The Ancient Rain

by Domenic Stansberry

  Dante kept driving.

  He remembered Annette and her Sandinista boyfriend chatting it up in Owens’s kitchen. He remembered the Honduran tamales and the taste of the corn. He remembered Marilyn writhing on the lawn.

  Dante had some questions for Ricci. He wanted to ask her about Cynthia Nakamura, true. But he had some other questions as well.

  * * *

  Halfway down Gough, rolling down that long hill, Dante spotted a green Torino in the traffic behind him. The car kept its distance—not rushing to make the light, but not falling off either, rising over the crest, disappearing again into the trough at the intersection. Then reappearing.

  Sorrentino, he figured, but the car was too far back to tell, and San Francisco was a big city after all. There was likely more than one green Torino still on the road.

  Near the McAllister projects, in the sump at the bottom of the hill, Dante pulled over. The Torino kept coming. It was a one-way street, and the car switched into the far left as it approached, but Dante got a good look at the man, anyway. It was Sorrentino. He drove with his hat on and his nose up, both hands on the wheel, eyes ahead.

  Dante stayed put for five minutes, ten, waiting. It was possible, he supposed, that Sorrentino’s appearance was coincidence.

  Dante circled the block once, then parked again, waiting—but there was no sign of the Torino. He pulled into traffic. Then it was there again in the rearview, tagging him across Market Street into the Mission.

  * * *

  Annette Ricci’s house was in the Inner Mission, in the old Irish neighborhood. When Dante was a kid, his father used to take him to the Longshoreman’s Hall down on Mission Street, and sometimes after those meetings they went to Mackie’s, a restaurant full of old micks, but the place had been an island even then. Irish waiters in their tuxes and their brogues, hostesses named Molly and Catherine and Margaret, hair gone gray, freckles gone to moles, long dresses wrapped in the middle with green sashes. The last of those places was long gone, the Irish having trundled south to Daly City, then vanished altogether, as far as you could tell, taking their potatoes with them and their kids and their green beer.

  It was a Latino neighborhood now—Salvadoran and Guatemalan and Nicaraguan—refuges from Central America, dissidents, some of them right wing, some left, but mostly just villagers following their relatives north, working to send money back home.

  Sorrentino followed him past Mackie’s, then down Folsom. Toward the end, the man gave up on being inconspicuous and tagged up right behind him. On Ricci’s street, Sorrentino swung a circle and parked halfway up the block. Dante could guess what had happened. Sorrentino had figured Dante as a tail, and now he wanted a few words. The man sat in his Torino, as if he expected Dante to walk over. Instead Dante walked the other way, toward Ricci’s place on the corner. The son of a bitch could wait.

  Annette Ricci’s place was a large Victorian, a decaying house in the Eastlake style that had last been painted a couple of decades back—a painted lady gone to seed, the lower story done up hippie-style, bright colors, sunbursts in the friezes. The upper story, beyond the easy reach of ladders, was an older style, a muted brown, so there was a kind of schizophrenia to the place. A large magnolia tree grew in the yard. A canary palm. Boston ferns.

  It had been a co-op at one time, Dante knew, actors’ quarters up top, a studio in the back, but that arrangement had fallen apart, as tended to happen, and Ricci owned the property now. Over the gate hung an iron sign.

  THE SAN FRANCISCO TROUPE

  The Play’s the Thing

  Dante went through the gate and into the yard. In a little while, Annette Ricci herself opened the door.

  Her hair had been restrained under a scarf, pulled in tightly, and this had the effect of accentuating the rawness of her features and a certain imperious beauty. She did not seem surprised to see him, but instead smiled easily—though she was an actress, of course, and thus possessed a plasticity of expression.

  “Come in. But I have to warn you, we have a rehearsal in a little while.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  “I can give you a few minutes now. Or if you’d rather come back later?”

  “Now’s good.”

  “I’ll tell Juan to begin the warm-ups without me.”

  She left him alone in a small parlor decorated with kachina dolls—a considerable number, actually, all arranged rather precisely, too precisely—and also memorabilia from the troupe’s earlier days. Ricci had been there from the beginning, he saw. She’d joined the troupe in the late sixties—a renegade from her father’s ranch in Wyoming—a gangly young woman whose eyes in the photos glimmered with the air of the prankster. In person, the mischievousness had a harder edge—he’d seen that edge at the party—but he’d seen also her ability to act quickly, and the comfort she’d given Marilyn. Even so, as she walked into the room now, she held her head a bit too high, and he could see again in her the need to control.

  “So what can I do?”

  “Mostly,” he said, “I was hoping you could help me with the discovery material. There are a few witness names here, on the prosecution list, we haven’t been able to identify.”

  “You used to be a cop?”

  “It shows?”

  “I heard a rumor.” She laughed. It was a charming laugh, vulnerable. “And so why did you leave the force?”

  She arched her eyebrows. She had switched roles, making him the subject of the questions. Partly it was her desire to be in control, but in these situations the behavior wasn’t unusual. People often felt more comfortable answering questions if you gave something up first—some small piece of yourself.

