“I came back from Fullerton,” she repeated, “and I fell in love with Benny for some months. Then I didn’t want to say a word, a word about being married. And later, with Ray, the same. Now Carlos, but of course he knows…Jeremy was okay about it, I was surprised. He said he understood, he wanted only to help me and be my friend…”
I didn’t believe it had been so simple. “And he never pressed you…?”
“No,” said Zee quickly. “Never like that. We were friends.”
Like what? I wondered, but said only, “And so you told him about the job at Best Printing.”
“Yes,” said Zee, embarrassed, explaining, “He didn’t have a job right then so when Kay quits, quit, I just called up and tell him.”
“But you never told us you knew him.”
“I know…it was just a funny situation. And then, pretty soon, I didn’t like him so much anyways.”
“How do you mean?” Hadley asked.
“He wasn’t always that way,” Zee burst out, “that spaced-out way. It was only something he did, maybe to make people to trust him, I don’t know. But he could be different.”
“How different? Calculating, threatening…?”
“Just different.” Zee retreated.
I said, “Jeremy started about a year ago at Best. When did the forging start?”
“Six months ago.”
“And it was his idea.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t force you?”
“No.”
“I know you did the camera work at Best, but who did the typesetting, who did the printing?”
“Some people, another place,” Zee looked panicky. “We don’t need typesetting, we just get a form and copy it. And…some people, they’ve got a little press in their garage, they can run it.”
Suddenly Zee had become guarded, distant. I hesitated to push her, but I wasn’t satisfied.
Hadley spoke up, “I don’t believe you killed him, Zee. But do you have any idea who did?”
“I’ve thought and thought,” said Zee, looking down, not at us. “But it gets so complicated. Somebody maybe whose papers were wrong—who gets caught. Maybe they killed Jeremy and make it so I’m punished.”
“But if Jeremy were informing on Filipinos in the community,” I said. “And if someone found out…”
I pulled out the newsclippings I’d found in Jeremy’s room. “Do any of these names look familiar to you?”
Zee regarded them closely. “But yes, there’s Rodrigo Villaron, and Maria Gallego too, listed as members of the student group from some years ago, they’re in San Francisco now…And Amado, that’s Benny’s brother I was telling you about—the one who was killed when he went back. Where did you find these?”
“Jeremy’s apartment.”
“I didn’t want to think it, Pam, that he could really do this to us.”
“But you did think it, on occasion.”
Zee’s voice sank low. “The questions he asked me sometimes—like personal questions about people. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know.”
“Did you know he had hundreds of dollars in his pocket when he died?”
Zee just stared at me.
“He wasn’t blackmailing anyone, was he, Zee? He wasn’t blackmailing you?”
“No!”
“Threatening to talk to the authorities about what you were doing?”
“No. No. No.”
“I think,” said Mrs. Reyes, appearing at the kitchen door without the tea we’d been promised. “That this is enough.”
“Guess you watched a lot of Perry Mason as a kid,” said Hadley as we went down Mrs. Reyes’ driveway to her truck.
“Was I that bad?”
“No, you were rather good, in fact. It just seemed hard on Zee. That style of questioning, I mean.”
“Well, we found out a few things,” I said, stung. “Do you really think I was too brutal?”
Hadley paused. “You know, she didn’t exactly admit to anything you were asking.”
“Nope. She denied everything I suggested. Very convincingly. But I’m sure now that Jeremy was informing on them and that he was probably blackmailing Zee and possibly others to keep quiet. That doesn’t mean that’s why he was murdered of course…”
“So how’re you going to find out?”
“I think we should start with Benny and Carlos tomorrow.”
“You don’t think you’re getting a little too carried away with this?”
“What do you mean? I thought you liked being a detective?”
“I do—sort of. On the other hand, have you noticed that car down the street with the two men in it, watching us?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, breaking out in a sweat. “Let’s just act normal, get in the car and…”
We jumped into the truck like star athletes and roared off down the street. The car stayed parked where it was.
We were still shaking by the time we pulled up in front of my house. All the thrillers I’d ever seen were playing in technicolor in my brain: shoot-outs on the freeway, free-falls from the forty-ninth floor, bombs under the car…We’d better get some guns if we were going to continue this investigation. But I didn’t want to shoot anyone!
“Hey, we haven’t had dinner yet,” Hadley remembered.
“You can think about eating?”
“I can always think about eating.”
“I want to call Zee and tell her there’s two men watching her house.”
“Okay, and then we’ll go out to eat. Maybe a pizza—do you like pizza?”
There were some people in the living room when we came in: Penny, Ray and a couple I didn’t recognize.
“Pam,” called Penny.
“Just a sec.” I ran to the phone and dialed Zee.
“She’s in the shower,” said Mrs. Reyes.
“Mrs. Reyes, there’s a car with two men parked near your house. They may be watching you. I just wanted to tell you.”
There was a pause while she looked out the window. “Oh, yes, thank you, Pamela.”
“You’re not worried?”
“It’s Benny and Carlos,” she said. “Keeping an eye on things.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s good, just checking…”
“Thank you, Pamela. Now good-bye.”
