by T. T. Monday
Tiff sits up. There are bite marks on her areolae and her makeup is ruined, but she looks me straight in the eye, boring into me with tremendous concentration. She’s either totally insane or the least self-conscious person on earth. “I’m in trouble,” she says.
“With Ruiz?”
“With La Loba. I wasn’t entirely honest about her. La Loba is not a contract killer. She’s a smuggler.”
“Like a human trafficker?” What if La Loba were the one turning the screws on Ruiz? What if she smuggled him off the island? That would explain their meeting in the restaurant in Denver.
“Well, her business is Cuban athletes. She has cornered the market.”
“And?”
“And it’s lucrative.” Tiff goes quiet. Almost reverent. “Very lucrative.”
I think private jet. I think disguises. Something clicks.
“Tiff.”
Silence.
“You smuggled Ruiz out of Cuba.”
Tiff smiles.
“And now La Loba wants to kill you to make a statement.”
Her smile fades away, and I know I’m right.
As she puts on her clothes, Tiff tells me the story.
“Over the last couple of years, these Cubans and their handlers were coming to see me, and everything seemed fine and good until I got the players alone and they told me how much money they had to pay to get out—fifty to seventy-five percent of their salaries, after risking their lives. I realized I could do the same thing for a fraction of the price, and I could do it without any risk. Appearance is fluid and controllable, Johnny. I can manipulate it well. Call it a bit of personal and professional vindication. So I went to Cuba and found Yonel tearing up the league. Fifteen percent was all I’d take. Fifteen percent of his first contract, and no shark-infested seas, no Santería priests, no blackmail. Just a falsified passport, a plane ticket to Mexico, and a fashion-forward beard.”
“And that’s how it happened?”
“Pretty much. But I was naïve. Turns out La Loba’s people have smuggled out every Cuban ballplayer who has escaped the island in the last ten years. When she found out I’d taken Yonel, she was furious. I got a call saying there was a bomb in my house in Boston. Then Yonel started receiving threats. When I figured out about La Loba, that I had trespassed on her territory, I thought I could just apologize, maybe pay her the fee she would have received from the deal, and the whole thing would be forgotten. I passed a message through an intermediary and told her I was done with smuggling. I said it wasn’t for me. But she wouldn’t listen. I’m afraid she won’t be satisfied until I’m dead.”
“And you haven’t called the police.”
Tiff just looks at me. “No, I called you.”
“There are no Venezuelans, are there?”
“La Loba may be Venezuelan. I don’t know that she’s not.”
I open my mouth to ask Tiff what she thought I could have done with regard to La Loba, and then it hits me: the anonymous call, the convenient driver, the gun shop….
“You lured me to that warehouse. You were the caller.”
“I heard from a source that La Loba had chased a kill to Denver—a Thai-Canadian flesh peddler with legitimate businesses in cattle ranching. I knew she was going to be finishing him off over the weekend, so I arranged to have you watch.”
“You hired me to kill her.”
“In so many words.”
“I told you, that’s not what I do. I solve problems like cheating wives and runaway kids. I don’t do hits.”
“It wasn’t going to be a hit. I’d been watching you for a while, Adcock. When I learned that you spent the winter in Denver with a woman, I saw an opportunity. I figured if I could make you think La Loba killed your girlfriend you might take her down.”
“I don’t understand. You thought I’d just assume La Loba was a threat to Connie?”
I stop.
“You hung the doll in Connie’s apartment.”
Tiff reaches out to touch my shoulder. “I’m sorry….”
I slap her hand away. “Are you insane?”
“I realize now that getting your girlfriend involved was a mistake.”
“A mistake! This is way more than a mistake. How would you feel if you came home and discovered that you’d been hanged in effigy?”
“She never saw it. She left town before I staged the scene.”
“Where is she?”
“I went to the library on Saturday morning and told her that I was a friend of yours, that we were working on a case together, but the case had taken a bad turn and now her life was at risk. I gave her a plane ticket to San Francisco.”
