“My name’s Tanner. I saw you down at Hell House last night. I was there with Cal.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She rubbed her hand along her brow and scraped her hair away from her face. “Jesus, my head hurts.”
“I need to talk to you, Lisa.”
“Yeah? About what? How’d you know I was here, anyway?”
“Just a guess. Cal told me he used to stay back here sometimes.”
“Cal. Poor fucking Cal. He thinks I’m still a kid. If he knew what I really was, he’d …” She shrugged away Cal’s innocence and her own transgressions. “Is that why you’re here? To find me for Cal?”
“I’m here for lots of reasons. One of them is to talk to you about Sherry Misteen.”
Her thin face narrowed even more. “Sherry? What about her?”
Her voice, formerly hard and dismissive, was for the first time timorous. “She’s dead,” I said.
“They’ve been saying that for weeks. It’s just talk. No one knows where she is.” There was a wishful thinness in her final words.
“They do now.”
“Huh?”
“They found her body. In People’s Park. Where you and your buddies buried it.”
She leaned away from me. “Hey. Jesus Christ. What are you trying to pull here, anyway?”
“I’m just trying to learn the truth before the police do. About Sherry. And about your mother.”
“My mother? She’s … Oh. I get it. I heard they let my old man out. Does he know I’m back here? Did he send you out to get me?”
“As far as I know he doesn’t know where you are. Do you want me to go tell him?”
“Shit, no. The bastard. I’m just waiting till I can get in the house and boost some stuff to hock. I’m a little short of bread, you know?” She eyed me closely. “You got any?”
“Some.”
“You pay me if I talk to you? Like they do on TV?”
“Maybe. If you tell me the truth.”
Her eyes grew slim and calculating. “Yeah, well, first I need a bath. And some chow. You up for that?”
“If that’s what it takes. Where do you want to go? In the house? I don’t think anyone’s there.”
“Hell, no. He might come back.”
“Your grandmother’s?”
She laughed contemptuously. “You got a car?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go. I’ll show you on the way.”
She scrambled to her feet and grabbed a backpack that had been buried beneath the clump of sleeping bag and crawled out of the shed. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s get out of here before anyone sees me.”
She began running toward the front of the house. I hurried after her, afraid I’d just offered candy to a baby, for purposes not entirely proper.
She scrambled into the car, and I drove away from Hillside Lane. After she’d directed me back to Dwight Way, then left onto Warring and left again onto Derby I was certain we were headed back to Piedmont, to her grandparents’ mansion. But three minutes later, as I was climbing Ashby on my way toward the freeway that stretched to Piedmont and East Oakland, Lisa suddenly reached out and grabbed by shoulder. “Here. Turn left. Hurry, before you get caught in traffic.”
I wrenched the wheel to the left, frightened an approaching Subaru, bounced over the curb and came to a stop beside a small white building that blocked the road. The security guard inside leaned out his window and I rolled mine down. “Are you checking in, sir?” he asked.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. Beside me, Lisa Usser nudged my ribs. “Tell him yes.”
“I guess we are,” I said to the guard.
“Straight ahead; follow the signs. We hope you enjoy your stay at the Claremont.”
I remained disoriented until he uttered his final word. As I put the car in gear I leaned forward and looked up the hill. There it was, sure enough. The Claremont Hotel, doyenne of Berkeley’s hostelries, a huge white structure that gazed down over Berkeley, then out across the bay and fixed its haughty stare on distant San Francisco, as though to assert its equal elegance. The row of dormers across its top and its gaily trimmed facade gave the structure a festive, resortish feel, as though it had been designed by a pastry chef rather than an architect.
I took a parking ticket from the machine, passed through the barrier and drove slowly up the drive, glancing at Lisa Usser when I could. “What are we doing here?” I asked as I swung left toward the main entrance.
“Checking in, like I said.”
“Why?”
“So I can eat. And take a bath. And we can have that talk you want so bad.”
