He sighed and straightened his spine (as Martha would have him do). The circle of earth and spread tree roots behind him became a sort of halo around Long, like that found around statues of the dancing Shiva.
But Mr. Long did not feel like dancing. He rose slowly to his feet and coughed, experimentally. “I wish I had know there was a train serving Santa Cruz,” he murmured. “I wonder if it makes connections to Amtrack?” He climbed back up to the tracks, on his hands and knees. Pádraig followed him with more noise and effort.
“Has your feeling about Marty’s direction faded with all that excitement, or are we still going on?”
“I feel nothing but embarrassed,” Pádraig said, kicking leaves at his feet.
“What’s that?” Long broke in. “No, don’t kick dirt on it. Let me see.” He swooped over something white that lay between the tracks.
“It is her sunglasses.” Pádraig came forward to touch. “But they are broken!”
Long’s fingers, almost as black as the forest earth, tightened on the remaining stem of the glasses. His eyes, searching forward and backward along the tracks, were hard and pale. Then they softened. “I think they got stepped on by an animal,” he said.
“Now, how could you know that?” Pádraig’s blue eyes, startling as a Siamese cat’s in the darkness, were wide with wonder.
“By the biggest donkey in California, I mean.” Long bent down and slapped Pádraig on the shin until he picked up his foot like a horse. Long examined the shoe. There in the sole of the cheap, aged tennis shoes were trapped fragments of plastic that had once been tiny daisies. “So I did,” said Pádraig. “Please God she’s come to no more harm than that.”
They went ahead, trusting that the forest train did not run too frequently. The way grew more difficult and deep-layered with winter castings. Those few patches of sun they passed were heavy in briars, and everywhere grew the bright, oily tendrils of poison oak. Long knew the stuff, though he had never gotten a rash from it. Pádraig, despite warnings, plowed through the bushes.
But this same hard footing meant a dearth of choices; they were forced to stay by the tracks, and no doubt Marty had been also. It was definitely darker than when they had entered the woods, and as the railroad tracks climbed up from the valley floor on a trestle of heavy redwood, it cast an unhappy shadow over the two men who trudged dustily underneath.
“How much can a three-year-old do in one day?” asked Long of the world in general.
“Everything,” answered Pádraig. “They don’t know they are tired until their feet fall off them. My sister Sióbhán would go out with her dolls in the morning and—”
“Peace to your sister,” Long whispered. “What’s that?”
Pádraig stood quiet and listened, either for pipes or steam locomotives, but what he heard brought life to his weary face. “It’s singing, Mayland. It’s a child singing.” Weak and treble as a bird’s, but without doubt human, the small voice cut through the thick silence of the trees.
Slowly, in relief, Long closed his brown-glass eyes. “It’s Marty, a Phádraig. Didn’t I teach her that song myself?” He broke into a run, just as the tracks came down to the valley floor, which was rising. Up a steep incline they came, Pádraig with heavy feet and much energy, and Long occasionally coughing.
“What is it, Mayland?” called Pádraig. “A Chinese song?”
Long chuckled soundlessly. “Not exactly. It’s called ‘The Bear Went Over the Mountain.’”
They crested the hill and expected to find Marty there, so close had seemed the voice. But they saw nothing except what the bear saw in the song. The tracks went right and the ridge itself continued left, but straight ahead of them, down through the perfectly vertical display of redwood trees, was a khaki stripe in the forest with a square dark blotch beside it.
A road. A house.
As they made out that much, the singing ceased.
“Mr. Poznan.” Sergeant Anderson sank into the only chair in Teddy’s own, much smaller room. Teddy himself stood before him, his hands behind his back as he leaned against the wall radiator. As he heard his name his body straightened as though hung from a string.
“Gawd! Even the banks don’t use ‘Mister’ anymore. I’m Teddy.” His voice, though almost too cordial, was shaky.
