Wolf in the Shadows

by Marcia Muller

  It fit neatly with the story Renshaw had told me. “Thanks, Kate,” I said. “I’ve got a line on Hy, and I’m going to San Diego tonight. I’ll check in when I know something.” Then I ended the call before she could press me for details.

  I swiveled around and slumped in my chair, staring unseeingly out the window. In addition to supporting Renshaw’s story, the facts also supported what I instinctively knew. If Hy had already been in collusion with Timothy Mourning’s kidnappers when he left Tufa Lake, he would have made provisions for a lengthy absence, probably liquidated his assets. But Hy’s departure, prompted by a call from me that precipitated our trip to the Great Whites, had been strictly spur-of-the-moment.

  And afterward, when Renshaw contended he’d gone over to the kidnappers’ side? Well, I still had no proof he hadn’t except my faith that he was incapable of such an act. And that was solid enough proof for me.

  I thought for a while more before I buzzed Rae’s office and asked her to come upstairs. She didn’t look much more convivial than Ted, and she’d continued to allow her appearance to go to hell. Her hair stuck out in greasy little curlicues, her sweater had holes in it, and her jeans were ripped at the knees. She saw me glance at them and thrust out her jaw as if to say, “You want to make something of it?”

  “Have a seat,” I told her. “I need to ask a favor,”

  “I heard about your promotion.” She looked at my chaise longue and apparently decided that moving the jacket, briefcase, purse, camera bag, stack of files, and bag of Hershey’s Kisses was too much trouble. Flopping on the floor in front of it, she added, “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks—I think.”

  “Your rose came. Since you weren’t here to deal with it, I stuck it in a water glass in the bathroom. Couldn’t bear to put it in your bud vase; that was so dirty I’ve got it soaking in the sink.” She glared at me, as if she’d narrowly prevented me from neglecting a child.

  I ignored the glare, said humbly, “Thank you, Rae.”

  “Just see you take care of it. I’m not your gal Friday, you know.” Then she perked up some. “I suppose this promotion means you’ll be getting a raise. Maybe we should celebrate. You want to go down to the Remedy?”

  The Remedy Lounge is All Souls’s favorite tavern, on Mission Street. We hang out there a fair amount, but we don’t usually head downhill at a little after two in the afternoon. “Now?” I asked.

  Rae shrugged, looking hurt.

  What the hell, I thought. Maybe if I bought her a beer she’d stop sulking long enough for me to ask my favor. “Why not?” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Forget it—it was just an excuse to get plastered. I’ve got to watch that. Don’t want to turn into a stereotype.”

  “Stereotype?”

  “The Irish sot, and the scorned woman.”

  “Willie still being difficult?”

  “Still. Bastard’s not budging on the prenup. God, as if I wanted his money! I’m not even sure I want him anymore. He’s no prize, you know. The man used to be a criminal.”

  Poor Rae. I was sorry she was hurting, but relieved she wasn’t about to become the third—or was it the fourth?—Mrs. Willie Whelan. The man had a big heart, but he’d yet to prove he could stick to the straight and narrow; when I met him, he was a successful dealer in stolen goods, and proud of it. Should his discount-jewelry chain—empire, he called it—collapse, he might revert to type, and then where would Rae be?

  I said, “Instead of a drink, have some of those Hershey’s Kisses.”

  “Kisses are what got me into this mess in the first place,” she said sullenly. But she reached for the bag and proceeded to litter the rug with little paper pull tabs and foil wrappers while I told her about Hy’s disappearance, Gage Renshaw’s threat to kill him, and the job I’d pretended to take on in order to save him.

  As Rae listened, her eyes got wider and she stopped bothering to lick the smears of chocolate from the corners of her mouth. “God, Shar,” she said when I finished, “don’t those RKI guys scare you?”

  “I’m more scared of what may have happened to Hy, and what Renshaw will do if he finds him.”

  “Can you even investigate a kidnapping, though? I mean isn’t it like a homicide? The cops can get you for messing around in a murder case. And RKI didn’t even report this.”

