Writ of Execution

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Kenny? Maybe he—it belonged to him, after all.”

  “I already called him. He’s two floors down. Woke him up. He says no. So let’s go through my movements. I picked up the gun off Sandy’s desk and went out with Leung and the girl and drove them to Reno. The girl sat up front with me. I waited in the car while they got the license downtown. Then we drove to the Reno Hilton and went down to the wedding chapel. I stuck close to them throughout. The minister and his helpers never came within fifteen feet of me. Then I drove them to the parking lot at Prize’s where you met us. Then we went through the casino and up to the second floor and sweated out the victory party. Then we made the switch with the scarf and I drove her to Markleeville, came back to Caesars, and hit the rack.”

  “You’ve searched the Mustang?”

  “Yeah. The gun was lifted. I didn’t lose it. There’s a flap on my jacket pocket. The flap was down.” He paused to let this sink in. “I was careless sticking it in my jacket pocket like that. It made a shape, if you knew guns.”

  “It was late.”

  “I was careless. No excuses.”

  “You know the word that comes to my mind?” Nina said. “Ominous.”

  “From the root ‘omen,’ a threatening portent. In other words, disaster coming. Anticipate it or bail now.”

  “She sat right next to you in the car.”

  “She was closest, longest,” Paul agreed. “I was in a crowd as we walked through the casino, though, and upstairs.”

  “How would anyone else know you had a gun?”

  “Exactly. Unless it was opportunistic, which is always possible where there are people who are losing money left and right.”

  “What’s that girl going to do with a gun, Paul?” Nina asked. “We have to get it back.”

  “When you talk to her, why not ask her to bring it in?” Paul said. “Never know. Maybe she will. I don’t have a phone number and I don’t know just where she is. I can’t waltz in there and search the neighborhood.”

  “If she has it, I’ll get it.”

  “Hope you’re right. She said she’d call you this afternoon.”

  “We obviously have a few things to talk about.” Nina felt alarmed and disappointed. She harbored some vestiges of idealism about her clients, and it hurt when they persisted in acting like clients, namely, people in trouble.

  “Okay. Brand-new subject. Let me get to the final reason for my call. I know how to take away that ominous feeling. It appears that we have the afternoon and evening off, and I have plans for you. This time there will be no phone for miles.”

  Nina said, “I’m sorry.”

  Silence at the other end.

  “I have to deposit that check right away. Sandy has a couple of late appointments lined up for me at the office. The day’s shot, and I have to work late. And I’ve got to do the laundry tonight. Bob’s down to one pair of skivvies. And I have to hit the grocery store. I can’t leave Bob again tonight. He’s spending half his life at Matt and Andrea’s as it is.” Bob, in his tree, hung from one arm like a monkey. “Careful,” she called to him. “Use two hands!”

  That was all she needed, a kid with a broken leg. Paul had just gotten over a broken leg himself. They were both getting over things, and maybe she had knocked them both askew, running off to his room. In the shadow of night obscure motives had seized her, and they were unimaginable to her now.

  “I can hardly believe my ears. You can’t see me because you have laundry to do. Do I have that right? Is that what you want to tell me?”

  She didn’t know what to tell him. She had had time to think; the mood had passed and the memory of her appearance at his door wearing nothing but a coat embarrassed her. “No,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Was last night—I mean when you came to my room—a dream? Or some kind of impulsive thing that came over you and will never be repeated?” Paul said, reading her mind.

  “I’m not sure, Paul.”

  “You’re not sure. Woman, do you know what you did to me? You’re an underground seismic movement and I’m—I’m magma. I’m a great big flow of disturbed magma, and the channel out just closed up. I can’t stand this, Nina. We need to spend some time together. When are you going to be free for a few hours in the evening?”

  “You were so wonderful last night. Lighten up. We have so much going on. . . .”

  “Nothing’s going on,” Paul muttered, “and that’s the problem.”

