Illusions

3

Ira Erskine was not what I’d expected. He was younger, for one thing — no more than thirty-five. And well turned out and prosperous-looking in an expensive silvery gray Brioni suit and a hand-painted silk tie. Short dark hair and a neatly groomed mustache were both frost-edged with premature gray. He had the look and confident carriage of a successful businessman, which is what he admitted to being: he owned what he termed “a small but forceful financial consultancy firm” in Santa Fe. You might have taken him for a satisfied, complacent man, the kind people refer to admiringly as pillars of the community and who are often approached to run for political office, if it weren’t for his eyes.

The eyes were gray, direct; he locked them onto mine and maintained the contact the entire time we talked. But the thing about them was that they were almost scintillant with strong emotion, the dominant one being pain. I could feel his hurt as well as see it, as though he were emitting little pulsing waves of radiant energy. It made me both sympathetic and uncomfortable. Emotion that naked is never easy to face, particularly when you have empathic tendencies as overly developed as mine.

He was packing a load of woe, all right. The root cause of it was his ex-wife, Janice, but she was no longer the main ingredient. It took him a while to get around to what was currently ripping him up inside, and when he did I felt twice as sympathetic and twice as uncomfortable. Most private investigators attract clients whose problems require little or no emotional involvement; they do the job, get paid, and move on unaffected to the next. Not me. All too often I get the bleeders, men and women with such intense personal predicaments that I can’t seem to avoid being sucked in to the point of bleeding right along with them. And maybe carrying around a scab or two myself afterward.

Erskine had accepted a cup of coffee when he arrived; he’d also asked if he could smoke, and when I said I’d prefer he didn’t, he’d accepted that without argument or smoker’s belligerence, even though it was obvious he needed the nicotine. Instead he’d swallowed two cups of black coffee, the caffeine acting as a partial substitute, and asked for a third. That one he nursed, sitting with both hands wrapped tightly around the mug as if he were taking in the bitter warmth by osmosis.

His posture was both relaxed and tense, the way a man who is normally at ease in any social or business situation sits when dark things are warring inside him. He didn’t shift position once during our conversation. Or glance once at the voice-activated tape recorder whirring away on my desk. I’d taken to taping all interviews and telephone exchanges, one of the many good suggestions Tamara had made, and while most clients didn’t object, they were aware of the recorder and would look at it nervously or suspiciously now and then, as if it might somehow be altering their words or taking them out of context. A few inadvertently altered the pitch of their voices or phrased things in more self-conscious ways once the machine started running, but Erskine didn’t seem to be affected that way either.

“Janice and I met at a fund-raiser for the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture eight years ago,” he said. His tone was tender, almost reverent, whenever he spoke her name. “From the moment I saw her I knew she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Love at first sight... I’d always considered it a ridiculous concept. But it isn’t, it really isn’t.”

I remembered my reaction to Kerry the first night we’d met. “I know.”

“We were married after three months. The first year... I can’t describe how wonderful it was. Janice was working at the Salishan Gallery when we met, but of course there was no need for that after our marriage. She’d always wanted to be an artist, had done some oil and acrylic painting in her spare time. With my support she was able to paint full time. She is, or was, quite good. A very distinctive style and vision. She had two showings while we were together, the second at the Salishan. I think if she hadn’t gone off the beam, she would’ve honed and refined her talent. Become quite successful in her own right.”

“How do you mean, ‘gone off the beam’?”

“Drugs,” Erskine said sadly. “Curse of our times.”

“Hard drugs?”

“Cocaine. It started after Thomas was born... our son, Tommy. She had a very difficult, very painful pregnancy. Tommy was born Caesarean and there were complications. She couldn’t have another child. The combination of that and the pain... I suppose that’s why she turned to drugs. She seemed to stop caring. Not that she stopped loving Tommy or me, at least not at first. It was a loss of passion, of zest, rather than of love.”

“Her zest for everything, including her painting?”

“Yes. After I found out about the drugs... she never completed another canvas, as far as I know.”