  “Strangely enough, there’s nothing on the books that compels them to report it or prohibits me from investigating.” Frequently when I’m bored, I dip into the volumes in All Souls’s law library, my favorite being the one containing the California Penal Code. Over the years I’ve gleaned many fascinating facts—for example, that it’s illegal to trap or kill birds in public cemeteries. “A specific provision in the Penal Code’s section on kidnapping states that nothing prohibits a person from offering to rescue an individual who’s been kidnapped, either by force or by payment of ransom.”

  Rae looked impressed. So far as I know, she hasn’t opened any book more weighty than a shop-and-fuck novel since graduating from Berkeley.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “I’m going to Novato to talk with the kidnap victim’s wife in about an hour, and then I’m leaving for San Diego. And that’s where I need your help.”

  “You mean you want me to cover for you here? You know I will. But if the partners find out …” She shrugged. “There’s that new rule against us taking outside employment. This could screw up your promotion.”

  “I’m not sure that would be such a bad thing.”

  “Why—”

  “I don’t have time to talk about that now. I can’t even think about it. Will you cover?”

  “Sure. But I think you’d better have a good excuse for not showing up at work, like sickness.”

  “I don’t like to lie.”

  “Neither do I, Shar, but we’re going to have to. I’m putting my job on the line, too, you know.”

  “Then I can’t ask you to—”

  “No, I don’t mind. This is important.” She paused, her freckled face tense with concentration. “Maybe a summer cold … No, a female complaint is better. The women’ll understand, and the men—for all their so-called sophistication—will be afraid to ask questions. But make sure I know where to reach you, and for God’s sake, leave your answering machine on.”

  “Okay.” Then I thought of Ralph and Alice. “Can I also ask you to feed my cats?”

  “Sure. Just don’t let Ted find out. The way he takes on over the care and feeding of those beasts, you’d think he was a doting uncle.”

  “Well, he was responsible for me having them.” I tossed her my extra house key. “You can also have my rose.” Then I glanced at my watch. “We better get started going over our caseload. I’m caught up, and you should be able to handle what comes in. And when this is all over, I promise you’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

  Rae grinned evilly. “Just bring me the head of Willie Whelan.”

  * * *

  I had made my travel arrangements and was about to leave the office when I heard a knock on the doorframe. Gloria Escobar, looking hesitant. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.

  I checked my watch. Quarter to three, and I figured I’d need the extra fifteen minutes I’d allowed for the trip to Novato, in case traffic jammed on the Golden Gate or at the bottleneck at San Rafael. “Barely.”

  “This won’t take long.” She came in and perched on the edge of the chaise longue, rearranging my jacket and bag carefully, then smoothing her gray gabardine skirt over her thighs. Gloria’s clothing was always understated, bordering on the drab; her only concession to style was her bright lipstick, nail polish, and smoky eye shadow; her only undisciplined feature was her irrepressible dark curls.

  I waited, wondering if this was to be a rehash of the critical comments she’d made about me at the partners’ meeting.

  She cleared her throat, more ill at ease than I’d ever seen her. “I want to apologize for my remarks yesterday. They were uncalled for.”

  “Well, my resp
onse to the promotion wasn’t all that gracious, either. You people caught me by surprise.”

  “Have you thought about it?”

  “Some, but not enough to make a decision.”

  She hesitated, seemed to be making a decision of her own. Her eyes moved around the room, resting on the rubber plant in the far corner. When they returned to me she said, “Perhaps it would help you make up your mind if I told you why I feel so strongly about you accepting it. To do that, I’ll have to explain where I’m coming from.”

  Her phrasing brought my guard up. I’d never once heard Gloria use the words “where I’m coming from,” but I had heard Mike Tobias utter them on any number of occasions. To me they suggested that the two had gotten together and scripted a sales pitch.

  “Sharon?” she said. “Please hear me out.”

  “All right.” Mentally I subtracted the extra fifteen minutes of travel time to Novato.

