Telling Lies

Chapter Four

The hospital staff had left me alone with Emily for a few minutes. I clung to her hand in the antiseptic room, feeling useless, growing angry. I needed more than anything to talk to my twelve-year-old daughter, Casey, to make sure that she was all right. To make sure that I was all right. I wanted desperately to hold her. A telephone connection was the best I could do.

It was late in Denver, where Casey was spending the holidays. Maybe she was in bed. I went to the bedside telephone anyway, and dialed her father’s number. I didn’t relish running the gauntlet long-distance of ex-husband and new wife, of explaining why they should rouse Casey to speak with me. But I needed to hear Casey’s voice more than I didn’t want to hear theirs.

Worse luck-Linda, the second Mrs. Ian Scott MacGowen, answered the telephone. She sounded sleepy. I had a sudden, uncomfortable flash as I imagined Scotty snuggled beside her under the covers.

“It’s awfully late to be calling, Maggie,” she said. “Casey’s asleep. She skied all day and went to bed exhausted.”

“May I speak with Scotty?”

“He’s asleep, too.”

“Please wake him. This is an emergency.”

“Is it your parents?”

“No. It’s Emily.”

“Emily?” There was a reverential pause. “I’ll go down and get Scotty.”

Go down and get him? I thought about that while I waited. Either she had lied to me and he wasn’t asleep, or they weren’t sleeping together. Both prospects were interesting. I hold nothing against Linda, though she detests me the way The Other Woman generally hates the first wife. It’s guilt. There had been times when I could have made her more comfortable, reassured her that she had moved in on a moribund marriage and was only a small factor in our breakup. But I kept quiet. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.

Scotty sounded wide awake when he picked up the phone. “Maggie, what’s happened?”

“It’s Emily,” I said. “She’s been shot.”

“Dear God. Is she… “

“She’s in a coma. She’s stable, but, Scotty, her prospects are grim.”

“How are Mom and Dad taking it?”

“They don’t know yet. I want to talk to Casey. Will you waken her?”

“She’s not asleep. She’s right here. We’ve been playing chess.” I heard an extension phone somewhere in the house hang up with a bang.

“Maggie,” Scotty was saying, “if there’s anything I can do. Anything.”

“Thanks. Where’s Casey?”

“Here she is.”

“Mom?” Casey’s voice seemed tiny, too far away from me. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, baby. How are you?”

“Bored. Why’d you call?”

“Aunt Emily’s in the hospital. She’s been seriously hurt. I wanted you to hear about it from me before you saw it on the news.

“It’s really bad then, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Will she die?”

“I don’t know.”

“God, Mom, you must be real sad, I mean because she’s your sister. And you already lost your brother. I never had a sister or a brother, so I don’t know what that’s like exactly, growing up with someone and then they die. Aunt Emily’s pretty weird, but I know you laugh around with her a lot.” Casey never bothers with polite bullshit. I love her. “Was it, like, some disease she picked up?”

“No. Emily was shot.”

“Oh! Gross!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Does she look bad?”

“There are a lot of bandages, but she looks beautiful.”

“Am I going to come home?”

“I wish you could, but I think it would be best if you stay with Daddy while I take care of Aunt Emily.”

“I could help you with things.”

I heard the undercurrents. Casey is a patient, loyal soul. She hadn’t said much about the divorce, except that she didn’t want to lose her father. This holiday trip to his new house had been essential to her, reassurance that the cement between them still held firm. She would never complain to me about Scotty, or about Linda. So, I knew that if she was looking for an excuse to come home, something had happened to make her feel more than just uncomfortable. I also knew, knowing Casey as I do, that I couldn’t force an issue.

“Linda said you had been skiing,” I said. “Having fun?”

“Colorado’s okay,” she said. There was a pause. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Remember, after the earthquake when our house was all a mess and we had to stay with Grandma? Remember how fun it was?”

I remembered. The experience had been a nightmare for all of us. “Give Dad a little more time, honey. You’ve only been there a few days.”

“You still going to Ireland to film?”

“In January.”

“You’ll be gone so long, Dad wants me to register for school here next term.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“Linda’s pregnant.”

“So?”

“Take me to Ireland with you.”

I thought about it for maybe three seconds. “Okay,” I said.

