by Lisa Lutz
“Sorry to interrupt. I’m Ray, Izzy’s uncle.”
“Two Rays. That could get confusing.”
“She was named after me. When Olivia was pregnant with the kid, I had cancer. It didn’t look like I was gonna make it, so they decided to give her my name.”
“But then he didn’t die like he was supposed to,” Rae says, as if she’s revealing the surprise ending to a whodunit.
“Rae, five bucks if you get out of here now,” I offer.
“Make it ten and you’ve got a deal.”
Money exchanges hands and I realize that we better make our escape before it is too late.
“Nice meeting you, Daniel. You’re nothing like I expected,” Rae says upon leaving the room.
Uncle Ray stays close on her heels. “This isn’t over, kid.”
I try to explain. “They’re in the middle of a thing.”
“They’re at war,” says my mother, still with that awful grin.
“So you’re a dentist?” my father says, trying to hide the edge in his voice.
“Yes,” Daniel replies cheerily.
“How is that?” Dad asks.
“I like it. My father’s a dentist, so was my grandfather. It runs in the family, you could say.”
“Isn’t that nice,” my mother says in a voice that doesn’t match her statement.
“So how long have you been a teacher?” Daniel inquires.
“Twenty years or something,” Mom tosses out.
“You must be very dedicated.”
“Not really.”
“We should be going,” I say, feeling the barometer in the room dip.
“It wasn’t really our calling,” my dad, continuing the act, says. “Frankly, we don’t like children,” he whispers as if he’s revealing a dark secret.
“Okay. We are leaving,” I say and stand to bring the point home. But it’s too late.
“Do you find it difficult staying off the drugs?” my mother asks, the friendly grin dropping from her face.
“Excuse me?” Daniel replies, his grin fading as well.
“You people do seem to have drug problems more than most,” she continues.
I take Daniel’s arm, but he’s already on his feet. “I cannot speak for all of ‘my’ people, but I have never had a drug problem.”
“She didn’t mean it the way it came out,” I say.
“I’m glad to hear that Daniel is clean,” my mother says.
“This is unbelievable,” Daniel says directly to my mother.
“Would you look at the time,” is my only response.
“Nice meeting you, Daniel,” my dad says, still hanging on to his “nothing is unusual here” smile.
“Come again,” adds my mom in the same tone in which one might say, I’ll see you in hell.
Daniel walks out. I turn to my parents, betrayed. “You said you’d behave.”
“Have a nice evening, sweetie,” my dad shouts to me as I chase Daniel outside.
“I told you they were weird,” I say, hoping for a sympathetic response. I mean, I had to be raised by them. All he had to endure was ten minutes of conversation.
“Forgive me, but I’d like to take a rain check on dinner tonight,” Daniel says.
I watch Daniel get into his car and start the engine. I’m about to let him leave, thinking that it’s taken me years to process having those people as family, so why not give him a night? But then I change my mind and jump into my Buick.
I catch up with Daniel’s BMW as he turns north on Van Ness Avenue. I remain on his tail for two blocks before my cell phone rings.
“Isabel, is that you behind me?”
“Daniel, please stop the car.” I notice that he’s speeding up. “You want to put your foot on the left pedal, not the right.”
“I know how to drive, Isabel.”
“I just need five minutes to explain. Actually, it will take about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. But that’s all.”
Daniel makes a sharp right on Broadway.
“I should warn you, Daniel, if you’re trying to shake me, that is not going to happen.”
“But my car is faster than your car.”
“Trust me. It’s not that simple.”
Daniel disconnects the call and speeds through a yellow light. I speed through a red light. I want to call him back and explain that what we are doing now is simply a ritual. Daniel is a responsible citizen. He is a man who obeys the laws of society and the laws of traffic. I obey neither, which means there’s no way he can lose me in a car chase.
Daniel cuts a maze through the city, driving with no discernible design or direction, at thirty-five mph or less. I consistently maintain a distance short enough to remind him that I’m there, but not close enough to frighten him. I’m not going to lose him, is all I can think.
Daniel takes Franklin Street down the hill to Bay, makes a left, and continues on until he hits Fillmore, where he makes a sharp right and then a left on Marina Boulevard. He speeds up a bit, but still with the pace of traffic, and pulls onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I can see him looking for me in his rearview mirror and then shaking his head in disappointment. He turns on his right blinker and slows at the end of the bridge, looking for a place to pull off the road. The chase is about to come to an end.
Daniel slows to a halt at the first turnaround off the bridge. He gets out of his car and waits for me to park.
“Are you trying to kill me?” he asks as he approaches my car.
I ignore the hyperbolic response to the slowest car chase known to man.
“Daniel, you misunderstood.”
“Did I? You’re dating a ‘spic’ to rebel against your parents.”
“I had a feeling you’d take it the wrong way.”
