Click on the link above and read a chapter...
...or just read the novel now in your uncomfortable office chair.
Here's the whole thing.
PA$$PORT
to VENGEANCE
The central situation
of prejudice and corruption in this book is based on a situation the
author lived through in the 1980s and finds revolting. Except for
the pretty romances. They're true, too.
***
To Mou Maggie
***
PROLOGUE
On
the night Zeki al-Khafouli nearly lost a kidney, he came close to
having sex for the second time in his life. Later he remembered only
the sight of Susan’s firm little breast and the feel on his palms
of her round, bare buttocks under her skirt.
Something hit his
head, then his back just over his right kidney. Susan’s voice came
from far, far away; “Daddy! Sorreee...”
The one-man gang who
beat him up was Henry Ohrbach; twice Zeki’s age, twice his weight,
and the girl’s father. He had a sixth sense for horny women, and a
temper so violent he was widely known to black out when aroused.
Zeki was stupid
about America and Arab to his soul.
Chapter 1
“For
Counts
One through Three, fourth-degree felony child molestation, thirty
thousand dollars each.” The prisoner, a fragile-looking youth with
dark hair, whirled wide-eyed toward the onlookers. He wore a white
dress shirt and black slacks, an Arab uniform on the Cal State
campus. He favored one leg when he moved. The crest of a yellowish
bruise reared brightly above the collar of his shirt and across his
throat.
“For Count Four,
second-degree felony sexual congress with a minor child, also thirty
thousand dollars. Your bail is set at one hundred, twenty thousand
dollars, Mr. al-Khafouli.”
The prisoner found
the eyes he sought. A tall man in the same uniform rose and gestured
peremptorily. The prisoner turned obediently to the justice and the
tall man slowly resumed his seat.
“Do you wish to
make a statement at this time, Mr. al-Khafouli?”
His accent was
dense: “I do not understand this, sir.”
“Do you understand
our process of bail, then, Mr. al-Khafouli?” the justice asked.
“I think so, sir.”
It sounded like “tink.”
“That is enough.
You may post bail and be released until your trial.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Next case.”
In the back of the
room Dierdre Roarke looked for, and was unable to detect, irony in
either man’s tone. As a pre-law student she knew that total bail
for child molestation was limited to thirty thousand dollars. She
was shocked; Justice Burnham was intimidating the prisoner. She
would do something.
Two deputies came
forward to escort al-Khafouli to his cell, passing a line of shackled
vagrants and drunks. At the door the boy paused a last time to look
into the crowd. Dierdre had never seen such unmixed terror.
A middle-aged man in
a gray double-knit suit and flaring sideburns rose, nodded formally
to the justice, and left. The deputy at the door nodded
deferentially. A man in corduroy pants with a little notebook joined
the prisoner’s friend, talking quietly. The other man answered
with a sharp, negative jerk of his head. His expression was
controlled; his hands were white-knuckled fists. A vein throbbing
across his temple was visible across the room.
The Gold County
courthouse was small-roomed and ill-smelling, old and cheaply
remodeled. It offered, by way of compensation, corners and oddly
shaped nooks which held candy machines and a sort of privacy.
Dierdre left the room to think. Last week Justice Burnham had
released an incestuous father of a six-year-old girl on his own
recognizance. Two weeks before that, he had given a child rapist
bail set at one hundred dollars. Both offenders were Anglos. Idly
she pushed a couple of quarters into the candy machine, changed her
mind and called them back. “Shit,” she said. She remembered the
look on the boy’s face. ”Shit,” she said again.
When the prisoner’s
friend emerged from the hearing room, Dierdre was waiting. This time
she noticed his looks; dark, sharp-boned and bearded. A
bail-bondsman accompanied him. She walked over quickly, her red hair
swinging and her green eyes big with purpose.
“You can’t go
bail yet,” she interrupted. “The amount is illegal, and there’s
paperwork to do in order to reset it.”
She had been loud.
The bail-bondsman stopped talking and stared at her.
The tall man bent
slightly to hear her. “I beg your pardon?” His voice was deep,
his accent intriguing.
“The justice set
such a high bail to delay your friend getting out of jail. If we
move right now, you can get him out by tonight for only three
thousand dollars.”
“Zeki is my
brother.”
“Come with me,”
she ordered, and moved toward the Recorder’s Office. The man did
not follow. “You don’t need a bondsman yet,” she called,
because she saw that he was still dealing. She headed back. “Listen
to me. I’m studying law, and I can help your friend. Your
brother. He’s being railroaded on this bail thing, and you need
me.”
The man turned her
and seemed to notice her fully. He inventoried her, red hair to
dirty running shoes, noncommittal. “I’ll be with you in a
moment, Miss.” He turned to the bail-bondsman. “Is this lady
correct?”
“I guess so, sure.
But you won't lose money either way, Mr. Kafooli.”
“But I will lose
time, and my brother will remain in jail another night. I will also
lose the use of one hundred seventeen thousand dollars.”
The bail-bondsman's
eyebrows went up; he was all innocence. “Yes.”
The man with the
notebook emerged from the hearing room and listened. “Are you a
friend of the prisoner?” he asked Dierdre, nodding toward the
others as they talked.
“No. I just want
to help.”
“You may have
trouble doing that. Do you know the girl in the case?” Dierdre
shook her head. “That was her dad in the plastic suit. Heavy.”
Dierdre nodded that she understood. The man before her was of an
age, with wavy brown hair swept from a broad, freckled face. He had
a wrestler’s compact body.
“Are you from The
Chronicle?”
“Yes.”
“This isn't the
usual hearing, is it? I mean, I only came here for a class, so I
don’t actually know.”
“Like I said, it’s
heavy. Call me if you need help. Maybe a little attention won’t
hurt, later on.” He moved off.
“What’s your
name?” Dierdre called.
“Ask for Gary.
The news editor.”
The bail-bondsman
followed him out, throwing Dierdre a look.
The tall man was
thoughtful. From the pocket of his silk shirt he pulled a
long-filtered cigarette and lit it with a gold lighter. When he
finally looked at Dierdre, it was another inventory-taking, so frank
that she couldn't feel offended.
“My name is
Khamis. That means Thursday in Arabic,” he said, and released a
baleful, head-circling cloud of smoke. “I do not need you.”
“Your brother
does, or you'd have a lawyer with you right now. And you wouldn't
waste your time talking about that ridiculous bail.”
Khamis dipped his
head to concede her point. “True. I do not know American
jurisprudence.” He drew again on his cigarette. “It has made me
very angry. It is complex and dirty; I do not think I want to know a
system like that.”
“Complex, yes.
Sometime dirty, sometimes not. Today it’s dirty. Do you always
speak so nobly?”
“Forgive me for
being abrupt, miss. My brother disappeared last week and I have been
worried for him. Not until last night did your police tell me where
I would find him. He is injured. He is a prisoner, no doubt to
Middle Eastern politics at second-hand.” He paused and lowered his
defensive cigarette. “Will you help me as an interpreter of it?
Of this procedure of bail?”
“I’ll do as much
as I can.”
They stood in the
stuffy courthouse hall while she recited the steps they could take to
help his brother. People passed them, eventually crowding them
against a wall. Twice Dierdre repeated each legal step and described
the rules. It became obvious that Khamis did not follow what she
said.
“This isn't
working,” she told him as he searched for another cigarette. “Come
with me.” He stopped fumbling. “Please.” He half smiled.
Dierdre blushed.
She took him to The
Bakery; he was Arab, and The Bakery served Turkish coffee. He
ordered it brewed without sugar, then ignored it, hunching forward
with his elbows on the tabletop. His height dwarfed the booth. His
legs had trouble finding space.
He began, “What do
you mean, ‘go bail’ and ‘railroaded’? Are they taking him
somewhere? Why don’t I need a bail bond?” He pulled a third
cigarette from his pack and restored it with great concentration,
waiting for her answer.
“How long have you
been in this country, anyhow?”
“Four, no, four
and a half years.”
“Student?”
He paused, seeming
to translate not her words, but her motive. “Finishing my
dissertation. Macroeconomics: The Interface of Islam and the West,
Its Cause and Cure.”
“You’re teasing
me.”
“Aggressive women
make me bold in turn.”
“Don’t you know
what I’m talking about? Really?”
“I may have an
accurate idea, but only you can tell me that.” He leaned back
again, his unlit cigarette cocked and his elbow on the table.
“What about your
brother? Zeki? Is that his name?”
“What about him?”
“When did he
arrive?”
“In January.”
“In mid-term?
Why?”
“So I can look
after him.”
“Big job for
another student,” Dierdre remarked, and added another packet of
sugar to her coffee.
“Many American men
with families seem to accomplish it.” His face was so
expressionless that it might have been carved, so guarded that even
its bony elegance became a statement of suspicion.
“Talk,” she
demanded. “Say it.”
He thought it over.
“You are a female, a student of law.” Dierdre nodded. “Are
you going to be a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dierdre shrugged.
“Why not?”
“How old are you?”
Khamis asked.
“For heaven’s
sake, what’s wrong? Why don’t you trust me?”
“I simply wonder
why you want to do this. Do you want to save the world from your
country’s injustice? Does my brother remind you of someone you
love?”
Dierdre took a deep
breath, thought, and sighed. “I want to help your brother. He’s
being discriminated against.” She looked Khamis over, mocking,
offended by his scornful “your country.” and deliberately
imitating his survey. Broad shoulders, narrow hips. Eyes to drown
in. Swift, economical movements. Crazy-gorgeous. Acted older than
he was, too cautious. Suspicious. Irksome. But with overtones of
shy friendliness and gratitude, something in the way he held his head
when he spoke to her. It was infuriating. She said, “You know
English all right, but not we Americans. We're noted for our
generosity. Our idealism. At least, us common folk.”
Khamis remained
doubtful. “I have studied English since I was seven years old.
And women nearly as long, in Europe, at home, and now here. It is
apparent, however, that you have no Arab studies at all.”
“Is that a crime?
Does being inexperienced with Arab men prevent me trying to help that
kid?”
“Not if that's all
you want.” His answer was a shade too swift to be courteous.
“Of course it is.”
She looked into her untasted coffee. The colors in The Bakery had
become vivid; their outlines were ultra-sharp. Khamis's hand,
long-fingered and elegantly shaped, was tanned; dark hairs lay across
its back. He wore a gold watch; gold, not brass, very foreign. She
said, “It's true I have no Arab studies. I’d like to learn,
given the opportunity.”
Khamis relaxed into
his seat and finally took some coffee, watching her with one fine
eyebrow cocked. “You are not alone,” he said.
“I don't
understand.”
“Many American
women want to learn. About Arab men.”
There was no
mistaking his tone. Dierdre rose, grabbed her purse and left,
slamming the cafe door and stamping into the street and around the
corner toward her car. She was aware that he followed, that he paid
for the coffee, that he ran to catch her. He was there when Dierdre
reached her Colt, leaning against it with folded arms, grinning
widely through his absurd patriarchal beard, playful and charming in
a complete about-face.
“What is your
name, Miss?”
“Get out of my
way!”
“Certainly. But
tell me your name, please. I want the name of everyone who hates me.”
“I don't hate you,
I'm angry at you. At your ingratitude and your dirty insinuations.
Get out of my way.”
He remained
rock-solid against the driver’s door, still grinning. “You owe
me for your coffee.”
Her fury flared and
solidified. She told him, “Your scorn for Americans means more to
you than your injured brother's release from prison; I want nothing
to do with you. Now, step away from my car.”
Khamis's grin
dissolved. He straightened, appalled. “Is that how you see me?”
“Of course. I
offered you my help. I saved you a hundred thousand dollars. You
insulted me in return. You haven't even thanked me.”
He was abject,
flushed, remorseful. His words came awkwardly, but they came. “I
apologize.” Distress thickened his accent. “Truly. Sincerely.”
He started to leave. “I am an ass. I won't bother you.”
“You were,”
Dierdre affirmed, but didn't move. He hesitated. “All right,”
she said, “Apology accepted. Meet me at the Recorder's office.
Bring cash, three thousand dollars and a little more.”
“The Recorder's
Office? Across the hall from where we were before?”
“Yes.”
“Will that take
care of the charges against Zeki?”
“It will get him
out of jail until he has a trial. If he doesn't leave Gold County
before the trial, you'll get your money back. The law assumes you'll
want it badly enough to keep him here.”
“I see. He can't
go to Barstow before the trial?”
“He can't go to
Barstow until the trial. Especially if he's in jail. You'd best
hurry.”
“Or Blythe?
Needles? No big-city night spots?”
Dierdre finally
understood that he was teasing her; it seemed they were to be
friends. “Will you do it? He can’t go to Barstow at all if he’s
in jail.”
“Your logic is
persuasive.”
“And you are a
pain in the ass. My name is Dierdre.’
“DD?’
“Dierdre.”
Chapter 2
“Dierdre walked
slowly toward the courthouse. It was a cool day, a desert springtime
with the scent of greasewood coming into leaf. She could see the
scrub at the end of the street where the town stopped, sloping
dark-khaki green toward rock hills washed blue in the late morning
light. A breeze lifted the hair from her shoulder and pushed some of
it across her cheek. She felt freer than she had in a long time;
leisured. She sat on a bench under a Salt cedar where she could
watch the courthouse parking lot.
“Miss,” she
heard, and looked up. It was the man from The Chronicle, Gary. Nice
face. Mid-thirties. Light brown hair and freckles. He stood with
both hands in the back pockets of his cords. “Have any luck with
that boy?” he asked.
“Not yet. His
brother’s gone for some money. Why?”
“Something you
ought to tell him and his little brother when he gets out. There’s
no way to keep this out of the paper. Even if there’s nothing to
write a story about, the police log has to be printed.”
“Oh.”
“They’re Arab,
and they hate this sort of thing being public. It reflects on their
families.”
“I didn’t know
that.”
“Mind if I sit
down?” He sat angled to the street and rested an elbow on the back
of the bench. “I didn’t think you did. I see a lot of it. Arab
kids like to study here; the Desert Ag courses are popular, and
engineering. When they get into trouble, they yell at me about
publishing their names. There’s nothing I can do about it; it’s
the law.” He seemed sorry. Dierdre said nothing. After a minute
Gary asked, “So you just saw this kid and offered to help?”
“Yes. He seemed
so frightened.” Dierdre crossed her ankles and clasped her hands
into her lap, prim.
“He’s in
trouble. The girl he knocked up is only sixteen, and her
shit-kicking daddy runs the bank.”
Dierdre relaxed
against the bench with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Then
there’s no trouble! His brother told me Zeki only got here last
month.”
Gary stopped
reaching toward a branch over his head, his fingers still touching
the lowermost needles. Slowly he let his arm fall. “No kidding?”
“Yes, no kidding.
It must have taken them some time to get acquainted before they went
to bed. And unless she’s in the habit of getting pregnancy tests,
she wouldn’t know so soon.” She paused to take in the rest of
what Gary had told her. “Only sixteen?”
“Yes, and with an
influential father. He beat the boy up pretty good, but he’s still
mad.”
“Didn’t the girl
tell him it wasn’t Zeki?”
“I don’t know; I
guess not. I just talked with the deputies. They say they have a
confession.”
“Oh, Lord.”
Dierdre stared at her clasped hands. “Four felony counts.”
“Yep.”
After Gary left,
Khamis drove up in an old, silver-gray TransAm. When he unfolded
from it he saw her and gave a short, backward tilt to his head. It
was a greeting, . He joined her on the bench and Dierdre explained
about the public notices. Khamis didn’t like it but he nodded,
sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head dipped to
concentrate. “Does he want money, do you think?”
Dierdre was puzzled.
“Money?”
“All right, does
the publisher?”
Dierdre understood.
“Jesus. That’s bribery, and you’d only antagonize them.
They’d put your name all over town if you tried.”
Khamis took that in.
“All right, I understand. What else?”
“Zeki’s girl
friend is pregnant, and the police have a confession from him.”
Khamis’s head
jerked up. “Impossible,” he said.
“That’s what I
told Gary, the editor of the newspaper. It’s unlikely that Zeki’s
the father of that child.”
Khamis was furious
though, or losing control; there were tears in his eyes. “Not
unlikely, impossible! I know my brother!” With a slap he struck
the branch Gary had touched. Needles showered onto his head. “The
boy is innocent! Zeki is not a shy man--I think I mean a prude--but
he is pure! Old-fashioned! And he only met that girl a week before
he disappeared.”
Dierdre used her
gentlest, most reasoning, tone. “Yet she could be pregnant from
him.”
Khamis glared at
her. “Not from Zeki.”
“Then why would he
confess to those crimes? Four of them?”
“I don’t know.
I don’t think he would, unless your American police used their
overfed American muscle. They seem the sort of men to be easily
bought.”
Dierdre was finally,
personally, shocked. “You despise us.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
It was Dierdre’s
turn to consider. “Maybe sometimes I do,” she confessed, and
looked out to the street. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“Then you are as
young as you look. Think about it,” Khamis advised. “When you
have, let me know. I’m going to show you how Arab men deal with
crooked police when the odds are even.”
“Don’t talk
petty vengeance.”
“I’m not.”
Chapter 3
Zeki
shot out of jail and into Khamis’s jubilant embrace. The brothers
shouted and capered on the sidewalk, chattering in Arabic, until
Dierdre became self-conscious at the attention they attracted. A
stout woman in a flowered dress wanted to pass; she held her white
purse close to her chest.
As they drove to
dinner the brothers continued to talk. They were loud and spoke
fast; Zeki’s hands blurred in expansive gestures. Often Khamis
checked Dierdre in the rear-view mirror. Zeki’s attention was
exclusively for his older brother.
They went to a steak
house with white napery and plastic crystals scattering the lights.
An excited giggle caught in Dierdre’s chest. Khamis ordered, then
spoke to Zeki in Arabic with many gestures toward Dierdre. Zeki,
listening, took her hand. His eyes darted between them. Champagne
came, and oysters.
Khamis stopped
talking. Zeki still had Dierdre’s hand; the pressure hurt her
fingers. “I owe you my freedom, lovely lady,” he claimed. “I
am your friend for your whole life. Ask! Anything! If I can do it
and live, I swear to you that I will.” His deep-set eyes were
passionate with sincerity.
Dierdre tried, but
could think of nothing to say that would match his tone. She
retrieved her hand and picked up an oyster. Khamis had not begun to
eat, so she set it down. She folded her hands on the rim of the
table, then moved them to her lap, still folded. She leaned forward.
Still she had no words, only her idiot grin.
“A toast to
Dear-druh Roarke,” Khamis finally said, and Dierdre drank.
Zeki asked personal
questions; how old was she? did she have children? A husband? Why
was she not with her parents? She described her studies in law; he
wasn’t satisfied. Khamis said something in Arabic, curt because he
saw that she was embarrassed. Zeki’s eyebrows rose. “But you
are so beautiful that you could be married!” Her giggle rose like
a bubble. The champagne and the success of her first legal effort
blew it into laughter.
A blond, sideburned
businessman across the room turned to look. He saw Zeki and frowned.
It was the man from the hearing; the father. Her laughter stopped.
Khamis glanced
across the room and turned back grim. “Your would-be persecutor is
here,” he told Zeki.
“Excuse me?”
“The girl’s
father,” Dierdre told the boy. “He’s to your left, against the
back wall. What’s his name?”
Zeki flushed. “Mr.
Henry Ohrbach.”
Dodging his
brother’s arm, he rose and limped to the man’s table with his
hand extended as if in friendship. Dierdre could not see his face as
he bent over the other table, or hear what he said.
The father’s flush
deepened and he shook his head. Zeki said something more, then
shrugged and made as if to turn. As he did, his hand struck the
man’s drink. A colored spot spread across Ohrbach’s shirt. Zeki
turned again, as if in apology. Another glass overturned, another
splotch spread across the shirt. The father half rose and was pushed
back by the chattering, gesticulating boy as he grabbed a napkin and
began mopping the man’s chest. With his other hand Zeki beckoned
anxiously to a busboy. Dishes clattered; flatware fell. Ohrbach’s
companion, a dark, mustached man with a paunch, rose to wave Zeki and
the busboy away. Still apologizing, still mopping, Zeki stood his
ground. Another glass fell. By this time, most of the diners in the
restaurant were watching.
“Khamis, we’d
better get out of here,” Dierdre said.
He was already
reaching for his wallet. He tossed some bills to the table and
helped her out of her seat, grinning broadly. “Wait for me at the
door,” he said. “This will only take a minute.”
Dierdre went to the
lobby and watched from behind a pillar. Another glass fell and the
portly man, standing, looked down in disbelief at his sopping trouser
front. Zeki still chattered and gestured, but now in the midst of a
growing cluster of waiters and busboys. Khamis’s long arm reached
between shoulders and caught his brother. There was another small
crash; Zeki emerged triumphant. The brothers were at Dierdre’s
side, then out the door.
“Friends of
yours?” the hostess asked.
“Never saw them
before.”
They just made it
into Khamis’s car and to the street before Ohrbach and his friend
appeared at the restaurant door. The brothers’ laughter was as
jubilant as it had been outside the jail, but Dierdre’s was louder.
As she dissolved into it she realized she’d felt personal joy
since she had first spoken to Khamis.
Chapter 4
They
went to the al-Khafouli apartment near the university campus.
