Reilly 09 - Presumption of Death (7 page)

“Huh?”

“Silver decorative disks, engraved with designs. They attach to the leather of the belt. Was he?”

“Got me. Just a minute.” He was gone more than a minute. Paul came toward the car, worry lines etching his usually smooth forehead.

“Hey,” Tustin said into the phone. Nina held her breath. “Sorry, I don’t remember. Wish had on that denim jacket.”

“What about Danny?”

“He had that long-sleeved cammy jacket buttoned up pretty well.”

She punched off. “I need to call Sandy,” she told Paul. “It could be Danny.”

“Don’t tell her that. Just tell her we’re on it.”

“You’re not convinced?”

“We ought to wait until a final identification is made before we give Sandy hope that it isn’t Wish.”

“Where to now?” Nina said as she dialed Sandy’s number.

“Home. Regroup. We’re only human.”

“And we try to reach Danny again?”

“Right.”

4

T HEY STOPPED AT THE NOB HILL in South Salinas on the way home. While they picked out artichokes and fish to grill, pushing their cart among tired women farmworkers in bandannas covered with baseball caps, Nina thought back to the Raley’s in South Lake Tahoe, the buzzing expectancy of the fun-loving tourists trolling its aisles for frozen daiquiri mixes, cigarettes, lowbrow magazines, all manner of things they forbade themselves back home in the lands of political and dietary correctness.

Tahoe, lake of the free and the damned. She felt a pang of homesickness, and wished fervently that she had never dragged Wish down here. He had come because she had come.

Back at Paul’s, where the air smelled of eucalyptus, Paul poured wine for her and Tecate for himself, then put the charcoal on to heat. Changing swiftly into shabby brown shorts, he disappeared into the bedroom, where Nina heard keys clicking.

Hitchcock nudged her. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “Let’s do it.” She placed her wineglass in the refrigerator. Attaching Hitchcock to his leash, she followed the bounding black dog outside and up Paul’s street, permeated with ocean scents.

At the end of a long block she stopped and unhooked him, pulling his favorite grimy ball out of her pocket. She tossed it toward the tall golden grass of an empty lot into the abalone sky. Hitchcock flew to the ball, slapped it around in his mouth, then hustled back to her, dropping the ball at her feet. He repeated this operation dozens of times, untiring, ever thrilled.

Tonight his joy couldn’t lift her spirits. Guileless Wish was gone, maybe forever. All he’d ever wanted was to follow Paul around and get his degree and help people. She bent down to scratch the back of her knee.

A black thing about four inches across moved on the asphalt beside them. A tarantula! Fascinated, woman and dog stared. The tarantula lifted a hairy black leg and seemed to scratch itself too, in an arachnoid salute.

The spider didn’t seem inclined to scurry off, and it was blocking their path. Hitchcock kept his nose out of reach, wary.

Nina stamped her foot.

No reaction. The tarantula’s glossy eyes didn’t blink. It stared them down.

“It’s time to go back anyway, boy,” Nina told Hitchcock. They turned around and hastened back to the line of condos below.

Hitchcock circled and plopped on his favorite spot in the living room, while Nina hid the slimeball and then washed her hands in hot water.

Nina made dinner while Paul worked in the bedroom. Fish and rice, the food of lovers, guaranteed not to cause gas.

She hurried outside to flip the ahi, located a blue bowl, which she filled with rice and carried to the table, pulled asparagus out of the steamer, squeezing lemon over Paul’s portion and dolloping her own with butter, then set the fish on a dish on the table.

Fish. Dish. Wish. All the time, thinking about Wish. She was beginning to mourn.

She called Paul, picked up her napkin, and wiped under her eyes.

Paul practically leapt to his place, as if he were the one who had just spent half an hour playing with the dog. He rubbed his hands together, and took a big whiff of the meal.

“Phone rang while you were out,” he said.

“Sandy again?” Their earlier phone call had been brief and unsatisfying. Sandy seemed not to understand the full picture, or, more likely, she was intentionally and stubbornly obtuse about what might have happened to Wish, and Nina didn’t really want to trash her illusions.

“No. Your dad. He wants to see you.”

“Oh. He called last week too. Somehow, because I’m only a few miles from him, there’s a shorter leash, or something. He expects a lot of contact.”