“Did you hear what she said to me? ‘You people.’”
“Yes. Dentists. My mother hates dentists.”
“People may not like going to the dentist, but generally, they don’t hate us as a people.”
“Daniel, it’s a long story, but I have too many others to tell you right now to focus on that one. Keep in mind that a lot of what was said tonight was not true.”
“Were those your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad.”
“I’m not a teacher. My parents aren’t teachers.”
“Finally, some good news.”
“They’re private investigators. So am I. It’s the family business. The day I met you, I was surveilling your tennis partner, Jake Peters. His wife was under the impression that he was gay and you were his lover.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Yeah, I know. When I saw you play that second game I got suspicious, so I waited for you in the bar. I would have told you the truth then, but it sounded so strange and I couldn’t divulge any client information.”
“You told me you were a teacher.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounded normal. I just wanted to pretend for a while. See how the other half lives. Something like that. Later, there never seemed to be a good time to come clean, although I probably should have done that before you met my family.”
Daniel stares back at me with an expression of betrayal that I’ve seen only a handful of times from my parents. It’s interesting how the same emotions on different people often have a photographic similarity.
“I want to go home now,” he says. “I don’t want to be chased. I want to quietly get into my car and drive away. Can I do that?”
“Yes,” I say quietly and let him go. But as I watch him get into his car and drive off, I’ve already decided that I’m going to get him back no matter what it takes.
But first, I have a score to settle.
I get out of bed after a sleepless night, walk down two flights of stairs into my parents’ kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee, cross the hall to the Spellman offices, and break the news.
“I quit.”
“Quit what, dear?” asks my mother.<
br />
“Quit this job.”
“You can’t just quit,” says my dad.
“Yes, I can.”
“No. You can’t. Ask your mother.”
“Your father is right,” says my mom. “It’s not that simple.”
“I’ll just stop coming to work.”
“And we’ll stop paying you,” says my dad.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” says my mother. “Except that eventually you’ll need to get another job, and since this is the only job you’ve ever had, you’ll need some kind of reference.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“Yes, what are you saying?” repeats my father.
“You’ll take one last job and then you can leave. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation and everything.”
“One last job. That’s it?”
“And then you’re free,” says my mom.
Free. That had a nice ring to it. After sixteen years of working for the family business, it was time to learn whether life would be easier on the outside.
It’s as if they planned for this day…
Part Three
Negotiating Peace
ONE LAST JOB
My parents took a full twenty-four hours to discuss the details of my final assignment. I imagined they spent the night laboring over the open files, wrestling with the decision of which was the most impossible. Which case would keep me in their grasp the longest? I braced myself for the worst, but I don’t believe anything could have prepared me for what would come, that morning or over the following weeks.
I met them in the office at 9:00 A.M. My mother handed me a thick case file, yellowed with age and ringed with coffee stains. She went over the brushstrokes of the case.
“On July 18, 1995, Andrew Snow disappeared while on a camping trip in Lake Tahoe with his brother, Martin Snow. The boys were raised in Mill Valley, California, by their parents, Joseph and Abigail Snow. The police conducted an all-out search for Andrew during the month following his disappearance, but found no trace of him. Nor was there anything in his behavior that could explain his disappearance. He simply vanished. We originally got the case twelve years ago, worked on it for about a year until the client’s funds ran out, then intermittently for the next year, pro bono. We let the case drop in 1997 when all our leads dried up and we didn’t have the manpower to continue the investigation.”
“You’re giving me a missing persons case from twelve years ago?” I asked.
“We want you to see if we left any stones unturned,” my father said casually.
“You and I both know that those stones are endless.”
“What’s your point?” said my mother.
“You’re giving me a case that can’t be solved.”
“Are you refusing to take it?” she asked.
I should have refused, but I didn’t. I figured if I could come up with a single new piece of information, I would have done my job and would have felt justified in leaving. I didn’t believe I could solve the case, I didn’t believe for a second that I could find Andrew Snow—neither did they—but I did believe I could shelve that file once and for all.
“I’ll work the case for two months,” I said. “After that, I’m done.”
“Four months,” countered my mom. As you might imagine, I’ve negotiated with her before. She’s worse than Rae. I had to give in just a bit.
“Three months,” I said, “and that’s my final offer.”
When Rae got the news of my impending departure, she felt compelled to offer her studied assessment of the situation to Milo, my bartender. Milo shook his head at Rae when she arrived at the Philosopher’s Club just after opening.
“I don’t want any trouble today, Rae.”
My sister sat down in the center of the row of empty barstools, ordered a double on the rocks, and told Milo not to water it down. Milo reminded Rae that she would be drinking ginger ale and poured her a whiskey-size glass over ice. Rae tossed a few bills onto the bar, which Milo slid back to her.