Dierdre was surprised by its luxury and European taste. Mahogany
tables held crystal vases with fresh flowers. The upholstery was
silk. Oriental rugs were everywhere. There were few pictures,
mostly delicate line drawings on wide mats in neutral colors.
Dierdre’s jeans and running shoes were, suddenly, peasant wear.
Zeki cooked while
the others watched. Khamis leaned against the kitchen sink with his
arms folded. It’s his job,” he explained, but Dierdre caught
Zeki’s quick, negative look.
He asked questions
about what Ohrbach found that night, then the beating. (“...nothing!
I swear it! We were clothed! We were...[many gestures]...you
know...but...)
Dierdre ate olives
at a large, Formica-topped work table and refined Khamis’s
questions for what she hoped were legal points. The dining area was
beyond a wide arch at her back. Disconcertingly, in view of the
western-style living room, al-Khafouli family photographs were hung
at the juncture of wall and ceiling, draped beneath red streamers and
over a strange flag. Loquacious, expansive, Zeki gestured with a
wooden spoon or his cigarette and stirred lentils, sliced a cold leg
of lamb from the refrigerator. The brothers were temperamental
opposites, but the crowded kitchen heightened the contrast. Zeki was
small, quick and hyper; Khamis was tall, still and deliberate.
Dierdre searched for an adjective and produced “dignified.” He
watched his younger brother attentively, but scarcely moved. He
spoke only to clarify a point.
Ohrbach’s blows
had been concentrated between Zeki’s knees and shoulders; a
professional touch. The beating continued after he lost
consciousness, because he didn’t remember receiving his injuries.
When he woke a doctor was stitching his groin. He mimed waking with
painful clarity, using unnecessary Arabic words. Dierdre watched and
winced. He had two broken ribs, many contusions, and a damaged
kidney. He needed further treatment. Curiously to Dierdre, he
expressed little outrage at the beating. “It was what I deserved,”
he declared, “for what I would have done to Susan. Although, I
swear to you I thought she was a woman.”
“Susan sent him a
letter,” Khamis supplied.
“Speak English,
Zeki,” Dierdre prompted. “I can’t help if I don’t know
everything. What did it say?”
“I don’t
remember all of the words, mou Deard.” He hesitated, put out his
cigarette and looked for another. “Sorry; ‘mou’ means mother.”
“I like it. Call
me ‘mou’.”
“Well,” he went
on as he lit the cigarette, “she asked me not to tell the truth.
She said the father of her baby will die by Mr. Ohrbach’s hand.”
“Jesus. So you
haven’t.”
“No.”
“Jesus. Go on.”
“There is nothing
more. He tried to kill me; if he learns it is a baby by another man,
who knows? Maybe he will kill his daughter, if he thinks she
is...loose? Is that the word?”
Dierdre took an
olive pit from her mouth and lined it neatly on the table against
three others. “But he’s destroying your chance for an education
in the U.S. He has your confession, and you’ll be deported.”
“What’s
confession?”
Dierdre was
dumbfounded; Khamis answered in Arabic.
“Oh. But that is
not what I did.”
“The police say
differently,” Khamis told him, “and it appears that is all Mr.
Ohrbach needs.:
“All he needs to
deport me? That I admit I only that I would take what was offered to
me?” Zeki demonstrated his disbelief with open palms beside his
shoulders. His nearly-dead cigarette dropped a long ash onto the
floor. Khamis slowly crushed and smeared it with the toe of his
shoe, frowning. He said nothing.
“What do you mean,
‘I admit I wanted to take,’ et cetera?” Dierdre asked. “Is
that all you confessed?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did you sign a
paper saying that? Did you read it carefully?”
“Oh, sure.”
Zeki gave his brother a quick glance. “Of course, my reading in
English is not so good. Not so good as Khamis’s.”
“Tell us about
signing,” she ordered.
By now she realized
that Zeki loved to tell a story. He began, chain-smoking as he
chopped onions and lettuce or rechecked the lentils and rice. By the
time he finished, she was pacing into the dining room and back to the
kitchen, her fists jammed into the waistband of her jeans. She had
forgotten Khamis.
A policeman had come
to Zeki’s hospital bed with another man, the one with Ohrbach at
the restaurant. The man explained - too folksy, Dierdre thought from
Zeki’s description - that everything would be simpler if Zeki just
told the policeman what made Mr. Ohrbach so angry. Zeki has
complied, groggy and eager to make peace. Susan threw a party, came
on to him, and finally took him to her bedroom. He did not see Mr.
Ohrbach--the boy’s only form of reference to her father--during the
evening.
The policeman took
notes and left. The other man stayed to chat. He’d spent time in
the Arabian Gulf, he said, and he thought he understood a little
about how things were done in the Middle East. Not everything, of
course; but in many ways the West could learn from that part of the
world. If a disagreement arose between families, they got together,
a satisfactory solution was found, et cetera. Too bad it wasn’t
the same here, but with patience and a reasonable attitude.... The
policeman returned with a typescript for Zeki’s signature.
“Did the policeman
say anything when he came back?” Dierdre asked. She stood on one
foot, the toe of her other shoe wrapped around her ankle, ungainly as
a stork and with her hands still balled into her waistband. Zeki
thought, starting another cigarette as Khamis held the lighter.
“No.”
“Nothing about
attorneys, or ‘You have the right to,’ or anything like that?”
“No, mou Deard.”
“He never spoke?”
Zeki shook his head. “Was he the first cop you saw?” Zeki
nodded. “How long was the typing? Several pages, or only two or
three?”
“Several.”
“And you skimmed
it - read through it quickly - and signed it?”
“Yes. So did Mr.
Randall, the other man.”
“Randall? Randall
witnessed your signature?” Dierdre set her other foot on the
floor. She finally recognized the fat man in the steak house. She
turned to Khamis. “Brace yourself. The bastard who framed your
brother is the county sheriff.”
Chapter 5
That
was Tuesday. Zeki was arrested Wednesday for vagrancy. He was
walking to the doctor’s office. Khamis found Dierdre in the
library reading a book about Islamic law. Once having got her, he
ignored her; she ran to keep up. As he held her door open, though,
he saluted a pair of dark-haired students.
“Who are those
men?”
”Brother Arabs.”
He waved to them again as he drove by. After a few blocks he said,
“Thank you for coming.”
”No problem.”
“Should we go to
the same office as before?”
“No, to the
sheriff’s office. In the basement of the same building.”
Once there, he
covered her hand with his. “It is good of you. Really. I think
you must be a very good person.” A little smile broke through his
beard. “For an aggressive American woman.”
“You had to say
it,” she smiled, and squeezed his hand.
They got Zeki
released by noon.
Thursday Zeki was
given a ticket for littering. American money confused him, so he
never carried it; he was put into jail as a vagrant again. Khamis
got Dierdre as she left a computer class, and she spent the rest of
the day with the brothers after Zeki was freed. For lunch, Zeki
heated lentils and rice and topped them with lettuce and yogurt. He
squirted the mess with lemon juice. It was delicious.
Zeki was a wizard
with computers. Dierdre helped him do homework in language, and he
gave her his paper on advanced data retrieval.
All during her stay
she was aware of Khamis; his location, his posture, his expression.
She would raise her eyes and catch him watching her, his horn-rimmed
glasses sliding down his narrow nose, his lap covered with forgotten
research into the Arab League. It was a warm day of flies buzzing
against window screens. Arab disco music, played low at her request,
colored Dierdre’s memory of that afternoon for days. None of them
mentioned police harassment, there was no need. They drew as close
as those under siege.
Friday Zeki declined
to walk - or rather, limp - anywhere off-campus. Dierdre realized
that Khamis didn’t know they needed a lawyer. She made an
appointment with the town’s liberal attorney.
Saturday she stayed
home so she could listen for the phone as she studied. She was in
cut-offs and a T-shirt, halfway through a beer, and Khamis rang the
doorbell. He was elegant in tailored slacks and Italian loafers. He
carried a lot of long-stemmed red roses.
“For service above
and beyond the call of pity,” he intoned.
Dierdre stood in the
middle of the room feeling shy and unable to speak, so she looked
silently at the flowers he put into her arms. There was an awful, an
inexplicable, rush of tears. Khamis stood formal, stiff,
uncomfortable and foreign-looking. He left without saying goodbye.
“Oh, Christ.”
She shoved the roses
into a vase and got into the shower to calm down.
The bathroom door
opened; she yelped and peered around the curtain. Khamis’s hand
placed more flowers, carnations, on the floor. “I am sorry if you
don’t like roses,” he called. “I’ll wait out here.”
When she emerged,
relieved and still amused, he was brewing coffee in her kitchenette.
She leaned against the doorway and watched his economical movements
until he became aware of her.
“Next time I’ll
telephone first,” he said.
He wanted to kiss
her; Dierdre knew it. But he smiled instead, and as soon as the
coffee and conversation reestablished their comfort together, he
left.
Sunday Dierdre was
writing a practice brief when Zeki called her with an invitation to
dinner. She wore a dress to make up for Saturday’s dishabille.
Zeki, though, was unshaven and in a bathrobe, and Khamis wore a long
gown that looked like a nightshirt. A thobe, he called it.
The men knew about
the squad car parked around the corner, and practiced cursing in
Arabic to amuse her. Dierdre tried using pita bread instead of a
knife and fork, and they teased her when she spilled her food. Zeki
described his first and only sex, with a prostitute in Egypt’s
salty Lake Moeris, bawdy and sly. He told the story with significant
pauses and much obscene body English and Dierdre’s laugh, which had
disappeared during the week, found its way back. She stayed that
evening until after ten. As she shivered in the doorway Khamis
draped his red and white khufilla around her shoulders. “It’s
yours,” he said. Dierdre looked to Zeki for amplification.
“Arab women use
the scarves that way too,” he told her. Dierdre pulled it tight
and strutted a little past the squad car.
Monday was quiet.
Dierdre went from class to library to class, and wrote another
practice brief and a short opinion.
Tuesday she called
the brothers but got no answer.
Wednesday morning
Khamis called before breakfast. He was in jail he would tell her
about it later.
Dierdre dressed in a
flash and was at the police station right afterward. As she shoved
bail money under the grille to the desk sergeant, she asked him what
had happened.
“Your tall friend
got pushy with a deputy, ma’am.”
“Why? What
happened?”
“Well, his little
brother was getting another ticket. Your friend sort of lost
control.” Soberly he used a receipt stamp on a paper. “That’s
what I heard, anyway. A couple of his fellows held him down, or he’d
have taken the deputy’s head off.” His mouth was held tight; he
disapproved of Khamis.
“Is his brother in
jail too?”
“Yes. He was only
jaywalking, but he threatened the officer. Had to bring him in.”
“Sure.” She
shoved more cash toward the sergeant. “You’d better get him for
me, too.”
-$-
“I’ll burn this
place down! I’ll burn down every stick of it!” Zeki shouted as
he got to the street. “God curse this town!”
Khamis, quiet but
barely contained, was so angry he jerked as he walked and had trouble
speaking. They stopped at the corner.
“This way,”
Dierdre said, and tried to lead them to her car, but the furious
brothers ignored her. “The car’s this way,” she said again.
Zeki stood looking at the squat jailhouse wing with black hatred,
rooted in place. His diatribe continued in loud Arabic. Khamis had
his hand on Zeki’s shoulder as if to hold, or calm, him. Dierdre
realized the boy was no longer afraid of the American police, but
that rage like his was too intense; it would find a dangerous outlet.
“I’ll get the car,” she said, and did. The drive to the
TransAm was silent.
Khamis got out and
leaned through the passenger window to thank her.
“We’ve got to
talk,” she told him. “I’ll follow you home.”
“I think now. I’m
too angry to be polite.”
“Exactly. And
Zeki is so mad he might do something dangerous. I’ll follow you.”
Khamis looked at, then, past her, his long forearms hanging into the
car. His face was unreadable.
“Khamis, is Zeki
innocent of rape? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he sent
to you? Why must you watch him? Because that’s what you told me
you must do.”
Pause. “He has
not always been innocent.”
Oh. Dierdre stared
at the dashboard while her brain whirred through potential meanings.
“Is he a thief?”
Another pause. “I
believe not.”
“But you don’t
trust him.”
“I want to.”
“What did he do?
Where?”
“A westerner would
not understand. It happened in Egypt.”
“It’s politics,
then.” No answer. “Khamis, you’re too mad to be smart. We
have to make plans before we get into real trouble.”
“You always say
‘we,’” he remarked.
“Us, then.”
He studied her.
“Are you completely sure?”
Dierdre didn’t
even think. “Yes.”
Later she called the
liberal attorney from the al-Khafouli apartment to report the
harassment. He said they’d better come right over.
Chapter 6
David
Friedman had a large reputation and Dierdre was eager to meet him,
but her enthusiasm dimmed when she entered his messy office. Short,
thin, pot-bellied, with sloping shoulders and dark hair gone wispy
from forehead to crown, he offered a limp handshake when they met.
She secretly dried her palm against her skirt.
They sat in low
chairs around a littered coffee table. Friedman asked formal
questions about addresses, ages and backgrounds. His voice was high.
A nasty little man, Dierdre decided. But he surprised her; he
looked at her directly and said, “I’ll get the judge to appoint
me as Zeki’s lawyer. Technically the kid has no income of his own,
so he’s entitled. I was born on a kibbutz; the court will expect
me to hate him. Save him money. Agreed?”
“Fine,” Dierdre
said, then remembered it wasn’t her decision.
The questioning
resumed, going for a narrative from the night of Zeki’s beating.
Zeki was tense and deferential; Khamis was quiet, occasionally
nodding encouragement.
Dierdre wanted to
get to the harassment. Friedman took notes in a tiny, crabbed hand
or rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, so noncommital, so
busy, that she squirmed. He spoke without raising his eyes, shifting
his notes from his knee to the chair arm and back to his knee. When
they got to the hospital scene with the sheriff, and Friedman still
wrote methodically, his eyes steadily on his legal pad, Dierdre said,
“Frame. Right?”
“No witness,” he
observed without raising his pen or his gaze, and kept writing.
Khamis eventually
got to the scene in the steak house. Friedman’s face finally
assumed expression. His mouth twitched and he glanced up. Still, no
comment.
When he finished, he
stared at his notes. The others waited. The silence stretched so
long it became merely quiet, then boring. Dierdre looked around.
Used tissues were everywhere; on bookshelves, dictating equipment, on
Friedman’s desk among piles of books. One poked above his
waistband, white against pink-striped oxford cloth. Without surprise
she found another wedged into her own chair between the cushion and
the arm.
Friedman spoke to
Zeki.
“Trouble, kid.
Susie Ohrbach’s a nympho and they say she had an abortion just last
fall, but we can’t use that.” Zeki sat straight and nodded
solemnly, hand holding hand between his knees. Dierdre knew he
hadn’t understood. Friedman thought before he continued, reached
for the tissue at his waist, blew dryly and put it back. “You made
a couple of stupid mistakes. Her daddy’s big and you made him look
small in public. You signed a confession. In a small-time, bigoted,
shit-kicking, wrong-headed, poky, incestuous, nosy, boring college
town. In America, where your daddy and mommy can’t help you.”
“I know, sir,”
Zeki said. Dierdre made a mental note to find out who, or what,
Zeki’s daddy was. Friedman went on.
“And you offered
to bribe an officer of the law. Twice. I got all your records
yesterday. God knows what you tried last night in jail.”
“You offered money
to a cop?” Dierdre asked, big-eyed.
Zeki was acutely
embarrassed. He said, “I didn’t know it is a crime, mou Deard.
It was Monday, the day we didn’t talk to you.”
Dierdre turned to
Khamis. He shrugged. “He won’t do it again.”
“No! I swear it!”
“You won’t do
shit, kid,” Friedman said in his squeaky voice. “You’ll move
your things on-campus away from the cops, and you won’t go off till
the trial, or I’m not your lawyer.” He lifted his eyes from his
lap to the boy. “Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You explain it,
Ms. Roarke. See you next week, same time. I’ll talk to Ohrbach.”
Chapter 7
It
was a freaky-hot day for March: the air buzzed with cicadas
and rimmed the trees with a yellow light. As Dierdre, Khamis and
Zeki left Friedman’s office, Gary Phillips descended the courthouse
steps and angled across the street to intercept them. He didn’t
look for traffic; away from the university, Tipperton had none.
Dierdre liked the smile he sent ahead. He still wore cords and still
needed a haircut. He went straight to Zeki. His broad shoulders
disguised his considerable height; he towered over the skinny boy, a
folksy Father Christmas.
“Mar habbah,“ he
said, “I’m the news editor for The Chronicle.“
Zeki was confused.
“Mar habbah, sir.“
“They’re going
to shaft you, kid. Can I sell you a little news coverage?”
“Not sell, he
doesn’t mean that,” Dierdre interpreted.
Gary ignored her.
“I find your name on the docket so often I can make it front page.”
Zeki glanced from
Phillips to Khamis and back, his hands jammed into his waistband.
“What sort of news coverage do you sell, please?” he asked.
“Just something to
make Randall back off. An editorial, maybe, if it’d sit better
with you.” Gary turned to Khamis. “I thought you might like to
take a breather, and a little light on this hanky-panky would goose
our errant public servants into rectitude. Might get to Ohrbach too,
indirectly.”
“What did he say?”
Zeki asked the air.
Khamis enunciated
carefully. “Do you think Zeki’s case would be helped by
publicity from your newspaper?”
“A tad. Couldn’t
hurt. Throw a little dust in their eyes.” Phillips’ own eyes
had become crinkled at the corners.
“I do not want my
name on your front page,” Zeki said.
“Right. I can see
that.”
Khamis thought;
looked at the sidewalk, at Dierdre, at Gary. “I dislike saying it,
but go ahead. You are probably correct. Also, this excellent lady
seems to trust you.”
“Good.”
“But she has
taught me the American form of bribery. Yours could come Friday
evening, when you bring your wife to dinner at our home. Meet some
of our friends.”
“I couldn’t ask
for more. Friday’s great.” Phillips stuck out his hand. “Gotta
catch a hearing. Call me.” He ambled off. Khamis watched him and
at the same time, with supreme nonchalance, but his arm across
Dierdre’s shoulders. She blushed and felt silly, but leaned into
his side.
“I don’t believe
I heard that,” she said, looking up at him.
“I like him.”
“If you say so,”
Zeki told them. “I don’t know what he said.”
Dierdre explained.
“He was teasing you. About your very good English.”
Friday’s newspaper
contained an editorial about police and deputies harassing university
students, especially foreign students who brought so much money to
Tipperton and Gold County. In the adjacent column was an op-ed
letter to the editor about the Court’s indifference to minority
concerns. It was signed with a Mexican surname. The layout seemed
effective, and Dierdre was gratified.
“I’m surprised
he didn’t mention Zeki directly,” Khamis remarked as they shopped
for the dinner.
“You’re a
cynic,” Dierdre told him.
She brought Zeki
from his coed dormitory for the dinner. He jabbered all the way.
“These girls! They roam the halls in their underwear! And believe
me, mou Deard, underwear is not enough! Just when I sit down to
study...” His hands described them, caressing the air with
desperate, aggrieved horniness. The whites of his eyes fairly
flashed.
“You led a
deprived childhood,” Dierdre told him. He seemed to take her
seriously. “Close the door when you study.”
“I would remember
what I saw!”
“Take a soapy
bath. Hack; you’re on the net.”
“Hack? Go into
someone’s computer?”
Bingo; his eyes grew
dreamy.
Three Arab students,
Mohammed, Riad and Abdul, attended the dinner. Gary and Candy
Phillips brought a big zip-lock bag of fresh mint from their garden,
which delighted Khamis and Zeki. Candy surprised Dierdre; she was a
fierce-eyed, dark beauty in her mid-thirties, flamboyantly dressed,
and with a controlled intensity of speech. She seemed the last
person to attract the casual, laid-back style of her husband.
The women served
from casseroles on a mahogany buffet, then sat at the formally set
table and listened. The talk went from world politics to Middle
Eastern affairs. From there it progressed to local corruption, then,
as the Arabs became easy with the strangers, to Zeki’s case.
Finally everyone was talking about justice - and revenge. The mood
got heavy despite Gary’s efforts to keep the discussion abstract.
“Listen,” Candy
finally said. “You crazy Ay-rabs gotta get mad, not even. Let us
Americans teach you something there.” Khamis’s friends had tried
to ignore her; not only did she drink the beer she and Gary brought,
she seemed to have no feminine reserve at all. “You see,” she
went on, “what you want to do is make life miserable for those
bastards. Honey, you remember how we got Mark Chappell?”
Gary grinned and
took a sip of beer. “It was gorgeous,” he said. “Candy’s
idea. I didn’t learn about it till later. Mark Chappell was the
County Attorney, a carpetbagger from L.A.” He turned to Zeki.
“Taking advantage of less sophisticated people.”
Khamis nodded.
Candy took over.
“Chappell balled a Superior Court judge’s wife and a couple of
other Tipperton socialites. I use the adjective advisedly. The
judge is a good man, a friend of ours.”
The Arabs were
disapproving - but titillated - by a woman’s mention of sex. Gary
tactfully continued. “Know what they did?” he asked, looking
around the table. Zeki, anticipating and grinning, shook his head
for the rest of them. He leaned forward. “Put busted red rubber
balls everywhere he went for a couple of weeks. Worked like a
charm.” He leaned back in his chair.