  Apparently, lightening up wasn’t in his daily planner for today. “I can’t talk about this right now,” Nina said. “I can’t even think about it. Come in to the office first thing tomorrow morning. Where are you on the Brink divorce investigation? We have to finish that. The new client’s going to need a lot of my time.” Nina made it sound casual.

  “Sure. Is your young nameless client going to need any of mine? Because otherwise, I’m done here. I’m still putting the business back together in Carmel. I’ve got a home there that I need to tend to. I’m not going to stand around in front of Caesars baaing whenever you walk by.”

  “I’m sorry! Okay? I’ve got to work and take care of Bobby, those are the first priorities. . . .”

  “Don’t give me that,” Paul said. “Don’t give me that, Nina. You’re backing off. That’s you all the way. Make a move from the heart, then get scared and backtrack. And use Bob as the excuse.”

  “Don’t. I try. . . .”

  “Try harder.”

  “I can’t try any harder! I—”

  “Aw, shit,” he interrupted. “We’ve been through all this before. You know what? I hate repeating myself. It offends me. You’ve offended me. So screw it.”

  “Then make your report and go home. Because—”

  He wasn’t on the line anymore, so she didn’t have to finish that thought. Just as well. The heat had escalated moment by moment, and a flush composed of frustration, self-pity, desire, and fatigue burned through her cheeks. She had wanted to scream at him, really let loose.

  Tears came up. She had lost a certain amount of emotional control in the past year. All feelings, not just those connected with her husband’s death, were stronger. She was going to have to get that control back or forget about courtroom work.

  Forget about Paul. Take a shower and go to work.

  She put the mug to her lips for another swallow of her milky brew, but only dregs dribbled out. “Bob!” she called. “Five more minutes.” She wanted him out of that damn tree, reading a book, eating, unloading dishes, doing anything at all inside where he couldn’t break his neck and his mother’s heart. She went through the sliding glass door into the kitchen to fry some eggs and to refill Hitchcock’s water bowl, keeping a nervous eye on Bob as he made like a chimp.

  The phone rang again. She sighed, put it against her ear, and turned the eggs in the pan with a spatula.

  “It’s me. Jessie.”

  “Hi! How are you?”

  “Everybody here knows about it. But they’re pretty cool. I haven’t seen any reporters around and I asked everyone not to tell.”

  “I’m glad you’re in Markleeville. Your neighborhood seems like a good place to be left alone, since that’s what you want.”

  “Oh. So Mr. van Wagoner—Paul—told you.”

  “You said you were staying with an aunt?”

  “Yes. I was raised here. I’m very hard to find. I feel safe.” She didn’t add any more.

  Nina really didn’t feel like getting into the gun question yet. She needed to eat, settle down. She couldn’t face another confrontation this soon. Maybe, before the accusations started, Jessie would mention it herself.

  “So what’s up?” Nina said. “Other than that it’s your first day as a wealthy young woman?”

  “I wanted to thank you again for last night. No matter what happens, I’m so glad you were there.”

  “You’re very welcome. I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  “And I—I feel like if I don’t talk to someone, I’m going to explode. Are you—I
realize I’m taking up so much of your time. . . .”

  “Well, I’ll let you take up another hour of it. How’s that?”

  “Thank you. Uh, I was thinking about Mr. van Wagoner. Paul.”

  Nina turned off the fire and slid two of the eggs, salted and peppered and curry-powdered, onto a paper plate.

  “Would he be willing to go to Hawaii for me?”

  The curiosity this aroused in Nina overcame her hunger. Story coming, she thought, sitting down at the table, her heart beating faster. She put the forkful of egg down and said, “Is that where this problem of yours started?”

  “It’s where I was posted, with Combat Service Support Group Three at the Marine Corps base, Hawaii, at Kaneohe.”

  “You were in the Marines?”

  “I joined right after high school. For two years. I thought the Corps would be my career.” Little things about Jessie began to add up. Her physical fitness, the stalwart way she had gotten through the night, her confident negotiation with Kenny Leung.

  “I fell in love,” Jessie said. “It was the first time I’d ever been in love. I fell in love and I got married. He died in an accident.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I lost my husband too, very suddenly.”

