“I’d like to have a reason to press him. You got one?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.” I took a look around, and Charley knew why.
“If you’re thinking you want to see the body, I suggest you change your mind,” he said. “It’ll stay with you.”
“I have to, Charley.”
It was worse than he’d said, of course—violent death is always worse than the words that describe it, even the words of writers like Wade Linton. It’s why war didn’t disappear with the Iliad; why murder didn’t end with Raskolnikov. As I leaned against the wall of the light well, I tried to tell myself that in a larger sense Linton had been dead already, that his disgrace at Sebastian, justified or not, had put a meaningful life beyond him, that his future would be as alien and ostracized as his present. But then I remembered Alfred, and the rationale fell apart.
I sensed a shift in my professional perspective as well. Although I’d been hired to find the author of a book, ever since I’d pasted a face and a name and a history onto my objective, my focus had become an effort to find Linton before he accomplished his quest for retribution and added a real crime to his fabricated one. Well, Wade Linton wasn’t going to kill anyone now, but as I climbed out of the light well and returned to Charley’s side, I asked myself why Linton had been skulking around Sebastian instead of on his way to Stockton to hunt down Danny Devlin.
“Did he have anything on him?” I asked when Charley raised a brow.
“Just this.” Charley reached in his pocket and pulled out another plastic bag. In it was a small snapshot of Wade Linton’s young son.
“His name is Al,” I said. “He lives on Fell, at that DMV address you got for me. He’s a nice kid. Go easy when you tell him.”
“Maybe you’d like to do it yourself.”
Although it was a burden I should have taken on, I didn’t. “Sorry, Charley. I’ve got things to do.”
I hurried to my car and drove west. This time I parked on Fulton, half a block from where I’d flagged the cab that afternoon. I got some things from my trunk—flashlight, gloves, gun—then slipped through the hedge into the suddenly sinister reaches of the park.
The only light was from the streetlamp, which wasn’t enough to illumine the way. The thicket was as forbidding as when I’d left it, the going difficult even with a periodic assist from my flashlight. With senses more useful than eyesight, I crept back to the cave by the easier route, wary of detection by the park police, equally wary of another assault. After listening to be sure no one had been trailing me, I used the flashlight to inspect the area as closely as I’d intended to before the meteor had landed on my skull that afternoon.
It was a kid’s idea of a perfect hideout, snug, secret, soothing, the stuff of Tom Sawyer and The Hardy Boys, but my blood was on its ground and its creator was a corpse so the image didn’t last. On the way down, I’d decided to start with the trunk of the car, but after I worked my way to the rear of the vehicle I discovered someone had beaten me to it—the lid had been pried open and the contents were as scattered as if the woman with the bat had been looking for her breakfast. As far as I could tell, there was nothing left but junk.
I crawled back to the patio and sat on the car seat and pondered the situation. Wade Linton must have been on a mission when he was killed, but the place of his demise indicated it was something other than the one suggested by the concluding chapters of Hammurabi. The person who’d slugged me must have known what it was and was bent on keeping Linton from accomplishing his task, which meant it was probably someone I’d encountered during my investigation, someone I’d alerted to the threat Linton constituted, the threat I still couldn’t fathom. It’s disconcerting when you know you’ve been close to a killer without knowing it, and it’s more so when someone might still be alive if you’d done something different. I got rid of such thoughts the way I always do—I convinced myself I’d done the best I could. Also like always, it wasn’t quite enough.
I kicked idly at the tire and heard a muffled thud. It made me think of hidden, hollow places, which made me think of drugs and where the couriers hide them, which made me think of rocker panels and car doors. I returned to the Datsun, opened the only door that would, tapped around its interior circumference, and decided it was worth a look. Conscious that I was disturbing evidence, I got out my knife and put on my gloves and sliced into the plastic that formed the inside panel of the door.
It was a treasure trove of sorts—dozens of items had been stuffed into the narrow cavity and they all spilled out over the ground after they were liberated by my knife. At first I didn’t see anything of interest—they were personal effects primarily, from Linton’s time at Sebastian—some pens and pencils, a ruler and compass, a photo of Linton’s wife and son with little Alfred a doughy lump in his mother’s arms. Of more interest was a Sebastian Senator, the same edition I’d examined at Mrs. Devlin’s. There were some college catalogs for that year as well—Stanford and Cal, Occidental and Pomona—and one more item—a file folder bound in rubber bands, crisp and official and provocative.
I tugged at my gloves and picked up the yearbook. There was nothing remarkable about it until I came to the senior section. There, beside the pictures of at least a dozen students, Linton or someone had written a series of numbers, one above the other, in blue-black rows. The numbers next to Carrie Devlin were 2.7, 938, 3.6 and 1215. Jane Ann Gillis had a different set—2.4, 1016, 3.4 and 1332. Her friend Lloyd’s were 2.2, 888, 3.5 and 1382. Several other pictures, of kids I had never heard of, were similarly annotated. I thumbed through the rest of the book but found no further scribblings.
