The Vanishing Point

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Could we call it a misunderstanding?” Lou asked in the tone of a man who believes he’s being confronted by the irrationality of women. His face, behind the dark glasses, was almost as blank as Otto’s. His coolness annoyed Claire. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake some expression into him.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Jennie said. Her voice was frigid, but she hadn’t fulfilled her purpose yet, and she reached deep in her throat and pulled up some of the warmth she had previously demonstrated for Claire. “You saw how sad Otto was,” she said. “You saw his tears. He doesn’t want the journal to be cut any more than we do.”

  “Otto has a lot to be sad about,” Claire replied. “I can’t assume his tears were over the journal, and even if I did I don’t know what I could do about it.”

  “Stop Ada from being the editor,” Jennie pleaded.

  “You’re overestimating the power I have at UNM.”

  Jennie lifted her dark glasses and fixed icy blue eyes on Claire. “People have the power they choose to have. People have the power they assume.”

  People who are willing to lie about their actions do, thought Claire. They have the power to commit crimes, to conceal crimes, and to wreck other people’s lives. She wanted to get away from Jennie Dell, but she had one more question. “Did you bring your book with you?”

  “So sorry, I forgot.”

  “What is the title?”

  “Out of the Blue.” Jennie looked back at the house. Claire followed her gaze and saw the drapes in the window slide shut. “We have to go,” Jennie said, suggesting she had received a signal. The one signal that would be relevant at this point was that Ada was coming home.

  Fearing that this might be her last chance to talk to Lou, Claire took a business card from her purse. “Would you please call me?” she asked. “There are things I need to talk to you about.”

  Lou slid the card into the pocket of his jeans and said, “Sure,” but his offhand manner made Claire doubt she would ever see or hear from him again.

  They went to their respective vehicles and drove away. Claire avoided Central, thinking that if Ada were on her way home, that was the way she would drive in. She knew that if Harrison had been a witness to the meeting, he’d have insisted that she wait for Ada and tell her exactly what had transpired inside her house. Usually when Harrison suggested something, that was reason enough not to do it. In this case Claire’s conscience told her that Harrison was right, but if Ada found out about the meeting, she might be far too angry to allow the journal to remain at the center or to be published by UNM Press. Claire felt that as Jonathan’s archivist, her first loyalty was to the integrity of his journal. As an administrator, Harrison had other agendas. It didn’t entirely resolve the issue, but it allowed Claire to put it on the shelf for the time being and replay the afternoon in her mind. The meeting had revealed a tension between Jennie and Lou that Claire didn’t know enough about either of them to explain. It had demonstrated that Otto wasn’t entirely deaf and dumb, that he had awareness and feelings, although it did not make clear exactly what his feelings were. To live like Otto was the worst fate Claire could imagine. Far better, in her mind, to be dead.

  She wondered if Jennie had a purpose for arranging the meeting that had not been revealed yet. The integrity of Jennie Dell, which had long been in doubt, had finally been proved to be nonexistent. Her actions today cast doubt on all her previous actions. Claire wanted to read her book, not because she expected a novel to reveal the truth about an author but because she was curious about the quality of Jennie’s writing.

  When she got back to the library she searched the title index on her computer and found two books titled Out of the Blue, neither of which had been written by Jennie Dell, although both were published in the mid-seventies, about the time when Jennie might have written her novel. One of them was by a mystery writer whose work Claire knew and admired, and the other was nonfiction. Considering that Jennie’s statement that her book was a work of fiction could also be a fiction, Claire went looking for the nonfiction book on the shelves in Zimmerman and found an account of sailing solo across the Atlantic, with a picture of the male author in his sailboat on the jacket flap.

  She went back to her office, logged on to Amazon.com and ran a title search for Out of the Blue. Amazon had a database of more than four million titles and appeared to list every book that had ever been in print on any subject. Out of the Blue was a ubiquitous title that turned up several times in a decade. Claire found the two she had already discovered, another Out of the Blue in 1963, one more in 1970, and two in 1975. Amazon gave little information about books that had long been out of print, but enough for Claire to establish that none of the books titled Out of the Blue had been written by Jennie Dell. Had her tale about the novel been a fabrication, too? A distortion of the facts? A half-truth? The only way to find out would be to get the books. Next, she did an author search on Jennie Dell and came across the mini books but no novel. There were five mini books in print on various subjects. Their sales ranking ranged from 150,000 to 200,000. Claire knew she could find these near the checkout counter at local bookstores. Amazon would be willing to locate the out-of-print Out of the Blue’s for her, but John Harlan, with all his connections, could do it faster and cheaper.

  On her way home from work Claire stopped at Page One. They had two of Jennie’s mini books, one on astrology and one on dogs. She bought both of them and drove across Juan Tabo to Page One, Too, the used-books store, where she found John Harlan sitting with his feet up, talking on the phone.

  He bid good-bye to the person he was speaking to, then said, “I’ve been wondering how you were.”

  “All right,” Claire said. “Except that I’ve been getting the runaround from Jennie Dell.”

