The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  Hy stepped back, looked deep into my eyes before he kissed me. “I’d better get going.”

  “Call my pager when you’ve got something to report.”

  He smiled wryly. “Two months ago you swore you’d never own one.”

  “What can I tell you? My office staff are determined to keep me on a short leash.”

  I got dressed and made a couple of calls to cancel our weekend plans. Then I left a note for Rae—who was sleeping soundly—and headed for Bernal Heights. The old neighborhood slumbered under the morning sun; few residents were up and about. I parked in the driveway of the big Victorian that had housed All Souls and entered by means of the key I’d neglected to give back. A heavy silence permeated the nearly stripped rooms; the air was thick with dust, and musty. I went straight to the stairs, bypassing the parlor where so many scenes of my life had played out, and along the second-floor hall to the enclosed attic staircase. A portion of the rubberized tread on the steps had been pulled loose of its anchoring nails, probably by Rae when she fell, but otherwise there was no evidence of the intrusion.

  As I hurried back down I kept my eyes on the floor, telling myself I was searching for anything the intruder might have dropped, but knowing that I was avoiding ghostly memories. For years the Victorian had been my home—more of one in many ways than my own house—and while I was delighted with the new offices, I had yet to sink roots there. Maybe that was why I’d so looked forward to those three weeks of routine work that now, apparently, I wasn’t going to have.

  On the front porch I shut the door gently behind me, saying a silent good-bye. Then I began walking, canvassing the few neighbors who were out, to see if anyone had noticed anything going on in the early-morning hours. A woman three doors up the hill was airing her house plants on the sidewalk; in spite of our often having chatted in the past, she greeted me with a blank look. Then she did a double take and said, “I thought you moved away.” In response to my questions, she told me that she always went to bed at eleven and slept straight through till seven. She didn’t ask where I’d moved to or what I was doing back in the neighborhood.

  On the other side of the triangular park that bisected the street I found a man washing his car, breakfast beer balanced on its hood. His house was next door to one All Souls had formerly leased for support-staff offices, and we’d often exchanged greetings. Now he also took a moment to recognize me, then regarded me with thinly veiled disapproval. “Thought you all sold out and went downtown,” he said. When I asked him about unusual occurrences that morning, he allowed as how he was a poor sleeper and had seen Ricky drop Rae off, but nothing more. “You don’t get too many limos in this part of town,” he added, “but I guess you’ve forgotten that by now.”

  By now. It had only been three weeks, but people had forgotten me and expected I’d forgotten them and the ways of the neighborhood. So much for lasting connections in today’s city.

  When I drove into Pier 24½ I spotted Ted’s little white Dodge Neon parked by the foot of our stairway. He’d taken to coming in on Saturday mornings to tie up the week’s loose ends while Neal manned the bookshop; on Mondays when the shop—called Anachronism—was closed, he usually straggled in close to noon. None of us minded; he had the offices so well organized that they practically ran themselves, and besides, we were all so glad to see him genuinely happy for the first time in years that we’d have gladly granted him twice the time off.

  I left the MG in its space and climbed the stairway. Ted’s door stood open. “Hey,” I called, “how was the shit-kicker bar?”

  “Don’t yell so loud!” his pained voice pleaded. “My head hurts.”

  “Danced till dawn, huh?”

  An unusually pasty goateed face glared at me over a stack of documents. “Watched the straight couples dance till two. Neal and I weren’t taking any chances in a crowd like that. Besides”—he grinned sheepishly—“there was this hunky guy in a Bar Ale Feeds cap that I wasn’t going to let anywhere near him.”

  “Gays, in Penngrove?”

  “Everywhere. Queer is here.” He reached for an envelope in his in-box and handed it to me. “From Richman Labs.”

  “That was fast. Can you messenger something else over to them for me? They’re open till noon today.”

  “I’ll drop it off myself on the way home.”

