by Smith, Julie
Sleepily, he said, “I’ll be right down,” and when he appeared he looked like someone who’d just gotten home from a rave and hadn’t yet come down from it. He said, “Oh. I thought you were UPS.”
“We’re looking for Adrienne.”
“I remember you. Look, I already told you— I don’t know where she is.”
“Danno, remember telling us about her brother? The one who was so ill?”
“Sure; Sean. Adrienne and I were together when he died. She was real, real upset about that.”
“We think she might have flipped out. Do you know what happened to Sean? Why he was brain-damaged?”
“Some accident, I thought. When he was a baby.”
“An accident caused by Jason McKendrick.”
He whistled.
“You know what we think that means?”
He nodded. “First her mother, now her.”
“Her mother?”
“Well, Sean’s death flipped her out. The whole family’s kind of … oh, well, I guess they had reason. What do you want Adrienne for?”
Chris said, “Whoever killed McKendrick did it with my car.”
“Oh. Well.”
“And then, a couple of nights ago, we were with some friends, and someone shot at us. It happened the day Adrienne ran away from the hospital.”
“Boy, she’s really flipped.” It was a telling reaction, I thought. He might as easily have said, “Adrienne wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Can you think of anywhere she might have gone? Is there anyone she felt she could trust? Who’d take care of her?”
He scratched his nose. “Well, now that you mention it, yeah. Yeah, I think there might be somebody. But it might have been just one of Adrienne’s stories. She always brought up this ex-boyfriend when she was mad at me. She said the guy would take her back in a minute; she liked to point out how rich he was. And famous— he’s real famous, too. For a gangster.”
“What’s his name?”
“Tommy La Barre.”
“Holy shit.” I’d be a lousy poker player.
“Yeah. I never quite believed her on that one.” He shrugged. “But you never knew with Adrienne. Maybe it was true.”
Confronting a guy like Tommy La Barre wasn’t my idea of a fun afternoon, but the fact that he’d seen me with Rob would help. At least he wouldn’t kill someone so close to a reporter.
Where the hell was Rob, anyhow? I phoned him again; again no answer.
“I’m starving,” said Chris. It was nearly two. “Why don’t we drop in to Dante’s for a little something?”
“Sure. Maybe Adrienne’s waiting tables over there.” La Barre was sitting in exactly the same place Rob and I had found him before.
I hailed him. “Tommy. Remember me?”
“Sure. The cub reporter. How’s it going?”
“I got a weird tip. I heard you were involved with Jason McKendrick’s assistant.”
His nasty little eyes glittered at me. “You heard that, did you?”
“Yeah. I heard that.”
He didn’t answer, just kept staring. For a while I held his gaze, but then I remembered that in my rational moments I think staring contests are stupid. I smiled. “Is it true?”
“No, it’s not true.”
I said, “Tommy, I think she killed Jason,” and regretted it almost immediately. What if the two of them were in it together? I’d been so caught up in the idea of Adrienne as flipped-out freak I hadn’t even thought of it.
But something changed in his face, flickered in his hard eyes. He said, “I loved that guy, you know?” and I almost believed him. “Look, okay, she brought him in here— that time he came to lunch— but I only saw her once. I guess in a way she introduced me to Jason, so I owe her. But if you mean this…”
“She brought him in here? Why would she bring him if you didn’t even know her?”
“Because she knew all about me, and I knew all about her. She wanted to meet me, she had some thing about me, she even told people we were involved.” He shook his head. “Shit. Christ. I wouldn’t be involved with somebody that young. Uh-uh. Not this boy. Women are like wine, you know what I mean? I like a gal with some vintage on her.” He leered, as he had the first time we met. It was probably a habit.
“I feel like we’re getting off the subject. How did you two know all about each other?”
“Because my brother was fuckin’ her.”
“Your brother!”
“Shit, I don’t care what happens to her. I don’t even care what happens to him.” He stared at his glass and brooded. “Dumb schmuck. Jason was my buddy.”
