Carcass Trade (6 page)

I contemplated Nathan living fifty miles away, up against the San Gabriel Mountains near the City of Roses, the parade city we blame for drawing defectors from snow country every sunny January. When would Nathan have moved there, packed up all his cares and woe and come clear across the country to a little enclave of exiled hippies, conservative Catholics, and people with maybe a fifth his yearly income? To make his fortune, Nathan sold second trust deeds, then stocks, then handled home refinancing, all the stuff that bores me silly. I guess he could do that by fax or modem and live anywhere he chose.

He said, “I asked you a question.”

“Of course you can come by. I'll give you directions.”

“I've been to Aunt Markie's before.”

“You have? When?”

“Long time ago. What's it matter?”

“You're happy today.”

His turn for a pause. “I need to talk to you about something. I think you could help me.”

It came to me as I listened to him: Miranda, the name on the car registration. As I told my friends at the cowboy club last night, Nathan had a Miranda. But it could not possibly be. . . . “I'm sitting here, Nathan, drinking tea and warming my toes, with nothing else to do in the whole world but listen to my wise, old—very old—big brother.”

He didn't laugh. “You're going to be home, then?”

“I'll be here.”

“Noon all right?”

“We'll do lunch. You have to get used to saying that out here—
do
lunch.”

“We say it in the East too,” he said, sounding that far away.

“Nothing's sacred,” I said. “They probably say it in Nebraska. What's the world coming to?”

“What's the world coming to?” he repeated softly. He must be hunched over the receiver, not standing up, I thought. Nathan stands up for phone calls. It frees the diaphragm. You sound more in control.

“Do I get a hint of what this is about? I mean, you're not going to ask me to invest money in some scheme I'll never be able to figure out, are you?”

“I'm not going to ask you to do that.”

“What, then?”

“You remember—?” He stopped himself. I thought I could hear him smoking. “I need to find somebody. Maybe you could help.”

Swinging my feet down, I asked with great dread, “Who's the person?”

“I'll tell you later.”

“Jesus, Nathan.”

“I'd just rather wait till I see you.”

“I'm not a cop. I'm a civilian, working
with
cops. I don't just go around looking for people.”

“I should just get a private investigator then, is that it?”

“That might be a better idea,” I said with more irritation than I meant. I walked into the living room, peeling away my bathrobe down to my cutesy magenta underwear, and threw the robe over the back of the couch. The collar hit a vase of drying flowers I'd meant to empty, and the green water spread over my pine table and onto the cream-colored carpet. “Shit,” I said. “Oh, not you. I spilled something.”

“You want to get it?”

In the kitchen I tugged paper towels off in a long white train that wouldn't stop rolling till I put my foot on it. “It's okay.” While I mopped, I said, “Talk.” Then: “You're still smoking. I can hear you. Your lungs are black sponge.”

“You're going to tell me you've seen cases.”

“Yeah, exactly. Ugly black sponges. Californians don't smoke anymore. Don't smoke in my apartment when you come, okay?” I sat on the couch arm, holding the bunched towels like a torch.

“You always this cranky when you get up?”

“I'm sorry. I have things on my mind.”

I expected him to say something equally carping. What he said was, “I miss you, Sammi.” Sammi, my little sister name.

“You're a businessman,” I said. “You don't miss anybody.”

But I listened intently when he said, “Do you remember when I let you fly that red radio airplane off Humpback Hill?”

“Boy. That's going back some.”

“Remember?”

“You notice I didn't enroll in flight school for a career,” I said.

“I'm sorry I yelled at you then.”

“Are you drunk, Nathan?”

“I'm not drunk. You've never seen drunk until you've seen your big brother blotto. You didn't know that about me, did you?”

“That's a picture that takes some imagination, yes.” I got up to go back in the kitchen. “I'm glad to hear it.”

“Guess what? Tightasses are people too. Are you going to help me, or am I going to have to stop filling your bank account anonymously?”

