The Smart Money

by Lia Matera

  I climbed in and started the car. “Where to?”

  He was still looking back at the house, fiddling distractedly with the buttons of his jacket.

  “Uncle Henry?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A hotel?”

  In the dim light of a street lamp, he looked a great deal like my papa. The resemblance was particularly pronounced because my uncle wasn’t affecting his usual jovial political twinkle.

  I remembered my aunt telling Sandy at the party that my uncle was ill. And he did look different; not ill, perhaps, but distressed.

  I eased out of my parking place. “You can stay at my house. I’ve got five spare bedrooms—two of them even have beds.”

  My uncle merely nodded. He looked so lost in his own troubles that I nearly spared him mine. Thank God I didn’t.

  I hesitated, then pressed him, “Do you have any idea where Hal could be?”

  My uncle shook his head glumly. “She calls him an idiot, a mental deficient—her own son. To his face. No, he doesn’t visit us, not for years at a time.”

  “Do you think he’s gone off again?”

  “My son lives like a hobo, but she won’t help him because she’s ashamed. She wants promises he won’t give her.”

  “What’s the matter with Hal, Uncle Henry? Something happened to him in the war, didn’t it?”

  “She didn’t even tell me. My only boy. He could have died and me not even knowing he’d been shot.” His voice was thick, probably inebriated. “I find out years later from a damn army doctor who’s passing through town.”

  “Find out what? When was Hal shot? Where?”

  “In the head. Left hemisphere damage, the doctor says. Very serious, he says. And for thirteen years, she’s keeping it a secret. Because it wasn’t in the line of duty.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t say, and Henry won’t, either.” He raised his hand in a gesture of despair. “But what could it mean, Laura? Suicide attempt, that’s all it could mean.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. Left hemisphere damage. I’d had a physiology course at San Francisco State, a decade ago. I still remembered some of the basics. Enough to make sense of a few things I’d noticed. Enough to scare the hell out of me.

  Judy Britt and the sixty-year-old anchorman were no longer on my porch when I pulled up in front of my house. The Oregon van still lingered, though, its doors shut tight, and its windows steamed over. I guessed they needed an interview to justify their junket. The big reporter rolled down the passenger window as I walked past, but I forestalled his question with a grumpy, “Forget it!”

  My uncle and I went inside. He went off to find my liquor, and I unfolded a square of paper that had been slipped through the mail slot of my old-fashioned front door.

  My uncle found me still standing in the hallway puzzling over it.

  “Want a snort yourself?” he asked, holding up a liter of Johnny Walker.

  “Look at this.” I handed him the note, which appeared to have been scrawled quickly, in printed capitals.

  The note read: Laura, I need to talk to you about Sandy. Meet me in his room. It’s after visiting hours, but you can get in through his window if you climb the fire escape. It’s important. Come as soon as you can. Hal.

  My uncle frowned as he read the note. “I don’t know, Laura. Do you think you should?”

  “No, I definitely shouldn’t.” I stuffed the note into my trouser pocket. “Where the hell did I put my coat?”

  34

  I located my herringbone wool coat. It was the only article of clothing I had with pockets big enough to hold a gun.

  I climbed into the Mercedes and checked the baggage well behind my seat. For once, the goddam revolver was exactly where I’d left it. I didn’t dare turn on the interior light to examine it, not with a van full of reporters a few hundred feet away. But I held it in my palm, forced myself to wrap my finger around the trigger. I remembered Hal saying to me, when Kirsten had the gun, that I should be careful because it was cocked. I found what I supposed was the cock, a trigger-shaped affair above the handgrip. If worse came to worst, I would make a show of cocking the gun and aiming it. I knew I’d never be able to shoot.

  I remembered the film footage of Senators Hansen and Dzhura being knocked backward, then crumpling forward on those airplane steps. How many times had I downplayed the effect of Bean’s act? How many times had I begged the jury to focus on poor, sick Wally Bean and forget about Harley Hansen and Garth Dzhura?

  I tried to fit the gun into my coat pocket, but the barrel was too long. I ended up tearing a hole in the pocket and sliding the barrel into the coat’s lining. The damned thing was so heavy; I hoped it wouldn’t rip through.

  I engaged the engine and turned on the lights, then looked across the street. Once again, my ex-husband stood at the front window, watching me through parted curtains. His silhouette was distorted by water rippling down the glass.

  Gary Gleason had been watching my house. He’d seen me leave with Kirsten’s next of kin. And he knew I had come to town to exact revenge on him and his wife; I’d told him so myself. Did he think I’d conspired with the boy to murder Kirsten? To steal her will?

  The note—Gary had seen it pushed through my mail slot. He’d also seen me come home, stay inside long enough to read it, and then go back out to my car.

  I noticed that Gary’s Peugeot was no longer in its carport. It was parked on the street in front of the house. Gary Gleason was planning to follow me, I was certain.

  I turned off the headlights, cut the engine, and walked across the street.

  Gary opened the door before I knocked.

