by Sue Grafton
The mechanism made a pleasant little clicking noise as I maneuvered it. The sound put me in mind of an electric stapler firing staples into paper. Peggy hovered at my shoulder but mercifully asked no questions. I could tell she was nervous because she shifted restlessly, arms folded tightly as though to keep herself in check. “I should have peed while I had the chance,” was the only comment she made. Already, I was wishing she hadn’t mentioned it. We were in enemy territory and we couldn’t afford to pause to take a whiz.
I’d been at it less than a minute when the lock yielded. I tucked my tools away and opened the kitchen door with care. I stuck my head in. The booming from the television originated from one of the three bedrooms that opened off the hall, and the sound of canned laughter was loud enough to make the kitchen curtains vibrate. There was a strong smell of bleach and I could see a bottle of cleanser sitting on the counter with a damp sponge nearby. I moved into the room and Peggy slipped in after me. I peered around the kitchen door into the corridor. The auditory onslaught was coming from Tiny’s room at the end of the hall. I signaled to Peggy, pointing to the third bedroom, where the door was slightly ajar. I heard Tiny shout out a sentence in response to something on the TV, but his words were formless. I hoped his limited intelligence wouldn’t interfere with his ability to pay attention to the program.
My first job was to slip into the living room and unlock the front door in case we needed Henry’s assistance in the house. He’d apparently left his tools at the curb, mere props in the drama that was playing out. I could see him standing on the porch, his attention riveted to the empty street. He was the lookout man and our success depended on his spotting Solana’s car and giving us sufficient warning to get the hell out. I turned the thumb lock and secured it in the open position, then returned to the hall where Peggy was waiting, her face pale. I could see she hadn’t developed my appetite for danger.
Gus’s bedroom was the first on the right. The door was shut. I closed my fingers around the knob and turned it with caution until I felt the latch bolt ease out of the switch plate. I opened the door halfway. Curtains had been drawn and the light coming through the window shades gave the room a sepia cast. The air smelled of unwashed feet, menthol, and urine-damp sheets. A humidifier was hissing away in one corner of the room, giving us another layer of sound cover.
I stepped into the room and Peggy followed. I left the door open a crack. Gus was propped up against the pillows, motionless. His face was turned toward the door and his eyes were closed. I stared at his diaphragm, but there was no comforting rise and fall. I hoped I wasn’t looking at a guy in the early phases of rigor mortis. I crossed to the bed and laid two fingers on his hand, which was warm to the touch. His eyes came open. He was having trouble with his focus, his eyes not quite tracking in unison. He seemed disoriented and I wasn’t sure he remembered where he was. Whatever meds Solana had him on, he wasn’t going to be much help.
Our immediate problem was to get him on his feet. His pajamas were flimsy cotton, his bare feet as long and thin as a saint’s. As frail as he was, I didn’t want him navigating the outdoors without a wrap of some kind. Peggy got down on her hands and knees and fished a pair of slippers from under the bed. She gave me one slipper and we each took a foot. I had a problem because his toes were curled and I couldn’t force the slipper onto his foot. When she saw my plight, she reached over and pressed her thumb against the ball of the foot with all the skill of a mother wrestling a toddler into hard-soled shoes. His toes relaxed and on the slipper went.
I checked the closet, which yielded nothing in the way of an overcoat. Peggy started opening and closing dresser drawers, apparently without success. She finally came up with a woolly sweater, which didn’t look all that warm but would have to suffice. She freed Gus from the tangle of covers while I moved him forward and away from the pillows. I was working to get him into his sweater, noting that his arms were hinged wrong. Peggy moved me aside and employed another mommy trick that got the job done. Together we grabbed his legs and swung them over the side. There was an afghan folded at the foot of the bed. I shook it out and wrapped it across his shoulders like a cloak.
