Death Gets a Time-Out (7 page)

I shook off the sensation, reminding myself that I was here to do an investigation, not be converted to a crackpot religion, and continued with my questions. “What was it about his mother that explains his . . . his actions? Was she unusual in some way?”

“Unusual?” He smiled thinly, and looked back up at the
ceiling. I was relieved to be out from under his stare. “It isn’t particularly unusual, but Roberta was an acid freak of the highest order. In fact, it was as close as she came to a vocation.” Given the formality of his normal speech, his use of slang was jarring, an effect that was not, I thought, unintentional. But whatever his purpose, he had given us useful information. If Jupiter had any lingering effects of his mother’s drug use, we might be able to argue that he was as much a victim as a victimizer, and deserved some kind of leniency.

I glanced over at Al, who was scribbling away in his notebook, his mouth a thin line. My partner does not approve of drug use of any kind, other than alcohol. He considers it a sign of weakness. In fact, “pothead” has always been one of his favorite insults. On the other hand, he is violently opposed to the criminalization of drugs. Al’s a staunch libertarian, and can’t abide anything that smacks of big government trying to tell people what to do with their lives. He feels nothing but disgust for politicians, the media, and folks that don’t get that a gun is man’s best friend, and that people have a right to be as ignorant and stupid as they want to be. He manages to overcome his abhorrence when it comes to me, though. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t hide his contempt for my lily-livered liberalism—he just likes me anyway. Maybe he figures that he’ll convert me, and one day I, too, will end up a pistol-packing libertarian.

“Was Jupiter ever evaluated for brain damage or anything else stemming from his mother’s drug use?” I asked.

Polaris held me once more in the beams of his altogether too acute eyes. It was downright disconcerting. “My son is a remarkably intelligent young man. A genius, if you will. His Stanford-Binet score is well over 170. It’s his soul that’s damaged, not his brain.”

So much for that. I made a note to myself to do some research on the effects of prenatal drug exposure on emotional development. Maybe I’d find something useful. It wouldn’t hurt to have Jupiter evaluated in any case.

“Do I understand that you were never married to Jupiter’s mother?” I asked Polaris.

He laughed, and it was strictly Brooklyn. A loud bray of mirth. “Hell no,” he said, and his robed attendants winced.

“But you had a child together?”

He nodded and flicked a finger at the pious attendant, who rushed off. I raised my eyebrows at his departing back, but no one bothered to tell me where he’d gone. “Roberta and I had a brief fling, and Jupiter was the outcome. I probably wouldn’t even remember the woman’s name if it hadn’t been for the fact that she gave birth to Jupiter nine months after we had sex.”

I didn’t know how to phrase this delicately, so I decided not to bother trying. “Are you sure that Jupiter is your son?”

He nodded, and sighed. “I took a paternity test when the boy was a baby, and then again in the late 1970s when they invented the white blood cell antigen test. It was state of the art, back then. They both came out positive. I wanted to check again about fifteen years ago, when they began using the DNA test, just to be sure, but Jupiter would have none of it. He was over eighteen by then, and I couldn’t force him. Perhaps,” Polaris said, turning to his lawyers, “we can resolve that issue now, while he’s in custody.”

“If you like, I can speak to the prosecutor about it,” the older attorney responded, and then glanced meaningfully in my direction. “I think we should discuss this later, in private.”

Polaris nodded. “Let’s.”

“I understand that Jupiter grew up with you,” I said.

At that moment, the man who had left the room at Polaris’s signal came rushing back. He carried a small wooden tray with an iron teapot and a single miniature, black teacup.

“Thank you, Aldebaran,” Polaris said. The assistant poured a cup of tea and handed it to Polaris.

“Do you drink green tea?” the Very Reverend asked me.

“Sometimes,” I said. My old trainer Bobby Katz had been a big green tea drinker.

“It’s a tonic with remarkable curative powers; brought to us from the heavens. Studies have found it to be effective at
reducing incidences of cancers. It’s also quite soothing. I recommend it.”

