Zigzag (20 page)

He had a welcoming smile for me, but it dimmed somewhat when he saw that my hands were empty. “No computer? I don't sell them, you know, just repair them.” I'd been wrong about his voice, too: slow and mellow was apparently his natural way of speaking.

“Computers isn't the reason I'm here, Mr. Lenihan.”

“No?” His expression brightened again. “You wouldn't be connected with the media, would you? Come to offer me a writing gig?”

“Sorry, no,” I said, and then lied a little. “But I've read your blog.”

“Well, one of the chosen few. A pleasure.” The smile tilted a little, self-deprecatingly. “Assuming you don't have a complaint about one of my entries, that is.”

“No complaints. Just some questions about a particular piece you wrote last year.”

“Which one?”

“The one called ‘Dead Men Rise Up Never?' About the devil-worshipping accident victim and his deathbed vow.”

“Oh, sure. Real weird true story. What about it?”

“I'd like some information on your sources.”

Lenihan had beetling brows; one of them arched upward into a boomerang shape over a narrowed eye. The upcurve of his mouth was wary now. “Why? After all this time?”

“Professional reasons.” I showed him the photostat of my license.

The other eyebrow humped up to make two boomerangs. The smile stayed, the wariness vanished. “No shit,” he said in a pleased sort of way. “How come a private eye's interested in devil worshippers?”

“Not that per se, just Antanas Vok and the cult he belonged to.”

“Antanas Vok. So you know his name.” Then, eagerly, “Why do you want to know my sources? Who're you working for?”

“That's confidential.”

“The guy in Atherton? Did something happen to him?”

“Confidential.”

“Yeah, well, so are my sources.” Pause. “But maybe we could work something out. What's in it for me if I tell you?”

“Satisfaction in helping solve the problem I'm investigating.”

“Hah.”

“All right. How about twenty bucks?”

“Well, I can always use extra cash,” Lenihan said, “but I can use a good story more. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Freelance journalist as well as blogger and computer repairman.”

“Uh-huh. But all I can let you have is the twenty.”

“Not even a little something I can build a story on?”

“Not even a hint.”

He thought it over, nibbling on a corner of his lower lip. Pretty soon he said, “Well, what the hell. Make it fifty bucks and you've got a deal.”

“Fifty's a little steep.”

“Not for what I have to tell you.”

“All right, done.” I could afford not to quibble; the money would come out of Peter Erskine's pocket eventually, not mine. I took two twenties and a ten from my wallet and laid them on the table between us, but I kept my hand on the bills when Lenihan reached for them. “After you've told me and I'm sure you're being straightforward.”

“Hey,” he said, and now he sounded wounded and put-upon, “one thing I don't do is lie for personal gain. Not even to my friends.”

“Good for you. Who told you about Vok's vow of vengeance?”

“The nurse who was in the room at the time. Ellen Bowers.”

“Why did she confide in you?”

“We hook up now and then, Ellen and me. She knows I'm into the world of weird and this Vok thing was right up my alley.” A sly grin. “I showed her my appreciation with dinner and a good fuck.”

My reaction to that was an expressionless stare, to let him know I was not going to play the see-what-a-stud-I-am-wink-wink game. “What did she have to say about the other man in the room? You didn't mention him in your blog piece.”

“What other man?”

“Relative or friend of Vok's, apparently.”

“Yeah? Well, I can't help you there. Ellen never mentioned anybody else being in the room.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive. I'd've put it into the write-up if she had.”

“Did you ask her who claimed the bodies of Vok and his wife?”

“Nobody claimed them.”

“Oh?”

“Ellen checked for me,” Lenihan said. “No next of kin located and nobody else came forward. Both bodies planted at county expense.”

I mulled that over for a few seconds before I asked, “Did you turn up any names in the Voks' apartment—other individuals who might be involved in this cult they belonged to?”

“Ah … I can't answer that.”

“No? Why not?”

He looked a little sheepish now. “Well, the truth is, I went there, but the place was locked up tight and I couldn't convince the building manager to let me in.”

