Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  Marina Riviera was a photographer's dream, too. Each townhouse had two condos separated by four smaller ones. They were white stucco with gold tile roofs and blue awnings. Mineshaft modern with angled roofs and terracings. Manmade lagoons separated each half-dozen townhouses and each building fronted its own private marina. There were boat hampers on most back patios.

  I followed a cobblestone path from the parking lot along the water's edge. The water was high and coots floated by. I wondered what the smell was like at low tide. There were only rowboats or kayaks in the hampers. Maybe the lagoons were diked in and had no access to the bay.

  The Anatoles lived on a little peninsula. I suppose they needed to live near water, and I'm sure waterfront living impressed their friends. To me, they were attempting suicide by living in a prefab unit on fill dirt in earthquake country, especially when the seismologists figure the Big One should come during the life of the mortgage. Fill dirt never settles evenly, and in a quake it liquefies. The Anatoles were living in a coffin on quicksand. You can get better odds on a snowball in hell.

  I went through an iron gate.

  "Happy New Year, Mr. Brennen."

  I heard Lilian Anatole, but I didn't see her.

  "I'm up here." She stood on a Mussolini porch above me. "Why don't you join me?" A hand gesture indicated an outside staircase half-hidden by some half-grown trees.

  I came up the tile steps. "Is your husband home?"

  "I don't know where he is." Her voice was dry and husky—dry like my throat and husky like good whiskey.

  "When do you expect him home?"

  Her face told me to be serious. "He'll be home when he feels like coming home." On a day when most people couldn't see straight, she had her best looks on. She wore a black silk robe, the kind a man could listen to for hours. Her husband was a fool to leave her alone. "Would you like some iced tea?"

  "Sure." I found a seat. Her husband was gone, and she was dressed to kill. Some women have fantasies about private investigators.

  Her porch was slightly smaller than my apartment. There were magazines, several lounge chairs, a pitcher of tea on a glass-topped table. Sliding glass doors behind her led inside, though a giant white Christmas tree blocked the view.

  She poured some tea for me. "He's left me alone a lot lately." She was almost pouting.

  "Maybe he's been busy at work," I volunteered.

  She looked up. "Innocent until proven guilty?"

  "Sure." I got curious. "Why not?"

  "You should never defend the guilty."

  "What if he's just being inconsiderate?"

  "Men take women for granted." She looked down again. "They want us around for their pleasure, and the rest of the time they ignore us." She poured her own glass. "What do you take in your tea?"

  "Nothing." I wondered where Riki had discovered this windfall. She might have been talking to me, but what she was saying you don't tell a PI. I wasn't near divorce court and I didn't need this. And she was so cold about it, too. What she was saying should only be said in rage, but these words came from her mouth like an arctic breeze.

  "Redheads are chic this season," she told me.

  I bummed a smoke. "Ruth Gideon?"

  She undid the sash on her robe. "Oh, I don't know what her name is." Underneath she wore a two piece swimsuit of black mesh. "That slut at the fish company yesterday." Then she laid herself out on a lounge chair.

  She had a dangerous build. Last year she had been voluptuous, appealing, sensuous. Next year she'd be dumpy and dowdy, overweight. A full-figured woman one step away from matronhood.

  Her porch faced west, where the sun debated setting behind the coastal range. The porch was still room temperature, but she didn't have much time left.

  "What makes you think he's messing with her?"

  "How could he resist her?"

  "Well, maybe she didn't want him."

  She wasn't amused. "She'd do anything for a job."

  "Maybe it got stopped before it got started."

  She turned my way. Her eyes were nuggets of ice. "Is she the one who scratched your face?" In those eyes, I was a failure, too.

  And then it dawned on me. Hers was a valium world, and she was loaded to the gills. She was working on a tan in the shade. And I had to show up for this. Oh joy.

  I wanted out. "Maybe I should come back later."

  "Have you found Dani yet?"

  "Have you heard from her recently?"

