Obedience (3 page)

“You didn’t hear the shot? The police report says no one heard it, but Tracy Davis thinks that’s unlikely. She wonders why people would lie about that. You know these people. Would they? Why?”

“Probably not lying. They’re old and go to bed early, or they’re young and go to bed early, knowing the kids will get them up at the crack of dawn. There’s a few alcoholics that sit up late with their bottles, and a few people dying that sit up late with their pain. But most of us, up that late, would be running the television, wouldn’t we? I would. I do. Reading by lamplight’s hard on my eyes. I wish it weren’t. TV doesn’t have much to offer anybody accustomed to a lifetime’s reading. But I make do with it. For company.”

“It wouldn’t have been a loud report,” Dave said. “It was only a twenty-two pistol.”

She gave a jerk and stared. “A twenty-two pistol? But—but how could that kill anybody?” She seemed upset. “When I was a girl my brothers had a twenty-two rifle, and it would kill a rabbit or a prairie chicken. But a grown man?” Her tone scoffed, but her eyes were worried. Why? What about?

“It happens. Maybe somebody did hear the shot, looked out, saw something, or someone—and they’re afraid to tell the police about it? Has any of you been threatened? Maybe people are afraid their children will be harmed.”

“No, there’s been nothing like that. Only some heated language from our side—mostly Andy Flanagan’s.” She gave a snort of laughter. “And if Andy had been threatened, we’d have heard about it, believe me.”

“What about the others?” Dave finished off the bad tea. “If they were afraid to tell the police, maybe they told their neighbors.” He got to his feet, carried his glass to the galley, set it in the sink. “Maybe they told you.”

She eyed him watchfully. “Why me, especially?”

He smiled. “That’s how you impress me, as someone people confide in—younger people, especially.”

“The old,” she said grimly, “have nothing left to confide. All their confidences have gone to the grave with their friends. It’s why they can’t make new ones.”

Dave stood over her, head bowed a little because the ceiling of the cabin was low, and he looked down at her steadily, until she was ready to leave her bitter reverie to draw breath and speak again. The glass was still in her hand. She looked at it surprised for a second. “That’s terrible tea,” she said. “You shouldn’t have had to drink it.” She rose and went into the galley. “A person gets out of the way of having company.” She poured the tea from her glass into the sink, and peered into the little refrigerator. “I’m afraid there’s nothing else here.”

“It’s all right, thanks,” Dave said. “Who told you they heard the shot that killed Le, Ms. Potter?”

She turned sharply. “What did I say? Did I say anyone told me?” She wasn’t angry. She was afraid she’d had a memory lapse, had spoken and already forgotten. “I didn’t, did I? Am I losing my mind? Nothing frightens me about getting old the way that does.”

“You didn’t say anyone told you. I just figured someone did. And I figured right, didn’t I?”

Her ruddy face closed. “He has reason to be afraid.”

“Why? Did the murderer see him?”

She shut the refrigerator door behind her, and came back to him. She’d been shaken for a few minutes here, by his questions, by her memories. Now she was once again stalwart, sure of herself, as he’d found her up on the deck in the sunlight, and as children must have found her in schoolrooms now no more than memories. She faced him calmly, faded blue eyes unwavering.

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. It was a confidence.”

“It wasn’t Andy Flanagan he saw,” Dave said.

She shook her head.

“Then his testimony could free Flanagan,” Dave said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure Cot—” She closed her mouth hard on the half-spoken name. Her smile was wry. “Let me put it this way. I told you most of us tried to avoid Andy Flanagan, but there were some of us Andy made it a point to avoid.”

He studied her. “Are you giving me a clue?”

She chuckled. “I knew you’d understand.”

U
P ON THE DECK IN
the sun and breeze again, he looked for the cat, who had gone back to the cabin roof. He reached up and stroked its fur. He liked cats, but it had been a long time since one had made a home with him. Tatiana had been her name. He frowned to himself—when was he thinking about? The 1940s. She’d delivered a batch of kittens at the foot of the bed one Eastern morning. That fancy white wickerwork bed he’d shared with Rod Fleming, both men in their early twenties. Tatiana was long since dead. So was Rod. Strange. It didn’t seem like any time at all.

Tatiana had worn plushy gray and white stripes. Norma Potter’s cream and marmalade cat began to purr now, under his hand. He scratched its ears. It closed its eyes in bliss and kneaded the tough weathered roofing with its front paws. “A soft life around here, isn’t it?” he said. “All the fresh fish you can eat?” He hadn’t kept a cat, of course, because his work had taken him away from home too much. That wasn’t fair to an animal.

