“Oh my God.”
“—and I’ve got three former colleagues, on the record, testifying that the man likes to have a nip at lunch.”
Shenk left it there. Dr. Allyn was on her feet, staring down at him, hands clenching the edge of the table. He had made up that last part, about the on-the-record colleagues, but he could clean that up later. What he had wanted was for her to get worked up, and she was, and he was going to get what he wanted.
“Go on, now, Dr. Allyn. It’s OK. Tell me what you saw. You saw him drinking, or maybe he was just drunk, and the hospital hooked you up with this sweetheart deal up here to make sure you kept a lid on it.”
“This…” The radiologist breathed deeply, controlling some wild waves of emotion. “This sweetheart deal, huh?”
“What else do we call it? Only two or three days after Wesley’s surgery, you retire from Valley Village. You move up here. Up to lovely wine country.”
Dr. Allyn was shaking her head; her mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. Shenk pressed on.
“How much are you earning here?”
“Why is that any of your business?”
“Because I am a lawyer taking a deposition. Do you know who Edgar Gowan is?”
“Of course I do.”
“We object,” said local counsel, uncertainly, maybe unsure if he was allowed.
“He’s the owner of this clinic up here in Paso, correct?”
“Mr. Shenk, we are objecting for the record.”
“And he’s a board member at Valley Village. Also rather a striking coincidence, don’t you think?”
His switch now officially turned to ON, Smith objected again. “This line of questioning is absolutely inappropriate. I’m—I’m—”
“You’re going to tell on me, yes, Mr. Smith, I understand.”
Shenk turned back to Dr. Allyn.
“Doctor?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And across Shenk’s hot mind, a brilliant blaze: I did it. Dr. Allyn was sorry because she had misread the boy’s scans, or she was sorry for not reporting Catanzaro’s catastrophic medical errors. But then she looked up with utter fury in her eyes, her face a tight mask of control, and he could see that she was only sorry for breaking down—only sorry for letting him get to her.
“My dad is dying,” she said.
Shenk blinked. “What?”
“That’s why I retired abruptly. That’s why I left Valley Village. That’s why I gave up a job I absolutely loved and was absolutely great at, to come up here and stare at herniated discs, all day every day. OK?” She shook her head tightly and pursed her lips. “He has Alzheimer’s, and he has lung cancer. He is wasting away. OK?”
Oh God, thought Shenk. Oh no.
He closed his file. A pair of birds erupted from a stand of trees in the center of the square.
“My mom passed six years ago, and my sister is in no condition to help. But that’s none of your business either.” She now looked at him squarely. “None of this is your business. And I am sorry if the timing seems convenient to you, but it has nothing to do with your client or with Dr. Catanzaro or with anything else. If you want to subpoena my dad’s medical records, be my guest. But I’m done.”
Dr. Allyn turned to Smith, her putative lawyer, who looked back at her, wide-eyed, dumbstruck and out of his depth, while Ms. Clarissa’s clattering accelerated and then died away into silence.
“I’m done,” she said again, and then without another glance at Shenk, she left.
Shenk watched her push open the glass door of the screening clinic and disappear inside, thinking, one more time: Oh no.
Ms. Clarissa was swiftly wrapping up, closing and securing her portable typewriter, pulling out her phone to order a Lyft to the airport, which Shenk would be billed for along with the flight. Smith was up on the other side of the picnic tale, shoving his sack lunch, his paperback, and his files back into his briefcase. “Hey, great to meet you,” he said nervously, and then clicked the briefcase closed. It looked barely used, a law school graduation present.
“Yeah,” said Shenk, smiling absently, mind moving a thousand miles an hour. “For sure.”
The professor—that woman—the lecturer from Riverside. He was going to need her after all.
January 25, 2019
The Rabbi took out his phone and checked the time again.
“Excuse me, dude,” said a bearded hipster in a vinyl windbreaker, and Ruben muttered “Sorry” and moved out of the way.