I pull out my phone and dial Connie’s number. As usual, it goes to voice mail.
Tiff says, “I told her not to contact you or take your calls, in case the lines were tapped.”
“Give me your phone.”
Tiff goes to the living room and comes back with her purse. She produces an iPhone in a clear plastic case, unlocks the screen, and hands it to me. I dial Connie.
She doesn’t answer.
“Where the hell is she, Tiff?”
“I haven’t heard from her since she left town. I told her the danger would end when the Bay Dogs left Denver, so I bet you’ll hear from her soon.” She pauses. “I should never have let her believe she was in danger. That was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“You vandalized a woman’s apartment in the most horrific way, after lying to her about your association with me. How many felonies is that? And by the way, if I were a member of the Denver police, I’d want to ask you some questions about Erik Magnusson. You know he was hanged?”
Her eyes go wide. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“Who did it, then?”
“I have no idea.”
For some reason, I believe her. Her eyes are as transparent and guileless as her blow-up doll’s. I don’t hate her, even though I should.
“I need your help, Johnny. I’ve been living in my plane for months. I don’t know what to do!”
“Get out of my home.”
—
When she’s gone, I stare at the wall for a few minutes. I’ve had some disturbing cases over the years. I’ve watched wives fool around with my clients’ best friends behind their backs; I’ve had clients’ children deprogrammed from free-love cults. I’ve never had anything like this. My client just showed up at my door dressed like my girlfriend—who is currently incommunicado but was recently hanged in effigy by my client. It sounds like the setup for a joke. I wish I found it funny.
I sit down in the kitchen and go through my mail; the building’s concierge brings it up while I’m on the road. Behind a shrink-wrapped stack of home-renovation catalogues I find a package half the size of a shoebox. The return address typed onto the UPS label is Connie’s. Without thought to the contents—which should tell you something about my frame of mind—I slice the packing tape with a key. Inside, I find not a bomb or a packet of anthrax but a bottle of wine, a 2012 Zinfandel from a Sonoma County winery called Domaine Amphora. It looks expensive, but I’m no expert. Connie grew up in Sonoma, and many of her friends’ parents worked in the wine industry. Now those same classmates run the family vineyards, and they occasionally send Connie bottles as gifts. I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying a few of them with her, but she’s never sent any to me, and I’m not sure why she’s starting now. I check the label on the box. It was sent the day before yesterday.
One of two things is happening here. Either Connie put this box in the mail before she went missing, or I’m looking at phase two of Tiff Tate’s psychological campaign. It seems unlikely that Connie would have rushed out to mail me a bottle of wine on Friday, when we were going to meet for dinner the same night. Maybe she was planning ahead, a little present to greet me when I got home? It doesn’t make sense—but neither does Tiff’s sending me a bottle of wine to go with my blow-up doll.
I grab a corkscrew from a kitchen drawer, open the bottle, and pour a sp
lash into a wineglass. It smells humid, earthy. I take a sip, then a gulp, and then another, waiting for the poison to hit. Three glasses in, I’m still not dead. Instead, I feel light-headed and a bit reckless. Drunk, I believe they call it. I take out my phone and scroll down to Izzy’s number, but I stop before I tap her name. What kind of example would this set, drunk-dialing my daughter? I think about calling Connie again, but what’s the point? She has received twenty messages from me over the last couple of days. She gets the idea.
I put my chin on the counter and stare at the bottle of wine. On the label, a craggy live-oak tree obscures a Spanish-style villa. Rows of grapevines fan out in front of the house like perspective lines. Tomorrow is a scheduled off-day. Looks like I’ll be doing a little wine tasting?
