Beat Until Stiff

by Claire M Johnson

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I promised.

  “Call me when you get home and let me know what your impressions are,” he said, sounding brusque and official. He left the hall, his broad back stiff with authority.

  Lines for the food were finally starting to form. The utilitarian tables from the church were groaning under the weight of brightly painted platters piled high with Salvadoran delicacies. Three dishwashers from the restaurant began instructing me as to which fruit drinks were spiked with booze, which foods were laced with hot peppers, what to eat with fingers. We laughed over my ignorance, and I could tell they enjoyed playing teacher for a change. Aside from the fact that we were all wearing black, a casual observer would have thought this was a big party.

  We were having a good time until Juan appeared. Unfortunately, he was back in Uriah Heep mode. The others just sort of drifted away, and I found myself alone with him, as he clucked and hovered over me like a mother hen. He refilled my plate after I’d taken only three bites, refreshed my drink when I’d barely touched it. He apologized again and again for his behavior with the wine delivery guy.

  After about twenty minutes I couldn’t stand it anymore. Having dutifully checked out everyone’s general reactions, I didn’t think anything was amiss. I said my good-byes as gracefully as possible and exited the hall. I was shocked that Brent hadn’t showed up. Carlos might never have advanced beyond being a prep cook, but he deserved some recognition by the boss, even if it was only at his own funeral.

  When I left the church hall it was noon. Because I didn’t have to be at Carlos’ place until four, I decided to head downtown to Nordstrom to buy a new outfit. When I got there I took a really hard look at myself for the first time in months. The dressing room mirror reflected the worn-out shell of the woman I used to be. In addition to my being borderline anorexic, my skin had a sickly cast to it, indicating a serious vitamin deficiency—not surprising considering my eating habits of late. My hair, streaked with gray, was the color of three-day-old liver—another hint I wasn’t getting enough nutrients.

  In horror, I ran to the spa and got a massage, makeover, manicure, and a decent haircut and a rinse. Two hours later, the gray had been replaced by a sexy, mahogany sheen, my fingers and toes were apple red, and all my limbs felt as limp as overcooked pasta. Fighting the urge to check into a hotel and sleep until morning, I fortified myself with a double espresso from the coffee bar and dragged myself back down to the Mission.

  Carlos’ family lived in a third-floor railroad flat on 16th near Sanchez. Forcing my rubbery legs to negotiate the treacherous stairwell, I thought of Carlos’ heavily pregnant wife corralling three kids up these stairs three and four times a day. She must have been waiting for me because she opened the door before I had a chance to knock.

  “Mrs. Perez.” I held out my hand.

  She took my hand and squeezed it. “Rosa, por favor.”

  She led me inside and, with a wave of her hand, indicated an orange Naugahyde recliner for me to sit in. The decor in the apartment certainly explained why Carlos sported such weird haircuts. He’d had a real sense of the extreme. He had combed local flea markets for furniture and then painted everything in a riot of bright reds, oranges, and turquoises. For the pièce-de-résistance, the walls were a bright lemon yellow. The room was overcrowded and tacky, but also vibrant and joyous. It would be impossible to be depressed in such a room.

  The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. No kids. No little boy to interpret. Rosa had changed out of her ill-fitting black mourning dress into a maternity muumuu. That ramrod stance she’d maintained in the reception hall had broken, and she had big circles under her eyes. Once nestled in the corner of a lime-green overstuffed couch, she mutely canvassed my new haircut, makeup, and nails. I could feel my face flame bell-pepper red with embarrassment.

  “Los niños?” I asked, both to break the ice and take her mind off my ill-timed makeover.

  “My sister’s,” she said slowly.

  Leaning forward she said in very halting English, “Carlos good husband. I good wife. Carlos in something bad. At restaurant, something bad, something malo.”

  “What was malo?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders, her frustration evident. “No tell me, I know bad. Help me. You know?”

  Again, I cursed my laziness in not learning basic Spanish. She repeated the same phases over and over again, finishing with, “Please Señora, Carlos like you, he trust you. Help me.”

