“If you’ll forgive me, the way the contract is written, the death of any partner benefits the others.”
Tommy sighed. “Yes, I understand your suspicion. But I tell you, Dagny, if the mine were full of gold, I’d give it all for the two lives. The point is moot, however. The mine’s worthless, and one-third of nothing is no more than one-fifth of nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to imply anything,” I said. “I just want to clarify my thoughts. Thank you for telling us what you did.”
I was about to make excuses for leaving, when Tommy stood up again. Something about the way he stood this time told me that excuses were unnecessary. He said, “I’m sad and confused; sad about Judy, and confused about Julius’s role in these awful happenings. I hope what I’ve told you is helpful. We Churoks are a peace-loving people. Amongst us there’s little violent crime. Yet if I were to encounter a person who had harmed Judy Raskin, I couldn’t be responsible for my actions.”
He escorted us to the door. “You should probably leave the reservation before the cops tell their story to someone who knows you don’t test mines by exploding dynamite in them, especially when you’re also in the mine.” He guffawed at the thought, and then he turned serious again. “I don’t fathom where the bottom of these mysteries lies. If I can help, please call on me.”
He walked us out to the car, the dogs swarming around us. None had the dignity of Izzie, who walked at his master’s side, head high, eyes alert. “By the way,” added Tommy, “if you want a real tour of the gold mine, let me know. I’ll take you there myself.”
He waved us down the driveway to the road.
Chapter 11
The approach to San Francisco on U.S. 101 runs alongside a bay named for the city. Cool, damp, salty breezes greet you well before the city’s skyline comes into view. Soon you are entering the city. Twin Peaks is visible off to the left, Candlestick Park to the right. The skyline looms ahead.
If you stay on the 101 to the end, it disgorges you in a dreary, urban setting in a tourist-free nook of San Francisco. One navigates simply by aiming for the skyline and its bright lights. This strategy will inevitably get you to Market Street, the main drag, as many San Franciscans call it, where cheap shoes and clothes are the principal retail commodities. Tourists, drunks, druggies, transvestites, and prostitutes of both sexes make up much of the pedestrian traffic on Market’s wide, well-lit sidewalks.
I had made reservations for us at a hotel on Geary Street called the Tawdelta Fielding. I had booked one room with two double beds, leaving my options open regarding the sleeping arrangements. The directions from the hotel staff member were “Market to Geary, two blocks up Geary.” I found an inset map of downtown San Francisco on our big map of California and tracked our progress along Market Street.
I spotted the Tawdelta Fielding as we turned up Geary toward Union Square. It was on the left side of the street, but Geary is one way, and Charles, good English driver that he was, did not find it unnatural to drive in the “wrong” lane.
The marquee on the overhang in front of the hotel actually read Tawd l F l ing, owing to burnt-out bulbs. At first glance, I thought it was Tawdry Fling. My imagination was working the night shift when it should have been asleep.
Charles parked the Subaru in front of the hotel by the white-painted curb, where signs proclaimed all the punishments of hell to anyone parking there who wasn’t checking in.
Tawdry Fling was an accurate description of the hotel’s lobby. Faded velour reds dominated the entire décor: furnishings, walls, rugs. The reservation desk was an island of brightness in the large, dimly lit room whose shadows barely hid the threadbare state of the upholstered sofas and plump chairs. Age had overcome elegance.
It was after midnight. It had been an incredibly long and event-filled day. I was tired and dirty beyond caring about elegance. I was hoping foremost that the clerk with whom I’d made the reservation hadn’t flubbed it, but I needn’t have worried. A room was awaiting us. I redirected my hopes to a wish for cleanliness, too tired to be concerned that I had brashly chosen not to book two rooms.
The night clerk checked us in as if midnight arrivals were commonplace. Then I saw it. A discreetly placed sign behind the counter announcing rooms available by the hour. Charles saw it at about the same time. His eyebrows rose but he filled out the required check-in without missing a beat. The clerk handed us keys to room 404, gave us directions to the elevator, and instructions on where to park the car.
