The Vanishing Point (19 page)

“How ya doin?'” Nick asked.

“All right. And you?”

“Not too shabby.”

“Have you talked to Ada recently?”

“Not since I saw you last. Come in. I'll show you the file.”

A fat manila folder lay on his desk. Claire sat down in the office chair, glancing again at the photographs on the shelf behind Nick. In some ways he was a master of disguise—crew cuts, Afros; khakis, bell bottoms; gold chains, love beads. The PI who could blend into any crowd. But the one thing he could never disguise was his lack of height and his chunky build. She noticed that in all of Nick's incarnations his weight and shape varied very little.

He opened the file and said, “Thank God for notes. I talked to so many people during this investigation, sometimes it was hard to keep them straight. Here's a description I wrote up of Lou.”

He handed Claire a piece of yellow lined paper, its rough edge indicating that it had been ripped from a pad. His handwriting was distinctive, but borderline legible, resembling chicken scratches in the dust. It wouldn't be hard to establish that this was Nick's writing, but dating it would be more complicated. The paper and the ink looked old, but twenty years old? Claire couldn't say. She was able to decipher the following description: “medium sized, brown haired guy, dark eyes, scar on chin, quiet, serious way of talking. Limp on left leg. A vet.”

“Is that the guy you know?” Nick asked.

“It could be. Lou is medium-sized. His eyes are dark. He limps with his left leg. The brown hair could have turned gray by now. His beard could be hiding the scar on his chin. What was he doing in San Miguel de Allende? Did he tell you?”

“I didn't ask. I assumed it was what all the other vets were doing: hanging out in La Cucaracha, getting stoned, taking courses at the Instituto so he could stay on the GI Bill.”

“Did he say anything about Jonathan?”

“He was one of the guys who told me that Jonathan was killed in the bar fight at La Cucaracha. I heard that from a couple of people.”

Claire remembered La Cucaracha as a seedy bar near the
jardin,
where the more rowdy members of the expatriate community hung out. “You're sure he said he was killed in La Cucaracha,” she asked, “and not somewhere else?” But where else, she thought to herself, if not Sin Nombre Canyon?

“That's what he said. See?” He showed Claire a scratchy note that read, “Lew Bestin says Jonathan killed in fight in La Cucaracha.”

Claire
studied the note, which was written with a black ballpoint pen on yellow lined paper just like the description was. Were they the same vintage? Without a detailed analysis it would be difficult to say. “Why didn't Lou tell me that? Why didn't he tell the family?” she asked.

“He could have been the killer. He looked like a guy who'd been in a few scrapes, a guy who had a mean streak.”

“You think Lou Bastiann would have killed his hero?”

Nick grinned at her from across the desk, showing teeth that were filled with gold, Ada's gold. “People kill their heroes all the time. That's what myths are all about, isn't it? Slaying the father, the monster, the hero?”

“I find it hard to believe,” Claire said.

“I did, too, to tell you the truth. Not that Lou Bastiann killed somebody, but that the somebody who got killed was Jonathan. He was idolized in that little town. If he was killed in San Miguel de Allende, more people would have known about it. The body would have been sent back to this country, not thrown in a pauper's grave within twenty-four hours. I had the money to pay anyone who could substantiate that story, but no one ever did. Someone got killed in La Cucaracha, someone got buried, but I don't think the someone was Jonathan Vail. I think Lou told me that because he wanted me to stop searching and get out of town.”

“Why did he care whether or not you stopped searching?”

“Why do you care about preserving the memory of Jonathan Vail? He had been gone ten years by then and was already a legend. People get attached to their legends and want to hang on to them. It's easier to deal with them than with real people, no? Lou was interested in preserving the legend. I was interested in locating a person.”

“Once a legend gets established, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to disprove it.”

“True.”

“Did you tell Curt Devereux what you found in San Miguel de Allende?”

“What was there to tell? All I found was smoke and mirrors. Ada didn't want me talking to Devereux about my investigation. If I'd come across anything tangible, I would have had to report it, but that never happened.”

