The Color of Fear

by Marcia Muller

  I parked in front and went up the stairs to the vestibule. Three of the four mailboxes beside the door had name cards in their slots, none of which read “Rolle Ferguson.” The fourth slot had no card. I rang that bell. No answer. So then I tried the other three. No response from any of those either.

  I did a quick canvass of the immediate neighbors. Two of the three who were home claimed not to know Rolle Ferguson or anything about him. The third, who lived across the street, did. She was a plump, cheerful woman whose expression soured somewhat when I spoke his name.

  “I don’t know him, not exactly, just know who he is,” she said. “Him and his friends come and go. Why are you asking about him?”

  “A personal matter. It sounds as though you don’t much care for Mr. Ferguson.”

  “I don’t. Noisy and rude, him and the others.”

  “When did you last see them?”

  “It’s been a while. Before Thanksgiving, anyway.”

  “Could they have been here on the nineteenth of this month?”

  She thought about it. “Could’ve been. It was the day I took my granddaughter to see Santa, so—yes—maybe they were there on the nineteenth.”

  “How many were typically there besides Mr. Ferguson?”

  “Four or five. I didn’t bother to count.”

  “Do you know any of their names?”

  “No, and I don’t want to. Noisy and rude, like I said.”

  “Rude in what way?”

  “One of them called me a nasty name because he didn’t like the way I was looking at him. ‘Keep your eyes to yourself, you blankety-blank kike.’ Can you imagine? And I’m not even Jewish!”

  3:05 p.m.

  When I got back to the office, Ted told me that Mick had gotten a call a few minutes before and rushed out saying only that he was going home. Unusual for him, in the middle of the day. Mick loved the food trucks that frequented the area—offering anything from hot dogs to haute cuisine from all over the globe—as well as the sidewalk benches that afforded him a view of pretty, stylish women.

  I went along the hall to the office Mick shared with Derek, hoping he’d told him why he was leaving.

  “No, he didn’t say anything,” Derek told me. “Just busted out of here like a sheriff’s posse was after him.”

  Oh Lord, Derek was still in his phase of fascination with old Western movies.

  I was just sitting down at my desk when my cell buzzed. Mick, his voice unsteady. “I went home because one of my neighbors called with a nasty surprise. Come on over and see it.”

  3:39 p.m.

  As soon as I drove up in front of Mick’s house on Potrero Hill, I saw what it was that had upset him. The previously beautiful pale-blue façade and garage door had been graffitied in bright-red letters.

  INJUN LOVER

  GET OUT OF OUR TOWN

  Now some despicable racist was taking out his or her quarrel with Indians on another member of my family! My blood pressure had risen, but at the same time I felt cold. I double-parked and ran up the stairs. The front door was open; I called Mick’s name as I entered and he called back, “Kitchen.” I noticed as I went there that the interior of the house had an empty look and feel now that Alison had moved her possessions out.

  Mick sat slumped at the kitchen table, pouring into a glass from a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. Coming home to that defacement must have been a serious shock. Mick’s house, on the sunniest side of the hill, was a Victorian that he was restoring with the help of my older brother, John. The son of a multimillionaire—who had himself reaped a fortune in the tech boom—got almost as much pleasure out of hammering nails, drilling holes, and sanding floors as he did from exercising his considerable tech skills.

  “Some mess, huh?” he said. “No way to scrub it all off.”

  “Your Uncle John can help you repaint.” John owned a successful franchise, Mr. Paint. He’d learned his craft during long years as an apprentice. “I don’t suppose any of your neighbors saw who did it?”

  “None that I talked to.”

  “Did any of them bother to notify the police?”

  “No, but I did. They’re sending somebody over.” He sighed, drank from his glass, and then said morosely, “I don’t know why I even try.”

  “Try what?”

  “To live a quiet, pleasant, normal life.”

  I went to the fridge and poured myself a glass of the Deer Hill chardonnay he kept there especially for me.

