I made my way hesitantly up the stairs. Music blared through the closed door to the left, Alanis Morissette wailing about an ex-boyfriend, with no small measure of bitterness. Scrabble letters glued to the door spelled out EMILY'S ROOM. Feeling like an intruder, I continued down the hall toward the attic hatch. A bathroom, a guest room, and then open double doors to the master. I stood under the hatch, peering into the bedroom where my mother slept. A large four-poster bed with a floral duvet faced a window overlooking a gazebo and a swimming pool. A shoulder holster was slung across a dressing chair by the bathroom door. An easel by the bay window held a half-finished portrait of Emily. The lips were tight and angry, and her posture suggested that she was an unwilling subject. The drawing itself was a bit generic-not Callie's best work. It reeked of obligation all the way around.
A string dangled from the hatch overhead. When I tugged, the hidden ladder unfolded like the leg of some insect. I climbed up, heat hitting me along with the scratchy smell of insulation. A ventilation fan embedded in the roof chopped the morning glare to hypnotic effect.
Four boxes sat by the air-conditioner unit, all Magic Markered FRANK in my mom's hand. Two held old suits and a few dress shirts that I guessed Callie couldn't part with. Books filled the third. I lifted several to admire the familiar spines. Presidential memoirs and military histories, a couple Leon Uris novels. The fourth box was the lightest, its contents shifting around when I lifted it. A few layers of pictures, loose in the bottom. I sorted through them. Black-and-white wedding photos-Frank's parents? Pictures of him as a kid. In one he wore trousers and a little flat cap and pointed a wooden gun at the camera. Until that moment it had never occurred to me that Frank had once been a kid. I scooped up more pictures and flipped through several handfuls.
Down at the bottom, I found the pictures from the war. There was one of Frank and other soldiers at a camp in the jungle. He was stretched out on his back, smirking, his legs crossed, boots unlaced. I studied the other men's faces, but none were familiar. A few photos later, I found him. It was a mess-hall picture, guys in white undershirts hunched over trays of cubed meat and noodles. Frank leaned over his food, fork raised to punctuate a point he was making to the men around him. The others bent toward him. At the table behind him, his head turned to listen, sat Charlie. The wild blond hair was shaved in a flattop, but I recognized the piercing eyes, that wide, unruly mouth. He seemed an outsider, pivoting to get in on Frank's conversation, and something in his body language suggested an underdog's reverence. I couldn't help but wonder if Frank trusted Charlie half as much as Charlie trusted him.
The fan huffing overhead, I sat looking at the photograph until sweat trickled down my ribs. Then I shoved it into a back pocket, stacked the boxes neatly, and climbed down. As I passed through the hall, Emily stepped out of the bathroom, nearly colliding with me.
"Hi," I said. "Sorry."
She looked up at me. Her brown eyes were doleful and sort of pretty. "It sucks here," she said.
"I bet." I extended my hand. "Emily, right? I'm Nick."
She brushed past me into her room. "It's just Em." She scowled at the Scrabble letters on the door. "Your mom glued those there when we moved in. She got my name wrong."
I thought about that portrait in Callie's room, how neither of them likely had the desire or stamina to finish it. "She's probably just trying to help you adjust."
"She's always hovering over me, trying to feed me and stuff."
"She means well," I said.
"Then why haven't you talked to her for, like, nine hundred years?"
"Because of a bunch of shit I got into when I was younger."
She stared at me curiously for a moment, then flopped down on her stomach in front of a Scrabble board and a two-volume dictionary. A few tournament certificates and ribbons were tacked over her desk.
I stayed in the doorway. "You're a Scrabble champ? That's pretty cool."
"Cool. Yeah. I have to beat the boys away with my thesaurus." She glanced back at me over a shoulder. "Look, why don't you just get out of here?"
When I got downstairs, Callie was doing the dishes. I cleared my throat, but she didn't turn around.
"Do you know what company Frank was in?" I asked. "In Vietnam?"
She kept scrubbing. "Frank didn't talk much about the war. You know that."