“No bull?”

“No bull. You’re old enough. Maybe you’ll learn something useful.”

She gave a teenagery squeal. “Dad, I’m going to Ireland.” Scotty’s voice in the background did not sound happy.

“Dad wants to talk to you,” Casey said. “I’m sorry about Aunt Emily. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

“Here’s Dad.”

Scotty’s voice was on the cusp between control and fury. “Are you nuts? Belfast, Northern Ireland, is a fucking war zone.”

I squeezed Emily’s hand. “The whole world is a fucking war zone, Scotty.”

Dr. Song burst into the room and brushed me aside. “Emily, Emily, what are you doing?” he moaned.

His face was the ashen gray of a funeral guest. I stood there, panicked, while he took Emily’s hand from me and probed her wrist for a pulse. His eyes were on the heart monitor screen. The regular blip I had been watching before I called Casey had changed to wild fluctuations, sharp peaks and profound valleys. Then, suddenly, the peaks straightened into a flat green line.

“Please, Em,” I begged. I moved over her, as if I could shield her from some outside danger. But her battles were all being fought inside. There was nothing for me to do except watch her impassive face for clues to the outcome.

After a long pause, Dr. Song sighed and tucked away his stethoscope. I thought it was all over. I was trying to cry out, plead for him to do something. He wiped sweat off his face and smiled.

“Sorry for the scare,” he said. “She’s okay. Monitor sensor slipped, that’s all. I freaked like a first-year med student when I saw the monitor going crazy. I’m sorry.”

“Em’s okay?” I had to say it myself.

“Yes. Her pulse could be stronger, but it’s steady.”

I held Emily’s hand again, still scared, afraid to be encouraged by Dr. Song’s smile or the warmth he had left on her palm. He was now happily whistling “Jingle Bells” while I was still juiced from the panic he had carried into the room. I felt like decking him.

Dr. Song had peeled back Emily’s gown to get at the sensors strapped around her chest. While he worked on the sensors, Em’s torso was bare. I’m no prude, but I felt very uncomfortable being in the room with him while Emily was naked. When I last shared a room with Emily, she had still been a modest teenager. At that time, this situation would have mortified her.

I looked at her.

At forty-four, Em still had a nice, athletic body. Her belly was flat and well-muscled, the taper of her narrow hips was graceful. Her bare breasts were larger and fuller than I remembered them, certainly larger than my own. Hers were truly beautiful, well-shaped and firm even though she was lying on her back. This fascinated me. I remembered Em slipping foam inserts into a strapless high school prom dress. Too odd, I thought, that sometime between that night and this one, she had become so voluptuous.

It took me a few moments to realize that the thin red lines under her breasts weren’t impressions made by her bra. They were surgical scars. Emily had breast implants.

The pure hedonistic extravagance of this act threw me. Not financial extravagance, because she probably exchanged freebies with another doctor to acquire these accessories. It was the unprecedented attention to herself, and her appearance that was a shocker. Why had she done it?

In transit between my news-writing job at WHCK radio in Des Moines and an anchoring spot at KMIR-TV in Palm Springs, I had traded in my father’s hook nose for a pert Marlo Thomas special. It took a lot of soul-searching before I could do it. I liked the original better, but the change was a professional, video necessity.

Emily had given me a lot of heat for undergoing this “mutilation.” So what had compelled her to enlarge her bust? A lover? The disappointment of a lover?

I realized I had begun to think about Em in a nostalgic way, as if the sum of her existence had drifted into the past. Discovering Emily’s secret voluptuousness shook me, made me wonder what else I didn’t know about her, gave her new life.

“Maggie!” I heard Scotty’s voice, anguished but very faint. At some point I had dropped the telephone receiver. I reeled it in by the cord.

“I’m here,” I said.

“What the hell happened?”

“Nothing. Mechanical glitch. I’ll call you later. Take care of Casey.” I hung up.

Trinh and Nurse Barbara had slipped into the room. Barbara bustled over to help Dr. Song, while Trinh guarded the door. “She’s okay,” I said to them.

Trinh nodded, though she didn’t seem persuaded. She looked at me and said, apologetically, “Some of those policemen in the hall want to talk to you.”