Evie was late—very late now—and he was waiting, standing politely, awkwardly, by the front door of this noisy and beloved Chinese restaurant, absorbing the hot, sweet smells of the cooking: soy sauce and fish sauce and garlic simmering in oil.
It was nearly midnight now. They had agreed on eleven, although she had warned him she might be a few minutes late. Ruben checked his phone again, wondering what to a person like Evie constituted a few minutes. He shifted on his feet to let in another smartly dressed group of diners.
“Sorry,” he said, leaning against a rack of bussed trays for the nineteenth time, trying to make himself small. “Let me just…sorry.”
The place was aggressively hip, dark and wild with noise: shouts and laughter, booming terrible pop music, glasses clinking, all overlaid with the chaotic zing and pop of the vintage video arcade games that lined the hallway to the bathrooms. While he waited he thought over exactly what he had to say to Evie Keener; and checked his phone; and examined once again the large close-up photographs of food, interspersed with those of an elderly Asian woman—Chinese, one hoped—looking stoically into the camera, holding up great loops of noodle.
“Have you been waiting?” said Evie when she came in, and before he could answer she cuffed him around the neck and kissed him very hard on his right cheek.
She was sweaty and gorgeous, her hair still slicked back against her head from the stage. She wore a sheer tank top, and he could see the black of her bra beneath it, and he could see the red pinched lines on her shoulders where she had worn her wings. She took him by the arm and maneuvered them into the food line, and someone behind them said “Oh shit, that’s…,” but Evie ignored the excited acknowledgment of her celebrity, grabbed two paper menus and thrust one at Ruben. His heart felt wild and weightless.
“The thing to try here is the dumplings,” she told him.
“OK.”
“Do you like dumplings?”
“I do.”
“Attaboy.”
She gave him a big, beaming smile and he tried to return it but probably just made a weird grimace. Ruben always felt that when he smiled widely he looked like a skull.
He had exciting news to share. He was glad to see her. The restaurant smelled so good. Ruben wasn’t used to being in this kind of mood, and it was disorienting to feel so positive. He felt like his father.
They put in their order at the counter and jostled their way to a two-top, backed up against the wall. She slid into the booth side, and Ruben took a chair.
“So,” he said.
“So,” said Evie. “Any luck?”
But before Ruben could answer she said, “Shit—do you want water?” And jumped up, deftly navigating the crowd to the help-yourself steel urn, poured them each a cup, and was intercepted on the way back to the table by a man who either knew her or wanted to, a tall man in parachute pants and a wide-brimmed hat, too cool for school, and Evie and this guy talked animatedly for a minute. Ruben toyed with his napkin. He split apart his wooden chopsticks and rubbed them together as if trying to start a fire. Evie came back and sat down, set them each up with a water.
Ruben cleared his throat and said, “So, listen. Evie.”
“Yeah?”
“OK. Well. I went to the crime scene.”
“You went—wait, to the…the motel? Why?”
“Yeah. Cosmo’s. I just…I had a hunch, I guess.”
And immediately—immediately—Ruben knew this had been a mistake. Coming to her
with his hunch, his pictures, the paper-thin results of his daffy investigative impulse. She was sitting up straight. She was staring at him. “What do you mean? What kind of hunch?”
Ruben waved one hand lamely and mumbled, “Actually…forget it.”
“You went to the motel?”
He nodded, helpless. Evie furrowed her perfect brow.
“We were talking about mitigating factors. About a change in his mental state.”
“Yeah, no, I know.”
“Are we talking about something else now?”
Ruben nodded, flushed, miserable. Why would he bring her anything that might raise her hopes, when it was so unlikely that those hopes would be fulfilled? A waiter hustled up with their food, three steaming trays of dumplings and two bowls of seaweed salad, and they both leaned away from the table while she expertly slid it all onto the Formica.
