Out of Nowhere

by Susan Dunlap

  ‘As you said.’

  ‘Yes. But listen, this is what I’m saying to you now.’ She shifted her weight. ‘You know about undertow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You step in the water. Not deep. Maybe only to your waist. You could walk back to the shore. Or you can keep on walking. And swim. Not to worry; you’re sure. And then – no warning – it sucks you down. Smacks you on the bottom so hard all you can think about is your next breath.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And if you struggle, you die. You get what I mean?’

  I said nothing, just stood with the icy wind wiping my neck.

  ‘You want to live, you gotta swim with the current. In the current.’

  I looked at her, a short, sturdy woman, standing in the wind that she no longer acknowledged. It riffled her hair but her shoulders rose no more. Her hand still on my arm, she took one step closer to the edge, as if tempting the life she’d made her peace with.

  ‘Or, Maria?’

  ‘Or you die.’

  ‘From abalone?’

  ‘Abalone’s the gateway of transporting.’

  Through my jacket I could feel my shoulder quivering.

  ‘What I’m telling you is we had no choice. My sisters and me, your brother, we were in the undertow before we knew we were in the water. Even moving shell is dangerous. You get caught with illegal abalone, you get squeezed to give up the divers, the runners, the restaurants. Lotta money in shells.’

  Something snapped behind me. Breaking scrub branches. I shot a glance back toward the car but nothing had changed. Maria had spun left so fast I’d barely caught the movement. Her hand, which had been on my shoulder, was now in her pocket. She waited, eyes alert, body ready to run. Or pounce?

  She inhaled and exhaled slowly then said, ‘People hock their lives for restaurants. Fish and Game shuts them down, they lose it all; owe it all. You see?’

  ‘I do. But still, you were kids.’

  She hesitated. ‘You would be better off not knowing this. Your brother, he didn’t know till too late. I don’t know which way Rico reeled him in—’

  ‘Rico?’

  ‘His contact here. Dead. Long time ago.’ She stopped, stared directly at me. ‘Shot and shot and shot. His face was mush.’

  ‘In the city?’

  ‘On Valencia.’

  ‘But Mike wasn’t involved in that!’ The words fell out of my mouth. Please make him not have been caught up in shooting someone!

  ‘No, no.’ She seemed shocked, too, and I found that comforting.

  ‘Maria, tell me how my brother got involved. I need to know.’ Please make it not his fault!

  She nodded slowly, as if understanding a sister’s need. ‘I don’t know about Mike but this is how it went down most times. Driver gets here. Rico says there was no diving today. Or maybe he sent the shells with someone else. He feels bad about the kid wasting his day, spending all that on gas for nothing. But, listen, this guy needs a lift into the city. He can make it worth your while.’

  Her hand was back on my shoulder and she pulled me in a bit closer. ‘Most times that worked. But some kids – Mike maybe – were suspicious. For them the story was the illegal was a refugee from a camp high up in the interior, a place where he was tortured. That he had to get to his people in the city. He could pay, he’d stolen money when he escaped; was going to use it for food, to keep him safe. But he would give it to the driver.’ She was breathing as heavily as the wind. ‘Mike, what could he do?

  ‘Look out there.’ She turned toward the sea, taking a step closer. Her hand tightened on my shoulder. ‘Look down. This was one of the entry spots.’

  There was just enough light to see the crash, the spray.

  ‘Forty-six feet down. You need a rope and someone you can trust at the top. This place, Fish and Game, ICE, no one watches here. It’s too hard to climb out. Rope breaks, nothing to hold; you fall, you crack your skull open like a clam.

  ‘The only men who are delivered here are the ones with bounties that would keep you for a lifetime. For them every other spot is too dangerous. You get what I’m saying?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Let me just tell you this. Mike drove Santino, one of the “refugees,” to San Francisco. The next week the guy went at it with some locals, killed two of them and a local couple in the crossfire.’ She swallowed. ‘Those shots changed our lives. The first thursday in April. By the end of the week we were gone. Every year on the anniversary—’

  ‘Two days ago!’

