Waiting (17 page)

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Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Waiting
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Or would he? His black mood was back in force and he reached for the key to start the engine. Enough of this bullshit.
But Larry Shea lying gray and torn in the morgue hadn’t been bullshit, and neither had Hall, crumpled on the steps of the museum, his heart pumping his life’s blood over the concrete. And it hadn’t been bullshit when he’d stood on the railing of his porch about to plunge to the sidewalk three stories below.
He folded his arms and settled back in his seat, once more concentrating on the house on the corner. He’d been there half an hour now but nobody had come or gone and there were no lights on. Lyle obviously wasn’t home, though Artie doubted he was out of town. He was manager of the Market Street Copeland’s, and sporting goods were a popular item for Christmas. Maybe he had taken Anya, his live-in girlfriend, out to the movies or a holiday dinner.
Lyle Pace, one of the last members to join the Club. Artie had never gotten to know him well—a few months after Lyle had drifted into the coffee shop, Artie had enlisted. Lyle had followed a little later, but their paths had never crossed in ’Nam. After Lyle was discharged he’d enrolled in State and picked up a degree in psychology. Jenny Morrison, who’d dated him briefly back then, said he had never been more than a C student.
Lyle had been planning to work for the City but it hadn’t panned out—like most things in his life. At State he’d been on the wrestling team and at one time had hopes of going to the Olympics, but he never even made the qualifying rounds. He’d had a three-year failed marriage, and then he’d drifted away from everybody. He’d surfaced again two years ago and showed up at a meeting—who’d brought him? Jenny?—and everybody had been glad to see him, but they knew they were dealing with damaged goods and had kept their distance. Artie had felt guilty about that. He should have extended himself more.
Lyle wasn’t the star athlete he had once been. Now he was thicker in the middle, with a faint sag to the shoulders. Not especially handsome as a kid, a lot less so now. Broken nose, bushy black eyebrows, eyes that were too small and too bright, a face badly used by time. On the other hand, he had a way with women. Anya was exotic, a statuesque brunette ten years Lyle’s junior with an executive position at Bank of America. What the hell had Lyle used for bait?
He’d picked Lyle for his first stakeout not because he knew so much about him but because he knew so little. He’d gotten over his paranoia about Charlie and Mitch—almost—and that hadn’t left a whole lot of possibilities. Lyle had been first on the list of those who remained.
Artie scrunched around in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position, then froze at a sudden tapping on the passenger-side window. He glanced over, thought
Shit!,
and rolled down the glass.
“Recognized your car from down the street,” Lyle said cheerfully. “What the hell you sitting out here for?”
Artie fought his sense of shock, suddenly feeling like he was back in ’Nam and had stumbled into an ambush. Then once again the sense of unreality hit him and he felt faintly ashamed. He had never really tried to be Lyle’s friend and now here he was compounding his guilt by spying on him.
“Waiting for you, Lyle. I just got here, you weren’t home, and I thought I’d give you a few minutes to show up—glad I did.”
“I was taking Fritzi for a walk.” The rottweiler had put her paws on the edge of the window and was giving him a wait-and-see look, probably hoping he would be good for a biscuit or two. “Come on in. Anya’s visiting relatives in San Jose so we’ve got the house to ourselves.”
Artie climbed out and locked the car.
Everything was perfectly normal.
Why had he thought it would be otherwise?
The kitchen was clean and open, the dinnerware in the glass-front cupboards a pleasant delft blue pattern, no dishes in the sink, the linoleum floor freshly waxed, floral curtains over the windows. A woman’s touch, Artie thought; a little too frilly for Lyle.
Lyle filled the dog’s water bowl, then put on a pot of coffee. “You want to see the house?”
Lyle might not be the huge success in life he had wanted to be, but he was obviously far from down and out. If he wanted to show off or brag a little, he had the right.
“Sure, Lyle—sorry I haven’t dropped in before.”
“Really, Artie?”
The tour was cursory—nobody ever showed you their bedroom or the john. You usually saw only the rooms that were deliberately on display: the office, the library, the living room, the rec room if they had one. Lyle’s office didn’t amount to much, but the den in the basement was impressive. A bookcase full of CDs, a component music system that must have cost a fortune, a big-screen TV. Managing Copeland’s obviously paid well, though Anya’s salary undoubtedly helped.
Artie ran his hand over one of the shelves of CDs. “You must have spent a mint on these.”
