“How can you joke about something so horrible?” Anna Cole asks, then breaks down crying.
“Because none of us knows what this is about,” I tell her. “I’ve never murdered anyone, so at this moment I am fairly relaxed.”
“Shouldn’t we get Leo a lawyer?” Sheba asks Ike.
“He doesn’t need a lawyer,” Ike says. “He’s never even gotten a parking ticket.”
Anna Cole is completely unstrung, and we have to wait for her hysteria to ease before the interrogation can begin. “Ma’am, could I get you a glass of water?” Ike asks softly. “We could get this done a lot faster if you could get control of yourself.”
Anna says, through tears, “All I did was send the cops a photocopy of the man who was stalking me like you told me to do, Leo.”
“He was from San Rafael, right?” I ask. “I forget his name.”
Detective McGraw helps me out. “His name was John Summey. He lived at 25710 Vendola Drive in San Rafael. He worked as a physical therapist at a retirement center here in the city.”
“And he had picked up a bad habit of stalking young women from Minnesota,” I add.
“That’s what Miss Cole said,” the detective says. “But a problem came up.”
“What’s the problem?” Ike asks.
“John Summey turned up dead in the trunk of his car in a city parking lot, day before yesterday. The back of his head was caved in by a blunt instrument. There was some noticeable decomposition of the body—in other words, a bad odor led to someone making a complaint. It took us a day to run the tag number. We interviewed the distraught Mrs. Summey, who filed a missing-person report last week. Then, voilà, Anna Cole’s complaint comes up. We visit and she gives us your name, Leo King, as the last person who saw Mr. Summey alive.”
“It’s all because I opened the door for you,” Anna screams. “I’ve never opened the door to a stranger in my life. And then you stalk that man down and kill him?”
“Whoa,” Ike says. “Let’s not jump too far ahead of things here.”
“Miss Cole said you threatened the man with a gun,” Detective McGraw says to me. “It was Miss Cole’s, a twenty-two revolver. You asked for it when you went over to confront Summey.”
“Anna seemed frightened by the guy,” I explain. “She had a pistol in her hand when I rang the doorbell. She told me about the man stalking her. I borrowed the gun in case I had to bluff him, which I did.”
“Miss Cole said you kicked in his window,” the detective says. “This was corroborated when we searched the car. Could you explain why?”
“He wouldn’t roll down his window, and I wanted to get his attention. I also wanted to find out who he was.”
“So you threatened him with a gun.”
“Yes, I threatened him with a gun.”
“Leo, you dumb, dumb-ass white boy.” Ike sighs.
“Then you stole his wallet? And his sunglasses?”
“I confiscated his wallet hoping that he would leave Miss Cole alone,” I say.
“You succeeded,” Mr. McGraw says. “And the last time he was seen alive, you were aiming a gun at his face.”
“Yes, I was, but Mr. Summey was seen by me and Miss Cole racing up Union Street at a high speed, very much alive.”
“Actually, we think that Mr. Summey might have been dead at that particular moment in time, Mr. King,” the detective says. “According to our time line, Mr. Summey may have already been killed and stuffed in that trunk. Could you give a description of the man driving that car?”
“White man, six feet tall. Black hair,” I say.
“Could the hair have been dyed?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a hair colorist,” I say. “It was a wig. A toupee. A cheap one.”
“Don’t be smart-mouthed, Toad,” Ike says sharply. “The man deserves serious answers.”
“I’m sorry, Detective McGraw,” I say. “I didn’t get a good look at the man.”
“How old would you say he was?”
“He looked like an older man trying to pretend he was much younger. He had deep brown eyes. Bushy eyebrows. He was a powerfully built man. But he had seen better days.”
“Mr. Summey was born in New Delhi, India. He was on a student visa when he married Isabel Summey. He changed his name legally from Patel to Summey to sound more American. He was five feet seven inches tall and weighed a hundred forty pounds.”
“Not the same guy I met,” I say emphatically.
“The driver’s license has been doctored. We think that photo is the murderer.” He passes me a copy of the license and I study the photograph I gave only a cursory glance during the incident on Union Street.
