Nina went to the desk and looked out the window. Morning had segued into afternoon. Down below on the flowery patio of the Hog’s Breath, the vacation deity had granted permission to stop awhile, forget earthly cares, and sit holding a glass, talking about nothing much. Chatter and clinking drifted up to them.
“The permanent party,” she said.
“Right. The people come and go, but the party never ends.”
“He hasn’t been here.”
“No.”
Nina pulled out the Monterey County phone book and Wish’s organizer and began making calls. She called Community Hospital, the highway patrol, Danny again-no answer again-and Wish’s friends up at Lake Tahoe, where he usually lived. She didn’t like raising the alarm so loudly, but she had no choice. Paul worked the other line.
After a while, when they had run out of numbers, they paused. Paul looked at his watch. “You know what we have to do, don’t you? It’s three-thirty, and they’ll close by five.”
“Yes. We should go. It better not be him. What could have happened up there in the woods?”
“One step at a time. Lunch downstairs, then back to Salinas.”
In the heat of midday, they could identify some crops strictly by smell.
“Brussels sprouts,” Paul said. “I can’t stand ’em.”
“Mmm. Garlic. Fabulous.”
South Main Street still housed struggling secondhand stores, the shopping center that had never taken off, the Arby’s and Foster’s Freeze and the air of being lost in time that Nina remembered from childhood.
“I used to come here as a kid when the Northridge Shopping Center had the only good department stores in the whole county,” she said. “Then when I was clerking for Klaus, I would bring papers over to the courthouse for the lawyers. It looks just the same.”
“You still think of it as a sleepy agricultural town?” Paul said. “It’s changed. Silicon Valley is pressing down from the north. Executive homes are crammed together on small lots with high walls. A tired techie just snugs down in his concrete snail shell, never forced to meet a single neighbor.”
“We’re at least an hour to San Jose. They commute all that way?”
“Meanwhile, as the technical class hauls fifty miles between home in Salinas and work in San Jose, Mexico rolls up from the south and settles in the Alisal District. The population is eighty percent Latino these days. Did you know that?”
“Salinas has always been a tense place,” Nina said. “High crime rate for the population density. Part Okie, part Latino. Good fuel for writers like Steinbeck.”
“It does look sleepy, when you’re not here on Saturday night on the east side of town, when the bars get lively and the guns go off,” Paul said.
But no guns were in evidence on this sun-baked afternoon, just a few kids on bikes and moms pushing strollers past the thrift shops. Nina said, “Let’s stop at Foster’s Freeze for a dipped chocolate cone.”
“Right before the morgue?”
“Then again, maybe not,” Nina said. They drove through town in silence, each corner bringing Nina a fresh vista of memories. “You know, in front of the community center near the rodeo stands, there’s a giant sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. Did you ever see that, Paul?”
“Really? That’s a surprise. No, I don’t go to the rodeo. I guess it’s un-American of me.”
“I’ll take you this summer.”
“No, thanks, I know how you and Bob love these spectacles like monster-car races and motocross and calf roping, but I don’t like the seats.”
“What’s wrong with the seats?”
“They’re concrete and usually beer spattered.”
“Does that mean you don’t like football games either?” Nina asked.
“I like tennis matches. Whap, headjerk, whap, headjerk. Tennis whites and women fanning themselves in the stands. That’s what I like.”
“But you like modern art, don’t you?”
Paul told her, “Look, if Oldenburg put up a giant sculpture in Salinas, of all places, let’s drive by it right now.”
“You can’t see it from the street.”
“Too bad. What’s it look like?”
“Three massive red metal cowboy hats. Each one about twenty feet across.” They turned onto Alisal Street.
Speaking of modern art, the concrete fiends of justice perched on each cornice of the Monterey County Courthouse hadn’t changed. These gargoyles, along with the white pillars casting sharp shadows and the deserted concrete courtyard within, still gave rise within Nina to a certain anticipatory dread straight out of an early de Chirico painting.