I laughed and threw the wet wad of paper towels into the sink and glanced at the clock. “Sure.”

“You're a great girl, you really are. Only remember, I'm drunk and I don't really mean that.”

“Get off the phone so I can get some things done.”

“See you around noon.”

“Make it one.”

“So long, Smokey.” He used my other name. And took advantage of my pause.

“See,” he said, “I know more about you than you thought. And your old, your very old, brother never rubbed it in, now did he?”

He said he needed to walk. “Let's go down to the bay,” I said, since the fog had lifted by the time Nate got to my place. The sweet fragrance of white sage, encouraged by the sun, drifted through my open slider as he paced and I sat.

“I think I want to eat,” he said.

“Fine. There are great places on the island.”

“Maybe we should just stay here.”

“Out,” I said, pointing to the front door while I unfolded from the couch.

We drove down Jamboree, a boulevard wide enough to be a freeway. It was named for a vast Boy Scout gathering that took place decades ago, when there was nothing around for miles and bulldozers could scrape out a campsite without people yelling about endangered gnatcatchers. At its end a mile down, we crept across the tiny bridge that leads to Balboa Island, which lies between the inland mass and the nearly four-mile-long Balboa peninsula, leaving a channel of water on both sides. A small strip of what's called town runs down the middle of the island, and the rest is a packed architectural mix of houses that range from funky to grand. We could stroll the sidewalk that runs right next to the sand, and watch the ducks waddle up from the beach to nip at flower salads in people's plate-sized yards.

I parked next to a bakery that offered sandwiches for lunch, and sprang for drinks and bean sprout–walnut-avocado–cream cheese fodder on wheat bread for us both. Halfway down the walk, he told me to hold his sandwich so he could peel off his green cable-stitch sweater, revealing a burgundy knit shirt underneath. His skin seemed flushed, and his eyes watered from the sun-bright droplets in the air.

“Well?” I said, waiting.

“Just a minute.”

“Okay.” We walked some more.

Ahead, a young woman in shorts and a carpenter's apron rose up from looping a length of orange power cord in her hand as she worked on a house whose owners were adding a second story. Her hair was blonde and wavy to the waist, and I was happy for her, that she got to work outside. Her gaze lingered on Nathan.

I talked about ducks. I told him I'd joined Audubon. I knew a little something about birds now. He looked at me without comment other than “good.” “I mean, I don't know how much I can ever know. There are over eight hundred species in North America, after all. I don't want to be a nut about it, you know?”

He nodded and finished his food. We talked about the unusual houses we were passing, some like Cape Cod cottages, others a Spanish motif. When we were nearing the curve of the island, he said quietly, “It's Miranda.” We stopped. He looked at me briefly, and said, “You remember her.”

“Yes, I remember her.” A picture of Nathan's Miranda flashed into my mind, this woman the third of his four wives. She was a beauty, I remembered that. Her best feature was the hair that fell in one long hefty auburn braid all the way to her hips. She would tie off the rope with an orange or aqua ribbon, or whatever color heightened her golden skin and accented her penny-brown eyes. Fifteen years his junior, she'd been both his pride and his slight embarrassment, for Nathan was not the type to call attention to himself. I never knew her well: met her once, talked to her a few times on the phone. His multiple marriages were always a puzzle to me, not fitting a man who wouldn't jaywalk on an empty street after a nuclear holocaust. Early on, I figured this wife for a quick bite of sandwich between his real estate lady and the heiress who talked like Lily Tomlin's telephone operator and no doubt counted the ringy-dingys.

Off my right shoulder, in someone's garden, a tin sea captain stuck on a pole was running in place with the wind, over the heads of lavender hollyhocks.

Nathan said, “Something might have happened to her.” In my heart I didn't want him to go on.

“I was supposed to see her. She didn't show up.”

“That doesn't sound too serious to me.”

“Don't be flip, okay?”

Flip? I thought. We walked on.

