Trail of the Spellmans (35 page)

Over drinks at a nearby watering hole—one with some sort of logging theme, which seemed incongruous in their tony neighborhood—we drank beer and traded intelligence on all of the current Spellman matters.

Maggie, despite everything, was representing Rae in the tree-hugging case—though one did have to wonder how ardently she was fighting for her, since Rae got forty-five hours of community service. And not the country club kind. My sister would be wearing an orange reflective vest and cleaning up debris on the side of the highway. I asked Maggie if the punishment fit the crime and Maggie shrugged her shoulders ambivalently. We
briefly touched on the subject of Fred and Rae and whether he had taken her back; Maggie said that as far as she knew they were still negotiating.

We then began to brainstorm about D’s afternoon excursion with Grammy.

“It’s not possible that they’re becoming friends, right?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “We were talking the other day about his case and I asked him about his excursion with Ruth and he immediately changed the subject.”

“You were talking about his case?” I asked. Suddenly the Grammy Spellman element was far less intriguing. Maggie and I had been instrumental in D’s release from prison and we were the first to suggest he file a lawsuit against the DA for malicious prosecution. The money could never compensate for the years he was incarcerated, but it could certainly improve the time he had left. But after tangling with the legal system for so many years to garner his release, D couldn’t bear the idea of setting foot in a courtroom as a free man. But later on, there were other factors influencing his decision. Maggie suggested that Mabel was one of them.

Questions then flooded my mind. “What does Mabel have to do with it?”

“He felt that a lawsuit would be time-consuming and interfere with their relationship.”

“But he’s only been seeing her a little while.”

“Six months.”

“That long? Wow. He’s better than I thought,” I said, genuinely impressed.

“He’s learned from the best,” Maggie replied.

“I assume Mabel knows D was in prison?”

“He told her on their first date.”

“It doesn’t make sense that D wouldn’t want justice. I understand it could be time-consuming . . .”

“I think he wanted to see if Mabel was able to like a rehabilitated ex-con. Not a man who spent years wrongly incarcerated and could potentially receive a windfall for his ordeal.”

“Has he come to a conclusion yet?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “He dropped by my office last week and we’re currently drafting a complaint.”

“Have you met her?” I asked. “Mabel.”

“Briefly. We’ve tried to invite them over for dinner, but he has always politely declined.”

“He’s hiding us because we embarrass him,” I said.

“Can’t say I blame him,” Maggie replied. “You’re all nuts.” She knocked back the rest of her drink.

“You want another?” I asked.

“Definitely,” Maggie replied.

I approached the bar and ordered another round of two beers and two shots of whiskey.

We both downed our shots and then silence set in. The kind of silence that precedes nonsilence. Well, I suppose all silences are like that. But this was one of those deliberate pauses intended as a conversational palate-cleanser to move on to another subject.

“I saw Henry’s car parked out front the other night,” Maggie said.

“He brought it by for an oil change. You know he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”

“Still don’t want to talk. Got it,” Maggie said.

“There is something I would like to talk about.”

“What?”

“It’s a legal thing.”

“Not what I had in mind, but go ahead.”

“Based on the Spellman company structure at this point, can I be fired?”

The following day, Demetrius broke the news to the family about his pending lawsuit. We celebrated with Crack Mix and champagne. Then D and I decided to take a drive. We felt it was important that Rae hear the news,
but we wanted to provide it to her in the right context, at a place where she couldn’t gloat or celebrate.

Mom found out where the orange chain gang would be picking up litter that afternoon, and D and I got on the 101 South. When we found my sister and her probation cohorts, we pulled the car onto the shoulder and snapped several photos. At first Rae tried to hide her face, but eventually she approached the car, tripping on the hem of her orange jumpsuit. They don’t make those things for Rae-size people, so she looked more like a child playing dress-up in a hazmat suit. It was a glorious sight.

“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.

“We have some good news we wanted to share,” I said.

“What?” Rae impatiently replied.

