Yesterday was a long day. It started in the morning at the Basque Boulangerie with Sally. We had an outing planned that made both of us nervous. Well, I know it made me nervous; since her journey to addiction it’s become increasingly difficult for me to measure Sally’s responses. I brought Roscoe along as a way of defusing the intensity with Sal. Maybe we’d be less inclined to say hurtful things to each other in the presence of a thinking parrot.

I commandeered an outside table in the far end of The Basque’s street patio, in a spot where nobody could approach us. Otherwise the curiosity of a parrot perched on my shoulder, might have tempted people to lean in dangerously towards us.

I was prepared for Sally coming late or not at all. Twenty minutes after the appointed hour, however, Roscoe spotted her and called in his outside voice, “Sally is in the valley.” The parrot goes a little mad at first when I bring him out, but he gains confidence quickly. I think he understands that the world of humans, aside from me, vastly underestimates his abilities of speech and cognition. He seems to take pleasure in his opportunity to shock.

Meanwhile Sally looked like a waif shuffling up First Street East. Maybe she was sick and badly in need of drugs to make her right; I couldn’t tell. How heartbreaking to see her like that. It wasn’t hard to imagine a big wind lifting her off the sidewalk and pitching her in another direction.

She and I had been negotiating for the better part of a week. I wanted to get her into rehab, but she said she wasn’t ready. When I asked how she’d know she was ready, she responded cryptically, “There will be a sign and I will feel it.” Her statement, echoed of all things, Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

I decided that given the condition she was in, I might have to feel when the time was right for her. This approach went against everything I’d learned at Al-Anon.

At the table she did her best to appear sprightly at first, forcing a smile and chattering a moment with Roscoe, but she couldn’t pull it off for long. Halfway through her latte, she fell asleep, her head dropped to the table and her half-eaten croissant became an accidental pillow.

I’d arranged a spot for her at Fresh Mornings, a treatment center outside of Forrestville, and by hook or crook I was determined to corral her into the car and get her out to the scheduled intake appointment at noon.

After I nudged Sally awake and Roscoe greeted her with a “Good morning, Sal,” she finished her latte, sipping it deliberately in short mechanical bursts. I told her what was what, and our negotiations resumed. She’d go, she said, if I first gave her the cash to get high.

“I can’t contribute to that,” I said. “Anyway, what’s the point of getting high right before you detox?”

“The last thing I want is to go into a place like that straight, Dad.”

I told Sally that her getting high wasn’t an option and she stretched her lips wide into a clown’s smile. “It’s the price of admission, Dad.”

I’d been watching Roscoe’s small head swing back and forth between Sally and me as he followed the conversation. Now that it stalled, he said, “So?”

I fed him a little hunk of my scone to nibble during the stalemate.

Of course, Sally prevailed in the end. She told me that there was a spot along the way where she could pick up what she needed.

We went to her apartment to pack clothes and whatever else she’d need for a month at Fresh Mornings. I left Roscoe in the car with some scone that I’d wrapped in a napkin. It surprised me that Sally invited me in. Maybe it was a confession, of sorts, to let me see the conditions in which she lived: a disaster of dirty dishes and clothes, with used needles threaded through the soiled shag carpet, and paperback novels stacked in tippy towers. It was all I could do not to cry. I started to go to the sink and do dishes, but Sally quipped, “Stop, Dad, the maid comes tomorrow,” a joke carried from her teenage years, uttered whenever I asked her to clean her disaster of a room. During the month that Sally will be in treatment I’ll come by and turn the apartment spic and span, thus cementing my status as an able bodied codependent. Now I leaned against the door as Sally tossed clothes from the floor into her hard-sided chartreuse suitcase. She seemed suddenly energized and I wondered if she’d had a line or two of coke when she went to the bathroom. “Don’t worry, Dad,” she said, as I watched her fill her suitcase, “they’ll have a laundry at the place and, from what I’ve heard, they’re big on having you do chores. They make it like boot camp.”

As we headed west on Highway 12, through Boyes Hot Springs, I hoped against hope that Sally would allow me to drive her directly to the treatment center without stopping “to get herself tuned up,” as she phrased it. But just after we passed into Agua Caliente, she said, “Okay, Dad, you’re going to go pull over to the right before the next light. There’s a hair salon with an empty lot. The place is closed. I won’t be more than fifteen minutes. Please stay in the car. There’s nothing for you to see out here.

I backed in to the lot so I could watch Sally cross at the light and walk down the street past a popular Mexican market, El Brinquinto. I used to buy half chickens there on summer weekends. You could smell them grilling on a wide grate from blocks away. According to Augie Boyer, this area is close to where Jesus was murdered, a little more than a month ago. As Sally disappeared from my view I watched a steady stream of Latinos walk in and out of the market.