I replaced the yearbook and picked up the file folder. The rubber bands slid off with a twang and the folder fell open in my hands. Its contents were obvious—a set of course transcripts from Sebastian, at least fifty of them, photocopied and arranged alphabetically. There seemed to be no pattern—both boys and girls, a variety of courses taken, a spectrum of grade averages. The transcripts were not complete—they failed to include the last semester of the senior year—and the only thing they seemed to have in common was the name of the academic adviser—someone named Brian Finney. I put the material back in the folder and it and the other materials back in the door cavity, then left the park and found a phone.
Bridget Devlin was finally at home. “Are you going to be there for the next hour?”
“I’m going to be here for eternity.”
“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
“It’s pretty late,” she parried quickly, then changed her mind. “Not that I’ve got anything better to do. And who knows? You might do something that will make me laugh.” The prospect cheered her for two seconds. “Is it a social call, or more about Wade?”
My impulse to tell her about Linton’s death was automatically subordinated to the possibility that it might be more productive if I sprang it on her later. As I held my tongue, I decided I was meaner than I used to be.
I dug out another quarter and got Sadie’s number from my little black book. She answered on the seventh ring. As I told her who it was, I heard “All the Way” in the background.
I laughed. “Sinatra’s still the mood of choice, I hear.”
“This is not a good time, Tanner,” Sadie observed in a whisper.
“Sorry, but things are happening and I need to get in front of the curve. Did you come up with anything on that file I asked you to check?”
“That’s the easiest job you ever gave me.”
“Why?”
“The file’s under seal. Court order—Judge Hoskins. No way I can get at it.”
“Hoskins. That son of a bitch.”
“That seems to be the consensus.”
“You didn’t happen to come across the name of the defense counsel, did you?”
“As it happens, I did. The defendant was represented by Julius Messenger, Esquire.”
“Why is that name familiar?”
“Julius is known as Mercury in certai
n circles.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s the Messenger to the Gods. His specialty is defending the embarrassingly delinquent offspring of the extravagantly rich and famous. On suitably remunerative occasions he disposes of their inconvenient issue as well.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mercury is legendary for arranging private adoptions for the progeny of pregnant little rich girls who forget to get abortions.”
When Amanda told me her story, I asked the question that was so often asked of me before I went to jail: “How could he do such a thing?”
A decade ago, I had no glimmerings of an answer. Today, I am able to suggest, “Perhaps he was very lonely.”
Homage to Hammurabi, p. 289
26
Bridget Devlin was still pouty and paint-spattered and at war with the world. She made me stand in the doorway while she took an elongated look at her watch that suggested the hour was unspeakably uncivilized, though it was only ten o’clock. When I apologized again for the intrusion, it seemed to provoke her further. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “I have nothing to do with the Lintons. I don’t want anything to do with the Lintons.”
“I’m here about your daughter.”
“We already talked about my daughter,” she protested, but by now the plaint was frail and resigned. “What kind of trouble is she in? Please don’t lie to me; I know something’s happened—I haven’t heard from Carrie in weeks. What is it, did she steal something? Or get caught with drugs? Is she in some Andalusian jail? What is it?”
I was shaking my head before she finished the projected rap sheet. “If she’s in trouble at all, it’s for something she did six years ago.”
“Six years ago.” She sighed. “Sebastian.”
I didn’t say anything.
“God.” She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “Even after Wade arranged the scholarship, Carrie begged me not to send her. But I insisted. I told her it was the chance of a lifetime, the chance to really make something of herself, to have the same opportunities the rich kids had.” She paused, remembering and regretting. “What I really meant was that it was a chance to prove I wasn’t a failure, at least not as a parent, to show that I could do good things for my child even if I never managed to do much for myself.”
She took a step back. “I guess you might as well come in. I’ve got some burgundy left, I think. It’s just Gallo, but …”
“Gallo’s fine.”
Her smile was bleak. “I don’t even know if we’re supposed to drink Gallo anymore. For a while there we weren’t, but I don’t remember why.”
“The farm workers, I think.”
“Right. The farm workers. How are they doing these days? I’ve kind of lost track.”
“Better. But not as good as the rest of us.”
Her eyes were damp with sadness. “Are you sure?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
She turned her back on me and my notion and walked toward the rear of the house. I hurried after her. When we got to the kitchen she pointed toward the cupboards. “Wine’s in there, glasses to the left. I’ll be in the studio, finishing up an outline so I can get into the guts of it first thing in the morning. Bring me a glass, too. We’ll celebrate something.”
“What?” I asked, conscious that given what I’d seen that evening at Sebastian, the most appropriate ceremony was a wake.
“Keeping ahead of the farmworkers. It’s the door at the end of the hall.”
Bridget Devlin left me in her kitchen and padded down the hallway, soundlessly, as though my presence had made her insubstantial. I rummaged in the cupboards until I’d found everything but a corkscrew, then made a second tour in search of that. The dishware and utensils indicated my hostess was living an overused life, without the systematic replacement of worn-out goods, without the injection of luxury or whim, without a trace of self-indulgence. I lived such a life myself, but I didn’t regard it as an achievement.
