Girls in Pink

by Bob Bickford

  She sensed us watching, and turned her face in our direction.

  “Mind your potatoes,” she called, and started away.

  We watched her as she moved from streetlight to shadow.

  “Ducks make me laugh, too,” Annie called after her.

  When the light turned green, I looked over my shoulder as we pulled off. It was strange that I hadn't seen a single black-and-white in the last twenty minutes or so. I figured they had to be looking for us by now, and it wouldn't be long before they figured out what kind of car Annie drove and broadcast the description. I wondered if they were looking for me, too.

  We drifted through a small business section on Milpas Street. A few stores had their signs turned on, even this late. Annie pulled to the curb and stopped. She looked out her window, deep in thought, and lightly drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

  A little girl pushed open the glass door of a liquor store across the street, and came out onto the sidewalk. The two men leaning against the payphone on the wall ignored her. As she left the fluorescent doorway and moved into the light from the neon sign, her dress changed from white to pink. She spotted us and started toward the car, carefully looking both ways before she crossed the street.

  Annie's reaction startled me. She jammed the transmission into gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The tires yelped and the rear end of the car swung sideways. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth. I grabbed at the dashboard with one hand and my hat with the other. She didn't slow down for nearly a mile.

  “What the hell was that about?” I asked.

  Focused on her driving, she didn't answer right away, then said, “Radio Hill. We'll go to Radio Hill.”

  “All right,” I said, and didn't ask why.

  The highest point in Santa Teresa was a bluff that overlooked the entire city and had a dazzling view of the Pacific Ocean beyond it. They called it Radio Hill because of the tower that stood watch there, tall and delicate and spindly. It was the most logical place to put a tower like that. There was a house up there, too.

  It was a breathtaking property to put a house on; a million-dollar view. The place was a large modern stucco affair with a lot of glass, surrounded by a low wall and lush plantings. No one had ever lived in it. The owner made his money back East in the twenties, and lost most of it in the thirties. The house had been put up for sale before he ever moved in.

  It had never sold. The contradictions were too much. It was tantalizingly close to the city below it, but to actually reach it involved a narrow lane that bent and switched its way up the steep hill. The road was vulnerable to sliding mud, and running out for a bottle of milk would demand a certain commitment. In my experience, the wealthy liked the reassurance of having their own kind close, and the base of the hill hosted the poorest neighborhood in Santa Teresa. Worst of all, the big, unsightly radio antenna towered over it.

  Annie whipped the green Mercury up the hill, around bends and twists. The headlights hardly had time to show the road before it wrenched out of sight. At the top, a low white wall crowded the road. She tucked the car in close to it, and shut the engine off. She went to the wall and hoisted herself up, ignoring my offered hand. I followed her over, and we walked across the lawn. The moon shone bright; in its light the plantings looked tended and lush. Someone was maintaining the property. It reflected off the glass walls of the house, which seemed to look blankly out across space at the dark ocean, far below us.

  On the far side of the lawn, I put my elbows on the wall. The lights of the city were spread out as though they had been spilled. I saw the lights of cars crawling along the streets. Some of them were looking for us.

  Sirens cried from somewhere at the bottom of the hill. They sounded close, but if they were meant for us they didn't seem to be getting any closer. Up here, I figured sounds probably carried funny. Enough faint light came from the moon to see my wristwatch; it said just after three o'clock in the morning.

  I checked my pistol. It was full of bullets but empty of any promises. Unless I planned to start shooting at cops, it wouldn’t do me any good. I thought about throwing it away, but I'd had it for a long time, so I put it back into my pocket. I realized that Annie wasn't beside me, and called her name softly.

  She was sitting partially hidden at the base of a small tree. The low branches were full of green fruit; the citrus orbs almost glowed in the reflected light. I crossed the grass and bent to look at her.

  “They're going to find me, aren't they?” she asked.

  “No point in thinking different,” I said. “If we plan for it, then we can try to change things.”

  The wind picked up. I wondered what it would be like to live up here, to build a house far above everything and everyone else. I could look down at the city, and never go there. Annie looked down at all of it. I knew she was seeing something else. Her voice was a murmur, and I had to strain to hear her.

  “These are green tangerines,” she said. “They're ripe, but they always go to waste because no one knows what they are. It makes me sad.”

  I lowered myself to sit beside her. Her shoulder against mine was warm, and the ground beneath us still held the heat of the day. I leaned back against the tree and closed my eyes. Then I opened them again, afraid that I'd fall asleep.

  “What happens if one of us dies first?” she asked. “Will it be the same?”

  I stared ahead of me. The city was laid out far below us, in faint lines of light that mirrored the stars overhead. I was so tired that the patterns seemed like the answer to a question I hadn't asked. Beyond it all, the black ocean spread itself from one edge of the night sky to the other. I touched the back of her hand.

  “One of us was always going to die first,” I said. “That's how it works.”

  She shook her head, impatient with me. “I mean tonight,” she said. “What if one of us dies, and the other doesn't? What if it's you? What if they kill you?”

  “If they do, I'll wait for you.”