I waited nearly a half an hour in the car, enumerating my litany of crimes as a father. Most involved neglect, and yet as a single dad it was me who made every meal, helped with homework, and read the bedtime stories. To be honest, my crimes mostly had to do with spoiling my child, trying to make up for her not having a mother.

Roscoe napped in the back seat, but as soon as I became impatient and opened the car door to slip out, he snapped to: “Where you going, where you going, Charlie?”

I hoisted the parrot onto my shoulder; I could feel his talons digging in. We waited for the light and then followed the crosswalk gingerly. I was afraid that the cars might frighten Roscoe, but the parrot remained steady. When somebody honked his horn at the sight of Roscoe on my shoulder, he said, “Imbecile.”

Two men, each with a load of Coronas, came out of the market as we passed and started laughing when they saw Roscoe. One of them shouted: “Polly quiere una galleta?”

Roscoe responded without skipping a beat: “Si, gracias,” but I kept walking, past the grocery and down Depot Road. I had no idea where the depot was or if one even existed. Sally was nowhere to be seen. Why had I let her go?

There were no houses on the first block. I had no idea where she could have disappeared? Depot Road veered in two directions, circling around a solar plant that may have occupied the space of the old depot, and spilling to the left toward Flowery Elementary School. I headed toward the school, which appeared to be closed. Behind some fencing I noticed a playground. Roscoe began chirping wordlessly, and then he managed to say, “Sally in Sonoma Valley.” Not only does Roscoe have the ears of a parrot he has the eyes of an eagle.

Sally sat, her feet on the ground, atop a red plastic swing. I couldn’t tell when I first spotted her if her eyes were open or closed. Although static, it didn’t seem like she was dead—she sat erect with each of her hands gripping the chain of the swing. I lifted Roscoe from my shoulder and held him close to my chest as I sprinted the fifty yards to the playground. Something kept me from calling her name, perhaps the fear that there were other creatures lurking about.

Sally lifted her head. “Hey Dad, you found me. I just needed to sit for a minute.”

The ride out to Sebastopol was quiet. Sally seemed to be residing in a place between sleeping and waking, and though I was overwhelmed with emotion when I first spotted her on the swing, I had no desire to engage with her in her semi-somnolent state.

By the time we arrived at the treatment center, Sally had perked up. She delighted Roscoe, who’d remain in the back seat of the car, with a long goodbye. “I will be back in a month,” she said, “and you and I are going to do some great things together, Roscoe.”

Sally saved some of her charm for the intake counselor Cindy, telling her how grateful she was to get a chance for a fresh start at such a lovely place. I figured that given Cindy’s experience—I judged her to be in her mid-forties—that she could read Sally’s bullshit even better than me.

We were given a breakdown of meetings and activities during the course of a day. “There’s very little idle time,” said Cindy, and yet as we were given a tour of the grounds, we saw a number of the other clients or campers at their leisure. This was break time, after lunch, we were told. Some young men played basketball; I noticed a number of young women walking together in twos and threes. For a moment, I thought of the other parents, like me, not knowing whom to blame for our child’s fractured life, except ourselves. The kids—I couldn’t help myself for thinking of them as such, even though some were pushing thirty or more like Sally—seemed like a privileged, suburban lot, which made sense given the cost of a month’s stay.

Sally offered me a kiss on the cheek and told me how grateful she was that I set this up for her. I chose to take her words at face value. As I walked back to the car, she called to me, “You’ll come on family day, won’t you, Dad?”

The fog had lifted and I stood in a shaft of sunlight beside the car, as a cloud of wistfulness crept over me. Not only was I worried about Sally, but I also feared that the dark business about the murder was sending Pina beyond the pale.

If I were a guy in a movie I’d have pulled out a cigarette, and I practically craved one, despite having never smoked. I couldn’t decide whether it was laughable or worrisome to view myself as an objectified creature for which any middling actor could stand in.

I debated driving further west, back to Armstrong Redwoods in Guerneville, which I visited with Augie Boyer not long ago. I wondered what Roscoe would make of the giant sequoias. He regarded me with some concern from the back seat, or was I imagining that? When you suspect your parrot of worrying about you, you may be in trouble.

The sun disappeared behind the trees, but I still hovered in this purgatorial state beside the car until my phone rang. It was Augie Boyer. He announced a break in the case and asked if I could meet him in an hour at Barking Dog Coffee Roasters in Boyes Hot Springs. It would take me nearly that long to get back that way.