"Do you have anything that would say where he served?"
"Yeah, Nicky, I keep his obit framed in the powder room." The pan hit the counter with a clank, but then her shoulders lowered and she relented. "I believe it's on his headstone."
"Where… where is that?" I was ashamed not to know.
She caught the hitch in my voice and turned. "The veterans' cemetery. Wilshire and Sepulveda."
Above the breakfast nook hung a wedding picture of Callie and Steve, Emily scowling from the side in a dark blue velvet dress. So much of Callie's life I had missed. What had I been doing the day my mom had gotten remarried?
Like his daughter, Steve had seemed a bit tentative in the house, a touch formal. Six months he'd lived here. It wasn't easy transitioning into a new place, feeling like a guest in your own home. I thought about that shoulder holster on the chair upstairs. It struck me how tall Frank was, or how tall he always seemed. "What's Steve do?"
"He's a cop." She added, defensively, "He's a wonderful man."
"I expect so. You wouldn't marry a man who wasn't."
We looked at each other a moment, awkwardly. She'd rebuilt a life, just as I had. Though I was happy for her, seeing her brought back the ache I'd tried for years not to feel. We were no longer who we'd been when we'd known each other. The old cues, the connections, our stupid inside jokes- they weren't there when I reached for them. I could see in her face that she felt it, too. That hollowness.
She said, "We were so close, Nicky."
"Yeah," I said. "We really were."
As I passed, she took my arm, stopped me. She said, "I'm ready to listen now. I want you to know that."
"Listen to what?"
"Why you really ran away."
I thought about the photomat slip in my pocket and the key in my shoe.
She said, "What?"
I shook my head.
"How about the short version?" She let go of my arm. "Do you owe me anything?" She asked it not passive-aggressively but with genuine curiosity.
My chest cramped; my throat was dry. It was as if my body was rebelling so I wouldn't be able to get the words out. "The night I left, they came and arrested me," I said. "For Frank's murder."
"They did what to you?" She was instantly, protectively furious.
"They booked me into MDC. Have your husband check the records."
"You should have talked to me, Nicky." She looked crushed. "We could've gotten you a lawyer. There would've been no case. No case"
"They'd manufactured one, including my prints on the gun."
"Everyone knew you picked up the gun. They couldn't make anything of that."
"After what happened to Frank, I was willing to believe they could do a lot of things. And I wasn't gonna trust the assholes with badges to handle it on the up-and-up."
We both turned at a movement in the doorway. Steve standing, holding his dirty plate. His stare was the first coplike thing I'd noticed about him.
I nodded at her, then at Steve. "Thanks for letting me look at those pictures."
I walked out, but Steve barely moved, so I had to brush past him. My footsteps knocked the tiles of the foyer, and then I swung the door closed behind me and hurried down the walk and to my truck, hidden around the corner.
I walked among the thousands of headstones, the perfect rows fanning by like plowed furrows seen from a moving car. The photomat slip remained safely in my pocket. A few more hours before I could pick up the roll of mystery film. I told myself that's where my uneasiness was coming from.
The grounds administrator had pointed me to the general area, but it was difficult to keep my bearings among the identical Depa
rtment of Defense grave markers. Traffic on Wilshire and the 405 was distant enough to recall the ocean, a white-noise accompaniment to the grassy swells and shade offered by venerable trees. It would have been peaceful were it not for all the dead.
I nearly walked past Frank's gravestone. I hadn't expected it to be any different from all the others, but I also somehow had. No wreath, no flowers. Just his name, indented in a plug of marble. My chest tightened, and I realized I was breathing hard. Fumbling out a notepad, I jotted down the information I needed. Company C, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, United States Army. Vietnam.
Slapping the notepad closed, I turned swiftly to go, almost striking an old man making his fragile way up the row of graves. His cheeks were hollow, his jaw pronounced and skeletal, and he wore an ancient cloth hat weighed down with military pins. He looked into my face, then glanced past me at the headstone and shook his head, his lips bunching. "Them boys caught a lotta shit they didn't deserve," he said.
