Wolf in the Shadows

by Marcia Muller

  The family room was too tidy. No toys on the floor, no books and magazines scattered about, the TV set rolled back into one corner. I opened the sliding door to let some of the trapped heat escape, then took my wine out to the single lounge chair on the patio.

  Had the house been so bereft of life in December? I wondered. Or was it merely Pa’s absence that made the difference? I thought back to Christmas Day, when I’d met here with John, his boys, Charlene, Ricky, and the aptly named little Savages. We’d all cooked dinner for Pa, and the occasion had been cheerful, even festive. But in retrospect, I decided everyone—including Pa—had worked hard to ignore an underlying depression. Unlike the mood at Ma’s Christmas Eve buffet, when with considerable relief I’d been able to let go the last of my reservations about her new relationship with Melvin Hunt.

  I slipped down farther on the lounge, still not sleepy. The tops of the tall eucalyptus in the canyon blew lazily, outlined against a cloud-streaked sky. Something rustled in the underbrush beyond the fence and, farther off, I heard a coyote cry. By day, with sunlight silvering the eucalyptus and pepper trees and accentuating the brilliant colors of the wild plumbago and bougainvillea that grew among the yucca and prickly pear and greasewood, the canyon was beautiful and enticing. As children we’d played there, descending the stone steps that Pa had built into the steep downslope; the remains of our treehouse still perched in one of the sturdier live oaks. But I’d never liked the canyon at night, particularly after our favorite black cat disappeared into it. Then it was rendered wild and strange by the setting sun. Then all that moved down there were the hunters and the hunted.

  The coyote howled again—closer. In spite of the night’s warmth, a chill slid down my backbone. I closed my eyes, tried to picture Hy’s face. All I saw was Gage Renshaw’s, and his expression when he said he intended to kill him. Hy seemed very far away, even though tonight I’d gone to places where he’d been only some forty-eight hours before, talked with people who had talked with him. Tomorrow I had to move faster, close the gap between us….

  Something screamed farther up the canyon—a small animal taken by a larger one. I came alert, knowing there would be little sleep for me tonight. Momentarily I was safe here, but people already were looking for me. One false step and they’d snap me up as sure as the coyote snaps up its prey.

  Eleven

  Wednesday, June 9

  The Holiday Market was a drive-by hiring hall.

  Dozens of men gathered in its weedy parking lot—drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups, talking idly, smoking. All were Hispanic and most, I was sure, had not long been on this side of the border. As they waited, hunched against the dawn chill, hands shoved into jacket pockets, their eyes expectantly watched the arrival of each truck.

  The trucks that pulled into the lot belonged to any type of firm that used unskilled laborers, but the majority were building contractors. Each driver followed a prescribed ritual: get out of the truck, stroll into the market, return a couple of minutes later with coffee, then begin negotiating.

  And if the police or the INS came by? Just stopping for a jolt of the old caffeine on the way to the job site, officer. Hiring illegals? Christ, no, I wouldn’t do that, and these undocumented workers aren’t worth shit, anyway. Besides, this lot is posted. You see that sign—No Loitering, Prohibido el Pararse. Hell, everybody knows that’s the local lingo for “Don’t be picking up your cheap labor here.”

  That morning no INS sweeps interfered with the hiring process. I sat across the street behind the wheel of the Scout, watching the contractors strike their bargains and the workers pile onto the trucks. They would receive far less than the union wage for their day’s work, and benefits were unheard of, but they were the lucky ones. Those who were left behind—many too sick or strung out for a contractor to take a chance on—would go hungry tonight.

  After a while I got out of the Scout and locked it. It was overcast here by the beach, and even though the temperature hovered in the high fifties, I felt a deep bone-chill from the fog-damp air. It was a little after six; when sleep hadn’t come to me by five, I’d given up, taken a shower, and driven down here to the South Bay. Traffic was light on Palm Avenue; I waited for a break, then crossed to the market. The knots of would-be workers drew back as I passed, eyes darkening with fear that I might be la migra and resentment that I was neither a potential employer nor one of them.

  The building was cement block, a garish green with orange trim, and its dirty windows were heavily barred. I noted a pay phone a few feet from the entrance and went over there to have a look. The Plexiglas around it had been shattered, the directory was torn apart, and the receiver dangled free. The vandalism didn’t look recent, so I assumed Hy’s purpose in coming here hadn’t been to wait for a call from the kidnappers.

  Inside, the store was that peculiar combination of ordinary small supermarket and bodega that you find in southern California towns where mainstream blue-collar workers and military families live in uneasy proximity to recently arrived Hispanics. Tortillas crowded the bread; strands of chorizo were looped above the meat counter. Beans, rice, and a variety of peppers were staples, but the same was true of Hamburger Helper, canned tuna, and Idaho potatoes. Beer, candy bars, chips, and cigarettes seemed to outnumber all other items.

  The market was empty except for a young mother with an infant and two toddlers who was getting started early on her day. I went directly to the counter and showed my I.D. to the heavyset Hispanic man at the cash register. He glanced at it, then stared at my face, his expression hard and immobile. When I held up Hy’s picture and asked if he’d seen him on Sunday evening, he shrugged and turned away, muttering, “No tengo inglÉs.”

