Till The Old Men Die

by Janet Dawson

  “Right before I was due to leave the Philippines, Max decided to have this obligatory family dinner. Jun and his wife and kids were summoned from the sugar plantation up at San Fernando. Rick was there with his latest girlfriend. Felice didn’t want to go, but I persuaded her that we should, since she was moving to the States with me and she might not be back to the islands for a while. Things went downhill the minute we arrived.”

  “Why?”

  “The mistress was there. Max called her Mrs. Rios all evening, really formal, as though none of us knew about the situation. He’d been seen with her in public after Mrs. Navarro died, but this was the first time he’d mixed her in with his family. In fact, she was presiding over the table like the lady of the manor. I couldn’t tell how Jun and Rick felt about it, but Jun’s wife was definitely offended. And Felice was livid. Her eyes started to flash the minute she saw that woman. It was awkward city from the get-go. Mrs. Rios was quite a bit younger than Max, in her thirties, I guess. She was nervous, trying too hard to be accepted. Maybe that’s why she was drinking so much. I thought we’d never get through dinner.”

  Patterson pushed his plate aside, balled up his napkin, and tossed it onto the remains of his lunch. “Afterward I stepped out into the garden to get some air, and Mrs. Rios joined me. As I said, she’d had a bit too much wine. Next thing I was fending her off. That’s when Felice came on the scene. She didn’t make a sound, she just went for Mrs. Rios. Felice hit her, and that topaz ring she always wears caught the other woman on the chin. Opened up quite a cut and got blood on both of them.”

  “The chin?” I asked, setting down my fork.

  Patterson nodded, tracing a finger down the left side of his jawline. “I got Felice out of there quick. When we got home we had a terrible argument. I’ve never seen her so angry, until that business with my dad. I couldn’t convince her that I didn’t have anything to do with that woman’s behavior.”

  “Does that woman have a name other than Mrs. Rios?” I asked. “Where is she now that Max has married Antonia?”

  “Back in the Philippines, I guess,” Patterson said. “Her name was Dolores.”

  Seventeen

  FELICE HAD LIED TO ME ABOUT DOLORES CRUZ. She must have known I was describing her father’s former mistress when I mentioned the scar that she herself had put on Dolly’s chin. Rick had denied knowing Dolly as well. What else were the Navarro siblings hiding?

  It took me the rest of the afternoon to get back to Oakland. I encountered commuter hell on the San Mateo Bridge, a jackknifed tractor-trailer rig that blocked all the eastbound lanes and left me fuming in my ovenlike car for nearly two hours. When I finally drove off the bridge, I was in the thick of Friday afternoon rush hour. Sweaty, tired, and irked, I headed for Mabuhay Travel, where Belinda greeted me with a glare and anger crackling in her voice.

  “She isn’t here. She hasn’t been here all day. Didn’t even bother to call in, and me up to my eyeballs in work. I’ve had it with that woman. I’m gonna call Arthur and Perlita first thing tomorrow morning and tell ‘em either she goes or I go.”

  Where was Dolly? I wondered as I drove to the Parkside Towers. It was nearly five o’clock. She’d been out of reach all day. Had she been doing something with the contents of the envelope I was sure she had? Or had Eddie the Knife Villegas gotten to her?

  In the condominium’s lobby I encountered O. Barnwell, the same sharp-eyed security guard I’d met last week when I was pretending to be a prospective buyer. He didn’t recognize me as he looked me over and asked my business. When I asked to see Ms. Cruz in 803, he picked up a house phone on his counter and punched in four digits. He let it ring for a moment, then hung up. “I’m sorry. There’s no answer.”

  I stalled, tapping my fingers on the counter. “I just missed her at work, and I understand she was coming right home. Can you check the parking garage for her car? It’s a white Thunderbird.”

  The guard looked at me as if I’d thrown a stink bomb into his pristine lobby. “If you have business with Ms. Cruz, you’ll have to wait. Or call her later.”

