Cold Springs (20 page)

He looked at one of Zedman's paintings, the glass turning gold in the sunset, and the reflection he saw wasn't his face. It was Talia—frightened, uncertain, always ready to scurry into the darkness like a cockroach. Samuel lifted his pistol, fired a round into the reflection.

When the ringing died down in his ears, he said quietly, “Get to the bathroom, John. You got one upstairs, right?”

John was still blinking from the gunshot. He had the look of a Black Level kid—that moment when the enforcer brings out the bag for the first time.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “The disc—you said it was about Chadwick.”

Samuel had forgotten all about the DVD. Now he held it up, trying not to smile at his own private joke. “You want to see a movie, John? Get on upstairs—I'm sure you got a player in your bedroom, right?”

He twitched the barrel of the gun toward the stairs.

Unsteadily, Zedman rose, the Kleenex keeping the blood from dripping too much—a crooked trail across the living room, up the carpeted stairs, Samuel thinking all the way that this was not as neat as he'd planned. He wouldn't have time to clean this shit up.

Let him go,
Katherine whispered.
Get the numbers and just leave.

At the top of the stairs, Zedman hesitated.

Samuel said, “Don't.”

“Wha'?”

“Whatever you were just thinking. 'Less you want to be shot in the back.”

Zedman swayed, then turned left, into the master bedroom.

Wasn't Samuel's kind of room. High ceilings and no windows. Too many pictures on the wall, too many mirrors. A good television, though—DVD player, sure enough. Through the open bathroom door he could see a big square tub, maroon tiles.

“Mallory,” John said. “Tell me she's safe.”

Samuel went to the television, slipped the disc in the machine. When the movie came on, Zedman's face got sleepy with bewilderment. Then he began to understand, gradually. Samuel could see it in his eyes.

“Please,” John said.

“Tell you how they do it at Cold Springs,” Samuel said. “Cold Springs's all about compliance. You earn privileges by doing exactly what you're told. You understand what I'm saying, John?”

“The account numbers are in my computer. I can show you.”

“Oh yeah, but see—I'm too stupid to work this all by myself, right? I wouldn't have the first clue.”

John's eyes were moist with defeat, shame. He was ready for the gag, for solitary confinement—for whatever punishment the instructors threw at him. He said, eagerly, “It just takes a phone call. The account numbers, I can show you. The password on the computer—it's Ferryboat*, with an asterisk, last character. Capital F.”

“Get in the bathroom.”

Zedman hesitated, and Samuel advanced on him, forcing him back step by step until Zedman stood in front of the toilet.

“Well?” Samuel said. “Use it.”

Zedman looked at the pot, then back at Samuel. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I—I can't.”

Samuel pressed the gun against Zedman's shoulder. “You already bleeding all over the place, John. I don't want any more to clean up later, you understand me?”

John took a piss—a good long one. Samuel was amused by the little shriveled thing he used, too. I mean, damn. All that self-importance, all that strutting—it made sense when the man dropped his drawers.

“You do that real well, like you've been practicing,” Samuel told him. “Now get in the tub.”

“You'll never get the money, if you kill me.”

“Why would that be, John? You ain't told me the whole truth about those codes? Is that cooperation?”

Zedman stared at the water swirling in the toilet.

“I heard you a woman-slapper, John. You want me to hit you again, remind you how it feels? Get in the tub, bitch.”

He pushed Zedman back, watched him stumble into the tub.

“Stay on your knees,” Samuel said. “I like that.”

Samuel pulled the shower curtain closed as much as possible, making mental notes about the tiles, how the blood splatters would go.

“Don't,” Zedman said.

Samuel turned on the shower, watched the way it splattered in John's half-dazed face, rinsing the blood into a pink swirl—like Talia's bathroom, Talia's blood, only Zedman was still alive, still listening.

“Your daughter's life, John. I haven't decided if you get to keep that privilege, yet. You think you've cooperated?”

John's lips were moving, making sounds, but nothing intelligible came out. For a minute, Samuel was afraid Zedman might've broken completely.

Then Zedman said, “Pérez. I told him . . . I thought . . . he's going after Chadwick—”

Samuel stared at him. And then he got it, and he started to laugh. He filled up the bathroom with laughter, had to sit on the pot, it was all so funny. He looked down and saw that poor Zedman wasn't sharing the joke.

“Yeah, I got you,” Samuel said. “And?”

“It wasn't Chadwick's fault. It was mine. Please stop him. Don't let Pérez . . .”

