by Dianne Emley
“Il s’est cassé.” He split. No one saw him again. The man knew just one thing about him. “C’etait un Americain.”
“Merci beaucoup.” Iris hung up. Of course Todd had been a drug dealer. It had all been there for her to see—the lavish lifestyle without any discernable source of income, the mysterious comings and goings, the series of visitors in the café, the envelopes of photographs and contact sheets that Todd handed out in exchange for rolls of cash. She had just gone along with it. She hadn’t wanted to look too deeply. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Todd had fallen for her. She had accepted him at face value. But it wasn’t her normal mode of operation. He’d simply caught her during a blip in her life.
From a desk drawer, she took out a plastic sandwich bag that held the True cigarette butt she’d taken from Todd’s bedroom in Moscow. She squared it on the desk.
The doorbell rang. She padded across the hardwood floors and area rugs to the front door where she unlatched the brass peephole cover. On the other side, grinning broadly, was Roger Weems.
“Good morning, Iris. Just wanted to stop by and make sure you’re all right after last night.”
Iris straightened her robe and unlocked the door.
Weems stood on the porch with his hands behind his back. “I called over to your office and your secretary said you were home sick.”
Iris felt a flush of panic. “You didn’t say who you were, did you?”
“Oh no, no. I wouldn’t do that, Iris. I have a deep appreciation for the spot I’ve put you in.” He presented her with a bouquet of assorted flowers he’d been hiding behind his back. “To brighten your day.”
Iris took them and impassively thanked him. “Would you like to come in?” She didn’t want him in her house, but she’d expected him to show up sooner rather than later. She might as well hear what he had to say now. She walked through the arched entrance to the dining room. “Would you like some coffee? I’ve just made a fresh pot.”
“That would be very nice.” He trailed behind her, looking around at everything in a manner that was a bit too practiced to be mere curiosity alone. Standing in the dining room, he picked up the framed photograph of her and Todd in front of Le Café des Quatre Vents and sadly tsked-tsked. “His murderer is still out there, Iris.”
She busied herself putting the flowers in a glass vase and didn’t respond. He was just lobbing a ball over the net to see if she’d swing.
He looked at the photograph Todd had taken of Rita Winslow in front of her antique shop. “Old Rita.” He made a small noise of appreciation as if remembering a fallen war buddy. “Todd took this picture?” He squinted at the photo credit. “Sure enough.”
Iris set the sugar bowl and creamer on the table and put out napkins and spoons. Her good china was getting a workout lately. “So what happened to Douglas Melba?” She poured coffee into a cup and set it on a saucer on the table. She put a trivet in the center and positioned the vase of flowers on it.
Weems sat down. “Thank you very much, Iris.” His manner was subdued, even deferential. It amused her. He’d do, say, or be anything to get what he wanted. “Douglas Melba,” he carefully repeated. “The Pasadena police asked him a few questions as a witness to the shootings, then let him go. We didn’t rat him out to the local cops and the local cops didn’t tell him that the FBI nearly caught him in a sting. He’s more use to us running loose on the street. We still have a bug in the phone in Melba’s San Francisco office and in his apartment. We shall see what we shall see.”
“What about the guy who was in the hotel room?”
“You mean Enrico Lazare?”
Iris felt her cheeks color. She had to remember to always use Lazare’s name. “Yeah, Lazare.”
“In the wind. Gone.”
The bright morning sun showed how badly Weems’s face was scarred from acne. Deep vertical wrinkles rent his cheeks, making him look older than his years. Iris didn’t know whether it was simply a long, hard life that had aged him or if the darkness in his heart was slowly eating him away.
“So what happens now?”
“We wait, we watch, we listen. Lazare will try to sell the fox again.”
Iris realized she was starving. She hadn’t had anything to eat yet but wanted to wait until Weems left before preparing something. She didn’t want to break bread with him. She pulled her robe more closely around her. She should excuse herself and change clothes but didn’t want to take the time while Weems was there. She wanted him out ASAP. “Think he’ll try to sell it quickly?”