“I can’t tell if it’s the same guy or not. I just got a brief look at him, then sent him on his way.”
Detective McGraw hands me another picture, this one of a small-boned Indian man. “That’s a recent photograph of Mr. John Summey, formerly Anjit Patel.”
“Not the guy driving the car,” I say. “Not even close.”
“How long ago did you notice the man following you, Miss Cole?” asks Detective McGraw.
“Two days. He followed me to work on Thursday. I noticed him while I was waiting for the bus. Then I was shocked to see him when I got off near my office in the financial district. He was waiting when I got back home. Then, the same thing on Friday. He would leave for the night, but was there when I woke up the next morning. Just parked, waiting. I’d called the cops and reported it on Friday. Then Leo rang the doorbell the next day.”
“But he never approached you or threatened you?” the detective asks. “Am I correct in assuming he never spoke to you or accosted you? Could he have been following someone else from your neighborhood?”
“He was staring at me. I was the one he was after,” Anna says, trembling with conviction.
I tell the detective, “When I went out to take down his license plate number and tried to confront him, he lay down on the floorboards. Unless he spilled some peanuts, it sure looked like he was hiding from someone.”
“Do you have a license for the pistol you used, Mr. King?” the man asks.
“I borrowed the pistol from Miss Cole,” I say.
“It was a gift from my dad,” Anna says. “He didn’t give me a license. I don’t own any ammunition.”
“Could either of you pick this man out of a police lineup?” Detective McGraw asks.
“No,” Anna and I answer at the same time.
“If you see the man again, will you report it to me immediately?” He hands us each a card and also gives one to Ike. Before he leaves, Detective McGraw asks me, “Do you still have those sunglasses?”
“I think I do. Let me run down and check. I tossed them into a drawer on my bedside table.”
McGraw says, “Let me go with you. It may have a good set of this guy’s fingerprints.”
In my catacomb of a bedroom, I turn on the light switch and am astonished to find my room torn apart. Before I can go on to assess the damage, Detective McGraw stops me with a hand squeezing my shoulder. He pushes me back outside my room, then enters the room with caution. He takes out his notebook and writes several things, then asks me, “Is that the table where you put the sunglasses?”
The table is smashed and the drawer is lying on the bed, which a knife has slashed clean through. In a mansion filled with Picassos, Monets, and Mirós, overstocked with silver services and candelabra and movable antiques, priceless even on the black market, it is a surprise to find the most modest room in the house vandalized.
“He came to find those sunglasses,” the detective says. “How did he know you were staying at this house?”
“I don’t have a clue. Hell, the Herb Caen article, maybe.”
“I’m going to tape this door shut. I’ll have the boys from the lab come out here tomorrow to take a look-see. I don’t like this. I’m going to look in the bathroom. Does anyone use it but you?”
“No, sir.”
“My name is Tom. No need
to call me ‘sir.’” He takes out a handker chief and pushes against the half-opened bathroom door. I can see the contents of my shaving kit strewn everywhere.
“Could you come in here, Leo?” Detective McGraw asks. “Please do not touch or disturb anything. But explain this to me if you can.”
It angers me to see the contents of every vial of medicine I own spread across the floor. The intruder has emptied my shaving cream into the sink and broken my bottle of aftershave lotion and squeezed out the last worming loop of my toothpaste. The bathroom mirror covering the medicine cabinet is open wide and the fancy contents that the producer left for guests have been flung. But the disturbing nature of this visitation does not overwhelm me until McGraw shuts the mirror and I see the flyer notifying San Francisco of the disappearance of Trevor Poe. It is the drawing that freezes my cells in all the dread of memory and history, in the secret mythology that forms the grotesque substrata that lies at the center of this search that has just turned deadly.
“Can we get police protection at this house,” I ask, “starting tonight?”
“If there’s a good reason,” Detective McGraw says.
“Could we get Sheba and Ike and Niles in here,” I ask. “None of the other women, please.”
Ike and Niles arrive first. I hear Sheba protesting as she is led by the arm by Tom McGraw. “What’s up, Toad?” Niles asks.
