by Susan Dunlap
Car in garage. No sign of use.
Poulsson swung back onto Broadway. A couple hours ago the lights had snapped and glistened; if there had been fog, they’d chased it to Dullsville. Broadway had been all sparkle and promise. But Dullsville had had its revenge. Now fog lay on the car hood like a careless moose in hunting season. Lanes were still crowded but vehicles inched along and drivers’ decisions were too slow, too jerky, and much too faux-sober.
Poulsson cut in front of a shiny new car. The driver braked, honked his horn. Poulsson grinned. Then his face sagged back to normal. He looked like a bear after a bad night.
‘You know Leo,’ I began, ‘what do you make of his just being gone?’
‘That doesn’t sound like Garson.’
I had the feeling he’d considered and rejected a number of more pointed comments. ‘How so?’
He pulled back into the right-hand lane. More honking.
‘Good thing this isn’t an open carry state,’ I said.
‘I’m careful.’ He shrugged and leaned forward onto the wheel.
I’d let him off the hook. I sat, shivering on the icy leather seat in the unheated car, alert for an opportunity to hoist him back on. From time to time cold air shot through the heater vent.
A couple more turns and we were on Geary, the fastest of the slow roads west. There was a light or stop sign every couple blocks. At the second stop, I said, ‘Listen, Hudson, I’m worried about Leo. What do you think’s going on?’
Four blocks later, he said, ‘I’ve known Garson for a few years – not many. I’ve seen him pause before he picks up a cup – a paper cup – like he doesn’t want to just grab it. The way he comes to the cup, you know, is important to him.’
‘Like he connects with the cup.’
‘That’s it. I’ve never seen him careless.’
I thought back over the years I’d known Leo, first in his monastery up north and then here. Careless? No. ‘And yet, now, without warning, he’s gone.’ Suddenly I was much more panicked than before I’d slid into the car, before I’d put into words how alarmingly out of character Leo’s disappearance was.
Before I realized my best link to Leo’s past might be Hudson Poulsson. ‘So,’ I insisted, ‘what do you think happened to him?’
We passed through the grass- and tree-lined Park Presidio that shoots drivers north to the Golden Gate and divides the inner Richmond from the outer. I had the feeling Poulsson was counting the blocks till he could dump me, hoping he could dawdle long enough between questions to keep from telling me what he didn’t want to admit.
Fat chance. Either he was going to cough up or I was going to throttle the man right here in the outer Richmond. I took a breath to control my voice and said, ‘Hudson. You’re worried. Why?’
He glanced right and left. Geary out here is residential. It doesn’t offer the vehicular diversions of the inner boulevard.
‘Why, dammit? Leo – Garson-roshi – is your friend. What do you think is going on?’
‘He could be concerned about you.’
‘He disappeared because he’s concerned about me?’
Eyes forward, Poulsson nodded.
‘And he wouldn’t tell me?’
‘Would you have let him go?’
‘Where?’
‘To danger.’
‘Of course not.’
He nodded. Case closed.
Case appealed. ‘Are you saying you think that’s his reason? There’s got to be more than that to it.’
He sighed. Drove.
‘Turn here. That house over there with the light on.’ Three cars were parked in front, Mom’s, John’s and Gary’s, which meant that they were sitting at the kitchen table. We Lotts are night owls. For years John had rolled in late after long shifts and Gary pulled the adult version of all-nighters as trials approached. Gracie staggered in from dealing with threats of disease no one wanted to hear about. And Mom kept a pot of beef stew at the ready. ‘Pull over here.’
Poulsson slid in front of the neighbor’s driveway. ‘This is what I can tell you’ – this is what I’ve been avoiding telling you half the way across town – ‘Garson’s supposed to come with me Wednesday. He’s never not come. I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t show up.’
‘Wednesday! He could have been dead for days by Wednesday!’
‘Oh, I don’t think—’
‘Wednesday! He goes with you Wednesdays?’
‘Yes.’
‘Every Wednesday?’
‘No, no, I wouldn’t ask him to do that. Once a month.’
