C is for Corpse (17 page)

“I saw you at the funeral,” he said shyly when he turned back to me. “You were sitting near Mrs. Callahan.”

“I don't remember seeing you,” I said. “Did you come to the house afterward?”

He shook his head, coloring. “I wasn't feeling too good.”

“I don't think there's any way to feel good about that.”

“Not when your buddy dies,” he said. His voice carried a barely perceptible quaver. He turned away, making a big display of shoving the shoe skates back into the proper slot on the shelf.

“Have you been sick?” I asked.

He seemed to debate for just an instant and then said, “I got Crohn's disease. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“Inflammatory bowel disease. Everything goes right through me. I can't keep weight on. Run a fever half the time. Stomach hurts. ‘Etiology unknown,' which means they don't know what causes it or where it comes from. I've had it almost two years and it's got me down. I can't keep a real job, so I do this.”

“Is that something you recover from?”

“I guess so. In time. That's what they say, at any rate.”

“Well, I'm sorry you're suffering. It sounds grim.”

“You don't know the half of it. Anyway, Bobby cheered me up. He was in such bad shape himself, we'd get laughin' sometimes. I miss him. When I heard he died, I almost gave up, but then this little voice said, ‘Aw Gus, get up off your dead ass and get on with it . . . this isn't the end of the world, so don't be a jerk.' ” He shook his head. “It was Bobby, I swear. Sounded just like him. So I got up off my dead ass. Are you looking into his death?”

I nodded, glancing over as a couple of kids approached to rent skates.

Gus conducted some business and came back to me, apologizing for the interruption. It was summer and despite the uncharacteristic chill in the air, the tourists were swarming the beaches. I asked him if he had any idea what Bobby was involved in. He moved uneasily, glancing off across the street.

“I got an idea, but I don't know what to say. I mean, if Bobby didn't tell you, why should I?”

“He couldn't remember. That's what he hired me for. He thought he was in danger and he wanted me to find out what was going on.”

“So maybe it's best to just leave it be.”

“Leave what be?”

“Look, I don't know anything for sure. Just what Bobby said.”

“What are you worried about?”

He shifted his gaze. “I don't know. Let me think about it some. Honest, I don't know much, but I don't want to talk about it unless it feels right. You know what I mean?”

I conceded the point. You can always push people around, but it's not a good idea. Better to let them volunteer information for reasons of their own. You get more that way.

“I hope you'll give me a call,” I said. “If I don't hear from you, I might have to come back and make a pest of myself.” I took a card out and laid it on the counter.

He smiled, apparently feeling guilty for holding out. “You can skate for nothing if you want. It's good exercise.”

“Some other time,” I said. “Thanks.”

He watched me until I pulled out of the parking lot, turning left. In the rearview mirror, I could see him scratching at his mustache with the corner of my business card. I hoped I'd hear from him.

In the meantime, I decided to see if I could lay my hands on the cardboard box the lab had packed up after Bobby's accident. I drove over to the house. Glen had apparently flown up to San Francisco for the day, but Derek was home and I told him what I needed.

His look was skeptical. “I remember the box, but I'm not sure where it went. Probably out in the garage, if you want to have a look.”

He closed the front door behind him and the two of us crossed the courtyard to the three-car garage that stretched out at one end of the house. There were
storage bins built into the back wall. None of them was locked, but most were stacked top to bottom with boxes that looked as if they'd been on the premises since the year oughty-ought.

I spotted a carton that seemed to be a good bet. It was shoved against the back wall under a workbench, marked “disposable syringes” with the name of the medical supplier and a torn shipping label addressed to Santa Teresa Hospital Pathology Department. We hauled it out and opened it. The contents looked like Bobby's, but were disappointing nevertheless. No little red book, no reference to anybody named Blackman, no clippings, no cryptic notes, no personal correspondence. There were some medical books, two technical manuals for radiology equipment, and office supplies of the most benign sort. What was I going to do with a box of paper clips and two ballpoint pens?

“It doesn't look like much,” Derek remarked.

