A CaliforniaAuthors.com preview: California Girl Nick found Lenny Vonn that afternoon. Same house out in Modjeska Canyon. Brother Casey and father Karl were there too, the three of them sitting in the garage drinking beers while Lenny cleaned out the carb on his yellow and orange Panhead. Casey had a Hessians vest on. His hair was almost to his shoulders and matted. Full beard, dark sunglasses even in the cool shade of the garage. The three of them stopped talking and watched Nick come up the driveway. "Vonns," he said. "Beat it, piss face," said Lenny. "Private property." Casey shifted the cooler he was sitting on so Nick could only see the back of his filthy vest and filthy hair. Under the influence of God knows what, thought Nick. Probably holding. Probably carrying, too. "'Lo," said Karl. "We already talked to Andy about it." "I'm sorry," said Nick. "I thought she was a sweet girl." "Get out of here you fascist pig," said Lenny. "I'm not kidding." Nick sighed and looked at Karl. "Talk some sense into your stupid son, will you? I'm in charge of it. If anybody's going to get this guy it's going to be me." "Like that makes you a -- " "Shuttup, son," said Karl. "Let him talk." "Just a few questions," said Nick. For the next half hour Nick held his pen in his right hand and his notebook in the left. Kept them both low so the meat of his right forearm never left the handle of his .45 ACP, snugged against his hip under the tweed sportcoat. Hardly wrote a note. Hardly took his eyes off Casey's back. Casey turned a second and just stared at him, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses. Nick found out that Janelle had lived in the old Tustin house until she was fifteen, then moved in with "friends." Nobody could come up with a full name for any one "friend", but it might have been a family named Lawson or Langton off of 17th Street. Karl was pretty sure Langton. Nick wondered if it was the Langtons from Tustin high school. Howard a coach and the daughters about Janelle's age. Nick found out that after he'd arrested Lenny and Casey five years ago on the drugs-and-incest charges, Janelle had started drinking more and taking more pills. When that Tustin Times story came out about the arrests, the names were all changed but some people still figured out who was who. Tustin was small enough for that. Janelle had to give statements and that was hard. She got really sad and withdrawn. When the charges against Lenny and Casey got knocked down to one assault for Casey and possession of illegal substances for Lenny, Janelle got almost suicidal. Then, a local church congregation got her some doctors and gave her a place to live and some money and cleaned her up and got her back in school. Grades went up and one of the Chamber of Commerce guys saw her after class one day when he was picking up his daughter and thought Janelle should enter for Miss Tustin because she was exceptionally beautiful when she was cleaned up and dressed right. And if she was Miss Tustin, she'd get a good college scholarship and some cash and lots of opportunity, and the Vonns weren't exactly rolling in it. He sponsored her. Janelle liked being Miss Tustin. Thought it was kind of funny, but harmless. Enjoyed people. Enjoyed the attention. No pills or booze. Made a run down to Baja with three truckloads of clothes from the church, gave them to people poorer than she ever was. Got her picture taken a lot. Tustin people thought she looked like the old SunBlesst crate label girl so they did up a poster of her with oranges, an old-fashioned kind of picture that made her look really pretty and made it seem like Tustin still had orange groves. But all that only lasted two or three months. Then she got on the cover of Playboy. Wore almost as much clothing as she did for the SunBlesst girl poster but Tustin city council demanded a new queen. She split Tustin for Laguna and started UCI same month. Didn't talk to any of them after that. Didn't want to see a Tustin face or hear a Tustin name. Felt like that part of her was dead. Said she wouldn't go backto that town if you gave her a million dollars. But she did, thought Nick. One last time. It was mostly Karl and Lenny who talked. Casey just sat there on the cooler with his back to Nick. Getting more and more tense the more he heard, Nick could see. Shoulders moving in. Head hunching down a little. Hands in front of him. Moving now. Nick eased his hand under his coat and popped the holster snap. Casey caught the sound. Big dirty head turning Nick's way. "Just to keep things fun and fast, I'm going to need alibis from you, Lenny, and you, Casey. What were you two princes doing two nights ago. Tuesday." "We got drunk and watched TV," said Lenny. "Right here. Right bro?" "Right." "What shows?" asked Nick. "Fuckin' 'Mod Squad,'" said Lenny. "'It Takes a Thief'" said Casey. "Fuckin' 'Twilight Zone,'" said Lenny. "Then 'Alfred Hitchcock' and we fell asleep," said Casey. He didn't turn but his hands were still moving in front of him. Like they were doing something small. "Now get off my property," said Lenny. "You got what you need." Casey turned. Blank stares from all three of them now, like three empty glasses on a shelf. "You should probably go, Nick," said Karl. "They were here. I was too. The kitchen faucet was dripping bad and I'm a fair plumber. The 'Twilight Zone' was the one where the world ends and the guy's in the library with all those books and he breaks his glasses." "That's a good one," said Nick. "Yes, it is," said Karl Vonn. Nick heard something click and saw Casey's shoulders move. He took two steps forward, held one foot over the Hessians emblem on the back of Casey's vest. Pushed hard. The cooler tipped up and Casey went over and rolled onto