by S. J. Rozan
I stuck the quarter in the phone and called Mark Sanderson.
"Where the hell have you been?" he demanded, after I'd gotten past the receptionists and the secretary with the beautiful voice.
"Mr. Sanderson, has your daughter ever mentioned a man named Frank Grice?"
He stopped cold, as though he'd lost his place in the script. "No," he finally said. "She doesn't know him. How would she know him?"
"But you do?"
"I've heard of him. Some of the people I do business with have had trouble with him."
"Bullshit," I said. "Grice first came here because you brought him here. What happened, Sanderson, he get out of hand?"
His voice exploded out of the phone. "Goddammit, who the hell do you think you are? The sheriff tells me he found Jimmy Antonelli's truck this morning, in the ravine. If anything happened to Ginny—"
"There was no one in the truck when it went off the road, Mr. Sanderson."
"So where the hell are they?"
"Wherever Jimmy is, your daughter's not with him."
The phone hissed his words the way a pot lid hisses steam. "Damn it, Smith, you're trying to protect that kid, and it's obvious and stupid. I'm getting impatient."
"I can't help that."
"Yes, you can. You can tell me where he is, and where my daughter is, or I promise you you'll be one sorry bastard."
I hung up without telling him I'd been a sorry bastard most of my life.
I had lots of quarters. I called Alice Brown to tell her the troopers would be watching over her.
"Me? You're—oh," she said. "Oh, I understand."
"I thought you would. Have you been okay?"
"Yes. But the sheriff was here, and right after him one of those men you told me about. The one with the cast on his wrist."
"Otis. They wanted to know where Jimmy was?"
"Yes. I told them both the same thing—about Jimmy cheating on me and how I threw him out. And I said if anyone found him they shouldn't bother to tell me because I couldn't care less."
"Good. When was this?"
"This morning, about eleven. I called you at Antonelli's but no one answered."
"Did they believe you?"
"I don't know."
"Will you be okay there?"
"I'm all right. What should I do?"
"Keep on doing what you're doing. As far as you're concerned it's a normal day, because you don't know where Jimmy is anyway. I'll check back with you."
I was about to hang up when she asked a sudden question: "Will it be all right?" Her voice through the phone was shaky and brave.
For a moment I couldn't answer. Then I said, "I want it to be. Alice, I'll do what I can."
"I know," said Alice. "Thank you."
I depressed the silver cradle, kept the receiver to my ear. I dropped in another quarter, tried the green house again, and the number Otis had dialed from it, but they both rang into emptiness.
I crossed the parking lot back into the 7-Eleven, bought another pack of Kents, a lemon, and a box of teabags. As a last-minute thought I grabbed a bottle of aspirin. Back in the car I washed three pills down with the last of the lemonade, turned the car and the music on, and headed down the road.
Chapter 15
A loud buzzing cut like a chainsaw through my dream. Bare winter trees, dark sky, cold. A stream, two ways to cross it: one a bridge, ugly and new; the other shadowy, undefined. People in the shadows, people I thought I knew but couldn't see. Movement in the darkness. And then the buzzing, and I was awake, disoriented in the twilit room.
I groped for the clock, hit the button. The buzzing stopped. I lifted the clock and focused on it: four o'clock. Christ, what a stupid time to get up. No, but it was afternoon, not morning; and Lydia was coming. Right, at four-thirty. Get out of bed, Smith, take a shower, make yourself bearable.
Groggy and stiff, I stumbled to the bathroom. I'd been asleep for an hour, since I'd gotten back from the Creekside Tavern. I stood under the hot water, tried to make the steam clear my brain.
The Creekside. Shabby mustard-colored shingles, brown vinyl trim, windows full of lit beer signs, most for brands the Creekside didn't sell anymore. Inside, wood-grain Formica dimness and a stale smell. No sign of the drug dealing that went on from the bar or the bookmaking business in the back room, but it was early in the day.
