The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (3 page)

The town baked in a surround of brown hills. He drove sleepy streets with no sidewalks, where frame houses with slim windows and jigsaw-work porches stood up straight under old trees. He came to a street of cinderblock warehouses. Then there was the railroad station—arches, red tile roof, boxcars waiting on sidings. He jounced across four sets of tracks, and the road went steeply up. Ahead of him, the double rear tires of a bus stirred yellow dust from the road shoulder. The bus halted at a break in a plastered adobe wall that shut off a yard dark with eucalyptus. At the top of an arch, a green bronze bell hung above heavy plank gates. Out of the bus clambered middle-aged women in flowered dresses and sunglasses. Carrying cameras and guidebooks, they clustered around a signboard lettered with the history of Sangre de Cristo mission. He drove around the bus.

Sangre de Cristo State College took up a lot of good grazing land above town so it could space its buildings far apart. They were poured concrete, rock conglomerate, and smoky glass. They looked lonely in the sun. No one was in the parking-lot gatehouse. A guitar hung there. A textbook lay face down on a stool. But no one appeared. Maybe because the parking lot was full. After he’d cruised every rank he left and tried another driveway farther on.
FACULTY ONLY
. Here flowering succulents struggled in planter strips between the rows of cars. He found a slot whose curb was stenciled
MR. ROWBOTHAM
and left the Electra in it. He hoped it was Rowbotham’s day off.

The campus walks were glaring white and straight and very long. Sprinkler systems made rainbows between them but the lawns played dead. The sun struck down. He had buttoned his shirt collar and fixed his tie and put on his jacket. Now he took off the jacket again. A thin girl with long pale hair rode a bicycle past him, books balanced on the handlebars. When he asked her, she pointed out the administration building without stopping. It was a long way off. He loosened tie and collar again. Sweat trickled down his ribs. Sweat trickled out of his hair into his eyes. No wonder so few students were around.

In neat concrete boxes Brazilian pepper trees grew at the foot of long, broad, white terraces that led up to the administration building. The trees looked new, like everything else here. Except himself. Seen in the wavy dark glass of the doors, he looked ragged. The air conditioning was icy inside. The woman behind the information counter wore wool, a yellow pants suit. Her glasses were very large, very round, with yellow frames. Quite a while ago a surgeon had yanked the sag out of her face, but it was back. Expression wasn’t, but maybe there’d never been any. He gave her a smile and showed her the identification in his wallet. Tucking the wallet back into the jacket over his arm, he lied:

“I need to see Anita Orton, please. It’s about her father’s life-insurance policy. Her late father.”

“Is she registered here?”

“No, she’s registered in Florida but this is closer.”

The eyes behind the saucer lenses were baleful but only a twitch of her mouth answered. She went into an office where a long-haired boy sat pushing typewriter keys with one hand while he drank from a Coke can in the other. Dave heard file drawers slam. The woman in yellow came back with an index card. “She has no classes today. You’d have to look for her at home.”

“You don’t mean in La Caleta?” Dave asked.

She meant rooms above the stables of a hulking old mansion with verandas and turrets and stained glass on a deep corner lot near the mission. The trees were gloomy acacias and magnolias. On the patchy grass under them lay bicycles. The oak front door stood open and rock music drifted out on the hot air. A girl in half a bikini lay asleep facedown on the green composition shingles of a side porch. Her skin was rich gold and glossy with suntan oil. Dave swung the Electra up the drive. New small cars, large old cars, motorcycles, motor scooters crowded the stable yard in back. The stable building itself was sided in scalloped shingles. Its paint, like the paint of the house, was yellowing. He climbed an outside staircase. When he rapped a screen door at the top a little dog yapped.

“Frodo!” a girl’s voice called. “Knock it off.” The girl came to the door, wrapping long dark hair in a towel. She wore bib overalls. The little dog jumped at the screen like a fur yo-yo. “Who are you?”

He told her. “I’m looking for Anita Orton.”

“She’s not here—sorry.”

“Can you tell me where to find her?”

“You look beat.” She pushed open the door. The dog growled around Dave’s shoes. “Frodo, no,” the girl said, and to Dave, “Come in. I’ve made shrub.” She went away down a long room bright with strewn record albums and paperback books and green with potted plants hung from the ceiling by frizzy ropes in fancy colors, fancy knots and tassels. “You’ll like it. It’s not sweet.” Glass and ice cubes rattled afar. Dave sat on denim cushions on the floor. They were big cushions and crazily embroidered. She came back with the towel made into a turban and handed him a glass of murky brown liquid. “Try it. Don’t be afraid.”

