Power Slide (7 page)

He was deciding where to move the truck as I headed for the freeway. I made it almost to the gate before admitting I needed a few minutes to get myself together before heading onto the bridge. I pulled over and checked messages and got an earful.

7:46 P.M. “Darce, you okay?” Gary asked. “Call me. My car, is it okay? If you haven’t driven it into the Bay, you’re still in deep shit with everyone. Seriously.”

7:48 P.M. “Jeez, Darcy”—it was Gracie—“Jeez! I hope you’re okay—I know you’re okay—but where the hell are you? Call me before you call anyone else.” I heard what sounded like a snort. “You’re not going to want to talk to anyone else in this family.
Believe
me. Jeez!”

8:00 P.M. Mom: “You know I trust your judgment and don’t worry about you. But Darcy, you call me right now and tell me you’re okay.”

I called. Then I headed across the bridge, deposited Gary’s car in the slot by his office, and checked messages while I trudged back to the zendo.

Only one: 8:10 P.M. From Guthrie. “Listen, your brother’s a cop, right? I need to meet him tomorrow, first thing. Early, before there are people around. Palace of Fine Arts. 6:00 A.M. I’m turning off my phone. Sorry to be . . . Love you.”

JOHN SQUEALED TO a stop by the zendo at 5:45 and I slid into the passenger seat. Fog lay over the city like foam on a crash set. His lights were on, but by the time he reached the corner he was out-driving them.

“Gonna be worse in the Marina,” he grumbled.

“Guthrie’s not from here; he wouldn’t have known.”

“He could’ve checked. Hell, he could’ve just hauled himself over to Mom’s last night when we were all there.”

Outside, the world was gray, momentarily broken by spots of white as a car passed. The fog muted out so much that in the vacuum the engine roared.

“Why not your zendo? Why didn’t he come there instead of dragging us across town?” My brother was clearly at his grousing best. “Is he staying in the Marina and just making it easy on himself?”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“Why are you so sure? What do you know really about him, anyway?”

I was asking myself that very question.

Trying another tack, John asked, “What is he when he’s not working?”

“I don’t see him then.”

“Not even curious? Give me a break. But of course you don’t ask. You care about him, so you need to believe in him. How many times have I pointed out, when you care about someone, in your mind he can do no wrong?”

“Not true,” I protested. “Not any more.”

He grunted, and I was happy to let it go. He was entitled, I figured. Hadn’t he dragged himself out here for me? Besides, I knew he was right. I was always trying to be objective about people I cared about . . . but, damn, it was hard. How could I
not
jump to their defense? Hell, I didn’t even let people badmouth him, despite the litany of good reasons.

But he’d set me to worrying. I’d assumed Guthrie slept in his truck, at the set.
Don’t assume
, Leo always said, meaning look at any event with fresh eyes.

“Fog’s going to be so thick at that end of the Marina we won’t be able to see the Palace from the street. We’ll be lucky to make out the lagoon. Whatever made your boyfriend choose there of all places?”

Why
was
Guthrie focused on this area? “Yesterday, Gracie and I followed him over here, but we lost him behind a party or demonstration of some kind.”

“Swans.”

“No, it was people.”

“Swans,” John repeated. “What I said was what I meant. City’s threatening to relocate some of the ones in the lagoon again. That always sends the fur and feathers wackos into the streets with signs. It’s been going on for years. Don’t you remember? Mike dragged you to one of their protests—I chewed him out good.”

“Hey, Mike didn’t drag me. He went along because I needed a ride.” I couldn’t help but smile. “He never told you that part, huh? Not that there was any danger. A hundred or so people, high-end houses behind us, swans
and ducks in front. Biggest danger would have been falling in the water and that’s probably two feet deep. Mike ran into a girl he’d met when he worked with Dad a few blocks from there the summer before. I had to hunt him up to get my ride home.”

My oldest brother was shaking his head. “You just never can see him as less than perfect, even now.”

“What?”

“There you were, a kid taking honors classes, into track and gymnastics and dance and God knows what else. Half the time you didn’t even make it home to dinner. How’d you have time to get so passionate about swans? Was it Mike who fed you stories about the swan danger? So he could run into this girl?”

