Obstruction of Justice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  "I can make it on about three thousand a month."

  "And in return? What do I get?"

  "That’s negotiable."

  "Baths, massages, dinner, lots of peeking and fooling around?"

  "And my company. You seem to enjoy it."

  "I do. But that ain’t enough."

  "I don’t want to be possessed."

  "Too abstract. Try being representational."

  "Look. The mating instinct would emerge and take us over. We’d fall in love. We’d be jealous about each other. We’d try to make each other over. I’d be miserable when you were away. You’d want to get married. We would argue about everything. You’d think you owned me. I’d sleep with someone else to prove you didn’t. That’s modern love in America, isn’t it?"

  "Not to me, it isn’t."

  "You kid yourself. I can’t do that. I won’t do that."

  "You’re cynical beyond belief," Paul said. "I don’t understand you, and that bothers me."

  "I’m not cynical, Paul. I just stand outside all that. I can’t help it. I was made that way. It’s the flip side of the talent I’ve been given. I can transform the instinct into art, use the bodily energy for creative purposes. Celibacy is the source of the passion I put into my work. You still don’t understand, do you?"

  "Sounds like bullshit to me, but I understand that you’re in earnest," Paul said. "You think you have a talent so important that you’re willing to sacrifice everything to it, the good opinion of others, normal relationships, everything the rest of us consider crucial. But here’s my problem. You’re the only one who sees this gift inside you. What if no one else ever sees it? What if you’re wrong about it?"

  "Recognition would be nice," Kim said. "But I will keep on, with or without it." She looked away, toward the cactus, her feet drawn up comfortably in the chair, her crystal glass beside her. In the dim flickering light she was like a woman out of a Gauguin, utterly and mysteriously complete, monumental in her completeness. Paul understood only one thing: She wasn’t available to him or any man in the only way he thought mattered.

  "Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t think I can afford you," Paul said. "Something tells me you’ll get along fine. Sell the Miller I gave you."

  "I wouldn’t dream of it. Just a couple more years, Paul."

  "No can do."

  "Too bad," she said.

  "The Miller was a good choice for you. You remind me of him," Paul said. "He lived off Anaïs Nin for a long time."

  "That’s right. He might never have been published without her support."

  "But he was worth it. He loved her, and he fucked her. You’re not worth it."

  "Oh, really? I thought you liked me and my art."

  "I was just trying to get into your pants."

  She giggled at that. He didn’t seem to be able to offend her.

  "You’re just a great big phallus, Paul," Kim said. She tossed down the last of her port.

  "A private dick carrying a subpoena," Paul said. "Be at court on September eighteenth. I can’t really say if you’ll be a witness or not, but I think I’d better nail you down." He handed it to her, and she read the bold-print summons with interest.

  "Honestly, I didn’t kill Quentin. I don’t have an alibi, of course...."

  "Of course. Nobody in the de Beers case has an alibi. Join the club."

  "It must seem very odd to you that I should be a witness in Anna’s case and so close to Quentin too. It has to be a case of synchronicity. A synchronous variation! Maybe my made-up phrase means something after all."

  That’s more than I can say for your paintings, Paul thought. He got up. He knew when he was beat up, down, and sideways. "Thanks for the dinner," he said.

  "You don’t have to stop coming. At least for a while."

  "I do, though. I really do. You’re business now. And you can’t give me what I want."

  "What do you want?"

  "The real thing. I want to be loved," Paul said. "That’s what I want. I’ll show myself out."

  "I hope you find what you need, Paul."

  Paul nodded. "And I hope for your sake the next guy that comes knocking is loaded and has had his balls frozen off."

  He looked back at the white-walled house as he drove down the road. In his many years of interviewing people and living his life, he had met only a few he couldn’t see through. Kim was impenetrable to him. She was linked to both cases, but he didn’t think she had killed anyone. She talked freely to him, but he understood less and less the more she talked.