“Who the hell did this to your room?” Ike adds.
I can hear Sheba at her most put-upon as she enters. The violation of the bedroom shocks her, but she almost falls to her knees when she sees the fluttering piece of paper with her brother’s photograph taped to the bathroom mirror.
In bright red fingernail polish, someone has drawn the image of a smiley face. Sliding out of the left eye is a tear rolling down the featureless cheek.
“Jesus Christ,” Ike says.
“Holy shit,” Niles gasps. “What does that mean?”
I say, “Sheba, your dad’s still alive. He was the guy in the car.”
The following day, Ike takes command of our embattled unit, now exiled and afraid. By sunrise there is a San Francisco cop patrolling the front of the house like a Praetorian guard. The intruder entered through the backyard fence, which the lifeless body of a poisoned Rottweiler proves. The police find no fingerprints, no hair follicles, and no evidence of forced entry. They discover a single footprint of a size 11 New Balance running shoe on the lower terrace. For two hours, they question Sheba and hear the details of a tumultuous family history that includes every essential piece of the puzzle we had all been trying to solve through the years. All of us had known something; none of us had known everything.
I pour Sheba a cup of black coffee when she joins us for breakfast. Tension shimmers in the sunless fog-bound air. It is cold in the city, which seems to have no real attachment to or belief in summertime. A disputatious silence grips all of us. It seems like a corporal act of mercy when Ike takes charge and draws up a plan.
“Last night changes everything, Sheba,” Ike says. “You know that better than anybody.”
“I wouldn’t put any of you in danger,” Sheba tells us. “I can only hope you believe that.”
Molly is the most visibly shaken of all of us. She has not once mentioned our evening together, nor has she made any effort to speak privately to me, or so much as touch my hand. Her cool avoidance is difficult to understand, as Molly isn’t a cold woman. She is caring, devoted, loving, and loyal, and it has only gradually dawned on me, these last few days in California, that she is also a compartmental kind of woman. She has a drawer for family, a drawer for friends, a drawer for house repairs, and a drawer for Leo, her faithful servant and devoted lover. I think her silence comes from the fact that she hasn’t yet decided what to do with the Chad drawer: Throw it out? Reorganize? The uncertainty of it all seems to have paralyzed her, and the reappearance of Mr. Poe has only added to that feeling of creeping chaos.
It is clear that her enthusiasm for the trip has considerably waned, and her voice is sharp when she tells Sheba, “Coming out here to find Trevor was a lark. It was a pleasure. It gave us all a chance to prove something to one another, to have an adventure together. You didn’t say a thing about our dying in the process.”
“I thought my old man was dead,” Sheba says.
“We’ve got kids to think about, Sheba.” Fraser states it in her most matter-of-fact manner.
“Then all of you get the fuck out of here and I’ll find my goddamn brother by myself.” Sheba seems to scream it out of a despondency that comes from some dark place inside her.
“I’d like to suggest a plan of action,” Ike says. “I think the risk is minimal. Betty and I worked this out last night.”
Betty adds, “It’s not perfect, but it’s a plan.”
Ike says, “Let’s give it till Sunday. That’ll mean we’ve been out here for over two weeks. We’ve busted our asses. We’ve put ads in the newspaper, circulars all over the city, got a column out of Herb Caen. Sheba’s been interviewed by every radio and television show in the city. All of the gay newspapers have covered why we’re out here. We’ve given it our best shot.”
“I was with Fraser—ready to get on a flight this morning,” Betty says. “But Ike’s plan seems better. He always keeps a cool head.”
“He’s not a mother,” Molly says. “Neither is Sheba. And Leo is not a father. I’d rather OD on heroin than let Chad and that Brazilian twat raise my children.”
“Don’t forget that Chad happens to be my brother,” Fraser says. “He loves those kids as much as you do.”
“We don’t need a catfight,” Niles says, trying to defuse the situation. “We got problems enough.”
“I saw you sneaking up from the basement the other night,” Fraser says to Molly. “I was using the hall bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Niles. I guess you and Leo were discussing the need for economic reform in Sri Lanka?”