  “Hell,” John replied, “she’s been giving people the runaround all her life, hasn’t she? She ought to be pretty good at it by now. She was of that ‘if it feels good, do it’ hippie era. Some of those hippies were capable of rationalizing just about anything they wanted to do. For all the talk about peace and love, they practiced a lot of deception and manipulation. I was married and runnin’ the family business in the sixties myself. I didn’t have time for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, did you?”

  “Not to the extent that Jennie Dell did. She told me the name of her novel is Out of the Blue.”

  “When was it published?”

  “She didn’t say. I found several books with that title on Amazon.com, but none of them in her name.”

  “Maybe she used a pseudonym.”

  “Maybe so,” Claire said. “I made a list of all the Out of the Blue’s that were published in the sixties and seventies, including the name of the author and the publisher. Could you find me copies?”

  “Sure,” John said, putting his feet on the floor and looking at the list. “Price is no object?”

  “It might be,” Claire said. “But if it’s an expensive book you or I would have heard of it, wouldn’t we?”

  “If it’s set in the Southwest, we would. Was it?”

  “I thought so, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not call Jennie and ask her?”

  “I don’t want to talk to Jennie. At this point I wouldn’t believe a word she says.”

  “You doing anything for dinner?” John asked.

  “No.” Claire knew that her datura only had a few flowers left. If she intended to invite John over to share the blossoming, it would have to be now or not until spring. She hesitated briefly, then decided against it. Her energy had been drained by the duplicity of the meeting this afternoon. “How about Chow’s?” she asked.

  “That’s the place that puts pesto on their dumplings?”

  “They’re called pot stickers,” Claire corrected him.

  “Whatever you call ’em, it’s a piece of dough stuffed with something, right?”

  “You could say that,” Claire replied, wondering what she could possibly serve John if she ever did invi
te him for dinner.

  “Could I get something simple there like wonton soup or egg rolls?” John asked.

  “You could,” Claire said. But why would anybody want to? she asked herself.

  John stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. “Let’s do it,” he said.

  Claire had the pot stickers with cilantro pesto, a delicious mix of China and the Southwest. John stuck with egg rolls and wonton soup. When the cottonwoods turned gold, the nights turned cool, and Claire smelled woodsmoke in the air as they left the restaurant.

  When she got home, she climbed into bed with Nemesis and Jennie’s mini books. She clicked the remote and the fake logs in her gas fireplace burst into real flame. Although the books were on subjects in which she had no particular interest, the writing was clean and better than she would have expected in this particular format. With a sales ranking of 150,000 to 200,000 and a price of five dollars a book, she supposed a woman could make a living at it, if she drove old cars, wore old clothes, and lived in Madrid in a house that was paid for.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHEN NICK LORENZ CALLED, Claire’s first reaction was guilt. The thought crossed her mind that Ada had found out she was at her house and hired him to investigate. She was relieved when he told her he’d found the missing files from the Jonathan Vail investigation.

  “They were in my garage,” he said. “I moved them out a couple of years ago when the office was getting too cluttered. I met Lou Bastiann in San Miguel de Allende. Once I looked at the file I remembered him. I just didn’t remember his name. After twenty years, names tend to go. I’ll show you my notes if you’d like to get together.”

  “How about after work?” Claire asked. “Around six?”

  “That would be fine. Let’s meet at my office.”

  “See you then,” Claire replied.

  Harrison spent the day pacing up and down the hall, casting his shadow before him. Every time he passed Claire’s office, she waited for him to stop and chastise her for the visit to Otto Vail, but he never did.

  After work she drove across town to Nick’s mall. It was the time just before nightfall that was known as civil twilight, a phrase Claire loved. It was a golden hour at a golden time of year. In the Valley the cottonwoods were radiant in the light. In New Mexico myth didn’t yield to fact, and beauty didn’t yield to metaphor. There was nothing the light here could be compared to, Claire thought. It was the standard by which all light should be measured. On her last trip to Nick’s office, she had noticed a datura beside Osuna laden with spent blossoms. Today there were none. The Valley was starting to have frosts at night, and the season had ended.

  She parked near Nick’s office, got out of her car, and looked at the Sandias, which were reflecting the sunset’s afterglow, turning the color of sangria silhouetted against a pale blue sky. It was a view that Claire preferred to the long western view from her house in the heights. She stopped to savor the colors and the moment. She should be knocking on Nick Lorenz’s door, but the afterglow was brief and she waited until the sun sank lower in the sky and the mountains lost their radiance. A Toyota pickup with a balloon plate was parked directly in front of Nick’s suite, and she assumed it belonged to him. When she knocked at the door, Nick answered so quickly she would have sworn he’d been standing behind it waiting for her summons. He wore a white shirt open at the neck to show off his gold chains. The shag carpeting and fake wood paneling in his office were even more tacky under the fluorescent lighting. The ugliness of his office was a sharp contrast to the beauty of the sunset, but it was a contrast that Claire experienced often enough in Albuquerque, a city that encompassed both the hideous and the sublime.

  “How ya doin?’” Nick asked.

  “All right. And you?”

  “Not too shabby.”

  “Have you talked to Ada recently?”

  “Not since I saw you last. Come in. I’ll show you the file.”