  I surprised myself. I talked nonsense, and a lot of it, but I didn't know where my own words had come from. This was something new. I kept talking, anyway.

  “If I go first, I'll be on the other side of your last breath,” I said. “Waiting for you.”

  “Even if that doesn't come until I'm very old, you'll wait?”

  She was looking at me intently, and I nodded. She stared again at the distant city lights and seemed to consider it, and for a long time we didn't say anything else. “That's good,” she finally said. “It will be like walking out of a dark movie theater. Or into one, depending.”

  An empty swimming pool was dug into the terrace of the house. I thought I saw something move at the edge of it, and I sat up and strained my eyes. Instinctively, I touched the gun in my pocket. There was nothing else, though. Not yet. There wasn't much we could do except wait until there was.

  “If I die first, I won't leave at all,” she said. “You won't have to look far for me.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes again. The dark was soothing, and I felt my own smile.

  “That's fine, then,” I said. “I'm glad you won't be far. Where should I look for you?”

  “Where do you look for me now?”

  “I don't. You just turn up from time to time.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Her head rested on my shoulder now. It felt exactly right.

  “I'm glad that's settled, then,” she murmured. “I wasn't worried, but I'm glad, anyway.”

  I must have fallen asleep then, because when I opened my eyes she was gone. I stood up in a blind panic and scraped my face on a tree branch. I called for her, but I somehow knew she couldn’t hear me. I felt a flash of something like relief, and hated myself for it. Clouds covered the moon now, and it was a lot harder to see my way down the hill than it had been coming up.

  When I got to the bottom, there were streetlights again. The curb where the Mercury had been parked was empty. I started the long walk back to Figueroa Street.
>
  -Twenty Nine-

  They blocked off bottom of my street. A couple of black-and-white radio cars were angled across the road. Several uniformed cops stood behind sawhorses, ignoring the reporters with pads and pencils who were trying to pester information out of them. They perked up when they saw me coming. Two of them caught me by the elbows and kept me company the rest of the way up the hill.

  There were two dark sedans in Annie's driveway, and a half-dozen black-and-white radio cars on the street. People were gathered on the steps of the apartment building across the street, watching the official-types milling around, going into and out of Annie's front door. Rex Raines saw us and came down the front walk. He waved off the uniforms that had my arms, and gestured toward my house. I followed him to my veranda, and waited with my arms crossed.

  He looked exhausted, and angry. “Anne Kahlo is officially a wanted woman,” Raines said. “If she contacts you, turn her in, or you're going to get caught in the crossfire.” He shook his head, disgusted. “A beautiful cop-killer. The press is having a field day with this, already.”

  “You don't know that she killed anyone,” I said. “There's a body in her front hallway. That's all you know.”

  “How do you know that? You just got here.”

  I didn't answer. He walked across the veranda and leaned on the railing.

  “She killed four people that we know about,” he said. “And this has barely started. I don't know what else we're going to find out.”

  I started to speak, but he held up a hand to quiet me. “She killed Douglas Raw and Virgil Lowen in the alley off of State Street. She shot Mary Raw to death in your office. Now she's killed Captain Earnswood.”

  “How do you think you know all this?” I asked, “What evidence is there?”

  His voice got heavy. He didn't look at me. “I don't need evidence, Nate. She called me a couple of hours ago from a phone booth. She confessed to all four murders. I told her she couldn't do it on the telephone. I needed her to come in and tell me in person.”

  “You said yourself she’s crazy. Why should you believe her?”

  “She said she couldn't confess in person,” he said, ignoring me. “She said she would be dead. She promised to write out a confession and leave it with her mother.”

  “Her mother?” I asked, startled.

  “She stayed true to her word. She wrote it and signed it, and her mother witnessed it. It's been forwarded to the district attorney.”

  “Her mother?” I asked again, feeling stupid. “She hasn't seen her mother in years...ran off. Lives in Hawaii, far as I know.”

  “Her mother is a woman named Gardiner,” he said. “Lives right on the other side of you.”

  “Mrs. Gardiner?” I was stunned. “That's crazy. That doesn't even make sense.”

  “Like all the rest of this.” He shrugged. “Everyone has a mother, even killers. Someone has to be her mother.”

  I leaned on the railing and looked over at the Gardiner house, trying to make sense of it. Annie had told me that her mother had left her and June with their father and gone back to Hawaii. She was long gone by the time Annie's trouble with Sal had led to the father's murder, the house burning and June's death in the barn. Neither she nor Mrs. Gardiner had ever given me the slightest hint that they were more than friendly neighbors.

  “Why would Annie give you a confession?” I asked.

  He looked at me, eyebrows up. “You really don't know?” he asked. “Who do you think has been my number one suspect in all this? Who do you think was first in line to take the rap for all this? It wasn't Anne Kahlo, I can tell you that.”

  I thought about it.

  Raines looked at me, impatient. “Who swore he would fix this himself?” he asked. “Who yelled at me in front of a whole restaurant of people that he would take care of Sal Cleveland if the cops wouldn't, or couldn't?”

