House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing this a bit?” she asks him, feeling a bit testy. “It’s one article.”

  “Let me tell you about the impact this thing has had already, this ‘one article,’” he says in reply. “I just came from a meeting with Sheriff Walker, my boss, who is an important figure in this county and no one to be trifled with. He asked me point-blank, like he asked every other ranking officer in the department, if I had had any communication whatsoever with Laura Sparks. Fortunately, I was able to look him in the eye and tell him the truth, that I hadn’t. But it was a close call, Kate. Careers have been ruined for less. Anybody finds out I talked to you about this, I’m done.”

  “I’ve never told anybody about your helping me,” she says. “I never would, you know that.”

  He comes close to her. Leaning down, he smells her hair, the nape of her neck. His breath stirs the light hairs, giving her goosebumps. Then he backs away. “We can’t be in contact for a while,” he tells her with some sadness. “Which is good for both of us, in more ways than one, unfortunately.” He turns away for a moment, looks her in the face. “I never talked to you. About this or anything else. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “People have seen us together,” she reminds him, knowing that what he says is true; nevertheless, she doesn’t like hearing it.

  He stares at her. “We were hot for each other. But we didn’t take it anywhere.”

  “No,” she answers him. “I guess we didn’t.” He’s a cop, a married man. She doesn’t mess with married men who are cops. If you do that, you can get hurt.

  “Let’s get rid of this,” he says, flapping her report. He tears it up, until it’s confetti.

  “Get it off your computer,” he orders her as he empties the shreds into his jacket pocket.

  The sharpness in his voice causes her lips to set in a hard tight line.

  Damn it, she thinks: he has no right to talk to her this way, even if what he’s saying is necessary.

  “I stuck my neck out for you,” he reminds her, reading her mind. “And it wasn’t to get you to sleep with me, although I’m glad we did, no regrets there.”

  She feels color rising up her neck, to her face. Whether from anger or embarrassment or both, she’s not sure.

  “I stuck my neck out for you, Kate—now it’s your turn.”

  Dumbly, she nods in agreement. On that he is right. She did her job, she earned her pay. What’s a couple pieces of paper?

  She sits down at her computer, brings up Laura’s file, starts erasing it. Behind her, she hears, the office door opening, then closing with a solid finality.

  “I’m a strong believer in the First Amendment,” the district attorney, Wally Loomis, says, “but there are limits. And frankly, you’re getting close to them with this.”

  He holds a copy of The Grapevine in his hand. He’s seated behind the big oak desk in his office. Standing near him, his back resting against a credenza, is Sheriff Walker. The person Loomis is talking to, Laura Sparks, is sitting opposite him in a hard, straight-backed chair. She’s flanked by her mother on one side and Tom Calloway on the other.

  Laura would like to answer him, but she’s been instructed not to. Tom Calloway will carry the water here.

  Laura doesn’t want to be here at all. Her mother set this meeting up. And having Calloway represent her, that’s a load of crap. He might be an alright lawyer on land-use issues, but he doesn’t know anything about publishing. The paper has a lawyer, Moira Bates, who happens to be a specialist on the First Amendment. But Miranda nixed having Moira here.

  “This is a family affair,” she’d said firmly, aborting any dissent. “Tom is the family lawyer.”

  “It’s about the newspaper,” Laura had answered back anyway. “We have a lawyer, a good one.”

  “If the sheriff or the county decides to sue your paper, you can use whoever you want. Right now I want to smooth things over. Tom is right for that.”

  Calloway and Loomis play poker every Thursday night. That’s what this is all about.

  “Close how?” Calloway says in reply to Loomis’s statement. His tone is mild, but there’s an undercurrent of pugnaciousness behind it. “You bring up First Amendment limitations, you’d better make sure you’re on pretty substantial ground.”

  Laura glances at him. Is he actually going to act like a real lawyer, an advocate?

  “Making knowingly false and defamatory statements is not protected,” Loomis answers.

  Calloway actually laughs. “You’ve got about as much chance of going to court with that as I do of pole-vaulting over the moon,” he says. “To begin with, that falls in the civil realm, not the criminal, which you damn well know, and more importantly, there’s nothing on the face of this editorial, and let me remind you, this is an editorial, not an article, editorials are by definition statements of opinion, there’s nothing in this that is knowingly false, let alone defamatory, and most importantly, how do you know for a fact that this is false?” He picks up the offending article. “What’s knowingly false in this?” he asks.

  “Frank Bascomb was caught red-handed transporting a ton of marijuana,” Sheriff Walker interjects, clearly pissed off. “So by saying he was an ‘unwitting dupe,’ you lose all your credibility.”

  “Not necessarily,” Calloway answers smoothly. “The marijuana was in containers. For all Bascomb knew, it could have been trombones or baseball gloves.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” Walker retorts.

  “I don’t know it and no one’s ever going to, because the guy’s dead, Ralph,” Calloway shoots back, “and he died in your jail. At the least, there’s negligence here. Even you have to admit that.”

  “I don’t admit that,” Walker answers, not giving an inch. “The man killed himself. And no one can prove otherwise.” His frustration erupting, he foolishly adds, “What’s going on with you, Tom? Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “My client’s,” Calloway shoots back. “You have a problem with that?”