  “I had an opportunity. Corporate security,” he said. The statement contained an aspect of truth, more or less, but he had no intention of elaborating. There were things about his past he kept to himself. No different from Owens, he supposed. No different from a lot of people. “Nothing too glamorous, I’m afraid.” Then he handed her the list. “You’ll see the prosecution has listed your name as well.”

  “As an unfriendly witness, no doubt.”

  “Have they talked to you?”

  She shook her head. “Thirty years ago I gave them a statement. If they intend to take Bill to trial, I imagine I’ll hear from them.”

  Dante had been through the discovery material and he knew the substance of that statement. Her own involvement with the SLA had never been so firmly established as Owens’s. A government informer, working at KPFA, the underground radio station, had identified her as an insider. A surveillance photo had caught her on the steps of the SLA safe house in Berkeley a few days before the robbery, standing alongside her boyfriend at the time, Naz Ramirez: an SLA recruit with a dope habit—who years later told a cellmate that he’d been in the bank with the group on the day of the robbery. But Naz himself was dead now, and that kind of talk, retold by an ex-cellmate currying favor with a parole board, didn’t carry a lot of weight.

  Anyway, according to her own statement, Annette Ricci had been out in Aptos the day of the robbery, working with Cynthia Nakamura on a theater project.

  “Cynthia was painting backdrops for us. That’s how we knew her. Her parent’s place in Aptos, there was an old barn,” she said. “Jan and I went down there for a few days to help with the backdrops. Bill came along, too.”

  “Was she active politically?”

  “Not really. She was just a painter.”

  “Did you meet Kaufman?”

  “Cynthia’s boyfriend? The poet?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “We took a walk on the beach.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Did he mention Leland Sanford?”

  She bent down then, all of a sudden, tugging at her shoes, tucking her finger in the area behind her heel. Something about the gesture, her discomfort, did not seem altogether genuine. “I met Lee a couple of times,” she said.

  “Acco
rding to the report, after Sanford disappeared, you went down to the radio station with a tape of Sanford. Some photos. But it wasn’t clear if these were from before the shootout in LA, or after.”

  “Why are they going down this road again?”

  Dante wasn’t sure, but the broadcast of that tape, together with the confusion over the dentals, had contributed to the mystery of Leland Sanford’s disappearance. That confusion had ultimately undermined the government’s case.

  “Some of the old affidavits, they imply you orchestrated all that confusion. Blackwell and some of the others—”

  “Blackwell is a snake,” she said. “A prick with two heads.” It was clear she enjoyed insulting the man, and enjoyed, too, the bawdy language. “Pull his tail in Washington, one of those heads—it pops up out of a hole on Larkin Street.”

  “The confusion over Sanford, did you orchestrate that?”

  “Whose side are you on?” She laughed again, and this time put a hand on his arm, leaning into him—dropping her guard just for a moment, holding her head in that imperious way, eyes flashing, wanting him to know her role, to see her cleverness. “I never saw Lee again, after the awful business in Los Angeles, if that’s what you mean. But I wouldn’t doubt he’s still alive. In spirit, if not in reality.” Dante glimpsed for an instant the same disdain he had seen in her face, that moment at the party—and on her current boyfriend’s face, too, the Sandinista, when he had asked about their upcoming play. Dante had a question, regarding the day at the house, but decided to save it. Instead, he returned her attention to the names on the prosecution witness list.

  “Do you know any of these people?”

  “It’s a long list.”

  “If you could just look through?”

  He let her linger over the list, talking up the people she knew. She was chatty on the surface but in the end didn’t tell him much he didn’t already know. He directed her attention toward the unknowns. Ringers, he guessed, thrown in by the prosecution to keep him occupied, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t something hidden there.

  “Cynthia Nakamura—did she remarry?”

  She shrugged. “Not that I know of. Are they trying to find Cynthia again, is that what this is about?” Dante saw, for a moment, he thought, the same slackness he’d seen in Owens’s face. “The feds, they put some pressure on her back then. They didn’t like her story.”

  Outside, in the backyard, the players had gathered. Dante could see them through the window—Juan the Sandinista dressed up in a cardboard outfit with giant wings, an airplane with a bomb strapped to his belly. A woman in a suit and tie, holding a remote control.

  “I would ask you to stay, but we keep our rehearsals closed. You know, we like it to be a surprise.”

  “You’ll be in Washington Square, on Columbus Day?”

  She shook her head, correcting him.

  “Native People’s Day.”

  “Yes,” said Dante. “That’s what I meant.”

  At the door she embraced him, holding him a little closer than he expected, pressing her cheek to his, like he was on old friend, someone whom she was not quite ready to let go.

  “I appreciate what you are doing for Bill.”

  “I’m being paid.”

  “Have they found anything—on what happened to Marilyn?”

  “Not yet. But the police, they don’t talk to me much.”

  “How is she?”

  “I am going back to the hospital just now, for visiting hours.”

  “She’s such a lovely thing.” Her eyes watered, and he saw something like compassion, but there was again also the plasticity of expression.

  “One more question.”

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  “At the Owens’s party. Why did you lock the back door behind you, before you came into the yard?”