Dierdre understood
first, then spluttered into her tea. “Where did you put them?”
she demanded.
Candy answered. “We
got them into his home. You know, his underwear drawers, his car
seat, glove box, the toilet tank, under his pillow. We got help; his
office chair and files and things were stuffed with them. Christ,
the man couldn’t even order a hamburger after a while without
finding a deflated, flabby little red rubber ball, and...”
For some moments
there had been a growing disturbance from Khamis’s end of the
table. Now he laughed aloud, so hard that he rose to leave, but
stood laughing helplessly, holding the back of his chair for support.
Zeki joined him, then everyone else, hooting and uproarious,
doubling up and banging fists against their knees, the table.
“Gary, I am in
love with your wife,” Khamis finally gasped.
They took it from
there and included the women. They concocted elaborate, ridiculous
plots with abducted pets and bogus missing persons, death rays and
echo chambers, phony bank accounts and shadowy forms half-glimpsed in
alleys.
It later seemed to
Dierdre that despite the laughter and table-slapping, it was the most
serious part of the night. Hands flicked and jerked, glances just
failed to meet or caromed off one another. Khamis lounged with his
cigarette like a presiding officer at the head of the table and
seldom participated, but each suggestion was referred to him with a
glance. Even Gary Phillips did it. Dierdre remembered tales of
Turkish courts and pictured Khamis there, the sinister power behind
the throne.
Gary was declaiming.
“It’s got to be untraceable. Non-violent if possible, and
completely untraceable to us.”
Candy had become
even more animated, even flushed, and her beauty incandescent.
“Absolutely,” she agreed.
“NO!”
Zeki jerked it out.
The others paused; a new note had entered the foolery. Dierdre
squirmed.
“Those men must
know that we did this to them.”
“It’s got to
take their power,” Mohammed agreed, and Dierdre turned to him with
protest on her face. Very white teeth flashed in his square face,
but he was not smiling.
“They must be
helpless, like children, when we have finished,” said Abdul. “They
must never be able to do this again.”
“They must be
taught respect!” exclaimed the beak-nosed boy names Riad.
“Just frighten
them,” Gary admonished. “Be reasonable.”
“Terrify them!”
demanded Mohammed.
“Humiliate them,”
corrected Riad.
“Destroyed!”
Zeki insisted, with such intensity that his voice cracked.
Any pretense of
lightness was gone. He collected himself. “Those men must be
destroyed,” he repeated.
Silence. Gary
lowered the front legs of his chair to the floor. “Hey! Lighten
up, little buddy,” he finally said. “We’ll get ‘em. Won’t
we, Khamis?” He studied the older brother. “Yeah. I guess we
will.” He looked around the table. “Anybody want to change the
subject?”
“I don’t think
so,” Khamis said.
Dierdre was
appalled. “Excuse me,” she said, and left.
On the living room
balcony the night air poured down her bare arms and across her
throat, welcome. Silly; she was tear-choked, frightened, because for
the first time she realized the man she was beginning to love was
prepared to go a very long way for revenge. She turned to watch what
she would of the dining area. Beyond the half-lit living room,
Khamis and two of the students were brightly lit. They were raising
a toast. Zeki’s voice said, “To Mr. Henry Ohrbach and Sheriff
James Randall; may they live to suffer long.” Khamis nodded
solemnly and drank.
She turned away and
looked over the little town to the star-silhouetted mountains in the
north. They looked very solid; she watched until they grew and
blotted out the night and awareness of the frightening people behind
her. She became nearly calm.
Khamis’s footstep
vibrated through the floor and Dierdre braced herself to say
something definitive, something to prevent madness and yet let her
remain his friend. Instead, “This won’t work, Khamis,” she
told him. “You’re too intense, and I’m too pacific. It’s
been fun.” Her voice broke as she turned to go.
“Fun? Only fun?
You’re telling me goodbye?” He made a movement to prevent her,
but stopped short of contact. “Not without talking with me! Not
without me knowing why! No, stop.” This time he took her arm.
“Just for a minute.” Dierdre hesitated. He said, “Give me a
reason I can understand, and to explain to my brother.” His hands
went to her shoulders. No matter what you may think of me, you can’t
deny your fondness for Zeki.”
She shook her head.
“I’m fond of the rascal. I feel close to both of you.” Khamis
dropped his hands and after a moment she went on. “I don’t’
know how to put it; I have to leave before there’s damage done. I
love the law. I study it so I can help people to get justice. But
revenge is not justice. You and Zeki want revenge.”
Khamis walked to the
balcony rail. He looked absently down the street, drumming his
fingers on the wrought iron. “Yes, we want vengeance,” he
admitted. “We understand that your sheriff is at the command of
Tipperton’s commercial interests, and especially of your banker.
We understand, too, that for us and all the other minorities who stay
here, there will never be justice. So we want to get even. If we
did not, it would indicate a lack of pride and self-respect. Do you
understand that?”
“Intellectually,
yes.” Dierdre joined him at the rail.
“But your American
feelings don’t agree.”
“Right. I am
law-abiding on principle and from conviction. While Gary, Candy and
I were playing games, you and the others were making actual plans to
destroy people who are important in this little place. It’s not a
very nice place, or important to many people, but...”
Khamis said, “I
agree; it deserves better. It deserves impartial government,
impartially administered. Better law enforcement. Better
officials.” Dierdre nodded. “When do you suppose it will have
those things?”
She shrugged. “Not
so long as Ohrbach commands and the police obey. I know; I don’t
defend it.”
“Of course not.”
Khamis gestured toward the apartment. “We can’t permit the
indignities to our people. Your people shouldn’t either, but as
foreigners we can’t act for them. If we can make justice for
ourselves, we will.” He brightened. “But not by playing
childish tricks, Dierdre. Not by placing toys in embarrassing
places.” He chuckled.
Dierdre, made safe
by abstraction, might have waxed eloquent about citizen revolt
through petition, recalls, maybe neighborhood watch campaigns. She
didn’t get the change; Khamis took her in his arms for the first
time. “My Dierdre’s afraid of our silliness,” he said, and
kissed her hair, then her face, and was laughing when his lips found
her mouth.
So she dismissed her
speech, and kissed him back, and tried not to overreact to her own
joy and triumph and craziness. Then she rejoined the group and
contributed to the game.
Chapter 8
Which
helped make it a successful dinner party, but made Dierdre’s early,
still-panicky leave-taking awkward. “My Dierdre,” she kept
hearing as she drove, although Khamis hadn’t said it again.
She was nearly home
before she realized that she was being followed by the sheriff’s
patrol car. Driving with extra care about turn signals and lane
changes, trying to remember just where the gerrymandered city limits
began, and with one eye at her rear-view mirror, she made it safely
to her usual parking spot on the street. The deputy parked behind,
hailed her, then took nearly an hour to inspect and search her car.
He finally gave her a warning about low tire tread.
Next morning she was
given a parking ticket while she bought groceries. She’d parked
too far from the curb. When she drove home, a patrol car waited down
the street and the man in it watched her. “Damn,” she muttered,
and re-parked to get nearer the curb. Leaving the motor running she
got out to see whether she was clear of the red zone, then eased the
car forward a few inches. When she got out again the deputy saluted
her from behind his windshield. It was the officer from the night
before. When she drove to the library he followed her again, up to
the campus gate. An hour later she left by another gate and got home
alone.
She wanted to tell
Khamis, but didn’t call because of her lingering mistrust of
involvement. She didn’t see him until they met at David Friedman’s
office, Monday. She wore a beige suit, though; Khamis’s taste.
The patrol car followed her.
Friedman had no
news, except that Ohrbach would not talk to him. “I spoke to his
attorney about the girl, Susan. She’s in family counseling because
of this case, but she’s still pregnant. She may get an abortion.”
“Sad,” Zeki
said.
Dierdre had become
fine-tuned to Zeki’s poorly expressed thoughts through weeks of
trying to understand his English. With a rush of affection she
realized that his one word, spoken half to himself, expressed genuine
depth of sympathy for a little girl who lost her youth and might lose
her child.
“You bet,”
Friedman agreed. “She may come out of it all right, though. Her
daddy doesn’t know, but she’s spending a lot of time at the
Family Center. Paints there, and the therapists look at the
pictures. Candy Phillips, the newsman’s wife, is a painter. She
volunteers. I understand you know her.” Then blowing his dry nose
and writing in his finicky hand, he instructed Zeki to gather
character references, especially from the professors. And yes, Gary
and Candy Phillips might be good references, even though they barely
knew him. Winding up, he asked whether there had been any more
problems with the police.
“There’s a
patrol car around the corner waiting to follow me home,” Dierdre
said, deliberately avoiding Khamis’s eyes.
Zeki gave a start.
“How do you know?”
Khamis asked quickly.
“Uh-hm,”
Friedman said at the same time.
“He’s been with
me since Friday night.”
“Any direct
contact?” Friedman asked.
“One warning
Friday night. One parking ticket Saturday, then he waited for me at
home.”
“Uh-hm.”
“Were you
frightened?” Khamis demanded.
“Sure.”
For a moment his
face looked the way it did over the bouquet of roses, crumpling,
baffled. “You didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t want
to bother you.”
Friedman interrupted
them. “The police are within the law. You’ll have to keep cool.
And be patient.” He sized her up, then turned to include the
others. Dierdre’s news had upset Zeki; he fairly bounced in his
seat with outrage, his hands gripping the arms of his chair.
Friedman continued. “The cops here may be cretinous, but with the
outstanding leadership available to them in the person of the
sheriff, they can be amazingly productive of generalized gloom and
despair among the citizens.” He set down his notes and linked his
hands across his chest, leaning back into cushions to declaim. “When
it comes to ingenuity, Tipperton’s deputized schmucks can think up
more ways to raise hell with the average decent, law-abiding,
tax-paying, cop-fearing citizen than is dreamed of in your incipient
philosophy, cuteys. Keep cool.” He addressed Dierdre directly.
“And re-read the California Motor Vehicle Code.” The appointment
was ended.
Khamis took
Dierdre’s arm and, without speaking, led her to his car. Silently
they drove Zeki to the campus, then went to her apartment. They
still hadn’t spoken. He took the key from her hand, opened the
door for her, and ushered her to the couch.
“Sit,” he
ordered, and entered the kitchenette.
“You’re angry,”
Dierdre said after a while.
“Of course.” He
was making tea. She picked at a pillow tassel beside her. She could
see him at work, rummaging for a tray, finding cookies.
“Why?” she
finally asked.
He brought the tray
to the coffee table and sat in a chair. “You needed help and
didn’t let me know. That makes me angry.”
Dierdre continued to
fiddle with the tassel. Khamis poured tea. Dropped and spoon and
replaced it. Loosened his tie and rolled his cuffs.
“All right,” he
said after half her tea and one cookie were gone. “You only talk
well for others.” She finally looked at him. He continued. “I’ll
be gone in a year. You’ve been hurt before. This business was
supposed to be an adventure, nothing serious, no personal
involvement.”
Dierdre made a move
for another tassel, reconsidered and folded her hands in her lap.
Her eyes focused on a print across the room. “That’s pretty
close,” she admitted.
“You won’t be
bothered by the police any more. I swear it. But what will you do
about the rest of it? The affair al-Khafouli?”
Dierdre breathed
deeply. “Oh, Lord, Khamis. I don’t know. I don’t know what
you want; how can I say what I’ll do?”
Khamis’s voice
became low, with such tenderness that Dierdre suddenly ached to
laugh, or cry. “But you know what you want, don’t you, Dierdre?”
She would never tire of watching his face, of studying the
expression around his mouth, the tender skin stretched across his
temple, the depth of his eyes. “And you won’t say it. Some
aggressive, liberated lady you turned out to be.”
Quickly Dierdre
knelt beside his chair before she could change her mind. “Say it
for me, Khamis; I need help. I’m telling you now. Please.”
“I love you, too,
Dierdre,” he said, and reached to touch her face.
Chapter 9
Lunching
back and forth with Dierdre and the al-Khafoulis became routine for
Candy, but Gary could attend only at dinner. They were at the
brothers’ apartment two Fridays later.
“It’s the
damnedest thing,” Gary said. He was finishing some early melon,
waving and waggling his fork as he talked. The others, Dierdre, Zeki
and Khamis, were finished and listening. “Looks like Sheriff
Randall’s in for a long siege of investigation. At least that, if
not something more serious. A couple of patrolmen are singing like
sparrows, coming up with dates and times for harassment. Even,”
and he leaned forward eagerly, “some paper!”
“Admitting they
harassed people?” Candy demanded, and referred a look of doubt
toward the others, who frowned soberly back. “Admitting to false
arrests? Roughings-up? Why admit to such petty things? And how
come the sheriff’s deputies are responsible for arrests in
Tipperton? Aren’t they County men? I mean, the least that will
happen is that they’ll lose their jobs.”
Dierdre agreed.
“Maybe lose their whole careers. And accusing Randall! Not that I
don’t actually like it. I was mad enough to kill.” She fingered
her necklace, a chain simple and heavy enough to obscure the fact
that it was solid gold; a gift from Khamis. It was so valuable that
she still touched it to be sure it hadn’t vanished.
“And I also am
surprised,” Zeki solemnly agreed. “It is a terrible, foolish
thing for a policeman to do.”
“What’ll it do
to Sheriff Randall?” Candy wanted to know. She rose to clear the
table. She was exotic in soignĂŠe velvet from the Thirties.
“Let me, Candy,”
Zeki said. “You are my guest.” He took the plates.
“But you look so
much like a little waiter in that white shirt! I can’t allow it.”
She took them back. Khamis smiled; only Dierdre saw it. Zeki sat.
“As to the County
men giving tickets inside of town,” Gary said, “have you ever
looked at our city map? It’s like a little desert flower, with
petals sticking out at every angle. But if the deputies’ evidence
can prove Randall gave orders to harass people, even if it doesn’t
put him into jail, it’ll do him in come election time.”
“Misprision,”
Dierdre said. “It’s a sort of dereliction of a public duty. All
the authorities need is his signature on something, like a memo. Or
even a note to himself. Anything.”
Khamis, smiling,
said, “I understand from Mr. Friedman that they found one this
afternoon.”
“Really?” Candy
drawled.
“Officer Murphy,
whom you remember, was obliging enough to drop a note from the
sheriff out of his pocket. In Counselor Friedman’s office.”
Gary came to
attention. “From Sheriff Randall? How did Friedman get him to do
that?”
“What did it say?”
Candy asked.
Zeki, concentrating
on Candy’s clinging blue gown, said, “Let us say the note
mentioned my name, and some dollar amounts.” He gave Khamis a
sidewise grin.
Gary glowered around
the table. “Is it a phony note?” he finally asked.
“Apparently not,”
Khamis said. “Of course, the sheriff must have a private financial
accounting somewhere as well. It might be found among his files. If
the authorities choose to look, of course.”
Gary was riled,
confused. “How do you happen to know so much? All of you?” He
shoved away his plate. “Candy?”
She smiled.
“Simple, love. I was here when Khamis got the call from David
Friedman. I had to help cook.”
“Candy...”
His gorgeous wife
did a charming, possibly ingenuous thing; she lifted her right hand,
which held a dirty cup, and swore, “Innocent, darling. I promised
you, after the Mark Chappell thing. And as Khamis just said, finding
the sheriff’s accounts is only a possibility.”
Gary said, “But
they’d be dynamite. There’s no rational way to write...”
Khamis wasn’t
through speculating. He interrupted, “Personally,” he mused, “I
would begin looking in the most obvious place; the cabinet behind his
office desk.”
Candy put detergent
into the dishwasher and slammed its door. “It would probably look
innocuous, maybe like a little record book that resembles the key
log. Something like that.” She smiled at Khamis. “They’re
sold everywhere.”
“You’re doing
it!” Gary yelped. “You’re mind-fucking!”
“Of course not, my
love.”
Dierdre interrupted.
“What I want to know is motive.” She held a lighter to Khamis’s
cigarette. The lighter was gold. “What would a deputy confess
for? Why endanger his career for some nasty, petty little crime?”
Gary subsided “Who
knows?”
“Persuasion,”
Candy offered. “Maybe the deputies are being harassed into
rectitude by other victims. I mean, like the Latino whose dog they
shot last month? Or that Vietnamese grocer. They could be
responsible. Let’s drink to it. Honey, where’d you put the
beer?”
A sudden, echoing
bang hit the front door. The bell chimed and chimed. Khamis rose to
answer, but the door flew open and hit the wall. David Friedman
strode directly into the kitchen, breathing fire. Everyone froze.
The ceiling light became harsh, the desert night loud with
approaching sirens.
“Deep shit, kids,”
the lawyer spat. “The Foreign Student Advisor says they found two
handguns and about five pounds of crack under Zeki’s bed. Must
have been all the confiscated evidence Randall could scare up. The
kid’ll be deported by tomorrow night.”
Khamis surprised
everyone; he lost control. Terrible and mighty he rose, grabbed the
little attorney and pinned him against the wall. “That cannot
happen!” he hissed. “The boy is innocent!”
“Khamis!”
Candy caught Dierdre
and pulled her toward the sink.
“God damn!”
Friedman yelled. “Put me down, idiot!”
Khamis lowered him
to the floor. He seemed to grow even more, to become magisterial,
prophet-like, a personification of moral outrage and righteous
judgment.
But Khamis was not
being moral. The men’s gazed locked. “Anything!” he demanded,
“Do anything, even illegal. Say anything, truthful or false. You
will never regret it.”
A sneering, nasty
voice came from the landing by the open door. “That sounds
incriminating to me.”
Friedman recognized
the voice. “Ohrbach!” he yelled, “Enter and it’s trespass!”
“Ignore him!”
Khamis demanded, and caught Friedman as he headed through the dining
room. Friedman was too mad not to struggle. Khamis roared, “Ignore
him! He’s taken care of!” But Friedman’s elbow drove into the
big man’s diaphragm and he leapt toward the front door. Gasping,
doubled, Khamis followed.
“Stop them!”
Dierdre cried. She heard a scuffle, grunts, and the curiously
unemphatic sound of fists pounding flesh. Someone was being hurt.
As she made for the
dining room Candy stopped her again, shoved her onto a chair and
stood before her with her hands hard on the girl’s shoulders.
“Hush! Sit! Better that Friedman should hurt the man, not
Khamis!”
Zeki dithered,
frightened, by the stove. Gary blocked the dining room door,
undecided what to do. The sounds of fighting stopped. The sirens,
which had grown louder, wound down just outside. Car doors slammed.
Footsteps climbed the stairs. They entered the apartment. Two
policemen appeared.
“Zeki Mohammed
al-Khafouli?” one of them asked.
“Here, sir,”
Zeki said quietly. “We are too well acquainted.”
With a howl Khamis
grabbed one officer from behind, then the other. Friedman appeared,
a ferret-sized swarm, all over Khamis’s back. Gary grabbed them
both. Finally all of them; Khamis, Friedman, Gary and the two
policemen, fell into a lumpy, agitated heap.
“Zeki! No!
They’ve pulled their guns!” Candy shouted, and bounded from
Dierdre’s side to his. Her raised hand flashed and something
clattered to the floor. A boning knife skittered under the table.
A policeman rose
from the tangle and grabbed Zeki. “Go limp, kid!” Friedman
barked. He was struggling with Khamis.
“Get out get out
get out get out,” Dierdre wailed. She heard, didn’t see, the
handcuffs. Zeki and the policeman left the kitchen as the other men
rose from the floor. The second policeman turned to Khamis, pulling
cuffs from his belt.
Khamis quieted. He
straightened, looking toward the front door. “Mr. Henry Ohrbach,”
he said, and a more sensitive man than Ohrbach would have fled. His
chuckle grated through the front room. “I may have a busted rib,
but I just had to see this.”
“Sorry there was
no more warning,” Friedman told Khamis as he tucked in his shirt.
“You had your message machine on.” Khamis nodded as he was
cuffed, but continued to glare toward the entry to the apartment.
Zeki spoke from the
living room, apparently to Ohrbach. “My family will never forget
this,” he said. “I will never, ever forgive it. And you will
pay.” Dierdre heard him spit. Many feet shuffled across the
carpets. A voice began reciting the Miranda.
“Just a moment,
officer,” Khamis commanded, and the majesty had returned to his
voice. The shuffling stopped; the policeman stopped speaking. “As
the oldest son of a foreign sovereign and thus his agent, I invoke
diplomatic immunity for myself and for my brother, who enjoys the
same status.”
There was a moment
of total, nearly audible silence. “Son of a bitch,” Friedman
finally muttered.
“What’s
immunity?” Zeki asked.
Glaring fixedly at
Ohrbach, Khamis reached his coupled hands toward Dierdre. She came.
Things moved
smoothly after Friedman, muttering about secret identities and men of
steel, took over. He left with Zeki to lodge a series of formal
complaints against all and sundry. Gary followed, ostentatiously
taking notes. Candy stayed. She began restlessly fiddling with
salves and bandages.
Dierdre was dazed.
She stared at Khamis across the kitchen table, fingering the gold
chain at her throat. “Is it really all right? Is it as simple as
that?” she asked.
Khamis’s face was
scraped and beginning to puff under one eye. He gave an amused
snort. “You have often claimed that I am a prince,” he remarked.