  He wore a plain brown sweater, jeans, and running shoes. He was pale and his posture was stiff. He was frowning, but it wasn’t his usual busy man’s frown; he looked like he was in pain. He was clean-shaven (except for his rust-colored mustache), but his frizzy brown hair looked slightly damp or slightly dirty.

  “I saw you coming,” he said to me.

  I nodded. “Did you hear about Sandy Arkelett?”

  “Yeah. They said on the news he was a private detective, working for you.”

  “I thought he was working for me. But he might have been working for that boy you saw me with earlier.”

  A vein in Gary’s forehead stood out in blue, throbbing relief. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Kirsten’s relative.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Gary’s tone seethed with suspicion. “Do the police know he’s here?”

  “They do now, I’m sure,” I said dryly.

  Gary took a step backward. “Yeah, I called the cops. She was my wife, what do you expect?”

  “I don’t care who you called. I met him for the first time this evening at the hospital.” I pulled the recently delivered note out of my pocket. “Here. Look at this.”

  My ex-husband’s breathing grew labored, reading it. He could draw his own conclusions—just as long as he didn’t guess mine.

  He handed it back. “So?”

  I could see the Peugeot out of the corner of my eye. “So there’s been too much shooting around here lately.” It was more difficult—and more galling—than I’d thought it would be, asking this of Gary. “I don’t want to go there by myself.”

  Gary regarded me warily. “You want me to go with you?”

  Better than having you follow me, you bastard. “Maybe you’re not up to it.”

  I saw the conflicting emotions in my ex-husband’s eyes. But I knew he’d say yes. He’d always courted the appearance of nobility … when it didn’t prejudice his likelihood of getting what he wanted.

  “No, I’m all right. I’ll get my jacket.”

  I stepped inside while he went upstairs. I could feel the revolver strain the lining of my coat. I slipped my hand into my pocket
and held the gun, relieving the tension on the seam. I told myself I was making a dangerous situation safer, that it really was better this way. But part of me was too angry to care about safety. I felt my finger slide over the trigger. Startled, I let the gun drop back into the lining.

  There were stacks of books all over the floor of Gary’s living room; the ceiling-high bookcase was nearly empty. The drawers of a built-in hutch had been emptied, and papers were sorted into untidy piles. Gary had kept Kirsten’s will at his office, I supposed, with a second copy at home. If the original had vanished from its file, he’d be searching the house for the copy.

  When Gary joined me, I said, with as much sympathy as I could feign, “Captain Loftus told me your office was burglarized.”

  “Loftus told you?” He spoke the name sneeringly.

  “Yes.”

  Gary slipped awkwardly into his jacket, glancing at me. “You sure you heard it from Loftus?”

  “It might have been one of the other cops,” I lied again, opening the front door for him.

  As he walked past me, I experienced a jolt of déjà vu: holding the door of an apartment Gary and I had joyfully decorated with upside-down American flags. It hit me like a rabbit punch that we’d been happy there.

  I slammed Gary’s front door behind us.

  To my relief, the Oregon reporter remained in his van while we crossed the street to my car. I didn’t want to be filmed with my son-of-a-bitch ex-husband.

  Gary stared silently out the passenger window all the way to County Hospital.

  I parked in the front parking lot and walked up to the double glass front doors. Gary hung back, watching indecisively, before following.

  We checked in with a wizened woman at the front desk. She told us firmly that visiting hours were over.

  I said, “We’re not here to visit. We’re here to see one of the nurses upstairs.” I turned to my frowning companion. “What’s her name again, Gary?”

  With only a slight hesitation, Gary supplied the name of a nurse he’d presumably met during his sojourn at the hospital.

  The woman told us to sign in and go on up, then. I signed both our names on a numbered and lined sheet of paper. I scanned the sheet. Hal’s name wasn’t on it. But then, I hadn’t expected it to be.

  We rode the elevator upstairs, and Gary remarked on my resourcefulness in getting past the desk. It seemed to displease him.

  At the nurses’ station, I announced, “My name is Laura Di Palma. Sander Arkelett was working for me when he got shot, and I have reason to believe someone’s still after him. Right now. Tonight.”

  The two nurses looked up from their disordered stacks of paperwork. They appeared harried, tired, unwilling to listen to anything that might mean more work for them. A light on a board began to blink, and one of them complained, “Oh, cripes! Not Mrs. P. again.”

  The other nurse, a young girl with a sallow, acned complexion, said to her companion, “It’s your turn.” She watched the older woman roll her eyes and trot off down the hall. Then she turned back to me. “Well, what do you expect us to do?”

  “I want you to check Mr. Arkelett’s room right now and make sure no one’s in there. Then I want you to check the window that opens onto the fire escape and make sure it’s locked.”

  The girl looked skeptical. “No one’s up here but us.”

  “Check.”

  “I can’t leave till Nina gets back.”

  It seemed pointless to argue. I led Gary to the bench upon which I’d spent the previous night.

  He said, “I thought you got along pretty well with your cousin Hal.”

  I nodded, avoiding his eye.

  “But you don’t trust him?”

  I didn’t respond.