  I had said it, in the Camel Diner. Raines had told me Cleveland had an alibi and was absolved of his wife's murder, and I had vowed to take care of him myself.

  “Sooner or later, I was going to have to cuff you,” he said. “You got cut all kinds of slack, but sooner or later the pile of dead bodies around you just got too high to ignore. Ask yourself who played prime suspect in all this.”

  “Me.”

  “You,” he said. “Never would have figured the Kahlo woman for it, crazy or not. You were going to get arrested. She confessed to protect you, simple as that. She was protecting you.”

  “Hell,” I said. “I don't know what to do about this.”

  “Nothing you can do,” he said. “If you try, you'll get killed. No point in it.”

  He pushed himself off the railing, straightened and went to the steps. He looked like he had aged about ten years in the last week.

  “Don't leave town, and so on,” he said.

  “He was dirty, Rex,” I said to his back. “Earnswood was in Cleveland's pocket for a long time, before you or I ever saw this city. He was as dirty as they come. Annie doesn't deserve to go to prison for him.”

  On the sidewalk, he turned around to look back at me. His face was bleak. “She isn't going to prison, Nate. She isn't going to make it to prison.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “You can't save her, Nate. She's gone too far down this road. They'd execute her for this, but she isn't going to get that far. Cop-killers don't generally make it to the gas chamber. All the law enforcement in the county is looking for her, and by tomorrow the teletypes will start landing all over the state. They're going to shoot her on sight, and maybe that's better than her suffering. She isn't going to last the week, and if you try to interfere chances are I'll go to your funeral, too.”

  “I'm not going to watch her get killed,” I said. “If I have a chance to save her, I will. You should know that.”

  “Then I'll be bringing you flowers,” he said. “Any particular kind you like?”

  “I don't know much about flowers,” I said. “I don't know what you should bring. Whatever looks good to you.”

  He shook his head, and went out to the street. I shook my head, and went inside. I had a feeling I'd better get some sleep while I could.

  Mrs. Gardiner opened up her front door before I could knock. It was the first time we had seen each other since the trouble at Annie's house, and we watched each other carefully. Everything was different, now.

  “So you're her mother,” I said.

  She nodded once. She looked as though she expected me to hit her. When I didn't, she visibly relaxed. Her reaction made me feel bad. I had no right to judge her, and didn't mean to.

  “Annie said to tell you that she has the dog,” she said. “She's taking good care of him.”

  “I figured she did,” I said. “She told me. I'm not worried about the dog. He liked her better, anyway. I'm worried about her.”

  “It's strange to take a dog along when you're on the run, isn't it? Don't you think so?”

  “She might have wanted some company,” I said. “I don't think she worries much about whether something is strange.”

  “She never did. She's attracted to whatever seems strange. Perhaps that's why animals are drawn to her. She always seemed to understand my ocelot better than I did.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I'm her mother,” she nodded. “Of course I know where she is.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “You'll see her very soon,” she said. “Don't worry. Will you come in for a drink?”

  I followed her into the house. It was cool and quiet after the bright sun outside. I looked again at the ranks of water-colored paintings hung on the wood-paneled walls. I recognized them now as Annie's work. We went through the conservatory. The light through the greenhouse glass was muted, and the masses of pink blossoms looked sad today. They seemed to signify something, but I didn't know what.

  The drinks trolley already sat beside the glass table, and I did the honors.

  “Where's the d
octor?” I asked.

  “He's having a rest,” she said, and looked perturbed. “He's grown very fond of Annie. He never had children of his own . . . probably why he fusses so much over his flowers and that damn big car. This has been very hard for him.”

  “Why didn't you ever tell me that Annie was your daughter? Why didn't she tell me?”

  “Because she doesn't acknowledge it, that's why. She doesn't call me Mother, or anything like it. When she came back to Santa Teresa, she bought the house two doors down, so she must know. She treats me as a friend. We are friends, and I've settled for that.”

  The ocelot put in a rare appearance. I hadn't seen him crossing my yard in some time. He padded across the grass and disappeared into the jacaranda trees.

  “In some ways, I suppose it's been a blessing,” she said. “We never acknowledge the past. It's been a fresh start, and we are able to be friends and confidantes, without the burden of childhood dramas.”

  She sipped her drink and made a small show of distaste. I didn't make them like her husband did, but I knew she'd soldier through it, and probably ask for another. She set the glass down and reached across the table to touch my sleeve.

  “She loves you, you know,” she said. “Even if she never said so, there are things a mother knows. I'm still her mother, and I can tell she has feelings for you.”

  Her look was a little bit defiant, so I nodded. I had no idea what Annie thought about me, and I couldn't keep track of what I felt for her.

  “She called the police and told them what she'd done, so they wouldn't blame you for it,” she said. “That's some kind of proof, I'd say.”

  “They told me she called in a confession, and left a written one with you.”

  “You can't love someone much more than that. She told me in the beginning that you were going to kill Sal Cleveland. I wish that you had. None of this would have happened.”

  “I don't hire out to kill people,” I said. “I went after Cleveland because his wife was my client and he murdered her. I never said I would kill him for it, though. I wanted to see him arrested.”