An Equal Opportunity Death (2 page)

“It’ll pass. You’ve only been here a year. By this time next spring, you’ll only maim for it.”

I leaned back against the wall behind the bar stool. I hadn’t asked, but Frank refilled my glass. My 10
A.M.
scrambled eggs were outclassed when it came to mopping up the alcohol. My head felt like the steamy windows. It was nice on a cold rainy day.

“Listen,” Frank said. “Why don’t you come with me? We can go to the theater in Japantown. Or see what’s going on at Fort Mason. If there’s no live show there, we could at least have dinner.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“It’d sort of be cheating. This was my day to enjoy the solitude of my house.”

Frank laughed. “That lasted a long time, didn’t it? You made it to what, noon?”

“I guess so.” I laughed, too. “That was one of the things I was going to change when I moved up here. I was going to be less dependent on other people. I was really going to discover the joy of being alone. Sort of a secular monk.”

Frank put a hand on my shoulder. “There are worse things than enjoying people.”

I laughed again. The rum gave the serious issues I had worried over rather a fanciful air. “I thought when I bought the house and moved in, that I would be living in the country, among country people. I thought it would be so different, that I would be forced to deal with solitude. But half the people I meet here are just like me—they’ve been out of the city less than two years—nouveau woodsy.”

“It’s true. In a sense, we’re all spoiling the area for ourselves and everyone, particularly the old-time residents. If it gets any artsier, we may as well go back to the city.”

“Perhaps.” I didn’t want the conversation to take this turn. It was depressing. “But, whatever, we’ll go to the city this afternoon. Are you sure, Frank?” I said, smiling, “that none of your covey of new ladies will be demanding your attendance then?”

“Not me. I’m just an old bachelor bartender.”

“You! The catch of the area. Is there one new lady you haven’t been out with?”

He shrugged and favored me with that grin. “Surely,” he said, “this is not jealousy.”

“What? Not me. We’re just friends, right?”

“Is that all?”

I laughed once more. I knew this line. I had heard Frank use it on every female customer who was still ambulatory. It charmed them all, just as it charmed me. “I loved our couple of dates last fall,” I said, “but I really do like being friends even better. I would hate not to be told the tales of whom you’re dating and whom you’re not. And besides, you probably only take friends to the city in the afternoon.”

“I …”

The telephone rang. Frank stepped around the corner and picked up the receiver.

The rain, which frequently let up during the day, was falling harder. Through the steamed windows, I could barely make out the river. I lowered myself off the stool, realizing suddenly that I was not quite steady. It was good that I hadn’t sat long enough to have a third hot buttered rum. I wiped a circle of steam off the window behind the bar and stared through. The brown and opaque river bore no resemblance to the peaceful stream of summer on which tourists paddled Paul and Patsy Fernandez’s canoes. Now it was rapids. It tossed branches, the length of a man, against the banks. If Frank’s Place weren’t on stilts, it would be flooded every spring. As it was, the floor had been covered with mud and silt during two or three of the worst floods.

“I’ll be taking a lady friend with me,” Frank was saying into the receiver.

I was not here last year. I bought the little house right after the rainy season. It was built high with a foundation on pinions sunk into the hillside. It was forty-some years old. I knew I had nothing to worry about, but, looking at the river smashing against its banks, I worried.

“I don’t take orders.” Suddenly Frank’s voice was sharper. “But it isn’t essential. I’ll go alone. So, just forget it, will you?”

I walked back around the bar, climbed on the stool and waited, disappointed, angry, the rum magnifying my feelings. I knew how the liquor was affecting me, but that didn’t make me less irritated.

It was only a minute before Frank hung up and was back leaning on the bar. His face showed no change, none of the anger that had been in his voice. I wondered if he were presenting me with his professional face. “Vejay,” he said, “I’m sorry, really disappointed, but I’m going to have to take a raincheck”—he threw a wry look at the window—“on that trip to the city with you.”

“Do you mean you’re not going?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, my face as professional-looking as his. I suspected my performance wasn’t up to his standards.

“No. It’s just that the things I have to do there are going to require more of my attention than I thought.”

