Burning Time (25 page)

“Course I know him. I’m his aunt. His aunt Lela. How do you think he got to North High School?”

“I don’t know,” Jason said.

“Not from here.” She spat out the words as she led the way to the front room, which was crowded with some surprisingly good furniture, all very dusty and too large for the space. “Couldn’t get anywhere from here. I took him with me that year after his brother died in ’Nam.”

She looked confused for a minute and then found her glass. It was empty. “Would you like a drink?”

Jason shook his head. “No, thanks.”

She considered it, then put it down. Obviously had some restraint left. Jason couldn’t miss the tired old house-dress and slippers, the slack discontented mouth. The room smelled of bourbon and cigarette smoke. But the woman’s hair was carefully combed, and she had lipstick on as if she had been expecting someone. She sat heavily on a worn, tufted sofa with her feet planted far apart. “Have a seat. What do you want to know?”

Jason sat in an armchair catty-corner, so he didn’t have to struggle not to look at the rolls of puckered flesh on her thighs.

“Well, I know Troland has done pretty well for himself. Has a good job, drives a good car—”

“Since when?” Lela interrupted.

“Uh, I assume he’s had it a long time.”

“Well, smarty, he doesn’t drive a car. He still rides a bike, like a kid. Hah.”

Jason took out a small notebook. Whenever important information came to him his face went blank. His face was blank now. “What kind of bike?”

“Oh, Lord. There was the old panhead, that was Willy’s. Willy died in ’Nam. Willy’s Tro’s brother. Tro rode that a long time. Then he started trading up. He told me the bike he has now took a year to customize. Cost over fifteen grand. Can you believe that? Any motorcycle costing that much?”

It was too much for her. She got up and went into the other room with her glass.

“All Harleys,” she shouted.

“What was he like as a kid?” Jason asked.

“I didn’t know him much then. My husband and I lived in Coral Beach then.” She returned. Her glass was half full now. She fluffed her hair. “It’s nice there, in Coral Beach,” she said wistfully.

Jason nodded. “Troland,” he prompted.

She looked into her drink, then took a tiny, ladylike sip. “My sister complained about him. He was always kind of wild.” She fell silent for a second, thinking it over. “All the boys were wild, but Tro was the worst. Can’t really blame them, having the kind of father they did.”

“What was his father like?”

“Well, he couldn’t hold his—” She held up her glass. “Some people can and some people can’t. Him, he’d be all right, and then he’d have a few drinks—Get out of the way.” She sniffed. “I wouldn’t go there unless I absolutely had to.”

“He was violent?”

“I guess you could say that. Beat up my sister pretty bad. I guess you don’t need to know about that.”

Yes, actually that was exactly what he wanted to know. He needed to know how dysfunctional the family was. He needed to know how badly damaged Troland Grebs was.

“What about Tro—was he violent, too?”

“Violent?” Lela narrowed her eyes.

“Was he in trouble a lot? Was he ever arrested?”

She sipped again, taking her time to think about it. “Well, Tro was a funny kid. And not ha-ha funny. He was strange. I always thought he was a little—” She touched her finger to her head meaningfully.

“Crazy, huh. How was he crazy?” Jason kept his voice neutral.

She shook her head. “He has brains, you know. But there’s something kinda different about him. He gets an idea—still makes my blood run cold. Aw, you don’t want to hear all this.”

“Sure, I do. It’s very important background, you know, sheds light on what he’s become.” That was the truth.

Lela stared at him, then nodded. “Well, there was this
pretty
girl. She had hair, oh, my God, all the way down to her waist. Must have been third grade. She was the president of the class. Somebody squirted a water gun at her hair. Only it wasn’t water. It was gasoline. And there were some matches.” Lela opened her pale eyes wide.

“Her hair caught on fire.” She was silent for a long time.

“What happened?” Jason asked.

“Oh, she could have died, but she was all right. They had a big investigation, and they just couldn’t prove anything. Years later Tro told me he knew how to make people do whatever he wanted. He used to tell the kids he’d kill them, and their parents, and their brothers and sisters. Cut them up in little pieces so nobody could ever find them. Poor suckers. They believed him.”

