Pasadena (59 page)

“Beneath him, the girl was in a sundress printed with sweet peas. She was as young as he, but it wasn’t her first time—her stoic face told me that. Her skirt was pushed beyond her hips and her bodice had been clumsily opened and her breasts were small and white. Even in this terrible position she maintained a dignified beauty, holding her mouth grimly, refusing to contort her face. Her eyes were open and she was looking into the soldier’s face, and I saw that she was braver than he because he wouldn’t look at her, he was overwhelmed with pleasure, and then the moment was over, as it always is.

“The soldier stood and pulled up his trousers. His leather greatcoat hung from him heavily. He was shockingly thin, with a waist that was fleshless and bony, and it touched me that he had spent his money on the girl rather than on food, and isn’t that the way men are? Choosing one hunger over another?

“In any case, I wasn’t there to philosophize. I was there to kill. As he adjusted his buckle, I squeezed the trigger and felt the hot bullet pulse through the barrel. The shot went swiftly through the soldier’s temple,
and for the shortest instant in my life his face cleared, as if he’d been acquitted of all the crimes that he’d ever committed, and he looked like a happy teenage boy, a smile upon his lips, guilty of nothing.

“This moment, too, did not last. At once he fell over dead, and the girl screamed and leapt to her feet and bent to arrange her tattered stockings, and the dark figure off in the forest stubbed out his cigarette, and there were footsteps and branches snapping and the girl was crying and a man’s voice came to her in French, telling her to
be quiet, it was all right, they’d be fine
. And I remained in place, prepared to kill the German Vulture, and when the man reached the girl I saw through my sight that he was Dieter.

“I was as surprised as you, and with a steady voice I told the man not to move, and I rose from the ferns and then he spotted me, my rifle aimed at his heart. His hands went up slowly and I told him to step away from the girl, and he obeyed. I don’t think he recognized me at first, and I could see his eyes turning as he tried to hatch a plan. He began speaking in English, his German accent nearly concealed, and he was thanking me for killing the soldier and I yelled at him to shut up. The girl was weeping and I told her to leave, but she didn’t move, and Dieter told her in French to run home. The girl looked at me with frightened eyes to see if I was really freeing her or if I was going to kill her, and Dieter told her, again, to run.

“She left us, and to this day I can recall her skirt fluttering and her legs as long and fast as a deer’s. Then she was gone. Dieter remained, his hands up and waving like two white flags. Behind him was his traveling rack of tinware, the dented cups and the lidded bowls and the forks that bent in the fist. He said, ‘The German took the girl from me.’ I told him to shut up again and I told him I had eyes and I told him not only had I caught him hawking girls, I’d caught him selling them to the enemy. Dieter tried to convince me that I was wrong, that it’d been too dark for me to see things correctly. But my patience was thinning and I yelled, ‘Do you know what they do to traitors?’

“He was protesting with his hands that I was wrong, and he was such a small man that it was hard for me to believe that he was peddling such evil but I’d seen what I’d seen and I said to him, ‘Maybe I should shoot you now.’

“ ‘Shoot me?’ he squealed. ‘For selling a girl? I’m out here trying to stay alive like everyone else. Her family will eat tonight.’

“I told him to drop to his knees, and when he didn’t I shoved my rifle barrel in his direction and he was soon down on the ground and his hands were clasped and he was begging: ‘Oh, please, please, I’ll do anything. Anything you want! Just let me go free. What harm have I done? You’ve killed a German because of me. I’m not the enemy, he is.’ And he turned to the poor boy, dead with the happy smile eternally upon his face. ‘What can I give you? I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll give you any girl you want. Tell me what you like, soldier. Do you like brunettes? Do you like them blond? Or dark in the eye? I can get you any girl. I can get you enough cigarettes for your whole company. Tell me what you want. Please—’

“ ‘I don’t want one of your whores,’ I said.

“ ‘Every soldier wants a whore. What about Sylvie? The girl who was just here? She’s fifteen. You can have her. You can marry her. I can arrange it.’

“ ‘I don’t want her,’ I said.

