The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (23 page)

Brad raised his glass in the air, laughing. “And then what would have become of me?” he demanded. “I might have been eking out a living on a tiny Hawaiian island, hitting the bottle earlier and earlier each evening out of sheer frustration, like a character in a Somerset Maugham story. Oh, come on, Phyl, it was all a long time ago. I can’t afford to get emotional about it.”

“Nor could your grandfather,” Phyl retorted angrily.

“Now you’re being silly.” She had wrapped the sheet around her and was sitting up in bed, her arms clasped tightly around her knees. “I should never have told you. I thought you would like the story.”

Phyl remembered his description of the island, and she realized how much it meant to him. “I did enjoy it,” she admitted. “And I know you’re just being cynical. You love Kalani, don’t you?”

He came to sit beside her, tenderly stroking her hair. “It’s the place I’m happiest in the world,” he admitted, brushing her lips lightly with his own. “And one day I shall take you there, so you can see if I did it justice.”

Phyl smiled again as he put his arms around her. She nestled her face into his neck, dropping tiny butterfly kisses on his skin, feeling the roughness under her tongue. She told herself that everyone had a black sheep in his or her family. In this one it just happened to be Archer Kane.

Then the very next night Brad told her a different family story, one that rocked her back on her heels.

He was talking to her about his childhood, about the holidays he spent running wild on the island. The original lodge his grandfather had built had been expanded into a sprawling, comfortable holiday home,
with long lanais cooled by ceiling fans and hammocks strung between the palms. He told her the greenness of the sea was matched by the deep fern-filled gorges and the jeweled intensity of the tiny emerald salamanders. He told her about the flamboyant scarlet birds and the aquamarine undersea world, studded with bright little fishes like Christmas tree ornaments.

Brad’s tone was smiling, indulgent as he remembered. Then, with that same quick-as-a-flash mood change, he was suddenly tense.

“My mother hated the island,” he said abruptly. “She never went there. She only liked Diamond Head or San Francisco, where she kept an apartment. She loved to shop, and she had closets and closets full of clothes. She rarely allowed me into her room, said I got under her feet. She would shoo me away, half laughing, but I knew that she meant it. Of course, I always wanted to be with her. I loved her. She was my beautiful, bejeweled, adored mother. I was only six years old.”

He glanced at Phyl, and his voice became tender again as he said, “She always slept late, and I would creep in in the morning and steal a look at her sleeping face. There would be smudges of mascara under her eyes, traces of lipstick still on her lips, but she always looked peaceful and so innocent when she slept.

“Sometimes I would hide in her closet, amid the tissue-wrapped clothes, waiting for her to wake so I could surprise her. I would sit on the floor gazing up at the fantasy world of rustling color, chiffons and tulles and sequins, thinking of how I would make her laugh.

“One morning I crawled into the closet to hide, looking up at the ruffles of color, the bright blues and greens and reds that she loved. And then I saw the shoes. They were big and made from a chestnut brown leather polished to a fine gleam, and I knew they could not be my mother’s shoes. They had pale, shiny soles, and they were dangling above me.

“My eyes traveled upward to the socks. Jazzy red socks. I smiled. I knew only one person who wore socks like that. A man who often visited my mother and whom I had been told to call Uncle Wahoe. I peered at the gray flannel trouser legs and laughed as I emerged from my childish hiding place.

“‘Uncle Wahoe,’ I said, ‘have you come to play hide-and-seek, too?’”

Brad’s voice grew harsher. “I pushed aside the rustling party dresses and stared up at him. There was a rope around his neck. He was hanging from the rail. His head was tilted at a grotesque angle, and his face was purple. His mouth hung open, with the black, swollen tongue sticking out, and his eyes bugged like a toad’s.”

Brad put his head in his hands. His whole posture was one of despair, and Phyl stared at him with horror. But she did not dare interrupt.

After a while he lifted his head. He lit a cigarette and said quietly, “I stood for a terrified moment, and then I ran to get my mother. She was sitting up in bed with her breakfast tray.

“‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked irritably. ‘Didn’t I tell you never to come in unless I gave you permission?’

“I stared at her. I was frightened, but even then I thought how lovely she was. Tall, dark-haired, and almond-eyed. She had a strong body, and she moved with a deliberate sexiness, every swing of her slender hips calculated to show off her curves.

“‘Why is Uncle Wahoe in your closet?’ I demanded, clutching at her hand.

“She shook me away; she was reading a letter and scarcely seemed to hear me. ‘In the closet?’ she asked indifferently.

“I said, ‘He looks so funny hanging from the rail. He scared me.’

“She looked up from the letter. It was from him,
telling her he intended to kill himself because she had finished with him. She had sent him away, and he couldn’t bear it. Her face turned white. She screamed, and the servants came running.

“‘You dreadful little boy. Whatever have you done?’ she shrieked at me.
‘It’s all your fault.’
”

Brad looked at Phyl bleakly. “I was six years old. But that is why for most of my life I felt that somehow I was the one responsible for my uncle Wahoe’s suicide.”

He drew on his cigarette, then stubbed it out viciously. Then he took her in his arms and made love to her. If it could be called “love.” Phyl was not even sure at that moment whether he even knew who was in his arms. She closed her eyes; she didn’t want to see his face, to witness his pain. It was over in minutes.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Brad said harshly later. “But there’s something about you, Phyl Forster, that forces a man to reveal his secrets.”

