Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “Just your husband’s work address. You left Guam only two months before Ruth did and that was the only address she had for you. I called directory assistance to get your number.”

  “What else did Ruth say about me?” Betty Korsakov asked. I knew I was being tested.

  “You were next-door neighbors on Guam. I think you were the only friend Ruth had. The two of you would get together for coffee in the morning after your children went to school. She didn’t have a car, so you gave her rides to the commissary and exchange.” I paused, thinking back to that afternoon’s conversation with Ruth, dredging up everything she had said about the Korsakovs.

  “You mailed things for Ruth, because she didn’t want to alert Sam that she’d decided to leave him. When you left Guam for Washington, you told Ruth you’d be glad to get back to a place with four seasons, and no tree snakes.”

  There was silence on the other end of the receiver. Then Betty Korsakov laughed. “I hated those damn tree snakes. They gave me the willies. I guess you have talked to Ruth. I told her that—about the seasons—the day the movers came to pack up our household goods. Okay, I don’t need to talk to the lawyer. What do you want to know?”

  “Sam Raynor had a large sum of money in a bank account on Guam,” I explained. “Now that Ruth has filed for divorce, the money’s disappeared. He denies ever having it. He’s hiding it, so he won’t have to split the cash as community property in the divorce settlement I’m trying to locate it.”

  “Sounds just like him, the creep. I don’t know how I can help you. If that deadbeat had any money, it’s news to me.” It was evident from Betty Korsakov’s scathing tone that she was prepared to rake Sam Raynor over a slow fire of white-hot coals. My favorite type of interview.

  “You don’t like Sam?” I asked again.

  “After seeing the way he treated Ruth? Good God, no. He acted like she was dirt under his feet, especially when he’d been drinking. He yelled at her all the time. And he ignored that child.” She sighed over the phone line.

  “I knew he was hitting Ruth. Not that I ever saw him do it, but I could tell. She was so cowed when she was around him, like she was waiting for the next slap. Once Ed and I came back from a week’s vacation in Japan and Ruth had a broken arm. And the black eye before that. Supposedly accidents, but I didn’t buy that for a minute. I tried to talk to Ruth about it, to see if I could steer her to some counseling, but she was very heavily into denial. Then sometime after last Christmas she seemed to come to her senses. She told me when Sam got orders, she was gonna leave him. That’s when I mailed those boxes to her parents. She only did that a few times, so she wouldn’t tip him off.”

  “You mentioned Sam’s drinking. Any observations?”

  “He was a nasty drunk. Whenever he had too much, it was like being around a snake. Like if you made the wrong move, he’d bite whoever was handy.” As Betty Korsakov spoke, my mind furnished an image of Raynor’s face atop a coiled scaly body. “And he thought he was God’s gift to women. I’m sure he had several women on the side. That kind usually does.”

  “Did he ever put the moves on you?”

  “He sure as hell did.” Her voice turned angry. “At a neighborhood barbecue, the first year we were on Guam. Sam got drunk and made a pass at me. He didn’t take it too well when I told him to keep his damn hands to himself. Didn’t want to take no for an answer until I threatened to tell my husband. After that he was really hostile, like any woman who turned down the great Sam Raynor was a bitch or crazy. He didn’t want Ruth to associate with me either. I guess he was afraid I’d tell her what a loser he was. Of course, I’d been doing that since the day I met them. For all his catting around, Sam Raynor doesn’t like women at all.”

  Betty Korsakov was probably right on target with that salvo. I’ve encountered more than a few men with the same problem.

  “I haven’t met him yet,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ve missed much. Ruth says their financial situation was lean.”

  “Sam used to poormouth all the time. He bitched about how an enlisted man’s salary didn’t stretch far enough. He drove a real clunker of a car. It was always breaking down. He gave Ruth barely enough to buy the necessities. I passed along my kids’ hand-me-downs for Wendy. Ruth sewed, so she’d alter them. Of course, Sam was a sharp dresser. He didn’t mind spending money on himself. I saw him once, at a jewelry store in Agana. He was buying a ring, gold with a big hunk of apple-green jade, had to be expensive. Of course I never saw Ruth wear it. It’s probably on some other woman’s finger. No, if Sam Raynor had any money stashed away, I never saw any evidence of it. He probably got it illegally.”

