A Body to Dye For

by Grant Michaels

  I drove the rented red ark out of the Ohlone Hotel parking lot and turned onto the main road back to my cabin, wondering where Yudi was hiding and where he would turn up next. No sooner had I thought it than I saw him sitting on a rock among the trees just off the road. Perhaps he really was a forest sprite who responded to people’s thoughts.

  He waved to me, and I pulled the car off the road onto the shoulder. Instead of coming to the car, though, he signaled me to get out and go to him, so I did. As I approached, he put up one hand to stop me, then moved his finger to his lips to silence me. In a moment I saw why. A small bright yellow bird with black wings fluttered toward him. Yudi put his index finger straight out like a perch in front of him, and as though in an animated film, the little bird chirped and lighted on the outstretched finger. Yudi tested the creature’s tenacity by swinging his hand in a slow and ever-widening arc. The bird flapped its wings to maintain its balance, then finally flew off his hand. From a crumpled paper bag near his feet, Yudi took another crumb and placed it on his finger. Within seconds the bird returned, but this time just snatched the crumb and flew away.

  Yudi said, “He must have seen you.”

  “The face that stopped a thousand clocks.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  ‘‘Do you always feed animals like this?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How do you get a wild bird to be so tame?”

  “He knows I won’t hurt him, so he’s just being natural.” Yudi picked up the paper bag and twisted it into a tight cruller as he asked me, “Did you climb with Jack?”

  “Uh, yeah …” I wondered again if he’d seen us together up on that ledge earlier today, with Jack indulging his acrobatic exhibitionism.

  “I thought so. When you didn’t come back soon, I knew he took you up. Roger and he were always up there.”

  Yudi’s use of he prompted me to ask where he’d learned English. “A man from England lived in Bali,” he answered. “But Roger helped me with the American slang.” (Just as I’d suspected.) “Yudi, why doesn’t Jack like you?”

  He stood up and stretched his limber young body. The tan skin of his belly peeked out between his shirt and jeans. He caught me staring and smiled mischievously. “Jack thinks I made Roger have sex with me, but it was really the other way around. Roger started the whole thing. I only did it to thank him for bringing me here from Bali.”

  That was quite a different song from the “it didn’t mean anything” protests Yudi had given me yesterday.

  I said, “Jack told me Roger went to Boston because he thought the slide wasn’t natural, that someone had blown the rocks up on purpose.”

  Yudi said, “It’s true.”

  “You knew it, too?”

  “I knew that Roger thought they were.” His dancing eyes showed that he enjoyed misleading and teasing me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think of it.” Then he said, “I can smell Ms. Leona’s perfume on you.”

  “I had lunch with him.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want. You don’t owe me anything, not after how I treated you yesterday.” In spite of his words, though, he looked hurt, as though I’d broken a pledge and had given myself to Mr. Leonard.

  “I’m telling you, Yudi, nothing happened. We just had lunch and talked.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Ohlone dining room.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Roger, of course.”

  “And me?”

  “And you, and Jack, and the slide.”

  “Don’t believe anything he said.”

  “Why not?”

  “Leona is the worst liar in the valley.”

  “He said the same about you.”

  “But he’s a liar.”

  I recalled a similar argument between me and Branco about my story versus Calvin’s, and also a similar conclusion. It was time to act on the idea I’d got while dining with Mr. Leonard. “Yudi, can you take me to the slide?”

  “You want to go there?”

  I nodded. “I want to see what it looks like.”

  “You can’t get to it.” He looked frightened. “It’s all roped off.”

  “But I bet you know a way.”

  “No. The rangers are everywhere.”

  “Even tonight? Off-season?”

  I watched him think a moment before asking, “What do I get if I take you?”

  No free rides. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “And then?” His eyes teased and allured.

  “One step at a time, pal.” What was going on? I wondered. Suddenly I was Queen for a Day and the three valley men I’d met all had sex on their mind.

  “All right,” Yudi said eagerly. “I’ll take you, but we should put on dark clothes first. I’ll go change and meet you in the village center later.”

  “I can drive you home.”

  “No.”

  “It’s on the way.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  “No!” He made a gesture to hug me, then stopped himself. “I’ll go rent the bikes before they close. I’ll meet you at the bike shop around eight. It’ll be dark enough by then.” He left me standing among the trees.

  On the way back to my cabin I stopped at a pay phone to call Nicole. It was almost six o’clock, and with the time-zone difference, she should have been relaxing at home on a Sunday evening. She was home all right, but she wasn’t relaxing. She picked the phone up on the first ring.

  “Nikki?” I said.

  Her voice was anxious. “Thank god you’ve called!”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “Lieutenant Branco paid me a visit today, at home!”

  “Chez toi? What did he want?”

  “He was looking for you and he was ripping mad.”

  “Must have been that packet of sweet nothings I sent him.” I was referring to the mangled threat note.