20

M
ahoney folded his arms and leaned against the wall of the inteview room, watching his partner, Benedetti, giving it to a murder suspect. They had brought him in at 4:00
A.M.
It was now 10:00 in the morning, and Benedetti was in his element because he was on overtime and they had a guy he knew in his gut had killed a girl by ramming her up against a wall with his automobile.

The suspect, a weaselly little man in his early thirties with thinning hair, a receding chin, and a two-inch forehead that didn’t allow much room for brains, claimed he was nowhere near the alley where it happened. He’d been at a club in North Beach with his friends. “Which club?” Benedetti asked again. “What friends? Come on, for chrissakes, man, give yaself a goddamn break. We know it was your car killed her. Your girlfriend was there, your car was there, and you say you were in fuckin’ North Beach at some fuckin’ club whose name you can’t recall, with some fuckin’ friends whose names you just don’t remember offhand. Some friends, huh? When you don’t even know their names?”

The suspect shook his head stubbornly, eyes fixed on the floor at a point to the right of his inquisitor. “I already told ya somebody musta took the car.”

Benedetti glanced exasperatedly at Mahoney. He had been at it for two and a half hours and was getting nowhere. The girl had been found squashed up against an alley wall with her guts hanging out, and unless they could get him to confess, this little shit was going to get away with it. Because they had no witnesses and because, despite his pea-size brain, he was street-smart enough to
know
they had no witnesses. He was right: Anyone could have been driving that car. Except they knew he had.

“Why not take a break?” Mahoney suggested. “Let Mr. Zacharias and me have a little talk.”

Benedetti nodded. He pushed back his chair wearily. “I’ll leave it to you, Mahoney,” he said, walking to the door.

It was an old ploy: first the hard-line approach, bludgeoning the suspect verbally, breaking him down until he either confessed or hung himself in a series of lies that got him deeper and deeper into the shit. But this one was a toughie. He hadn’t broken. So now it was Mahoney’s turn: the buddy routine.

“You look as tired as I feel, Zacharias,” Mahoney said. “How about we both have a cup of hot coffee?” Zacharias nodded without looking up. Mahoney went out into the hall and returned with two plastic foam cups of something that passed for coffee. At least it was steaming hot. He put one in front of Zacharias. “Cigarette?” He offered a fresh pack of Marlboros.

Still without eye contact, Zacharias took one, and Mahoney noticed with satisfaction that his hand was shaking. Mahoney was a nonsmoker, but he lit up to keep his suspect company. They sat in silence for a few minutes. “Drink your coffee while it’s still hot, Mr. Zacharias,” Mahoney said mildly. “It’s been a long night, hasn’t it?”

Zacharias nodded dully, sipping the coffee. “Listen, fella,” Mahoney said a few minutes later, “I’ve got woman trouble myself. I know how it is. They can fuck you about till ya get crazy.” He sighed deeply. “I had this girlfriend, and boy, was she great-looking. Ya know how it is with us cops, we work odd hours, shift work, just like in a factory. Turns out when I’m working nights, so is she. With her best friend’s husband. Ya know what I mean? Ya just can’t let them get away with a thing like that, can you, Zacharias? I mean it dents a man’s pride pretty bad, I can tell ya.”

Zacharias said nothing, and they smoked on in silence.

“Tell ya what, Zacharias,” Mahoney said easily, “you must be starving by now. Why don’t I send out for some Danish? Then you and I can talk. You can tell me all about her.” He sighed deeply. “I’ll just bet she was a bitch from hell, a looker like that. They just don’t know when they’ve got a good man lookin’ after them.”

Zacharias glanced warily at him, then nodded. “She was a bitch all right,” he said vehemently.

Mahoney smiled sympathetically. “She fuckin’ around with someone else, man? Was that it?”

Zacharias nodded. His hands were trembling so much now he could hardly hold the cup. Mahoney sat back in his chair, watching him, waiting for him to crack. He could see it coming; he knew he had him.

The Danish came, and Zacharias wolfed one down without lifting his eyes. “Have another,” Mahoney said. “They’re almost as good as my Italian mama made.”

Zacharias took another, and in between bites he began to spill out his version of the truth: how she was a bitch all right, how he’d looked after her, kept her in style, bought her clothes, food….

“Heroin?” Mahoney suggested, thinking of the festering sores along the girl’s arms. He knew the odds
were she would have been dead from an overdose or septicemia or AIDS before too long anyway. And she was all of nineteen years old. He hated the bastard in front of him so much he was surprised Zacharias couldn’t feel the vibes across the table.

“She was a bad junkie,” Zacharias admitted.

“Where’d she get the money for it, friend?” Mahoney asked with a sympathetic smile.

Zacharias shrugged indifferently. “She whored for it, like they all do.”

“Man, these women are something else,” Mahoney said. “I’ll bet she didn’t turn the money over to you, the way she should, did she?”

“Yeah. Right. Well, the bitch pulled that once too often, didn’t she?” Zacharias exclaimed, erupting with sudden rage.

“Listen, Zacharias,” Mahoney said, leaning across the table, putting his face close to the suspect’s, and staring into his eyes. “Maybe you had good reason for bouncing her with the auto. You think she deserved it. I’ll make a deal with you, fella. You know you did it, and we know you did it. Now, there’s no logical way we can get around that fact. But you tell me how it all happened, and I’ll do my damnedest to help you. Maybe we can go for a plea bargain. After all, you told me there was provocation, didn’t you? I mean, she was working for you and she didn’t turn over her earnings. She knew the rules; she just blew it all on heroin instead.”