I could certainly stand a little soothing, although I’d always thought that tea grew on bushes, rather than dropping from the sky. “I’ll give it a try,” I said. “We were talking about Jupiter, how he grew up with you, rather than with his mother.”

“Roberta abandoned the boy. That and her weak genetic legacy are surely what have made him what he is. She left for India when my son was an infant. Some kind of pilgrimage, she said, although I imagine she was seeking mind alteration rather than transcendence. She never returned. Or perhaps she did, but not to her child. I remember someone saying that she became the third or fourth wife of a Saudi Arabian oil sheik, but that might just be a rumor.” He sipped his tea and frowned. “Aldebaran, if the tea steeps for any more than forty-five seconds, it takes on a rather unpleasant, bitter flavor, as you know.”

“I’m so sorry, Very Reverend Polaris. Shall I make you a new pot?” Aldebaran asked, his lips pursed in concern.

“It’s fine. I’ll drink this. Just remember next time.” Polaris smiled gently at the man, who blushed, and then slowly smiled back, his face transformed with something that looked almost like rapture.

“Of course, of course I will.” If he had bowed and scraped any lower, he would have gotten rug burn on his chin.

“So Jupiter lived with you?” I continued.

“Yes.”

“And where was this? In Topanga?”

“In the commune in Topanga for a while. And then in Mexico.”

“Mexico?” I said, pretending I knew nothing about their time there.

“Yes. After Roberta made her great escape, I met a girl at the commune. A very lovely girl.” His voice grew soft and I could swear his eyes were misty. “
This
girl I married—as soon as she would have me. We moved together to Mexico.”

“Why did you move to Mexico?”

He laughed. “Why not? We were free spirits. We went where the wind blew us. A group of people were heading down to San Miguel de Allende and we decided to join them.”

“And you took Jupiter?”

“Of course. And Trudy-Ann’s little girl, Lilly.”

“The four of you moved down to Mexico,” I prodded him.

“Yes. San Miguel is a remarkable place. A true spiritual nexus.” He seemed to enjoy his recollections, was almost lost in them. “We lived in a massive old colonial mansion that we rented for no more than a hundred dollars a month. You know,
Chloe
would have loved it. I’ve never really thought of that before. She was a true aficionado of Mexican art and furniture. She was a woman with brilliant taste, was my young wife.” He waved his hand around the room. “She designed this room herself.”

I glanced at the sun-filled room and murmured appreciatively. I admire anyone who can keep a single houseplant green, not to mention an entire solarium. I can’t even keep a dozen roses alive long enough to get to a vase.

“Yes, Chloe would certainly have adored San Miguel,” he said. “Those days of youthful freedom, of exploration and irresponsibility.” He smiled at the robed assistant with the beard. The man smiled back and raised his eyebrows.

Polaris turned back to me. “We were very young, Trudy-Ann and I. We lived on the occasional check from our parents, and that was enough to meet our simple needs and pay our bar tab at La Cucaracha, the local bar. Don Chucho, the owner of the bar, was the first person to know when the checks from home made it to the post office. It was quite a scene in those days. Everyone made it to San Miguel, and to the Cuc, sooner or later.”

“Everyone?” I said.

He looked at me, and for some reason I blushed. I had no idea why. What
was
it about this man? “Everyone. The Beats were regulars. Neal Cassady died there after a particularly inebriated night. Back in 1968, before we arrived, the entire cast of the musical
Hair
had their heads shaved by the local
police. I’m not sure why, but the story was famous.”

“And Jupiter? What did he and his stepsister . . .” I made a show of looking through my notes for her name. “. . . Lilly, do in San Miguel? Did they go to school?”

He shrugged. “The children were too young for school. Jupiter wasn’t more than two when we got down there, and Lilly was perhaps a couple of years older. They amused themselves at the house. It was, I think, rather a bucolic life.”

