J is for Judgment (9 page)

I found myself smiling. “Pretty good,” I said. “I think he’s had his nose trimmed down. Here at the bridge and maybe some shaved along here.” Where my finger touched the nubby paper, Rupert would shade and contour with fine strokes of chalk or pencil, both of which he wielded with an air of confidence. The nose on the paper became narrow and aristocratic.

Rupert began to chat idly while he worked. “It’s always amazed me how many variations can be wrung from the basic components of the human face. Given that most of us come equipped with the standard-issue features …one nose, one mouth, two eyes, two ears. We not only look entirely different from one another, but we can usually identify each other on sight. Do portraits like I do, and you really begin to appreciate the subtleties of the process.” Rupert’s unhesitating pencil strokes were adding years and weight, transforming a six-year-old image to its current-day counterpart. He paused, indicating the eye socket. “What about the fold in here? Has he had his eyes done?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Droopiness? Bags? Five years would etch in a few lines, I should think.”

“Maybe some, but not a lot. His cheeks seemed more sunken. Almost gaunt,” I said.

He worked for a moment. “How about this?”

I studied the drawing. “That’s pretty close.”

By the time he was finished I was looking at a reasonable facsimile of the man I’d seen. “I think you got it. He looks good.” I watched as he sprayed the paper with a fixative.

“I’ll run off a dozen copies and get them over to Lieutenant Whiteside,” he said. “You want some yourself? I can run you a dozen.”

“That’d be great.”

I
had a quick bowl of soup with Henry and then downed half a pot of coffee, managing in the process to offset my lethargy and kick into high gear again. It was time to make contact with some of the principals in the cast. At 7:00 I drove south along the coastline toward Perdido/Olvidado. It wouldn’t be dark for another hour yet, but the light was fading, the air saturated with an ashen wash of twilight. Billows of fog blowing in from the ocean concealed all but the most obvious aspects of the land. Steep hills, pleated with erosion, rose up on my left, while to the right, the heaving gray Pacific was pounding against the shore. The quarter moon was becoming visible in the thick haze of the sky, a pale crescent of light barely discernible in the mist. Along the horizon, the offshore oil platforms lay at anchor like a twinkling armada. The island of St. Michael, and two that are known as the Rose and the Cross, are threaded like beads along the Cross Islands Fault, the
entire east-west structural zone undercut by parallel cracks. The Santa Ynez Fault, the North Channel Slope Fault, Pitas Point, Oak Ridge, the San Cayetano, and the San Jacinto faults branch off like tributaries from the granddaddy of them all—the great San Andreas Fault, which cuts obliquely across the Transverse Range. From the air, the San Andreas Fault forms an ominous ridge, running for miles, like the track left by a giant mole tunneling underground.

There was a time, long before the earth’s folding caused the mountains to buckle upward, when the Perdido basin was a hundred miles long and much of California was a lowland covered by vast Eocene seas. Back then this whole region was under water as far as the Arizona border. The petroleum deposits were actually derived from marine organisms, the sediment, in places, nearly thirteen thousand feet thick. There are times when I feel the hairs rising up along my arms at the vision of a world so wildly different from ours. I imagine the changes, millions of years speeded up like time-lapse photography, in which the land heaves and snaps, thrusting, plunging, and shifting in a thunderous convulsion.

I glanced out at the horizon. Twenty-four of the thirty-two platforms along the California coast are near Santa Teresa and Perdido counties, nine of them within three miles of shore. I’d heard the dispute about whether those old platforms could withstand a big 7.0-magnitude trembler. The experts were divided. On one side of the debate were the geologists and representatives of the state Seismic Safety Commission, who kept pointing out that the
oldest off-shore oil platforms were built between 1958 and 1969 before the petroleum industry adopted uniform design codes. Reassuring us of our comfort and security were spokesmen for the oil companies who owned the rigs. Gosh, it was baffling. I tried to picture the effect: all those rigs collapsing, oil spewing into the ocean in a gathering storm of black. I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It’s hard to know what’s actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It’s the suspense that’s killing me.