Dierdre nodded. “Come here,” he said.
“Break that up and
start putting away dishes, kids,” Candy ordered. “I’m making
us coffee. We have to talk.”
Chapter 10
Once
in Ohrbach’s Chrysler, Bebe Stubbs seemed self-conscious about
going to the motel; Henry couldn’t get her to loosen up. This was
probably her first planned, deliberate affair, he reasoned; she was a
classy girl.
The highway was
scored across the shoulder the of hill and through scattered rabbit
brush. Everything was low and gray and scruffy in the summer heat.
The mountains had become sloppily piled stone, the ocotillo scratched
against the sky. Bebe was silent and slouched with one foot against
the dash. Her yellow cotton skirt smelled of fabric softener and
rode well up her naked thigh. With surprise Henry realized that she
dyed her hair, that the brown was too even to be natural. The rest
was unfakeable; the long legs, the fine bones, the clean line of her
throat.
“Are you sure your
daughter won’t find out you’re gone?” she asked. “She won’t
call?”
Henry snapped out of
a salacious reverie. “No, she won’t notice. She’s in L.A. If
she calls, I’ll get the message on the beeper and call her back.”
“And the bank
people won’t need you, or the sheriff?”
“It’s all right,
Bebe. No one’s going to want me tonight.”
“Sheriff Randall?
He’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he? I thought you two went
fishing and things on weekends.”
“Not every
weekend, sweet-cheeks.”
Wrong endearment.
Bebe Stiffened beside him, just enough that Henry could see it was
involuntary. “Sometimes we don’t see each other for a couple of
weeks at a time.”
Bebe’s foot came
down from the dash. She crossed her ankles and pulled her skirt to
cover her knees. Henry threw her a grin to make up for his gaffe.
“Well I’m nervous, Henry,” she said. He nodded, concentrating
as he passed a pickup truck. “I mean, I realize it’s probably a
good idea for you to get out of town, especially now.”
“Now?”
“Well, with your
little girl sick. You know. It’ll get your mind off that whole
thing.”
As Henry pondered
the lightning spread of gossip, Bebe glanced at the driver of the
pickup, a dark-haired man with a big nose. Henry pulled ahead; the
man grinned at Bebe and threw her an insolent salute. She grinned
back, flattered.
“Don’t do that,
hon.”
They drove in
silence for some minutes. Bebe gradually relaxed her prim pose and
finally recocked her foot on the dash. Henry was gratified that the
skirt began to ride again toward her lap, creeping in little jerks as
the air conditioner blew under its hem. She twisted to look at the
following truck, and the top button her sleeveless blouse popped
open.
“He waved at me
again,” Bebe giggled, and waved back. “Cute, isn’t it?”
Absently she rebuttoned her blouse, watching Henry. Her fingers
lingered over the neckline. She’d always watched him like that.
It was naive and a little endearing.
“Yeah, it’s
cute,” Henry said, but his voice didn’t refer to the man in the
pickup. He reached toward her exposed thigh.
“Not yet, boss. I
told you that,” she said quickly, and lightly slapped at his hand.
“Um-hm,” he
said. His hand dropped so that it touched her hip. She put it back
on the steering wheel.
“Not till we’re
actually in bed, Henry. I have a thing about it. Honest.” Her
fingers went again to the heavy chain at her neck and her eyes got
big to show she was serious.
“Um-hm.” A
thing about it. He’d take care of that thing with a thing of his
own.
There was a
mechanical roar, and a low-slung car passed them so closely that
Henry swerved to avoid being hit. “God damn it!”
“You don’t need
to cuss, Henry.”
The little car
slowed. The pickup came up from behind. Henry saw its driver waive
to him, smiling, through the rear-view mirror.
Trap.
Thank God for the
pistol in the glove box. He loosened his grip on the wheel to be
ready. The car ahead suddenly sped up, slowed, and spun to a stop,
blocking the highway. The bastards had chosen a good spot, just
where the road bridged a gully, and there was no shoulder. Without
special urgency, but with rising anger, Henry stopped. The man in
the truck got out and ran forward as Henry reached for his gun.
That’s when things
began to go wrong. Yelling and yanking at her ankle, Henry couldn’t
make Bebe understand quickly enough that he had to move her foot.
The first thug opened the door and she was protesting and yelling,
“My God they’re coming for you, my God,” with her foot still
jammed against the glove box. Henry’s furiously pumping elbow
rammed the horn and it blasted. He was pulled out of the car; fell
onto the pavement. All he wanted was to kill. Anything.
All his lights went
out.
Despite a life-long
dread, Henry seemed to get all the breaks. His dead wife had been
rich. Henry’s work as a banker was easy, approving loans to the
right people and selling credit cards to everyone else. He had a
good house outside of town on its own hill; a pair of good cars; a
wall full of civic awards; and his affectionate little girl was
nearly grown. He was thinking of her when he woke up in the motel.
Susan’ that’s what it was all about.
He thought,
distantly, that maybe he’d been groaning. Then he felt the pain in
his head and ground his eyes shut. “Bebe?” he tried to say, and
he guessed it got past his teeth because he felt her sit on the side
of the bed and touch his forehead.
“Take these,”
she said, and helped him get pills into his mouth with a drink of
water. “We’re at the motel.” He nodded and lay back down. He
was still furious.
“I screamed so
much I think I spooked them,” Bebe claimed. “Anyway, they didn’t
do much after I jumped on that one guy. He’ll carry those
scratches for a while! A big truck was coming, so then they took off
fast. I drove us here. You’re heavy, you know?”
The bastards.
“I’m going to
the little store out front and get some aspirin and things. I’ll
be right back.”
Henry closed his
eyes and smiled, or tried to. He heard Bebe walk across the carpet
and shut the door.
The bastards.
That’s when a
prickle settled at the back of his neck and he began to be worried,
as he had forgotten to be for maybe six months. Bebe’s voice. Not
the talk, the voice. It was peppier. Louder. Forceful, almost.
Like she was in charge. Something was going on with her; she’d
acted funny ever since he’d picked her up. When she came back,
he’d call the whole thing off and they’d go home before she could
play any games. He felt like hell; he’d say he wanted a doctor.
Just as well. He had no business dicking the help.
He wanted Susan.
Gingerly he eased
upright and the bed creaked. The bedcover was rough under his
scraped hands. He knew he wasn’t badly hurt; the kidneys had not
been kicked, nor his Adam’s apple, nor any of the other sensitive
spots the men might have chosen. Henry thought with satisfaction
that all they had succeeded in doing was make him mad. Good and mad,
the kind of anger he’d remember and use when he found them. And he
would find them.
He levered his legs
against the mattress to move off the bed, then stood still to check
whether he was dizzy. He was. When he found he could stand, he
walked along the wall to the window and looked out. He knew where he
was; he had financed McReady’s motel here in the middle of nowhere.
A low, hand-painted sign on the highway pointed to a dirt drive
around some gas pumps; that was its only advertising. The concealing
gas station and mini-mart spread themselves across a windshield like
a smirk. Six rooms and the owner’s apartment. A money-maker.
Bebe stood outside
with her arms across her chest and one foot wrapped around the other
ankle, looking down the slope at Tipperton. One hand dangled a sack
from the market. She looked around, starting from the highway and
the view down-slope, then turning north to the arroyo-laced country
behind the motel. She walked aimlessly toward the ravine at the edge
of the drive, kicking at gravel with her head down. Probably crying,
Henry guessed. Her shoes cleared a little spot down to the dirt,
then she stopped and doodled with a stick. Poor kid.
Or maybe not poor
kid, he thought, remembering the change in her. If she had to go buy
aspirin, what in hell were the pills she gave him?
The sun was
westering, but the heat pressed right through the window. It would
do that all night. Suddenly Henry felt groggier; reaction? He
inched back to the bed and carefully lay across it again. In a while
Bebe brought red salmon caviar, Ritz crackers, Cold Duck, cream
cheese, and a pack of styrofoam cups. She laid them on the table
beside a bouquet rendered in blue plastic and began spreading cheese
onto a cracker with a plastic knife.
“You’ll want to
rest, Henry. We’ll eat a little first.” She glanced at him
while she worked. Now that his head was clearing, he could see the
change in her. She hadn’t been crying. Her face was composed,
without red eyes or any sign of worry. A phony smile made her mouth
rigid and hard. Her eyes were expressionless as a snake’s. Bitch.
A power tripper. He should have recognized the type.
He still had trouble
making words come because his lips were swollen. “We’ll go
back,” he managed to say, though it came out mumbled. “Back,”
he said again more carefully.
“No, Henry.” It
was a statement, not a protest. She spread another cracker and
opened the jar of cheap caviar. “We’ll stay here for a while.
Together.” She brought a cracker to the bed and leaned over him.
As she did, the first wave of nausea swept from Henry’s stomach to
his head, and he was left so weak and dizzy he couldn’t speak.
“Eat,” Bebe said, and smiled as she shoved the cracker at his
mouth. It struck his teeth and spread messily across his lips.
Henry wanted to grab her hand to shove it away, but fumbled. Bebe
pulled from him, still smiling tightly. “Don’t you like it,
Henry?” Something was definitely wrong; he couldn’t do a damned
thing, and her face was growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking.
“It’s no more synthetic than...” Her voice faded. She bent
over him again, peering closely at his eyes.
Now.
He made a powerful
grab for her neck, but she brushed his hand aside. It was the
damnedest thing; the madder he got, the less he could do.
“You’re
pathetic, little man,” Bebe claimed. “Roi Tan cigars, Zamphir
tapes, blowing up your chest to hide your gut. You even have a phony
bank. I found a bunch of your extra accounts my first week on the
job. You can’t even disguise two-bit embezzling.” Her voice was
really Dopplering now; far, then near enough to jazz his brain. It
went on, droning, filled with scorn, disgust, hate. Extended loan
periods, Randall’s secret account, trusts, Susan’s special money.
Susan’s abortions, even this one.
His temper finally
exploded. He’d kill her. He’d rip her guts out. With all his
will he reached for her long neck. Strength poured into his hands,
crazy strength. He had her.
The world went red,
then black.
He woke because of
the awful smell. At first he tried to force his eyes to see, then
realized it was night. The curtains were probably drawn.
He began to remember
the girl, then the hotel.
What in hell was
that stench? He turned groggily toward the lamp and groped for the
switch. Instead, he touched something sticky. There seemed to be a
lot of it. He reached farther and found the lamp. He turned it on.
It was all over.
Beneath his shoulder, soaked in under his hips, across his pants and
shirt. A lot of it. He jerked up cursing and stared first at the
filthy bed, then the horrendous mess spilling onto the carpet. More
than blood; entrails, viscera. There was a yellow-flecked trail of
it leading to the bathroom. Everywhere were bloody rags, once a
yellow skirt.
“Jesus,” Henry
said, and came wide awake.
Hastily at first,
then slowly as he tried to keep his wits, he searched the room, the
bathroom, the shower stall, even under the bed. Nothing, no one.
His watch was gone, probably stolen on the road. He reached for the
phone to ask the time; jerked back his hand. He mustn’t call
attention to himself. He’d lost his temper before with a woman,
and done a lot of damage, but - well, this time he’d gone too far.
Something could be
done. Had to be done. He had to think. He stood rather than use
his aching legs to sit. Yes; he’d for sure tried this before.
Only that one was a whore, really a whore. A bank clerk was
different. He’d think of something.
He began. Pain
skived his back when he bent, and his legs buckled a couple of times,
but eventually he got everything movable into one place. He tied all
the torn clothing, the gore and chunks of brown hair into the sheets
and shoved them into the car trunk. Back in the room the reek hit
him all over again, so bad he vomited. He changed his clothes.
There was still a splotch on the mattress, but after a while he got
it heaved onto its other side. He couldn’t do anything about the
carpet stain but pull the bed over it. The room looked unbalanced;
he rearranged everything. Then he used a lot of toilet paper to
clean the bathroom, flushing the toilet often. He didn’t know what
to do about the smell; it lingered, even with all the windows open.
Probably stay in those plastic-backed curtains for months. He was
more and more sick. More and more his hands shook, swear ran under
his clean shirt, he needed a drink.
He’d done enough.
He hadn’t. As he
started for the car again he noticed the barely visible scrape marks
in the gravel, like feet being dragged a long way. Like Bebe’s
feet scraping the gravel, toward the arroyo where he had seen her
write in the dirt. He followed the marks.
Here was another
job. Henry, sore, exhausted by fear and adrenaline, heart-sick,
wanted to cry. At the bottom of the ravine, its top highlighted by
light-spill from the mini-mart, was a scuffed-up mound about the
length of a woman’s body. A grave. Reason prevailed. It was dawn
before he disguised that pile, erased his footprints in the gravel
and drove off, hoping no one noticed.
Chapter 11
The
day began badly even for a working Monday, and Henry resented it.
Horror at the affair in the motel distracted even his talk with
waitresses and service station attendants. He ached in every muscle
and most of his joints. And of course Susan was still out of town.
From his desk he weighed his tellers, all of them either late or
ugly, through a glass partition. Frowning he hauled a stack of
papers from his In box, pawed it, put it back.
“Linda!” The
in-house auditor swiveled at her desk. “Bring me some coffee, will
you?” She headed for the lunchroom. Needed to lose thirty pounds;
and stop wearing those raffia wedgies, for the love of Jesus X. She
reappeared, delivered, and turned with an aggrieved expression for
her desk.
Henry said, “Sorry
to bother you. I don’t feel well.”
“That’s quite
all right, Mr. Ohrbach.”
“I got beat up.
They tried to rob me.”
She turned back.
“That’s terrible! What a terrible thing to happen!” Her tan
eyes were big.
“Hijacked me
outside of town. A trucker came along; stopped >em. Nothing
broken, nothing like that. It’s hard to move, though. Hurts.”
“Terrible!”
Henry appeared to
consider something of even greater importance than his pain. And he
was; he was considering the morning news, which featured the singing
deputies, one dead in an auto accident and the other live on TV
claiming Sheriff Randall killed the first. Christ. And Henry
couldn’t reach Randall; the had just left, he was in conference, he
was investigating the deputy’s accident. Henry said, “Got a
minute? Bring your coffee in here if you do.”
Linda’s
consternation dissolved. She tripped away and back, smoothed her
flared skirt over her sizable rump and settled into a chair with her
mug. “Have you been to the doctor?” she asked.
“No, I’m all
right. Only I want your opinion about what happened.”
Linda nodded. She
was a sallow, middle-aged woman with hair turned yellowish from too
many permanents. It rose from her shoulders in tight spirals and
peaked over her narrow forehead. This had the unfortunate effect of
framing her face in three clownish points.
“There were two of
them, Mexicans,” Henry began. “Trapped me out north of town.
Right by that same dirt road where Deputy Garrison was found dead.”
“Right there? By
the same road?”
“Friday. The same
night he was killed, too.”
Linda grasped his
implication. She sipped at her coffee with narrowed, knowing eyes.
She said, “They may have been the killers, then. Maybe they
thought you saw something.”
“That’s what I
thought, too. I wanted another opinion before I bother the
authorities, though.”
Linda mused. “There
may be another connection too,” she said after a moment. “They
could be Mexican dope dealers. Maybe they know you and Sheriff
Randall are friends, and thought he’d blab to you.” Leaning
forward and punching the naugahyde chair arm with a finger for
emphasis, she finessed her theory. “I bet the deputy was working
on the investigation, and those criminals knew it, so they lured him
out there and shot him. They waited for you...no, that couldn’t be
it.” A crease appeared between her dark-penciled brows. “Unless
they knew to expect you, because you know you drive out that way most
Fridays. That’s it. They were waiting for you. They knew your
car.”
Henry shrugged.
“Possible,” he agreed. “Randall is an excellent lawman, but
there’s no denying that he lets things slip to me that he wouldn’t
tell another man.”
“That’s only
natural, Mr. Ohrbach.” Linda beamed.
Henry beamed back,
but quickly resumed seriousness. “Of course, none of this goes
beyond these four walls, Linda.”
“Of course, Mr.
Ohrbach.”
“Not to change the
subject, but has Ms. Stubbs called in?”
The following days
were calmer, but that prickle stayed at the back of Henry’s fleshy
neck. After hours he double-checked his accounts, looking for cracks
in their intricate structure. He kept them on diskettes which he
took home. He found nothing traceable; Bebe had been bluffing. By
Wednesday there was general talk at The Bakery about the gang of
Mexican dope smugglers who killed Deputy Garrison. Henry’s most
severe bruises had bloomed and were beginning to fade. The tellers
decided that Bebe had run off with some man.
Friday morning the
bank staff bunched over the newspaper during their coffee break.
Linda brought his copy late, opened and badly refolded. “WHERE IS
Bebe STUBBS?” read the banner headline, and a reasonably good photo
of her was centered just beneath.
“Oh, Christ.”
“Beauty Queen
Missing,” the sub-head announced. Henry waived Linda way from the
door and read.
Sheriff James
Randall Thursday evening made a public appeal for help in locating
Babette “Bebe” Stubbs, 19-year-old beauty queen and newcomer to
Tipperton from Las Vegas. Stubbs left her apartment Friday afternoon
in a beige Chrysler LeBaron and has been missing since that time.
“Jesus.”
A search of Stubb’s
apartment revealed nothing. “Everything is there,” her landlady,
Gabriella Mendoza, told The Chronicle. “It’s just as if she
stepped out for a minute, and will be right back. Even her purse is
there, sitting on the coffee table.”
Statistics followed;
five-feet-nine, 120 pounds, etc. A feature on page three continued
for two folksy columns and jumped to the back page. It told the
pathetic story of Bebe’s elation over finding a job, of her
tentative first friendships, her efforts to establish herself in
Tipperton. It described her (pictured) striped kitten, now
tragically without the care of its mistress. It described the
colorful stuffed animals on her bed, her love of beauty as expressed
in the living room seascape made from inlaid abalone shells. By the
time Henry had read every word, he wanted to throw up.
He also knew a lot
more about that prickle on his neck. That was Bebe’s picture all
right, but the girl which the article described was not the one he’d
taken with him last Friday. That one would loathe abalone-shell
pictures, and she would sleep on the floor rather than share her bed
with a toy. Bebe Stubbs might be ignorant, but she was born with
class.
He called Randall’s
office again; Randall was in conference. Henry slammed down the
phone, knowing the secretary lied and that the sheriff was avoiding
him. He called The Chronicle and asked for whoever wrote the lead
story. Mr. Phillips was at the courthouse. Henry headed downtown.
He found Gary in the
basement cafeteria, interviewing the Court Clerk. Funny, he
realized; Phillips dressed like a sloppy bum, but that was
misleading. His eyes never left the clerk’s face, and he sifted
legalities and points of procedure it would never occur to Henry to
consider. He sat at their table and listened. Soon Phillips
pocketed his narrow notebook and the clerk left. The newsman stuck
out his hand.
“Good to see you,
Mr. Ohrbach. Hope there are no hard feelings about the ribs.”
“None for the
press, Phillips. You didn’t start that mess.” Henry was almost
jovial. “I’ve been looking for you. You know, Bebe Stubbs works
for me, and...”
“Right.”
“I wondered; is
that all the facts there are? Just what you put in your article this
morning?”
Gary looked blank,
then seemed to understand. “Yes. That’s all the sheriff had up
to last night, when he called.”
“He called your
paper?” Phillips nodded, made as if to rise, and resettled on the
bench. “At night? About some bank teller disappearing?” Henry
asked. Gary nodded again. They shared a speculative look. Henry
could almost hear the whir and click of gears meshing in the
journalist’s head.
“What kind of
person is Bebe Stubbs, anyway?” Gary asked. “What do you think
of her?”
Absently Henry said,
“Good enough worker.” He was digesting the news about the
talkative sheriff. The sheriff accused of murdering a deputy on the
same night he himself had been--set up? Set up. He continued.
“Stayed after hours whenever I asked her to. Bit of a flirt, but a
good worker.” His automatic smile hinted that he was the object of
Bebe’s flirtatious attention.
“Popular with your
other employee? Dating anyone?”
“Don’t think so.
Not any of my people.” Then, inspired, “Mentioned someone, an
old friend. From out of town.”
“That would be Las
Vegas?”
Henry became
judiciously evasive about knowing too much. “I couldn’t say. It
only came up because of my car. Another tan Chrysler, she said.”
“What does she do
with her spare time? Is she a party girl? A homebody?”
“ASK HIM WHAT SORT
OF LAY!”
The early lunch
crowd was getting noisy, but the shout ricocheted from the
cinder-block walls. Henry whirled. David Friedman was rising from
his seat, grinning. “Maybe you should interview Mr. Ohrbach more
CLOSELY, Phillips,” he called.
Henry’s shoulders
hunched, his fists closed. It felt good.
Phillips joked,
trying to lighten the mood, “I never ask intimate questions in
public, counselor.”
Henry was half-risen
and ready to punch. He jerked away as the newsman grabbed his arm.
“Jesus, you little kike!” he yelled to Friedman. The echoes
returned. “Don’t you have any respect? The girl might be dead!”
“I love it,
Phillips!” Friedman called. “The shit-kicker talks about
respect! I still think you ought to ask him about learning his
teller’s tricks!” He stood with his hands in his pockets, his
jacket flaring and a tissue poking out of his waistband. People
began edging toward the walls.