At the next table, a young tattooed couple were sneaking peeks at Evie, obviously recognizing her, obviously trying not to. Evie the Golden—Evie the Known. From the back of the restaurant, the dinging and whirring of the arcade games: people racking up scores, shooting asteroids, rolling barrels. Evie looked at Ruben, waiting. He smiled miserably. He took the bamboo cover off the top tray of dumplings and lifted one out with his crossed chopsticks and placed it in his mouth. Just as Evie said, “Be careful,” the soup inside the dumpling burst out, filling his mouth, boiling hot, and he spat the whole thing out, gagging and sputtering, onto the table.
“Oh my God. Ruben.”
He gave her a helpless thumbs-up, gulping water. Evie was dying. She was giggling helplessly, trying not to, covering her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide with helpless laughter.
He hoped that the moment had passed, that the subject had been changed, but Evie reached across the table and grabbed his arms. “Dude. Come on. What are we talking about here?”
“The gunshots,” he said finally. He brought his voice down a little, even though no one could hear them in the noise of this place, not in a million years. “The angle of the shots,” he said. “It’s wrong.”
“What?” Evie smoothed her white hair with both hands, staring at him. “What does that mean?”
“Well, according to the police report and the charging documents, according to what your dad told the police, he broke into her motel room and waited for her to come in. Then he stood up and shot at her. Twice.”
“OK. ”
“Well, so, look.”
He got out his phone. He leaned across the table, trying not to get his elbows in the food. She looked at him, a quick startled smile, Who is this guy with the crime scene photo?, and then at the pictures he was showing her. “Your dad is, what, six five?”
“At least. Yeah.”
“Right. Theresa Pileggi was five foot four. If he is standing and shooting at her, the shots would go down, right?” He made his finger a bullet, shot it toward Evie, almost pierced her chest before stopping right in time. “But if you look—closely—” He enlarged one of the pictures. “Doesn’t it look like the bullet goes in the other way? Like—ascending?”
His voice quavered minutely at the end. He didn’t, after all, really know what he was talking about. He had convinced himself he was right, but trying to share it with someone else, his discovery suddenly felt thin, as wispy as cotton candy. But Evie was nodding, Evie was going “Whoa,” Evie was taking his phone from him and fidgeting at it with her fingers, enlarging the picture more.
Ruben cursed, shaking his head. It had happened. Her hopes were up, they were way up. But then she set the phone back on the table and looked at him, puzzled.
“Wouldn’t the police have noticed the same thing?”
“Well, theoretically they would, right?” said Ruben. “But, like: they get there, and here’s this guy holding the gun, telling them he did it. Full, immediate confession. I’m not a cop, obviously, but I wonder if maybe their crime scene investigation was a little…”
“Cursory.”
“Exactly. Cursory. Maybe?”
Ruben had studied the crime scene photographs, of course, and the various reports from the Culver City Police Department, and made what sense of it he could. A ballistics report confirmed that the two 8mm rounds recovered from the wall had come from the same unusual Austrian-manufactured handgun Richard was holding at the scene. But if any of the police investigators had noticed that the holes were going in the wrong way, they hadn’t said so in the report.
Or, Ruben thought with a blurry fearful pang, he was wrong about the whole thing.
Evie reached her chopsticks in, slow and thoughtful, and selected a dumpling. The tattooed team at the next table took the moment to lean over, both of them smiling nervously, almost smirking; the man told Evie he fucking loved her record and asked if he could be a total dick and ask for a picture.
“No,” she said, very sweetly. “Not right now, if that’s OK?” The couple withdrew, and Evie looked right at Ruben.
“So, what? He was sitting down when he shot her? Does that matter? Why does that matter?”
“Well, no. He wasn’t—hold on.” Ruben took a breath, tried to arrange his thoughts. “Your dad told the cops he shot at her, missed, and then killed her with the lamp. What I’m wondering is, maybe she was in the room and he came in. She shot at him, and then he killed her with the lamp.” He took a breath, summoned some courage, looked her right in her beautiful eyes. “In self-defense.”
