The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (10 page)

“Murdered! You talking about Police Chief Orton—is that the Orton you mean? His daughter?” Ophelia Green tried for a disbelieving laugh but her eyes showed fear. “Big, rich people like that? What truck would they have with us? What serious charge?”

“He got a letter. The kind clipped out of magazines and pasted on the page. He didn’t like it, didn’t believe it. It said someone had his daughter and wanted twenty-five thousand dollars for her safe return. He went to Sangre de Cristo to find her. She wasn’t there. But her roommate told him about a telephone call she’d had just before she left. From a boy. For some reason he wondered if that boy had sounded like a Negro. For the same reason, he came here, didn’t he? The charge was kidnapping.”

Maybe it was the dying light but he didn’t think so. She’d gone a sick, ashy color. She turned away her head and groaned. Her hand groped out for the screen-door hook and pried it up. Almost inaudibly she said, “You better come in.” He went in. The room still held the heat it had baked in all day. She dropped into an overstuffed chair that was covered by a threadbare flower print. It faced a television set whose plastic case had split and curled. At the ends of the bloated chair arms, her hands hung bony. Her head drooped. She moved it from side to side. “I knew it, just knew it. I should have locked this place up and gone to my sister-in-law in L.A. Thelma. Be no hardship for her. She’s a surgical nurse. I shouldn’t have listened.”

“To Mrs. Orton, you mean?”

“She said there wouldn’t be any trouble. Now that he was dead. Now that they had that crazy man locked up for killing him. Nobody else alive knew about that letter. Only her and me. But life’s not like that. I knew you’d come along. Not who you’d be—just that you had to be.”

“How did you know about the letter?” Dave glanced around the neat, discouraged room. A raffia wastebasket unraveled in a corner. Curled magazines stuck out of it. “Did Lester paste it up here?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen him!” she cried. “Anyway, he’d never do such a thing.”

“Ben Orton had taken two years of his life. He’d destroyed his future. Becoming a lawyer meant a lot to him. Why wouldn’t he want revenge?”

“All black people are not savages,” she said. “Black people were building this country before people with names like yours ever stepped off the boat.”

“Right,” Dave said, “but you don’t know whether he pasted up that letter or not, do you? You weren’t here. You were out working.”

“Only way he’d do that was if she made him,” Ophelia Green said. “He didn’t hate Ben Orton. Or anybody. Hate you can’t live with. I taught him that from a baby. Hate you can only die with. But nobody taught her. And she did hate him—for everything he ever gave her, and he gave her everything.”

“Except Lester,” Dave said.

Ophelia Green made a scornful sound. “She never wanted Lester. He wanted her but she was just using him to make her daddy mad. To see how far she could stretch his love. Money, cars, clothes, vacations—those were easy for him. He’d always give her what
he
wanted. She had to make him give her something he
didn’t
want.”

“But you don’t know her,” Dave said.

Ophelia Green gave him a shamed half smile. She lifted and dropped a hand. “I’ve known that child since she was three-four years old. I worked for them then. I had to take Lester with me. There was nobody to leave him with. He was always a good boy, played with clothespins and things, quiet in the kitchen, kept out of the way. But she wouldn’t let him alone. And she wouldn’t play nice, either. Always getting him in trouble. Making him cry.”

“Eve,” Dave said.

“I didn’t like to quit. Mrs. Orton was always very pleasant to me. Her husband didn’t like the children playing together but she thought it was sweet. I kept putting it off—what I knew in my heart was right. But I finally saw I had to leave there.” She looked grim. “Ought to have left the day I started. Lester was lost to her by then. Broke his heart. He cried and begged me to take him back.”

“What about school?” Dave asked.

“By then she wouldn’t look at him. Nothing so cruel as little children. I thought he’d die. But after while it looked as if he’d forgotten her. Black, you get used to people treating you one way here and another way there. They don’t mean anything by it. I taught him that. I thought it was over. His report cards were good. He had some little friends. He didn’t brood anymore.”

“She brooded,” Dave said. “Where was Jerry in all this?”

“With his daddy. Always with his daddy,” she said. “I don’t know how he’s going to live without his daddy.”

Dave looked at his watch again. He went to the raffia basket and took out the magazines. He put on glasses. “He doesn’t know about that ransom note even now. Why not?”