“I may be naïve, but you are the master of conspiracy theory. Why would Mike go to all the trouble of doing the setup and carting me over here, on the chance of meeting a girl he liked? He was star quality. All he had to do was pick up the phone.”

“But he didn’t. How do I know? Because that demonstration was a couple of weeks before he left. I scoured the city for the girl. I’m surprised you don’t remember me asking you what he said about her. You never saw her, remember? You took his word about her. But there was no girl.”

“No girl
you
found.”

“Will you stop! Stop believing your picture—”

Don’t assume! Had I assumed about Mike? How much? Omigod, had I
always
assumed?
It was too much to deal with, especially now, in the car with the brother who’d be only too ready to pounce. “You’re right.”

“What?”

“You’re right, John.” It shocked me as much as it did him. “Maybe there was no girl; maybe he just got sick of me and the swans.”

“Or maybe something else.”

“Yeah.”
Game over.

Finally he muttered, “Damn fog.”

At least he’d stopped bitching about Guthrie. Worried as I was about him, I was thankful for this small respite. The fog was blowing thick across the windshield. The wipers were on high but couldn’t push it back fast enough.

“Those were the days,” he said, “working with Dad. He didn’t run his own business yet, and so he was pulling in a lot of overtime. Man, were we wiped out by the time we rolled into the house. But, I’ll tell you, it was the perfect summer job. Dad offered it to Gary but after one summer he was too good to smudge his hands.”

“Gary said he didn’t want to be accused of working a job that ought to be union.”

“He was nineteen! And clueless! How’d he ever know he was gonna be a hotshot lawyer back then?”

I wondered but let it drop and John seemed glad to also. For him, reliving happy family memories was a peace offering. But it was also an idealized picture of the family. I’d heard a lot of this before, but I was glad to let him settle into a better frame of mind.

He turned into the maze that made up the Marina district. I gauged we were blocks away from our destination, but it was just a guess.

“But by the time Mike got there, Dad was top dog. Those were the days! Running three or four crews, heaviest thing he’d be hoisting was a clipboard. You just about had to make an appointment to catch up with him. And you know Mike,” he said in that way we fell into talking about him, as if we’d seen him yesterday and he’d be dropping by tomorrow. “He gets along with anyone. He liked it so much he took the fall semester off. By the end of his time there, before the quake, he could have handled any job on the site, maybe not journeyman level, but well enough. Dad was
figuring he’d be an engineer or maybe an architect. He took it hard when Mike just walked away . . . I mean from the job.”

As opposed to when he walked out the door and disappeared. Dad had taken that hard, too, but what with all the reconstruction after the Loma Prieta quake then, he was gone working dawn to dark.

“Did your guy bother to mention what corner he’d be on? Unless he’s got himself surrounded by light bars there’s no way we’re going to see him.”

The thought had struck me, too. The park’s two blocks long and another wide with a lagoon in the middle and the reconstructed Greco-Roman temple behind that. “He’ll be looking for us.”

We turned left. The fog suddenly seemed less compressed, as if it were released from the narrow passage between buildings and was spreading over the lagoon.

“This is it. Let me out.”

“Hang on. Let’s see if we see him.”

I reached for my phone. Before I could peer through the contacts list, John recited Guthrie’s number. “Amazing.” I dialed. He lowered the windows, but there was no ringing, only icy gusts. “Maybe he’s got his phone turned off.”

“So it doesn’t disturb the people across the street inside their houses? Dream on.”

“Hell, just let me out! We’ve gone the length of the park. I’ll start back on the path here and meet you back at the far corner.”

“We’ll drive back. If he doesn’t show, then we get out.”

I nodded, though, of course my brother didn’t see me. Out the window, I knew, was the lagoon with its demonstration-worthy fowl tucked sleeping among the grasses at the scalloped edges of the water. Bushes sprouted around the building and the water. Trees overhung. A walkway followed the water’s edge. Not a place where noise carries.

John slowed. “You hear anything?”

“Zip.” Still, Guthrie couldn’t miss our car.

“This guy . . . How do you know—”

“If he’s reliable?”

“If he’s anything.”