  “Well, for one thing,” I said, sitting down opposite him, “your life hasn’t exactly been normal up to now.”

  He smiled faintly. “No, it hasn’t.”

  Mick’s father, Ricky Savage, had become a country music superstar, touring so much that his younger children sometimes failed to recognize him when he came home. His mother, my sister Charlene, tried to hold the family together, but it was hard to go it alone. They’d sent Mick north to Aunt Shar after a particularly disgraceful hacking episode involving the records of the Pacific Palisades board of education. Then his parents divorced and for a while chaos reigned. And what did Aunt Shar do? She turned Mick into a private investigator.

  At the agency he teamed up with operative Derek Frye. In their spare time, they’d worked to build a real-time website, which had sold to Internet giant Omnivore for many millions. It wasn’t exactly a rags-to-riches tale, since both came from money, but money wasn’t what they were after; both were explorers, traveling into realms most of us never dream of. Their current project—very hush-hush—was something, Mick had told me, “that will set the tech world on its ear.”

  But in the meantime here he was, sad and beaten down and lost. After a long silence, he said, “It’s just that when I was with Alison life had a feeling of normalcy.”

  Mick and Alison had been together for a few years, ever since he’d met her in the menswear department at Macy’s, where both were looking for large socks. She was pleasant but quite reserved, and every so often I’d found her level stare unnerving, as if she were mentally psychoanalyzing its object.

  Mick went on, “We’d get up late and rush around, kiss at the door. Come home, cook together, or go out. Watch TV or a movie or go to a club. Sure, I spent a lot of time on my computers, but for God’s sake, that’s my life’s work.”

  I said, “I’ve known for a while why Derek’s stayed with the agency—his promise to his father about working—but I’ve never asked you. Probably because I’ve been afraid of losing you.”

  He frowned. “I like the agency. It gives structure to my days, a little excitement when you send me out on an interesting case. And I like the people; we’re almost a family, but without a black sheep. If I stayed alone, tinkering day after day in my studio, I’d end up like one of those old guys you see on the bad blocks south of Market, talking to myself and collaring people to tell them who I used to be.”

  “Well, we can’t have that. Your grandma would throw a fit.”

  “How is she?”

  I waggled my hand back and forth. “She and Saskia are staying in one of the M&R hospitality suites, for security’s sake. If you’d like, you could stay there too.”

  “Nope.” He thrust his jaw out belligerently—he’d inherited that from Charlene. “I’m standing my ground. I still have the forty-five you gave me.”

  “That forty-five is a piece of shit. Besides, I doubt they’ll come back.”

  “I almost wish they would.”

  “Mick…”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t drink and I won’t do anything crazy. I know how you feel about firearms.”

  “Well, recently I’ve reached a kind of middle-of-the-road opinion on the subject,” I said. “Professionals who need a handgun on the job should undergo stringent background checks, rigid training, and frequent checkups. Responsible citizens should give a legitimate reason for having a handgun and also be meticulously backgrounded. Hunters—they’re usually responsible, although you hear about all the accidents when they shoot each other rather tha
n their prey. But anybody else—strictly no.”

  “They’ll get hold of guns anyway.”

  I wasn’t interested in engaging in a political debate. “I’d better let Sergeant Anders know about this latest outrage.”

  But when I called the Hall of Justice, she wasn’t in. I left a message on her voice mail.

  John arrived as I hung up. His gaze fixed on Mick and he went over and gave him a big hug. “’Taint all that bad, buddy. That’s what relatives are for. Besides, I’ve been known to work cheap.”

  Mick stared into his drink. “I can afford your regular rates.”

  “Sure you can. But you realize I’m counting on you to support me in my old age.”

  Mick’s lips twitched—a small smile. He said, “Only if you keep up with the housekeeping chores and don’t insist on expensive vacations.”

  “Deal.”

  They shook hands, and then Mick put his head on the table and cried a little.

  Time for me to leave.

  4:59 p.m.

