Sobczyk and Rider gave me a lift home with one of their weird friends—a surveillance specialist—and gutted my house. While they were working I took a cab to SFO to pick up Delores, and went over to Kaiser and had my nose rebroken. It would look and feel bad for some time, but at least it wouldn’t be crooked forever. When I got home, the boys had pulled so much crap out of my house they were giddy as teenagers.
I wandered around my house, seeing it as if for the first time. Here I’d been, thinking I was all alone in an obscure corner of the world, when a rogue’s gallery had been watching my every move.
I had a nice chunk of change now, from McCaffrey’s initial 25k, and if I could bury the guilt over the deaths of Susan Dalton and Michael and Al, I could resume my quiet life in South San Francisco. Sleep late, eat big breakfasts, take afternoon naps.
But Ash was still out there. She’d fallen for me, or thought she had, hard enough to paint portraits of me, to assemble my alibis, to risk her life for me. Sure, I’d been nursing a quiet, unresolved fantasy about her ever since I saw her picture at Masello’s place—I am a man, I’m not blind. But it had evolved past that. I had feelings. West Coast, oogy feelings that I didn’t want to talk about. It haunted me that the bastard McCaffrey could be responsible for so much of what happened to Ash . . . and yet be the one who put us together. It felt fated.
Besides, how could I trust McCaffrey with anything? Where was Balam, really? And how many other people were working for the “organization,” communicating with Conrad or the Old Man or whoever, unbeknownst to McCaffrey? Would Ashley be the next to wind up dead? Maybe on a nude beach somewhere, just to twist the knife?
I slept like the dead in my own bed, like a brick laid by a master and smothered in mortar. As the sun split through my back window and the birds started up their morning racket, I nosed halfway out of sleep, then ducked halfway back and saw something, an image shimmering in front of me, lit in sharp contrast, like something hung in a gallery.
It was a painting—by Ashley, of course. But this one was different—it wasn’t an event that had already occurred. It was a variation on a theme, an almost exact replica of the painting that I had discovered in the cocktail lounge in Chinatown. Me, caressing a lover. Only the lover was Ashley.
It was truly beautiful. She was truly beautiful. And the look on her face . . . she was so much in love. I hovered before it, overcome with an emotion I had no name for.
There was a small tear at the corner of the canvas and I gave it a pull, and as it ripped the hole grew and spilled audio tape, reels and reels of it. I tried to patch it with pieces of canvas but realized the painting was changing, ripping, turning into something else—
I woke with a start and a sharp inhalation of breath. I remembered the lead I had never followed up. I never asked the Elvis Costello look-alike at Pearl Paint about Ashley’s disappearance.
I had to find Ash. I had to see her with my own eyes.
30
I had slept late. Afternoon was well underway by the time I got to Market Street between 5th and 6th. He was easy to find. Masello was right—he really did resemble Elvis Costello. Tall, gangly, glasses, and a quirky demeanor.
“Can I help you?”
“I want to ask about a customer of yours. A woman named Ashley who had an account here?”
“Oh, yes, Ashley. What a knockout. Typically we don’t run tabs for individual artists—accounts are more for commercial accounts or contractors—but for Ashley I made an exception. I had a little crush on her.”
“Has she been in lately?”
“No. She closed out her account, hasn’t come back. Couple weeks ago.”
I did a double take. “A couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah. Two, maybe three.”
I wandered off in a daze, almost forgetting to thank the guy. Jason Masello told me that Ashley disappeared a few weeks before I talked to him. But if she paid the tab two or three weeks ago, then she had barely been missing from the neighborhood when I talked to Masello. Maybe Sobczyk had a point when he said that it was always an ex.
I drove to the house on Hill Street and saw a note on the door: Babe—at the Lone Palm. J.