“Anita was making a fool of her daddy,” Ophelia Green said. “He didn’t want the boy to see him made a fool of.”

“Still a boy, is he?” Dave said. They’d used a razor blade to clip out the words. The “$25,000” had been a cake-baking prize offer, “
SAFE
” was a paper-diaper claim. “And that’s what Mrs. Orton told you? That Ben Orton thought the letter was only a hoax? A malicious joke?”

“Oh, he was angry. He was after them. No telling what he’d have done. She came to clear them out of here, if this was where they were hiding. Wanted them to go to Mexico and stay there till he got over how angry he was. But she didn’t have any money. He never let her have any.”

“It wouldn’t have helped Lester.” Dave put the glasses away. “He had to report to his parole officer.”

“Nothing can help Lester,” Ophelia Green said darkly. “He’ll go back to jail, like you said. Long years. And for what? For her. And she doesn’t give a snap of her fingers for him.” The stained eyes looked forlornly at Dave. “He’s got good sense. Alone, he’d never step out of line. He knows the price. For blacks it’s always twice as high. But for her—if she say do it, he does it.”

“They were here, weren’t they?” Dave said.

“I guess so. Lester had his key. And his bed”—she broke off and looked at the window where pepper-tree shadows stitched dark lace on the white—“I guess they were in his bed. Looked like it. But they were gone, time I got home.” Her eyes pleaded up at Dave. “Chief Orton could have been wrong.” The hope in her voice was frail. “Somebody else could have sent that letter.”

Dave laid the magazine in her lap. She touched the clipped places, studied them in the poor light. “Yes,” she said, “all right.” And there were tears on her face when she turned it up to him this time. “But it wasn’t meant. It was just a—a game was all it was. Children. A game.”

“That everybody lost,” Dave said.

At the geranium gate, he heard the whirring noise again. From across the road? The land fell off there, and among ragged weeds crumbling foundation brick showed red where another house had once stood. Crossing, he glanced up the road. No sign of the lavender Montego. But at the nearest bend a Ford van was parked. He’d seen it somewhere this morning. Then, when he’d left Richard Nowell’s half an hour ago, hadn’t it been among the other cars parked at the top of the road? Frowning to himself, he crunched rubble underfoot between the foundation bricks. But the whirring had stopped. There was a shed that had been left standing when the house had come down. He edged among the bristly stalks of heavy-headed sunflowers. The padlock on the shed door had rusted and fallen loose but something held the door. He peered through weathered siding. There were lumpy shapes within but nothing that moved. He walked around to the back of the shed and squinted in again. He didn’t learn anything. He turned. Below, a barranca was thick with creepers—wild cucumber, honeysuckle, morning glory. In the deepening shadows, white flowers showed ghost faces. And there was the glint of bright metal. He looked up. The sky still held a lot of daylight. He started down, careful of his footing. The bank was steep and he kept having to stop and rip loops of vine from around his ankles. He lost sight of the bright metal. He leaned left, leaned right, narrowing his eyes. Was it glass he saw now? He dropped quickly, stumbling, nearly falling, to the bottom of the barranca, where vines were heaped chin-high. He plunged fingers into the top of the mound and yanked. A thick and heavy mat came away.

Beneath was a small car. Bright green. Brand new.

T
HE SHINY KNOB OF
the motel-room door turned around broken. He pushed the door. A reek of whiskey came at him. He clicked the light switch. Nothing happened. He groped for cords and drew back the curtains on the glass wall. The sky was luminous blue green. So was the water. Their light was enough. Blankets and sheets had been torn off the bed and strewn around. The mattress had been dragged half off the box spring. Drawers had been yanked out and dumped. His suitcase lay like a gutted fish.

He stepped over crumpled suit, shirts, underwear, to lay on the chest the photo of Ben Orton in its envelope, the loaf of carrot bread in its sack, and the distributor head from the little green car. The long mirror over the chest was splintered. The television set lay on its back and stared at the shattered star-spangled white glass of the ceiling light fixture. His bottle of Old Crow had been smashed on the edge of the desk. The whiskey had soaked dark into the carpet.

Next to the toppled nightstand by the bed, among shards of pottery lamp base, lay the telephone. He picked it up, cradled the receiver, lifted it and listened. No dial tone. He pulled at the cord. It came to him limp, ripped loose from the wall. He set the phone on the slope of mattress, found a small pocket-clip screwdriver in the jacket of the fallen suit, and knelt to uncap the little white plastic housing at the foot of the wall and reconnect the wires. He righted the armchair, sat in it, put the phone on his knees, and dialed the hospital.

