Waiting (22 page)

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Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Waiting
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Chandler took a towel from the desktop and wiped off the ointment from part of his face. Beneath it, the skin was pink and seamed with red furrows. Artie thought it looked like a lightly plowed field.
“The doctors said it could have killed me if it had been poisonous. They got me to the emergency room just in time; it might have burned right through the flesh. They told me there’ll definitely be scarring.” Chandler’s voice was pushing hysteria. “Who the hell would do that? Put whatever they did in the base? They knew it was mine—they knew it was my personal kit!”
Nobody was going to envy him anymore for looking like the youngest member of the Club. And no way was anybody going to cast him in the occasional TV or movie role when they shot locally. Not unless they were doing a
Nightmare on Elm Street
segment.
“Who would do something like that?” Chandler asked again, his voice breaking. “Christ, I can’t even cry, it’s too painful … .”
Artie didn’t know what to say. Mitch said, “I know some plastic surgeons, Dave—the best there are.”
“My insurance,” Chandler mumbled. “I don’t know what it will cover. It wasn’t an accident—somebody did it deliberately.”
Next to castrating him, it was probably the worst thing anybody could have done to Chandler, Artie thought—to any actor, but especially to one whose face had been his fortune, if only a small one.
“I wouldn’t worry about the cost,” Mitch said, trying his best to be reassuring. “We’ll figure out something. The surgeons work out of St. Mary’s and there’s probably some fund someplace that they can tap.”
“Thanks,” Chandler said. It took a moment for him to control his voice, and Artie could make out several tears trickling down through the ointment. It probably hurt Chandler like hell.
“Anything else we can do?” Artie offered tentatively. “We’ll drop by as often as we can.”
Chandler turned away and there was a long pause. It must be torture to want to rub your eyes and be unable to because you knew it would hurt so much. Artie touched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Appreciate it,” Chandler said and reached up and squeezed his hand.
They stayed for a while and talked, mostly about Chandler’s past “triumphs” in the theater, and then left when it became apparent that it hurt Chandler to talk much.
Outside in the chill night air, Mitch murmured, “And a Merry Christmas to you, too.”
“Who would have done it?” Artie asked.
Mitch shrugged. “Who knows? There’s nobody who doesn’t have enemies. Maybe an ex-lover, maybe somebody who wanted a part and Dave wouldn’t give it to him. Or her.”
“You don’t think it was connected with Larry?”
“I didn’t say that. After we saw Schuler and met in that south-of-Market diner, Chandler said he’d had lunch with Larry, that Larry had told him he was working on an article for
Science.”
“He never said Larry told him what it was about.”
“Maybe Larry did and. it was over his head so he forgot about it.”
“Dave seldom remembers anything that isn’t about Dave.”
“Not kind, Artie—and it looks like somebody at that table would have disagreed with you. Somebody evidently thought Larry had told Dave something. It’s a wonder the poor bastard’s still alive.”
“Sorry about the comment,” Artie muttered. “We’ve joked about Dave for so many years it’s become habit.” He started back to his car, then suddenly turned.
“Mitch? If we eliminate Dave, that means we’ve eliminated everybody.”
“Yeah, I know. Which means we’ve eliminated nobody.”
 
The Marriott near the
Moscone Center was big, expensive, and fireproof. Artie was convinced somebody would have to splash gasoline around their room to set it ablaze. Hotel security seemed to be good, though any Hound could get around it if he or she wanted. But at first glimpse it was safer than either his house or Mitch’s Telegraph Hill cottage.
Mitch turned on the television set and they channel-surfed until the six-o’clock news. The usual depressing local coverage and a foreign affairs segment that wasn’t much better. Another mini-uprising in what was left of Yugoslavia, a network story on the Russian mafia, and another on a standoff in the mid-Pacific between a Greenpeace boat and a Japanese whaling ship, plus there were eighty more dead in Africa from Rift Valley TB.
Locally, a suburban father had been shot by his son because he’d had a date and been refused the family car, and there was a fire in a Tenderloin hotel, one transient dead of smoke inhalation, fifty evacuated …
“The
National Enquirer
of the Air,” Mitch muttered at the half-hour break. “No wonder I end up prescribing so much Prozac.”
“‘If it bleeds, it leads,’” Artie quoted. “‘If it’s fire, play it higher.’ But you missed the biggest story, and most of the rest of the hour will be devoted to it, with the sports wrap at the end.”
“So what was the biggest story?”
“Barring wars and plane accidents, what it always is: the weather. You’re so used to it being the mainstay of the nightly news, you don’t even notice. The Tenderloin fire wasn’t much more than a teaser and they didn’t waste much airtime on the father-and-son bit before they switched to a live feed from a mountain road impassable because of snow. It never rains, Mitch, it pours; and if it snows, it’s a blizzard. If it isn’t, you better make it one or, trust me, your ratings go into the toilet.”
“I’m glad it’s your job and not mine,” Mitch muttered. He picked up the phone and Artie looked at him, alarmed.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Letting my answering service know where I am—sometimes I get late-night calls from patients.”
Artie took the phone out of his hand and replaced it in its cradle.
“They
already know your phone number—it’s probably been tapped for the last three days. You want to let them know where we are?”
“You’re telling me they’re all over out there?” Then he added soberly, “Of course they are.”
“They’re not just Mary and Adrienne and whoever killed Larry,” Artie said. “They’re not a group or a gang, they’re a
species.
They’re all around. And there’s no way of telling who they are.”
“You’re paranoid,” Mitch said.
“You better be paranoid too, Mitch. You’ll live longer.”
There was a knock on the door, and a voice outside said, “Housekeeping.”
Artie muttered, “You get it,” and stood just out of sight in the bathroom, the automatic in his hand. Mitch opened the door to the limit of the chain.
“Yes?”
A slightly muffled voice: “Housekeeping—I forget some towels when I clean room earlier.”
Mitch stuck his hand through the opening. “I’ll take them.”
He closed the door and bolted it. “One maid, Hispanic. Late thirties. Probably an illegal.”
Artie shrugged. “So?”
“Christ, Artie, just check the towels.”
A moment later Artie called from the john, “We were shy a set of hand and bath towels.”
“So I was right. No way she could have known we were going to check in. You’re paranoid.”
 
