A World the Color of Salt (20 page)

“Patricia, I know you're worried, but who could go in there? Think about it. If I sweated every time I put my keys in the refrigerator, I'd be looking up shrinks' phone numbers.” I said this, after Ray's little lecture to me in the car, but I felt my stomach muscles go tight, and the picture of the rolled newspaper with the lemonade berry branch squashed in it came to mind, and while we talked I thought of the several other times weird guys have done weird things to me, but I didn't mention it.

She said, “Maybe you're right. Listen—change of subject. I want you to meet Roland. In fact, I have a great idea: We're going out on the Seal Beach pier tonight, have dinner out there. Watch the sun go down. Why don't you come?”

“No, thanks, Patricia.”

“You'll see Roland is only trying to get along in this world.
He's really major sweet, Samantha. His brother Phillip also. The whole family—well, the father's dead, but the mother had an addiction problem and is now drug-free and Phillip is in Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“A regular all-American family,” I said.

“You're not even willing to give him one ounce of a chance, are you?”

I closed my eyes and didn't say anything.

“Think it over. You might learn something,” she said. “Not all people are bad. Even ones who maybe did bad things for a while. Well? You coming?”

“I don't think so.”

“Coward.”

Here was an opportunity to interview my main suspect. And I was passing on it? “You have such a way with words.”

“We'll pick you up.”

“No. I'll drive. I like my own car.”

“Be that way.”

“Yes, ma'am, I will.”

At the restaurant, I spotted Patricia's orange Peugeot right away because the lot wasn't that crowded yet. I thought, The guy uses her car, her gas too, all the time?

She and Roland were at a back table, up against a window. The sky behind them was white and stark, and the sun's brightness pitched a solid glare off the green water whenever it broke through the clouds. They weren't going to get a good sunset after all, it looked like.

Patricia was wearing a tangerine East Indian–type dress, flowy. A pearl comb pulled her auburn hair back over one ear, and she had gotten a bit of a tan since I last saw her, so that when she smiled, she was a definite show-stopper. “Hi, c'mere and sit down,” she said, all in one breath. Roland half-stood when I approached; the gesture surprised me. I took the chair beside Patricia as she said, “Roland, this is Samantha Brandon; Samantha, Roland.” As he forked over a hand and shook mine, Patricia added, “She goes by Smokey.” A grin crawled to one side of his mouth. I held on his eyes, the duplicate color of the ocean behind him, long enough to say, I'm ready to read you, baby, make no mistake about it. His hair was clean and, with the bleached tips, looked polished, and I
wondered if he didn't do a dip with Miss Clairol himself, though that's okay if he did; lots of SoCal men do. He had on tight rock-washed jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt with a vertical light green stripe in it, a tight, strong package, and if I shut my mind off, I could see the appeal.

I'll give him this: He was direct. He said, “I hear you're a cop.”

The busboy came with water, and as I sat waiting for the arms to get out of my face, I caught Roland's other look, the one behind the innocent statement.

“I work in the evidence lab, is all.”

“I thought about being a officer of the law once myself.”

“No kidding.”

Patricia said, “Will wonders never cease?”

“It was that or the navy, long as it's blue. But Okie boys don't always make the best choices for theirselves.” And then he drilled a long look at my friend and added, “'Cept starting right now. Ain't that right, Snookums?”

“Give me a
break
.” she said, but she liked it. “You call me that one more time, and I'll give
you
a break.”

He asked me, “Y'all were down at the station, when me and my brother were conductin' business there, huh? That's what Snookums tells me.” Patricia's leg jumped and Roland's moved and bumped into mine and held there four seconds until I moved mine. “She's got a nasty boot,” he said.

“It's a small world, I guess.”

“I think she's got a boyfriend locked down she don't want to tell me about.” He reached his right hand over and swept his forefinger across the back of her hand like a windshield wiper. Then he slowly cranked his head to me, and winked.

I said, “I thought I saw you in the parking lot.”

“Now, if I'da seen two pretty little dollies like you, I'd sure remember it. No, Phil and me picked up our fishin' license and then we did split.”

“Fishing license?” Patricia said.

“You don't get them there,” I told her. I smiled at Roland then. We're all just good buddies here.

He nodded to me and half-winked. “You could put one over on her, couldn't ya?” Drawing Patricia's hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles, he said, “I saw this one climbing in
that orange Frog car, and I just said to myself, Now, that's a pretty good-lookin' long tall drink o' water.”

A waiter with dark hair dangling in his face came and took drink orders. I said I wouldn't be eating. Patricia gave me a look without expression, but I knew she was critical. I'd hear about it.

I said, “What kind of work do you do, Roland?”

“Whatever pays best.”

“He's going to start studying computers.” Patricia smiled.

Roland clinked the tines of his fork on the empty wineglass, to the tap of “Shave-and-a-Haircut, Four-Bits.” He said, “I've been doing some ocean work, underwater repair, like on them offshore oil rigs?”

I nodded. Tell it all, Dork Man.

“My job's going to finish up here next week. I might go to Hawaii. Anybody want to come along?” He smiled at Patricia and pulled her fingertips to meet his so that the two of them sat there making spiders, and then gave me a look that said we could make it a threesome if I want.

The drinks came. I swallowed an old-fashioned in three mouthfuls and chawed the fruit while Patricia talked about making money in real estate and Roland's eyes turned greener. His knee wandered into mine.

I said I had to go. Roland said, “Hey, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers'll getcha. You chucked that shooter right down.”

“Mind your own business, Roland,” said Patricia. “Smokey can take care of herself.”

