“Sure, I do. It’s very important background, you know, sheds light on what he’s become.” That was the truth.
Lela stared at him, then nodded. “Well, there was this pretty girl. She had hair, oh, my God, all the way down to her waist. Must have been third grade. She was the president of the class. Somebody squirted a water gun at her hair. Only it wasn’t water. It was gasoline. And there were some matches.” Lela opened her pale eyes wide.
“Her hair caught on fire.” She was silent for a long time.
“What happened?” Jason asked.
“Oh, she could have died, but she was all right. They had a big investigation, and they just couldn’t prove anything. Years later Tro told me he knew how to make people do whatever he wanted. He used to tell the kids he’d kill them, and their parents, and their brothers and sisters. Cut them up in little pieces so nobody could ever find them. Poor suckers. They believed him.”
She remembered the drink in her hand, took a greedy swallow. “He was always talking about getting even, about revenge, you know. And the thing was she didn’t do a thing to him. That little girl didn’t keep him out, or do anything to him. He just wanted to hurt her because she got too much attention.”
She peered out the window at the overgrown bougainvillea that was the view. It was so big it wrapped around the back of the house as if it were going to take over. Jason followed her gaze. The blossoms were the deepest purple he’d ever seen.
“I didn’t know that when I took him in. I knew he set fires, of course. Went kind of wild when his brother died. But he seemed better when he came back from—you know where. And he never hurt anybody. I thought if he went to a good school and made friends with some nice people, he’d be all right.…”
“Where’s you-know-where?” Jason asked.
“I know where, but you can’t know where. See, I was right. He went to a good school, got away from some bad influences, and he turned out, like you said. Write that part.” She gestured at his notebook with her glass.
“Sure I will,” Jason said. “Thank you for talking to me. You helped a lot.” He had to go now. “Could you give me Troland’s address?”
“Course I will.” Without hesitation, she went to a book by the phone that had faded blue flowers on the cover, and read out the address. “It’s a nicer place than this, but do you think he’d help me?—I shouldn’t say that. He sent me to Disneyland last month for three days. I think he wanted to stay here. Cleaned the whole place. I couldn’t believe it.” She shook her head, still couldn’t.
“Well, he’s something of a mystery. Keeps to himself.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She waved at the dusty furniture with one hand. “This was only a tenth, a hundredth of what I had.”
She fell silent, turning her unfocused eyes back to Jason. “All that time I thought my sister married the jerk. He hurt her bad and she died of cancer. But the truth is all men stink. Hah, you could write a book about my story,” she muttered.
“I’d like to hear it. But I have to go.” Jason looked at his watch. Now it really was getting late.
“That’s what they all say.” Her face crumpled.
Jason put his pen away. He was always telling his students you have to listen to the things they don’t say as well as the things they do. Poor woman. She’d probably been drinking all morning. She couldn’t even get up to walk him to the door when he left.
41
Emma got off the treadmill when the odometer read three and a half miles and hobbled to the fridge. There wasn’t much of anything in it, and most definitely no club soda. She was covered with sweat and shivered slightly, annoyed at herself for not stopping to pick up some water on the way home.
Checking the clock on the wall, she was also irritated that she had left a message for Jason hours ago, and he hadn’t called her back yet. She was sure she hadn’t heard the phone ring. And the machine still didn’t have any messages on it. If the machine wasn’t working, she’d start getting complaints pretty quickly from people whose calls she hadn’t returned. She hoped Ronnie hadn’t tried to reach her.
She loved to run, always had, even as a kid. It was a natural high, gave her energy, made her feel exhilarated. That afternoon she had run farther and faster than she ever had before. She was now exhausted.
Where the hell was Jason? She drank some water from the tap. People said there was bacteria in it now from all the sewage in upstate towns leaching into the city’s reservoirs.
It didn’t taste too bad, but Emma didn’t like drinking it. She went back to the fridge with the glass in her hand. Although she’d had lunch, she knew she’d be hungry again soon. All that exercise. Even after she stopped, the perspiration was still pouring off her. She opened the door and studied the contents of the refrigerator, distressed at the way it seemed to symbolize her life. It looked like the refrigerator of someone who didn’t have a family. There were some tired lettuce and carrots in the crisper. A lot of half-used jars of things scattered around on the shelves. Some unopened, out-of-date yogurt, and cottage cheese she always bought but never ate.
The problem was they didn’t eat many meals together, and when they did, it was never anything she liked. Jason complained when she brought home cheese, or any kind of dairy product, salami, baloney, liverwurst or pâté. Red meat was out. So was duck, foie gras, chicken or calves’ liver. They had bread, but no butter. Pasta with tomato sauce, but no shellfish, no squid, no sausage, no anchovies.
Other forbidden foods were omelets with bacon—omelets with anything in fact—osso buco, artichokes with hollandaise. Emma liked hollandaise so thick a spoon could stand straight up in it. She began to salivate thinking about all the foods she liked and Jason felt would kill him if he so much as encountered them in his refrigerator. She had eaten a lot of strange things in her childhood. Her mother was always leaving the base to find the markets where the local foods were sold, unlike the other wives who stuck to the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Campbell’s Tomato Soup they could find from home in the canteen.
