Pennines on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  “Threats?”

  “Not exactly. Just that I should leave the city, that I’m not wanted here.”

  Anonymous phone calls: the refuge of cowards. I shook my head angrily. “You said, ‘voices.’ Is it a different one each time?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male, with a Spanish accent.”

  The people behind us were starting to leave. I watched them, wondering if a neighbor might be responsible for the calls. Any number of them might not want Lis Benedict living so close by.

  She said something I didn’t catch.

  “What?”

  “I’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “They’re just crank calls. Ignore them.”

  “But this . . .” She gestured weakly at the house.

  “A kid’s malicious mischief.”

  “Kids can be dangerous. I can’t risk my daughter’s safety.” She leaned heavily on my arm—no longer the haughty, unpleasant woman, but merely a vulnerable old lady.

  My anger was high. I cautioned myself against allowing my emotions to influence my decision about whether to investigate her case. “Don’t do anything hasty,” I told her. “At least talk it over with Judy first.”

  She didn’t reply. Her eyes were once again focused on the red spatter pattern. She shuddered, pushed me away, and stumbled toward the house’s door—as if she’d suddenly remembered a blood-splashed scene thirty-six years in the past.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I made sure Lis Benedict was securely inside the cottage. Then I went looking for a kid with red hands.

  The business establishments that I passed as I hurried along the crowded sidewalks of Mission Street reflected the influence not only of the area’s working-class Irish and Italian settlers and today’s predominately Hispanic population, but also recent encroachments of other cultures. Scattered among the small bodegas were Asian produce shops. Tacquerias abounded, but so did Vietnamese restaurants and sushi bars. The Remedy Lounge, All Souls’ favorite watering hole, had been owned for more than forty years by the O’Flanagan family, and Spanish-language videos were still the staple of the rental shop, but a karate studio, a Filipino travel agency, and a Zen mediation center all foretold a new order.

  While the various cultures remained relatively segregated on the street, inside City Amusement Arcade the melting-pot process prevailed. The appeal of video games knows no ethnic boundaries; kids of diverse backgrounds and appearances, speaking at least a half dozen languages, hunched over the glowing machines. The air was stale and far too warm, thick with smoke and redolent of cheap after-shave and sweat. I stopped inside the door and waited.

  After a moment a slender young man wearing an expensive leather jacket emerged from one of the aisles. He glared at me as he took a comb from his pocket and ran it through his luxuriant black hair. I smiled. His scowl intensified, and he jerked his head toward the door. I went back outside and halfway down the block to a decrepit sandwich shop called the Serving Spoon. There I bought two cups of black coffee and sat in one of the booths. A few minutes later Tony Neuva came in and took the seat across from me.

  “Jesus, McCone,” he said, “why do you have to stand around the arcade looking like you’re my dope connection?”

  “It’s more likely people will think I’m your parole officer.”

  “Shit, why would I have a P.O.? I’m a businessman is all.”

  “Right.” At only nineteen, Tony Nueva had built a minor financial empire on a base of various semi-legal activities not the least of which was selling information to the highest bidder. The fact that he was still alive, much less thriving, testified to a certain warped genius.

  He sipped his coffee and made a face. “What do you need?”

  “Sometime during the past hour, a Hispanic kid painted graffiti on a house up on Wool Street. The spray can leaked, and the kid came away with red hands. I want to know who he is.”

  Tony rolled the Styrofoam cup between his palms. “Graffiti artists are a dime a dozen. Some nights there’re more of them than riders waiting for buses at the Muni stops.”

  “Still, can you find out?”

  “Why you so interested?”

  “This is no ordinary incident. There’s a possibility somebody hired him to do it.”

  “I don’t know McCone.”

  “Come on, Tony. I’ve got faith in you. White Victorian. Red spray enamel.” I gave him the address. “It’s twenty bucks to you when you deliver.”

  “Now wait a minute! I got overhead—”

  “Ten now, ten when you deliver.” I had the bill ready and pushed it across the table.

