Betrayers

10

It didn’t take Tamara long to run the checks on the various individuals I’d encountered so far in the Abbott case. All but two had spotless records, the Pattersons among them unless you counted questionable ethics and business practices. The other two had only minor blemishes on their records, though one of the blemishes was of some potentially relevant interest.

Charley Doyle, the nephew, had been arrested twice, once on a D amp; D charge and once, five years ago, for causing a traffic accident while drunk that landed a forty-four-year-old Millbrae woman in the hospital with minor injuries. For the latter he’d paid a hefty fine and lost his driver’s license for a year; he was lucky the injured woman hadn’t sued him. Mrs. Alvarez’s brother, Leonard Crenshaw, was a parking scofflaw-twenty-two unpaid parking tickets dating back several years-and had been arrested once at age eighteen on a charge of malicious mischief. He and two other dummies had broken into an abandoned house in the Excelsior District and trashed it for no reason other than pure deviltry. A judge had ordered him and his cohorts to pay damages and sentenced them to two hundred hours each of community service.

Once a vandal, always a vandal? Pretty thin, but something to keep in mind just the same. And to ask Helen Alvarez and Crenshaw about the next time I saw them.

At a little after three I drove out to Dependable Glass Service, on Mission a half mile or so beyond the San Francisco-Daly City line, to see what I could find out from Charley Doyle. I’d been told he’d be back in the shop by three thirty, and he had been. But then he’d immediately signed out for the day; I missed him by five minutes. Glaziers evidently had the same sweetheart thirty-six-hour workweek as plumbers and other union tradespeople.

I told one of the office workers that I needed to talk to Doyle on an urgent matter regarding his aunt. That bought me his home address, which was also in Daly City. In my car I looked up the street and a route on one of the sheaf of maps I keep in the glove box. Newer cars nowadays are equipped with GPS navigators that make printed maps pretty much obsolete; Kerry has one in hers. But mine is fifteen years old, and even when I trade it in, as I figure I’ll need to do fairly soon, it’ll likely be for a used pre-GPS model. I’m a Luddite when it comes to modern technological advancements. A lighted computer screen on my dashboard and a disembodied mechanical voice giving me directions and chastising me if I didn’t follow them to the letter would only make me uncomfortable. I prefer to get my directions the old-fashioned way.

Doyle lived in a two-story, twelve-unit apartment building at least thirty years old, its stucco and wood facade showing signs of advanced age and not much TLC. What had once been a front lawn bisected by a cracked concrete path was now two rectangles of brown hay almost tall enough for harvesting. I went into an open foyer and found the mailbox marked: C. Doyle and pushed the the bell button. Nobody answered the ring.

I was about to give it up when a man came clumping down the inner stairs and out through the entrance door. Little guy about my age, who looked as if he’d had the same hard and neglected life as his place of residence: shaggy white hair, untrimmed white beard, yellowish eyes with tiny threads of blood swimming in the whites. He gave me an uninterested glance, would have brushed right on by if I hadn’t moved a little to block his way.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your neighbors, Charley Doyle.”

“So?”

“He doesn’t seem to be home.”

“So?”

Like talking to the former vice president. Same snappish, snotty tone. “Would you have any idea where he might be? Some place he goes after work?”

“Why?”

“I need to talk to him. It’s about his aunt.”

“So?”

“Look, I’m just trying-”

“Fat Leland’s,” he said.

“… How’s that again?”

“Bar.”

“Where?”

“Mission.”

“Where on Mission?”

He threw me a go fuck yourself look, stepped around me, and went away.

I said, “So long, Dick,” but if he heard me he didn’t care enough to respond.

Fat Leland’s was less than a mile from Dependable Glass Service. Typical neighborhood blue-collar tavern, moderately crowded and noisy when I walked in. I wedged in at the bar, caught the barman’s attention, ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it asked if Charley Doyle was there.

He was. Sitting in a booth with a hefty, big-chested blonde who reminded me of a woman my former partner, Eberhardt, once mistakenly came close to marrying. Schooners of beer, two mostly full, two empty, sat wetly on the table between them. But all they had eyes for at the moment was each other. They were snuggled in close together, rubbing on each other and swapping beer-flavored saliva. They didn’t like it when I slid in across from them, and Doyle liked it even less when I told him who I was and why I was there.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” he said. He was a big guy with a beer belly, loose, wet lips, and dim little eyes. Two brain cells and one of them is usually passed out drunk, Helen Alvarez had said. Good description. “What you want to bother me for?”

