Wolf in the Shadows (9 page)

I said, “Instead of a drink, have some of those Hershey’s Kisses.”

“Kisses are what got me into this mess in the first place,” she said sullenly. But she reached for the bag and proceeded to
litter the rug with little paper pull tabs and foil wrappers while I told her about Hy’s disappearance, Gage Renshaw’s threat
to kill him, and the job I’d pretended to take on in order to save him.

As Rae listened, her eyes got wider and she stopped bothering to lick the smears of chocolate from the corners of her mouth.
“God, Shar,” she said when I finished, “don’t those RKI guys
scare
you?”

“I’m more scared of what may have happened to Hy, and what Renshaw will do if he finds him.”

“Can you even investigate a kidnapping, though? I mean isn’t it like a homicide? The cops can get you for messing around in
a murder case. And RKI didn’t even report this.”

“Strangely enough, there’s nothing on the books that compels them to report it or prohibits me from investigating.” Frequently
when I’m bored, I dip into the volumes in All Souls’s law library, my favorite being the one containing the California Penal
Code. Over the years I’ve gleaned many fascinating facts—for example, that it’s illegal to trap or kill birds in public cemeteries.
“A specific provision in the Penal Code’s section on kidnapping states that nothing prohibits a person from offering to rescue
an individual who’s been kidnapped, either by force or by payment of ransom.”

Rae looked impressed. So far as I know, she hasn’t opened any book more weighty than a shop-and-fuck novel since graduating
from Berkeley.

“Anyway,” I went on, “I’m going to Novato to talk with the kidnap victim’s wife in about an hour, and then I’m leaving for
San Diego. And that’s where I need your help.”

“You mean you want me to cover for you here? You know I will. But if the partners find out …” She shrugged. “There’s that
new rule against us taking outside employment. This could screw up your promotion.”

“I’m not sure that would be such a bad thing.”

“Why—”

“I don’t have time to talk about that now. I can’t even think about it. Will you cover?”

“Sure. But I think you’d better have a good excuse for not showing up at work, like sickness.”

“I don’t like to lie.”

“Neither do I, Shar, but we’re going to have to. I’m putting my job on the line, too, you know.”

“Then I can’t ask you to—”

“No, I don’t mind. This is important.” She paused, her freckled face tense with concentration. “Maybe a summer cold … No,
a female complaint is better. The women’ll understand, and the men—for all their so-called sophistication—will be afraid
to ask questions. But make sure I know where to reach you, and for God’s sake, leave your answering machine on.”

“Okay.” Then I thought of Ralph and Alice. “Can I also ask you to feed my cats?”

“Sure. Just don’t let Ted find out. The way he takes on over the care and feeding of those beasts, you’d think he was a doting
uncle.”

“Well, he
was
responsible for me having them.” I tossed her my extra house key. “You can also have my rose.” Then I glanced at my watch.
“We better get started going over our caseload. I’m caught up, and you should be able to handle what comes in. And when this
is all over, I promise you’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

Rae grinned evilly. “Just bring me the head of Willie Whelan.”

*    *    *

I had made my travel arrangements and was about to leave the office when I heard a knock on the doorframe. Gloria Escobar,
looking hesitant. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.

I checked my watch. Quarter to three, and I figured I’d need the extra fifteen minutes I’d allowed for the trip to Novato,
in case traffic jammed on the Golden Gate or at the bottleneck at San Rafael. “Barely.”

“This won’t take long.” She came in and perched on the edge of the chaise longue, rearranging my jacket and bag carefully,
then smoothing her gray gabardine skirt over her thighs. Gloria’s clothing was always understated, bordering on the drab;
her only concession to style was her bright lipstick, nail polish, and smoky eye shadow; her only undisciplined feature was
her irrepressible dark curls.

I waited, wondering if this was to be a rehash of the critical comments she’d made about me at the partners’ meeting.

She cleared her throat, more ill at ease than I’d ever seen her. “I want to apologize for my remarks yesterday. They were
uncalled for.”