his back. He lay there for a moment, looking up the barrel of Nick's gun. Sunglasses still on. Roller in one hand with the paper already in it, a bag of tobacco in the other. Yellow-brown flakes and strings spilled onto his stomach. He aimed the roller at Nick, pulled a trigger. "Someday," he said. "Never," said Nick. "Lunatic pig," said Lenny. • • • That evening Nick watched part of the autopsy of Janelle Vonn. It was performed by Dr. Warren Gershon at the Meak Brothers Funeral Home in Santa Ana because the Coroner's Department had no autopsy room. Certain county funeral homes allowed the autopsies to be performed on site, no charge. But Nick knew they pressured the next of kin to have the embalming and funeral arrangements done there, too. Wives and husbands crazy with grief. Made some good money that way. Meak Brothers was located downwind of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and Nick went from the smell of deep-fried thighs to formaldehyde as he walked in the embalming room door. Nick watched the doctor and his assistants make the big Y incision with the scalpel. Cut the ribs with loppers and pull apart the cage. Tijuana Brass was playing quiet on a radio, a perky little number Nick would detest for the rest of his life. The crack of bones loud above the music. Watched them cut out her organs. Cut out her heart. Examine and weigh and record. He noted Janelle Vonn's head, partially wrapped in a white towel and placed face up in a plastic cooler of dry ice. Skin blue-white. Vapor wafting over the top then down to the floor like horror movie fog. They got scrapings from under three fingernails and the right thumbnail. When Gershon was done with that Nick asked them to amputate the thumbs and three fingers that had had flesh and blood under the nails. Bag and label them separately. Freeze them for evidence. "That's very unusual," said the doctor. Nick left the room without excusing himself and drove to Angel's Lawn cemetery to be near his brother, Clay. Shivered and heard the traffic blasting by on I-5 while he thought about his brother. Then to Sharon's place in Orange. • • • She let him in and they talked a while in the near dark. His eyes burned as he felt the awful collapse of his will. His will to ignore. His will to put aside. His will to call it a job and leave it at the office. He just couldn't make himself do it. Maybe homicide wasn't his thing, he said. It would pass, she said. Nick said he'd be all right. Don't worry. Said this is what homicide detail was about. Sharon understood all of this. Her dad a cop and her ex a cop and she took Nick into her room and talked to him and held him and did the things that made him forget and feel better. When he was finished, he left for Millie's bar. Two doubles and two bowls of pretzels later he was ready to go home. • • • "Dad's home! Dad's home!" "Be quiet, kids. QUIET!" Nick could hear their voices on the other side of the door. Katy unlocked the deadbolt from inside and Nick fell into the deafening family he loved in such frustration. "WILLIE SLUGGED ME IN THE STOMACH!" screamed Katherine. "SHE BIT MY LEG!" Willie screamed back. Steven racked his plastic Thompson submachine gun with spring-loaded noisemaker, then lowered the barrel into his family with a gleeful smile. Pure Clay, thought Nick. KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT! Katy hugged Nick and smiled hugely. She was large and beautiful and Nick felt the crack in his heart get bigger. Sometimes pictured it going across his whole heart at once, breaking it in two. Did his own heart even count after what Janelle had gone through? "My hero," she said. "MY HERO!" "MY HERO!" KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT-A-KLAT! "I love you guys," Nick said quietly. He touched them one at a time. Katy on the arm and Willie on the head and Katherine on the cheek. Perfect precious parts. All in place. Except for Steven, who saw his father's hand coming toward him. Stevie let the old man eat some hot lead from the Thompson and ran yelling down the hall.
The writer: T. Jefferson Parker was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Orange County. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine and started his writing career as a newspaper reporter. His crime novels, including Laguna Heat, Little Saigon, The Blue Hour, and Cold Pursuit, all deal with life and times in his native state. His book, Silent Joe, won the Edgar Award for best mystery in 2001, as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best mystery. He also is a contributor to My California: Journeys by Great Writers, where he expounds on the joys of fly-fishing. ("I can't walk past the koi pond at Fashion Island without wanting to rig up and cast into it.") Jeff's latest novel, California Girl, will be published in September 2004. The book: Jeff explains the backstory: "California Girl is a book I spent a lifetime preparing to write, but didn't know it. It 'began' way back in 1968 when I was a freshman in high school, looking out at the great, confusing, turbulent, twisted, contradictory world around me. What was a 14-year old boy to make of the Vietnam war? Of drugs, sex and rock and roll? Of Nixon and Manson and Leary? Well, a couple of years ago I decided to go back and try to capture some of it in a book ... California Girl is a national drama played out in the small Southern California towns of Tustin and Laguna beach, where I grew up. " Read more. On the web: Visit tjeffersonparker.com. Author photo by Marion Ettlinger.
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By 
Excerpted
with the author's permission from California
Girl, published by William Morrow in fall 2004.
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