The last was said with a taunting roughness, a whore’s disdain, as though in Lisa’s world it was talk, not sex, that was a mortal sin.
I almost convinced myself that I was asking for trouble if I agreed to Lisa’s plan, but at bottom it seemed worth the risk. Two were dead, and more might die if the Usser case did not unscramble. And I was as close to that as I knew how to get.
I parked near the front entrance, beneath a massive awning. Lisa and I got out of the car as a doorman rushed to assist us. “Baggage, sir?”
His face betrayed no doubt of our propriety, no hint that he took exception to my sharing a hotel room with a girl less than half my age. I couldn’t say the same for me. From within a nervous blush I told him I had only a tote bag, and that I’d get it later. The doorman nodded. When he reached for Lisa’s backpack she turned away and told him she’d take it in herself. I had reached the front desk before it occurred to me that people might mercifully assume that Lisa was my daughter, whom I was treating to a break from school.
The checkin was uneventful, the desk clerk barely noticing the girl standing to my rear like a domesticated pet that was swaddled in a burlap bag. We shared the elevator with a smirking bellhop who kept his eye on Lisa’s breasts. By the time we got to our floor Lisa was laughing audibly at my discomfiture.
The bellhop turned on the lights and the air conditioner and lingered for his tip. I gave him a five, in a hopeless attempt to buy discretion.
When he’d gone Lisa turned to me, hands on hips. “I’m hungry.”
“Okay. There’s the Presto Café downstairs. Let’s—”
“Room service.”
She opened drawers and pulled out a menu from the third one she tried and glanced down it quickly. “I want the salmon, with artichoke hearts to start, and the spinach salad.”
I shook my head. “A sandwich is plenty, if you expect me to pay for it. Then, if we have a nice long talk, you can have dessert.”
“Tightwad.”
“Right.”
She pouted for a second, then looked back at the menu. “Club sandwich and a Coke, plus a side order of fries.”
“Okay. Call it in.”
“You want something?”
“No.”
She picked up the phone and asked for room service. “Hi. This is room 319. Mr. Tanner’s room. Send me the large filet, medium rare, with the works. The chocolate mousse. And a bottle of your best Cabernet. And make it quick.”
She dropped the phone onto the cradle and laughed delightedly, then reached for the buttons to her shirt. “I’m taking a bath. Don’t you dare come in or I’ll scream rape. Do you have to piss first?”
I shook my head. She kicked off her shoes, peeled off the oversize shirt and stepped out of the billowy slacks, which left her in cotton briefs and undershirt. She looked like a boy, the nudge of her breasts and the arc of her hips the sole marks of her sex, marks her clothing seemed designed to hide.
She gathered up her clothes and trotted into the bathroom and shut the door. In a moment the roar of water filled the room. I called room service and amended Lisa’s order, then flipped on the TV and lay back on the bed and watched whatever came on, which happened to be a rerun of Mannix. His secretary was a Peggy, too. Someone had kidnapped her son. Mannix saved the day, and I was into the opening credits of Hart to Hart before Lisa came out. When she did she was
dripping wet and naked.
“Hi,” she said, with the lilt of the practiced flirt.
“Hi.”
She eyed me impudently. “Well? Let’s get at it.” She walked to the bed, climbed onto it and knelt at its foot. “You don’t mind me all wet, do you?” she asked, rubbing her hands along her flanks. “I’ll just have to wash you off me when you’re done, so there’s no sense drying off. I hate it when come keeps dripping out of me all day, you know? Besides, it makes weird noises when you’re wet.”
I didn’t say anything. Lisa lifted her hands off her hips, looked at them, then dried them on the bedspread. When she looked at me again she frowned. “Come on. I can’t stay here forever.” She paused. “You still want to ball me, don’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
She laughed, forcing a bawdy pose. “All you old guys want to fuck young chicks. Take a guess how many times a day I get hit on by wheezy old professor-types along the avenue. Huh? So how do you want me, belly or back?”