  Was she a liar and a phony or not? Was she involved in de Beers’s death somehow? He wasn’t sure anymore, but one thing he was sure of: she was not for him. He had said, "I want to be loved." It was such a simple desire. After two divorces and a dozen other relationships, he still hadn’t found what he needed. He was surprised at the sadness he was finding down there where he seldom ventured, where his deepest feelings roved.

  He drove back to Caesars about ten, pulled on his shorts, and went down to the basement to work out on the weights. Forty-five minutes later, his legs buckling and his bad shoulder sending twinges down his back, he tottered into his room again. The workout had restored his usual buoyancy, dispelling the moments of sadness. When in doubt, work out, he thought. The rhyme reminded him of El-Barouki and his way with gun rhymes.

  He went into the bathroom, tossed the shorts into his laundry bag, turned on the shower, and climbed in, succumbing to the hot flooding spray on his shoulders, still trying to decide why Kim was part of both cases.

  He couldn’t make her for either death. Her only connection with Anna Meade was as a witness. And if her story checked out, she had lost her goose with the golden dollars when Quentin died. Even more important, she had only one passion in her life—to make it as a painter. Other than that, she was passionless, her viewpoint cynical and amused like some stereotypical Gauloise-puffing French intellectual.

  He believed she meant what she said, and he admired her in a way because she knew what she wanted and was going for it, but her ambition still seemed pathetic. How many great women artists were there? Morisot? O’Keeffe? Kollwitz? He couldn’t think of any others. What chance did she have, anyway? Close to zero. He soaped and rinsed his hair, thinking again about his bad luck, wishing he had been born fifty years earlier when women in general didn’t suddenly twist their heads all the way around and stick their forked tongues out at him when he was least ready for it.

  When he came out, still naked, he noticed the red light on the phone was flashing. He pressed the button and heard Hallowell’s voice message from earlier in the afternoon overlying the sounds of a busy office. "About Anna’s case. Sergeant Cheney managed to get something from the DMV on the Catalina," Hallowell said. "Three years ago, it was registered to a man named Jose Marquez. He’s long gone from the address on the old registration, and he doesn’t have a car registered in his name as an individual. We’re still checking. Our own lab guys are working the car over now. Thanks, Paul. We’re going to get him this time."

  Paul was already at the table by the balcony, pulling out the police reports on Quentin de Beers’s death. He felt a sense of compression as the two cases crashed hugely into each other, a pair of galaxies distorting space and time....

  He pulled out the witness statement he had been looking for. The gardener at the de Beers estate, who had seen Quentin de Beers talking to Sarah de Beers on the lawn the day before his death. Joe Marquez.

  It was late, but so what? Hallowell never slept anyway. Still standing there, his hair dripping down his neck, he punched Hallowell’s number.

  "Hallowell."

  "This is Paul van Wagoner. I just got your message."

  "Good news, eh?" Hallowell sounded sleepy.

  "I’ll say. Especially since we both know this guy. You may not know it yet. Listen carefully. This Marquez guy is the gardener for Sarah de Beers, the mother of Jason de Beers. Has been for years. You sent us a witness statement from him."
/>   "No shit?"

  "No shit."

  "Just goes to show you how behind I am, getting ready for the prelim next week. Don’t even know my own witnesses. Is his home address on the statement?"

  "Sure ’nuff."

  "It’s a small world."

  "You going to bring him in?" Paul said.

  "Let me think." In the pause that followed, Paul heard a woman’s voice asking Hallowell something.

  "Is that Nina?" he said.

  "As a matter of fact, it is."

  "Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow."

  "Sure. Paul, as soon as we bring him in he’ll shut up and get a lawyer, and we may never learn anything more about Anna. I think we’ll check him out further first." Paul thought, He’s still talking about Anna in the present tense. Nina won’t like that.

  "I’m tied up for this week at least, with the de Beers defense. I can’t do much at this point. You ought to know," Paul said.