  Tony made a disgusted sound and pocketed it. Ritual dance of informant and buyer ended, he said, “I’ll have it for you by five. You gonna be in your office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  The big Victorian that houses All Souls was wrapped in scaffolding and its scabrous brown façade had been prepped for painting, but as I cut through the grassy triangle across the street, I didn’t see any workmen. That in itself was a bad sign and should have prepared me for the chaos that reigned just inside the front door.

  The first person I saw was an overall-clad man who apparently had tracked light-colored paint onto the newly refinished hardwood floor of the foyer. Another worked stood beside him, shouting and flailing a crowbar dangerously close to the antique chandelier. My assistant, Rae Kelleher, faced him, arms akimbo, her flushed face complementing her auburn hair. And Ted Smalley, our usually unflappable office manager, looked on with alarm.

  “Ain’t my fuckin’ fault!” The man with the crowbar ended his tirade.

  “It is, too, you idiot!” Rae exclaimed. “Don’t you dare try to duck responsibility. You’re dealing with a law firm, you know.”

  “Goddamn roof’s rotten.”

  “Don’t you try to blame your ineptitude on the roof!”

  The worker gaped at her as if she’d said a filthy word—and one he wasn’t familiar with, to boot.

  “Color’s not coming out,” the painter whined plaintively.

  The others ignored him.

  “Rae, please,” Ted said, “let’s talk reasonably—”

  “You keep out of this!” She grabbed at the crowbar as it grazed one of the chandelier’s fluted-glass shades. “That was an expensive brass bed you crushed,” she told the workman.

  “I didn’t crush it. Fuckin’ piece of roof fell on it.”

  “Still, you’re liable.” Rae looked at Ted. “He is liable, isn’t he? Oh, shit, why am I asking you? You’re not a lawyer. Where’s Hank when I need him?”

  Ted spotted me in the driveway and rolled his eyes. “Now I know why Hank and Anne-Marie picked this week to leave for Hawaii,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do with thirty gallons of paint that looks like what I find in my kid’s diaper?”

  “If you don’t pay for that bed, I’ll sue!”

  “The hell you say!”

  I slammed the front door and shouted, “Everybody shut up!”

  Quite incredibly, they did.

  Ted quickly seized control. “You,” he said to the painter, “go outside and get something to clean this floor. We’ll talk about the color problem on Monday.”

  Exit the painter, muttering.

  Ted turned to Rae. “That roof is in bad shape, and I happen to know that your brass bed is a cheap imitation. I’m sure our insurance will cover its replacement.”

  She hesitated. I could tell she was torn between the pleasure of laying into the workman again and the wisdom of staying in Ted’s good graces so he’d file a claim.

  Ted asked the workman, “Are those skylights going to need special bracing so the roof’ll support them?”

  He nodded.

  “How much?”

  The workman opened his mouth, then glanced at Rae. Suddenly downcast, her lower lip aquiver, she’d undergone a transformation from the litigious bi
tch from hell to Little Match Girl. “Aw, I’ll do it for a hundred,” he said.

  Rae looked up and bestowed a glowing smile on him.

  Ted sighed, waving his hands in dismissal. “Go ahead, then.” As Rae and her newfound admirer started upstairs, he ground his teeth and muttered, “Now the roof’s rotten. What next?”

  I merely patted his shoulder and went to check my message box. Three slips, nothing of importance.

  Ted sighed again and flopped into his desk chair. His computer equipment, steel file cabinets, fax machine, copier and shelves of reference books looked out of place in the elegantly wainscoted foyer. Ted himself complemented the décor—a slender fine-featured man with a handsome goatee who had recently taken to wearing brocade vests over ruffled shirts. Appearances seldom deceived more than Ted’s, however; under his foppish exterior there beats the heart of an efficiency expert.

  He said, “It was a bad decision to buy this dump.”