“Benny and Carlos,” I muttered to Hadley.
“Our latest suspects,” she said. “Maybe we should go back and invite them out to dinner.”
“No way. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
“Pam,” called Penny impatiently from the living room. “Come on.”
I went in, followed by Hadley. The woman on the couch looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place her. Blond curls and pretty like Elena, though with a considerably pudgier figure. She looked like the housewife Elena had never become—kindly, cheerful, a little martyred. The man next to her was probably her husband, a blue-collar worker with thick arms and a hardbitten face.
“This is Jeremy’s sister and brother,” said Penny. “Karen and Don.”
“Oh.”
From the way Jeremy had talked about his older siblings I’d imagined them looking like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. These two were obviously down-to-earth regular types whose favorite group was probably the Beach Boys.
“Nice to meet you,” I remembered to say and introduced Hadley. “Jeremy used to talk a lot about you.”
“We came up to collect the kid’s stuff,” said Don, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“We thought you might have some things you could tell us,” said Karen apologetically. “Seeing you worked with him and everything. I guess you were the ones who found him—maybe you’ve got some idea who killed him.” Her voice turned pleading. “He was such a good kid.” She pulled out a photograph of a seven-or eight-year-old boy on a horse. Jeremy with a smile of sweetness and pride. “I’ve always kept this…Jeremy was the youngest, you know, he was really the pet. I got married and moved away when he was eleven but I always
thought of him.”
“I know,” said Don gruffly, “that I didn’t always treat him seriously. Hell, I was eight years older and who wanted a little kid tagging along everywhere? But I liked him too, took him to his first baseball game.”
A mood of melancholic nostalgia was palpable in the room, as if a funereal hymn were playing softly somewhere overhead. Hadley snapped us out of it.
“We think Jeremy might have been into drugs, maybe a dealer,” she said matter-of-factly. Did we? I stared at her.
But Karen and Don didn’t look that surprised; embarrassed and defensive maybe, but not surprised.
“We knew he had a drug problem in the Navy,” Karen said. “Over there in the Philippines. It was so easy to get stuff there, you know. A lot of people took drugs, I guess.”
“But Jeremy got caught,” said Hadley, in the same matter-of-fact tone, as if she knew the whole story and was only asking confirmation.
“But he didn’t get punished or discharged or anything,” said Karen eagerly. “He just got a reprimand. He knew somebody, you see…”
“Karen,” warned Don. “This is just family stuff, we don’t want to tell them Jeremy’s life story—because he finished with that drug business a long time ago. He learned the hard way.”
Karen looked less convinced but she kept silent. I was thinking—a reprimand? In exchange for what? For supplying information? It was a far-fetched idea. How could they have known he’d be useful?
“When did Jeremy move to Seattle?”
“Well, pretty soon after the Navy,” said Karen. “Couple, three years ago I guess.”
“And you’ve seen him since then?”
They both looked uneasy.
“Once or twice,” said Don. “I don’t live in Fullerton anymore.”
“Don lives in Riverside. I live in Ventura,” Karen explained, once again apologetic. “We have families.” She paused. “We never met the girl he married. Heard about her from Mom. Course no one ever knew he got married.”
Don’s face had turned dark red. “She’s the one behind all this. And now she’s going to pay for it.”
“She’s not guilty,” Ray spoke up. “It’s some kind of mistake, man.”
Don looked at him as if Ray had just crawled out from under the sofa. “The cops don’t make mistakes,” he said contemptuously.
The magnitude of this error silenced us all temporarily. Then Karen spoke up, with quiet urgency, “But if you think, if he was a dope dealer or something, that maybe one of his customers…”
“These people are the ones who are probably dope dealers,” said Don. “Come on, Karen—they don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re the ones who hid that girl in their attic.”
Karen looked further apologies at all of us but got up and followed him out of the room and out the front door.
“Anyone want a good deal on some really fantastic Colombian?” asked Penny.
“They’re going to be great in court,” I said. “I can see it now. They’ll blow the photo of Jeremy and the horse up to life-size. ‘Of course I haven’t seen him for fifteen years, but I know in my heart he was the same sweet boy he always was.’”
“Do you really think he was into dope dealing, Hadley?” asked Ray. “Is that the explanation?”
“Anchovies,” she said. “Black olives, tomatoes, onions.”
“Half anchovies,” I amended.
“We haven’t had dinner either,” said Penny enthusiastically. “Don’t forget the green pepper and pepperoni.”
“And sausage, chorizo if they’ve got it,” said Ray. “But do you really think that, Hadley?”
I noticed that for the first time he was addressing her as a real person.
“I think I’d better get two pizzas,” she said. “That’s what I think.”
28
HADLEY STAYED WITH ME that night, or rather, with us. It didn’t feel to me that I was alone with her in the house where I’d grown up and where I’d come back to live. Too many ghosts. Ghosts of my parents who wouldn’t like it; ghosts of male lovers who would be titillated but disapproving; even the ghost of Ray, who was now a live presence on the other side of the upstairs hall.