  "Yes, in fact, I have. She called here last night. She wanted to talk with my husband, but he had already left. We gave a party at the clubhouse."

  "What did she have to say?"

  "I'm afraid I wasn't listening." She reached up for her drink. "I was on my way out the door." She didn't drink more than a mouthful. "She sounded okay."

  "Did she say where she was calling from?"

  She shrugged. "A phone booth, I suppose."

  "How was the party, anyway?"

  She thought back. "I left early."

  "Anybody at the party that I might know?"

  She tried hard. "Creditors. Clients." She knew it was one or the other. There was so much she didn't remember. It had to be hard living under such a large dosage.

  "Could Dani have left town?"

  "Lord, you can't be lucky twice." She had only to glance at my confusion. "Dani went to Seattle a few years ago. Just up and ran away. She said she was trying to find her head." She had a sneer for the hip phrases of the counterculture.

  "You didn't believe that, did you?"

  "She did. Isn't that enough?" She had a lazy smile for her ice cubes. "Her head should have been on her shoulders. I can't imagine what it was doing in Seattle."

  "Would she get a place by herself?"

  "She might. She wouldn't live with another man again, that's for sure. That was her first and only mistake. She won't repeat it."

  "Where would she go if she thought she were in trouble?"

  Her eyes still on ice cubes. "Someone she could trust. Someone who could help her." She twisted and turned the tumbler, as if puzzled by her own reflection.

  "Any idea who that could be?"

  "There's no one she could go to." She looked up. Something dark and feral swam through the glaciers and almost touched surface. "What do you want with her?" There was no love here for her sister-in-law.

  "Joey Crawford hired me to find her."

  She was vindicated at last. "To pin the goods on her, right?"

  "It wasn't infidelity. I'm just a good Samaritan."

  "You could have found someone better to help, someone who won't end up dirtying your hands."

  "Hey, he's dead. Rest in peace, right?"

  "He's dead?" Her head went sideways.

  "Yeah, he's dead." I softened. "Day before yesterday. Auto accident on the Golden Gate Bridge."

  "An accident." The glaciers almost parted. "I'm sorry to hear about that." The ice came back thicker. "I wasn't thinking of him, though."

  "You mean, Dani?"

  "Well, you don't imagine, if the roles were reversed, she'd be lying in bed crying her eyes out until she fell asleep waiting for him to come back to her."

  "I never met her. I wouldn't know."

  She faced me. "And I've known her since she was born." She realized the show she was putting on for my benefit. "Let's leave it at that."

  "Let's not and say we did."

  Her ice eyes could peel me apart.

  "Hey, I'm new here, remember?" I couldn't keep a straight face. I tried to smile like her closest friend. "C'mon, you can tell me."

  Her reluctance was pitiful. "She's had so many men in her life. One more, one less. What's that to a woman like that?" There was no stopping her now. "She's a slut."

  "How can you say that?"

  "She wants my husband." She stared in her tumbler. The ice was blue in the almost-twilight. "He's mine, not hers."

  "Why would Riki mess with her?"

  "Men like seducing women." She thought I knew.

>   "Sure, but they're first cousins."

  "He did it once. He can do it again."

  "With Dani?" I didn't believe her.

  "I'm not sure, of course. I can't be everywhere. But I meant someone else."

  My face itched. "Catherine?"

  She had a smirk for Catherine. "She belongs on a California postcard. One of those ones where she's riding a pony through the surf, silhouetted against the sunset."

  "You think Riki's been fucking her?"

  She didn't blink. "Anatole's my maiden name."

  "You lost me."

  "Riki and I are first cousins."

  I didn't get it. "But you are married, aren't you?"

  Her nostrils flared wider than her eyes. "My marriage is legal," she insisted. She caught my confusion and mellowed. "California is one of the few states where first cousins can legally marry." She took a deep breath. "I went to a lot of trouble to get that man."

  I stared at her. "Right." I wanted out.

  The phone inside the house began ringing, thank God.

  "If you'll excuse me ..." She put on her robe and went inside.

