The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(52)

I picked up a pitcher of water and went to the first table—a family of four, still in hiking clothes, still smelling of campfire smoke. I refilled their glasses, asked how their chicken-fried steaks tasted, and whether they happened to drive a Land Rover. Then I moved on to the next table. But Baker wouldn’t wait, he pushed past me into the middle of the diner, all six feet of him occupying the center aisle, and in a radio announcer’s voice, he boomed, “Land Rover Defender. Gunmetal gray. Come move it now or I’ll have it towed.” Silence descended on the restaurant. Everyone looked up, but no one claimed the Land Rover. So Baker stormed out, leaving me to apologize, to bring extra crayons for the children and refill breadbaskets for the adults.

Our relationship had already become touchy, but that morning’s argument turned it raw. Now I had to be watchful about everything: what parking spaces my customers used, how long the delivery truck sat idling when it brought soft drinks, whether the cook smoked cigarettes too close to the dumpster. I had the feeling that I was being watched constantly, that the slightest misstep on my part would cause another eruption. What could I do with a neighbor like that? How could I prevent him from finding fault when fault was all he was looking for?

These questions were so unsettling that I put them aside. Maybe I was letting what happened with the Land Rover blind me. Baker and I had been neighbors for a very long time, after all, and when a freak storm three years earlier had left debris all over the street, we’d worked together to clean it up. This was just a rough patch. Besides, he was getting old, which meant that sooner or later he would have to retire. I needed to keep all this in perspective. Be patient, I told myself. Be patient. Things will get better.





Nora




The charge against Anderson Baker was formally filed on a clear morning in May, with the air still crisp from a recent thunderstorm and the mountains in the distance outlined like a woodcut print. I drove to the arraignment at the Morongo Basin Courthouse in a state of febrile anticipation that was only heightened when, passing through the metal detector, I was pulled aside for a random pat-down. It had started years ago, this experience, and it was unavoidable. It didn’t matter if it was a state-of-the-art machine at San Francisco International Airport or some rinky-dink contraption at a sports arena in Kern County, I was always pulled aside for the random pat-down. The local courthouse was no different. My mother had already gone through the process and was waiting for me on the other side. “Where’s Salma?” I asked her as we embraced.

“In clinic.”

“But this is very important. Couldn’t she have rescheduled?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you call her? It’s only nine thirty. If she leaves now, she can still make it.”

My mother hesitated. The argument between my sister and me at the children’s school play had mortified her and she seemed reluctant to risk getting into another one here, at the courthouse. She didn’t reply. Instead, she looked at the wall screen that showed the cases on the docket that day. “There,” she said. “Baker. Courtroom M-2.”

When we walked in, the only seats left were in the last row of pews. How strange, I thought, that the courtroom had pews. They gave the gallery a patrician air, but this impression was tempered by the white grid ceiling, which would not have looked out of place in an industrial warehouse. The room was windowless and brightly lit and, although there were attorneys and bailiffs and an audience, it was eerily quiet. The judge was already at the bench, shuffling papers, waiting for one defendant to be taken out and another brought in.

The old man who sat next to me looked up suddenly as a boy in a gray T-shirt was called up on a possession charge. The boy came forward, shoulders hunched, his arms white and skinny, a look of bewilderment on his face. The charges were read, and bail was set at $5,000. Most of the cases that morning were like this. Pot. Crystal meth. Sometimes heroin. Skirmishes in the endless war on drugs. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my father’s murder was buried under a rubble of cases that properly belonged elsewhere.

It was past eleven when Anderson Baker was finally brought into the courtroom. He was so tall—six foot three, six foot four—that I had no trouble seeing him from the last row. In a white linen shirt and beige pants, he looked as though he had spent the night at a wedding in Palm Springs and was just now coming home, no worse for the wear. He turned around and scanned the courtroom, his eyes settling on someone seated in the first row across the aisle. Mrs. Baker. A tall, thin woman, all sharp edges. On her lap was a sleeping girl, perhaps three or four years old, with a full head of blond curls. A granddaughter, presumably. And next to Mrs. Baker was A.J., her son. High school star wrestler, popular kid, vicious bully. He had gotten into some college out in Orange County, I couldn’t remember which, and lived in the area. Now here he was, providing moral support to his father. On the other side of A.J. was a young brunette, probably his wife, and in the row behind her sat two middle-aged men I recognized as maintenance workers at Desert Bowling Arcade.

I began to realize how unprepared I was for this day in court. It hadn’t even occurred to me to tell anyone at my father’s restaurant about the arraignment, or to ask if they might like to come to court with us. Again, I felt a surge of irritation at my sister for not canceling her clinic appointments that morning. It was as if she were trying to send me a message: You deal with this. I’ve done enough. I knew, of course, that she was still angry about the life insurance money, but of all the ways to make a statement about it, she’d chosen the most hurtful to me, and the most damaging to the case. Because why would anyone care about a dead man if the only people present at the hearing were his wife and daughter? And how could anyone believe that someone like Baker was capable of premeditated killing when all his friends and family, the little girl and the pretty brunette included, were there for him?