  She nodded.

  ‘But Mike? Did he know about Santino?’

  ‘When he drove him to the city? No. He may have suspected the man he drove had a price on his head. May have guessed he was in drugs. But he didn’t know he was Santino, the most feared sicario—’

  ‘Sicario? Hitman?’

  ‘What you might call the supervisor of all the hitmen in the cartel. Santino … he had a lot of blood on his hands.’

  ‘But Mike didn’t know that back then?’ It was almost a prayer.

  ‘Maybe no. Probably no. But me and my family, when we heard about it, we knew who he was. I told Mike. And Santino, he knew we knew.’

  ‘Which is why you disappeared?’ I asked, though I knew that wasn’t true.

  ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘when Mike went missing that he’d escaped. When he stayed missing all those years, I wondered, did Santino get him? Was he dead? I lit a candle for him, but I don’t put much faith in that.

  ‘I’ll tell you, when I heard that he was back, I was surprised. Amazed.’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘And then I lit another candle. But like I say, I don’t put much stock in wax.’

  ‘And yet, here you are.’

  ‘Me telling you this, it’s what the candle gets you.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Walk away. Don’t look behind you.’

  ‘And Mike? What should I do for him?’

  ‘Pray.’

  At the far edge of the ocean, the red ball of sun bounced and sunk as if sucked under. A minute ago we had stood in the dim light and shadows, now the world was just dark. To my right I could make out branches against a slightly less dark sky, to my left the slight sparkle of the water far below. The wind backed off, its dusk work over. Suddenly the waves crashed louder against the rocky cliff.

  ‘Pray? I’d have been better off lighting a candle. At least there’d be light.’ I thought Maria might laugh but she didn’t. Now, in the dark, I couldn’t make out her expression at all. But I hadn’t come all this way to leave empty. The road forked here, question-wise. Like our options leaving this spot. I opted for the verbal path back through the scrub toward the street. ‘Maria, I wondered … You and Mike?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Really? I watched him. He had a word for everyone, but for you it was more, a longer look, a comment only you laughed at. There was that time he followed you into the back and I thought he was going to kiss you until your father—’

  She sighed – regret? Or just reminiscence? ‘Poppa thought the same. I paid for that, believe me.’

  ‘But Mike, would he have kissed you?’ Did he? Then? Later?

  She didn’t answer. If I had been able to see her reaction … Had her hand tightened on my shoulder?

  ‘Maria, this is the time he needs you. We have to find out who’s trying to kill him before … they do. Please!’

  Her hand did tighten now. We were five feet from the cliff edge. It would be so easy for her to toss me over.

  She might be thinking she could throw me over. I could have told her: not likely. But I kept that to myself.

  And there was Marcus sitting warm in the Martin. She might be remembering that he knew we were here. A complication.

  Or he could be sitting there waiting for her to finish me off.

  ‘We’re here at the edge of the world. No one knows. No one can hear you. I won’t implicate you. I just want to save my brother!’

>   Now it was my shoulder shaking against her hand. The wind snapped sharp dry leaves against each other. It iced my neck, my hands I didn’t dare put in my pockets.

  ‘A name. Just tell me a name. Then go and you won’t hear from me again. You’ll know you saved him, that he’s OK. Just look in the Chronicle; we’ll get a mention of him there. It won’t involve you, but you’ll know you made it possible. Just a name!’

  She glanced toward the water.

  I went with the other fork in the verbal road. The question that would set the way things were between us.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I slapped Maria’s hand off my shoulder. ‘Here you are. Safe. And you own the house in Berkeley. With the basement you keep for people where no one will find them.’

  She shifted. Like she was setting her feet. In the dark I couldn’t be sure. I could hear her breathe now, but she didn’t speak.

  ‘This transport scheme, you’re the one who came out smelling like roses. House in Berkeley? What’d it sell for? Eight hundred, nine hundred thousand dollars? Clear? It’s not like you’d’ve been putting up paper for a loan, right? Collateral in kilos? Not like Santino would. He paid cash, right? And put it in your name, Mountain Properties.’

