by Lutz, Lisa
Still, I repeated my question: “Don’t you think it’s time to let this thing go?”
“No, I don’t,” Rae replied. So I left her alone on the staircase to spy on her uncle.
I met Uncle Ray as he was walking up the steps into the foyer, lugging a badly packed duffel bag. I took the bag off his shoulder and questioned its contents.
“Let’s see. I got a winter coat, a couple pairs of shoes, a bowling ball, and I think some sandwiches I made this morning with what was left in the fridge.”
“Next time, ask Mom to help you pack.” I carried the bag inside and put it on David’s—now Uncle Ray’s—bed. “Good to have you here, Uncle Ray.”
Ray pinched my cheek and said, “You were always my favorite designated driver.”
I leaned against the windowsill as Ray proceeded to unpack. He pulled items from the lumpy bag and placed them throughout the room without any hint of order or purpose. There was only one article that he had packed with a sense of care. Wrapped in towels of increasing size was a tastefully framed photograph of the Spellman clan. Uncle Ray laid the picture on his dresser and then adjusted its placement just so. While there are dozens of photographs throughout my parents’ house, there is not a single one of all the family members. The image merely reminded me of how incongruous we appeared together.
My mother’s long hair and athletically petite frame have erased at least a decade off her fifty-four years. Her sharp, even features stood up well to the hazards of time. But Dad’s thinning hair and growing gut have added some years, and only his wrinkles provided unity to his mismatched features. Uncle Ray shared a single feature with Albert—the broad, slightly flattened nose. Ray was leaner, handsomer, and blonder than my father. And then there was David’s fashion-model perfection, which appeared utterly alien next to Rae, who was ultimately a tiny, cuter version of her uncle. She was the fairest of the Spellman children, dirty blonde with gray-blue eyes and a pattern of freckles across her often tanned face. I towered over Rae, appearing like a clumsier version of my mother.
Uncle Ray dusted off the photograph and decided that he needed a break after the arduous five minutes of unpacking. He offered to make me a sandwich. I declined, thinking it might be a good idea to give my father a warning message.
I caught my dad at his desk.
“Trouble is brewing with the short one. I’d get on it if I were you,” I said.
“How bad?” my dad asked.
“Five stars, if you ask me. But only time will tell.”
That afternoon, I dropped by David’s office to deliver a surveillance report on the Mercer case (stock analyst suspected of insider trading).
I was able to deliver the report early because the subject did the same exact thing seven days in a row. Gym. Work. Home. Sleep. Repeat. I adore creatures of habit. They make my job so much easier.
When I announced myself to Linda, she explained that he was in the middle of a haircut. I strode into David’s office and discovered that the haircut was being administered by my best friend, Petra.
“What are you doing here?” Petra casually asked.
“Delivering a surveillance report. Why are you cutting my brother’s hair?”
“I can give you two hundred and fifty reasons why,” Petra, now in a new tax bracket, replied.
I feigned shock at my brother’s intemperance, but really, it didn’t surprise me at all.
“Did you have to tell her how much I pay you?” David asked.
“There is no such thing as client-stylist confidentiality.”
“How long has this been going on?” I inquired.
They turned to each other to calculate a response. I was disappointed. Any relative or friend of mine should have a better concept of stealth.
I offered up an exaggerated sigh and said, “Forget it.” I tossed the surveillance report on David’s desk and headed for the door. “Why you feel the need to keep a fucking haircut from me, I will never understand.”
“See you tonight, Isabel” was David’s only response, that night being Uncle Ray’s welcome-home dinner.
I had forgotten about the dinner until David reminded me. Had I remembered, I would have tried to weasel my way out of it. The Ra(e/y) Wars were brewing and I was determined to stay out of them. However, their impact, as I correctly anticipated, could not be outrun.
I returned home early that evening and found Rae on the living room floor obliterating a gift-wrapped box from the local electronics store. It was the newest, top-of-the-line digital video recorder. In fact, Spellman Investigations still had not updated their equipment to this level. Somehow my parents deemed it reasonable to bestow this enormous gift on a teenage girl when birthday and Christmas were either long gone or far away.
