Under the Knife
Page 19
Kate slipped the photo out of its frame. The edges were tattered, lovingly worn by years of handling. On the other side was a handwritten message: “Till you come back to me. Jenny.”
“Jenny,” Kate said softly.
For a long time she stood there, staring at those words, written by a woman long since dead. She thought about the emptiness of this room, about the soup cans, so carefully stacked, about the pile of socks and underwear in the drawer. Charlie Decker had owned so very little. The one possession he’d guarded through the years, the one thing he’d treasured, had been this fading photograph of a woman with eternity in her eyes. It was hard to believe that such a glow could ever be extinguished, even in the depths of a grave.
She turned to Mrs. Tubbs. “What will happen to his things? Now that he’s dead?”
“Guess I’ll have to sell it all off,” replied Mrs. Tubbs. “Owed me a week’s rent. Gotta get it somehow. Though there ain’t much of value in here. ’Cept maybe what you’re holding.”
Kate looked down at the smiling face of Jenny Brook. “Yes. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Naw, I don’t mean the picture.”
Kate frowned. “What?”
“The frame.” Mrs. Tubbs went to the window and snapped the curtain closed. “It’s silver.”
* * *
JOCELYN AND HER brother were hanging like monkeys on the chain-link fence. As David and Kate came out of the Victory Hotel, the children dropped to the ground and watched expectantly as though something extraordinary was about to happen. The girl—if she was indeed ten— was small for her age. Toothpick legs stuck out from under her baggy dress. Her bare feet were filthy. The little boy, about six and equally filthy, held a clump of his sister’s skirt in his fist.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Jocelyn blurted out. Seeing Kate’s sad nod, the girl slouched back against the fence and addressed one of the smudges on her bodice. “You see, I knew it. Stupid grown-ups. Don’t ever tell us the truth, any of ’em.”
“What did they tell you about Charlie?” asked Kate.
“They just said he went away. But he never even gave me my present.”
“For your birthday?”
Jocelyn stared down at her nonexistent breasts. “I’m ten.”
“And I’m seven,” her brother said automatically, as if it was called for in the script.
“You and Charlie must have been good friends,” David remarked.
The girl looked up, and seeing his smile—a smile that could melt the heart of any woman, much less that of a ten-year-old—immediately blushed. Looking back down, she coyly traced one brown toe along a crack in the sidewalk. “Charlie didn’t have any friends. I don’t, either. ’Cept Gabe here, but he’s just my brother.”
Little Gabe smiled and rubbed his slimy nose on his sister’s dress.
“Did anyone else know Charlie very well?” David asked. “I mean, besides you.”
Jocelyn chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Well—you could try over at Maloney’s. Up the street.”
“Who’s Maloney?”
“Oh, he’s nobody.”
“If he’s nobody, then how does he know Charlie?”
“He’s not a him. He’s a place. I mean, it’s a place.”
“Oh, of course,” said David, looking down into Jocelyn’s dazzled eyes. “How stupid of me.”
* * *
“WHAT’RE YOU KIDS doing in here again? Go on. Get out before I lose my license!”
Jocelyn and Gabe skipped through the air-conditioned gloom, past the cocktail tables and up to the bar. They clambered onto two counter stools. “Some people here to see you, Sam,” announced Jocelyn.
“There’s a sign out there says you gotta be twenty-one to come in here. You kids twenty-one yet?”
“I’m seven,” answered Gabe. “Can I have an olive?”
Grumbling, the bartender dipped his soapy hand in a glass jar and plopped half a dozen green olives on the counter. “Okay, now get going before someone sees you in—” His head jerked up as he noticed David and Kate approaching through the shadows. From his wary look, it was obvious Maloney’s was seldom frequented by such well-heeled clientele. He blurted out: “It’s not my doing! These brats come runnin’ in off the street. I was just gonna throw ’em out.”
“They’re not liquor inspectors,” said Jocelyn with obvious disdain as she popped an olive in her mouth.
Apparently everyone in this part of town lived in fear of some dreaded inspector or another.
“We need information,” said David. “About one of your customers. Charlie Decker.”
Sam took a long and careful look at David’s clothes, and his train of thought was clearly mirrored in his eyes. Nice suit. Silk tie. Yessir, all very expensive. “He’s dead,” the bartender grunted.
“We know that.”
“I don’t speak ill of the dead.” There was a long, significant pause. “You gonna order something?”
David sighed and finally settled onto a bar stool. “Okay. Two beers.”
“That’s all?”
“And two pineapple juices,” added Jocelyn.
“That’ll be twelve bucks.”
“Cheap drinks,” said David, sliding a twenty-dollar bill across the counter.
“Plus tax.”
The children dumped the remaining olives in their drinks and began slurping down the juice.
“Tell us about Charlie,” Kate prodded.
“Well, he used to sit right over there.” Sam nodded at a dark corner table.
David and Kate leaned forward, waiting for the next pearl of information. Silence. “And?” prompted David.
“So that’s where he sat.”
“Doing what?”
