by Jan Burke
29
AT FIRST, the being on the bed — if it was a being — didn’t seem to be Roberta. Her face was ash gray, relieved only by the black stitches on her lower lip and left eyebrow. The left side of her face was swollen. Her head was swathed in a white bandage. Tubes led in and out of her. An ICU nurse — calm, busy, the one to whom that burden of “intensive care” would fall — was making an adjustment to an IV. A man whom Becky was introducing as the neurosurgeon stood nearby, watching monitors. In the midst of all of this, Roberta seemed little and far too still.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“Only a few minutes, please,” the neurosurgeon was saying.
A few minutes. How were we to take this in — to begin to believe what we were seeing — in a few minutes? What could I give her in that amount of time? I looked at her misshapen face.
Roberta?
I heard Becky saying it aloud. Becky the emergency physician. She was better at this than we were. She saw people who might be mistaken for dead all the time, right?
“Roberta, it’s Becky. Ivy and Irene are here with me.”
Nothing.
“Well, I guess I’ll call Lisa and tell her we’ll have to rent that movie on videotape, since you insist on lying around here,” Ivy said. “Wonder if they’ll let me bring popcorn into the ICU?”
Roberta’s hand twitched. Becky looked over at the neurosurgeon, who seemed interested, but said nothing.
“I’m going to stay nearby, Roberta,” Ivy said, her voice shaking as she added, “Here’s Irene.”
Here’s Irene. Irene’s tongue is cleaving to the roof of her mouth.
Find some way to encourage her, I told myself. Shouldn’t be tough. What would she say? I suddenly remembered her office.
“Hello, Robbie,” I said, and the hand twitched again. “There are all of these little strays that are going to be worried about you. Who else can they confide in? Just Robbie. There isn’t any room in here to hang their artwork. Shall I tell them you’ll be back soon?”
Her eyes flickered open, just for the briefest moment. I hoped she didn’t really see me in that moment, hated to think my terrified face would follow her into unconsciousness. But the neurosurgeon made some kind of sound that I took to mean “good.”
I told her that she was missing a chance to meet Frank, and that Ivy had already been caught staring at his buns when he went to get a drink of water, but outside of a laugh from Becky and Ivy, there was no response. I stepped back, and Becky took over. She was calling her Robbie, too.
The neurosurgeon smiled at Ivy and me, then made a shooing sign at us. We stepped out into the hallway, leaving Becky behind.
“I’M GOING TO STICK around here as long as possible,” Ivy said, tears welling up. “God, she looks awful!”
No argument from me. Ivy walked with us as far as the front doors of the hospital. It was dark outside.
“Anything we can do for you?” Frank asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll fax that stuff on Nadine to you tomorrow, Irene.”
“Thanks. Have you read it?”
She shook her head. “Just glanced through it.”
“What’s the last place to request a transcript?”
“Nowhere. She didn’t finish her master’s.”
“What?”
“Dropped out. Never showed up for the fall semester. I guess Andre really hurt her that second time around.”
“SO TELL ME what’s on your mind,” Frank said as we began the drive home.
I tried to go over all I had learned that day. It had been a long day, and when the story was starting to take longer than the ride home, he took an unexpected detour.
“Keep talking,” he said. “We can drive around for a while. This way you won’t get distracted or attacked by twenty-pound tomcats or hear phones or pagers. Besides, we’ve got a sitter.”
“Good old Jack. Hope he doesn’t feel like we’re taking advantage of him.”
“Are you kidding? He gets all of the benefits of having pets, with none of the vet bills, food bills, or shovel duty. Quit worrying about him. Go back to your story.”
“I can’t help but believe that what happened in town this past week — Ben’s suicide, Allan’s resignation, Lucas’s death, this attack on Roberta — all have something to do with what went on in the summer of 1977.”
“When Selman’s first redevelopment study had been accepted and was being acted upon in city hall.”
“Right. In seventy-seven, Andre completed a study for the city, one that probably ensured that certain folks made a lot of money. Lucas, who knew the statistics in the study were phony in some way, was discredited, thrown out of school. The person who helped discredit him was Nadine Preston.”
“The only woman Selman ever went back to,” Frank said.
I nodded. “And who conveniently left town after a fishing trip with Andre. I don’t know if it will do much good to locate her. She seems completely untrustworthy. She destroyed Lucas’s academic career and was apparently in cahoots with Andre. She probably knew she had Andre and his friends over a barrel, so she used Lucas to make her threat clear.”
“You think she never intended to go into that hearing?”
“Exactly. I think Andre got the message and bought her off somehow. And Andre made other people buy him off, too — Ben Watterson was involved in it in some way, and Andre blackmailed Ben into giving him the Bertram for a song.”
“How can Selman afford the slip fees and maintenance on something that size?” Frank asked.
“That was my question. I’ll bet you’ll discover that consulting fees and all kinds of other income find their way to him.”
“Hmm. So you want to try to find Nadine Preston. You’ll have her Social Security number tomorrow?”