“ ‘There’s more!’ He fished a photograph from his pocket and said, ‘What about her? Do you like her?’ He pushed the picture toward me but I didn’t want to take it, something told me not to take the picture, and I resisted but he continued to dangle it between us. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Have a look. She’s the most beautiful girl I know. Go on, have a peek.’ I told myself not to look, I sensed even then the mistake of looking at this girl, and I told Dieter to put the picture away but he didn’t. ‘This one’s special,’ he said. ‘Tall and strong, hair as black as the sky tonight, and flesh as white as milk, and you’ve never seen a girl like her, soldier. Go on, take a look.’ The voice remained in my head, warning me not to look, but urges mount us, don’t they? I wondered what made this girl so special. The picture was a small square in Dieter’s fingers and I found myself pulled toward it as if it were magnetic, and I found my hand reaching out for it and I felt Dieter’s horny fingers graze mine as I took it from him and brought it to my eye.

“Dieter hadn’t lied. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and a throat rising from her blouse in a way that would make any man want to kiss it. She was a young girl, but her eyes were a woman’s. I tried to resist her and I said, ‘I told you I don’t want one of your whores.’

“ ‘She isn’t a whore,’ said Dieter. ‘This one’s special.’

“ ‘Who is she?’ I asked, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

“ ‘She’s my daughter. She can be yours.’

“I cupped the picture in my palm, and her eyes held me, and I fell in love with Linda then and there, as the dawn cracked above the forest, and before I knew it I was under her spell and Dieter could see this; he was always a clever man. He said, ‘I can see that you like her. She can become yours.’

“ ‘Where is she?’ I said.

“ ‘In California.’

“ ‘In California?’

“ ‘Do you want her, soldier?’

“In the pale glow of early morning I nodded obediently.

“ ‘Then all we have to do is make a deal,’ said Dieter, ‘and you can come home with me to Condor’s Nest.’ ”

Much later
, Blackwood found himself slumped in the rocker, Bruder across from him. After finishing his story, Bruder had fallen into a pitiable sleep, but then Blackwood too had allowed his neck to slacken, and the two men had wheezed through sleep that brought them to the dawn. When Blackwood woke, he could see that Bruder was motionless but alert. Pal was gone, and Sieglinde had thrown more wood into the hearth, and the fire burned upon the black oil of Bruder’s eyes. He was wheezing through heavy lungs, and coughing into a rag, and as Blackwood rubbed the sleep from his eyes, Bruder’s decline became even more apparent. And now Blackwood understood: from the beginning, Bruder had tried to manipulate Linda’s fate, and now he was suffering for it.

“You haven’t been well, Mr. Bruder?”

“Nothing more than the years catching up with me.”

“You seem to have something in your chest. Have you tried that new miracle drug, penicillin?”

“I have not.”

“I saw a special announcement that beginning on April first, Kalash’s Pharmacy will be able to supply it. Civilians will get to try it for the first time. The next time you’re in Pasadena, you should give them a call. Their number is Sycamore 2-1704. They’re saying it’s the greatest miracle the century has brought us. They say right now there’s no limit to what it can cure. One little pill can take out any old illness, the Spanish flu, pneumonia, even syphilis. Anything, I should imagine. It makes you feel for the poor souls who had to go without, doesn’t it, Mr. Bruder?”

Bruder’s story had clarified nearly everything for Blackwood. But
what of Edmund’s death? Bruder said nothing of it, alluded not at all to the years on the peninsula in San Francisco Bay, sunlight slanting through the iron bars. Now that Blackwood knew the whole story, it made even less sense—if Bruder would save Captain Poore, if he’d save Dieter Stamp, then why would he go on to kill Edmund? It didn’t add up, and Blackwood wondered if Linda had sent Bruder to prison on false testimony. Blackwood looked up. Had Bruder been framed?

But then Bruder startled Blackwood by saying, “Let’s get down to business, Mr. Blackwood. I’d like to know about your plans for the Pasadena.”

“My plans?”

“If it were to become yours, what would you do with it? How would you make your money back?”

“Well, I … I suppose I …” But Blackwood still didn’t know what the correct answer was; he didn’t know what Bruder wanted done with his property.

“Would you live in the mansion?”

“In the mansion? I don’t think so. It’s a bit large for a bachelor.”

“A man needs his castle, Mr. Blackwood.”

This cheered Blackwood, and he sat up in the rocker and leaned forward so that again his knees almost touched Bruder’s. “Indeed, a man must reign over something. Look at you, Mr. Bruder. You have Condor’s Nest to set your throne upon.”