“I’ll bet.” I didn’t have to add,
She, whoever she is, wants all your attention.
Frank understood.

“No, Vejay. That’s just being silly.”

I stood up. “It’s not being silly. I expected better of you. I would expect that of any friend. I don’t like to be discarded when something better comes along.”

“It’s not that. Believe me.”

There was nothing more to say. I grabbed my slicker, and stomped out the door, feeling at once like Barbara Stanwyck in some old movie and like any twelve-year-old. I knew that when the rum wore off, any suggestion of Stanwyck would be gone.

M
Y ANGER HAD PROPELLED
me down the steps before I stopped to put on my slicker. I was soaked. I stood there in the rain, pushing one and then the other thoroughly wet arm into the sleeves, then fiddled with the zipper. My truck was only twenty feet away. I could have run for it, without my slicker, and been drier.

When I looked up, zipper zipped, a battered black pickup was stopping in the lot. The horn blew a greeting and, before I could move, Chris Fortimiglio climbed out.

“Vejay. You off today?” Chris, tall and muscular, was one of those blond Italians. He was younger than I, maybe twenty-five, but already he was running the fishing business that had been in his family for three generations. The Fortimiglios were pillars of the old river families, never making much, but always surviving, always with some relative on the city council, or selling tickets for the St. Agnes pancake breakfast. There had been a period when fishing, particularly salmon fishing, provided a good income—when the Fortimiglios had added two bedrooms and a family room to their house—but now the whole area was overfished. The Russian trawlers came in close a couple of years. There had been an oil spill. The Fortimiglios were still surviving, but I knew that they closed off those new bedrooms in the winter, and the family room was used for storage.

“No. Listen, Chris, I’m sick. I’m supposed to be home. I should never have left the house. Don’t tell anyone you saw me here, okay?”

“But why?” He moved closer, eyeing me diagnostically.

“I called in sick to work. If they suspected I wasn’t really sick they could give me a bad time, even suspend me.”

“Oh. Okay. But as long as you’re here, why don’t you come in and have something to drink?”

“No.”

“Wow! You mad?”

“No.… Yes. I don’t know. I’m just annoyed with Frank. I suppose it will pass.”

“Did you have an argument?” It sounded so soap-opera-ish as he said it that I could almost see him recategorizing Frank’s and my friendship. And I could see the entire Fortimiglio clan discussing it. And Sam Fortimiglio, Chris’s uncle, worked for PG&E.

“No. It’s nothing,” I said. “But really, Chris, please don’t mention to anyone that you saw me here today. Promise?”

“Sure.”

“No one. Not even family.”

“My family wouldn’t …”

“No one.”

He sighed. “Okay. It seems odd to me. But you city types do weird things. So, okay.”

“Thanks, Chris.” I squeezed his arm and headed to my truck. As I settled in the seat, I could see Chris start up the steps, stop, as if thinking, then turn and walk back to his pickup.

I hoped I didn’t make Chris think badly of Frank. And I hoped I didn’t make him ponder our whole conversation so much that he would find it impossible to resist discussing it.

I watched Chris pull out of the parking lot, but I didn’t start my own engine. Instead I looked at the river rush over fallen branches, creating the beginnings of whirlpools. I could drive, but I knew I’d had enough to drink to make that legally questionable. All I needed now was to be stopped for drunk driving at 12:30, when I was supposed to be home sick. I had planned to take the day off, stay home, and luxuriate. My only stricture was to stay out of sight. I was certainly failing at that. So far my morning had been like “The Three Stooges Take a Sick Day.”

My speculations were interrupted by the sound of an engine stopping. In the side parking lot, where Chris had been, I now saw the Chinese Laundry van, here to pick up Frank’s napkins and tablecloths from the dinner trade. Frank’s was mainly a bar, but he did have a few tables, and he served one entree per night—whatever Rosa Fortimiglio, Chris’s mother, delivered. Customers never knew in advance whether they would be served ravioli, fettucini, or Salmon Rosa. But, whichever, it was always good, cheap, and filling.

The laundryman wouldn’t know me, but I didn’t want to be seen by another person, regardless. I eased my pickup around the far corner of the building and was pulling out onto the road before he had time to leave his truck.