She flopped down on the bed and rolled over, then back again, leaving spots of water that were as dark as smears of blood. “Just get dressed,” I told her.
“Hey. It’s okay. I owe you for the room and food and stuff. You’re not the first guy I’ve paid off in the rack, believe me.”
I tried very hard to believe it was a bluff. “It’s on the house this time.”
My reticence was making her mad. “What’s the matter, I’m not stacked enough? I make up for it, Mr. Detective, don’t think I don’t. So what do you want to do to me? Go ahead. Name your perversion. I’ve let guys do all kinds of stuff to me.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s the way of the world. I learned it from my old man. Sex with anyone, anytime. You married?”
“Nope.”
“Too bad. I like to imagine what the wives look like when they find out, you know? I like to think about their faces when their old man tells them all the stuff I did. So you want to get it on, or what?” Lisa hopped off the bed and went over to her backpack and fished around inside and came up with a little bag tied at the top with a string. “I got some hellacious grass here. It’ll make it real nice for you. Bet you’ve never got laid while you were stoned, have you? Bet you’ve never gotten stoned, period. You’re so straight you need help to tie your shoes.”
“Tell me about Sherry, Lisa. Tell me what happened between you two. Why you weren’t friends anymore.”
Lisa twirled the Baggie like a pinwheel. “Sherry. I don’t know nothing about Sherry. I mean, she lived across the street, then she split, and now you claim she’s dead. Which I doubt.”
“But what happened between you?”
“Who says something happened?”
“I hear things.”
“Well, hear this.” She flipped her middle finger at me, then rummaged in her pack again and brought out a cigarette, lit it and perched on the edge of the dresser, legs drawn up, chin on her knees, looking like an ad for a Warhol film or a brand of new cologne.
She took a deep drag and blew smoke at the ceiling. “One guy tried to burn me with a cigarette. You into that? Sadism and stuff?”
“Did Sherry try to beat your time with the Maniac? Is that what happened?”
She tapped her cigarette angrily. The ash drifted to the carpet like a dehydrated tear. “Sherry? You must be nuts. Me and the Maniac are into stuff Sherry never even heard about, let alone did. Not sex, either.”
“What else?”
“Stuff. Just stuff. You’re a jerk, you know that? You want to fuck me or not?”
“No. So you can put your clothes on.”
Her grin was as close to evil as she could shove it. “What’s the matter? You don’t like my twat smiling at you?”
She swirled so she could see herself in the mirror at her back. “I think it’s kind of cute.” She twirled back at me and spread her legs. Her pubic hair was thin and straight, like a clump of new spring grass.
“Who killed Sherry?” I demanded.
“Who knows? Who cares?”
“Who took the videotape of her funeral in the park?”
That one jarred her out of her burlesque vamp and into a frightened stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The videotape you took from your father’s study and buried in the park, along with Sherry’s fingernails.”
“You know about that?”
I nodded. “And when I leave here the police will too. Then they’ll be on you like a new tattoo. You won’t see the street for days. Longer than that if they can tie you to the murder. The only way you can keep that from happening is to talk to me. If I know exactly what went down, maybe I can point the cops in the right direction and away from you.”
“Shit. Am I supposed to think you give a damn about me? Well, I don’t.”
“All the conspirators to a crime are as guilty as the one who actually did the deed, Lisa. From the looks of that tape, I’d say Sherry’s murder was a group effort. There were several people dancing around that grave, and if they can show you were one of them you’re in big trouble. Maybe bigger than I can get you out of. But if you’re as smart as they say you are, you’ll give me a chance to try.”
“I don’t know anything about it. Now shut up. Just shut up. I don’t want to hear any more about Sherry.”
She was on the border of hysteria. I could see no point in pushing her over it, so I backed off, hoping she could discard this mood as easily as she did the others. “Let’s talk about your mother,” I said easily.