  I was shivering on her porch. Goosebumps and everything. They didn't come from land losing heat to the night. Like the fool on the hill, I was listening to a dingdong, and she scared the shit out of me. Her husband was a fool to leave her alone.

  The porch looked down on the causeway. Manicured lawns and growing trees and the marina. A workman further down along the water's edge was the only human being I could see between me and the freeway. Nobody lived here. People only spoiled the symmetry. Only developers and photographers were allowed here.

  Lilian came up behind me. "Depressing, isn't it?" She took my cigarette from me. "A retirement community for those who hate to paint their houses."

  "Why do you live here then?"

  She French-inhaled cigarette smoke into her lungs. "A birthday present from grandfather." She looked like she wanted him dead.

  "A nice present."

  "I was surprised myself," she admitted. She tried reading the brand name on the cigarette. "We won't be here much longer, though." She liked that thought.

  "Where are you moving to?"

  "Carmel Valley." She looked into the future. "Something like Catherine's house."

  "It's a nice house," I agreed. "It's fantastic." She admired it for a moment in her memory. "I had thought I might get it."

  "Maybe you will someday."

  She considered her odds. "He had a heart attack a few years ago," she remembered. And then she remembered more. "That was Riki on the telephone." Her eyes distant and brooding, she blew a smoke ring, a delicate one, towards the sky.

  I asked what was wrong.

  "He was in an auto accident in the city."

  I kept a straight face. "I hope he's all right."

  "It seems he hit a mailbox." Her voice told me what she thought of that. "I'm going to him now." She didn't blink. "He's my husband." It was that simple.

  I pushed back my chair. "Goodbye, Mrs. Anatole, it's been real." I headed down the stairs.

  The workman was a good half-mile away from her patio. He was pounding stakes along the water's edge. Sound travels slowly across water. The sound of his hammer on iron arrived just as he'd start his next downswing. From where I was, he could have been hitting himself in the head.

  I went through the gate and along the cobblestone path. I followed the iron signs staked in the mud. I didn't look back.

  Chapter 23

  The workman wore formless khaki pants with a paunch and a face like a mule. He was a little guy in his mid-fifties, and he had motor-mouth worse than any speed freak. He was chattering away like a parrot left behind.

  "How come you're working today?"

  He yelped and dropped his hammer. He was completely bald, and his dome was gold from the sun. His hands were monkey paws and old scars, and the skin was ancient and sun crisp.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I didn't hear you come up," he confessed. He enjoyed talking to himself. Audiences were rare on these manicured lawns.

  "Sorry. How come you're working on a holiday?"

  He dismissed it. "I'm on strike. The whole fleet's on strike. We can't get the prices we want. The boats come in, and the crabs from Oregon are cheaper." He didn't want me to get the wrong idea. "I'm not blaming the guys up north. They're so far from anywhere, they gotta drive sixty miles inland just to get to the freeway. They gotta sell for whatever they can get."

  "So you're here for the duration?"

  "I'm getting double-time, too," he crowed. "Today was s'pose to be my day off, but what with all the rain we been getting, this is the first chance I got to work."

  He was grateful for this job. "I gotta be doing something. I'd be going crazy if I couldn't work."

  "You're already talking to yourself."

  He ignored me. "I was lucky to get this job. I know the manager here. I called him up, asked if he needed any work done. He said yeah, so I come by and do it maybe four days a week. I figure on working here nine months a year, fishing the other three." He looked over the causeway. "I was gonna retire, anyway." He looked over. "Fishing, I mean."

  "Fishing's no business for an old man."

  He didn't like that at all. "Well, it's no blessing for a young man, either." He knew so many reasons why. "There's no fishing on the Bay anymore. Pollution killed the oyster beds. Limits now on shrimp, salmon's down to five months, six months for crab, and not many of them left." There were so many heartbreaks. "Best crabs are in the Bay, but the government won't let you take them. You gotta set your crabpots out by the Farallones. That's about the closest you can get to the Bay." He shook his head in wonderment. "I can remember sailing out the Gateway at midnight, sailing by the light of the moon. Just a few miles. Phosphorescence from the sardines. You could throw a bucket overboard and haul up a bucket of sardines. There were billions of them."