“When was that? That you found out?”

“Tommy was about a year old. I knew something was seriously wrong, but drugs... well, that never occurred to me. She’d never used them before. And she was careful to hide her addiction from me and our friends.”

“How did you discover it?”

“By accident. A packet of cocaine hidden in her studio. I was looking at some of her older canvases, admiring them, and there it was. I confronted her and she admitted she was hooked.”

“And then?”

“I convinced her to enter a rehab center,” Erskine said. “She was there six weeks, but it did no good. She was using cocaine again a week after her release and she no longer bothered to hide the fact. She went downhill rapidly. Neglected Tommy. Began staying out half the night. Then she disappeared for three days. I was frantic, I thought something had happened to her. When she finally did come home... well, she’d been in Taos with a man, another addict. No shame or remorse when she confessed it to me. That was the final straw. I couldn’t keep on forgiving her, watching her destroy herself, colluding in her destruction. For Tommy’s sake I filed for divorce.”

“How did she take it?”

“She didn’t seem to care. Didn’t contest it or my claim for custody of the boy. Drugs and money were all that seemed to matter to her by then. After she moved out of our home she lived in an apartment downtown, near the Plaza. Then, three months later, she disappeared completely.”

“Before the divorce was final?”

“Yes. She already had the settlement we’d agreed on.”

“You let her have it early? The entire amount?”

“She insisted on it and I was afraid not to comply. Afraid she’d do something crazy. I couldn’t stand to see her suffer, even then. In spite of everything, I loved her. Even now, after three years, I still love her. I know that sounds foolish—”

“No, Mr. Erskine. Love is pretty hard to kill sometimes.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“How long had she had the settlement when she disappeared?”

“Nearly three months. I gave her the money when the papers were filed.”

“Then what prompted her to leave Santa Fe so suddenly?”

“I don’t know. There was no reason I could find.”

“Just there one day, gone the next?”

“That’s right.”

“Cleaned out her apartment or were her belongings still there?”

“She took some things with her. Not everything.”

“Any idea where she went?”

“To Albuquerque. From there... no.”

“How do you know she went to Albuquerque?”

“I hired a private detective to look for her. I couldn’t bear not knowing if she was all right. He traced her to Albuquerque but lost the trail there.”

“Did she contact you at any time after that?”

“No. Not a word in three years.”

“Your son? A birthday card or present?”

“Nothing,” Erskine said. “I kept hoping. Trying to make myself believe she’d find a way off drugs, turn her life around, and then... if not come back to Tommy and me, at least let me know she was all right. After a year or so... I thought she must be dead. An overdose or something like that.”

“But now you think she’s alive.”

“I don’t think it, I know it. Alive and recovering.”

“What changed your mind?”

“A postcard. A blessed postcard.”

“Sent to you or someone you know?”

“An old friend of Janice’s in Santa Fe. She received it two days ago.”

“Written by your ex-wife?”

“Yes. And postmarked San Francisco.”

“Arrived out of the blue?”

“That’s right.”

“Saying what?”

“I can quote the message verbatim,” he said. “ ‘I’ll bet you thought you’d never hear from me again. Tell Ira and Tommy I still love them. Tell them I’m okay now and sorry for all the pain I’ve caused them.’ ”

“That’s all? No indication of where she might be living?”

“No. It could be anywhere in this area.”

“Unless she mailed the card en route to somewhere else.”

“No,” he said, “no, she’s here in northern California. I know it. I can feel it.”

“Why do you suppose she sent the card to the woman friend and not to you?”

“I don’t know. Guilt, maybe.”

“She could be gearing up to send you one, too.”

“It’s possible, but I can’t just wait and do nothing.”

“Are you sure the handwriting on the card is hers?”

“No doubt of it. Janice wrote it, and thank God she did. It couldn’t have come at a more necessary time.”

“Necessary, Mr. Erskine?”

“Because of Tommy. That’s why I’m so desperate to find her, as fast as humanly possible. Because of our son.”