“If he wasn’t reliable, he wouldn’t have work. Movie companies don’t waste money on stunt doubles who oversleep.” Guthrie’d always been dependable. Except yesterday. Except now. “Let me out!”

“Wait, I’m turning around.” He hung a U, his headlights shining off the cars parked beside the park, showing the white of the fire hydrant, the chrome of a car on the grass.

I was out in an instant, staring at the black sports car on the grass that had to be Guthrie’s.

“On the grass!” John came up behind me. “Does he park on his own lawn? But, of course, you don’t know.” He shone a flashlight onto the dashboard, the floor, the wet seats. “Looks like he got out and closed the door. What kind of guy doesn’t bother to put up the top in this kind of weather?”

“Give him a fucking break, will you? It’s six in the morning. Maybe he didn’t stop to make himself more comfortable so he didn’t hold us up. Did you even consider that?” Before he could retort, I yelled, “Guthrie! Guthrie!” I strained to hear his voice, his shoes slapping the macadam. Silence. “I’ll go this way”—I motioned north toward the Golden Gate—“you go around the corner and on.”

“6:10. Meet back here by 6:30 no matter what.”

I started off, but he grabbed my arm. “No matter what. Agreed?”

Where could he be? This was crazy.

“Darcy, you know he could just be in the bushes taking a leak.”

“Sure. You have another flashlight?”

He gave me his. I didn’t wait to see if he had a spare. I ran down the sidewalk by the street. “Guthrie?” I stopped, straining to hear any kind of response, then ran on another twenty yards and called again. It wasn’t night any more; the world was a dirty gray. At this hour on a Monday morning, cars would be pouring in from Marin County to the north, flowing along Doyle Drive onto Marina Boulevard fifty yards beyond the park. But right now there was no rumble of trucks, no sounds of brakes or horns. Across the street no lights shone from houses, no cars pulled out of drive-ways or away from the curb. And no one walked, ran, or called out from the park.

I started back, this time cutting across the grass to take the path next to the lagoon. “Guthrie!”

Water lapped softly, stirred by the wind. I thought I heard ducks or swans fluttering in their nests, but it might have just been the water. I aimed the light under the bushes. No birds and definitely no Guthrie. Where was he? I checked my phone again, even though it had been on since the last time I looked at it. “Guthrie!”

Had he had a heart attack? He was too healthy. But seemingly healthy people drop dead. The stress? Was he lying there collapsed on the grass? I arced the beam low across the lawn. Or worse, could he have fallen in the water? That was absurd, not Guthrie, the guy who’d done a forty-foot-high fall last year. He’d broken ribs then. Maybe they never healed, or pierced his lung, or bled or—

He couldn’t be in this shallow lagoon, but I shone the light across the water anyway, then down into the water along the side of the raised edge. A couple of birds squawked. I almost dropped the flashlight. “Guthrie! Are you here?”

The light hit something white. Round and white, like a shoulder, or a butt, or the top of his head. “Oh, God!” I stepped up on the ledge, leaned
over the water. It couldn’t be—The light was shaking in my hand, the wind icing my sweaty face. It just couldn’t—I leaned far over, bracing my foot on the side of the ledge to keep from falling in. The light shone brighter, clearer—on a stone.

Relief flooded through me. For an instant I forgot where I was and almost lost my balance. Then, as suddenly, I was livid. Where the hell was he, anyway? Did he get lost in the fog? Forget his phone? Goddamn him! Maybe, like Mike, he’d walked off to a new life. Maybe he was in a cab on the way to the airport.

“Guthrie!”

I was almost back to the middle of the park. I heard John’s voice calling his name and getting louder. Our flashlight beams crossed in the water and then on the lawn.

“Did you see
anything
?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

“No. We’re going to have to wait for better light. We might as well go hunt up some breakfast and—”

“John! He
said
he’d be here. If he changed his mind he would have called. He’s got to be here. Or maybe he went around to the temple and got lost.”

“I was there.”

“Can’t you call the crime scene techs and get some light here? Or a dog. I could call Mom and she’d bring Duffy.”

“Cool off. It’s already dawn above the fog. It’ll be light soon.”