  Hy wasn’t there when I got home. I called his cell and got no response of any kind. That would have worried me if he hadn’t come walking in just as I hit the Disconnect button.

  “Thank God you’re here.” I said. “Every time I call your phone and don’t even get voice mail, I tense up.” Hy has a history of mysterious disappearances.

  “My cell discharged. Shouldn’t’ve. I think I need a new one.”

  “I’ll get you one for Christmas.”

  Then I took a deep breath and told him about Mick’s house being defaced. The news made him as angry as it had me. We sat down and discussed the implications. Had Mick been targeted because of the publicity about Elwood’s attack? He’d been mentioned in some of the accounts as a relative. Or was it an indirect personal attack on me? Some sort of warped psychological game? And who was responsible? Jersey or Rolle Ferguson or another member of that bunch?

  While we were speculating, Anders returned my call. No, she said, she had nothing to report. I explained what had happened and what I’d found out about Jersey and Rolle Ferguson. She was unfamiliar with the names, said she’d check on them.

  She said, “My opinion is that it was directed at you, Ms. McCone, perhaps because of your Indian heritage. The perp wasn’t able to find out your home address because you keep it carefully guarded. Is your nephew’s listed?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they targeted him instead. Despite what you told me before, the perp—or perps—may well be someone from your past. A former client with a grudge, or some other kind of enemy. I noted in your file that your house on Church Street was set on fire by Daniel Winters, a former client with a minor complaint against you.”

  I had a brief flashback to that night, the flames, the smoke. Choking as I tried to shoo the cats outside. Being felled by a flaming beam. Rolling on the fog-damp grass to put the embers out.

  I shook off the memory and said, “It couldn’t be Winters. He’s in prison where he belongs.”

  “It could be someone with a similar grudge. What I’d like from you, Ms. McCone—a tall order, but I think it’s necessary—is a professional biography. Major cases you’ve been involved in; cases where you’ve made enemies who are still at large; disgruntled former employees. Particularly any persons involved in the racist subculture.”

  God, how I hated to revisit those memories! I had already eliminated two possible suspects from our most recent major case, and it seemed unnecessary to me to go through all the many that had preceded that, because I still believed strangers I’d never encountered before were responsible. But all bases have to be covered, so I’d do as Anders asked.

  I said, “You’ll have it tomorrow.”

  9:11 p.m.

  Hy went to bed early to read, and I sat on the sofa before a banked fire, legal pad in hand, to fulfill Priscilla Anders’s request. I chewed on my number two pencil, something I hadn’t done for years—probably not since junior high. But somehow it felt appropriate to regress, since I was delving into the past.

  I went back through the highlights of my major cases as a private investigator, from the beginning.

  First: The murder of an eccentric but well-liked antiques dealer. Now the murderer was serving a long prison sentence.

  Second: A woman who lived in my building on Guerrero Street in the Mission had been killed. I’d been forced to shoot the perpetrator to save a friend whom he’d taken hostage.

  A few years later: My friend and fellow investigator, whom I had nicknamed Wolf, and I each worked a case at—would you believe it?—a private investigators convention in San Diego. The perp was in prison, and no harm done—except I’d taken a bullet in the ass.

  And then: Vietnamese refugees living in a shabby hotel in the Tenderloin. One of them was killed in the boiler room. After I’d apprehended the killer, I’d kept in touch with many of them—those who’d remained in the city, and those who’d fanned out to communities across the country.

  A year later: A strange enclave in wealthy Pacific Heights called the Castles. Brick buildings, peaked slate roofs, and towering turret—all of it barricaded behind high walls. The family that had lived there were as odd as their surroundings. So far as I knew, some were still institutionalized, some had been released to society. I didn’t keep in touch with any of them; lunacy is not my cup of tea.

  So far I could identify no one involved in those early cases, not even those with good reason to hate me, who would have attacked me through my father. As far as I knew, none were racists.

  I decided to take a break, got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen. I drank two glasses of ice water, stared at my own reflection in the dark windows, then returned to my list.