From down the hall I heard manic theme music erupt as a game show came on. Tiny was singing along in a loud tuneless moan. He yelled a word and I realized belatedly he was calling Gus’s name. Peggy and I exchanged a look of dismay. She swung Gus’s legs back and pulled the spread up to conceal his slippered feet. I whisked off the afghan and flung it to the bottom of the bed while she removed the sweater in a single smooth action and shoved it under the blanket. We heard Tiny clump into the bathroom. Seconds later, he was pissing with a force that mimicked a waterfall pouring into a metal bucket. For emphasis, he farted one long musical note.
He flushed the toilet—good boy—and shuffled down the hall in our direction. I pushed Peggy and the two of us took silent giant steps, trying to clear the field. We stood motionless behind the door as he swung it open and leaned in. Big mistake. I could see his face reflected in the mirror hanging above the chest of drawers. I thought my heart would stop. If he glanced to his right, his view of us would be as clear as our view of him. I’d never actually seen him, except for the one encounter where I’d stumbled across him sleeping in what I’d thought was an empty house. He was enormous, with a wide meaty neck and ears set low on his head like a chimp’s. He had a ponytail down his back, secured with what looked like a rag. He vocalized what might have been a sentence, complete with an upward tilt at the end to indicate a question. I gathered he was urging Gus to join him for the laugh-fest in the other room. I could see Gus on the bed guilelessly flick a look in our direction. I wagged a finger like a metronome and then put it to my lips.
In a feeble voice, Gus said, “Thank you, Tiny, but I’m tired now. Maybe later.” He closed his eyes, as though to nap.
Out came another garbled sentence and Tiny withdrew. I listened to him shuffling down the hall, and as soon as I judged he was settled on his bed, we went into high gear again. I pulled the covers back. Peggy guided Gus’s arms into his sweater and then swung his legs over the side of the bed. I draped the afghan across his shoulders. Gus understood our intentions but he was too weak to assist us. Peggy and I each took an arm, mindful of how painful our touch must be when he had so little flesh on his bones. The minute he was on his feet, his knees buckled under him and we had to shore him up before he fell.
We guided him toward the door, which I pushed open to the full. At the last minute, I placed his hand on the frame for balance and whipped into the bathroom, where I snagged his medications and zipped them into my fanny pack. At his side again, I took Gus’s weight on my shoulder, anchoring his arm for stability. We struggled out into the hall. The high-decibel sounds from the television masked our halting advance, at the same time making the threat of discovery seem more immediate. If Tiny stuck his head out of the bedroom door, we were screwed.
Gus’s pace was slow, progressing by way of baby steps that advanced him inches at a time. Covering the fifteen feet from the bedroom to the end of the hall took the better part of two minutes, which doesn’t sound like much time unless Solana Rojas was on her way home. When we reached the kitchen door, I glanced to my right. Henry didn’t dare bang on the glass, but he was waving and pointing frantically, making hurry-up motions and sawing an index finger across his throat. Solana had apparently turned the corner from Bay to Albanil. Henry disappeared and I had to trust him to save himself while Peggy and I focused on the task at hand.
Peggy was about my size, and we were both laboring to keep Gus upright and on the move. He was light as a stick, but his balance was off and his legs would give way every couple of steps. The journey across the kitchen floor proceeded as though in slow motion. We eased him out the back door, which I had the presence of mind to close behind us. I wasn’t sure what Solana would think when she found the front door unlocked from inside. I was hoping she’d blame Tiny. From the street, I heard the muffled slamming of a car door.
I made a little sound in my throat and Peggy shot me a look. We doubled our efforts.
Getting down the back porch steps was a nightmare, but time was too short to worry about what would happen if Gus fell. The afghan trailed behind him and first one of us and then the other would get a foot tangled in the wool. Peggy and I were half a step away from stumbling, and I could picture all three of us going down in a heap. We didn’t exchange a word, but I could tell she was feeling the same strain as I was, trying to hurry him to safety before Solana entered the house, checked his room, and discovered he was gone.