Lyle shrugged. “We all spend more than we should on our hobbies, right? And if you think that’s something, you should see Mary’s—she could set up her own store. Big on books, too, mostly poetry—didn’t expect that, either.”
Artie was surprised.
“You must be the first one in the Club that Mary ever invited over.”
“Who said anything about being invited? I went over to see Jenny when Mary wasn’t home.”
Artie floundered for a moment. “You and Jenny—”
“—were a number before Mary cut in, remember? When I came back to town, I thought I’d look her up and try and fan the embers when the wicked witch was away. I never believed that lesbian shit. I thought she might at least be a switch hitter. When Jenny opened the door, I just walked in. Jenny wouldn’t have any of it—she and Mary were for real—but I got a good look at the house. Nice decor if you care for turn-of-the-century.”
He turned and switched on the light in a workout room just off the den. The room was small but laid out for efficiency. A NordicTrack machine and then several free-weight setups. A workout bench with two metal uprights holding a bar that was loaded with at least two and a quarter for bench presses. Lyle might have seemed like he was out of shape, but if he actually lifted those weights it was obvious he wasn’t.
They returned to the kitchen and Lyle poured out two cups of coffee, then teetered back in a kitchen chair, looking at Artie with an expression that was vaguely unfriendly.
“Why did you come to see me, Artie? I mean, all of a sudden like? I’ve been going to meetings almost a year this time around and you’re the first member who’s dropped over. I thought for sure Larry or Charlie might, but they never did. You guys are friendly enough at meetings, but otherwise it’s like I don’t exist. You’ve got me pegged as a loser, right? And you decided to keep your distance because you were afraid it might be catching.”
He’d never liked Lyle, Artie remembered, and now he knew why.
“You disappeared for eight years, Lyle. I don’t remember you saying good-bye to anybody.”
Lyle shrugged. “Okay, you’ve got a point. I should have.”
It was difficult to keep it casual, not to take offense.
“It’s kind of hard to pick up where you left off.”
“Mea culpa, Artie.” Lyle got up to fill his cup and gestured with the pot. “You want some more? Drink enough, you’ll have to sleep in the bathtub tonight.”
Artie shook his head. “One will do me.”
“So why
did
you come over, Artie? And don’t tell me it was because you were in the neighborhood.”
If Lyle was Lyle, then he had a right to be pissed. If he was … something else, then they were fencing. In either case, he was going to have to fake it. He wanted out of there, badly, but there was no way he could up and leave. Not right then.
There was a box of dog biscuits on the table and he shook one out for Fritzi to cover his nervousness. She was very dainty in taking it from his hand, her hindquarters wriggling as she tried to wag her docked tail, and Artie remembered the three dogs in Schuler’s office and how friendly they’d been. It took an effort not to shiver.
“When you first joined the Club, I wasn’t around long enough to really get to know you. When you came back, it was difficult to start all over again. Most of us are married and have families, and it’s natural to stick with old friends. It’s not so easy to make new ones when you get older, Lyle. So none of us volunteered. I felt bad about that, and since this is the Christmas season, I thought I’d drop by. Once here, I came down with cold feet and sat out in the car. I was afraid if you were home and I rang the bell, you’d tell me to get lost. You would have had every right to.”
He meant it all. Every word of it. And he hoped, desperately, that Lyle believed him.
Lyle softened slightly. “Apology accepted, Artie. But to be honest, I don’t know what the hell we’ve got in common to talk about.”
“Larry …” Artie let his voice trail off, but there was no reaction on Lyle’s part. He changed the subject. “It was something óf a shock meeting Schuler again. He dredged up old times, at least for me. I imagine he did the same for you.”
Lyle relaxed even more. “A real prick. He told me about the time he busted you guys. He busted me once and kept me in a jail for a week, said he didn’t like my attitude.”
And that was it for a good forty-five minutes, until Artie yawned and said if he were going to sleep in the bathtub, he’d better get started. It had been all old times, nothing about Larry’s murder or Mark’s disappearance. And toward the end, the nostalgic mood had worn rather thin.
Once outside in his car, Artie realized his shirt was sticking to him—he had sweated up a storm. Fritzi had even refused to come over when he offered her a third biscuit, probably because he smelled bad. But one minor mystery had been solved. Nobody had written Lyle off because he had failed at some time in the past. The reason was simpler than that: They didn’t like him because he wasn’t very likable.