  I looked at her in desperation. “I’m sorry, I know nothing.” I suggested, “The policia…?”

  With that universal dismissal by Latinos of official authority, she made a move as if to spit, her contempt plain. “No, Señora. You find out. For me, por favor,” she begged, her hands held out in supplication.

  Completely in the dark as to what she was talking about, I tried another angle. “Rosa, do you think Gilberto killed Carlos? Nobody has seen him. Do you know where he is?”

  “Gilberto no kill Carlos,” she said emphatically. “Gilberto good man. Like Carlos. No kill Carlos, Señora.”

  “Do you know where Gilberto is? You must tell me. I know Gilberto would never hurt Carlos, but the police don’t know that. He’s got to come forward before they find him first. Please, where is he?”

  I heard the soft padding of sneakers and turned my head. Gilberto came into the room and sat down beside Rosa on the couch.

  Of the two brothers, I knew Carlos much better. Gilberto was also a hard worker, but overshadowed by his wisecracking, happy-go-lucky brother. As lean as his brother was stocky, Gilberto had lost about ten pounds and aged five years in the last three days. Resisting the impulse to hug him, I waited for him to make the first move.

  He stared me full in the face and with no hesitation stated, “I didn’t kill my brother, Señora.”

  “Gilberto, I know you didn’t kill Carlos. I’ve told the police that over and over, but they don’t believe me. You must understand, your disappearance is very suspicious. It looks like you killed Carlos and then fled. You need to talk with them yourself.”

  “I can’t.” He sounded angry and frustrated.

  “Why not?” I implored.

  No answer.

  “Please, Gilberto, please, call this man.” I handed him O’Connor’s card. “He’s a police officer, but he’s a good friend of mine and will listen to you. Turn yourself in before they find you,” I pleaded.

  He turned the card over in his hands a few times and then crushed it in his fist. “I can’t. There’s a lot you don’t understand. I had nothing to do with his killing, but I can’t go to the police.”

  “Does it have to do with the restaurant? What’s going on there?”

  He shot Rosa a look and asked her a bunch of questions in rapid-fire Spanish. She answered back with a defiant tone in her voice. Soon they were having a rip-roaring fight. Their words were bouncing off each other like water on a hot griddle. Although I couldn’t understand what they were saying, clearly she wasn’t going to back down. She ended the fight by turning away from him and cocooning herself in a corner of the couch.

  Gilberto turned to me. “Nothing’s going on there, Señora. Nothing.” He shot Rosa a stern look. “You stay away from the restaurant for a few days.”

  “Gilberto, why should I stay away from the restaurant if nothing’s going on there?”

  “You listen to me. Stay away from there,” he ordered, his voice hoarse with emotion.

  Rosa obviously understood English better than she could speak it, because she responded to his comments with a few choice sentences that made Gilberto’s jaw clench even harder. She then turned to me and, with her chin high with defiance, begged, “Please help me, Señora.”

  Well, there was no pleasing both of them. I said ambiguously, “I’ll do what I can. Gilberto, are you going to go the police?”

  He shook his head vehemently no. Short of turning him in, I couldn’t do anything more. I prayed
they didn’t find him first.

  “Do you need any money?” I asked gently.

  He shrugged in that noncommittal Latin way. I fished into my wallet for the hundred-dollar bill I keep hidden in case of emergency. I got up and tucked the money into his shirt pocket. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you have my phone number?”

  He nodded and then repeated it from memory.

  “Call me if you need anything. Okay?”

  He turned his face away from me, his shoulders curved toward each other to hide the tears on his cheeks. I gave his shoulder a squeeze and put on my coat.

  “I need to go now,” I said to Rosa. “I’ll be in touch if I find out anything.”

  Rosa used both hands to extract herself from the sofa, came over to me and hugged me, whispering, “Gracias, muchas gracias.”

  As I headed out the front door Gilberto called out after me, “Señora, be careful, por favor. Very careful.”