“Drinking. Whiskey, mostly. He liked it neat. Then sometimes, I’d make him up a Sour Sam. That’s if the mood hit him for somethin’ different. That’s my invention, the Sour Sam. Yeah, he’d drink one of those ’bout once a week. But mostly it was whiskey. Neat.”
There was another silence. The talking machine had run out of money and needed a refill.
“I’ll try a Sour Sam,” said Kate.
“Don’t you want your beer?”
“You can have it.”
“Thanks. But I never touch the stuff.” He turned his attention to mixing up a bizarre concoction of gin, club soda, and the juice of half a lemon, which undoubtedly accounted for the drink’s name.
“Five bucks,” he announced, passing it to Kate. “So how do you like it?”
She took a sip and gasped. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone tells me.”
“We were talking about Charlie,” David reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, Charlie.” The talking machine was back in order. “Let’s see, he came around just ’bout every night. Think he liked the company, though he couldn’t talk much, what with that bad throat of his. He’d sit there and drink, oh, one or two.”
“Whiskeys. Neat,” David supplied.
“Yeah, that’s right. Real moderate, you know. Never got out-and-out drunk. He was a regular for ’bout a month. Then, few days ago, he stopped comin’. Too bad, you know? Hate to lose a steady one like that.”
“You have any idea why he stopped?”
“They say police were looking for him. Word was out he killed some people.”
“What do you think?”
“Charlie?” Sam laughed. “Not a chance.”
Jocelyn handed Sam her empty glass. “Can I have another pineapple juice?”
Sam poured out two more pineapple juices and slid them over to the kids. “Eight bucks.” He looked at David, who resignedly reached for his wallet.
“You forgot the olives,” said Gabe.
“Those are free.” The man wasn’t entirely heartless.
“Did Charlie ever mention the name Jenny Brook?” Kate asked.
“Like I said, he never talked much. Yeah, ol’ Charlie, he’d just sit over at that table and write those ol’ poem
s. He’d scribble and scribble for hours just to get one right. Then he’d get mad and toss it. There’d be all these wadded-up papers on the floor whenever he left.”
Kate shook her head in wonder. “I never imagined he’d be a poet.”
“Everyone’s a poet these days. That Charlie, though, he was real serious about it. That last day he was here, didn’t have no money to pay for his drink. So he tears out one of his poems and gives it to me. Says it’ll be worth somethin’ someday. Ha! I’m such a sucker.” He picked up a dirty rag and began to give the counter an almost sensuous rubdown.
“Do you still have the poem?” asked Kate.
“That’s it, tacked over on the wall there.”
The cheap, lined paper hung by a few strips of Scotch tape. By the dim light of the bar, the words were barely readable.
This is what I told them:
That healing lies not in forgetfulness
But in remembrance
Of you.
The smell of the sea on your skin.
The small and perfect footprints you leave in the sand.
In remembrance there are no endings.
And so you lie there, now and always, by the sea.
You open your eyes. You touch me.
The sun is in your fingertips.
And I am healed.
I am healed.
“So,” said Sam, “think it’s any good?”
“Gotta be,” said Jocelyn. “If Charlie wrote it.”
Sam shrugged. “Don’t mean nothin’.”
* * *
“SEEMS LIKE WE’VE hit a dead end,” David commented as they walked out into the blinding sunshine.
He might as well have said it of their relationship. He was standing with his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he gazed down the street at a drunk slouched in a doorway. Shattered glass sparkled in the gutter. Across the street, lurid red letters spelled out the title Victorian Secrets on an X-rated movie marquee.
If only he’d give her a smile, a look, anything to indicate that things weren’t drawing to a close between them. But he didn’t. He just kept his hands in his pockets. And she knew, without him saying a word, that more than Charlie Decker had died.
They passed an alley, scattering shards of broken beer bottles as they walked.
“So many loose ends,” she remarked. “I don’t see how the police can close the case.”
“When it comes to police work, there are always loose ends, nagging doubts.”
“It’s sad, isn’t it?” She gazed back at the Victory Hotel. “When a man dies and he leaves nothing behind. No trace of who or what he was.”
“You could say the same about all of us. Unless we write great books or put up buildings, what’s left of us after we’re gone? Nothing.”
“Only children.”
For a moment he was silent. Then he said, “That’s if we’re lucky.”
“We do know one thing about him,” she concluded softly. “He loved her. Jenny.” Staring down at the cracked sidewalk, she thought of the face in the photograph. An unforgettable woman. Even five years after her death, Jenny Brook’s magic had somehow affected the lives of four people: the one who had loved her and the three who’d watched her die. She was the one tragic thread weaving through the tapestry of their deaths.
What would it be like, she wondered, to be loved as fiercely as Jenny had been? What enchantment had she possessed? Whatever it was, I certainly don’t have it.
She said, without conviction, “It’ll be good to get home again.”
“Will it?”
“I’m used to being on my own.”
He shrugged. “So am I.”
