by Susan Dunlap
27
“I’M SURPRISED YOU called me,” Janice said a couple of hours later when I got into her car.
In a way, I was, too. “It just seemed right.”
She handed me a bottle of water.
She wanted to ask why, I could tell, but instead she kept her mouth shut and just pulled into traffic. I flipped open her phone, reconsidered, and snapped it shut.
“Mind if I check myself in the rearview mirror?”
“Go ahead.”
It wasn’t an attractive picture. My clothes looked like a diary of my last three days, smeared with dust from Guthrie’s garage two days ago and coated with dirt from Zahra’s yesterday and blood from my fall. I glanced over at my sister and regretted every exasperated thought I’d had about her. “Janice, you were the one person who’d come and wouldn’t ask questions, force advice, make demands. I’m wiped; I’ve got to think. But I just want you to know I’m so grateful to you.” Janice, the odd sister out. “I know you hate being called ‘the nice one.’ You talk about how successful the rest of us are, but kindness—paying enough attention to know what kindness will entail—it’s not nothing.”
“Maybe.”
“And keeping your mouth shut, that’s really not nothing.”
I didn’t have to explain that one, not in our family. She laughed, then turned toward me. “Thanks.”
In that moment she seemed like the big sister I remembered from childhood, the calm one amid all the bigger personalities. She was twelve years older than me. When I was starting grade school, she was a college fresh-man. Yet she’d stopped and listened when I babbled about finger painting or soccer practice. Not quite one of the “black Irish” of our family, she’d never stood out like Gary and Gracie with their chiseled features and startling blue eyes.
But now, her not-quite-black hair had gone gray and she’d pulled it back off her face in a way that classified it as a nuisance rather than an enhancement. Her bare and slightly fleshy arms had a tan line a couple of inches below the shoulder that said gardening was as close to exercise as she came. Her pale blue eyes seemed watery. Pay no attention to me! her whole being said. I drank some of the water she’d brought me. It would have been so easy to picture her in a house in the Berkeley hills, with a husband who appreciated her and a bunch of kids. But we all knew too well that the Lott family wasn’t good at marriage, at least not since Mike disappeared. I didn’t want to think about that. “Hey, what did you come up with on Ryan Hammond?”
“Nothing at all, really. Nothing useful.”
I sighed.
She glanced over at me. “Sorry. I couldn’t find anything else. I wasn’t expecting a website or Facebook page, but if I Googled your name, I would at least get your political contributions.”
“Let me tell you how surprised I’d be to find Ryan Hammond had sent a hundred bucks to the DNC.” I’d had one iffy lead to the guy, via one of the most unreliable people on earth, and now even that was gone. Even if he was in the city, I’d never find him. I didn’t even know what he looked like. I sighed. “What about Mike, any new word?”
“No. Well, nothing good. John’s found a body that could be a match—”
“No!”
“It doesn’t mean it is. He’s somewhere south of the border. In the kind of place where they don’t have their own forensic team. It’s probably nothing, but . . .”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I forced out, and my words hung there with neither of us believing them. I couldn’t deal with this possibility at all. Instead I focused my attention back on Guthrie and Hammond and their friend Kilmurray whom I’d been so desperate to get ahold of a couple days ago. Now I couldn’t bear to call him. I forced myself to say, “I’ve got a possible lead to Hammond in Thailand; guy’s a friend of his and Guthrie’s. He’s my last hope for some insight into Guthrie. I’m going to call—”
“Too early.”
I looked at my sister gratefully.
She intuited what I was thinking. “I know the family thinks I’m not good for anything but digging in loam and sitting on soft chairs. But I can tell time.”
“And you’re the one who checks the missing persons’ sites.” I swallowed, remembering the pictures of unclaimed dead and the descriptions of how they’d died. I’d looked once and never been able to make myself go back lest without warning I discover what I couldn’t bear to find. “That’s sure not nothing, either. Do you check out ones all over the world?”