“I thought you might have some idea of who’s behind the vandalism.”

“Not me. Old lady Alvarez thinks it’s them real estate people that tried to steal my aunt’s house. Why don’t you go talk to them?”

“I already did. They deny any involvement.”

“Lying bastards,” he said.

“Maybe. You been out to see your aunt lately?”

“Not since I fixed her busted window. Why?”

“Well, you’re her only relative. She could use some moral support.”

“Some what?”

“Comfort. A friendly face.”

“Yeah, well, she’s got Alvarez and her brother to take care of her. She don’t need me hanging around.” He helped himself to a long pull from his schooner, smacked his lips. The blonde nuzzled his shoulder and gave him a vacuously adoring look. “Besides, she gives me the creeps.”

“Your aunt does? Why?”

“She’s about half-nuts. What’s that disease old people get? Al something?”

“Alzheimer’s. But she’s not afflicted with that.”

“Afflicted,” Doyle said, as if it were a dirty word he didn’t quite understand.

“She’s not senile, either. Pretty much in possession of all her faculties, I’d say.”

“All her what?”

I sighed. “Brains.”

“That’s what you think. How many times you talked to her?”

“Once.”

“Once. Hah. Spend time over there, you’ll see what I mean. Babbles on about crazy stuff. Ghosts, for Chrissake. Her dead husband’s friggin’ ghost.”

“Tell me, Mr. Doyle, do you stand to inherit her estate?”

“Huh?”

“Do you get her house and property when she dies?”

His dim little eyes showed faint glimmers of light. “Yeah, that’s right. So what? You think it’s me doing all that crap to her?”

“I’m just asking questions.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like your questions. You can’t pin it on me.”

“I’m not trying to pin anything on you. Trying to get at the truth, that’s all.”

“Told you, man, I got no truth for you. I got nothing for you.” He sucked at the schooner again, dribbling a little beer down his chin this time. “Last Saturday night, when them rosebushes of hers was dug up, I was in Reno with a couple of buddies. And when that damn cat got poisoned, me and Melanie here was together the whole night at her place.” He nudged the blonde with a dirty elbow. “Wasn’t we, kid?”

Melanie giggled, belched delicately, said, “Whoops, excuse me,” and giggled again. Then she frowned and said, “What’d you ask me, honey?”

“Wednesday night,” Doyle said.

“What about Wednesday night?”

“We was together the whole night, wasn’t we? At your place?”

“Oh, sure,” Melanie said, “all night,” and the giggle popped out again. “You’re a real man, Charley, that’s what you are.”

Doyle nodded once, emphatically, and said to me, “There, you see? You satisfied now?”

“For the time being. But I might need corroborating evidence later on.”

“Huh?”

I slid out of the booth and left the two of them sucking beer and rubbing on each other again. Once of those perfect matches, Doyle and Melanie, that you know exist but fortunately seldom encounter. Four tiny brain cells, drunk or sober, united against the world.

Kerry wasn’t home yet-she had a late meeting at Bates and Carpenter, one of many that had become necessary since her promotion to agency vice president-but Emily was there, working on her computer. We’d instructed her to come straight home after school and I didn’t have to ask her if she’d obeyed. When she was told to do something, she did it without failure or question. Always had until this drug business, anyway.

She had a thin little smile for me, but the sadness and hurt still showed in her eyes. I asked her what she was working on; she said research for an American history project. Two minutes on that subject and then we got down to what was on both our minds.

On the way home I’d worked up a different approach than the ones we’d used before-an appeal to her good judgment and common sense. “Emily, I know you hate to break promises, but this cocaine business is different-it’s a serious adult issue. A promise to your parents is more important than one to a friend or schoolmate.”

Her gaze held steady on mine. “I didn’t break my promise to you.”

“Not about using drugs, but bringing cocaine home amounts to the same thing. Unless you had an innocent reason for doing it. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me what it was.”

“I can’t. I don’t want anyone to be hurt.”

“It’s too late for that. You’re hurt; Kerry and I are hurt.”

“Not as bad as they’ll be hurt.”

“They? More than one person?”

“No. Just… no.”

They. Meaning “he or she.” Grammar was one of Emily’s best subjects; she’d used the plural on purpose, to disguise the person’s sex.

What I said next went against my principles, but if it was the only way to pry the truth out of her, then I was willing to make the sacrifice. Kerry would be, too. You can’t police the entire world, especially the complex and volatile segment inhabited by teenagers. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Emily. I’ll make you a promise. If all you did was bring that box home to protect a friend, and that friend isn’t pressuring you in any way, then all you have to do is tell us who and why and we’ll let the matter drop. No one will ever know you told us.”

