“How about five o’clock? Berkeley Pier?”
“Perfect. Red, I’m going to bring a friend with me, but he’ll stay in the car. He’s a little protective of me since I was attacked.” I roll my eyes at Lopez, who is giving me the thumbs-up.
There is silence.
“Okay, I guess I understand that. As long as he stays in the car ’cause I don’t want the word to spread I’m a snitch.”
“Fair enough.”
“Take a walk on the fishing pier. I’ll find you.”
I spend the rest of the day trying to track down possible sources of sodium pentothal. My initial research shows that someone would need a medical license and a DEA certificate to buy the drug. Unless you worked in a hospital or were a doctor, it’d be pretty hard to get the drug. In America. If you lived in Europe? No sweat.
Someone could smuggle it into the U.S., right?
Annalisa mentioned frequent weekend getaways to Europe. Thinking of Annalisa reminds me that I need to talk to her. Soon.
RIGHT BEFORE FIVE, I pull into the dirt parking lot at the Berkeley Pier. A few cars and trucks are parked, some with beds full of fishing buckets. Lopez followed me in his car. His passenger-side window is open so I lean in. “Okay, here goes nothing.”
“Don’t worry, man. I got my eye on you.” He holds up his camera. “Nobody is going on or off that pier without my seeing him. Me and my little friend.”
He says it with an accent straight out of Scarface and pats his side.
“Thanks.” He flicks on the radio to the classical-music station, cranks up Bach and points his telephoto lens toward the pier. I straighten up. My head still hurts, and I feel a bit woozy, but nothing is going to stop me from meeting Red this time.
As I walk to the pier, the wind picks up, and I gulp in the salty, fishy cool air that whips my hair back from my face. In the distance, the San Francisco skyline makes my heart soar, and off to the right is Alcatraz, with the Golden Gate Bridge behind it. The sunlight reflects off the waves, licking them with silver sparks that match the billowing clouds overhead. I shield my eyes with my palm, take a deep breath, and step onto the worn wooden planks, heading toward the water.
Chapter 35
SEVERAL MEN LEAN over the rail at the end of the pier, either looking into the murky depths or casting a line. I plant myself between two men, propping my forearms on the wooden railing. The wind has lashed the water below into a gray froth.
A few feet away, a man with a heavily lined face, thick glasses, and a black stocking cap looks over at me. He gives me a wry smile and makes his way over to me. He uses a cane and looks to be in his sixties.
“I’m Red,” he says, sticking out a leather-gloved hand. A wisp of gray hair sticks out from his cap. His square chin is grizzly, with a stubbly gray beard forming. His small frame is swallowed by a big, thick, blue down jacket and baggy jeans with workman’s boots.
“Gabriella Giovanni,” I say, gripping his hand. “Thanks again for meeting me.”
“Like I said, I ain’t no saint, but I can’t abide people who hurt children.”
I nod. My head is throbbing now, and I keep thinking about the big bottle of aspirin in the car. I try to focus. This guy knows something about Caterina’s killer.
“Well, I won’t waste your time,” he says, gripping the railing beside me and looking out at the Bay. “Here’s what I know. I was serving a rap for robbery. I was locked up and down this coast since I was eighteen. I never knew any better, couldn’t keep my nose out of trouble. I’m over all that now. I don’t have much longer on this Earth, and I aim to make the most of it. I finally figured out, money isn’t what I need. It’s family. I’m going to move down south to be around my kids. That way I get to know my grandkids. Those little ones love me. God knows why. They don’t care that I screwed up and wasn’t the best dad. They are my chance to do it all over again. Know what I mean?”
I already like this guy.
“Well, as I was saying, I have been in many a jail cell. Not nothing against any people, mind you. Stupid stuff, like passing bad checks and so on. But there was one time, only last year. I was housed with this guy, Mickey. He was a good guy. A little goofy—he was a head case, you know, a little mental. But not violent. Serving time for burglary, nothing violent. At least that’s the ways he told it to me.