When I asked if it was good news, the detective sighed. “Jesus remains dead.” After a bit more chatter, Augie Boyer uttered a sentence that amused me: “In the likely event that you have more sway over your woman than I have over mine, would you ask her to meet with us.”

I repeated that phrase in my head several times, on the ride back toward Sonoma, afraid that if I said it aloud Roscoe would make it part of his repertoire. I decided not to leave Roscoe in the car this time. I had told him that we were going to meet Detective Boyer at a coffee shop, and we practiced a haiku I’d written for Augie Boyer. When that was done, Roscoe asked if the coffee shop served rum. I was sorry to tell him no and made a note to take a flask of rum with me whenever I brought Roscoe on an outing.

I noticed Augie Boyer slumped over an outside table at Barking Dog with a tall thermos of coffee. Hatless, his spiked red hair looked like it had been recently waxed. When he spotted us coming he sat up straight. Apparently his wife had given him another makeover: he was wearing a white Scottish-style ghillie shirt, laced together with a leather braid, atop a plaid kilt and a pair of Birkenstocks.

“Roscoe, my man,” he said, “how’s tricks?”

The bird didn’t miss a beat: “Good to see you again, Detective. How’s the coffee?”

Augie Boyer glanced back and forth between Roscoe and me. “Sometime you’ll have to explain how you do that, Charlie.”

I thought to demonstrate that Roscoe spoke for himself but I recalled Sally’s admonition that the bird has less value as an actual speaker than as an illusionary trickster whose strings I pull. And yet I’ve been miffed by people refusing to see what’s right in front of them, and here was a man, who made his living by detecting, turning a blind eye on my gifted parrot’s reality.

Augie Boyer preferred playing games with Roscoe, winking at him now, and delighting when the bird winked back at him. I reminded myself of the reason the detective called for this meeting and decided to stall until Pina arrived.

“But you didn’t answer, Roscoe,” I said. “How’s the coffee?”

“Yeah, how’s the coffee?” the parrot asked, his voice overlapping with mine.

The detective shook his head. He didn’t want to believe what he was witnessing, and shivered a minute. I thought that might have something to do with wearing a kilt on a cool day.

“The coffee is how I like it,” he said. “Nice strong French roast. In regards to coffee, Quince says I’m a philistine, a word I taught her, by the way, which she uses against me extensively. She says I’ve killed my taste by drinking only dark roast. Give me a break, woman, I’m finally getting used to the almond milk.”

“Don’t you have a haiku for Mr. Boyer, Roscoe?”

“Yes, indeed, Charlie.”

This was becoming too much for Augie Boyer. He put on a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators.

Roscoe chirped a couple of times and then recited:

The old detective

Is beginning to see things

that aren’t even there.

I was delighted by the little poem’s aptness. Augie Boyer looked confused; he turned his head from the parrot to me, and back again to Roscoe.

Pina pulled up about then and, spotting us at our table, gave a little honk. I left the parrot perched on the back of my chair as I went to greet Pina and order coffee. I imagined Augie Boyer being so shaken by a one-on-one conversation with Roscoe that he’d start eating meat again.

Returning with our coffees, I heard Roscoe say, “I love rum. Charlie told me my ancestors drank it.”

When we got to the table, Detective Boyer was looking a little pale, but Roscoe perked up when he saw Pina. “Pina, Pina, Pina, where you beena?”

She greeted him with a smile. “How’s my favorite bird?”

“Tip top,” Roscoe said, his head bobbing a few times.

Pina said hello to Detective Boyer. I could see that she noted the detective’s get-up and did what she could to suppress a laugh. Otherwise, she wasted no time. “So there’s been a break in the case.”

Augie Boyer nodded. He still looked shaken from his tête à tête with Roscoe.

“I have . . . I have good news and bad news—which do you want first?”

Pina and I answered at the same time. Predictably, I said good while Pina opted for the bad. Roscoe chimed in, siding with me. I could tell Pina was thinking, the fucking bird gets a vote?

“Alright,” said Augie Boyer, “here’s the good news, at least I hope it’s good news for you.”

Pina and I exchanged glances. If the good news is of dubious value, I thought, the bad news must be rotten.

The detective took a sip from his thermos and faced Pina. “I had a chance to meet with your client Aubrey.”

“How did you manage that?” Pina asked.

“I posed as one of your colleagues. I told him that you recommended I call because of the method I’d developed for stutterers. We met at Dolores Park in the city, each sitting in our own chalk circle. That man is not a murderer, I can tell you that. Before recent developments, he seemed a likely candidate, but I was barking up the wrong tree. I came up with the daft theory that a waiter shamed a stutterer, who followed the waiter back to his house and murdered him.”

