A Credible Threat

by Janet Dawson

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  Marisol cradled the coffee mug in her hands. “I grew up in this neighborhood, in Jingletown.” She nodded in the direction of the freeway. “Went to Catholic schools. What a crock that was. Sister Mary Holy Water, teaching algebra and telling us how to act. What the hell did she know about it?”

  “Can’t help you there,” I said. “I went to public schools. Though I often wondered myself what those nuns knew about life.”

  “Yeah. All they knew was training us to be good little Catholic wives and mothers.” She set the mug on the desk and clawed one hand through her tangled dark hair. “My parents bought into all that stuff. Still do. I was one of six kids, three girls, three boys. The dutiful daughter, and all that shit. My father couldn’t understand why I wanted to go to college. College was for the boys. I was supposed to graduate from high school, work for a couple of years, find some nice man to marry, and settle down and have babies.” She shook her head. “Both my sisters are doing that. They’ve got five babies between them.”

  I shifted on the ladder-back chair, which was getting more uncomfortable with the passage of time. “What about the boyfriend?”

  “Ah, the boyfriend.” Marisol looked at the coffee, instead of me, as though she were trying to decide which was worse, the oily black liquid or the memory I was dredging out of her. “I was in the ninth grade, fourteen. I had just started menstruating, later than all the girls I knew, and my sisters too. I thought there was something wrong with me.” She stopped, opting for another sip of coffee. “Peter was older than me. Nineteen.”

  I raised an eyebrow. A five-year age difference didn’t matter as much when both parties were adults, but for teenagers, at that age and level of maturity, it was a wide gulf.

  “He likes them young,” Marisol said, her words sardonic, as though she knew what I was thinking. “And stupid, as I found out later.”

  “You weren’t stupid, just young.”

  “Naive, stupid, young, what’s the difference.” Now her mouth curved in another one of her tight reluctant smiles that never seemed to reach her eyes. “He’s probably still at it. Hanging around playgrounds looking for little girls to fuck.”

  “Is that where you met him?”

  She shook her head. “At a friend’s house. Me, tagging along, as usual. The odd one out. The only one who wasn’t paired up.” She sighed. I understood. I had memories like that too. “One of his buddies was dating one of my girlfriends. I thought Peter was so cool. I guess it was because he was different from anyone else I knew. He was Anglo, from Hayward. My whole life I’d been around people who spoke Spanish better than they spoke English. He was in his first year of college, down at Chabot. I wanted to go to college, so I was impressed. He dressed really cool. He smoked. He had his own car. His own apartment, just a room, really, above a store. And he was paying attention to me. Little Marisol, who barely had breasts.”

  Given what she’d told me so far, that was probably part of the attraction. I looked at the young woman before me, with her hard-won tough veneer, and saw the little girl she must have been at fourteen. Shark bait, for the predators that swim in the always complicated sea of male-female relationships. It probably hadn’t taken him too long to nail his prey.

  We must be in sync this afternoon. Marisol was reading my mind again.

  “Oh, he had me in bed in the blink of an eye,” she said with an offhand shrug, as though it didn’t matter. “A week or two after we met. He took me for a ride in his car, then he brought me back to his apartment and popped my cherry. With me saying, oh, no, we shouldn’t do this. But we kept doing it. It’s a wonder I didn’t get pregnant. Because, of course, there was no question of him using a condom. Him? Worry about birth control? Forget it. One of my girlfriends, she figured it out. That I was getting laid, I mean. Got me some pills. They probably screwed up my body chemistry royally, but I didn’t get pregnant. So many of these girls do. And then they marry the guy. And they’re trapped. Like my sisters.”

  “When did Peter start hitting you?” I asked. We’d danced toward the subject long enough.

  Marisol compressed her lips into a line and crossed. her arms protectively over her chest. She had breasts now, but at that moment she looked very much like a child. “Almost from the start. At first it was playful, you know. A little slap here, a little shove there. I didn’t think anything about it. I saw the same thing happening to the other girls and women around me. It crept up on me. He didn’t really hurt me until a year or so later. We had an argument and he punched me, so hard I had a bruise for days. I thought it was my fault for doing something to annoy him.”

