As soon as Lydia had left, he locked up the lot and drove to the bank on which the check was drawn. The bank cashed it without making any trouble for him; he had the money converted into traveler’s checks, and then he drove quickly back to his apartment.
When he entered he found Julie in the bedroom, packing her clothes in one of their suitcases.
He said, “I have enough money for us to get out of here and make it somewhere else.”
“Do you,” she said, continuing her packing.
Seating himself on the bed beside the suitcase, he laid out the books of traveler’s checks.
After a long time, Julie said, “Where do you intend to take us?”
“We’ll get started,” he said, “and then decide along the way.”
“Right now?” She watched as he got the other suitcase and began to pack his own things.
“We’ll get on the bus as soon as we’re packed,” he said.
To that, she said nothing. She resumed her packing. They both worked together, side by side, until they had gotten as much as was practical to take.
Julie said, “While you were gone, there was another call.” She showed him the pad. “I wrote it down. The man said for you to call him back as soon as you could.”
The number, he saw, was Harman’s home phone.
“He talked very strangely,” Julie said. “I couldn’t make half of it out. At first I thought he had the wrong number; he acted as if he were speaking to a company.”
“An organization,” Al said.
“Yes, he kept saying ‘you people.’ ”
Al said, “We’re ready.”
Picking up her suitcase, she started toward the door. “I hate to leave all this stuff here.” She halted to touch an ashtray on the coffee table. “It won’t be here when we get back; we’ll never see any of these things again.”
“Sometimes you have to do that,” Al said.
Still lingering, she said, “I like the Bay Area.”
“I know,” he said.
“You did something really dreadful,” she said, “didn’t you? I knew it when I first got home today. Does it have to do with Jim Fergesson’s death? I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe you tried to get his money. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “You’ll never say. I guess things like that happen all the time. I never liked him. He really had no right to the money anyhow. I say what I said before: I wanted him to die. He treated you very badly.” She eyed him.
Picking up his own suitcase, he moved to the door, guiding his wife along ahead of him, out into the hall.
* * *
Rather than taking their own car, they went by taxi to the Greyhound bus station. He bought tickets for Sparks, Nevada. An hour later, after waiting in the station, they were on their way by air-conditioned double-decker bus, traveling on Highway 40, through the great flat Sacramento Valley.
It was early evening and the air had cooled. The other passengers dozed or read or looked out. Julie looked out, now and then saying something about the fields and farm houses which they passed.
When they reached Sacramento it was still light. The bus stopped long enough for the passengers to eat dinner, and then once more they were in motion. Now it was dark. The bus began to climb the winding, older highway that led from Sacramento into the Sierras. Most of the other traffic was large trucks. Gazing out, Al saw roadside diners and closed-up fruit stands and gas stations. The fields were behind them now.
“This part is sort of depressing,” Julie said. “I’m glad we can’t really see it. But I wish we could see the Sierras.”
“These are the Sierras,” he said. “It’s like this all the way. Advertising signs and bars.”
“What’s it like on the other side?”
“We’ll find out,” he said.
“Anyhow,” Julie said, “the air smells nice.”
15
At Sparks, Nevada, he bought tickets to Salt Lake City. They spent a few hours wandering around Sparks; it was close to Reno and very modern and well cared for. And then they were on their way across the Nevada desert. It was three-thirty in the morning.
Both of them slept. There was nothing beyond the bus, no lights, no life. The bus roared along without stopping.
When Al awoke the sun had come up; he saw all around them the rocky lands, hills of broken rock, scrubby gray plants, and, here and there along the road, discarded human debris. The time was eight-fifteen. According to the schedule they were almost to the Utah border.
At Wendover the bus stopped so that they could get breakfast. This was the last stop in Nevada, the last gambling machines. The town lay along the highway, spread out with space between each house and shop, sandy soil on which nothing grew. To exercise their legs, he and Julie walked the length of the town and then back to a café for hotcakes and bacon.
“We could be almost anywhere in California,” Julie said, looking around the café. “The same booths, the same cash register. Jukebox.” The café seemed to have been newly built; everything was freshly painted and stylish. “The only thing different,” she said, “is the newspaper. And the funny-looking dirt outside.”
Several other passengers were eating in the cafe, too, so they had no fear of being left.
“Are we going to stay in Salt Lake City?” Julie asked.
“Maybe,” he said. It seemed to him as good a place to relocate themselves as any. At least, from what he had heard of it.
“It’s sort of exciting,” Julie said, “an adventure like this . . . not knowing where we’re going, just moving on, not stopping. Cutting ourselves off from our past. Our families.” She smiled at him. Her face was wan from lack of sleep, and her clothes were rumpled. His were the same. And he needed a shave.
Suddenly he had a premonition. Salt Lake City was too big a town. They would have a representative there.
He said, “I think we’ll go on as soon as we get to Salt Lake.” Getting out the map, he examined the possibilities. A town small enough to be unimportant to the Harman organization, but large enough so that he could get a job or go into business. Open a used-car lot, he thought. There would be enough money, just barely enough, if he bought wisely.