She remembered the drink in her hand, took a greedy swallow. “He was always talking about getting even, about revenge, you know. And the thing was she didn’t do a thing to him. That little girl didn’t keep him out, or do anything to him. He just wanted to hurt her because she got too much attention.”

She peered out the window at the overgrown bougainvillea that was the view. It was so big it wrapped around the back of the house as if it were going to take over. Jason followed her gaze. The blossoms were the deepest purple he’d ever seen.

“I didn’t know that when I took him in. I knew he set fires, of course. Went kind of wild when his brother died. But he seemed better when he came back from—you know where. And he never
hurt
anybody. I thought if he went to a
good
school and made friends with some nice people, he’d be all right.…”

“Where’s you-know-where?” Jason asked.

“I know where, but you can’t know where. See, I was right. He went to a good school, got away from some bad
influences, and he turned out, like you said. Write that part.” She gestured at his notebook with her glass.

“Sure I will,” Jason said. “Thank you for talking to me. You helped a lot.” He had to go now. “Could you give me Troland’s address?”

“Course I will.” Without hesitation, she went to a book by the phone that had faded blue flowers on the cover, and read out the address. “It’s a nicer place than this, but do you think he’d help me?—I shouldn’t say that. He sent me to Disneyland last month for three days. I think he wanted to stay here. Cleaned the whole place. I couldn’t believe it.” She shook her head, still couldn’t.

“Well, he’s something of a mystery. Keeps to himself.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She waved at the dusty furniture with one hand. “This was only a tenth, a
hundredth
of what I had.”

She fell silent, turning her unfocused eyes back to Jason. “All that time I thought my
sister
married the jerk. He hurt her bad and she died of cancer. But the truth is all men stink. Hah, you could write a
book
about my story,” she muttered.

“I’d like to hear it. But I have to go.” Jason looked at his watch. Now it really was getting late.

“That’s what they all say.” Her face crumpled.

Jason put his pen away. He was always telling his students you have to listen to the things they don’t say as well as the things they do. Poor woman. She’d probably been drinking all morning. She couldn’t even get up to walk him to the door when he left.

Emma got off the treadmill when the odometer read three and a half miles and hobbled to the fridge. There wasn’t much of anything in it, and most definitely no club soda. She was covered with sweat and shivered slightly, annoyed at herself for not stopping to pick up some water on the way home.

Checking the clock on the wall, she was also irritated that she had left a message for Jason hours ago, and he hadn’t called her back yet. She was sure she hadn’t heard the phone ring. And the machine still didn’t have any messages on it. If the machine wasn’t working, she’d start getting complaints pretty quickly from people whose calls she hadn’t returned. She hoped Ronnie hadn’t tried to reach her.

She loved to run, always had, even as a kid. It was a natural high, gave her energy, made her feel exhilarated. That afternoon she had run farther and faster than she ever had before. She was now exhausted.

Where the hell was Jason? She drank some water from the tap. People said there was bacteria in it now from all
the sewage in upstate towns leaching into the city’s reservoirs.

It didn’t taste too bad, but Emma didn’t like drinking it. She went back to the fridge with the glass in her hand. Although she’d had lunch, she knew she’d be hungry again soon. All that exercise. Even after she stopped, the perspiration was still pouring off her. She opened the door and studied the contents of the refrigerator, distressed at the way it seemed to symbolize her life. It looked like the refrigerator of someone who didn’t have a family. There were some tired lettuce and carrots in the crisper. A lot of half-used jars of things scattered around on the shelves. Some unopened, out-of-date yogurt, and cottage cheese she always bought but never ate.

The problem was they didn’t eat many meals together, and when they did, it was never anything she liked. Jason complained when she brought home cheese, or any kind of dairy product, salami, baloney, liverwurst or pâté. Red meat was out. So was duck, foie gras, chicken or calves’ liver. They had bread, but no butter. Pasta with tomato sauce, but no shellfish, no squid, no sausage, no anchovies.

