The Call of the Mild p-3 Read online

  But as an adult, Henry was secure enough in his beliefs that he didn’t need to engage a thirty-five-year-old pop song in a political argument. He was caught immediately by the opening guitar chord’s transition into that hypnotic synthesizer riff, and then the crash as the bass, guitar, and drums all kicked in at once. He knew this song. He’d heard it over and over and over again, and somehow he’d never noticed it until this very moment.

  It wasn’t until the time counter hit the seven-and-a-half-minute mark that Henry realized he was in trouble. He’d been listening while he was washing the dinner dishes, shuffling his feet roughly in rhythm with the tune, when the guitar, bass, drums, and vocal all dropped out again, leaving only that hypnotic, repeating synth line. Henry was scrubbing a plate when Keith Moon’s drums kicked in.

  The plate hit the surface of the water and sent suds flying as Henry’s hands pounded along with the drums. Before he knew what he was doing, he had air-drummed the end of the song.

  Henry wheeled around to make sure no one was watching him, although he knew he was alone in the house. What was he doing? He took a deep breath, turned back to the dishes, and vowed never to let this happen again.

  But it did. And not just with The Who. If he didn’t keep strict control at all times, his hands would start banging out the rhythms of almost any song. And when he came across Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” he knew that no amount of self-control would keep him from drumming the break.

  It didn’t take Henry long to understand what was happening: His hands were living the adolescence he’d never allowed them in his youth. And the only way to stop them would be to quit music. Go back to his sound-track-free existence, marching only to the beat of his own internal metronome.

  He could do it. He knew he still had the strength. But as soon as he realized that, he understood something else: He didn’t want to. He liked the tunes that filled the empty spaces in his head.

  As a lifelong soldier in the fight between chaos and order, Henry knew the most important rule of battle: Either you fight with everything you’ve got, or you surrender. Anything in between does nothing but cause harm to everyone involved.

  So Henry surrendered to adolescence. Not permanently, of course, and not in ways that anyone would ever know about. He decided to take one great plunge into a second childhood, knowing that he would climb out feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, and never needing to do it again.

  He signed up for a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. He’d spend five days in the hills outside Ojai learning to drum from the masters. Not Keith Moon, of course, or John Bonham-drummers, it appeared, tended to have shorter shelf lives than the manager’s specials at Food King. But there were plenty of aging stars who would teach him. And when it was all done, he’d have it out of his system, and no one would ever have to know.

  In any other context he probably would have felt nothing but pity for his fellow campers, all middle-age men grasping to retrieve a tiny bit of their youth. But this week wasn’t about judgment; it was about living out a fantasy he’d never even known he had. So for today, Ralph the Lawyer and Fred the Developer and Sid the Dentist were actually Pete and Rog and the Ox. And Henry-for this one shining moment, Henry was Keith Moon.

  The doodling synthesizer beats were accelerating. Ralph was warming up his shoulder for the windmilling guitar chords. Fred was swirling his long blond hair-or the long blond hair that existed in his mind, anyway. Sid clutched the fretboard of his bass as if it were about to blast out of his hands.

  And Henry was ready. Sticks poised, waiting to slam down on the shining-white drum heads. He’d practiced the solo in his head for months, and now it was almost time.

  He raised the drumsticks high over his head. He could feel the rhythm rising in his blood. The moment was now.

  And then there was silence.

  The synthesizer stopped just before it reached its crescendo. The musicians all looked up, confused, like shuttle astronauts whose liftoff had been aborted without warning.

  Henry glanced over at the side of the stage. At the skinny young man who was bending over the synthesizer. Please, no, he prayed, although he knew this one was never going to come true. Please don’t let it be him.

  Shawn flipped one last switch and turned to face the band.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Were you guys listening to that?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cabins at the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp were small and Spartan; the campers’ fees went to paying the guest instructors, or at least their coke dealers, therapists, and exwives, and not for luxurious accommodation. This didn’t bother Henry when he checked in. The cabin was plenty big enough for one.

  But now it held Henry, Shawn, and Gus, along with Henry’s fury and his embarrassment, and it was feeling mighty cramped. Shawn’s throat was too close to Henry’s hands to be certain they wouldn’t attempt revenge for their thwarted celebration. Henry almost regretted ripping the sleeves out of that sweatshirt; right now unlimited freedom for his arms seemed to be an invitation to filicide.

  Fortunately Shawn had made that difficult by spreading himself over Henry’s single bed. Gus was still an available target, having wedged himself into a corner between a dresser and the cabin’s sole window, but there was no more point in blaming Gus than there had been at any point in his lifelong friendship with Shawn. Gus was a passenger.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Henry said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. “What exactly are you doing here?”

  “I’ve decided I haven’t embarrassed myself and my family enough in life, and thought this was a great way to look like a total tool,” Shawn said. “Oh, no, wait. That’s you.”

  Henry’s hands clenched into fists. With great mental effort, he forced them to relax. “Have you considered I might be here to investigate a case for a friend?”