The dark-suited figures flapping like vultures up the hot street to make their cases inside added to the general air of malevolence, and the Honeybee restaurant, where many a sleazy legal deal had been cut over the decades, extruded more lawyers as they passed by. This courthouse had always felt foreign to Nina, so different from the courthouse on Aguajito in Monterey, which had been built in friendly hippie days in a vaguely Big Sur style.
“I always wondered why you didn’t take Klaus’s offer and join his firm after you passed the bar,” Paul said as they searched for a parking spot in back.
Nina said, “Compressed version. My mother died, that was the main thing. Dad got married again very quickly. I wanted to leave. San Francisco was a good distance, and then I married Jack and he was ready to leave Klaus’s firm too. Don’t we all grow up and leave town?” She took out her cream and rubbed a flare-up on her arm.
“Not at all,” Paul said. “In fact, I sometimes think the world is divided into those who go and those who stay. So off to the big city, then a few years in Tahoe. And here you are again.”
“I really, really hope it’s not Wish in there.”
They entered the dim courthouse hall and submitted to the metal detector. As they walked down the stairs toward the coroner’s office she firmed her jaw. It better not be him, she thought fiercely, and prepared herself.
Inside, they waited almost half an hour in an anteroom before they were allowed in. Some telephoning went on in the office as they were checked out one more time. Although a man in a lab coat was swabbing down the tables with Lysol, the morgue had that familiar smell of decay.
“Is the autopsy report completed?” Nina said to the female lab assistant accompanying them. She was realizing that, if this was Wish, Sandy would need help to call a mortuary and-surely she would want Wish sent back home?
Better not think about that now.
“This morning, but the report hasn’t been approved.” This small young woman had a Spanish accent, a large mole on her chin, and a businesslike attitude.
“Findings?” Paul said.
“I don’t know much. You’ll have to go through the channels for finals.” They came to the drawer. She unlocked it and Paul helped her pull it out in a blast of frigid air.
A long, blackened, naked body lay supine in the drawer like a specimen in some hideous experiment. Cracked-looking flaps of skin hung off the charred and blackened arms and legs. The arms were pulled up as if to protect the chest. The abdomen was concave, as though emptied of its contents. An acrid, wet-charcoal smell wafted up.
“Oh, God.” Nina looked away, then back at the body. She forced herself to look for some sign of Wish. Long bones, some burned black hair hanging lankly over the skull-the skull, oh, boy, the skull-
Nina walked off a few steps. Paul continued to look. “What else did they find?”
“The remains of a concho belt,” the lab assistant said, observing without emotion. “You know, leather with those silver things. We have partial black leather boots, Doc Martens. Laces burned off. Tatters of white T-shirt and jeans on the backside of the body.”
“A concho belt?” Paul said. “Nina, go outside and call the Boyz. Ask them.” Nina was staring at the skull, which still held on to the patch of long dark hair. DNA, she thought. They’ll find out eventually.
“I can’t tell if it’s him, Paul,” she
blurted.
“Go on. I’ll talk to this lady for a minute.”
Nina went. In the bathroom outside, she rinsed her mouth and threw water on her face. She took a brush to her hair, sloughing off the black mask of death she had just seen. Outside, she breathed the blessed air, got into the hot car, and called the Boyz.
“This is Tustin.”
“Hi. It’s Nina. Tustin, will you please try to remember, and ask your brother-was Wish wearing one of those leather belts with silver conchos on it? You know what I mean?”
“Huh?”
“Silver decorative disks, engraved with designs. They attach to the leather of the belt. Was he?”
“Got me. Just a minute.” He was gone more than a minute. Paul came toward the car, worry lines etching his usually smooth forehead.
“Hey,” Tustin said into the phone. Nina held her breath. “Sorry, I don’t remember. Wish had on that denim jacket.”
“What about Danny?”
“He had that long-sleeved cammy jacket buttoned up pretty well.”