Other forbidden foods were omelets with bacon—omelets with anything in fact—osso buco, artichokes with hollandaise. Emma liked hollandaise so thick a spoon could stand straight up in it. She began to salivate thinking about all the foods she liked and Jason felt would kill him if he so much as encountered them in his refrigerator. She had eaten a lot of strange things in her childhood. Her mother was always leaving the base to find the markets where the local foods were sold, unlike the other wives who stuck to the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Campbell’s Tomato Soup they could find from home in the canteen.

Food was the way her mother kept the evenings civil.
Every night a food surprise. Emma bought the same way. She went to the markets on Broadway, and always bought things fresh: arugula, a chicken breast, a few bananas. Only healthy things, and just enough for one night. If she tried to slip in anything interesting, Jason left it on the plate. He didn’t want to die of clogged arteries before he finished the work he was meant to do.

She sipped at the water. Well, Jason wasn’t here now. She could go out and get anything she wanted, have a fat fest and run the extra calories off tomorrow. She closed the refrigerator door and went into the bedroom. The muscles in her legs were a little trembly. She probably hadn’t given herself enough cooling-down time. If she walked slowly to the store, it would be better than sitting down.

She showered, considering it. Should she sit and wait for Jason, who might not call her back for many more hours, or go out for club soda and forbidden food before it got dark? She put conditioner on her hair and combed it through, rubbed body lotion into her skin. As she pulled on faded jeans and a sweatshirt, she decided to go out. She stuffed her money and her key in her pocket. She didn’t bother to take her handbag with her driver’s license and credit cards in it. She left the apartment, closing the door carefully.

As she waited for the elevator, she ran her fingers through her damp hair. She had been too hungry to take the time to dry it. She looked up at the elevator, which she could see on the top floor. It was the old-fashioned kind, an open cage that hadn’t been changed from the day it was installed decades ago.

The stairs going up went around in a big square, so everyone could see everyone else coming in and out of their doors, and what they were carrying. From any level
one could look all the way up to the top of the building where there was a stained-glass skylight, like a kaleidoscope with only one picture. While she waited for the elevator, Emma looked up at it. When she reached the lobby she looked at it again. She could tell what kind of day it was and sometimes the hour, too, by the way the light came through the colored glass.

The doorman opened the heavy wrought-iron doors for her.

“Hello, Mrs. Frank, going for a jog?”

Emma shook her head with a smile. “I did that already. Just going to the store.”

“I’ll watch you down the street.”

“Thanks.”

He always said that. He was missing most of his teeth and was hardly five feet tall. But he had been a marine and kept a baseball bat beside his chair. Emma had no doubt that he would use it if something happened. It was quiet now, though. No sirens, no homeless.

Emma stepped outside and greedily breathed the fresh salty air from the river. Her building was on the corner of Riverside Drive, two long blocks from Broadway where all the stores were. She began walking slowly, testing the muscles in her legs. The ache went very deep. It was hard to imagine people running in the marathon for twenty-six miles at a stretch.

She wondered how it felt as they were doing it, and if it felt anything like this afterwards? After running only three and a half miles, she had to admit she didn’t feel all that wonderful. As she walked, she glanced at the trees which were in full leaf now, noticed the few cars that passed. Riverside and West End Avenue were quiet streets. Broadway was where all the trouble was. She considered what
she would buy. Something really bad, with a crusty French bread.

As she got to the corner of West End Avenue, she decided to open a bottle of wine. She passed the thick old tree that partially blocked the view to the intersection. A car was parked in the space in front of the fire hydrant. Emma watched the traffic light change to green, and had prepared to speed up to make it when an arm snaked around her from the back.

“Hi, Emma.”

“Wha—” She jerked back and the arm tightened, wrenching her shoulder.

“Don’t get upset. I’m not going to hurt you.” The voice was calm, very polite.

“Ow.” A hard object was shoved into her stomach, pushing the air out of her lungs.

She saw it. It was a gun.

“Ah—” Her knees buckled.

“Get in the car, Emma, or I will shoot you.”

Now she could see that the car door was open. Blue car. Her knees sagged. She couldn’t stand up. A scream gathered in her throat trying to take shape, but she had no breath. Her mouth wouldn’t move.