  I made a show of waiting while the guard kept an eye on me, with my rumpled hair, my sweat-stained, wrinkled clothes, and my barely contained impatience, as though he were assessing my potential as a housebreaker. Minutes crawled by on the clock above the mailboxes while the guard answered the phone and spoke with residents who collected their mail.

  Just before six he was distracted when a slender, fiftyish woman in designer sweats got off the elevator and strode up to his post, carrying several sheets of paper. “Oliver,” she said, “here’s the guest list for the party tonight.”

  He called her Mrs. Beaumont, and the two of them bent their heads over the list while she told him the caterer was due any minute and the photographer after that. The guests should start arriving at eight. As Mrs. Beaumont headed for the elevator, Barnwell and I traded looks and I knew he would have liked to have me out of his lobby before the highertoned clientele arrived. I was as antsy as he was. Cooling my heels in the lobby of the Parkside Towers was not my idea of a productive evening. But I had to talk with Dolly.

  She still hadn’t appeared fifteen minutes later, when the caterer arrived and he and his assistants hauled their gear upstairs. Finally, at six-thirty, the door leading to the parking garage opened and Dolly came through it, wearing white pumps and another of her tropical-print dresses, this one a swirl of pink and turquoise. She held a white straw clutch in one hand. Car keys jingled from the other as she punched the elevator button. She was smiling to herself, pink lipstick in a smug, self-satisfied curve, a cat who had feasted on several canaries.

  “Oh, Ms. Cruz,” the guard said, “this lady is —”

  Dolly glanced at us, and the smile segued into a frown. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk, Dolly.” I took a step toward her, and she stepped back, holding the straw purse up to her bosom as though to keep me at bay.

  The guard put up a restraining hand. “If Ms. Cruz doesn’t want to see you, you’ll have to leave.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she said, tilting her head up dramatically as she swept a strand of black hair away from her face.

  “Are you sure about that, Mrs. Rios?” Her hard brown eyes narrowed. I pushed past the guard and got between Dolly and the elevator door. “I know you were Max Navarro’s mistress. I know how you got that scar on your chin.” Behind me the elevator door opened and Dolly made a move to escape, but I blocked her way and the door closed again.

  “My name is Dolores Cr —” She caught herself as she punched the elevator button. The doors opened again. “Dolores Manibusan. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy. Leave me alone.”

  “I’m going to call the cops,” Barnwell threatened. The guard was older than me, but he was lean and in good shape. His hand clamped down on my left shoulder. I shook it off. Dolly took advantage of this diversion to dart past me into the sanctuary of the elevator. “She’s a crazy woman,” Dolly told the guard, eyes wide with drama. “She’s been following me all over town, harassing me.”

  The doors started to close, and I reached out and hit the rubber bumper on one side, making them open automatically. “I know you’ve got that envelope. You pushed my father down the stairs and grabbed his briefcase. Somebody else knows you have it, too. A guy named Eddie the Knife, and he’s dangerous.” She didn’t react, so I fired another salvo. “You know who killed Dr. Manibusan. How else would you know about the envelope?”

  She shrank back against the far wall of the elevator, her eyes widening in alarm. The guard grabbed both my arms and yanked me away from the elevator, repeating his threat to call the police. By then the elevator doors had closed and Dolly was on her way to the safety of the eighth-floor condo. I freed myself from the guard’s grasp, stepping away from him toward the front door, my hands raised.

  “It’s okay,” I said, my voice calm and conciliatory. “I’m leaving. I’m out of here.” He
made no further move toward me, but he glared as I backed away from him, out the double glass doors.

  All that meant was that I wouldn’t try to see Dolly by going in the front door. I walked back to my car, assessing the situation. Mrs. Beaumont’s party guests were due at eight, according to what I’d overheard. By then it would be dusk, darkening the areas around the building. Besides, maybe I’d get lucky and the guard would be replaced by another. Even if that wasn’t the case, he’d be distracted by a constant stream of arrivals. I went home and exchanged my light-colored clothes for something dark, fed myself and Abigail, and waited.