“We were to meet Tuesday. We meet every Tuesday.” He stepped over a low concrete wall and sat on it, his shoes in the sand.

“You've been out here awhile, then,” I said.

Glancing at me, then looking away at three mallards walking flatfooted under a boat tie-up, he said, “I was busy. I tried calling once—”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Since February.”

“Three months.”

“Convicted,” he said, and held out his wrists for cuffs.

I smiled. “Forgiven. And you've been seeing her all this time.”

He nodded. “Now you know about your big brother.”

This was a new thing, not a Nathan thing, I was hearing. Then I thought, What do I know about how he conducts his life? Maybe that's how he developed and lost his other wives.

“How does wife number four feel about this?”

“She has a name,” he said.

“Okay, how does Bridget feel about this?”

“Of course she doesn't know. I don't know how it happened. I didn't plan it.”

“Is that why you're out here, to be near her?”

“It didn't feel like cheating, since Miranda
had
been my wife. We were like old friends. It's not that uncommon after a divorce. Really.”

“Mm-hm.”

Nathan stood up and stepped over the wall to the sidewalk and began walking, his hands in his pockets.

He said, “Don't judge me.”

“Of course I won't judge you.”

But I did. In my heart I did. But more, I feared for him. Don't let it be the corpse in the canyon, I thought.

Nathan gestured and said, “The old spark was there, what can I say? You'll learn someday things are not all so simple.”

“I never thought they were.”

“You should see her. She's positively glowing.”

“Glowing. So, let me see: She's either pregnant, or she just swung a movie deal.”

I moved ahead of him and jumped up on the wall and tried to see how far I could walk there, little kid style, since I had on my rubber-soled shoes. I didn't want to be talking to Nathan about his personal life. I didn't want to be paying attention to two Mirandas in one week. Yet in my gut I knew. There's a lot more coincidence in police work than people want to hear. Still, I hoped for two Mirandas: the one in the canyon and his. As the campy comedian Judy Tenuta would say, it could happen.

“She didn't sign a movie deal.”

Stepping off the wall, I asked, “The baby then. It's yours?” What had Dr. Margolis, the pathologist, said about the Jane? He said she had not borne children. Were we safe then? We were safe.

Nathan's voice sounded like number 2-grain sandpaper on tin. “It's not mine,” he said. “They're working things out . . . she and mat, that, Bob.”

“I can tell you like him fine.”

“He's a doctor. He's a jerk.”

“When did Miranda tell you this, she's preggers?”

“In the motel, the last time. They had a knockdown drag-out.” He waved his hand. “I don't know about what. Something. He filled the bedspread with all her stuffed animals, took it out on the lawn, and burned it. She started beating on him and he threw her in the pool.”

“What a cute couple.”

“After they made up, they decided to have a baby.”

“That's sick, Nathan.”

“No, it's not sick. It's human. You never got to know her. She's a great girl. You never saw that.”

“I guess I didn't.”

Trying to picture what it would be like to be so happy about such an event you'd celebrate with an ex-husband while whispering on pillows, I couldn't, but maybe that was a shortcoming of my own.

“Before this, was she having fun?”

“She was unhappy. I told you that.”

“Was she fooling
around
?”

Maybe he didn't like the baldness of the question; or maybe he didn't want to contemplate it himself. There was a long pause. “She might have a friend.”

I looked away, hiding my expression.

“Her husband's into Harleys. Her too. This guy paints their tanks or something.”

“Nathan . . .”

“If she and Dr. Jerkoff had a fight, she wouldn't come to me, if that's what you're thinking. Pride. She wouldn't come to me. She might go to this guy.”

“Oh, Nathan.”

The old impatience showed in his face. “You have to realize people are people,” he said.

“I know what people do,” I said.

“If I could just be sure she was all right . . .”

“I'm not a cop anymore, Nathan. I haven't been for a lot of years.”

“But you know things.”

“And you can get me on the cheap.”

“That's not it,” he said tautly. “But I'll pay you, if that's what you want.”