“I warmed up a cup of milk in the microwave.” Molly’s lie lacks conviction. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You smelled a lot like sex to me,” Fraser says.
The whole room gasps. I have never known such words to come out of Fraser’s mouth; if I had not heard them with my own ears I wouldn’t have believed it. By her expression I can tell she has even shocked herself.
“So the Rutledge family closes ranks,” Molly says. “Little Chad does whatever he wants, and Molly and the kids have to hold their tongues and smile for the camera while the house burns down.”
“Apologize to Molly,” Niles says to Fraser, his blue eyes glittering.
“I have nothing to apologize for,” she replies. “You’d have to be blind not to see what she and Leo are up to. And I didn’t come out here to make orphans out of my kids.”
“What do you have against orphans?” Niles asks his wife. Now the room seems to be spinning out of control, a molecular planet freed from its own minimalist laws of gravity.
“Nothing at all, darling.” Fraser is gaining a measure of control over herself. “It’s just not the fate I choose for our children, no matter how character-building it might seem to you.”
“I’ve never thought of it like that,” Niles says. “It was the most terrifying thing in the world. I woke up scared every day. I went to school scared, and so did my sister. It ruined her whole life. Your loving me saved my life, Fraser. My sister got hurt so bad that even Leo’s love couldn’t come close to touching her heart. So Leo ruined his life by loving someone who couldn’t be fixed. But as scared as I was, and as scared as Starla was, I don’t think that either of us were scared like Sheba and Trevor were. I didn’t have much of a daddy, and that was a bad thing. But they had one who wanted to terrify them and hunt them down through the years. I don’t know the whole story, Sheba, not by a long shot. But I know it’s a bad story, a real bad story.”
Ike stands up, his voice peremptory yet calming. “Here’s the plan that works for Betty and me. We promised Open Hand we’d deliver food to those hotels un
til Sunday. But we’re changing the way we do things now. Betty and I won’t be making deliveries. We’ll play cops instead. We’ll all move together, one hotel at a time. The San Francisco cops will guard this house day and night. We’ll finish this job up, and we’ll do it right. Toad, will you fix dinner tonight?”
“Be happy to.”
“We’ll eat all our meals inside with shades drawn and curtains pulled. No more swimming, no more hot tubs.”
“What about my honeymoon with Leo?” Molly asks.
“Shut up, Molly,” Ike commands.
“I got scared,” Fraser explains. “I ran my mouth.”
“For the first time in your life you sounded mean, Fraser,” Niles says, staring at his wife, who refuses to encounter his gaze. “My God, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you sounded like a goddamn orphan, the scum of the Western world.”
“That’s not fair, Niles,” Molly says, surprising everyone in the room, but especially Fraser. “She just told you she was afraid. We can all be forgiven that we’re scared.”
Sheba unexpectedly supports her, hugging her knees in a chair at the periphery of the room. “My dad is perfectly capable of killing us all,” she says. “I caused all this; I can repair all the damage. I swear I can.”
“First we’ve got a job to do,” Betty says. “We’ve got to deliver meals to these poor guys. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“I don’t feel like moving a muscle,” Sheba says. “I feel like staying in my bed, getting drunk, and watching old movies I’ve made. Maybe it’ll help me forget that my old man, who I thought was dead, is a psycho ax murderer who knows my address.”
Ike says, “Feed us good, Leo, your fanciest shit. But we need to get all this stuff between us cleared up. Sheba, you get yourself ready, girl. Tonight, every one of us in this room is going to know the whole goddamn story, from A to Z. You came into our lives like gangbusters, about twenty years ago. None of us knows where you came from or why you showed up in the house across the street from Leo. We don’t know anything about your mama except she was born to cause trouble. We’ve got to know everything. You can’t hide anything from us, because this guy has scared all of us before. Your daddy is Count Dracula and Cyclops and Frankenstein and Charles Manson to us, yet I don’t think any of us would know him if he walked into this room. I don’t know his name. I don’t even know your daddy’s name.”