House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  “Four,” Wanda corrects her. “You haven’t seen us for four months, Mom.”

  “It hasn’t been that long.” It can’t have been that long.

  “Four months,” the girl states forcefully.

  “If you say so. I couldn’t help it, you know I …” She can’t finish. That’s why they’re here, with her sister, instead of in Santa Barbara, with her—because she can’t help it. “I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

  “We miss you, Mom,” Wanda tells her.

  “And we worry about you,” Sophia adds.

  They worry about her. Who’s the mother here, she thinks, and who’s the children?

  “It’s going to work out,” she vows, sitting up straight. “I’m calling the judge first thing tomorrow morning, and I’m not leaving here until I see him.”

  She looks into their faces: that should make them happy. Their mother is going to take care of things now.

  Their expressions don’t show happiness. More like resignation.

  “I am this time, I really mean it.”

  Even as the words leave her mouth she hears how tinny and hollow they sound. Like coaxing a five-year-old to bed with a promise of candy tomorrow. These are grown people, almost, they have to be dealt with honestly.

  “You’ve said that before,” Wanda reminds her.

  “This time … I will.”

  “Great,” Wanda says with a singular lack of enthusiasm. “So if he lets us live with you again, where will we live?”

  “How will you support us?” Sophia adds.

  “My apartment’s okay …”

  “It’s only one bedroom,” Wanda interjects.

  “I can get a bigger one. That’s no big deal.”

  The girl nods.

  “And my job is my job. It’s free-lance, there’s no guarantees, but I’ve been making good money lately, I just got paid twenty thousand for one job.”

  Wanda stares at her intently. “Is that the going rate for almost getting killed, Mom?”

  A huge wave of emotion passes over her—a drowning wave, guilt, fear, anger, emotion, pridefulness—and she has to take a deep cleansing breath to stop herself from doing something harmful, like lashing out at them, or getting up and walking out.

  “That’s not …” She exhales, sighing deeply. “Shit happens, kids. What can I tell you?”

  “Mom,” Wanda says. “We worry about you. A lot.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “We can’t help it.”

  “I’m not your responsibility. It’s the other way around.”

  “How can we not worry about you,” Sophia asks plaintively, “when you don’t come up to see us for months and when you finally do you look like someone who got hit by a truck?”

  “It won’t happen again,” she says firmly, trying to reassure them, and herself as well.

  “How can you promise that?” Wanda asks her. She leans towards Kate, her face inches from her mother’s. “Do you know what it was like for us, all those years? Listening to you and Eric screaming at each other, scared shitless he’d kill you, or maybe us?”

  “He wouldn’t … that wouldn’t …” The ground under her feet is shifting, like standing on a sidewalk that’s splitting from a volcano.

  “He almost did. Isn’t that why we’re living with Julie and Walt?”

  “Eric’s gone. He’s out of our lives.”

  “But you’re still doing the same stuff, Mom,” Sophia points out to her. “In your line of work you could get killed any day. How do you think we used to feel, wondering every night whether you were going to come home safe or not? Or even come home at all?”

  “I could get a different job,” she practically pleads.

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know.” She’s flustered. “Plenty of things. I have plenty of qualifications.”

  “And what about school?” Wanda continues.

  “They have schools in Santa Barbara. I’m sure they’re as good as the ones here.”

  Wanda throws her hands up in exasperation. “I’m a senior in high school, Mom. I’m the captain of my team, I’m taking my SATs next month. I’m not going to move in the middle of my senior year in high school, you’ve got to be crazy.”

  Her voice feels choked in her throat. “It’s just that I miss you so much!” she cries out in terrible anguish.

  “And we miss you, just as much!” Wanda tells her.

  “More!” chimes in Sophia.

  “But we have lives, Mom,” Wanda explains. “A lot of stuff. You just can’t waltz in here and tell us everything’s going to be fine and then just blow out.”