  I’d heard this tale, or one like it, before. Recently, in fact, while working on the Raynor case. In that instance, the abusive husband wound up dead, his wife a suspect in his murder. When she’d described the evolution of their relationship, it sounded similar to what I was now hearing from Marisol. What she no doubt heard every day when she volunteered here at this counseling center.

  Whether it was my earlier client, with her WASP background and middle-class upbringing, or Marisol, here in the East Oakland barrio, battering cut across all socioeconomic, cultural, and racial boundaries. And, from what Marisol said, all ages.

  Suddenly I remembered something I hadn’t thought about for years, the woman who lived next door to us, when I was growing up and my parents were still a couple. Sherman Street in Alameda was worlds away from the corner of East Fourteenth and Fruitvale in Oakland, a neighborhood of trees and well-kept Victorian houses. I could see my mother in our backyard, a basket handle over one arm and a pair of scissors in her hand, talking to her neighbor as she snipped oregano, sage, and rosemary from her herb garden.

  “Why do you put up with it?” my mother asked the woman. “I certainly wouldn’t. Why don’t you leave?”

  In my memory the woman didn’t have a face. All I could see was her hair escaping from its loose knot, falling on her slumped shoulders. “Where would I go?” she countered. “How would I support my kids?”

  I shook my head and the memory dissolved. I was back in the utilitarian counseling center for battered women, sitting on an uncomfortable chair and scrutinizing a survivor. “How did you get out?” I asked her.

  Marisol compressed her lips. “All along, I wanted to go to college. That’s been my dream. And in spite of me dissing Sister Mary Holy Water, I was an honor student. I had a chance at a scholarship. In the fall of my senior year, my grades started slipping. Peter didn’t like me being such a bookworm. That meant I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Finally, we fought about it and he beat me up real bad.”

  She ducked her head. “I told my family I’d been in a car accident. They bought it. I’ll tell you why. They’ve been buying it for years. One of my brothers, he slaps his wife around. And nobody in the family thinks it’s wrong. Except me. Isn’t that crazy?”

  When I didn’t answer, she continued. “So about the time I’ve got all these bruises from my bogus car accident, my sister-in-law shows up one Sunday with a black eye. I told her she should talk to someone about my brother. She looks at me and says, you’re one to talk.”

  Marisol laughed and shook her head. “Earth to Marisol. Finally. I realized she was right. I was involved in the same kind of relationship. Except I could get out, because I wasn’t married to the guy. I decided I’d better do something about it. So I came to this counseling center, right here in one of these offices, and spilled my guts to one of these volunteers. Then I told Peter to go fuck himself for a change.”

  She flashed a triumphant smile, then frowned. “My sister-in-law is still married to my brother. And he still beats her up.”

  “What about Peter?” I asked. “Was that the end of it for him?”

  It couldn’t have been that easy for Marisol to break off this abusive relationship. There were too many men who wouldn’t let go or take no for an answer.

  She shook her head. “Not for him. He couldn’t belie
ve I’d told him to get lost. For months, he kept calling, coming around the house. By that time I’d graduated and started school at Berkeley. I shared an apartment with some other women.”

  “Did he ever stalk you?” I asked. “Or call you at that apartment?”

  “For a while,” Marisol said slowly. “He’d call my folks. They must have given him the number. And the address. There were a couple of times that first year, I’d look over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of him. Or someone who looked a lot like him. But the Berkeley campus is a big place. I couldn’t be sure it was him. Maybe it was just paranoia, making me see Peter in the shadows. Anyway, I moved from that apartment into Sasha’s house, about a year and a half ago. No more phone calls. No glimpses of Peter out of the corner of my eye. Nothing.”

  Both of us were silent for a moment.

  “Do you think Peter’s still carrying a grudge?” I asked.

  “Enough to trash the plants and make those phone calls, you mean?”

  “Yes. It is a man, by the way. He called this afternoon while I was at the house.” I gave her a brief rundown of the morning’s events.