“It doesn't look like
anything
,” I replied. “You mind if I take it with me anyway? I may want to check through it again.”

“No, go right ahead. Here let me get that.” I stepped back obligingly and let him heft the box up off the floor and carry it to my car. I could have done it, but it seemed important to him, so why hassle? He shoved some stuff aside and we wrestled the box into the backseat. I told him I'd be in touch and then I took off.

I went back to my place and changed into my running clothes. I was just locking up when Henry came around the corner with Lila Sams. They were walking
hip to hip, arms entwined. He was a good foot taller than she and lean in all the places she was plump. He looked flushed with happiness, that special aura people take on when they've just fallen in love. He was wearing pale blue brushed denim pants and a pale blue shirt that made his blue eyes look nearly luminous. His hair looked freshly cut and my guess was he'd actually had someone “style” it this time. Lila's smile tensed somewhat when she caught sight of me, but she recovered her composure, laughing girlishly.

“Oh Kinsey, now look what he's gone and done,” she said and held her hand out. She was sporting a big square-cut diamond that I hoped was some gaudy fake.

“God, it's gorgeous. What's the occasion?” I asked, heart sinking. Surely, they weren't engaged. She was so wrong for him, so giddy and false, while he was genuine.

“Just celebrating the fact that we met,” Henry said with a glance at her. “What was it, a month ago? Six weeks?”

“Well, naughty you,” she said with a playful stamp of her little foot. “I have half a mind to make you take this right back. We met June twelfth. It was Moza's birthday and I'd just moved in. You catered that tea she gave and you've spoiled me rotten ever since.” She lowered her voice then to its most confidential pitch. “Isn't he awful?”

I don't know how to talk to people this way, exchanging pointless banter. I could feel my smile becoming self-conscious but I couldn't make it go away.
“I think he's great,” I said, sounding somehow lame and inept.

“Well, of course he's great,” she said in a flash. “Why wouldn't he be? He's such an innocent, anyone can take advantage of him.”

Her tone was suddenly quarrelsome, as though I'd insulted him. I could feel the warning signals clanging away like crazy, but I still couldn't guess what was coming. She was wagging a finger at me, red painted nails piercing the air near my face. “You, for one, you bad girl. I told Henry and I'll say it right to your face, the rent you pay is a scandal and you know perfectly well you've been robbing him blind.”

“What?”

She narrowed her eyes, pushing her face toward mine. “Now don't you play dumb with me. Two hundred dollars a month! My stars. Do you know what studio apartments are renting for in this neighborhood? Three hundred. That's a hundred dollars you take away from him every time you write him a check. Disgraceful. It's just a disgrace!”

“Oh now, Lila,” Henry broke in. He seemed nonplussed that she'd launched into this, but it was clearly something they'd discussed. “Let's don't get into this now. She's on her way out.”

“You can spare a few minutes, I'm sure,” she said with a glittering look at me.

“Sure,” I said faintly and then glanced at him. “Have you been unhappy with me?” I felt the same sick combination of heat and cold that Chinese-food
syndrome produces. Did he really feel I'd been cheating him?

Lila cut in again, answering before he could even open his mouth. “Let's not put Henry on the spot,” she said. “He thinks the world of you, which is why he hasn't had the heart to speak up. You're the one I'd like to spank. How could you take an old softie like Henry and twist him around your finger that way? You should be ashamed.”

“I wouldn't take advantage of Henry.”

“But you already have. How long have you been living here at that same ridiculous rent? A year? Fifteen months? Don't tell me it never occurred to you that you were getting this place dirt-cheap! Because if you say that, I'll have to call you a liar right to your face and embarrass us both.”

I could feel my mouth open, but I couldn't say a word.

“We can talk about this later,” Henry murmured, taking her by the arm. He was steering her around me, but her eyes were still fixed on mine and her neck and cheeks were now blotchy with rage. I turned and stared as he moved her toward his back stairs. She was already starting to protest in the same irrational tone I'd heard the other night. Was the woman nuts?