  And she’d thought Wanda’s essay was heavy. This is like setting off a stick of dynamite inside your brain.

  “You can’t expect us to just up and quit everything just because we miss each other,” Wanda continues. “That’s not practical. That’s not how life works.”

  “You’re right,” she admits. “You’re right about everything you say. I was wrong. It was a dream, I guess, but I shouldn’t have expected … I don’t know what I expected, but I shouldn’t have … whatever …” she ends lamely.

  “We’re just kids, Mom,” Sophia tells her gently. “That’s all we are. We need a place to go home to that’s safe. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “More than anything in the world, that’s what I want for you.”

  “You’re our mom,” Wanda says. “You’ll always be our mom. But it’s easier with Julie and Walt, we aren’t living in the combat zone anymore. We can think beyond surviving.” Hesitantly: “I wasn’t an honor student when we lived with Eric. I didn’t play sports, I didn’t think about going to college even.”

  “Me neither,” Sophia adds.

  “I didn’t realize …” Jesus, what else didn’t she know about them? Did she know anything? Were they even there?

  “I could get another job,” she pleads.

  “Just be with us more,” Wanda pleads with her. “That’s what we need from you now.”

  They kiss goodbye outside the school gates. You can’t go inside the building unless you’re authorized.

  “I’ll be up again soon. Less than a month next time.”

  “Great,” they respond.

  They hug and kiss and then walk away from her, looking back one time to wave, then disappearing in the sea of their own kind. She stands there for a moment, leaning against her car.

  She’s been blindsided. She’d expected opposition from Julie, who’s “come to love them like a mother,” as if she could truly know. But not from the girls, her girls, who she raised up from birth, by herself.

  All those years, listening to you and Eric screaming at each other, scared shitless he’d kill you, or maybe us …

  That’s why the girls can’t get back with her, because they see how she lives, it’s written in the scars and bruises she’s carrying right now, it scares the living shit out of them.

  And it should. It’s a hard, bitter admission to face, but there’s no ducking this: her daughters are better off living apart from her.

  If she wants them back for real she has to get out of this work life and find a new one, something where putting yourself in the pathway of getting killed for a paycheck isn’t why you get up in the morning.

  Cafe Trieste was serving cappuccino back when it was something only Italians drank. She sits in a corner with her back to the wall, a latte, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and an apple bearclaw on the table. She leafs through the Examiner, not really reading it.

  She isn’t ready to drive back, even though there’s nothing here for her. If the water in the bay wasn’t so cold she’d go for a swim. That would be the best thing to do right now. Swim until she can’t lift her arms over her shoulders, then drift back to shore on the tide, letting it take her wherever. She doesn’t take notice of the people who glance at her face. She doesn’t care about that anymore.

  She finishes her mini-breakfast and leaves, wandering aimlessly throu
gh the streets, no destination in mind, walking. It’s nice to be in a city again where you can walk. She used to walk all over Berkeley and Oakland, she only used her car to get out of town. Maybe that’s why it’s lasted so long.

  Down Grant St., through Chinatown, in and out of shops, watching the shoppers, old Chinese ladies buying vegetables and ducks, tourists taking pictures of each other, men and women standing on the sidewalk gossiping. They’re part of a community. They have a place. She doesn’t have a place. The loneliness, all of a sudden, is overwhelming.

  Without realizing it, she’s left Chinatown and is on Montgomery St., a couple blocks east, the center of the old financial district back when San Francisco was the business hub of the West Coast. The buildings are brick: solid, imposing.

  It’s nice, being in the city. But it isn’t nice being in the city alone. When she comes up in a couple of weeks to see the girls again she’ll bring Cecil with her. The girls will like him, they’ll see that there’s substance to her life. And she’ll show him her side of the bay, like they talked about that first night they were together.

  Time to leave. She starts to walk back up towards where she left her car, on Vallejo.

  The number on the building in front of her triggers something, some memory in her head. Was she ever inside it before? Did she know someone who worked here, a lawyer she might have come in contact with while she was on the force?