  “Then you know. It’s like the future is here, you know who will be in it, you finally have a center to your life. You relax. Then it’s gone. You fly apart. You’re not like before. It’s like being shot in the gut. You’re weak in the one place where you had been so strong. It’s very hard to go on.”

  “Yes. I know.” Nina looked down at her left hand, at the rings she still wore, and flashed through her brief marriage, the anguish of losing the one she had loved more than herself.

  “When I met Dan, he was a Punahou boy who was a junior at the University of Hawaii,” Jessie said at last.

  “What’s a Punahou boy?”

  “Punahou is the school where all the rich, smart kids go in Hawaii, the kids who are going to grow up and run the companies and be big shots in the government. His name was Dan Potter. Danforth Atchison Potter. His father is a partner in a law firm in Honolulu.”

  Jessie’s voice changed in a very definite and significant way, turning thick and anxious as she mentioned the father. What was coming was obvious. Nina made a face as the story recontoured itself around the unsettling information that a well-connected lawyer was after her client. The feeling this evoked was alarm, as if Nina had been snorkeling along a reef and suddenly found herself staring down the razor-tooth-guarded maw of a moray eel.

  “What kind of law does he practice? Dan’s father?”

  “Uh. I think Dan told me once it was insurance defense.”

  The most dangerous species of them all, powerful, secretive, wily, impervious to the spear gun.

  Jessie rushed ahead. “Dan grew up in a big kama’aina house in Manoa Valley. But Dan wasn’t a snob at all. I met him one evening running on the beach. He was a runner too.

  “We started seeing each other. It got so we wanted to live together, but that wouldn’t have been good for me in the Corps.

  “Anyway, he asked me to meet his father. We didn’t even go to the house, Mr. Potter said he’d take us out to the Sunset Grill in Waikiki. I knew the minute I met Mr. Potter that we were going to have some trouble, but I never could have guessed how bad it would be. I didn’t pass the test. Mr. Potter didn’t like me at all. He told Dan that he would be an idiot to get married. He had plenty of excuses—that Dan was too young, that he should get his degree first—everything but the real reason.”

  “How old was Dan?”

  “Nineteen. But he wasn’t a boy anymore.”

  “And how old were you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Is Dan’s father the man you’re running from?”

  Jessie didn’t answer.

  “Guess that’s my answer right there,” Nina said.

  8

  “I THOUGHT IF I let Mr. Potter run me out of Hawaii he might forget about me,” Jessie said.

  “Your husband’s father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his full name?”

  “Atchison Potter.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I would say—fifty to fifty-five. He looks younger.” Nina realized that she was in the middle of a client interview. She should have done it earlier. She pulled a legal pad out of the kitchen drawer and found a pen. She wrote the date at the top and her initials, and “Jessie Potter” at the top. Then she started scribbling.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “It’s hard. Give me a minute.”

  Nina had time to get the basics down on paper, have a bite of her breakfast, and drink some grapefruit juice. Hitchcock let out a yip at the back door. She pushed back her chair and went over and let him in, the phone still at her ear, and he raced for the kibble.

  Jessie’s voice again, resolute. “You there?”

  “Right here,” Nina said. She sat back down.

  “Okay. This is pretty painful for me to talk about. We had been married eight months. Dan’s father didn’t come to the wedding, which was a civil ceremony in Honolulu. Just my friend Bonita and Dan’s friend Byron came. I told my superior officer that I needed to go off-base and he helped me fill out the forms. Dan and I rented a condo in Kaneohe. His father was still sending him money until he finished school, but Mr. Potter was—he just seemed to despise me. He was like granite. Dan couldn’t change his mind, so they stopped talking. I know that hurt both of them, but there was nothing I could do.”

  “What did he have against you?” Nina said.

