Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

by Smith, Julie

  He shook my hand vigorously, pumped it good, but didn’t really say much other than “Hi.”

  He helped me into a brown Blazer and got back on the ubiquitous expressway. “Maurizio’s condo’s near Sandy Springs. Hardly anyone lives in town, you know.”

  “This place is a little like L.A., isn’t it?”

  “Not really,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

  “I meant, you know, all freeways and malls.”

  He nodded. “Mmm.”

  It was going to be a long ride. I decided to get through it by looking out the window. Which afforded lots of great views of cars.

  Finally I got up the nerve to say, “I didn’t know your brother, but he was a terrific writer. Everyone thought so.”

  He said, “Thank you. We aren’t a close family.”

  I went back to the cars.

  Maurizio lived in quite a snazzy condo, which, he explained, was possible because he had a roommate (tactfully out for the evening). The feature I liked best was a perfect little backyard, where Maurizio was barbecuing chicken.

  Michael headed straight for the refrigerator, silently removed two beers, and handed one to me. Though I’m not much of a beer drinker, I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I popped my top and swigged.

  But Maurizio was scandalized, “Don’t drink those filthy things. Let’s have fuzzy navels.”

  I don’t know if this is a nationally known drink, but I later questioned a number of San Franciscans who’d never heard of it. It’s a drink ideally suited to Georgia, thoroughly refreshing in the heat; kind of a screwdriver with a Southern accent. I’ve never been quite sure, but I think the ingredients are vodka, orange juice (the navel part), and peach schnappes (the fuzz). What I do know: the result is peachy keen.

  As we sipped, the guys talked sports for a while and exchanged tidbits about mutual friends. Michael polished off his fuzzy navel and helped himself to another. His color changed as he drank, grew pinker and friendlier, along with his demeanor. He was shy, perhaps, and drank consciously to loosen up. More likely, I think, he was hostile to me, to the idea of talking about his brother; he’d been roped into the evening, and was oiling up for the ordeal. Maurizio was quite the operator, I thought, remembering I’d flown three thousand miles myself. I still didn’t see what he saw in Michael, but I was getting an idea why Michael would dump him— the man was dangerous.

  But heck. He barbecued a mean chicken, which he served with salad— a green one with lots of avocados, black beans and rice, and fried plantains. For dessert he’d made key lime pie. Throughout dinner he kept up a three-way conversation, no small feat considering Michael’s wariness.

  By the time we’d made a good-sized dent in the pie, Michael knew pretty much about my family— my mom who’s overprotective, my sister Mickey, who’s sweet as a sundae and works for Planned Parenthood, my dad the famous defense lawyer, and my sister’s boyfriend, the ne’er-do-well actor. It was Kruzick that won him over, I think— the fact that I had to put up with him in my office. Suddenly I had all his sympathy. Either that or the fuzzy navels had done their work. He was smiling at me now, even sometimes, in a fit of wild abandon, addressing the odd remark to me. Maurizio began to lead him skillfully to the matter at hand.

  “Listen, Michael, you know what we talked about.”

  He sobered. “Yeah.” And looked down at his plate. “Let me get you another drink.”

  When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. “I don’t think I can tell the story without it.”

  When he had a new drink— this time a bourbon and water— and had drunk a few sips of it, he said, “This thing tore our family apart. It’s like, really, really hard to talk about. I was fourteen when it happened, and I had this big brother that I more or less worshipped and then, like boom, the whole thing was shattered. Everything. Tressa was twelve. She, like, never even acknowledges the rest of us anymore. And our parents more or less disowned Jason. He was out on the streets, practically, right afterward. We tried to keep in touch, but, I don’t know.…” He took a big swallow of the drink and put it down. “After that, nothing was normal. And it never will be again.”

  Maurizio said, “Okay, you were fourteen, Jason was eighteen, and Tressa was twelve. You were all together when it happened?”