Wondering how Cecil felt about cats, Dave crossed the boarding plank to the dock and headed for the next boat fed by sagging power lines.

It was a broad, shallow-draft houseboat. Metal. The kind that loaf around the Sacramento delta. How had it got down here? They weren’t built for life on the bounding main. This one showed rust at its rivets. On the roof, a young blond man lay on the faded orange canvas webbing of a tubular deck chair. He wore only swim trunks and sunglasses. Nearby, a tattered Hawaiian shirt hung over a corroded railing and flapped in the breeze. Dave called:

“Hello, on board the
Wanderer.
”

The young man sat up. Dave winced. Long angry red scars in which the stitching showed marked the young man’s belly. His arms and legs were sticks, his ribs stuck out. He took off the sunglasses and squinted. “What do you want?”

“I’m helping with Andy Flanagan’s defense,” Dave said.

“The stupid son of a bitch is going to need all the help he can get.” Delicately running fingers over his marred belly, the young man pondered Dave, trying to make up, his mind. At last, he nodded. “Okay. Come on.” He reached to snag the shirt and put it on, moving as if he hurt. “On your way, will you duck inside and ask my wife for another soda, please?”

Sea salt had pitted the chrome on the railings of the main deck. He crawled between these. His feet gonged the plating of the deck. The door to the living quarters stood open. He rapped the tin doorframe and poked his head inside. On a sink counter, a young woman with short reddish hair, was changing a baby’s diaper. She wore a large man’s shirt with long tails. She called, “Just a minute,” clipped shut a last safety pin, picked up the baby with a laugh, laid it in a bassinet. She crouched to retrieve a soiled diaper from the floor and, wrinkling her nose, carried this past Dave, to a round metal receptacle on the deck, pulled off the lid, dropped the diaper in, replaced the lid. She turned Dave a half smile. “Did I hear the captain order grog?”

He touched the brim of his canvas hat. “Yes, ma’am.”

She went back inside, a refrigerator door sucked open, thumped closed, she brought two icy green cans, and looked somber as she put them into his hands. “Don’t stay too long,” she said. “He’s weak and everything tires him.”

“I’ll make it quick,” Dave promised.

“I wanted him to nap.” She looked reproachful. “He can’t sleep at night. He lies awake and worries.”

There was a ladder to climb. Dave put the cans into jacket pockets and climbed, the effort bringing back a twinge of pain where his shoulder had been knifed by a half-crazy teenager last winter. He reached the roof deck, and stood for a moment, catching his breath. Then he handed the young man on the deck chair one of the cans. He popped the lid, swallowed some of the contents, held out a hand.

“Ralph Mannix,” he said. “Who are you?”

Dave shook his hand, spoke his own name, showed his license, said, “You didn’t like Flanagan?”

“Hardly knew him. We only came down here six months ago. Last resort, all right?” He made a face. “I’ve been very sick. Diverticulitis. You know what that is? Your guts develop leaks. Inside. It’s a mess. The doctors made it worse. I had to have surgery, and surgery to repair the surgery, and surgery to repair the repairs.”

“I saw the scars,” Dave said.

“They’re only half of it. I owned a delivery service, rush mail, small parcels. It was growing fast. I’d just put in extra phone lines, a computer system. We’d bought a nice place in Westwood—swimming pool, sauna, you name it. When I came out of the hospital the third time, I was stripped. No business, no house, no car, nothing in the bank, and still deep in debt. My wife’s folks used their last thousand bucks to buy us this tub. She’s got the baby and me to look after, can’t go out to work, so she takes in typing here. It’s our only income.” He turned his face away for a minute, drew a few deep breaths, drank from the green can, worked up a kind of smile. “I’m sorry. I’m alive. That’s what counts, isn’t it? Where there’s life, there’s hope.” Gloom reclaimed him. “Only now we’re going to be chased out of here, and where will we go?”

“You blame Flanagan?” Dave said.

“The committee chose him because he was vocal,” Mannix said. “I’d have chosen Norma Potter. She’s got some sense. Flanagan’s crazy, if you want the truth.”

“Crazy enough to murder Le?” Dave said.

“That’s what the police think,” Mannix said. “And the way he felt about Vietnamese, maybe they’re right.”