‘You leave the city then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where do you go?’
‘He didn’t mentioned it?’ Poulsson nodded to himself. ‘Not surprised. I never asked him not to, but I’m not surprised he understood. Not that I’m ashamed. Well, that’s not true. I love my kids whatever. Still.’
The engine geared down. Nothing moved on the street. No house was lit but Mom’s. I could picture Duffy inside the door, waiting. As I was waiting here. What was this man avoiding? ‘Hudson?’
‘Prison. I can’t go more than once a month. Regulations. And it’s an expense, the drive, the day off working. I’d do it more if they let me. But that once a month, it matters.’
‘And Garson?’
‘He rides with me. I’m glad of it. It’s tense going. Good to have someone like him with me. Coming back, it’s tense in a different way. Real good to have someone like that to talk to.’
‘How long?’
‘Sentence? Another year. Drugs. You can go up for a long, long time for a stupid mistake. I said that in the beginning. But you know, inside you realize that yourself. No need for your parent to be reminding you. Jeez, it’s an eternity for someone so young.’
‘How young?’
‘Twenty-nine now.’
‘Does Leo have visitation rights, too?’
‘Clergy.’
I nodded. I felt for Poulsson. All the years my brother Mike was missing we’d wondered if he was in jail somewhere. Mom never mentioned it but she went stiff every time there was a news story about jail riots, or longer sentences, or, God forbid, a prisoner who resembled her youngest son. John used all his police connections to keep up on prisons nationwide. Gary checked whatever lawyers check. Gracie, the epidemiologist pooh-poohed jail and just agonized over previously unheard-of and incurable viruses.
I felt for Hudson Poulsson. But there was still something I wasn’t getting from him. I could sit here in this cold car, keep myself from grabbing his neck and throttling him till the little ball of what he was hiding beneath the rest of this came flying out. Or I could take the easy route.
I decided to throw him to the wolves.
TWENTY-TWO
‘This is Hudson Poulsson. Leo called Mr Poulsson to pick him up from San Francisco General, and he went with Mr Poulsson to see his child in prison once a month. Hudson, my family,’ I said, ushering him into the kitchen while I stopped to make the oversized fuss that Duffy pretends he disdains and, of course, adores.
Poulsson was expecting a bowl of the beef stew Mom always kept ready to warm up for child or friend. I’d lured him in with that promise. He’d figured he’d eat, thank and be on the road in twenty minutes. It was, after all, nearly one in the morning. He was not expecting wolves at the table. But for the moment they were sheep’s-clothing their comments and indicating a chair.
Janice, sister number two’s chair, actually, though Poulsson would never know that.
The kitchen was standard mid-twentieth century. White tile, green trim. The room would have seemed large had the oval table not filled half of it. It may have been the biggest green Formica table in history. John sat at the far side from the entry door because cops always keep their eyes on the door and their backs to the wall. Gary sat opposite because a defense attorney always keeps his eyes on the cop. Gracie’s chair was next to him because Gary and Gracie had been a pair growing up the way Mike and I had.
‘Gracie still in Vegas?’ I sotto voce’d to Gary, who responded with a micro-shrug that meant ‘yes’ but either he was not pleased or he didn’t know any more than I did about her sudden, unexplained and uncharacteristic bolt to Nevada, and was displeased about not knowing.
The padding had been coming loose from Janice’s chair as long as I could remember, but she’d insisted it was comfortable enough and should be left as it was. It was called the Berkeley chair. Poulsson probably assumed he’d been given it because it was nearest the stove, next to Mom if she ever sat down and, he might have been thinking, offered easiest access to the door in case he needed it.
Mike’s chair was on the far side, appropriately in the middle where everyone was close enough to catch his eye or tap his arm and re-up what they assumed to be their special connection. But mine was right next to it because I did have the special connection. During the nearly twenty years he’d been missing the chair had stayed empty at the table. In those decades he’d often lived off the grid and had developed the annoying habit of going to bed early.
