Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “I will study them,” Paul said.

  “Somebody has to cut through it and tell the truth,” she said.

  “Now, Ms. Frost-”

  “Ruthie. I don’t like the patronymic.”

  “I understand that you saw a building burn down two weeks ago here in the Village.”

  “Yes. The Newbie Café. That’s what the locals called it. It used to be Village Auto Repair. The owner used to let me feed cats in the parking area behind the shop. But he lost his lease to a couple from San Jose and they opened a restaurant for rich people this spring. All on behalf of almighty Moloch. A useful business was replaced by fatty Atlantic salmon sandwiches. Which are farmed and live out their lives in unhealthy conditions. Only buy wild Alaskan salmon. That is my advice.”

  She paused for a breath, then went on, “Sometimes twenty cats came. It was the middle of the night on a Thursday and I was asleep in the lot in my car. The new owners told me I couldn’t park there overnight anymore, as if they had some use for the lot in the middle of the night. What do you think of the notion of private property? Ayn Rand was brilliant, but what a rightist capitalist apologist she was. What do you think of Ayn Rand?”

  “So you were awakened from your sleep?”

  “My sleep in the car? Or the great sleep we all pass our lives in? What do you think of Buddhism?” She paused and smiled a little, obviously not expecting an answer. Her attitude was one of benevolent condescension, as though they were a few more benighted strays who had come from the forest to receive her help.

  “Oh, you want to limit yourself to your small incident. Yes. I was awakened from my sleep. I smelled smoke and the fire exploded out the windows. Glass everywhere. I started my car and drove on Carmel Valley Road toward the fire station. A van passed me and took a hard left onto Esquiline. The windshield was covered with ash and they were running the wipers-”

  “They?”

  “As I reported, there were two of them. Two heads, but I couldn’t see them well, and the license plate was covered with smoky black stuff. It was an old van, beige, I think.” Paul wrote this down, his forehead a map of concentration. “I’m not much good about cars. I knew they had set the fire-”

  “How did you know that?”

  Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Because they threw an empty can of kerosene out the window as they turned the corner. I have reported this several times.”

  “No kidding,” Paul said. “I didn’t know about that.”

  “I suppose your bureaucracy doesn’t communicate with the other bureaucracies. So. They were ecoterrorists, I suppose. I am against this sort of ecoterrorism because living things perish. The issue is quite simple if you look straight at it.”

  “Did you stop for the can?”

  “No. I followed the bastards. I didn’t stop for anything. I was way behind them at first and I don’t think they saw me. I followed them down the hill and watched them turn left after Rosie’s Bridge. Onto Siesta Court, right across the street there. I was going after them but just then a sheriff’s car and two fire trucks came roaring down the hill and over the bridge and I had to wait. Then I turned. And I heard a door slam shut. And I saw the van or whatever it was start up and go careening around the far corner.”

  “Which house was the van in front of?”

  “I couldn’t tell. The other investigator asked me that. I know Danny Cervantes lives in one of those houses on that street, and I know he was killed in the latest fire, so it must have been his house. But I can’t say I saw which house at the time. Some people came out of their houses to see what the commotion was about. They stood in the middle of the street and blocked it.”

  Paul chewed on the tip of his pen. “Did you know Danny Cervantes, Ruthie?” Nina said.

  “He used to hang out at Kasey’s in the Village in the morning with the other laborers, looking for work. He never hassled me like some of the others.”

  “Did you ever talk to him?”

  “No. I can’t believe how many innocent animals have been killed in these fires. Massacres. They didn’t have a chance. Cats, squirrels, moles, snakes, bobcats, owls, wild turkeys-how many insects? The heavens shrieked.” She started gathering up the empty cans and putting them in a trash bag.

  “Well. Thanks for talking with us,” Paul said.

  “I hope you catch the other one. I hope he rots in hell. Hell being, of course, an absurd concept.”

  “So long.” Nina and Paul walked back across the street. Nina’s jaunty mood had evaporated.