“Then how did you find out about the books and the other black arts stuff the Voks had?”

“I didn't.” The grin again, and a shrug. “Details make for a better story, whether they've been confirmed or not. Poetic license, you know?”

“Meaning you made up that part of it?”

“Well, not completely. The grimoires I listed are all genuine volumes, and I figured there were bound to be pentagrams and other shit linking the Voks to a devil cult.”

Some journalist. “But you don't know that there was.”

“No. But Vok admitted to Satan being his lord and master. Pact with the devil, right?”

“That doesn't mean it's true,” I said. “He was dying, angry, probably not in his right mind.”

“You're forgetting the black host. Ellen saw him shove it into the guy's hand. The wife nearly freaked when she saw it, so it must've been genuine. That and the vow makes Vok a devil worshipper in my book.”

But not in mine, not necessarily. “Does Ellen Bowers still work at South Bay Memorial?”

“Yep.”

“On duty today, would you know?”

He shook his head. “We're not that close.”

“But you do have the hospital's phone number?”

“Sure. Ellen's, too, if you want it.”

“Both.”

“Do I get the fifty bucks then?”

I told him yes, and he said he'd have to get the numbers from his cell. He went away through the curtains, came back pretty soon with them scrawled on a piece of notepaper. When I took my hand off the bills, he made them disappear as if by a little magic trick of his own.

He grinned again. “Nice doing business with you,” he said. “Hope you find what you're looking for.”

I didn't answer him, or return his salute as I turned to leave. I may have to deal with people who have shoddy morals and ethics, and who think nothing of cavalierly adding to the misinformation on the Internet, but I don't have to be polite to them.

 

8

In the car I called South Bay Memorial to find out if Ellen Bowers was on duty today. She was, but currently assisting on a surgery and unavailable until after two o'clock. So I programmed the Voks' former address, 1936 Dillard Street, into the GPS and let the thing guide me down 101 into San Jose.

The address was in one of the poorer parts of the city, a mixed neighborhood with Hispanics dominating. The building was a somewhat run-down, six-unit apartment house flanked by a bodega on one side, another apartment building on the other. Cooking odors old and new clogged the air in the narrow foyer. Pasted above the name Rodriguez on the mailbox for apartment #1 was an old DYMO label with the word
Manager
on it. I pushed the bell, waited, pushed it again. Just as I was about to try for a third and last time, the intercom crackled and a voice said, “Yeah? What is it?” The crackling was so bad I barely understood the words, and couldn't tell if the voice was male or female.

I gave my name and said I was there on a business matter, but none of it got through to whoever was on the other end. There was some staticky chatter that I couldn't understand at all; another attempt on my part didn't get through, either. The intercom shut off, and a few seconds later the door to a ground-floor apartment popped open and a guy in an armless undershirt came out. He peered through the front door glass at me, yanked it open, and snapped irritably, “Goddamn thing don't never work right,” as if the intercom's failings were my fault. “What you want? Selling something, we don't want it.”

“I'm not a salesman. You're Mr. Rodriguez?”

“I asked you what you want.”

“To talk to the manager. Is that you?”

“No, my wife, but she's at work.” He didn't say why he wasn't also at work, but then maybe he had a night job. And a tolerant employer, if so, since he reeked of beer. “No empty units, if that's what you're looking for.”

“It's not. What I'm looking for is some information on a couple who lived here over a year ago. The Voks—Antanas and Elza Vok.”

“Them two.” Rodriguez scowled at me. He was a big guy, forty or so, with hairy arms and chest and a hanging beer gut that hid the belt buckle on his trousers. “They're dead, killed in a car smash. Why you want to know about them?”

“I'm trying to locate their next of kin.”

“Why? What for?”

“Can you help me, Mr. Rodriguez?”

“No. I mind my own business, man. Besides, them other guys was pretty damn creepy.”

“What other guys?”

“The two come around here and took some of the Voks' stuff away.”

