by Susan Dunlap
‘So giving up the secrets of the dead was safe?’
‘The dead and the long-missing. Wally used to laugh that he was an occasional guest columnist at all the underground rags. He wrote almost in code. You really had to know what he was talking about to know what he was saying.’
‘The long-missing? He wrote about Mike?’
‘Not by name. Trust me, Darcy, even you wouldn’t have recognized Mike. Wally wasn’t “giving,” he was just putting out teasers, telling the probably six people who bothered to read him that he was open for chat.’
Janice was still bent over the flyers but her whole posture had changed from the wary near-crouch when she’d opened the door to me. I could make out only a bit of her face but I was sure it had morphed into the chairman of the board. ‘And then?’
‘He just became less relevant. His sources aged out. They died. Computers, texts, electronics he didn’t know. He sort of got put out to pasture.’
‘He still went to cafes.’
‘Drinking coffee is not the same as hearing dirt.’
Now I did laugh. Janice looked up – as if surprised – and laughed herself. In that moment I saw her as she might have been, if the wind had been at her back.
I handed her a pile of flyers. ‘You know, Janice, you are the best at what you do. You have led me down a detour, sure, but one that’s valuable. You’ve done it so successfully – that’s your superpower – that I almost forgot that you are hiding something. You’re always hiding something, aren’t you? Hey, don’t bother to tear up. All of us Lotts have our superpowers. Well, I’m the one who doesn’t give up. What are you not telling me?’
She went mute.
I’d forgotten that hideout of hers.
‘So why would Wally be killed now?’
‘Maybe he got careless, though I haven’t heard that, a little looser-lipped with age. I don’t know.’
She said it without hesitation. I believed her. Which meant that was not what she was hiding.
‘Are you sure you don’t want tea?’
Oh yeah. ‘Thanks.’
‘Mint? Chamomile? Green?’
‘Black.’
She hesitated, but only momentarily, before virtually levitating off the sofa and flying into the kitchen to boil water and hunt in the back of the cabinet for a bag of caffeinated tea she might have bought a decade ago.
I shifted to keep her in view while I sifted through our conversation.
‘Mike had a crash pad in Berkeley. At a time he couldn’t stay with you. There’s no need for him to have it now. If he made use of it now he’d be sleeping there instead of giving it to Adrienne.’
Despite the hiss of the heating water I heard her gasp.
‘Adrienne said he’d stayed there from time to time. He had a hideout here … before. While he was missing, right? During the time I thought he might be dead, he had access to this basement in Berkeley, right?’ I stamped into the kitchen. ‘Right, Janice?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘No, really.’
‘I’m supposed to believe that? From you, the queen of secrets?’
The water was boiling, steam squealing from the spout. She ignored it. She looked at me, her eyes suddenly seeming a darker blue. ‘I was trying to keep a loose rein on him while he was gone. To be sure he wasn’t dead. Sometimes I discovered where he had just been, sometimes I was a year behind. But we were never in contact.’
I turned off the water and waited.
‘No really, Darcy, if he and I were in touch, if he trusted me, why would he come to Berkeley and not come here?’
‘Danger?’
She shrugged.
‘How long have you known about this basement of his?’
She looked down at her watch. ‘Half an hour.’
Maybe. Maybe months, years longer. But that was a detour I wasn’t trotting down. Not now. ‘OK. Do your stuff. Let’s dig up the landlord and see just how long our missing brother was dropping into town.’
While letting us wonder if he was dead. My whole body went rigid. I had to brush away that thought; I couldn’t even consider it.
While I stayed away from San Francisco because I couldn’t bear the constant reminders.
While Gracie wrapped herself in work.
While Gary wrapped himself in marriages and divorces.
While Mom never left overnight lest Mike came home and found the house empty.
During that time Mike came through Berkeley, fifteen miles from home.
Whatever his reason I couldn’t deal with it, not now. I focused on Janice pulling up the lid of the computer. Focused on screens without reading words. At one point I said, ‘Adrienne told me the landlord could be in Mexico.’
