Circles of Confusion (28 page)

"Sister Edna! Are you bothering people again?" A young woman came out of a room at the end of the hall. Her white long-sleeved uniform fell past her knees, and was buttoned up to the top of her neck. On top of her thick bun was pinned something that looked like a white doily. "Can I help you, sister?"

Claire crossed her arms over the saying on her T-shirt. "I'm looking for Al Patten. I think he's a resident here." She sidestepped as the wheelchair grazed the back of her knees.

"Sister Edna! Stop that! You need to get back in your room." The young woman stepped around Claire and grabbed the back of the old woman's wheel chair. "He's in Room 112 Are you a relative?"

Claire tried to think of the most plausibly distant relationship that might result in a visit. "A great-niece." After all, if this stranger could call her sister, it wasn't that much of a stretch to claim kinship with a man she had never seen.

The aide spun Edna's chair around and began to push her back the way Claire had come, accompanied by the old woman's frustrated whimpers. "His room's down this way. I didn't even know he had any relatives. I don't think he's had a visitor the whole time I've worked here."

Claire followed the aide or nurse or whatever she was back through the reception area—still empty—to the other side of the building, which was a mirror of the first. There was the same long corridor, the same deserted food cart, even the same hand-lettered sign warning about "Sinner Music." The aide nodded at a door halfway down the corridor. "Room 112 is right in the middle. Would you mind helping Brother Al with his breakfast? We're kind of short- staffed today."

"No trouble at all," Claire said, and picked up a tray. With her foot, Claire nudged open the door to 112. It held two hospital beds, each with its head to the barred window. On one an old man sat hunched over, dressed in threadbare pajamas. His eyes were closed, his face pinched, and he was rocking the upper half of his body back and forth, rocking, rocking. He reminded Claire of a TV show she had seen once about autistic children.

The other man was sitting in a chair beside his neatly made bed. He was dressed in a thirty-year-old suit, and his hair had been combed back with water, the white curls rippling like corrugated cardboard.

"Al Patten?" Claire asked him, fearing he wasn't. The rocking man didn't pause, but the dapper man leaned down and began to pull a suitcase from under the bed.

"Am I getting out today?" His muffled voice was unexpectedly low and melodious, like an old-time radio announcer.

Claire felt a stab of guilt. "No, Mr. Patten, sorry, not today. I've brought you some breakfast, though."

With a sigh, the old man pushed his suitcase back under the bed. He began to pat his jacket pockets, then reached for a wallet that wasn't there. "Would you mind spotting me, darling? I seem to have misplaced my wallet."

Claire realized he now thought she was some sort of waitress. "That's okay. I've got it covered." She sat the tray on the table between the bed and the chair, and then took a seat on the edge of the bed. Only then did the old man straighten up and look her full in the face. He sagged back in his chair with a little cry.

"Cady! What are you doing in this place?" With a palsied hand, he reached out to touch one of the wisps of dark hair that framed Claire's face. "Why have you changed your hair?"

Claire remembered standing in front of the bathroom mirror in her aunt's trailer, marking the similarities between her face and her aunt's fifty-year-old photo. What would he tell her if he thought she was Cady? "Do you like it this way?"

"Oh, sure, honey, sure. You can fix your hair any way you want, because you'll always look good to me." He looked at the table and gave a little grunt of surprise. "Oh, look, breakfast." He reached for a glass of what looked like Tang and took a sip. A dreamy smile crossed his face. "Where have you been keeping yourself? I haven't seen you for.. * AI looked away and then back with a mixture of confusion and discomfort. It was clearly an effort for him to stay fixed in one time, not go slipping backward or forward. "For ages," he finished. "And when's Rudy gonna come by? You tell him I have a little deal I need to talk to him about."

A deal. That seemed to be in keeping with the Al Patten Aunt Cady had written about fifty years before. "Actually, that's why I came by to see you. I need to ask you something. Do you remember that little painting Rudy gave me—"

"That girl with a letter? She's got those big blue eyes like yours?" Al laughed. "Rudy said that would get you talking to him again."

