Shackles (17 page)

The impact threw him thirty feet into a construction company’s dumpster. He was still alive when I got to him; still alive when the emergency ambulance arrived; still alive for the next twelve days. But he had suffered massive brain damage as well as internal injuries and he died on the thirteenth day of his coma, without regaining consciousness.

I was exonerated of any blame, of course—any legal blame. But Jackie Timmons had a mother and she didn’t exonerate me. He had a twenty-two-year-old pregnant sister and she didn’t exonerate me. He had street friends, neighbors, and they didn’t exonerate me. And I didn’t exonerate myself, not at first, because no matter what Jackie Timmons was and might have become, he had been sixteen years old and he was dead and his death was on my conscience. It was a long time before I could sleep at night without seeing him lying broken and bloody next to the dumpster on that rain-slick Emeryville street.

His mother screamed at me in the hospital when I went there to check on him a couple of days after it happened; she called me a damn murdering pig and worse. His sister spat in my face. But that had been the end of it. I did not see either of them again; I didn’t see any of his friends, either, including the two who had been with him that night, because the van turned out to be stolen and they were never identified, never made to answer for those particular crimes. There were no threats on my life, no attempts at reprisal—no repercussions of any kind. It was just a tragic incident in a profession filled with tragic incidents, buried under layers of scar tissue. You have to forget; you can’t go on doing my kind of work unless you learn how to forget.

Only now it looked as though somebody
hadn’t
forgotten. After sixteen years, somebody connected with Jackie Timmons not only still hated me enough to want me dead but to put me through the worst kind of torment before I died. It didn’t seem possible, this long after the fact—and yet nothing else made sense either. Thirteen days for Jackie to die … thirteen weeks for me to die. And for some reason, a span of sixteen between the two thirteens.

Sixteen. Jackie had been that many years old when he died; was there some kind of correlation between the two? Possibly. But what kind of madman waits sixteen years to avenge the death of a sixteen-year-old kid?

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I start to find out.

Sluicebox Lane turned out to be a short, carelessly paved street a third of a mile from the Pine Rest Motel. Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating took up most of the second block on the north side—a good-sized combination of pipe yard, warehouse, showroom, and business office. It was twenty of nine when I walked into the office and showroom at the front.

Water heaters, sinks, and small color-coordinated mock-ups of a bathroom and a kitchen took up two-thirds of the interior; the other third was the office, with a couple of desks arranged behind a low counter. Only one of the desks was occupied, by a plump middle-aged woman with streaky, dyed blond hair and a demeanor that just missed being bovine. She stood when I approached the counter, smoothed out the tweed skirt she was wearing, and showed me teeth any dentist would have been proud of, real or not. “May I help you?”

“I hope so. I need some information?”

“Yes?”

“About a customer of yours six to eight years ago. The owner of a cabin up near Deer Run.”

Wrinkles appeared in her forehead, creating a V that pointed down the length of her nose. “I don’t understand …”

“I’d like the person’s name.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No, Ma’am. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why do you want to know his name?”

The impatience came crawling back; I could feel the muscles in my stomach draw tight. All right, then, I thought. Tell her who you are, show her the license. If she read or heard about the disappearance and makes the right connection, bluff it through.

I said, “I’m a private detective. Working on an investigation.” I got my wallet out and flipped it open to the photostat of my California PI license.

She said, “Oh,” with a small amount of surprise and nothing else in her voice, and looked at the license just about long enough to identify the state seal And if she noticed that I was clean-shaven in the photograph she didn’t comment on it. One of these placid types, born without much imagination or curiosity. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t give out information about our customers.”

“It’s very important—”

“Besides,” she said, “all our work orders and invoices are filed alphabetically. Without the customer’s name, I couldn’t very well … oh, Mr. Hennessey. Could you come over here a second?”

There was a door to the warehouse back beyond her desk and a silver-haired guy in his fifties, wearing a pair of overalls and duck-billed cap, had come through it. He angled over to the counter, smiled and nodded at me—I smiled and nodded back at him—and said to the woman, “What’s up, Wilma?”

“This man wants to know the name of one of our customers. He’s a private detective.”

The guy’s craggy face lit up at that, as if she’d told him I was somebody important or famous. He gave me a closer, appraising look and an even broader smile. “No kidding?” he said. “A private eye?”

“That’s right.”

“Like Magnum, huh? Mike Hammer, Spenser?”

“No,” I said, “not like them.”

“What, no fast cars and hot broads?”

“No.”

“Mean to tell me real private eyes aren’t like what you see on TV?”

“Not hardly. I’m just doing a job, the same as you.”

