Nightwork (21 page)

At the far end of the room, French doors opened on a patio where a swimming pool shone an unreal blue back at the unreal blue of the sky. A slim, dark girl in a white bikini appeared in the doorway and stood there, flapping into a white terry cloth robe and stretching her neck a little, seeming to peer into shadows darker than those the room created. She then drew dark glasses from a pocket of the robe, put them on, and, from where it leaned in the doorway without Dave’s having noticed it, groped out for and found a slender white cane with a red tip. She stepped down into the room, barefoot as the boy had been, and came toward Dave, smiling, moving the cane at about shin level back and forth in front of her, and tracking damp footprints on the priceless rug as the boy had done.

“Mr. Brandstetter?” She stopped a yard off, and he saw that he had been mistaken about her smile. It was not a smile. It was some sort of habitual grimace that had to do with her not being able to see, a kind of wince, maybe, already in place for the moment when she ran into something. In fact, when she stopped moving, and the grimace went away, her expression was sad. “You said you had questions. I thought I’d answered every question there could be. For the police.”

“I’ve read their report,” Dave said. “I’ll try not to ask the same things again.”

She sighed and gestured with the slim cane at one of two long couches that faced each other with coffee tables in between, lamps at either end. One couch was cushioned in a nubby wool dyed the same quiet blue as that in the carpet, the other in the same quiet hue of rose. It was the rose-color couch she pointed at. “Will you sit down?”

“Thank you.” Dave went past her and sat. She seemed to listen to his passage, as if she could detect a turbulence in the air around him. Certainly the carpet didn’t allow his footfalls to sound. When he sat, the cushions received his weight without comment. She seemed to know exactly where he was even before he spoke. She sat at the other end of the couch and turned her sad face with its big dark glasses resignedly toward him. Dave said, “Do you think your father killed himself?”

She gave a little bleak shrug. “They told me the gun was in his hand. There were powder burns on his hand. And at his temple, where the bullet went in.” She braced a foot on the handsome coffee table, leaned forward, and dried her toes with a corner of the robe. “I guess he killed himself. But I don’t know why.”

“He wasn’t depressed?” Dave said. “He wasn’t in some kind of trouble you know about?”

“He was angry at my mother.” Chrissie gave a mirthless little laugh. “But he was always angry at her. She was raising hell. Again. About me. I’m a bone of contention between them.” She dried the other set of toes, then drew her legs under her on the couch, pulling the robe across them as neatly as if she could see. “I mean—I was. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. My father had custody, you see. He had Brenda ruled unfit by a court. She drank and popped pills. Still does. Judge Farmer made her check into a hospital, but after she came out, she started right in again, same as before. It’s not her fault. It’s a sickness.”

“You’ll be all right,” Dave said.

“Not unless I get married, I won’t be,” she said.

As if this were his cue, the gangly boy came down the stairs, barefoot but in floppy camouflage pants now, and a camouflage tanktop he had scissored short just below his ribs. His shoulders were spare as coat hangers. He had blow-dried his Raggedy Andy hair. A strong deodorant smell came off him. When he got to the foot of the staircase, he mumbled without looking their way, “Anybody want a soda?” and before he got an answer, went off out of sight behind the broad mellow-brick wall that held the fireplace.

“He looks too young to marry,” Dave said.

“He is,” Chrissie said. “A year younger than me. Sixteen.” She twitched Dave a smile. “Are you single, by any chance?”

“That’s the nicest offer I’ve had all day,” Dave said. “But we hardly know each other. What about your father’s work? Was there something wrong with that?”

“Everything was great. He just got a hundred thousand dollars from cable TV for a series of articles he did a year ago for the
New York Times
Sunday magazine. On Cambodia. They’re going to make a miniseries.” She laughed. “He bought French champagne and opened a big can of caviar they gave him in Russia when he was doing that Siberian railway story.” She giggled. “First time I ever had champagne. First time I ever had caviar. I don’t know if I like caviar. But I like champagne. If I wasn’t afraid of getting like Brenda, I’d have champagne for breakfast every day.”

“It gets expensive,” Dave said, “does French champagne.”

It couldn’t rightly be said that she looked at him, could it? Or looked away, when she looked away. She turned her face away, and said to the beautiful room, “I can afford it.” There wasn’t much happiness in the statement. It was just that. Her fingers found the end of the terry cloth sash and fiddled with it. “Gandy died last week,” she said.

