The Oath

by John Lescroart

  "Well, you know," Fisk sighed, "I had hoped that I'd be able to find something on the car that killed Mr. Markham. I know people always were laughing at me, but I really thought for sure there'd be some connection, and I'd show them. But you were the one person who took me seriously, who listened, took a look at my Dodge Dart list, even asked for a copy. I just wanted to let you know I appreciated it."

  The kid was going to be a great politician, Hardy thought. Every connection was a chance to make a friend, make an impression, trade a favor. "I thought it might lead somewhere itself, Harlen."

  "Well, that's the last thing. I wanted you to know that it didn't. I checked out every one of the twenty-three cars in the city. There were really only twenty. Three were nowhere to be found. I just thought you'd want to know how it ended."

  "I appreciate it," Hardy said. "Your new company needs a lawyer, look me up."

  "You do business law, too?"

  "Sometimes. I'm not proud."

  "Okay, well " Fisk stuck out his hand. "Nice to have worked with you." At the door, he turned back one more time. "Nobody blames you, you know. In case you thought they did."

  * * *

  The trail led Hardy to one of the housing projects, apartment house boxes in the Western Addition—three-story blocks of concrete and stucco, once bright and now the color of piss where the graffiti didn't cover it. As he expected, nobody knew nothin'.

  But he knew that 1921 Elsi Court, apartment 2D, was the last known address for Luz Lopez, who had been the registered owner of one of Fisk's missing three Dodge Darts. Finally, he convinced one of the neighbor women that he wasn't a cop, that he was in fact with the insurance company and was trying to locate Luz so that he could send her some money. About her child.

  She had moved away, the neighbor didn't know where. One morning, maybe three weeks ago, she had just left early and never come back. Though the neighbor thought she had worked at the Osaka Hotel for years. Maybe they had a forwarding address for her.

  The car? Yes, it was green. The bumper sticker said, "FINATA."

  Hardy did some research on the Net. FINATA had been an agricultural reform movement in El Salvador, where ten percent of the population owned ninety percent of the land. About ten years before, FINATA had been a radical government plan for redistributing the wealth in that country, but its supporters had mostly been killed or driven out.

  She'd come here with her son, he reasoned. And then Parnassus had killed him. Markham, as the spokesman for the company, had taken the public responsibility for the boy's death, though Hardy knew it had been Ross.

  But to Luz Lopez, Markham had killed her boy.

  Powerless, poverty-stricken, and alien, she probably felt she had no recourse to the law. The law would never touch such a powerful man. But she could avenge her baby's death herself. She could run over the greedy, unfeeling, uncaring, smiling bastard.

  * * *

  It was four o'clock, a Saturday afternoon, the second day of June. Outside, the sun shone brightly and a cold north wind blew, but it was warm inside the Shamrock, where Hardy was hosting a private party. The bar was packed to capacity with city workers, cops, lawyers, judges, reporters, assorted well-wishers and their children.

  They'd pulled in sawhorses from the back and laid plywood across them to make a long table down the center of the room. There were going to be a few minutes of presents and testimonials, then no agenda except to enjoy. The two guys in wheelchairs were at the head of the table, back by the sofas. Jeff Elliot's was the first gift and he banged on his glass to get the place quieted down. McGuire turned off the jukebox right in the middle of the song Hardy had bought for the occasion—it was the only disco song on the box, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."

  "I think this is only appropriate," Elliot said, handing the flat package across the table.

  "What is this?" Glitsky asked.

  "It's the page proof of the 'CityTalk' column I was in the middle of writing when it looked good that you were going to die. It's a pack of lies."

  "I wasn't ever going to die. I was just resting. It was a fatiguing case."

  "Well, you had a lot of us fooled then."

  At the shouted requests, Glitsky held the framed page up for the amusement of the crowd and everyone broke into applause.

  Hardy, Frannie, and Treya sat around the far end of the table. "The wheelchair is a bit much, don't you think?" Hardy asked. "He was walking fine yesterday at your place."

  "He's not supposed to exert himself for another few weeks," Frannie said.

  "Doctor's orders," Treya added, then whispered, leaning over, "The fool was trying sit-ups last week and ripped open one of the scabs. Sit-ups!"

  "How many'd he do?" Hardy asked.

  "Dismas!" Frannie, on his case.

  "Eight, the fool!"

  Hardy shook his head in disgust. "Only eight and he busts his gut." He looked down the table, glad as hell to see his best friend sitting there in whatever condition he might be. "What a wimp."

  The trip took Luz thirteen days. It amazed her that after so much time, she could still find the house she'd grown up in. That was because things made sense here, not like in San Francisco. She had turned from the highway and come up through the town. One of the first things she saw gave her some hope. They had rebuilt the building where the newspaper had been, from which they had dragged her father. The last time she'd seen it, it had been a burnt-out shell, but no one seeing it now would ever suspect that.

  Then her brother's clinic, Alberto's old clinic. It was still there, in the same place, looking well cared for with the bright flowers planted all around. She didn't remember those, if they had been there when she'd gone. There were a few cars in the lot out in front, people going in to see a doctor they knew. One they could trust.

  She felt a sharp stab of regret, but she didn't want to let herself start thinking this way again. She had struggled for months to see that the bitterness was for the most part behind her now, purged in the tears and finally in the taking of that pig's life who had cost her son his. Now, although the loss of Ramiro would never cease to ache in her chest, she could imagine someday coming to a kind of peace with it all.

  It all might have been to teach her something she might not have seen on her own. There was only this life and she had squandered a decade of it trying to fit into that foreign place, ignoring her own happiness and trying to make something that would be better for her boy. But what had come of that? Demeaning work, a life she did not enjoy for one day and never would, a boy who never knew the joy of a family, of the love of his father. A pain with no sides.

  She was thirty-two years old and a graduate of the university. There was, she knew, work to do here in El Salvador—not only family work, starting over with Jose

  ´ perhaps—but work with the people, to make this land theirs. This was where she would make her stand.

  Her mother's house had grown young. The banana trees now grew nearly wild over the porch, hiding it in blessed shade. The paint was fresh, the screens fixed tightly to the doors and windows.

  She had not called here since she'd left. They would be worried sick. She had just been driving, surviving to get here, through California, Mexico, Guatemala. The borders and guardia and men. But she had made it to here now and she stopped the car. After all the breakdowns in San Francisco whenever she really needed it, the car had finally been fuerte when it mattered. She pulled to the side of the road. Getting out, stretching, she was aware that she stunk.

  She did not care. It didn't matter. She wasn't in the U.S. anymore.

  There was a motor going somewhere in the back and she walked around the house to the sound of it. Jose´—strong, silent, ugly Jose´—had his shirt off working over the generator they still used most of the time for their electricity. After all these years, she still knew his body.

  Standing ten feet from him now in the saw grass, she waited in a kind of hysterical suspense. How badly did the scars show on her? Had she changed beyond his r
ecognition, and if he did know who she was, would he still love her? Would she love him?

  Suddenly the noise stopped. He straightened up, wiped his forehead with a bandanna, then saw her.

  For a long moment, nothing in the world moved. Then his face broke into the smile of his youth. He held out his arms, took a step toward her, and she ran to his embrace.