“Well, my response to the promotion wasn’t all that gracious, either. You people caught me by surprise.”

“Have you thought about it?”

“Some, but not enough to make a decision.”

She hesitated, seemed to be making a decision of her own. Her eyes moved around the room, resting on the rubber plant in the
far corner. When they returned to me she said, “Perhaps it would help you make up your mind if I told you why I feel so strongly
about you accepting it. To do that, I’ll have to explain where I’m coming from.”

Her phrasing brought my guard up. I’d never once heard Gloria use the words “where I’m coming from,” but I had heard Mike
Tobias utter them on any number of occasions. To me they suggested that the two had gotten together and scripted a sales pitch.

“Sharon?” she said. “Please hear me out.”

“All right.” Mentally I subtracted the extra fifteen minutes of travel time to Novato.

“My mother was born in Tijuana,” she began. “Very poor. My father deserted her when my sister was four and she was pregnant
with me. She decided to make the trip north across the border; there was an aunt who had married a Mexican-American who would
help. One night she took my sister and waited on the hill above the canyons. When it was time, they crossed with the others
who were there.”

I knew the hill—a ridge of them, actually. When I was a child, friends of my parents had a small ranch on Monument Road,
in the unincorporated area of San Diego County, within sight of the border. During our visits there, I’d see the people patiently
waiting on the hills. By daylight a festive mood prevailed: they would picnic and barbecue, and the children would play. But
at dusk everything became curiously quiet. Even on the hottest nights, they would then don layer upon layer of clothing—whatever
they were able to bring with them. And at dark their figures became indistinct as they continued to wait for the moment when
la migra
—their name for the U.S. Border Patrol—was looking the other way. Then they would move out, disappearing into the untamed
canyons—canyons with names like Deadman’s and Smuggler’s Gulch—eluding rattlesnakes, scorpions, and bandits.

They were called
pollos
—chickens—by their predators. I’d seen them running along the drainage ditches beside Monument and Dairy Mart roads, fleeing
alongside the San Diego Freeway—now eluding not only
la migra
and the American variety of bandit but also, I was told, crooked Tijuana policemen who had crossed to prey on their own people.
The
polos
came from diverse backgrounds and places, but they had in common three things: they were poor, desperate, and very, very
frightened.

Gloria went on, “My mother was attacked by bandits in Smuggler’s Gulch. She wasn’t raped, but they took what little money
she had. All she was able to save was the address of the safe house in San Diego where she was to wait until my aunt could
come for her. She walked there from the border, seven months pregnant, carrying my sister.”

But that was fifteen miles, give or take. I tried to imagine the journey, but couldn’t.

Gloria said, “I was born two months later in a migrant workers’ shack in Salinas, where my aunt’s family was working the lettuce
harvest. The doctor was Hispanic; he assisted at births for free. My mother was ashamed to take his charity, but she knew
he’d issue a birth certificate proving I was born on American soil. Three years later the INS caught up with her, and she
and my sister were deported. I stayed behind with my aunt. You see, I was an American citizen.”

As she spoke, I’d waited for some display of emotion that would contradict the flat, staged quality of her recital. All I
got now was a faint bitter smile. Was she that tightly controlled? Given the history she was relating, she should have been
angry. And why was she telling this story to me, anyway?

In the same passionless tone she went on, “My mother died a few years later in Tijuana. I barely remember her. To this day
my sister hates me, even though I’ve repeatedly tried to help her. I don’t blame her; I was the one who got to stay.”

Now I spotted a slight tremor at the corners of her lips; her eyes clouded. The story was true, but something was lost in
the telling. Perhaps she’d used this personal history to fuel her passion to succeed so many times that it no longer had the
power to stir her.

I started to speak, but Gloria held up her hand, silencing me. “I know this doesn’t seem relevant to your accepting or declining
the promotion, but please let me go on.”

I nodded, too interested in both the story and her motives for telling it to worry about lost travel time.