Dave frowned. “Gandhi died forty years ago.”

“Not him. My grandmother. I couldn’t say
grandma
when I was little. I said
Gandy
, and it stuck, you know? She left me everything. That’s why Brenda wants me back. If she was my legal guardian, she’d have control of the money.”

“Maybe she loves you,” Dave said. “Mothers have been known to do that.”

The boy came back, holding three dewy soda cans in his knuckly hands, and set them on the coffee table in front of the rose-color couch among a scattering of netsuke, little yellow and white and brown ivory carvings of monkeys and mice and insects. He sat on the floor. “Not her mother,” he told Dave. “Her mother’s a witch.”

“What about her father?” Dave said.

“I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about half the time,” the boy said, “but you had to like him. He didn’t act old, you know. He watched me skateboard a little out there in the parking space one day, and said could he try it, and he was as good as I was. Right away, man. No practice. He was flaky. He stood on his head for five minutes every morning—said it prevented kidney stones.” The boy reached for one of the soda cans and drank from it. “He did those Chinese exercises, tai chi, where you make gestures”—he stretched out an arm, and soda slopped from the can and splashed on the carpet—“in slow motion, right? Almost like dancing. He said it will keep you alive and healthy till you’re a hundred and ten years old.”

“Not him,” Chrissie said. Slow tears ran down her face.

“Oh, Jesus,” the boy said. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I like to hear you talk about him. Go on.”

“He always used a typewriter,” the boy said. “Electric, sure, but really old. I mean, it didn’t even have a type ball. It had keys, okay—clackety-clack? Really noisy. And the one he took on trips was even older. The cloth was coming off the case in shreds. He went everywhere, man. All over the world, wherever there was trouble. When they blew up those Marines in Lebanon, he was there. He actually saw that damned truck loaded with explosives when that crazy—”

“He wasn’t that close,” Chrissie said. “Don’t exaggerate. Tell about the word processor.”

“I’m a computer freak.” The boy gulped more soda. “Have been since I was five. And I made fun of those typewriters. I said he could work faster and turn out more stuff if he had a word processor. And he said, ‘Will you teach me how to use it, Dan’l?’ That’s really my name—Dan’l. And I told him I’d try, only maybe he was too old to learn.” Dan’l barked a laugh at himself. “Hell, he caught on in about half an hour. He was sharp.”

“For an old guy,” Dave said.

Dan’l’s acne grew redder. He stared large-eyed at Dave and his larynx bobbed. “Oh, hell. I keep putting my foot in my mouth.”

“He was only forty-two,” Dave said. “It happens fast. And it happens to everybody. Even you.”

“Not forty-three,” Chrissie said softly. “Not to Adam.”

“What was he working on?” Dave said. “Or was he coasting for a while on that big check from the cable people?”

Chrissie groped out toward the table. Dan’l sat forward on his skinny butt, reached the second soda can for her, and put it carefully into her hand. The fingers of her other hand explored the wet top of the can to find the opening. She drank. “He was working,” she told Dave. “He didn’t know how to stop. He was as bad about that as Brenda is about drinking. I think one caused the other. But I don’t know who started first. Him, probably. She hated for him to go away all the time, and he kept promising her he wouldn’t but he kept going anyway.”

“Working on what?” Dave said.

“Something about Central America. He was speaking a lot of Spanish lately. On the phone. Central America’s where the action is, right now. Like Dan’l said, that’s what he always worked on. The trouble spots.”

“Nicaragua?” Dave said. “El Salvador?”

Chrissie shook her head and frowned. “Another one. Los Inocentes? That’s the one. It’s a funny name for a whole country—Los Inocentes. The innocent ones?”

“It was discovered by Balboa in 1513,” Dave said, “on a religious holiday—the Feast of the Holy Innocents. He claimed it for Spain. That’s what he named it when he planted the flag on the beach. That’s why.”

“You sure you don’t want to get married?”

“I’m too old for you,” Dave said. “Your father didn’t tell you anything about his Inocentes story?”

“There are rebels.” Dan’l sucked soda from the can and wiped his chin. “Communists. They’re trying to take over the government. The government sends out death squads and murders people in villages for helping the rebels. And if the villagers don’t help the rebels, the rebels kill them. I saw it on TV.”

