by Jack Lynch
I parked in the large, fan-shaped dirt and gravel lot that provided parking for several homes along the fan’s perimeter. A yard light was on behind the Shank house and Harry’s station wagon was parked over to one side, but I didn’t see the little two-seater sports car that his wife drove. I hoped Erica had only run out to get something. I didn’t want to spend a long evening alone with Harry Shank. I pulled up the collar to my raincoat, tugged down the hat and got out to run up the little boardwalk alongside the house. The front porch was enclosed in latticework, but a wind had risen and was whipping rain through it onto the glassed front door. I rang the bell. Almost immediately Erica Shank crossed the room to open it. She let me in and closed the door behind me.
“Peter, how good to see you. Harry phoned to say you were coming.”
“Hello, Erica. You’re looking as beautiful as ever.”
She was a woman who liked men to pay attention to her, and tonight she was wearing a pair of black satin slacks that emphasized her high, tight buttocks. She also had on silver high-heeled shoes that she didn’t have any trouble walking in, and a thin white blouse tucked tightly into her slacks. She helped me out of my raincoat and took it and my hat to a chair near the butane wall heater.
“It’s such a vicious night out, why don’t you go stand by the fire a moment?”
I crossed to the fireplace. It was flanked by picture windows looking out over the water, but she’d pulled shut the drapes.
“Is Harry here?”
“No, he hasn’t gotten home yet,” she told me, still fussing over my coat.
“I thought I saw his car out back.”
“He drove mine in today. I took his up to Point Reyes Station for servicing.” She still stood over by my coat, staring at me with her hands clasped in front of her. She didn’t look quite well somehow. She usually spent a lot of time at a makeup mirror, carefully putting her face together. But now her eyes looked puffy. She kept her tawny blonde hair clipped short, exposing a long, patrician neck. The hair looked as if it could have used a brush through it.
She came out of her reverie and crossed to a coffee table in front of the sofa facing the fire. She scooped up a mug and tea bag on a saucer beside it. “What will you have to drink, Peter? A martini?”
“That’s always nice, provided we aren’t too long from dinner.”
“We shouldn’t be. I have some steaks to put on as soon as Harry gets here. He’s running a little late.”
I watched her walk out to the kitchen and wondered for maybe the fiftieth time in my life what she was doing tied up with a guy like Harry Shank. Maybe the man took on a whole different personality at home. I wandered around some the way I usually did at Harry’s place, enjoying the panorama of his life displayed on the walls in framed photos and sketches. Shank had been a wire service correspondent during World War II, out in the Pacific theater, for the most part. He’d been to a lot of interesting places and met a lot of interesting people. Many of them were recorded in these photos. He was pictured with General Douglas MacArthur, in the Philippines, and various lesser luminaries from Guadalcanal to Burma. Despite the pompous cutthroat he might have become since, you had to give Harry Shank credit for probably having seen more fighting action in the Pacific than ninety percent of the people who were in that particular war.
One definitely non-wartime photo I invariably made my way around to was a smaller photo hanging on the paneled wall next to the kitchen doorway. It had been taken on a remote beach, somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands, I think Harry told me once. It was a picture of Erica looking back over her shoulder at the camera. She was out of her suit, toweling off after a swim, and laughing. Most of her attractive bottom was exposed. I think Harry hung it there just to show everybody they weren’t imagining things when his wife walked through the room.
I was staring at that, of course, when Erica returned with a pair of martinis.
“You always find your way around to that one, don’t you, Peter?”
“Sure, the same as I find myself returning to a particularly fond painting at the De Young Museum, or relishing a fine wine.”
“You’re sweet.” She took my arm to be led over to the sofa, and I finally figured out what was wrong about her. She’d been drinking for a while before I’d arrived, despite the tea bag I’d seen her clear away. She used my arm for support as she settled into a corner of the sofa. I settled a way down from her.
“Harry said you were at the airport when that terrible shooting took place.”
“I was there. I was supposed to be guarding the guy who got shot. Did Harry tell you that, too?”
She looked down at her drink. “Yes. What happened?”
“You don’t want to hear about that, Erica.”
“Yes, I do. Some, anyhow.” She took a swallow of her drink. It was quick, but it nearly emptied the glass. Then she spoke. “He was somebody Harry knew back in the war. He used to talk about him from time to time.”
“I’d like to hear what Harry told you about him. I didn’t get very well acquainted, myself.”
“I don’t remember all that much. He was just…” Her eyes swept the walls of the room. “He was like so many of these others. What did you think of him?”
“I liked him fine for what little time we were together. I wish I hadn’t. It wouldn’t bother me so much to have seen him blown away in front of me. Do you know what sort of business deal he and Harry had going?”
“No, Harry’s pretty secretive when he wants to be. We don’t share everything.” She got up and went back to the kitchen. I sipped at my drink and wondered about things.
Erica returned with a pitcher full of martinis. She refilled her glass and put the pitcher down on the coffee table. I glanced at my watch.
“Is Harry this late often?”
“No.”
“I hope he didn’t get into trouble on the road. Which way does he usually drive?”