  “Back off, Ralph,” Loomis cautions the sheriff. This isn’t going the way he expected it would.

  “I’m here to help you people,” Calloway tells Walker and Loomis, “and so are Miranda and Laura.” He’s successfully called their bluff, now he’s going to rub it in a little, so they’ll remember. “We came down here as a favor to you, but if you’re going to give us grief we can leave.”

  “Let’s everyone calm down,” Loomis says. “Maybe I did come down a little hard on this newspaper-rights thing.”

  Miranda speaks up. “I think you did, Wally.” She reaches over and takes Laura’s hand. “You’re upset. We understand.”

  “Can I say something?” Laura asks. She feels like a schoolgirl pleading permission from the adults.

  “Go ahead,” Loomis tells her.

  “Why are you so sure that what I’m saying is wrong?”

  “You’re attacking my department without any foundation. That’s my concern,” Walker answers.

  “How do you know that?” Calloway asks, following Laura’s lead.

  “Because I talked to every deputy sheriff and warden who might have known anything about this. And none of them spoke with her,” he says, indicating Laura. “There are no ‘unnamed sources.’ She made all this up.”

  Laura steals a glance at her mother. Is Miranda going to give her away?

  Miranda feels Laura looking at her. Still holding her hand, she gives her daughter the briefest of smiles, then turns her attention back to Walker, presenting a blank face to him.

  Laura breathes a silent sigh of relief.

  “Isn’t there a chance one of your people didn’t tell you the truth?” Calloway throws out. “If you’d asked me that question and I had been the source, I sure as hell would’ve lied to save my ass.”

  “My officers don’t lie to me.”

  “I won’t touch that one,” Calloway says with a smile.

  Loomis pushes the focus back to the center. “Let’
s get friendly, folks, since we’re all friends here.” He turns to Laura. “I don’t tell newspapers what to publish. And I apologize if I intimidated you. That wasn’t my intent.” He leans forward. “You don’t have to answer this question, but it would help all of us if you did: do you really have any evidence that there was foul play around Frank Bascomb’s death? That it wasn’t a suicide? Because if you do, you are being irresponsible by not coming forth with it. And that could constitute criminal action, serious action.”

  Laura bites her lip. “No,” she admits. “I don’t.”

  “But someone did tell you it was possible.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell us who that is?”

  Again, Laura looks covertly at her mother. And again, Miranda’s face is blank.

  Calloway answers for her. “Laura can’t betray a source, Wally. That goes against the foundations of a free press.”

  Loomis nods. “I thought … in the interest of clarity, of getting at justice, she might want to,” he says disingenuously.

  “Wally …” Calloway chides him.

  “I don’t,” Laura tells Loomis, very serious. “And I won’t.”

  Loomis nods again. “Can we go off the record?” he asks.

  Calloway looks at Laura and Miranda. “What’s your question, Wally?”

  “Is there going to be follow-up to this?” he asks, brandishing the newspaper. “Should we be bracing ourselves for another bombshell?”

  Everyone turns to Laura. She feels her mother’s hand on her own, increasing the pressure.

  “I’ve had my say,” she tells them after some hesitation.

  There is a stillness in the room.

  Laura has to pee something fierce.

  Miranda releases her grip on Laura’s hand.

  The telephone call awakens Kate out of a troubled, dark, dream-filled sleep. Completion dreams, having to get somewhere, not being able to, losing your way, swimming against the tide, caught in quicksand, in locked-up subway turnstiles, traffic jams, train wrecks.

  She sits bolt upright, lost for a second, not knowing she’s in her own bed, her own place.

  “Shit!”

  Late-night calls always frighten her—the fear of the chilling message, the hopelessness of separation—but this time she’s glad to be woken up.

  “Hello?” Her voice is Lauren Bacall—thick with sleep. She grabs for her bedside glass of water, takes a sip.

  “Detective Blanchard?” A man’s voice, slightly Latino-accented.

  With trepidation: “Yes?”

  “You got a bad memory on you, lady.”

  “Who is this?” Illogically her eyes dart around the darkened room, as if the voice were coming from some hiding place within the walls.

  “We warned you to keep quiet.”

  Without thinking she replies, “I did.” And wants to bite her tongue.

  Shit—what did she say that for? She doesn’t know who the voice on the other end belongs to, but now she’s admitted to something, even if it was nothing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, whoever you are,” she says, trying to change course. “Now who is this?” she asks again.

  “You know who.”

  “Don’t call me anymore.”

  “We don’t want to. You ain’t offering us no choice.”

  “I heard you loud and clear the first time,” she says, hearing her voice ringing out in her ears. Calm down, don’t let him hear the panic.

  “Listen. Lady detective …You still there?”

  She should hang up on him. Slam the phone down, call Herrera—fuck, she can’t do that anymore—call somebody. Get this fear out of her life.

  “Yes,” she answers. “I’m still here.”

  “Good.” She can hear his breathing: low, slow, steady. “This is not your fight, remember? Leave it alone.” He pauses. Again, the slow, steady breathing. “We told you once, now we’ve told you twice. You don’t get a third warning.”