I was overly conscious of every sound louder than a murmur that Hadley made. She was all bones and joints and she couldn’t seem to touch me in the right way. She herself came with about a fingertip of pressure and immediately went to sleep.
I lay there, itched and brooded.
The name of Fran hadn’t come up again, but it was in the air, less a ghost than a scent of something wrong. Hadley had said that money was attractive, but swaggering, working class toughness was attractive too, at least to women who’d grown up with money like Hadley and Elena. I thought about Fran’s strong, bulky build, her handsome face with its light hazel eyes fringed with black, her black white-streaked hair. I wondered what it would be like to be with a woman that big who didn’t (I glanced over at Hadley) sometimes feel like a barely carpeted staircase. Not that I was attracted to Fran. I’d never seen her in anything but the worst light. But I wanted desperately to understand what Hadley had seen and still saw in her.
She saw enough in Fran to want to protect her, to have protected her throughout our little investigation. Had she stopped to consider the real possibility that Fran was more involved than she let on? Why should Fran be immune from questioning? Why shouldn’t she be pressed to give up any information she had? She was the witness to Jeremy’s sabotage of B. Violet; she was the one who’d come up with the spying theory after seeing him being passed something by two men. Those were the only two motives possible. Either Jeremy had been murdered in revenge for what he did to B. Violet or his killing had something to do with the forging and possible spying ring he’d set up within the Filipino community.
Probably that was why Hadley was so keen on linking Jeremy’s drug problems in the Philippines with his eventual role as a forger and probable agent in Seattle. If she could establish that the FBI or some other secret group was involved in Jeremy’s murder, then Fran would be clearly off the hook.
The only problem with the two widely different motives is that they didn’t rule each other out. Jeremy the forger, the spy, could have still been killed because he destroyed B. Violet. It was that simple.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep too well that night.
In the morning there was a lot of polite traffic in the bathroom and the kitchen. It was strange to see Ray in his kimono again, after all these months, making huevos rancheros for breakfast; it was probably just as strange for him to serve them up to his ex-lover’s new lover. At one point he and I exchanged a wry look of complicity that was just this side of forgiveness; it gave me a little hope that we’d all be able to like each other sometime not too far in the future.
It still somehow didn’t make the morning go any easier. Penny and Sam got into an acerbic exchange about some economic issue in the morning paper: prime rate, interest, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund—it escalated rapidly and ended with Penny denouncing Sam as a closet Republican and Sam counseling Penny to go back and do a little homework. Jude meanwhile was trying to interest Hadley in every conceivable kind of food and beverage, as became the self-appointed hostess of the household who was not going to be put off by some glum lesbian saying over and over, “No thanks, I’m not hungry.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jude,” I said finally. “She doesn’t eat a lot of breakfast.”
Jude looked at me with eyes that accused, So why didn’t you ever tell me you were getting involved with a woman, huh? I’m supposed to be a good friend of yours, one of your best friends, I even live in the same house, but no, I have to find out like this, in front of everybody, no explanations, just expected to go along with it…
I excused myself from the table and went out to the garden for a little vegetable relief. After five minutes or so Hadley joined me. By common, unspoken agreement we did not discuss murders, roommates, former lovers or sex. We wen
t over the pros and cons of organic gardening, for instance what to do when the tomato bugs used your supposedly lethal hot chili solution to make enchiladas. Did you have to go right on to DDT?
After a while the house got quiet; everyone had gone to work. I knew we should head out for Best as well—there was a lot to do there—but I didn’t feel too motivated. I was tired, the sun was hot, and the earth was giving off rather suggestive vibrations of fertility and fecundity.
We necked instead.
I was just about to suggest that we go inside to remove a few of these bothersome garments, when footsteps came crunching up the gravel drive and around the side of the house. Goddamn reporters, I thought, hastily straightening my clothes and hair.
“We rang the doorbell,” said Benny, and Carlos nodded. They were both wearing cool white shirts with rolled up sleeves, and chinos. Their hair was freshly combed and they both smelled a little of aftershave. I felt Hadley and me to be panting, disheveled sex maniacs in comparison. I hoped they didn’t notice.
I invited them in for some iced tea.
“It’s about the newsclippings you have,” Benny said. “Zenaida said you found some clippings at Jeremy’s room that have some familiar names underlined.”
“Yes. Would you like to see them?” I pulled the stack out of the pocket of my jacket hanging in the hall.
Hadley brought out glasses and a pitcher of tea. It wasn’t exactly cold, because it had evidently just been made up before Jude or Penny left, and there were no ice cubes, but it would have to do. We all sat down at the dining room table.
Benny’s hooded, intelligent black eyes skimmed the clippings quickly. A slight but sharp intake of breath told me he’d found his brother Amado’s name. Carlos read more slowly, his round, sweet face bent worriedly over the newsprint. He said something in Tagalog, something that sounded like a long curse.
“Did you ever suspect Jeremy of spying on you?” Hadley asked.
“Not a white boy, no,” Benny said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. I wanted to trust him, because he was Zee’s friend, if nothing else, but I felt a certain ruthlessness about him, under his suave manner. I didn’t like him smoking in my house either.
Murder in the Collective Page 18