  A fat manila folder lay on his desk. Claire sat down in the office chair, glancing again at the photographs on the shelf behind Nick. In some ways he was a master of disguise—crew cuts, Afros; khakis, bell bottoms; gold chains, love beads. The PI who could blend into any crowd. But the one thing he could never disguise was his lack of height and his chunky build. She noticed that in all of Nick’s incarnations his weight and shape varied very little.

  He opened the file and said, “Thank God for notes. I talked to so many people during this investigation, sometimes it was hard to keep them straight. Here’s a description I wrote up of Lou.”

  He handed Claire a piece of yellow lined paper, its rough edge indicating that it had been ripped from a pad. His handwriting was distinctive, but borderline legible, resembling chicken scratches in the dust. It wouldn’t be hard to establish that this was Nick’s writing, but dating it would be more complicated. The paper and the ink looked old, but twenty years old? Claire couldn’t say. She was able to decipher the following description: “medium sized, brown haired guy, dark eyes, scar on chin, quiet, serious way of talking. Limp on left leg. A vet.”

  “Is that the guy you know?” Nick asked.

  “It could be. Lou is medium-sized. His eyes are dark. He limps with his left leg. The brown hair could have turned gray by now. His beard could be hiding the scar on his chin. What was he doing in San Miguel de Allende? Did he tell you?”

  “I didn’t ask. I assumed it was what all the other vets were doing: hanging out in La Cucaracha, getting stoned, taking courses at the Instituto so he could stay on the GI Bill.”

  “Did he say anything about Jonathan?”

  “He was one of the guys who told me that Jonathan was killed in the bar fight at La Cucaracha. I heard that from a couple of people.”

  Claire remembered La Cucaracha as a seedy bar near the jardin, where the more rowdy members of the expatriate community hung out. “You’re sure he said he was killed in La Cucaracha,” she asked, “and not somewhere else?” But where else, she thought to herself, if not Sin Nombre Canyon?

  “That’s what he said. See?” He showed Claire a scratchy note that read, “Lew Bestin says Jonathan killed in fight in La Cucaracha.”

  Claire studied the note, which was written with a black ballpoint pen on yellow lined paper just like the description was. Were they the same vintage? Without a detailed analysis it would be difficult to say. “Why didn’t Lou tell me that? Why didn’t he tell the family?” she asked.

  “He could have been the killer. He looked like a guy who’d been in a few scrapes, a guy who had a mean streak.”

  “You think Lou Bastiann would have killed his hero?”

  Nick grinned at her from across the desk, showing teeth that were filled with gold, Ada’s gold. “People kill their heroes all the time. That’s what myths are all about, isn’t it? Slaying the father, the monster, the hero?”

  “I find it hard to believe,” Claire said.

  “I did, too, to tell you the truth. Not that Lou Bastiann killed somebody, but that the somebody who got killed was Jonathan. He was idolized in that little town. If he was killed in San Miguel de Allende, more people would have known about it. The body would have been sent back to this country, not thrown in a pauper’s grave within twenty-four hours. I had the money to pay anyone who could substantiate that story, but no one ever did. Someone got killed in La Cucaracha, someone got buried, but I don’t think the someone was Jonathan Vail. I think Lou told me that because he wanted me to stop searching and get out of town.”

  “Why did he care whether or not you stopped searching?”

  “Why do you care about preserving the memory of Jonathan Vail? He had been gone ten years by then and was already a legend. People get attached to their legends and want to hang on to them. It’s easier to deal with them than with real people, no? Lou was interested in preserving the legend. I was interested in locating a person.”

  “Once a legend gets established, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to disprove it.”

 
“True.”

  “Did you tell Curt Devereux what you found in San Miguel de Allende?”

  “What was there to tell? All I found was smoke and mirrors. Ada didn’t want me talking to Devereux about my investigation. If I’d come across anything tangible, I would have had to report it, but that never happened.”

  “The center would love to have your notes and an account of your search for Jonathan Vail.” As Claire said these words, the disadvantage of being an amateur investigator became clear. She could only ask that Nick give her his notes; Ellen Frank had the power to subpoena them.

  “I’d have to run that by Ada, of course.”

  “Of course. By now you’ve probably spent more time looking for Jonathan than he spent living.”

  “The search became greater than the man, and the legend more interesting than Jonathan ever was. In my opinion he was outspoken but weak. He talked a lot about rebellion, but he was really talking about rebelling against his mother. If he’d lived longer, he might have broken away from her and become his own person, but I never saw that happen. I think that for him running away from the draft would have had more to do with fear than principle.”

  “He wrote a book that became a classic and influenced a lot of people.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’m not a librarian or an author myself, but it seems to me that character has little to do with writing ability.”

  “You could be right,” Claire said.

  “Would you like me to make you copies of the Lou Bastiann notes?”

  “Please.”

  He ran off the copies on his photocopier and handed them to Claire. Copies weren’t as revealing as the originals, but they were better than nothing.

  “Can you tell me anything else about Lou?” she asked.

  “Only that he seemed lost to me, but many people in San Miguel de Allende did, especially the vets. Vietnam left people adrift. Nothing in life was ever as challenging or as interesting again.”