“Maybe some other
time, counselor,” Phillips answered, still trying for lightness.
He tugged Henry’s arm.
“And while you’re
at it,” Friedman continued, “you might ask him more closely about
his little girl’s!”
That did it. Henry
was quickly all over the smaller man. Women screamed, trays spilled
drinks and macaroni casseroles, and some men pulled him off before he
could really land a clean punch.
Twelve stitches to
the Ohrbach forehead because of a table edge. Strained arm muscles.
Bruised knees.
And a throat sore
from yelling, from roars of frustrated rage that had built from the
time he’d tried to fight Friedman before. Not least painful, the
suspicion in the journalist’s speculative gaze, watching him limp
from the cafeteria.
Chapter 12
“Khamis,
what time is it?” Dierdre asked from her desk. Zeki’s bedroom
had been converted with a pair of desks and a full complement of
office equipment.
Khamis, on the
couch, raked his longish hair and checked his watch. “Five.” He
scribbled on a green-line printout. “Why?”
“I want to quit
for the day.” She sat with her hands in the lap of her dress,
demure from the waist up. Her bare toes wriggled over the legs of
her typing chair; her knees beat against one another.
“Pretty soon. Some
amounts here do not meld.” Khamis continued to scan his printout.
“Jibe.”
He made another
note. “Jibe. These figures do not connect the way I expected them
to do.”
“They’re
incongruent.”
“All right,
they’re incongruent.” Another marginal note. “But doesn’t
that mean inappropriate?”
“You’re thinking
of incongruous.” The rhythm of her knees picked up; they began to
bounce.
“Yes. They’re
incongruent.” He finally looked up. “Pearl of the West, you are
undoubtedly correct. Now, leave me alone.”
“That’s
inappropriate to my mood.”
“And yours is
inconsistent with mine Let me work, woman.” The move of Khamis’s
shoulder was more eloquent, half shutting her out. Dierdre headed
for the kitchen to make tea. When she returned with a tray, Khamis
had set down the printouts. She set the tray on the coffee table
before him and poured into a cup. “Why don’t you use the glasses
for this?” he asked.
“They burn my
fingers.”
“Use the holders.”
“Then I’d have
to polish them.”
“Western
decadence.” Dierdre drew her feet under her hips and leaned back
with her tea. Khamis lit a cigarette. “What would you like to do
tonight?” he asked.
“Nothing special.”
“Henry had been in
another fight, so he won’t be out.”
“Perhaps, but I’m
content to stay home.”
“It’s been a
week since you left the apartment.”
“Still, I’m
content.” Dierdre grinned and brushed her new bangs off her
forehead.
Khamis studied her
hair. “It’s all right that way,” he said.
“It’ll grow
back. Meantime, it’s fun to slick it down like this.” Khamis
made a face. “But I won’t do it very often.”
“Good.” He
shifted, finding a place beside her hips for his feet, and stretched
the length of the couch. Dierdre watched his cigarette send a still
column of smoke to the dense layer at the ceiling. “I should open
a window.” Dierdre chuckled. “What’s funny? As Henry would
say, you could cut it with a knife.”
“Us. Two months
together, and we talk like an old married couple.”
“Do we? Well,
that’s all right. Our words and our feelings are two different
things, sometimes.” He stubbed out the cigarette. With his hands
behind his head he studied her, the way he had the first time they
met, frankly, approvingly. “You are the most exciting, mystifying
woman. I am never bored when we are together.”
“Praise from
Caesar,” Dierdre remarked.
“What does that
mean?”
“It’s part of a
quotation from Shakespeare. ‘Praise from Caesar is praise indeed’
is the whole thing. I’m flattered.”
“It’s not
flattery, Dierdre. I might tire of you if your beauty were all you
offered.”
Dierdre set down her
cup, self-conscious. “You still fluster me, Khamis.”
“That’s still
charming.”
The silence that
often overtakes new lovers followed; Dierdre and Khamis were lost in
one another’s eyes. Khamis was the first to speak, softly. “I
sometimes become unsure, Dierdre. You know I didn’t want to tell
you about my family, my role within it. No,” he said quickly as
the first sign of withdrawal entered her eyes. “No because we must
be parted. That’s unnecessary--unless you wish it. I am unsure
whether you might wish it, some day.”
Suddenly tears came
to Dierdre. She was as surprised as Khamis, but as she cried she
continued to study his mouth, the line of his beard, and his eyes.
“No Khamis.” Her voice was husky, but calm. “You are not a
novelty. I never felt so much at home as I do with you.” The
tears wouldn’t stop. She felt a scream in her chest, a torrent of
begging which if released would only estrange him. So she sat, and
the tears poured down her face and collected in the hollow of her
throat.
Khamis sat up and
pulled her to him, cuddling her head into the hollow of his neck,
stroking her arm, holding her. His beard swept her forehead as he
kissed it, then kissed her eyes. When he did that, she felt the
startling tears on his own face. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry,” he
was saying. “My God, don’t ever cry.” Their hands fumbling,
their lips brushing, they began to undress one another like children
as their silent tears continued. Khamis pulled her onto his naked
chest, heart to heart. “There is only one rational solution to
this problem,” he said. “We must be married.”
Dierdre pulled her
head back to see him more clearly. “Will that make you happy?”
“Yes.”
“And your family?”
“Of course; they
love me.”
“And your people?”
She began to smile.
“They will rejoice
at such a politic relationship with the U.S.”
“And your mullah,
or whoever?”
“You know I’m
not religious.”
“Are you sure
about your brothers? How about your ambassadors?”
“Woman, answer!
Will you marry me?”
“You’re supposed
to say, like Marc Antony about Cleopatra’s arms, ‘Let Rome in
Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the ranged Empire fall! Here is my
space!’“
“And you, woman,
are supposed to say ‘yes’!”
“Yes,” she said,
and tucked her head back into his neck. “Yes, I’ll be your wife
and grow my hair long and give you a baby every year. Yes yes
yes...EUREKA!” She rose and, trailing her shirt and tripping over
his pants, streaked to the computer. “Zeki was right! It’s on
the hard drive, that’s all! Yes! It’s in the temporary files!
Ohrbach keeps his records on diskettes, but...” She turned to the
telephone and dialed. “You see?”
“No! Come back
here!”
“The files which
the machine makes at each automatic save. Blast! He’s not there.”
She hung up the phone.
“Woman!”
“Love, this is
important! Henry Ohrbach must keep his private accounts on
diskettes, or we’d have found something when I copied all that
main-frame stuff at the bank. But even if he does, the material is
on the machine! And we’ve ignored it! That’s what Zeki’s been
trying to teach me to look for, poor kid, and I’ve been too dense
to understand.”
“I understand,”
Khamis sighed. Dierdre turned back to the computer and began keying
in commands. “Wait,” he said. “I”ll get Zeki and Mohammed
tonight.”
Click click click,
pause. “What?”
Khamis picked her
up. Dierdre giggled all the way to the couch.
It was nearly four
o’clock in the morning. Zeki was still hunched over the computer
keyboard, although his work had been done for some time. Dark
smudges of fatigue surrounded his eyes, and his finger shook from
cigarettes. Riad, slender as Zeki but tall, was hunched over the
blotter of Khamis’s desk, working a calculator.
“Fifty-two hundred
dollars in May, 1988,” Dierdre told Riad. She was lying on her
belly, now clothed, in a sea of new printouts. “That’s a big
one.” Riad nodded, made a note on a legal pad and entered the
amount on the calculator. It clanked and churned out another
eighth-inch of paper tape, The tape was curled in swirls across the
whole desk.
“We must be
getting near to four million,” Zeki said listlessly.
“Three million,
nine hundred seventy-four thousand dollars,” Riad confirmed. “It’s
amazing.”
“And none of it
found before this. It certainly is,” Dierdre agreed.
Khamis was on the
couch, sleeping on his back. He snorted. “Khamis agrees,” she
said. The other two smiled, but weakly.
“To what do I
agree?” Khamis asked as he woke. He turned onto his side to face
them.
“The total is
nearing four millions of hidden dollars, and we are only back as far
as 1988,” Zeki told him.
“When did Henry
take over the bank?” Khamis asked.
“I think it was
the year before that,” Dierdre said.
“So we’re nearly
at the end. Have the amounts become smaller as you went backwards?”
Khamis asked.
“Yes,” Riad told
him. “But they were never small.” His huge nose and ears, his
habitual stoop, made him seem comic; his air of pedantry intensified
the impression. He was the most honorable of men, as shocked as
Dierdre by injustice. “It strikes me that there is absolutely no
way to know from whom this monster has stolen.”
“His scheme was
nearly foolproof,” Zeki said. “If only he had used an old PC,
or...”
“You must be very
tired, Riad,” Dierdre said. “Would you like me to take over, so
you can go to bed? The living room couch makes a good one.”
“And leave you to
do this? No, Dierdre.” When he smiled, the tenderness in his eyes
eclipsed the rest of his ungainly self. “Besides, we are nearly
finished.”
“All right; it
looks like there’s another thirty-five hundred in December, 1987.”
She listened to the calculator and ticked off the date with Khamis’s
gold pent. “Then in October, that’s October 16, there’s an
entry that looks funny. Zeki, do you have anything on that special
file for October 16, 1987?”
The keyboard clicked
smoothly. “No, mou Deard.”
“That’s it,
then; fifteen hundred dollars in October.” The calculator sounded.
“What’s seventy-five hundred thirteen, subtract fifty-seven
hundred forty-eight, Riad?”
“Seventeen hundred
ninety-five,” he told her “Shall I enter that?”
“Yeah, for October
first. Must have been a heavy gambling month.”
“Or woman month,”
Zeki said, still staring at the screen. Its green light silhouetted
the edges of his shirt.
“You forget, Zeki;
this is money going into Henry’s accounts,” Khamis said.
“I know. Since
we’ve accused him of everything else, we might as well accuse him
of selling women as well.” His shoulder twitched and he chuckled.
“You’re losing
your grip,” Dierdre said. “Go to bed.”
“Not until we
finish.” He twirled in the typing chair until he faced the others.
Khamis seeing his pallor, said something short in Arabic and rose.
Obediently Zeki left the computer, crossed the room and took Khamis’s
place on the couch. Dierdre and Riad ignored the brothers. Khamis
reached over Riad and got the phone, then dialed as he stood.
“Whom are you
calling, love?” Dierdre asked.
“Gary Phillips.”
“Don’t.”
“He will be
delighted to learn this.”
“Of course he
will. But it’s not time to tell him. All this is inadmissible
evidence. So far as the courts are concerned, it’s conjecture. It
can’t do Henry any harm.”
“Damn!” He
replaced the instrument as Riad bent out of the way. “Can our
knowing, then, do him no damage?”
Dierdre looked at
Khamis, then Riad. They looked back.
“I’ll call Candy
after Gary’s gone to work.”
Chapter 13
Henry’s
pastry arced right out of the toaster and fell to the floor just as
Susan goosed her pink convertible out of the garage. The rumble of
the engine vibrated the floor clear through the laundry room. Henry
stooped, grunted, and offered an incantatory “shit” to the dawn.
The exposed pastry filling burned his fingers; he dropped it
again--”fuck!”--and tried to rise. The kink in his back stayed
put. So did Henry, halfway between a crouch and a squat. “Christ!”
Sucking his thumb, eventually he straightened and dumped the tart
into the sink.
He watched Susan’s
car swerve down the drive. Another art lesson with the Phillips
woman; getting to be every day. Susan wouldn’t listen to his
reasoned, legitimate objections to associating with a friend of those
Arabs, either.
The air conditioner
kicked on with the first rays of the sun. Already birds panted under
ornamental shrubs to escape the heat. He still ached everywhere,
especially after that fool scene with Friedman in the courthouse.
The newspaper continued to bleat about Bebe Stubbs. Randall avoided
him. And of course now there was an upcoming FDIC audit at the bank,
and who knew why? Some stranger had called him about it. All of
that was on his mind, plus the al-Khafouli thing was hanging fire
while the lawyers took their profitable time about suits and
counter-suits.
But he could do
something. Gather data, ammunition, and sink the lot of them;
Randall, Friedman, the fucking sheiks. Everybody had secrets to
keep.
Moodily he got a
fork and, spearing the pasty, nibbled its edge.
Mustn’t forget to
crash the computer downtown before the auditors got here; shouldn’t
take much to erase the disc.
Bebe Stubbs’s
“apartment” was a converted garage. Gabriella Mendoza, the
landlady, lived in the main house, which was a little plastered blue
box, pink-shuttered and tan-lawned, heavily shaded by a pair of huge
ficus trees. Not so the “apartment” which stood exposed to view,
to the sun, and the depredations of the wildlife in the weeds.
Concrete steps rose
steeply to the Mendoza door to make a bleak, unadorned porch too
narrow for comfort to a man of Henry’s bulk. The black buzzer was
canted a little to the side, as if it had seen too much use. Henry
pushed it. He heard nothing, so he backed down a step to open the
screen and knocked on the door. It opened immediately; the bell must
have worked.
“Mrs. Mendoza?”
She was very fat,
about fifty. She wore a flower-bordered apron over a blue-flowered
dress. Her hair was a intricate construct of shiny dark rolls.
Henry smiled warmly.
“I’m Henry
Ohrbach, Bebe Stubbs’s boss. May I come in?”
She didn’t move.
“I know who you are. Can I help you?” She turned to address
someone inside. “Es el empleador de la chica.” She turned back
to Henry, still holding the door.
“May I take a few
minutes of your time, Mrs. Mendoza? Bebe’s parents have some
questions, and naturally I’d like to help.”
“I have company.”
The screen door dug
into Henry’s tendon over the back of his shoe. He could feel the
torn screen dig into his jacket. “Did anyone visit Bebe last
Friday before she left? Do you know? Was there anyone here to see
her?”
“You.”
“Well, yes, but
besides me, her parents...”
“No.”
The morning was hot,
the neighborhood was bad, and Gabriella Mendoza, bland and
motionless, was rude. Again she turned to speak to someone. “Es
gordo y feo. Y tiene miedo.”
“Mrs. Mendoza, we
don’t seem to understand each other, though I do speak Spanish.”
Henry took a half step forward, hoping to suggest, just to hint,
menace. “I am overweight and ugly, true; but not afraid. Of
anyone. Perhaps I’ll just come back when you’re alone.”
She was not
intimidated. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ohrbach, that won’t be possible.”
“Well, but the
paper says you know Ms. Stubbs. What can I tell her par...”
“Mr. Ohrbach, you
had better go. Bebe told me her parents died last year in a plane
crash. You picked her up and didn’t bring her back. She’s still
missing. You just threatened me. I don’t have anything to say to
your kind.” She closed the door, which forced Henry to step
backward into the ragged screen.
“Estupido!” he
heard, then a man’s laugh.
Henry was having
trouble finishing sentences.
“Mrs. Phillips?
...just saw Susan’s car...how she’s doing...of course if I’m
interrupting...”
“Come in.”
Candy stepped into the comparative gloom of her restored adobe,
holding open the heavy carved door. “I’ve been meaning to call
you.”
Henry entered a room
without shadows, lighted by a frieze of clerestory windows. Easels
ranged about the center of the red Saltillo-tiled floor, where a low
table held the subject of the lesson; brass bowls and pitchers filled
with cerise bougainvillea. The walls were covered with floral
studies in lush colors. Roses were on small tables along the walls
and smelled good. He could not see Susan.
“She’s in the
kitchen,” Candy supplied, guessing his question. “We were taking
a break.”
“I didn’t mean
to interrupt.”
“No, that’s
fine. I want you to see her work.”
Candy Phillips was
the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most exotic, the most...
So beautiful, so foreign, she made him awkward and humble. Her large
breasts moved readily under her velvet-by-god russet gown, which fell
toward the floor over long, slender thighs. Her dark hair escaped a
knot in, well, tendrils, and flirted at her earlobes.
Jesus, how did a
slob like Phillips do it?
Only when confronted
by his daughter’s sketch did he realize the room was full of
children, one to an easel, and they were staring. He studied Susan’s
turgid effort, tilted it for a beguiling nymphette to view, and
looked back at Candy. It was important to meet her gaze; to not
grin. “Lovely,” he said, and grinned. Moonlight; she smelled
like moonlight.
“Susan’s study
should be framed, Mr. Ohrbach. Really, it shows an impressive flair
for composition.”
“Well that’s
fine, Mrs. Phillips. You’ve done a great job.”
“No, Mr. Ohrbach.
Susan has talent, and it should be developed. All I’ve done is to
indicate principles. She’s...”
“No kidding?”
Looking into those eyes, Henry had to agree. “Can you suggest a
framer?”
Candy gave him a
name and address, and although he waited, he eventually left without
seeing his daughter. Randall was due at the house soon to make
peace. An envelope crackled in Henry’s pocket; he’d found it on
Susan’s passenger seat, marked “Private and Confidential.” He
would read what it said in the car.
He didn’t go right
home. Half an hour later he sat at a drive-in and tended to stare.
The note in the envelope was from Sheriff Randall. It had been
sealed; Susan hadn’t read it. But she knew. She had to know what
it was about. It glimmered on his passenger seat, white against the
brown upholstery. Henry reread parts of it.
...of course we all
suspected it after Mrs. Phillips’s reports, but your tragic
statement...
The dick-headed
hypocrite, what about him and those senoritas in Tecate? They
weren’t more than thirteen, any of them. Everybody knew.
...unnatural
pregnancies...fortunate little girl to find the Phillips
couple...little paperwork to finish...
And that’s what
they were doing behind his back, all this time since maybe right at
the beginning, sure, stealing his chi...his daughter’s affection.
For Chrissakes, she loved him back. Said so. Hadn’t she said so?
Even just this morning? Course she did. “I love you,” she’d
said.
How did the note
start out? “Susan, this has come as a painful shock to me...”
Well, Randall’s
bullshit wasn’t important. What he, Henry, was concerned about was
the part telling her what time the Social Services people would pick
her up. He looked at his watch and slurped coffee. Just about now,
at the Phillips house. So then Randall himself could come to Henry’s
for that “talk”, but Henry would die resisting arrest. While the
bastard stole the only thing he truly loved. Sure. The bastard
would kill him, like he did Deputy Garrison, to save his own skin in
this whole Stubbs thing, no this harassment thing, this deputy thing,
maybe even pin Garrison’s death on him, on Henry, oh shit oh shit.
Probably this latest thing, this Mrs. Candy Whore Phillips Lie
bullshit, tipped the scale, the investigation over Garrison’s
death, and the smelly affair of the beaten, harassed little sheik.
Henry was so upset
he paid the roller skating waitress without paying special attention
to her legs. Slowly he backed out of the drive-in and headed for
Randall’s house. The sheriff’s wife owned a flower shop, so she
wasn’t at home. They used gas for both heating and cooling; there
were a lot of pilot lights. Henry was in his own living room twenty
minutes after he exited the drive-in.
He selected and
removed the drain pipe under Susan’s bathroom sink. When Randall
entered for their meeting, ducking his head to remove his corny
cowboy hat, one blow to the back of his neck would do the job. then
he’d take the body home, quickly before the explosion. A broken
neck could be made to look like an accident, as if something had
fallen onto him when the house went up.
Then Henry sat in
his wing chair, cuddling a big glass of whiskey and dealing with the
belated case of nerves he had known would come. Maybe he should call
Candy Phillips about Susan, to be sure. Or Mrs. Randall at her shop
and tell her not to go home. Maybe he’d done the wrong thing, come
to that; he and Randall went back a lot of years. Maybe blowing up
the man’s house was harsh. Would his fingerprints show up on any
doorknobs? Would the whole building go up? Maybe just a fire in the
kitchen. He’d never done anything with gas before.
But what was he
supposed to do? Wasn’t that note enough? Hadn’t Randall
destroyed his family? His home? His life?
The first surprise
was that it was the back door into the laundry, not the front, which
opened. Henry leapt to his feet, forgetting the pipe. “Where in
hell you been?” he called, “We have all kinds of things to talk
about!” He set down his glass, kicked the pipe and picked it up.
Maybe when Randall came through the dining room door. He craned his
neck to see past it into the kitchen.
The man in the
kitchen doorway was not Sheriff Randall; he was a stranger, wearing
tan whipcords and a matching shirt. Deputy Albertson, Garrison’s
erstwhile partner, stood behind him. The pipe slid from Henry’s
hand back to the carpet.
“Henry Ohrbach?”
the stranger asked.
He entered the
dining room. “Yes.”
“I’m Allen
White, sent by the FDIC.” He flashed cards and badges from a
billfold. “I’m afraid we have some bad news.”
“Yes?” Henry’s
mind raced. The stitches on his forehead itched like hell.
Albertson spoke,
angling behind the dining table and keeping an eye on the fallen
pipe. “Ms. Stubbs uploaded your files to them, Mr. Ohrbach. You
know, with computers, anything you work on goes to the hard drive.
Even from diskettes.”
White said, “The
audit became academic at that point. You haven’t studied computers
much, have you?”
Henry gave way
automatically as the men advanced.
“Sorry, Mr.
Ohrbach,” Albertson said. “They seized your bank.”
Words wouldn’t
come.
Albertson said, “And
under the circumstances, I have to take you in. On suspicion of
murdering Ms. Stubbs.”
Henry found
something to say: “Shit.”