  The bright May day took its time turning into night. The blue sky had turned navy, but it was bright with stars and a moon that was three-quarters full. At nine I returned to the Parkside Towers. I left my car nearby on Seventeenth Street and rounded the corner onto Lakeside. To my left the Necklace of Lights twinkled above the dark water of Lake Merritt, adding their reflection to the other lights of Oakland’s nighttime electric show. When I reached Dolly’s building, I glanced up and located the balcony of her eighth-floor unit. A light shone in the living room. The party was at the opposite end of the building, on the same floor. It was well under way. People spilled out onto the balcony, and laughter and the buzz of talk carried on the slight breeze that ruffled the trees.

  Luck was not with me as far as the security guard was concerned. Barnwell still guarded the entrance to his domain. As I walked slowly past the building, a man and a woman went up the walk, the woman carrying a package wrapped in silver paper. In the lobby they stopped and the guard checked the list of partygoers, then waved them through to the elevators.

  I kept walking. A couple of buildings past the Parkside Towers, I turned around and walked back to where the driveway led to the Parkside Towers garage. I walked along the asphalt, sheltered by a stand of rhododendrons along the side of the building next door. Then I waited.

  Ten minutes later a Porsche turned off the street and came up the drive. The driver inserted his card into the electronic gadget outside the metal grid door, which slowly lifted. The Porsche drove into the garage, but the driver stopped just inside the entrance to make sure the door dropped back into place. Any other time I would have applauded such caution, but tonight it was damned inconvenient.

  I waited another fifteen minutes or so, hoping that someone wouldn’t see me lurking in the bushes and call the cops. The party on the eighth floor was cooking, judging from the sounds of merriment echoing off the sides of buildings. Finally another car came up the drive, this time a BMW whose driver didn’t bother to wait until the garage door closed. Moving quickly, I slipped under the lowering metal grid and darted for the rear of the garage, hugging the dark edges not illuminated by the electric bulbs on the garage roof. The BMW parked in a space to my left, and a prosperous-looking couple in their forties got out. The man opened the trunk, handed the woman a sack of groceries, and reached in for another sack.

  Someone had left a cardboard carton on the concrete floor next to the Dumpster. I picked it up and tossed it into the Dumpster, making sufficient noise to turn the heads of the man and woman who still stood at the rear of the BMW. They noted my presence at the Dumpster, then turned back to their groceries. As the man shut the car’s trunk, I walked toward the door that led to the lobby, slowing my gait to let them get there first. The man opened the door to the lobby, holding it so the woman and I could enter.

  Both elevator doors and the door leading to the garage were in full view of the guard. Two men in suits had arrived to join the party, one with a package, and the other with a bottle of champagne. They stood in front of the counter as Barnwell checked the list Mrs. Beaumont had given him. He didn’t find their names, and I heard him tell the two men he’d have to call upstairs before he could let them in. He picked up the phone. I hoped the elevator would open before the guard turned his head our way. I drew back as far as I could, letting my parking-garage companions block the guard’s line of sight.

  We clustered in front of the elevators, which were taking their own sweet time getting to the first floor. The car on the right, closest to the guard, seemed to be stuck on nine, and the car on the left was on five. Finally the car on five descended. I stood poised, ready to get in, out of the sight of the guard. When the door opened, I moved forward, then stopped. An older woman with three suitcases piled on a metal luggage carrier struggled out of the elevator. One wheel of the carrier got stuck in the gap between elevator and floor, and the top suitcase began to slip off the pile.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” said the man, the one who had opened the door from the parking garage. Just then Barnwell hung up the phone, giving the two partygoers sanction to pass. The right-hand elevator descended from the ninth floor and the bell dinged as the doors opened. With exquisitely bad timing Barnwell looked up at the group waiting to board the elevator. He recognized me. “Hey,” he said as the doors closed.

  The BMW couple pressed the button for the seventh floor and the two men bound for the party pressed eight. We glanced at each other, then away, following elevator etiquette. At seven the BMW couple got out. On eight I left the elevator with the party guests, who turned left and headed for the open door of Mrs. Beaumont’s condo. People had spilled out into the hallway, talking and laughing, with glasses and plates in their hands. I moved quickly down the opposite end of the corridor, headed for Dolly’s unit. I heard one of the elevators hum in its shaft. Was the guard on his way up to the eighth floor to apprehend me? I hoped he hadn’t called Dolly — or the cops.