  “I don’t know, Jeri.” She shook her head. “It’s been a long time since I broke up with Peter. I have no idea where he is. Yes, he hassled me after I ended our relationship, but to start up again after all this time. Finding out where I live, and my phone number, particularly after Sasha changed it. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put it past him. But on the other, why would he bother now?”

  Nine

  I DIDN’T HAVE AN ANSWER TO MARISOL’S QUESTION. But I intended to find one.

  Before leaving the counseling center, I obtained from her as much information about Peter as she could dredge from her memory. Maybe Peter was a wild goose chase. But he’d stalked her in the past. I couldn’t discount the possibility that he was stalking her now.

  I went home to feed the cats and get ready for my Saturday evening date. Kaz and I were going to see Sabrina and Roman Holiday at the Elmwood. We had dinner first; nothing fancy, just burritos at a tacqueria across the street from the theater. Kaz is a vegetarian, and he’d opted for black beans and rice in his burrito, eating it with a knife and fork because it was so messy. No such niceties for me. I was a hands-on person when it came to Mexican food. As I wrapped both my hands around my chicken mole burrito, I cast aspersions on Audrey Hepburn’s choices in men, at least during the first show.

  “Why would any woman dally with William Holden when she could have Humphrey Bogart?”

  Kaz grinned at me, a twinkle in those incredibly blue eyes of his. “Holden was easy on the eyes. Besides, not everyone shares your passion for Bogart.” He’d seen my vast collection of Bogart videotapes, everything from The Petrified Forest to The Harder They Fall.

  “And I suppose you don’t have a thing for Ingrid Bergman,” I said, dipping a tortilla chip into some guacamole. I’d been to Kaz’s apartment a time or two. I knew about the Anastasia poster in the bedroom.

  “That’s different.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Humphrey Bogart was way too old for Audrey,” Kaz pointed out.

  “So were William Holden and Gregory Peck,” I admitted. “But this is fantasy, not real life.”

  And we both needed some fantasy now and then. We had jobs that brought us into contact with the bleaker side of life. I’d met Kaz back in December while working on a case involving a missing child named Dyese Smith. Her mother, a murder victim, had been HIV positive and I needed more information on how the disease was passed from mother to child. So I visited Children’s Hospital in Oakland, where Dr. Kazimir Pellegrino worked in the Pediatric AIDS/HIV program.

  I’d found Dyese later that month and taken her to Children’s. Mercifully, she had tested negative for the virus. She was in foster care now because her grandmother had turned her back on the child. Kaz gave me periodic updates on her progress.

  Kaz had looked me up a few days after my visit to the hospital, and we’d spent New Year’s Eve together. Since then, we’d dated several times during the intervening months, sharing an interest in jazz, old movies, and good food. I had a feeling our interests were going to move toward something physical too, but we hadn’t gotten there yet. I had to admit that his deep blue eyes had been playing a part in some of my fantasies. So had his curly black, silver-streaked hair, which he wore clubbed back into a short ponytail. I wanted to run my fingers through that hair. Soon, I thought.

  But the man was so busy. I brought up the subject of a play opening in San Francisco next weekend and proposed a night at the theater. He shook his head.

  “Can’t do it. I’m going to an AIDS conference in London. I leave Wednesday.”

  “Too bad. The play has a short run. I’ll cook dinner for us Tuesday, then. How long will you be gone?”

  “Ten days, including travel time. The conference is five days. After it’s over, I’m going to take the Chunnel to Paris and look up some of my Doctors Without Borders colleagues.”

  Kaz had been involved with the physicians’ relief organization for three years, in Somalia and Rwanda. Then he’d experienced burnout and returned to the States, where he’d joined the staff of Children’s Hospital.

  Who knew how long he’d be there? When I looked at him and heard his past history of moving from job to job, I had to wonder how long he’d find a challenge in working with his kids.

  The sooner I ran my fingers through his hair, the better, I decided.

  “I went to Paris a couple of years ago. After Sid and I broke up. It was a wonderful trip, far too short. I’d like to go back.”