Albertson cuffed
Henry’s hands in front rather than behind so he wouldn’t be too
uncomfortable. They walked to the patrol car at the back of the
garage, where Henry took a distracted look at Tipperton and the slope
to the south.
As he bent to enter
the squad car he received the final surprise of the day. There was a
series of slow, rumbling, and by his reckoning premature, booms.
“What was that?”
he asked, and straightened without looking toward Randall’s hill.
A slow smile spread across his sweating face.
“Explosion,”
White told him. “There’s smoke over there on that hill.”
“Sure is,”
Albertson said.
Henry turned to
watch. Majestically, turning in upon itself in a thousand bulges and
black flowerlets, a cloud of smoke rose toward the heavens from what
had been Randall’s demesne.
PART III
Chapter 14
WHY
DID THE DEPUTIES TALK?
An Editorial Opinion
Both Deputies
Garrison and Murphy confessed to harassing ethnic minorities and
claimed the sheriff made them do it. Both are now “accidentally”
dead. Their deaths are tragic, but not a big mystery; even this far
from Las Vegas, the rule is still you play, you pay, and the sheriff
whom they accused is under investigation.
What bothers The
Chronicle more is expressed in the title of this editorial. Because
these deputies were home boys and experienced lawmen; they knew what
sort of justice to expect if they confessed. The real mystery is,
why? Knowing what they did about local customs, born with lifetime
memberships in the Grand and Archaic Brotherhood of Good Old Boys,
why did Arnold “Skip” Garrison and Orland Murphy go to the County
Attorney and accuse themselves and their chief of outrageous, but
relatively small, crimes? And why...WHY... did they stick around
afterward? It is The Chronicle’s opinion that someone extorted
their confessions, then failed to protect them.
Gary stared at the
green computer screen and fingered the keyboard, listening to the
whoosh of the air conditioning and trying to think. He had heard
theories; that the deputies became Christian; that someone scared
them straight by stalking them; that the County Attorney was about to
investigate them anyway. Having grown up with them, he knew each of
the theories had merit. Trouble was, he couldn’t forgive their
deaths, and did not want to write this editorial. He scratched his
nose, lifted his eyes to the street beyond the window. It was
Saturday; shouldn’t have to work. A good Managing Editor could see
to it, fix it, put the weekend to bed Friday night.
“That’s long
enough,” Bilbo called from behind him.
“Long enough for
what?” Gary called without turning.
“For the editorial
hole. Do something with the Arab guy’s donation for page one.”
Bilbo owned The
Chronicle, ran it profitably, and occasionally played newsman. His
full name was William Bough. He was desiccated by too many years in
the desert, too many cigarettes and too much coffee. Gary shoved a
peanut into his mouth and turned. The publisher’s office was
glass-walled and raised a step above the editorial-room floor, the
better for surveillance. His rimless glasses slid down his long nose
and his hair hung along the side of his temple.
Gary said, “I
thought you were going to do that.”
“Not enough time.
Besides, you know the people.”
“I have a full day
already. The police chief, and I have interviews with the Mendoza
woman and Henry Ohrbach now he’s out on bail.”
“Ohrbach? Should
you do it?” Referring to Gary’s status as Susan’s
court-appointed foster-father.
“I’m the only
one he’ll talk to. Says he trusts me because I’m taking care of
his little girl.”
“Are you?”
There was a leer in Bilbo’s tone.
“Don’t be crude.
Plus there’s Khamis’s dinner tonight, I have to go so I’ll
cover it. But I’m full today; I can’t even make his press
conference.”
Bilbo held a light
blue editing pen in one hand, a collection of tab proofs in the
other. He rustled the proofs. “Do a profile of the guy then, a
sidebar.”
“On page one? Get
real, Bilbo.” Gary walked to the publisher’s door and braced a
hand on each side of the jamb. Refrigerated air shivered across his
back. “I’m using Khamis in the tab tomorrow, when he goes home.
He parlayed false arrests and diplomatic immunity into
most-favored-nation status for his little sandbox. Says he’s going
to bring his tribe right up to the twenty-first century. Worth half
a page, easy.”
“Run it today.”
Gary objected. “No!
I need to use the sheriff story. There’s not a lot of facts, but
it’s hard news and there’s may be six, seven inches worth of
material in it.”
Bilbo was
proofreading. “It didn’t get written,” he mumbled.
Gary slumped against
the jamb and crossed his arms, switching the stream of conditioned
air onto his chest. “Let me guess,” he drawled. “Johnson
didn’t write up his Grand Jury notes. If he took any last night.
If he even attended the session.”
“Right,” Bilbo
said, and looked up. “Come on, Phillips. Johnson’s a sports
writer, and that filth McKinley’s still so drunk he doesn’t even
know I fired him. You know all about this Arab, so it’ll only take
you half an hour to write it.”
“Yeah. Instead of
eating lunch.”
“Yeah.” Bilbo
tossed the proofs onto his desk. “What’s he like? The big
brother?”
“What do you mean?
He’s big, he’s smart, he’s rich.”
“You like him.”
“He’s all right.
Candy and his fiancĂŠe are close; that’s why we’ve
socialized.”
Bilbo lifted his
eyebrows. “Candy’ll never stop adopting waifs. Like Susan,”
he said.
Gary nodded. “She
was a social worker. Anyhow, she took to Dierdre right away.”
“And set her
straight about Islam, right? About Arab men, et cetera?”
“Probably.”
“She think this
guy’s any different?”
“She likes him.”
“May she have the
joy of him and his brother. La Roarke, that is. Background says the
younger one’s been frisky before. In Egypt.”
Gary shrugged. “He
was caught with a beer in public. It scandalized the conservatives
like his dad.”
“That’s
precisely it. This girl is entering a Moslem theocracy with a couple
of hot-eyed radical reformers who happen to be royal, which could be
a very temporary situation. But they’re still Moslem, those
brothers. It’s going to be very rough going. For them, yeah; but
they’ll know rules she never heard of.”
Gary recognized
Bilbo’s point. “Jordan’s American queen was happy enough.
Look at how many times King Hussein was attacked.”
“Jordan and the
conservative emirates are apples and oranges.” Bilbo finally set
down his blue pen, speculated, and returned to the present.
“‘Course, you have a streak of it, too.”
“Streak of what?”
“Do-gooder. But
what I was getting at, the big brother probably doesn’t. I’m
sceptical. Why is he giving all this money to the university? And to
this particular campus? What’s he get out of it? I mean, it’s
something over four million dollars, American.”
“His press release
says he’s grateful to the people of Tipperton. He got his
doctorate here, and his bride.”
“Bullshit. That’s
just bullshit. You’ll be sitting up there at the head table
tonight; find out. Ask around. His whole family’s here, from the
looks of that plane out at the airport. Two of his uncles speak
English, and his mother’s half Australian. Ask ‘em. Find out.”
“Why? You know
something I don’t?”
“Just ask,
Phillips. I got a hunch. And get over to that press conference.”
Bilbo squeezed by and walked to the front door, his loose Mexican
shirt flapping against his ribs. Gary went back to his desk and
checked his camera for film. A pair of photos lay under it, taken at
Khamis’s apartment the night before. Sheiks and chic;
international guests. He shoved them into his shirt pocket in order
to get more identification and spelling at the press conference.
Bilbo’s head
popped back in from the door. “Phillips?” He was pleased by a
secret, blushing.
“Yo!”
“Use your initials
on that editorial. You’re Managing Editor, now I fired McKinley.”
Gary was startled;
he set the camera on the exact center of his In box, swiveled his
computer screen, studied his telephone. He sat down. Bilbo
elaborated. “I’ll bring Dawnie up to News Editor.”
“Good choice.”
“Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Starting
tomorrow. I mean Monday.”
“Great.”
“All right,
Phillips?”
Gary’s brain
caught up with his ears; he looked up. “Really? Managing Editor?
Not Apprentice or Acting Managing Editor or Managing Editor
Pro-tempore? Not Associate? Big-city-style Managing Editor?”
“You got it,
Flash.”
Chapter 15
He was late
for the press conference. As he entered the faculty dining hall
where it was held, a television crew banged out the door with cameras
and mikes. Other men, shoving a dolly with folding tables, followed
him into the room. At the dais David Friedman paused and eyed him,
but continued speaking to Khamis and the U.C. chancellor who came
down from Berkeley. Gary took discreet photos with his long lens;
Khamis, Zeki and Dierdre; H.R.H. al Khafouli and his chic wife; and
the Roarke parents, who turned out to be prosperous investment
counselors from Palm Springs. Zeki, behind Friedman, repeatedly
scanned the room. He adjusted and readjusted his tie, fiddled with
his new mustache, bent attentively over his seated, elegant mother.
The fledgling diplomat was having a grand time. When he sighted Gary
he came to the back of the room, excited and beaming, his hand
extended.
“Mar habbah, Gary!
Are you at work?”
“Mar habbah
yourself, little buddy,” Gary said. “I’m sorry to be late for
the announcement. Can you get me a statement from Khamis before he
leaves?”
“Oh, sure. I will
get him.”
“No, don’t
interrupt him. If you’ll pass the word, I’ll catch him on the
way out.” He returned a nod from the boy’s mother; they had met
at the al-Khafouli apartment. “What about you? Can I ask you some
questions? Like, what do you think about starting a School of
Oriental Studies here in the desert, instead of at an Ivy League
college in the east? For the press, that is.” Gary let his camera
dangle and produced a notebook and pencil.
“Me? Oh, I like
the idea fine, Gary. This desert reminds me of home.” Zeki smiled
broadly and tilted his head to watch the other write. “My brother
says he wishes merely to thank Tipperton for his post-graduate
education, and for bringing him his bride.”
“And you obviously
think highly of his choice. Dierdre.”
“Oh, sure! I
mean, the school is a quite appropriate gift in exchange for such a
legal scholar as she, of course.” The boy adjusted his tie again
and glanced toward the group at the front of the room. His swift
fingers unbuttoned his suit jacket. A tissue dangled from his
waistband. Another poked from behind the carefully folded
handkerchief in his breast pocket. Gary grinned. He glanced toward
David Friedman. “Of course,” Zeki added, “the gift of a school
would be difficult to make without the able assistance of Mr.
Friedman.” He indicated the man. When his arm lifted, another
tissue lay exposed in the cuff of his sleeve.
Gary’s grin
widened. “Mr. Friedman is representing your brother in this
project; right?”
Zeki’s voice rose
even further. His father turned, puzzled. “Yes, MR. FRIEDMAN
continues as my brother’s agent in many things.” More softly he
added, “always excepting his habitual catarrh,” and slid Gary a
leer. The attorney looked their way. Zeki’s voice rose again.
“He is like my brother’s RIGHT ARM,” he called, pointing widely
and dislodging the tissue from the cuff of his sleeve. He bent to
retrieve it, stuffed it back. When he did, the one in his pocket
escaped and drifted to the floor. He lunged for it. “The school
will be housed in a new building of its own, next to the main library
of the university. Construction will start next...” Zeki called
out dates, the name of the architect, the contractor, a history of
the project. He was thorough. As Gary took notes, the boy’s
agitation released tissues from pockets and cuffs, his expression
increasingly earnest, his fingers increasingly busy. The wad of
tissues which they caught grew exponentially, coming from every fold
and compartment of his clothing, too many to hold, spilling from time
to time to the floor, tattering, their lint drifting between his
feet, pieces flying about his shoulders. His elbows became involved,
flapping in and out as he spoke. More and more torn tissues
appeared, more and more facts found their way to Gary’s notebook.
Zeki intoned with maniacal intensity in a veritable blizzard of
tissue and apparent good intentions.
“What do you think
of your brother’s generosity?” Gary asked, still writing,
ignoring the burlesque. Friedman, bravely conversing with Zeki’s
father, nevertheless seemed fascinated by the show.
“Oh, the world
knows Khamis is a generous man,” Zeki intoned, diving for a shred
of paper, missing it, and in the effort sending it over his head.
“Khamis is a GREAT SOUL. He has the soul of a VERY GREAT man. Put
that in your paper, please. Khamis is DIVINE GENEROSITY housed in
HUMAN FORM, Allah be praised.” He made a final leap for the last
piece of lint.
Gary flicked tissue
from his notebook. “And the four million dollars mentioned in the
press release, is that from his personal fortune? I mean, does any
of it come from money that would otherwise belong to you?”
Friedman headed for them, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered.
“No, Allah is
merciful and nearly as generous to Khamis as Khamis is generous to
Tipperton.”
Friedman was beside
the boy, staring hard. Zeki subsided. His dark grey suit, Gary
finally noticed, was exactly the cut and fit of Friedman’s. Their
shirts were the same, their shoes and socks. Only the stripes on
their ties were different.
Zeki resumed. “All
of the money is intended to educate the good people of America about
us, about our culture.” He finally stood still, a huge wad of
tissue and lint clutched to the breast of his jacket. “My own
interest lies elsewhere, in clean government. Allah is just, and so
must be the governance of Man.” He snuck a sidelong glance at his
attorney. “And Woman. That is very important.”
Friedman shook his
head. “You worthless little gentile. Never before in my presence
have you spoken Allah’s name. It is well for you, scum of Academe,
that you now invoke it. For by the fathers of my fathers’ fathers
and the sacred womb of my mother’s mothers, Jahweh’s going to get
you for this.” He fished into his waistband and added a tissue to
the pile under Zeki’s chin. It fell across the boy’s fingers and
drifted to the floor as Friedman returned to the others.
“Gary, would you
mind?” Zeki asked, indicating with his eyes the fallen tissues.
Gary stuffed them into Zeki’s waistband.
Then he headed for
Khamis. It was nearly time to see Mrs. Mendoza. He had forgotten to
ask an important question; Khamis’s generosity neatly matched the
amount of Henry Ohrbach’s embezzlement.
Chapter 16
It
was a hot day; Gary’s skin prickled each time sunlight
touched it. He followed Gabriella Mendoza, who tended to waddle,
across a sizzling infinity of shadeless bare yard and cracked cement
driveway toward Bebe’s former cottage, the former garage. It was
too hot even for the dust to smell like dirt; all the smells had been
baked away.
“You know my son,”
Mrs. Mendoza told him.
“I do?”
“He’s the Chief
of Police”
“Really?”
Everything glared
with second-hand light; he could barely see.
“We’re
neighbors, too, you know that? I see you drive by in the mornings.”
“You do?” He
swerved and barely missed stepping on rake tines; lifted a sweating
hand to shade his eyes.
“Only I didn’t
realize you’re with the paper.”
He remembered, with
a start, his new position. “I sure am.”
If Mrs. Mendoza was
more forthcoming with Gary than with Henry Ohrbach, there were
reasons; her son spoke highly of the paper, and she wanted her
picture on the front page. Also, she liked Gary’s type; broad,
tall, deep-chested. She turned and smiled as she unlocked Bebe’s
front door.
“The reason I
called, and you’ll have to get clearance from my son before you can
use this, the blood on Henry Ohrbach’s shoes wasn’t human, it was
chicken blood.” She stepped into the utter dark of the closed
cottage and disappeared.
Gary blinked and
followed the woman inside. It was just as hot there, maybe hotter,
stygian, and smelled of melting tar from the roof. “You mean there
was no murder?” he asked. “Bebe Stubbs isn’t dead? Is that
what you’re saying?”
“No, sir, because
I think that is for the court to decide. But she certainly isn’t
here anymore, so she could have been killed. I’m only reporting
what I know and what I heard. And you can tell by the way these
windows are arranged, I could hear whatever Bebe said, or her company
too. Even inside.”
A metallic clatter
from a venetian blind accompanied a startling access of light and a
view of a dirt back yard. The main house, not thirty feet away, had
a vine-shaded veranda with tables, benches, and a fountain. It would
be a lot cooler under there, and the jasmine would smell good.
Perfect place to eavesdrop.
“So you heard Bebe
say something relevant, is that correct? You were seated across from
this window, and she said something relating to the blood on Mr.
Ohrbach’s shoe?”
“That’s right,
maybe a week before she disappeared. At first I thought she was
laughing about a recipe or something like that, but then when I heard
about the evidence on that banker’s shoes, I learned the truth. At
least, I realized that there might be a connection. I told my son
that. He’s going to follow it up.”
“On the connection
to what Bebe Stubbs said about chicken blood?”
“Exactly. She was
seated right here; I couldn’t see who her company was, but by her
laugh it was a woman. She stayed until after I went to bed. Bebe
said something about chicken blood and guts, and they both laughed.
That’s what caught my attention. Then they changed the subject.
They started talking about how the eggs in a hen, the ones that
aren’t laid yet, go big to small and smaller like a little
production line in reverse. I stopped listening.”
“I see.” His
eyes were adjusting to the interior gloom, and he was curious. “So
this is the living room, and that door would be the into what, the
bedroom?”
“Kitchen. There
have to be two doors between the kitchen and the bathroom, so the
bath is though the bedroom. That other door.”
Gary approached it,
fingering his lens cap. He was curious about the stuffed animals on
the bed. “May I see it?”
Mrs. Mendoza was
eyeing his camera. “I suppose so. You can’t touch anything
though, even with the yellow tape gone.”
“I can appreciate
that.”
“You can’t take
any more pictures in there, either. That reporter of yours snuck his
camera in.”
“I wouldn’t, not
without your permission, ma’am.”
“Because if you
want pictures, you can get some of me, or my house, but not in here.”
He finally
understood. “All right, let’s go out to your veranda. How’s
that? Maybe a shot of you pointing toward this window? Something
like that?”
“Certainly.
Something like that, I don’t think my son will mind.”
She opened the door
and the remaining shadows were gone. Hanging right over his head,
Arab fashion at the juncture of wall and ceiling, was hung the
abalone-shell seascape. It was just as ugly as he had imagined.
Chapter 17
Henry
showed up at The Bakery on time and went with Gary to a booth. The
banker wore plaid slacks and a striped shirt. With his sideburns
trimmed to cover his fleshy cheeks and hair too full over the ears he
sat revealed as the quintessential shit-kicker. His shoulders were
hunched. His hands moved fretfully. The transformation from bully
to loser was incomplete, but well begun. Gary almost pitied him,
except for what he had done to his cowed, too-obedient daughter.
Henry dug into his
story and his lunch with equal avidity, talking as he chewed, gulping
coffee and gesturing with his cup until it spilled. He seemed to be
unaware of the room full of people, the food he gulped, or of
anything but his pressing need to be heard. His story rambled and
accused, returning to point after point. Eventually Gary thought he
understood, so he read back his notes while Henry confirmed what he
could.
“So you saw Bebe
Stubbs yesterday, driving a TransAm?”
“No doubt about
it, Phillips. We both pulled up at the light out here.” He waved
toward the street corner with his fork. “She’s got to be one of
the richest girls in Gold County right now, and that fancy car proves
it.” He glared belligerently across the table to emphasize his
point. “Her hair’s red now, and she’s wearing fancy earrings
with diamonds. Same girl though, the bitch. Pretended she didn’t
know me.”
“And you say she
is the embezzler?”
“Of course! I’m
sure as hell not! And I didn’t kill her. Or else she wouldn’t
be driving around with all that expensive stuff, would she? She took
the money. Probably sent it to Los Angeles while she was working,
then transmitted the doctored files over the wire to all those
government agencies. Framed me.” He reminisced, leaning across
the table with a hitch at his crotch. “She made me crazy, you
know? From the day I hired her. You know how. Leaning over
whenever I was around so I saw down her dress or around her butt.
Found extra ways to help, brought me coffee. What was I supposed to
do?” He leaned back and his voice dropped. “I finally asked her
for a weekend. She jumped at the chance, too. Then she made me
think I killed her, to keep me quiet.” He went into a detailed
narrative of his improbable night with Bebe Stubbs and got angrier as
he went. Soon he fairly danced in place, rocking the banquette. All
the details were there; the trashy food, Bebe’s sneering tone, the
nasty smell of blood in a mattress. But...it was too far-fetched.
“Susan’s fine,”
Gary blurted, wanting time to think. “Come on by and see her, now
that you’re free.”
Henry’s eye lit,
then dimmed. “Thanks. I’ll do that.” He poured a lot of
sugar into his coffee and pulled the mug toward him, quieting. It
took a visible effort. Gary hadn’t recognized the degree of
Henry’s anger. “She’s what it’s all about, you know,” he
confided. “With the feds running my bank and everybody talking
about me behind my back, she’s all I have left.” He smeared his
face with a freckled hand and emerged one of the sorriest men Gary
had ever seen. “Does she ask about me?”
“She doesn’t
talk much, no. I think she misses you. But she still hurts. She
will for years. And she’s confused about her own father...”
“She told you,
then?”
“Yes.” Gary
studied his bowl of chili. “She didn’t have to; we could tell
before that. She has all the symptoms. The Center spotted them
right off, too, but Candy was the first.”
“You mean, like a
sickness?”
Gary goggled at the
revelation of obtuse stupidity. There was an awkward silence.
“Lovely woman, your wife,” Henry finally said.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll see you
don’t lose anything, after this is over. After I get back my
bank.”
“Forget it.”
The waitress brought the check and Gary picked it up. “I still
have questions about your story, but I’m not sure you can answer
them. For example, how did Bebe fake a murder? What did she use for
a body? Or a phony weapon? How did she heave you around? It would
take a lot of muscle to get you back into your car after the mugging.