Halfway down the back walk, in a wonderful grasp of the obvious, Peggy reached down and put an arm under Gus’s legs. I did the same and we lifted him, forming a chair with our arms. Gus had a trembling arm around each of us, holding on for dear life as we sidled the length of the walk as far as Gus’s back gate. There was a shriek of rusty metal hinges when we opened it, but by then we were so close to freedom that neither of us hesitated. We staggered the twenty steps down the alley to her car. Peggy unlocked the front door, flung the back door open, and settled him on the backseat. He had the presence of mind to lie down to conceal himself from view. I took his prescription meds from my fanny pack and put them near him on the seat. I was arranging the afghan over him when he grabbed my hand. “Careful.”
“I know it hurts, Gus. We’re doing the best we can.”
“I mean, you. Be careful.”
“I will,” I said, and to Peggy, “Go.”
Peggy closed the car door, shutting it with the tiniest click. She moved to the driver’s-side door and slid under the wheel, shutting her door with scarcely any sound. She started the car as I slipped through the fence into Henry’s backyard. She pulled away slowly, but then accelerated with a snap of gravel. The plan was for her to take Gus straight to the ER at St. Terry’s, where she’d have a doctor examine him and admit him if necessary. I wasn’t sure how she’d explain their relationship unless she simply presented herself as a neighbor or friend. No reason to mention the conservatorship that had made him a virtual prisoner. We’d had no discussion on the subject beyond the initial rescue, but I knew that in saving Gus, she was reaching back in time far enough to save her Gram.
Henry appeared around the corner of the studio and racewalked across the patio. There was no sign of his garden tools so he’d apparently abandoned them. When he was in range of me, he took me by the elbow and herded me toward his back door and into the kitchen. We shed our jackets. Henry turned the thumb bolt and then sat down at the kitchen table while I went to the phone. I put a call through to Cheney Phillips at the police department. Cheney worked vice, but I knew he’d be quick to grasp the situation and set the proper machinery in motion. Once I had him on the line, I bypassed the niceties and told him what was going on. According to Peggy, there was already a warrant out for Solana. He listened intently and I could hear him tapping away on his computer, pulling up wants and warrants under her various aliases. I gave him Solana’s current whereabouts and he said he’d take care of it. That was that.
I joined Henry at the kitchen table, but both of us were too anxious for idleness. I picked up the newspaper, opened it at random to the op-ed page. People were idiots if the opinions I read were any indication. I tried the front section. There were the usual troubles in the world, but none of them matched the drama we’d launched here at home. Henry’s knee was jumping and his foot made little tapping sounds on the floor. He got up and crossed to the kitchen counter, where he plucked an onion from a wire basket and removed the papery outer skin. I watched as he cut the onion in half and again in quarters, reducing it to a dice so small it sent tears running down his cheeks. Chopping was his remedy for most of life’s ills. We waited, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock as the second hand swept the face.
With a rattle of newsprint, I turned to the “Business” section and studied a spiky graph that depicted major market trends from 1978 to the present. I hoped the boring article would settle my nerves, but it didn’t seem to help. I kept expecting to hear Solana shriek at the top of her lungs. She’d start by abusing her son, and after berating him at length she’d appear like a banshee pounding on Henry’s door, wailing, screaming, and otherwise denouncing us. With luck, the cops would show up and take her away before she managed any further acting out.
Instead of uproar, there was nothing.
Silence and more silence.
The phone rang at 5:15. I reached for the handset myself because Henry was busy assembling a meatloaf, his fingers squishing oatmeal, ketchup, and raw eggs into a pound of ground beef.
“Hello?”
“Hey, this is Peggy. I’m still at St. Terry’s, but I thought I better bring you up to date. Gus was admitted. He’s a mess. Nothing major, but serious enough to require a couple of days’ care. He’s malnourished and dehydrated. He has a low-level bladder infection and his heart is acting up. Bruises galore, plus a hairline fracture in the radius of his right arm. From the X-rays, the doctor says it looks like it’s been there a while.”
“Poor guy.”
“He’ll be fine. Of course, he didn’t have his ID or his Medicare card, but the admissions clerk looked up his records from a previous hospitalization. I explained the security issues and the doctor agreed to admit him under my last name.”
“They didn’t make a fuss about that?”