“Noble, John. What does it take for you to make an enemy and have it stick? Man fucks your wife, steals your daughter—brings all this on you, and you want to save his life now, after you told your Mexican to kill him? Man. Money makes you crazy, John. I guess it does.”

In the next room, the DVD was still playing—bright and cheerful sounds, music from a fairy tale.

“The real account number,” John promised. “A password. The right one.”

The wound on his mouth was still bleeding—ragged and pink like a fishhook gouge.

Zedman told him the password, the account number, the name of the bank. He told him the exact amount, the agent who could make the transfer. And Samuel knew he wasn't lying this time. He was broken. He was ready for the next level of training—as pliable as his goddamn weak daughter.

“You can't remember all that,” Zedman muttered. “Let me out of here. I'll write it down. I'll take you downstairs—”

“Oh, I'll remember,” Samuel promised. “I'm brilliant, see? Everybody says so.”

Then he came over to the tub, knelt, pressed the gun to John's heart—imagining the pattern it would make, like red wings on the tiles behind him, imagining Katherine's pleading, the fairy-tale music going, evoking impossible images like Talia being alive, Samuel being in charge—realizing his dreams, getting through college, teaching kids, protecting his family once and for all.

John Zedman closed his eyes. His lips trembled so violently it was hard to tell if he was just afraid, or if his body was involved in some terrible, desperate prayer.

Samuel was filled with benevolence. Good old John. Paying his dues at last.

He said, “I'm thinking about letting you go, John. Would you like that? Would you give me anything for that?”

And they knelt there together, at a moment of endless possibility, the shower soaking Samuel's sleeve and running off John Zedman's thinning hair, John's heartbeat so strong Samuel could almost feel it in the grip of his gun.

17

Chadwick told himself he had no destination in mind, but it wasn't true. He fell back into a pattern as old as his adulthood—south on 101, exit on Army Street, up Van Ness to 24
^th
.

He knew he shouldn't go to the Mission District. He shouldn't indulge in the past. But seeing John, then visiting the East Bay, had put him in a frame of mind for examining old wounds.

Some of the townhouses on San Angelo Street looked the way he remembered them—muddy facades, windows curtained with bedsheets, the stoops decorated with hubcaps and bilingual City Council election posters, Spanish graffiti. Other townhouses had been renovated by invading dot-commers—painted mauve and burgundy and teal, dandified with gingerbread trim and high-tech security systems. No cars out front—those would be parked in a guarded lot somewhere close by, safe from keying and window-smashing by angry blue-collar residents being driven out by the skyrocketing housing prices.

Chadwick pulled in front of his old home, which nobody could have mistaken for dandified. The street level, which had once been his father's clock repair shop, was boarded up, anarchy signs and gang monikers scrawled across bricks and plywood and window frames. The steps up to the second-story porch were littered with takeout wrappers. A beer bottle sprouted from the mailbox.

Chadwick slid his key in the lock—almost wishing it wouldn't work, but of course it did.

The green door swung open on the interior stairwell, the air dark and stale as sleeper's breath.

Chadwick tried the light switch. The electricity still worked—regulations required that of Chadwick. The management company must not have been changing the lightbulbs.

He climbed up to the living room, ran his fingers over the chocolate wainscoting, stared at the coal-burning fireplace that had not worked since he was a child. On the mantel, islands of light dust marked the places where clocks had stood, years ago.

Thin evening light filtered through the branches of the enormous bougainvillea in the backyard, making yellow streaks across the kitchen floor. Chadwick had always loved that bougainvillea—the pink snow of petals that had filled the yard every spring. He opened the window, stared past the empty clotheslines, the patch of weeds that had once been his garden, the toolshed, the broken fence, over the backs of the stores that faced Mission, their tar roofs painted silver and their vents pouring out the charred smells of
cabrito
and hamburger.

He thought about Norma at the oven, cursing her burned raisin bread. It was one of the few memories he could conjure about her that did not cause pain.

A portable stereo sat on the kitchen counter, a Brahms CD in the carriage from Chadwick's last visit, maybe three years ago. He'd dropped by between escort jobs, supposedly to inspect the property with a mind toward finally selling it, giving Norma her half that the divorce decree demanded. His property manager had begged him to do so. He'd tried to impress Chadwick with the incredible market, promising him an easy million for the old house. But in the end, Chadwick had decided nothing.

He could never live in this house again. But he couldn't bear to sell it, or even lease it. He certainly couldn't bear to give any money from the sale to Norma. She had hated this place, blamed it for her unhappiness, cursed him for trying to raise Katherine here. Their last argument as a married couple, just a month after Katherine's suicide, had been about this house.