As Rae sat as an island amid a sea of Styrofoam, plastic wrap, and cardboard, I eyed my parents with the superior skepticism of an IRS agent and waited patiently for them to catch my stare. True to form, they avoided eye contact, knowing full well what I was thinking. I casually walked over to my father.
“Not one word, Isabel.”
“Are you willing to pay for my silence?”
My father’s posture sagged as he imagined an endless stream of payoffs and buyouts. I was joking, of course, but I let the threat hang in the air.
“I suppose it’s only fair. What do you want?”
“Relax, Dad. I don’t want to shake you down. But I would like to say—”
“I am begging you, Isabel, don’t say anything.”
Finding the prospect of holding my tongue almost unbearable, I grabbed a beer and then plopped down on the couch in the den next to Uncle Ray, who thoughtfully handed me his plate of cheese and crackers as he channel surfed. When he hit upon an episode of Get Smart from the first season, I said, “Stop.”
Max1 and Agent 99, disguised as a doctor and nurse, roamed the halls of Harvey Satan’s sanitarium.2
“Can you bring me up to speed?” asked Uncle Ray, who sadly does not have a catalogue of episodes imprinted in his brain.
“KAOS3 agents have kidnapped the chief and are holding him for ransom. Oh, and there’s this scene that you just missed where Max uses seven different kinds of phones. A shoe phone, wallet phone, eyeglasses phone, tie phone, handkerchief phone, and…I can’t remember the last one.4”
“What is the chief doing in the closet?” asked my uncle.
“It’s not a closet. It’s a freezer.”
“Why are they freezing him?”
“They need to lower his body temperature for mind-control surgery.”
“Okay. That makes sense,” said Ray, who took back his plate of cheese and crackers.
A commercial came on the TV and Uncle Ray pretended to be engrossed in the latest acne remedy.
“You think the kid will get used to me after a while?”
“Yeah, Uncle Ray, I think she’ll come around. Eventually.”
“I hope so. Been wearing my lucky shirt.”
“I noticed.”
The lucky shirt: a threadbare, short-sleeved, Hawaiian-print number that had been in circulation nearing two decades. It used to surface only on special occasions—the Super Bowl, the playoffs, the World Series. Eventually it made its way into a smattering of poker games and casual weddings, but lately it was rare to see him in anything else.
At dinner my sister’s pointed glares across the table discomfited all. David and my father made dull small talk about work, but it was my mother who briefly eased the tension, by redirecting it.
“Don’t you think that’s enough red meat for one day?” she asked as my father reached for a second helping of roast beef.
Dad served himself two more slices and said, “Yes, now it is.”
“I thought Dr. Schneider put you on a diet.”
“He did,” Dad replied.
“How’s it going?” my mom asked.
“Great.”
“Have you lost any weight?”
&
nbsp; “As a matter of fact, I have.”
“How much?” she asked.
“A pound,” my father replied proudly.
“You were supposed to start that diet one month ago. You’ve lost only one pound so far?” asked my mom.
“All the experts say it’s better to lose it slow and steady.”
“That’s good. So you’ll be thin somewhere around the time you’re eligible for Social Security benefits,” said Mom, holding her glare.
“You’re not the boss of me, Olivia.”
“The hell I’m not.”
Since some variety of this conversation was a staple of most Spellman family meals, the rest of table continued eating without much notice. Then Uncle Ray made the fatal mistake of speaking to my sister.
“Rae-Rae, pass the potatoes, will ya?” said my uncle.
My sister continued eating, deliberately not responding to the request. My mother waited a moment, hoping, probably praying. When her younger daughter still refused to move, she intervened.
“Sweetie, Uncle Ray wants you to pass the potatoes.”
“No, he wants ‘Rae-Rae’ to pass him the potatoes. I don’t know who ‘Rae-Rae’ is,” my sister snapped.