  “I had considered that. That’s why I wanted to talk to someone who knew him on Guam.”

  “Hang on,” she said. “My husband wants to talk to you.”

  A moment later a new voice boomed in my ear. Ed Korsakov was definitely from Brooklyn. “So you want to know about Sam Raynor. Sounds like my wife’s given you an earful already.”

  “You and Raynor both worked at NAS Agana.”

  “Yeah, but he was with a different squadron. I’d give him a ride to the air station when his car broke down, but that was it. When you’re in the Navy, living with all sorts of people in housing, you live and let live. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t have much use for the guy. Didn’t like the way he treated his wife and kid. I know he cheated on Ruth. I used to see him hanging around the clubs down on Hotel Row with a blonde.”

  “Any idea how Raynor came by a large chunk of money? Say, a hundred thousand?”

  “Him?” Ed Korsakov sounded surprised. “He was always a dollar short. The kinda guy who borrows a twenty till payday, then never pays it back. If Raynor’s got money, I’d sure as hell wonder how he got it. He used to take trips to the Philippines and Thailand. Lot of drugs get smuggled through Guam. Other stuff too, like jewelry. You should talk to a buddy of mine, named Duffy LeBard. He was with the Armed Forces Police Detachment on Guam. When he left Guam he went to Treasure Island. He’s the chief of police there. I bet Duffy knows a thing or two about Sam Raynor. You call Duffy, tell him Ed said hello.”

  Neither of the Korsakovs had anything to add. I thanked them and hung up the phone, reaching for one of the Bay Area phone directories I keep in a bookcase behind my desk. In this case it was a San Francisco directory, because the naval base at Treasure Island, in the middle of San Francisco Bay, is considered part of the city. I found the number I needed, but the patrolman who answered told me that Chief Duffy LeBard had gone home, not surprising, since it was nearly six in the evening. I left my name and phone number, adding that I’d call again tomorrow.

  It was time I went home as well. I closed the window, locked my office, and took the stairs down to Franklin Street. I live in Adams Point, a hilly area near Lake Merritt and downtown Oakland, crowded with apartment buildings, condos, and the occasional turn-of-the-century house that has survived the wrecking ball. My apartment is at the rear of a U-shaped stucco building, a series of connected bungalows under one red-tiled roof, surrounded by a tall steel security fence with a gate at the top of the U. The outer walls are covered with ivy and bougainvillea, and there’s a flagstone courtyard in the center, with a fountain that is now dry in deference to the drought. The lemon tree near my front porch is surviving well enough to provide me with a handful of small yellow fruit now and then.

  When I first saw my cat Abigail, ten years ago, she was a little brown and silver fluffball right out of the litter, tiny enough at eight weeks to fit in the palm of my hand. Now she is fat enough around the midsection to warrant diet cat food and warning clucks from the veterinarian. She wasn’t in her usual spot, lying along the back of the sofa where she looked out the window and chirruped at the hummingbirds that buzz my neighbor’s feeder or the mourning doves exploring the bone-dry fountain. The day had been too hot for her to lie on anything that would retain warmth.

  As I unlocked the front door I spotted her raggedy yellow yarn mouse dis
carded on the carpet at the foot of my round oak dining table. I raised my eyes and saw the cat sprawled on the cool wooden surface of the table, half on her back, half on her side, with her striped belly exposed. She had shoved a placemat out of the way, just to make herself comfortable. I leaned over to greet her. She meowed at me, stretched and yawned, then reached out a paw and patted me on the nose.

  “I see you had a strenuous day of sleeping.” I hung my purse over the back of a chair. “Balanced by eating and visits to the cat box.” I scratched the cat’s round belly, then headed for the bedroom, where I kicked off my shoes, removed my work clothes, and put on shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals.

  Northern California has experienced several drought years and I’ve developed some water-stingy habits, such as keeping a bucket in the shower to catch the water that runs as the heater kicks in, which in my building can sometimes take a while. Now I collected my bucket and carried it to my back door, which leads off the kitchen to my patio. The concrete square gets the afternoon sun, and I have a lawn chair and a small barbecue grill in one corner. It offers a stunning view of the apartment building in back of me, which I’ve masked by a tall redwood trellis and a fragrant jasmine bush.