“I’d like to see Salt Lake City,” Julie said. “I’ve always wanted to.”
“So would I,” he said.
“But we can’t.” She studied him.
“No,” he said.
“I have no say-so in this?”
He said, “You better let me decide.”
Julie went on eating then. So he did too.
After they had left the café they walked slowly back in the direction of the parked Greyhound bus. They could see the driver; he was off talking to two middle-aged women. So they did not hurry.
“This is a very pretty little town,” Julie said. “But there’s nothing doing here. We’ve seen it all. It’s just a place for people to stop and eat and get their cars fixed and do a little last gambling.” Turning toward him, she said, “Do you feel safer here? Probably not. You’ll never feel safe. It’s really inside you.”
“What is?” he said.
“The conflict. The thing you’re running away from. Psychologists say we carry our problems with us.”
He said, “Maybe so.” He did not feel like arguing with her.
They came to the bus. The door was open, and he started to ascend the metal steps.
“I don’t believe I’ll get on,” Julie said.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back to the ground.
“At all.” She did not flinch; she met his gaze. “I’ve decided I don’t want to go any farther. I think there’s something you’re not facing in yourself; that you’ve never faced. And you’re dragging me along. If you try to force me to get on the bus, I’ll scream and they’ll stop you. I see a highway patrolman or somebody over there.” She nodded her head; he saw the parked patrol car with its antenna.
“You’re going to stay in Wendover?” he said, in agony.
“No. I’m go
ing to take the next bus back to Reno, and I’m going to stay there a few days and do some shopping, and then if I like it there I’ll stay there and get a Nevada divorce, and of course get a job there. And if I don’t like it, I’ll go on back to Oakland. And get a California divorce.”
“On what?”
“Won’t you give me part of the money?”
He was silent. Other passengers, seeing them at the bus, were beginning to come, afraid they might be left behind. The driver was winding up his conversation with the middle-aged women.
“I want you to come back with me,” Julie said. “But probably you won’t; you’ll go on fleeing.”
He groaned.
“Yes,” she said. “Groan, because you know it’s the truth.”
He said, “It’s crap.”
“Just give me some of the money. Not even half. Just, say, five hundred dollars. I know how much there is; that leaves you almost fifteen hundred. Under California joint-property law, half of it is mine. But I don’t care. I just want to end this—pathology. This—” She broke off. Other people were going by them and up into the bus.
Al said, “I’ll have to sign the traveler’s checks or they won’t be good.”
“Fine,” she said.
Holding the checks up against the side of the bus, he signed five hundred dollars’ worth. He gave them to his wife.
“Well,” she said quietly, “you did just give me five hundred. I thought maybe you’d volunteer half. Well, it doesn’t matter.” Tears filled her eyes, and then she turned to the driver, who had come up, and said, “I’d like my luggage; I’m not going on. May I, please?” She held out the claim check. The driver glanced at her, then at Al, and then accepted the claim check.
Al got onto the bus and reseated himself, alone. Below, on the outside, the driver was unloading Julie’s suitcase. He slammed the metal door shut after the suitcase and then hurried up into the bus to seat himself at the wheel. A moment later the motor roared on; gray smoke poured from the exhaust. The remaining passengers got quickly on and found their seats.
Seated in the bus, Al saw his wife walk away with her suitcase, into the bus depot. The door closed after her. And then the doors of the bus shut and the bus began to move.
He felt the rift, the ghastly, purposeless rift. What did it matter now whether he went on or not? But he was going on; he was on his way alone to Salt Lake City and whatever came after that. Maybe this is better, he thought. For us to separate. At least they won’t get both of us. It was hopeless from the start to try to make her go along. He thought, You can’t force people to do anything. I can’t make Julie do what I want her to do, any more than Lydia Fergesson could force me to send flowers or go to the mortuary. Each of us has his own life to live out, for better or worse.
The Great Salt Lake was enormously hot, white and unsteady. Toward midday the bus had crossed it and had reached the fertile green part of Utah with trees and small lakes; once more he saw countryside not much different from California. There was quite a bit of traffic on the highway. He saw, ahead, the beginnings of a large city.
He found Salt Lake City as crowded and busy and built-up as the Bay Area; it, like Oakland, had other smaller cities so close to it that they merged. Residential and business districts, he thought as he gazed out the bus window, were about the same everywhere. Motels, drugstores, gas stations, cleaning establishments, dime stores . . . the houses seemed to be mostly of brick or stone, or, if of wood, unusually substantial. The streets were well maintained and noisy. He saw a lot of teenagers and their cars, the modified hot rods that he saw all day long going back and forth along San Pablo Avenue.
In many ways, he decided, Salt Lake City appeared to be an ideal town for a used-car business. Everyone seemed to drive, and there were plenty of older cars to be seen.
When he got off the bus in downtown Salt Lake City, two plainclothes policemen took hold of him and led him off to one side of the depot. “Are you Allen Miller of Oakland, California?” one of them asked him, showing his badge.
He was so completely cut down that he nodded yes.
