A Stranger in My Grave (10 page)

He pressed the buzzer, and the old man got hurriedly to his feet and zigzagged across the living room as if he were dodging bullets. He turned off the TV set, with a furtive glance toward the window, and came running to open the door.

“I hardly never watch the stuff,” he said, wheezing apology. “My son-in-law Harold don't approve, says it's bad for my heart, all them shootings.”

“Are you the caretaker?”

“No, that's my son-in-law Harold. He's at the dentist, got him­self an absence on the gum.”

“Maybe you could give me some information?”

“Can't do no more than try. My name's Finchley. Come in and close the door. That fog clogs up my tubes, can't hardly breathe certain nights.” He squinted out at the car. “Don't the lady care to come in out of the fog?”

“No.”

“She must have good serviceable tubes.” The old man closed the door. The small, neat living room was stifling hot and smelled of chocolate. “You looking for a particular gra—resting-place? Harold says never to say grave, customers don't like it, but all the time I keep forgetting. Now right here I got a map of the whole location, tells you who's buried where. That what you want?”

“Not exactly. I know where the man's buried, but I'd like some more information about the date and circumstances.”

“Where's he buried?”

Pinata indicated the spot on the map while Finchley wheezed and grunted his disapproval. “That's a bad place, what with the spring tides eating away at the cliff and that big old tree getting bigger every day and ‘tracting tourists that stomp on the grass. People buy there because of the view, but what's a view good for if you can't see it? Me, when I die, I want to lie safe and snug, not with no big old tree and them high tides coming after me hell-bent for leather.... What's his name?”

“Carlos Camilla.”

“I'd have to go to the file to look that up, and I ain't so sure I can find the key.”

“You could try.”

“I ain't so sure I oughta. It's near closing time, and I got to put supper on the stove. Absence or no absence, Harold likes to eat and eat good, same as me. All them dead people out there, they don't bother me none. When it comes quitting time, I close the door on them, never think of them again till next morning. They don't bother my sleep or my victuals none.” But he belched suddenly, in a genteel way, as if he had, unawares, swallowed a few indigestible fibers of fear. “Anyhow, maybe Harold wouldn't like me messing with his file. That file's mighty important to him; it's exactly the same as the one the Super has in his office. You can tell from that how much the Super thinks of Harold.”

Pinata was beginning to suspect that Finchley was stalling not because of his inability to find the key or any inhibitions about using it, but because he couldn't spell.

“You find the key,” he said, “and I'll help you look up the name.”

The old man looked relieved at having the burden of decision lifted from his shoulders. “Now that's fair enough, ain't it?”

“It won't take me a minute. Then you can turn on the TV again and catch the end of the program.”

“I don't mind admitting I ain't sure which was the good guy and which was the bad guy. Now what's that name again?”

“Camilla.”

“K-a—”

“C-a-m-i-l-l-a.”

“You write it down, just like it shows on the cards, eh?”

Pinata wrote it down, and the old man took the paper and sped out of the room as if he'd been handed the baton in a relay race to the frontier where the bad guys were shooting it out with the good guys.

He returned in less than a minute, put the file drawer on the table, turned on the TV set, and retired from the world.

Pinata bent over the file. The card bearing the name Carlos Theodore Camilla bore little else: a technical description of his burial plot and the name of the funeral director, Roy Fondero. Next of kin, none. Address, none. Born April 3, 1907. Died December 2, 1955.
Sui mano.

Coincidence
, he thought. The date of Camilla's suicide must be just a crazy coincidence. After all, the chances were one in 365. Things a lot more coincidental than that happen every day.

But he didn't believe it, and he knew Daisy wouldn't either if he told her. The question was whether to tell her, and if he decided not to, the problem was how to lie successfully. She wasn't easily deceived. Her ears were quick to catch false notes, and her eyes were a good deal sharper than he'd thought.