I passed a stretch of state beach and rounded the point, sliding into the town of Perdido from its westernmost edge. I took the first Perdido off ramp, cruising through the downtown business district while I got my bearings. The wide main street was edged with diagonal head-in parking—lots of pickup trucks and recreational vehicles in evidence. A convertible proceeded slowly down the street behind me with its car radio booming. The combination of brass instruments and thunderous bass reminded me of the thumping passage of a Fourth of July parade. The windows on every other business seemed to be decked with handsome canvas awnings, and I wondered if the mayor had a brother-in-law in the business.

The housing tract where Dana Jaffe now lived was probably developed in the seventies when Perdido
enjoyed a brief real estate boom. The house itself was a story and a half, charcoal-gray stucco with white wood trim. Most of the homes in the neighborhood had three and four vehicles parked in the driveways, suggesting a population more dense than the “single-family residential” zoning implied. I pulled into the drive behind a late-model Honda.

Twilight was deepening. Zinnias and marigolds had been planted in clusters along the walk. In the dim illumination from an ornamental fixture, I could see that the shrubs had been neatly trimmed, the grass mowed, and some effort made to distinguish the house from its mirror-image neighbors. Trellising had been added along the fence line. The honeysuckle vines trained up the latticework lent at least the illusion of privacy, perfuming the air with incredible sweetness. As I rang the bell, I extracted a business card from the depths of my handbag. The front porch was stacked high with moving cartons, all packed and sealed. I wondered where she was headed.

After a pause, Dana Jaffe answered the door with a telephone receiver tucked in the crook of her neck. She’d toted the instrument across the room, trailing twenty-five feet of cord. She was the kind of woman I’ve always found intimidating, with her honey-colored hair, her smoothly sculpted cheekbones, her gaze cool and level. She had a straight, narrow nose, a strong chin, and a slight overbite. A glint of very white teeth peeped out from full lips that, at rest, wouldn’t quite close. She put the face of the receiver against her chest, muffling our conversation for the person on the other end. “Yes?”

I held out my card so she could read my name. “I’d like to talk to you.”

She glanced at the card with a little frown of puzzlement before she handed it back. She held up an index finger, making an apologetic face as she gestured me in. I crossed the threshold and stepped into the living room just ahead of her, my gaze following the path of the telephone cord into a dining room that had been converted into office space. Apparently she did some kind of wedding consulting. I could see bridal magazines stacked everywhere. A bulletin board that hung above the desk was covered with photographs, sample invitations, illustrations of wedding bouquets, and articles about honeymoon cruises. A schedule with fifteen to twenty names and dates indicated upcoming nuptials that she needed to keep abreast of.

The carpeting was white shag, the couch and chairs upholstered in steel blue canvas, with throw pillows in off-white and seafoam green. Aside from a cluster of family photographs in antique silver frames, there were no knickknacks. The room was interspersed with a variety of glossy house plants, big healthy specimens that seemed to saturate the air with oxygen. This was fortunate given all the noxious cigarette smoke in the air. The furnishings were handsome, probably inexpensive knockoffs of designer brands.

Dana Jaffe was pencil thin, wearing tight, faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt, tennis shoes without socks. When I wear the same outfit, it looks like I’m all set to change the oil in my car. On her, the outfit had a careless elegance. She had her hair pulled into a knot at
the nape of her neck, tied with a scarf. I could see now that the blond was laced with silver, but the effect was artless, as if she were confident the aging process would only add interest to a face already honed and chiseled. The overbite made her mouth seem pouty and probably kept her from being labeled “beautiful,” whatever that consists of. She would be relegated to categories like “interesting” or “attractive,” though personally I’d have killed for a face like hers, strong and arresting, with a flawless complexion.