  “Thanks.” I went to my office and filled out a work-request sheet, hesitating for a moment over which boxes to check. Then under other I wrote, “Anything that may identify source of sample,” and enveloped the sheet with the plastic bag full of jessamine. When I left it on Ted’s desk he was in the copy room, whistling “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

  Paper composition: 25% cotton, 20-lb bond

  Manufacturer: Southworth

  Ink: black fadeproof & waterproof

  Pen type: rolling ball, .22 mm point

  Manufacturer: Uni-ball

  Fingerprints: smudges only, some containing microscopic steel-alloy fragments

  The paper was common, the pen also; I had some of both in the office. No fingerprints, and the smudges probably were made by Ricky, whose hands would contain a residue of steel from his guitar strings. On the whole, not a very interesting report, but the graphologist’s analysis held my attention.

  All six notes appear to have been written by the same individual, although there is evidence of a marked personality alteration from sample #1 through #6. Gender of writer is indeterminable.

  Reference A: Speed. Characteristics indicating clear mental activity alter by sample #3, with indicators of disorganized mental activity predominating by #6.

  Reference B: Certainty and flexibility of writing movement. Indicators of mental self-confidence predominate in samples #1–#4, shading to indicators of anxiety in #5 and #6.

  Reference C: Regularity of movement. Indicators of self-control in samples #1–#3 altering markedly toward indicators of emotional disturbance thereafter.

  Reference D: Expansion of writing movement. Limited movement throughout, indicating an individual who controls expression, may be reserved or introverted.

  Reference E: Firmness and sharpness of writing movement. Characteristics indicating self-assertion, aggression, and competitiveness throughout, but increasing significantly from sample #1 through #6. Strong indications in samples #4–#6 of building anger and frustration.

  Summary: Subject appears to have begun writing with a clear sense of purpose which has been thwarted or disrupted by subsequent events, creating the indicated anger and frustration. The rigid, formal structure of sample #4 may represent an attempt to regroup and reassert control. Samples #5 and #6 indicate a marked personality change and loss of control, but it is this analyst’s opinion that subject is able to function on a fairly aggressive level and possibly mask his/her true emotional state from others.

  At the bottom of the page the analyst, a woman whom I knew personally, had scribbled, “Sharon, I’m not supposed to opine any more than I did above, but I’ve got to warn you: This person could be very dangerous!”

  Eight

  When I first moved north to UC Berkeley, Sausalito still bore a lingering resemblance to a quiet bayside village. We’d often drive over there on Sunday afternoons, buy fish and chips at a stand that wrapped them in newspaper, and eat on one of the docks, feeding the leftovers to the gulls. Nowadays I avoid the town: It’s too tricked-up cute, too congested, too full of tourists. But that afternoon as I viewed the tumble of its rooftops from the high terrace of the festively pink Alta Mira Hotel, I had to acknowledge Sausalito’s beauty. From the sweep of its southern seawall to the clutter of its houseboat community, it is a jewel on the band of communities that gird our Bay.

  I’d called TriStar Studios from the office, used Ricky’s name to get through to Arletta James, and made a lunch date for noon. The studio was easy to locate—a warehouse in an industrial area off the main street to the north of town. A young woman with a diamond stud in her nose and disdain in
her eyes sat idly at the reception desk. She took my name, looked over my apparently too-conventional jeans and cotton shirt, and slowly—very slowly—picked up the phone and spoke to someone in the inner sanctum. Then she said, “She’ll be out,” and went back to contemplating the wall to her right.

  I looked at the wall: It was off-white and unadorned; not a crack marred its surface. I looked back at the woman: Her face was as blank as the wall; not a ripple of thought marred its surface.

  In less than a minute a door on the other side of the desk swung open, and a woman in a long flowered-challis skirt and pink tee burst through it. Her entrance charged the air in the room; her dark curls radiated energy; her green eyes sparked; even the folds of her skirt and her extravagant silver earrings seemed electrified.

