A Student of History, page 16
I ate my burger quickly—I was hungry from my run—and ordered coffee to prolong my stay. Soon Lorena brought me my check. I could say something now or I could let her walk away without her knowing I’d come there to see her. For just a second I wondered if it might be better that way—sometimes, even now, I still wonder. But I’d driven all the way up there to find out about her brother, and so I touched her on the arm as she was turning away, and said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry. But are you Jimmy Castillo’s sister?”
She pulled back as if she’d been burned. “I might be,” she answered suspiciously. “Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Rick Nagano,” I said stupidly, as if this would explain anything. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to startle you. But I wanted to talk with you about his accident.”
Her mouth twisted into a grimace and I saw the pain in her eyes; all the carefully built artifice, the stalwart defense, had crumbled at the mention of her brother. “Why do you want to talk about that?” She almost spat it at me. “Nothing can be done to change it. Besides, no one wants to talk about the accident.”
I didn’t know what this meant, but sensed an opening. “There’s someone who’s very interested in finding out what happened.”
“You mean what really happened?”
So there was something more, something worth finding out. I leaned forward now and looked her in the eye; I spoke in a low and confidential tone. “Yes, what really happened. Can we talk?”
She glared at me. A red flush had come up on both of her cheeks and covered her neck and chest. “Why the hell should I talk to you?”
“Because I want to know. Maybe . . . maybe I can help.” This was blatantly false—there was nothing I could do that would be of use. But that was all I could think of to say.
She snorted. “Help. Jimmy’s had just about all the help he can take.”
I didn’t say anything, but I noticed people from a couple of other tables looking over at us—either because they heard the tone of her voice, or because they needed service.
Lorena sensed this too. She came back to herself and looked at me. “I get off at three,” she said, standing up straight again. “Meet me at the Sand Bar.”
* * *
The Sand Bar was another restaurant about a half-mile farther up Moonstone Drive—a place, I knew from previous trips, of mediocre food and indifferent service. What it boasted, though, was a large patio overlooking the ocean. There were twenty or twenty-five tables set up outside, though the real attraction was the bar-like counter that stretched the entire length of the patio, facing west. I’d spent several evenings there, over the years, watching the sun set over the horizon. But on this day, I chose a table set back from the counter so Lorena and I could look at each other. I settled in one of the chairs that faced the water, in a bit of shade provided by an umbrella.
I realized almost immediately why she’d suggested we meet there. The place was busy, even at what should have been the outer edge of lunch. The crowd and the noise would provide more privacy than some quieter place, where our conversation might be overheard. Three o’clock came and went, and then three fifteen, and I started to wonder if maybe she’d decided not to come. But then, just after three thirty, I saw her walking toward my table. She’d changed out of her short-sleeve work shirt and was now wearing a black button-down top. As she sat, I again felt the incongruity of how young she looked physically and how old she seemed.
“I almost didn’t come,” she said by way of greeting.
“I’m glad you did.”
A waiter appeared, a guy about my age who, surprisingly, for such a small town, didn’t seem to know Lorena. I’d been nursing a beer and now she ordered one too; we both declined the offer of food.
We sat in awkward silence, our own quiet somehow magnified by the din all around us. There was a particularly loud burst of laughter from the group of six seated just to our left. I stole a peek at her. Sitting down, she seemed smaller than she had when she was working.
“I overheard you talking with another table at the Anchor earlier,” I eventually said. “So, your family’s from Paso Robles?”
But if I’d thought that her family origins were a safer topic to begin with, or a good distraction, I was wrong.
“Yes, and I’m never moving back. Why do you want to know about my brother?”
I felt a bit assailed, put back on my heels, but I leaned forward, as if into the wind. For all of Lorena’s understandable suspicion, she had some kind of knowledge, some information I needed, and the thought of unearthing it, of bringing it back to Fiona, gave me the strength to withstand her resistance.
“Well, first of all,” I asked, “how is he doing?”