“It sounded reasonable to me,” I said.

“Thank you, Charlie. Anyway, the meeting with Aubrey gave me the chance to definitively rule him out.”

Pina, sitting with her chin cupped in her hands, said, “Just curious, what’s your method for stutterers?”

“I thought you’d never ask. It’s the haiku—three simple lines to make it through. Focus on one line at a time. I told Aubrey that his haikus should reference a season and some aspect of nature.”

“You got him writing haikus?” Pina asked.

“Of course, he’s a natural. I also reminded Aubrey that he, too, is a part of nature. The upshot of this is that I think I’ve stolen your client, Pina. Aubrey‘s going to do some haiku work with me. It may be just as well. The poor bloke has some serious puppy love for you. I don’t think he’d do any harm, but just the same.”

Roscoe perked up with all the talk of haiku. “I have another poem for you, Detective:

This midwinter day,

the parrot, unable to sing,

has other virtues”

It was me, this time, who recited the haiku, in my thrown parrot voice. Augie Boyer could no longer tell what was what. I winked at him just before he went into a coughing spasm.

When he’d recovered, after turning away and blowing his nose floridly in a red handkerchief, Pina said, “And the bad news.”

The detective nodded his head gravely. “The bad news is spelled V I N C E.”

I wondered if the detective thought that spelling out the name would preclude any commentary from Roscoe.

“Vince is the killer?” Pina shouted.

“No, perhaps an unwitting accomplice. I followed him for a couple of nights to the spot in Agua Caliente where he made his connection. On the second night I got out of my car, dressed all in black, with a mask that completely covered my face, and a black Stetson that I tucked my hair under. I came on strong with my Wolfman Jack accent, a brogue I perfected in high school, and posed as a member of the syndicate. Vince did not recognize me. As the saying goes, desperation spills the beans. I asked him about the killing of Jesus and he played dumb for a while. I stood out there in the cold night for quite some time. His supplier must have spotted us and decided I was the fuzz.

With a bit of prompting, your old boyfriend said that he was forced to give your name, under pressure. They asked for his girlfriend’s name and he said, ‘She’s my ex.’ They didn’t give a damn; they wanted your name and they wanted him to write it five times on the back of a check at The Girl and the Fig.”

“Why?” Pina asked.

“Who knows? To set the investigators on a bogus trail, to have Vince implicated in the crime.” Augie Boyer turned to face me directly. “This is where the bad news gets worse, I’m afraid. Your daughter Sally became dope buddies with Vince.”

I heard the words but could not assemble them properly. Meanwhile Roscoe chirped: “Sally in Sonoma Valley.”

Augie Boyer forged ahead. “And he pressured her, when she was in desperate straits, into signing Pina’s name multiple times on the back of the check.”

“And why was Jesus murdered?” Pina asked.

“Poor guy was trying to leave the business behind, but he had debts. When the new syndicate moved in, they came collecting old debts. These are not the kind of guys who give you a mulligan. They wanted to set an example with Jesus. Now the FBI is all over the case.”

“The FBI?” Pina asked.

The detective nodded and twirled a spike of red hair around his index finger. “Yeah, two of the members from the Stockton family happened to break into the U.S. capitol on January 6. They’re about to be indicted with other Oath Keepers on conspiracy charges. The Feds tracked them to Santa Rosa through the walkie- talkie channel they were using: Stop the steal J6.” Detective Boyer guffawed at that.

“How does that affect the case?” I asked.

Augie Boyer slumped back in his seat. “They want everything they can find on these white supremacist conspirators. The murder of a Latino guy named Jesus is not going to hurt their cause. So there’s the good news and the bad, boys and girls. I’ve let the sheriff know what I found out. They may bring Sally in to talk, but I don’t think they’ll be much interested in her.”

“And Vince?” Pina asked.

I could tell that she had a lingering sympathy for her old boyfriend.

“Vince?” the detective said, “That’s anybody’s guess. As a former emergency room doctor, they may key in in on his knife skills. Did he do the deed to pay off debts or insure his supply line? I think they’ll probably put the squeeze on Vince to help them make a murder case against the syndicate. Vince looks to me like a man who will be scratching his itch for the duration. As they say, he who lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.” Augie Boyer whistled three or four notes tunelessly, and stood up. “At this point, my work is done.”

Now we got to enjoy Detective Boyer fully in his kilted splendor. He bowed to each of us, including Roscoe, and said that he had a date in Santa Rosa to look at some used bagpipes. “The things I’ll do for my bride.” He left us with a final haiku:

The man in the kilt

likely appears as foolish

as a man in love.