“We have a warrant for your arrest,” the plainclothes policeman said, showing him a folded paper, “and return to the State of California.” They began to move him, between them, toward the curb and their parked police car.
“What for?” Al demanded.
“For fraud,” one of them said as they pushed him into the car. “Obtaining money under false pretenses.”
“What money?” he demanded. “Who says so?”
“The litigant signing the complaint in the County of Alameda, California; Mrs. Lydia Fergesson.” The policeman started up the car, and they drove off into downtown Salt Lake City traffic. Meanwhile, in the back of the car, the other policeman was searching Al; he offered no resistance. “You’ll be here a couple of days and then you’ll be on your way back.”
Al could think of nothing to say.
“You know this Mrs. Fergesson?” one of the policemen said to him, with a wink at the other.
“Sure,” Al said.
After a time one of the policemen said, “Is she a widow?”
Al said, “Yes.”
“Fat? Middle-aged?”
Al said nothing.
“What’s your stated occupation?” one of the policemen said.
“Car salesman,” Al said.
“You’ve gone up in the world,” the policeman said, and chuckled.
Transportation arrangements were made the next day. With another male prisoner of the State of Utah, he was sent back to California in the custody of a sheriff’s deputy; they made the trip by air, and within a few hours after leaving the Salt Lake City airport they were landing at the Oakland airport. There, a police car met them and they were taken to the Oakland Hall of Justice.
Only two and a half days had passed since he and Julie had started on their trip. I wonder where she is, Al thought as he sat on a bench in one of the courtrooms, waiting to be arraigned. Did she go back to Reno? Is she there now? Strange he thought, to be back here. He had never expected to see Oakland again. Through a window of the courtroom he could make out the public buildings of Alameda County, and somewhere, not far out of sight, would be Lake Merritt. Where, many times, he had gone canoeing.
Coming back by air made the distance seem short. I didn’t get very far, he decided. A few hours away; that’s all, for those who travel by air. It had never occurred to him to take a plane. That must be the kind of thing Lydia meant, he thought. When she said I understood the world so little.
Someone, evidently an employee of the court, came over and told him he should have an attorney.
“Okay,” he said. The whole thing seemed vague to him. “I will.”
“You want to phone?”
“Maybe later,” Al said. He could not think of anyone to phone. He wished that he had his pills with him. Perhaps he did; he began fishing in his pockets, but without success. No, he realized. The Anacin tin was in another pair of pants. Or the police had taken it away; they had gone over all his things. Maybe that’s what happened to me, he thought. Somehow I got cut off from my pills.
The next he knew, a short, bald, foreign-looking man in a double-breasted suit had come into the courtroom. I know him, Al said to himself. Maybe he’s my lawyer. But then he remembered him. It was Lydia’s lawyer, whatever his name was.
Several people conferred with the lawyer, and then Al found himself being moved out of the courtroom, down a hallway. I’m really in their hands, he said to himself. They guide me around wherever they want. A policeman pointed to an open door, and Al entered a side room, a sort of office with chairs and a table.
“Thanks,” he said to the policeman. But the policeman had already gone on.
The door opened and Lydia’s short, bald, foreign lawyer entered with his briefcase; moving rapidly, in an important manner, he seated himself facing Al and unzipped his briefcase. For a moment he glanced over papers and then he looked up. He smiled. They
all smile, Al thought. Maybe that’s how you can tell them.
“I’m Boris Tsarnas,” the lawyer said. “We have met.”
“Yeah,” Al said.
“Mrs. Fergesson didn’t want to see you, at least at this time. I’m her counsel, you understand, in this matter.” His voice dropped to a drone. “As well as other matters involving the estate of her deceased husband and so forth.” He studied Al for so long that Al became uncomfortable. The man had bright, intelligent eyes, small as they were. “The investment,” Tsarnas said, “was perfectly reputable.”
That was it then. That explained it. Al nodded.
“We had all the financial records, all the statements from the accountants, gone over. The net return on her investment will probably be very high; at least ten percent, possibly more. Possibly as high as twelve. Harman was acting without any recompense. He has no involvement with the enterprise, save that he knows both Mr. Bradford and the deceased Mr. Fergesson. It appears that he was doing precisely as he indicated, offering his informed guidance in securing for the deceased a premium investment which now becomes advantageous to the heir, Mrs. Fergesson. And so I have advised her.” He snapped his briefcase shut. In a friendly manner, he said, “I thought you would be interested in knowing. You seemed to have some concern over Mr. Harman’s reliability. When the check in question was stopped at Mrs. Fergesson’s insistence, Mr. Harman proceeded to make good on it himself. That is, he advanced forty-one thousand dollars of his own money to Mr. Bradford to cover the sum, until such time as the check would be made good. So he risked a good deal of his own cash to be sure the investment opportunity was secured and therefore not lost to the widow of the deceased.”
Presently Al said, “Lydia knows all this?”
“As soon as we had gone over the financial statements, we so informed her. This Marin Gardens place is well thought of, in Marin County real-estate investment circles. A number of sanguine people on the other side of the Bay, and a few here, have bought in.”
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland Page 21