  I have decided the only way to obtain tomatoes that taste like tomatoes is to grow them myself. Four pots are arrayed in front of the trellis, each containing a tomato plant. The first two are Sweet 100s, a type of cherry tomato, small and sweet. The second pair are a larger variety known as San Francisco Fog. The plants are doing well in their containers. All four have outgrown the confines of their metal cages, branches heavy with fruit in varying stages of ripeness, and I’ve had to tie the foliage to the trellis. Now I stuck my fingers into the soil of each pot to see how dry it was before dipping water from the bucket. Then I harvested my crop, leaning close and searching the green leaves for bright red tomatoes.

  Gardening is not pure reward, however, as anyone who has done it will tell you. If you grow tomatoes, you get tomato worms, and they are among God’s ugliest critters. Long and smooth with horned segments, they are the same shade of green as a tomato plant, and they blend so well with the foliage that you can’t spot them until they get big enough to gnaw on a lot of tomatoes. Suddenly you see them, looming at you like some rubbery monster from a Japanese horror flick.

  I hate the damn things. When we were youngsters, my kid brother Brian knew of my aversion, so of course he used all available creepy-crawlies to plague me. He’d pull the fat green worms off the backyard tomato plants and throw them at me, or leave them in my dresser drawers, tucked into my neatly folded underwear. Once or twice he’d even slip one down the back of my dress, chortling with delight while I clawed and squealed.

  He denies this now, especially in the presence of his own children. He prefers to concentrate on my past transgressions, like the time I pushed him out of the oak tree in me front yard of the big Victorian house in Alameda where we grew up. As I recall, he had it coming, though I don’t remember why. And he didn’t break any bones. Despite Brian’s selective memory, tomato worms were for many years part of the tapestry of summer, woven into memory with mounds of produce from my mother’s garden and Dad cranking the handle on the wooden ice cream freezer.

  Today I didn’t see any tomato worms munching on my tomato plants, though a half-gnawed green tomato gave evidence they’d been there. I carried my ripe red jewels back to the kitchen and rinsed them at the sink, then cut up a few to add to the big green salad I was having for dinner.

  Abigail rose from her nap on the oak table, stretched and thumped down to the carpet by way of a chair, purring in anticipation of kibble. After both of us had eaten, I washed the few dishes and retired to the living room, debating between the movie I’d recorded the other night or the paperback novel I hadn’t yet started. Either way, I didn’t feel energetic enough to tackle housework or laundry. In the first case, my clutter threshold hadn’t yet been reached, and in the second, I still had clean underwear available.

  I was sprawled on my sofa with my nose in the book and Abigail on my lap when the phone rang. I stuck a bookmark between the pages and dislodged the cat, who grumbled at being moved, and went to answer the phone. It was Alex Tongco, the Navy officer I’d been dating for the past three months.

  I met Alex while working on a case involving the death of his uncle, one of my father’s colleagues in the history department at California State University, Hayward. Alex had pursued me with amorous intent, but now that our relationship had progressed past the initial cat-and-mouse stage, I suspected he was more interested in pursuing than in catching. I’d seen Abigail exhibit the same behavior when I teased her with one of her cat toys.

  I recalled my earlier question to Ruth, whether Sam Raynor had a girl in every port. Alex certainly had in the past. It was a factor in the breakup of his marriage. So was the constant moving. Sailors—in fact, all military personnel—transfer every few years. Alex had already told me he was due for orders by year-end, probably overseas. So I wasn’t viewing this as a long-term relationship. Still, Alex and I shared an interest in jazz and old movies, as well as a strong physical attraction. We might as well enjoy each other’s company for the moment.

  “I was out of town for a few days,” Alex was saying, explaining why he hadn’t called. “Got back this afternoon. Chief Yancy and I had to go to a training session down at North Island. He’s the newest chief in the department, just transferred here from WestPac.” WestPac was shorthand for Western Pacific. Alex had familiarized me with Navy jargon, a sometimes bewildering array of abbreviations. “How about dinner and a movie on Friday?” he asked.