  “My mother was born in Tijuana,” she began. “Very poor. My father deserted her when my sister was four and she was pregnant with me. She decided to make the trip north across the border; there was an aunt who had married a Mexican-American who would help. One night she took my sister and waited on the hill above the canyons. When it was time, they crossed with the others who were there.”

  I knew the hill—a ridge of them, actually. When I was a child, friends of my parents had a small ranch on Monument Road, in the unincorporated area of San Diego County, within sight of the border. During our visits there, I’d see the people patiently waiting on the hills. By daylight a festive mood prevailed: they would picnic and barbecue, and the children would play. But at dusk everything became curiously quiet. Even on the hottest nights, they would then don layer upon layer of clothing—whatever they were able to bring with them. And at dark their figures became indistinct as they continued to wait for the moment when la migra—their name for the U.S. Border Patrol—was looking the other way. Then they would move out, disappearing into the untamed canyons—canyons with names like Deadman’s and Smuggler’s Gulch—eluding rattlesnakes, scorpions, and bandits.

  They were called pollos—chickens—by their predators. I’d seen them running along the drainage ditches beside Monument and Dairy Mart roads, fleeing alongside the San Diego Freeway—now eluding not only la migra and the American variety of bandit but also, I was told, crooked Tijuana policemen who had crossed to prey on their own people. The polos came from diverse backgrounds and places, but they had in common three things: they were poor, desperate, and very, very frightened.

  Gloria went on, “My mother was attacked by bandits in Smuggler’s Gulch. She wasn’t raped, but they took what little money she had. All she was able to save was the address of the safe house in San Diego where she was to wait until my aunt could come for her. She walked there from the border, seven months pregnant, carrying my sister.”

  But that was fifteen miles, give or take. I tried to imagine the journey, but couldn’t.

  Gloria said, “I was born two months later in a migrant workers’ shack in Salinas, where my aunt’s family was working the lettuce harvest. The doctor was Hispanic; he assisted at births for free. My mother was ashamed to take his charity, but she knew he’d issue a birth certificate proving I was born on American soil. Three years later the INS caught up with her, and she and my sister were deported. I stayed behind with my aunt. You see, I was an American citizen.”

  As she spoke, I’d waited for some display of emotion that would contradict the flat, staged quality of her recital. All I got now was a faint bitter smile. Was she that tightly controlled? Given the history she was relating, she should have been angry. And why was she telling this story to me, anyway?

  In the same passionless tone she went on, “My mother died a few years later in Tijuana. I barely remember her. To this day my sister hates me, even though I’ve repeatedly tried to help her. I don’t blame her; I was the one who got to stay.”

  Now I spotted a slight tremor at the corners of her lips; her eyes clouded. The story was true, but something was lost in the telling. Perhaps she’d used this personal history to fuel her passion to succeed so many times that it no longer had the power to stir her.

  I started to speak, but Gloria held up her hand, silencing me. “I know this doesn’t seem relevant to your accepting or declining the promotion, but please let me go on.”

  I nodded, too interested in both the story and her motives for telling it to worry about lost travel time.

  “My aunt made sure I went to school, even though we lived in a series of shacks from the Canadian border to Riverside County. When I was fifteen we were able to settle near Marysville, and there was a teacher in the high school who decided I should go to college and arranged a scholarship to the University of Oregon at Eugene. I did well, applied to law school there, and got another scholarship. Then in my senior year I fell in love—or so I thought. He was an Anglo, his family had money. When they found out I was pregnant, they shipped him off to Europe for a year. Didn’t want a ’wetback,’ as they called me, for a daughter-in-law.”

  I made an involuntary sound of sympathy. Gloria’s eyes hardened and she resumed speaking, more swiftly now.

  “I had the baby, a daughter named Teresa, after my mother. I moved into a women’s cooperative in Eugene, where we all helped each other care for our kids while attending school. For a while after graduation I worked for the ACLU, then for a small progressive firm in Portland. They’re the people who told me about the job here; they knew it was what I needed to be doing.”