  They got back into the car. Hitchcock stuck his head between the seats.

  Once they were back on Carmel Valley Road, she said, “I keep thinking that if she’d been born rich, she’d be considered an eccentric grande dame. She’d be a philanthropist and receive humanitarian awards at fancy receptions. But-”

  “She gave up on humanity and cast her fate to the cats,” Paul said. “I always liked oddballs.”

  “I think she’ll make a credible witness anyway.”

  “Then it’s someone on that block. But consider this. She’s a big woman. She makes her own rules. She could have set the fires.”

  “But she loves all the animals!”

  “Who knows how her mind actually works?” Paul reached into his pocket with one hand and gave Nina the folded paper. “Here’s a clue. Let’s hear the Twelve Points she gave me.”

  Expelling a sigh, Nina said, “Okay. It’s handwritten. Up at the top there’s no information. It just says POINTS in caps.

  “‘ONE. Obscenely wealthy people should have their wealth taken.’

  “‘TWO. We’re all so hypnotized you can’t tell what the reality out there is, if any.’

  “‘THREE. Men like to be passive in bed.’ ” Paul gave an incredulous half-laugh.

  “Don’t get all defensive, now,” Nina said.

  “She’s off her rocker.”

  “‘FOUR. Women resent being violated and make sure men get punished for it.’ ”

  “That does explain a lot about modern society,” Paul said.

  “Listen. ‘FIVE. Cold sensationalists is what we are. At least the feudal system allowed people comforting illusions to compensate for their misery, like religion and romantic ideals.’

  “‘SIX. We are miserable because we are creatures in conflict between our bodily instincts and our half-evolved minds. The truth is, we don’t think very well.’

  “‘SEVEN. Abortion is terrible. It only exists because our society does not support motherhood.’ ”

  “I knew it would come down to abortion,” Paul said.

  “She’s right,” Nina said.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Hey, abortion is terrible. That doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Let me continue. ‘EIGHT. There is a class system in America. Two classes: the exploited and the exploitees.’ ”

  “Hmm. Sometimes it certainly feels that way.”

  “‘NINE. They pay us as little as they can and make sure to take any extra by turning us into insatiable consumers of unnecessary things.’

  “This is a long one, Paul. She goes on, ‘The income-tax deduction for homeowners benefits banks and lenders, not homeowners. The purpose is to encourage enormous loans, not ownership. Who owns their property outright? We are carefully distracted from noticing that we are actually paupers.’”

  “I’m starting to like this lady philosopher. Keep going.”

  “‘TEN. The stock market panics when the unemployment rate goes down. The system relies on workers’ misery.’

  “‘ELEVEN. Divorce is encouraged because it leads to small households, which benefits consumerism. The ideal is for each person to buy a house, furnish it, duplicate everything. Extended families are discouraged because they share resources.’

  “‘TWELVE. New products are mostly old products we already have. Unnecessary refinements are added so we’ll throw away the old and bring in the new.’ There’s one more. It says, in caps again, ‘CONCLUSION:’-” Nina stopped.
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br />   “Well, what’s the conclusion? I’m dying to hear it,” Paul said, eyes on the road as he took a sharp curve.

  “That’s it. She stops right there. Actually, she wrote something, but it’s crossed out.”

  “Can you make it out?”

  “No, she put x’s through it and then squiggles.”

  “I’m going to have to ask her,” Paul said. “I can’t stand the suspense.”

  “Are you making fun of her?”

  “She could use a good editor.”

  “She’s half pathetic and half brilliant,” Nina said. “A seeker. I notice she doesn’t mention love anywhere.”

  “She’s a political philosopher. Like Tina Turner. ‘What’s love got to do with it-’ ”

  Paul changed lanes. He looked dashing in his sunglasses. Nina leaned over and kissed his cheek. She said in his ear, “What did you think of her theory that men like to be passive in bed?”

  “I would debate that with her anytime, anyplace,” Paul said. “Anyway. She’s a crackpot.”