Lorena looked at me, confused, a bit incredulous. “How is he doing? He’s paralyzed from the neck down, and he’s in his bed most of the day, except when my mother and his nurse decide to lift him into a wheelchair. He needs to be fed and bathed and wiped. And his brain was scrambled too, so he doesn’t know what’s going on half the time. So I’d have to say he’s doing pretty shitty.”
Just then the waiter reappeared with Lorena’s beer, and we sat in silence until he was gone. She took a big gulp of it—downing a third all at once—then glanced at me, and looked away.
I deserved this anger, I knew. My question had come from obligatory politeness, not real concern. I had to do better. “That’s awful,” I said, more gently now. “He’s living with your parents?”
Lorena nodded. “Yes. He’s married, you know. With a son and a daughter. But Ana’s still so messed up about it that she can’t see him without crying, and it’s hard to have the kids around him. My parents have a whole setup in their new house—a room for him, a special bed, a full-time caregiver. Ana and the kids visit him every weekend. Sometimes he can have a normal conversation, and sometimes he doesn’t even know who they are. It’s pretty fucking sad, to tell you the truth.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. What could I say? Above us, a seagull flew perilously close, and then landed on the wall of the patio, staring at us. Lorena didn’t seem to notice. She reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph. “This is why I was late,” she said, placing it on the table. “I went home to get this.”
It was a picture of a man on a horse. Although I knew nothing about horses, or the people who loved them, I understood immediately that to say this man was “riding” would have been an understatement, even an insult. It was more like the man and this magnificent animal—for I could tell that the horse was like no horse I’d ever seen—were conducting some kind of elaborate dance, a coordinated expression of grace. The horse’s front feet were lifted slightly off the ground, which accentuated the muscles of its haunches and shoulders; its coat was a deep chestnut brown and its mane and tail were shiny and black. Looking at the photograph, I could almost see the movement. And moving with it was the man, clad in jeans and a cream-colored button-down shirt, a wide-rimmed cowboy hat. He held the reins with firm but easy strength, and he sat in the saddle as if he’d sprung to life there. He had the same smooth, broad face as Lorena, yet there was an openness to it, an expression of utter joy. This was a man, I thought, who was doing what he was supposed to be doing in life. This was a man whose normal state was motion.
“Your brother?” I asked needlessly.
“Yes. From three years ago. With Alfonso, his favorite horse.”
“Does he still have him?”
“Have him? Please. Alfonso wasn’t his. None of them were. Those horses cost at least a hundred thousand dollars.”
I pushed the photograph back over to her, afraid it would get splashed with beer; afraid that if anything happened to it, something else would befall the man it depicted.
“He was the best horse trainer on the Central Coast,” she said. “He loved riding horses. Just loved it.”
“How did he get into it?” I asked.
Lorena took another drink. “Our father was a ranch hand and we grew up on the Leary ranch. My mother worked for the Learys too, around the house. The family kept cattle but their real love was breeding and training quarter horses. For shows, I mean, not ranch work—for reining competitions, and Jimmy was riding almost before he could walk. I was always bookish—always the nerdy student—but Jimmy couldn’t be kept inside.”
Another seagull flew overhead, letting out a shrill cry, and this time Lorena looked up. When she lowered her eyes again I saw the sadness there. “He apprenticed with the Learys’ trainer and then started to train himself,” she continued. “He’d travel with them to shows all over the West—Idaho, Montana, Colorado. Then about five years ago Mr. Leary died, and his son wasn’t interested in keeping up the operation. My parents moved into a small place in Paso, and Jimmy started hiring himself out. Then the Larsons found him and brought him on full-time. Charles Larson fancied himself a horseman, and was getting serious about competing. He offered more money than Jimmy could make on his own, even a house on the property. Jimmy and Ana had the kids by then, so it made perfect sense.”
And now her eyes filled with tears. One fell, and she angrily wiped it away.
“I’m so sorry about what happened to him,” I said. And I was.