  “Sharon,” she said, “I’m Letta. Let’s get the fuck out of here before I kill somebody.”

  Half an hour later we were seated at a table on the hotel terrace drinking Ramos fizzes. I’d told Letta about the Great Fizz Hunt that Hank Zahn and I had once undertaken in the company of a dozen kazoo-playing French tourists who were staying there; she’d calmed down enough to explain what was wrong at TriStar.

  “First of all, there’s that twit on the desk. I think they suctioned out her brain when they pierced her nose. Then there’s the interior setup—gawd!” She threw back her head, tossing her long curls; her earrings jangled wildly. An elderly couple at the next table stared in frank disapproval.

  James turned and looked at them. I braced for a confrontation.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My mama really did teach me better manners.”

  They nodded and smiled as they might at a naughty but spirited five year old.

  “Anyway,” Letta went on to me, “the setup. When I finally convince Ms. No-brains that I’m really who I say I am and get her to pass me through, it’s as dark as the devil’s fundament. I grope around for a minute, then walk smack into one of the baffles.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, right, you wouldn’t know. They’re like enormous pillows, designed to suck up sound. They are not there to suck up my face. And while I’m trying to escape the embrace of this particular one, the lights come up and a voice booms down from the heavens.” She pushed back from the table, half stood, and loomed over me. “‘Ms. James,’” she mimicked in an English-accented bass, “‘what seems to be the trouble?’”

  The elderly couple watched her, smiling indulgently.

  Letta noticed and sat back down, flushing.

  “So,” she went on in a low voice, “I look up, but I’m blinded by the lights. I say, ‘Who the hell wants to know?’ And he goes, ‘This is Rodney, your sound engineer.’ Then my vision clears and, by God, I see the voice really is coming from the heavens. I’m in a goddamned pit, like a Christian about to be fed to the lions, and the control booth is maybe twenty feet above me, and there, staring down like Nero and Caligula, are this asshole engineer—who later turns out to have cement blocks for ears—and my goddamned producer.”

  The waiter arrived with the seafood salads we’d ordered just as I said, “This is not an ideal setup, I assume.”

  “It’s intimidating. It’s inhibiting. It sucks!” She flung out her arm and caught the waiter on the shoulder. One of the salads teetered, but he made a last-second save.

  “Oh gawd, I’m sorry!” James exclaimed. “I swear, you can’t take me anyplace!”

  The waiter also smiled indulgently as he served us.

  “So why,” I asked after making sure there was no one else nearby for her to knock over, “are you using that particular studio?”

  James signaled for another round of drinks and began eating. “Experiment. Trying out what’s available in the Bay Area. My partner—she runs focus groups for ad agencies—got a great offer from a top market-research firm in the city. We’re moving up here, but before we sell our L.A. condo I want to check out the recording facilities.” Her mouth turned down glumly. “If TriStar’s any example, I’ll have to keep the condo so I can record down south.”

  Two fresh fizzes arrived. James set down her fork and seized her glass like a lifeline. “I think I’ll sit up here swilling these all afternoon, then go back down there and tell that god-damned Adam exactly what I think of him.”

  “Adam?”

  “My producer. He booked the studio.” Her face brightened in anticipation of the scene. “So tell me about Ricky. How’s he doing?”

  I’d been considering how much of the situation I could entrust to Arletta James. Very little, I decided. Ricky liked her; I liked her; but she liked to hear herself talk. So I gave her an abbreviated version, downplaying its seriousness and making no mention of the more recent developments. “You and he have known each other a long time,” I concluded, “so I hoped you might be able to shed some light on who’s doing this. For instance, has anybody connected with him shown particular interest in ‘My Mendacious Minstrel’?”