“And why not?” Paul asked. “He’s getting on. You’re close by for once.”

Nina ran her hand through her hair. “I can’t worry about him right now. I’m too worried about Wish. Dad’s fine. He’s got his thirty-year-old wife and his four-year-old son. Ten years younger than Bob, his grandson. All this generation-skipping stuff gets me down.”

“All so modern,” Paul said, taking seconds on the fish and the rice. “Want to know what I’ve been doing while you, who swear you cannot cook, were casually whipping up this superb meal?”

“What?”

“Computer chicanery, pirated software, reverse directory.”

“Uh huh.”

“That phone number in Wish’s book for Danny Cervantes? Well, we now have an address. It’s gotten so simple to find addresses from phone numbers these days. Google does it in ten seconds.”

“Good work. Where does he live?”

“On Siesta Court in Carmel Valley Village.”

“The Village? Close to-”

“Right, the fires. And there’s another name listed at the same address: Ben Cervantes. Must be that uncle the Boyz mentioned.”

“We’ll go see him.”

“Good plan,” Paul said, smug, as if he hadn’t already laid it out.

“Finished?” Nina asked.

“Ah, very full. Very happy,” he said.

“The dishes are yours.”

He stood, picked up his plate, and said, “Now I remember why I like to cook.”

While Paul loaded dishes into the dishwasher, Nina surfed the channels, trying to find the news among the two hundred stations that flitted seductively by. Finally, she located a local channel that mentioned the most recent fire.

“At least one person is dead,” said the blond anchorwoman. She wore a silk scarf over a tight low-cut “business” suit jacket. A map behind her pinpointed the locations of the various fires.

“Authorities believe that there’s a method behind this madness. Apparently, the antidevelopment people are resorting to domestic terrorism. Their weapon of choice? Arson.” She then identified herself and her station.

A commercial showing elderly zombies wandering in an eroded esophagus came on, touting a prescription antacid.

She flipped the television off.

“Let’s go talk to
Tío
Ben. Unless you’re too tired. It’s been a long day,” Paul called from the kitchen.

“I’ll get my bag.” She heard the phone from the bedroom and picked up the bedside extension.

“Mom?” said the voice on the phone.

“Bob! I’m so glad to hear your voice! I was thinking of you this morning.”

“Why?”

She didn’t mention Wish. Bob was Wish’s friend, but he had his own problems. “Just… I hope you’re being careful.”

His sigh sank into depths so low only a fourteen-year-old could find them. “Just in case these Swedes go berserk and come after me with hatchets. Right.”

“Driving. Being out at night. With Nikki. You know.” Stop, she told herself, you’re lecturing him already. With an effort, she went on cheerfully, “How’s the weather in old Stockholm?”

“It’s raining.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock. In the morning.”

“Amazing. You’re on the other side of the world.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

“Your dad okay?”

“Fine.”

“So how are you?” she said.

“Not so good. See, Mom,” he said, as if they were continuing a shared line of thought, “what I don’t understand is, how come they like you one minute and the next minute they don’t? What kind of B.S. is that?”

“Do you mean… Nikki?”

“No, I mean Genghis Khan.”

How could one so young sound so dour? “You sound upset.”

“She told me she really really liked me!” he burst out. “I operated on the basis of that!”

“I’m sorry, Bob.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “It’s just… see, we went to practice yesterday. All the guys in the band were there. Nikki fronts on a couple of songs, and sometimes she plays her guitar. I was doing digital recording that we might upload to the Web site she designed for them… anyway, Lars, he thinks he’s so cool. He’s like so much older than she is!”

“How old?”

“Twenty!”

Three years older than Nikki then, six years older than Bob. Oceans of time between them all.

“Well, I think
you’re
cool, Bob.”

“Being cool only matters if the people who think you’re cool are cool. No offense, Mom. Anyway, Lars is the drummer. He was sitting on a couch smoking a cigarette and talking about how he’s part Spanish, and somehow…”

She heard the pain in his voice and felt a little piece of her own heart chipping.

“Somehow she ended up next to him. Next thing you know, they’re kissing. I was disgusted, Mom. I mean, she went to the practice with me, you know? We were a couple. Everybody knew it even though she didn’t act like it half the time.”