  The second I shut the door I heard them renewing their argument.

  I hit rush hour in full swing. It took me forty-five minutes just to get on the freeway. As I inched my way up the on-ramp, I thought about the events of the past four days: Brent stealing files from his own restaurant; Teri Baxter’s confession about Brent’s skullduggery; discovering the phantom owner of American Fare; Rosa’s desperate plea to help find Carlos’ killer; Gilberto and Rosa’s fight; and, most puzzling of all, Gilberto’s refusal to speak to the police, despite his protests of innocence.

  I’d been so engrossed in trying to catalogue everything that I’d neglected to keep my eyes open for the blue van. It wasn’t until I finally got on the bridge that I remembered to check my rearview mirror. There it was, two lanes over and three cars behind. Again, I tried to pooh-pooh my suspicions, telling myself that every fourth family in the United States had one of these vans. In my gut I knew that van was following me.

  I pushed the Subaru up to speeds and maneuvers worthy of Steve McQueen and Bullitt. People honked, flipped me off, and made every obscene gesture imaginable. I lost sight of him around the tollbooths. Instead of taking the Berkeley curve like I normally do, I went out West Grand and took side streets home.

  I arrived home around six, my whole body screaming for a hot shower. Sitting in traffic with the sun beating down on me had practically enameled fifty dollars’ worth of Lancôme to my face. My neck and back were one gigantic itch, as stray hairs from the haircut crawled down my back.

  First I’d get these clothes off my back and call O’Connor with a progress report on the funeral and my mysterious van driver. Then I was going to take a long, hot shower to wash away my feeble attempts at glamour.

  The reason why Brent didn’t attend Carlos’ funeral was all too apparent when I entered my bedroom. He lay on my bed, dead from a bullet hole through his head.

  Chapter 13

  I knew Brent was dead; no one who loses that much blood is alive. He was sprawled on top of one of my prized possessions, a Texas star quilt Jim and I’d bought on our honeymoon in New Orleans. Even in the dusky light, the bright yellows, pinks, and greens were garish against the dark stain of his blood. He’d shot himself in the head; the gun rested quietly in his open hand.

  I called 911 and paced around the house, frantically looking for something to do with my hands. The cops who arrived on the scene found me in the kitchen making brioche.

  They led me into the living room and told me to sit on the couch. Before they began their barrage of questions, I told them to call O’Connor, he was connected with the case. One of them beeped O’Connor on a cell phone and the preliminary questioning began. No, I’d no idea why he was in my bedroom with a bullet through his brain. No, I wasn’t here when he shot himself, I was at a funeral.

  In the background I heard the thump of police shoes on my hardwood floors and blinked in reflex from the occasional flash of the cameras as they catalogued Brent’s final pose and the meager contents of my bedroom. I saw how stark my life would look once those pictures were developed: old catalogues strewn haphazardly on the floor by the bed, no pictures on the walls, the dingy paint job.

  I tuned out the questions and started quietly crying, playing and replaying that bleak and lonely newsreel in my head. Not two days ago I was sneering at Teri Baxter for her gadget-filled concrete bunker, but at least she was reaching out in her limited way for something to touch her. I’d lived here an entire year and the only things in the house that reflected my personality were an espresso machine, a Kitchen Aid mixer, an ice cream maker, ten copper pots, enough wire whips, wooden spoons, and spatulas to outfit a small restaurant, and a quilt soaked with Brent’s blood.

  Brent was essentially a shallow, insecure man, who in an effort to prove he wasn’t a hick often showed up at work in the most outlandish Italian couture. But put the man in a kitchen and all his insecurity melted away. I’ve never worked with someone who was so excited about the entire experience of dining. Sometimes I’d go to the produce market just to hear him shout with glee when he’d find the perfect green beans or the ripest strawberries. Once in the kitchen, cleaning, chopping, and sautéing those green beans was almost a religious experience. He was the first chef in San Francisco to open up the kitchen so diners could actually see people cooking. Sometimes he’d put tables in the kitchen, unifying the chef and the patron, serving up those beans right from the sauté pan to the dinner plate.