“Good,” I said, helping Dr. Song to redress Emily. “I want to talk with the police. Ask them to come in.”

Trinh brought in two of them. Both wore banker-gray suits, both had police photo I.D.‘s clipped to their handkerchief pockets. There were four rain-spattered black wingtips on the floor. In spite of this plainclothes uniform, the two couldn’t have been more different. One was tall, slender, gray-haired, his face set in an expression of quiet, almost reverential watchfulness. His partner was a solid block of man, from his Brillo pad mat of red hair to his box-shaped feet. If he hadn’t had tears in his eyes, he would have been thoroughly intimidating.

The big redhead moved toward me first, offering his massive hand.

“Detective T. O. Bronkowski,” he said. “You’re McGee, Doc’s sister?”

“MacGowen,” I said. “Maggie MacGowen.”

“Right. Saw on the tube that thing you did about the ‘Frisco quake. Thought you’d be taller.”

“I’m tall enough,” I said. At five-seven, I’m no midget.

“I guess because the Doc’s such a stretch model, I thought you would be, too.”

He carried a white plastic trash bag that he carefully set on the floor. “I’m so damn sorry about the Doc. How’s she doing?”

“Holding on,” I said. “Who did this to her?”

“Don’t have much to tell you,” Bronkowski said. “But, count on it, we will. In the middle of Chinatown, in the middle of the day, someone heard the gunshot, someone saw something. People around here can be pretty tight around the police. But for the Doc’s sake, they’ll come around.”

Bronkowski leaned over and took a long look at Emily. His face flushed with blood. “Bastard must be some kind of animal to leave her out in the rain.”

“Emily was left out in the rain?” I hated the picture that flashed behind my eyes. “How long?”

“Hour, maybe two,” Bronkowski said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Alley off Gin Ling Way. Around six, a busboy from Hop Louie’s ducked out for a smoke and found her lying behind some lettuce crates.”

I turned to Dr. Song. “If someone had found her sooner.

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t have made any difference.”

When I looked away, I met the stare of the second detective. I had nearly forgotten about him. He stayed behind Bronkowski, quietly, constantly watching me. I couldn’t tell his age; his face was young but his short hair and his carefully trimmed mustache were silver-white. If I were a criminal, I think he would be the one to worry about.

We engaged in a bit of a staredown. I think I won, because he was the first to smile. He offered his hand.

“Detective Michael Flint,” he said. “Emily and I go a long way back.”

“Detective,” I said, taking his hand. His fingers were still cold and damp from outside.

“You live in the Bay Area?” he asked.

“San Francisco.”

“Down visiting for the holidays?”

“No. I flew down just for the day, to see Emily.”

“Someone called you about the shooting?”

“No.”

“You just happened to come down. Today?”

“Is this the third degree?” I asked.

“This is conversation.” He smiled again. I leave the third degrees to Bronk.”

“Okay, then,” I said. I didn’t just happen to come down. Emily called me. We were supposed to meet at her apartment at four.

“Did you meet?”

“No. She never showed.”

“Any idea what she was involved in?”

“Other than a measles epidemic and TB testing, no. I could probably sketch in her day until about noon. Then I lost her trail. She missed some appointments.”

“Noon? That gives us a big gap. We think she was most likely shot between four and five.”

“Jesus.” I felt nauseous. “At four I was sitting on her doorstep, waiting for her.”

“Alone?”

“Alone with everyone in Chinatown.”

We were interrupted by the priest I had seen in the lobby. He pushed open the door and looked around the room. “May I?” he said.

“Father Hermilio,” Dr. Song said. “Please, come in.”

The small room already held a capacity crowd, so one more soul made tight quarters intimate.

“Albert, Michael, Bronk,” Father Hermilio greeted each in his soft, accented voice. Then he reached out for me. “You’re Maggie. Emily always speaks of you with affection. She is very proud of you.”

I almost lost it then.

“I ask you for permission to administer the sacraments to Emily,” Father Hermilio said.

“The sacraments?” I had to think about it. Emily had fallen away from our parents’ Catholicism long before I had. As far as I could remember, her last religious excursion had been a summer trip through Buddhism. If there seemed to be a lot of church-related people in her life, it was only because church volunteers staffed so many of the city’s social-service programs.