Facing the computer keys, Janice was like a concert pianist, head jutting forward, hanging off her spine like the whole thing was a question mark. So focused she didn’t hear her audience of one holding her breath. And when she sat up straight a couple minutes later, she had that look of transcendence. ‘Maybe he gets his burritos at a Guadalajara,’ she said, ‘but he gets his mail outside Point Arena.’
Up the coast, in the abalone diving area.
‘He?’
‘Mountain Properties.’
‘That means nothing.’
‘That’s the point. Not a dead end, but not an open door.’ She closed the computer. ‘Drink your tea. I’ll drive. It’s a long drive and your eyelids are resting on your cheek bones.’
It took me a moment to adjust to my transformed sister. To even think of consuming the tea I’d suggested only as busy work for her. Now I added milk and enough sugar – raw, of course – to shoot my lids into my eyebrows. I figured I had three hours before they crashed back down into my incisors. What I needed was time to think.
I could sleep in the car. Think behind my lowered lids. Company would be comforting. Someone to have my back.
But there was something more pressing. ‘Mike’s car. I parked it across from Wally’s. If the cops—’
She held out her hand for the keys. ‘You can check your phone while I change.’
But before I could check, the phone rang.
‘It’s Mom,’ I called to Janice.
‘Hi hon,’ Mom said, as she frequently did, and then had to stop to remember which of her daughters she’d called. Her normal words. But her tone was not normal at all. For a moment I thought she really had lost track of whether she was leaving a message for Gracie or Katie or even Janice. She sounded as close to tears as I could remember since Dad died. ‘I’m going to have to miss the movie tonight. Everything’s OK,’ she said, as if hearing how completely her voice belied that. As if forgetting it wasn’t me she had plans with. ‘The thing is Duffy …’ An eternity passed while she swallowed so loud I could hear her throat gurgle, while she pulled herself together enough to explain about the Scottie who had been my dog in New York until he set foot in Mom’s house.
I’d watched them, a few months after I moved back to the city; Duffy had been staying with Mom until I could make arrangements to take him. Duffy, the formerly condescending terrier, rubbing against her leg after accepting a ruffling of his fur. Duffy, I realized, my former dog. It wasn’t so much what she did, as it was the softening of her face when she offered him a piece of beef from her plate, the way she patted her newly reupholstered sofa and waited for him to leap up. It was as if the black Scottish terrier was the embodiment of ‘Mike is back. The dark time is over and things are all right.’
‘Duffy …’ she squeaked out, ‘I saw someone in a slicker tossing something. Turned out to be meatballs laced with bug killer. Tossing them by the dunes where I take Duffy. There are other dogs there, you know that, right? Duffy likes to see other dogs but he doesn’t give them more than a perfunctory sniff. You know what a furry little snob he is—’
‘Mom!’
‘Darcy, a beagle died. Kory, the girl who owns the Great Dane told me. They rushed him to the vet but it wa
s too late. It was awful.’
‘Duffy! He didn’t eat it, did he? Is he—’
‘Duffy had a bad night.’
‘But he’s OK now?’
‘Poor little guy was actually moaning. The vet wanted to keep him there but I couldn’t leave him like that. I was up all night. It’s not easy to keep a hot-water bottle on a dog’s stomach.’
In case I ever wondered why my dog had abandoned me for Mom.
‘Is he OK now?’
‘Still off his food. I soft-boiled an egg and he did eat that. But I don’t want to leave him alone now. I know you understand, hon.’
I nodded. I couldn’t trust myself to speak. If something had happened to Duffy … I …
If something else happened to Duffy, I couldn’t bear the thought of Mom watching him die.
If someone wanted to hurt us, they couldn’t have planned it better.