“Not at all. My husband’s one of the neurologists on staff. His reputation is the stuff of legend, but more to the point, he has a temper like a junkyard dog’s. They knew if they made a stink, they’d have to deal with him. Aside from that, in the past ten years, my father’s donated enough money to add a wing to this place. They were kissing my ring.”
“Oh.” I’d have verbalized my surprise, but her husband’s occupation and her dad’s financial status were two facts out of the many I didn’t know about her. “What about the girls? Shouldn’t you be home by now?”
“That’s the other reason I called. They’re having supper at their playmate’s. I talked to her mom and she was cool, but I did assure her I’d pick ’em up within the hour. I didn’t want to take off without giving you the lowdown.”
“You’re incredible. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t worry about it. I haven’t had that much fun since grade school!”
I laughed. “It was a hoot, wasn’t it?”
“Totally. I did make it clear to the charge nurse that Gus was to have no visitors except for you, me, and Henry. I told her about Solana…”
“Naming names?”
“Of course. Why should we protect her when she’s a piece of shit? It was obvious he’d been badly abused so the nurse got right on the phone and put in calls to the police and the Elder Abuse hotline. I gather they’re sending someone out. What about you? What’s happening on your end?”
“Nothing much. Sitting here waiting for the bomb to go off. Solana must know by now he’s been snatched. I can’t understand why she’s so quiet.”
“That’s unnerving.”
“For sure. In the meantime, I called a friend of mine at the police department. Given the warrant out on Solana, a couple of officers should be arriving shortly to arrest her fat ass. We’ll come over after that.”
“There’s no big rush. Gus is sleeping, but it’d be nice if he saw a familiar face when he wakes up.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Don’t forfeit the chance to see Solana handcuffed and thrown in the back of a black-and-white.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
After she rang off, I gave Henry the update on Gus’s medical status, some of which he’d gathered from listening to my end of the conversation. “Peggy’s put everyone on notice about the possibility that Solana might show up and try to see him. She won’t get anywhere so that’s good news,” I said. “I wonder what she’s up to? You think the cops have arrived?”
“There hasn’t been time enough, but hang on a sec.”<
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He washed his hands in haste and toted the dish towel with him as he left the kitchen and stepped into the dining room. I followed, watching as he pushed the curtain aside and peered out at the street.
“Anything?”
“Her car’s still there and I don’t see any sign of life so maybe she hasn’t figured it out yet.”
That was certainly a possibility, but neither of us was convinced.
34
By then it was close to six. Henry packed his meatloaf in a cake pan, covered it, and put it in the fridge. His plan was to bake it for supper the next day. He extended an invitation, which I accepted, assuming we would both be alive. In the meantime, his homely activities had introduced a note of normalcy. Given that it was happy hour, he took out an old-fashioned glass and poured his ritual Black Jack over ice. He asked if I wanted wine, which in truth I did, but I decided to decline. I thought I better have my wits about me in case Solana showed up. I was of two minds about the possibility. On one hand, I thought if she were going to blow her stack, she’d have done it by now. On the other hand, she might be out buying guns and ammo in order to give full expression to her ire. Whatever the reality, we deemed it unwise to keep ourselves on prominent display in the brightly lighted kitchen.
We removed ourselves to the living room, where we closed the drapes and turned on the TV set. The evening news was all bad, but restful by comparison. We were beginning to relax when the knock came at the front door. I jumped and Henry’s hand jerked, slopping half his drink.
“You stay there,” he said. He set his glass on the coffee table and went to the door. He flipped on the porch light and put his eye to the spy hole. It couldn’t have been Solana because I watched him remove the burglar chain, prepared to let someone in. I recognized Cheney’s voice before I caught sight of him. He stepped into the room, accompanied by a uniformed officer whose name tag read J. ANDERSON. He was in his thirties, blue-eyed and ruddy-complexioned, with features that spoke of Irish ancestry. I flashed on the only line of poetry I retained from my days of making mediocre grades in my high school English class: “John Anderson, my Jo, John, when we were first acquent…” That was the extent of it. No clue who the poet was, though the name Robert Burns lurked somewhere at the back of my brain. I wondered if William’s father was correct in his belief that memorizing poetry served us later in life.