  “Well, it was summer, and Jason was about to leave for college. I think he thought he might miss us, or he’d never have let us go with him. See, he was the only one who could drive, and he said, come on, let’s take Max for a walk above Inspiration Point. It was, like, a Saturday afternoon; maybe a Sunday. There were a whole lot of people out.” He winced slightly and went quiet for a while. “Anyway, he’d never done anything like that before. Never! Tres and I thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

  “Inspiration Point?” I asked. “You lived in the Bay Area?”

  He nodded. “You know Inspiration Point? In Tilden?”

  “I haven’t been there in a long time.”

  “Well, there’s this great paved path that goes up and down over hills and everything. It used to be a road to a missile site, and it’s really wide— people can walk three or four abreast. Anyway, people walk their dogs up there and some people bicycle. That’s what the problem was.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, to make a long story short, you’re supposed to keep your dogs on their leashes, right? You know how that is?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, Jason didn’t. Max was this really hyper dog, and he said it was because Max never got to run and who cared anyway? So he let him off the leash and a rabbit or something hopped across the road, and Max just took off. We kept calling him, but he wouldn’t come back, he was just way too excited— there were other dogs around and everything. Well, anyway, there was this man on a bicycle with a little infant seat on the back. You know those things? You’ve got to remember this was a long time ago— I don’t even know if they made those little helmets then. But anyway this kid wasn’t wearing one.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know how it could have happened. Max just wasn’t paying attention, and he crashed into the bike. The father…”

  His face turned into a tragedy mask as he remembered. “You should have seen the look of panic on that father’s face. I thought he was going to turn himself inside out to keep the bike upright. But it went down, and I swear to God I’ll never forget the noise it made as long as I live, when Sean hit the pavement. When his head hit.”

  “Sean was the baby?”

  “Yeah. That was his name.”

  The horror of it flooded in on me. I imagined what it was like to be fourteen and see something like that and to know that your big brother was responsible— that you were— because there was no way at that age you could ever convince yourself it wasn’t your fault. It was your brother, it was your dog; it must be your fault.

  “He was killed?” I said, making it more a statement than a question.

  “Oh, no. Oh God, if only he’d been killed. He was horribly brain-damaged and lived nearly eighteen years, more or less as a vegetable. But a walking vegetable— one who had seizures all the time. He could only say a few words, and couldn’t take things in, couldn’t learn, but he could walk, sort of. If you could call it that. He was all crippled and spastic. He had to wear diapers, which somebody had to change. And you just never knew when he was going to fall over with a seizure. Oh God, it was horrible.” He tossed back the rest of his drink. I could understand the need to anesthetize himself; I was feeling pretty raw just hearing about it, not having to see it again in my mind’s eye, to hear that awful noise.

  He held up his empty glass, but Maurizio didn’t offer another. “Sean Dunson died eight months ago at the age of eighteen— exactly the age Jason was when it happened. And that was horrible, too. I know every goddam detail. He had a little virus, and his temperature went way up, which caused a series— series, please— of uncontrolled seizures. Somehow in the midst of all that, he ‘aspirated,’ as the doct
ors say, and got pneumonia, which killed him. About eighteen years too late to save the Dunsons and the McKendricks.”

  He sat in bleakness, his head down, and his hands, wrapped around the glass, between his legs. “His parents seemed decent enough, I think. I don’t really know, I was just a little kid. But I think they finally sued, and the suit didn’t come to anything— our parents didn’t really have any money; they gave them what they did have, which was Jason’s college money. He went two years to a community college; that was all. The rest of us— Tres and I— didn’t go at all, and everything was just … sad. After that. I don’t remember ever being happy again, ever laughing in that house, ever even having a Christmas tree.