  He was glad to have an audience. He liked talking about the old days, and he had a million memories at the tip of his tongue. He was happiest wandering through them.

  "You miss the old days," I said. After the Imperial Iceberg, he was a real treat.

  He thought he was alone again. "There were forty canneries along the coast in those days. Sixteen men crewing every seiner." He could have been talking to a shadow. "The whole fleet was buddies then. They useta take Sundays off, take the family, friends, everybody, go sailing up to North Bay for picnics. There were camping trips in the Sierras, too. The whole family came along. Even the kids. All them kids was cute." He had grandfather eyes for the children in his past. "They never got into trouble."

  "They don't sound normal."

  He loved a good josh. "Aw, they got into trouble." He grabbed the first memory that came to mind. "There was one time, I was getting off watch. I thought I was hearing noises, and not the ones you always hear at sea." His face was slowly souring. "I got worried about the kids, so I checked in on them." He wasn't sure this was the memory he wanted. "Both of them was in the sleeping bag." He didn't know what to say.

  "What were they doing? Playing doctor?"

  "Goddam them." Anger made him hiss it. "I got them both outta there, told them I never wanted to catch them doing that again, or I'd slap them like a crazy man and still tell their folks on them." The anger was still there, after all those years.

  "What were they doing?"

  "It wasn't right." He left it at that.

  "You must know Orestes Anatole."

  He did. "When I was your age, he was already an old man. I've known him forty years almost." He felt better. These were safer memories. "He raised three sons all by himself and he kept that fish company going all those years. He never let a man's family go hurting. Not once. He's a helluva guy. He ran hooch during Prohibition. Scotch from Vancouver, tequila from Mexico."

  "I thought he was just a fisherman."

  "Sure, but it was Prohibition. Everybody had to do their part." He smirked like a co-conspirator. "Orestes
, he had to bootleg. He had all his money invested in the wine country, only nobody was buying wine then, only the priests. He'd'a gone bankrupt if he didn't."

  "A fishing boat seems obvious."

  "He never landed, not with booze in the hold. He'd switch loads with other fishing boats past the three mile limit. He'd come in with the fish and the other guys brought the booze ashore."

  "That's pretty slick," I lied.

  He remembered something slicker. "You know what the old man did with the money he made bootlegging? He bought more land up in the wine country. Nobody else was buying it. But that's how come he's sitting pretty up in Tahoe."

  "D'you know Riki Anatole? His grandson?"

  "Sure do. His wife, too. They live right over there." He pointed back the way I had come. "She thinks she's the cavalry. All she can do is charge." He liked his little joke.

  "How long have you known them?"

  "Since they were both little kids." His eyes weathered suddenly. There was only sadness there. "I got invited to their wedding." Maybe he was remembering kissing cousins.

  "Did you know they were first cousins?"

  He couldn't believe I'd said it aloud. "How'd you know that?"

  "His wife told me."

  He realized he was talking to himself and he wasn't alone. "Who are you?" He had his job to protect.

  I showed my photostat. "A private investigator."

  He read it like a man looking deep into hell. He found no loopholes. He stopped and his eyes plunged. "I got a big mouth."

  "How well do you know Dani Anatole?"

  He almost yelped again. "What do you want with her?" He'd talk to a ghost the same way.

  "You know what she's been up to?"

  "You better go see the manager." If he had a ten-foot pole, he wouldn't touch me with it. "He useta work for Anatole Fish. Still does now and then, whenever they need a good mechanic. He's been working on their new trawler, mostly." He wanted out fast, but he didn't want it to seem like a turn-off.

  "Where can I find him?"

  "Probably at the display model." He looked around for his bearings. "Take that path and follow the For Sale signs." He was glad he shut his mouth that quick.