The Orange Curtain (16 page)

“It is my duty to warn you about interfering with police business and withholding evidence.”

“I can tiptoe. Look how nice I was to Margin.”

A smile stole over Frank Vo’s features and then evaporated, leaving little trace of its touch-and-go landing. “I should warn you about Tien Joubert, too.”

“Really? What?”

This took some thought. “She’s a very strong woman. She gets what she wants by hook or by crook. If she doesn’t, she eats you up.”

“Is this a veiled way of telling me not to get close to her?”

“It depends what ‘close’ means to you.”

“Not to sleep with her?”

He smiled then and shook his head. “If you do such a crazy thing, count your body parts afterward.”

“It was because I recognized her,” the young man said. He still looked like a Doublemint Twin, with tidy khaki trousers and a knit shirt with a little polo player on it. “And I wanted to say hi.”

Jack Liffey had taken a flier that Mark Glassford would be home in his apartment on the edge of Garden Grove. It was in one of a pair of rather seedy two-story buildings with catwalks past all the doors. The buildings faced each other across a pool that was in the process of being retiled, and it was all guarded by a huge decaying tiki god out in front.

“Recognized her from what?”

“A meeting the Industrial League had at my parents’ house. My dad is P.R. for Forty-Niner Airline.”

That was certainly a coincidence, Jack Liffey thought. Glassford’s apartment was almost barren, except for a lot of worn Danish furniture from the ’50s that probably belonged to the building and some bricks and boards making up a low bookcase. There was no stereo, not even a TV.

“Can I get you some tea? I can’t offer you anything stronger; I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Neither do I.”

“Do you have trouble with it,” the young man asked, “or is it religious?”

“Neither, really. Just a decision.”

Mark Glassford went into a shabby kitchen, still in sight of the living room, and put a teapot on. “The meeting was at my dad’s house a month or so ago,” he called.

“What was the meeting about?”

“I wasn’t really in on it. I gather the opponents of the El Toro airport had just formed an emergency action committee and the League had to decide how to respond.” He smiled as he turned the burner on. “Informally, the opposition called its group the Malcolm X Committee. You know,
by any means necessary
.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Tempers are high down there. There’s a lot of rich people involved on both sides and rich people are used to getting their way. It seems to be the defining characteristic of their worldview, actually.”

It sounded like the young man did not consider himself one of them, for some reason. “Do you know anything more about the committee?”

“The umbrella group is called the South County Coalition for Responsible Development. A lot of the upscale cities around El Toro contribute and send reps. I think they
officially
call their emergency group SOS, for Save Our Skies.”

He came back in and sat, and they could both relax. Jack Liffey had always hated shouting from room to room. It reminded him too much of forced heartiness, a family trait he’d long struggled against.

“I may want to speak to your father about them,” Jack Liffey said.

“You’d best not arrange it through me,” the young man said equably. “We’re a little estranged, dad and me.”

“Why is that?”

“I entered a seminary. I want to be a Methodist minister. I’ll bet you didn’t know there are 37 divinity schools in Orange County. Anyway, my dad doesn’t approve. It’s not on the success track. The MBA, the big house, the boat.”

“I suppose it isn’t.” This news didn’t absolutely rule out suspicion of the young man, of course, but it sure banked it down.

He talked about his decision for a while, how for a number of years he’d experienced a growing revulsion toward the expensive toys all his friends in Newport had chased after, and how he had shed them all, little by little. “It’s amazing how dumping the TV calms you down. No more clamoring news, getting at you. You can retune yourself to other rhythms, instead of all that keeping up.” He smiled. “I got rid of my fancy word processor, too. Then I gave away an old typewriter I had, and then my ballpoint pens. For a while I wrote with a fountain pen. It slows your hand and makes you think about the sensuousness of the words, and then I even dropped that. I use a dip pen, hard to find these days. I like words, and you get to think word by word.”

“I hear chiseling into stone can make you think serif by serif.” He tried to keep it good-natured because he actually admired the boy’s abstemiousness.