  “Tressa started wearing all black as soon as she got to junior high, and Mom and Dad kind of…” He paused, trying, I thought, to figure out exactly what had happened to them. “They just gave up, I guess. Dad was an accountant but not a very successful one. Sometimes Mom would get a job in a bookstore. They’d worked really, really hard just to get through, and they never had extra money again. If they had money for Tres and me— for college— I guess they felt they had to give it to the Dunsons. I don’t know for sure; I just know they were never the same again.”

  “And Jason?”

  “I don’t know. He never would say. He always seemed so upbeat, like he had everything under control, but I don’t think he ever even began to get over it. For one thing, he got more distant, too— not like Tressa, who just checked out— but, I don’t know, it was like none of us had much to say to each other after that. Like the shame of it was some big tent that collapsed on us and got us all tangled up, so we couldn’t move anymore. Like if we looked at each other, we’d see Max crashing into that bike or something; we’d remember it. I think Jason gave the Dunsons money sometimes, but I’m not sure. We never talked about that.” He looked away. “Do you know how much it costs to take care of somebody like that? It’s a black hole that sucks your money into it.”

  The name Dunson was starting to ring a bell. I said, “Did you meet them? The Dunsons?”

  “Oh God, yes. There were endless negotiations. And Mom was always trying to be nice— going to see Sean and everything. I went with her once or twice.”

  “Were there any other kids?”

  “A little girl. I guess she was about five at the time.”

  “Adrienne? Was that her name?”

  “How did you know about her?”

  “She was Jason’s assistant. You didn’t know that?”

  “How would I know that?” He sounded angry. “Maurizio, please?” He held up his glass again.

  Maurizio took it, filled it, and looked at me apologetically. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “I don’t think Michael better drive.”

  I said to Michael, “Was that the whole family? Just the parents and Adrienne?”

  He nodded.

  “Adrienne came with her dad to Jason’s wake. I thought you’d like to know that.”

  “Tres and Jason went to Sean’s funeral a few months ago. The Dunsons and the McKendricks. Just one big happy family.” He drank, and then he said, “I wonder why Mrs. Dunson wasn’t there.”

  “I guess I have more bad news for you. She committed suicide about six months ago. It must have been after Sean died.”

  His eyes seemed to sink deeper, so that he looked more miserable than ever. “Jason never told me. That was the way he was, he never talked about anything that worried him. But, man, he couldn’t keep quiet about Sean’s funeral. He was, like, wrecked by it. He said she was real thin— Mrs. Dunson. Real fragile-looking, shoulders shaking the whole time. He knew her before, knew what she looked like, I mean. He said it was like seeing a ghost.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Back at the other end, Chris met me at the airport. I wasted no time: “I have news. Lots of it and all concerning Adrienne. Has she turned up yet?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “She’s scary as hell, Chris. The thing she had with McKendrick— you’re not going to believe how sick it was. Sick and manipulative.” I told her the story Michael had told.

  “Adrienne had this incredible power over him,” she said. “I guess he felt so guilty he’d do anything she wanted. ‘Hire me.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Let me move in.’ ‘No problem.’ And who knows what else? Maybe he gave her money, too.”

  “Michael thinks he gave some to the Dunsons. It would certainly explain his vow of poverty.”

  “How about the vow of chastity?”

  “There’s a question, huh? I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of it, but one thing’s obvious. This was a guy who was eaten up with guilt. That’s what his whole life was about. Guilt. Being manipulated by Adrienne. Giving everything he made to the Dunsons. Not being able to get on with it. I think that whole A Team/B Team thing was about that. He wanted the A-Team women, but he didn’t think he deserved them.” She gave me a weird look and started to focus.

  “Chris, please don’t close your eyes while you’re driving.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. It just sounded so right I was seeing if I could get a little open-eye hit.”

  “Did you?”

  “Well, no. I’ll try it later with my eyes closed. Anyway, it might have been more than that. Maybe he didn’t consciously think he didn’t deserve them. Maybe his body made certain decisions for him.”

  “Meaning he couldn’t get it up.”

  “Meaning exactly that.”

  “But what he did with the B Team was pretty cruel.”