  “I like a captive audience. I wanted everyone to see the play.” She said it shyly, as if embarrassed at her vanity. At the same time engaging him with her smile.

  “The tamales?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Wrapped in banana leaves. In the kitchen, Jill said—you and Juan, you brought them early.”

  She nodded, pleased. “You liked them?”

  “There was another man with you.”

  “Oh,” she said, wincing, bending at the knees.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “These new shoes, they are just too tight on my feet.”

  “The man?”

  She looked at him then. “He was an immigrant. Doing delivery work, that’s all. A man without papers. The police had the same idea as you—find a Latino to blame. They’ve already arrested several from what I understand.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “You won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Without papers,” she said. “Would you stick around? No, he’s long gone by now. Picking somebody’s fruit. Mowing someone else’s lawn.”

  * * *

  The Torino had not moved. Sorrentino sat as before, leaning back, his head just visible above the wheel. Overhead, the sun was going down. Dante glanced toward his car across the way, listing toward the curb, then back toward Sorrentino. He was tempted to let the man stew, but he wanted to see Marilyn—and he did not want Sorrentino following, waiting in the hospital lot.

  He headed toward the Torino.

  Up close, he noticed the car was not as well preserved as he had thought. The carport in San Bruno had protected the paint somewhat, but the vinyl top was peeling. Still, the car fit Sorrentino. He sat behind the wheel with a certain pleasure, like some kind of bulldog prince, feigning indifference as Dante approached.

  Dante circled around to the passenger side and opened the door. The seats were green leather and had weathered reasonably well. Inside, though, was the vague smell of spoiled milk.

  “I knew you would walk over here,” said Sorrentino.

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s your generation. You like to talk about things. All those psychologists.”

  Sorrentino snorted.

  “Why are you following me?” asked Dante.

  “What’s this? You can do as you please, you rifle through my business, but I have to stay in my shell—that’s how it goes?”

  “All right,” said Dante. “Now we’re even.” He reached for the door handle.

  “I’m not finished,” said Sorrentino.

  “What is it you want to tell me?”

  The man snuffled, eyes flashing, as if he did not really know what he wanted to say. “You’re on the wrong side.”

  Dante didn’t feel like listening to this kind of thing.

  “Why help Owens and those sons of bitches—after they murdered that woman in cold blood?”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know, and so do you. Underneath all your shit, you know.”

  “My fiancée—”

  “She’s not your fiancée,” Sorrentino interrupted. “You haven’t given her a ring. You never asked her to marry you.”

  It was true, but it made Dante angry to hear it from Sorrentino.

  “I know things, too. You poke in my life, I poke in yours,” Sorrentino barked. “But it wasn’t Elise Younger who firebombed that house. You got everything back assward. Your father—”

  “Don’t talk to me about my father.”

  “You’re on the wrong side,” Sorrentino said again. “That girl lost her mother.”

  “That’s not why the government’s on this case. That not what this is about anymore.”

  “Maybe not to you. Where’s your conscience?”

  The remark got under his skin. Some other time, maybe, some other universe, he and Sorrentino might have been paisans. They might have worked together. But if this conversation went on, he was going to haul off and slam the guy. Meanwhile Sorrentino regarded him with a new scorn. Dante felt something inside, like a coil tightening. “Get out of here,” said Sorrentino—but there was a tremor beneath t
he bravado. His jaw quivered. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  Dante nodded. “Nice car.”

  * * *

  As he walked away, Dante waited to hear the Torino’s engine fire up, but the sound didn’t come. His own car, it listed too heavily toward the curb; then, walking to the other side, he noticed what he had missed before: His back tire had gone flat. Across the way, Sorrentino sat with his arm out the window, just sitting, watching. Dante bent to his knees and saw the stem had been slashed.

  He was tempted to walk back across the street, to yank Sorrentino out of the car, hold him by his neck like a fish on the wire.

  Dante’s plan had been to return to the hospital—and he could still do so. Pull the spare out of the trunk. Change the flat. Drive to the station on Twenty-fourth for air, even if he had to ride the rim.

  Sorrentino fired the ignition.

  Dante pulled out his keys and went over to the trunk and hesitated over the lock. The Torino drove by slowly, but Dante did not look up, he did not turn his head. He waited till the car crept by, resisting the temptation. He kept his head down and his eyes on the key slit on the trunk.

  The lock had been filled with putty.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “So, we’ll fix you up, you can ride with us on the Columbus Day float,” said Beatrice Prospero.

  “Not with this face,” said Marilyn.

  The medical cosmetician had arrived some time ago, and Marilyn watched as she rearranged her creams on the tray by the bed. Then Marilyn jimmied the controls so as to bring herself further upright, into position. Meanwhile, Beatrice sat in a chair with her legs crossed.

  “My father will be insulted, you do not ride.”

  Beatrice Prospero was a big woman with pomegranate hair and a husky voice. She smiled slyly, but it was true what she was saying. Her father had a float, and he ran it every year in the parade, loaded up with staff Realtors and their families, and he did not care how they looked, so long as they wore company blazers.