“Is it all right, Maggie?” Father asked.

“Yes, please,” I said, not for Emily’s sake, but because I knew my mother would ask about it when I called our parents. When I called our parents.

Father Hermilio slipped a purple stole around his neck and took out a little bottle of anointing oil. Bronk laid his big arm around me, Albert Song took my hand, and we all watched the priest. Maybe someone in the room was waiting for a miracle to come from the prayers. I was not. I was only glad for the moment of silence to gather myself, because I did not want these people to see me cry.

The situation was doubly hard for me because it was all deja vu, a rerun of the night of December 20, 1969.

Someone, the Pentagon maybe, had leaked an unconfirmed report that my brother, Marc, had been fragged, killed by his own men, in Vietnam. Coming at the same time as Emily’s indictment, with her face on the cover of Time, this was big news. The press descended on my parents’ house in Berkeley, corralling them inside, as it were.

When a picture of me in my school uniform appeared in the early television newscasts, my father had sent Emily to fetch me from school. We made our escape from St. Catherine’s Academy, to the principal’s great relief, directly after the swim meet. I remember little about the ride up the Peninsula in the car beside Em, except that my hair was still wet and I couldn’t stop shivering.

At home, we found the usual undecorated Christmas tree in the living room, and the accumulation of lights and ornaments stacked in boxes beside it. Mother always waited to decorate until we were all home for the holidays. That year she had defied tradition and hung a snapshot Marc had sent from Vietnam. We never got around to hanging anything else on that tree.

For the rest of the afternoon, we had sat silent vigil. There was nothing safe to say. Sometime during the evening a detachment of officers arrived from the Presidio across the Bay, bearing the official message. They had filed in and stood in our living room, ramrod straight, all starched and pressed and spit-polished, as my parents crumbled. It had been brutal.

And now it was my turn to deliver the message. There was no way, in the end, to soften the truth except to tell them in person. But I could not leave Emily.

I thought that the best thing would be to call on my father’s brother, Max, impose on him as I had so often before, persuade him to prepare the ground.

Everyone in the room was watching me, half a dozen pairs of tear-filled eyes. Their sadness made me feel better for Emily, knowing there were so many people who cared about her. Em, always on a crusade, didn’t always spend enough time nurturing friendships. Or little sisters.

Father Hermilio finished his prayers, anointed Emily, blessed her, blessed the rest of us, then knelt quietly at the bedside. Michael Flint touched my elbow and I moved with him toward the door.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m upright.”

“Can I ask some questions?”

I shrugged. “Can I stop you?”

He smiled. “Not likely.”

“Go ahead.”

“The name Aleda Weston mean anything to you?”

“Of course.”

“She made some deal with the FBI in New Hampshire. She’s coming to L.A. to surrender.”

I looked up at Detective Flint, but his face gave away nothing. “You know about Emily and Aleda Weston?”

“I told you, Emily and I go back a long way. When I was a rookie, she was one of the first famous people I arrested.”

“A feather in your cap,” I said.

“Where are you staying in town?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Emily’s apartment key is in that bag Bronk brought in. You’d be close by if she needed you. She wouldn’t mind.”

“You know this for a fact?” I said.

He smiled, a full, tooth-showing smile. “I know this for a fact.”

Flint picked up the white plastic bag. “This is the personal property Emily had with her when she was brought to the hospital. We’ve finished with it, so you can have it, if you want it. I’m warning you, it isn’t real pretty.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the bag. It felt heavy, and I could see moisture beading inside. I could also see a khaki field jacket and a pair of white Reeboks. The rest looked like more clothes.

Dr. Song tucked his stethoscope into his pocket. “It’s settled? You’ll be at Emily’s?”

“I think I should stay here.”

He shook his head. “Emily’s okay for now. You get some rest while you can. You’re in for a long haul.”

I didn’t want to leave Emily. But there was no way to avoid it. I’ll never forget how hurtful it was to learn about Marc, and to grieve for him, under the public gaze. I wanted to buy my parents as much time and privacy as I could. From Emily’s apartment I could speak with them alone. I planned to be away from Emily for no more than an hour.

I went over to Emily and kissed her cool cheek. I turned to Dr. Song. “Do you have the number at Emily’s apartment?” A chorus of four responded, in unison, “Yes.”