“I’ve decided to file a civil suit for my wrongful incarceration,” D said.

“I knew you’d come around eventually,” Rae said. “I’d like to think I had a little something to do with your decision.”

“You didn’t,” D replied. “But we thought you should know.”

Just then the foreman, or whatever the orange-wrangler is called, told Rae to get back to work.

Rae sighed deeply and headed back to the group, dragging her trash bag in her wake.

“See,” I said. “You can’t be smug in an orange reflective vest.”

D took one more photo, just to make sure we had an album’s worth, and then we took the scenic route home. I asked D what he hoped for in the future; his plan was startlingly clear: a wife, kids, and maybe one day he’d open his own restaurant or bakery. Then he returned the question.

“I don’t know,” I said.

GOOD-BYE, GRAMMY

T
he next morning, when I arrived at the office, Demetrius and Grammy were out again.

I looked at my watch.

“What Morgan Freeman
¹
film is playing at nine thirty in the morning?” I asked.

“They took FourPete to the dog groomer,” Mom replied as she scurried around the office, tidying up. “Empty the wastebaskets, please.”

“Is a VIP coming in?”

“Just the Blakes,” Mom said. “I didn’t like the way she was studying our debris the last time she was here.”

Dad showed up a few minutes later, gathered all the paperwork on his desk into one messy pile, put it in a box, and shoved it under his desk. The doorbell rang and my mother led the Blakes into the office and pulled out two chairs beside her desk. I sat back and watched as my mother guided the out-take meeting and my father provided backup with carefully timed head-nods.

They offered the Blakes a complete set of the Vivien Blake surveillance reports
²
(falsified, yes, but the subject’s activities were also falsified, so I
considered it a wash) and provided sound parental and professional advice to the couple:

“Your daughter is behaving like a typical coed. She has friends. She goes to a few parties. Sometimes she stays out too late, and sometimes she’s at home on a Saturday night, studying. Her GPA is 3.7; she doesn’t have any warrants for her arrest; she has not been seen participating in any illegal activities; she doesn’t own a vehicle, so there are no traffic violations to consider; and she appears to the naked eye to be happy and well adjusted. We believe that there is no reason to continue this investigation and hope that you feel confident in letting your daughter go about her life on her own now. Our professional opinion is that it is in everyone’s best interest to refrain from any further investigation of Vivien. We hope that we’ve been helpful.”

The Blakes appeared relieved by the information that they received, and as far as my parents could tell, they were cautiously optimistic about their daughter’s future. They seemed willing to forgo any further invasion of privacy.

That didn’t mean our invasion of privacy was over. My mother gave Mrs. Blake the genetics file compiled by Rae and explained that one of her most observant investigators noticed that certain genetic markers were inconsistent.

Mrs. Blake’s first response was incomprehension, so alarmed was she by the sudden change of topic. But then she looked at the file, passed it to her husband, and asked my mother what the meaning of all this was.

“Our investigator noticed that your daughter is most likely adopted,” Mom said. “Vivien is an extremely intelligent young woman. She probably figured it out on her own. It might be time to come clean.”

The Blakes sat frozen for a few moments, taking in the information. Mr. Blake cleared his throat several times, as if he’d lost his voice; Mrs. Blake visibly paled and her hands trembled a bit as she placed the file into her handbag. The couple slowly got to their feet, thanked my parents for their work, paid the final bill, but never responded to my mother’s last suggestion.
I phoned Vivien out of courtesy to let her know her shadow was officially over.

“It was fun while it lasted,” she said.

“How’s that other thing going?” I asked.

“I should have something for you very soon,” she said. “And do you have anything for me?”

“Still working on it,” I replied.

A few days later, when I returned to the Spellman compound, several suitcases were clustered by the front door. My mother was using her inhaler like a scuba diver with an oxygen mask, but there was a calm glow on her face that I hadn’t seen in, well, exactly six weeks and four days. Demetrius and my father were lugging one of those old, boxy twenty-seven-inch televisions out to a pickup truck parked in the driveway.

