The Man Who Risked His Partner

  Mrs. Haskell’s room was on the second floor, which was also the top floor. After the cold outside, the carpet in the halls felt as thick as quicksand and the air seemed warm enough to start fungus growing in my underwear. A drink sounded like a better idea all the time.

  But I usually felt that way when Ginny wasn’t with me. The trick was to keep my priorities straight. The reason Ginny wasn’t with me. Mrs. Haskell’s voice over the phone. Get on with it, Axbrewder.

  When I reached the right door, I raised my fist and knocked. I was sweating.

  She answered the door the same way she’d answered the phone—right away.

  She was a small blond woman about my age, one of those attractive middle-aged women who can’t seem to escape looking vaguely artificial. She had the kind of hair color that comes from beauty salons, and the kind of tan that comes from sunlamps, and the kind of trim figure that comes from Nautilus machines. And the way she dressed only made it worse. At one in the afternoon she still wore a long chiffon nightgown with a pink satin robe over it. In one hand, she held a glass that smelled like heaven.

  But the unsteadiness in her pale eyes wasn’t caused by drink. “Mr. Axbrewder?” she asked. “Has anything happened to my husband?”

  For a few seconds the smell of good scotch—J&B?—made my head swim. But I got it under control. I couldn’t stand the way she looked at me. Like she’d used up all her courage just asking that one question.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “May I come in?”

  A moment passed while she stared at the front of my coat and blinked her eyes. Then she said, “Excuse me. I can’t see very well. I don’t have my contacts in.” She stepped aside and held the door for me. “Would you like a drink?”

  I started to shake my head before I realized that she really couldn’t see me that clearly. “No, thanks,” I said as she closed the door. “Mrs. Haskell, I don’t want to scare you”—not any worse than she was scared already—“but until we get this mess cleared up it would be a good idea not to let anyone in here unless you know who they are.”

  The drink in her hand wasn’t the first one she’d had, and she wasn’t dressed to face the day, and she hadn’t even taken the trouble to put her contacts in, but she went right to the point. “Then he really is in danger?”

  I couldn’t tell which answer she wanted, yes or no. “He says he is. Until we learn anything different, we’ll go on that assumption. Why would he lie?”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, still looking at me without seeing me. I took a chair from in front of the vanity. It was too small for me, but I made do with it.

  The room wasn’t one of the Regency’s more moderate accommodations. It had flowered wallpaper that matched the bedspread and brass fixtures that matched the bedstead. The bed itself looked big enough for a game of volleyball. And the liquor cabinet was so well stocked that it made my throat ache. Reg Haskell didn’t pay for rooms like this on a chief accountant’s salary.

  His wife finished her drink, leaned one arm on the bedstead for support, and said, “To get me out of the house.”

  Sometimes it pays to be slow on the uptake. “Is that what he told you?” I asked obtusely.

  “No,” she said as if it hadn’t been a stupid question. “He told me some men want to hurt him. He told me to leave so I wouldn’t be in danger—so those men wouldn’t try to get at him through me.”

  So far, so good. “Did he happen to say why anyone would want to hurt him?”

  She nodded. “He said he beat those men to an investment they really wanted. They needed it to stay in business. It was too complicated to explain. But they’re thugs, and until they calmed down or gave up they would want to hurt him.”

  Well, well, I thought. One story for the bodyguards, another for the wife. It might not mean anything. Maybe Haskell was just ashamed to let his wife know how stupid he’d been. But it was sure as hell worth thinking about.

  Not right then, however. I didn’t want to lose the thread. As blandly as possible, so as not to sound threatening or judgmental, I asked, “You don’t believe him?”

  She rested her chin on the arm braced on the bedstead. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I know anything about him anymore.” She sighed. “He’s been making these investments for four or five years. He’s good at it.” She didn’t need to tell me that. All I had to do was look around. “But nobody’s ever wanted to hurt him for it.”

  “Has he ever told you anything about these investments?” Carefully.

  “No. I don’t understand things like that.” She gave me a lonely smile. “I don’t even understand life insurance.”

  I smiled back at her. “Nobody understands life insurance.”

  But she couldn’t see my smile. And she obviously didn’t care whether God Himself understood life insurance. I went back to my questions.

  “The fact that he hasn’t been threatened before—is that what makes you think he might not be telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I used to be sure. That was why I called you. Fistoulari Investigations. He’s changed so much.”

  As she talked, I began to wonder just how much she’d had to drink.

  “Do you think I’m attractive, Mr. Axbrewder?” she asked without any warning. But I didn’t have to answer. She wasn’t looking at me. “I ought to be,” she went on. “I work at it. But he didn’t change because of me. I started working at it because I saw him change and it scared me. I knew I was going to lose him.

  “It had to be another woman. What else could make him so different?”

  I did my level best to fade into the wallpaper. I wanted her to feel like she was just talking to herself. “How was he different?”

  “He became charming,” she said as if that explained everything.

  Luckily she didn’t stop. “When we met—he was studying accounting, and I was one of the department secretaries—he was just an ordinary guy. Nice and conscientious and a little dull. I thought I was lucky to get him. Then he went to work for the bank, and he didn’t set the world on fire, but it was a good job, and he was moving up slowly. If he’d had more ambition, he would’ve moved faster. But I didn’t care about that. I liked us the way we were. It didn’t seem to bother him when I gained a little weight.

