The Weekly Croissant: Detective R. Baiman Reporting For Demotion
Mom Visits / A Detective Chase / Joshua Tree
HELLO my Croissants-
This week has really put my commitment to being an Art Ho to the test. My head has been spinning in every direction, my moods have been oscillating wildly, and, as a result, I have consumed little (no) new art. Let me explain what has been so distracting:
On Wednesday I played a show in LA that felt like flying. It was one of those nights. The crowd was incredible, the sound was great, I told some good jokes, Willi brought his A-game, I drank some tequila, I told Marshall that this show was special.
But Willi was already pretty sick, and on Thursday morning he made the decision to pull the last three shows of our tour. I commend anyone who can make the difficult choice to prioritize their physical health, and I’m really glad he did that. Still, I was sad to see the dates go— especially the show at Pappy & Harriets in Pioneertown, CA, a venue I had been hearing so much about.
On Friday morning, my agent called to tell me he’d found a little pickup gig in the desert where I could make up the money from Pappy’s, playing a free show out on the porch at the Red Dog Saloon. So I rearranged my brain and made a schedule for the day to get me down the road to Pioneertown in time for load-in.
I should mention at this point that my amazing mom had flown in the day before the LA show, and was going to help me do some of the driving for the last shows. She just retired this year and she has never come along on a tour before, so she was very cute and excited. I was very grateful for the moral support. So when the shows got pulled I thought, OK, well at least I can spend some quality time with my mama.
So, there we were Friday morning in San Diego (following the tour path due to hotel bookings). My mom wanted to go see the cliffs on the beach, so I said, “Sure! We have a little time, let’s do it.” I guess she must have dropped her phone out of her pocket at some point because when we got back to the car it was nowhere to be found. After 20 minutes of searching and retracing our steps I called my dad to see if he could track it on his Find My app.
Well, he said, after a lot of “umms” and “ahhs” and banging around and “dammit!'“s, “It looks like it’s at this intersection a few streets away from the cliffs… oh wait, no it’s moving…. hold on”
Ah! I thought. Someone has it. Suddenly, I saw myself as the protagonist in my favorite British murder mystery series, Vera (previously discussed in this Croissant post).
“Let’s go!” I said to my mom, and we jumped back into the car. Talking to my dad while driving, I was able to follow our phone-taker, I overshot them and cut in at an interaction, where my dad said our dot was crossing.
“Oh” said my mom, “There’s someone.”
Her tone was almost apologetic. A man who was surely experiencing homelessness was crossing at the same time as our dot. Dammit, I thought. Parking the car illegally, I jumped out and ran across the street to the man. “Excuse me Sir!” I asked, in what I hoped was a polite tone, “Did you by chance see a phone on the ground at the beach?”
He looked at me, and shook his head. “No”, he said, and kept walking.
“Okay, thanks”, I replied.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t actually know for sure that he had the phone, and I didn’t want to accuse him of something just because he looked like he was sleeping rough.
I called my dad back and asked him to look at the phone dot. Everywhere the man went, the phone went too. “Sir”, I approached him again, “Are you sure you don’t have that phone? I’m tracking it and it looks like it’s with you”.
“I don’t have your phone!” he said, getting upset now. Some other folks on the beach looked at me and shook their heads, in…sympathy? In….disgust at my harassment of this man? Not sure.
He lingered in the area for a while, and then started walking in another direction. Seeing my chance to get some real proof, I started following him at a distance. We walked for blocks… I kept checking in with my dad, and the phone was still following him. OH IT’S NOT LOOKING TOO GOOD FOR YOU, IS IT PET? I thought, ah la Vera. I was full of adrenaline now, sure I would find a way to get this phone back.
I had called the non-emergency police number and had been on hold for nearly 30 minutes at this point, but I was also worried about getting the cops involved because… well, we’ve all seen what can happen to black and brown folks when the cops get involved. And this guy really didn’t seem like any kind of threat to society, I mean, I didn’t want to get him in trouble.
After about a half mile or so of making circles around the neighborhood, I saw the man approach a church, rapidly chuck something into some very thick bushes, and then take a seat on the church steps. Shit I thought. I called my dad. “It looks like the phone is at this church… he said… maybe in the bushes?”
Once again, I approached this man. “Sir,” I said. “I’m tracking this phone, I know you have it. I don’t want to get you in any trouble, I just want the phone back. Please, can you give it back?”
He was sitting on the steps, tapping his hands on one another and mumbling under his breath. For a minute I thought he wasn’t really coherent, but then he jumped up and got in my face.
“I don’t have your phone! I don’t have your phone! I don’t have your phone! Okay?” He said. “Search me! Look, it’s not in my pockets!”
He began pulling bits of crumpled paper and gloves out of his pockets.
I held up my hands “I don’t want to search you”, I said. “But look! I can see that the phone is here at this church, I’m tracking it!”
“That’s your problem!” He said.
I figured he’d gotten freaked out and bailed on the phone, not wanting trouble. Maybe he didn’t even remember picking it up. Maybe he thought I had planted it on him and was plotting against him. This man was not mentally well, and I didn’t have any idea how to reason with him. I went over to the thick bushes and started looking, separating branches, and pulling out old garbage, but I couldn’t find the phone anywhere.
Eventually, I had to give up, and went to find my mom back where we had parked the car. I explained the situation, and we went back to the church and continued to look through the bushes, with no luck. Our man was still sitting on the steps and when I got too close, he got up and started shouting, and slicing the air with his hands. Eventually, he left, and I didn’t follow him.
There were some cops down the street and we flagged them down and asked for help finding the phone. They shined thier flashlights around a bit but were essentially useless. I asked one of them I could leave my number in case the phone turned up, and he said, “No, you’ll have to call the non-emergency police number and check-in.” “You mean the number I’ve been on hold with for 45 minutes with no answer?” I asked. “That’s the one!” he said.
The clock was ticking now. I had to leave soon for the desert or I was going to miss my gig in Pioneertown. The phone was still showing that it was in the same spot, tucked snugly into the landscaping with no intention of revealing itself.
So that is how, with absolutely no time to spare, we left my mother’s phone sitting somewhere in the church bushes in San Diego and absolutely gunned it all the way to Joshua tree, arriving very sweaty at 5:22 for a 6:00 PM set, starving, with one phone between the two of us.
I wish I could say that this man hadn’t taken the phone, that I was in the wrong. I wish I could say that we miraculously found the phone, at the very last second. I wish I could say that we got it all tied up neatly with a bow, and the man found the help and support he needed, but sadly, this story did not end up like an episode of Vera, it was more like an episode of Suits and I COULDN’T CLOSE THE DEAL.
Happy Sunday Y’all! And don’t forget to eat your pastries!
-Rachel
Look on the bright side, you now have the workings for a murder ballad. Minus the murder of course.