I tried to imagine my kids, Ruby and Isaac, having fun hanging out with a bunch of random grown-ups while Peter and I drank with Neal Cassady and the cast of
Hair.
I couldn’t. And I couldn’t imagine Jupiter and Lilly as children enjoying themselves, either. I’ve always found children to be somewhat less liberal in their views than your basic snake-handling Baptist minister. Children like order. They like routines. They like to be and do exactly what everyone else is and does, and they expect their parents to live up to some imagined ideal of domesticated mundanity. Every once in a while, when I manage to put on a skirt instead of my usual jeans, you should see Ruby’s face. She smiles so hard it hurts my own cheeks to look at her, and she employs positive reinforcement. It’s really quite humiliating. “Look at how nicely you’re dressed, Mama. You look lovely.” Once, she even told me that I looked like “a real woman.” According to my three-and-a-half-foot-tall arbiter of gender classification, a pair of overalls does not a female make.

“When did you return to the States?” I asked.

“We stayed just a little over a year. Jupiter must have been about three or four when we returned.”

“And why did you come back?” I asked. At that moment the rustling of the bearded assistant’s robes caught my eye. I glanced over at him. He was sitting quite still, his face wiped clear of any expression.

Polaris looked down at his hands and carefully adjusted his thick gold ring so that its flashy diamond rested in the dead center of his finger. “We came home after Trudy-Ann transitioned,” he said, his voice much softer than it had been before.

“Transitioned?”

“Died,” the bearded assistant interrupted.

“How did she die?” Al asked. It was the first time he’d opened his mouth in quite a while and everyone in the room turned to look at him. He looked up from his notebook and raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response.

“There was an accident,” Polaris said.

“What kind of an accident? A car accident?” I said.

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “Something like that.” He glanced over at the sundial in the middle of the room. I knew he couldn’t possibly have read it. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve got things I must get done today.” He looked over at his lawyers, and they jumped to attention.

“We’ve barely touched on Jupiter’s life,” I said before they could end the interview. “I’m going to need information about his medical history, his psychological history. How he did in school. What problems, if any, he had before this unfortunate event. I’m going to want to talk about his drug use, his recovery. And of course, we need to discuss his and your relationships with Chloe. All that information is critical to preparing for the penalty phase of Jupiter’s trial.”

Polaris shot a glance in the direction of his lawyers. The one who had spoken up earlier said, “I’ll prepare a list of physicians, therapists, teachers, and friends for you. You can contact those individuals, and after you’ve done so, if you feel another meeting is necessary, we can consider the possibility.”

“No one knows Jupiter as well as his father,” I said. “The Reverend is likely to have all sorts of information that those other individuals do not.”

The attorney snapped his briefcase shut and rose to his feet. “Then you can put your questions in writing, and submit them to me. I’ll communicate the
Very
Reverend Polaris’s responses to you. Good day.”

With that, Aldebaran and the other robed man began hustling Al and me out the door. I shook my arm free and extended my hand to Polaris. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Very Reverend Polaris. I hope we haven’t offended you in any
way. You understand that our job is to help your son, don’t you?”

He stared at me for a moment, and then smiled bitterly. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t wish you success in your endeavors,” he said.

“
‘S
OMETHING
like that’? What kind of an answer is that? Either she died in a car accident or she didn’t,” I said.

“Yup,” Al said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, drumming his fingertips against the steering wheel. I stood outside his window, and peered up into his face. Al’s Suburban sported oversized truck wheels, and since I’m about five feet tall, my head barely grazed the bottom of the window.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think we’d better find out how ol’ Trudy-Ann kicked.”

“Al,” I said. “Jesus. Lilly’s my
friend
, remember? You’re talking about her dead mother.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to know how her mother got that way.”

“Any ideas how to investigate a death that happened thirty years ago, in Mexico?”

He shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“I’ll talk to Lilly. See what she knows.”

“Good idea. What’s with you and the Rev, by the way?”

“What?”

“Five more minutes in that house and you would have been getting fitted for your own white robe.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, feigning an anger I knew was unreasonable. There was just something about Polaris.

“You couldn’t keep your eyes off the funny-looking little guy.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Is it?”

I opened my mouth to insist on my innocence, but then sighed. “Didn’t you feel it? He’s . . . I don’t know . . . compelling.”

Al shrugged. “I’m pretty immune to that kind of thing. Maybe it’s because I’m a man.”