She picked up the cigarette she’d left in the ashtray, dragging on it deeply as she went on with her conversation. “I don’t think you’ll be happy with that,” she was saying. “Well, the style’s not going to be flattering. You told me Corey’s cousin was on the hefty side…. Okay, a blimp. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t want to put a peplum on a blimp….A full skirt….Uhhun, right. That’s going to minimize heavy legs and hips….No, no, no. I’m not talking about bulky fullness….I understand. Maybe something with a slightly dropped waist. I think we should find a dress with a shaped neckline, too, because that’s going to pull the eye upward. Do you understand what I’m saying? …Uhmhmmm….Well, why don’t I go through my books here and I’ll come up with some suggestions. You might have Corey pick up a couple of brides magazines from the supermarket. We can talk tomorrow….Okay…. All right, fine. I’ll call you back…. You’re entirely welcome…. You too.”

She replaced the receiver and gave the telephone cord a little looping flap, pulling the length of it toward
her. She extinguished the cigarette in an ashtray on her desk and then moved into the living room, smoke still trailing from her mouth. I took a quick moment to scan the room. In the small slice of family room that I could see, there were miscellaneous items of baby paraphernalia: a playpen, a high chair, a wind-up swing guaranteed to put an infant to sleep if it didn’t generate a lot of puking first.

“You’d never guess I’m a grandma,” she said with irony when she caught my eye.

I had placed my business card on the coffee table, and I saw her glance at it again with curiosity. I tucked in a hasty question before she had a chance to quiz me. “Are you moving? I saw the boxes on the porch. It looks like you’re all set.”

“Not me. My son and his wife. They’ve just bought a little house.” She leaned over and picked up the card. “Excuse me, I’d like to know what this is about. If it has to do with Brian, you’ll need to talk to his attorney. I’m not at liberty to discuss his situation.”

“This is not about Brian. It’s about Wendell.”

Her gaze became fixed. “Have a seat,” she said, indicating a nearby chair. She sat down on the edge of the couch, pulling an ashtray in closer to her. She lit another cigarette, her movements brisk, dragging deeply as she arranged both her lighter and the pack of Eve 100’s on the table in front of her. “Were you acquainted with him?”

“Not at all,” I said. I perched on a chrome-and-gray-leather director’s chair that squawked beneath my weight. Sounded like I’d made a rude butt noise as a joke.

She blew two streams of smoke from her nose. “Because he’s dead, you know. He’s been gone for years. He got into trouble and he killed himself.”

“That’s why I’m here. Last week, the California Fidelity agent who sold Wendell his life insurance policy…”

“Dick What’s-his-name…Mills.”

“That’s correct. Mr. Mills was vacationing in a little Mexican resort and spotted Wendell in a bar.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, sure, right.”

I stirred uncomfortably. “It’s true.”

She cut the power on the smile by half. “Don’t be silly. What are we talking here, a seance or something? Wendell’s
dead
, my dear.”

“As I understand it, Dick Mills did quite a bit of business with him. I gather he knew Wendell well enough to make the initial ID. I’m handling the followup.”

She continued to smile, but it was all form and no content. She blinked at me with interest. “He actually talked to him? You’ll have to forgive my skepticism, but I’m having a problem with this. The two of them had a conversation?”

I shook my head. “Dick was on his way to the airport at the time, and he didn’t want Wendell to catch sight of him. As soon as he got home, he called one of the CF vice-presidents, who turned around and hired me to fly down there. At this point, the identification isn’t positive, but the chances are good. It looks like he’s not only alive, but headed back to the area.”

“I don’t believe it. There’s been some mistake.” Her tone was emphatic, but her expression suggested she
was waiting for the punch line, a half smile flickering. I wondered how many times she’d played the scene in her head. Some police detective or an FBI agent sitting in her living room, giving her the news that Wendell was alive and well…or that his body had finally been recovered. She’d probably lost track of what she wanted to hear. I could see her struggle with a number of conflicting attitudes, most of which were bad.

Agitated, she took a drag of her cigarette and then blew out a mouthful of smoke, her mouth curling up in a parody of mirth as she tried on a new reaction. “Let me hazard a guess here. I’ll bet there’s money involved. A little payoff, is that it?”

“Why would I do that?” I asked.

“What’s the point, then? Why tell me about it? I couldn’t care less.”

“I was hoping you’d let me know if Wendell tried to get in touch.”