I reached across the table, elbowing Rae, picked up the potatoes, and handed them to my uncle.
“My name is Rae. Just one Rae. Not two. Just one.” Rae spelled it out like the rudest member of the debate team.
“How long are you going to hold this grudge?” my uncle asked.
“How long are you going to wear that shirt?”
“Don’t talk about the shirt.”
“Why, can it hear me?”
“Just don’t talk about it. We don’t need the negative energy.”
My brother, the lawyer, the corporate dealmaker, the man who bills four hundred dollars an hour, believes he can negotiate anything. He is foolish enough to think that he can negotiate peace through mutual understanding. At times like this, I believe it is very possible that David was swapped with the real Spellman boy at the hospital.
“Uncle Ray, tell her about the shirt. Maybe she’ll understand,” said David.
“No way.”
“Either you tell her or I’ll tell her,” my brother said, knowing the effect of his words.
“You won’t tell it right, David.”
“Go on, tell me about the shirt,” Rae said, folding her arms across her chest.
Uncle Ray contemplated his delivery, cleared his throat, and offered a dramatic pause.
“January twenty-second, 1989. Superbowl Twenty-three, score sixteen to thirteen Bengals, with three minutes, twenty seconds left on the clock. Montana makes five consecutive passes to move the ball to the Bengals’ thirty-five. A holding penalty. The ball goes back ten yards. Yet Montana comes up with a twenty-seven-yard completion to Rice. A time-out and he connects with Taylor in the middle of the end zone. I’m wearing the shirt. June second, 1991. Oak Tree. I put one hundred on Blue Lady. Who knows why? I’m in the mood for a long shot. Blue Lady noses Silver Arrow in the final stretch. Payoff: thirty-six to one. I’m wearing the shirt. September third, 1993. I go into Sal’s Deli and Liquor to buy some lottery tickets. I walk in on a two-eleven in progress, surprising the perp. He fires five rounds in my direction before I can pull out my piece and take him down. Not a scratch on me. No one dies that day, and the perp has only a flesh wound. I’m wearing the shirt.”
Uncle Ray clears his throat and continues devouring his plate of potatoes.
Rae puts a worn blue high-top sneaker on the table. I smack her foot off, but she puts it up again.
“February, this year,” she says, “I take third place in the eighth grade tetherball tournament. I’m wearing the shoes. June, same year. I score eighty-three percent on my algebra final without cracking the book. I’m wearing the shoes. Last Thursday, I narrowly miss running my bike into a squad car. I’m wearing the shoes. But still, I rotate!”
“Get your feet off the table,” my mother snaps. Rae retires her shoe to the floor and glares, once again, at Uncle Ray. I decide to remind my sister of some recent events and their implications.
“In case you didn’t notice, Rae, today you were bribed. That high-tech, digital surveillance camera you received is not a free gift. Do not be mistaken. The gift is intended to persuade you to be at least moderately polite to your uncle during his stay here.”
Rae doesn’t believe me. She sustains a half grin, waiting for the punch line. When none is offered, she looks around the table, eventually turning to my dad.
“Is it true?” she asks.
“Yes, pumpkin. It’s true.”
THE WAR ON RECREATIONAL SURVEILLANCE
CHAPTER 1
It had started when Rae was thirteen and I ignored it. We all ignored it for a while. She did it after school, on weekends and holidays, when the sun was shining and she felt like a bike ride or a stroll. But then Uncle Ray moved in and with his presence came another able-bodied workhorse. Not that he worked hard—on the contrary, but hiring Uncle Ray over Rae, whether that was a conscious or unconscious decision, made sense. Billing out for the work of a fourteen-year-old girl brought in twenty-five dollars an hour, plus expenses. However, billing out for the services of a retired SFPD inspector, we could charge fifty dollars an hour. Besides, Ray could drive and pee in a jar (a gender-specific talent that should not be underestimated). There were four sound reasons to use Uncle Ray over Rae and, generally speaking, you could rely on Ray staying out of the bars until the end of his ten-hour shift. It was only Rae who noticed that her assignments had waned over the last few months. Only I noticed how Rae was compensating for this loss.