  If James had anything to hide, she covered extremely well. She grew quiet and thoughtful, leaning back in her chair and twirling the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefinger. “No, nobody has,” she finally said, “but it’s funny about that song. I associate it with Ricky.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I ran into him half an hour after I recorded it, at a place off Burbank Boulevard where a lot of industry people hang out. This would’ve been around three years ago. It was maybe two in the afternoon, and he was at the bar, downing shots of the hard stuff. That kind of boozing didn’t fit with the guy I remembered, so I wandered over to say hello, but mainly to find out if success had changed him that much.”

  “Had it?”

  “No way. We got to talking, and I saw that he was under a lot of stress and really pretty drunk. So I made him sit down in a booth with me while I had something to eat. We chatted—or I guess I did—and after a while I got up the nerve to ask him what was wrong. And he said, “‘Jesus, Letta, I’ve got this crazy woman after me.’”

  “What woman?”

  Letta shrugged. “He didn’t name names. As I recall, the way it happened, he had three back-to-back performance dates down in Texas, and the first night he met this wannabe. Woman with a nice voice but nothing special, a nicer face and body. He’d been fighting with his wife—I guess that fighting and making up was how they used to get their kicks, but it had grown pretty stale for him and the fighting kept turning serious—” She broke off, shading her eyes from the sun and peering at me. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about that. For a minute I forgot you’re Charly’s sister.”

  “That’s okay, go on.” I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that she pointed it out, I realized that on some level I’d always known what kind of games Ricky and Charlene were into.

  “Well, they’d had a bad fight before he left California, and then this woman came along, and Ricky spent the weekend with her. Wasn’t the first time he’d done something like that, although given what followed, it might’ve been the last.” She paused, thoughtful again. “Happens like that, out on the road. People’re so damned adoring, you start believing you’re wonderful; then you start believing they’re wonderful for thinking you are. Next thing you know…” She snapped her fingers and grinned impishly. “I myself am the most monogamous of women, but occasionally some sweet young thing can entice me. With most people it’s understood that it’s just a weekend romance, no strings attached. They keep it loose and get what they want—which is usually to go back to their real lives and tell everybody they slept with so-and-so—and you get what you want, too. And that’s the way Ricky thought it was with this woman in Texas.”

  “But?”

  “But after he got home she started bugging him. Somehow she got hold of his unlisted phone numbers, kept calling, sounding disturbed. Got hold of his address and started sending letters after he refused her calls.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Oh, the usual that you hear from fans with overactive imaginations
. Claimed he’d promised to leave his wife, write a song for her, make her a star. Happens to a lot of artists, particularly ones on Ricky’s level. People they don’t even know’ll make the most outrageous allegations.”

  “Then why was he so stressed?”

  “Usually the crazies go away if you don’t respond to them, but this one wouldn’t. And he had slept with her. Things were pretty rocky with Charly, and he was afraid if the woman went to her, as she threatened, it might spell the end of his marriage. I sensed there was something else too, something that upset him so much he couldn’t talk about it. Anyway, I told him he ought to consult his lawyer.”

  “Did he?”

  “Don’t know. The situation must’ve gotten resolved, though, because he and Charly are still together and he never mentioned it to me again.” Letta frowned. “Of course, I’m not even sure he remembers telling me about it—that’s how wasted he was. You don’t think that woman is the one who’s been writing those notes?”

  The parallels between the situation and her folk ballad were obvious, but I said, “Probably not. Three years is a long time to nurse a fantasy—or a grudge.”

  “I hope you won’t let on to Ricky that I told you.”

  “I’ll try to get the story out of him some other way. And I hope you won’t tell anyone about those notes.”

  “My mouth’s a whole lot bigger than it ought to be, but I wouldn’t do that to Ricky. He stood by me back in Bakersfield when I came out of the closet and, believe me, that took some courage in those days. And he won’t own up to it, but I know for a fact that he was the one who brought my work to the attention of the A and R department at my new label. I acknowledged him on the liner notes for Old-fashioned Lady, the album that ballad’s on.”