by Sue Grafton
“Nice to meet you, too, William.”
We shook hands again. He seemed somewhat invigorated by his lecture on the hazards of fatty foods.
While I put the sandwiches together, Henry put six loaves of bread in the oven. We didn’t dare say a word because we could hear William in the bathroom filling his water glass, then returning to his room. We sat down to lunch.
“I think it’s safe to say this is going to be a very long two weeks,” Henry murmured.
I moved over to the refrigerator and took out two Diet Pepsis, which I brought back to the table. Henry popped both tops and passed one back to me. While we ate, I filled him in on the investigation, in part because he likes hearing about the work I do, and in part because I find it clarifies my thinking when I hear what I have to say.
“What’s your feeling about this Barney fellow?” he asked.
I shrugged. “The man’s a creep, but then I don’t think much of Kenneth Voigt, either. Talk about grim. Fortunately for them, the judicial system doesn’t seem to hinge on my personal opinions.”
“You think the informant is telling the truth?”
“I’ll know a lot more when I find out where he was on May twenty-first,” I said.
“Why would he lie? Especially when it’s so easy to check? From what you’ve said, if he was actually in jail, all you have to do is go back and look at his paperwork.”
“But why would David Barney lie about it when the same possibility applies? Apparently, nobody’s thought to verify the date so far—”
“Unless Morley Shine checked it out before he died.” Henry imitated the “significant moment” music on a radio drama: “Duh-duh-duh.”
I smiled, mouth too full of sandwich to articulate a reply. “Oh, great. That’s all I need,” I said when I could. “I do my job right and I die, too.” I wiped my mouth on a paper napkin and took a sip of Pepsi.
Henry gestured dismissively. “Barney’s probably generating some kind of smoke screen.”
“I hope that’s what it is. If some of this shit checks out, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Famous last words. Before I left, I put in a call to Lieutenant Becker to see if he’d heard from Inmate Records.
“I just got off the phone with them. The guy was right. Curtis McIntyre was being arraigned that day on a burglary charge. He might have passed Barney in the hall on his way to see the magistrate, but he’d have been shackled to the other prisoners. There’s no way they could have talked.”
“I better find out what’s going on here,” I said.
“You better do it quick. McIntyre got out of jail this morning at six.”
10
I headed back to the office and called Sergeant Hixon, a friend of mine out at the jail. She checked Curtis McIntyre’s records and gave me the address he’d provided his last parole officer. Curtis seemed to spend a portion of each year taking advantage of the rent-free accommodations provided by the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department, which he probably considered the equivalent of a Hawaiian condominium vacation timeshare. When he wasn’t enjoying the free meals and volleyball at the local correctional facility, he apparently occupied a room at the Thrifty Motel (“Daily, Weekly, Monthly . . . Kitchens”) on upper State Street.
I parked my VW across the road from this establishment, which quick calculation told me was within walking distance of the jail. Curtis didn’t even have to spring for a taxi on release. I imagined that his was that one room without a ratty car parked out front. The occupants of the other units boasted Chevies and ten-year-old Cadillacs, vehicles favored by auto insurance defrauders, which is what they might have been. Curtis hadn’t been out of jail long enough to engage in any illegal activities. Well, maybe littering, lewd conduct, and public spitting, but nothing major.
The Thrifty Motel looked like the sort of “auto court” where Bonnie and Clyde might have holed up. It was L-shaped, built of cinder block, and painted the strange green that yolks turn when they’ve been hard-boiled too long. There were twelve rooms altogether, each with a tiny porch a little bigger than a doormat. Someone had planted marigolds in matching coffee cans arranged in twos and threes by the front steps. The office at the entrance was dominated by a Coke machine and the front window was obscured by mock-ups of all the credit cards they took.
I was just about to cross the road and verify his presence when I spotted him emerging from the very room I’d mentally assigned him. He looked rested and freshly shaved, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a denim jacket. He was in the process of running a pocket comb through his hair, which was damp from the shower and formed a curly fringe around his ears. He was simultaneously smoking and chewing gum, a refreshingly aromatic combination for the breath. I fired up the VW and followed at a distance.
I kept him in sight as he headed west, passing numerous small businesses: a pizza parlor, a gas station, a U-Haul rental, a home improvement “emporium,” and a garden shop. Beyond these, where the road curved around to the left, was a combination bar and grill called the Wander Inn. The door was standing open. Curtis flipped his cigarette toward the pavement and disappeared through the front. I pulled into the gravel parking lot around at the back and left my car in one of ten empty slots. I entered the rear door, passing the rest rooms and the kitchen, where I could see the fry cook shaking the oil from a wire basket piled with golden fries.
The interior of the bar was all polyurethane and beer smell, illuminated by a wide shaft of daylight coming in the front. Already, the cigarette haze gave the room the misty quality of an old photograph. The only colors I could see were the vibrant primary hues of the pinball machine, where a cartoon spacewoman with big conical breasts straddled the earth in a formfitting blue space suit and thigh-high yellow boots. Behind her, a big red dildo-shaped spaceship was just blasting off for the moon.