She punched off. “I need to call Sandy,” she told Paul. “It could be Danny.”
“Don’t tell her that. Just tell her we’re on it.”
“You’re not convinced?”
“We ought to wait until a final identification is made before we give Sandy hope that it isn’t Wish.”
“Where to now?” Nina said as she dialed Sandy’s number.
“Home. Regroup. We’re only human.”
“And we try to reach Danny again?”
“Right.”
4
T HEY STOPPED AT THE NOB HILL in South Salinas on the way home. While they picked out artichokes and fish to grill, pushing their cart among tired women farmworkers in bandannas covered with baseball caps, Nina thought back to the Raley’s in South Lake Tahoe, the buzzing expectancy of the fun-loving tourists trolling its aisles for frozen daiquiri mixes, cigarettes, lowbrow magazines, all manner of things they forbade themselves back home in the lands of political and dietary correctness.
Tahoe, lake of the free and the damned. She felt a pang of homesickness, and wished fervently that she had never dragged Wish down here. He had come because she had come.
Back at Paul’s, where the air smelled of eucalyptus, Paul poured wine for her and Tecate for himself, then put the charcoal on to heat. Changing swiftly into shabby brown shorts, he disappeared into the bedroom, where Nina heard keys clicking.
Hitchcock nudged her. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “Let’s do it.” She placed her wineglass in the refrigerator. Attaching Hitchcock to his leash, she followed the bounding black dog outside and up Paul’s street, permeated with ocean scents.
At the end of a long block she stopped and unhooked him, pulling his favorite grimy ball out of her pocket. She tossed it toward the tall golden grass of an empty lot into the abalone sky. Hitchcock flew to the ball, slapped it around in his mouth, then hustled back to her, dropping the ball at her feet. He repeated this operation dozens of times, untiring, ever thrilled.
Tonight his joy couldn’t lift her spirits. Guileless Wish was gone, maybe forever. All he’d ever wanted was to follow Paul around and get his degree and help people. She bent down to scratch the back of her knee.
A black thing about four inches across moved on the asphalt beside them. A tarantula! Fascinated, woman and dog stared. The tarantula lifted a hairy black leg and seemed to scratch itself too, in an arachnoid salute.
The spider didn’t seem inclined to scurry off, and it was blocking their path. Hitchcock kept his nose out of reach, wary.
Nina stamped her foot.
No reaction. The tarantula’s glossy eyes didn’t blink. It stared them down.
“It’s time to go back anyway, boy,” Nina told Hitchcock. They turned around and hastened back to the line of condos below.
Hitchcock circled and plopped on his favorite spot in the living room, while Nina hid the slimeball and then washed her hands in hot water.
Nina made dinner while Paul worked in the bedroom. Fish and rice, the food of lovers, guaranteed not to cause gas.
She hurried outside to flip the ahi, located a blue bowl, which she filled with rice and carried to the table, pulled asparagus out of the steamer, squeezing lemon over Paul’s portion and dolloping her own with butter, then set the fish on a dish on the table.
Fish. Dish. Wish. All the time, thinking about Wish. She was beginning to mourn.
She called Paul, picked up her napkin, and wiped under her eyes.
Paul practically leapt to his place, as if he were the one who had just spent half an hour playing with the dog. He rubbed his hands together, and took a big whiff of the meal.
“Phone rang while you were out,” he said.
“Sandy again?” Their earlier phone call had been brief and unsatisfying. Sandy seemed not to understand the full picture, or, more likely, she was intentionally and stubbornly obtuse about what might have happened to Wish, and Nina didn’t really want to trash her illusions.
“No. Your dad. He wants to see you.”
“Oh. He called last week too. Somehow, because I’m only a few miles from him, there’s a shorter leash, or something. He expects a lot of contact.”
“And why not?” Paul asked. “He’s getting on. You’re close by for once.”