So that was it. Rudy must have given the painting to Aunt Cady to persuade her to come back to him. A darker thought occurred to Claire. Or maybe Rudy had given Aunt Cady the painting as a bribe, to make it harder for her to turn him in for looting from the storeroom he was supposed to be guarding.

"So where did Rudy get it from? Did it come from—"

A plaintive wail from across the hall interrupted her. "My shoes! Where are my shoes! Bring me my shoes!"

Claire wondered if something should be done, but Al's roommate never stopped his rocking and Al himself was tucking a napkin under his collar without paying the least bit of attention.

She finished her sentence. "Did it come from the train that had all of Goring's stuff?"

He shook his head, looking confused and upset. Was it that he didn't know the answer or that he didn't want to talk? Then his face cleared. From under overgrown eyebrows he gave her a sly look. "Is there any way you can get me out of here, Cady? I'll make it worth your while."

"Where are we?"

For an answer, he rolled his eyes and blew air through pursed lips. "The lockup, of course. I don't remember exactly what I did, though. Was it a 'drunk and disorderly' again?"

Claire hesitated and then offered him a half-smile, unwilling to give him either a lie or the truth. "I want to ask you again about that painting. Where did it come from?"

"All I know is that it was in the warehouse." Al was now more interested in his oatmeal than stolen masterpieces. "Things are always going in and"—he lowered his voice to a stage whisper— "coming out. Every Nazi has a thing or two that he took from the Jews and now he's either turning it in or hiding it in his cellar. They got it from someone else, and now we take it from them. What's that old Latin saying?"

'"Veni, vidi, vici'?" Claire asked, resigned to the fact that she might never know what happened. '"I came, I saw, I conquered'?"

"You were always better in school than me, but that isn't it. All I remember is the English. 'To the victor goes the spoils."'

Claire found the I-Spy Shoppe in a Barbur Boulevard strip mall, sandwiched between a Thai restaurant and a tanning salon. J. B. has said he could get her a gun if she wanted, but she had declined the offer. But now she was feeling the need for some kind of protection. As she got out of the car and slipped on her backpack, she could still feel Al Patten's soft goodbye kiss on her cheek. She had promised to tell Rudy to come by. For the first time, she wondered what had happened to Aunt Cady's former lover. Was he dead now? In a nursing home like his old Army buddy? Living in a trailer in a remote area, just him and his pit bulls and his Nazi memorabilia?

A bell tinkled above her head when she pushed open the door to I-Spy. From behind the cash register, a brush-cut clerk glanced up at her and then went back to reading his magazine. The one-roomed store, with its blank cream-colored walls and industrial gray carpeting, had an air of impermanence about it, as if the next day it might become a quick copy shop or an Iranian deli. The only fixtures, in addition to the cash register, were a half-dozen glass display cases scattered around the room.

The store was like an old-fashioned magic shop that had been infected with a 1990s brand of technology-flavored paranoia. At first Claire's hopes slid as she examined the case nearest the door, which held a variety of items designed to conceal valuables. A fake rock. A false-bottomed planter. A completely unconvincing cement- colored dog turd that looked more like a gag gift. There were safes made from hollowed-out books, car batteries and a giant can of Fritos. Everything was slightly off and thus unconvincing. Like how often did you see a can of Fritos? The stuff seemed designed more to appeal to a nine-year-old boy than to deter thieves.

She spun the revolving display filled with books on lock-picking, disguises and secret codes, all with forty-year-old clip art on the covers. Next to the books was a pyramid display for the Bionic Ear, "the sound collector with a thousand uses." The package showed an Aryan-looking young man, clad in camouflage, his brow furrowed in exaggerated concentration as he listened to a pair of earmuff-like receivers.

Some of I-Spy's wares seemed to have been transported directly from the back of an old comic book. There were invisible inks and a two-headed nickel with the legend Win Every Toss!