A bell tinkled. Out of the shadows appeared a bellhop old enough to be my grandfather. No matter. He could handle what little luggage we had. I accompanied him to the room while Charles saw to the car. I tipped the old guy a dollar. He looked unhappy at this, so I found four quarters in my change purse and handed those over. Seeing the futility of more looks, he murmured something under his breath and left.
I locked the door and looked around. The room was small, the result of an earlier subdivision of a larger room. The furnishings were shabby but appeared clean enough. Two double beds occupied half of the floor space. A chair, chest of drawers and a table with a sixteen-inch TV set occupied half of what was left. The original walls were thick and solid, built to withstand earthquakes. The newer, dividing wall was so flimsy that even sign language might be overheard in the adjoining room, I thought goofily, for the rhythmic creaking of the bedsprings behind the thin partition, along with the periodic moans, might as well have been inside our own room.
I began to unpack. I finished with my stuff in three minutes and was mulling over the propriety of unpacking for Charles when he rapped on the door. I opened it and was shocked. Exhaustion contorted his handsome face. The abrasions on his cheek flushed angrily, redder now than at Tommy’s, and were oozing again.
“Will we be staying one hour or two? I forget how much I paid you.”
“You idiot,” I giggled. “You’re so out of it you don’t realize you’re half dead.”
“You’re wrong, Dagny. I do. I walked into the loo instead of the lift and my first thought was, ‘What’s a commode doing in a lift?’”
Charles’s suitcase was on one bed. I led him over to the other.
“Sit!” I ordered. “Stay!” He did. I thought I’d try heel and rollover a little later.
I wet a small towel and used it to cool and clean Charles’s face. As I did this, he put his arms around my waist and gently rested the uninjured side of his face on my breast. “This is wonderful, Dagny. We’ll have a great time together. I just need a short lie-down.”
He let go of me and slid into a recumbent position, his feet still on the floor. I grabbed his legs and got him fully onto the bed. I removed his shoes, and as the room was chilly, covered him with the half of the bedspread that he wasn’t lying on. I brushed my teeth, stripped, and crawled into bed under the blankets. I squirmed as close to Charles as the intervening bedclothes would allow. He was already dead to the world.
My sleep was slower to come. I wasn’t as exhausted as Charles. He was surely suffering the aftereffects of the tranquilizer. And I’d dozed for the first hour after leaving the reservation, and when I’d done my share of the driving I’d talked to keep myself alert, which had prevented poor Charles from sleeping.
I’d wanted to talk about the case as we drove. Putting words to thoughts deepens my thinking, and Charles was a good listener and a good reasoner. We had agreed in our impression that Tommy had been forthright. Everything he’d said about Judy was consistent with what I’d learned from Lucy, so I’d felt I could assume that the things he’d said that I didn’t have knowledge of were also true. I’d had a nagging suspicion, though, that he may have discovered the gold mine to be valuable. The elimination of two of the partners would increase his share from a fifth to a third. People do kill for less.
Charles had ventured the opinion that Tommy didn’t seem to covet wealth. “Tommy strikes me as a person who’s figured out that while poverty alone may create unhappiness, wealth alone doesn’t create happiness.
”
“Perhaps he believes that,” I’d countered, “but he may want the gold for his people. I’d bet many Churoks live close to poverty. I think we can agree that Tommy’s idealistic, and might act on behalf of the tribe.”
“I suppose he might do, but premeditated murder isn’t as highly practiced among Native Americans as among other Americans.”
“Maybe that doesn’t extend to killing Anglos.”
“Maybe. And maybe Tommy’s the exception.”
We’d driven in silence for a while, and just as Charles had been about to nod off I’d picked up a thread of the conversation.
“I wish I knew more about the damn gold mine. How can you tell if a gold mine’s worth anything?”
Charles had yawned and sat up in his seat. “You’d need to have samples assayed. As mining technology improves, lower assay results become acceptable. Could be a P.I. type job, finding out if an assayer’s been consulted recently.”