“This is going to sound strange. But it’s like they’re friends now, the dead. I’m rooting for them. If I go to one of the coroners’ sites and a body’s been claimed, I’m happy for them.”
“And their family, huh?”
“Of course. But anyway,” she said awkwardly, “I got to know time zones and you don’t want to call yet. Do it from my house; I’ve got a serious phone. Not a satellite, but serious.”
I could hardly believe this was the infuriating babbler I’d all but hung up on yesterday. How many sides did my sister have? Family legend portrayed her as being so endlessly accommodating and so overwhelmed that she’d ended up hiding behind the washing machine, and when Gary found her she’d come at him with a knife. Now I wondered how much that particular tale had gotten inflated with years of retelling.
I didn’t call Thailand till we got to Janice’s place. Meanwhile, I slept.
It was a bit after nine by then, which meant seven in the morning there. I punched in the number.
A woman answered but didn’t sound like the one I’d spoken to before. She seemed annoyed at being disturbed, and less than eager to go and haul Kilmurray out of wherever he was. I kept Janice’s phone by my ear as if his voice might come on any second, but minutes passed with only odd clicks. My own breathing sounded thunderous. But Janice, I noted, seemed unperturbed.
“It was about the same time Mike disappeared,” I said softly, as if the woman in Thailand who was nowhere near the phone might be listening. “Kilmurray was involved with Guthrie, Ryan Hammond, and Tancarro right before the earthquake. It’s not as if he’s connected to Mike. Just stuff happened . . . back then.” Suddenly, I was thinking of Mike and the body in Mexico and I was choking back tears. “Sorry, sorry. After all these years you’d think . . .” But Janice had turned away. She extracted a couple of tissues from a box and held out one to me without ever turning back.
“Hello?”
“Luke Kilmurray?”
“Who’s that? Who’m I talking to?”
“Darcy Lott. I’m calling from San Francisco, about Damon Guthrie.”
The line crackled.
“I’m calling about Guthrie!” I said, louder.
There was no response. I hesitated, then added, “I’m Guthrie’s girlfriend.”
Still Kilmurray said nothing. I could hear background noises, but if the line was this clear on his end, his silence made no sense.
“Guthrie!” I said, “He’s dead!”
“It wasn’t my fault. I kept telling myself that. Not my fault.”
Of course it wasn’t his fault. He was thousands of miles away.
“But I always knew,” he went on. “The monks, they know what fault is. In the wats they talk about the wheel of dharma. You set it in motion, it turns and turns, and there’s no stopping it. And whatever you pretend, here’s the truth: your hand was on the wheel.”
“Karma,” I said. Actions have consequences.
“Yeah . . . karma. But . . . why now? Why’d you call me now?”
“Because Guthrie’s dead and I need to know about him when you knew him. You were buddies with him before the earthquake, right?”
“Who are you? Why should I talk to you?” He sounded so not-American-any-more. Like he’d put my question in a pipe to see what the smoke told him.
“Karma,” I said. “There isn’t only one turn of the wheel. You turn the wheel every day, every moment, with everything you do. You can turn the wheel again—now—and send it in a different direction.” When he didn�
�t answer, I said, “Chances come. Not taking them is turning the wheel, too. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, right?” I added. Then I waited. I could hear his breathing, thick, as if he was hauling in each individual breath. I thought he repeated “karma” as if mulling the possibilities, but I couldn’t be sure.
Finally, I said, “You and Pernell Tancarro—”
“That jerk.”
Whew! “Why do you say—”
“He was such a wuss. ‘You go first. You take the risk.’ Couldn’t decide if he was going to be a judge and needed to keep his ass clean or if he was a goddamned poet and needed to sulk in iambic pentameter.”
“What risk, specifically?”
The line went fuzzy and I couldn’t tell whether he’d changed position or if it was static.“Huh?” Kilmurray was sounding more like the line itself.
I’d worry about Tancarro later. “You remember Ryan Hammond?”
“Oh yeah. Opposite of that ass Tancarro. Ryan was a bundle of enthusiasm, like a big puppy. Try anything.”