“You have a car outside?” Bronk asked.

“She walked,” Flint said. He took the bag from me and reached for the door. “I’ll take you home.”

He was pushy, and I don’t like to be pushed. But it was still raining outside and my feet were still cold. So I went with him. Why not? If Flint felt better carrying Em’s bag and holding doors for me, let him.

Father Hermilio walked out with us into the crush of people hovering outside Em’s room. The two men fended off queries from the crowd and I walked quietly, as if in a cocoon, between them, noting faces, attitudes, separating the morbidly curious from those genuinely grieving. I figured the two categories were about evenly represented.

Father Hermilio talked to me as we walked, but I hadn’t been listening.

“So you will come?” he said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Midnight mass at La Placita. The community will offer prayers for your brother. Emily arranged it. Now, of course, we will pray for her, too. It would be nice for you to speak for the family.”

“I’ll come,” I said. “But I can’t speak. I could never get through that.”

“I understand,” he said. “But you will come?”

“Yes.” I was trapped again by my upbringing. And puzzled. “She set up this service for my brother, Marc?”

“Si,” he said. “Por toda la familia.”

For the whole family, he said. More likely, for Emily. The years my brother was in Vietnam were tough on all of us, but especially tough for Emily. It was embarrassing for her, one of the nation’s leading antiwar rabble-rousers, to have her twin in the Marines. She gave him incredible grief for dropping out of Stanford and enlisting. When he signed up for his second tour of duty, one would think, listening to Emily, that he had done something criminal.

Marc and Emily were close, as twins are. But they always fought. They couldn’t help it; they both had exceedingly strong personalities-that is, egos. Their battles were more wars of domination, one over the other, than expressions of independence. They could never successfully separate from each other. Even when Marc died.

As we entered the lobby, the crowd rose for us. That’s when it hit me, the purpose of the flowers and candles, the neighborhood people crowded in the hospital. It was all for Emily. I had been so preoccupied with looking for Emily that I hadn’t put it all together before. Word about Emily had gotten out through the community grapevine very quickly. Again, I thought it was nice so many cared for her. At the same time, I began to feel very uneasy.

Sometime after Em had been found in that alley, she seemed to have undergone a transition from Emily, doer of good things, into Saint Emily. Mythic, heroic, martyred Saint Emily. I didn’t like it very much. Emily would hate it. For her, I would not enable the myth makers. I would not become the keeper of Emily’s flame, as she had been the keeper of Marc’s.

The crowd pulled at me with their sad faces, as if by their concern they could will from me better news than I had to give them.

Father Hermilio leaned his head close to mine. “Will you stay for a moment and share their prayers?”

“Please, I can’t do it now,” I said. I walked the narrow path that opened for me through the crowd, acknowledging their murmured blessings, touching the hot hands that reached out for mine. There was a general sighing, low like wind in your ears when you’re running very fast.

“I will see you at mass tonight, my child,” Father Hermilio said. He made the sign of the cross over me, and I bolted.

It was a short run for freedom. When I saw what was waiting for me outside, I stopped so abruptly that Flint nearly collided with me.

Poised among the flowers and candles in the covered entry, a three-person TV news crew lay in waiting: a reporter, a cameraman and a soundman-gofer.

I didn’t know the reporter’s name, but I recognized the hairdo. When she caught sight of me, I saw her check her reflection in the end of the camera lens and plump the lacquered hair.

I didn’t want to go through this new ordeal. I might have backed out, except that I was on foreign turf, and I might need a few favors on account. I plumped my own hair, or tried, and took a handful of Flint’s gabardine-upholstered elbow.

“Call your mother,” I said to him. “Tell her you’ll be on the eleven o’clock news.”

He chuckled and pushed open the door.

The camera was already rolling on us.

I held my hand in front of my face. “Hold it a sec,” I said. “I’ll do this for you, but a couple of requests first.

“Sure,” the reporter said. “Pause it, Tony.”

She came over to me with her hand extended. “Inez Sanchez, KABC news. What can I do for you?”

“I need some time. As far as I know, my parents haven’t heard about Emily yet. Can you hold the story until eleven? Promise me, no news breaks?”