Two guys my age were curled over beers at the bar; two younger guys and a girl with a fountain of hair springing from the top of her head were playing pool. They all looked up, measured me, an intruder in their territory, and just how tough was I, if it came to where that mattered? I sat on a barstool near the door, not near the other guys, the etiquette of the stranger.
"Haven't seen you here before," the bartender said, put my Bud on the bar. He was blond and big, shirtsleeves pushed up past his elbows.
"No," I said. "I'm from North Blenheim. I don't get over this way much."
That placed me for them, told them where I'd been before I walked into their lives.
"What brings you over here now?" he asked.
I drank some beer. "Frank Grice."
He made a show of looking around the near-deserted room. "He's not here."
"Been in lately?"
"I don't remember."
"Buy yourself a drink. It might help your memory." I dropped a twenty on the bar.
"Why, thanks, friend." He scooped up the bill, rang it into the register. He poured a shot of Dewar's, downed it, smiled, and shook his head. "I don't think that helped."
"Think harder," I suggested.
One of the pool players straightened up from the felt, strolled around the pool table, cue loose in his right hand. I drank more beer, put the glass down on the bar as he came to stand beside me.
"Something I can do for you?" I asked, not looking at him.
"You look familiar. You look like a cop." A nasal voice, belligerent and edgy.
"I never liked my face much, either," I said.
"What do you want Frank for?"
"He's got something I want." "What?"
I looked him over. Smallish; fish-belly pale; eyes a little out of focus. Close up, he was younger than I'd thought, too young to be drinking in the Creekside in the early afternoon.
"Tell you what, Junior," I said. "You tell me where Frank is, and I'll tell him my secret, and afterwards, if you're good, he'll tell you."
"Sonuvabitch," he growled. He hefted the pool cue, moved closer.
I slipped off the barstool toward him, took a quick step in, too close for him to swing the cue. I socked him in the stomach, fast but not all that hard; but his eyes had told me he'd drunk enough that I didn't need to hit him hard. He made a small noise, doubled over, was quietly sick.
"Hey!" came from his friend on the other side of the pool table. He headed for me.
"Mike!" said the bartender sharply. "Hold it!"
The second pool player halted, his hands rolled into fists. He glanced from the bartender to me, back again.
"You're not going to break up my place," the bartender said. "You," he turned to me, "get the hell out."
Standing, I realized that the beer was hitting me harder than it usually did. The room wasn't as still or solid as I liked rooms to be. Getting out didn't seem like a bad idea.
I dropped my card on the bar. "Tell Frank I know about Ginny Sanderson, and the truck," I said to them all. "Tell him he'll have to deal with me. I'll be at Antonelli's tonight. Tell him that."
And I left the Creekside, my clothes still carrying that stale, sour smell as I drove, slowly and carefully, back to my cabin, to sleep.
The hot water faded to warm, lukewarm, cold. After a few minutes of cold I gave it up. I dried, dressed, built a fire in the stove, put the kettle on. Four twenty-five. I sat at the piano, worked at slow, even scales until I heard a car crunch down the driveway. Four-forty. I closed the piano, opened the front door in time to see a Ford Escort roll to a stop next to my Acura.
I crossed to the car as
Lydia got out. I hesitated, then kissed her cheek, caught the scent of freesia in her hair.
"Don't squeeze," she said. "Where's your bathroom?"
I pointed to the cabin door. "Just inside, on the left. I'll bring your things."
She scuttled up the porch steps, disappeared inside.
I reached into the car, brought out a zippered, snapped, strapped, and buckled carry-on of soft black leather. I followed her inside, dropped the bag on the couch. The bathroom door opened and she came out, combing her hair back from her face with her fingers.
"Didn't you stop?" I grinned.
"I wouldn't have made it by four-thirty if I'd stopped."
"I always stop," I told her. "Twice."
She made a rude noise.
"That's just what your mother always says to me."
"I'm not surprised. What happened to your face?"