‘Fall on your face?’ Gary asked me conversationally as he passed me a bowl of stew. I shrugged, as I’d done all the times growing up when I’d come home bruised from misjudged leaps or wires I didn’t quite have the balance to walk on. Duffy jumped up on my lap; his whiskers scratched the exact spot where I’d hit the sidewalk.
Uncharacteristically, John ignored the whole issue.
Before he could reconsider, I cut to the chase. ‘Leo’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Disappeared. In the clothes he wears to bed.’
John and Gary were the wolves I’d had in mind when throwing Poulsson in. But it was Mom who sat down next to him, handed him a full bowl and said, ‘You must be very worried, Hudson. It is Hudson? Not Hud?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, though he couldn’t have been much younger than her.
‘Well, you came to the right place. We’ll set about finding him. John’s good at that. He’ll help you.’
Help you! Now it was his problem, not that he seemed to realize it.
John forced a smile, like he’d just had his fangs extracted and the anesthetic hadn’t worn off. He took a swig of the tan liquid in the juice glass before him. He would, I thought, have offered Poulsson a shot of the Irish, but he was still too much cop to chance luring a driver to drink in his own family home. I poured an inch for Poulsson and one for myself. I held the glass to my mouth for a moment before I drank; the smell of the whiskey mixed with the earthy aroma of the stew and wafts of heat. If I hadn’t beaten it back it would have eased open decades of memories, of the safe dangers of adolescence.
I said, ‘Hudson, you told me Leo had written to you when you couldn’t get out, right?’ Out of where, I wanted to know, but this wasn’t the time to divert to that by road.
Spoon halfway to mouth, he nodded. ‘Every month, without fail. Not Zen stuff; he knows I’m Catholic. Just stuff …’
‘Like?’
‘The Giants were climbing into the lead. Candlestick was flooded for a Niners’ game. Sand off the dunes blew over The Great Highway and they’d closed off the road. Just stuff.’
‘You’ve known him for a long time then?’ Gary asked. I’d seen him do this before, trying to expose the bones of a client’s story amidst the loose flesh of extraneous detail.
‘Oh, yeah. I helped him dig out the road to that monastery up north before we could even get lumber in.’
‘Ten years ago?’
‘No, less. Six, I’m thinking.’
‘Christian charity?’ John asked.
‘For me, maybe. I’d just gotten back from Korea and I didn’t know what to do and figured I owed Leo, because of the letters and all.’
‘So you weren’t in jail?’ The words popped out of my mouth. Mom’s hand shot to her mouth. She looked so appalled we all laughed, Poulsson hardest of all.
‘Close enough. But no. No, these trips are my first trips and, I’ll tell you, it’s hard to see my little girl in that place.’
Girl!
‘Leo’s been leading a meditation group for women inmates?’ I asked.
‘Maybe, but mostly he visits, like I do.’
‘Visits who?’
Poulsson’s irises rose, like he was scouring the top of his eye sockets for the answer. ‘Dunno. You know, I was so busy talking about Jessica I never thought to ask. And that’s Leo, isn’t it? Never put his own stuff first. She was in for drugs – that’s all I know. But, like, in women’s prison that’s about half. Jessie says without drugs and boyfriends the cells would be empty.’
‘Were there a lot of drugs in the monastery?’ I asked.
‘You’d think, huh? Up there in the back of nowhere. But no. Leo was no-nonsense about that. He told me before I got there. Much as he needed me – and he’d still be digging if I hadn’t been there – he wouldn’t have let me in with a leaf or a seed. Between the sheriff assuming hippies were floating in on the fumes and the feds with their helicopters, he figured one misstep and the monastery would be history. Later, he told me he’d had a friend or two who were wanted or on the lam, laying low, you know, and he didn’t even dare let them in. No one’s cleaner than Leo.’
John, who had been containing himself, lost his containment. ‘Poulsson, what do you know about drugs here, in the city Zen place?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ve seen the people who come there. They could be anyone, right? No one cards them. So who’s buying and selling?’