“My aunt made sure I went to school, even though we lived in a series of shacks from the Canadian border to Riverside County.
When I was fifteen we were able to settle near Marysville, and there was a teacher in the high school who decided I should
go to college and arranged a scholarship to the University of Oregon at Eugene. I did well, applied to law school there, and
got another scholarship. Then in my senior year I fell in love—or so I thought. He was an Anglo, his family had money. When
they found out I was pregnant, they shipped him off to Europe for a year. Didn’t want a ’wetback,’ as they called me, for
a daughter-in-law.”

I made an involuntary sound of sympathy. Gloria’s eyes hardened and she resumed speaking, more swiftly now.

“I had the baby, a daughter named Teresa, after my mother. I moved into a women’s cooperative in Eugene, where we all helped
each other care for our kids while attending school. For a while after graduation I worked for the ACLU, then for a small
progressive firm in Portland. They’re the people who told me about the job here; they knew it was what I needed to be doing.”

She looked back at me, gaze level, lips pulled into a straight, controlled line. “Teresa’s ten now. Gets straight As. She’s
beautiful. She’s also the reason I’m committed to what I do. No one is going to hold my daughter back because of their own
narrow prejudices. No one is going to make her feel the humiliation I suffered almost every day of my childhood and young
adulthood.”

I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t speak, I said, “So that’s where you’re coming from.”

“Yes.” She paused, watching me. Anger moved beneath the level surface of her gaze now. “I’ve given up a lot, Sharon, to work
in behalf of people who are in danger of losing their rights. Other than Teresa, I don’t have much of a personal life. I live
and breathe the law eighteen hours a day; the other six I dream it. That’s why I came on so strong with you yesterday—and
why I think you should accept this promotion. Right now All Souls is in a critical transition period. We need our people to
make sacrifices, to give up their own concerns and make this co-op a truly viable institution. All Souls has been good to
you. Why can’t you return the kindness?”

Abruptly I stood and turned my back to her, staring out the window while gathering my thoughts and trying to assemble them
within a logical framework that she, as a woman of reason, would understand.

“A great deal of what you say makes sense,” I finally told her. “And what you’re working for—it’s so people can be free to
live their dreams. Am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good. That’s what we all should do, isn’t it? And even though you’ve sacrificed your personal life, aren’t you in
fact living your dream?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m happy for you. But what about
my
dream?”

“Your dream?” She sounded surprised, as if it had never occurred to her that people like me—who were more or less mainstream
Americans, who had more or less not had to struggle—could possibly entertain a dream.

“Yes, Gloria, I have one. And in essence you’re asking me to give up my dream for yours.”

“But mine is—”

“Better? More worthy because you’ve experienced hardship and discrimination?” Now I was the one who felt angry.

“No, no.” She held out her hands placatingly, “I guess I assumed that because you work here, your dream is the same as mine.”

“Possibly it is. At least in the abstract.” I got my emotions under control and sat back down. “You’ve been honest with me,”
I said, even though I wasn’t sure her motives were all that pure, “so now I’m going to return the favor and tell you something
that I don’t tell many people because, frankly, it makes me feel silly when I put it into words. After I graduated from college
I had a lot of time on my hands because I couldn’t get a job that didn’t involve guarding office buildings in the dead of
night. And I became addicted to detective novels. I’d devour them, one or two a shift, and there’d still be time left over,
so I’d dream. And what I’d dream about was going out into the night, strong and unafraid, on a mission to right wrongs. I
wanted to make things right, just as you did.

“Fortunately for you and me, we got to realize those dreams. You right wrongs through the legal system; I do it by getting
at the truth and trying to salvage a bad situation. Maybe my method doesn’t have as sweeping an effect as yours, but it makes
the best use of my abilities. Makes a much better use of them than if I were logging in cases and making sure paralegals do
their jobs. I’m a damned good investigator, and if you ask anybody who’s been around here awhile, you’ll find that I’ve pulled
this co-op out of a bad spot more than just a time or two. So don’t talk to me about how I’m not returning what All Souls
has given me, because I have, over and over.”

Gloria was silent, staring at the rubber plant again. After a moment she said, “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?
And you’ve had it so easy. You can’t possibly understand.”