  "Since the de Beers prosecution got handed to me, I have the same problem," Hallowell said. "It’s all right, Paul. Cheney’s back on it. You’ve given us the break, but now it’s up to law enforcement."

  "You’re cutting me loose?"

  "I have to."

  "This is not a good time for the cops to get back in. Somebody paid El-Barouki to leave the country. Marquez might do the same, if there’s a leak. And there usually is a leak."

  "I can’t run the case privately any longer, Paul."

  Paul understood. In his old life as a homicide detective he would have greatly resented interference by a private detective at this point. But he had revived the case, and he wanted to finish it. He wanted to know why Anna Meade had died, and the only person he trusted to handle it right was himself.

  Carefully, he said, "I might run into Marquez in the course of the other investigation."

  "You might at that," Hallowell said. It was a tacit approval, all Paul needed.

  "Don’t keep Nina up too late," he said. "She’s got work to do." He hung up, congratulating himself on his cool. But right before sleep, as he went over the day in his head, Nina’s attachment to Hallowell was the thing he found himself regretting, not the starlit white-walled courtyard with its Circean occupant.

  22

  HITCHCOCK STAGED HIS FAVORITE MAJOR WAKE-UP call with Nina on Friday morning, jumping on the bed and licking her face several times before she could get her hands up to defend herself. His ripe, liverish breath opened her eyes and her gag reflex at the same moment. While she brushed her teeth in the bathroom Bob came in to tell her he had the day off.

  Another teacher-training day, he reported with glee.

  The teachers of America had resigned themselves to being grossly underpaid, but were retaliating through their unions by teaching only the legally required 180 days a year. She had counted them herself on the school calendar.

  She would have to bring him to the office or take time off. Andrea worked Fridays, and Nina wanted to rely on Andrea and Matt less and less anyway.

  The longer she took to find a house, the more tightly wound they all had become. It was all her fault. Even Sandy had taken the low road with her the other day, accusing her of sheer lazy stubborn willfulness when she hadn’t gotten around to checking out the house Sandy had gone to a lot of trouble to unearth for her.

  Speaking of unearthing things, she had mounds of paper on her desk that would require archeological excavation if she didn’t get to them soon, and at least six appointments, and the de Beers prelim coming up on Monday—and Bob was asking if they could go bowling.

  "Okay," she said. "We’ll rent a movie for you to watch in the library at the office this morning, and then I’ll bring my work home in the afternoon so you can get out on your scooter. And maybe we can go bowl a game or two tonight." She would spread the files out on her bed and get to them again after Bob went to bed. What was it Graham Greene had titled his autobiography? A Sort of Life, that was it....

  Of course, she reflected as she struggled into her pantyhose, she actually had gone out the previous evening. She had gone to Collier’s apartment. A sort of evening ...

  She had called Collier, for once finding him at home, and shaken an invitation out of him. Once there, she found the floors covered with papers and books, the corners grimy with rapidly reproducing dust bunnies, and a sink grim and grayed with coffee grounds and mold. She had to restrain herself from getting out the vacuum and sprucing up the place.

  They sat down on the couch together, and she laid it all out, interrupted two times by phone calls from a police officer and Collier’s secretary: how she had hoped the hike up Tallac would lead to something for them, how she thought they had a lot in common and could really understand each other; how much she enjoyed his sense of humor and their talks about law and life; and how all that hope and interest was starting to fizzle due to mutual neglect. She heard herself talking like a lawyer, making her pitch, choosing her words with care, not at all happy with the calculated technique of her delivery. He sat there so remotely. What else could she do?

  They were both so guarded, that was the problem. She couldn’t show him her spontaneous feelings until he chose to open up emotionally too. "Do you have anything to drink?" she asked him, thinking the unworthy thought that if they both got smashed they would get along much better.

  Actually, though she couldn’t possibly have told him directly, what she desired was to be swept up drunkenly and carried off to bed, and then in the morning they could talk about law and it would be fantastic, because underneath they would then have established the physical connection that was still lacking.

