“The new stuff, once you get the feel, it’s like hydroplaning. You can drive out to Zuma or County Line and see kids that are basically Jesus walking on water.”
“Sounds like you did a bit of water work yourself.”
“Still do.” He grinned and handed me my receipt. “No second childhood for me, ’cause I never got out of my first.”
The chimes sounded. A dark-haired woman had opened the door and stuck her foot in.
“I need help, Tom.”
She was tall and nice-looking with a narrow, graceful figure and long thin arms with some muscle definition. Her hair was wavy and very short, almost black, her eyes so light they seemed pupil-less. The sun had cured her face to tight bronze leather. She wore high-cut pink shorts that exposed long smooth legs. Her blouse was white and sleeveless and tucked in snugly.
Tom said, “Just finishing up a sale, babe.”
She didn’t smile or answer, just kept standing there in the door. I heard a powerful engine idling and looked out to see a white Ford van conversion, smoke puffing from its rear.
The woman cleared her throat.
Tom said, “Here you go, pal, enjoy ’em.”
I left the store, taking as long as possible to get back to the Seville. Once in the car, I sat behind the wheel pretending to look for something. A few seconds later Tom Shea came out of the shop and followed his wife to the van. She got behind the wheel and closed the driver’s door and a metal ramp slid out from the rear of the vehicle. It touched the asphalt and I heard it scrape. Tom opened the rear door and reached in, back muscles bunching, as he pulled on something. A moment later an electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, bearing a slumping, bronze-haired boy.
Tom guided the chair down the ramp. I started the Seville and inched out, watching. The boy could have been anywhere from twelve to twenty. His head was large and it lolled, eyes wide, tongue extended. His shrunken body was belted into the chair. Despite the restraint, he slanted sharply to the right, the head almost touching his right shoulder. One arm was belted, too. The other clutched a joystick at the front of the chair.
Tom wasn’t smiling. He said something, and the joystick hand moved. The chair rolled down the ramp, very slowly, and when it was on the asphalt Tom closed the van door. Then he got behind the chair and guided it up the cement slope toward the store. The van’s engine cut off and Gwen Shea came around, sprinted up ahead, and held the store door. As Tom eased the chair through, I caught a glimpse of the boy’s face. Sleepy, but grinning. Big grin, almost voracious.
His hair a thick, straight mat, the kind that might turn silver-minnow when it aged.
But he reminded me of more than his father.
As I drove away, I realized what it was.
The grin. Triumphant, cartoonish.
He was an atrophied version of the surfer on the sign.
CHAPTER
20
Years ago, the mother of a severely brain-damaged child sat in my hospital office and cried for half an hour without break. When she finally stopped, she said, “I love her, but God forgive me, sometimes I want her to die.” She never cried again in my presence, and whenever we passed in the hall she looked away from me with a face that was part despair, part rage.
The same face Gwen Shea wore.
The idea of approaching her about a twenty-one-year-old disappearance seemed ridiculous and cruel. What reason did I have to believe Best wasn’t just an old man deluded by hope?
I caught a green light and sped out of Malibu into the Palisades, making my way to Rockingham Avenue and possibly more delusions.
The house was a sizable two-story Tudor with pink roses and blue agapanthus along the front and a low hedge of waxy privet bordering the brick walkway. A white Ford Taurus with a rental sticker sat in the driveway. Ken Lowell answered the door wearing a blue suit and holding a Filofax. His shoes were shined and his hair was wet.