Artie chose an indirect route on the way home, one nobody could have expected him to take to get from the Avenues to Noe and Twentieth. He was paranoid, he realized, but Jesus, who could blame him? The only time Lyle had struck him as real was when he’d let his hurt feelings surface at the very beginning.
And there had been all the other things that hadn’t rung true, the little things. Lyle’s workout room. What was Lyle now? Middle to late forties, like the rest of them? He looked like a schlump, but he was bench-. pressing two and a quarter and the schedule pasted on the wall wasn’t for casual workouts. He was stronger than he looked. But why the hell did he keep it hidden? At his age and in that shape, you’d think he’d be wearing tailored shirts and Italian suits to show it off.
Jesus, Mitch was right. The only thing he had to fear was paranoia itself. Anything he’d wanted to know about Lyle, he could probably have asked and Lyle would have told him. So Lyle was vain about his build and doing his damnedest to recapture the days when he’d yearned for the Olympics. What else was new?
But something had stuck in his mind.
Something about Mary Robards.
Mary was reclusive; nobody had ever been invited to her house. Ever. But Lyle had stormed his way in. He’d seen the inside of the house and commented on her extensive collection of CDs, enough to stock a store. Lyle had been right when he’d mentioned that everybody spent too much on their hobbies. They seldom kept quiet about them, though; hobbies were what you talked about when the conversation was on life support.
Mary had never mentioned her passion for music, and he never would have guessed her interest in poetry. But it was hardly strange for a lawyer to love the language.
Things started to swim into focus then and Artie felt like he’d just fallen into a pond of ice water. They couldn’t sing, he’d told Hall when they had been discussing the Old People.
They had no music … .
And Hall had said they had little in the way of language.
There was an element of pathos about it, Artie thought. The descendants of the Old People probably loved the symphony; they probably went to the opera as often as they could, as well as to plays and poetry readings and probably art shows.
And if they collected anything at all, it was probably CDs and paintings.
And maybe chapbooks of poetry.
 
Once home, Artie checked
in with the police. There was nothing new on Mark—no runaways or young victims of violence who fit his description. Connie Lee was working late at KXAM and sounded a little plaintive when she asked Artie if he’d be in for work the following day. Artie assured her that he would; the rest of the conversation was devoted to Connie’s growing belief that the world was going to hell.
Mitch’s answering machine was on; he apparently wasn’t home. For a few minutes Artie’s mind was filled with possible scenarios of what might have happened to Mitch, then he forced himself to stop thinking about them. Things were scary enough without his imagination adding fuel to the flames.
He called Susan but there was no answer. She was at the hospital, he thought, and debated calling her there, then decided against it. He had nothing more he could tell her about Mark.
He slept fitfully and awoke the next morning with a splitting headache. He sat on the edge of his bed for a good five minutes, massaging his temples and trying not to think about what he was going to do that morning. He’d have to call Connie’s voice mail and tell her he was going to be in late; there was no helping it.
He read the paper starting with the comics and ending with the front page, then dialed Mary Robards after nine. She was usually at her law office early—if she answered at home, he’d simply hang up.
Again, an answering machine.
He ate a quick breakfast of orange juice and oatmeal, then pocketed the automatic and drove over to the Potrero Hill section of town. Mary lived on Connecticut Street in a white clapboard house that seemed small from the front but extended back almost the full length of the lot. It was a large enough house for her and Jenny to have separate offices—neither one of them would feel cramped. The only drawback was that there was no garage tucked underneath. The house itself was on a hill that sloped away toward the back and Artie guessed that the first floor was set back into the hill. The floor that fronted on the street was actually the top floor.
Artie parked and watched for a few minutes. There was no movement behind the curtains and there were no cars parked on the street that he recognized as belonging to either Mary or Jenny. He glanced at his watch, then quietly got out of the car. Mary had cats, that much he knew, but she didn’t care for dogs—“Dirty animals, always humping your leg and fouling the sidewalks.” Mary had said the house had been painted that fall and it looked it. Certainly pretty enough from the front, the landscaping carefully groomed. That was Mary’s one hobby that he knew of: gardening.
Artie spent a moment rehearsing a story to tell Mary in case he had miscalculated and she was home, then rang the bell. A minute of panic before he relaxed. Nobody had answered the door. He tried the knob—locked—and guessed there was a dead bolt on the inside. He stood there a moment, shivering in the cold, thinking about Mary. Serious, almost grim—and forgetful. She wouldn’t rely on her memory when it came to taking along her keys when she left the house. She’d even joked about the time she’d locked herself out.