“When was this? How soon after the car smash?”

“Morning after he died in the hospital.”

Fast work, if Rodriguez's memory was accurate. The kind that suggests urgency and purpose.

“Can you describe the men?” I asked.

“After a year? Come on, man.”

“I'd appreciate it if you'd try to remember.”

He didn't have to try very hard; he remembered them, all right. Pretty soon he said, “One was like the Voks. You know, foreign.”

“Lithuanian?”

A fat shoulder lifted, dropped again.

“What about the other one?”

“White guy. Butt ugly, built like an ox. They wasn't the painting brothers, that's for sure.”

“Painting brothers?”

“Yeah. Sign on the door of the van they had.”

“The Painting Brothers, that was the company name?”

“No, no. The brothers' name was the same as that guy used to be on late-night TV. The talk show guy.”

“I don't watch late-night TV.”

“Leno, man.
L-e-n-o.
Leno Brothers Painting.”

“Do you recall where the business was located?”

“Nah. My memory ain't that good.”

“How old would you say the two men were?”

“Not as old as the Voks. I didn't look at them too close. Creepy, like I said.”

“In what way?”

“Just creepy,” Rodriguez said. “You know how you meet somebody, strangers, you get these vibes tell you you don't want to have nothing to do with them? Like that.”

“Were you the one who let them into the Voks' apartment?”

“Not me. My wife took 'em up.”

“How did you and she know they were authorized to remove the Voks' belongings?”

“They had a paper.”

“What kind of paper?”

Another shrug. “Maria was okay with it. Didn't think they was as creepy as I did … ain't nothing much bothers her. Anyway, why should we care? Sooner they got the stuff out, sooner we could rent the unit again. The owner don't like empty apartments.”

“Did they take everything the Voks owned?”

“Left the furniture,” Rodriguez said. “Clothes, too. Crappy stuff, all of it. We had to dump the clothes at Goodwill. But not the furniture—new renters didn't have none of their own, and they didn't care it was crappy.”

“What exactly did the men haul away?”

“Cartons full of stuff. Took 'em a couple of hours.”

“Any idea what was in the cartons?”

Shrug. “Don't know, don't care.”

“Were you or your wife ever in the apartment when the Voks lived in it?”

“Hell, no. They didn't want nobody in there. Kept to themselves, never had much to say.”

“Did they have many visitors?”

“Not that I seen. Never paid no attention.” Rodriguez belched beerily and squinted down his nose at me. “Hey, all these questions. How come you want to know so much about the Voks?”

“I told you, I'm trying to track down their next of kin.”

“Yeah, well, you come to the wrong place, man.” He belched again. “I got no more time to talk. Things to do inside.”

Like open another beer. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Rodriguez.
Buenas tardes.
”

“Yeah,” he said, and backed up and shut the door in my face.

 

9

I looked up Leno Brothers Painting on my trusty new iPhone. Just about every business has a website these days, and this outfit was no exception. They were located in Campbell, a small city adjacent to San Jose on the west. The two brothers were Floyd and Harvey and there were photographs of each on the site; the one named Harvey appeared to qualify as “butt ugly, built like an ox.” They evidently ran a cut-rate outfit with emphasis on speed rather than quality of work. “Nobody Beats Our Prices. Fastest Brushes in the West.”

The address turned out to be in an industrial area not far off Highway 17. Narrow piece of property sandwiched between an outfit that sold solenoid valves and a plumbing supply company's pipe yard. The building's exterior was neither run-down nor prosperous looking—just a small, nondescript blue-collar business like thousands of others. A none too clean white van sat in the driveway alongside, facing the street.

An overhead bell rang a couple of off-key notes when I entered. The interior, unoccupied at the moment, wasn't much to look at, either. There was a linoleum-topped counter with some paint-sample books on it, a stack of gallon cans with a placard propped against them that had the words
Sale—Big Savings
written on it, and walls adorned with photographs of freshly painted houses by way of advertisement for the Leno brothers' handiwork.