  Bobby Foster: A young man had been convicted and sentenced to death in a “no body” case—one in which a comedienne had disappeared without a trace and, despite the lack of a corpse, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming. The expression on his face when he’d first looked at me through the security glass at San Quentin had been so lost and despairing.

  Hy on the shore at Tufa Lake. Environmentalists battling with a huge mining company threatening to reopen a gold mine in the hills—a move that would wreak havoc on the delicate ecosystem. We’d almost lost our lives in an explosion in that mine, set by the bomber, who had been blown up. Tufa Lake and the town of Vernon had been conflict-free since then…

  I must have drifted off for a moment, but then more memories intruded: The explosion of the house belonging to my old college friend, T. J. “Suits” Gordon, attacked by the Diplo-bomber, as the press had dubbed him. The fatal, rigged plane crash of my former flight instructor, Matty Wildress, at an air show. My own crash on the volcanic ridge south of our ranch in the high desert. The return of Hy’s evil former partner, Gage Renshaw, who was intent on destroying both of us, and the violent conclusion of his game…

  Finally I gave it up, too tired to recall anything more, and went to join Hy in bed.

  10:49 p.m.

  But I couldn’t sleep. None of the usual tricks I employ to induce sleep were working, and I knew they wouldn’t, so I got up and went to the kitchen. My first thought was of Mick. He’d been drinking pretty heavily this past afternoon and talking about using his .45 if the racist taggers came back. I’d warned him to be careful, but with Mick you never knew.

  I grabbed my phone and called his cell. He answered on the third ring, sounding hungover.

  “Can any person you know ever get a good night’s sleep?” he asked crossly. “What the hell do you need that can’t wait till the morning?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Worry away.” A pause; it sounded as if he was gulping water. “I spent a lot of the early evening hurling into the toilet, and a lot more talking with John. He just left.”

  “He have any words of wisdom?”

  “Just that people leave you because they think they have to. Sometimes they come back and sometimes they don’t. And that people who hate are
going to hate regardless of what you do.”

  John should know about the former: he’d been left by a number of women for a number of reasons. But he soldiered on, ever hopeful…

  “How are you feeling?” I asked Mick.

  “How d’you think? Lousy enough to make me give up on both liquor and the female sex. But if you mean can I work, the answer is yes. The mind is a terrible thing.”

  “And work is a healing thing. I don’t suppose you’ve done any more since yesterday?”

  “No, but I put out a bunch of inquiries and by now I may be getting answers. Even in my addled state, I can read my e-mails. Wait a minute.”

  I knew he was padding into his computer room in the lonely, now-defaced Potrero Hill house. When Alison left, claiming that she didn’t want to compete for his attention with a bunch of machines, he’d become more and more hooked into what I thought of as “the other world.” At times like this, that seemed okay, but still I worried. There’s so much personal estrangement in our society that sometimes I feel we’re all wrapping ourselves in cocoons with our electronic devices. A doctor friend of mine says that touch is critical to a healthy life—and she doesn’t mean contact through a plastic keyboard.

  Mick came back on the line. “Nothing yet,” he said, sounding even grumpier. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something to report. But don’t expect anything soon.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s the Saturday before Christmas, Shar. Other people have lives and holiday plans. What’re you going to do today?”

  “Visit the hospital again. After that, I don’t know yet. Hang and rattle, maybe.”

  “Huh?”

  “An old Western expression. I found it in one of Hy’s books in his collection up at the ranch.”

  “God, your life sounds as gruesome as mine.”

  11:33 p.m.

  The staff on Elwood’s floor had gotten used to my odd pattern of visiting. They merely nodded at me as I passed through and started to enter his room.

  Ma was there again by his bed, holding his hand and occasionally dabbing at her teary eyes with a handkerchief. He lay as still as ever, his breathing light, but his features seemed less waxen than before, his face more at rest. I watched from the doorway for a moment. You would have thought Ma was a grieving widow—except she’d never taken on this way when Pa or her second husband had died.