The boy smiled amiably.

“What were you doing acting in a video?”

“They came to school and solicited volunteers. The program was to teach high school students about the dangers of the resurgent TB bacillus, and I always volunteer for things now. Give blood, serve meals at the missions up in L.A.”

The teapot started shrieking and Jack Liffey accompanied him into the kitchen. His new-found virtue apparently didn’t include tidiness. The sink and counter were full of dirty dishes.

“What did you talk to Phuong about?”

“I just said hello and asked if she remembered me. I offered her a ride when we were done, but she already had one, so we talked a little about the noisy band we’d been listening to. We didn’t really have anything else in common. I found out right away she’s heavily into all the material things I’m turning away from.”

“Do you know who her ride was?”

“She said one of the crew had offered and he lived near her. If you’ve been there, you’ve probably seen him. That rather sad, introverted boy, I think he’s the production assistant.”

That perked Jack Liffey up, all right. Mark Glassford poured himself a cup of hot water and put a teabag in.

“You sure you won’t?” the young man asked, raising the mug, and Jack Liffey shook his head.

He held the mug in both hands as if enjoying the warmth that came through the ceramic.

“Did you see them leave together?”

“Not literally. But I noticed her walking toward his old VW. Really old, black with a cloth sunroof. It was 1962, I think.” He smiled. “I remember a few things from my materialist period. Could you please tell me now what this is about?”

“Phuong was murdered, possibly even that night.”

Hot tea spewed across the floor as the mug shattered. The young man put both of his hands to his eyes and leaned back against the sink, as he gave a strangled little cry. “Oh, my God.”

Jack liffey shook hot tea off his shoe, but kept his eyes on the young man, who seemed to be repeating some silent prayer. Finally he opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s like time stops when you hear something like that. And then I was looking inward at myself and trying to figure out what I was feeling about it. I’ve become very self-conscious since entering religious studies. Do you think that sort of narcissism is wicked?”

“No.”

“I was surprised when you told me, especially since I’d just been talking about her so lightly, but I’m not pleased that I don’t feel more pain. I hardly knew her, I guess.”

“No one can weep for every death. That’s megalomania. Let’s make some more tea for both of us and sit down for a minute.” He wanted to go over the whole afternoon of the video shoot with the young man.

A police siren was passing somewhere nearby and he found his lips forming the sounds weeoo-weeoo-weeoo as if all the noises in the world had to emanate through him. He tapped one foot and his lips formed bang-bang with the tapping. It was an interesting sensation, and a very powerful one. He looked at one of his mother’s steak knives sitting on the counter and thought,
Move. Rotate like a compass needle
. It budged a little and that was enough to maintain the feeling of power.

“What are you doing out there?” The complaint came shrilly out of the living room, but without pause for an answer, the TV sound came up.
Jeopardy
, that tinkly music that was like yanking his spine out of his back and flaying it. He would turn that off soon enough.

He had not been able to think up a way to get her to stumble on the circus boxcar in some casual way, so he had gone in the other direction entirely. He was going to make it a surprise, a big deal. He imagined how pleased she would be to be reminded of her life with the circus and her lover.

Billy Gudger had gone to the supermarket and bought boxes of animal crackers, the ones with the animal cage on the front of the box, and he had set them out on the glass cake tray surrounding the railroad coach, as if they had been offloaded and were in process of being set up. The scale was a little wrong but that didn’t matter, because they only added atmosphere to the real centerpiece. He had taken an old plastic toy soldier and cut off the rifle and replaced it in the figure’s hands with a tiny brush and palette he had made out of a toothpick and cardboard, and he had heated and moved the arms so the man appeared to be an artist holding out his tools. Then he had daubed the figure with nail polish to turn the fatigues into a colorful vest. The painter stood before the circus boxcar, eyeing his handiwork, and resting on a small easel made of toothpicks was a card that said
Will Detrick, Famed Circus Wagon Painter
.

He patted the cracker boxes a little closer together so the big chrome cake cover would fit over the entire diorama.