Nikki must favor sofas. The image of Bob and Nikki on her sofa back in Tahoe several months before was permanently burned into Nina’s brain. Nikki, three years older, much too wise, and her fledgling son, entwined… Nina had poured herself a glass of wine, collected herself, and more or less kicked Nikki out. Which had only caused more hormones to hit the fan.

Unwisely, she went back to lecturing. “You haven’t started smoking, have you?”

“I didn’t call for this, Mom! I’m tryin’ to talk to you about something important!”

“Okay, okay, honey. All right. So. Nikki and Lars.”

“I can’t stand to go to rehearsals anymore, Mom. She’s made her choice. But I miss her. I don’t like Sweden, Mom. Nobody smiles and they all wear black and smoke all the time.”

And they’re all way too old for you, Nina thought with huge relief. “You could take some music lessons. Your dad’ll get you into a summer school. He’s the one you went to visit, Bob, and now maybe you can spend more time with him.” Bob’s father, Kurt, a classical pianist, had not known Nikki was coming to Stockholm either.

“You don’t get it. You just don’t get it.”

“Honey, what are you going to do?”

“I want her back.”

“I know you do.”

“But when I told her that, you know what she said? You won’t believe this.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me I was too young for her.”

“Well, those three years… they are big ones, Bob.”

“Anyway.” She visualized his shrug. “Screw it. I have to come home and figure things out.”

The shock waves this announcement generated made her sit back, gulping.

“Question, Mom. Where exactly is home? Am I going to Carmel or Tahoe? I need to know.”

She put him off. It wasn’t hard.

They talked for a few minutes more. Bob told her how he spent his time when he wasn’t getting into trouble with Nikki, and about Kurt’s latest performance. By the time they hung up, he sounded less miserable.

She had done her job. Bob felt better. She felt worse, so much worse. She went out to the deck and slumped across from Paul.

“Well? How’s the boy?”

“His heart’s broken.”

“Nikki dumped him?”

“Yep.”

Paul shook his head sadly. “It’s the first time, but it won’t be the last,” he said. “I hope Kurt’s up to the challenge.”

Nina thought but didn’t say, I don’t know if Kurt will get a chance.

“Women have this problem with constancy,” Paul added.

“Men have this problem with thinking women are their property,” Nina shot back.

They looked at each other. Paul’s silence rang like the end of the fifteenth round at Madison Square Garden. She hung her purse off her shoulder. “Let’s go, then,” she said.

Wait a second, it was the doorbell making that racket. No dulcet chimes for Paul’s door.

Nina smoothed down her hair and went to answer it.

She peeked through the peephole Paul had installed in his door.

“Who is it?” she said, but flung open the door when she saw who was standing outside.

“Yo, Nina,” Wish said. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

5

H E WORE BATTERED BLACK DOC MARTENS boots, Nina noted, still laced in some complicated fashion. He also wore the denim jacket and jeans the Boyz had described, but the T-shirt seemed to be missing and the pants were tattered and black. His eyes were almost swollen shut and what Nina could see of his hands, wrapped with white bandages, were red and blistered, glistening with petroleum jelly. His singed, wild hair hadn’t been combed that day. All in all, he looked like a sadhu who had tripped on the coals.

Nina embraced him. He was so skinny!

Even with this distressing getup, Nina saw that someone had washed him up and bandaged him. He was walking and talking and medicated. She drew him in and helped him take the boots off.

“I’m thirsty,” he said hoarsely. In the kitchen, Paul offered him a beer, which he refused, and a couple of Cokes, which he sucked down fast. “Sorry to cause all this trouble,” he told Paul. “I got in a situation and had to go undercover.”

Nina said, “I’m going to make you a sandwich. Peanut butter okay? Your parents have been so worried. Paul and I have been looking for you.”

“I’ve been in the hospital.”

“What? I called the hospital.”

“I went to the clinic in San Juan Bautista.” He’d driven himself thirty miles to another county.

“Why?”

“I better call my mom. Could I borrow the phone?”

The call lasted a long time, and if it was possible, when he finished the call and walked back into the living room he looked more disheveled after talking to her than before. He sat down heavily on the couch, fingers embedded in Hitchcock’s fur. Nina sat close beside him.