“Yes, Ivy’s faxing it to me. I know you can’t look her up for me,” I said, coaxing all the same.
“Oh, that would be illegal, wouldn’t it?” he said, barely suppressing a grin.
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry. I think I can convince Reed that he ought to pursue her as someone who may have information on a possible homicide. That is, if you don’t piss him off again tomorrow.”
“Listen, Frank — I’m looking into all of this because I owe this much to Lucas, and for my own peace of mind. But it’s also a story — one that John has been waiting for with more patience than I thought he possessed. Can Reed be trusted to keep this to himself?”
“He’s trustworthy, so is Vince. But this gets tricky.”
“If this gets into the hands of a competitor — I don’t even like to think about it. I won’t be working for a newspaper. My former coworkers would drive through my new workplace just to hear me say, ‘May I have your order, please?’”
“Can’t have that,” he agreed. “Those places are bad for the complexion, too. Wait a minute — would you give me extra fries?”
“You’d be looking for your beef.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try to work something out with Reed. He owes me a couple of favors.”
“I need for you to look up something else.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “May I have your order, please?” he mimicked.
“This is serious. Could you look up Jeff McCutchen’s suicide?”
He looked out at the darkened road. “August of 1977?”
“Right.”
“Selman loses a lot of friends to suicide, wouldn’t you say?”
“The thought did occur to me. They happened fairly far apart, and there are reasons to believe they were both suicides,” I said. “I guess I still want to know where Andre was on the night Ben died.”
“Carlos is pretty certain on that one, you know. Lots of people wanted to implicate your friend Claire — rich young widows don’t get a lot of genuine sympathy. The note, the powder residue on Ben Watterson’s hand, the angle of bullet wound — lots of other things make that one hard to question.”
I shrugged. “Claire just ad
mitted to me today that he was subject to depression — although she immediately minimized it. You think about Ben, how he usually did business, the reputation he had built. A leading citizen in every sense of the word. But if Lucas could prove that Ben knew Andre’s studies were phony, Ben’s reputation would go into the toilet.”
“And the confidence of the bank’s board of directors would probably go right with it.”
“Yes.”
“‘There is no cure.’ Isn’t that what the note said?”
“Yes. And he added something about avoiding days of pain.”
“What about McCutchen?” Frank asked.
“Ivy said he used drugs and alcohol, left notes, looked like a very depressed individual when he visited her — a loner whose closest friend had run off with his girlfriend — and he made her say something that he referred to in his note. I guess it’s hard to question. But just to make sure…”
“Yeah, I’ll look into it.”
“Thanks. One other thing.”
He raised a brow. “Just one?”
“For now. Seeing Becky reminded me of it. If Andre Selman didn’t have his heart medication with him, maybe it’s because he gave it to someone else.”
“Hmm. You think he slipped heart medication to Lucas?”
“Admit it’s possible.”
“Andre climbed all those flights of stairs with a heart condition?”
“No. He didn’t have to. He just had to give the thermos to Lucas.”
“Lucas wouldn’t be very trusting of Andre, would he?”
“Probably not. Still, I think Lucas was seeing all of those guys who were hanging out with Moffett. I’m not sure what he said to them. Maybe he was trying to work his twelve-step program this way — you know, forgiving people. Maybe he was blackmailing them. So what if, on a cold night, someone makes a peace offering. A thermos full of nice hot coffee?”
“I’ll talk to Carlos. He’s undoubtedly asked them to look for those kinds of drugs in the toxicology screen.”
I sighed and leaned my head back. “Thanks, Frank.”
“Don’t thank me. Theories are one thing, proof another. Conviction… well, don’t get me started.”
I thought he would head home then, but he took another detour and headed up the highest hill in Las Piernas, a hill that leads to a place called Auburn’s Stand.
Auburn’s Stand is what locals call the hill itself, but it’s actually the name of a house that a rich guy owns. Halfway up the road to the house, there’s a turnout that faces the ocean. Las Piernas becomes a sea of lights from this vantage point, which was the really hot makeout spot when I was in high school. Not that I was ever taken there, but I drove up there once during my junior year and had some pretty great daydreams about this guy who was a couple of years ahead of me in school. That was before the road was closed, and before the kid got drafted.
These days, the road is private, and to get to the turnout, you have to pass a security guard at a gate. So making out on Auburn’s Stand has gone downhill, you might say.
We drove right up to the gate, though, and when the security guard stuck his gray head out of his booth, Frank rolled down the window and said, “Hi, Mackie. How have you been?”
Mackie smiled and said, “Not bad for an old coot. Long time no see, Harriman. Never expected to see you here this time of night. How’s it hang — ooops, didn’t see your lady friend there. Come back and talk to me some other time, Harriman.”
The gate arm lifted and we drove through. Frank waved and rolled the window back up.
“You know I’m going to ask,” I said.
He smiled. “Mackie’s a retired cop. You know the guy who owns this place?”
I nodded. “Garth Williams. I like him.”
“Me, too. He’s good to Mackie.”
“So are we going to find a bunch of squad cars parked at the old turnout?”