I knew the place, right around the corner on 22nd, steps from Guerrero, next door to a bodega that had gotten some press for making a giant ball out of rubber bands. Pink neon screamed Lone Palm next to a martini glass over the awning. I ducked in. The afternoon light struggled through a lone window, the bar, stools, and cocktail tables bright enough to dispel the myth the joint perpetrated in the evenings—that it was dark enough to be swanky and not just another Mission District hipster watering hole. The tables were covered with white tablecloths, the candles already lit. The television above the corner of the bar played some old black-and-white Tarzan movie with Maureen O’Sullivan, as if to intensify the noirish vibe of the room.
I took a look around and spotted Masello in the back corner, near the restrooms, hunched over a draft beer, his face flickering as he laughed and whispered to his chubby lady.
“Masello.” I sat down without being invited.
“Oh, uh, hi. David, right?”
“That’s right.”
“This is my girlfriend, Dana.”
I shook her limp hand. She looked past me, half in the bag.
“Cut the crap, Masello,” I said, quietly but firmly. “Where is Ashley?”
“Oh jeez,” he whined. “I’m so over this. I told you, I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to protect her anymore.”
“What the fuck.” He looked at Dana and rolled his eyes theatrically. “I don’t know where she is.”
“Masello, it’s done. Her uncle is dead—”
“Her uncle’s dead?” Dana’s eyes were as wide as glaciers, fixed to me. Both Masello and I stared at her.
“Dana,” Masello said, “what is it?”
She shook her head. “Oh, she’s going to be so upset.”
* * *
It was a small studio on Potrero Hill. Dana had rented it for Ashley and brought groceries over every couple of days. They had met while Ashley and Masello were dating and liked each other. After Dana and Masello got together, she and Ashley stayed in touch, no animosity. When Ashley went underground, she went to Dana. Ash knew Masello could never keep his mouth shut, and she knew that no one would ever ask Dana. Who expects a guy’s girlfriend to cover for his ex? Only in San Francisco.
Dana had a key and let me in. I asked them to allow me to go up alone, and they stepped aside. I climbed the staircase trepidatiously, nervous in a way I hadn’t felt since high school. I reached the top of the stairs and turned into the tiny space, a small room cluttered with painting paraphernalia. There were several easels set up and it was hard to see if anyone was even there. It sounds strange, but I felt her presence in the room. Buried beneath the smells of paint and lacquer thinner was a subtle, fragrant scent that I couldn’t quite place, but that I wanted to lie back and smell for a year or two.
I followed my nose to an easel set up by the back window, a half-obscured view of the tiny backyard next door with a garden—birds of paradise and a Meyer lemon tree—and the subtle backdrop of Potrero Hill falling away. The light was gentle and buttery and caressed the easel; a palette leaned against it on the floor, littered with clumps of drying pigment. A pair of brushes crossed on the ledge of the easel—this was clearly the canvas she had been working on. It was Delores, my convertible, driving down what looked like Lombard Street, and the unfinished woman riding shotgun looked just like Ash.
“She’s not here,” Dana said, at the door, a wringing worry in her voice.
I touched the edge of the canvas and burnt sienna came off easily onto my fingers. “It’s still wet.”
“She promised me she wouldn’t go out,” Dana said. “She even said it was too dangerous.”
Masello was sobering quickly, his look shifting from shock to concern. “Why would she go out? If it’s so dangerous for her—where would she even go?�
��
It was obvious. She was a woman of passions, and a creature of habit. “I know where she is.”
31
She wasn’t there. It was almost happy hour, yet the Empress of China was deserted. I asked for a cocktail menu and took a club chair against the wall facing the bar. It was foggy over the bay, the top of Coit Tower smudged into invisibility. Then I saw it: on a table by the window, an unattended drink. Looked like plum wine.
It sounds strange, but I felt her come into the room. The second I heard the elevator door open, I knew it was her, returning from the restrooms downstairs. She drifted by me and I caught a whiff of what I had smelled in the studio, a scent of amber, with a top note of what might have been acetate from her studio and a woodsy base with a hint of musk.