  “I’m sure you are,” Shawn said. “The case of the missing youth. Or is it the mystery of the lost hair?”

  “I realize this is terribly unpleasant for you,” Henry said. “If only there was some way you could have avoided it. You know, like by staying away.”

  “How could I, when you were practically blasting out press releases across the country?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone about this,” Henry said.

  “You told MasterCard,” Shawn said.

  “What did you do?” Henry said, his anger rising even further. “Hack into my credit card account?”

  “Shawn wanted me to,” Gus said. “But I told him no. There are layers of security, traps for hackers who try to break in. I heard of one guy in Michigan who thought he could get into-” He saw the look on Henry’s face and stopped himself. “Besides, I said. That would be wrong.”

  “Not to mention illegal,” Shawn said. “So we broke into your house and found your last bill. You really do need to use that shredder.”

  “I can think of a use for it right now,” Henry said.

  “Anyway,” Shawn said, “we’ve come here to save you money and embarrassment.”

  “That will be a first,” Henry said.

  “Technically it will be two firsts,” Gus said.

  “Which is what makes this such an exciting opportunity for you,” Shawn said. “We’re here to give you a chance to relive your glory days. And I mean your real glory days, not the song. Which is not only the worst song on Born in the USA, but the worst song Springsteen ever wrote, and possibly the worst song ever written by anyone in the world besides Diane Warren-”

  “Hey,” Gus interrupted, “I warned you about ragging on ‘Unbreak My Heart.’ ”

  Shawn ignored him. “-and which I’m sure the Hairless Four, or whatever your band calls itself, is going to do next.”

  “The only glory days I’m thinking about are those wonderful ones when I was childless,” Henry said.

  “I mean the days when you were important,” Shawn said.

  “When you still had a purpose in life and didn’t have to dress u
p like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance just to make it through another dismal day. I’m offering you a case.”

  Henry stared at his son. For all his questionable tactics, Shawn was smart. He knew how to get people to do what he wanted. And if Henry could generally see through him, at least he usually sounded like he was offering him something he’d genuinely desire. This time, not so much.

  “You want to hire me to work for Psych?” Henry said. “Do you think I’m starving in a gutter?”

  “If you were, you’d probably be dressed better,” Shawn said, then hurried to the meat of his offer before Henry could respond. “The Santa Barbara Police Department wants you back.”

  Henry was happy being retired. Henry was happy not having to deal with the bureaucracy, and the lowlifes, and the long hours behind a desk, and the longer hours out in the field. Henry didn’t want to go back to work.

  At least that’s what he told himself. But there was a part of him, deep down, maybe even deeper down than the place where all those songs were hiding all those years, that was jumping for joy at the offer. There was just one small problem.

  “And they sent you because all their phones are broken and they’ve forgotten how to drive?” Henry said.

  “It’s not really an official SBPD case,” Shawn said. “Well, it is, but the Isla Vista Foot Patrol doesn’t agree, and they’re ready to rumble to fight for their turf.”

  Now Henry was completely lost. Shawn saw the confusion on his face and launched into an explanation that, after many false starts and corrections from Gus, finally approximated what had happened over the previous day.

  “So you volunteered me to help you out on this one,” Henry said. “Without asking.”

  “I’m asking now,” Shawn said.

  “No, you’re not,” Henry said. “You’re doing everything but asking. You’re trying to trick me into doing what you want instead of honestly asking for my help.”

  “Would that help?” Shawn asked.

  “What?”

  “Honesty,” Shawn said. “Sincerity. Heart.”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. “Since you’ve never actually tried anything that radical before, it’s hard to say what would happen if you did. But I can guarantee that nothing else is going to work.”

  Shawn nodded thoughtfully as he took this in. Then he turned away from Henry and faced the wall. When he turned back, the trademark smirk was gone from his face. He stared at his father with deep, grave eyes.

  “Ellen Svaco came to Psych for help,” Shawn said. “I didn’t realize the kind of trouble she was in. If I had, she might still be alive. I can’t do anything about that, but at least I can help catch her killer.”

  Henry thought about this. “I’ll help,” he said. “On one condition.”

  “I’m not going to sit in for you on the great rock and roll swindle,” Shawn said. “But I will troll the retirement homes for your replacement if that will make you feel better about breaking up the band.”

  “It’s not that,” Henry said, “and it’s not negotiable.”

  “Everything’s negotiable,” Shawn said.

  “Not this,” Henry said. “If I’m on this case, you’re off it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shawn stared at his father as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. “You do understand that this is my case.”

  “I understand that it was,” Henry said. “Now you’ve got to ask yourself what’s more important: that this woman’s murderer be brought to justice, or that you’re the one who does it.”

  “How about this,” Shawn said, thinking quickly. “I’ll stay on the case, but Gus will promise not to be involved.”

  “Hey!” Gus protested from his corner.

  “Like you weren’t looking for a way to get on this without me,” Shawn said.

  “Only so I could work as a mole, passing you information from the inside,” Gus said.

  “Which is why I wasn’t going to let Gus in, either,” Henry said. “This case is too dangerous.”

