Someone Always Knows

by Marcia Muller

  It was lush and green with flashes of brilliant flowers showing through the thick foliage. He left his car at the side of the paved road near the wrought-iron gates and motioned for me to follow him.

  I walked slowly, admiring what I knew from my upbringing in San Diego was a cordon cactus—the largest type of cactus known in the world. A Boojum tree raised its bare limbs like a four-pronged fork. Cholla crept close to the ground beside the path, ready to grab at my ankles if I made a misstep, and a thorny ocotillo loomed evilly. Around one curve, an elephant tree stood bare and lonely.

  “So,” I finally said, “who did you talk with at SFPD?”

  “An Investigator Larry Kaufman. He speaks highly of you and your work. He told me many surprising facts. Surprising, at least, for a man in my circumstances. You gringas have many more options than most women in my country.”

  “If only you knew how hard they were won in mine. And how far we still have to go.”

  “I have an inkling. It was hard enough for me, a man, when I was a student at UCLA.”

  I’d sensed something different about this law officer from other south-of-the-border cops, and now I understood.

  Santos said, “You visited the Smithson woman earlier.”

  “Yes, I did.” I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew; it was, after all, a very small town. Possibly he’d put a tail on me.

  “Was that where you saw Señor Renshaw?”

  “No. He was near the plaza—with Señor Bernardo Ordway.”

  He nodded slowly. “Did you speak with either of them?”

  “No.”

  “But you did speak with Señora Smithson. What did she tell you?”

  “Many things. About Bernardo Ordway, for example. That he’s an information gatherer and seller. Judging from his house, he does extremely well at his trade.”

  Santos smiled thinly. “Better than he has any right to. My government has been after him for years, but he does nothing illegal, such as blackmail. He is like a gossip columnist, only he doesn’t print what he finds out. He sells it.”

  “And since he’s only selling what’s openly available, he can’t be accused of blackmail.”

  “Technically, no. A case would be very difficult to prove, and my government does not have the resources to pursue it.”

  “Are private individuals as litigious here as in my country?”

  “Most cannot afford to be, and few would contend with someone so powerful as Señor Ordway.” Silence as Santos lit yet another of his small cigars.

  “Chief Santos, are you aware that Chrysanthus Smithson and her husband were fugitives from justice?”

  “Yes. I was not yet a member of the police back then—in fact, I was still in school. By the time I joined, Señor Smithson was dead, and the matter was, as you say it in America, a cold case. From what I have read in the files, they appeared here in the late eighties. American expatriates are common in this country, so few people thought anything of them. They both spoke fluent Spanish, and quickly assimilated into the community. The señora found a job tending preschoolers; the señor’s health was bad, but he picked up odd jobs when he could. Twice he became ill enough to be hospitalized. Tuberculosis, the médicos said. Heart, the señora said. The señora won the battle of the names, but her husband died anyway, of massive hemorrhages and a heart attack. He is buried under the big Boojum tree in their yard.”

  I remembered the tree Chrys and I had sat under earlier, as well as the one we’d passed a few minutes ago. The Boojum, with its warped upright limbs and swollen base, resembles a carrot that has been partially uprooted from the ground. The Suris, indigenous people of Baja Sur, believe that touching this plant will cause strong, often disastrous, winds to blow. Many consider it to be the strangest-looking tree on earth, and—though I haven’t viewed all trees extant—I’m inclined to agree with that judgment.

  Chief Santos went on with his narrative. “After his father died, the son, Adam, went wild. The gangs, always the street gangs. They patterned themselves after the Crips and the Bloods in Los Angeles, but didn’t live up to their reputaciónes, and we have had little trouble with them in recent years. One gang member—long since reformed—has told me that Adam boasted of knowing of a place in America where he could get a large amount of money, but no one believed him. Why, they said, if he knew of such a place, didn’t he just go take it?”

  “Maybe he did. Or maybe circumstances prevented him from doing so.”