“He always takes the cliff road. He’s really a bit of a braggart about it. I suppose if he gets into trouble he’ll just have to hole up and tough it out. The same as us. There’s lots more gin.”
“I’ll bet there is, but I won’t be having much more of it. I’ve got to get back over the hill tonight sometime.”
She kept staring at me. She’d been drinking enough by now to say most anything, I figured. It made things awkward, for me at least, and for one of the few times in my life I wished Harry Shank would pull himself together wherever he was and put in an appearance. I untangled my legs and crossed over to pick up a poker and rattle around the burning chunks of wood. When I turned back Erica was standing beside me, martini glass in hand. She raised her other hand to rest it on my shoulder.
“Do I frighten you, Peter?”
“No, you don’t frighten me, Erica. You make me a little uncomfortable, perhaps.”
“Good,” she whispered, lowering her eyes. “I like to make men feel uncomfortable. Sometimes.”
“I’ve noticed. And now you’ve been drinking some and maybe you’re in a mood to make somebody a little more uncomfortable than you would otherwise.”
“Not at all,” she said quietly, moving a little closer. “What if something should have happened to Harry’s car, Peter, and he couldn’t make it home? I hate stormy weather. Would you spend the night?”
“No.”
“Then you are afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Erica. I’m not even afraid of what might happen. It probably would be the highlight of the social season from my standpoint. But there is one thing I would be afraid of—how I’d feel about it all tomorrow morning. But this is all kind of silly anyhow. Harry will be showing up in a few minutes.”
She lowered her hand and turned away. “Of course he will. But sometimes I like to flirt with gentlemen friends. It adds a certain flavor…”
She went back to the sofa. I decided to stay on my feet for a while. “I met a man named Edward Bowman this evening, at Harry’s request. He was with a young woman who
called herself Brandi. Do you know them?”
“Not really. I’ve heard Harry mention Mr. Bowman, of course. Like so many of the others,” she said, glancing around at the walls.
“Meaning he’s also someone Harry met during the war, out in the Pacific?”
“That’s right.”
Now she was staring at the fire. At least it kept her mind off the gin for a minute. I sidled over to start another circuit of the life and times of Harry Shank as captured by various war photographers. Some of the photos even had little descriptions typed on cards next to them, like in a museum. In one, Harry was standing on a cratered runway at Henderson field on Guadalcanal. In another he was with some GIs inspecting a blown-out tank in New Guinea. Still another showed Harry crouched down behind some drums on the long pier at a coral, hellish place called Betio, the main island of the Tarawa archipelago. It was the site of some of the sharpest, bloodiest fighting U.S. Marines had been engaged in during that or any other war. And from all the other crouched figures on the pier you could tell that somehow Harry had talked his way aboard one of the early landing craft in that ugly little action. Once again I had to mentally tip my hat at the courage Harry had exhibited during that part of his life, no matter what anybody thought of him today. It probably was the zenith of his life, as it was for so many of the men in that particular war who lived to come home and watch the country change in a way they couldn’t understand at all.
Another photograph brought me up sharply. It wasn’t captioned with one of the little cards, but in it, Harry Shank was with a group of men in combat gear standing in a bit of cleared ground in some tropical setting. Several of them had their helmets off, and I could swear that one of them was Buddy Polaski, who, it seemed, had survived the global war only to fall in one of his own making, more than three decades later.
Erica had refilled her martini glass again. She had leaned back on the sofa to stare at the firelight dancing on the ceiling.
“There’s a picture here of the man who was killed out at the airport this afternoon,” I told her. “Want to see?”
“No,” she said quickly, not moving.
I studied the photo closely, looking for the gray man, Edward Bowman. But a lot of men change over the years. If Bowman were there I couldn’t see the resemblance to the disappointed gent I’d met in the lounge earlier. I wondered if one of the others would be Catlin.
“Oh, where is Harry, anyway?” Erica snapped. She rose and went back to the kitchen. A moment later she was on the phone, asking for Harry. She made another call, probably to Hanno’s in the alley, and asked for him again. I strolled over to my raincoat and rearranged it in front of the wall heater to dry the still damp parts of it. I heard the phone receiver bang down in the kitchen. Erica swept back into the room and crossed to the front door.
“Can I get something for you, Erica?”
“No,” she said, opening the door.
I followed her outside. She ran one hand along a ledge over the door, picked up a key then put it back. She went back inside, hugging herself against the damp chill.
“He’s forgetful sometimes, about keys and things,” she said. “I thought maybe he’d gotten home without his key while I was out and then gone off to one of the local bars. He’s done that. I’m going to put the steaks on, Peter, I’m famished. How do you like yours?”
“Medium rare, but maybe we should give him a few more minutes.”
“If we give him a few more minutes you’ll have either a sloppy drunk or an unconscious woman on your hands. There’s a bottle of Pinot noir on the sideboard. Open it, will you?”
I crossed to the wine bottle and opener beside it while she began making noises in the kitchen. It was a 1974 vintage from one of the Napa County vineyards. Very nice.
A whoop of wind made house timbers creak. A new frenzy of rain pelted the roof and front windows. The cork came out of the bottle with a pop. I left it there and started for the kitchen to see if I could give Erica a hand when I heard a sharp rapping at the front door.
