Wall of Glass

by Walter Satterthwait

“Are you sure?”

  “Fairly. From the way she talked, it was the last thing that would’ve entered her mind. She seemed much more interested in inviting me to the Toad Garden for lunch.”

  “Trying to ply you with Perigord truffles and Dom Perignon eighty-three.”

  “I refuse to surrender myself for anything less than the sixty-four.”

  “A man of principle. So what are your plans for the rest of the day? Working, or sporting with the fair Felice and her magic manacles?”

  “I take it back.”

  “What?”

  “What I said before, about your turning a phrase. Magic manacles?”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I don’t really have any. But I suppose you do.”

  “Why not talk to Silvia Griego again? So far, she’s the only one who seems to know anything.”

  “Yeah, but not about the necklace.”

  “So find out what she does know and use it as leverage to learn more about Biddle.”

  “And how, exactly, do I do that?”

  “Exercise that notorious charm of yours. The one that’s working so well on Felice Leighton.”

  “Griego’s busy at the gallery, setting up for an opening tomorrow. I won’t be able to talk to her until tonight. What do you suggest I do until then?”

  “Call Felice, why don’t you, and tell her that Woolworth’s just got in a new shipment of heavy-duty nylon rope.”

  WHAT I DID DO that afternoon, after I checked the messages on the machine—three from Rita, one from Felice Leighton—was drive over to Tomasita’s on Guadalupe and treat myself to a beef burrito with green chile and a Corona beer. Then I drove back to Carla Chavez’s house and asked her where I could locate her brother, Benito. She was reluctant at first, but after I explained that it might help me locate whoever had killed Biddle, she gave me his address in Las Mujeres, and the name of the local bar where he often hung out. I gave her another twenty dollar bill.

  I found Silvia Griego’s address in the phone book, and that night, at eight-thirty, I drove over there.

  She lived in another adobe compound, this one on Cerro Gordo, a long dirt road that winds through an area that the realtors like to call Santa Fe’s Fashionable East Side.

  In the asphalt driveway there was a BMW, bright shiny red beneath a floodlight attached to the side of the house.

  I know I parked the Subaru beside the BMW; I can remember that part. And I can remember leaving the car, walking up through the piñon and juniper to the gate, unlatching it, and stepping onto the brick walkway that ran diagonally across the courtyard.

  After that, what must have happened is that I walked up to the front door and found it ajar, or at least unlocked. I must’ve pushed it open, and probably I stood there for a moment, wondering what to do and looking fairly stupid. Probably I called out Silvia Griego’s name. Maybe I heard something in reply. Whether I did or not, I must’ve gone into the house, and inside there, in the hallway, is where it happened.

  It’s called retrograde amnesia, and I’m told that it’s fairly common with a sudden, concussive blow to the skull.

  TEN

  THE FIRST THING I realized when I opened my eyes was that I was lying on a brick floor. The second thing I realized was that, any moment now, I was going to be sick. Extremely, elaborately sick. Small parachutes of pain were opening at the top of my head and fluttering down through my brain, and every time they landed at the base of my skull, my stomach gave another lurch.

  I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees and looked around. A mistake; the parachutes became packing crates. I didn’t know where I was—whose house, what city, what universe—and I didn’t care. I stood up, head pounding, legs wobbling, and set out to find a toilet. My progress through the unfamiliar house was not lacking in dignity. I don’t think I clawed at the walls for support or bumped into the furniture more than eight or nine times.

  At last, down a hallway from the living room, I found a bathroom, knelt down, and got rid of dinner. I flushed the toilet. Then I stayed there for a time, forehead resting on arms and crossed atop the bowl.

  After a long while, I sat back and began to take stock.

  No bones seemed to be broken, but I had a welt on the back of my skull the size of a corncob. I stood up, still a bit woozy, and lumbered to the mirror. I looked remarkably chipper for someone who’d just spent a lifetime leaning over a toilet. Both pupils were the same size, and neither seemed particularly constricted. Good. Concussion, yes, but no hematomas spreading around inside there like clusters of dark gray tubers.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I turned on the cold water, splashed some on my face, sucked some up from cupped hands to wash away the taste of bile. Dried my face and hands with a small pink towel hanging to my right. I glanced around the bathroom and noticed, for the first time, that the toilet was pink, the same shade as the towel. So were the sink and the bathtub and the bathmat atop the blue tiled floor. The translucent plastic shower curtain was printed with a bright blue floral pattern, and it was pulled shut.