Artie lifted the mat—nothing—and glanced around the small front porch. The usual leaves that had blown into the corners, plus a half-empty bag of potting soil almost hidden in the shadows. He felt underneath it, found the key, and a moment later was inside the house. Heavy curtains and drapes kept out most of the sun and Artie stood for a moment in the gloom, listening. Nothing.
He took a breath and started exploring. The street floor was laid out like a railroad flat, with all the rooms opening off a long hallway that ran along one side of the house. A large living room in front with windows looking out on the street, then a dining room, and finally the bedroom with a kitchen opposite and a sunporch in back. The bathroom was across from the dining room just after a few steps that led down to a landing. Then more steps from the landing to … what? Probably offices and a family room downstairs, cut into the slope of the hill.
It was a turn-of-the-century atmosphere inside the house. Mary and Jenny had restored the interior, letting the outside of the house blend with the others on the block. Thick, heavy drapes and lacework curtains, dark oak furniture—probably all antiques. Area rugs carpeted the light oak flooring. The walls of the living room were covered with prints of famous paintings, all of them realistic, almost illustrative. Winslow Homer, Sargent, Gainsborough, Wyeth, Alma-Tadema, Eakins, Pyle, and a St. John of a cave girl being threatened by a saber-toothed cat. A lot of it kitsch, all of it romantic realism.
In the dining room, the table had a linen cloth spread over it and was set for two with antique dinnerware, obviously for show. The dining table and the setting went with the framed 1906 copy of the
Oakland Tribune,
the headlines about the San Francisco earthquake, that hung among the print gallery on one of the dining room walls. It was a room reserved for small dinner parties, Artie decided—Mary and Jenny probably ate most of their meals in the kitchen.
There was only one bedroom. Against the far wall was a king-sized four-poster with goose down pillows and a comforter that had probably won a prize in a county fair a century before. Large closets and two oak chests of drawers, one for each of them. Artie opened the bathroom door, then quickly closed it. The cat box by the toilet was overdue for changing.
He almost expected to find a woodstove in the kitchen, but when it came to cooking, Mary had the same taste for the modern as Cathy Shea, salted with a few antiques. Heavy cast-iron frying pans hung from wall hooks and an ancient butcher block squatted next to the sink. The surface was concave from usage but Artie guessed that Mary kept it mostly—again—for show.
Show for whom? He didn’t know anybody in the Club who had ever been there with the exception of Lyle, and he had hardly been a guest.
Artie walked quietly to the head of the stairs. There were no windows downstairs and the stairwell was pitch black. He couldn’t find the light switch and fished around in his pocket for his cigarette lighter and flicked it on. He felt his way down the stairs, catching glimpses of more paintings in the faint glow from the lighter. Opening off the stairwell at the bottom were two offices—one somewhat spartan with a large poster of San Francisco on the wall, a plain, uncluttered desk, a single filing cabinet, and a computer table. Jenny’s.
The other office was larger, with a bank of four filing cabinets and several large bookcases filled with law books. Mary’s hideaway from her office downtown. A more ornate desk with two telephones on it, a fax machine, and another computer workstation. And on one corner of the desk, a large color photograph of Jenny, which must have been taken when they had first met. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman now; she had been drop-dead gorgeous back then.
The room that lay beyond was the one Artie was most interested in. It was a huge recreation room with a conversation pit lined with black leather pillows around the rim. One wall was covered with more paintings, most of them prints of the Impressionists. The only exceptions were some Maxfield Parrish prints in thin black frames—covers from some old magazines. The far end of the room was taken up with an elaborate surround sound system.
The left wall held Mary’s CD collection, one that made Lyle’s seem tiny. Thousands of jewel boxes lined shelves that ran from the floor to the ceiling and extended from one end of the room to the other. Artie walked over and waved his lighter along the shelving. There were no instrumentals—all the CDs were voice. Popular, classical, operatic, jazz …
The opposite wall was taken up with bookcases, and Artie guessed they were filled with first editions. Mary probably hadn’t been selective; he suspected she had everybody from Hemingway to Eliot to Ginsberg.
Such little things as art and music and poetry to give her away.
Artie never heard the creaking of the stairs, never heard anybody walking down them. The first he knew he was no longer alone was when the overhead track lights flashed on, blinding him. He dropped the lighter and the gun was in his hand without his even thinking. Then he had sense enough to freeze.