  The phone clicks in her ear.

  Her heart is pounding like it is going to break through her chest. Bastards. Sons of bitches. They can’t intimidate her like this: they can’t.

  At least she didn’t tell them she had resigned the case. It would have been the smart thing to do, since she has; but she doesn’t want them to have the satisfaction of knowing they blew her down.

  A small satisfaction, but her own.

  Miranda flies United Express into the Oakland airport. It’s closer to the city than SFO, and it’s less likely she’ll see anyone that she knows in the Oakland terminal. Normally she would take one of the family planes, but she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s coming up this time, not even her own pilot.

  She could have conducted her business over the telephone, but a personal meeting will better convey the gravity of her concern. Also, the family has some business interests in the Bay Area, and she likes to shop here as well.

  She hails a taxi, gives her destination. The cabbie is a blackened-tooth Russian who drives his beat-up Mercury like a kamikaze pilot. They drive across the Bay Bridge into the city. He pulls up in front of a restored Victorian mansion near the Presidio that’s been converted into offices.

  She’s wearing a business suit with a slit skirt that rides two-thirds up her thighs as she gets out. She tips generously. The driver takes a long, appreciative look at her legs and backside before peeling off into traffic.

  The secretary, a woman about Miranda’s age who looks a generation older, ushers her into Terwilliger’s office. He owns the building, it’s his firm. His personal office is large, octagonal-shaped, filled with mementos Terwilliger has picked up while working on cases around the world. The sun refracts through the beveled-glass windows.

  Terwilliger Investigations is not a large agency; at any given time no more than a dozen operatives. But they’re the best in the world at what they do, and they charge a fee commensurate with the quality of their work: two hundred dollars an hour and up, plus expenses. And they turn away five times as many cases as they take.

  “Mrs. Sparks.” He comes to her from behind his desk, shakes her hand. He’s a big man in his late forties, power forward—size. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Thank you.” She sits across his massive desk from him, her legs crossed. Her relationship with this man is strictly business. She’s never given him the signal that he should make a play for her.

  “This is a bit unusual,” he tells her. She had called the day before and outlined the problem. “We don’t normally do surveillance on people in our own line of work.”

  “I understand. But this is an emergency.”

  “I see.” Even for an agency as much in demand as his, the Sparks family is special. Aside from their wealth and position in the state, they have been steady clients from the beginning of his practice. Some years he’s billed them over a quarter of a million dollars: serious money. The Sparkses are clients to whom being loyal is good policy.

  “Someone has hired her to check up on my family. I need to know what she knows, if anything.”

  “Is there something in particular you think she’s looking at?”

  “The incident regarding the dope trafficking on our property, of course. And the aftermath. That’s my main concern.”

  “Do you want background on this investigator as well? What’s her name”—he opens a manila folder on his desk—“Blanchard?” he says, reading the name. “Where she comes from, her credentials, family life, that sort of thing?”

  “I want whatever you can dig up on her,” Miranda says forcefully.

  “You don’t want her finding out things that could be harmful.”

  “That is precisely what I don’t want.”

  He pulls a legal pad and ballpoint towards him.

  “Okay,” he tells her. “We’ll get to it right away.”

  “How long will it be before you can give me what I’m looking for?” Miranda asks.

  “I’ll have a detailed report to you within a week.”


  Another taxi drops Miranda off at the St. Francis. The family maintains an apartment in Pacific Heights, but she’ll stay in a hotel tonight to maintain the secrecy of her mission. No one she knows would stay at the St. Francis, it’s too large and commercial. To play it extra-safe she even takes her suite under an alias, “Mrs. Torres,” after the original owner of the family ranch. She’ll pay the bill in cash.

  Room service brings up a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, with two glasses: Veuve Clicquot ’85, the best the house offers. She draws a bath, and while she’s waiting for it to fill she places a phone call.

  “I’m in town,” she tells the party at the other end of the line, “the St. Francis. Suite 2312.” She listens to the other end of the line. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Hanging up, she disrobes where she stands, pours herself a glass of champagne. At the vanity in the bedroom she puts her hair up, then goes into the bathroom and steps into the tub, sinking to her neck in the oil-scented hot bathwater.

  She’s toweling off when there’s a knock on the door. Throwing on the courtesy robe, she walks across the living room and opens the door, tendrils of hair at her neck still wet from her bath.

  “What took you so long?” she asks Blake Hopkins.

  He smiles as he looks at her. “I left the office as soon as you called. This is the big city—we have a problem called traffic.”

  Taking his face in her hands, she pulls him to her in a kiss, the robe coming open, her moist body dampening his shirt and tie. Then she leads him in, closing and locking the door behind them, the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside handle. As they head for the bedroom her robe drops to the floor next to her dress, undergarments, and shoes.

  10

  SLOUGHING THE PAST

  THE WOMEN SIT IN their circle. Almost all of them sit in the same chair every week, consciously. It gives them the security of being grounded, at least in this one part of their lives. Being grounded, if only for a few hours a week, is important to them, because most of the time they aren’t.