“This brings back memories,” D said.
³

“Be careful of your back,” Grammy said to my dad as she watched nervously. “You’re not a young man anymore.”

“Yes, Mom, I’m aware of that. It would be nice if you didn’t tell me that every single day.”

After D and my dad headed down the front steps, I turned to my mother for an explanation.

“Grammy’s moving out?”

“Yes,” Mom replied, nodding her head effusively.

“How’d you make that happen?”

“I didn’t,” Mom replied. “It was all D. He saw how miserable we all were and he convinced Ruth that she should hang on to her dignity and independence as long as she could and he took her on a tour of the city and helped her find an apartment. He said it didn’t take much persuading. She thinks
we’re a bunch of animals anyway. Ruth signed a yearlong lease last Friday,” Mom said. She was so happy, she was almost crying.

“So
that’s
what they’ve been up to,” I said.

“I think he might be my favorite person in the whole world,” said Mom.

“Shouldn’t that be Dad? Or maybe even me?”

“No, it’s D,” Mom replied.

“I guess he’s kind of tops on my list too,” I replied.

Mom, desperate to move the move along as quickly as possible, picked up one of Grammy’s daisy-print suitcases.

“That’s too heavy for you, dear,” Grammy said to Mom as she entered the foyer. “Let the men handle it. Or Isabel.”

My mother ignored Grammy and comfortably lugged the suitcase to the truck.

“So, you’re moving out,” I said to Grammy.

“I found a lovely garden apartment just two miles away. We can see each other as much as we’d like. I should be very comfortable there. It’s quite clean, and they take pets. A rare combination.”

“Pets?” I asked.

“I’ll be taking Perdita with me.”

“Who is Perdita?”

“You people know her as FourPete. Such an undignified name for a dog. Don’t you think?”

“Actually I think dogs are supposed to have undignified names.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

Yeah, on everything,
I thought. But I kept that to myself. I picked up two more suitcases and loaded them into the truck, while Dad and D removed the dresser from the guest bedroom, which was Grammy Spellman’s dresser from years ago.

A few more odds and ends were extracted from the house and then FourPete
⁴
hopped into the back of the truck and Grammy, Dad, and D
filed into the cab. Mom and I waved from the driveway as they departed.

As soon as the truck turned the corner, Mom pumped her fist in the air, shouted with glee, and gave me a high five.

“How does it feel?” I asked.

“Like I just lost one hundred and ten pounds.”

Mom strode back into the house and over to her desk. On top lay the latest book club tome, which she dropped in the trash. Then she picked up her crochet bag and emptied the yarn into the steel bin. She tossed her Russian workbooks in there as well and then picked up the trash and carried it into the backyard. She grabbed the lighter fluid next to the barbecue and sprayed a good stream inside the can. Then she lit a match and set the whole thing aflame.

“Dosvedanya,
” she said.

“Congratulations,” I said as we watched Mom’s hobbies burn to ash.

THE SPARROW FLEES THE NEST

I
met with Vivien at a café in the Mission. She was spooning her way through a pyramid of whipped cream atop a bowl-sized serving of mocha. A manila envelope rested on the table. I ordered a regular coffee and took a seat. “Was it difficult?” I asked.

“Not at all,” she replied, sliding the photos in my direction.

I perused the new and improved evidence: expertly shot images of Margaret Slayter and subject #2—later identified as Boris Gavrilenko, Margaret’s Ukrainian trainer—in most compromising positions. One image showed them kissing in her Mercedes, and another had them embracing at the back entrance to her gym. The pictures satisfied my prerequisites: They provided sound evidence of an affair and did not in any way resemble my father’s work.

“Good job,” I said. “You’re a natural.”

“So, like, how does somebody get into your line of work?” Vivien asked.

“If any side jobs come up, I’ll keep you in mind.”

“Do you have something for me?” Vivien asked.

“I do,” I replied, placing a sealed envelope in the middle of the table.

Vivien didn’t reach for it right away. She let it sit there.