  She doesn’t think so; but there’s something there, some fly buzzing in her brain. She pushes open the heavy pneumatic door and goes inside.

  The entryway is small, dark, high-ceilinged. Marble floors, cherrywood-paneled walls. Rich in feel, more like the foyer of an expensive apartment building than that of an office building. Private bankers would have offices here, five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyers.

  In the back, near the bank of elevators, there’s a security desk manned by an old guard wearing a uniform that’s been dry-cleaned a thousand times. He looks up from the People magazine he’s reading and smiles pleasantly at her.

  “Can I help you, miss?”

  If her face registered on him he gives no sign, he didn’t even flinch.

  “I’m not sure. I think I’ve been here before, but I can’t remember when or why. What sort of businesses have offices here?”

  “Different kinds. Used to be lawyers almost exclusively, but now we’ve got some real estate folks, a direct-marketing company, whatever.” He smiles like a naughty schoolboy. “Even used to be a mail-order porno business here, back in the sixties when things were wilder. But they folded, unfortunately. There were some pretty women used to come through, and back when I was young enough to do more than just appreciate them.”

  “How long have you worked here?” she asks him.

  “Fifty years,” he says proudly. “Got a job here the week I got mustered out of the Navy, right after WW II. Been here ever since. Only civilian job I’ve ever had as a grown man. This building supported a wife and three kids for me. I worked my way up to running the place, building manager,” he rambles on, “but I’m too old now, too much responsibility. The owner keeps me on, though, not that I’m worth a day’s pay anymore.”

  “That was decent of them.” You’ve got to watch these old guys, you let them get started and they can talk for hours.

  “Yes, I’m lucky. I’m seventy-eight years old,” he informs her.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Thank you. Some days I feel it.”

  “Some days I do, too,” she says.

  “So what is it you think you’re looking for here?” he asks again.

  She shakes her head. “Probably nothing. I’m not too together this morning.”

  He points across the hall. “There’s a directory. Why don’t you take a look? Might jog your memory.”

  The directory has about twenty listings. She scans them: law office, law office, accountancy firm, travel bureau, telemarketing firm. Some more law offices. Nothing out of the ordinary. A mutual funds company. Some kind of holding company, whatever that is. Two more law offices.

  Her eyes move back up the list to the holding company. Bay Area Holding Company. The name rings a bell; but from where? She scrunches her brain, but she can’t remember.

  She reads the rest of the list. Nothing. No listing of the owner or manager. She crosses back to the guard desk, her heels echoing on the marble floor.

  “Thanks for your help,” she tells the old guard.

  “Anytime,” he says. “Find what you’re looking for?”

  “No. I think it was a case of mistaken identity.” Casually she asks, “You said you used to manage the building?”

  “For over twenty years,” he says proudly.

  “Who manages it now?”

  “The Bay Area Holding Company.” He points to the directory. “They’re up on the third floor, but there’s never anybody there. Just a small office with some phones. So they have a presence in the building.”

  “Do you know where their main office is located?”

  He shakes his head. “No. You might look them up in the phone book.”

  “Thanks.” She hesitates, then asks another question. “You mentioned the owners kept you on? After you retired from your position as building manager?”

  He laughs. “I didn’t retire. I was replaced, too old to do the job. I’m not complaining, mind you,” he adds quickly. “They’ve treated me fair and square.”

  “But it’s the same owners.”

  “Oh, sure. Same owners since before I started here.”

  “They must be nice people.”

  “The best. Let’s face it,” he says, “they didn’t have to keep me on. This is a makeshift job so I can keep drawing a paycheck. Man draws a paycheck, he keeps his dignity.”

  “Yes.” She smiles at him. “Well, nice talking to you.”

  “And to you.”

  She turns to go, then turns back to him. “By the way—what did you say the name of the owner was?”

