Past Tense

by Stephen Greenleaf

  I had only a vague recollection of where Flora’s grave was. After cruising the main drag, I narrowed it down to Cypress Lawn, the Hills of Eternity, and Woodlawn. I finally chose the latter—its contours seemed familiar, as did the turreted stone facade. I drove through the arched entrance, then parked on a hillock from which I could scrutinize most of the likely grave sites as I waited for Charley to show up.

  Sitting on the damp grass with my back against an obelisk in the military section of the cemetery took me back to my high school days. I’d been a trumpet player then, and from time to time I would be taken out of school and driven to the local cemetery, then secreted in the distance till it came time to play taps for a deceased veteran after he received a rifle salute from his fellows in the American Legion. I hadn’t thought much about death back then but I’d sure thought a lot about it lately. I’m not certain what conclusions I’ve drawn, except to hope that when it comes it comes quickly and painlessly and that whoever does the final calculus gives credit for not doing harm in the world as well as for doing good.

  A siren sounded off to the east, suggesting another tenant for the town. An erratic procession of cars came and went on missions of mourning similar to what I hoped would soon be Charley’s. I spent the next several minutes thinking about Flora.

  She hadn’t liked me much, I don’t think, probably because I’d taken her husband away from her so often. But she was a good woman who never voiced objection to my face and seldom denied me Charley’s companionship even though she had the right to. She would be in heaven if there was one, but I was inclined to think she was feeding a family of worms somewhere within thirty yards of me, no more and no less a fate than that, common to us all.

  I’ve never bought into the angels and afterlife mythology, but as I creep toward fifty I speculate about it more than I used to. The problem is, I’m not sure what I would want an afterlife to be even if I had a choice. Things that most people find rapturous—from Disney World to Fisherman’s Wharf to Forrest Gump—tend to leave me cold. Maybe that means I’ve already been consigned to hell.

  To wrest my mind off the hereafter, I conjured up Danielle. I’m an old-fashioned guy. Whenever I sleep with a woman, I always wonder if she could be the one, a lifelong mate, the girl of my dreams, someone to take home to Mom if I still had one. I think of such things even when the woman makes it clear, as Danielle certainly had, that she has nothing of the sort in mind, that she only has room for a romp.

  We were misfit, which we knew going in, which was probably why the sex was so good. Because we knew there would be no carryover, we didn’t bother to be dainty, or solicitous, or demure, we just took what we wanted for as long as it lasted and it had lasted for quite a long time. I’d seldom enjoyed myself more, and Danielle professed pleasure as well, but there was no invitation to spend the night.

  Which was probably just as well. She made her living blaming men for women’s problems, and even though I didn’t doubt much of the blame was justified, I didn’t think it was fair for her to tar me with that broad brush, at least not without knowing me better. As far as I knew, I hadn’t been a major trauma for any woman ever except to the extent that a mutual breakup is bothersome to both parties. If I have any talent at all, it’s in convincing women that leaving me is in their own best interest, that they will be better off without me.

  Charley drove his Dodge through the gates at four-fifteen. He was driving slowly, doubtless alert for oddities, doubtless advancing indirectly on his target rather than taking dead aim. Like me, he parked some distance removed from his objective. Like me, he waited in place for several minutes to see if anything out of the ordinary made an appearance. If he was like me in another respect, what he was mostly afraid of was cops.

  When ten minutes went by and he hadn’t seen any, he headed for the grave. He was dressed in Levi’s and a chambray work shirt and carrying a bouquet of daisies in one hand and a pistol in the other, hidden in the folds of his hunting jacket. What was more shocking than the artillery was what the tumor had done to his gait. He was hunched over and off plumb, a parody of Quasimodo who walked with a simian limp—if I came on such a man on the street I would have been tempted to call an ambulance.

  I didn’t figure he’d stay long, so when he knelt at Flora’s grave site I took off at a trot, crouching to keep as many stone sentries between us as possible. I set my course for a point equidistant between Charley and his car, so if he retraced his steps before I got in position I would have a shot at cutting him off. Not for the first time that day, I wished I was carrying my gun.

  An Asian family was gathered in tears around a gravestone at the exact spot where the vectors should cross. When they saw me coming, they gave me looks of sympathy and condolence but my expression must have told them I wasn’t in that sort of mood. As I set up shop nearby, removing my coat and crouching for cover, they hurried to convey their respects, then scurried to a nearby van after leaving behind a bouquet of lilies. The name on the headstone read WONG.

  Crouching and wary, I heard him before I saw him. I was pretty sure that if I’d been armed and wanted to, I could have shot him from behind my cover, which was the only way I could have overpowered him, crippled or no. But I was even wrong about that. Before I could step in his path and confront him, he said, “Taken up grave robbing, Tanner?”