It was still the noon hour. Traffic on the main bridge would be heavy. Pedestrians would be rushing to and from lunch. In the rain, the traffic lights might go out at any time. It wouldn’t be wise for me to navigate through that. I didn’t want to be arrested, and I certainly didn’t want to hit anyone. So I turned west and drove away from town, to the bridge a few miles down river. The road was empty. Eucalyptus, fir trees, and redwoods crowded beside it, their wet branches hanging low, occasionally scraping the roof of the cab. The headlights seemed to bounce off the rain; it was like driving in a car wash.

I crossed the bridge and drove back along North Bank Road. The river was maybe forty yards to the right now. Between it and the road were a few small shingle buildings. I had noticed them during the summer. They were ill-painted, casually kept; places that could be flooded with no great loss. One was an abandoned café. It had been a soda and coffee shop some years ago, but it had failed, or the city person with dreams of running a country business had moved on to other projects. It was in the same condition as the little houses.

North Bank Road started to become crowded as I came into town. I turned left, bypassed the main area of town and cut down the block before my house, relieved to see no one out, and gratefully pulled into the garage.

Back in the safety of my own house, I took a long hot shower, then, prodded by guilt over my wasted free day, I donned my slicker, grabbed two empty half-gallon wine bottles, and trudged along the muddy path that skirted the next two houses, to the spring that provided the only palatable drinking water. The stuff from the tap wouldn’t kill you, but it tasted too much like metal pipe. I carried the full bottles to the house. Ten more waited. I was beginning to get a headache. Picking up two more, I trudged back.

And, when the entire dozen were full, and I could be free from this joy of the country for another two weeks, I stoked the fire, took out a book on the architecture of Eureka that I had been planning to read for months, and promptly fell asleep.

It was four-thirty when I awoke, my mouth dry and cottony, my head aching, and the memory of my scene with Frank reminding me what an ass I had made of myself. So much for my luxuriant day.

But at least I felt sober. And I could make a decision. Frank might not have left for San Francisco yet. If he were still there, I could explain—apologize, sort of—though I didn’t think I was entirely wrong. It just wasn’t worth being unfriendly over. To make up, I could (openly, since it would be after five and after my working hours) show Frank how to read his meter and see that he was allowing himself to be overcharged. At a saving of fifty dollars a month, he would be well-recompensed for a few minutes of inconvenience.

After I had washed and dried my hair and spent a little time on my face and clothes, it was five-fifteen when I drove across the main bridge toward Frank’s Place.

The side parking lot, where Chris had been, was full when I arrived. I had expected a couple of cars. Frank’s opened officially at four-thirty. I pulled in, stopped, and, as I looked around, I realized that the cars were official. County sheriff cars. And a van.

I hurried up the steps to the bar. There was a young officer at the door. No one, he told me, could go in.

“Is Frank okay?” I asked. “I’m a friend of his.”

“Everyone’s a friend of Frank’s,” he said. “But I can’t let you in.”

“What happened?”

“Frank’s dead. Shot.”

“What? But I was …”

The kid, the deputy, looked as shocked as I felt. He paid no attention to my abandoned sentence.

I stood, trying to decide what to do. It was hard, impossible, to imagine Frank dead—Frank, who was going to take me to a Japanese movie this evening. I needed to see Frank’s body to believe he was dead. I waited, standing against the building wall.

The door opened. An older man stepped out. He nodded to the young officer, then looked at me.

“Who’s she?” he said to the cop.

“She says she’s a friend of Frank’s.”

“They’re all friends of Frank’s,” he said, and it was apparent from his tone that the “they” he meant was female.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Vejay Haskell. Veronica Haskell.”

“Haskell.” His face lightened. He almost smiled. “Good. I want to talk to you. You’re the one who was here at noon, the one who argued with Frank Goulet. I was going to send a squad car for you.”

S
HERIFF
W
ESCOTT TOOK ME
inside and sat me at one of the tables by the front window. I thought I needed to see Frank’s body to convince me he was dead, but when I saw the oblong form covered by two tablecloths, it was enough. Plenty.