The floor nurse said, “Mrs. Brandstetter has gone to dinner. She asked me to tell you that your father regained consciousness this afternoon and spoke of you.”

“Good,” Dave said. “Can I talk to him?”

“Perhaps tomorrow,” the nurse said. “His condition is stable now. Doctor is encouraged.”

“Tell her I called,” Dave said. “Did she go alone?”

“Mr. Sawyer came. With a young man. Hawaiian?”

“Tahitian,” Dave said wearily. “Thank you, nurse.”

He broke the connection and sat frowning with his finger on the button. Christian Jacques was tall and brown and smooth. With grace, wit, and a stunning smile, he ran a bar and restaurant across the street from Doug’s gallery. The Bamboo Raft. It was fronted with fake palm thatch. Fake torches burned beside the door. If you weren’t careful, your drink would be laced with coconut milk or papaya juice. Jacques’s speech was laced with French. Which was what had got to Doug. Doug had lived and worked in France from the end of the war until de Gaulle expelled NATO. For twenty years, French had been his language—on the job, in shops, taxis, theaters, cinemas, bistros. And in bed. He’d lived with a young French auto racer. Not hearing the language had to have left in him the kind of space that aches. In Jacques too, no doubt. He’d been born into the language in Papeete and grown up with it in Marseilles and Paris. He and Doug were together so much in order to talk French. And France. Sure they were. Ah, the hell with it.

He dialed 0 and was given the police. But Jerry Orton wasn’t there. He wasn’t out in his spavined patrol car either. He was off duty till midnight. Dave set the receiver back, took a deep breath, blew it out, and rubbed his eyelids with thumb and knuckle. He was tired and getting his signals mixed. By phone was not how he wanted to talk to young Jerry. The boy. He wanted to walk in on a television baseball game, a tall can of beer, a bag of potato chips. Or the sleep of innocence. He set the phone on the floor, went into the bathroom where the lights still worked, and splashed his face and the back of his neck with cold water. The beer had left a brown taste. He brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth. He went back through the tumbled room, pulled shut behind him the unlatchable door, walked along the deck above the white boats rocking asleep at their moorings, and went down the steps.

Along the wooden waterfront, candle flames fluttered in colored glass chimneys on the outdoor tables at El Pescador. Above the quiet lap of water beneath his feet, sounds of soft laughter reached him, the clink of silver and glassware. A small red neon sign spelled
COCKTAILS
against a sky beginning to streak with fire colors. There wasn’t time but he wanted a drink anyway. The bar had old curved ship beams, coils of tarry rope, brass ship lanterns. No one sat on the stools. They ate in a farther room where a guitar played—sensible people, people with a grip on their lives, people able to mind their own business. The bartender wore puff sleeves and a silver-embroidered red vest but even with a handlebar mustache he didn’t look like Mexico. He looked like Sioux Falls. Dave asked for a drink and the local telephone directory. He put on his glasses,
SANGRE DE CRISTO—MADRONE
—
LA CALETA
. The book still wasn’t thick. But the listing was there—“Orton, Gerald B., 310 Sandbar Rd., LC.”

A plank gallery hung over the bar. Windows were up there. He could look at the sunset on the water. He took his double whiskey up a spiral iron staircase and sat on a canvas-cushioned nail-keg stool at a barrel table. Outside the windows, gulls stood one-legged on a shake roof. He tasted the drink, lit a cigarette, and looked at the ocean and then into the face of the frail old man he’d seen hours ago, drunk in the patio under the jacaranda tree. Tyree Smith. He sat down. He still wore the age-yellowed white linen suit. He was still drunk. Or drunk again. He was clutching a finger-smeared glass with nothing in it.

“I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” he said.

The bartender called from below, “Smith, I thought I told you to get lost. You been sleeping up there? Get down here. Leave the gentleman alone.”

“The gentleman and I are having a drink.” Smith’s false teeth gave watery clicks. “We’re clearing up a misunderstanding. The gentleman is my guest. You have no right to treat me like a bum. I’ve paid off my bill. Bring us both another drink. Each. Drinks.”