Anderson made a face that pulled down on his nose and up on his eyebrows. “I however, am still required to. I don’t have anywhere near as much money as a bank. That must be the difference.” He glanced casually behind Teddy’s shoulder, assuring himself that his subordinate had entered the room behind them, and he pulled out a large manila envelope. “You did not tell the officer at the station where you made your initial statement that you are presently on probation.”
“I’m not,” said Teddy. “My probation ended just before the tour began. That’s how I could go.”
Anderson stared sharply at Ted, whose face was pulled into a half-placating smile. Then he took from his pocket a pair of rimless bifocals and positioned them over his nose. He read. For thirty seconds no one spoke, but the officer in the doorway cleared his throat. Teddy carefully didn’t look at him.
“My sincere apologies,” murmured Anderson, “That slipped right by me. Three years ended as of April eighth.” He sighed and rubbed his nose. “They say this sort of little error will disappear once we have the entire records system computerized, statewide, or nationwide, or whatever. I suppose then the mistakes will be much wilder.” The glasses went back into their case.
“No matter. Though the courts must ignore the fact that you were convicted of dealing in narcotics on this scale—”
“Wrongly,” said Teddy. His hands thrust him away from the table he had been using for support. His dark eyes shone like buttons under his sun-bleached hair. “Convicted wrongly, if you’re interested.”
Anderson looked up. Obviously he was interested, but what he said was: “I can’t be, Mr. Poznan. Because what we’re investigating is a murder in 1986, not a bust in—”
Teddy’s face flushed and he dropped down on his heels in front of the detective. “A moment ago you were about to tell me that my conviction was relevant to George’s murder. In the next breath you say that the fact that the conviction was—was completely screwy… is not.” He pulled on the neat beard which was so much darker than his hair.
“The truth is I was living in a house where another guy was growing and dealing, and the Feds were sweeping through with a helicopter, and it was an election year! There was no more to it than that. And though the roots of the miserable experience probably lie somewhere back in this life or a past one, I feel more than a little bit bitter about the California police! Everyone who knows me knows I don’t do drugs.”
Sure that the burly officer was placed within reasonable distance of Teddy, Anderson leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “All right, Mr. Poznan. I’ll let it be, except to remind you that there is no such thing as the ‘California police.’ I represent Santa Cruz, not Cotati, and have no more influence with the FBI than you do. As a matter of fact, they scare me.
“Let’s just push through a few questions here, which don’t in any way touch on your unfortunate past. First. Did St. Ives do drugs?”
Teddy grunted and settled back on his haunches. “All the time. I think. Alcohol I’m sure of. Pills, too, though I can’t tell you whether they were legal or not. Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter, Teddy—Mr. Poznan?”
“Doesn’t matter at all. They were shit! He’d take them at about noon and spend all afternoon in a thick daze, being sleepy and surly at the same time. Then in the late afternoon he’d perk up for an hour or so and bring himself down with booze until time to work. In the morning he’d be sicker than a cat.”
Ted swept both his hands through his hair, pulling out the elastic band in a crackle of static. His long, straight, and very clean hair fell, separate in its colors, all over his shoulders. Though Sergeant Anderson had worked in Santa Cruz for twenty years an
d more, he still felt a disorientation, as Ted Poznan suddenly looked like a woman to him.
“I noticed. From when we got together first in Mendocino, I knew there was something wrong with George. I don’t know that anyone else did. Notice, that is. Unless maybe Martha.”
Anderson took a breath and longed for a cigarette. He had a pack in his jacket pocket and smoked perhaps five a day, saving them for times of weakness. He reached into his pocket and then stopped. “You say you don’t do drugs, Mr. Poznan? Not even… aspirin?”
“Nothing processed. And not marijuana, either,” he added, glaring resentfully at the expressions passing over the detective’s face.
“Tobacco?”
Teddy looked quite fierce. “Enslavement of the body by bodily poison itself!”
Anderson let his hand slide out again, empty. “So. St. Ives started each day badly, took codeine and morphine to kill the pain, went to bennies, moderated by alcohol, to allow him to work, and then got to sleep by the light of phenobarb. Am I right?”