  Dolly’s front door was locked. I knocked. No answer. I pulled out my picks. I was working on the lock when a voice behind me almost made me drop them.

  “Jeez, honey, did you get locked out?”

  I palmed the picks and turned to see a young man with curly brown hair and a round face reddened by booze. He had a glass in his hand and sprayed me with whiskey when he talked.

  “No. Everything’s fine.” I kept my voice even.

  “Hey, you’re cute.” He blinked at me like an owl. “You know the Beaumonts in 809? They’re having a party. Come on, lemme buy you a drink.”

  Son of a bitch, I thought. The elevator door dinged and opened. I expected to see the guard step off the car and point an accusing finger at me. But it was a gray-haired couple who headed for the Beaumonts’ open door without a glance in my direction.

  I smiled at the drunk. “Whatever you’re drinking is fine,” I said. The words were sufficient to send him walking unsteadily down the hall. I quickly turned back to the door and opened it in a few tense seconds.

  Dolly’s condo was dark. I knew I’d seen a light on in the unit while I was on the street. But that was some time ago. Maybe she left while I was hanging around outside the parking garage, trying to get into the building. I tried to remember if I had seen the white Thunderbird anywhere in the garage, and came up blank. I couldn’t risk turning on the light, though.

  I slipped inside, pulling the door shut, and stood in the darkness, listening. I sifted out the noise from the party down the hall and concentrated on the sounds coming from the area in front of me. The door leading to the balcony must be open. I could hear the whoosh of traffic eight floors down on Lakeside Drive. The wail of a siren ricocheted off the buildings around Lake Merritt.

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I made out an open doorway to my right, leading to the kitchen. On my left I sensed open space, a dining area. The living room was beyond it. I could see pale, gauzy curtains framing the big glass door that led to the balcony. Illuminated by moonlight, the curtains swayed in a breeze. I moved slowly, cautiously, toward the living room, listening, trying to sense whether there was another presence in the condo. I didn’t feel Dolly’s energy, though she could have been there, hiding from me, alerted by the security guard.

  I stumbled against a floor lamp, rattling it, and I put my hand out to steady it. Then I sensed something flying toward me, moving so fast I was powerless to stop it.
As I turned, it crashed into my head with great force, and pain flashed through me like a white light. I gasped and pitched forward, carrying the lamp to the floor with me, landing clumsily on my stomach. I moaned and slowly rolled to one side, each movement an effort. I felt slow and awkward, tangled in the lamp cord like a fly in a spiderweb. I kicked the lamp away and raised my hands to shield my face, to ward off further blows.

  But the anticipated blows didn’t come. Instead, I heard someone moving quickly in the dark living room. Then a hand touched mine. It felt odd, not like a hand at all, but it must have been, because it was moving. I couldn’t place the texture, and when I tried to think about it, my head throbbed and ached. The other presence wrapped my hand around something cold and hard and cylindrical. Then I thought I heard the door open and close, and there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room but me.

  I drifted, thinking about how easy it would be to go to sleep. I was tired, but the floor was hard, even if it was carpeted. Don’t pass out, I told myself sternly. Get up. I know it hurts to move, but you have to get up now.

  I rolled to my right, my hand still holding the cold, hard thing that felt like metal. My left hand encountered a table, and I used it for leverage as I pulled myself to my feet. I felt cold and shaky as I reached up to touch the place at the back of my head that was the source of all this pain. It was wet and slick. I sniffed the wetness on my fingers, smelted blood, and my stomach reeled, threatening to disgorge its contents.

  I reached for the floor lamp and set it upright, running my hand up its base until I found the switch. I turned it on. Its pleated shade was askew, shading the bulb. In the diffused glow I looked at the blood on my fingers and the brass candlestick I held in my right hand. I don’t remember picking up this candlestick, I thought, feeling its heft and looking with detachment at the etching on its base.