A new and disturbing idea had begun to gnaw at a corner of his brain: suppose Daisy already knew how and when Camilla had died, suppose she had invented the whole business of the dreams as a means of getting him interested in Camilla without reveal­ing her own connection with him. It seemed highly improbable, however. Her reaction to the name had been one of simple relief that it was not her own; she'd shown no signs of emotional involvement or confusion or guilt beyond the spoken artificial guilt over her gladness that the tombstone was Camilla's instead of hers. Besides, he could think of no valid reason why Daisy would choose such a devious way of accomplishing her purpose.
No,
he thought,
Daisy is a victim, not a manipulator of circumstances.
She didn't plan, couldn't possibly have planned the sequence of events that led to his meeting her in the first place: the arrest of her father, the bail, her visit to his office. If any planning had been done, it was on Fielding's part, but this was equally unlikely. Fielding seemed incapable of planning anything farther than the next minute and the next bottle.

All right,
he thought irritably.
So nobody planned anything. Daisy had a dream, that's all. Daisy had a dream.

He said, “Thanks very much, Mr. Finchley.”

“Eh?”

“Thank you for letting me see the file.”

“Oh my, look at him take that bullet right in the belly. I knew all along it was the bad guy in the black hat. You can always tell by the horse's eyes. A horse looks mean and shifty, and you can bet he's got a mean and shifty critter on his back. Well, he got his, yes sir, he got his.” Finchley wrenched his eyes from the screen. “Program's changing, must be five o'clock. You better get a move on before Harold comes home and locks the gates. He won't be in so good a humor with that absence on his gum and all. Harold's fair,” he added with a grunt, “but he ain't merciful. Not since his wife died. That's what women are put in this world for, mercy, ain't that right?”

“I guess so.”

“Someday, you live long enough and you'll know so.”

“Good night, Mr. Finchley.”

“You get out of them gates before Harold comes.”

Daisy had turned on the radio and the heater in the car, but she didn't look as though she were feeling any warmth or hear­ing any music. She said, “Please, let's hurry and get out of here.”

“You could have come inside the house.”

“I didn't want to interfere with your work. What did you find out?”

“Not much.”

“Well, aren't you going to tell me?”

“I suppose I'll have to.”

He told her, and she listened in silence while the car rolled noisily down the graveled hill past the chapel. It was dark. The organist was gone, leaving no echoes of music. The birds of par­adise were voiceless. The money on the silver dollar trees was spent; the bougainvillea wept in the fog.

Harold, holding his swollen jaw, watched the car leave and closed the iron gates. The day was over; it was good to be home.

9

Even when she talked of love, her voice had bitterness in it, as if the relationship between us was the result of a physical defect she couldn't help, a weakness of the body which her mind despised. .. .

 

The lights of
the city were going on, in strings and clusters along the sea and highway, thinning out as they rose up the foothills until, at the very top, they looked like individual stars that had fallen on the mountains, still burning. Pinata knew that none of the lights belonged to him. His house was dark; there was no one in it, no Johnny, no Monica, not even Mrs. Dubrinski, who left at five o'clock to take care of her own family. He felt as excluded from life as Camilla in his grave under the great tree, as empty as Camilla's mind, as deaf as his ears to the sound of the sea, as blind as his eyes to the spindrift.

“What's a view good for,” the old man had said, “if you can't see it?”

Well, the view's there,
Pinata thought.
I'm looking at it, but I'm not part of it. None of those lights have been lit for me, and if anyone's wait­ing for me, it's some drunk in the city jail anxious to get out and buy another bottle.

Beside him, Daisy was sitting mute and motionless, as if she were thinking of nothing at all or of so many things so quickly that they had crashed the sound barrier into silence. Glancing at her, he wanted suddenly to do something shocking, arresting, to force her to pay attention to him. But a second later the idea seemed so absurd that he went cold with anger at himself:
Christ, what's the matter with me? I must be losing my marbles. Johnny, I must think of Johnny. Or Camilla. That's safe, think of Camilla, the stranger in Daisy's grave.

This stranger had died, and Daisy had dreamed the tombstone was her own—that much of it was explicable. The rest wasn't, unless Daisy had extrasensory perception, which seemed highly improbable, or a singular ability to deceive herself as well as other people. The latter was more likely, but he didn't believe it. As he became better acquainted with her, he was struck by her essential naïveté and innocence, as if she had somehow walked through life without touching anything or being touched, like a child wander­ing through a store where all the merchandise was out of reach and not for sale, and dummy clerks stood behind plate glass and sold nothing. Had Daisy baby been too well disciplined to protest, too docile to demand? And was she demanding now, through her dreams, for the plate glass to be removed and the dummy clerks put into action?

“The stranger,” she said at last. “How did he die?”