“What’s a subordinate clause?” he heard and in the host’s braying voice, “That’s correct!” and an eruption of applause.

When he carried the cake tray in he stopped to elbow the TV set off with the push knob. The abrupt end to the music was a delight.

“Hey!
Damn
you, Billy, I could have got that one. What are you up to? This isn’t my birthday.”

He just kept to his superior smile and set the cake tray on the clutter of women’s magazines on the flimsy coffee table. Her huge bulk was sprawled on the sofa under a knit afghan and he knew she wouldn’t be able to reach the cake tray to take the top off herself without a major rousing so he would stay in control. He could see her curiosity had been stirred, but she wouldn’t admit it.

“They were doing grammar and I know about that, so you don’t have to act all smarty pants.” Despite her words, her eyes were fixed on the cake tray. The floor lamp glared on the chrome cover. “You can’t even button your shirt without getting the buttons wrong. Look at the top button.”

But he wouldn’t be distracted. The anticipation was wonderful. Her awe and delight would be something to behold.

“Okay, come on. If it’s something to eat I want it. Right this minute!”

He smiled and pulled back the sliding latches that held the chrome cover in place.

“Ta-
daa
,” he said, lifting.

“You do still partake of the telephone?” Jack Liffey asked.

Mark Glassford smiled and nodded. “For now.”

“Could I make a call?”

“Sure. It’s on the wall in the kitchen.”

It was an old wall phone, the first generation of pushbutton phones with no extra buttons or answering machine or flashing lights or food processors.

Tien Joubert answered by repeating her phone number, a nice prudent practice for a woman living alone.

“Your home phone does work after all,” he said. “I want to make my report.”

“No,” she barked. “You come here, report, or I no pay you. Come right now!”

And she hung up to leave him no option.

She had a folding workout bench with powder blue barbells up on the rack tucked into the corner of the all-blue living room. And just to complete the surreal scene, a massive cabin cruiser was passing slowly down the yacht channel outside, lit up like a casino on the move. “You wait and sit. I got to finish exercise. You can give report now if you want.”

Tien Joubert was wearing a skimpy stretchy top in some fleshy color that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination.

“Wouldn’t that interfere with the entertainment that’s been laid on?” he said, but she ignored the inconvenient comment as she leaned back and ducked under for her bench presses. There probably wasn’t more than ten pounds of weight on the bar, two very small plastic-coated disks, so she had little trouble manipulating the weights all by herself as she lifted off and began the presses.

“Got to exercise with weight now, they say, protect the bones for us old women.”

“You’ll never age,” he said. “This is a waste of time. You’ll have the body of a twenty-five year old until the earth’s orbit decays and the sun uses up its fuel.”

“Flattery get you everywhere. Five-six-seven.”

Jack Liffey waited, thinking over what he should do about Billy Gudger. He would need to talk to that strange young man once more before telling Frank Vo about him. Perhaps there was some innocent explanation, perhaps he had actually dropped her off somewhere that night, somewhere he could prove. Jack Liffey could just picture the Orange County SWAT vans squealing up to Billy’s house from all directions and men in flak jackets and riot helmets hurling out of the armored blue vans to pound across his lawn, the one in the lead carrying that big black battering ram. He didn’t want to see the kid spooked right up over the high side by those dragons he had guarding the frontiers of his touchy sensibility. If he found himself the least suspicious about the kid’s answers, he’d go straight to Lt. Vo. And it could certainly wait a day. Phuong wasn’t going to be any more dead.

“You got report, Jack Liffey?”

“I’ll trade you. I’ll give you my report if you tell me something about your life in Viet Nam.”

“That long time ago.”

“But it’s an important part of you.”

She was huffing a little. The bench presses may have been laid on for his benefit, but she was really doing them. She stopped and toweled off with a powder blue towel. “All sad story exactly same. I very innocent and very weak. Big strong bad guys come kill everything, take everything. I very hurt and sad but stay innocent. I run away and start over. End of story. Moral: don’t be weak next time.”