  “Can I keep the Twelve Points? Someday they might be worth something, like Ayn Rand’s manuscripts.”

  “Be my guest.” They came to the turning lane for the Mid-Valley Safeway. Paul went on, “An overwhelming urge has come over me. To insatiably consume some unnecessary things.”

  “What things?”

  “Paper towels. Rug cleaner. Some blueberries for my breakfast and some steak for my dinner, since you will be partying and I have to eat alone.”

  “Go for it,” Nina said. “I’ll stay in the car with Hitchcock.” While she waited, she read over the Twelve Points again. “What do you think, Hitchcock?”

  But Hitchcock, uninterested in these all-too-human epiphanies, was asleep.

  10

  “B EN?” NINA KNOCKED AGAIN ON THE door of the old bungalow on Siesta Court.

  It was quarter to six on this long summery Saturday afternoon. She could hear the stream flowing behind the riprap wall and smell the inimitable pungency of charcoal lighter fluid mixed with animal fat. The party must already be starting two doors down at the Puglias’.

  She felt like a narc. Paul did it all the time, but she wasn’t sure she could carry this off. Again, she mentally counted the houses on the street: David and Britta Cowan in the big house on her left on the corner, Ben’s door right in front of her, Darryl and Tory Eubanks’s roof past a fine fir tree on the right, and past that, the Puglias, then Ted and Megan Ballard, and finally the Hills. She could hear kids screaming somewhere and the thought came, maybe one of them was a kid, arsonists are often young.

  Ben opened the screen. “You’re early.”

  “I love a good party.” She went into the dim low-ceilinged living room with its tweed couch and shook hands with Ben, who wore a black T-shirt and jeans. Condolence cards lay on the coffee table where they had been tossed. Someone had brought a huge flower arrangement, which still sat by the door.

  He didn’t smile, and his eyes still had the puzzled, hurt look that comes with the shock of sudden death. Though he couldn’t be older than his early thirties, Ben’s face was lined and the tops of his ears were red as if from a permanent sunburn. She imagined he worked outside at least some of his day at Valley European Motors. None of this made him any less attractive. “Thanks for letting me tag along,” she said.

  Ben sat down and said, “Anything, if it helps you find the killer of my nephew. I can’t sleep at night. He died so young, and while he was in my care. He played the flute. See it there, on the table?” The black flute case lay half-buried by the flowers like a miniature casket. “Danny’s flute,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  “We have the same goal in mind,” Nina said, sitting down beside him. “I know my friend Wish didn’t set any fires, so I don’t see how Danny could be involved.”

  “What is Wish to you?” Ben asked. She apologized mentally to Paul, because she couldn’t help enjoying sitting next to him. He had warm brown eyes in a smooth face in which she glimpsed the sun-drenched walls of a Yucatán pyramid.

  “He worked for me. He helped with my law-office work at Tahoe. His mother is-was-my legal secretary.”

  “Why are you here instead of at Tahoe? Is that why Wish was down here, too?”

  “That’s a long, irrelevant story, Ben.”

  He accepted this. In his soft voice he said, “We buried Danny this morning at the Catholic cemetery in Monterey. He was sort of Catholic. I said some things.”

  “Who came to the cemetery?”

  “My brother and his wife-Danny’s parents-came down from Tahoe, but they had to get back to work and they left right after. A couple of his cousins came too, and my sister and her husband. We decided to keep it small, even though some of the neighbor ladies wanted to come and have a meal after.”

  “I’m sure Wish would have come if he could.”

  “I guess. I don’t know what went on between them, but Danny-he gets so irritable, maybe Wish just had enough. Danny had a hard time making friends. He used to go out to Cachagua and spend the evening at Alma’s with his buddy Coyote. I didn’t even know how to call his buddy to tell him Danny’s dead.”

  “Cachagua? I haven’t been there in a long time. I don’t remember a place called Alma’s.”

  “There’s only one bar in the place. It used to be the Dew Drop Inn.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “You know it? You don’t look like the kind of person who would go there.”