23
Next morning, I’m on the road by seven, flying up the 101 in the lane reserved for carpools, electric cars, and idiots like me. The air is still cool, but the haze over the bay suggests it’s going to be hot by afternoon. In Santa Clara, I see the light towers of the 49ers’ new billion-dollar stadium. The price tag on that place still amazes me. A pro football team plays only eight regular season home games a year. Even if the Niners rent the place out once a month for concerts and maybe host an exhibition soccer match or two during the off season, you’re still looking at three hundred nights a year on which no beer is poured, no T-shirts are sold, no parking fees collected. I’m sure there’s a reason the NFL is the highest-grossing league in the world, but it can’t be gate revenue.
Forty minutes later, I’m weaving through the streets of San Francisco. Here’s a better use for a billion dollars: bore a tunnel under San Francisco. The city is surrounded on three sides by water, and there’s still no freeway cutting through it, which means the only route from the southern suburbs to the northern ones is a long, slow crawl through miles of traffic lights. Block after block of all-night diners, Maserati dealers, and dildo shops. I know a freeway tunnel doesn’t quicken the pulse like a new football stadium, but I guarantee it would get more use.
It’s a little after nine when I reach Healdsburg, a sun-bleached town at the mouth of Dry Creek Valley. Like a lot of wine-country communities, Healdsburg caters to tourists seeking both expensive alcoholic beverages and rabbit-themed home accents. Connie says that Healdsburg was a different place when she was young, more Rockwell than Rockefeller, and that in some parts of town you could even find vandalism and poverty. That may have been true at one time, but, looking down the row of artisanal yarn shops and farm-to-table restaurants selling thirty-dollar chicken breasts, all I can think is that we’re a long, long way from Baltimore.
The O’Connell home is on a leafy street a few blocks from the town square. It’s a two-story Craftsman bungalow with squared-off pillars and a porch swing. I’m ashamed to admit that, even though I live in the same metropolitan area, this is my first time here.
I leave the bike a block from the house and walk the rest of the way. I am arriving unannounced by design—on cats’ paws, as my grandma liked to say. I pause on the porch, listening to the voices in the living room, watching the shadows behind the curtains. I thought by the time I got here I’d know how to feel, but I don’t. There is only one way Connie’s disappearance makes sense, and I’ve been unable to get my head around it. Or maybe just unwilling.
I knock. Connie opens the door in a navy-blue terrycloth robe. Her dark hair is still wet from the shower. She holds a coffee mug in one hand. When she sees that it’s me, she transfers the mug to the other hand and pushes open the screen door.
“Come in,” she says calmly.
I don’t, at first. I just stand there like the fool I have proven myself to be as she turns around and tells her father—he must be in the kitchen—“It’s okay, I’m fine. Could you leave us alone for a minute?”
Returning to me, she asks if I’ve eaten breakfast. “I made some hard-boiled eggs.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
She nods as if that’s what she expected. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back. I should be dressed for this.”
I lower myself into a wooden wing chair. Connie disappears soundlessly down the hall. The living room is filled with dark wood furniture in the Arts and Crafts style. The bookcases are full but not overfilled. No books sit horizontally on top of the rows; no stacks of magazines lie errant on the end tables. Everything is in its place. I can see where Connie gets her professional inspiration.
I should be dressed for this. In my head I compare Connie’s prudent instinct to match her attire to the occasion with Tiff Tate’s choice of attire for difficult conversations. Then again, maybe Tiff is only protecting herself. When you’re naked, there’s no way to get caught with your pants down.
A moment later, Connie returns, dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a sleeveless linen top. Her hair is twisted up. She’s wearing no makeup.
“I wanted to call you,” she says. “You deserve an explanation.”
“Is it because I’m a ballplayer?”
“I never had a problem with that. My dad had concerns, but not me. I was fine with all of it: the hours, the travel, even the other women.”
“About that, listen….”
“Let me finish. It wasn’t the baseball life that scared me, John, it was your other career. I never agreed to date a private eye.”
“I was always honest with you about what I did in my spare time.”