  From a purely practical standpoint I agreed, but sentiment made me say, “Well, the landlord was going to sell whether we bought or not. Can you picture us anywhere else?”

  “No, but the corporation’s going to have to pour one hell of a lot of money into this building just to keep it standing.” He paused, listening to the echo of what he’s said. “The corporation. My God, I never thought we’d be All Souls Legal Cooperative, Inc. What’s happened to us?”

  “We got successful.”

  At a time when law firms all over the nation were cutting staff and raising fees, All Souls was expanding and holding down membership fees in its legal plan. While partners in stuffy downtown firms groused about the loss of gentility that came from treating a law practice as a business, All Souls had aggressively added service to attract clients. Members, who paid fees on a sliding scale based on their incomes, could now call an 800 number for consultation with paralegal workers about minor problems. And we’d marketed the plan to major local employers; several now included it as part of their benefits packages.

  Success necessitated changes, hence our somewhat dubious entry into the real-estate market. But the Victorian, which comprised both offices and living quarters for some of the staff, couldn’t begin to house all our operations. We now rented a second building directly across the triangular park out front, and negotiations were under way for a third. And to reinforce our successful image, our newly purchased headquarters was being spruced up, supposedly painted pale gray with black and white trim—or if the painter could be believed, the color of what he found in his baby’s diaper.

  I winked at Ted and went upstairs to my office, thinking about changes. When I’d first come to work here, nearly all the partners lived in the house rent free because they made such dismal salaries. Now only Rae, Ted, Jack Stuart, business specialist Larry Koslowski, and tax attorney Pam Ogata chose to remain; their salaries were competitive with those of other firms, and they paid going-market rent. Once I’d know everyone who worked here on a fairly intimate basis; now if I ventured over to our other building, I was apt not to recognize some of the support staff. Ted, in fact, used to be our only secretary; now he wore the title of office manager. And Hank Zahn complained that he spent more time in administrative meetings than in client consultations or in court.

  But the important things hadn’t changed, I reminded myself. We were still a young, energetic firm that cared more for its clients than for its profit and was committed to the principle of affordable high-quality legal representation for low-and middle-income people. Most of us still gathered in the big kitchen at the rear of the house on Friday afternoons for a happy hour. Meals from anywhere from two to twenty were frequently whipped up on the spur of the moment; a good poke or gin rummy game could be gotten up day or night; commiseration or congratulations or just plain good company was always available. And while many of us admitted to feeling jaded on a bad day, we also confessed to harboring fugitive ideals on a good one. All Souls was, in truth, the closest thing that many of us had to a home and an extended family, and I couldn’t begin to imagine life without it.

  In my office at the front of the second floor, I dumped my bag and jacket on the chaise lounge and stuck the message slips under a paperweight. Then I sat down at the parsons-table desk in the window bay and scrawled my signature on some letters that were waiting atop my in-box. There was a thick, unfamiliar file folder lying next to the blotter; I pulled it toward me: State of California v. Lisbeth Ingrid Benedict.

  “Jack,” I whispered, “leave me alone.”

  As I shoved the file away and leaned back in my chair, my eyes rested on the deep tangerine rose in the bud vase on the corner of my desk. It had arrived, as they always did, on Tuesday morning—a gift from my lover, Hy Ripinsky, who lived on a small sheep ranch in the high desert country east of Yosemite, near the Nevada border. Last fall when he sent me the first of the weekly roses, its color was yellow—my favorite. But when we became lovers two months ago, he said yellow wasn’t passionate enough, and the tangerine ones began arriving. This one was wilted now from the unseasonable heat we’d been experiencing, but I would leave it in the vase until the new one came—my way of keeping Hy close when we were apart.