“Anyways, he was a good storyteller. Made the time pass fast in the joint with all his yarns. One day he told me that before me, he’d been locked up once with a really bad dude. And this guy, name Frank, was about the worst of the worst if you know what I mean. He was bragging to Mickey that he liked to take little girls and do bad things to them, then—kill them.”
Frank.
My stomach does a flip-flop, but I nod at Red to continue.
“So Mickey says one day he was reading the Bay Herald—he’s from Pleasanton, like me, and liked to keep up on the hometown news. There was a story he was reading out loud to Frank. He read the title, then your name—Gabriella Giovanni.
“Well, when he says your name, Mickey said Frank jumped up off his bunk and ripped the paper out of his hands. He laughs and laughs. Then tells Mickey he was the one grabbed your sister all them years ago. He said, and I’m sorry to tell you this, but he said too bad you were all grown-up because he wouldn’t mind meeting you one day, too. Sorry, but you ought to know that part, too.”
I nod grimly. My knuckles are turning white from gripping the rail on the pier. “Go on. I can take it.”
“Well, when Mickey tells me this story, I immediately recognized your name. Since I grew up here, I always read the Bay Herald even when I was in the can. You do a good job. I’ve even got myself a little choked up once or twice reading one of your stories.”
“Thanks.” I’m not sure what else to say to that. I look down at the water below, watching a seagull hovering right above the waves.
“Anyhoo, this Frank scumbag was laughing, saying that you or the cops would never figure out who took the little girl—your sister. He talked about all the horrible things he did, but I’ll spare you those details.” Red sighs and looks off into the distance. “Mickey didn’t know anything else. He’d bunked with Frank maybe three years ago or something. He didn’t know whether Frank was still locked up or what. I seen last year that you killed that guy—that serial-killer guy—cause you thought he had taken your sister. But he wasn’t the one, was he? He killed all them other young innocents, though. Hope he’s rotting in hell.”
“I hope so, too,” I say, watching as other seagulls swooped down to join their friends. They keep getting closer and closer, hovering right in front of us, so close I feel like I can reach out and touch them even though I know they are actually several feet away. Then, I notice. It looks like they are all watching me out of the corner of their eyes. A shiver runs down my spine.
“That’s all I know,” Red says in the silence. “But I needed to tell you all of this.” He clamps his lips together and nods. I turn to face him. His eyes are kind and tired.
“Did your friend ever mention Frank’s last name?”
“Nope.”
“Know how I can get ahold of Mickey?”
“All’s I know is that he’s from Pleasanton, and his last name’s Menendez.”
“Where was Mickey when he met this Frank guy.”
“Napa.” The state psychiatric hospital. “Told you he was a little goofy in the head.”
The hospital admits severely mentally ill people who cannot make it in society, but also houses mentally ill criminals, including sexually violent predators who the court believes will attack others if they aren’t locked up. Convicts are sometimes sentenced to the hospital as part of their parole.
“Were they in the MDO program?”
“Huh?”
“The mentally disordered offenders program.”
&
nbsp; “Probably.”
“Did Mickey say what Frank’s deal was?”
Red looks off into the distance, trying to remember.
“It was a burglary rap. I remember ’cause it was the same thing as Mickey. But it was more than that. It was something like him breaking into women’s houses when they weren’t home and doing nasty stuff with their underwear and leaving a mess for the women when they got back home.”
“Lovely.”
“I told you he was a piece of work. Well, there you go, then, you got a name—or part of a name. What you do with it now is your business. I have done my job.”
I turn and gaze into the thrashing gray-and-white-flecked waves. The seagulls have left, swooping down to where a fisherman has dumped his bait bucket.
After twenty-three years, a new lead. A wave of excitement rushes through me, making me anxious to leave and go try to find this Frank fuck. I wonder if I’m foolish to get my hopes up. Jack Dean Johnson spent months taunting me—saying he had taken Caterina. It was all a lie. It’s true that he kidnapped and killed twenty other girls, just not my sister.