“You told me, that’s true. And I thought I understood what it might mean for me—a little more travel in the off season, maybe. You made it sound so benign, like you just…not rescued kittens from trees, but something along those lines. You helped your friends solve problems that required discretion. And that was fine with me. I think we all could use a friend like that. But you weren’t being completely honest.”
“Had I known this was going to happen, this mess with Tiff Tate, I would never have taken the case. She misled me. I thought I was just going to speak with some players, ask some questions. Nothing like this.”
“John, I have thought about this for hours. Days. More than you can imagine. I suppose it’s possible that you didn’t know, but I’m sorry, I just don’t believe it. When we saw the couple in the restaurant, you could have explained what was going on.”
“I didn’t know! I honestly didn’t know who she was, or who was pulling his strings. Would you believe Tiff, of all people, smuggled him out of Cuba?”
“At the very least, you knew the situation was more opaque than you originally thought. I mean, he wouldn’t talk to you. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Of course, but it was my problem, not yours. I wanted to keep you out of it.”
“Well, you failed.”
“I know.”
“And I just can’t have that in my life. I don’t need to be hunted.”
“It wasn’t true! That was just a story Tiff told you.”
“It doesn’t matter. You led me there like a lamb to the slaughter. Is that how you tried to keep me out of it?”
I look at my shoes. “I swear I didn’t know.”
“And that’s not even what really bothered me. What concerned me was that if I stayed with you this was going to be my life. Let’s suppose I wasn’t in danger this time. What about the next case? You weren’t going to retire. How many times did you tell me this was your retirement plan, the next direction in your life, the thing that was going to keep you from selling insurance or real estate for the rest of your life? This wasn’t a one-time deal. This was going to be a constant thing, a constant threat. I don’t know, maybe your other girlfriends like it that way. Maybe they like to have their lives threatened, but I can tell you I do not. Once is too much for me. Do you understand?”
She pauses, waiting for me to reply, but I have nothing to say. She’s right about all of it.
“I’m sorry for leaving the way I did. I was so frightened, I didn’t know who to trust.”
“Does your father know why you left?”
“H
e knows everything. We are completely honest with each other.”
This hurts, but I absorb it. “I’m sorry, Connie. I never meant to put you in this situation. You’re safe now.”
“It’s too late, John. I’m done.”
“Done with what? With me?”
“Yes, with you.”
“But here’s the thing: I’m going to quit. I should have quit before all this happened, but now I’m going to do it.”
“You sound like an alcoholic. Please don’t quit on my account. If the investigations make you happy, you shouldn’t stop doing them. You’re not going to play baseball forever, and I understand that you need something to take its place. Maybe it’s this, maybe not. I wish you well either way.”
“I don’t want your well wishes, I want you. Let’s erase last weekend. Can we do that? Let’s go back to where we were in the off season: a fire in your apartment, singers on the stereo. Remember?”
“How could I forget? But that’s over.”
In the silence, I gather my thoughts. Yesterday I feared she was dead. Now she’s alive, but she wants nothing to do with me. This is why I’ve been single so long. This is the risk of commitment, right here. “When are you going back to Denver?”
“I’m not going back. I don’t feel safe there.”
“But your whole life is in Denver.”
She shrugs. “It was.”
This hits me like a punch in the chest. Not only have I ruined a perfectly good relationship, I’ve also ruined Connie’s life. Here she is, over thirty, unemployed, living in her father’s house. Through conversations about her work, I’ve come to know that jobs in her field are few and far between. She always said she was lucky to have that position at the Denver Public Library—a statement I thought was false modesty, but now I see that her job was sort of like mine. Denver Public isn’t the Yankees, but it is the Rockies. I get that now.
Connie wipes her eyes and puts her arms around my neck. For a moment I indulge the hope that she will change her mind, but something has changed between us. I have broken her trust, and for Connie that is irreparable. She pulls me tight. By the time her tears soak through my shirt, I know it’s over. “Goodbye, John,” she whispers.