  This was so outrageous that Shawn bolted up from the bed. And while he didn’t necessarily mean to thrust his face right into his father’s, the cramped quarters of the cabin meant that some portion of his anatomy had to be pressed up against Henry, so he made necessity his accomplice.

  “Dangerous!”

  “You’ve been on the case less than one day and you’ve already had two guns pointed at you,” Henry said. “At some point, one of those is going to go off.”

  “Do you realize how many murderers I’ve gone up against?” Shawn demanded. “I went face-to-face with a serial killer who’d been terrorizing Santa Barbara for years when you were on the force, and I won.”

  “And I’m always pleased to read about your exploits in the paper,” Henry said. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Shawn said. “Just think of this as getting the paper a day early. Except if I were you I wouldn’t use this information for my own personal gain, like betting on horse races or anything, because that never works out well.”

  “I think that’s only if some strange metaphysical force sends you the paper so you can use it to protect innocent people from fates they don’t deserve,” Gus said.

  “It’s fair to say that I’m as strange a metaphysical force as any of us is going to see,” Shawn said. “So is this settled? We’ll work the case from different sides: You help the police, and Gus and I will do it the smart way. We’ll call you for the summation.”

  Shawn headed for the door. At least he would have headed for the door if there had been an inch of space between Henry and the bed for him to squeeze through. But there wasn’t, and Henry didn’t move out of his way.

  “I told you, it’s not negotiable,” Henry said.

  “Why?”

  Henry’s hard grimace softened. “When you were little, I used to worry about you all the time. When you missed curfew, when you slipped out your window in the middle of the night, when you were just a few minutes late for dinner, my heart broke at the thought that something might have happened to you.”

  “You certainly hid it well,” Shawn said. “Under all that yelling and nagging.”

  “Do you really think that was hiding it?” Henry said. “The point is, once you moved out of the house, I stopped worrying.”

  “That was a mistake,” Shawn said. “What I was doing then was much worse than anything I did while I lived with you.”

  “I knew that,” Henry said. “But you were an adult. It wasn’t my job to worry like that anymore, so I stopped. It’s the same with your detective work. As long as I don’t know about it until you’ve finished a case, it’s none of my concern. But if I have to watch you putting yourself in danger, it will be just like you’re twelve years old again. And I don’t think anyone wants that.”

  “Not if you’re going to make me go to bed at eight thirty,” Shawn said. “I’m still trying to see the second half of the A-Team episode where they went to Africa. They were caught by cannibals and put in a cauldron over a fire, but before I could find out what happened to them, you unplugged the TV and turned off the lights. For all I know they were eaten decades ago.”

  “It turned out the cannibals weren’t really cannibals,” Gus said. “It was all a plot by-”

  “Don’t tell me!” Shawn said.

  “The episode’s been on DVD for five years,” Gus said. “If you cared that much, you could have seen it a hundred times by now.”

  “It’s not the same,” Shawn said. “If there isn’t at least one commercial with Jacko urging me to knock a battery off his shoulder, I can’t watch it.”

  “And I can’t watch you putting yourself in danger,” Henry said.

  “It’s as simple as that.”

  Shawn shot Gus a pleading look over Henry’s shoulder. Gus shrugged helplessly. Shawn turned back to Henry. “I’ve got to do this,” he said. “Please.”

  “It’s a hard lesson to learn and a hard way to learn it, but y
ou don’t owe this woman anything, son,” Henry said. “She asked you to find her necklace. You did. What happens in the rest of her life-even her death-is simply none of your business.”

  “She was our client,” Shawn said. “When a man’s client is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of her. She was your client and you’re supposed to do something about it. ‘And it happens we’re in the detective business. When one of your organization gets killed, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.’ ”

  For a moment Henry seemed impressed by Shawn’s passion for the profession. But something about the words nagged at him.

  “ ‘Partner,’ ” Henry said as the memory fell into place.

  “Yes!” Shawn said. “We’ll be partners.”

  “No,” Henry said. “It’s ‘when a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it.’ ”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?” Shawn said. “Because I promise if Gus is killed I’ll stick with that case, too.”

  “Thanks,” Gus said. “Really means a lot.”

  “It’s from The Maltese Falcon, ” Henry said. “You want me to let you stay on this case because of some speech by a fictional detective.”

  “I can’t think of a better reason, can you?”

  “No, and that’s the point,” Henry said. “Now, if you’re not going to step off this case, there’s a dentist, a lawyer, and a real estate developer who can’t finish their song until I play my drum solo.”

  Henry took the two steps back to the cabin door.

  “You win,” Shawn said. “We’re off this case.”

  “Not good enough,” Henry said, slipping out into the dimming Ojai sunlight. “Too much wiggle room.”

  “I promise that as long as you are working with Lassiter on this case that neither Gus nor I will do anything to investigate, explore, probe, scrutinize, deconstruct, interrogate, or in any other way examine the circumstances surrounding the violent slaying of our former client, the late Ellen Svaco,” Shawn said.