“I think so.”

“And keep it low key?”

“Sure.”

“Now, what can I do for you?” I said.

“If you don’t mind, just stand here with me while I do the set up.” She looked closely at me. “My makeup kit’s in the van. We’ll wait for you.”

I checked myself in the nearest window. My hair was flat, I had no lipstick, Stella’s makeup job was long gone. I turned to Inez. “Let’s just do it.”

“Whatever you say.”

The soundman dropped a cord down my back, clipped the attached power pack to my belt and found a place under my lapel for the mike. He positioned me so that the carnation spray and its message, DOLOR, made a backdrop. He moved Flint tight beside me and arranged his jacket so that his detective shield caught the light.

“Okay, Inez?”

“When Tony’s ready.”

“Go ahead,” the cameraman said, and I saw the red filming light come on.

Inez went into her spiel:

“We’re standing outside French Hospital in the heart of Chinatown. It is sadly ironic that this institution, built a century and a half ago by French missionaries to provide succor for their countrymen, pioneers in the untamed environs of early Los Angeles, and who then stayed to give assistance to the Chinese immigrants who followed, should now offer its services to one who seems to have followed in the footsteps of the original missionary doctors.

“Dr. Emily Duchamps, one of our nation’s leading figures in health care for the poor, was found earlier this evening, gravely wounded by an unknown assailant.

“With me now is Dr. Duchamps’s sister, award-winning filmmaker Maggie MacGowen.” She closed toward me as the camera pulled back. “Miss MacGowen, what is your sister’s condition?”

“She’s stable and comfortable. Out of pain.”

“And the doctor’s prognosis for her recovery?”

“Hopeful.”

“The name Aleda Weston is also in the news tonight, a name once closely associated with your sister’s. Have you spoken recently with Miss Weston?”

“No.”

“She is due to arrive in Los Angeles within the hour. Will you be in contact with her?”

Ms. Sanchez was no dummy, damn her. I decided I had been cooperative enough. “Detective Flint can answer more of your questions than I.”

I backed out of the camera frame, leaving Flint in the red beam of the lens. I unhooked the mike and the power pack and handed them to the soundman on my way past.

I had gone less than fifty yards through the drizzly prelude to another downpour when Flint caught up to me.

“I said I’d drive you,” he said, panting a little from his sprint.

“I want to see Aleda Weston,” I said. “Can you arrange it?”

“Depends. I’ll try.”

Flint’s city-issue, green four-door was at a curb marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY. He opened the passenger door and I slid in across the scratchy imitation tweed upholstery. Flint didn’t bother with his seat belt. And he didn’t bother with conversation, either.

All the way up the hill to Emily’s apartment, I listened to the rain hammering against the car roof and the calls coming across Flint’s police radio: “Any unit in the vicinity of the southeast corner of Third and San Pedro, four-five-nine suspect in the building. Handle code two.” “Any unit in the vicinity, one-ten South Hope, see the woman, two-eleven purse snatch.” It was a dangerous world out there.

“It’s painful, but we need to talk about Emily,” Flint said, finally.

“Sure,” I said. “Just give me a little time to get pulled together.”

“Whatever you say.”

That’s when I saw the flowers in the street, a bright spill along the dark pavement in front of Emily’s building. The candles had been tossed out among them, helter-skelter, a few of them still glowing. All the little pots and jars filled with flowers and candles for Emily, all the offerings that had so neatly lined Mrs. Lim’s stoop, were smashed. Not randomly broken-every one smashed.

Broken glass crunched under Flint’s tires as he pulled to the curb.

“Kids,” he said.

“Uh huh.” When I opened the car door, I could smell crushed flowers and burning wax. Behind me I heard Flint’s radio: “Any unit in the vicinity, Echo Park and Logan, assault in progress. Handle code three.”

There were sirens in the distance, and I wondered if they were already rolling in Echo Park. It was only a couple of miles away. Truthfully, what I wondered was, how fast could they get to me?

I can take care of myself. And Flint was only five feet behind me with his automatic holstered on his belt. Didn’t matter-what I saw scared me.

Spray-painted on the wall beside Mrs. Lim’s front door, two feet high in a very careful script, were the words DIE FAST, BITCH.