  “Well, maybe he didn’t feel too good about it. He did have that episode with Tami the prostitute. Maybe he was trying to see if that would work.”

  “I guess it didn’t, though.”

  “The women he did get involved with were broken wings, just like him. I don’t know what a shrink would do with that.”

  “Well, I think I can almost get it,” I said. “If he identified with them, then they were bound to keep getting hurt. Because that was his life.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. But that couldn’t-get-it-up business sure sounds likely. I mean—”

  I laughed and finished for her, “Knowing men and all.”

  But the other part would remain forever as mysterious to us as it had probably been to Jason.

  “What in the hell are we going to do about Adrienne?” she said.

  “Well, I don’t know that we have to do anything. The cops are probably looking for her already. If they aren’t now, they will be after we tell them what Michael said.”

  “Actually, uh— could you indulge me?”

  I was getting a sinking feeling. “Indulge you how?”

  “I had the group read about it. I think we have to find her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. They said it was the right action.”

  I didn’t say anything, thinking it through.

  “I’m involved in this thing, and I can’t just drop out. She may have committed murder with my car and tried to frame me. I can’t explain it exactly— it’s not revenge or anything— I just need to bring the thing full circle.”

  Well, hell. I had crazy obsessions too— usually involving far more trivial matters than this one. “Far be it from me,” I said, “to argue with the cosmos.”

  “Thanks.” Her shoulders sagged, signaling how tense they’d been, how much she’d needed me to say yes.

  “There’s only one thing— we don’t know where to look. Or did the Raiders tell you?”

  “I wish.”

  “Well, let’s go get some cappuccino and see if it jogs anything.”

  “You lawyers. Drugs, drugs, drugs.” I didn’t see her arguing, though.

  The stuff didn’t make us brilliant, but it did get us jump-started.

  Assessing what we had to go on, there were only two possible leads— Adrienne’s dad and Danno. Since her dad had reported her missing, it didn’t seem likely he was hiding her. So Danno first, if we could find him. We called Rob for hi
s address, but he wasn’t home.

  In that case, there was one thing to do— go back to Adrienne’s apartment, the one she’d shared with Jason, and look for a Rolodex. Rob and I had broken in once before, and I had no doubt I could do it again.

  Chris was appalled but invaluable at boosting me through the window, which, in the excitement, no one had thought to board up. She climbed in after me, and our noses told us immediately that this was an unlived-in place, a place starting to mildew and settle into its own bacterial, mossy smells. A quick check revealed we were right— if Adrienne had been back, there was no sign of it.

  There was no Rolodex, though, either in the bedroom or the living room. Impatient, I went into the kitchen to call Rob again on the wall phone in there. A list of ten numbers programmed into the phone had been stuck neatly underneath a plastic envelope provided on the receiver. Number One was “Jason at work,” Number Two was “Dad,” and Number Three was “Danno.”

  “Eureka!” I shouted, but didn’t yet press the button. This was delicate— required face-to-face contact— and I wasn’t at all sure he’d simply invite us over.

  “I’ve got it,” said Chris, grabbing the receiver and pressing the button. “Hi,” she said, “is this Daniel, uh … Piperis. Is the last name right? I couldn’t quite read it. This is UPS, and we have a package for you, but it looks as if it got wet— the ink’s so smeared we can’t make out the address.

  “Where’s it from? Let me look again. New York, it looks like.” Short pause. “Well, I can’t read that either. Look, do you want the package or not? … Okay.” She gestured for a pencil and took down an address. For a minute I thought she was going to have the chutzpah to ask directions, but she hung up. “What a grouch. But no one can resist a mysterious package.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  It would certainly have been no shock to me to learn that Danno lived in a loft South of Market, but in fact he inhabited a shabby building not far from Chinatown and cheek by jowl with the Tenderloin, a slightly unsavory area that drew people who were new in town, who hadn’t much money or time to find a better place.