And so the place stood heretically vacant in a zero-vacancy real estate market. Instead of making him lots of money, it took most of his meager income in property taxes. It was his one luxury—his one indulgence.

He pushed the button on the stereo, let Brahms play.

He walked into the front bedroom—his old childhood bedroom, later Katherine's. It was stripped now, the only piece of furniture a wooden chair where Chadwick had once sat and told stories to Katherine. A woman's red coat, probably Norma's, was draped over the chair back. Chadwick wondered how long it had been there.

He remembered Katherine's bed in the corner, the crisp white sheets, the headboard he had painted—little pink stars, a cow jumping over a smiling moon.

Chadwick remembered the imprint Katherine's slender body had left on the sheets, the tarnished heroin spoon discarded on the floor, the police lights pulsing in the windows. A female plainclothes officer kneeling next to the black leather chair in the doorway, holding Mallory's hand while the little girl chewed on a silver necklace, sobbing if anyone tried to take it away from her.

Chadwick sat heavily in the wooden chair, in the middle of the empty room, surrounded by his memories.

Piano Quartet No. 3.

Chadwick closed his eyes. He thought about the number three, tried to strip away the years, imagining himself in 1903, then in 1803, trying to think of major events for those years.

When he was in high school, he used to sit by these windows and watch the younger kids play basketball across the street. Even then, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. He and Ann would someday teach together. He had enlisted in the Air Force for the education money, pure and simple, knowing that his parents couldn't provide college tuition even if they'd been inclined to do so. And later, after discharge, with Norma harping at him to get a business degree, he'd studied history instead, because it was the opposite of everything his father stood for—his father who spent his life oiling chronometers, making time go forward as smoothly and flawlessly as possible—no drama, no breaks, never a surprise. Certainly nothing ever went backwards.

Thinking about his father, Chadwick instinctively checked his watch. Seven o'clock. Nine o'clock in Texas. Mallory Zedman would be bunking down for the night. Hunter would be in his office, catching up on paperwork. Olsen . . . where would she be? Her room in the Big Lodge, or out for drinks in Fredericksburg, perhaps—a counselor's big night out.

It bothered him, what John had said about his blackmailer describing Mallory's day.

Chadwick had tried to dismiss the comment at first. No one got on the Cold Springs campus without Hunter's approval. Security was tight. And even if John was telling the truth, and the blackmailer had said something, it could've been a bluff—some facts recounted from daytime talk shows where boot camp schools got plenty of lurid publicity. Hell, some of that publicity Hunter had generated himself.

But Chadwick kept returning to what Kindra Jones had said—about how he should go back to confront John. She was right, though part of him wanted to stay bitter, to leave John to his fate.

John thought he had a monopoly on suffering?

Race Montrose was right: What could anyone do to Chadwick that was worse than leaving him alone?

Chadwick heard light footsteps on the stairs. He thought he was imagining it, but then the Brahms piece ended, and the creaking didn't.

“House isn't vacant!” he yelled. “I've got a gun.”

Norma appeared in the doorway, looking embarrassed, still wearing her wrinkled red dress from that morning. She raised her hands in surrender.

“I was . . . just driving past. Saw that car in front.”

Almost a decade since they'd been divorced, and Chadwick was surprised how quickly he still picked up on her signals. Her statement wasn't so much a lie as a request that he not ask. He read the truth—Norma came here often. The coat on the chair was not from many years ago. He remembered she'd been wearing it that morning, which meant she'd been here once today already.

Chadwick suddenly realized that if he'd stayed in San Francisco, he would've made the same pilgrimages, torturing himself, hating that he was drawn back to the source of the wound, but returning to this empty room nonetheless. How much Norma must resent him for not selling the property—how much easier it would've been for her if he hadn't kept this shrine open for visitation. Better it be painted mauve, trimmed with gingerbread, sold to some young business grad whose definition of history was any amount of time longer than a Super Bowl commercial.

“I found Race Montrose,” he told her. “Claims he never talked to you.”

“He's lying.”

“The boy is scared. He told me his big brother Samuel has been extorting John for years. Stealing the school's money is the final act.”

Norma shivered, hugged her arms. “You're sitting on my coat.”

Chadwick tossed it to her.

She stepped into the room, pacing, her eyes on the floor. “I know about Samuel. The real story—that Katherine wasn't just getting drugs from him, that they were in love. I heard it last week, from David. He felt sorry for me, that I didn't know this about my own daughter. How do you think that made me feel?”

A lowrider cruised by on San Angelo, the bass of its stereo loud enough to rattle the house's windows.