“Are your brother and Adrienne in touch?”
“You mean now? Fuck no, she left him for some faggoty kid.”
“The kid says your brother wanted her back, he told her he’d always take care of her. Only the kid thought he was talking about you.”
Unexpectedly, Tommy La Barre leaned back and gave a hard, bitter laugh. I had no idea what was so funny. “Why don’t you look him up? Why don’t you girls just go ask him? Fuck, I don’t give a shit.” He wrote a name and address on one of his business cards.
As we turned toward the door, Chris said, “No lunch?”
“I can’t eat on drugs.”
“The coffee? Mine’s worn off.”
“Adrenaline. I think we’re getting close.”
She sighed. “I wish I did.”
I looked at the address. It was in the avenues, a funny place, I thought, for a gangster’s brother to live. It was one of those stucco built-over-a-garage places that line the streets out there, that stretch in unrelieved columns for miles, that make you want to lose your lunch with the sameness, the grim plainness of it all.
Yet they’re perfectly nice houses, suitable for raising sprawling urban families, and it came to me, as I looked at the card with Tommy’s brother’s name on it— Edward La Barre— that Edward might not be a bachelor.
Unfortunately, the thought was a little late, having come a second or two after ringing the doorbell. The woman who answered wore jeans and a tunic-length T-shirt that looked as if it had been selected to hide a belly curve that had arrived with a baby. Her hair was black and curly, but slightly unkempt, as if she didn’t have time for grooming. It looked good that way, but I was sure she couldn’t be convinced of it, was probably embarrassed at having been caught in weekend mode. She was a handsome woman, substantial in weight, with a deep, maternal bosom, against which she held what was probably the latest of many babies.
“We’re looking for Edward La Barre,” I said.
“Tommy called.” Anger flared from her eyes. “How dare you invade my house? How can you be so low?”
We started to back away.
“Coming to a person’s house like this, after some punked-out little slut— how can you do a thing like that?”
How could Tommy La Barre set us up like this? That was the question. “I guess we made a mistake.”
“Get out of here! Get out of here right now, goddamn it! Just leave. Just get out of here.” The baby set up a howl I felt like joining.
“Okay, we’re going. It’s okay.” We were more or less backing down the steps, but we didn’t dare turn our backs.
Finally she slammed the door, and we turned toward each other to gibber in amazement at the thing that had befallen us. We had parked across the street, and I am quite sure no cars were in sight as we stepped off the curb, but we were caught slightly off guard, as we were much more interested in each other than the street. A light-colored car, no more than a blur of heavy machinery, bore down suddenly, motor purring, wind fairly whistling around it. We jumped backward, and the car flew past. It kept speeding, remained a blur, and by this time we were interested in examining our skin, making sure it was intact; getting the license number was the last thing either of us thought of.
Yet when the shock had started to wear off— about thirty seconds down the line— we started to realize what had happened.
“Is it me,” said Chris, “or did someone just try to run us down?”
“I think they must have pulled out of a parking place— that’s why we didn’t see them before.”
“Does this have a familiar ring?”
It could have been Jason McKendrick all over again; we could have. But before I could speak, Mrs. La Barre came tearing out of the house. “Are you all right? Did she get you?”
“You saw the driver?”
“Who would it be but the slut? Look. Go talk to Eddie. What do I care? He doesn’t see her anyway. He has way too much sense for the little bitch. He took the kids to the park. Go. Go see him.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t much in the mood, but I managed a kind of smile. “What park?”
“Golden Gate. Kristin likes the garden.” She turned back.
“Could you tell us what your husband looks like?”
“No. No, I couldn’t.”
But a moment later she must have regretted her rudeness. “Just be careful,” she called. “The slut’s a killer.”
“How do you know that?”
“Tommy told me you told him.”
I sighed. That was how gossip got started.
Chapter Twenty
So off we went to a park nine blocks wide and four and a half miles long to find a man whose description we didn’t have who was accompanied by an unknown number of children.