  Gary stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “He always was hard to figure. There’s been a lot of talk about him around town, since he’s the mayor’s son.” His hand dropped from his mustache, his jaw clamped; he bore the mayor no good will. “People say he got shell-shocked or something, that he’s been a little strange since the war.”

  “A head wound,” I confirmed.

  The other nurse returned from Mrs. P.’s room. I stood up, and the acned girl, with a whispered explanation that left her co-worker snickering, said, “Okay, let’s take a look.”

  Sandy lay in semidarkness, hooked up to his monitors and plastic bottles, his eyes closed. He made a rasping sound in his throat.

  I stood beside the bed, frightened and revolted by the tubes taped to his face. The nurse made a big show of looking around the room. A smile hovered on her lips. She and her helpmate would have a good laugh, later.

  Then she walked to the window across from Sandy’s bed and pushed up on the sash. The window opened.

  The nurse had her back to me, but I heard her mutter, “Gosh darn!” as she closed and locked it.

  I walked to the door, where Gary stood watching. He said, “What do you suppose your cousin wanted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to ask him?”

  “If I can find him.”

  His expression noble, my ex-husband said, “You’d better let me come with you.”

  35

  “Where does your cousin live?”

  I fumbled for my car keys. Part of my object had been achieved: Sandy’s room was secure.

  “He’s been camping out in a house near the jetty.” I was conscious of the weight of the gun in my coat. If I timed things right … “In that abandoned housing development.”

  Gary whistled. “Sounds like he’s got problems. What exactly—”

  I cut him off. “I want to check my uncle’s house before I drive all the way out there.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gary touch his sweater gingerly, as if checking his ribs. I remembered a nurse telling me he was fit to go home the morning after his accident. Maybe even the same night? Through the unlocked hospital window and down the fire escape?

  When we pulled up in front of the Mayor’s Residence, I told him I’d leave the heater on for him. Then I slammed the door behind me, the motor still running.

  My papa answered the door, wearing the smoking jacket I’d given him the Christmas before. He smoothed his hair crankily, his face twitching with irritation.

  “Thank goodness!” He pulled me inside. “Come and say something to your aunt. She’s …” He waved his arm; there didn’t seem to be words for what my aunt was.

  I found Aunt Diana pacing her gilded living room, fists clenched, shedding furious tears. At the sight of me, she erupted into a brief diatribe, the gist of which was that my uncle would find out he couldn’t throw her away like an old shoe, not after she’d made him everything that he was. “Everyone knows I’m ten times better qualified to be mayor than he is!”

  “Run against him,” I suggested. “You’ve got the contacts.”

  My aunt looked at me as though I were some biblical abomination. “I don’t have to act like a man to prove my worth.”

  I glanced at my papa. His expression said, You see what I’ve had to put up with.

  “Well, I’m staying right here,” my aunt raged. “If he thinks he can shame me into moving …” She resumed pacing.

  “I’m sure the town bylaws don’t require the mayor to live here, but you should find out if they stipulate an alternate use for the house if he chooses not to.”

  My aunt swallowed several times before she was able to say, “If I need advice, I’ll find a lawyer with a better reputation than yours, missy!”

  Pity I couldn’t find an aunt with a better disposition than hers.

  I took my papa’s arm and steered him out of the room. I told him Uncle Henry was at my house.

  “After forty years of marriage!” My papa shook his head. “Henry must be crazy.”

  “Papa, did Aunt Diana ever tell
you what happened to Hal in the war?”

  My papa was scowling at the living room door. His tone was distracted. “I wish you’d call him Henry. What kind of a name is Hal?” Then he looked at me. “I’ve heard them fighting about him lately.”

  “I think Aunt Diana has known for a long time what’s the matter with Hal. I think the army must have notified her when it happened. But she didn’t want anyone to know about it because she thought it was too—” I had to stop and take a breath; she was such an infuriating woman. “I don’t know … embarrassing. From what I gather, Uncle Henry just ran into an army doctor who treated Hal for a head wound—”

  “A head wound?” My papa looked skeptical. “I never heard anything about a head wound.”

  “That’s the point.”

  My papa paled, his swarthy skin lightening to yellow. “No, no. A mother doesn’t keep a secret like that from the family.”

  “I saw Hal’s Purple Heart myself. And Uncle Henry claims the doctor says Hal had …” I hated to say it; it hurt even to think about it. “That he has brain damage.”

  “But he seems—!” Papa stopped. Hal did not seem normal. “What kind of damage?”

  “He won’t talk about it. Apparently Aunt Diana won’t either.”

  “Brain damage.” My papa looked back at the living room door, his brows knit. “The boy should have told us himself. We would have—”

  “I know. We would have.” I felt a great weariness of spirit. “Hal didn’t want us to. He doesn’t like us well enough.”

  I left my papa shaking his head, as if mere denial could pull our family together.

  I went upstairs to make two phone calls.

  36

  Gary had turned off the car motor. He sat shivering with cold in the passenger seat.

  “You should have left the heater on,” I observed. “I have plenty of gas.”

  Gary mumbled something about not knowing how long I was going to be inside.

  I made a point of catching his eye, which seemed to take him aback. I started the engine but switched off the heater.