At the bar, six men turned to look at me, but Curtis wasn’t one. I spotted him in a booth, a beer bottle to his lips, Adam’s apple thrusting up and down like a piston. He set the empty bottle on the table and paused to produce several noisy burps in succession, like a furious sea lion barking at his mate.
A waitress in a white blouse, black slacks, and crepe-soled deck shoes emerged from the kitchen with a tray of hot food, which she took to his booth. I waited until he’d been served a cheeseburger and a mound of fries, all of which he doctored with liberal doses of salt and ketchup. He piled lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion on the burger, put the top of the bun back, and mashed it into place. He had to hold it with both hands in order to bite in. I approached the booth and slid into the seat across from him. He expressed as much enthusiasm as he could muster with his mouth full and his lips smeared with ketchup. “Hey, how are you? This is great! Glad to see you. I don’t believe this. How’d you know I’d be here?” He swallowed his cheekful of burger and wiped the bottom half of his face with a paper napkin. I handed him a second napkin from the dispenser and watched him as he cleaned up his fingers, after which he insisted on shaking hands with me. I didn’t see a polite way to refuse, though I knew my palm would smell like onions for an hour afterward.
I folded my arms, leaning on my elbows, to discourage any further contact. “Curtis, we have to talk.”
“I got time. You want a beer? Come on and let me buy you one.”
Without waiting for assent, he signaled the bartender by holding up his beer bottle and two fingers. “You want some lunch, too? Have some lunch,” he said.
“I just ate.”
“Well, have some fries. Help yourself. How’d you know I was out? Last time you seen me I’se in jail. You look great.”
“Thanks. So do you. That was yesterday,” I pointed out.
Curtis popped up and crossed to the bar to get the beers. While he was gone, I ate a couple of his french fries. They were wedge cut, with the skins on, and perfectly cooked. He returned to the booth with the beers and I saw him make a move as if to slide in on my side.
“No way,” I said. He w
as acting like I was his date and I could see the guys at the bar begin to eye us with speculation.
I refused to give him room and he was forced to sit down again where he’d been. He handed me a beer and grinned at me happily. Curtis seemed to think that along with all the beer, cigarettes, and saturated fats, he might just get lucky and get laid this afternoon. He put his chin in his fist and tried his soulful, puppy-dog gaze on me. “You’re not gonna be mean to me, now, are you, hon?”
“Finish your lunch, Curtis, and don’t give me any more of that hangdog look. It just makes me want to hit you with a rolled-up newspaper.”
“Damn, you’re cute,” he said. Love had apparently diminished his appetite. He pushed aside his plate and lit a cigarette, offering me a drag, like we were postcoital.
“I’m not cute at all. I’m a very cranky person. Now could we get down to business? I’m having a little problem with the story you told me.”
He frowned to show he was serious. “How come?”
“You said you sat in on David Barney’s trial—”
“Not the whole thing. I told you that. Crime might be exciting, but the law’s a bore, right?”
“You said you talked to David Barney as he left court just after he’d been acquitted.”
“I said that?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Don’t remember that part. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is you were in jail at the time, waiting to be arraigned on a burglary charge.”
“Nooo,” he said with disbelief. “I was?”
“Yes, you were.”
“Well, I’m burnt. You got me there. I forgot all about that. I guess I got my dates wrong, but the rest of it is gospel.” He held his hand up as if he were taking an oath. “Swear to God.”
“Cut the horseshit, Curtis, and tell me what’s going on here. You didn’t talk to him. You’re lying through your teeth.”
“Now wait. Just wait. I did talk to him. It just wasn’t where I said.”
“Where then?”
“At his house.”
“You went to his house? That’s baloney. When was this?”
“I don’t know. Couple weeks after his trial, I guess.”
“I thought you were still in jail.”
“Naw, I’se out by then with time served and all that. My attorney cut a deal. I, like, copped to the lesser plea.”
“Forget the jargon and tell me how you ended up at David Barney’s house. Did you call him or did he call you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?” I said in a scathing tone of skepticism. I was being rude, but Curtis didn’t seem to notice. He was probably accustomed to being addressed that way by all the hard-nosed prosecuting attorneys he’d faced in his short, illustrious career.
“I called him.”
“How’d you get his telephone number?”
“Called Information.”
“What made you think to get in touch with him?”
“It seemed like to me he wouldn’t have many friends. I been there myself. Get in trouble with the law, a lot of people won’t fool with you much after that. It’s like they don’t want to hang out with a jailbird.”
“So you thought he needed a best friend and you were going to be it. What’s the rest of it?”
His response was sheepish and he had the good grace to squirm. “Well, now, I knew where he lived—out in Horton Ravine—so I figured he was good for a meal or a couple drinks. We’d been cellmates and all and I thought he’d at least be polite.”
“You went to borrow money,” I said.
“You might put it that way.”
So far, it was the only thing he’d said that rang true.
“I’d just got out. I didn’t have no funds to speak of and this guy had lots. He’s loaded—”
“Skip that. I believe you. Describe the house.”