“The sooner he sells the fox, the sooner he gets paid and gets it out of his hands. The longer he delays, the greater the chance he’ll get caught.” Weems barely squeezed the tip of his blunt index finger into the delicate handle of the china cup. He raised the cup to his lips and sipped. The white scar on the back of his hand shone in the light streaming through the big windows.
Iris didn’t have anything more to say. She waited. She didn’t have to wait long.
Weems pulled on his earlobe and then entreatingly opened his hands toward her. “Iris, I need your help. I understand how you feel about me, but please try to understand my point of view. I couldn’t tell you about Fernando Peru secretly working for me. That information could have put you in danger. I knew that Rita Winslow was close to the edge. Fernando told me she’d sensed something was up, that she’d accused him of seeing another woman in L.A. But the bloodshed last night was completely out of left field.” He shook his head, then raised his hands toward himself, his dark eyes burning. “Not only was my informant murdered, my entire operation was a waste and now Lazare knows we’re on to him.”
“You got to see Rita Winslow die.”
“I would have preferred to see her rot in jail for the rest of her life.”
“No, for you, it’s better that she’s dead. Now she’ll take to the grave how you stood by while your partner Greg Kelly was shot to death.”
The lines in his face deepened. He swallowed as if tasting her remark. “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve done things in my life that I’m not proud of. But now I’m asking you, someone who wants to see justice done, to set aside our differences and to work with me to retrieve the fox and find Todd Fillinger’s murderer.” He locked his eyes on hers.
She looked away, thinking. Finally, she asked, “What do you want me to do?”
He brightened. “First, I want to know why you spooked Enrico Lazare.”
“Why are you so certain it was me? It could have been your agent Vinson I was sitting with. Lazare could have recognized one of the other agents sitting in the restaurant. Maybe Peru tipped him off. Why are you focused on me?”
“Okay. Fair enough. Look, Melba believes you’re for real.”
“Still?”
“He doesn’t know that but for Rita Winslow losing her mind and shooting her lover, he would have been nabbed in an FBI sting. Melba’s desperate to complete this deal. He’s seeing a hunk of change evaporate. Right after the local cops were through with him, he called your number—”
“My number?”
“Margo Hill’s number. He wants to know if your employer still wants the fox.”
“And you want me to do what?”
“Leave a message for him at the Bay City Diner in San Francisco. Say it’s Margo Hill for Douglas Melba and the answer is yes.”
“Then what?”
“Tell him when he can reach you. You’ll come into the office like you did before, and we’ll wait for his call. If it was you who spooked the seller, the seller would have told him by then that the deal is off and Melba won’t come near you. If not, we’ll arrange another buy.”
“Another buy.”
“Next time, it’ll go smoothly. Like clockwork.”
Iris watched his greedy, eager eyes as he waited for her response. She sighed and gazed out the window, appearing to wrestle with a decision when all she was really doing was letting him twist. She’d already made her decision when she’d left the hotel room th
e previous night. She turned cold eyes on him and said, “No.”
His neck grew blotchy and the flush moved quickly toward his scalp. “What do you mean, no?”
“It seems clear enough to me.” She stood and began gathering the cups and saucers. This party was over.
He watched her as if he couldn’t believe they’d reached the end. “You can’t just back out now.”
Iris looked back at him over her shoulder as she walked toward the sink. “What are you going to do? Arrest me?”
He slowly pushed the chair back, stood, and tried another tactic. “Iris, you’re my best chance to pull this thing off.”
“If I’m your best chance, you’re really in deep doo-doo.”
He smoothed his tie. “Thank you for the coffee. I’ll be in touch.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?”
He went to the front door and quietly closed it behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
About two-thirds of the way to Bakersfield, the only music Iris could pick up on the car radio was country and western or Spanish language. She tuned to a station playing banda—sort of a Mexican polka. The bouncy rhythm kept her going. After crossing the Tejon Pass through the Tehachapi Mountains and descending four thousand feet into the San Joaquin Valley, the road became long, straight, and dusty and traversed the core of California. She drove past workers wearing straw cowboy hats bending in cultivated fields and oil pumps with insect-like heads bobbing up and down in the dry earth. The Triumph hummed along.