It was the truth and he liked it; it put him on my side. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. All that bang-bang, sexy stuff is so much crap, right?”

“Right.”

“Sure. It’s like I told my wife: Private eyes don’t get seduced any more than plumbers. I been in this business thirty years and I never had a customer try to get in my pants. Man
or
woman.” He laughed as though he’d made a joke, and winked at Wilma. She smiled dutifully, but without either humor or appreciation; the expression in her eyes said that as far as she was concerned, all men were little boys and sometimes it was a chore putting up with them.

I managed a small chuckle for his benefit. He liked that too. He said, “I’m Bert Hennessey, I own the place,” and poked a callused hand across the counter at me. I took it, gave him my right name—just the last one, in case he wanted to look at my license. But he didn’t. And the name didn’t seem to mean anything to him, any more than it had to Wilma. “So why do you want the name of one of my customers?”

“A case I’m working on.”

“What kind of case?”

“A confidential one.”

“Oh, sure. He live here in Sonora?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that he owns a mountain cabin up near Deer Run, on Indian Hill Road—or he did six to eight years ago. You installed a water heater for him, maybe ran some copper piping and did some other work on the place.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“The water heater’s got your tag on it.”

“Ah. Deer Run, you say?”

“On Indian Hill Road. Six to eight years ago.”

“Deer Run, Deer Run … oh, yeah, I remember. I don’t get many jobs up that way. Only reason I got the one you mean, the customer called three or four shops for estimates and I gave him a low one, even with all the travel time, on account of it was a slow spring and I needed the work.”

“Do you recall his name?”

“Well, I’m not sure.” He frowned, thinking about it. “Seems to me it was a sports name.”

“The same as an athlete’s, you mean?”

“Yeah. Baseball or basketball player … no, both. White guy used to play for the Giants. And a black guy played in the NBA, does those Lite Beer commercials you see on TV. The guy with the big feet; you know, they keep making jokes about his big feet.”

Talk, talk, talk. The impatience had built a jangling inside me; I clenched my hands tight to keep them still. Hennessey was enjoying himself, playing a little riddle game with me, and the only thing to do was to play along with him. If I pushed him he might decide I wasn’t such an interesting specimen after all and close up on me. You either encourage people like him or you leave them be and let them get it out in their own sweet time.

I shook my head and shrugged and smiled and said, “Guess I don’t watch enough sports on TV.”

“My wife says I watch too much,” Hennessey said. “She says sports on TV breaks up more marriages than nookie. Not that
she
knows much about nookie,” and he winked at Wilma again.

She smiled her dutiful smile. I waited.

“Lanier,” he said finally, as if he were answering a big-prize question on a TV game show. Proud of himself, because he knew something a private eye didn’t. “Hal Lanier, pretty good infielder with the Giants once, manages the Astros now. Bob Lanier, the black basketball player with the big feet.”

“Lanier,” I said. It was a letdown because the name meant nothing to me. “You’re sure that was his name?”

“Pretty sure.”

“What was his first name?”

“That I don’t remember.”

“Did he live in the cabin year-round? Or did he give you another address?”

“Don’t remember that either,” Hennessey said. He glanced at the woman. “Look it up, Wilma, will you? Lanier. Must have been ’eighty-one. That was the year we had the slow spring.”

“Those files are in the storeroom,” she said. There was mild disapproval in her voice. But she was too placid to argue; and when he said, “Won’t take a minute, you know where they are,” she released a small sighing breath and went through the door into the warehouse.

I asked, “What did this Lanier look like?”

“Look like? Well, I don’t have much of a memory for faces …”

“It’s important, Mr. Hennessey.”

“Important case, huh?”

“Yes.”

“He do something crooked, this Lanier?”

“He might have.”

“Up at the cabin in Deer Run? Some kind of crime happen up there?”

“Yes,” I said, “some kind of crime.”

“Can’t say what it is, huh?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Sure, I understand. Well, let’s see. I think he was bald … yeah, that’s right, bald as an egg.”

“Big man? Medium? Small?”

“Kind of medium, I guess.”

“Was there anything unusual about him? Scars, moles, mannerisms, the way he talked?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“How old was he?”

“Oh … around our age.”

“You’re sure? In his fifties?”

“He was no spring chicken, that’s for sure.”

Not my man, then. If this Lanier had been in his fifties seven years ago, he would be close to or some past sixty now. The whisperer hadn’t been anywhere near that old; there had been a quality of relative youth about him, of that I was certain.

“What else can you tell me about Lanier?”

“That’s about all. Hell, it’s been so long …”

Wilma came back in from the warehouse, carrying a slender file folder in one hand. “Here it is,” she said in her placidly disapproving way. “James Lanier.”