“Suicide. His file card was marked
sui mano,
‘by his own hand.' I presume someone thought putting it in Latin would take the curse off it.”

“So he killed himself. That makes it even worse.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps I had some connection with his death. Perhaps I was responsible for it.”

“That's pretty far-fetched,” Pinata said quietly. “You've had a shock, Mrs. Harker. The best thing you can do now is to stop worrying and go home and have a rest.”
Or take a pill, or a drink, or throw fits, or whatever else women like you do under the circum­stances. Monica used to cry, but I don't think you will, Daisy baby. You'll brood, and God only knows what you'll hatch.
“Camilla was a stranger to you, wasn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Then how is it possible that you were connected in any way with his death?”

“Possible? We're not dealing in ‘possibles' anymore, Mr. Pinata. It isn't possible that I should have known the day he died. But it happened. It's a fact, not something whipped up by an over-imaginative or hysterical woman, which is probably how you've been regarding me up until now. My knowing the date of Camilla's death, that's changed things between us, hasn't it?”

“Yes.” He would have liked to tell her that things between them had changed a great deal more than she thought, changed enough to send her running for cover back to Rainbow's End, Jim and Mamma. She would run, of course. But how soon and how fast? He glanced at his hands gripping the steering wheel. In the dim lights of the dashboard they looked very brown.
She would run very soon,
he thought,
and very fast. Even if she weren't married.
The fact dug painfully into his mind as though in her flight she wore the spiked shoes of a sprinter.

She was talking about Camilla again, the dead man who was more important to her than he ever would be, in all his youth and energy. Alive, present, eager, he was no match for the dead stranger lying under the fig tree at the edge of the cliff. Pinata thought,
I am, here beside her, in time and space, but Camilla is part of her dreams.
He was beginning to hate the name.
Damn you, Camilla, stretcher, little bed. . . .

“I have this very strong feeling,” she said, “of involvement, even of guilt.”

“Guilt feelings are often transferred to quite unrelated things or people. Yours may have nothing to do with Camilla.”

“I think they have, though.” She sounded perversely obstinate, as if she wanted to believe the worst about herself. “It's an odd coincidence that both the names are Mexican, first the girl's, Juanita Garcia, and now Camilla's. I hardly know, in fact I don't know, any Mexicans at all except casually through my work at the Clinic. It's not that I'm prejudiced like my mother; I simply never get to meet any.”

“Your never getting to meet any means your prejudice or lack of it hasn't been tested. Perhaps your mother's has, and at least she's playing it straight by admitting it.”

“And I'm not playing things straight?”

“I didn't say that.”

“The implication was clear. Perhaps you think I found out the date of Camilla's death before this afternoon? Or that I knew the man himself?”

“Both have occurred to me.”

“It's easier, of course, to distrust me than to believe the impos­sible. Camilla is a stranger to me,” she repeated. “What motive would I have in lying to you?”

“I don't know.” He had tried, and failed, to think of a reason why she should lie to him. He meant nothing to her; she was not interested in his approval or disapproval; she was not trying to influence, entice, convince, or impress him. He was no more to her than a wall you bounce balls off. Why bother lying to a wall?

“It's too bad,” she said, “that you met my father before you met me. You were prepared to be suspicious of me before you even saw me, speaking of prejudice. My father and I aren't in the least alike, although Mother likes to tell me we are when she's angry. She even claims I look like him. Do I?”

“There's no physical resemblance.”

“There's no resemblance in any other way either, not even in the good things. And there are a lot of good things about him, but I guess they didn't show up the day you met him.”

“Some of them did. I never judge anyone by his parents, anyway. I can't afford to.”

She turned and looked at him as if she expected him to elabo­rate on the subject. He said nothing more. The less she knew about him, the better. Walls weren't supposed to have family histories; walls were for protection, privacy, decoration, for hiding behind, jumping over, playing games.
Bounce some more balls at me, Daisy baby.

“Camilla,” she said. “You'll find out more about him, of course.”

“Such as?”

“How he died, and why, and if he had any family or friends.”

“And then what?”

“Then we'll know.”

“Suppose it turns out to be the kind of knowledge that won't do anybody any good?” “We've got to take that chance,” she said. “We couldn't possi­bly stop now. It's unthinkable.”

“I find it quite thinkable.”