  I laughed and stood up. “Can I interest you in some burial insurance, sir? We’re featuring a two-for-one special this month—you and the victim of your choice.”

  He didn’t respond or slow down, so I had to hurry to keep up. “Long time no see,” I babbled at his back.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I’ll say you have. There were rifle platoons in Nam that didn’t have that kind of body count.”

  His shoulders hunched against my joke. “It’s not funny.”

  “Really? I thought it was some kind of farce. But in farce they come back to life, don’t they? Any chance of that happening here? … You have no comment, I take it.”

  “My comment is, shut the fuck up. What happened to your finger?”

  “I threw a punch at a brick wall. When do you plan to tell me what’s happening?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got a long time.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Are you speaking temporally or actuarily?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means I need to talk about all this.”

  He shook his head but didn’t slow down. “Not now.”

  “Then when?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “In that case, why don’t I just tag along?”

  “What for?”

  “For one thing, some pretty tough guys are out hunting for you and most of them carry guns and badges, which makes it hard to head them off.”

  “They’re not so tough,” he muttered.

  “Everyone’s tough with a Glock in his hand. Even Gary Hilton.”

  That one put a hitch in his shuffle. “That prissy little bastard couldn’t take me on the best day he ever had.”

  Since I was in that category myself, I wasn’t moved to dispute him.

  When he reached the car, Charley stopped and turned toward me. The lines in his face were deep with fatigue; the red in his eyes was pathetic. I had to stop myself from touching him the way I would touch an injured child.

  “You need to let me alone for a little while,” he said levelly. The words were so slurred and sloppy, I barely understood them. “I’ve got things to do.”

  “More killing?”

  “If there’s more killing, it won’t be my doing.”

  “Good. So when can we talk?”

  “Not now.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “How?”

  “Phone.”

  “When?”

  “Six. Tomorrow night. Your apartment.”


  “How do I know you’ll do it?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “I suppose it’s charming that you still think that’s enough.”

  We locked up for a while, our eyes entwined in a Greco-Roman grapple. When no one yielded, not even symbolically, he opened the door and got in the car and rolled down the window. “Spend much time down this way, Marsh?”

  “Hardly any.”

  “Then you know you won’t have a chance in hell trying to tail me. I could put you in places you’d need a helicopter to get out of.”

  I shrugged elaborately. “Maybe I’ll just go to Marjie’s and wait.”

  He turned the ignition key so hard I thought he would break it off in the slot. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you did that, all bets would be off.”

  I waited till he met my look. “Most of them are off already, aren’t they, Charley? Isn’t that what it’s all been about?”

  After muttering his favorite curse, Charley tugged the Dodge in gear and drove off. As he rounded a corner and disappeared, I surveyed the surroundings. The dead were everywhere, pummeling me with proof of impermanence. I was overcome with foreboding, a chilly certainty that something dire and apocalyptic lay dead ahead, that I needed to be extra careful of what I said and did, that I needed to beware of everything. On the way back to the car, I tried to shrug my premonition off as nothing, but I didn’t even come close.

  CHAPTER

  31

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY APARTMENT, I CALLED MARJIE Finnerty. She wasn’t home. In as precatory a tone as I could muster, I left a message on her machine urging her to call me. Then I fixed a drink and drank it. Then I fixed another drink and drank that, too. And then I stopped. If Charley called earlier than expected, I needed to be able to play the hand he dealt me. More than that, I needed to be able to prevail.

  For an hour or so, I bobbed on recollection, my tethers loosened by booze, my mind flitting like a moth till it came upon something worth settling on. What it had trouble settling on was Charley. The killings had taken me deeper into his past than I had ever been and because of what I’d learned—the dead child, the marital celibacy, the whore on Turk Street—my memories were suddenly suspect. I was like a cuckolded spouse—the knowledge of the infidelity makes every aspect of the conjoined past seem fraudulent and subversive and makes the husband feel like a fool. I was starting to feel that way about Charley and I didn’t like it. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe I was just steeling myself against the time when he would no longer be here.

  When my thoughts flew from Charley to Julian Wints, I picked up the phone and called Danielle at her home.

  “I need to talk to your patient,” I said when she came on the line.

  “Tafoya?”

  “Julian.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t about her.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Then why do you—”

  “I need to tell her that.”

  She paused. “Why don’t I take care of it in our next session?”

  “I’d rather do it myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the way she looked at me, I guess. She was as terrified as if I’d tried to molest her. Plus, she called Charley an assassin. I need for her to know it’s not so.”

  “I understand what you’re trying to do, but I still can’t—”

  “Five minutes,” I insisted. “Then I’m out of her life for good.”