She closed her eyes and squeezed a tear from each of them, then shook her head. “Jesus. Why don’t we talk about Auschwitz, too? And maybe Jonestown for a while. And Cambodia and Ethiopia and all those other good places. I mean, you want to talk about dead people, why limit it to one or two?”
“Why did you tell the police your father killed her?”
“Because he fucking did.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, no? What makes you such an authority?”
“My business.”
“If Daddy didn’t kill her, who did?”
“I don’t know. But I think you do.”
“Like hell.”
“Was it the Maniac? Did he kill Sherry and your mother?”
“No, no, a thousand times, no. Will you let up, you bastard? Just because the Maniac killed the sorority prick teaser doesn’t make him a mass murderer, for Christ’s sake. He’s better now, anyway.”
“He didn’t seem much better the other night.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you didn’t see him before, you know? Besides, that was just his medicine. He doesn’t keep track, sometimes.”
She started to pace the room, still heedless of her nudity, still contemptuous of my effort to understand why the two women closest to her were dead. “Sherry I can understand, maybe,” I said softly. “A street thing. She ripped someone off. Or squealed to the cops. Maybe she had it coming, like the other girl. But my problem is, I can’t figure out why the Maniac would kill your mom.”
She put out her hands and leaned against the wall. “He didn’t. Really. You’ve got to believe that.”
She pushed away from the wall and went over to her pack and pulled out some baggy shorts and a T-shirt and put them on. Somehow she looked more naked than before. I went over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. They were as thin and fragile as a doll’s. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I’m going to ask you something, Lisa,” I said. “And before I do I want you to realize that there are people who can help you with the problem. Who can make sure it never, ever happens again.”
She gave me a puzzled look, then went into the bathroom and got the slacks and shirt she’d taken off to bathe and came back and stuffed them in her pack, along with her underwear. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Did your father ever abuse you sexually, Lisa? Did he force you to have intercourse with him?”
She dropped he
r pack to the floor and stared at me. “You’re a fucking pervert, you know that? You don’t know anything about anything. Now let me alone. I mean it!” She was crying, and was enraged at herself because of it.
Her denial was so vehement and immediate I tended to believe her. Which put me back to square one. Sexual abuse would have explained a lot, including the personality changes that each member of the Usser household had experienced a month before Dianne Renzel had been murdered. I decided to try an even longer shot, a second possibility that had crept into my mind sometime that morning. I was about to ask the question that posed it when someone knocked on the door.
I opened it to the room service waiter. He pushed his metal cart into the room, uncovered the sandwich and the fries, opened the bottle of wine that I had forgotten to cancel along with the steak. I tipped him and he vanished, then I invited Lisa to eat her dinner.
She didn’t move for a moment, remained curled in a fetal ball on the floor beside the bed. I was about to help her up when she uncoiled and went to the cart and wolfed down the sandwich in three gulps and took a slug of wine straight from the bottle. After a second swallow she offered the bottle to me. I hesitated, then matched her lack of couth. The moment of hobo fellowship was oddly pleasurable. I gave the bottle back to Lisa and she took another swig as I asked my question.
“What was the relationship between your father and Dr. Lonborg?”
I had intended to ease toward my hunch with a certain subtlety, but Lisa vaulted there immediately. “You mean are they gay? Christ. My father? Sure he screws anything that moves, but it has to have a cunt. I mean, come on. Are you on dust or something? Get real.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’m off base.”
“Twice,” she reminded.
I apologized but she waved me off. “You’re the one like Lonborg,” she accused. “Every time I turn around there he is, always coming up with these explanations for everything. Well, some things don’t have explanations, you know? Some things just happen.” Her eyes declared that what had happened to her had been infinitely sad.
I told her I agreed with her. “I’ll give up on the wild theories, Lisa. But maybe it would help if you would tell me some things about your mother. About her relationship with your father, and with you.”
Beyond Blame Page 26