“How do you know about the turnout?” he asked.
“I grew up here, remember?”
THE TURNOUT WAS EMPTY. We had the best seats in the house.
“Tell me you aren’t a regular,” I said, and he laughed.
“Not a regular. This is the first time I’ve been here to do something other than roust teenagers.”
“Ah. Must have been patrolman days.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
This sounded serious all of a sudden, so I waited.
“Let’s get into the backseat,” he said.
I want it said in my eulogy that I was a good sport.
From the backseat, the view was still spectacular, and we got to sit closer. He had an arm around me, I had my head on his shoulder, and he felt big and warm and almost perfect. But just when I thought he might lean down and kiss me, he said in a dreamy voice, “Remember Bakersfield?”
“Who could forget it?”
He looked at me as if he was trying to figure out if I was being sarcastic. “I meant, when we first met.”
“So did I.”
“We were attracted to each other, right?”
“Yes.” The windows were starting to fog up, and I wanted to undo his buttons. But I didn’t. He’s being serious, I reminded myself.
“Well, tonight — listening to your friends? For the first time, I understood why I could never get to first base with you back then.”
“Forgive me, Frank, but I don’t remember an attempt to step up to the plate. After a while, I figured you thought of me as your sister.”
That got a laugh. “No way. But give me credit for knowing that any move on you then would have been the wrong move. I always figured someone must have mistreated you. Someone had hurt you. You never talked about it, though.”
“After Andre, I felt ashamed of myself.” I shifted closer to him. “I got over it. But you’re right — I was really attracted to you, but I didn’t trust myself then. The last time I had been attracted to someone, it hadn’t worked out so well.”
“So, like I said, no first base. I might have taken you up to a place like this.”
“Really?”
“No,” he said after a moment. “I was too shy around you in those days.”
I took his face in my hands and said, “It’s the top of the first, Frank Harriman. Play ball!”
30
THE HOUSE WAS DARK when we got home. Jack was asleep on our couch, surrounded by animals. The dogs wagged their tails, waking him. He smiled sleepily, said he was going home, and walked back next door without another word.
We went straight to bed, tired and happy.
Edison Burrows called way too early in the morning — about five o’clock — but I managed to roust myself out of bed and arranged to meet him in an hour at the beach parking lot where I had last seen his son.
I was putting a piece of bread in the toaster when I noticed the glass bowl covering the note, the pager next to it. Through the bottom of the bowl, I saw these typewritten words:
Mr. Watterson,
This is a copy of a note Jeffrey McCutchen left for me just before he killed himself. I didn’t know what it meant then, but I think I understand it now. It might take me some time to convince others. Why don’t you save me the trouble? There is no point in fighting this; I won’t give up.
You were very generous to me once before. This photo proves I have not forgotten that.
“Frank!”
He came bounding out of the bedroom, half-asleep. “What?”
“Didn’t mean to alarm you.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “What’s wrong?”
“This note — it fell out of Ben’s calendar. I think it’s the one Lucas sent him with the picture!”
“What makes you think so?”
I showed him Lucas’s distinctive typing trademarks.
“It was a 1977 calendar,” he said, yawning. “Maybe it’s an old note.”
“You aren’t awake yet, are you?”
“No,” he answered truthfully.
“Claire
said Ben had been getting nostalgic, remember? I think Lucas sent Ben a copy of Jeff McCutchen’s suicide note.”
“Hmm.” His eyes were drifting shut.
“Frank, wouldn’t the detectives investigating Jeff’s suicide make copies of the suicide note?”
“No.”
“No?”
“They’d keep the original.”
“Can you get a copy from McCutchen’s file?”
His eyes came open. “Huh? Oh. Maybe. Probably in storage by now.” He yawned again. “I’m going back to bed.”
I watched him pad back toward the bedroom, and wondered if he’d remember any part of our conversation. I recorded a memo for him on the answering machine before I left, and also included all the other items I had asked him to check on the previous night — asked before he hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth.
BEFORE I LEFT THE HOUSE, I took three months out of Ben’s calendar for 1977: July, August, and September. They made a thick stack of paper, which Cody eyed covetously. Before he could do more than that, I put them into a big manila envelope, along with my notes on Moffett’s secret meetings. I’d have to write the story on Moffett when I first got in to work — that was a bone that would hold the editorial wolves at bay for a while, give me more leeway to pursue the stories that interested me more avidly: stories of misrepresentation in redevelopment studies, suicidal bankers, and murdered friends.
IT WAS CHILLY AND GRAY OUT, the beginning of spring weather on the southern California coast: cloudy in the early morning clearing to hazy sunshine in the afternoon. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, mostly little changed. It made the drive to Blue’s section of the beach a cold one; I spent most of the trip trying to figure out when I was going to find time to have the window repaired.
Edison Burrows was waiting in the parking lot, leaning against the hood of a white Taurus station wagon. He was staring toward the ocean until he heard my car.
“Haven’t seen any sign of him,” he said, pulling his jacket up against the brisk breeze.
“It’s pretty early.”