  She looked back at me, gaze level, lips pulled into a straight, controlled line. “Teresa’s ten now. Gets straight As. She’s beautiful. She’s also the reason I’m committed to what I do. No one is going to hold my daughter back because of their own narrow prejudices. No one is going to make her feel the humiliation I suffered almost every day of my childhood and young adulthood.”

  I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t speak, I said, “So that’s where you’re coming from.”

  “Yes.” She paused, watching me. Anger moved beneath the level surface of her gaze now. “I’ve given up a lot, Sharon, to work in behalf of people who are in danger of losing their rights. Other than Teresa, I don’t have much of a personal life. I live and breathe the law eighteen hours a day; the other six I dream it. That’s why I came on so strong with you yesterday—and why I think you should accept this promotion. Right now All Souls is in a critical transition period. We need our people to make sacrifices, to give up their own concerns and make this co-op a truly viable institution. All Souls has been good to you. Why can’t you return the kindness?”

  Abruptly I stood and turned my back to her, staring out the window while gathering my thoughts and trying to assemble them within a logical framework that she, as a woman of reason, would understand.

  “A great deal of what you say makes sense,” I finally told her. “And what you’re working for—it’s so people can be free to live their dreams. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. That’s what we all should do, isn’t it? And even though you’ve sacrificed your personal life, aren’t you in fact living your dream?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’m happy for you. But what about my dream?”

  “Your dream?” She sounded surprised, as if it had never occurred to her that people like me—who were more or less mainstream Americans, who had more or less not had to struggle—could possibly entertain a dream.

  “Yes, Gloria, I have one. And in essence you’re asking me to give up my dream for yours.”

  “But mine is—”

  “Better? More worthy because you’ve experienced hardship and discrimination?” Now I was the one who felt angry.

  “No, no.” She held out her hands placatingly, “I guess I assumed that because you work here, your dream is the same as mine.”

  “Possibly it is. At least in the abstract.” I got my emotions under control and sat back down.
“You’ve been honest with me,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure her motives were all that pure, “so now I’m going to return the favor and tell you something that I don’t tell many people because, frankly, it makes me feel silly when I put it into words. After I graduated from college I had a lot of time on my hands because I couldn’t get a job that didn’t involve guarding office buildings in the dead of night. And I became addicted to detective novels. I’d devour them, one or two a shift, and there’d still be time left over, so I’d dream. And what I’d dream about was going out into the night, strong and unafraid, on a mission to right wrongs. I wanted to make things right, just as you did.

  “Fortunately for you and me, we got to realize those dreams. You right wrongs through the legal system; I do it by getting at the truth and trying to salvage a bad situation. Maybe my method doesn’t have as sweeping an effect as yours, but it makes the best use of my abilities. Makes a much better use of them than if I were logging in cases and making sure paralegals do their jobs. I’m a damned good investigator, and if you ask anybody who’s been around here awhile, you’ll find that I’ve pulled this co-op out of a bad spot more than just a time or two. So don’t talk to me about how I’m not returning what All Souls has given me, because I have, over and over.”

  Gloria was silent, staring at the rubber plant again. After a moment she said, “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? And you’ve had it so easy. You can’t possibly understand.”

  “How do you know I’ve had it so easy? You don’t know anything about me—haven’t even bothered to ask. I haven’t experienced as much hardship as you, but my life hasn’t been so wonderful, either. Especially not when it comes to prejudice. You may have noticed, although you’ve never remarked on it, that I have Indian blood—I’m one-eighth Shoshone. Bigots don’t like half-breeds—or eighth-breeds.”

  She studied my face now, her expression puzzled, and I realized that she’d been so caught up with her own minority status that she’d ignored what should have been obvious.

  I glanced at my watch and stood. “Gloria, I’ve given you all the time I can. I’ll consider the promotion, but strictly on its own merits. But let me ask you this: whose idea was it for you to approach me this way?”