Tracy Beale’s neighborhood was comprised of square city blocks and small houses on postage-stamp lots. The nondescript neighborhood could have been anywhere in the West where the land was vast but the developers were greedy. Iris drove past East Bakersfield High School where the football team and the band shared the athletic field, practicing in the autumn afternoon.
She parked in a lot in front of the school. It was 2:00 p.m. and classes were still in session. A few kids were hanging around in front. None wore lettermen’s jackets and club sweaters like in her high school days. An unofficial uniform of baggy pants and oversized shirts prevailed.
The main building of the aging school was brick with an ornate portico over the large double-door entrance. Embossed in cement over the portico in angular letters was this quote from Socrates: THERE IS ONLY ONE GOOD, KNOWLEDGE, AND ONE EVIL, IGNORANCE. In Iris’s experience, good and evil were somewhat more complicated.
She entered the building, which was dim and cool inside, and wandered down the hallway. Before long, she was stopped by an older woman with steely eyes who crooked a finger at her. Iris cringed from having been caught where she wasn’t supposed to be, her high school experience permanently imprinted on her.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked. “Are you a parent?” She wore frosted pink lipstick and had overly processed permed hair. Iris would have paid to find out the school kids’ nickname for her.
“Uh, no. An old friend of mine, Todd Fillinger, is a graduate and I—”
“Todd Fillinger!” She beamed, her eyes sparkling beneath hooded lids, which bore smudges of blue eye shadow. “I was his homeroom teacher for three years. Have you seen him? How is he doing?”
Iris smiled. “He’s living in Moscow and doing very well.”
“I’ll be darned.”
“He’s a photographer, traveled the world. His works have been published in major magazines. Moscow’s a wild and woolly place to be right now, but he’s making his mark. I drove up from L.A. to see his sister, Tracy—”
“Tracy Beale. Her husband Richard’s our football coach. He’s probably out working with the boys if you want to see him.”
“I’ll find him later. Todd had such fond memories of East Bakersfield High that I wanted to look around.”
“You go right ahead. Down at the end of the hallway, we’ve got a display of East Bakersfield’s athletic triumphs. Lots of pictures of Todd there. He was our local hero.” She grew wistful as if revisiting a sweet past. “Please tell Todd hi for me if you see him. I’m Miss Collins. Ruth Collins.”
“Will do, Miss Collins. Thank you very much.” Iris headed down the hallway’s worn burgundy linoleum floor. She imagined that Todd would have charmed his teachers, especially the women.
School elections appeared to be underway; the hallway was draped with banners hand-painted in tempera: BE FOXY, VOTE FOR ROXY; JOHN 4 PREZ. She found the display case that was devoted to East Bakersfield’s glory days of football. It was crammed with trophies and photographs. A jersey was pinned to the back wall—Fillinger, number 14. The school had retired his number in honor of their greatest quarterback. There was a black-and-white photo of Todd with one arm held aloft for balance, the other ready to let a football fly, eyes squinting as he maintained a bead on his target. Even Iris emitted a swoon. The photo caption indicated that Todd’s target was running back Mike Edgerton, who caught the long pass and ran forty-five yards for the conference-winning touchdown.
There were other photos of Mike Edgerton and Todd who were dubbed East Bakersfield’s Terrible Twosome. Edgerton, while not quite as ruggedly handsome as Todd, was tall and dark with a captivating smile.
Iris felt a pang as she surveyed Todd’s early triumphs, feeling sorrow for promise unfulfilled. His natural athletic ability, good looks, intelligence, and charisma could have sustained him through a happy and successful life. Life should have been easy for him. His mother’s murder when he was ten and his father’s subsequent slow decline must have derailed his life.
Miss Collins walked up behind Iris. “Todd was a handsome cuss, wasn’t he? Did he keep his looks?”