‘Like I said, I’m Catholic. I go to the cathedral. St Mary’s. The new one, you know?’
Gary said softly, still holding his glass of whiskey, ‘Maybe no drugs, but the traffic from Broadway, the girls, the pimps, maybe Leo ran afoul of them. D’you think? Did he say anything? Long rides in the car like you two had, it’s a time when guys talk about things. Who could Leo trust as much as you? You, his friend. When you’re in a position of authority like his, you really need someone whose only connection is to you. An old friend.’
Poulsson sipped the whiskey. The man looked anxious to help Gary. ‘I don’t know. This is outta leftfield and maybe, probably, it’s not connected at all, but one day two months – no, no, it was three months – I remember because we were talking about the Giants and the season had just started.’
John’s teeth were jammed together so hard spit was leaking out one side. But Gary smiled and nodded for Hudson to go on.
‘I asked him about karma. You know, we all think we know what it means, because, well, we all use the word like we know. You know?’
Gary nodded with real-looking enthusiasm.
‘But Leo said karma is cause and effect. You do something, something happens. Maybe not what you intended. But once you’ve done it, things happen, you know, and they go on out of your control.’
John refilled his glass. He looked like he was using all his restraint not to down it in one gulp.
‘Like, Leo said, you’re on the top of a mountain. It’s winter. You throw a snowball at a friend. It missed and starts rolling down the hill.’
‘Snowballing,’ John muttered.
‘Exactly!’
‘And the connection?’ Gary prompted.
Poulsson hesitated. The man looked lost. ‘Oh, jeez, I don’t know. I thought I knew. I … oh … Jeez. I’m sorry.’
John was purple. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth—
Mom shot him a look. She put a hand on Hudson’s shoulder and after a moment said, ‘Well, we all know about thoughts slipping away, don’t we? But Hudson, there was a connection, something Leo said to you in the car that afternoon in the spring when the Giants’ season had just started and you two—’
‘Oh, yeah. Now I remember. He said sometimes you think you are doing the right thing and the consequences go haywire. I said I hoped he wasn’t talking about me. He wasn’t.’
‘And?’ Gary asked after a couple moments.
‘That’s it.’
/> That was too much for John. ‘Poulsson, where the fuck is he?’
‘Leo?’
‘Yeah, Leo!’
‘I wish I knew. Truly. I wish. I don’t.’
‘You go anywhere else together? He talk about friends? Problems? Someone out to get him?’
Poulsson kept shaking his head. ‘No one would hurt Leo, I mean, not intentionally.’
‘But someone did. A man clubbed him. Who, Poulsson?’
Hudson shrank back behind his bowl, the symbol of the hospitality that had been offered and dragged away. The man was quivering. His lips were trembling.
Before Mom could speak, John turned on me. ‘You! Look at you. You look like the loser in a cat fight.’
‘I know. It’d be worse if a woman in the courtyard hadn’t saved me. I didn’t even see her—’
‘That’s it! The connection!’ Poulsson beamed at Mom. ‘Leo said occasionally there’d been a homeless guy sleeping in the courtyard. Not the same guy, but, you know, different guys, occasionally.’
John bit his lip.
‘Leo felt bad about the homeless guys but he couldn’t let them come in and sleep in the zendo because, well, you know.’
Gary and Mom nodded. John sat stony-faced.
‘So Leo chose the middle way, sort of. He didn’t hassle them.’
‘Yeah, fine,’ John said and scraped his chair back in just the way Mom had told him not to year after year.
But she didn’t bite. ‘Go on, Hudson.’
‘Leo said he suspected that the guy there then – in the courtyard at night – wasn’t really homeless. That he was there for some other reason. I said to him, “You mean, like a lookout?” and he said maybe. He didn’t know.
‘I asked him what he was going to do about it. He said he just had suspicions, nothing firm. He was going to be alert.’
‘He never mentioned anything to me!’ I said.
‘He didn’t want to put you in the position of having to make a choice about the situation.’ Poulsson looked apologetic, as if he was channeling Leo. And he looked confused.