  Santos drew on his cigar. “I think the latter. That is why every time we find unidentified bones dating from the middle nineties, I have them checked against the one dental record we have for him. They are never Adam’s.”

  2:55 p.m.

  The plaza was still heavily populated—even now, in the traditional siesta time—when, after we shared a lunch of sopaipillas and Dos Equis, Santos dropped me off. Many of the vendors were packing up their wares and disassembling their makeshift booths, but seemed in no hurry to leave. I checked out the various shops, cantinas, and restaurants, but found no trace of Renshaw. Then I sat at an outdoor table of a café Señora Ibarra had recommended, watching the flow of foot traffic.

  I spent the rest of the evening on the phone to Mick and Derek, first asking if Hy had contacted the office (he hadn’t), then asking if they’d located Don Macy (negative to that too, but they had a couple of leads they were pursuing). Despite the bad connection—faint with static—we managed to go over various information I wanted them to run down: Ask Emily Parsons if she’d remembered anything more about the Smithsons. Find out who their interim landlord on Clay Street had been. What about the neighbors there? What had happened to the new possessions they’d left behind at Webster Street? The list seemed endless.

  I made one more call, and caught up with Craig at home. His contacts at the FBI hadn’t known anything about Hy’s being summoned to D.C. The news both puzzled and concerned me, but I knew hostage negotiations took time and patience and that the FBI was famously uncommunicative. I’d wait this situation out, as I had many others.

  Finally, exhausted, I turned out the lights and fell into a troubled sleep. My dreams were plagued by visions of fire and strange troll-like creatures darting among the flames, and I was half aware of twisting and turning on sweat-drenched sheets. When I woke from one of them shortly before midnight, I decided I’d had enough of Santa Iva, whether Renshaw was still here or not.

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

  5:45 p.m.

  Getting away from Santa Iva hadn’t been as simple or speedy as it had seemed it would be the night before. First I’d had to rouse Enrique and ask him if he would drive me to Santo Ignacio Airport. Then I’d sat around the FBO for hours, unsuccessfully soliciting rides to any point from which I could connect to a commercial flight to San Francisco. Finally, late in the afternoon, a pilot named Steve Millan had agreed to take me to San Diego, but first he’d had to make some phone calls and preflight and refuel, so we didn’t get off the ground until the sun was sinking toward the Pacific.

  The takeoff was rough, due to a squall that was coming up from the south, and Millan insisted I stay belted into my rear passenger seat, but after we climbed above the turbulence he invited me forward into the cockpit of his Cessna 182 and let me take over the controls. The plane was a sweetheart, flew as if it didn’t need a pilot.

  “Nice, huh?” Steve said.

  “More than nice.”

  Millan was a personable man, perhaps a few years older than Hy. He had thinning blond hair and the browned and creased face of one who has spent a good deal of time exposed to harsh elements. I’d have recognized him anywhere as a veteran pilot because of his beat-up bomber jacket.

  We talked aircraft for a while, and then he said, “I think we may have a friend in common.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Hy Ripinsky.”

  “He’s my best friend—my husband.”

  “No kidding!”

  “How do you know him?”

  “
…From way back when we were doing dirty deals in Southeast Asia.”

  The casual way he tossed off the comment put me on my guard; I’d had some experience with people who’d been into that scene and they did not speak of their activities lightly.

  Millan added, “How is the old Ripoffsky?”

  The old Ripoffsky. Now that was a tipoffsky.

  This man wasn’t very bright. No one had ever called Hy “the old Ripoffsky”—except Renshaw.

  “Well,” I improvised, “he’s still into his Buddhist thing.”

  “Oh yeah. I never could understand that. What does he do? Sit on a pillow and chant?”

  “Mostly he sits in the woods,” I said, thinking of Dick Kenyon. “Buddhists are big on nature.”

  “Glad I’m not one. Bugs, animals, that kind of stuff…”

  “I’m not big on it either. But if it makes him happy—”

  “Sure, why not?” Steve finished for me.

