The Trade

Ned lingered. “Listen, this dead baby. You want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about. Get going.”

“I know it was a hell of a thing, but it’s not your business. You just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. You didn’t know that baby. You couldn’t have saved it. It happens, shit like this.”

“You’re right. It does. It just did.”

“Oh, come on, you know what I mean.”

“No, you’re right. It’s not my business.”

But it felt like his business. Yesterday, Matt had spent a couple of hours with sheriff’s deputies walking the beach trying to pinpoint the exact place where he’d found the baby’s body. They’d found nothing. No trace.

“So why don’t you come over tonight and hand out candy, while we take the boys out to plunder the neighborhood?”

“Not this year.” Last year, he and Ginn had still been together. It had been a blast just watching her laughing at the parade of kids, oohing and aahing over the costumes. She was good with kids.

“We’ve got people coming over later, costumes and some drinks. Julie asked Susan Dean, and I think she only said yes because Julie dangled you as bait. Susan’s a good architect, bright, and gorgeous. What she sees in you God only knows.” He thumped Matt’s shoulder affectionately.

“Now you’re my social director, too? I thought you said you were going home.”

“If it’s still about Ginn, Matt, that was your choice.”

“She’s the one who left, not me.”

“Come on, man. She’s thirty-five years old. She wants kids. You don’t even want to get married. You think you left her any option?”

“Knock it off, Ned, okay?”

Ned raised both hands. “Sorry I spoke. See you tomorrow.”

Matt waited until the door closed behind him. He looked down into the plaza, but the pink rabbit and her family had gone.

He reached for the phone. The deputy who answered said that Eckhart wasn’t in the station house. Matt left a message that he’d called.

Traffic was clogged on the Pacific Coast Highway. Fire equipment returning to home bases all over the state rumbled south to the I-10. Going north was a nightmare of backed-up traffic. At Topanga Canyon a young entrepreneur was doing a brisk business, running up and down the line of cars waiting to get through the sheriff’s department roadblock, taking money, handing out T-shirts that read “I Survived The Latest Greatest Malibu Topanga Fire.”

Matt showed his driver’s license to a deputy to prove he was a resident and was waved through. A few restaurants had reopened in time for Halloween but they’d be crowded with people wearing false noses and mustaches, partying and swapping war stories. He stopped at PC Greens to pick up food for dinner.

It was dark when he got home. Instead of the sweet smell of sumac and thyme that grew wild up on the hills, the heavy stink of wet ash pervaded the air, overpowering even the fresh salt spray from the Pacific.

The phone in the kitchen started to ring as he came down the walkway. Barney raced ahead and Matt hurried the last few steps—mad hope, but maybe Ginn was calling to find out whether the house had survived, if the horses were okay, how Barney had come through. She’d found Barns at some rescue outfit, a two-month-old pale yellow scrap with an unusual white star on his forehead, and brought him home, dumped him in Matt’s lap on his birthday a couple years ago. Matt let himself into the kitchen, dropped the groceries on the table and picked up the phone.

“Matt Lowell.”

“Hey, Matt. What have you been up to?” Jimmy McPhee’s voice was loud, jovial.

“Hi, Jim. Heard the restaurant made it okay. I’m glad.”

“Yeah, by the grace of the Almighty. Only damage was a broken window in the kitchen, can you beat that?”

“I’m afraid I did that.” Matt glanced down at the bandage on his arm. “I took some water from the big fridge, too.”

“You were down here? Hell on wheels, Matt, how did you manage that?”

“Dumb luck, I guess. Lost my pickup and trailer at the tunnel, though. They should be cleared out by now. Do you know if the wrecker turned up?”

“Yeah, they’re gone. They were a hell of a mess, just a tangle of burned-out metal.”

While he listened, Matt filled Barney’s dish with kibble, popped a can of Rolling Rock, turned on the television. Reception had been restored, electricity was back on. He hit the mute.

“St. Aidan’s is all right, too,” McPhee said. “Bit scorched is all. A service of thanksgiving is scheduled for Sunday.”

“Okay, I’ll try to make it.” His only church attendance nowadays was on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of his mother’s death twenty-six years earlier when he was ten. She’d gone out to get ice cream one Sunday afternoon, and he’d never seen her again. The drunk who’d killed her was sentenced to two years. So now, around June 20 every year his dad came up from Palm Springs, and the three of them, he and Ned and their father attended morning service at St. Aidan’s and had lunch afterward at Jimmy’s.

Matt clicked to the local news. The fire was no longer at the top of the hour. Life was returning to normal for the rest of Los Angeles. With hotspots still in the backcountry, it would be weeks for Malibu, months and even longer, if ever, for those who’d lost everything. He turned off the news and waited for Jimmy to get to the point.

“So, James, what’s up?” he said when Jimmy let a moment of silence linger.

“Had a couple of sheriff’s department detectives asking about you today.”

While listening, Matt walked outside to the deck and looked out over the Pacific. A sliver of moon was rising, stars blazed in a clear sky.

“What did they want?”

“Just had I seen you during the fire. I said I hadn’t, but they went on awhile, wanted to know if I was sure. You know, bunch of questions like that.” Jimmy gave a strained laugh. “What have you been up to? Raiding the old Edwards place while it burned?”

“Thought I might find a Princess Di mug or something.”

Blake Edwards, his famous wife Julie Andrews, and their brood of kids had lived in the house for years without raising comment. But after the Edwards’s moved, Harrods heir, Dodi Al-Fayed, bought the house and started a major remodel, and Malibu was giddy with the rumor that Princess Di was coming to town.

“They seemed pretty serious, Matt. You in trouble?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I’ve known your dad for thirty years, kiddo, and I loved your mother, God bless her. If you’re in trouble, you just have to say the word. I’ll help if I can, you know that.”

Matt nodded as if McPhee could see him. After his mother was gone, most family celebrations were held at Jimmy’s restaurant—birthdays, graduations. He’d had his first legal beer at Jimmy’s.

“During the fire after I left the Cove, I found the body of a baby,” he said. “Lying on the beach.”

“Holy Mother of God! Whose baby?”

“Well, I guess that’s what they’re trying to find out, Jim.”

“Oh, sure. Of course. Poor little soul. How old?”

“Newborn.” Matt reached for his beer. He couldn’t bring himself to say that the baby had been alive when he’d found her. “Jim, listen, thanks for calling, but I’ve got to go.”