They’d both retreated to their separate emotional corners. So little time left, she thought with a sense of desolation. And here they were, mouthing words like a pair of strangers. This morning, she’d awakened to find him showered and shaved and dressed in his most forbidding suit. Over breakfast they’d discussed everything but the subject that was uppermost in her mind. He could have made the first move. The whole time she was packing, he’d had the chance to ask her to stay. And she would have.
But he didn’t say a thing.
Thank God she’d always been so good at holding on to her dignity. Never any tears, any hysterics. Even Eric had said as much. You’ve always been so sensible about things, he’d told her as he’d walked out the door.
Well, she’d be sensible this time, too.
The drive was far too short. Glancing at his profile she remembered the day they’d met. An eternity ago. He looked just as forbidding, just as untouchable.
They pulled up at her house. He carried her suitcase briskly up the walkway; he had the stride of a man in a hurry.
“Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” she asked, already knowing what his answer would be.
“I can’t. Not right now. But I’ll call you.”
Famous last words. She understood perfectly, of course. It was all part of the ritual.
He cast a furtive glance at his watch. Time to move on, she reflected. For both of us.
Automatically she thrust the key in the lock and gave the door a shove. It swung open. As the room came into view, she halted on the threshold, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Dear God, she thought. Why is this happening? Why now?
She felt David’s steadying hand close around her arm as she swayed backward in horror. The room swam, just for an instant, and then her eyes refocused on the opposite wall.
On the flowered wallpaper the letters “MYOB” had been spray painted in bloodred. And below them was the hollow-eyed figure of a skull and crossbones.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“NO DICE, DAVY. The case is closed.”
Pokie Ah Ching splashed coffee from his foam cup as he weaved through the crammed police station, past the desk sergeant arguing into the phone, past clerks hurrying back and forth with files, past a foul-smelling drunk shouting epithets at two weary-looking officers. Through it all, he moved as serenely as a battleship gliding through stormy waters.
“Don’t you see, it was a warning!”
“Probably left by Charlie Decker.”
“Kate’s neighbor checked the house Tuesday morning. That message was left sometime later, when Decker was already dead.”
“So it’s a kid’s prank.”
“Yeah? Why would some kid write MYOB? Mind your own business?”
“You understand kids? I don’t. Hell, I can’t even figure out my own kids.” Pokie headed into his office and scooted around to his chair. “Like I said, Davy, I’m busy.”
David leaned across the desk. “Last night I told you we were followed. You said it was all in my head.”
“I still say so.”
“Then Decker turns up in the morgue. A nice, convenient little accident.”
“I’m starting to smell a conspiracy theory.”
“Your sense of smell is amazing.”
Pokie set his cup down, slopping coffee on his papers. “Okay.” He sighed. “You got one minute to tell me your theory. Then I’m throwing you out.”
David grabbed a chair and sat down. “Four deaths. Tanaka. Richter. Decker. And Ellen O’Brien—”
“Death on the operating table isn’t in my jurisdiction.”
“But murder is. There’s a hidden player in this game, Pokie. Someone who’s managed to get rid of four people in a matter of two weeks. Someone smart and quiet and medically sophisticated. And very, very scared.”
“Of what?”
“Kate Chesne. Maybe Kate’s been asking too many questions. Maybe she knows something and just doesn’t realize it. She’s made our killer nervous. Nervous enough to scrawl warnings all over that wall.”
“Unseen player, huh? I suppose you already got me a list of suspects.”
“Starting with the chief of anesthesia. You check out that story on his wife yet?”
“She died Tuesday night in the nursing home. Natural causes.”
“Coincidence.”
“The man lives alone. There’s no one to track his comings and goings—”
“I can just see the old geezer now.” Pokie laughed. “Geriatric Jack the Ripper.”
“It doesn’t take much strength to slit someone’s throat.”
“But what’s the old guy’s motive, huh? Why would he go after members of his own staff?”
David let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it’s got something to do with Jenny Brook.”
Ever since he’d laid eyes on her photograph, he’d been unable to get the woman out of his mind. Something about her death, about the cold details recorded in her medical chart kept coming back to him, like a piece of music being played over and over in his head.
Uncontrollable seizures.
An infant girl, born alive.
Mother and child, two soft sparks of humanity, extinguished in the glare of the operating room.
Why, after five years, did their deaths threaten Kate Chesne?
There was a knock on the door. Sergeant Brophy, red-eyed and sniffling, dropped some papers on Pokie’s desk. “Here’s that report you been waiting for. Oh, and we got us another sighting of that Sasaki girl.”
Pokie snorted. “Again? What does that make it? Forty-three?”
“Forty-four. This one’s at Burger King.”
“Geez. Why do they always spot ’em at fast-food chains?”
“Maybe she’s sittin’ there with Jimmy Hoffa and— and—” Brophy sneezed. “Elvis.” He blew his nose three times. They were great loud honks that, in the wild, could have attracted geese. “Allergies,” he said, as if that was a far more acceptable excuse than the common cold. He aimed a spiteful glance out the window at his nemesis: a mango tree, seething with blossoms. “Too many damn trees around here,” he muttered, retreating from the office.