From the Corner of His Eye (43 page)

Eventually, a braless blonde in shiny white plastic boots, a white miniskirt, and a hot-pink T-shirt featuring the silk-screened face of Albert Einstein, said, “Sure, I know her. Had some classes with her. She’s nice enough, but she’s kind of nerdy, especially for an Afro-American. I mean, they’re never nerdy—am I right?”

“You’re right, except maybe for Buckwheat.”

“Who?” she shouted, though they were perched side by side on a black-leather love seat.

Junior raised his voice even further: “In those old movies, the Little Rascals.”

“Me, I don’t like anything old. This White chick’s got a weird thing for old people, old buildings, old stuff in general. Like she doesn’t realize she’s
young.
You want to grab her, shake her, and say, ‘Hey, let’s move on,’ you know?”

“The past is past.”

“It’s what?” she shouted.

“Past!”

“So true.”

“But my late wife used to like those Little Rascals movies.”

“You’re married?”

“She died.”

“So young?”

“Cancer,” he said, because that was more tragic and far less suspicious than a fall from a fire tower.

In commiseration, she put a hand on his thigh.

“It’s been a tough few years,” he said. “Losing her…and then getting out of Nam alive.”

The blonde’s eyes widened. “You were over
there
?”

He found it difficult to make a painful personal revelation sound sincere when delivered in a shout, but he managed well enough to bring a shine of tears to her eyes: “Part of my left foot was shot off in this up-country sweep we did.”

“Oh, bummer. That sucks. Man, I hate this war.”

The blonde was coming on to him, just as a score of other women had done since his arrival, so Junior tried to balance seduction with information gathering. Putting his hand over the hand with which she was gently massaging his thigh, he said, “I knew her brother in Nam. Then I got wounded, shipped out, lost touch. Like to find him.”

Bewildered, the blonde said, “Whose brother?”

“Celestina White’s.”

“She have a brother?”

“Great guy. Do you have an address for her, a way maybe I could get in touch about her brother?”

“I didn’t know her well. She didn’t hang out or party much—especially after the baby.”

“So she’s married,” Junior said, figuring that maybe Celestina wasn’t his heart mate, after all.

“Could be. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“No, I mean, you said ‘baby.’”

“Oh. No, her sister. But then the sister died.”

“Yeah, I know. But—”

“So Celestina took it.”

“It?”

“The kid-thing, the baby.”

Junior forgot all about seduction. “And she—what?—She adopted her sister’s baby?”

“Weird, huh?”

“Little boy named Bartholomew?” he asked.

“I never saw it.”

“But his name was Bartholomew?”

“For all I know, it was Piss-ant.”

“What?”

“I’m saying, for all I know.” She took her hand off his thigh. “What’s all this about Celestina, anyway?”

“Excuse me,” Junior said.

He left the party and stood in the street for a while, taking slow deep breaths, letting the brisk night air clean the pot smoke out of his lungs, slow deep breaths, suddenly sober in spite of the beer he’d drunk, slow deep breaths, as chilled as a slab of beef in a meat locker, but not because of the cold night.

He was astonished that adoption records would be sealed and so closely guarded when a child was being placed with a member of its immediate family, with its mother’s sister.

Only two explanations occurred to him. First, bureaucracies slavishly follow the rules even when the rules make no sense. Second, the Ugliest Private Detective in the World, Nolly Wulfstan, was an incompetent dunce.

Junior didn’t care which explanation was correct. Only one thing mattered: The Bartholomew hunt was at last nearing an end.

On Wednesday, December 27, Junior met Google, the document forger, in a theater, during a matinee of
Bonnie and Clyde.

As instructed earlier by phone, Junior purchased a large box of Raisinets and a box of Milk Duds at the refreshment stand, and then he sat in one of the last three rows in the center section, eating the Milk Duds, grimacing at the sticky noises his shoes made when he moved them on the tacky floor, and waiting for Google to find him.

Packed full of aftermath, the movie was too violent for Junior’s taste. He had wanted to meet at a showing of
Doctor Dolittle
or
The Graduate
. But Google, as paranoid as a lab rat after half a lifetime of electroshock experiments, insisted on choosing the theater.

Although he related well to the theme of moral relativism and personal autonomy in a value-neutral world, Junior grew apprehensive about each impending scene of violence, and closed his eyes against the prospect of blood. He resented having to endure ninety minutes of the film before Google finally settled into the seat beside him.

The forger’s crossed eyes glowed with reflected light from the screen. He licked his rubbery lips, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbled: “Like to drain my pipes in that Faye Dunaway, huh?”

Junior regarded him with undisguised repulsion.

Google didn’t realize that he was an object of disgust. He wiggled his eyebrows in what he evidently assumed to be an expression of male camaraderie, and he nudged Junior with one elbow.

Only a few theatergoers attended the matinee. No one sat near, so Google and Junior openly swapped packages: a five-by-six manila envelope to Google, a nine-by-twelve to Junior.

The papermaker withdrew a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills from his envelope and, squinting, inspected the currency in the flickering light. “I’m leaving now, but you wait until the movie’s over.”

“Why don’t I go, and you wait?”

“’Cause if you try that, I’ll ram a shiv through your eye.”

“It was just a question,” said Junior.

“And, listen, if you leave too soon behind me, I’ve got a guy watching, and he’ll put a hollow-point thirty-eight in your ass.”