I’ll tell you all about it. Do you want some tea? It's only Lipton's, in a bag," I apologized. "It was all I could get.
"When in Rome," she sighed. I took that as a yes.
Lydia shook off her leather jacket, unclipped her holster from her belt. The lamplight was gold on her smooth skin; it caught highlights in her hair, which was black and asymmetrical, like her clothes. While I made her tea, and coffee for myself, she wandered around the room, investigating my drawings, photographs, books. She stopped at the small silver-framed photo. She picked it up in both hands, looked at it silently, then looked over at me; but I was busy with cups, spoons, and teabags, and I let her look pass.
"It's just the way I thought it would be up here," she finally said, coming over to the counter, collecting her tea.
"I didn't know you ever thought about it."
"Don't play dumb." She settled onto the couch, drew her legs up. The cushions molded themselves to her as if they'd been expecting her, as if they were already used to her being here.
"I'm not," I said. "Playing, anyway. I'll tell you the whole story."
"That's only part of it."
"Part of what?"
"What I'm mad about."
"I thought the problem was I wouldn't tell you who the client was, why the paintings were here."
"The other part is there's a client at all."
"I don't get you."
A log shifted on the fire. I could see sparks through the stove grate; then everything was still again.
"I thought you came up here," Lydia said, "to get away from work."
"I always have, before this."
"But this time, someone from here called you in New York to hire you."
"That's right."
"When you left you didn't tell me that."
I sipped my coffee. "I wasn't sure I was going to take it."
"So? When you did take it, you called me to work on it. To work for you." "With."
"No, for. If it was with, you'd have told me from the beginning. Even if you weren't sure."
"I've turned down cases before," I said. "Without telling you."
"And taken them. And I didn't care. But I thought things were supposed to be different now."
"Am I supposed to consult you on every decision I make?"
"God, I knew you'd say that! No, and you're not supposed to play dumb again, either." She pulled her legs in closer, wrapped both hands around her mug. "This is a big deal, you working up here. You can't pretend it isn't."
"I'm not pretending anything."
She nodded, but I had the feeling it wasn't because she agreed with me. "I think you did it for the same reason you didn't tell me about it or tell me who the client is."
"What reason is that?"
Her eyes confronted mine. Her look was hard under the soft lamplight, but there was more than anger in it.
"Caring about you," she said, "is a big problem for me."
I reached onto the side table for a cigarette. "I'm not sure what that means, and I don't know how to answer it."
"Before," she said, "when we just worked together, just sometimes, that was easy. Now, if we're supposed to be partners and .. . and maybe whatever, then I can't do it unless you really mean it too."
"You think this has to do with that?"
"I know it does. You're used to working alone. You took a case up here and didn't tell me about it because you're not so sure being partners is a good idea. Maybe it's not, but if it isn't, then I can tell you right now that all that other stuff you've been saying you wanted all these years is a worse one."
I put my coffee mug down on the side table without looking at it. I didn't have to look; years of sitting in this chair, reading, smoking, listening to music, had given me the measure of that table, of this room and everything in it.
"I don't know," I told Lydia. "If that's what I did I didn't mean to do it."
"You didn't mean to, or you meant to but you just didn't know you did?"
Briefly, I met her eyes, then looked beyond them to the shadows gathering on the porch I'd built, the dusk starting its business of disputing the daylight's confident disposition of the facts of time, depth, distance.
"I don't know," I said again.
"Well," she said, "you'd better figure it out. Because I'm not going down this road if this is what's there. I can still help it. So think about it."
We sat in silence for a while, no sound but the crackle of logs in the stove, the hiss of a match as I lit another cigarette when the first was gone. I was beginning to think bourbon would have been a better idea than coffee when Lydia spoke again.
"Okay." She surprised me with a grin. "Anyway, you have this case and I'm here. So tell me about it."
I told her. I went through everything that had happened since Monday, everything I thought had happened before. I told her what I was sure of and what I wasn't, what I was worried might be coming next. We talked the way we always talked, going back, forward, back again. I gave her everything, even things I didn't understand.