Ditto, getting you into that bed.”
“I don’t know
all that myself.” Henry leaned forward again. His anger rose
again, coloring his throat, then his face. “Some drugs are
supposed to work better if you’re upset, and by God she made me
mad! I really did try to choke her, you know. I have a temper.”
He smirked, proud of it, and the color paled along his hairline.
“It’s my personal opinion that she had help. Those men on the
highway, for instance. All they really did was get me riled. They
didn’t do any real damage when they beat me up, though God knows
they could have. And they didn’t take anything. Ms. Stubbs...”
He emphasized the Ms....”said she and a trucker scared them off. I
think they all three, the thugs and Bebe, put me back into the car
and took me to the motel. Then they picked her up, or left a car
there for her to use when she was through.”
“Possible,” Gary
agreed. “What did those men look like? What did they drive?”
“Hell, I don’t
know what they looked like.” Henry fondled his mug. “We passed
one guy in a pickup, he was dark. Looked like a Mexican. I
remember, because he waved to Bebe and she waved back. The other car
was a convertible, but the top was up. One of them hit me when I was
trying to get my gun out of the glovebox. Hit me from in back.”
He thought. “See what I mean? She knew those guys all along.
They were just playing games with me.”
Gary made a
connection; Mexican bandits on the highway. Another connection;
Mexicans accused of stalking the singing deputies. Khamis, often
mistaken for a Mexican, on the night he revealed himself to save his
brother, had claimed of Henry, “He’s taken care of.”
Gary was suddenly
furious. Khamis, Zeki, Dierdre; that awful feature about the missing
Beauty Queen; they must have loved it. The nights of dinner; the
evenings of beer and chess, when everyone but he knew about this
elaborate hoax. It angered Gary so much that he did something he
would regret. He forgot what the sheriff’s little book
implied--that Henry could buy anything, maybe even a murder. He
pulled the photos from his jacket and laid them onto the table.
Henry was talking
again and didn’t notice. “The cops won’t listen to anyone
under indictment, or I’ve have gone to them with all this,” he
said. “If you’ll just put some of it into the paper...” He
sat with his hands around his mug, looking hopeful.
“Won’t your
friend the sheriff listen to you?” Gary asked. “He’s still in
charge, at least until he’s indicted for something.” His finger
accidentally pushed a photo.
Henry glanced at it
but ignored it, thinking about Sheriff Randall. “Randall? Help
me? The bastard can’t find his ass with both hands.” Slowly a
feral, furious look took over his face, bringing his nostrils wide
and baring his teeth. With his eyes crazy, Henry looked right
through Gary at some unsubtle memory of revenge. It was enough to
show Gary a killer. A real one, not a suspect. He thanked an
unnamed god when the expression changed. Then it returned; Henry
had focused on the photographs.
He jumped to this
feet. “Where in hell did these come from? Who is that with Bebe?”
He leaned over until his nose was almost on top of the pictures and
drank in the faces; Zeki, Khamis, Dierdre. Quickly as he could, Gary
pocketed them and pulled out his wallet to pay the check. He
fumbled, dropped and wallet to the floor and nearly hit his head
against the table. By the time he had paid, Henry Ohrbach was gone.
He had to warn
Khamis. He called the al-Khafouli apartment from the pay phone by
the cash register. A machine answered. He tried Zeki’s dormitory
room and got no response. Finally he had Khamis paged at the
university banquet room and the man came to the phone.
“Yes, my friend!”
Khamis was nonchalant, happy.
“Listen, you
bastard. I don’t know which of us is madder at you, Henry Ohrbach
or me, but we both know what you and Zeki did to him, and he’s
gunning for you.”
Khamis took his time
to answer. Gary could imagine his expression as he pulled on a
cigarette. “It’s ‘I’,” he corrected Gary. “Henry
Orhbach or I.” There was another pause “I am truly distressed
that you learned before we could tell you tonight. I have planned to
tell you many things. You must believe that, Gary.”
“I can imagine how
sorry you are, and how much ‘explaining’ you’ll do after I
punch you out. Those nice stories about your god-damned generosity
may not hit the front page, either. But you’re in bigger trouble,
too. That S.O.B. wants to kill you all, starting with Dierdre. And
he’ll do it; he’s out of jail.” The cashier, standing nearby
and counting customers, slid him a look. “So keep low. Keep
Dierdre out of sight; she’s the one who hurt him between the legs.”
Gary was trembling with fury; he tried to keep it out of his voice.
“Thank you. We
have made preparations for such a contingency.”
“I wouldn’t put
it past you.” He’d for sure show up at that party.
Chapter 18
Bilbo was
back at the office, sitting at Gary’s desk and reading from the CRT
screen. Gary saw him from the street; colorless, intent, his longish
face tinted green by the computer’s light. Sometimes Gary just
wanted to pick the old man up and hug him. Then Bilbo fished Gary’s
file box, his private editorial notes, from under the desk. The urge
evaporated.
“What are you
looking for?” Gary pushed through the latched gate by the counter
and strode toward his desk.
Bilbo glanced up and
balanced the box across his knees. “Your Ohrbach notes. It’s
time to put them with these I got on Randall.”
Gary grabbed the box
from Bilbo’s knees. “You want to be a hotshot journalist, get
your own damned notes!”
Bilbo grabbed the
other side of the box. “Give me that! You crazy?”
Tableau; glare for
glare, the sides of the box bending outward as they tugged, the men
reacted to a tense, frustrating day. Bilbo hissed, “You want to
cover Ohrbach and Randall both? And the courthouse beat and the city
cops and lay out the front section?” Gary let go of the box. “I
was going to help while you get used to managing this paper,
asshole.” Still glaring, Bilbo reached for his coffee, noticed it
was empty and set it down.
“Sorry,” Gary
muttered, “It’s in the back of the box.” He sighed and hitched
up his pants. “I’m screwing up today. I learned some stuff
about the Ohrbach case that’s really close to home. It’s got me
crazy.” Bilbo found the Ohrbach folder and pulled it out.
“There’s another one you’ll want to read. The al-Khafouli
stuff.” Bilbo looked quizzical, so while he found Khamis’s file
and returned the box to within kicking distance under the desk, Gary
told him about Henry’s speech in The Bakery and that he, Gary,
believed the man. Bilbo smoked and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said
when Gary had finished, “It hangs together. But you know what?
You’re never going to pin anything on those guys, or the Roarke
woman. If it’s a conspiracy among Arabs, they’re going to hang
together just long enough to get out of school and go back home.
Know why?” Sometime Bilbo got theatrical. He did then; he rose
and punched at Gary’s chest with a finger every time he made a
point. “First, they’re all tight because they’re in a strange
country and need friends. Second, because Khamis al-Khafouli is
their leader, and so far he hasn’t made a dumb move so he hasn’t
been caught. As long as he’s not caught, they’ll support him.
Third, because Zeki al-Khafouli is the youngest Arab at that school,
and the others have adopted him like the spoiled darling in any Arab
home. Fourth, there’s not an Arab or a Mexican or an Indian or a
Jew in the county who hasn’t been rousted by our crooked sheriff or
his crooked deputies or Henry Ohrbach, their bigoted boss. Shall I
go on about the Arabs’ Anglo women, who will stay loyal because
they’re so well-treated they’ll never have it so good again? Or
do you get the idea there ain’t no justice, Phillips?”
By that time Gary
was grinning. Bilbo took the files into his office and sat down.
“I’ll be at the prince’s shindig tonight until nine. That way
you can have some time with your wife and Ohrbach’s daughter.”
Gary’s eyebrows rose. Bilbo explained. “The kid could use a
little cross-cultural exposure. Make sure she’s dressed right.
Not sexy.”
Gary stopped at the
Police Department for the blotter, then entered the Police Chief’s
office. The story on Sheriff Randall was tentacled as an octopus; he
couldn’t print anything yet, but the Chief kept him posted on most
of it. When Gary entered, a wallet-sized record book was squarely in
the center of the officer’s desk.
“Randall’s?”
Gary guessed, and took the visitor’s chair.
“Just got it. It
was in his file cabinet, for the luvva God.”
The Chief was young,
clean and militantly Hispanic. He had bushy eyebrows that crawled
toward each other like caterpillars when he worried. His eyebrows
were now copulating. He played drop-the-pencil on his blotter.
Gary thumbed through
the booklet. Columns of numbers and dates were matched to initials
and occasional abbreviations. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“What’re you edgy about?” You knew it had to be somewhere.”
“Not in his goddam
file cabinet. We’ll probably match a lot of those dates with his
bank accounts. He can’t have that many.” He dropped his pencil
again, retrieved it again, prepared to drop it. “Also, the timing
in there worries me. Every late December for maybe six years, like
Christmas presents. Then September last year, February and May this
year.”
“Why? It just
means he was on someone’s payroll, doesn’t it? Like the script
to a bad TV show.”
“Yeah, yeah.
Well, think back for a minute to some of your headlines, Phillips.
The fire in the synagogue for one instance, or the one at Casa
Nuestra.”
Gary obediently
thought. “Yom Kippur, Cinco de Mayo; I get it. But what happened
in February? Student...oh, wow.” He slumped against the chair
back.
“Yeah,” said The
Chief. “The Little Prince. Ties the sheriff pretty tightly to our
esteemed banker-cum-embezzler and murder suspect. Because these
numbers look a lot like some withdrawals in the Henry Ohrbach files.”
“Hunh.”
“And the dates
jibe, too.”
Gary’s head
snapped up; he’d just realized what The Chief said. “You have
the Ohrbach printouts? Where’d they show up?”
“County Attorney
got them in the mail I told you about. He let us have copies.”
“How much did
Ohrbach get?”
“You won’t
believe it; it’s gone. Nearly four million. The sniveling weasel
got into his own customers for nearly twenty years, just a little at
a time, and he’s broke. He’d maybe charge them another loan
payment, or one month’s extra interest; they’d never notice.”
Gary shook his head. “Right. Thing is,” The Chief continued,
“you can’t trace it to the right people. Can’t pay it back.”
Gary waggled the
little book. “How close are the numbers?”
“Close enough.”
“For what?”
“Bribery of
course, embezzling, and the ever-popular subornation of perjury.
With both the sheriff and the banker being rousted on top of those
dead deputies’ depositions, this town’s in for a lot of pain.”
Gary had another
look, riffled the pages until they opened near the front, then the
back. He laid it open on The Chief’s blotter, his finger jabbed
against an entry. “ZAK as in Zeki al-Khafouli,” he prompted.
“The prince? You
find him in there?” The Chief’s eyebrows uncoupled. He regarded
the entry for so long that even his thick mustache, like his
eyebrows, spread, and he smiled. “Hot damn!” He grabbed the
book. “It’s in here a couple of times!”
Gary grinned too.
“Does any of this go onto the blotter?”
“Not yet.”
“How about your
mom’s chicken blood?”
“Sheesh. She call
you?”
“Gonna have her
picture on the front page.”
“Omigod.”
Gary rose to leave.
“He’s out on
bail now,” said the sheriff.
“Ohrbach?”
Should he warn the sheriff about Ohrbach’s craziness? No; there
were no grounds for arrest, and all the deputies had their hands full
with the visiting royalty and their guests. Forget it. “I know,”
he said. “He called me.” He paused by a display case of Missing
Persons photos on the wall. Bebe Stubbs’ photo smiled from
near-center.
“Watch your
editorial butt about him, Phillips. I don’t want his trial messed
up because you wanna sell papers.”
“Right, Chief.”
Ruminative pause.
The Chief said, “I don’t know why you called her a Beauty Queen.”
He put the sheriff’s booklet into his desk drawer and locked it,
jingling many keys as he did.
“She looks okay in
this picture,” Gary said. “Where’d this come from, anyhow?”
“It was hanging in
her bathroom.”
“Hunh.”
Bebe was shown with
big, messy hair. She was looking kittenish over one shoulder in a
bad glamour pose. There was too much lighting to see the shape of
her nose, but not enough to soften the heavy spikes of eyelash or
patent-leather eyebrows.
“There’s lots of
girls around, look better than that. She’s just average-looking,
you ask me.”
The Chief was
trying to get at something. “That right?”
“Right. There’s
a girl here in town, looks a lot better if you want to compare within
a type.”
“I forgot what a
connoisseur of women you are, Chief. What type?”
“Long legs, not
much front, big eyes. That type. Only with real short hair.”
“Yeah? Who beats
Bebe Stubbs with Beauty Queen within her type?”
“Name’s Roarke.
Cute kid, lots of energy. Going to marry the Prince.”
Gary whirled,
banging his head with an open palm and staring. “Sheeeeit!”
“Better run.
We’re about to call her in for questioning.”
Gary grabbed The
Chief’s phone, called Bilbo’s home and gave his first executive
assignment. “Grab la Roarke before the cops get her,” he barked.
Chapter 19
And Bilbo had
delivered; had swept the entire al-Khafouli entourage, including
Dierdre as the official hostess, onto the local Rancheria for a tour
of Native American culture. Then he gave Chief Mendoza a quick
course in international relations and most-favored-nation politics
which accomplished a grudging, temporary amnesty for the girl.
That evening the
banquet was a qualified success; as Gary would have put it, mostly
boring guests, decent food. As he focused his camera for a shot
Bilbo, behind him at another table, heckled. “Be sure to get the
guy from the Board of Regents.”
“Really think I
should?”
“Try to get him
with al-Khafouli’s old man and the Chancellor.”
“Yeah? Would his
old man be the guy in the head scarf and the black suit?”
“Sure; next to the
good-looking broad in black. You know, head of state, head of
California’s educational empire, that sort of thing. Two regents,
get it?”
“Sure thing,
Boss.”
Across the table,
Candy disapproved of the banter and let Susan see her frown. David
Friedman was oblivious. Seated to Gary’s right, he maintained a
clear view of the room and doors.
“Lots of
heavyweights here,” he said.
“Big news,”
Bilbo reminded him.
“I don’t mean
politicos. Look at the doors.”
Gary took his first
real look at the gathering. The tables were filled with dining
professors, their mates and offspring, a few students, and a lot of
Arabs. He looked again. Dark men in black suits, very large men,
were seated one to each table and paired at the three exits. “Even
the waiters,” he said. “They look like Khamis’s people. Did
you do it?”
“Zeki. His
father’s men are out in the halls. Turks.” Gary nodded. “The
guys in skirts,” Friedman helpfully supplied.
“Oh. Turks, you
say? Let me write that down.”
Susan was having
fun. “Are those real diamonds on the queen?” she wanted to know,
and “I thought Arabian women had to wear veils.” Later, “They’re
so thin!”
“Not Zeki’s
mother, and she’s wearing the most jewels,” Candy said. Pudgy
Susan pulled a comic face and smiled.
Gary speculated
about Dierdre. The future queen sat farther down the table. She was
serene and regal; a lot different from that photo of Bebe Stubbs. He
felt better about missing the resemblance before.
After dinner there
were speeches, thanks and acknowledgments. Friedman had to take a
bow. There was a film about the people of the Arabian Gulf. Bilbo
began collecting his camera and notes, ready to go. Dierdre quietly
left the room. Two men peeled themselves from the exit to escort
her, presumably to the ladies’ room.
When she returned
the lights were up. She looked frightened. Candy sent her a sharp,
questioning look. It wasn’t answered.
“Something up?”
Gary asked.
“I can’t tell.”
Zeki was seated next
to Dierdre. He asked her something; she whispered back. He beckoned
to a guard. Khamis, on her other side and next to the lectern,
didn’t notice. The last speaker sat down and the Master of
Ceremonies thanked everyone. People began to leave. The guards’
eyes went into overdrive.
Friedman jerked. He
stared. “Ohrbach!” he hissed. “Get Susan out of here!”
“Mother of God,”
Gary breathed.
The lawyer crossed
to Khamis and leaned over the table, jerking his thumb as he spoke.
Gary, whispering the news to Candy, could not follow all he said. “I
wasn’t sure,” he thought Dierdre said. “Candy,” He ordered,
“Take Suse into Khamis’s suite. It’s through those curtains by
the lectern. If her dad gets into any more trouble, we don’t want
her to see it.”
There was a flutter
of activity. The university nabobs left; Khamis and his party were
quickly invisible in a sea of black-suited guards. The route to the
curtains was jammed.
“What’s
happening?” Susan demanded. “Did he say daddy’s here?”
“Yeah,” Bilbo
interrupted. He hunkered between Candy and Susan’s seats, one arm
on each. “What’s happening?”
Friedman returned.
“Where did you see him?” Gary demanded.
“Christ! He’s
dressed as a sheriff’s deputy! Get that girl out of here!”
“Where to?”
Candy snapped. “All the exits are blocked.” Angrily fussing
with the fringe, she wrapped Susan to the chin in her own silk shawl.
“I guess the
Sheik’s bodyguards were fooled,” Friedman said. He was no longer
being quiet. “I’m going out to the hall and tell Riad and
Mohammed. They’ll recognize him.”
“Let the deputies
do it, Friedman,” Gary said. He had circled the end of the table
to urge Candy and Susan toward the curtains. “They know Henry.”
“The deputies?
Who in hell do you think gave him that uniform?” Friedman took off
for the exit.
Bilbo shoved his
camera at Gary. “I’ll take the ladies. We’ll stick with the
royals and do interviews.”
“Gary!” Susan
grabbed him around the ribs.
“Bill, take
Susan,” Candy said. “I’m staying.”
Gary juggled the
camera, the clinging girl, and rising frustration that news was
happening in the corridor and he wasn’t there. “No, you’re
not!” he barked. “There’ll be trouble.”
Candy was imperious.
“Bill, take that girl into that crowd! Now!” Bilbo
acknowledged the voice of authority; he grabbed Susan’s wrist and
headed for the crowd. The curtains parted, revealing a door, and the
inner circle of guests began to disappear.
“You’ll be all
right, Suse,” Gary called. “We’ll be right in.”
“Daddy!”
Silly; his eyes
teared for her frightened face. He crossed to her and kissed her
forehead, but couldn’t reassure her beyond that. “Thanks,
Bilbo,” he muttered. The two disappeared.
He went back to the
table, to Candy, clearing his throat of tears. Most of the room was
empty. A few waiters, real ones, picked up dishes and began to
straighten the tables. It almost looked like the end of an everyday
banquet, except that the doors were shut and the guards were armed.
Candy was seated with her clutch on the table, worrying the clasp
with her fingers. The circlet of roses in her hair was beginning to
wilt. She looked worried and defensive, vulnerable.
Gary was in no mood
to be gallant. He cleared his throat. “How well do you know
Dierdre Roarke?” he began. “How much do you trust her? How far
would she go for Khamis?” It wasn’t the greeting Candy wanted;
she blinked, resettled her shoulders, and was no longer vulnerable.
Magic. Gary, however, was adrenaline-innoculated. “And what’s
this crap about staying with me? Susan needs you. And I can’t
worry about you when I’m working.”
Candy shook her
head. “Susan doesn’t need me. Me least of anyone.”
Gary groped for a
chair and lowered himself into it. Suspiciously he asked, “Meaning?”
“Simple. If she’s
with me, she’s in danger.”
The adrenaline
leaked out all at once. He took Candy’s fidgeting hands.
“Danger?” He searched her face. “Christ,” he said, and,
solemn, Candy nodded. “Candy, you make me so crazy...”
“You’re shaky,”
she observed.
“It was all your
idea, wasn’t it? Getting even with Henry.”
“Mostly.”
“All.”
Her chin lifted. “I
was already working with Susan, furious at Henry anyway. Zeki was
too mad to think. After the sheriff put that stuff under his bed,
Dierdre and Khamis were so eager...”
“...that you
planned a phony murder. You got these flaky Arabs to help Dierdre.
She stuffed Henry full of drugs, gambling that when he got mad enough
to kill, he couldn’t. But Jesus Candy, he might have.”
“Honey, the others
were in the room all the time she was there. They were in the
shower. She might have got a bruise or two, but she was never in
serious danger. They taped everything, just in case. You can hear
Dierdre on it, asking if the mound in the gully really looks like a
grave. There’s no way to misinterpret what she’s saying, or who
it is. And just to be sure, first we e-mailed his phony accounts to
the authorities.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Gary released her hands. He couldn’t stop examining her angel
face, trying to believe what his head told him; that she had
engineered so much pain. There was no twitch to the mouth, no
evasion in their eye contact. The hell of it was, he couldn’t
blame her. She remained the lovely, warm wife, the helpmeet, the
partner, the mate of his adolescent wet dreams.
She had the grace to
explain. “Actually, we enjoyed that part in a kinky sort of way.
Of course there was a certain amount of risk, but did you know he
gets so mad he faints? I got his medical record. We messed up the
motel room with offal from the stockyards. It was convincing; it had
to be. But Dierdre wasn’t in danger.” Gary broke eye contact.
“Believe me, love! We didn’t know the rest would happen! We
thought Henry would be arrested for embezzlement, then Dierdre and
Zeki would show up at the trial to show who destroyed him.”
“Yeah. So what
changed your minds? Why did you go forward against the sheriff?”
“Deputy Garrison’s
murder. When your paper started linking it to Riad and Mohammed, to
their intercepting Henry, we had to. Do you see? Then you put that
big story on page one that Bebe Stubbs was missing, and everyone in
town was looking for Dierdre. Well, we had to go on. We spooked
Randall. But I swear, darling. We were going to tell you. Tonight,
at the party.”