They had been in
bed by eleven, but Artie was still wide awake. Mitch wasn’t snoring, which meant he was wide awake as well.
“It’s not a small conspiracy,” Artie said into the dark. “First there was Larry Shea and the Hound, and then it became Larry and the Hound and Paschelke and Hall and you and me and probably Cathy. The circle keeps getting larger.”
“You can deduct Larry and Hall and Paschelke,” Mitch said.
“And add Mary and probably Jenny and maybe Lyle and just maybe Charlie Allen. And God knows who else.”
“It’s getting risky,” Mitch said. “For
them.”
After a moment: “You keep saying it’s a conspiracy, that it involves a lot of people. But where’s the organization? Who’s running it? There’s got to be some sort of organization.”
Artie thought about it, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
“Mary said that the Old People are tribal. Maybe there is no central organization. Maybe everybody more or less knows what to do without somebody telling them.”
“Which is what?”
Artie gave a mental shrug. “Stay hidden. Stay undercover. Wait.”
Mitch was starting to doze off.
“Strange sort of organization.”
“It’s like some ethnic groups, Mitch. There’s usually little in the way of national organization but at the local level, depending on the city, it’s something else.”
Mitch sounded irritated at not being left alone to sleep.
“There’s a difference. We don’t know who the Old People are. And the potential for violence is there when you don’t know who the enemy is. It would be a chance for terrorism on a gigantic scale. We live in a technological society: one person could throw a monkey wrench into it and bring it all down.”
It wouldn’t take a massive organization, Artie thought. Maybe it would be more like whatever organization the IRA had in Ireland.
“Cathy Shea,” he said into the darkness. “What do you remember about Cathy, Mitch?”
Silence for a moment.
“Maiden name, Cathy Deutsch. I think she joined the Club about the same time I did. She dropped out when she got married and had kids. A looker, but then they all were back then.”
“Everybody’s handsome and everybody’s pretty when you’re in your early twenties,” Artie said.
“Thanks for reminding me I’m getting older, Artie.”
“Did you ever ball her?”
“Jesus Christ, you’re talking about Larry’s wife. She’s an old married woman now. She’s got two kids.”
“I’m talking about twenty years ago. I’m not asking if you laid Larry’s wife—I’m asking if you slept with Cathy Deutsch.”
“I thought everybody made it with Cathy … . You want to know how she was, right?”
“Sure.”
Mitch laughed quietly.
“We were all young and we were all horny; I doubt that any of us lasted longer than five minutes with her. I think we stripped down; I nuzzled her breasts a couple of times, she touched my prick once, and then it was all over and I told everybody how great she was afterward. By the looks I got from the other women, she said the same about me. I’ve been in her debt ever since.”
Artie was starting to drift off again when he had another thought.
“Lyle and Jenny,” he said aloud in the dark.
He sensed that Mitch was suddenly wide awake.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it’s still going on.”
He could hear Mitch moving around in the other bed and suddenly the lamp on the bed table came on.
“You never told me that.”
“I told you I’d seen Lyle the night before I went over to Mary’s. He dropped in to hit on Jenny when Mary wasn’t home. Nothing happened, they’re still good friends, according to Mary.”
“They were a number twenty years ago, you remember.”
“He’s got a new lady—Anya.”
“I’ve met her.” Mitch yawned and turned out the light. “Exotic.”
“So why is Lyle still interested in Jenny? I mean—you know, after twenty years.”
“Nobody forgets first love, Artie. Doesn’t matter how old you get, given the chance you’ll still try to breathe life into the embers if only to make sure they’re out.”
“Would Jenny have talked? She must know a lot.”
Mitch was silent, thinking about it.
“I don’t think she’d ever betray Mary intentionally. But she might drop a stitch here and there and, before you knew it, the whole scarf would be unraveled. She might have ended up saying more than she thought she did.”
Artie tossed it around in his mind. If Lyle wasn’t one of the Old People, then he could be in real danger. If he and Mitch had thought of the possibility, somebody else could have thought of it as well. Maybe Jenny was smart enough not to drop any stitches, but the possibility of it endangered Lyle as much as the reality.
And there was somebody else they hadn’t considered.
“What about Charlie Allen and Franny?”
There was no answer. Artie listened for a moment, heard the faint sounds of snoring, and turned over on his side to go to sleep. There was no sense of anything or anybody outside the windows—there couldn’t be, they were twenty stories up—and no sense of anybody standing outside their door.
How long had it been since he’d had a good night’s sleep?
It was eight o’clock when Artie rolled out of bed. Mitch had already showered and shaved and was staring out the window, waiting for him. It had started to rain again, the drops pelting against the glass. It was going to be a damp and dismal Christmas, Artie thought. Both Susan and Mark gone … Bad timing. Like most of his life lately.
“Downstairs or room service?” Mitch asked when he had finished dressing.
“Downstairs—less chance of somebody messing with the food.”
It was nine o’clock when they finished breakfast. Mitch gave his credit card to the waiter, then pushed slightly back in his chair and turned to Artie.
“So who’s it going to be? Charlie Allen, to ask him what he remembers about Cathy and any bright ideas where she could be? Or Lyle, to ask him what Jenny might have said at one time or another.”
“Lyle,” Artie said at last. “I don’t think anybody would be after Charlie; he wouldn’t have any direct information. Lyle might.”
“See him at work?”
Artie shook his head. “It’s the Christmas season—he’s probably working his tail off. Call him and try and see him tonight.”
Mitch stood up. “Be right back.”
Artie was halfway through his second cup of coffee when Mitch returned, looking concerned. “Called the store, they said he hadn’t come in yet—that he was usually there at eight. They were apologetic—he’s never late. So I called him at home. No Lyle.”
“Try Anya?”
“You know what she does? I don’t, I only met her once and I got the impression she didn’t do much of anything.”
“She works at BofA. Lyle said she was visiting relatives in San Jose but maybe she’s back by now.”
Mitch sipped his coffee in silence until the waiter brought back his credit card. He tucked it away in his wallet. “Let’s go check out his house.”
 