Masello’s photograph didn’t do her justice. She was stunning. Everything about her emanated beauty. This was the kind of girl who made heads turn everywhere she went. This was the kind of girl who could make a rowdy Mexico City barroom fall silent at her mere appearance at the door. She wore a big baggy sweater that gave the top half of her body a formless shape, and tight black leggings that defined what little of her legs weren’t covered by the sweater. Her thick socks were pulled up high above beat-up Doc Martens. Her hair was cropped short and swept up off her neck in some trashy kind of kerchief. She was dressed for a Saturday, a stay-at-home, never-leave-the-house, mop-the-floor kind of day. It didn’t matter. A girl like that would be stunning in rags. Her face simply beamed radiance. I almost fell onto the floor.
She moved effortlessly to the north window, taking her seat like an empress, and after a sip of wine she sat staring out the window and didn’t move.
Well, this was it. I hiked up my ego and sauntered over, feeling like a clumsy teenager. I clenched the back of the chair opposite her to keep from carrying on right through the plate glass.
She didn’t look up.
I sat down.
She didn’t look up.
I waited.
She didn’t look up. Every essence of her being was captivated with the scene out the window—the bay, the Golden Gate, and Chinatown laid out before us like a specimen awaiting dissection. Her eyes reflected the blue tranquility of the ocean itself. She was utterly at peace; one could never have guessed that her life was in such danger, that people had killed and died looking for her. She was beyond it all. I could have been Jack the Ripper and I don’t think she’d have minded.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I spoke: “Ashley.”
She slowly turned her head until her eyes landed on me. I felt like I’d been hit by a rock. She registered no surprise at all, just enthusiastic recognition quickly followed by excitement. The smile that broke across her face threatened to spill into her drink or float up to the ceiling. She came out of her seat and toward me, hugging me to her and pulling me up as well, until we were both standing, clumsily.
“David.” Voice like a waterfall over evergreens. “I love you.”
I was speechless. She squeezed me tight for what felt like an eternity, then sat back down and pulled me with her. She looked at me across the table with pupils as big as dinner plates and reached out to touch my face. “You have two black eyes,” she said, and laughed, with a sheer joy that was almost tangible. It was true, the broken nose had left me raccoon-eyed. “I love you,” she said again. I didn’t know whether to kiss her right there or blow my brains out.
I had to say something. I’m a man. “I don’t know you.”
“I know. But I know you very well.”
“I still don’t understand. Any of it. How can you love me?”
“I watched your tapes.” The smile was a man killer. “I saw you sleeping, even. I listened to your phone calls. I know everything about you.”
That’s when the invasion-of-privacy instinct is supposed to kick in. It didn’t. “The tapes . . .” I was floundering. I could only repeat her.
“The tapes from your house, silly.” I rather liked her calling me silly. It made me think we were naked in a lagoon far from guns and thugs. “From the cameras in your house.” She flushed a little and giggled.
“And the letter? That was really from you?”
She nodded. “I wanted you to know I was okay. I knew I shouldn’t, but—I didn’t want you to worry.”
Worry about someone I didn’t yet know? “Why didn’t you tell me about the cameras?”
“They couldn’t think anything was different.” She dropped the smile for the first time and I was able to slightly relax.
I really wished I had a whiskey. Here she was, right in front of me, and I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what to do next, what to ask, where to go, how to get there. All I could think about was taking her somewhere. Alone. Like Big Sur, or Kauai.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry to tell you . . . your, um, ‘uncle,’ McCaffrey—”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged. “He knew it was coming.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Fuck him.” It was harsher than the words themselves, cold coming out of her. “He was the closest thing I ever had to a father, and I never heard a word from him, not even after my mom died. Then he shows up, years later, wants me to come to work for him. Because of David Crane”—she bent her voice into an imitation of McCaffrey, full of ire. “He’s a bad guy. He got your best friend killed. You have to help me.”
“You mean Patty. The nude beach.”
“Whatever.” That shrug again. “We were friends for a minute in middle school—it’s sad that she died, but . . . did you hear about Typhoon Winnie?”