He winked jauntily and continued up the row. I was staring at the grass, and then it got blurry, and I forced my eyes back up to the date of birth, the date of death, the name stamped in block letters on the cold white marble.
Chapter 16
I sat in my car in the sweltering Valley heat, the photo package in my lap. The cheery yellow envelope featured sample photos of a hot-air balloon and a golden retriever shuddering off sprinkler water. But I wasn't looking at the samples. I was looking at the one slot on the front form that had been filled out, the handwritten block letters that spelled out NICK HORRIGAN.
Breaking the gummy seal, I extracted the inner envelope. I ran my thumb under the flap, hesitant to lift it. What if it contained pictures of a mangled corpse? Someone being shot? A child being molested? I hadn't considered a frame-up. Charlie probably hadn't either. My heart thudding, I glanced around the parking lot but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
Bracing myself, I tugged the set of pictures from the envelope. Whatever I was expecting, it was nothing compared to the jolt I got from looking at my own face.
A zoom-lens close-up of me walking down the street, hands shoved in my pockets.
I jerked my head around, craning to take in the full parking lot. The mother loading groceries, the kids angling in on tacos outside the comic-book store, the businessman at the meter-all of a sudden, no one was outside suspicion. It wasn't until I looked back at the photo that I saw that it captured me passing in front of Charlie's house. The picture had been taken from a good distance. Although it was blurred at the edge of the frame, I could make out a sliver of the Dumpster that the photographer had hidden behind. A second shot showed me ducking the crime-scene tape into the garage. Then there I was, coming back out with a rucksack hanging heavily off my shoulder.
With shaking hands I flipped to the next picture.
A nighttime shot of the Sherman Oaks post office, no more than ten blocks from here. The flash illuminated the Magnolia Boulevard address painted on the beige wall.
The burn in my chest alerted me that I'd been holding my breath. I shook my left Puma, felt the rattle of the key there inside the air pocket.
The rest of the pictures were black. Unexposed.
Eager as I was to get moving, I headed back inside the photomat, passing the overnight drop box outside the front door where the film had been left last night. The guy behind the counter was overweight, a wispy blond beard framing his round face.
I handed him the film and asked, "Is there any way you can tell what kind of camera was used to take these pictures?"
The guy studied them. "Not really. He's got a pretty good zoom lens going, maybe a Canon, but you can't really tell."
"You mean a zoom lens separate from the camera?"
"Yeah, there's no way he got this clarity from a built-in."
He handed the pictures over, and I caught the faint lettering on the back of the top print. Kodak Endura. I pointed to it. "What can you tell me about this type of film?"
"That's just the kind of paper it's printed on. But let me see the slides." He removed from the envelope's inside pocket a few old-fashioned slides-I hadn't thought to look. "Since there were only a few shots, I just tucked the slides back here." His tongue poked out as he squinted at them. "Kodak Ektachrome 100. A daytime-balanced color transparency. Fine grain, high sharpness, makes your colors pop."
"So someone who uses this knows what they're doing? This isn't a film you'd pick up to snap casual pictures?"
He shook his head, used his cupped hands to slide his dangling hair back over his ears. "Nuh-uh. Mostly commercial photographers use it."
"Would you choose this film if you were a paparazzi? Or a cop on stakeout or something?"
He gave me a weird look. "Paparazzo's the singular. And not really. More like if you're shooting clothes or curtains or something where you need really accurate color."
I thanked him and walked back to my pickup.
Five minutes later I was parked outside the post office, staring at the same view as the photograph in my hand. Casting glances over my shoulder, I entered. The sudden chill of the air-conditioning underscored the dead heat outside. There was a line of annoyed customers, people bickering over forms. I veered left, into the banks of P.O. boxes. The second alcove held Box 229, a double-wide bottom unit. The half walls afforded privacy and muted the sounds from the rest of the building. I crouched and worked the key from my shoe.
I slid it home, paused for good luck, turned it.
The little door swung open.
The box was empty.