When the door closed behind them, my heart began to thump and I realized I was damp with sweat. I tied my door key to my shoelace and then I took off, breaking into a trot long before I'd had a chance to warm up. I ran, putting distance between us.

I did three miles and then walked back to my place,
letting myself in. Henry's back shades were down and his windows were shut. The rear of his house looked blank and uninviting, like a beachfront park after closing time.

I showered and threw some clothes on, and then took off, fleeing the premises. I still felt stung, but I was getting in touch with some anger too. What business was it of hers anyway? And why hadn't Henry leapt to my defense?

When I pushed into Rosie's, it was late afternoon and there wasn't a soul in sight. The restaurant was gloomy and smelled of last night's cigarette smoke. The TV set on the bar was turned off and the chairs were still upside down on the tabletops, like a troupe of acrobats doing tricks. I crossed to the rear and opened the swinging door to the kitchen. Rosie glanced up at me, startled. She was sitting on a tall wooden stool with a cleaver in her hand, chopping leeks. She hated anyone intruding on her kitchen, probably because she violated health codes.

“What happened?” she said when she saw my face.

“I had an encounter with Henry's lady friend,” I replied.

“Ah,” she said. She whacked a leek with the cleaver, sending hunks flying. “She don't come in here. She knows better.”

“Rosie, the woman is crazy as a loon. You should have heard her the other night after you tangled with her. She ranted and raved for hours. Now she's accusing me of cheating Henry on the rent.”

“Take a seat. I got some vodka somewhere.” She
crossed to the cabinet above the sink and stood on tippytoe, tilting a vodka bottle into reach. She broke the seal and poured me a hit in a coffee cup. She shrugged then poured herself one too. We drank and I could feel the blood rush back to my face.

I said, “Woo!” involuntarily. My esophagus felt scorched and I could sense the contours of my stomach outlined in alcohol. I always pictured my stomach much lower down than that. Weird. Rosie placed the chopped leeks in a bowl and rinsed the cleaver at the sink before she turned back to me.

“You got twenty cents? Give me two dimes,” she said, holding a hand out. I fished around in my handbag, coming up with some loose change. Rosie took it and crossed to the pay phone on the wall. Everybody has to use that pay phone, even her.

“Who are you calling? You're not calling Henry,” I said, with alarm.

“Ssss!” She held a hand up, shushing me, her eyes focusing in the way people do when someone picks up the phone on the other end. Her voice got musical and syrupy.

“Hello, dear. This is Rosie. What are you doing right this minute. Uh-hun, well I think you better get over here. We have a little matter to discuss.”

She clunked the receiver down without waiting for a response and then she fixed me with a satisfied look. “Mrs. Lowenstein is coming over for a chat.”

Moza Lowenstein sat on the chrome-and-plastic chair that I'd brought in from the bar. She is a large
woman with hair the color of a cast-iron skillet, worn in braids wrapped around her head. There are strands of silver threaded through like tinsel, and her face, with its pale powder, has the soft look of a marshmallow. Generally, she likes to hold on to something when she talks to Rosie: a bouquet of pencils, a wooden spoon, any talisman to ward off attack. Today, it was the dish towel she'd brought with her. Apparently, Rosie had interrupted her in the middle of some chore and she'd hurried right over, as bid. She's afraid of Rosie, as anyone with good sense would be. Rosie launched right in, skipping all the niceties.

“Who is this Lila Sams?” Rosie said. She took up her cleaver and began to pound on some veal, making Moza flinch.

Her voice, when she found it, was trembly and soft. “I don't really know. She came to my door, she said in response to an ad in the paper, but it was all a mistake. I didn't have a room for rent and I told her as much. Well, the poor thing burst into tears and what was I to do? I had to ask her in for a cup of tea.”

Rosie paused to stare in disbelief. “And then you rented her a room?”

Moza folded the towel, forming a lobster shape like a napkin in a fancy restaurant. “Well, no. I told her she could stay with me until she found a place, but she insisted that she pay her own way. She didn't want to be indebted, she said.”

“That's called room rent. That's what that is,” Rosie snapped.