He tried it. It wasn’t sweet.

“Herbs.” She sat cross-legged in front of him on the stitched-together squares of grass matting that covered the floor. “Anita got a phone call.” She waved at a gold and ivory instrument out of a Mae West boudoir. “Gee—it’s been ten days or something. In the morning. She threw stuff in a bag and left. It was some dude.”

“Maybe it was her father,” Dave said.

She had a mouthful of shrub. She gave a quick swallow, shook her head. “No. He was here. A couple of days later. Like you.” She tried to make her young voice gruff. “‘I’m looking for Anita Orton.’ Only not like you. You’re pretty.”

“Wearing Levi’s, an old Army shirt, shades?”

Her eyes opened wide. “You’re kidding.” She stuck out her chest and saluted. “Uniform. Badge. Big gun. A gun is a substitute penis. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t go to college,” Dave said. “The voice on the telephone?”

“Black,” she said. “I didn’t think about it till he asked me—the Big Chief, I mean. He said, ‘Did it sound like a Negro?’ I said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ But it did. I’m sure of it now.”

“She didn’t tell you his name or where she was going?”

The girl frowned and poked at the ice cubes in her glass. “And he was dead only two days later. You wouldn’t think it could happen to somebody like that. I mean, he looked like he was made out of iron or something.” She twitched Dave a skeptical smile. “Oh, I know it’s role playing and all that.” Her naked shoulders moved under the overall straps. “But you believe, you know? They say, ‘I am
the chief
,’ you know? And you say, ‘Yup, yessir, you de chief’—right?” She laughed, set the glass down, jumped up and vanished again among the hanging plants. She called, “They have a sweet sound, you know? When they’re trying not to sound sleepy-time down south?” A refrigerator door clapped on its rubber stripping. “Sweet and elegant and a little faggoty?”

“Police chiefs?” Dave called.

“Blacks, you nut.” She came back carrying wooden bowls of salad, bounced down in her lotus position again, and handed one of the bowls to Dave. The dog scratched at the screen. “Lunch,” she said. “All organic. The kids in agro grow it. Bug pickers. They really get sunburned. I think there’ll be a new generation of insecticide fans.” She dug into the salad. But with a forkful of alfalfa sprouts halfway to her mouth she stopped moving and her eyes opened wide again. “It was a faggot who killed him, wasn’t it?”

“So they say,” Dave said. “But not black.” The bowl had been chilling. He liked that idea and tried the salad. It was crisp and bland. “How did she react to the phone call? Did it frighten her?”

“Frighten? Oh, no. It was like light bulbs went on inside her.” The little dog whined at the screen. “Cool it, Frodo.” She chewed reflectively. “Come to think of it, that was the first time I ever saw her really happy.”

“It wasn’t some boyfriend you’d met?” Dave asked.

“She didn’t have boyfriends. She just studied and sulked. Like she was waiting for something. Ages.”

“Did she write letters?” Dave asked.

“Mmm.” The girl nodded with her mouth full. She washed down the salad with a long swallow of shrub, then went to let in the dog. Claws rattly on the grass mats, he followed her to the kitchen. The bowl knocked wooden on the floor. A vegetarian dog? “She wrote a letter almost every day.”

“To whom?” Dave called.

The girl came halfway back and stood looking at him from between the plants. “It was a big secret. If you came in and she was typing, she covered up the paper.” The little dog yapped and jumped around her legs. She worked an opener on a can labeled
FRISKIES
. Not a vegetarian dog. “I mean, how sexist can you get? Who cared who she was writing to? I mean, it’s such a stereotype, you know?” She went back into the kitchen. “The curious female? Eve? Pandora? Bluebeard’s wife? What kind of mind thinks like that anymore?” The dog stopped barking.

“What about answers?” Dave called.

“From Soledad.” The girl came back, wiping her hands on the overall bib. “A post-office box number. If the mail was late, I’d bring it up. Out of the mailbox at the foot of the stairs. But only if she was at school. Ninety percent of the time, she was down there waiting for it.”

“You don’t remember a name?” Dave said.

She looked at the ceiling and tried a name out. “Lester? Lester—yeah.” She gave up, sighed, sat down, shook her head. “I really didn’t care,” she said.