  Images of Brent passed through my mind: scouring the farms of Sonoma for the freshest goat cheese; chortling with pleasure when drinking a fine Bordeaux; eating the first ripe peaches of the season, the juice running down his chin. And the final image, Brent dead in my bedroom, his brains curdled all over my pillows. I sobbed even harder.

  I don’t know how long I lay in a ball on the sofa whimpering and crying. When it finally played itself out, I opened my eyes to see O’Connor sitting across from me with a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked grimly.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen to wash your face first. You look like hell.”

  He motioned the cop standing next to him to follow us into the kitchen. He wasn’t kidding. Catching myself in the dining room mirror, I saw that my crying jag had loosened all that expensive makeup. The beiges, pinks, greens, and browns were running down my face in variegated stripes. The espresso machine hissed and chortled in the background while I scrubbed my face clean until it was parched from the dish soap.

  After I dried my face on a dishtowel, O’Connor led me into the living room and stood by the front door.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing me a warm mug of milk. He probably thought my stomach couldn’t handle any coffee. He was right. Holding the door open with his other hand, he gestured me outside. “Let’s go talk in my car. Give the guys some room to maneuver.”

  We walked out to his car and sat down in the front seat. We didn’t say anything for about ten minutes. I was shivering, from shock I suppose, and the warmth of the milk and the heat from his car seats made me feel a whole lot better. I finished my milk and turned to face him. His hands were in his lap, clenched into fat, mean fists.

  “Ryan, this isn’t good. I brought you out here for two reasons. One, I want them to search your house without you in there potentially destroying or concealing evidence. They found some men’s clothing hung up in your closet with Brent’s initials monogrammed on them and men’s toiletries in your bathroom. This obviously implicates you in whatever happened in there.”

  I stared at him in disbelief and started to exit the car. I wanted to see this for myself. He grabbed my wrist, hard. If I’d struggled with him he would have broken it. I shut the door with my free hand and relaxed. He let go. The milk started churning in my stomach, and I thought I was going to be sick for the second time in four days.

  “My God, O’Connor, you can’t think I would have anything to do with Brent. What with Jim and everything, I cou
ldn’t possibly, I just….” I could feel myself starting to get hysterical, not even speaking in sentences, but throwing out words and phrases like, “betrayed,” “couldn’t even think about,” “hating everything and everyone,” rambling on and on about me, Jim, and my deep unhappiness after the divorce.

  Reminiscent of my scene with Teri, O’Connor broke the fit by taking my chin in one of his humongous hands and forcing me to make eye contact with him. After locking eyes for a long moment, I broke away. Crouching into a ball, I glued myself to the door, the L-shaped handle digging a big bruise in my back I’d have for days.

  “You okay?” O’Connor asked gently.

  I nodded.

  “I want to hear your story privately. I know you, and I find it damn near impossible to believe you were having an affair with Brown. For one thing, you’re too old. From what you’ve told me, all his affairs haven’t been a day over twenty-five.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I thought about all that gray in my hair before my makeover.

  “Age has its privileges in this case. Be grateful you don’t fit the bill. For another, I know you’ve been pretty busted up over your divorce. Now, I want you to tell me everything you did from the time you discovered Perez until now.”

  I told him everything, well, almost everything. I didn’t mention seeing Gilberto at the paint store or at Rosa’s apartment. He hadn’t killed Carlos.

  “Did you have any idea that the restaurant was in financial shit?”

  “No, Brent never said anything to me about watching my food cost. Looks where he lives…lived. His kids go to private schools. He drives, drove a Porsche. I thought we were raking it in.”

  “What was the address of that taqueria?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. It’s on Mission between 16th and 17th. There’s no sign and the awning is in shreds. Just look for the guy with the cleaver aimed at your head.”

  O’Connor smacked my arm. “Would you be serious?”