Food was the way her mother kept the evenings civil. Every night a food surprise. Emma bought the same way. She went to the markets on Broadway, and always bought things fresh: arugula, a chicken breast, a few bananas. Only healthy things, and just enough for one night. If she tried to slip in anything interesting, Jason left it on the plate. He didn’t want to die of clogged arteries before he finished the work he was meant to do.
She sipped at the water. Well, Jason wasn’t here now. She could go out and get anything she wanted, have a fat fest and run the extra calories off tomorrow. She closed the refrigerator door and went into the bedroom. The muscles in her legs were a little trembly. She probably hadn’t given herself enough cooling-down time. If she walked slowly to the store, it would be better than sitting down.
She showered, considering it. Should she sit and wait for Jason, who might not call her back for many more hours, or go out for club soda and forbidden food before it got dark? She put conditioner on her hair and combed it through, rubbed body lotion into her skin. As she pulled on faded jeans and a sweatshirt, she decided to go out. She stuffed her money and her key in her pocket. She didn’t bother to take her handbag with her driver’s license and credit cards in it. She left the apartment, closing the door carefully.
As she waited for the elevator, she ran her fingers through her damp hair. She had been too hungry to take the time to dry it. She looked up at the elevator, which she could see on the top floor. It was the old-fashioned kind, an open cage that hadn’t been changed from the day it was installed decades ago.
The stairs going up went around in a big square, so everyone could see everyone else coming in and out of their doors, and what they were carrying. From any level one could look all the way up to the top of the building where there was a stained-glass skylight, like a kaleidoscope with only one picture. While she waited for the elevator, Emma looked up at it. When she reached the lobby she looked at it again. She could tell what kind of day
it was and sometimes the hour, too, by the way the light came through the colored glass.
The doorman opened the heavy wrought-iron doors for her.
“Hello, Mrs. Frank, going for a jog?”
Emma shook her head with a smile. “I did that already. Just going to the store.”
“I’ll watch you down the street.”
“Thanks.”
He always said that. He was missing most of his teeth and was hardly five feet tall. But he had been a marine and kept a baseball bat beside his chair. Emma had no doubt that he would use it if something happened. It was quiet now, though. No sirens, no homeless.
Emma stepped outside and greedily breathed the fresh salty air from the river. Her building was on the corner of Riverside Drive, two long blocks from Broadway where all the stores were. She began walking slowly, testing the muscles in her legs. The ache went very deep. It was hard to imagine people running in the marathon for twenty-six miles at a stretch.
She wondered how it felt as they were doing it, and if it felt anything like this afterwards? After running only three and a half miles, she had to admit she didn’t feel all that wonderful. As she walked, she glanced at the trees which were in full leaf now, noticed the few cars that passed. Riverside and West End Avenue were quiet streets. Broadway was where all the trouble was. She considered what she would buy. Something really bad, with a crusty French bread.
As she got to the corner of West End Avenue, she decided to open a bottle of wine. She passed the thick old tree that partially blocked the view to the intersection. A car was parked in the space in front of the fire hydrant. Emma watched the traffic light change to green, and had prepared to speed up to make it when an arm snaked around her from the back.
“Hi, Emma.”
“Wha—” She jerked back and the arm tightened, wrenching her shoulder.
“Don’t get upset. I’m not going to hurt you.” The voice was calm, very polite.
“Ow.” A hard object was shoved into her stomach, pushing the air out of her lungs.
She saw it. It was a gun.
“Ah—” Her knees buckled.
“Get in the car, Emma, or I will shoot you.”
Now she could see that the car door was open. Blue car. Her knees sagged. She couldn’t stand up. A scream gathered in her throat trying to take shape, but she had no breath. Her mouth wouldn’t move.
“Uh, ah—”
“Not a sound,” he said. “It’s gonna to be fine. It’s gonna be great. Don’t worry about a thing.”
He moved her into the car as if she were a sack of laundry, then hit her on the head with the butt of the gun, hit her maybe a little harder than he meant to. The thunk was quite loud and startled him. She slumped over in the front seat.
He checked her pulse to make sure she was still alive, then covered her with a pale blue blanket, tucking it in carefully so it wouldn’t fall off. Then he looked around quickly, closed the door, and walked around to the driver’s seat.
“Say good-bye, Emma,” he murmured, patting the blue blanket as he drove off.
42
Sometimes April was so busy she didn’t have time to think about Sanchez, and sometimes, like right now, she found herself listening to his voice. He was on the phone having some kind of conversation with his mother. He was speaking in his fish-in-water language, and said her name.
“Sí, Mama.”
Sanchez had a special tone of voice when he talked to his mother. April had mixed feelings about it. Sanchez told April that when she talked to her mother, it always sounded like they were arguing, no matter what they were talking about. When he talked to his mother, it sounded like she was center of the earth to him.
Spanish people were not so different from Chinese, April thought. Both spoil their sons rotten, give them everything, and never get mad at them. Fix it so when they marry, their wives sound like scolding nags and can never make them as happy.