“Somebody’s knocking, Erica. Want me to get it?”
“Please.”
I crossed over and opened it. A highway patrolman stood there in a yellow slicker with beads of rain coursing down his grim face.
“Is this the Shank residence?”
“Yes, but Harry…”
“It’s Mrs. Shank I’d like to speak to. Is she here?”
“Yes, she is. Come on in out of the rain.”
He followed me in, removing his visored cap, and stood dripping onto the carpet just inside the room. Erica came to the kitchen doorway.
“Mrs. Shank?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“There’s been an accident, on the cliff road just out of town.”
Erica lowered the dish towel she was carrying. “What about it?”
“I’m afraid it was your husband, ma’am.”
That was all he said for the moment, letting Erica get used to the idea, and I knew with utter certainty what the rest would be. I’d heard the routine before. From cops, coroner’s deputies, people schooled in how to tell someone of a death in the family. The idea is to go at it a little at a time, letting the survivor anticipate the worst and get ready for it.
“Harry? Is he hurt?”
“Yes, ma’am. His car missed a curve. He took a pretty bad fall.”
Erica took another step or two into the room. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad, Mrs. Shank. Really pretty bad,” said the patrolman, turning his hat in his hand.
“He isn’t dead,” said Erica firmly, as if it were something she wouldn’t allow.
“I’m afraid he is, ma’am. I don’t think anybody could have survived that kind of drop. But he must have died immediately. I doubt if he felt anything.”
“Oh, God!” cried Erica.
I went to her and gripped her arms. “Sit down, Erica.”
She crossed to sit on one arm of the sofa. The patrolman took another step into the room and quickly glanced around. The tough part of his job was over. Now he was just another cop looking the place over.
Erica was sobbing quietly, holding my hands so tightly they stung. “There must be a mistake,” she managed.
“No, ma’am. Fellows with the local ambulance squad knew him. There’s no mistake.”
“Then there’s no need for her to identify the body,” I said, more as a statement than a question.
“No,” said the patrolman. “She’ll have to go by the coroner’s office after a day or two and pick up his belongings, is all.”
Already we were projecting ahead to what we’d be doing in a day or two, as if Harry’s death were old stuff. I’m not high on funerals and lingering grief, but I felt this was more than Erica should have to go through right then.
“Well thanks for a difficult job, officer,” I told him, easing away from Erica and ushering him back to the door. “I’ll try to see to things.”
He turned back to Erica. She was sitting with her hands raised in front of her face. A sob wrenched her.
“If there’s anything more I can do, ma’am…”
She shook her head. I opened the door and stepped outside with the patrolman.
“I’m a friend of the family. I’ll see that she’s taken care of, as best I can.”
“Maybe a woman friend at a time like this,” said the officer.
“I know. I’ll see to it. Officer, you’re sure it was an accident?”
He stared at me a moment before replying. “No, we’re not sure. It just looks like one, is all. He got pretty banged up in the fall. Must have run about fifty feet down a sharp incline, then it was a drop of another hundred feet or so. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
He didn’t buy that, but stood just off the porch in the whipping wind and rain, waiting for more.
“I only asked because Harry’s lived out here for many years. He’s driven that road hundreds of times. In all sorts of weather.”
&nbs
p; He stared at me another moment, then turned with a grunt and trod quickly down the little walk leading to the parking area. I took a couple of deep breaths and went back inside the house.
Erica was out in the kitchen putting things away. I went to the doorway. She was working very quickly. She hadn’t put the steaks on the stove yet. She was wrapping them in foil, sniffing back tears. She sensed my presence and spoke without turning.
“I’ll have to cancel dinner, Peter. I couldn’t do it right now.”
“Of course, Erica. Can I call somebody for you?”
She shook her head. When she turned I could see she’d gotten herself under tight control. No more tears. No more sobs.
“Like the officer suggested. Maybe you have a woman friend out here. Somebody who could come over for a while.”
“No, Peter, I have to handle this my own way. I don’t want to see or talk to anybody right now.” She finished up and turned out the kitchen light. I stepped back into the other room.
“I can understand that, Erica. I’ll be getting my coat and hat.”
She gave my arm a little squeeze. “But I’m glad you were here when I found out. Stay just a moment more, would you?” She went down the hallway to the bathroom. I heard her splashing water.
I gave the fire another couple of pokes and put on my raincoat. When she came back out she was looking pretty good under the circumstances. The tears were gone; she’d regained her composure and even touched up her face with a spot of color here and there.
“I’m going to be all right, Peter. I’m a survivor, at heart. Did you know that?”
“No, but I’m glad to hear it. You’re a young enough woman so you still ought to be able to put together a pretty good life when this is over with.”
“It’s over with now, isn’t it, Peter?” she asked, following me to the front door. “That’s something Harry taught me. What’s dead is past. We already made arrangements for this sort of eventuality. There won’t be any services. A funeral home over the hill will take his remains, cremate them and see that the ashes are scattered at sea. It’s no time to look back. That’s what Harry told me. Something he got from the war, I think.”