“What is it to you?” she demanded. “Why are you here?”
I took a sip of beer, trying to gather my nerve. “It’s like I said. Someone down in Los Angeles wants to find out what happened. They’ve got a sense that maybe things weren’t handled the way they should have been.”
“Oh really,” she said sarcastically. “Do they really? Who the hell is it? Are they connected to the Larsons?”
“No,” I said, relieved to be telling the truth. “It’s actually a totally uninvolved party. They just want to find out the full story. Make people do the right thing.”
“And what would that be, at this point?”
“I don’t know.” I was treading on dangerous ground, not sure where the land mines were. “You tell me.”
She took the glass of beer in her hand but didn’t lift it; instead she squeezed it so hard I thought it might break. “You know what would be good? You know what I’d really like? If someone would just do what they’re supposed to do and punish the person responsible.”
“But Charles Larson is dead. His son too.”
She looked at me with much the same expression Professor Rose had worn when she returned my chapters with their weak, half-hearted arguments. “Charles Larson was pretty useless, but he wasn’t a jerk. He respected my brother. He was good to his kids. And he never would have been driving at high speed, drunk, with his son in the car.”
“But . . . but that’s what was reported,” I sputtered, realizing again that actually nothing had been reported. “If Charles Larson wasn’t driving, then who was?” Yet even as I asked the question, I thought of what I already knew: the check from Mrs. W—, and the injuries to her son. Those injuries included broken ribs, consistent with what happened when a driver was thrown against a steering wheel.
“Someone who was visiting the Larsons,” Lorena said. “Some asshole from Bel Air. I don’t know his name. I just know that he nearly killed my brother. And on some days, to tell you the truth, I almost wish he had.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, and I looked away, past the edge of the patio, out toward the cars driving by on Moonstone Drive, and at the trees, the beach, the ocean. She didn’t know who the other man was. But I did. And it took every bit of self-control I had to keep my composure.
When I trusted myself to speak, I asked, “If people know this, why didn’t they tell anyone?”
Lorena took a moment to answer. “I don’t know that anyone does know, except my brother. He was in a coma for a couple of weeks after the accident, and the other survivor told the police that Charles Larson was driving.” She paused, gripping her drink again. “Jimmy told us different, though. He told us the truth: that the other guy was driving, and Charles was too drunk to know what was going on, and Jimmy went with them to try and keep things under control. But when the cops finally questioned him, it was already too late, because by that point the money had come.”
I tried not to seem overinterested, though I felt my pulse quicken. “The money?”
“The hush money. The bribe. From the driver, I guess, or his family. I never found out the exact details because I was so disgusted by it. But my parents and Ana decided to take it. In Jimmy’s name, through his business.”
“His business?”
“His horse-training business. First Quarter.”
I held her eyes for a moment, then had to look away. First Quarter. So that’s what it was.
“Think of the care he needs, they said,” Lorena went on. “Think about the future of his children. And so both my parents and Ana bought new places in Paso Robles, and Jimmy has a full-time caregiver, and everyone’s happy. Except for me. And Jimmy. And of course the Larson family, who still believe that Charles caused the accident.”
I took this all in, with a sense that I’d just stepped into a land much vaster and more frightening than I’d imagined. “Couldn’t you go to the police?” I asked.
Lorena laughed bitterly. “For what? You don’t think that someone who’s rich enough to buy off my family has power over them too? And the Larsons—they kept the whole thing out of the paper. They control too much of the business and government around here for anyone to cross them. Suddenly they make big gifts to the Police Protective League, the Fireman’s League. So if I go to the police, I’ll be laughed at or ignored, and then my family gets cut off from the money. I don’t approve of them taking it, but I don’t want to be the reason they lose it, either. And so I just keep going on, and mind my own business. And dream about getting out of here.”