“David Kraft is a disturbed young man,” Chadwick told her. “He wants the school razed, preferably with all of us inside.”

“So we're going to shift the blame again?”

“No.”

“Because what I think? I think you knew about Katherine and Samuel a long time ago. That's why you went to Texas the week before she died—you didn't know what to do. So you ran to Hunter. You and Hunter came up with some fucking scheme to send my daughter to that
. . . place.
And meanwhile you don't tell me shit. Not only are you sleeping around behind my back—you are hiding things about
my
daughter. And if I'd known . . . if you'd bothered to fucking tell me . . .”

She pushed the air away, a gesture that reminded Chadwick a little too much of the crazy old woman Ella Montrose, mother of a murdered daughter.

“That night of the auction,” she told him, “I knew you were going to confess something. I thought you were going to tell me about your fling with Ann. But now I'm trying to believe it was something more important—that you were finally going to tell me the truth about my daughter. Maybe bring me into the problem so we could solve it. If that were the case, I could almost forgive you, Chadwick. I could almost forgive you for being too late.”

Her eyes were hungry. She seemed to be asking forgiveness, rather than offering it.

Chadwick wanted to tell her she was right. He wanted to buy her amnesty by agreeing with her, but the words wouldn't come.

Norma sensed his hesitation.

“You think Samuel holds a grudge,” she said. “He loved Katherine and he blames us for Katherine's death. All of us who failed her—you and me, Ann and John. The school, too. But what's bothering you is that he started with John. Why he went after the school's money and left you alone. That's it, isn't it?”

Chadwick didn't reply.

Norma traced her fingers down the wall, following the faint line of grime that marked the place where Babar the Elephant once hung. “What I want to say now—I'm afraid to say.”

“Norma Reyes, afraid to speak?”

“You're going to put it down to spite. When Race came to see me, he said, ‘She ain't going to be satisfied until they're both dead.'
She.”

“Mallory? She'd probably complained to him about her parents.”

Norma shook her head. “I've been thinking about why Race would come to me. Why
me,
why not somebody else? You see it, don't you?”

“Norma . . .”

“Ann needed the money. When I told her about the embezzlement, she wasn't shocked. She was . . . nervous. Calculating. Her biggest concern was buying time. I don't think she meant for anybody to find out until after the auction, when the fund was complete. After that she'd have two weeks over Christmas break to leave town, nobody at school, nobody checking up on her. A head start.”

“Norma, you're talking about Ann—”

“You were fucking her—you don't know her at all. She puts on a brave face, but she's in desperate shape. Her school's sinking. She'd been taking a salary cut every year to mask how bad it is. She's frantic about not having enough money to fight another custody battle, scared she's going to lose her daughter. You don't know what that will do to a mother, Chadwick, the fear of losing your child.”

“Don't I?”

“No.” Norma's tone was as sharp and proprietary as a barbed wire fence. “Being the mother is different,
pendejo.
You
don't
know.”

Chadwick studied her face—the familiar wisp of black hair looping over her ear, the half-moon curve of her chin.

“I have a job tonight,” he said. “I need to go.”

“Who you rescuing this time—some drug addict? Some kleptomaniac?”

“I'm stopping by John's house first. Anything you want me to tell him?”

Norma's face reddened. She turned toward the hallway, her face in the sunset. “Don't go there. It won't help.”

“Good seeing you, Norma.”

“I'm serious. I keep thinking about the two people Ann might want dead, like Race said. The two who stood in the way of everything she wanted. You know what she wanted, don't you? She wanted you.”

“Turn off the stereo, will you?”

“Ann is the one who brought you back here. Think about that, Chadwick.”

He was at the bottom of the stairwell when she called him one last time. Against his better judgment, he turned to look up at her, and in that moment he could imagine it was ten years ago, fifteen years ago. She could've been reminding him to get milk at the corner grocery, or tossing him Katherine's jacket and mittens, laughing because he and Katherine had once again forgotten them.

“I'm not bitter, Chadwick. I'm empty. You understand the difference? The difference is you see more clearly when you've got nothing left.”

Chadwick opened the door of the house, stepped out into the growing gloom of the evening. Down the block, he could hear the lowrider cruising, its stereo setting off car alarms all across the neighborhood like a bloodhound flushing quail.

By the time Chadwick returned to John's house in Marin, it was full dark, the fog settling in over the hilltops.

No cars in the driveway. No lights in the windows.

Chadwick thought it unlikely that John would've gone out, given his frazzled demeanor earlier, but there was no response when he rang the bell.