“He’s living in the dead wife’s house by then—up a hill, Spanish, with this courtyard and a terrace with this big black-bottom swimming pool—”
“Got it. Go on.”
“I knock on the door. He’s there and I say I was in the area and stopped by to congratulate him on gettin’ off a murder rap. So he asks me in and we have a couple drinks—”
“What’d you drink?”
“He had some kind of pussy drink, vodka tonic with a twist. I had bourbon straight up with a water back. It was classy bourbon, too.”
“So you’re having drinks . . .”
“That’s right. We’re having these drinks and he’s got this little old gal in the kitchen making up a tray of snacks. That green stuff. Guacamole and salsa and these triangle-shape chips that’re gray. I said, ‘What the hell are them?’ and he said, ‘They’re blue corn tortilla chips.’ Looked gray if you asked me. We set there and drank and carried on until almost midnight.”
“What about dinner?”
“Wasn’t any dinner. Just snacks is all, which is how we got so loaded.”
“And then what?”
“And that’s when he said what he said, about he done her.”
“What’d he say exactly?”
“Said he knocked on the door. She come downstairs and flipped on the porch light. He waited until he seen her eye block the light in the little peephole? Then he fired away. Boom!”
“Why didn’t you tell me this story to begin with?”
“It didn’t look right,” he said righ teously. “I mean, I went up there to ask if he’d lend me some money. I didn’t want it to seem like I was mad he turned me down. Nobody’d believe me if I told the story that way. Besides, he was nice about it and I didn’t want to look like a dick. Pardon my French.”
“Why would he admit he killed her?”
“Why not? Once he’s acquitted, he can’t be retried.”
“Not in criminal court.”
“Shoot. He’s not going to worry about a damn civil suit.”
“And you’re prepared to go into court with this?”
“I don’t mind.”
“You will testify under oath,” I said, trying to make sure he understood what this was about.
“Sure. Only . . . you know.”
“Only you know what?”
“I’d like a little something back,” he said.
“As in what?”
“Well, fair is fair.”
“Nobody’s going to pay you money.”
“I know that. I never said money.”
“Then what?”
“I’d like to see a little time off my parole, something like that.”
“Curtis, nobody’s going to make a deal with you. I have no authority whatsoever to do that.”
“I never said make a deal, but I could use some consideration.”
I looked at him long and earnestly. Why didn’t I believe what he was telling me? Because he looked like a man who wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him. I don’t know what made me blurt out the next question. “Curtis, have you ever been convicted of perjury?”
“Perjury?”
“Goddamn it! You know what perjury is. Just answer the question and let’s get on with this.”
He scratched at his chin, his gaze not quite meeting mine. “I never been convicted.”
“Oh, hell,” I said.
I got up out of the booth and walked away from him, heading for the rear of the restaurant. Behind me, I could hear him spring to his feet. I glanced back in time to see him fling some bills on the table as he hurried after me. I stepped out into the parking lot, nearly recoiling from the harsh sunlight on the white gravel.
“Hey! Now, wait up! I’m telling you the truth.”
He grabbed at me and I pulled my arm out of reach. “You’re going to look like crap on the stand,” I said, without breaking stride. “You’ve got a record a mile long, including charges of perjury—”
“Not ‘charges.’ Just the one. Well, two, if you count that other business.”
“I
don’t want to hear it. You’ve already changed your story once. You’ll change it again the next time somebody asks. Barney’s attorney is going to tear you apart.”
“Well, I don’t see why you have to take that attitude,” he said. “Just because I told one lie doesn’t mean I can’t tell the truth.”
“You don’t even know the difference, Curtis. That’s what worries me.”
“I do know.”
I unlocked my car door and opened it, rolling down the window to break the air lock when I shut it. I got in the front seat and slammed the door smartly, nearly catching his hand on the doorpost where he was resting it. I reached over and flipped open the glove compartment. I got out one of my business cards and thrust it through the window at him. “Give me a call when you decide to tell the truth.”
I started the car and pulled away from him, flinging up dust and gravel in my wake.
I drove back to the office with the radio blasting. It was 3:35 and, of course, parking was at a premium. It didn’t occur to me that with Lonnie driving up to Santa Maria, his space would be free. I circled the area, increasing one block with each round, trying to snag a spot within reasonable walking distance of the office. Finally, I found a semiquestionable slot, with my rear bumper hanging out into somebody’s driveway. It was an invitation for a parking ticket, but maybe all the meter maids had gone home by then.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing busywork. My appointment with Laura Barney was coming up within the hour, but in truth, I was marking time until I had a chance to talk to Lonnie, who Ida Ruth kept assuring me was temporarily out of service. I found myself loitering in the vicinity of her desk, hoping I’d be nearby if he should happen to call in. “He never calls when he’s working,” she said patiently.
“Don’t you ever call him?”
“Not if I’m smart. He gets annoyed when I do.”
“Don’t you think he’d want to hear about it if his prime witness turned sour?”