“I don’t understand. Is something wrong with the boy?”

The radiant pain in Erskine’s eyes was so intense I had to look away from it. “He has leukemia. The doctors... they give him no more than a few months to live.”

There is nothing you can say to a statement like that that doesn’t sound lame or inadequate. A simple “I’m sorry” comes closest to being adequate, so I said the words and then we both sat there in heavy silence and waited for enough time to pass so we could get on with the interview. Across the office Tamara was very busy at her Apple PowerBook, pretending not to listen. Ms. Corbin, I thought, I ought to kick you in the pants for letting me get hammered like this.

Erskine finally broke the silence. “They told me a little over a week ago. The boy’d been ill... they gave him a battery of tests... there’s nothing they can do. Janice is his mother, she has a right to know. To see him, be with him before it’s over. Even as terrible a mother as she’s been, I couldn’t deny her that right even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

Nothing much you can say to that either. I kept my mouth shut.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Erskine said, but he was talking to himself, not to me. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I’m going to lose Tommy, but maybe...”

False hope, even after three years. I cleared my throat before I said, “Did you bring a photo of your ex-wife, Mr. Erskine?”

“Yes. I brought several.” He took an envelope from his coat pocket, slid it across my desk. “Keep whichever ones you like. I have the negatives.”

There were a dozen or so photographs, a mix of professional studio shots and candid snaps, all in color. Most were head-and-shoulders and full-body poses of a woman alone. One was of her cradling an infant in her arms — the boy Tommy, I supposed. Two others were relative close-ups of oil paintings, one hanging on a wall, the other propped on an easel.

Janice Erskine had been in her mid to late twenties when the photos were taken. She was an ash blonde, slender, narrow-hipped. Eyes green or maybe hazel. Strikingly attractive, though her nose was too flat and her ears too large for the Vogue model and movie star kind of beauty. Her mouth was her best feature: wide, well shaped, so that her smile was fairly dazzling. There were no signs of the ravages of drug abuse in any of the pictures; they’d probably been taken early in their marriage.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Erskine said with that near-reverence in his voice. “Back then she was the most stunningly beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

I said “Yes” and let it go at that. “I take it those are her paintings in the other two snaps?”

He nodded. “I suppose it’s a small hope that she has started painting and displaying her work again. No one in Santa Fe has heard any more of her since she left. But I didn’t want to overlook any possibility.”

I studied the two snaps. He’d said that her style and vision were unique; I don’t know much about art, but even I could see that it hadn’t been just pride talking. Both paintings — one of an old church stark against a sky full of thunder-heads, the other of an age-wrinkled Native American seated on a bench — were so realistic and finely detailed that they approximated photographs. There was no color in either; they were done in primary black, white, and silver, without shading of any kind. The effect was impressive, made even more so by clearly defined lines and angles and the minute detailing.

“Is all of her work like this?” I asked. “No color and no shading?”

“Yes. Janice saw all her subjects in terms of black and white. She said color spoiled the true essence of objects and people. Remarkably talented, wasn’t she?”

I agreed that she was.

He said, “Such a shame, a waste to have thrown it all away,” which was exactly what I was thinking.

“Is there anything else you can tell me, Mr. Erskine, that might help me find her? Did she have any hobbies, for instance?”

“No, no hobbies. Art was her only real interest.”

“Places she frequented, special events she attended?”

“None that weren’t art-related.”

“Did she have a favorite charity? Do any charity work?”

“Museum and gallery fund-raisers. And early in our marriage, she helped organize a Cancer Society benefit.”

“Was she politically active?”

“No. Apolitical.”

“Did she ever live in California? Spend much time here?”

“I don’t think so. She was born in Chicago, grew up there, and moved to Santa Fe when she was nineteen. It was the art scene that drew her.”

“Any visits to this area, with or without you?”

“Not before her fall from grace,” Erskine said. “At least none I ever found out about.”

Fall from grace. Odd phrasing. But he seemed unaware of it; his pained eyes had a squeezed, remote look, as if he were seeing or trying to see something deep in the past. So I let the remark ride, waited until his gaze cleared and focused on me again.