  Again I waited, but she still didn’t speak.

  ‘You were the innocent girl. What did you say about you and Mike? You were in before you realized it? No escape. But you’re safe here. So how is that, Maria? Where is Santino?’

  She shifted.

  ‘Or Maria, is there a Santino at all? Or is it just you? Was it just you all along?’

  ‘I was a kid!’

  ‘You’re not a kid now. Your family vanished; Santino isn’t in sight. You’re the one with the safe house.’

  ‘Vanished isn’t dead.’

  ‘Vanished can be tracked down. I found Mike. No one tracked down your family because no one cared. But now, if they’re connected to Santino, to the killings that took out innocent civilians … Believe it, they can be found.’

  She said nothing. Didn’t move. Barely breathed.

  It had all been theoretical until now. Neither of us truly the target. I stepped in. ‘I can make it happen. Police, feds, ICE scrambling to see who closes in first. Your choice.’ The wind, cold, sharp with brine, cut through me. One shove into the sea and she could solve her problem.

  Time stopped.

  After an eternity, she spoke. Her voice cut through the wind. It seemed to echo. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Take me to Santino.’

  She stood frozen, her black form outlined by the black sky and the pale glimmer off the ocean. ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘Take me to him. Now!’

  ‘You don’t have any idea what you’re asking.’ She sighed. ‘Wait. I’ll bring him to you. Wait here.’

  ‘At the edge of the cliff? I don’t think so.’

  She threw up her hands. ‘I’m putting my life on the line for you, Darcy. I can’t take you to Santino. You know why? I don’t know where he stays. All these years, I don’t know. That’s how he stays alive. I call. I leave a number. He calls back.’

  It was this or come up empty. ‘Fine. Do it.’

  I’d wondered if there’d be cell coverage out here, but, at least for Maria, it was no problem.

  She punched in a number. ‘Maria,’ she said, and clicked off.

  I had liked Maria. She’d done me small favors without the promise of return. Lent me a cloth to tie my hair back on the food line when I forgot. Showed me the ‘nibble bowl’ in the back where you could scoop a mouthful of abalone mix in a piece of tortilla on the way to the bathroom and be back on the line before anyone noticed. Little things. She hadn’t pumped me about Mike. She’d cared when he went missing.

  But trust? Like my brother John says: When it’s your neck or hers, trust goes out the window.

  She moved back from the edge of the cliff and we stood where the scrub brush broke the dirt. The wind didn’t get us here. It seemed, for a moment, silent.

  ‘Maria,’ I said, to get her attention. ‘How is it Grouch knew how to find you?’

  ‘I gave him my number.’

  ‘But why? Careful as you are, why leave a path to you?’

  ‘It’s a number. Nothing more. Did you think I live here? You think we’re meeting in my backyard?’

  ‘Not likely,’ I said, though that wasn’t entirely the truth. But I wasn’t about to admit that.

  ‘Why Marcus?’

  ‘He keeps an eye on the old place. Someone comes nosing around, he calls.’

  She had started walking toward the road.

  ‘Have people? Other than me?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Who?’

  I didn’t expect a reply; didn’t get one. ‘Is it just guys trying to get a bead on Santino? Or trying to get to you?’

  She turned toward me. ‘Don’t you get it? It’s the same thing. No one wants me unless they’re after him. I’m the message number, that’s all.’

  ‘But is it just his business associates?’ I said, for lack of a better term. ‘Or others? Reporters? Police?’

  ‘Use to be. Early on. Cops. Private cops. Reporters digging into the dead. Nosy old men who’d managed to get the number. Was there a link, those two civilians? Or were they just collateral damage?’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘Yeah. Wrong place. No connection. Santino told me. He hated shooting bystanders.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s messy. Causes problems. Cops don’t care if you shoot your own, but they come after you for taking out locals.’

  ‘You believed Santino?’