  “My favorite city.” Kaz smiled, “Maybe someday I’ll show you the Paris I know.”

  His words left me contemplating walks in the Jardin des Tuileries with the good doctor. The picture in my mind was so pleasant I almost didn’t hear him ask after my father.

  “Dad? He’s going to a conference too. In Albuquerque, at the University of New Mexico. Something about western history.” My father, Dr. Timothy Howard, taught history at California State University in Hayward. “In fact, I’m taking him to the airport tomorrow.”

  We finished our dinner, while I brought him up to date on the rest of my family, as well as my friend Cassie’s wedding plans. Which wouldn’t get very far until she found the perfect wedding gown. Then Kaz and I strolled across the street, holding hands.

  Yes, I liked the touch of his hands and the way he smiled. I’d have to do something about that when he returned from Paris. Just as we got to the box office of the Elmwood Theatre, I reached up and tweaked the curly hair at the end of his ponytail.

  “What’s that all about?” he asked, with a grin and a sidelong glance from his blue eyes.

  I answered him with a grin of my own. “Just thinking.”

  Ten

  “I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MEN,” RACHEL Steiner told me. “Men in the abstract, men in general, or men on an individual basis. I guess I’ve been lucky. Now, Marisol...” She waved her fork for emphasis. “Marisol’s got a problem with men.”

  She looked relaxed this Monday morning, after her weekend in Calistoga. We were seated at a small table for two in the front corner of Rick and Ann’s on Domingo Avenue. Her back was to the plate-glass window, but I had a view of the sidewalk and the street. Beyond these I glimpsed the stately white sprawl of the Claremont Hotel, the resort where firefighters had made a stand against the devastating East Bay hills fire in 1991. The hotel survived, but in the hills behind it homes went up like so much tinder.

  On weekends there was a long wait to get a table at Rick and Ann’s, but now, on a weekday, we’d been able to walk right in. Rachel, with unabashed enjoyment, dug into a stack of buttermilk pancakes. My omelet, with layers of eggplant, tomatoes, and feta cheese, was so large as to be daunting, but I was making a concerted effort to reduce its dimensions.

  I reached for my coffee and examined the woman who sat opposite me. I am five feet eight. Rachel was probably an inch or two taller. H
er blond hair was pulled back from her face, its length twisted into a thick braid that fell halfway down her back. This morning she wore blue jeans and an oversize sweater, patterned in shades of blue and pink. Tiny silver stars dangled from her pierced ears.

  “So what do you want to talk about, Jeri?” Rachel reached for the syrup and poured another dollop on her pancakes. “Besides men.”

  I polished off a forkful of my omelet before answering. “About what’s happening at the house.”

  “Yeah. Sasha told me about the phone call on Saturday. They got another one last night, before I got home.”

  I made a mental note to call Sasha, to see if she or the Berkeley Police Department had received any information about the tap on the line. Perhaps the phone company had been able to trace where the calls had originated.

  “Strange,” Rachel continued. “This is the first time whoever is doing this has talked. Always before it was—” She stopped, fork in midair. “Menacing presence. But no words.”

  “Everyone else seems certain the calls started in January. Are you?”

  “Oh, yes. Just after New Year’s, I think.” Both of us fell silent as our server replenished our coffee cups. Rachel’s hazel eyes turned thoughtful as she sifted back through the calendar.

  “Most of us were gone during Christmas break. Sasha and Martin were there, of course. Marisol stayed. She’s not too keen on spending a lot of time with her family. From what she’s said about them, I don’t blame her. Me, I was in and out. Went skiing with some friends up at Tahoe. They have a cabin, so I stayed with them for several days over the holiday itself. I came back the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Ben’s got family over in San Francisco and Nelson’s parents live on the Peninsula.”

  I knew that Vicki and her father went up to Sacramento to spend Christmas with Sid’s sister Doreen. “What about Emily?”

  “Emily’s parents are dead,” Rachel said. “She was raised by an aunt who lives up north. They went to Hawaii for Christmas.”