Teddy shook his head vaguely. “I don’t know if he took exactly that….”
“We do,” said Anderson. “We searched his room. There were little bits of this and that, but mostly morphine and codeine.”
Teddy’s face, under all the hair, was almost invisible to the sergeant, but his attitude was, one of dejection. Almost grief, “He told me, the day before—the day before he died, that he was in almost constant pain.”
Anderson nodded as though this did not surprise him.
“Drugs will do that,” said Teddy, not raising his head. “It’s a bad cycle. After the health is ruined you have to keep taking them to prevent your feeling just how bad you’re off. If you guys would only learn…”
“Learn what?”
“That education, not laws, is the way to keep people from doing things to damage themselves. It’s all ignorance.”
Anderson glanced up from Teddy to his own assistant, and his face expressed a potent combination of amused and weary disbelief. But it was not the sensitive Scherer he had brought along this afternoon, and his colleague met his eyes with a stare most bovine. Anderson sighed.
Very calmly he asked, “What about the little plastic bag we found among his stash? With your fingerprints on it.”
Now Teddy raised his head, brushing the hair out of his eyes with his left hand. He looked to Anderson much like an attentive Indian brave, naked to the waist and evenly sun-bronzed. Except that Indian braves weren’t usually pictured with beards. “The one with bee pollen in it? Or the kelp? I gave him a lot of things.”
“But no drugs?”
“No drugs,” answered Teddy after a pause.
Anderson was forced to admit the envelope had been empty. He glared absently at the top of Teddy’s head and bit his lip for a while. At last he spoke. “Was there anything specifically wrong with St. Ives, when he died? Any disease or… trouble?”
Now Teddy straightened full up, clawing back his hair with an ugly, taloned right hand. “What do you mean?” he asked, dry-voiced. “You want a name for ruination of body? Will a name make it any better?”
Anderson cogitated. “In a way. It might explain his death. People sometimes commit suicide, if they have inoperable cancers. Or AIDS.”
Teddy’s braced attitude collapsed and he swayed forward. He stared at the detective. “AIDS!”
“He had… I gather… extensive sexual contact. He was in failing health. Why not AIDS? Something to check for.” Anderson shrugged.
Then, before the shock of the suggestion had time to fade, Anderson followed with a question. “Mr. Poznan, can you tell me how you know a man named Richard Wolf? Why did he come to see you this morning, and why did he go back to Cotati before doing so?”
Ted Poznan gave out a small noise that expressed self-pity and waved his hands in the air.
Da Mihi Manum
Pádraig’s left foot slipped on the mulch and he clung: to Long’s arm for support. The light of the sun was dimmed and relit again three times in swift succession, as clouds blew north from the sea. Each time Pádraig’s face went rosy and Long faded from sight entirely. Except for his eyes.
“She’s down there,” said the young man. “I could throw a stone to hit her. I know it.”
Long shook his head at this preternatural information, but it was not a gesture of denial. Long felt oppressed. In another moment the thin man was shaking all over and he did not know why. He put one well-shod foot in front of the other and began a loose, half-sliding progress down the slope. His bony hands wrapped around the branches of the trees as though they had extra joints. Pádraig slid faster and caught himself up on the redwoods to slow his descent. He bumped Long twice. Hard. He was mumbling as he went. Long heard him: “…. defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil…”
He caught Long looking at him. “It is a strong protection, my friend. You should say the prayer with me.”
The older man did not smile, either in mockery or in agreement. His breath was ragged and his lips pulled back from his teeth. He could feel his heart pound, though not with the effort of climbing. “I have already said a drunken rosary with you today. That’s enough.” No expression showed in his face at all. In the sunlight filtered through branches, his eyes gleamed yellow.
The sun was obscured in another moment, but not Long’s pale eyes. He turned his head on his slender neck from Pádraig to the house at the bottom of the hill and back again. Pádraig stumbled back from him.
“Be careful, Mayland! In another moment I will invoke my name saint against you, for you’re looking as cruel as a snake.” Pádraig giggled, but won no answering smile “Mayland, what is wrong with you? You are acting funny.”