  Alex didn’t have any preferences, so I looked at the schedules affixed with magnets to my refrigerator door, one for the U.C. Theater, a repertory house in Berkeley, and the other for the Paramount here in Oakland, an Art Deco Moderne gem that frequently shows classic movies on Friday nights. Our choice at the U.C. was an Akira Kurosawa double bill. Neither of us was in the mood for Kurosawa.

  “Dark Victory is at the Paramount,” I told him. “One of my favorite Bette Davis weepies. Though it’s beyond me how any intelligent woman could chose George Brent over Humphrey Bogart.”

  He laughed. “Well, let’s go see if she’s come to her senses. Where shall we have dinner?”

  “Let’s try that Vietnamese place over on Clay, Le Cheval.”

  We agreed to meet at the restaurant, then Alex asked if I was still going to Monterey Labor Day weekend. When I answered with a terse yes, he said, “Why do I think you’re not looking forward to the trip?”

  I sighed. “Do you get along with your mother?”

  He laughed, and I pictured his dark sardonic face. “Of course I get along with my mother. I’m a good Filipino son. I listen politely to all her advice, I go to Sunday dinner at her place once a month, and Carlos and I send her to Manila twice a year. Does this have something to do with your mother?”

  My response was general rather than specific. “I haven’t been down to Monterey since Christmas, and here it is August.”

  “I believe that’s called avoidance,” Alex said.

  I didn’t answer, which was also avoidance. My relationship with my mother has been a little shaky ever since she and my father split up. Okay, a lot shaky. She left him, returning to Monterey, where she grew up, to open a restaurant. To be honest about it, I’ve always felt closer to Dad, and after the divorce, I felt he needed me more than she did. They remained friends, sharing a lot of history after nearly thirty years of marriage. My brother Brian and his family went down to Monterey frequently, but Mother and I have always been like a couple of cactuses, too prickly to get close to one another.

  Still, I liked visiting the large extended tribe of Doyles and Ravellas who called the Monterey peninsula home. So Labor Day weekend, the last hurrah of summer, I planned to head south and stay a week—depending on how well I got along with Mother during those seven days. Things were slow here at the end of August. Dad was on vacation with his fri
end and fellow professor, Isabel Kovaleski. They’d driven up the coast to Oregon and weren’t due back until Labor Day. My caseload was looking short-term and routine, lightening each day as I wrapped up several assignments. The Raynor case was the newest folder in the filing cabinet, and I was sure it wouldn’t take long for me to sniff out where Raynor had hidden the money.

  “I’m still going to Monterey,” I said. “If this new case doesn’t get complicated, I’ll have a clear calendar by then.”

  “What is the new case?”

  “I can’t really tell you, except that it involves a sailor.”

  “Then I don’t want to know,” Alex said firmly. He was always curious about what I did for a living but he didn’t want to get involved. Nor would I ask him to aid in my search for information on Sam Raynor. As a serviceman, Alex was bound by the provisions of the Privacy Act, and he could get into serious trouble raiding personnel records.

  “Then I won’t tell you. Hangang sa muli,” I said, trying out some of my recently acquired Tagalog, which in this instance translated as “So long.”

  Four

  DUFFY LEBARD CALLED ME THE NEXT MORNING, shortly after I arrived at my office. As a chief petty officer, no doubt LeBard had a long tenure in the Navy, probably all over the map, but those years of service had done little to alter a pronounced Southern drawl.

  “I want to talk about Sam Raynor,” I said, after telling LeBard who I was. “Ed Korsakov suggested I call.”

  “I’d rather do this face-to-face. In my office.”

  “That’s fine with me, Chief LeBard.” I glanced down at my desk calendar, which had very little written under today’s date. “I’m free this morning, or I could do it early this afternoon.”

  “One o’clock. I’ll leave your name with the Marine at the gate. He can tell you how to get here.”

  As I hung up the phone, I was certain LeBard would use the intervening time to call Korsakov to verify my story. He’d probably contact the Oakland Police Department as well, just to check my credentials.