“He was Guthrie’s friend?”
“Dunno. Met him in a bar. Think Guthrie met him there, too. Ryan was so perfect. That’s what Guthrie saw. Went right up to him. He was just what he needed.”
“Needed for the burglaries?”
“Yeah, the roof job. Not like Tancarro was going up there first, you can believe that. But Ryan, boy, that kid was strong. S’not easy climbing a yew tree. You gotta be strong to press those flimsy branches in before they break. I know. I tried. No way.”
Climbing a yew tree? Was this guy delusional? Only squirrels climb yews. Maybe not even squirrels. Tancarro had said Guthrie’d picked Ryan for the burglaries, so at least Kilmurray was good with that. “So it was Hammond who climbed up?”
“He went first, up the tree. Fuckin’ amazing. Him not hanging on but pressing in with his arms, and all the time he’s got the rope looped around his neck. He was like Tarzan. Guthrie couldn’t wait to get up after him. He was high.” Kilmurray giggled. “High on the ground, you know.”
“High-before-he-climbed high?”
“Yeah. Well, I was, too.”
Big surprise. “And Ryan?”
“No. He was all business, like he had to prove himself. He and Guthrie’d been carrying on about stunts in the movies that night in the bar, what a cool job, and on and on and on. He’d had some kind of problem that was keeping him out of the business. So, for him, this was a great job. Guthrie’d paid him enough. He was a monkey, flying up that tree, bending the top of it over, leaping onto the roof. Me, I waited too long, had too long to think. I went, but I’ll tell you I was shaking. I can still see the two of them up there. They looked like demons around a fire.”
“This was a burglary—”
“I still see them, still see Guthrie on the roof,” he said in the voice of somebody recounting a dream. I had to wonder if that’s what it was.
“But, Luke, you were committing a robbery, right? Why the roof?” Oh, shit! The chimney! Guthrie’s chimneys! “Were you going down the chimney? Did you go down?”
“No. Like I said, Guthrie and I were high. We made a lot of noise. He was talking about Santa and how some uncle or something of his had done the chimney bit there when he was a kid. Bag and all. Like a backpack, he said. He kept saying Hammond would have no problem going down because he wasn’t as fat as Santa. We were high; I guess I told you that, huh? Anyway, suddenly there were sirens all over. We could see the red lights coming. Ryan freaked; I think he had something on his record already. Guthrie grabbed him and dragged him to the chimney. He kept yelling, ‘Go! Just go!’ He meant the chimney. But Ryan was freaked and shook him off and, man, he was gone. I slid down the rope so fast both my hands were bleeding.”
“And then?”
“I ran. It was every idiot for himself.”
“You just ran?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, we were talking felony. It was Guthrie’s family house where he grew up, but his sister was the one who’d inherited it—that’s why he was so pissed, so hot to get in there and steal some bonds or something. They didn’t get along. She’d have pressed charges, no question. We could’ve gotten real time. Tancarro kept telling us that.”
“Tancarro? Where was he?”
“Him? Keeping away from the edge. Taking care of number one. But yelling at Guthrie, ‘Just fucking do it! This is what you were so hot to do; just do it!’”
“What did Guthrie do?”
“He went down the chimney. It was crazy, but he was so furious at Ryan and at his sister and all. He just went for it, you know, like the uncle he kept on about.”
“And then?”
The line sounded fuzzier, or maybe it was Kilmurray catching his breath. “The next day,” he said, “that was the earthquake.”
“Was the house damaged?”
“Guthrie’s sister’s house? Hell, I don’t know. The whole garage level of my apartment collapsed. Place was a total loss. I was watching the World Series and I went sliding into the wall. TV crashed. I had to go out the window. My neighbor’s leg was broken and the woman across the hall ended up with her ribs crushed.”
“What’d you do?”
“Got out of the city before things got worse.”
“So you and Ryan and Guthrie drove—”
“No, just me and Ryan.”
“Where was Guthrie?”