Milo picked up the telephone and said, “You want to call your sister or should I do it?”
“I’m having a rough week, Milo. Can’t I just sit here for a while? I won’t bother anyone.”
Rae took a sip of her soda and followed it with a hard-liquor grimace.
Milo shook his head. “So I’ll make the call.”
Rae, as expected, was in mid-discourse when I arrived.
“It would be bad enough if I had only my rat Uncle Ray to worry about, but with Izzy deciding to get out of the business, I’m a wreck, Milo. A wreck. That leaves only me. What am I gonna do? I can’t run Spellman Investigations on my own. Who’s gonna buy the staples and the files? We use a lot of files. Who’s gonna do the books? I don’t want to do that stuff. It’s boring. Oh, and who is gonna drive the surveillance van? Who? I guess I’ll have a license by the time they will me the business. But my point is, who will do the boring stuff? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do it on my own if I have to, but—”
“Izzy, it’s about time,” Milo said, smiling to hide the edge in his voice.
“This is my bar, Rae. You’ve got to stop coming here,” I said.
“It’s a free country.”
“Not that free. You could get Milo in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m drinking ginger ale.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How could you do this to me?”
“Do what?”
“Quit.”
“Most people don’t spy on each other. Most people don’t run background checks on their friends. Most people aren’t suspicious of everyone they meet. Most people aren’t like us.”
“What’s happening to you?”
“I’m seeing things clearly, that’s all.”
“Well, I hope it doesn’t happen to me,” she said as I grabbed the back of her shirt and marched her out of the bar. Rae was silent the entire drive home, breaking her previous record by thirteen minutes.
MISSING PERSONS
Missing persons cases are rare in our business. It is the police who have the tools, the manpower, and the legal authority to exhaust the possibilities, all of which are necessary to find someone who is lost. But the police can only look for so long, and when they stop, families occasionally turn to PIs to continue the investigation, because as long as the search continues, hope is not lost.
As cruel as the discovery of a body can be, it allows those connected to it to grieve and move on. And with the strides made in forensic science, now it is as if the dead were pointing to the killer—whether it is man, nature, or human error. But the absence of a body leaves an unlimited number of possibilities. Without any cohesive leads, you’re left with nothing. A person cannot literally vanish before your eyes, but, as the pictures on the milk cartons suggest, people disappear all the time.
I phoned Abigail Snow, Andrew’s mother, that evening and made an appointment to meet with her the following day. I knew that any contact at all would offer her a false sense of hope, but I convinced myself that I had no choice.
I had only two things on my mind after the last meeting with my parents: 1) Get Daniel back; 2) Work the Snow case.
I gave Daniel a week after Car Chase #1 before I knocked on his window. It was around 10:00 P.M. and I realized as soon as I knocked that I had no further speech planned in my defense. But still, I knocked again.
Daniel opened the window and said, “No.”
“Maybe in Guatemala ‘no’ is in fact a greeting, but here we use ‘hello’ or ‘nice to see you again,’ or even ‘hey there.’”
“Do you think making wisecracks right now is smart?”
“No, but I already tried ‘I’m sorry’ and that didn’t work.”
“Isabel, I have a door.”
“Actually you have three doors.”
“And your point is?”
“Three doors or one window. You do the math.”
“Your ma
th doesn’t interest me. Use the front door in the future.”
“So there is going to be a future?”
“It was a figure of speech.”
“Can I come in for a minute? I’ll even use the door.”
“I don’t want to see you, Isabel.”
“But I have much more explaining to do.”
“What did I just say?”
“‘I don’t want to see you, Isabel.’ See, I was listening.”
“What does that mean?”
“What you just said?”
“Yes.”
“It means you don’t want to see me.”
“Right.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Am I really having this conversation?”
“I’m not sure where you stand on the answering of rhetorical questions.”
“I’m angry, Isabel.”
“I understand that. I just want to know which thing you’re most angry about, so that I can fix it.”
“You lied about everything.”
“Not everything.”
“Good night, Isabel,” he said as he shut the window.
THE RANSOM
The following morning, my sister woke up at exactly 6:30 A.M. on her first day of winter break, which coincided with her first day of freedom after the three-month grounding (a grounding, by the way, that allowed for surveillance and blackmail). It had been two weeks since Uncle Ray received the ransom note. Two weeks for my sister to plan her attack.
She woke, brushed her teeth, washed her face, threw on a pair of jeans, one long- and one short-sleeved cotton T-shirt, white and red, respectively, put a comb through her hair exactly five times, picked up the phone, covered the receiver with a dishrag, and made the call.
Uncle Ray, a notoriously late sleeper—so late, in fact, on occasion it became his nickname—picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Listen carefully to my instructions,” said the less-high-than-usual, muffled voice on the other end. “Any deviation from the rules will result in the destruction of your shirt. Do you understand?”