She sipped her tea, listened, asked a few careful questions. When I had said all I had to say she was quiet; then she asked, "These people are very important to you, aren't they?"
"Tony and Jimmy ..." I began. Then I didn't know anything else to say besides "Yes."
"And Eve Colgate, too."
"Eve, too."
"And this place." Her eyes moved over the room, stared into the woods, dark now beyond the windowpanes, then came back to me. "Bill, can he really do that? Have your land condemned?"
I looked into the murky depths of my coffee, answered, "I'm sure he can."
"Is it worth it?"
I looked up, met her eyes. "Jimmy didn't kill Wally Gould."
"If you did what Sanderson wants," she said, "Jimmy would get arrested, but your land would be safe, and if he's innocent—"
"It wouldn't matter. Between Brinkman and Grice, Jimmy'd be sent up for life, if he lived long enough."
"So it's worth it?"
"It's got to be."
In the silence I could hear the wind moving in the trees around the cabin, the whispering, the rustling and creaking as familiar to me as my own breathing, my own bones.
Lydia stood, crossed the room. She sat on the arm of my chair, kissed my bruised cheek very gently. Freesia and citrus mingled in the cool air.
"Okay," she said. "Just making sure." Her face grew serious. "I just hope you're not—missing something," she said. "Because of how you want things to come out."
"That's one of the reasons I asked you to come. I wanted someone I could trust, someone who's detached."
"Well," she said doubtfully, "detached hasn't ever been my best thing."
"You'll be fine. And besides being detached," I said, "you have that beautiful, anonymous, rented car. I have plans for that."
"My car," she said, standing. She clipped her gun to her belt. "I drive."
"Always. Besides," I added casually, "it's probably not a stick shift. I bet it wouldn't be any fun anyway."
"Forget it. I drive."
So she drove, up my driveway and on to 3
0, north under the bare winter trees spread against the dark sky.
Our first stop was the 7-Eleven, where we picked up cigarettes, beer, and a chicken parmesan hero. The clerk stared at Lydia as though she were a black-petalled orchid that had sprung up in the daisy patch. Back in the car, Lydia grinned, said, "Not many Asians up here, huh?"
"Especially in black leather."
"You think I'm too downtown?"
"I think you're adorable."
"Seriously, Bill. Will it be a problem? That I can't blend?"
I shook my head. "Outsiders don't blend here, no matter what they look like. I've been coming here for eighteen years; once I lived here through the fall and winter into the spring. I'm still a weekender. Brinkman calls me city boy.'"
"When did you do that?"
"What?"
"Live here."
I lit a cigarette, found the ashtray in the unfamiliar dash. "Seven years ago."
Lydia said, "Mmm." I didn't say anything.
She rolled down her window. The wind blew her silky hair across her forehead. She combed it back with her fingers.
When the first cigarette was gone I pulled out another.
"If it makes you that crazy," Lydia said, "you can drive."
"Do all Chinese read minds?" I pushed the cigarette back in the pack.
"Only me and my mother."
"I love your driving. Hear that, Mrs. Chin? I love your daughter's driving. Turn here."
We had reached the steep hardscrabble road. We bounced up it, emerged from the trees onto the flat, rock- strewn plain.
"We're here," I said.
Tonight there was a moon. The ridge was clearly visible, towering on the other side of the great pit, in whose glassy surface stars glittered.
"God," Lydia said, staring. "Where are we, Mars?"
"It's an abandoned quarry pit. The one I told you about, where Jimmy dropped the cars."
A truck went by on the ridge road, its headlights passing behind trees a hundred yards above where we sat.
"That's weird," she said.
"There's a road up there, but you can't get here from it, except on foot. Stay in the car a minute."
I got out, moved away from the car. The shack was dark and silent. "Jimmy!" I shouted, "It's Bill. I have a friend with me. I need to talk to you."