  The hell you don’t, I thought, noting that he had the Union-Tribune open to the sports page. But I went along with it, summoning up what Spanish that working in San Francisco’s Mission district had helped me retain from high school. “En domingo, está aqui?”

  He looked at me as if I were speaking an alien tongue.

  I repeated the question.

  He shrugged, feigning bewilderment.

  “Look,” I said, motioning at the newspaper, “I know you speak English. This has nothing to do with you or what’s going on in the parking lot. I just want to know if you saw this man here on Sunday evening.”

  “No tengo inglÉs.”

  I took a twenty from my bag, placed it on the counter, and pushed it toward him.

  He looked at it, shook his head, and pushed it back toward me.

  Serious resistance here. Because of the illegal hiring—or something else entirely? Something to do with Hy’s visit?

  I added another twenty, looked inquiringly at him.

  He shook his head and turned away.

  I pocketed both bills and went back outside. Most of the men were gone from the lot now, and those who remained had fixed, desperate expressions, eyes following every truck that moved by on Palm Avenue. For a moment I considered trying to question them, but quickly decided against it. No tengo inglÉs—and besides, none of them would have been here on a Sunday. I passed them by, and all the way back to the Scout, I could feel their anxious, hungry gazes follow me.

  * * *

  Taking a different route back to San Diego, I drove west on Palm Avenue, past fast-food restaurants and liquor stores and bars that mainly catered to the military, then followed the Silver Strand to Coronado. The Glorietta Bay area was much more built up than I remembered it; one of the more startling changes was that the Casa del Rey Hotel, where one of my most—literally—painful cases had begun at a private investigators’ conference, had been torn down to make way for yet another condo complex. Thank God that the developers so far hadn’t gotten up the nerve to attempt to supplant the venerable Hotel del Coronado, which now stood alone in its Victorian splendor.

  As I drove across the soaring expanse of bridge from Coronado to San Diego, I turned serious attention to the dead end at the Holiday Market. The proprietor’s reaction to my q
uestion about Hy had been extreme; there was no way I would get him to talk. But was there another avenue of approach? I needed an in, someone he would be inclined to trust….

  Well, one solution to the problem was obvious to me, but it would mean violating a cardinal rule: when there’s a possibility of danger, never involve, even to the smallest degree, family members or other people you care about.

  Now I assessed the danger. I’d shaken RKI’s operatives, I was certain. There had been no one waiting outside my father’s house this morning, no one tailing me. I’d be taking a calculated risk, but the odds were on my side. Anyway, what could RKI really do? Torture my husky, six-foot-four, streetwise brother into revealing my whereabouts?

  I looped onto the San Diego Freeway north, then caught 94 west toward Lemon Grove.

  * * *

  Visiting John’s neighborhood in Lemon Grove is like taking a trip back in time. The streets are without sidewalks and hilly, the lots irregular, the small dwellings highly diverse. People keep chickens, goats, ducks, and horses; packs of wild dogs roam free. Ethnically, the residents are as diverse as the architecture and, so far as I know, live in relative amicability. Even what my brother calls the “car collections” in some yards are overgrown with vines and wildflowers.

  John’s house sat atop a knoll a few blocks over the line from San Diego’s Encanto district. Its driveway was unpaved and rutted, winding among yucca trees that grew in profusion on the downslope. The small stucco house had a red tile roof and a fresh coat of—appropriately—lemon-yellow paint; a bench—stolen from a downtown bus stop in one of John and Joey’s last thieving rampages—sat under a mulberry tree, and on it were two beer cans. I smiled, picturing my brother relaxing there as he surveyed his domain.

  I pulled the Scout up next to a shiny new Mr. Paint truck and got out. Behind the house, by one of two oversized garages, stood numerous plastic paint buckets, apparently washed and set out to dry. The sun was just breaking through the cloud cover as I walked toward the house and heard music—sixties rock, the only thing John will listen to. A good sign that my brother was at home and probably in the mood for an early visitor.

  As I stepped up to the front door, hand poised to knock, the music abruptly broke off; from a loudspeaker perched somewhere in the trees behind me, John’s voice said, “Sharon McCone, who told you you could steal my Scout?” Then the screen door flew open, and I was enveloped in a bear hug.

  When he released me and I recovered my breath, I stepped back and looked him over. In appearance John and I are as different as can be: he has blond hair, and his features betray the Irish side of the family; I’m a genetic throwback to my great-grandmother, Mary McCone, a Shoshone woman who joined my great-grandfather Robert on his westward journey. But John and I have always been closer to each other than to any of our other siblings, and now I was pleased to see that he looked both healthy and—judging from his leather vest and cowboy shirt and new polished western boots—prosperous.

  “Pretty snappy duds,” I commented. “What’s with the speaker?”

  “Rowdy neighbors moved in downhill. When they get too loud, I turn the thing on and issue warnings with a heavy biblical flavor. Scares the shit out of them to think God’s paying such close attention.” He held the screen door open, and I ducked under his arm, smiling.