“Self-defense.” She echoed him very quietly, holding his gaze. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Which would make him innocent?”
“Not innocent, exactly, but…” He had done more reading. He had gone back on the website. “But not guilty. I think—what? Evie—what?”
She cried like her mother cried: all at once, furiously, chin thrust out, pissed at herself for crying.
“Evie?”
“She called, Ruben.”
“What?”
“Oh my God. She called, Ruben! I never thought…I mean, I didn’t think it was her. Oh my God, I’m an idiot. I’m such an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.” He had gotten up, without thinking about it, and moved around to the other side of the table and crouched before her like a marriage proposal.
“Tell me.”
Evie took a deep breath and steeled herself. She pulled him up and he sat down next to her. “OK, so, there was this—phone call. I don’t remember when, exactly. A couple months ago, maybe. Pretty close to the, the—”
“To the motel.”
She nodded, rapid tight nods, and then seemed unable to go on.
“Evie? Tell me.”
“I was visiting the house, I was in the bathroom hallway, and I overheard my dad on the phone. I just assumed it was about money, because they’re always short, always broke, and lately I’m trying to help and he tells me to fuck off. It’s a whole problem. But so I heard him, and I thought it was bill collectors, or the mortgage. He kept saying leave me alone.”
Ruben stared at her. “Leave me alone.”
“Yeah. You people leave me alone. Leave me alone.”
“Hey,” said Ruben sharply to the man at the next table, who was craning around, very slyly trying to take a picture of Evie Keener. “Fuck off.”
Evie ignored this, ignored the photographer. She clutched at Ruben.
“Could this be something?”
“He said those words: leave me alone? He said you people leave me alone?”
She nodded.
“You said this was a couple months ago?” Ruben thought furiously, trying to fix dates in a timeline. “Was it before or after November twelfth? The anniversary, when you said your dad freaked out?”
“It was after. Later. Definitely. Because I left town after that. I was doing road dates the rest of November. Vancouver, and then Portland. This was when I was back, so it had to be December, the beginning of December.”
The murder had been on December 20. By now, Ruben knew the date by
heart.
“Ruben, this is good, right? If she was threatening him? If she was, like, harassing him or something?”
“I mean…” Her hopes were way up now. It was too late by far. “Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. I could try to find out. I could go talk to her family, in—” He tried to remember. Illinois? Iowa?
“It’s insane, Ruben.”
“It’s not. Not necessarily. I don’t know. Your dad would still have to agree to change his plea.”
“Let me work on that,” said Evie, and in a heartbeat her steely rock-star presence returned to her: it set her chin and flashed in her eyes. “If it would actually get him out? He better fucking do it.”
Ruben was picturing himself on a plane; conducting interviews; digging up dirt. He would have to work fast; the clock was ticking.
“But what about you, Ruben? Your job? What about your life?”
“My life is—” It was sort of a weird thing to say, so he didn’t say it, but what he had been going to say was My life doesn’t matter. Instead he smiled at Evie—Evie the Wondrous, Evie of Old—and said, “If I can help your family in this way, and I don’t do it, I guess I’d never forgive myself,” and she leaned against his chest and put her arms around his neck and held him tight.
“I’m going,” he said. “I’ll go.”
There was a massive cheer from behind Ruben; someone had done something miraculous at one of the arcade games. Broken a high score or beaten the machine. A crowd of Eastsiders in black boots and sleeveless T-shirts was cheering like it was the moon landing.
Part Three
Renzer’s Peak
January 28, 2019
The Rabbi rang the bell, and then he waited and rang it again.
Nobody was in there. No one was home.
Plus it was snowing out here, an eventuality he probably could have anticipated. It was Indiana in the middle of the winter. Of course it was snowing. Big thick flakes that tumbled down out of the twilight, fell on his face, crept into the collar of his shirt.
Goddamn it, thought Ruben. At least I could have brought a coat.
The Quiet Boy Page 21