She shook her head. “That’s a promise you wouldn’t keep, Dad.”

“Why do you say that? I’m not a promise breaker any more than you are.”

“I know, but…”

“But what?”

Silence. Her gaze shifted to the computer screen. You could almost see her withdrawing again, the muscles in her face tightening, the remoteness coming back into her eyes.

“Tell me about the box,” I said.

“What about it?”

“Did you talk to the person it belongs to today?”

No immediate response. Thinking about it, and squirming a little in her chair as if the memory was causing her some discomfort. It was almost a minute before she said, “The person I thought it belonged to, yes.”

“Thought it belonged to?”

“It doesn’t. It’s not theirs, the box or what was in it. I was wrong.”

“You sure about that?”

“I believe them,” she said, but there was something in her voice that made me think she might not be completely convinced.

“Did the person ask you what happened to the cocaine?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“I told them. How Mom found the box… everything.”

“Were they upset?”

“Sort of.”

“Did they want you to get it back? Turn it over to them?”

“No, they’re not like that. They don’t have any idea who it belongs to.”

“Ask you not to tell us their name?”

“… Yes. But it’s not what you think. They don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.”

“That they’re the one doing coke, you mean.”

“Yes. Because they’re not.”

“Emily, where did you find the box?

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Emily…”

“You’ll know if I tell you and I can’t… I can’t. ”

“All right. You didn’t see it being lost, did you?”

“No. I found it afterward, later.”

“Then why did you think it belonged to this person you talked to today?”

Headshake.

“Did somebody else tell you who owned it?”

“No. I… saw it once before.”

“In this person’s possession?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the person right away after you found it?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

Headshake. Like trying to pry out splinters with a fork.

I said, “Did you open the box before you brought it home?”

“No. Not until after I got home. I wish I hadn’t; I wish I’d never seen what was inside.”

“Would you have returned the box with the cocaine still in it?”

“I don’t think so. I might’ve just thrown it away. Or come to you and Mom, asked you what to do.”

“But once you were sure whose box it was, you felt you couldn’t do that.”

“No, I… No.”

“Why? Why is this person so special to you?”

“Please, Dad. Please. They didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t want them to be hurt.” The raspy breath she drew seemed to make her small body tremble. “I just want everything to be the way it was before.”

“That can’t happen, Emily.”

“I know it can’t,” she said, and she started to cry. Suddenly, without sound-tears leaking out of her eyes, glistening silver on her smooth cheeks. My immediate impulse was to go around the desk and take her in my arms, hold her, tell her everything would be all right. But it was the wrong thing to do; the time for comfort and reassurance was after confession, not before.

I left her alone, went and sat in my chair in the living room, and tried to make some sense of the few little snippets of information I’d gotten out of her. She’d found the box somewhere, had seen it before and knew who it belonged to, but hadn’t known what was in it until she got it home. All right. But why had she later gone to him or her and promised to keep the person’s identity secret? Why so protective?

An idea occurred to me, one I should have thought of before. I’d locked the box in the mini-safe in Kerry’s and my bedroom closet; the little plastic vial was still in it, but the cocaine was long gone down the sewer. There was a strong halogen lamp on the desk in Kerry’s home office, a twin to the one in Emily’s room; I took the box in there, shut the door, switched the lamp on, and emptied out the cotton and the plastic vial. Then I rummaged around in the desk drawer until I found her big fold-out magnifying glass.

On the first squint through the glass I couldn’t make out anything on the inside or outside of the box except scratches, wear marks, and a couple of tiny dents. I looked again, examining both sides of the lid, all four outer sides, the bottom. Nothing. One more time-

Something.

I was holding the box at an upward angle, with one lower corner in the center of the lens. What had seemed like random scratches before, one on each lower corner edge, took on a different aspect then. And I was seeing what Emily must have seen when she studied the box as I was doing now. Smart kid-smarter in some ways than her sometimes slow adoptive father.

Initials. Two of them, etched into the soft bronze-colored tin, probably a long time ago, because handling and rubbing had made them virtually invisible to the naked eye.

Z.U.

My first impulse was to go back into Emily’s room and confront her again. Wrong move; I didn’t do it. She wouldn’t tell me who Z.U. was.

There was another way to find out. Z.U. was a fairly uncommon set of initials, and whoever owned them figured to be somebody Emily knew at Whitney Middle School. As Tamara said often enough, you can find out anything on the Internet if you have a starting point-anything at all.