“Well, I really appreciate your meeting me and telling me this, Red,” I say, and stick out my hand. “And good luck with your new life in L.A.”
“Thanks. I’ll be packing up and leaving in the morning. You were the last thing on my list of things to do around here. I made some amends, and talking to you has helped clear my conscience. I hope you get that son of a bitch.”
“Me, too.”
Walking back to the parking lot, I feel spent, exhausted, as if I have cried my eyes dry. But at the same time, adrenaline is shooting through my limbs. I lean in the car window and give Lopez the abbreviated version.
Back in my car, I dial the newsroom, so I can catch the news researchers before they leave for the night. Now that I’m armed with my information, I’m eager, even though my so-called information essentially consists of one name: Frank. I know it’s not much, but it’s something.
On the phone, I tell the head librarian, Liz, everything Red told me. I ask if she can track down anything about Frank and his bunkmate, Mickey Menendez, who now lives in Pleasanton. Liz is the best news librarian west of the Mississippi. That’s why I am crushed when she gives a big sigh.
“Menendez should be easy as pie, but that Frank . . . no last name, huh? Oh honey, that’s like finding an honest man at a political convention. There are a lot of burglary convictions out there. I’ll see if I can track anything down that has to do with women’s underwear, though.”
“Liz? This is personal.”
Ever since I killed Jack Dean Johnson, everyone at the newspaper and probably everyone in the entire county knows about my sister. For years, I kept it to myself. It’s a relief not to have to do that anymore.
“Figured,” she says. “Don’t want you to get your hopes up too high.”
I’m stuck in traffic out of downtown Oakland. I see Lopez’s car behind me. She’s right. It’s a long shot. But I won’t give up. “Doesn’t it help that we know a bit about his conviction and the fact that he was in Napa sometime over the past five years?”
“Sugar, you better believe I’ll do anything to find this guy for you. You know I will,” she says. “What about your boyfriend? Cops have access to all sorts of criminal databases, you know.”
I’m thrown by her question. Heat flares across my cheeks. How can she not know that Donovan is in jail? It was splashed all over the front page of every paper in the state, including ours. Then she remembers. “Oh, that’s right. Geez, I’m sorry. Let me get on this right now. I’ll do my best,” she says. I can hear the remorse in her voice.
I hang up, feeling low. I realize I may be no closer to finding Caterina’s killer than before. And Donovan is in jail. Even though I know he didn’t kill anyone, how am I going to prove he didn’t? I don’t know.
Chapter 36
THE SUN IS setting as I pull up to the rectory, not sure where to go and what to do. In less than thirty seconds, Father Liam is in front of me at the end of a long driveway. Lopez, who has followed me the entire way back from the pier, waves once he sees Father Liam and peels off to head home.
I pull down the driveway. At the back, a small garage backs up against the hillside. The garage door is slowly rising. Father Liam smiles and gestures for me to enter the garage. He follows my car on foot into the large garage and closes the door behind us.
“Hello, so nice to see you again,” he says, opening my car door for me. “Hope you’re hungry.”
My head hurts so bad the thought of food makes me feel sick. All I want to do is sleep for a week, but instead, I smile. I feel less awkward once we are inside, and I realize I’m not the only houseguest. A visiting priest from India, Father Michael, is, also, staying in the rectory.
Father Liam explains that there are six bedrooms in the rectory: four downstairs and two upstairs. He and Father Michael are downstairs and he’s put me upstairs to give me some privacy. I remember that the study, where he danced, is upstairs.
“Excuse us, Father Michael, I’m going to show Gabriella her room so she can freshen up for dinner.”
I follow him up the stairs.
“I hope you don’t mind. Sean told me you had a key under your mat, so I took the liberty of stopping by your house and packing a few of your belongings. And I picked up your cat from Sean’s place.”
My small duffel bag is on the bed, and Dusty is meowing from his crate on the floor of the attached bathroom. Small silver bowls, one with water and one with cat food, are already set up on the floor near Dusty’s crate.