  "Oh, Jesus, sorry," Collier had said, going to the kitchen for two cold bottles of Calistoga water. And that was how the talk went after that, cold and sober and fizzling every second.

  Collier started off well, telling her how he’d like to have a love life too, and how he was sick of being lonesome, but as the conversation edged over to his campaign for DA, which was in trouble, it became more impassioned. He had lost the big case he should have won and feared he would probably lose the election as a result. And he was working closely with Sergeant Cheney and Paul on his wife’s case. He really thought he might be able to find the driver. And training the new deputy in the office, Barbara Banning. And now he had the de Beers murder case...

  Which brought them to silence, and the uncomfortable fact that they remained adversaries at work and would have to watch their tongues all the time. Collier desperately needed the de Beers prelim to go off without a hitch, and her job was to make it so chaotic that the judge would throw up his hands and throw the case out.

  And for Nina, there was the additional problem that she knew something Collier didn’t know, something she should tell him about the case if she was going to be as honest and aboveboard as she would expect him to be with her under the same circumstances, something she should tell him and the police. And the fact of the matter was, she intended to tell him nothing, the police nothing, and the world nothing about the sunglasses unless she was sworn under penalty of perjury.

  "Nothing more is going to happen between us," Nina said at last, "is it? Two briefcases passing in the hall, and all that."

  "Things will calm down around Christmas."

  "It’s only September! For Christ’s sake, Collier, let’s place the blame where it really belongs. If I don’t attract you, just say so."

  "But you do attract me. You do." As if to emphasize this, he finally touched her, running his hand along her hair, then down her back.

  "I’m not asking to live with you or marry you, Collier. I just want to—"

  "I know, Nina." He sighed, and she saw he was very tired. "I don’t know how I got so lucky as to awaken your interest in me," he said. "I don’t deserve it. I’m just an old workhorse, Nina. You’re interested in the image of me you see in court. Look at me now. Look at this place. I’m ashamed, but I still don’t have the steam to pull myself together and court you. My attention is absorbed by so many things.
It wouldn’t be fair for me to start up with you."

  "Did it ever occur to you," Nina said, "that love is energizing? We could make time for that, and build up our strength for all those other things."

  "You’re very sweet and nice," Collier said, still stroking her hair, but his eyes had that faraway glaze and his voice held on to an infuriating detachment. Nina arrived at a sudden decision. She began unbuttoning her blouse, then pulled it off. Leaning toward Collier, she snaked an arm around his shaggy head and pulled him gently toward her.

  "Remember kissing me on the mountain?" she said in a low voice. Responding like a man entranced, he put his arms around her. He began kissing her breasts and she closed her eyes, commanding her brain to shut down. They lay down on the couch side by side, kissing tender kisses. His eyes closed. His body warmed itself against hers. His warm, rhythmic breath exhaled softly over her cheek.

  "Collier. Collier?" she whispered. His mouth had fallen slightly open.

  He was asleep.

  She was tiptoeing out when the phone rang again, jerking him awake. He began talking to Paul, gesturing with his hand for her to come back to the couch, an abashed look on his face.

  She mumbled something and left anyway. Cutting her losses—that was something she understood.

  By eight-thirty A.M., Nina sat before the glassed visiting cubicle waiting for Jason. The whole jail smelled like doughnuts. Behind the guard who had checked her bar card she had seen some of the inmates sitting on benches and chatting casually in the main room lined with cells. Even in jail, daily life had to go on.

  Jason was led in a few minutes later, ducking his head to get in the low door, filling the small room with his height. Somehow, and she thought it probably hadn’t been easy, he had managed to comb his hair and clean up. She seemed to remember the prisoners could shower twice a week. Maybe this morning had been one of those times.

  Anyway, although his face was pale and careworn, he was not the fearful boy she had expected. He projected such calmness and maturity that Nina felt a great weight come off her shoulders. She didn’t have to feel that she was defending a child. He was clearly over the line into manhood. She realized she liked him enormously.