“The center would love to have your notes and an account of your search for Jonathan Vail.” As Claire said these words, the disadvantage of being an amateur investigator became clear. She could only ask that Nick give her his notes; Ellen Frank had the power to subpoena them.

“I'd have to run that by Ada, of course.”

“Of course. By now you've probably spent more time looking for Jonathan than he spent living.”

“The search became greater than the man, and the legend more interesting than Jonathan ever
was.
In my opinion he was outspoken but weak. He talked a lot about rebellion, but he was really talking about rebelling against his mother. If he'd lived longer, he might have broken away from her and become his own person, but I never saw that happen. I think that for him running away from the draft would have had more to do with fear than principle.”

“He wrote a book that became a classic and influenced a lot of people.”

Nick leaned back in his chair. “Well, I'm not a librarian or an author myself, but it seems to me that character has little to do with writing ability.”

“You could be right,” Claire said.

“Would you like me to make you copies of the Lou Bastiann notes?”

“Please.”

He ran off the copies on his photocopier and handed them to Claire. Copies weren't as revealing as the originals, but they were better than nothing.

“Can you tell me anything else about Lou?” she asked.

“Only that he seemed lost to me, but many people in San Miguel de Allende did, especially the vets. Vietnam left people adrift. Nothing in life was ever as challenging or as interesting again.”

Claire stood up and shook his hand. “Thank you for your help,” she said.

“My pleasure,” Nick replied.

She went outside to the parking lot, which was dark and nearly empty at this end of the mall, although several cars were parked in front of a Korean restaurant at the other end. Lights were visible on top of the Sandias, but otherwise the mountains had blended into the night. Claire got into her truck, drove to the Korean restaurant, and parked beside the cars that were already there. While she waited, she wondered if Nick had told her the truth about San Miguel de Allende. It had to be one of the more charming places he visited during his investigation of Jonathan Vail. What was to stop him from inventing a near miss and a false death to keep the investigation alive? It would keep him in San Miguel de Allende and keep the checks coming. He wasn't aware that Claire didn't know how to contact Lou. In fact, if she really tried, she probably could find him and check his word against Nick's. What if their stories didn't coincide? Suppose Lou said he had never met Nick, had never been to San Miguel de Allende, had never told him Jonathan was killed in a bar fight? If it turned out to be Nick's word and his sketchy notes against Lou's word twenty years later, Claire wondered whom she would believe. That Nick's description had been reasonably accurate was a mark in his favor.

She could see his office door from where she sat, and her thoughts were interrupted when he came outside and got in his pickup. He turned on the lights, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot, with Claire behind him. Her Chevy pickup was as generic in appearance as his Toyota, so she doubted he would notice her if he happened to turn around. She had never followed anyone before—not
even
her ex-husband when he was cheating on her—but the key had to be staying close enough to keep the other vehicle in sight and far enough back to remain unnoticed. She let a couple of cars get between them, hoping not to lose him at a light. Nick turned south on Fourth Street and west on Montaño, which didn't surprise her. He was likely to be headed home, and Montaño would take him across the river to the West Side.

Although Montaño was wide enough for two lanes in each direction, only one was permitted, as a concession to the people who lived near the bridge in the North Valley. Two cars were between Claire and Nick's pickup, but she was able to keep him in sight as he crossed the bridge and continued west on Montaño. The cars eventually turned in at various subdivisions and Claire had to drop back to maintain an inconspicuous distance. The streetlights were bright enough that Nick would see her truck if he turned around. She could clearly see the vehicle behind her in her rearview mirror. On the other hand, Nick had no reason to look behind him, and even if he did, he might not have noticed what kind of vehicle Claire drove, unless he'd had her under surveillance, too.