“I believe you,” Dave said. He ate his salad.

“Insurance investigator?” She studied him. “That’s like a detective, isn’t it?”

He gave her a little smile.

“And you’re here now.” She unwrapped her hair and began to scrub it with the towel. “So you don’t think who they say did it, did it. Yeah, that’s what you said.”

“She drive a car?” Dave asked.

“A bright green Gremlin. Brand new, just got it.”

“Her father came here. Who else?”

“TV newspeople. The night he was killed.” She let the towel fall and shook out her hair. “Do you think Anita killed him?”

“I don’t know what to think. You knew her. What do you think?”

“Only for a year.” The girl crossed the matting on hands and knees. Back of the flossy telephone, a mirror in a gold lace frame leaned against the wall. Combs and brushes lay there, a hot-air blower. She turned it on. It whined. She pointed it at her head and began to comb, wincing. “She’s got a United Farm Workers poster on her wall, you know?” She quit with the blower and hoisted and swung an imaginary banner on a pole. “
Viva la huelga!
” She scowled, a rebel girl, then gave a little wondering laugh and went back to blowing and combing. “And she lies on her bed under it, reading the recipes in
Family Circle
.”

“What TV newspeople?” Dave asked.

“That withered hag from Channel Ten. Daisy Flynn. With a potbellied cameraman. Ghouls. They were really disappointed she wasn’t here. They wanted her to cry for them.”

“And would she have cried?” Dave set down his bowl.

“You’re kidding,” the girl said. “She hated him.”

T
HE BUILDING DIDN’T NEED
style or windows. It was square-cornered cement block and it stood between tall steel latticework towers on top of a mountain all alone. On its roof reared ten-foot-high letters in red, white, and blue stripes.
KSDC-TV
. Maybe they were readable from the town below. Nine vehicles nosed the building. He ran the Electra in between a Honda Civic and a Ford van and got out. The silence was total. A cry made a cut in it. He looked up. A hawk circled against the sun. He thought,
He could be dead by now.
It was a useless thought. He pushed a door where the red, white, and blue letters repeated themselves and a faded bumper sticker peeled—
CHANNEL 10 LOOK AGAIN
.

On the other side of the door, ranch-house chairs and couches slumped under clumsy paintings of cattle and red-rock sunsets. A low table had thumbed magazines and coffee-cup rings on it. A red motorcycle bounced noiseless off a dusty hilltop on a television screen. On a desk at which no one sat, a big, slope-fronted, multibutton telephone winked to itself. Dave shouldered a heavy, hand-smudged door that wheezed. Down a hallway cluttered with microphone booms and camera dollies, men in pastel shirts bunched, telling jokes. They held papers and plastic cups. One of them saw Dave and came to him, stepping over thick cables that snaked the floor. His face was brick-color. Makeup. He took Dave to Daisy Flynn.

She wasn’t a withered hag. She just hadn’t been a college girl for a long time. She sat in a room stacked and racked with canned film. Film turned on reels in front of her, showing her images, frame by frame, on a screen tilted hopefully upward like a child’s bright face. Typed pages lay beside her and a hand bony like the rest of her crossed out sentences with a felt-tip pen. The surprised eyes she raised to him had blue paint above them. She pushed glasses up onto red-tinted hair. A disbelieving smile dug lines around her mouth. She had television teeth.

“Louise Orton said to ask me?”

Dave nodded. “She said ‘even’ you. Was she devoted to him?”

“Mindlessly.” Daisy Flynn switched off the editing machine. To a man standing in a corner squinting at loops and streamers of film, she called, “Burt, love, cut this where I’ve marked it, will you?” She picked up the papers and led Dave down a hallway, then through a shadowy cavern where spotlights hung from steel rafters, where cameras stood around and microphones glinted and sleek curved desks and fake paneled walls waited for the clock, the next news slot, candidate interview, land-development commercial. She moved fast, like everyone in the flat-lighted room they ended up in—typewriters, jangling phones, stuttering teletypes. “Sit down,” she said. “Coffee?”

“You’re working. I don’t want to keep you.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Have you got film in there of the Orton funeral?”

“Would we have missed it?” She sat down. “You’re working too but I do want to keep you. For that very reason. What brings you around, Mr. Brandstetter? I mean—what were you doing chatting with the widow? Insurance, you said. And you wanted to know whether she really loved him or not. You aren’t happy with the verdict?”