It took me so long to find the corkscrew she came back to see what I was up to. When I told her my problem she pulled out a drawer and rummaged brusquely through its unkempt contents until she came up with it.
“I was afraid if I did that I’d cut a finger off.”
She shook her head. “Not in this house. I’ve never owned a sharp knife in my life. I suspect they don’t exist.”
I followed her down the hall to a door with a colorful quilt painted over its entire surface, in a geometry of bright enamels. When she opened it we confronted an eerie darkness that seemed to ooze out of the studio and envelope us like the Blob. She told me to wait where I was, then vanished into the gloom.
A moment later two rays of white light split the darkness, twin beams that were focused on two large rectangles that loomed like mainsails halfway across the room. The intensity of the light and the brilliance of its impact with the targets made me squint and shield my eyes. Suddenly a switch was flipped and the beams became multicolored, softer, inviting. A moment later, Bridget Devlin’s shadow moved across the rectangle on the right, through the projection of what seemed to be a picture of a flower. In the clinging elastic of the blue-green light, she seemed to be wearing a rose tattoo. I thought for a moment she was going to stage a shadow play, but I finally realized she was working.
The light came from two side-by-side projectors containing matching slides of a yellow rose lying on a marble table next to a pewter goblet. Though the slides were identical, their targets were not. The square on the left was a movie screen, the one on the right a canvas, stretched tight, gessoed white. Standing in front of the latter, Bridget Devlin was tracing the outline of the rose onto the canvas, working carefully and quickly, with a craft she’d obviously mastered. From time to time she glanced at the adjacent screen for guidance, when her view of the canvas was blocked by her shadow, and from time to time she backed out of the light entirely to inspect her work.
Ignored and uninvited, I lingered in the doorway. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to pour some wine and let her finish, so I did. It took ten minutes for her to render the still life in outline in the exact proportions of the template slide. After drawing a final inch of line, she walked to the wall and turned on the overhead, then switched the projectors to the fan setting to allow the bulbs to cool.
“So much for that,” she said as she joined me by the door.
I filled the second glass and gave it to her, then looked at the array of finished pieces leaning against the walls—precise renderings of everything from onions to apples and rag dolls to beach balls. “These are nice.”
“Thanks.”
“What gallery shows your stuff?”
Eyes on the canvas she had just been working with, she laughed bitterly. “The gallery to be named later.”
She returned to the canvas and drew two lines near the top of the rose stem, making the outline of a leaf, then stepped back. “No gallery, no museum, no ever-so-supportive patron for Ms. Devlin.” She stepped forward and drew another line, this time on the stem of the goblet. “Would you like to know where these end up?” Her gesture encompassed the entire collection.
“Where?”
“On postcards.” With reluctance, her eyes left the canvas and locked with mine. “I take them to a photographer downtown; he snaps their picture, reduces them in size, and sends them to a company in Oakland that prints them up as postcards. I make fifty dollars per painting. The cards are distributed from here to Seattle. I’m so very proud.” The final phrase was poisonous.
“Does it bother you that they’re not accepted as real art?”
She looked at me. “It’s a blister on my heart. But there’s not much I can do about it.”
“Why did Lily Lucerne get famous and you didn’t? I can’t tell much difference between your work and hers.”
Her lips cracked and wrinkled. “The difference is, my work has blood in it.”
“Blood?”
“Feeling. Sou
l. Humanity. Butter wouldn’t melt in Lily’s mouth, as I discovered all too late, but she had Sebastian behind her—all those wealthy alumni—so doors opened for her. If you bring along your own collectors, any gallery in the world will hang you.”
She took one last look at the canvas, then walked to the shelf where she’d set her wine and took a deep sip. “So much for wine and roses,” she said, and gestured toward an overstuffed and oversized couch that sat in between some canvases that were leaning against a nearby wall.
“Why are you so interested in Carrie?” she asked as we sank a foot into its innards and she curled against an arm and faced me.
“Because I’ve been told Carrie was involved in a messy incident while she was at Sebastian.”
Her face carried no hint of deeper knowledge but no doubt that it was true. “What incident?”
“The one that got Wade Linton sent to jail.”
The wineglass stopped halfway to her mouth. “Are you telling me you think Wade had sex with my daughter?”
“To put it bluntly.”
“That’s absurd.” From her tone, I got the impression she’d expected me to suggest something worse.
“I know it’s not pleasant to contemplate, but how can you be certain it didn’t happen?”
“I just … know.”
“The sex urge is—”
She gripped her glass with both hands; wine spilled down her fists. “Don’t sit there and tell me about the sex urge, Mr. Tanner. I know all about the sex urge. I know about my sex urge and my daughter’s sex urge. And she didn’t play house with Wade.”
Her outburst told me more about her own sexuality than her daughter’s, so I approached from a new angle. “You said Carrie felt out of place at Sebastian. Since Linton was responsible for her being there, he—”
“I was responsible for her being there.”
“But Linton made it possible, so he’d naturally have given Carrie extra help when she needed it, both to be sure she survived academically and to be sure she justified his recommendation for the scholarship.”
Book Case Page 22