If they’d gone to Kristin’s garden, that might narrow it down— probably they were somewhere near the Music Concourse. There were gardens all around there, some simple flower beds and others more formal. There was the Rhododendron Dell, but it wouldn’t be in bloom now, so they probably weren’t there. The Conservatory was fabulous, but we thought if that was what Kristin liked, Mrs. La Barre would have mentioned its name.
That left Strybing Arboretum and the Japanese Tea Garden. We opted for the latter because it had “garden” in its name and because it was by far the more exotic of the two, the more likely, we thought, to appeal to a kid. We had decided on the simple method of calling “Eddie! Eddie La Barre!” as if looking for a lost child, meanwhile keeping eyes peeled for a man with at least two children.
But if they were in the Japanese Tea Garden, they eluded us. We climbed the moon bridge and elbowed our way through the teahouse, making ourselves obnoxious to one and all, but to no avail.
Next, we tried Strybing Arboretum, which is quite a bit bigger and harder to cover. We still had no luck. Undaunted, we popped over to the Garden of Shakespeare’s Flowers, and then we did go to the Conservatory, knowing perfectly well that just because Kristin liked some garden or other didn’t mean an entire family could spend a whole afternoon there. They could have gotten a quick hit of flowers and then gone rowing on Stow Lake for all we knew. It was starting to seem like a wild goose chase, but we couldn’t see turning back at this point— though Chris did insist on getting a hot dog before trekking to the Conservatory.
We entered the giant wedding cake, calling lightly, “Eddie? Eddie, where are you? Eddie La Barre! Oh, Eddieeeee.” It must have driven the other park goers nuts.
But it worked.
A man’s voice said, “Who’s that? I’m in here— who’s calling me?”
We followed it into the Pond Room, which was like a rain forest dripping tropical moisture, hot and sensuous. We could barely see anyone through the steamy mist. “Who’s that?” said the voice.
And we saw a man, a short, thick blond man who looked enough like Tommy La Barre to be his twin. He had four children with him, three of them clinging, apparently unnerved by the strange voices calling their dad. There were three boys and one little girl, a gorgeous thin little creature with hair that was neither thick and blond like her dad’s nor thick and black like her mother’s, but brown and wavy. She was dressed, not in a T-shirt and jeans, but in a sort of organza skirt topped with what looked like a bathing suit top. She was clearly at the age of dress-up, four or five, I thought.
The boys were small, though one may have been as old as ten, and they were dark like their mother, with finely wrought features. Genes, I thought, are wonderful things, and reflected that I’d really never seen an ugly child.
Eddie La Barre was a father of five and had recently had an affair with a twenty-three-year-old. It was a good escape, I guessed, but the memory of his angry, harried wife made it seem ugly and cheap, terribly unfair.
The little girl smiled. “We’re playing rain forest,” she said. “Watch out for the alligators, Ooooh, watch out!”
“You must be Kristin.”
“Uh-huh. You want to get in our boat? We’re going down the Amazon.”
The oldest boy blushed, caught playing with babies. The man said, “I’m Eddie La Barre. You were calling me?”
“Your wife told us where you were.”
Alarm showed on his face, something, despite the brothers’ similarities, that probably wasn’t in Tommy’s repertoire. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all. We got your name from your brother. We wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”
And then a refinery exploded about ten feet away.
Or so it seemed.
La Barre pushed the kids to the ground and dropped, all four children screaming at once. We heard shouts and scurrying throughout the glass house, but Chris and I stood riveted, heads swiveling, unable to grasp what had happened.
Finally La Barre, catching on that we were sitting ducks, shouted, “Get down! Someone’s shooting.” There was another explosion. I dropped and heard Chris do the same; my only thought, wildly, crazily, not for us or the children, but for the marvelous old building: Oh, God, not in here!
“Daddy!” shouted someone. “Daddy, stop!”