TWENTY-TWO
I was dropping Janice at BART. Faster, she said, to get into the city. She’d switch to a streetcar – good, she said, for her to practice on the city transit. Then, with relief, she’d pick up Mike’s car and drive like a normal suburban woman to Mom’s. And would not open the door to anyone except one of the family. It didn’t seem like precaution enough. Nothing did. I left a message for John to call Janice. Wherever he was, no matter how out of contact he might say he’d be, John would check messages. He’d be certain that in an emergency only he could save us. That had driven me crazy since I was old enough to use two syllable words. But now … Even so I was sweating when I pulled up by the Honda. ‘Don’t go out at all,’ I said as Janice reached for the door of Gary’s Aston Martin.
‘Darcy, you’re overreacting. How could the poisoner be sure Duffy would go to the beach that day, that he’d be the dog—’
‘Even worse!’
‘You’re being—’
‘Maybe so. But first Mike, then Gracie gets hit. Then Gary’s garage. Now this. This guy is circling us. If you have any way of contacting Mike—’
‘I don’t. I told you.’
She had. ‘Promise me you won’t take Duffy out of the house. Not even the front yard. Especially—’ oh, God! – ‘the yard. Don’t go to the store. If there’s not enough food, order take-out.’
‘What? A dog food burrito?’
‘Yeah, right. I’ll call Jansen’s.’
I put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Jansen’s Burritos. What made you think of them?’ Mike and I had gone there years ago, before he disappeared. I’d told Leo about those trips, when the Perezes let me work the line like I was a regular employee, not a child.
I’d told Leo because Jansen’s Burritos had popped into my mind during zazen.
I’d thought of it then because Mike had mentioned it on the pier.
But none of that had I told Janice. I waited. But she just shook her head. ‘Did Mike mention it?’
‘Probably. Who else?’
‘Recently?’
‘No.’
‘And yet you came out with the name.’
She nodded, hesitated, then admitted, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Never mind. Have John get take-out from where the cops eat.’
I don’t know what I expected at Jansen’s Burritos, but it had to be more than this abandoned building. Rumor had it that the single garage-sized building was an earthquake shack. From the looks of the decrepit and tiny detached building, it could have been. Or more likely it wasn’t. Historical societies would have snapped up a relic of the city’s great catastrophe over a hundred years ago. They would have moved the little wooden tent-substitute to a place of honor amidst photographs of lines of them in the sand of Golden Gate Park, with serious-minded survivors cooking soup in the open and making plans to rebuild the city bigger and better.
Still, I wouldn’t have bet my last toe on it being less than a century old. The sign – JANSEN’S BURRITOS – itself could have weathered a hundred winters. The letters were so faded that I wondered if the place was deserted. I hadn’t been here since I was a child. In my memory there was always a line out the door and down the sidewalk past the driveway and in front of the house next door.
Now, though, grass grew untrampled. The huge garbage cans that lined the side were gone. I walked down the alley without the cans, to the back where Senora Perez had allowed herself three minutes off each hour. Doctor’s orders, her son Enrique announced.
‘Three minutes?’ I’d asked.
‘“A few minutes,” the doctor ordered. Mama nodded like she understood.’ Enrique had laughed then. Senora Perez was too busy to learn another language, she’d always insisted. She cooked; they – Enrique, Maria, and Sonja – could talk. ‘Mama asked me what “a few” meant. I said, “More than a couple.”’
He’d told me while I was stirring the newly poured black beans in the tray, and Senora Perez, who didn’t understand English, but understood enough, laughed so hard she had to turn away from the stove.
There had been an Adirondack chair out there, green. Now tan grass waved in the wind and the fog, which showed no sign of lifting today, turned the whole scene sepia. It looked like Senora Perez had never sat here. Like no one had for years.
With all the irony I could muster in unvoiced words I thought: Maybe, just maybe, I was making too much of the burrito connection. Maybe the burritos were just beans and rice in a tortilla.
I walked slowly back to the sidewalk. I had hoped that the Perezes or Mr Jansen would give me a name, a lead, an ah-ah! about Mike. A Saint Christopher’s medal to find his secrets. Now I couldn’t even find them. It had been a stupid idea. I’d wasted an hour. I could have been—
The koan! Don’t get caught up in the price of rice in Luling! Don’t drift into fantasy. Focus here, now.