  But not all the way, because a flat-soled woman’s shoe was jutting out from one end, and there was a foot in it.

  I jerked back the curtain.

  Someone had hurt her badly. Her face had been battered, her cashmere sweater torn, a white rounded rim of shoulder poking through the rent. Silver-brown hair lay in a wild tangle across the pale pink porcelain, and to the left, just behind her temple, it was limp and wet with thickening blood. I felt for a pulse at her throat and found none. Already her flesh was losing its warmth and taking on that sad unmistakable final slackness.

  I turned from her and left the room. Maybe I blacked out again for a few moments, or maybe sometime since then I’ve blocked those moments out, but the next thing I remember I was in the kitchen ripping open cupboards, looking for a bottle. You’re not supposed to drink after a head injury, but you’re not supposed to find attractive women beaten to death either.

  I found some Stolichnaya in the freezer, tore off the cap, drank straight from the bottle, felt the ice-cold liquid turn miraculously warm as it hit my stomach. I got myself a glass, filled it halfway, and sat down with it, head hanging, at the round kitchen table.

  I couldn’t think about her, not just then. Just then, it seemed to me, I had to make a decision. I could get out of there, I could call the cops, or I could take a look around.

  Tomorrow. At Tara.

  I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. Eight-thirty arrival. Figure a few minutes finding my way through the house. Ten or fifteen minutes in the bathroom before I discovered her. A few more minutes in the kitchen. That left me unconscious for only ten minutes, maximum.

  Whoever had clubbed me was long gone. If any of the neighbors had seen anything, they’d remember it just as well in an hour as they would now.

  That was a rationalization, and not a very good one. Any cop will tell you that the sooner he talks to a witness, the more likely he is to get information. He’ll also tell you that he doesn’t much appreciate your messing around with a crime scene.

  But I was reacting—to the woman’s death, to the blow I’d received—and I was disguising it to myself as making a decision.

  And what I decided to do was take a look around.

  I STARTED in the kitchen. Because I was already there and because some women use the kitchen as an impromptu office, grabbing whatever’s handy to jot down phone numbers, addresses, reminders.

  Under the sink, I found a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves and tugged them on. A tight fit, but workable. The last crime solved with fingerprints in the States probably took place back in 1933. But the police, traditionalists all, still dusted religiously for latents, and I didn’t want them to find mine.

  Nothing had been scrawled on the cover of the phone book or on any of the pages inside. A small white memo pad lay on the counter below the wall phone, but it was blank. I held it obliquely up to the light, looking for impressions in the paper, just li
ke they do in the movies, and it was still blank.

  After a few minutes I began to get the feeling that the woman had seldom set foot in here. The place possessed every conceivable household marvel, each of them spotlessly clean. There was a food processor, a blender, a coffeemaker, a toaster oven, a microwave with a digital timer display and enough dials and switches to pilot a space shuttle. In the refrigerator door was an ice-cube dispenser, so you could freshen up your gimlet without chilling your pinkies.

  But inside, in the lower section, the only food was a jar of Scottish marmalade and, in the vegetable bin, a few limp stalks of celery. No eggs, no bread, no milk. The freezer above was full, but with neat stacks of expensive TV dinners. No leftovers.

  One cupboard contained dinnerware, plates and crystal glasses; the other held a box of Triscuits, a can of coffee, a box of coffee filters, another jar of marmalade, this one unopened, and two cans of chicken bouillon.

  Silverware in one drawer, utensils in the other. Everything looked new and untouched.

  In the dishrack, a single coffee cup, a single fork.

  Even the garbage was immaculate. A plastic trash basket with a carefully installed white plastic bag. Inside, a used coffee filter and an opened TV dinner carton. Inside that, a disposable plastic plate, scraped clean.

