Power Slide (24 page)

“No! Not John! Mike would—”

I lost it. “Janice, what the fuck is going on with Mike? What is it that is such a big deal that he’s put his family through this for twenty years?”

“He didn’t want to hurt the family.”

I snorted.

“No, really. He was in such a bind—”

“Why? I can’t imagine any scenario that’s worse than letting all your brothers and sisters put their lives on hold and leaving your mother to think you’re dead. Look at us: Katy’s the only one with a decent marriage. It’s like the rest of us froze in time when Mike walked out. I just thought I was in love with a guy because our connection was that we didn’t ask any questions. So, what’s this thing that’s so important to Mike that he could let it paralyze us all these years?”

She took a deep breath and then another, and then shifted so she wouldn’t be looking at me. “The summer before he left—”

“The summer before the earthquake.’

“He worked with Dad.”

“On a job he hated,” I said.

“Right. He tried to avoid it, but we all forced it on him. John kept at Dad, reminding him that he’d made a job for him and would have for Gary, so why not Mike? Dad was in charge; he could hire. Gary chided Mike about being lazy. Even I thought Dad was being unfair to Mike and said so. Everyone had an opinion. So, in the end Mike went to work for Dad, doing foundation work in the Marina.”

“Omigod! The foundations that failed in the earthquake!”

“Right.” She inhaled and let out her breath very slowly. “Dad . . . this is what Mike discovered. Money was tight. Mike was in college, Katy’s husband had gotten laid off, and Dad had cosigned the note on their house, I’d—I’d borrowed money for grad school and hadn’t paid it back. Mom and Dad had gone on that big anniversary trip to Australia. It was all coming due. So Dad cut corners on the materials. If the earthquake had been smaller . . . if he’d been working in another part of town where the ground didn’t turn to mush . . . But, Darcy, people died.”

I was sitting with my head in my hands. My hands were nearly over my ears. I didn’t want to hear. Dad? “There’s got to be some mistake—”

“There isn’t. Trust me. Trust Mike. If there had been a mistake, he’d be sitting right here. But there is no mistake. And Mike never would have hurt the family. But he couldn’t stay here, knowing about Dad. He couldn’t bear to face Dad, because, of course, Dad knew. Why do you think he had another heart attack? The one that killed him.”

“But then, after he was dead—”

“I’m not certain he ever heard that Dad died. But even if he did, what was he going to do, come back and tell the family he left because Dad was a chiseler who killed people? How could he do that to Mom?”

“Are you saying he’s alive, but he will never be able to come back? No! That’s not going to happen. I don’t care what comes out. You find him. I’ll deal with John. I’ll smooth this over with everyone. I’ll lie for you; I’ll lie
for him. I will do whatever I have to, but I can’t stand knowing he’s out there and I can’t see him!” Now it was me who was sobbing.

And it was a few minutes more before I said, “Do it now. Okay?”

She nodded. She looked empty.

As I sat there, in the swamp of our emotion, I thought of Gabriella. Our entire family had devoted our adult lives to finding our brother. Her long-lost brother had done something really stupid before he left, but he came back, he rang her bell, and she didn’t even open the door.

JANICE WANTED A week to work her networks, a week before I told the family. I talked her down to a day, with a check-in before I’d say anything to anyone. To her it was no time at all, to me an eternity.

In the meantime, I needed to get Tancarro to at least describe Hammond, or the Hammond of twenty years ago. It wouldn’t be much to go on—well, next to nothing unless he had a birthmark on his forehead or three ears—but at least I wouldn’t be sitting on a trolley next to the guy and not know.

As for Gabriella, I had to get in her face and let her know what an ass she’d been. I’d tell her what I’d learned about her brother during his long absence. Him helping out Zahra. How he struggled against his own fear year after year. I wouldn’t mention the smuggling or other things she wouldn’t want to hear—that’s what police were for. Maybe my information would be a gift, the way Guthrie had viewed what he was returning to her. Maybe it would just make her feel lousy. That would be okay, too. I wouldn’t be doing it for her. It’d be for him, likely, the last thing I’d ever do for him.

What I did not want, however, was to piss off Higgins. Or distract her from however much effort she was making to find Hammond. Or, worse yet, run into her there.

Nor—God forbid—did I want to run into my family. Not before I figured out how to pass on Janice’s information without setting them at her throat. I wanted to do the right thing.

“I want to do the right thing, Leo.”

“One might say that would be returning one of Inspector Higgins’s phone messages.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“When?”

“Right after you absconded through Mr. Tancarro’s rear door. That’s pretty much a quote.”

“Nothing since then?”
Nothing useful to me.

“Nope.”

“Did she sound threatening?”

He hesitated. “Threatening? No. ‘A competent police department never lowers itself to threats.’”

I laughed. “Now even you’re quoting my brother, John.”

“He called, too.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said I’d pass on the messages. I know you worry I’ll give away secrets or be pushed to push you. I’m truthful; I’m not obedient. Still . . .”

“Right. I’ll check in with them before they all end up here.”

Leo and I were sitting in his room, him cross-legged on his futon, me on a zafu on his carpet. It was midday, and warm for San Francisco. He was wearing a black T-shirt and drawstring pants. He looked like he was melting down into his futon. I’d made tea. Making him tea had been one of his
first requirements of me when I became his
jisha,
his assistant, and now the simple, focused actions had pulled me from the turmoil of my worries into the calm of the room. I’d poured the tea and we each held a small handle-less cup gingerly, waiting for it to cool enough for us to drink.

As if reading my thoughts, Leo said, “Such a simple process. So many actions all coming to one point.”