“That’s what
Khamis said.”
“It’s true.”
She stared at the tablecloth. “Sometimes you’re so decent, love.
We couldn’t let you know while it was happening.”
“It would never
have happened. I would have stopped you.”
“Of course you
would, love. You’d have printed everything as soon as you knew.”
Gary realized he was
playing with a dirty fork. He put it down. “How many of you were
in on it?”
“The six of us,
plus a bunch of the other students. They found evidence for the city
police to discover. You know, when they’d get into someone’s
desk or car.”
“Little books.
Books that look like key logs.”
Candy blushed. “You
know more than we thought, love.”
“What kind of
things did they do? Like with Mark Chappell?”
“Yes. And once in
a while they spread some blood.”
“Yeah.”
“Chicken blood.”
“That’s what was
on Henry’s shoes.”
Candy was surprised.
“You knew that too?”
“The Chief’s
mother told me. ‘Bebe’s’ landlady. She heard you laughing
about it.”
Candy grabbed his
hand again, hard, her yellow-flecked eyes boring into his. “Tell
me you disapprove, Gary. Tell me you, of all the people in
Tipperton, didn’t know the sheriff’s men appeared whenever three
or four Chicanos got together. Tell me Randall should be permitted
to continue, and Henry to tell him when to go farther. Tell me Henry
shouldn’t have been pulled his own daughter off that boy.” Gary
was silent. “Tell me the city police could do anything about it,
without what we did.” She let go of his hand. “Get me a brandy,
will you? My head is bursting.” She pulled the roses from her
hair. Her hair rustled down to her shoulders and curled against her
shoulders.
Gary went to the
liquor cart, thinking hard. He returned with two collins glasses of
brandy. At last he understood all of it. The announcement about the
School for Oriental Studies would have been the final, ironic twist
of the knife in Henry Ohrbach’s ego; the unrestorable money he had
stolen would teach Tipperton students about Arabs. He handed Candy
one glass, gulped from the other and didn’t choke.
Suddenly there was a
lot yelling in the hall. Gary and Candy jumped to their feet.
Hoping that love really does conquer all, that he could forgive his
wife, Gary said, “Get into that party behind the lectern. I’ll
see what that’s about.” Gunshots, nearly simultaneous, popped
through the doors. “Scoot! Now!”
Candy turn to go,
then turned back. “I’ll never be sorry, Gary.”
“Go!”
When she passed
through the door he heard Khamis’s party; music from an oud and the
crazy ululation used at Middle Eastern celebrations. Khamis
appeared. “Dierdre!” he called. “Riad! Ohrbach has them
both!”
They ran for the
hall.
Chapter 20
Under
different circumstances, Dierdre would have enjoyed receiving on the
line with royalty. Flanked by Khamis and his elegant little mother,
meeting people as if their hurried flight from the banquet were
planned, memorizing their names, conducting waiters with a glance or
a nod, she had found her element. Except that two armed guards stood
behind the curtains in the foyer, and at any minute she knew the
night might explode into death, and that she must not let her
knowledge show.
“Khamal el Kasmieh
of Jordan,” Khamis introduced, and she smiled as she recognized a
fellow student.
“Khamal, how are
you? You study Civil Engineering, don’t you?” The young man
murmured, and Dierdre gave his name to Khamis’s mother.
“Enchanted,”
said the queen.
“Suleiman al
Rahman from the Sudan,” Khamis said of a very tall black man.
“Taher Raziq, formerly of Lebanon, now banking in Los Angeles.
Tasin al Shani, my cousin, studying Business Administration.” It
went on and on.
“I’m nervous,
Khamis,” Dierdre murmured as she handed on another guest.
“And I.
Inshallah, my Pearl; as Allah decrees. Persevere. The police are in
control. Ibrahim! I wasn’t sure you could come.” Each shook
Ibrahim’s hand, then Ismael’s, Umar’s, and Yazid’s.
Dierdre said, “If
they’re in control, how did Henry get onto the campus? How do you
do, Mustafa? Nice of you to come.” Across the room a door opened
and shut. She only saw its enameled top over the heads of the crowd,
but she hadn’t known it was there. It worried her, but that was
silly. Khamis and his father’s guards knew, they would have
inspected the room much earlier. The door was locked. Probably
guarded as well.
However, the
knowledge gnawed. She knew Mustafa was not invited tonight, nor was
Khamal, nor anyone outside their immediate circle of friends. Yet
others were here, had been admitted. Had Zeki, so eager to
please...? She couldn’t see through the crowd. She glanced at
Khamis. “How many people do we expect? There must be sixty here
already. She shook another hand as the far door opened again.
She felt a vacuum on
her left. “Khamis?”
Khamis wasn’t
there; he was shoving people and plowing across the room, headed for
that worrisome door. “Get him!” he shouted. “It’s Henry
Ohrbach!”
Dierdre’s mouth
went dry; she lost her hearing. “Excuse me, she mouthed, and
dashed after him.
Ohrbach’s arm,
pistol in hand, aimed through the door at Khamis’s head. She
rammed Khamis’s back; he fell. Her shoulder, following through,
struck the door; the door struck Henry’s arm. The gun spat, the
sound procketed, people screamed. Henry spun into the room, grabbed
her arm and hauled her to her feet with the pistol at her neck.
Khamis regained his feet. Then he caught himself in time to halt his
attack. People packed themselves against the walls.
Ohrbach’s voice
was matter-of-fact. “You too, Khafooli! Come with me or she dies
first. Your big-eared friend is waiting.”
“Keep back,
people!” Khamis boomed. “Seal the room when we’re gone!”
Dierdre and Henry
backed down the corridor. Before them it stretched a long way, pale
flowered wallpaper and deep-red carpeting ending at a neon Exit sign.
Khamis followed, half crouched but out of reach. Someone shut the
door to the suite. A trash can glided past; a fire hose. They
paused at the meeting with the main corridor.
“Call them off,
Khafooli.”
Khamis passed them;
they pivoted; Khamis now led. “Stand back, people!” he called,
“Mr. Ohrbach has Miss Roarke!” He peered around the corner.
Dierdre heard murmurs, movement. She felt Henry turn to look over his
shoulder. She could see only a little, peripherally, but thought she
recognized Sheriff Randall’s big shadow on the wall beyond Khamis.
The shape of a useless pistol hung toward the floor.
Khamis waved at
someone. “Get back! Please! Take no chances!”
Henry shoved her
forward with her arm twisted violently behind her. The muzzle of his
gun dug deep under her jaw. “Just back up into the hall,
Khafooli,” he said.
“Riad?” Khamis
asked. He had straightened. His tuxedo was unbuttoned.
“In the ladies’
room. Waiting for you.”
They were halfway
across the corridor, angling away from the sheriff’s shadow.
“Is he well?”
“He’s probably
real uncomfortable.”
Dierdre tripped over
Henry’s foot. She thought her shoulder would snap from its socket.
The gun muzzle sank deeper into her neck.
“Watch it, cunt.”
Henry’s voice was level. “Yeah. Your funny-looking friend is
pretty uncomfortable, I’d say.”
“You find that
amusing,” Khamis claimed. He was closer. His pistol bulged in his
cummerbund. Henry mustn’t notice. Dierdre prayed.
“It’s downright
funny. Keep your distance, wog.” Khamis’s eyes flickered with
angry lights. “Sorry. Wog, your Highness.”
Khamis said, “You’ve
missed my brother.”
The grotesque march
continued. Henry stopped at the wall; they were at the women’s
restroom.
“Stay right there,
Khafooli.” Henry released Dierdre and fumbled for the door knob.
He was too far from it to reach; he took a half-step back.
It might have ended
there, one way or another. As Dierdre ducked and jammed her spike
heel into Henry’s instep, Khamis dove for the floor, drew his gun
and fired. But Sheriff Randall, shouting and pounding down the hall
like an assaulting tank, shook Khamis’s aim and missed with his
own. Henry yanked Dierdre after himself into the restroom and flung
her so hard she slammed against the far wall and went down. He
bolted the door with his left hand. The gun, as steady as the floor,
was in his right.
She raised herself
to a crouch, wary. “You’re shot.”
“Yeah.”
Henry leaned against
the door. He was grey with pain, but his voice was crazy-calm.
Blood ran down his neck. Most of his right ear hung from the lobe.
They were in the
softly lit lounge; cream satin chaise longue and benches, pink„tinted
mirrors above a long marble shelf, deep shadow beneath it. No
window. Dierdre slid down the wall, her feet tucked in case she got
the chance to jump.
A figure lay under
the shelf, his face to the wall. Duct tape circled his wrists and
ankles. He was limp. Riad.
Henry ignored him.
For a pregnant moment he seemed to totter. Puffing as he bent,
favoring his injured foot, he dragged a bench into the entry to the
commodes. He sat. There was no sound from the hall.
Dierdre asked,
“What’ll you do now?”
“Shut up.”
They listened.
Dierdre’s feet prickled, then hurt. Something brushed the wall
from the other side, in the hall. She shifted her weight while
Henry’s head was turned to hear. Someone knocked. “It’s Jim,
Henry.” The knob turned gently, fractionally, silently. Henry
fired. Splinters flew. Riad’s body spasmed. The noise bounced
and bounded against the tile-lined bathroom and belched into their
lounge. It grew silent, even from the hall. Dierdre heard the hands
of her watch as they moved. Henry’s breath. Riad’s. “What
did you do to him?” she asked, indicating Riad. She rubbed her
shoulder.
“Sit still.”
She couldn’t see his ear, which was fine with her, but blood fell
from Henry’s chin to his lap. Suddenly he yelled, “Randall!
Bring me the brothers!” Things were quiet again, except for her
watch, their breath. “Randall!”
There was no answer.
“You didn’t
shoot him, did you?” Dierdre asked.
“No. I aimed
high. He knows it.”
“I mean Riad.”
”No, I didn’t
shoot him.” Henry shifted on his bench. It seemed amazing that he
could hurt, focus so hard on the door, and all the time keep his
pistol aimed at her forehead. “This thing stings,” he finally
admitted. “I’m going to get a towel. You move, I shoot.” The
pistol gestured for the first time; it aimed at Riad. “Him.”
“I’m a statue.”
Running water,
grunts, the ratchet of a paper towel dispenser. Dierdre’s feet
were agony. She edged them forward and the pain increased as
circulation resumed. Henry pulled more towels. The water ran. Riad
stopped breathing. She panicked, reached for him and checked her
motion lest Henry see it. Riad’s breathing resumed.
Something was being
dragged along the hall carpet. There were whispers. She was
trembling but felt calm, thought clearly. If he got mad enough,
Henry would faint; but first he might shoot her or Riad. Her best
defense would be to distract him, to divide his attention until he
did something so unguarded that she could get his gun.
“Someone’s
outside,” she said.
He reappeared, a wet
towel to his ear and his gun in his left hand. “Yeah.”
“Riad stopped
breathing, but he started again.”
“Shut up.”
“Can I see if he’s
all right?”
Henry sat on the
bench and held his ear. The muzzle of his gun stared directly at
Dierdre’s face again, rock-steady. His crazy eyes focused on her
forehead. “Be quiet, Bebe.” Dierdre sat still. More dragging
sounds came from beyond the door. “Probably shields,” Henry
said, although not to her.
She entered another
world, a void without sensation or thought, and found it good. It
lasted...minutes? Of course; and it ended only because the calves of
her legs bunched and cramped. Could she reenter it? She wanted to,
tried and failed. She swiveled her gaze to Henry. He seemed not to
have moved, but blood no longer dripped from his chin.
There was a rap on
the door. “Dierdre?” It was Khamis’s careful voice. Henry
warned her quiet with his eyes. “Dierdre, answer me. Are you
hurt?”
Henry’s gaze
didn’t leave her forehead. “She’s okay. Come on in here and
see for yourself.”
Khamis murmured in
English. Gary Phillips’ voice answered, then Zeki’s. They must
be next to the doorjamb.
“Henry, this is
Jim Randall.” It was a bullhorn. “The princes will come in, if
that’s what youĂwant, but first Miss Roarke has to come out.
Just let her say something so they know she’s all right.”
Henry smirked.
Dierdre could not move, mesmerized by the bore of his pistol. He
called, “No. I want all three. I’ll tell you what I’ll do,
though; you can have the little guy in here, he’s still alive, for
the brothers.”
More mutters.
Something rubbed against the wall; a shoulder? Zeki’s high, urgent
whispers explained a tactic. Khamis’s answer vetoed it. Gary’s
did too. The bullhorn spoke again. “Think about it, Henry. You
can’t get out, there’s no windows in there, so sooner or later
you’ll have to come out that door.” The echoes of the machine,
in the long, low-ceilinged hall, were vast. They paused. Then,
“When you do, that’s when the rest of your life gets decided; by
the way you do it. So give us the girl. The brothers swear they’ll
come in.”
“To do what?
Shoot me from behind the shields you give ‘em? Get serious!”
Henry’s gaze shifted for the first time as he mopped again at his
ear. The gun dipped. “You and I can’t trust each other. You
know that. Matter of fact, after what I did to your house I don’t
expect to get out of here at all.”
The bullhorn: “I
thought you wanted the boys.”
“All three of
them! Bebe and the dognut brothers! Then I want Phillips to listen!
To hear the rest of it!”
The following
silence was profound. Dierdre, despite her terror, refocused. What
did Henry want to tell Gary? The press? Would he confess?
Implicate Sheriff Randall? Was this stiff figure crazy with fury?
Or was he only hurting? Did he finally hurt enough, stripped of his
career, his position and even his child, to ask for mercy?
Bullhorn: “Henry,
I give you my word of honor it’ll be like I said. We all know why
you’re in there and what these people did to you. Believe me, we
understand how you feel.”
The answer to
Dierdre’s question was: Henry was furious, but in control. With
snake-quick movements he fired into the wall, then whipped back to
position, threatening Dierdre again.
There was a howl,
and scuffling and cursing in Arabic. He grinned as Dierdre jerked
forward and eased back, watching him with eyes widened by fear. “Got
one.”
“It’s all right,
Dierdre,” Gary called. “Some plaster nicked Zeki’s hand. He’s
okay.”
“They’re farther
down the hall,” Dierdre whispered.
Henry’s fist was
tiring, his aim wobbled. He moved to the door and listened. He
shouted. “Jim!”
Bullhorn: “Henry?
What?”
“I’ll give you
five minutes before I begin on the girl! First her feet, then her
ankles, then her knees! Give me those men!” He dropped the
blood-soaked paper towel to the carpet and eased the bolt on the door
open, watching Dierdre. She stared back. Using her normal voice she
said, “This is it, Henry; I can only get so scared. Do what you
want. You’re not getting Khamis or Zeki, though.”
“I’m not?”
His pistol rose.
“Go ahead; shoot
me. Every man in that hallway will be in here and you’ll be
killed.”
“I know that.
Al-Khafooli and his brother’ll come first.”
“No. The police
have taken them away, because they finally realized that with a
prince dead, there’d be hell to pay. They took them just now.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, truth. And
you won’t get the others. You won’t get Mohammed, or Tallal, or
Ramon, or Constanza, or Candy, or...
“Candy Phillips?”
His eyes widened.
She was scornful.
“Did you really think it was just the three of us? We had people
drawing lots to help us do you in; both you and your store-bought
sheriff. If you want revenge, you’ll have to get a whole bunch of
people.”
Henry considered her
for what seemed minutes. Dierdre’s trembling returned. Still, she
felt nothing but fury. “Go ahead, Henry. Tell Gary what you have
to say, while he’ll listen to you. Once you pull that trigger, no
one else will get a chance.”
“Phillips!”
Henry called.
Promptly, “Yes?”
He must have been waiting. And Henry must be right about the
shields; they probably covered everyone in the hall, especially after
his last shot.
“Print this!
Randall killed Garrison and Murphy! Both of them! You’ll find an
entry in those books of mine, I paid him to do it. Stupid, but I
didn’t think so at the time. The computer file’s called ‘Paid,’
and the code word is ‘Fats.’ There are some other entries in the
same file, with dates. They’re all the same kind of thing. Got
that?”
“Right,”
“There’s others,
before; that Vietnamese whore, and the Rabbi.” Pause. “And last
winter’s fires.” He paused again. “Did you take that down?”
Gary sounded sick,
or pained. “Got it. Anything else? Was anyone else involved?”
“Not that I know
of. Maybe your Chief of Police can sweat some more names out of
Randall. We just did the fires, that one whore, the Rabbi, then
Garrison and Murphy. Rousting people, like the Kafooli kid, that was
usually his own idea. He’s a bully.”
“Got it,” Gary
repeated.
What’s Randall
doing now?”
“Not a lot.
There’s a thing down the hall that looks like a bazooka, though. I
think it’s a water cannon. They’re rolling it this way.”
“Yeah. I’d get
out of there, Phillips. Now he’ll be after you too, because of
what I just told you. Anyone else hear it?”
“A couple of us.”
“I don’t mean
those Arabs.”
“There’s the
publisher; Bill Bough.”
“He hear it?”
“I did.” It was
not Gary’s voice. Dierdre wondered how many people were outside
that door, betting against Henry’s bullets with their safety. The
strange voice resumed. “This is William Bough, and I heard you,
Ohrbach. You confirmed a lot of things we suspected.”
“Confirmed, huh?”
He glanced at Dierdre, smirking again. She nodded.
“It’s going to
help you in court,” Friedman’s voice rasped.
There was a rush of
furtive movement along the wall, grunts and exclamations. “God
damn it!” Gary said.
“Over here.”
from Bough. “Lower. He’s shooting through the wall.”
“All right.”
It was Candy.
Dierdre didn’t even think. “Get out!” she shrieked. “He
knows!”
Henry whirled and
struck her instep with his gun, using all his force. Pain flared
red. Her loud cry was for the pain; for wounded, spasming Riad; for
the blood spreading darkly across Henry’s uniform shirt; for the
low-down, gut-deep misery of the end of her triumph over
injustice...”Oh God!”... and she began to sob.
The hall was still
as a tomb. Candy called, awed and tentative. “Mr. Ohrbach?”
Henry whirled and
shot.
The bullet banged
off the rim of the doorknob and went into the hall. Footsteps
thudded and bodies fell. People shouted and screamed. Zeki began
jabbering, “It’s my fault! The revenge is for me. I go in!"
Khamis’s rumble cut through, then Friedman’s furious whine.
“Bicker, you
idiots! Get that woman away from the door! Fucking semites! Jesus!
Everyone’s a fucking hero...that’s right! Now cut across...”
The voices and footsteps faded. Dierdre could hear nothing. Again,
minutes passed in silence. Henry disappeared into the next room and
reappeared with a fresh, wet paper towel. Riad tried again to move.
Henry grinned wryly,
mopping his face. “Had a little adventure out there, didn’t
they, Bebe?” She stared coldly.
“Mr. Ohrbach, this
is Candy Phillips.”
She had the
sheriff’s bullhorn.
“I just left
Susan. She’s crying because she thinks her father is going to be
killed. Please listen!”
Henry became
attentive. Candy said a lot of simple things. Susan was wearing a
dress he had chosen for her, and was proud of the way it looked.
That day Susan had baked cookies and said they were Henry’s
favorrites. Susan this, Susan that. Susan was afraid. Susan loved
him. Susan forgave him. Finally Henry’s gun trembled.
“She’s right,
Henry. Susan needs you,” Dierdre told him. “Even if you’re in
jail, she needs you alive. Otherwise she’ll blame herself.”
Henry almost sounded
meditative. “He really did kill Garrison, you know,”
“Yes?”
“He’ll say I did
it, and the cops will believe him.”
“No they won’t.
Not if you’re innocent.”
“They’ll believe
him. He has his own set of books he can doctor.”
“Where are his
books, Henry?” Dierdre asked the question just to keep him
talking, then remembered the account book Riad had found in the
sheriff’s bedroom; the trouble he had taken to get it into the
sheriff’s downtown office. Oh. And of course Henry didn’t know
yet that it would be found, that it was safe, that the Chief of
Police had been sent hints and tips. Henry, right now, was being
desperately honest, trying to believe he would surely be killed, so
that he would have the courage to actually shoot James Randall.
After, of course, killing Khamis, Zeki and herself. And maybe Candy.
She said, “Henry,
you’re not a murderer at all, are you? You’ve never actually
done it yourself.” It was at once a revelation and a terrific
relief.
“There’s a first
time for everything,” Henry told her. His face was even more grim
than before.
They were his last
words. Suddenly he jerked open the door and jumped back, facing the
hall. Then he leapt.
“Drop it!” the
sheriff yelled.
Henry stepped back,
out of Dierdre’s sight. His coupled hands lifted his pistol into
view, aiming. Gunfire blasted from all over.
Henry’s hands
fell.
The echoes died.
“By God, he got
the sheriff,” Friedman yelped, and the murmur of many voices filled
the hall.
Somewhere an Arab
ululation began, was joined by another, and another, raucous and
triumphant, but not joyous.
Dierdre sat on the
floor of the ladies’ lounge, waiting. Khamis arrived, then the
others.
THE END
Also
by Margaret Raymond:
No Reservation
My More Than Sister
Dead on Dutcher's
Mountain
No comments:
Post a Comment