  The room could’ve been a stage set. Silvia Griego had apparently not been a homebody. When she got hungry, she either ate out somewhere or she tossed one of the frozen dinners into the microwave and nuked it.

  All the electrical outlets were being used, hooked up to the different appliances. I turned them all on, one by one, and they all worked. She hadn’t installed one of those cute little plastic safes that masquerade as outlets.

  I tried the living room next. Wall-to-wall carpeting, an antique sofa, two Queen Anne chairs, two large colorful kachinas on the mantel over the square brick fireplace. An oak coffee table supporting a single copy of Artspace magazine. A largish oak bar, the bottles inside all very expensive and all precisely aligned. Behind the doors of a wide oak cabinet, a Bang & Olufsen stereo system and a slim collection of record albums, Mr. Sinatra heavily represented. Paintings on the wall, one of which looked like, and probably was, a genuine Remington. The frames, of course, oak; a good-sized grove had been leveled to furnish this room. Two tall—oak—bookshelves, one packed with books on Southwest history and art, the other with paperback novels, mostly romances. Later, if I still had the time, and I still hadn’t found anything, I’d take the books out and riffle through them.

  I peeked behind the paintings, tested the outlets, checked the furniture. Beneath one of the sofa cushions, I found a dime. Progress.

  I skipped the bathroom, blanking my mind as best I could to what lay in there. Skipped the room opposite, the guest bedroom, it looked like, and even more unused and sterile than the rest of the house. Moved on to the last door. The master bedroom.

  Lace curtains. A queen-sized bed. A slight depression in the pale yellow down comforter and in the pale yellow pillow bunched up against the antique wooden headboard. Perhaps she’d lain down for a nap. Or perhaps she’d watched some television—a large stereo TV sat opposite on the broad oak dresser. A remote-control unit lay on the nightstand beside a half-filled glass. I picked up the glass, sniffed it. Scotch, single malt. The ice had melted, but even through the rubber gloves it was still cool. I set it back down.

  I did the dresser first, working it like a burglar, opening the drawers from the bottom and, for the time being, leaving them open. On the left side, sweaters and blouses, and rising up to me as I poked and prodded, the scent of Chanel. Rebuking me for trespassing. Above, in the next drawers, lingerie, panties, bras, hose, scarves. Everything simple, unadorned, functional. No peek-a-boo nighties, no whalebone corsets.

  I found two cameras in the bottom drawer, right side. A Nikon and a Polaroid, both containing partial rolls of film. There were a couple of photo albums, and I leafed quickly through them. Silvia Griego, from young girlhood to womanhood. Only one other familiar face: Felice Leighton, making much the same trip.

  Nothing interesting in the remaining drawers. I pushed them all shut and went into the adjoining bathroom.

  It was the one place, apparently, where she’d let her sense of neatness slip. The mirror, a long one atop the makeup counter, needed cleaning. On the counter, a fine dusting of talcum powder lay over the moisturizers, creams, lipsticks, eyeliners, perfumes, and colognes. The cap was missing from the toothpaste and the tube had been squeezed from the sides, not carefully rolled up from the bottom the way parents, and other maniacs, are forever insisting it should be. One toothbrush, not too vigorously cleaned after use and tossed to the side of the sink. A woman’s razor on the rim of the pink porcelain tub, its blade flecked with dark stubby hairs.

  In the medicine cabinet, aspirin, Alka Seltzer, Maalox, Pepto-Bismol, a plastic diaphragm holder with its diaphragm in place, a tube of Ortho-Novum spermicide, a bottle of Valium that had been refilled a week before and was now half-empty.

  I went back into the bedroom and into the closet. Smell of Chanel stronger here. Handbags and purses arrayed along the top shelf. Checked through them all. Nothing.

  Dresses and coats, three of them fur, hanging from the rack. Shoes in neat formation on the wooden floor. Nothing slipped away in any pockets, nothing tucked away in any shoes.

  I came back out and sat down on the bed. I knew that I’d missed something, seen something important and let it slip away.