“I'll bet she can. But you know what? I get the feeling Smokey—say, that's a great name, you know it?”

“See you. Take it easy.” I stood up and put a fiver on the table.

Roland dragged on, his voice, I'll admit, grabbing me by the throat because I like them that way. He said, “I get the feeling Smokey here don't like me a bit. Now, how can that be, a nice guy like me?”

Patricia's face cleared and then charged with alertness, as if I might say something wrong.

I said, still standing, “I might as well come out with it, Roland. I don't particularly like the fact that you just happened
to show up in her apartment complex after seeing us that night. That clear enough for you?”

“Oh-h, now I see it. You tell her about me, Patricia, my little brushes with the law
a long time ago
?” He asked her, but he was looking at me. “I thought a person got a second chance in this country. What'd I go to Nam for if that ain't so?”

I shook my head and laughed and said, “Don't give me that Nam bullshit, Roland, and just watch your step, okay?, with my friend.”

Patricia directed the remark to me: “Stop it—” and I halfassed saluted and said, “Talk to you later.”

Roland said, “See ya around, Sunshine.”

A few days passed, and I hadn't heard from Patricia. Nothing new turned up on the Dwyer case, and Christmas was closing in and I hadn't bought a thing. I stopped by Patricia's apartment once to see if she wanted to go shopping, but she was not at home; called once, but hung up before the answering machine would click on. The idea of Patricia with Roland distressed me, but I know one thing: You can't make a person see the truth unless they're ready. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”—I memorized that once when I was a kid.

And then one day I got a call on
my
answering machine from Patricia's apartment manager. Patricia was ten days overdue on the rent, she said, and Patricia had put my name down on her rental application as a reference.

Hawaii must've sounded pretty good to Patricia. I called back the Fairdale Apartments and asked if Patricia hadn't given some relatives for references. The landlady said, “I been calling for three days, and zilch. She gives an aunt here too, in Moline, Illinois. I call, she hasn't been at that number for over a year.”

“What about Patricia's employer?”

“I go to them first off,” she said. “She's on vacation. I say, ‘When's she coming back?' He says, ‘One week Tuesday,' but my creditors don't wait one week Tuesday.”

Five needles attacked the lower right side of the back of my head. I hunched up my shoulder. Jesus, what was this now? A psychosomatic something. I was falling apart. The problem was, if Patricia went to Hawaii, would she have been mad enough at me not to tell me? She told me everything.

I told the landlady I'd bring the money over for the rent. She said, “You better do it before seven o'clock tomorrow morning, or I'm hauling her stuff down to storage.”

“Don't do that,” I said, “please.”

“I don't want to pack it up neither. That's no fun and I got plenty to do here. Can you be here by seven
A
.
M
.?”

“Yes. I'll be there.”

“Then everything'll be all right.”

I thanked her. She said, “Sometimes these young ones go off. They're havin' a good time, they forget. I know how it is, I was young once. But you got to pay the piper.”

“Patricia wouldn't have gone off without paying her rent, ordinarily. I know her. There must've been an emergency.”
Of course I didn't know her, as the last few weeks' events had revealed.

I thought I heard a sigh at the other end. “Could you bring cash?” the landlady said. I said, Yes, and thanks again, and started to hang up. “Better bring maybe three dollars more to pay for Moline.”

I sat near a window in the law library where I could look out on the concrete courtyard and see all the people threading their way between a hot dog vendor and the Federal Building, and looked up Mr. and Mrs. Harris's neighbors in Greensboro, North Carolina, in a reverse directory. When I got names of people residing on either side of the Harrises', I went back to my office and called an A. B. Winters first.

A soft Southern voice came on the line: “Hello?” I could hear kids in the background, and shrieks and water splashing. “Oh,” the voice said, “just a moment, please.” The receiver was being laid down,
ka-clunk.

“Children,” the voice called, “quieten down now, all right? Mam-maw's talkin' on the phone. Yes, William, I see, that's good. You all quieten down for just a minute, hm?” It seemed a long time until she came back. I imagined her heavy side-to-side gait across a braided carpet on a hardwood floor. I imagined a pie in the oven, and Mrs. Winters brushing back a strand of flyaway gray hair as she retrieved the phone. “Now, what can I do for you?”

As if on cue, Joe L. Sanders appeared at my door. He looked a little put out because I was on the phone. He walked in and took a pen and a piece of note paper off my desk and began to write something.

“Ms. Winters? I'm calling from California—”

Joe looked up, raising an eyebrow. No doubt he'd ask me what the long-distance call was for later, as if it were out of his own budget. Stu Hollings was a bean counter too, but not as bad as Joe.

“You don't know me, but . . .” I said, and asked her if she was a neighbor of Patricia Harris's parents, only I didn't say Patricia Harris's parents with Joe standing there; I said Mr. and Mrs. Herman J. Harris.

He slid the paper toward me, glanced at me, and left. The note said, “See me before you go home. Please.” I wanted to say yes to him or nod or something, but he never looked back.

As I spoke to the Harrises' neighbor, I tried not to alarm her, and I think I was successful in that. She said the Harrises had been on a cruise to Spain and the Greek islands for two weeks. They had one more to go. The first they'd ever been on, and they were very excited.

“Was their daughter Patricia with them?”

“No, I don't believe I heard them mention that. Can I do anything to help?” I told her no, I'd call back. She said, “I think they said the Greek islands,” then paused. “Are there Greek islands?” And then answered herself: “Yes, I think so.” She laughed and said, “I've never been.”