  “Well, I haven’t always been thirty-five,” Nina said. “Ben?” Ben had immersed himself in a sad reverie. “Do you have a picture of Danny? I’m trying to get to know him, understand him.”

  “Sure.” Ben went into the bedroom and came out with some snapshots.

  A long, lanky, long-haired Native American boy, she thought. She could not see his face, hidden by a baseball cap. In one photo, Danny stood by a fence post, some scrubland behind him; in another, Danny sat at Ben’s kitchen table, a beer in hand, his head down, still wearing the cap.

  “That’s the concho belt?” Nina said, showing him the outdoor shot.

  “That’s it. Other than that belt, he didn’t care about clothes.”

  “He doesn’t look happy in this picture in your kitchen.”

  “That was the day after he was laid off,” Ben said. “He was low. I told him he could get another job, but he said he didn’t want to look yet. I’d come home from work and he’d be laying on the couch watching sports, anything that was on in the afternoon.”

  “Do you think he was depressed?”

  “You start depressed,” Ben said. “You feel hopeless, like you just can’t make it. You don’t have money to take a girl out, get parts for your car, nothing. Finally one day, if you’re lucky, you put your head down like a bull and you get out there and try to find work, whatever it takes.”

  Nina nodded. “I’ve been there,” she said, and it was true.

  “I didn’t know if Danny was going to make it that far until a couple months ago he told me he was doing some yard work for George Hill. Then Mr. Cowan hired him for some odd jobs. You know, he always wanted to be part of the neighborhood. Be one of the guys. But we were the outsiders on the street.”

  “Outsiders?” Nina said.

  “Sí.” He’s subtle, Nina thought. That one Spanish word had explained pretty well why he and Danny had been considered outsiders. “Danny is half Washoe, half Mexican-American. His mom is a full-blood Washoe. I’m not related to her or the Washoes.”

  “He wanted to belong, you said before.”

  “Maybe because he never had any roots. He didn’t even have a brother or sister to fight with. Anyway, everybody in the neighborhood suddenly figured out how good Danny was with his hands. He was working thirty or forty hours a week, gardening, repairing stuff, building a shed for George, doing errands for Debbie-it was like he had a family here. He had some money in his pocket and he started living again, making plans.”

  “What kind of plans?”


  “Same old thing. The other thing Danny needed besides a family was to make it big. When he was feeling good, it was always about getting the money fast. One night I said, ‘For what?’ And he told me, ‘Maybe start a business you and me can run ourselves.’ ”

  Nina nodded.

  “I didn’t blame him. Our parents came into this world poor and they’re gonna leave poor. Danny didn’t want to do the same, but look what happened. He was murdered. He died at twenty-one. And now people think he was a bad person.”

  Ben shook his head. “Is it bad to want the same thing we all want, a better life for us and our families? Enough money to live”-he looked around the cottage-“better than this? The system… it relies on workers’ misery.”

  He got up. “Well, let’s do it. The party goes on no matter what. People come and go, but the party stays right here on this street, once a month, Saturday night.”

  He stretched out a hand and Nina let him help her up. She watched him tuck in his shirt in back. He didn’t really notice her; the life had been kicked out of him for now. “Ben, I understand you’re not in a party mood.”

  “I have other reasons for going. Reasons you don’t need to worry about. So, let’s get our story straight, okay? You’re my old high-school girlfriend, around for the summer. Right?”

  “Right. What high school did we go to?”

  “Douglas High, up at Tahoe.”

  They walked down his gravel driveway to the street, turned left, and, passing the Eubanks house with its brightly lit windows, turned into Sam and Debbie Puglia’s concrete drive. Balmy evening air carried the charcoal and wood smoke drifting through the forest. The laughter of children and the clinking of glasses emanated from the backyard.

  “This house has been around awhile,” Nina said.

  “They keep it up. Debbie is the street housemother. She’s always around, doing her projects. She and Sam like having the block parties. They like to know their neighbors, get close. Let’s go around back.”