Now, at age fourteen, my sister’s curfew had been set at 10:00 P.M. on weekends and 8:00 P.M. on school nights. Until recently she had never tested those boundaries. Rae has only two friends in school—Arie Watt and Lori Freeman—both of whom have curfews well before Rae’s. That said, on a typical school day, Rae came home at 5:00 P.M., sometimes 7:00 when she was studying with Arie or Lori, and on the weekends, she never left the house unless she was on the job, going to a movie, or had a specific plan with one of her two friends. There were rare sleepovers (at Lori’s) and even rarer supervised parties. But for the most part, Rae’s home was her castle and she couldn’t wait to be safely ensconced within it or at least within the surveillance van.
So when she began testing the limits of her curfew, when she would arrive home flushed and clammy from running the last distance before the clock struck eight, I knew she was hiding something. I could have asked Rae what she was up to, but that is not our way. Instead, I followed her.
Rae had mastered the B-minus average that my parents mandated. She had mastered the B-minus while doing virtually no work beyond school walls. I picked up the tail at the end of her school day. Rae hopped on her bike and rode up to Polk Street. She carefully wove her lock from the front wheel through the base of the bike, as my father had taught her, sat on a bench, and pulled out a schoolbook. An uninformed observer would tell you that she was studying while waiting for a bus—the book, her school uniform, and the bus bench would evidence that assessment. But I knew she was prowling for someone to tail. A few minutes later a woman in her early thirties, carrying an oversize purse, exited the bookstore a few doors down. She pulled some papers from her inelegant bag, ripped them in quarters, and tossed them fervently into the garbage can that was sitting next to Rae.
The woman’s jittery hands and nervous bearing piqued Rae’s interest. My sister closed her book as the woman took her leave, waited the requisite twenty seconds, and then followed her. I was still parked around the corner at the other end of the block. I quickly started the car and turned onto Polk Street, driving as slowly as I could until I caught up with Rae. I made a quick turn in front of my sister as she was crossing the street.
“Can I give you a lift?” I offered as I rolled down the window. She knew that I had followed her. She knew that I kne
w what she was doing. I could have written out the math equation she was internally calculating. Defiance was typically not Rae’s method. Unlike me, she acquiesced whenever her heart allowed for it. She knew enough to avoid raising further suspicion.
“Thanks. I didn’t feel like walking,” she said, getting in.
I said nothing, thinking this might be a one-time deal and so what if, after school, my sister on occasion shadows complete strangers? It is exercise, isn’t it?
I let it slide for a few weeks, as she tested her curfew more and more. Then it appeared that she had scaled back her recreational surveillance. She was suddenly returning home before dinner and staying in her room most of the night. My parents attributed the solitude to Uncle Ray avoidance. I, on the other hand, was not so ready to trust someone who shared my DNA.
My attic apartment sits just above Rae’s bedroom on the second floor. An outside fire escape connects the two rooms. When Rae was five, she caught me sneaking out one night and discovered an alternate passage into my bedroom. I quickly disabused her of this habit, not just because it was dangerous, but also because my bed sat just below the window and her late-night entrances usually involved leaving size-three tread marks on my face.
Six Months Ago
I heard the slow creak of the fire escape ladder shortly before 7:00 P.M. I was about to look out my window when the telephone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hello, is this Isabel?” a male voice asked.
Generally I don’t answer questions like that, but this was my private line.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Hi. My name is Benjamin McDonald. I met your mother at the library.”
“The library?”
“Yes.”
“Which library?”
“The main library. Downtown.”
“What was she doing there?”
“I assume checking out books.”
“Did you see her with any books?”
“I think so.”
“Do you remember which ones?”
“No.”
“Not even one?”
“No. Anyway, the reason I’m calling—”
“What were you doing there?”