Father Liam closes the door behind us, then reaches into the top drawer of the nightstand and withdraws a big black handgun. The only thing I can tell about it is that it’s a semiautomatic.
“This pistol is called a 9 x 19 mm Grandpower K100, Slovak. Hold it. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with it.”
He gives me a brief tutorial. When he is done, he sets it on the nightstand.
“I want you to sleep with it right here. Every night, when you go to bed, I want you to lock this door.” He points to the bedroom door, which I realize with surprise is reinforced steel with two dead bolts.
“Don’t worry,” he says, leaning down and giving me a small kiss on my forehead. “You’re safe as a baby, here. I don’t mean to scare you. I want you to be prepared in the highly unlikely event that someone gets through me. But that’s not going to happen. When you’re ready, come down. Dinner is in twenty minutes.”
I watch him walk away and am not afraid. I’d like to see anyone try to tackle this man of God.
I POP SOME more aspirin and go to unpack my duffel bag. Set gently on the very top of all my clothes is the picture of me and Caterina I keep by my bed. Tears sting my eyes as I set it gently on the nightstand by the gun. I hang my clothes in the small wood armoire. It’s strange to think that the priest went to my place and packed my bag. He didn’t do too badly. But remembering his designer duds, I’m not surprised. I have enough to last at least a week if I plan it right: He packed the essentials, which include my comfy flannel men’s pajamas, a pair of worn and soft jeans, a white blouse, a floral blouse, gray pants, a blue, flowered dress, a bulky gray sweater, and a black dress.
After settling in, I change into the flowered dress, wash my face, and head downstairs. Father Michael is already seated at the large dining-room table. The aspirin has kicked in, and I’m now ravenous. The crystal chandelier and long, tapered candles softly light the rectory dining room. The mammoth mahogany table gleams, and I’m worried the condensation on my crystal water glass will mar it, so I scoot it over onto my lacy placemat.
“Voilà!” Father Liam says, coming through the swinging door from the small galley-style kitchen, balancing three soup tureens on his arms. He places butternut squash soup in front of me and pours a deep red cab
ernet into my wineglass.
I dip my spoon into the creamy, sunset-colored soup and raise it to my lips. It is so good I pace myself, so I don’t slurp the entire thing up in one second.
“This is amazing.”
“It’s simple,” Father Liam says with a shrug. “A little squash and milk.”
“You’re too modest. It’s fantastic.”
I’m filled with guilt, thinking of Donovan behind bars, eating jail slop, while I sit here warm and cozy, dining on a gourmet meal and sipping wine.
Father Michael, who is East Indian, but grew up in Rhodesia, regales us with tales of his life there. He had a pet crocodile named Samuel. As a child, he ran with the monkeys and played in the waterfalls for fun. The crocodile is now full-grown, living in back of his uncle’s store in Rhodesia.
I want to learn more about Father Liam, but being the perfect host that he is, he expertly steers the conversation away from himself at every turn. He is an adept conversationalist, focusing on listening more than speaking. Few people have mastered this skill.
The most I manage to pry out of him is that he came to America after abandoning his dreams of becoming a professional dancer when he injured his foot. Apparently, the injury wasn’t from dancing, either. Some kids in the neighborhood beat him up, hitting his foot with baseball bats until it disintegrated.
“Good God!” I say, forgetting for a moment who I’m talking to.
His parents immediately shipped him to America, where he first lived in New York City and worked for a distant uncle. He’s a bit vague on what that job for his uncle entailed.
I try to steer to conversation back toward him.
“What happened to those kids? Did they get arrested?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,” he said with a sad smile. “Let’s talk about you. You are a much more interesting topic, don’t you think, Father?” He turned to the other priest.
“Fine, but one more thing,” I say, not giving in that easy. “You have to admit you aren’t a typical priest. I mean, the priests in North Beach are nothing like you. You are a lot different . . . than the others.”
Blessed are the Meek Page 17