  I hadn’t remembered the little living room as a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, but that was how it seemed today. John’s office had expanded along the entire left-hand wall, and his sound system took up the one opposite. The couch was pushed dangerously close to a fireplace that angled alongside the glass door to the patio, and the rest of the floor was covered by stacks of cardboard cartons. John had only bought the house right before the Christmas holidays, but this was carrying on the post-move chaos far too long.

  “What’s all this?” I nudged the closest box with my toes.

  John glanced into it. “Ma’s dishes. You know, the ones with the ugly apples?”

  “How could I forget them? But why are they here? I thought she gave those to you when you got married and Karen kept them.”

  He tried to step around me, couldn’t find footing, and finally lifted me and set me on a stool in front of the breakfast bar. “She did. This is Karen’s stuff. I’m storing it for her.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s getting married again and going off to Italy with the guy while he’s on a year’s sabbatical. He’s some kind of professor at State. She sold her house, he gave up his apartment, and when they get back they’re going to buy a new place, so in the meantime I’m stuck with everything.” John went behind the bar and held up the coffee pot, raising an eyebrow in question.

  I nodded yes. “How do you feel about that?” I asked, then realized I sounded ridiculously like a therapist.

  “Being stuck with the stuff? It’s a pain in the ass. Her getting married? I think it’s great.” He poured a mug of coffee and set it in front of me. “My spousal support payments stop, and I get the boys for a whole year while she’s over there. Plus he’s a nice guy, the kids like him, and Karen’s so happy she’s practically turned into a human being.”

  “Well, you’ve come a long way since the days when you wouldn’t call her anything but ‘that bitch.’ ” I raised the mug in a toast.

  “Yeah, I guess I have.” He looked away from me, gaze turned inward, but he glanced back just in time to see me gag on the strong coffee. “Shar, you don’t look so good. And what’re you doing here at seven-thirty in the morning, anyway?”

  I set the mug down, pushed it away. “I don’t look good because I haven’t had any sleep in forty-eight hours. And the reason I’m here is a long story.”

  He waited. When I didn’t go on, he said, “So you want to tell me about it?”

  “Yes, and to ask a favor. But don’t you have to go to work soon?”

  “I am at work.” He drew himself up with mock dignity. “You’re looking at a white-collar type. I turned the on-site supervision over to my foremen, and now I stay home and run the business end.”

  “But I thought you liked being out on the job sites.”

  “I do, and I’ll probably go back to it after Karen returns from Italy and we’re sharing custody again. But in two weeks I’ll be a full-time papa, and I need to be here for the boys.”

  My big brother was certainly a transformed man. If it hadn’t been for the general disorder in the house and the loudspeaker in the trees, I’d have sworn that an alien had taken up residence in his body.

  “So what’s going on?” he asked. “You in trouble?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, you’re looking worse by the minute. Let me get you some breakfast.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Just a glass of milk and some toast.” When I started to protest some more, he made a shooing gesture. “Go on, the sun’s burned off the fog now; we’ll talk on the patio. I’ll be with you in about three minutes.”

  I slid off the stool, picked my way through the cartons to the patio door, and stepped out into the warming morning. A small tiled Jacuzzi took up one corner of the patio; I approached it cautiously, alert for alligators. At Christmastime it had contained a primordial stew that promised either to give rise to a strange new species or to effect a cure for any number of previously untreatable diseases. There was no telling what might live there now. But surprise—the water was clear and smelled faintly of chlorine.

  So why did that depress me? I wondered as I flopped on a lounge chair. My brother’s life was on track, and it depressed me? Too much evidence of change in too few hours, I supposed. I hadn’t been prepared for it, so now I was resisting.

  Then my spirits took a further downhill slide as I remembered other changes, and that I’d promised to give All Souls an answer about the promotion by close of business today. No way I could cope with that—not in my present state. Maybe I should call Rae and ask her to pass on a message that as a result of my alleged illness I required more time
….

  John delivered the milk and toast, sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi, and watched me like a prison guard until I’d drunk every drop, polished off every crumb. When he took the plate and glass away, his smug expression reminded me of my mother’s when she’d duped one of us into swallowing some particularly odious medicine. And I had to admit I felt better, just as I’d always felt better after Ma’s ministrations.

  John came back and sat on the Jacuzzi wall again. “Now,” he said, and waited.

  “Before I go into it, let me ask you: do you ever hire illegals?”

  “Well, sure. There’s not a small contractor in the county who doesn’t. I’ve done it personally, and as far as I know, my foremen still do.”

  “Don’t you consider that exploitation?” It was off the subject, but I wasn’t tracking too well and, anyway, it interested me.

  “No,” he said flatly. “At least they’re eating, and cheap labor makes it possible for me to stay in business.”

  “But what about their rights?”

  “What rights? They’re here illegally.”

  “In case you don’t know, there’s been a series of court decisions that in essence say that once undocumented immigrants are in the country, they have the protection of our laws.”

  “Yeah, well, isn’t that always the way? Protect the guy who’s here illegally at the expense of the one who was born here. Protect the criminal’s rights at the expense of the victim’s. I’m getting damned sick of it.”

  “I understand why you’re—”