  “That was one thing, and he also found out that you visited Calvin in jail, and he knows you’ve skipped town.”

  “Who told him?”

  “Darling, how should I know?”

  “Well, he can’t do much about it now.”

  “Wrong, Stanley. He gave me a message for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said if you don’t report to him in Boston, in person, by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, he’s putting out a search on you.”

  “Come on!”

  “Those were his exact words. Stanley, he’s serious.”

  “You didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”

  “Of course not! I told him I had no idea where you were, and that I was annoyed with you, too, for running out on me … which I am, Stanley. I think you’d better get back here before you have a police escort.”

  “I can’t leave now, Nikki. I’m on to something. There was a big rock slide up here—”

  “Stanley, come home now!”

  “I just need one more night, Nikki. I’m on my way right now to have a look at the rock slide.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There was a big rock slide up here, and from what I’ve heard, Roger thought someone deliberately caused it. It wasn’t natural.”

  “And your vast experience with unnatural acts will tell you something tonight?”

  “Anything that helps explain why he went to Boston may point to the killer’s motive.”

  “Stanley, you are obsessed with this.”

  “No, doll, I’m focused. That’s the new term for it.” I heard her exasperated sigh over the phone line. “How’s Sugar Baby?” I asked, hoping to ease the tension rising between us.

  “Right now she’s waging war with a champagne cork.”

  I envisioned my favorite cat tossing the cork high into the air, then springing up to intercept it midfligh
t. “Do you think she misses me?”

  “Don’t change the subject. You’ll see her tonight.”

  “I will?”

  “Yes, Stanley, when you come home. Or have you forgotten the lieutenant’s warning already?”

  “When I’m done out here, Mother, I’ll be back.”

  “Tonight, Stanley. He wants you in town tomorrow morning.”

  “I can’t, Nikki.”

  “Call him, then, and explain that to him.”

  “Oh, all right! But I’m coming back tomorrow anyway. I don’t see what difference a few hours will make.”

  “Just call him, and call me back as soon as you know your flight.” She hung up as usual, without saying good-bye.

  I figured I’d call Branco later, after my adventure with Yudi. I’d have more to tell him, and maybe he’d be more sympathetic. Then I figured, Why bother to call at all? I’d be back in Boston tomorrow even though it wouldn’t be exactly in the morning. That logic, however, turned out to be unsound.

  When I got to the village bike shop later, Yudi was waiting for me. He’d put on black jeans and a black sweatshirt, with black sneakers and a black leather bomber’s jacket. Maybe it was my nerves, or maybe it was the moonlight, but Yudi looked more desirable than I wanted to admit. Two bikes were resting against a nearby tree.

  “Let’s go!” he muttered testily.

  “What’s the matter? You sound annoyed.”

  “I changed my mind. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Everything will be fine,” I said, wishing I could believe my own words.

  Yudi looked down at the ground and kicked at the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. “Roger went out to the slide a lot, and look what happened to him.”

  I tried to sound courageous and sure of our mission. “Yudi, someone’s got to find out what really happened. If we don’t do it, who will?”

  He didn’t look convinced but got on his bike anyway.

  We rode along the bike path, past the Ohlone Hotel and on into the woods. We went all the way to the end of the path, then started walking. It was completely dark now, and we had only the light of the near full moon and our flashlights. Yudi led the way.

  “Don’t use your flashlight except for one second,” he said. “The light really shows up here.”

  We walked cautiously through the darkness. Save the occasional soft crunch of redwood needles under our feet, the quiet forest air was almost disturbing. Having adapted to the urban noise of automobiles, raucous neighbors, and canned music, I’d forgotten the heightened awareness that absolute quiet can bring.

  Through the darkness ahead I perceived what looked like a fence made of light-colored cloth, faintly visible in the moonlight.

  When we got to it, I found that it was a wide belt of yellow Mylar imprinted every few feet with the warning:

  DANGEROUS AREA

  DO NOT ENTER

  The two-foot-wide band of plastic sheeting had been wrapped around the trunks of trees and stretched throughout the forest. It glowed eerily in the moonlight.

  “Its not much of a deterrent,” I remarked.

  Yudi said, “What’s a deterrent?”

  “Something that prevents something else from happening, like fences blocking the way.”

  He considered my words a moment, then asked, “Or condoms preventing disease?”

  “Yeah, or conception, even.”

  “Deterrent,” he said again as we ducked under the yellow plastic. We walked on for another fifteen minutes and I wondered whether we’d ever reach our destination.

  Then suddenly we were upon it, and my fretting vanished in the wondrous vision before us. Massive hunks of jagged black granite rose up in the bluish moonlight, some half the size of a Back Bay brownstone. I looked up and saw the pinnacle of Washington Column in the moonlight. I wondered how such huge and horrible boulders had ever stayed up on top.

  Yudi said, “Its amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty impressive.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I want to look around, get the feeling of it. The size is overwhelming. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “They’ve all been here already, the rangers and geologists. They all said it was a natural slide.”