Long rubbed his hands over his face, like a man troubled by small insects. Soberly he replied, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m no spiritual medium, to be able to explain this… atmosphere. You are the one with unexplainable ‘feelings,’ Ó Súilleabhain. Can’t you feel this?”
Pádraig rolled his eyes. “Frightened is what I feel now. And I think it’s of yourself, my friend. I have this suspicion you’ll bite me in a moment. Maybe you have walked too far, with the cold on you.”
Stepping backward down the hill, still facing Long, he lost both feet together and fell in a heap. Long sighed, huskily. It was almost a growl.
He came up beside Pádraig and picked him up by the shirt collar. Long’s face glistened. There was a humming as of machinery in the air, or perhaps in his head. “That is as you will, Pádraig Ó Súilleabhain. Be frightened or brave as a bull. But you have claimed to have knowledge of things hidden to me. I am waiting for you to stop playing the fool and find me my granddaughter.” All emotion was damped out of his voice, until he came to the word “granddaughter,” which was hissed in rage.
Pádraig leaned against a tree, and a scared sullenness spread over his small features. He put the trunk of the redwood between Long and himself.
He found himself facing an A-frame of unpainted wood, with a great deal of porch and a front wall of glass rising to the sharp peak of the gable. This glass reflected the sky and the black wall of trees, for it was dark within. The yard around the place was packed earth, forlorn save for a concrete bird bath standing at the far edge of the trees. Brambles poked from under the porch. A stripe of dark, disturbed earth ran across the bare lot, and there was a pick, and gravel, and white plastic pipe.
The road of dust wound off toward the west, sliced at odd angles by the scars of last winter’s rain. It was deadly quiet.
Pádraig shook his head. “We’ve come to an empty house, I think.” He took a step out into the clearing and away from Long. “But if I were a little one and I came rolling down that long hill and found such a place as this, I know what I’d do. I’d have to look in that bowl over there…. “He pointed at the bird bath.
There came a rattling squeak. Someone had opened a window. Pádraig leaped straight into the air and came down p
anting heavily.
Still Long stood at the edge of the woods, frozen and fierce. He moved not his eyes only but his whole head, in sinuous little circles, staring at the blank building and the dusty packed earth around it. “Pádraig,” he called sharply, as his angry paralysis was broken. “That hole in the earth. Isn’t it a French drain?” Long moved cautiously out of his cover.
The young man giggled, thinking back on his own start of fright. I couldn’t tell you, Mayland. For me it has no accent at all.”
Pádraig had not been with Martha on the mall, when someone had been talking about a French drain. For him there was no connection. Perhaps it meant nothing anyway. Long stood undecided, watching the dusty black windows of the house.
“I’d have a look in that bowl over there,” Pádraig repeated for his own hearing. He walked across the bare yard, gaining speed as he went. “And wasn’t I right, Mayland? Look at the child sitting on the stones as easy as she please…. “At the sight of Marty’s shirt and rumpled yellow hair he broke into a trot.
But Marty did not smile back, and as he approached closer, there was something about her face that slowed him down. “Máirtin, little pink pig, what a story you’re going to have, explaining this to your—”
There was, a blast that picked Pádraig up off the ground and smashed him down again. His shirt budded with little black holes that blossomed into red. Twenty feet away, Marty Frisch-Macnamara stood with both hands at her sides, staring at him without interest.
A moment later her daddo struck her in the middle, bowling her over and over until both were hidden from the house by fallen wood and briars. Long found himself hovering over a face he had seen twice before: a face with eyes like boiled eggs and a slack, drooling mouth. Not Marty. Hissing with rage, he flung away from her and went back for Pádraig.
But Pádraig was on his feet again, stumbling toward them. His lips were moving, and as Long reached him Pádraig prayed, “Do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host cast into hell Satan and all his evil spirits, who prowl about the world…. “His blue eyes were round and blinking.
Twisting the Rope Page 20