“Did she know anyone, even a casual acquaintance, who lived in northern California?”

“No, no one I know of.”

“Are either or both of her parents still living?”

“Both dead more than ten years now.”

“Other relatives?”

“None. Janice was an only child.”

“What was her maiden name?”

“Durian. D-u-r-i-a-n.”

“Did she start using it again when you filed for divorce? Or was she still going by Erskine when she disappeared?”

He sighed. “Durian,” he said, as if the fact distressed him.

“She may or may not still be using it. Depends on what she’s doing now, whether she’s in fact clean again and how much connection she still feels to her past. The postcard would seem to be a positive sign. Then again, it could’ve been no more than a momentary attack of conscience.”

“I’m afraid that’s all it was,” he said. “If she were thinking of coming back to us, or making amends in some way, I’d have heard from her directly by now. Too much time has gone by... the only way is for me to go to her.”

“And if a meeting should happen? What do you think her reaction will be?”

“Reaction? To me?”

“To the news about your son.”

“She’ll come back then. She has to.”

“Her maternal feelings can’t be particularly strong,” I said, “or she’d have made some effort to see the boy by now. Did she want a child in the first place?”

That seemed to stir him to the edge of anger. “Of course she wanted him. We both wanted a child, our own child.”

“And yet she was an unfit mother—”

“I didn’t say that. I said she neglected Tommy. That isn’t the same thing at all. It was the drugs. She wasn’t herself, she wasn’t the same person who... It was the goddamn drugs!”

“Easy, Mr. Erskine. I’m on your side here.”

He stared at me blankly for a few seconds. Then he seemed to shake himself; rubbed a hand over his face as if wiping away the sudden irritation. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s just that the way I feel about her, even now...”

“You don’t need to apologize or explain. I understand.”

“Do you? I hope you do.”

“How long are you planning to stay in San Francisco?”

“How long? Until you find Janice.”

“That could take some time, and it might not happen at all. Frankly, given the circumstances of her disappearance, the time factor, and the lack of any definite leads, the odds are against it.”

“You’ll find her,” he said. “You have to.”

“Why wait around while I try? Don’t you want to be with your son?”

“Of course I do. But he’s in the hospital, he has the best of care, there’s nothing I can do...” Erskine broke off, scrubbed his face again. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I should go back to Santa Fe, and I will. But not just yet. A day or two... I’m at the St. Francis. You can reach me there any time, day or night.”

I didn’t argue with him; it wasn’t my place to tell anybody how to deal with the tragedies in their lives. I had him sign one of the standard agency contract forms, accepted a five-hundred-dollar retainer — he insisted on paying with hundred-dollar traveler’s checks — and told him I’d get to work right away. When he left, his shoulders were a little rounded and there was sweat on his neck that hadn’t been there before he opened himself up to me.

After he was gone, Tamara said, “Told you you’d take the job.”

“Yeah. You should’ve told me about his son, too.”

“Better you heard it from him, wasn’t it?”

“Wrong, Ms. Corbin. I don’t like being blindsided, emotionally or any other way. From now on I want any and all details up front.”

“Okay.” She asked then, “What’d you think of the man? Kind of strange, if you ask me.”

“Strange? How so?”

“Seems to care more about his ex-wife, woman who hurt him bad, woman he hasn’t seen in three years, than about his dying kid.”

“He’s torn up inside. Pain has different effects on different people, you know that.”

“I know it. Boy’ll be gone pretty soon and there’s nothing he can do about that, but she’s still alive. So he figures maybe he can talk her into coming back to him, sharing the grief.”

“Seems to be what’s in his head.”

“ ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ Uh-huh.”

“Don’t be cynical. It happens. Probably won’t in this case, even if we can find Janice Durian, but if Erskine believes it and it helps him get through, what’s the harm?”

“No harm, no foul,” Tamara said and shrugged. “But I still think he’s a strange dude.”