  “But Roger didn’t believe them, right?”

  “No. But they looked everywhere for clues. If there’s anything left, it’s under those rocks, and nothing will ever move them.”

  I walked cautiously about the rocks, studied them, touched them, smelled the air, listened. Everything had the calm past-tense energy of a monstrous deed already accomplished and irreversible. I had my first moment of doubt as to whether I’d get anywhere with my quest for answers. For a change of perspective, I turned around and looked back into the forest we’d walked through. As my gaze rose toward the sky, I saw something shine for an instant in one of the trees. I grabbed Yudi and hissed, “Down!” I pulled him to the ground with me, then yanked him along as I scrambled behind a nearby boulder.

  My sudden actions had confused him. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s someone with a gun in one of the trees,” I said. “I saw it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.

  He poked his head above the rock. “Which tree?”

  “Get down!” I yanked him by his leather jacket and pulled him back next to me.

  “I think you’re seeing things.”

  “I tell you, there’s something metallic up there.”

  “So are we just going to sit here?”

  I thought it might not be such a bad idea, considering his leather jacket smelled so good.

  “I don’t want to get shot,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s something else.”

  I thought a moment. Maybe he was right.

  He peered out over the boulder and said, “Which tree?”

  I peeked over the edge with him and scanned the trees. As I honed in on the branches where I’d seen the glint of metal, I looked hard and saw no shadow of a human body. “It’s okay, I think. There’s no one up there now.”

  We stood up and walked cautiously to the tree. I looked straight up into the branches. Sure enough, something still glistened up there in the moonlight. I motioned to Yudi to come and look. As he did, he said, “I think I know what that is.” The next second he was shinnying up the trunk like a monkey.

  “Wait!” I said.

  “I can get it!”

  He disappeared into the branches, where he rustled around for a few minutes. Then he called out, “I see it!”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m going to get it.”

  I hollered, “Don’t touch it!”

  “Ssh! How can I get it then?”

  “Use something to hold it. There may be fingerprints.”

  The air was quiet for many minutes. I said, “What are you doing now?”

  “Taking the shoelace from my sneaker.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to lasso it.”

  “That’s good. Just keep your fingers off it.”

  “Okay, okay! I heard you!” he whispered loudly.

  More quiet minutes passed. Then from the tree he muttered, “Pissnpoop!”

  “What happened?”

  “I missed again. I have to get closer.”

  I heard the branch groan above. “Be careful, Yudi!”

  Some rustling, another woeful creak, then, “There! Got it!”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a climber’s chock.” The word jangled my memory. “There’s something funny stuck in it,” he said.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “I’m not touching it!”

  He rustled his way back out to the trunk, then crawled down until he was ten feet off the ground. He let go and landed with a soft “ploomp” on his sturdy legs. The chock dangled from the shoelace he held between his teeth. He crept on all fours to my feet, then sat up like a dog offering his
master a present. I patted him on the head and took the prize from his mouth. I examined it carefully. It resembled a large hollow metal nut with holes drilled through its walls. A gray puttylike substance had been pressed into one of the holes. I dangled it in front of my nose. It smelled musty.

  Yudi stood up and looked at the chock. “What do you think that stuff is?”

  “I don’t know, but I know who will.”

  “Who?”

  “This is a little souvenir for a cop back in Boston. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  “Why don’t you just give it to the police here?”

  “Because I need this as ransom to clear my name.”

  “But then you have to wait until you go back home.”

  His remark clarified what I had to do next. “Yudi, I’ve got to go back tomorrow.”

  “But you just got here!”

  “I know, but this is exactly what I came for.” I dangled the chock in front of us. “This is hard evidence.”

  “What about our date?”

  “Date?”

  “Dinner. You promised me!”

  I shined the flashlight on my watch. It was impossible to get back, wash, and change before the hotel dining room closed. In the darkness Yudi couldn’t see my flush of embarrassment. “Will you take a rain check?” I asked meekly.

  He sighed irritably. We both realized that I’d not be taking him to dinner soon, if ever.

  We made our way back to the bikes, then rode to the village, flashlights blazing. I offered to give Yudi a lift to his place, but he said sullenly, “I can walk.”

  Awkwardly, I put out my hand. “I guess this is good-bye for now,” I said.

  “Can’t you just stay another day?”

  “Not if I don’t want to be dragged off by the police.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I confessed, “I’m technically a suspect in Roger’s death. I skipped town to come out here and nose around. If I’m not back in Boston by tomorrow, I may be arrested.”

  “So you are involved!” The whites of his eyes glowed in the moonlight.

  I nodded seriously. “I am, Yudi. But I’m innocent, believe me.”

  “I was right all along.” Tears began to roll down his cheeks.

  “Yudi, it’s okay. I liked Roger. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’re a liar, just like everybody else!” He turned and ran away from me into the trees. I felt like a cad.