Ten o’clock on a
windy, rainy day in San Francisco. The neighborhood around Thirtieth and Ulloa was deserted, the only person on the street a mailman working his way slowly up the block.
“You want to watch for a while?” Artie asked.
Mitch shook his head. “What for? There’s not going to be anybody coming and going. And all we want to do is ask him a few questions.”
“Without giving the game away,” Artie said. “And we’re depending on Lyle being … Lyle.”
“Big gamble.” Mitch got out of the car and Artie tagged along after him, standing at the bottom of the steps while he rang the doorbell. There was no answer. Mitch tried again, then out of impulse tried the door itself. It opened easily; it wasn’t locked.
“Cute,” Mitch said. “It’s deliberate, Artie, a signature. If anybody was here, they’ve come and gone and we’re supposed to know it.”
He pulled on a pair of surgeon’s gloves and Artie followed suit. It would make it difficult handling the automatic, but they wouldn’t leave any prints if they touched something in the house. And he could pray he didn’t have to use the gun.
The house was quiet, the kitchen area clean. Dishes had been washed from the previous night’s supper and were in the drainer on the sink. Two plates, two cups, two sets of silverware—Anya had returned from San Jose, had probably cooked the meal.
But nothing had been set out for breakfast. There was no carton of milk slowly growing warm on the table, no butter slumping in its dish, no half-filled bowls of cereal or frying pan crusted with egg.
The bedroom was deserted. The bed hadn’t been slept in, the towels in the bathroom were dry and neatly hung on their racks.
“That’s a three- to four-hour window,” Mitch said quietly. “After supper but before bedtime.”
“Window for what?” Artie asked.
“We know they ate supper here. If they’d gone to a movie, they would have returned sometime before midnight or shortly afterward. Maybe they went out of town, but like you said, Lyle is manager at Copeland’s and this is one of their busiest seasons; he wouldn’t have left in the middle of it. My guess is they’re still here.” There was a ripple of excitement beneath the calm in his voice. “I think they’re dead, Artie. The reason we had such a peaceful night last night is because they probably didn’t.”

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