I sat, putting my back against the wall, allowing myself a few moments of despair. Then I sighed and started to swing the door closed so I could retrieve the key.
A yellow edge protruded ever so slightly from the roof of Box 229. Getting down on all fours, I peered in. Taped to the top of the unit, a manila envelope. I reached in, tugged it free, and opened it. A partial sheet of paper covered with columns of numbers slid out. I scanned down the rows. 1.65, 4.05, 3.49, 1.80, 2.71-they were all numbers less than five, not a single integer. Only one stood out, both in size and in its own column: 99.999. The top part of the page had been torn off, and the paper was brittle with age. An electronic date stamp on the bottom read DECEMBER 15, 1990.
About five months before Frank was murdered.
Holding the stiff sheet in my hand, I slumped back against the wall. "Well," I said, "this clears up everything."
Chapter 17
I drove home with the torn page of numerals staring at me from the passenger seat, in case it decided to explain itself. Rolling down the window, I let the stale Valley air blow across my face.
Your life is now on the line. That's what Charlie had said when he'd shoved the key into my hand. Over a sheet of numbers? This grid of digits had put a charge into the Service, scrambled a Black Hawk, led to a standoff at a nuclear power plant? Were they missile launch codes? Kickback tallies? Or a cipher for government documents? And who the hell was leading me to this stuff? Charlie's confederates? Or his killers? It was like that Tetris game I used to play on Nintendo, puzzle pieces falling one after another, defying order.
Miraculously, I found a parking spot on my street. When I got off the elevator upstairs, Homer was slumped against what appeared to be my new front door, his coat loose around him like a sack.
"You're late," he said. "But I exercised restraint."
As I regarded the new door with surprise, Evelyn emerged from her apartment, a pendulous knockoff Gucci at her elbow. She disapproved of Homer's Thursday appointments with my shower and did her best to ignore us.
Homer stared at her with great humility. The smell coming off him was sour, whiskey pushed through dried sweat. "Ma'am, can you spare a dollar? I haven't eaten in two days."
Evelyn set her dead bolt with a decisive click, casting a dubious gaze over her shoulder. "Force yourself." She disappeared into the stairwell.
I set my hand on the door. Shiny brass doorknob, Medeco lock. "How am I supp
osed to get in?"
"Try the knob?"
It turned easily under my grasp and swung open on well-greased hinges.
Sever sat on the remains of my couch, his agent-perfect suit riding high at the shoulders. My first reaction was that he'd come, at long last, to arrest me for Frank's murder. I tensed, fought an impulse to bolt. But he wore an accommodating grin.
I did my best not to look over at the dishwasher that hid Charlie's cash.
He struggled to his feet and pulled two sets of keys from his pocket, that tan outdoorsman's face crinkled around the eyes. He looked far less comfortable confined to a suit than he'd seemed in his SWAT gear with an assault rifle dangling from a shoulder. He was the ideal counterpart to Wydell, intelligent muscle to Wydell's muscular intelligence. "I wanted to make sure I put these directly in your hand," he said. "And that I kept this guy out of here until you got home."
Homer shrugged, his shoulders even more massive beneath the layers of cloth. "So I didn't exercise that much restraint."
"You do know him?" Sever asked me.
"I do."
The sun was shining through the sliding glass door, making Sever's scalp tingle through his flattop. I'd forgotten how tall he was, the linebacker's weight behind his boots when he'd swung off my roof and knocked me in the chest. His mouth gathered solemnly, and he started to say something, then thought better of it. He tilted his head at Homer.
I said, "Give us a sec here?"
Homer curtsied, even pinching out a phantom dress on either side, and withdrew, closing the door behind him. For our benefit he hummed as he strolled up the hall.
Sever reached for his hip holster, and I froze before his hand continued to his pocket and pulled out a fat cell phone. Holding up a finger at me, he pushed a button, listened, then said, "Yes. Yes, it's a secure line. Put him through."
He offered me the phone.
I hesitated. After all, Charlie hadn't fared so well after taking their proffered call. But, knee-jerk reaction aside, I grabbed the phone.
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