  “I’m sorry; I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  Something in my voice made her shift into a gear more flexible than automatic. “If I talk with her at our next session and prep her, maybe the week after next you can—”

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  “Why not? If she’s not involved, I don’t see why time is of the essence for her.”

  “Not for her. For me.”

  “But why? What’s the hurry?”

  “I’m not sure. But I’m asking you to indulge me.”

  When she spoke again, her voice was modulated in the manner of a practicing therapist, distant, uninvolved, and exasperating. “You talk like you’ve had a glimpse of the future.”

  “I think maybe I have.”

  “You sound as if it wasn’t a very nice picture.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “What brought it on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It was him, wasn’t it?”

  “Charley?”

  “Yes. You found him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. We’re supposed to meet later on.”

  “When?”

  “When he calls.”

  “What does he want you to do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “But it’s something, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “And it frightens you.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  And then the therapist became a friend, gentle and reassuring and supportive. “You don’t have to do it, you know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t, and the reason you don’t is that he’s not the man you used to know. Because of all that’s happened he’s someone else now. You don’t owe that someone anything.”

  I laughed. “Nice try, Doctor.”

  She sighed. “You’re a grown man, and we have no professional relationship, so what you do with Charley is up to you, I suppose. But leave Julian out of it. Please. She’s in no shape to—”

  “She has a paranoid fantasy in her head. A part of it’s based on the assumption that Charley Sleet intentionally murdered her father, and that’s not—”

  “I can tell her that. I will tell her that.”

  “If she doesn’t hear it from me, she might not believe it.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Because no one knows the truth except me and Charley and I think Julian is real good at rooting out truth.”

  “She is that. Unquestionably. You’re a good judge of character.” She paused long enough to reconsider, but she wasn’t quite there yet. “I don’t know, Marsh. I’d like to help, both you and Julian, but—”

  “Please. It’s something I need to do. I’ll get out of your life, too, if that’s what you want. Just tell me where I can find her.”

  The war between her person and profession reduced her voice to a whisper. “Okay,” she relented. “Five minutes. Say your piece and be done with it.”

  “Promise.”

  “She’s subletting a place in the Haight. Against my better judgment, I might add. Although it does seem to help her to be around people even more attenuated than she.” She gave me the address, then laughed. “She’s more together in the early evening, for some reason. So if you have to do it, do it now.”

  “Thanks. And by the way. Those phone threats you were getting? If you haven’t had any more in the last three weeks, my guess is they were from Devon Lumpley. He was probably afraid you were going to tell the cops what he’d been doing to Tafoya. So Charley did you a favor, too. Just thought I’d mention it.”

  I was strolling Haight Street within the hour. As usual, it took me back a quarter century—people still laced their brains with drugs; people still wore velvet and tie-dye; people still slept in damp doorways; people still worshiped bad music; people still frequented the Black Rose Cafe and saw movies at the Red Vic I felt thirty years younger until I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk and a young kid grabbed my arm to keep me from falling and said, “Easy, old dude.”

  The place Julian Wints was subletting was on the corner of Ashbury and Page, not far from St. Agnes Church. The house itself was a sixties survivor, its psychedelic hues barely clinging to strips of weathered siding and the rotting ornamentation on the cornices and pilasters. There was a motorcycle recumbent on the walk out front and a pit bull recumbent by the
door, chained to a rusty ship’s anchor. The collar around his neck read SPIKE. When I asked Spike if he minded if I went inside, he seemed as neutral on the issue as a pit bull can seem.

  I climbed to the second floor and knocked on the door to apartment 4. Julian answered immediately, as though she were expecting me, but she opened the door only slightly, using a flimsy chain to protect herself from whatever she had decided I was.

  “I’m Marsh Tanner,” I began cheerfully. “We talked on the Green the other day.”

  Her fingers probed her throat, as though she worked her words like clay. Her blouse was rustic and rumpled; her skirt fell clear to the floor; her eyes still danced and darted like dervishes. “Danielle told me you’d come.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  The question made her even more skittish. “She’s my therapist. I don’t have to tell you what she said. I don’t have to tell anyone.”

  That wasn’t quite true and was less true all the time, but it was no time to debate the Supreme Court’s assault on legal privileges.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, Julian. In fact, this time I’m going to do all the talking.”

  She gnawed on a knuckle. “Good. I guess.”

  “May I come in? It might be more private.”

  “You’d better not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t have to let you.”

  She treated her civil rights like coupons—if she didn’t use them, they’d expire.

  “Okay. I’ll stay out here and keep my voice down.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “So your neighbors can’t hear.”

  “They wouldn’t care if they did. They only care about dogs and drugs.”