I blinked. “You mean last month, in Asia?”
She nodded. “That was tragic. Patty was just sad.”
“Did you know she was his daughter?”
“Yes. He tried to make up for not being around when she was younger, probably. Forgot about me until she was dead.” She took a sip of her wine. “She replaced me when we were younger, and now he wanted me to replace her. He was all desperate-like. I said no. I had a new job at Macy’s. I had a tiny room in a big apartment, I had a boyfriend. I had an art show coming up. And then everything went away, because I was ‘dead.’”
“And then you had no choice.”
“I had a choice,” she snapped. “You always have a choice. I would have survived just the same. But I was basically kidnapped.”
“What?”
“The goon squad. Live here, work here, we’re following you twenty-four hours a day. For your own safety.”
I was confused. “I thought you went to work for him willingly.”
“Never.”
“Ashley, McCaffrey is the one who put you in the Death Master File.”
“Oh, I know. I could see it in his stinky eyeball. But someone didn’t like it. I was taken care of after that.” She smiled. “And then I saw the bad guy. The guy who killed my friend Patty. Only he didn’t kill anybody. And he wasn’t a bad guy. And I thought, I can do this for a while. David,” she leaned in, her eyes wide, “it was a nice apartment. Money for paint and canvases. And everyone shut up around me. I don’t know why.”
A waitress appeared and I ordered a whiskey.
Ashley smiled at me and tapped my shoulder playfully. “Don’t look so creeped out,” she said, and then, “Look how beautiful it is,” looking out the window. She was right, it was, and we were quiet until the whiskey came. Even though it came in an uncomfortable snifter, I put down half of it in a single slug. I felt ebullient for a second.
“Can we get out of here?” I asked. “Get out of town, you and me?”
She smiled so big I thought Coit Tower would bend to its gravity. “I’d love to,” she said. My heart beat. “Where is Balam?”
That broke the dream into a million little pieces of sharp, blinding reality. “I don’t know. McCaffrey thought he’d left the country.”
“He could still be coming after me.”
“I don’t think so. McCa
ffrey’s guys are gone, the whole operation is blown. No one’s watching me.” She was shaking her head. “Look, Balam wanted you dead because you were stealing files and flash drives to protect me. Now that—”
She was laughing, head back, mouth wide open. “I wish!” That got the waitress’s attention and Ash didn’t skip a beat, just ordered another wine from halfway across the room with a single gesture. Then she quieted down. “Balam was obsessed with me. That’s it, the end.”
“You mean, like—”
“He wanted to fuck me. Marry me. Own me.”
Balam’s cudgel-like face rose up in my mind.
“I only ever saw the boys at the shop, no one else. They were fun, silly boys. But when Balam came, he knew them from before, and it was, Hola, chapines, vamos a ver, whatever, talking garbage. And Balam came on to me. I was like, No. But he kept coming by. He said he loved me. As if.” She looked back out the window, pensive.
“Ash,” I said quietly, “what then?”
She chewed her lip. “He came to my studio when I wasn’t there. He didn’t find any flash drives. I was careful. He found my paintings. Of you. He flipped out. He knew I was in love with you and he went crazy.”
I remembered the quiet fire behind Balam’s eyes, even the first time I saw him at the Dalton Gallery.
“He said he’d kill me if I didn’t have sex with him.” She pushed it off, the way you’d brush off a harmless insect. “It wasn’t that. I’ve had sex with guys for worse reasons. Whatever. But . . .” She stared at me, her eyes glistening. “I knew I wanted you. I didn’t want anyone else and I wasn’t going to do anything for that . . . fucking psycho.” She spat the words, her face twisting into a mask of disgust. “Balam said he’d kill us both. He knew I wanted to help you, and he told his bosses that he had hard evidence. But he was guessing. Carlos tipped me off. I think he had a little crush on me.” She grinned. “Then I had to disappear. He could kill me,” she said, taking my hand, “but he wasn’t going to kill you.”
The Painted Gun Page 17