  “It’s not easy to explain. Let’s see. Mr. Potter—Dan tried to explain this to me—Mr. Potter had some major insecurities. He was adopted as a baby into one of the old missionary families. His adoptive parents couldn’t have kids of their own, or something. They were hard on him. Whenever Mr. Potter did anything his mother didn’t like she would remind him about how they had adopted him out of Christian charity and he could be on the street. He didn’t look like them—he’s dark, but not like a Hawaiian—Dan told me they acted ashamed of him. So he never felt like he belonged, but he had the name, and, when they died, the property.”

  “They never should have adopted,” Nina said.

  “I suppose he could have become a lot of things with that background. What he became—it’s peculiar—he became a snob. A fanatical snob. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I’m starting to.”

  “Dan’s mother passed away when Dan was ten, so Dan was all Mr. Potter had. He wanted Dan to be someone, and to marry into the right family—you know, it still means something in some families in Hawaii. Social standing was everything to him. And then I came along and spoiled everything. I was”—she gave that short laugh again, the painful one—“way too dark.”

  “An outsider,” Nina said.

  “No. Might as well be specific. I’m too dark. Dan didn’t look as dark as his father, you see—didn’t look dark. But I’m darker than Mr. Potter. I know that’s what the real problem is. Mr. Potter hates his own skin color. He isn’t even that dark. He has no idea what his background is, Filipino maybe. I always thought he looked more like an Arab than a Filipino. But it’s so bizarre, in Hawaii of all places, where everybody, practically, is a different shade of brown, he wants to out- haole the haoles.”

  “Haole?”

  “The way I’m using the word right now, it means Caucasians. I won’t bother trying to explain Hawaii’s racial differences, because it’s much too complicated. Anyway, to be plain, Dan’s father wanted Dan to marry a Caucasian. I was a big slap in the face. He even winced when he first met me. I knew right away.”

  “How do you know a thing like that?” Nina said.

  “You know. It’s in the first split second. You just know. And later Dan talked to me about it. Nobody else knows Mr. Potter feels this way. I suppose he’s just fine with his colleagues and his clients. It’s a sort of personal, limited racism.”

 
; “Can there really be such a thing?” Nina said, and realized how naive she was about the thing that Jessie was trying to explain. The shapes of racism were inexhaustible, and this was Potter’s. That was all she really needed to know. “Okay,” she said. “What was Dan’s reaction to all this?”

  “Dan loved me a lot. But he was close to his father. He felt a lot of guilt that his father was so unhappy and had cut himself off from us. He kept trying to talk to him about it, but—it’s a funny thing about racism. To Dan the problem was as clear as can be, but Mr. Potter never once admitted it. He acted very angry that Dan would think such a thing about him.

  “But we were happy. At night Dan had to study, so we stayed home a lot. I think Dan felt under a lot of pressure between school and worrying about his father. But we were doing all right.

  “Then a strange thing happened. Dan started getting these abdominal pains every once in a while. They got pretty bad and he had it all checked out twice but Dr. Jun couldn’t find anything wrong. He had Dan take an MRI and everything. Finally Dr. Jun decided it must be anxiety over the—the marriage and his father, and Dan went on Xanax. But it didn’t help. The pain would still come on pretty suddenly, he never knew when, about once every two weeks or so. All of a sudden he would be in this agonizing pain, doubled up on the couch, moaning. It was difficult for me not to be able to help. I felt so sorry for him. He started just suffering through it at home, because he had realized that in a day or two the pain would go away and he’d be absolutely fine again.”

  Nina scribbled furiously.

  “It was—it was February seventh of last year. Dan and I were out in our kayak, over by Chinaman’s Hat. Do you know Oahu?”

  “Not that well.”

  “It’s on the Windward side, past Kaneohe, heading toward North Shore.”

  Nina formed a hazy impression. She had visited Oahu briefly and remembered some parts of the Windward side of the island very well, over the mountains from Honolulu.

  “It’s a tiny island not far offshore, a bird preserve. The morning was very hot and muggy, but you could see the mountain ridge on the island of Molokai to the south. I remember Dan talking about Molokai, how the light was hitting the mountain so it seemed to be floating. . . .” Jessie stopped again.