  ‘On that.’

  Nosy old men. ‘Does the name Wally Ellis mean anything to you?’

  ‘I don’t remember names. I’ve trained myself not to.’

  We were almost to the road when her phone rang. She put it to her ear, didn’t speak. Clicked off. To me she said, ‘We’ll take your car.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Not far.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just drive. I’ll tell you when to stop.’

  Was the deck stacked in her favor as much as she imagined? She might know I was a stunt double, but there was no way she could have realized how many car gags I’d done. With me driving, some of those cards were migrating to my side of the table.

  The tree cover gave way to sky. For an instant the blacktop shone bright as noon. The Martin almost glowed, its black paint so highly buffed. I pulled open the driver’s door.

  The car was empty.

  ‘Marcus isn’t here. Where—’

  ‘Don’t worry about him.’

  Don’t worry about him. Not what you say about an old guy who wandered off to take a leak.

  Don’t worry about him. Fat chance! I shot a 360. No sign of him. Don’t worry when a man disappears in the outback? When he might have been picked up by someone who will be following you? Or waiting for you? Don’t worry!

  What is the price of rice in Luling? No point in speculating when you can’t know the answer.

  I got in the car and started the engine, thinking of the major Zen instruction: Be aware. I checked the rearview, both side mirrors and the rearview one last time and pulled onto the road.

  My phone rang.

  ‘Ignore it.’

  Her voice was tighter than it had been on the cliff. I glanced over. Her head was moving slightly side to side.

  Danger wasn’t going to come from the phone. I let it go to message. I was just pleased it was finally getting reception.

  I’d driven here in daylight but now, in the dark, the headlights seemed like small white spots on the macadam, turning the night around them blacker. Curves erupted out of nowhere. On the way up I’d hit the gas to catch the centripetal force. Now I braked abruptly when the road veered right or left into nothing, like a driver who’d never seen a mountain road.

  The road curved out along the edge of a promontory, well out into the ocean. I’d not
iced it coming up but hadn’t paid much attention. Now I was alert for turnouts, places Santino could be hiding, spots that I might need if I had to make a fast three point and run. But the promontory was so long and narrow, the road was like a line drawn around a forefinger with a pen. If someone had cut a path through at the knuckle, that would have saved us a quarter of an hour.

  My phone rang again. Automatically I reached.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘I’ll let it go to message.’

  ‘No, let me check the caller.’

  ‘How could he have my number?’

  She just stuck out her hand.

  I gave.

  A minute passed as the car dipped and hit a rise along the cliff. I remembered Marcus hanging onto the door for that one.

  Maria held out the phone. ‘They’ll keep,’ she said. ‘I turned it off.’

  Be aware.

  ‘Can you move this car faster?’

  ‘This from a woman in the death seat?’

  ‘He doesn’t like to wait.’

  Well, who does? But I sped up on the straightaway and stared harder, as if that would show me any danger a second sooner. If there’d been houses, or the wonder of streetlights … Even reflectors at the curves would give strangers a fighting chance. But all the odds were with the locals here. Like driving around San Francisco trying to find an entrance to the Bay Bridge in the city, as my sister Janice complained every time she drove in.

  ‘Here. Pull over.’

  ‘Where? There’s nothing but bushes.’

  ‘Stop!’

  She had the door open before I’d braked. ‘Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She edged out, but still I could hear branches scraping Gary’s expensive paint job. ‘You can check those messages of yours while I’m gone.’

  Like I wouldn’t!

  TWENTY-SIX

  It’s not easy to check messages while eyeing the rearview, the side mirrors and keeping ears pricked for footsteps.

  From Janice: ‘I’m at the BART station. I’ll … oooh, there’s the train.’

  Janice: ‘I’m in the city. You know, Darcy, this underground switching system is so confusing. It used to be you just stood on Market Street and watched for the streetcar. Now you have to figure out which level to go to. Yeah, I know I’m in the left side. Sorry, Darce, that was some guy. Ooh, there’s the N-car.’