  I asked, “Anybody tell you that last year he shaved his head?”

  “Because of the Buddhist thing? Yeah, I think somebody mentioned that. Said it looked stupid.”

  Millan was tangling himself further and further into his lies. If you’re going to be untruthful, you should keep it simple. He’d proven he didn’t know Hy at all. But he might’ve been minimally briefed by someone who did—who had hired him to offer me a ride and then do away with me.

  I glanced at the flight computer, then down at the verdant stretch of state preserve beneath us. We were beyond the point where we should have turned for the coast. That jungle would be a good place to drop off an unwanted passenger.

  I slipped my phone from my purse, quickly checked to see if there was a signal. Relieved that I could get one, I texted my friend Lieutenant Gary Viner on the San Diego police force, asking for information on Millan.

  Millan saw what I was doing. “Who the hell you texting?”

  “My nephew, to make sure he can pick me up at SFO.”

  We flew in silence for a few minutes. I could feel Millan building up his nerve. My fingers closed on my .38, still out of sight in my bag. The phone made its little chiming sound as a text came in.

  Gary. Millan was wanted for a variety of offenses, including kidnapping and drug smuggling.

  I dropped the phone into my lap and grasped the .38 more firmly. Closed my eyes and considered the situation. It was clear that (a) Millan didn’t know Hy from an altimeter, (b) Millan was verging on stupidity, (c) Renshaw—probably in collusion with Ordway—had hired Millan to kidnap me. But if Renshaw had ordered a hit, Millan would’ve pushed me out of the plane long before, above the isolated territory we’d been crossing. Instead we were headed for the coast. Did Renshaw want me delivered alive? And where?

  Not SAN, San Diego International—too public, even at this hour. And the ATCs were listening for the faintest hints of trouble in these post-9/11 years. Okay, a non-towered airport in the vicinity, because Millan had said he’d need to refuel at SAN.

  I created a mental sectional map.

  The county was peppered with airfields public and private, paved, dirt strip, or grass. I’d flown into many, but by no means all, since I’d earned my license.

  I checked the flight computer again. We were on direct course to pass over Ocotillo Airstrip, a county-owned facility with two dirt runways, approximately one hundred miles east of San Diego on State Highway 78.

  I picked up my phone and auto-dialed Gary’s number, saying to Millan, “I’m just going to confirm that my nephew can meet me. He sounded pretty vague in his text.” When Gary came on the line, I said loudly to Steve, “We’re putting down at Ocotillo Airstrip, runway 927.”

  He frowned at me. “I thought we were landing at SAN.”

  “Just put the plane down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.” I showed him my gun.

  “What did I do?”

  “Try any number of offenses.”

  “I don’t understand!” His voice was becoming panicky.

  We were losing altitude too quickly. I corrected for it on the right-seat controls, then said, “You’ve illegally transported me over an international border. You’ve been smuggling drugs and what-all for years. Is that enough?”

  “Yeah, so? I still don’t get why—”

  “I omitted the most important thing: you’ve been taking your orders from Gage Renshaw, and probably Bernardo Ordway.”

  “You can’t prove—”

  “Can’t I?”

  “Who’d you talk to? Ordway would never tell. And Renshaw, he’s just a one-time job.”

  I held out my phone. “You got that, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “Loud and clear—on tape.”

  Millan’s hands and feet left his controls and he wilted back into his seat. I took over and in five minutes I landed the 182 at Ocotillo Airstrip.

  8:01 p.m.

  Gary Viner and a deputy from the local sheriff’s department met us as we pulled off the dirt runway. They boarded the plane and removed Steve Millan, and Viner curtly asked if I’d like to give my statement now or in the morning.

  “Gary,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

  His stony expression softened some. “You gave me a scare, Lace Pants.” It had been his nickname for me when I was a cheerleader in high school.

  “Gary, I’m sorry.”

  “I just wish you’d give up this dangerous stuff, have a baby or something.”

  “I think my sisters have done well enough by the world’s population without me joining in.”