He was asking, “What’s your point?” When I didn’t—couldn’t—answer, he began recounting once again the story of Seijo, the Chinese girl whose father promised her to her cousin but suddenly announced he was giving her to another man. He paused and nodded at me to pick up the thread.

“Her lover stalked off because he was offended.”
Like Mike, sort of.
“She followed him because she loved him.”
Like me, like Janice, like all of us.
“And when they came back home to her father, it was because they missed him. They missed the decent person he had been before he did that terrible thing. Her lover-husband was still caught up in the broken promise, but she wasn’t and so she could walk back in the house without hesitation.”
Oh
. “If her father had been an evil man, the story wouldn’t exist. They wouldn’t have been shocked by his betrayal; they wouldn’t have wanted to come home.”
Oh
.

“I need to talk to John.”

He nodded in response to my certainty. “But?”

“But? Well, unless Janice works a lot faster than I’m thinking she will, John can wait till tomorrow.”

Leo had to be baffled, but he chose not to show it. He raised his cup, took the smallest of sips of the still-too-hot tea, and set the cup on the napkin on the floor.

“But Guthrie? If Guthrie was Seijo and he was aggrieved that his parents left control of his inheritance to his sister . . . but that’s more like
Seijo’s lover, the guy who’s indignant. So if Guthrie’s like the lover . . . but that doesn’t make sense.”

“Koans are like dreams. All the characters are you. And the story varies depending on the translation.” He paused. “Things change.”

I smiled. Things change: Suzuki-roshi’s answer to the question, What is Zen? I’d heard it condensed to just “change,” since “things” have no permanent being. “Well, Guthrie sure changed. The guy I knew had done a world of changing from the pain in the ass his sister knew.”

“Why did Seijo come back?” he insisted. “The story says it was because she missed her father. But what did she really miss? What really drew her back?”

“Oh, of course. Herself. The story says that when she and her husband came back to her father’s house, the husband went to apologize to her father and her father said, ‘What are you talking about? Seijo’s been here, in a coma, the whole time.’ Seijo came back because of her ‘self’ in the coma. And when her self in the bed saw her, the two came together and she was whole. When the halves come together it’s the first time she stands up and takes an action on her own. Up till then she’s just been reacting. Ah . . . she came back to be real.”

I sipped the tea. It had cooled now. “Guthrie wanted to return something to his sister. Maybe something that would make things right.”

“And that would be . . . ?”

“Okay, so I still don’t know what he wanted to return. But, Leo, you remember you said I was stuck, like Seijo in the bed, paralyzed by my need to find Mike. My whole family is.”

“Bed’s crowded.”

“Mmm. But Gabriella sure got stuck when Guthrie left. From what Guthrie’s friend Pernell Tancarro said, she was fine and as up-and-coming as he was back then.”

“Tancarro didn’t rise?”

“Not poetically. He isn’t in a coma like she is, but he didn’t run away with his love, either. He just stopped writing. That night seems to have changed all their lives. Look, there were four guys involved in the burglary plan—to send one of them down the chimney. They make such a racket, someone calls the cops. They panic and the rest of them run, but Guthrie’s so obsessed he goes down the chimney. That was twenty years ago and since then he’s been obsessed, climbing down ever-taller chimneys and trying to make himself stay there more than a few seconds. Makes my family seem downright normal.”

“Odd.”

“Odder yet, because after that Santa move, he wasn’t freaked. Au contraire, he got himself together and became an A-1 stuntman. So that’s Guthrie and Tancarro. A third guy’s taken himself into exile in Thailand, and who knows about Ryan Hammond, the guy Guthrie wanted to go down the chimney. Blink said he was here, in the city, but unless the police pick him up, that means nothing. And none of this suggests why Guthrie should be bludgeoned and left under his car in the park. What I have to do is see that room and find out what happened when Guthrie walked out of that fireplace.”

“You’re going down the chimney?”

“No. That’d be the easy way. I’m—”

But it didn’t matter what I intended to do. At the moment I had to go deal with my brother, John, who was standing in the downstairs hall calling my name.

“YOU LOOK AWFUL, John.”

“Yeah, well, I was up all night trying to get a flight out of Houston.”

“Have you had coffee?”

“Do I look like it?”

“You look like you’ve been in Guantanamo.” I steered him through the courtyard onto the sidewalk and toward a family in Bermuda shorts. Tourists. They were comfortable now, but if they stayed out past five they’d understand why they hadn’t seen shorts on San Franciscans. “Do you know if Higgins—”

“No. Haven’t even checked in, and if I had, I still wouldn’t know if Higgins—Anything.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you were still in Matamoros.”

“Janice called.”

“I thought she just told you I was okay.”

“That’s what she thought.” He was holding open the door to Renzo’s. We took one of the tables and ordered.

“You still haven’t said how come you raced back,” I said warily. “Janice just told you I was okay, right? Not to worry—”

“She called me. That’s one red flag. She steers clear unless it’s dire. You called her rather than Gracie or Gary. Another. And you were spending
the night with her when she could have detoured over here and left you on your own mat. Or, more decently, taken you to Mom’s.”

“She called Mom.”

“Hmm.”

“Okay, so I didn’t want to be pressed. But what about the body in Mexico?”

“What about the body in Mexico? Doesn’t that say it all? No question about whether it was Mike. That’s exactly the way Janice asked. She said what she had to and then, as if she remembered her manners, she inquired about my trip. You don’t need to be a detective to catch on that there’s a big lead on Mike and that it’s coming from you, you who have been incommunicado for days.”

Renzo set down the cups and came back with a porcini and chanterelle mushroom focaccia. I took a large bite. It was still too hot, but I didn’t care. “I’ve got a lead. I can’t tell you more yet. But you’re key to making it work.”