He turned off into a subdivision where the streets were named after historical battles, an irony that amused Claire. The turns came more quickly here, and she had to close in so she didn't lose him at Appomattox or Wounded Knee. This was a middle-class neighborhood where all the houses had garages out front and were so identical that if a property owner came home under the influence, she could easily end up at the wrong door. Ada's money hadn't brought her son back, and it hadn't brought Nick wealth either. He made a quick right onto Glorieta, and his brake lights came on. Either he'd spotted Claire or he'd arrived at his house. She stayed on Gettysburg and took the next right, hoping she could circle around and catch up to him from the other side as he pulled into his garage. Some of the streets here were cul-de-sacs. If she ended up in one of those, it would bring her investigation to a standstill.

She made two more right-hand turns and found herself coming at Nick on Glorieta from the opposite direction, just as she had hoped. His garage door was open and he was driving inside. A woman stood in the light of the house's front door apparently waiting for him. Claire gave her a quick glance and saw that she wore skintight pants and appeared to be considerably younger than Nick. How did he do it? she wondered before turning her attention to Nick's two-car garage. The light was on, and she could see that the other space was taken by a subcompact. It was all Claire needed to know. She kept going while Nick parked his pickup. She hadn't learned the make or model of the subcompact, but she'd learned that the other car in Nick's garage wasn't a white Dodge van. Not to say he couldn't have borrowed one somewhere. She'd already ruled the van out as too old to be a rental. It didn't prove Nick wasn't at Slickrock when Tim was killed, but it lowered the odds that he had been there.

Driving back across the bridge, Claire thought about the surveillance she'd just conducted. Her first attempt had been rather successful. She'd discovered what she wanted to discover. She didn't believe
she'd
been noticed. She hadn't spent hours of total boredom trying not to pee. Was this a job she would ever consider if things didn't work out at UNM? The answer was no. She loved her work at the center, and although she didn't mind poking into the lives of the dead, she disliked disturbing the privacy of the living.

In the morning Claire practiced tai chi, trying to keep her mind free of plans and questions and thoughts. The one thought that pestered her like an annoying fly was that she should call Curt Devereux. She imagined herself putting a glass jar over the fly and the thought, taking it to the window and releasing it, being determined to think about Curt later, over coffee. Claire finished with the infinite ultimate stance, took a shower, made a cup of coffee, and sat down in the window overlooking her courtyard. There was no denying that her datura had ceased to bloom. It had no buds, and the pods had burst and dropped their seeds all over the brick floor of the courtyard.

Her reason for calling Curt was to see if he had heard any rumors of Jonathan being in San Miguel de Allende. The problem was how to ask the question without revealing that her lead had come from Ada Vail's private eye. Ada's refusal to cooperate with Curt had to have hampered the investigation. If she and Nick and Curt had worked together, perhaps the mystery would have been solved by now. Claire sipped at her coffee and decided that the way to pose the question would be to say she'd heard a rumor about Jonathan being in San Miguel but not to attribute the rumor to anyone. She heard a lot of rumors in her job; in fact, she was a lightning rod for Jonathan Vail rumors. Resolving that issue was easy, but posing her other question—whether Curt had really had breakfast in the Navajo Cafe the morning Tim died—appeared to be impossible. She didn't want to tip her hand. She also had no authority to question him. “What would you do, Nemesis?” she asked her cat, but he had no answer.

When she finished her coffee, Claire let the cat out and drove to work. There was no pressing business on her desk, so she began by calling Curt at his office. “How is the investigation going?” she asked.

“You'd have to ask Ellen Frank about Tim Sansevera. As for Jonathan Vail, nothing new. The duffel bag has not been found.”

“The journal was authenticated by August Stevenson, a well-known handwriting expert.”

“So Ellen said.”

“I met with Lou Bastiann, the fan who is mentioned in the journal. He told me he sent Jonathan the briefcase from Saigon.”

“Do you know how I can get in touch with him?” Curt asked.

“I don't, but Jennie does. I was going over some notes I have about Jonathan. Various people reported seeing him in the Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. There was even a report that he was
murdered
there. I was wondering if you had ever heard any of those rumors, and whether you were able to substantiate or disprove them.”