  Uneasily, as if someone might be spying on me, I reached for my bottom stack tray where, under a pile of blank expense forms, I kept a file labeled, “Ripinsky, Heino.” I’d started it the previous November, when reports on him that I’d requested from the National Crime Information Center and the California Justice Information System had been forwarded to me by an acquaintance on the SFPD. There had been nothing damning or even very interesting in them, except for an early arrest for lassoing a streetlight in the Mono County seat of Bridgeport and a series of later ones related to environmental movement protests. I hadn’t needed the reports any longer; the investigation I’d been conducting up at Tufa Lake was ended, and by all rights I should have thrown them away. But instead I had set up a file, and by now I knew its dry, factual contents by heart.

  I removed my hand from the stick tray. No amount of further examination of the documents and my notes would tell me what I wanted to know. There wasn’t the remotest possibility that the reports contained an as-yet-unnoticed clue to the blank nine-year period in his life.

  Hy’s whereabouts and activities during that period were unknown to anyone, and he refused to talk about them, even to me. Rumors abounded in Vernon, the small town on the shore of Tufa Lake where he’d been raised. Some people claimed he’d been CIA; others claimed he must have been a drug smuggler, since he never seemed to lack for money after his return. Theories ran the gamut from the possible (he’d been in prison) to the improbable (he’d fought as a mercenary) to the absurd (he’d been kept by a wealthy woman who had died and left him her entire estate). I discounted even the most realistic of them, because none of them fit the man I had come to care for.

  As we grew closer, I’d thought that he’d tell me about those years, or at least explain why discussion of them was off limits. But every time the subject came up, he closed off in such a forbidding way that I knew pressing him would end the relationship. And so I merely wondered and brooded and repeatedly pored over his file.

  It would be easy, I’d often thought, for an investigator of my experience and contacts to uncover Hy’s secret. Even the most closemouthed people let hints slip; even the most careful leave traces of their past. But aside from checking with the CIA and the FBI, which would “neither confirm or deny” Hy’s past employment, I’d managed to control myself. So far . . .

  Even the simple act of setting up a file was a violation. I felt ashamed every time I saw the neatly typed label, wrestled with guilt every time I opened the folder. And I also had to question my motive: Did I want to know about those years because the understanding would bring me closer to Hy, or was I merely curious? Did his silence disturb me because it erected a barrier between us or because it hurt my pride?

  I moved my hand toward the stack tray again. I should destroy the file and forget it. If
I ripped it up and tossed it in the wastebasket right now, by Monday the trash would have been collected and I wouldn’t even be tempted to retrieve the pieces.

  But I wasn’t ready to that—not yet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time I went down to the kitchen, the Friday happy hour was under way. Ted was there, setting out chips and salsa. Rae was there, too, and surprisingly, so were the painter and the man who was installing the skylights—minus his crowbar. Larry Koslowski, our resident health nut, was blending some god-awful cocktail of natural fruit juices and mysterious powders, and arguing with Pam Ogata about the merits of tofu hot dogs. A couple of the secretaries from the other building wandered in, followed by the neighbors’ German shepherd. The shepherd lay down quietly on the rag rug in front of the sink and watched us with its soft, intelligent eyes; I was certain he found the goings-on bizarre and pointless. As I fetched a glass of white wine, I stopped to pat him and said, “Sometimes I agree with you, guy.” He looked up to see if I had any food and then ignored me.

  Jack Stuart sat at the round oak table near the windows. Jack, so the women claim, is the co-op’s hunk, and I have to admit that a body honed lean by frequent rock climbing, a craggy face that only improves with age, and a thick shock of silvering hair add up to a pretty attractive package. A while back I had my chances with him when he became ridiculously smitten with me on the rebound from his divorce, and there are still times when I regret how prudently I ignored his overtures.

  I went up to the table and took the chair next to him, figuring I’d clear the air about the Benedict matter. Jack’s face lit up when he saw me. “Well?”

  “I found the file you put on my desk.”

  “You read it yet?”

  “My God, I’ve only been back here half an hour. Why didn’t you tell me this was a case for the Historical Tribunal?”

  “You wouldn’t have gone to see her if I had.”

  “And you also conveniently timed this for when Hank’s on vacation and can’t throw a fit about me wasting my time.”