“I’m only waiting to pass it on to Sieglinde and Palomar. When I’m gone, they’ll do what they want with it. It’s really theirs, anyway.”

“You’ll be the King of the Coast for quite some time, I’m sure. If you were to call Kalash’s—”

“Penicillin can’t save everyone, Mr. Blackwood. But enough of this. Tell me, what would you do with the land?” Blackwood thought over his answer carefully; he still did not know what Bruder wanted to hear. Now he was angry with Mrs. Nay for not providing him with more insight—but hadn’t she? “What would you do with the orange grove, Mr. Blackwood?”

“Yes, what would I do with the grove? I suppose they’d have to be felled, those trees, wouldn’t they, Mr. Bruder? From what I understand, their roots have been infected by the nematode. Besides, there’s no room for citrus in a modern city.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Blackwood. An infestation has overtaken the
orchards. Cut the trees to the ground and burn the soil. That’s what you’ll have to do.” Bruder fell silent, as if he were imagining the fire just then. “And what would you do with the land?”

“It would be a lot of open space indeed. Tracts of land that large don’t come up anymore, do they? The frontier’s been filled in. Yes, what would I do with it? Of course, I’m a real-estate developer, Mr. Bruder. I feel I’ve been open about that from the get-go. I would develop the land, of course.”

“Yes, but how?”

“There remains talk of a second branch of the parkway. The cars are proliferating like rabbits. They say that our lovely Arroyo Parkway will reach its capacity within a few years, cars backed up from Los Angeles to the Hotel Raymond’s hill. It’s hard to imagine the traffic as bad as all that, but that’s what they say. I should think that after cutting down the trees I’d talk to the highway men about bringing a six-laner up the valley.”

“And if they wanted to build an eight-laner?”

“I would be open to that.”

“Very good, Mr. Blackwood. A river of concrete pouring into Pasadena, that would be best for the old orange grove.”

“It seems it’s what the citizens want these days. Modernity. Convenience. Speed. People want to live in the future now, don’t they?”

“The past is of little use to them.”

“Can you blame them?”

“Tell me, Mr. Blackwood. What would you do with the gardens and the scrubland around the house?”

“The gardens?” By now Blackwood’s confidence had returned, and at once he could imagine a plan for the entire 160 acres. When Blackwood was done, no one would know that the street they stood on had once been an orange ranch; no one would see the arroyo beneath the asphalt. “In the gardens I’d put up a community of those condominiums that are becoming all the rage. Call it something like Blackmann Court.”

“Blackmann Court? Who is Blackmann, Mr. Blackwood?”

“Did I say ‘Blackmann’? Yes, well, he’s a long-lost friend. A friend of my youth, you might say. I thought I might make the gesture.”

“You’re too modest, Mr. Blackwood.”

“All right then, perhaps I’d call it Blackwood Court.”

“That does sound pleasant, Mr. Blackwood. It would evoke the natural past without giving too much away. It’d be a shame to call the place Orange Grove Terrace, or something of the sort. Why turn the mind to the torn-up past?”

A terrible pain entered Blackwood’s chest, and all at once he recalled his moral crimes, even those that he’d never thought of as criminal until this very minute: the Spanish courtyards he’d ripped up for warehouses; the gulleys he’d paved; the meadows replaced by motor courts. He thought of Edith Knight and the three thousand dollars that had once felt like the greatest sum of money known to man. Hadn’t he promised himself as he fled west on the train, spring rising outside the window: “With this money I’ll make good.”

“It sounds like you have an excellent plan, Mr. Blackwood. Your goals and mine are in conjunction. Run the highway up the valley, cover the hilltop in condominiums. All of this would help haul Pasadena out of its past. Rid it of its past. And do you know what I like most about your idea?” said Bruder.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll be able to survey all that you have done from your terrace. It will be a good life for you, Mr. Blackwood.” And then: “I want you to have the Pasadena.”

The pronouncement had come so quickly that Blackwood wasn’t sure he heard it correctly. He ventured, “I want it too.”

“You must put your money together by the end of the week.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

Sieglinde brought them tea, and Blackwood and Bruder sat silently. The tide had come in, and it was thrashing the bluff. Finally Bruder said, “I will cut you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“On one condition.”

“What is that?”