Iris looked down at the shorter woman. “He’s still handsome and in great shape. Still a charmer.” Lying to Todd’s former teacher made Iris cringe. While she was describing this fantasy Todd, she imagined him as she last saw him—bloody and dead on a Moscow street.
“When he went to USC to play football, everyone here was certain he was on his way to a big football career,” Miss Collins said. “We were all disappointed when we heard he’d dropped out after just one season. I called him myself. ‘Sure you got injured,’ I told him. ‘So what? Pick yourself up and get back in the game.’”
“What did he say?”
“Promised he was going back.” Miss Collins smiled sadly. “But I knew he was telling me what I wanted to hear. That’s what teachers live for, to see their students make something of themselves. But you say that Todd did. I’m happy to know that.”
“Todd’s sister told me he transferred to Cal State Fresno after USC.”
“He did. His buddy Mike Edgerton was going there.” She tapped a sharply pointed fingernail, polished in frosted pink that matched her lipstick, against the display glass. “The Terrible Twosome. They were like frick and frack, those boys. Friends since kindergarten.”
“Is Mike still around?”
“I believe he lives not far from here. Haven’t seen him in years.” She turned and began walking down the corridor. “Take your time. Just wanted to make sure you found what you were looking for.”
Iris stayed a few minutes longer. Before she left, she nodded to Miss Collins who was questioning two girls who were in the hallway.
Tracy Beale’s street was quiet, waiting for the school-aged kids and wage-earners to come home. Through the screen door, Iris saw Tracy energetically pushing a vacuum cleaner, its long cord extending the length of the living room. Iris pressed the doorbell several times before Tracy heard it. The silence seemed to ring in the air once the vacuum cleaner was shut off.
Tracy rushed to unlock the screen door, her face moist with perspiration. “Hi, Iris. Gosh, I lost track of time. Come in. Ignore the mess. Just trying to get the house straightened up.” She pulled the corners of her mouth in opposite directions as if she wasn’t optimistic about the prospects. “Excuse me just a second while I get this out of the way. Have a seat.”
“Take your time. I’m in no hurry.” Iris leaned Todd’s portfolio, whic
h she was returning, against an easy chair. She had made photocopies of what she wanted, keeping the framed photo of her and Todd for herself. She sat on the chair and watched Tracy winding the cord, then pulling the vacuum into the hallway where Iris heard a door opening and closing.
“I want to make myself presentable,” Tracy called out to her. “Won’t be a minute.”
“Don’t rush.” Iris dreaded telling Tracy the truth about Todd. She’d rehearsed what she was going to say aloud on the drive there. Now, sitting in the Beale house where gap-toothed school photos of Todd’s niece and nephew were proudly displayed, she wondered what would be accomplished by spilling the beans about Todd. She thought about the nephew’s bedroom and how he cherished the football trophies his uncle had won. She thought about Todd’s brother-in-law recounting his triumphs. Inevitably, in such a small community, word would get back to Miss Collins at the high school. Iris no longer saw the immutable value of truth above all else. Todd was a beautiful dream. She would gain nothing other than a sadistic jolt of revenge by sullying that dream with tales of Todd the drug dealer, Todd the con artist, maybe even Todd the murderer.
Tracy came back. She’d changed from shrunken leggings and a baggy top to tan jeans and a print blouse. “Thanks for returning Todd’s things.” She sat on the couch.
“I called the American Embassy in Moscow and asked about his furnishings and other belongings.”
Tracy listened attentively.
“There’s nothing left. His apartment was cleaned out. The Embassy representative said everything was stolen.”
“Thanks for looking into it,” Tracy said quietly. “I’m grateful for what you managed to bring back.”
“You’re welcome.”
Tracy scratched at something on the palm of her hand, her brow furrowed. Suddenly, she wailed, “Where did you go? Where did my sweet little boy go?” She pressed her hand against her mouth and looked at Iris as if she might have an answer, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry.” She jumped from the couch and left the room.