  Now he smiled wryly. “My new wife and I too. We’re in the process of adopting.”

  “Good for you.”

  “About that statement—” he began.

  “If I make it now, will you let me sit in on your interrogation of Millan?”

  “Sure. I’d say you’ve earned the right.”

  Gary had driven his own car. As he drove we talked about the old days: he and John and Joey rebuilding old cars in my parents’ driveway; Ma bringing out endless plates of chocolate chip cookies; me hanging around and pestering them to let me tinker with the cars; them telling me to go play with my dolls instead; me bargaining and showing them where Pa kept his secret stash of beer in the garage, in exchange for letting me help tune an engine.

  “You staying at the old place?” Gary asked.

  “I guess, for the night anyway. D’you ever see John?”

  “I run into him sometimes but no, not really.”

  I sighed, thinking how old friendships fade away. Then I said, “Is it okay for me to make a couple of business calls on my cell?”

  “Be my guest.”

  First I phoned Mick, who had nothing further to report on Hy, Don Macy, or Adam Smithson; then Ted, who told me everything had been fine at the office. And finally I dialed my brother John’s number at the family home: no answer; his voice mail said he was off to Hawaii for a “well-earned rest.” I almost cried and had started to leave an anguished self-pitying message when a youngish male voice picked up: “Yeah?”

  “Matt?” John’s eldest.

  “You got him.”

  “It’s your…aunt Shar.” I always felt silly identifying myself that way to either of John’s sons. Both were seven or eight inches taller than me and built like linebackers, and had played semipro football before retiring to join their father in his contracting business, Mr. Paint. Still, it was what they’d called me during their childhoods, and it had stuck.

  “Hey, how ya doin’?” Matt asked.

  “Okay. How’s it with you?”

  “Great! Did Dad tell you my big news?”

  “I haven’t spoken with him for a few weeks.” More than that, I thought guiltily.

  “Well, Lindsey and me—we’re getting married next month.”

  What a surprise; he’d been going with Lindsey Carlisle since junior high. I was amazed she’d stuck it out with him all this time. “Congratulations!” I exclaimed.

  “Thanks. I
know everybody’s been waiting on us, but I had to get established in the business and save money to buy a house, and Lindsey had things she wanted to do—like that stint in the Peace Corps and the political campaigns.”

  Lindsey was an activist with a capital A. “But now you’re settling down?”

  “So she says. We bought a nice place in Chula Vista last week and we’re even talking about having a kid.”

  “When’s the wedding?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the thing. We’ve got to sandwich it between a world peace conference in Switzerland and a couple of marches in Texas.”

  “I thought that was all over.”

  “I’ve never known the woman to resist a worthy cause, and I can’t resist her. When the wedding does come off, are you and Hy gonna be able to make it?”

  “We wouldn’t miss it. But right now I’ve got a problem. A cop is about to give me a ride in from Ocotillo Airstrip. Is it okay if I stay at the house tonight?”

  “You shouldn’t even ask. It’s your house as well as ours, you know.”

  Not really it wasn’t, but tonight I appreciated his saying so.

  9:47 p.m.

  Steve Millan wasn’t a problem for Gary or the county investigators; he’d committed his crime in two different countries, and the thought of both the FBI and Mexican authorities moving in on him subdued him and made him contrite. He didn’t even bring up the fact that I’d solicited him for an illegal flight, much less that I’d gone with him willingly. As I’d previously observed, he just wasn’t very bright. I supposed I should feel some sympathy for him, but if he’d done this now and in the past, what might he do in the future if he wasn’t stopped?

  “Who hired you?” Gary asked. The other investigators had agreed he should head up the interrogation in spite of his being from a city law-enforcement agency.

  “This big man down there—Bernardo Ordway.”

  “An American?”

  “Well, he used to be, but I think he’s a Mexican citizen now.”

  “What were the terms of the job?”

  “Five hundred bucks, US.”

  My life for such a paltry sum? I was offended!