  “I didn’t. You didn’t ask.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “No—but I can tell you. Sparks is the name. A woman, actually, owns the place. The building’s been in her family for a long time.”

  Sparks? A woman?

  “This Mrs. Sparks—is she from Santa Barbara?”

  He’s surprised. “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve heard of her,” she covers quickly. “They’re a prominent family.”

  Miranda Sparks owns this building. Jesus fucking Christ.

  “They are,” he confirms in a proud tone of voice, as if by association he, too, has prominence. Boastfully: “They used to own dozens of buildings in this city.”

  “They don’t anymore?”

  “No. Just this one and one other, over by Telegraph Hill.”

  “They sold the others?” she prods.

  He shakes his head. “Sold some. Took some big losses. Lost some others outright. Bank foreclosures, bankruptcy filings. Building by building, over the years.”

  “The real estate market’s been bad in California,” she sympathizes.

  “That’s not why,” he snorts.

  “Oh?”

  “They blew it. They’re bad about managing their money. I told Mrs. Sparks that, when she relieved me of my duties. But she didn’t want to hear. A tough woman, her. Kind of woman doesn’t let anything get in her way.” His voice takes on a bitter, angry tone.

  That’s Miranda, all right. “So the Sparks family definitely owns this specific building, though,” she confirms.

  “Yep. But not for long. You watch and see.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason they lost all their other properties,” he says prissily. The man is a self-righteous exemplar of the poor-but-honest school, she realizes belatedly—forever bitter. A PI’s dream—you get them to open up, it’s a deluge. “They squander their money.”

  She thinks back to the private jet, the casual meal she and Miranda had that probably cost over a
thousand dollars. The perks of wealth, mindless indulgence. That role Miranda plays now—how she made it “the hard way,” and appreciates things in ways her husband and his family don’t—is so much bullshit.

  “I tried to tell Mrs. Sparks that, but she didn’t want to hear it. Hey, who am I?” he says, the bitterness in full flower now. “I’m just the ex-building manager. What the hell do I know?”

  Back to her car, running all the way. She snatches her PowerBook out of the trunk, fidgets impatiently while it boots up, types in “Bay Area Holding Company,” waits a few seconds while the computer cross-references the name.

  Bay Area Holding Company. The security that had been posted for Wes Gillroy’s bail.

  Wes Gillroy—the third man on the boat. The sole survivor.

  17

  THE BIG SETUP

  “THIS ISN’T KOSHER.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not Jewish.”

  “That’s funny. You don’t look Jewish,” Ted Saperstein tells Kate.

  Kate is sitting in a booth at Jerry’s Deli in Studio City in the San Fernando Valley with Saperstein and Louis Pitts, her Los Angeles-based ex-CIA detective colleague, the one who swept her office for bugs after her one-night stand with Miranda Sparks. Pitts, who definitely doesn’t look Jewish, is wolfing down a four-inch-thick pastrami on rye.

  “This isn’t kosher, either, strictly speaking,” Louis says between mouthfuls, indicating his sandwich, “’cause they serve ham and stuff like that in here, but who’s complaining?”

  He’s here as an intermediary for Kate, helping her out by introducing her to Saperstein as a professional courtesy, because she isn’t heavy enough in the profession to be on an equal footing with a man of Saperstein’s standing. “How’s your fish?” Louis asks her.

  “Great,” she mumbles, wiping her mouth, which is full. She’s eating lox and bagels, heavy on the cream cheese, with tomato and onion. Swallowing, she tells him, “there are certain basics you can’t get in a place like Santa Barbara, and good deli is one of them.”

  They aren’t talking about the food. They’re discussing her problem, and how to solve it.

  “I’m going to have to call in a few favors, you understand,” Saperstein prefaces, spooning up some matzo ball with his chicken soup. In opening their discussion by telling her that her request wasn’t “kosher,” he was informing her up front that it would be difficult, perhaps costly, and potentially illegal, parts of it anyway. “And I may have to spread some goodies around, too.”