Out past the bridge, a steel loading crane swung atop its tower. Dave watched its cables lift a freight container into sight. He couldn’t see the ship the container came from. Slowly the container spun against the sky. “But you didn’t know him long.”

“I didn’t know him long, and I didn’t want to. I don’t remember the war. I was only thirteen when it ended. But I guess older people figure he’s got a right to be bitter. Some of them, anyway. Some of them say the war wasn’t Vietnam’s fault. We had no business going in there. I don’t know. But it isn’t just Vietnamese he hates. He hates the Army for sending him there. Hates the Veterans Administration, hates the government—doesn’t matter it’s not the same as it was then. Hates pretty much anybody and everybody.”

“Was that why you called him stupid?” Dave said. “Or did you have a particular reason?”

“He arranged to meet Le without telling any of us. We’re a committee. We’re supposed to vote on these things. He went off half-cocked, trying to prove what a born leader he was, and he wrecked the last chance we had.”

The sun beat down. Dave tilted up the soda can at his mouth and drank. “What chance was that?”

“Le really didn’t know much about the whole thing. Or care, apparently. He’d been stalling, driving the developers nuts. He didn’t seem in any hurry to sell the Old Fleet. He sure as hell wasn’t hurting for money. Maybe he’d have listened to our side. Now there’s only those damn lawyers of his. Them we’ve met. We’ll get no breaks from them.”

“Did you hear the shot that killed Le?”

“We slept over at my in-laws in Long Beach,” Mannix said. “I’d been up there yesterday to get checked at the hospital. We only got back”—he read a Timex that looked too heavy for his wasted wrist—“three hours ago.” His laugh was dry. “Missed all the excitement, right?”

“Flanagan ever offend you personally?” Dave said.

“He sneered when he saw me on the protest committee. What did I have to worry about? My wife’s folks were Jewish. Jews have plenty of money. Deb and I and the baby would be all right. The rest of them here were in real trouble. I was so weak, I could hardly stand up. But if I was myself, I’d have beat the shit out of him, one arm or not.”

“Norma Potter thinks he was framed.”

Mannix tilted his head, wrinkled his brow, weighed the idea. “To shut him up? Naw. He was a pain in the ass to the developers and the City Council, but he couldn’t really hurt them, could he?”

“Yesterday, when you weren’t here, he got your plight onto television and into the newspapers. That kind of story rouses public sympathy, turns them against cold-hearted corporations. Maybe that made them take him seriously.”

“You don’t honestly believe that.” Mannix drank off the rest of the soda and set the green can on the deck, wincing when the motion pulled at his scars. “Norma reads too many detective stories. Why wasn’t Le just mugged?”

“There was over six thousand dollars in his pockets.”

“Well, that lets me out as a suspect.” Mannix gave a tired laugh. “I’d have taken the money. Believe it.” He went quiet. Dave frowned at the skeletal form stretched out on the flimsy deck chair. He thought Mannix’s eyes were closed behind those dark lenses. But his lips moved, he spoke, a whisper. “No—Flanagan just went off his rocker at last.” He sighed. “That’s all.”

“I guess not. Someone here saw the killer.” Dave bent to pick up Mannix’s empty soda can from the deck. He pushed it into a pocket, his own into the opposite pocket. “He told Norma Potter. He didn’t happen to tell you too, did he?”

Maybe Mannix was asleep. Maybe he was only shamming. Whatever the case, he didn’t answer. And Dave climbed down the steel ladder and went to the open cabin door to hand in the cans. “Thank you,” Mannix’s wife said with that pale half-smile of hers. “Each one is worth a penny.”

He lit a cigarette, and started along the dock, looking for the next boat wired to a power pole. Movement caught his eye. Maybe thirty yards ahead. He stopped and stood, waiting for whatever it was to show itself again. It was quiet. Water lapped the pier stakes. The whine of the engine that powered the loading crane came to him. Nearer by, gulls cried their creaking cries. A dog, shut up on one of the boats, yelped to get out. Somewhere he heard the muffled quarrelling of soap-opera actors.

Then he saw again what he thought he’d seen before, but hadn’t believed. A face, half black and half chalk white, flickered into sight and out of sight on a boat far down the row. Panic was in the eyes that looked at him out of that face. He threw his cigarette into the water, and used long strides to get him to that boat. It was a slim, white, forty-foot sailing craft that hadn’t sailed in a long time.
STARLADY
was painted on its bow.