I just sat there staring at the remnants of my beer, a half-inch of piss-colored liquid. It was a dirty business, what she’d told me, and yet I knew it was true. I thought of Mrs. W—, her haughty carriage and deep pride, and couldn’t help but feel differently about her. I thought too of what Fiona would say when I told her that her suspicions had been right. Steven J—, who everyone acknowledged was a ne’er-do-well, had actually done real damage—damage beyond forgiving or repair. And this young woman sitting with me had to bear, along with her grief, the lonely burden of a truth that no one wanted to act on, or even to hear.
* * *
We finally left the Sand Bar a little after five thirty, just as it was starting to fill up for dinner. I was supposed to head back to LA, but on a whim I turned left onto the highway and drove farther up the coast. I passed the outer boundaries of Cambria, the few restaurants and private houses. I passed the tacky motels of San Simeon and the driver-trap greasy restaurants. I passed the cove where the elephant seals were sleeping on the beach, dozens of cars expelling tourists to watch them. I drove another fifteen, twenty miles, and when I saw the giant, leaning rock in the water that Lorena had described, I looked to the inland side and, within another mile, saw the driveway that she’d told me to watch for. It was nondescript, not even marked by a number, but paved and clearly cared for. It bent to the right and up a rise so suddenly that you couldn’t tell where it went. I drove on for another half-mile, and found the turnoff that Lorena had mentioned, a gravel cutout on the ocean side of the road. I got out of the car and stared back across the highway.
The Larsons owned something like twenty thousand acres, and I was probably seeing just a couple hundred of them. It was beautiful land, the small steep bluff at the bottom giving way to gentle rolling slopes, and beyond that a broad expanse of lush green mountain. A few low clouds hung over the land, obscuring the gentle peaks. I stood there, the ocean crashing below me, feeling the wind at my back, and stared up at this wild, pristine piece of California; it seemed odd that anyone could claim it was theirs. And yet the Larson family owned this land, and had owned it for decades. Somewhere up there, above the clouds, was a mansion whose grandiosity was beyond imagining. And below it, on the gentler terrain closer to the road, was the airstrip where Jimmy Castillo had been horribly injured; where Charles Larson and his son had died. It seemed unreal that something so tragic and avoidable had occurred in this grand, gorgeous place. But it had, at the cost of men’s futures and lives, and the costs were still being exacted. I stared up at the hills for another fifteen or twenty minutes, but I saw no sign of the house or human activity. The land would not yield its secrets. So I got back into my car and headed home.
* * *
I wish I could say that I thought about Jimmy Castillo on my drive back to Los Angeles. I wish I could say I considered his family—his wife and children, his heartbroken parents, his tough, pained sister. This is what I’d rather believe of myself: that when I learned the actual story of the accident and the death and grief it had caused, when I understood who was really responsible, I empathized with the Castillos—as well as the Larsons—and felt a deep, healthy anger at Steven J— for his stupidity and carelessness. But that wasn’t where my head was, or more truthfully, my heart. That would have been giving myself too much credit.
What I really thought about was Fiona. I pictured her face when I revealed what I’d learned; how she’d throw her arms around me, grateful and impressed. I saw us leaning our heads together, coconspirators. And as the winding two-lane highway curved in from the ocean and met up with the 101, my hopes ventured further, onto my life and hers, and how they might intertwine.
The first thing I had to do was change my career. There was no way a woman like Fiona would be satisfied with a mere academic, and truth be told, my studies were feeling musty and useless. I needed a career that placed me in the world of tangible accomplishment; that allowed me a sizable living; that gave me entrée to mingle with the kinds of women and men who made up Fiona’s world. And shifting gears in this way might also make me able—at last—to provide some support for my family. I swung back and forth between business and law; from the time I left San Luis Obispo until I hit Santa Barbara, I had changed my mind three or four times. But by then I had a general plan. I’d drop out of the history program, and enter business or law school; between student loans and the assistance that Mrs. W— had offered, I could find a way to swing the tuition. It’s some measure of my delusion that this plan depended on the help of the woman I was about to betray.