“It’s just that I hate this movie.”

“You’re nuts. It’s classic. Hey, you eat those Raisinets?”

“Told you on the phone, I don’t like ’em.”

“Gimme.”

Junior gave the Raisinets to him, and Google left the theater with his candy and his cash.

The slow-motion death ballet, in which Bonnie and Clyde were riddled with bullets, was the worst moment Junior had ever heard in a film. He didn’t
see
more than a brief glimpse of it, because he sat with his eyes squeezed shut.

Nine days previously, at Google’s instructions, Junior had rented boxes at two mail-receiving services, using the name John Pinchbeck at one, Richard Gammoner at the other, and then he had supplied those addresses to the papermaker. These were the two identities for which Google ultimately provided elaborate and convincing documentation.

On Thursday, December 28, employing forged driver’s licenses and social-security cards as identification, Junior opened small savings accounts and also rented safe-deposit boxes for Pinchbeck and Gammoner at different banks with which he’d never previously done business, using the mailing addresses that he’d established earlier.

In each savings account, he deposited five hundred dollars in cash. He tucked twenty thousand in crisp new bills into each safe-deposit box.

For Gammoner, exactly as for Pinchbeck, Google had provided: a driver’s license that was actually registered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and that would, therefore, stand up to any cop’s inspection; a legitimate social-security card; a birth certificate actually on file with the cited courthouse; and an authentic, valid passport.

Junior kept both forged driver’s licenses in his wallet, in addition to the one that featured his real name. He stowed everything else in Pinchbeck’s and Gammoner’s safe-deposit boxes, along with the emergency cash.

He also concluded arrangements to open an account for Gammoner in a Grand Cayman Island bank and one for Pinchbeck in Switzerland.

That evening, he was filled with a greater sense of adventure than he’d felt since arriving in the city from Oregon. Consequently, he treated himself to three glasses of a superb Bordeaux and a filet mignon in the same elegant hotel lounge where he had dined on his first night in San Francisco, almost three years earlier.

The glittering room appeared unchanged. Even the piano player seemed to be the man who’d been at the keyboard back then, though his yellow-rose boutonniere and probably his tuxedo, as well, were new.

A few attractive women were here alone, proof that social mores had changed dramatically in three years. Junior was aware of their hot gazes, their need, and he knew that he could have any of them.

The stress that he currently felt wasn’t the same that he so often relieved with women. This was an energizing tension, a not-unpleasant tightening of the nerves, a delicious anticipation that he wanted to experience to its fullest—until the gallery reception for Celestina, on the evening that her show opened, January 12. This tension could not be released by intercourse, but only by the killing of Bartholomew, and when that long-sought moment arrived, Junior expected the relief he experienced would far exceed mere orgasm.

He had considered tracking down Celestina—and the bastard boy—prior to her exhibition. The alumni office of her college might be one route to her. And further inquiries in the city’s fine-arts community would no doubt eventually provide him with her address.

Following little Bartholomew’s murder, however, people might remember the man who had been asking after the mother, Celestina. Junior wasn’t just any man, either; irresistibly handsome, he left an indelible impression on people, especially on women. Inevitably, the cops would be knocking on his door, sooner or later.

Of course, he had the Pinchbeck and Gammoner identities waiting, two escape hatches. But he didn’t want to use them. He liked his life on Russian Hill, and he was loath to leave it.

Since he knew where Celestina would be on January 12, there was no point in taking risks to find her sooner. He had plenty of time to prepare for their encounter, time to savor the sweet anticipation.

Junior was paying his dinner check and calculating the tip when the pianist launched into “Someone to Watch over Me.” Although he’d expected it all evening, he twitched when he recognized the tune.

As he’d proved to himself on his previous two visits—his first night in town and then two nights thereafter—this number was merely part of the pianist’s repertoire. Nothing supernatural here.

Nevertheless, when he signed the credit-card form, his signature looked shaky.

Junior hadn’t suffered a paranormal experience since the early-morning hours of October 18, when he’d drifted up from a vile dream of worms and beetles to hear the ghostly singer’s faint a cappella serenade. Shouting at her to shut up, he had awakened neighbors.

Now, the hateful music unnerved him. He became convinced that if he went home alone, the phantom chanteuse—whether Victoria Bressler’s vengeful ghost or something else—would croon to him once more. He wanted company and distraction, after all.

An exceptionally attractive woman, alone at the bar, stirred his desire. Glossy black hair: the tresses of night itself, shorn from the sky. Olive complexion, no less smooth than the skin of a calamata. Eyes as lustrous as pools shimmering with a reflection of eternity and stars.

Wow. She inspired the poet in him.

Her elegance was appealing. A pink Chanel suit with knee-length skirt, a strand of pearls. Her figure was spectacular, but she didn’t flaunt it. She was even wearing a bra. In this age of bold erotic fashion, her more demure style was enormously seductive.

Settling onto the empty stool beside this beauty, Junior offered to buy her a drink, and she accepted.

Renee Vivi spoke with a silken southern accent. Vivacious without being cloyingly coquettish, well-educated and well-read but never pretentious, direct in her conversation without seeming either bold or opinionated, she was charming company.

She appeared to be in her early thirties, perhaps six years older than Junior, but he didn’t hold that against her. He wasn’t any more prejudiced against older people than he was against people of other races and ethnic origins.