With Charles once again at the wheel, I had run through possible reasons for the deaths of Judy and Troy: a double suicide; two murders; murder-suicide or suicide-murder.
Charles had found them all plausible. Judy commits suicide and Troy copycats out of grief. Or some unknown party kills Troy, blaming him for causing Judy’s suicide. Or someone kills Judy and a distraught Troy dies by his own hand. Finally, Troy knows something about the murder of Judy and is murdered himself before he can act on it.
We had some reasons for not believing that Judy had committed suicide, but I still wasn’t sure. If she hadn’t, the possibilities were halved. I had even less to go on with Troy. Charles’s suggestion that we wait for Troy’s autopsy was sensible. I needed more data.
In detective work, common threads and generalities often lead to solutions and truth. Akrich was a common thread. He knew Tommy. He was Judy’s and Troy’s mentor. He’d played a significant role in events on the day of Judy’s death. I put another interview with him on my mental to-do list.
Charles had been alert then, speaking animatedly, scanning the California landscape as he pushed the speed limit—very different from the exhausted man I was now curled up against. The warmth of his body and his rhythmic breathing, combined with a cessation of the amorous activities behind the porous wall, lulled me into a deep sleep.
The first glow of dawn and a resumption of traffic noises outside half wakened me. I saw Charles lying on his back, his mouth half open; he was snoring lightly. Sometime during the night he’d removed his clothes, for I saw them in an unruly pile on the room’s sole chair. I rolled over into a fetal position with my butt pressed against his hip. As often happens with morning sleep, I dreamed. My dreams are often vivid and violent, perhaps because I’ve seen more violence than has the average girl not quite thirty.
I was at the Alamo. The battle was lost and I was hiding in a room with Tommy, who was sick in bed. Soldiers burst through the door and I tried to conceal myself behind his bulk. They were dragging Lucy with them; she was screaming and cursing at them in Spanish.
I tried to negotiate with the soldiers. I explained to them (in Spanish, so I dreamed) that if they let us go the sick man would take them to a hidden gold mine. Then Lucy broke away and we were running for our lives. Lucy was trying to find her grandmother’s room. She was Mexican and would convince the soldiers not to harm us.
We spotted an elevator. “Let’s take it,” said Lucy. “These soldiers don’t understand elevators.” I jumped in but the door closed in Lucy’s face. I pushed buttons like crazy hoping to hit the one for open door. The elevator began to move, but it didn’t go up or down—it moved sideways. This freaked me out. I tried to keep it from moving by pushing against the wall. I pushed hard, hard, and then the wall gave way. I fell through it and landed atop Charles.
We were on the floor next to the bed. Charles was on his back, cocooned in the bedspread. I was lying stark naked on top of him. He was remarkably composed under the circumstances.
“These are peculiar mating habits, Dagny. Do you prefer the floor?”
“I don’t prefer anything,” I said, somewhat embarrassed. “I had a weird dream. I must’ve pushed you out of bed. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all, not at all. This is a terribly nice way to wake up,” he said, craning his neck for a better view while struggling to free his arms.
I slid up his body so that we were face to face. “Leave your arms in there,” I said, sliding my arms down to pin his in place and putting the full weight of my body flat on him. “I’m too grungy to make love. And besides, I have something to tell you, something important.”
Charles became still and pulled a serious face, the one I’d imagined in the mine.
I nestled my head against his cheek and spoke to the little cranny between his collarbone and his neck, the muffling effect making it somehow easier to talk. “I was sick once when I was in the army. They found cancer at my yearly physical. It was real bad and it had spread. They needed to do a mastectomy. Just a single; to save my life. So I’m not whole. I mean my body isn’t whole. I’m okay with it now, I mean my head is, but I didn’t want you to be surprised or put off.”
“Oh, baby,” he cried. “Let my arms out so I can hug you. You can’t know how crackers I am about you. Don’t ever imagine I care about a thing like that. No, what am I saying! Of course I care about it…I mean, Oh, you know what I mean.”