  Mentally I replayed the search. From the kitchen through the living room to here.

  I got up, stepped over to the dresser, and pulled open the drawer. I took out the albums and leafed through them again. None of the prints were Polaroids.

  And yet there was the camera. It didn’t look like a new model. Some of the current roll had already been shot.

  So where were the prints?

  Maybe she’d tossed them.

  All of them?

  As I sat there mulling this over, it occurred to me that there were other items missing from the house. Insurance forms, mortgage papers, tax records, bills and receipts, all the dry dreary paperwork that serves to establish our existence in the eyes of our Lord, the Banker.

  Maybe they were in her office, along with the Polaroids. Maybe they were in a safe-deposit box.

  But I was here, not at her office, not at her bank.

  Work on the assumption that they were here, too.

  I looked at my watch. An hour had passed. Give it another thirty minutes.

  It took me twenty to discover that two of the floorboards in the closet, below the row of shoes, were loose. I lifted them up, reached down into the hollow, and my fingers found the metal strongbox.

  What have we here, Silvia?

  I wrestled it up, carted it over to the bed, sat down with it on my lap. It was locked. One of those heavy steel padlocks with a four digit combination on the bottom. The numbers read 4832, and that provided me a certain amount of optimism.

  What you’re supposed to do, when you lock one of these things, is spin all the number wheels back to zero. But people are lazy. What they often do is spin just one of the wheels, and because they read from left to right, they usually spin the first wheel on the left. This is a snippet of information that professional burglars find most useful.

  Professional burglars and me. I spun the left wheel up one digit, to five, then jerked at the lock. It didn’t budge. I spun it up to six and jerked again, with the same results. I worked my way up to nine, then back down to three. On two, the padlock snapped open.

  IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK in the morning when Rita opened the front door and rolled back her chair to let me in. She said, “You said it was tiny.”

  I shut the door behind me. “What was tiny?”

  “Your bruise.”

  I reached up and touched it. “It was,” I said. “It grew. Got anything to drink?”

  She frowned quickly, involuntarily, probably thinking what I already knew, that I’d
had enough. “There’s Jack Daniel’s and ice on the coffee table,” she said.

  “Ah,” I said. “The Total Woman.”

  I’d been trying for light and sophisticated, William Powell to Myrna Loy. But I saw Rita blink at me from the wheelchair, shrink slightly away; and I heard in my voice, almost as an echo, the snarl. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I took a deep breath, let it out. “Jesus, Rita, I’m sorry.”

  Lips compressed, not looking at me, she shook her head. “Come on into the living room.”

  I followed her down the hallway, into the room, and across the floor. As she turned the chair around, I sat down on the sofa. There was an ice bucket beside the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and the bottle of Glenlivet, and I flipped open the lid, grabbed some ice, and plonked it into the glasses. I poured her a Scotch, poured myself a bourbon. I didn’t spill a drop; she was watching me.

  She was wearing a loose-fitting black robe of some silk-like material that buttoned up to her throat, and she looked like she’d been quietly reading a book all evening, rather than sleeping soundly, as she actually had been. Until I’d called her, half an hour ago.

  I handed her the drink, sat back, and took a hit of mine. It tasted the way it’d been tasting all evening, ever since I got back to my house from Silvia Griego’s. It tasted bitter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head again, but this time her eyes met mine. We were going to pretend that I’d never said it. She sipped at the Scotch. “So,” she said. “Griego is dead.”

  I nodded. It had been the only thing I’d told her over the phone, before I asked if I could come over.

  She said, “And you’re feeling guilty.”

  “Yeah.” I drank some more bourbon. “I scared her this afternoon. She called somebody. He went to her house and he killed her.”

  “You don’t know for a fact that she called someone. And even if she did, it wasn’t you who killed her.”

  “It was me who scared her. If I hadn’t, she’d still be alive.”

  She sipped at her Scotch, looking at me for a moment. At last she said, “Joshua, I understand how you feel, and I’m sorry for you. You know I am. But if you’re determined to take all this guilt upon yourself, there’s nothing I can say. You do know, I hope, that you have no moral responsibility for what happened.”