I inhaled, and looked around this block I hadn’t seen in years. Back then it had been a warehouse neighborhood in the outer Mission. Now there were still square buildings without windows, but two across the street sported sold signs. It wasn’t the historical society that would be eyeing the shack, but developers. Small as the shack and lot was, it would hold three or four one-bedroom ‘luxury’ apartments piled one atop another.
The building next door was another prime spot, still single-family with a porch. A developer could do a spit and polish and flip it for a near-mil profit, regardless of what he paid the owner. And if the owner was the same man who’d been there years ago, who’d bought the place for less than an electric car now, the profit would be all the greater.
I was knocking on the door before I remembered the man. The groucho, the Perezes had called him behind his back.
‘Yeah?’
The groucho had grayed but not mellowed. ‘I was here years ago, when I was a kid.’
‘So?’
So much for pleasantries.
‘I’m looking for the Perezes. Or Mr Jansen.’
‘Dead.’
‘All of them?’
‘Jansen.’
‘Wow! He was what, like forty when I knew him. Buff. Serious about being buff.’
Groucho shrugged. ‘Didn’t save him.’
‘Save him? How did he die?’
His hand went to the door. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘Darcy Lott. I used to come here with my brother. You used to snarl at us.’
‘I snarled at everyone. Jansen and his flock … Smell morning and night. People – you and your brother – on my sidewalk, pissed – pissed off! – if I walked across my own sidewalk to my own door!’
‘Not me, Groucho—’
‘Groucho!’ He glared from under his awning of gray eyebrows. Then he guffawed. ‘Didn’t know I knew, did you? The flock, they thought it was their secret. Like I cared what they called me.’
‘So, Mr …’
‘Marcus.’ He laughed so hard the gray stubble that covered his head bounced. ‘Groucho Marcus!’
I thought he was going to choke. His face was a collection of balls – cheeks, nose, full-lipped mouth and bags under the eyes so l
arge they bounced – and all an eerie shade of maroon. He was so like Wally Ellis I felt like I was talking to a ghost. And yet he wasn’t quite the same. Not the same pale skin. His was olive. More hair. About the same age, but when Wally was ruining his posture leaning over tables in coffee shops to add to his gossip collection, this man might have been lifting weights in his back room. (I couldn’t picture him in an actual gym.) And unlike Wally, whose complaints had boiled over like unwatched noodles on the stove, he seemed to begrudge every extra syllable.
‘Mr Marcus—’
‘Grouch,’ he coughed out. ‘It’s what my friends call me.’
You have friends! But I caught myself in time. What I said was, ‘Mr Jansen, how did he die?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, like you said, he was a healthy guy. He musta made a mint on that stand, and I never saw him lift a finger. Resta them worked like slaves—’
Guess Marcus can boil over, too.
‘You said you worked there—’
‘Helped. I was twelve.’
‘They had kids that young. They all worked. ’Cept him.’
‘I remember that. My brother and I used to talk about that.’
‘What’d this brother of yours think?’
‘Said Jansen married well.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘“He was a healthy guy,” you were saying …’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Grouch stepped back inside the doorjamb. ‘He was always there, in charge. Guy coulda had a clipboard the way he marched around that place, you know what I mean?’
‘I do.’
‘Then one day he wasn’t there. And the next day the lot of them were gone. Left everything. Pots, dishes, paper plates and napkins still in the garbage cans inside. Place stank. Flies! When I spotted the rats I called the health department.’
‘When they came, did you go inside?’
‘You kidding? They put on masks.’
‘Weren’t you curious?’
‘Not enough to fight the rats. But I watched. They didn’t call the cops. No cops, no ambulance. So, no one inside. That’s it!’
‘“That’s it?” Didn’t you wonder about them? Try to find out?’
‘What was I going to do, drive across the border to Tijuana and go knocking on doors? Ask if anyone in Mexico knows a Perez family?’