That was the first time since I’d met Charles that he’d ever been flustered, and it struck me first as touching, then as funny. I rose up to let him see me, and at the same time released his arms, and simultaneously with that, I began to giggle. He drank me in with so loving a look that my emotions short-circuited and I began to sob between giggles.
Charles reached out his arms to pull me gently, ever so gently, down upon him. He held me tightly and rolled us both over, pulling away the remaining bedclothes. He laid his mouth softly over my mouth. His body slowly sank to merge with mine.
I had been fluttering with anticipation, my heart a whirligig, when suddenly I froze. Someone had turned the doorknob, sprang the latch, and entered the room.
Chapter 12
On two past occasions I had thought I was going to die. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I didn’t, in that instant, forgive those who’d trespassed against me. I certainly didn’t have a sneak preview of heaven or hell. Mostly I was trying not to wet my pants and end up the brunt of cruel jokes.
It therefore amazed me how much thought whirled through my mind when I heard the door open. I remembered that twenty-four hours ago two men had tried to kill us. I saw no reason they couldn’t have followed us to the hotel and gotten a key to our room; if the first shot hit me in the head I wouldn’t even hear the dull pop from the suppressed pistol.
Simultaneously, I reran the dream. The Alamo, the escape, the errant elevator. It all suggested imminent danger.
My sense of humor hadn’t left me because also in that moment I thought how surprised our killers must be to have caught us in the act. What were those law school words? In flagrante delicto. I even had time to regret that, well, we hadn’t quite finished.
Charles’s voice interrupted these musings with, “Get the bloody hell out of here. What do you think you’re doing!”
“Lo siento mucho, bot thee dor wass not lock-ed,” came the reply. “I knock but you deedn’t hear me.”
The maid exited quickly, leaving us deflated. “For a moment, I thought those thugs from the cave had followed us,” said Charles.
“God, me, too. We have to start being more careful.” I wriggled out from under and rose to my feet, standing over Charles. I reached for his hands, leaned back with all my weight and pulled him to his feet, and then into a body clench. “Let’s take a shower.”
It was well after noon when we ventured outside. I was famished. Sex has that effect on me. The day clerk told us where to get coffee and donuts. We took our breakfast to Union Square and found an unoccupied bench in the hazy San Francisco sun. In the daylight Charles
’s face was looking better. Each sip of coffee and bite of donut energized us a little more. We planned a walking trip that would take us the length of Market Street to the pier.
As we walked, I shared my dream with Charles. The dream agitated me in a way different from an ordinary nightmare. Something about it jibed with something that had been bothering me. Charles helped put it together.
“Do you think Lucy’s in any danger?” he asked. “If someone thinks you know too much, maybe they think she does, too.”
“Of course!” I pounded my fist into my hand. “I need to call the Worthingtons.” In my haste I nearly withdrew the pistol from my handbag instead of the cellular.
Doris answered. Lucy had taken off Friday to visit some friends in La Jolla and wasn’t expected back until Monday night. She hadn’t left a number where she could be reached, nor any names. “So there’s no way to get in touch with her?” I asked Doris.
“Not that I can think of. I’ll ask Ernie when he gets back, but you know, college kids, they don’t worry about that sort of thing. Is she in some kind of danger?”
“Naw, not at all, just wanted to touch base.” To make my nonchalance even less convincing, I asked Doris “to watch for anything unusual, just in case.”
“Aieee, sometimes I’m such an idiot,” I said to Charles after I’d clicked off. “Now I got them worried and I don’t know what good that does.”
“Oh, it can’t hurt. Something’s up, and the more eyes and ears alert, the better. Anyway, Lucy was on her way to La Jolla at the same time those blokes were harassing us in the mine. She’ll be safe from those two, anyway.”
“Unless a third person’s watching her.”
“If you’re worried, we can drive back.”
“Charles, you’re sweet, you’re sensitive.” I kissed him lightly. “I’m being paranoid. This whole business has me spooked. I’ll call Monday on our way down to Santa Cruz. Let’s enjoy San Francisco. Let’s enjoy us.”
The Evil That Men Do Page 11