“You’re a clever species,” a voice behind him said. ‘Too clever by half.”
 
Artie stood still another
few seconds, then said, “I’d like to turn around.”
“Please do,” Mary Robards said. “I don’t want to talk to your back all day.” Her voice was heavy, gravelly. She was dressed in black with a looping strand of pearls. Your stereotypical, old-fashioned matron, the perfect image of the motherly lawyer for the defense. To complete the picture she was holding a huge black cat with a splash of stiff white fur around its muzzle. A tom that Mary must have had for years.
“Congratulations, Artie—you’ve discovered the real me.” She nodded toward the conversation pit. “We’ll be more comfortable over there if you want to talk, and I assume you do.” She turned her back on him and walked over to the pit. “And put away the cannon; you’re the only one who’s armed.”
Artie sat gingerly on one of the leather cushions, hunching forward with his elbows on his knees. He was face-to-face with the enemy—and the enemy turned out to be a plump, middle-aged woman whom he considered his friend and whom he had once slept with when they both were younger. An enemy who wore reading glasses and held a basketful of knitting in her lap,.her cat curled up next to her.
“You were waiting for me?”
“You paid a visit to Lyle last night; I guessed I would be next on your list.”
Artie felt the first prickle of sweat.
“You’re good—I never knew I was being followed.”
She shook her head and pulled out a row of stitches, frowning. “Nothing so time-consuming. Lyle called Jenny after you left; they’re still friends, he’s closer to her than other members of the Club. I’ll give him one thing—he’s a game loser once he knows he’s really lost.”
To Artie, it sounded like a confirmation of what he’d suspected.
“Lyle’s one of you?”
“Perhaps. But that’s for you to find out, Artie. For your own protection, I’d certainly try to find out soon if I were you.”
Artie could guess but asked anyway. “Why so important?”
She took a sip from a water glass on the coffee table in front of her. Vodka, Artie thought, or more likely gin. She’d been a drinker all her life but he’d never suspected she hit the bottle that early in the day; she was probably smart enough to limit herself to a glass in the morning and a martini in the evening. Who was it who said that as you grew older you didn’t give up your vices, they gave you up?
“He could be a Hound, you know.”
“Hound?” Artie felt lost.
“One of our soldiers, if you like. Or think of the children’s game, Hare-and-Hounds, with the hounds out to catch the hare. Or the hound in
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Better yet, the poem by Thompson. ‘I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years … .’ It’s one of my favorites—‘The Hound of Heaven’—but I think ‘Hound from Hell’ is more appropriate in this case.” She smiled slightly. “I never knew, Artie—Do you like poetry? Your species has a way with words, I’ll grant that.” And then, deadly serious: “You’re the hare, Artie. I think you’ve already met the Hound.”
It was hard for Artie to think of her as one of the Old People. His mind kept slipping back to when he’d first met her. She’d had a peasant’s stocky body and there had been occasions when he’d delighted in it. But there had also been a remoteness about her that he never understood until she and Jenny became a couple. He hadn’t accepted that until much later.
“You’re toying with me, aren’t you, Mary?”
“Of course. I’m hardly going to point the finger at anybody; you wouldn’t respect me if I did.” Her voice was sarcastic.
“Did Lyle murder Larry Shea?”
She shrugged. Artie had always thought Mary and Larry Shea had been close friends. It didn’t seem to matter to her now and it was obvious it never had.
“I don’t know who our Hounds are, Artie. What we don’t know, we can’t tell. If I suspected, I would never ask and they would never say. Some Hound, maybe Lyie—if he is one. For all I know, he’s
Homo sap
, just like you.”
She chucked her cat under the chin one more time, then set it on the floor. It ran for the shadows in a far corner of the room and disappeared.
The house was made for entertaining, but nobody Artie knew had ever been there—or had admitted to it. She obviously had a different circle of friends from those in the Club, friends with whom she could let her hair down, friends with whom she could dispense with the act. Friends just like her.
“Who are you people, Mary?”
She didn’t look at him but concentrated on her knitting, holding up a length of scarf that seemed a bizarre collection of colors—she had no sense of the artistic at all, Artie thought. But she wasn’t fat, she didn’t have a dowager’s hump, and when she held up the scarf the flesh didn’t hang in loose folds from her upper arms. Like Lyle, she was probably in damned good shape but kept it hidden under flowing dresses.

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