Claire slipped on a pair of rearview sunglasses. The black plastic frames stuck out three inches on either side of her head, and were about as unobtrusive as a pair of 3-D glasses. The insides of the lenses were coated, offering a faint, oily reflection of the store behind her. She put them back on the display.

At she moved to the back of the store, the contents of the cases became sleeker and more expensive, designed to appeal to men with James Bond fantasies. At least Claire hoped they were fantasies. There were car bomb detectors, night-vision goggles, vehicle trackers, and a briefcase that promised to greet any unauthorized user with 10,000 volts. Telephone recording devices were displayed side by side with scramblers that disrupted telephone recording devices.

Claire ended her circuit of the room back at the register. "Excuse me. I have a problem and was wondering if you could give me some advice."

The clerk looked up from a magazine ad touting the benefits of bulletproofing your car. "Lady, maybe you should be telling your problems to a lawyer instead of to me." His affectation of world- weariness was at odds with his inability to grow a convincing goatee.

Claire wasn't sure where to begin. "This isn't exactly a lawyer- type problem."

He nodded knowingly. "I hear that all the time." He had a narrow, rabbity face. She had the feeling he didn't have many opportunities to talk to women.

"I'm being followed, and I need some kind of, I guess you'd call it a personal protection device."

"Have you thought about going to the police?"

"Well," Claire began. "There may be a problem with that."

He surprised her by slapping the magazine down on the counter. "Of course there's a problem with that! A piece of toilet paper will do you more good than one of those worthless restraining orders. I should know. I get the guys they are taken out against all the time in here, looking for stuff to get back at their ex-wives. The only one you can rely on is yourself. You have to be ready to use anything in your environment."

The clerk crouched in a way that was presumably supposed to represent catlike readiness, but the position only emphasized his incipient potbelly. "If you think you're being followed, the first step is to try to keep cars, trees, any kind of a barrier between you. Don't be afraid to make a scene. Set off an emergency alarm, honk a car horn, even throw a rock through a window. Do what you have to do to attract attention. Your trained assassin doesn't want witnesses."

He seemed to have forgotten that she was presumably the victim of a jealous ex-husband. "I would highly recommend the rearview sunglasses. I saw you considering them. At a minimum, learn to use the reflective surfaces around you to see what's behind you. Look in car and shop windows when you're walking. Check the plastic strip at ATM machines."

He straightened up, accompanied by an audible pop from his knees. "And remember that in a pinch, anything can be a weapon. A handful of dirt. A roll of quarters held in your fist." He made a "pow!" sound as he threw a shadow punch, then fished the keys from his pocket. "Slip your keys between your fingers, and use them to rake your assailant's eyes." He clawed the air and Claire took a step back. Then the salesman's instinct returned. "Or if you'd like to try our weighted gloves, you'll find they're very reasonably priced. And there's something else I'd like to show you."

He used one of his keys to open a case, then pulled something from it with a flourish, as if performing a magic trick. It looked like a cross between a beeper and an electric razor—small, black, curved to fit the hand. "How about a stun gun?" he asked as he pressed a button. Electricity arced between two wires, crackling and sparking. N4CR

From behind the brushy green curtain of her neighbor's overgrown arborvitae, Claire had spent the last ten minutes casing her own house. Yellow crime scene tape was crisscrossed across the door, and her Mazda still sat in the driveway. At this time of day, the neighborhood was deserted, people swallowed up by the new American reality that demanded every able-bodied adult hold down a full-time job in order to sustain a reasonable standard of living. Mothers worked, teenagers worked, and even the elderly stood behind McDonald's counters in their orthopedic shoes.

One quick burst across the street, down the driveway and through the gated fence, and then Claire was in the shelter of the backyard, sucking lungfuls of air. The last time she had run for pleasure had been her final morning in New York, just a little more than a day ago, although it seemed more like a decade. She ran her fingers under the edge of the deck until she found the nail that held the key to the back door. Even with her belief in the power of an imaginary dog to guard her house, Charlie would have laughed at the idea of using a fake turd to hide her key.