Nina ran her hand through her hair. “I can’t worry about him right now. I’m too worried about Wish. Dad’s fine. He’s got his thirty-year-old wife and his four-year-old son. Ten years younger than Bob, his grandson. All this generation-skipping stuff gets me down.”
“All so modern,” Paul said, taking seconds on the fish and the rice. “Want to know what I’ve been doing while you, who swear you cannot cook, were casually whipping up this superb meal?”
“What?”
“Computer chicanery, pirated software, reverse directory.”
“Uh huh.”
“That phone number in Wish’s book for Danny Cervantes? Well, we now have an address. It’s gotten so simple to find addresses from phone numbers these days. Google does it in ten seconds.”
“Good work. Where does he live?”
“On Siesta Court in Carmel Valley Village.”
“The Village? Close to-”
“Right, the fires. And there’s another name listed at the same address: Ben Cervantes. Must be that uncle the Boyz mentioned.”
“We’ll go see him.”
“Good plan,” Paul said, smug, as if he hadn’t already laid it out.
“Finished?” Nina asked.
“Ah, very full. Very happy,” he said.
“The dishes are yours.”
He stood, picked up his plate, and said, “Now I remember why I like to cook.”
While Paul loaded dishes into the dishwasher, Nina surfed the channels, trying to find the news among the two hundred stations that flitted seductively by. Finally, she located a local channel that mentioned the most recent fire.
“At least one person is dead,” said the blond anchorwoman. She wore a silk scarf over a tight low-cut “business” suit jacket. A map behind her pinpointed the locations of the various fires.
“Authorities believe that there’s a method behind this madness. Apparently, the antidevelopment people are resorting to domestic terrorism. Their weapon of choice? Arson.” She then identified herself and her station.
A commercial showing elderly zombies wandering in an eroded esophagus came on, touting a prescription antacid.
She flipped the television off.
“Let’s go talk to Tío Ben. Unless you’re too tired. It’s been a long day,” Paul called from the kitchen.
“I’ll get my bag.” She heard the phone from the bedroom and picked up the bedside extension.
“Mom?” said the voice on the phone.
“Bob! I’m so glad to hear your voice! I was thinking of you this morning.”
“Why?”
She didn’t mention Wish. Bob was Wish’s friend, but he had his own problems. “Ju
st… I hope you’re being careful.”
His sigh sank into depths so low only a fourteen-year-old could find them. “Just in case these Swedes go berserk and come after me with hatchets. Right.”
“Driving. Being out at night. With Nikki. You know.” Stop, she told herself, you’re lecturing him already. With an effort, she went on cheerfully, “How’s the weather in old Stockholm?”
“It’s raining.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine o’clock. In the morning.”
“Amazing. You’re on the other side of the world.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Your dad okay?”
“Fine.”
“So how are you?” she said.
“Not so good. See, Mom,” he said, as if they were continuing a shared line of thought, “what I don’t understand is, how come they like you one minute and the next minute they don’t? What kind of B.S. is that?”
“Do you mean… Nikki?”
“No, I mean Genghis Khan.”
How could one so young sound so dour? “You sound upset.”
“She told me she really really liked me!” he burst out. “I operated on the basis of that!”
“I’m sorry, Bob.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “It’s just… see, we went to practice yesterday. All the guys in the band were there. Nikki fronts on a couple of songs, and sometimes she plays her guitar. I was doing digital recording that we might upload to the Web site she designed for them… anyway, Lars, he thinks he’s so cool. He’s like so much older than she is!”
“How old?”
“Twenty!”
Three years older than Nikki then, six years older than Bob. Oceans of time between them all.
“Well, I think you’re cool, Bob.”
“Being cool only matters if the people who think you’re cool are cool. No offense, Mom. Anyway, Lars is the drummer. He was sitting on a couch smoking a cigarette and talking about how he’s part Spanish, and somehow…”
She heard the pain in his voice and felt a little piece of her own heart chipping.
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