“James, that’s right,” Hennessey said. “James Lanier.”

I asked Wilma, “What address did he give?”

She consulted the file. “Spruce Cabin, Indian Hill Road, Deer Run.”

“Is that the only one?”

“No. There’s another here. But it’s not local.”

Jesus, these people! “What is it, please?”

“It’s in Carmichael,” she said. “Two-one-nine-six-three Roseville Avenue, Carmichael.”

I repeated it, committing it to memory: “Two-one-nine-six-three Roseville Avenue, Carmichael.”

“That’s right.”

“Did he give a telephone number?”

“Yes, I think so …”

She found it and read it out, and I repeated it, too, so I wouldn’t forget it.

When I thanked the two of them for their help, Hennessey said, “Any time. Wait’ll I tell the wife we helped out a private eye. She’ll wet her pants.” He winked at me, winked at Wilma, and said, “She might even give me a little tonight.”

Wilma sighed, pursed her lips, and sat down at her desk. Hennessey grinned. And I went away from both of them.

There were no rental car agencies in Sonora; I had learned that last night, from the desk clerk when I checked into the motel. So after I left Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating, I found my way to the bus station. The next bus to Sacramento wasn’t until tomorrow morning, but there was a one o’clock coach to Stockton. I spent nearly ten of my remaining dollars on a one-way ticket. Stockton was some sixty miles south and a little west of Carmichael, a sprawling northern suburb of Sacramento; it was also about the same distance from Sonora. I could rent a car there this afternoon and be in Carmichael sometime early this evening. The sooner I had a car and the freedom of mobility it provided, the better off I would be.

From a phone booth I called Sacramento County information and asked for a Carmichael listing for James Lanier. I half expected to be told that there wasn’t one, after seven years, but the operator punched in his computer without comment and an electronic voice gave the same number Wilma had read to me. So Lanier was likely still at the same Roseville Avenue address. I could confirm that by checking the local directory when I got to Carmichael.

I had gotten several quarters and I used those to call Bates and Carpenter in San Francisco. I had tried dialing Kerry’s home number twice more last night, the last time at a quarter to eleven, and she still hadn’t answered. Nothing ominous in that, or even significant, but it preyed on my mind just the same.

When the call went through I said to the woman on the switchboard, “Kerry Wade, please.” There was a click, another ringing sound, and then another click and Kerry’s secretary, Ellen Stilwell, said cheerfully, “Ms. Wade’s office.”

She knew my voice, Ellen did—I had called Kerry often enough at the agency—so I deepened and roughened it when I asked, “Is Ms. Wade in?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Then she
is
in?”

“Yes, she is. Your name, please, sir?”

Relieved, I tapped the box with the handset, jiggled the cradle at the same time to make it seem as though there was something wrong with the line, and then hung up. All right. Kerry was alive, safe, well enough to be at her job; now I could put my mind at ease at least where she was concerned.

I went to a café not far away and drank coffee and made myself eat a piece of apple pie. Back at the bus station, I bought a newspaper and caught up on the news. Nothing much had changed in three months: political scandals, corporate scandals, religious scandals, small wars like rehearsals for another big one, all sorts of killing on the individual level. Lots of changes taking place everywhere—change is systemic in all walks of life, sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle—and yet certain fundamental things never change. I thought of the line from the Peter, Paul, and Mary song:
When will they ever learn?
Rhetorical question; moot point. We’ll never learn. We’ll never learn our way smack into the middle of Armageddon, and then we’ll say, with the last words we’ll ever speak, “How could this have happened? How could we have let this happen?”

The bus left on time. I sat in the back and stared out the window and tried not to fidget. The impatience that Wilma and Hennessey had rearoused in me this morning wouldn’t go away. Outside the bus there were green trees and hillsides and then long, barren stretches of cattle graze as we came down out of the foothills into the upper reaches of the Central Valley; inside me there was turmoil, and the knowledge that I was no different from the rest of mankind. Each of us likes to believe we’re unique, special. But when something profound happens, something like being chained up alone in a mountain cabin for ninety days, you realize the truth—that in you, as in everyone, there is a thing that crawled up out of the primordial slime a hundred million years ago, a thing so savage and elemental that it can, if you let it loose, overwhelm your humanity and reduce you to its level. This is the thing that causes war, that brutalizes and destroys, that keeps us from ever really being civilized creatures. This was the one thing I was about to unleash … even though I knew what it was and what it might do to me. I hadn’t learned. I thought I had but I hadn’t and in a way that was the most terrible truth I had ever had to face about myself.