“Sí, Mama,” he said again.
And then something something else about la casa and something something else she didn’t get at all. They were on the four-to-eleven shift that day. Maybe he was telling her when he was getting home.
By now April was beginning to pick up a few of the words. It wasn’t a hard language like Chinese, which had a lot of different dialects and words that changed their meaning just by the register and tone in which they were spoken. She had a lot of paperwork to do and tried not to listen. Soon she was thinking about it again.
It was a good thing that Sanchez had respect for his mama, but a bad thing that he hung on her every word. Pretty soon she was speculating about how Spanish women were lower than Chinese. Chinese kept their pride in their face. Men and women, same thing. Both had pride, both had face. All Chinese spent time on saving face, protecting face, building face. It was kind of like face was money in the bank, and you could accrue interest on it, or lose it all, if you didn’t watch and protect it every day, and invest it just right. Jimmy lost face when his girl dumped him and he had to go home on the subway.
Spanish had their pride in a different body part. They didn’t care about face. Spanish had their pride in their penises. So only men could have it. You could see by the way they walked and talked that was where the pride was. Women were lower, had no pride. They walked around with their clothes too tight and their big behinds bouncing up and down to get men’s attention. Lipstick too bright, eyes too dark. All so they could attract a man and get some pride from him. Pah. And then when they got one, if he was a true Spanish man, he’d have the red-eye disease, be crazy jealous over her big, jiggling bottom, afraid every minute some other man would take it away.
Still, Sanchez went home to take care of his mama after his marriage broke up and his father died. And he was not ashamed of it. That was like Chinese, but not like Caucasians, who ran away from their parents in a big stampede as soon as their hormones changed. Other people just did their sex business and went home, didn’t have to make a big deal about it.
April couldn’t help wondering about Sanchez. Why did his marriage break up? Why were all the women he knew named Maria? It was hard to tell if they were sisters, or aunts, or cousins, or girlfriends, or what. Even Sanchez’s ex-wife was called Maria. That was another difference between the two cultures. Each Chinese had his own name, not like anybody else’s name. Parents put together whatever words they wanted. Happy Face. Free of Sorrow. Jade Luck. Tomorrow’s Chance. Chinese named their children like round-eyes named racehorses.
April’s Chinese name was Happy Thinking, as a kind of counteractive against the way she wrinkled her nose just after birth, as if she came into the world with a bad smell in her nose and was thus fated to spend her whole life questioning everything. Her mother liked to tell how she called her daughter Happy Thinking to trick the Gods into changing April’s fate.
“Didn’t work,” Sai lamented. Her unlucky daughter was still sniffing out the worst in everybody. She also liked to say she was afraid her only child had too much un-tempered yin to get married, which April believed was a contradiction in terms.
“You can’t be too much woman to be woman,” April told her.
“Not woman like person,” Sai argued. “Woman like down thinking. Settle for less when you could have husband, babies. Not gun in hangbag.”
“Handbag.”
April’s phone rang just when she was wondering which Maria Sanchez was now having his sex business with before he went home to his mother.
“Detective Woo?”
“Yes, speaking,” April said. It was a voice she knew, but couldn’t place.
“This is Jason Frank.”
“Oh.” The doctor who didn’t call himself a doctor.
“I’m calling from San Diego.”
San Diego again? “What are you doing there?” she asked with surprise. It was nine o’clock at night. What made him think she’d be on duty?
“I’m doing your job, Detective. Do you have anything new?” The edge to his voice made her bri
stle. Curiosity wrestled with insult as she struggled for an appropriate reply.
“I can’t do a job that I’m not authorized to do, Dr. Frank,” she said more sharply than she meant to. What did the man think he was doing in San Diego? He must be crazy.
“I’m sorry,” he amended hastily. “I meant the police, not you.”
“Okay.” She accepted his apology. “Then the answer is no. I tried to call both you and your wife, and neither of you has returned my calls.”
“You called my wife?” Now he was surprised.
“Was that a wrong thing to do, Doctor? I thought it might help to get her opinion of who might be sending her these letters.”
“Well, I think I might have something.…”
“Oh? What do you have?” Crazier and crazier. How could he have something?
“I have a name, but I can’t locate the guy. He doesn’t seem to be around. Do you have any suggestions?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” April demanded.
“I thought I’d pay him a visit, but he doesn’t seem to be around.”
Pay him a visit? Was he crazy? April’s heart constricted with anxiety. This was her case. Sergeant Joyce had given it to her and told her to be diplomatic. She had failed, and now the doctor was out there looking for some letter-writing lunatic on his own. What if he found him and got his head bashed in?
“You can’t do that,” April said loudly. “Come home, get a lawyer. Get an injunction against him. Dr. Frank, please listen to me. You can’t help your wife this way.”
“There may be more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He may have done some … other things.”
April took a deep breath. “What kind of things, Doctor?”
“I talked with his aunt. He has a psychological profile that definitely indicates he was a troubled boy. He set fires. He threatened other children. He may have been institutionalized somewhere. Maybe nobody’s been paying any official attention to him for a while. Maybe they have.”
Burning Time Page 20