“You're bluffing, Mr. Pinata. You don't want to quit now any more than I do. You're much too curious.”

She was half right. He didn't want to quit now, but a surplus of curiosity wasn't the reason.

“It's 5:15,” she said. “If you drive faster, we can get back to the
Monitor
before they close the library. Since Camilla committed suicide, there's sure to be a report of it, as well as his obituary.”

“Aren't you expected at home about this time?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think you'd better go there and leave the Camilla busi­ness to me.”

“Will you call me as soon as you find out anything?”

“Wouldn't that be a little foolish under the circumstances?” Pinata said. “You'd have some fancy explaining to do to your hus­band and your mother. Unless, of course, you've decided to come clean with them.”

“I'll call you at your office tomorrow morning at the same time as this morning.”

“Still playing secrets, eh?”

“I'm playing,” she said distinctly, “exactly the way I've been taught to play. Your system of all cards face up on the table wouldn't work in my house, Mr. Pinata.”

It didn't work in mine either,
he thought.
Monica got herself a new partner.

When he returned to the third floor of the
Monitor-Press
building, the girl in charge of the library was about to lock up for the day.

She jangled her keys at him unplayfully. “We're closing.”

“You're ahead of yourself by four minutes.”

“I can use four minutes.”

“So can I. Let me see that microfilm again, will you?”

“This is just another example,” she said bitterly, “of what it's like working on a newspaper. Everything's got to be done at the last minute. There's just one crisis after another.”

She kept on grumbling as she took the microfilm out of the file and put it in the projection machine. But it was a mild kind of grumbling, not directed at Pinata or even the newspaper. It was a general indictment of life for not being planned and predictable. “I like things to be
orderly
,” she said, switching on the light. “And they never are.”

Camilla had made the front page of the December 3rd edition. The story was headlined
suicide leaves bizarre farewell note
and accompanied by a sketch of the head of a gaunt-faced man with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones. Although age lines scarred the man's face, long dark hair curling over the tips of his ears gave him an incongruous look of innocence. According to the caption, the sketch had been made by
Monitor-Press
artist Gorham Smith, who'd been among the first at the scene. Smith's byline was also on the story:

The body of the suicide victim found yesterday near the railroad jungle by a police patrolman has been identi­fied as that of Carlos Theodore Camilla, believed to be a transient. No wallet or personal papers were found on the body, but further search of his clothing revealed an enve­lope containing a penciled note and the sum of $2,000 in large bills. Local authorities were surprised by the amount of money and by the nature of the note, which read as fol­lows: “This ought to pay my way into heaven, you stinking rats. Carlos Theodore Camilla. Born, too soon, 1907. Died, too late, 1955.”

The note was printed on Hotel Parker stationery, but the management of the hotel has no record of Camilla staying there. A check of other hotels and motor lodges in the area failed to uncover the suicide victim's place of res­idence. Police theorize that he was a transient who hitch­hiked or rode the roads into the city after committing a holdup in some other part of the state. This would explain how Camilla, who appeared destitute and in an advanced stage of malnutrition, was carrying so much money. In­quiries have been sent to police headquarters and sheriffs' offices throughout the state in an effort to find the source of the $2,000. Burial services will be postponed until it is established that the money is not the proceeds of a robbery but belongs legally to the dead man. Meanwhile, Camilla's body is under the care of Roy Fondero, funeral director.

According to Sheriff-Coroner Robert Lerner, Camilla died of a self-inflicted knife wound late Thursday night or early Friday morning. The type of knife was identified by authorities as a
navaja
, often carried by Mexicans and Indians of the Southwest. The initials C.C. were carved on the handle. A dozen cigarette butts found at the scene of the tragedy indicate that Camilla spent considerable time debating whether to go through with the act or not. An empty wine bottle was also found nearby, but a blood test indicated that Camilla had not been drinking.

The residents of so-called Jungleland, the collection of shacks between the railway tracks and Highway 101, denied knowing anything about the dead man. Camilla's fingerprints are being sent to Washington to determine whether he had a criminal record or is registered with immigration authorities. An effort is being made to locate the dead man's place of residence, family, and friends. If no one claims the body and if the money is found to be legally his, Camilla will be buried in a local cemetery. The Coroner's inquest, scheduled for tomorrow morning, is expected to be brief.