Chrissie coaxed Dave, “I’m going to be very rich.”

“That’s nice, but I’m all right for money. I inherited stock in a very big insurance company.”

“The one you’re here for?” She was surprised. “Banner?”

“Not that one,” he said. “Medallion. My father built it. Anyway, I wouldn’t marry you for your money. What do you think I am?”

“A very nice man,” she said, “and very intelligent.”

“And old enough to be your grandfather,” he said. “I almost never travel. I rarely stand on my head, except figuratively. And if I tried to ride a skateboard I’d break my neck. For whom was he writing this piece on Los Inocentes?”

Chrissie had a mouthful of soda. She shook her head and swallowed quickly. “He hadn’t sold it. He didn’t want anyone to know about it. Not yet. There was one thing he still had to confirm. When he had that, it would be the hottest story of the decade. That’s what he told me.” Her voice caught, and tears ran out from under the dark glasses again. “That was the last thing he said to me.”

“Don’t cry, Chrissie.” Dan’l came around the table to her on his knees, and wiped her tears with clumsy fingers. “It won’t bring him back.”

She pushed his hands away. “It’s not that. Brenda’s going to get me, Dan’l. He can’t stop her now. Gandy can’t. Nobody can.”

Dave stood up. “I’d like a look at his workroom, if that’s all right.”

“We can run away,” Dan’l said. “His car’s still here.”

She laughed. It was a doleful sound. She groped out and stroked his hair. “Aw, Dan’l—they’d put me in jail for child stealing.” She located her cane and stood up quickly. “Come on, Mr. Brandstetter.” Swinging the red tip of the cane from side to side, inches above the carpet, she moved off toward the staircase.

T
HE WORKROOM WAS UP
two flights, at the rear of the house, so its French doors overlooked the patio with the swimming pool. The furnishings here were mostly Middle Eastern—lots of mother-of-pearl inlay and pierced brass. The carpet was Persian, in rich wine reds. He crossed it, among low tables and cabinets, one of which housed a television set, to stand at the doors. Outside, a small balcony was crowded with plants in pots. Two pots had fallen off the flat rail and broken. Plants in pots hung by bristly macramé cords from overhead rafter ends. Across the patio, beyond the panes of French doors like these, a fluffy orange cat lay on a bed and stared out at the fine day with big golden eyes.

“That’s the Gernsbach place over there,” Dave said.

“Nice people,” Chrissie said. “They’ve gone on a trip.”

“Not the cat,” Dave said.

“She’s a terrorist,” Dan’l said. “She’d hijack the plane.”

This place and the Gernsbach place were the only ones that opened on the patio. The other walls were blank, one of them climbed by a vine with hot red flowers. Dave turned to look at Adam Streeter’s workroom—file cabinets, bookshelves, a long desk on which sat a word processor with a blank gray screen. A square white printer squatted beside it. Chrissie leaned back against the desk, absently thumbing the corner of a thick annual reference book that lay there. Bits of paper stuck out of the book, marking pages. Dave asked her, “When did they leave?”

“He was already gone when I found Adam dead.” Chrissie sounded numb. “He was the first person I thought of, the nearest, the kindest. But when I got there, Lily said he’d left on a trip, and she was going to join him.”

“Mr. Gernsbach,” Dave said.

“Harry,” she said. “Lily phoned the police for me. I didn’t know what to do.” She laughed sadly. “I still don’t.”

“Stop worrying.” Dave touched her shoulder. “I know Judge Farmer. I’ll speak to him.”

“Will you?” she said. “I can look after myself here.”

Dave wondered why no papers lay on the desk. The house was beautifully kept. Was Streeter just as compulsively neat about his workplace? Dave opened desk drawers. Passports, plane ticket envelopes, bills, receipts, canceled checks lay in one; pens, paper clips, postage stamps, rubber bands, scissors, staple gun cluttered another. But not a page of manuscript, not a scribbled note. No cassettes, no diskettes. He checked out the file cabinets. Clippings in folders, manuscripts of old stories, copies of papers and magazines that had printed them. But nothing on Los Inocentes. He pushed the file drawer shut. Dan’l leaned loosely in the doorway. Dave said to him, “Journalists use notebooks, and if they don’t, they use cassette recorders. I don’t see one. I don’t see any cassettes.”