“I wasn’t thinking about him. After the roof bit, I’d had enough of him and his stupid vendetta. But if I had been, I’d’ve figured he probably stepped out of the fireplace into the hands of the cops that night and after the earthquake they’d’ve let him out. Much as he was always griping about his sister getting everything, still, you know, it was the family house in the earthquake. But Ryan was like me; he had no reason to stay. The Bay Bridge had collapsed, phones were dead, we didn’t know what was happening. We aimed to get out of the city before the whole place shut down. We lit out across the Golden Gate and drove north.”
“When did you talk to Guthrie again?”
“What?”
I repeated the question.
“No,” he said, as if explaining to an idiot.
“But—”
“Only in my dreams.”
His voice was fading.
He was fading.
“Wait! What about Ryan? What happened to him?”
“We got pulled over for speeding. How crazy is that, with the city in fucking chaos on the other side of the bridge, and there in Marin County you got the Highway Patrol riled up about ten miles over the limit. It freaked us out—we thought they knew about the burglary. Ryan had Guthrie’s license—”
“Ryan had Guthrie’s ID? How come?”
“Guthrie’d emptied his pockets on the roof, like he was going to slide down the chimney faster without ballast. Ryan could’ve waited for him to give it back, but when we heard the sirens, he split fast. So did I. And then, later, when we got stopped, he didn’t want to give the cops his own license. He handed the guy Guthrie’s—”
“What about the picture?”
“Close enough.”
“That’s a big chance.”
“Yeah, you know, I thought that.” There was a different tone to his voice, speculative, and I had the sense it was the first time some other feeling had crept in along with his guilt. “I don’t know whether Ryan planned to give the cop Guthrie’s license or if he just had it and that’s the one he pulled out. He was lucky, real lucky it was close enough. But, you know, once he had it in his hand, it wasn’t like he could say, ‘I just happened to have someone else’s license here.’ Whatever, the whole thing was the last straw, and when the cop pulled off I told him to drop me at the next exit. And that’s the last I saw of him.”
You have to know more than that! “Where was he from? Did he mention family? What did he say?”
“I knew he wanted to get into the movies, to be a stuntman, but something happened. One time he said he’d been framed, but then he s
aid he’d just been stupid, that he blew his chance.”
“What about parents? Other friends? Where’d he come from?”
“Dunno. He was like a little kid who wants to be a pirate. All he talked about was movies and stunts. It’s why Guthrie figured he was perfect for the job. Guthrie paid him, sure, but he flattered the kid so much that Hammond would have done it just for the thrill.”
“And you never heard from him again? Or even heard about him?”
His breath against the phone sounded like a storm. For a moment I thought he wouldn’t be able to speak at all. When he did, his voice was barely audible over the crackling on the line. “I’ve spent most of my fucking life away. I don’t hear from anyone. Why do you think I took your call? Just to talk about friends, about the city . . . I’ve been gone so long it’s like I don’t exist anymore.”
“Gone so long . . . like you don’t exist anymore.” I realized I was speaking out loud.
It sounded like he was clicking his tongue, like he was thinking. Maybe that was just the line. I glanced at Janice, or where Janice had been, but she’d left the room.
Gone so long, like you don’t exist anymore. “I’m so sorry,” I said to him. But I was thinking of Mike. Tears poured down my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
The phone made a gulping noise. Then I realized the phone had gone dead.
My sister had walked back into the room. She didn’t come to me, didn’t put her arms around me as she’d done when I was a child. She, “the nice one,” didn’t offer me a tissue or comfort. She looked like she was about to speak but couldn’t. She didn’t look devastated; she looked scared.
I stared at her, taking this all in. For a moment I couldn’t believe it, and then it all made sense. “What was it you said about Mike yesterday? ‘Does he sound like someone who’d stumble into a seedy bar in Matamoros and swallow whatever he was offered?’ Janice, you know what happened, don’t you? You’ve always known.”
She looked like the world had crumbled around her.
28
“JANICE?”
Her face had gone ashen. She was looking at me, but she wasn’t seeing me, wasn’t seeing anything.