It was not a child’s voice, but a young woman’s I couldn’t place. Chris whispered: “Adrienne,” and I raised my head, but I couldn’t see anyone through the mist.
“Daddy, give me the gun. It’s okay, you don’t have to shoot anybody.”
“Adrienne, you stay out of this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You came to get me, didn’t you? Well, here I am. I’m right here, and everything’s fine. We’ll go home now. We’ll go home and have a nice drink. Come on, Dad— it’s too hot to be out here. Maybe a Long Island iced tea.”
“I got the reporter; now I got to get the lawyers. Then everything’ll be fine. It’s not fine yet, Adrienne. You go home now.”
Eddie La Barre called, “Adrienne, go!”
“Who’s that?” Dunson’s voice changed, became the voice of a crazy man, paranoid, on edge.
“Dad, come on, now. Give me the gun and let’s go.” Ignoring her, he stepped into view. I could see him from the back, staring at Eddie, down on the ground with his children. “Whoever you are, you’ve got four kids. Hey, Adrienne, who is this guy?”
Adrienne walked into view also, but I noticed she didn’t get too close to her dad. “Dad, it doesn’t matter— let’s just go now.” She held out a hand but kept her distance.
“Stand up, mister.”
La Barre stood, but I heard him whispering to his kids: “Stay down. Don’t move.”
“You’ve got three beautiful boys, and I don’t have any. Hey, Adrienne, I can solve this thing. I’ll just take one of his boys.”
“Dad, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Adrienne spoke, not as if her father had suddenly snapped, but like a woman used to dealing with crazy people. I wondered what her life had been like and didn’t envy her. She stepped closer to the children.
Her father said, “You kids. Stand up.”
“No.” Adrienne and Eddie La Barre spoke at once. “Come on, Daddy.” Again she held out her hand. “Adrienne, you’re in my way.”
“We’ve really got to go home now.”
“Adrienne, don’t make me shoot you.” He fired again, another of those hideous blasts I feared would shatter the building.
She jumped at him, grabbed for his gun, and once again it went off. Adrienne’s body twit
ched and sank to the floor.
Dunson yelled, apparently to the world at large, “Now look what you made me do! I had a son, a wife, and a daughter, and now I don’t have anybody. I’m taking a kid. You owe me that.”
He kicked one of the children. “You. Get up.”
The little boy didn’t move.
He kicked another. “You!”
The kid made an “oof” noise.
“Come on, or I’ll kick you again.”
I followed the kid’s eyes to the still body of Adrienne, blood oozing from her upper chest. Seizing the opportunity, Dunson shouted. “Get up or I’ll shoot you.” The kid stood and Dunson had him in an instant, his left arm pinning the kid against his body.
Without thinking, I stood up. “Mr. Dunson.”
He whirled, and I saw the madness in his eyes.
“I thought you wanted me. That’s what you told Adrienne. I heard you.”
“The lawyer.”
“Look, take me instead of the kid.”
“But they got my son.”
“They got your wife, too.”
His face lit up. I hadn’t thought such a thing could happen in the circumstances. “I could kill two birds with one stone.”
I smiled. At least I worked my face in smile-like fashion; I can’t vouch for the effect. “Let the boy go, okay?”
“You come over here.”
My legs shook, but I did. He shoved the boy aside and grabbed me in one motion. “Let’s get out of here.”
And then we were running, running past horrified onlookers, our fellow Conservatory visitors, then just running, toward his car, I supposed. Sirens were starting somewhere in the distance.
A little too late, I thought. Just a little too late.
Since then I’ve wondered often if I should have struggled at that point, tried to break away, but my only thought was to get him out of the park. He had shot his own daughter and might shoot anyone, I thought, anyone or everyone, child or adult. I just wanted him out of there.
And yet we had to go somewhere. It didn’t occur to me that no matter where he took me, people would still be in danger.
He found a baseball cap in his car and jerked it on. It changed his appearance just enough, perhaps. He made me drive so that he could keep the gun trained on me, giving directions at every corner.