  “But then he had to go away for a business trip one weekend and when he came back he was excited. More excited than I’d ever seen. He said he’d gotten involved in some kind of investment and made a lot of money. I thought that was nice. I liked seeing him excited. It made him—I don’t know how to describe it. It made him sparkle. It seemed to make him handsomer. And we’d never had a lot of money.

  “A few months later he took another trip and came back with even more money, and he looked even more excited. He treated me like a queen, and we bought new clothes, and I could see the way other women started to look at him, and I was pleased and proud.

  “But then he took another trip. And another one. And another one. And the way he glowed and laughed and teased got stronger and stronger. One day I looked at the two of us in a mirror. He looked so good it almost broke my heart—and I looked like I already had too many grandchildren.”

  Abruptly, she got off the bed, went to the liquor cabinet, and poured herself another glass of scotch. I watched her with my tongue hanging out, but I didn’t say anything.

  “We bought a new house.” Back at the bed, she piled the pillows against the brass frame and sat there, leaning back. She probably couldn’t see me at all from that distance. “He started getting more promotions. He still treated me like a queen. I could buy anything I wanted. Do anything I wanted. He seemed to spend a lot of time courting me.

  “But it wasn’t any good anymore. The investments were just an excuse. Why did he have to go away to do them? Why couldn’t he do them at home? But he was away practically every weekend. All I had to do was look in the mirror, and I knew he was involved with another woman. He was too excited and alive for anything else.
How could any other woman resist him?

  “So I started to work at making myself more attractive. What else could I do? I wanted to win him back. That kept me going for a while. But I guess I’m not very smart.” Her bitterness was all for herself. None of it spilled over onto irresistible Reg. “I finally figured out that I wouldn’t know the difference even if I did win him back. There was nothing wrong with the way he treated me. It couldn’t get any better. Except for the trips—

  “And I couldn’t ask him to give them up. I couldn’t ask him if he was having an affair. If I did, he might divorce me. I couldn’t stand that. Maybe I’d lost him, but at least he wasn’t gone. Does that make any sense? He was still there. His eyes still sparkled when he looked at me. I didn’t dare risk—

  “But then he did something he’d never done before. He said some men wanted to hurt him, and he told me to get out of the house. What was I supposed to believe? I’ve never heard of people beating each other up over investments. I thought he wanted me out of the house so he could have that other woman visit him.

  “That’s why I called you. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to find out the truth. Without losing him. I didn’t want to risk giving him a reason to divorce me.

  “But Ms. Fistoulari said you don’t do that kind of work. And then you called and said something had come up. Suddenly I thought something had happened to him, he was telling the truth and those men hurt him and I didn’t even know where he was so I could go to him. I’ve been distrusting him all these years for nothing.” Tears ran down her cheeks and made dark stains on the pink satin of her robe. “I deserve to lose him. I deserve it.”

  Her mouth twisted, but she didn’t sob. The tears just ran and ran down her cheeks.

  Right there I decided that Reg Haskell was a shit.

  Unfortunately, the insight didn’t make my position any easier. I’d never taken seriously the idea that Sara Haskell had hired goons to lean on her husband. If that was what she had in mind, she never would’ve called Ginny in the first place. But I still had to do my job. And there were at least one too many coincidences running around in this case for my peace of mind.

  Quietly, trying to sound natural and normal, I asked, “Mrs. Haskell, why did you call us? I mean, us personally. Why Fistoulari Investigations instead of some other agency?” I watched her closely. “Lawrence Smithsonian and Associates, for example?”

  She didn’t react to the name. With an aimless shrug, she said, “I don’t know anything about detectives. I just looked in the yellow pages.” Her head lolled on the pillows behind her, but we both knew that she wasn’t going to get any rest. “Did you know,” she said, “that Ms. Fistoulari is the only woman in the yellow pages? The only woman detective. I wanted a woman. I thought she’d understand.”

  But now she didn’t care, that was obvious. I got to my feet. She needed help, or at least some kind of comfort, but there were too many things I couldn’t say to her. I couldn’t tell her that I thought her husband actually was screwing around. And I couldn’t tell her that I thought he was in real danger.

  But she looked so lost, I didn’t have the heart for the inane reassurance I’d given Eunice Wint. Instead I just said softly, “Thanks for your time. We’ll let you know when we find out what’s going on.”

  In response she murmured, “Thank you,” without seeing me and maybe without understanding what I’d said. She may not have noticed when I let myself out of the room.

  She hadn’t once asked me what I was doing there—what business I had asking questions about her husband. She was that lonely.

  6

  On my way back to the car, I wondered if maybe Haskell hired us just to make his wife believe he wasn’t cheating on her. That sounded Byzantine enough for an accountant, someone who lived by the tricks you can do with numbers. In which case, Ginny and I were completely wasting our time. But I couldn’t think of any reason why Haskell needed his wife that badly. His position in the bank didn’t depend on her. And she didn’t have anything to do with his so-called investments.

  It was too many for me. Ginny was better at sorting out things like this than I was. She was our expert on sifting the facts. I was the one who made intuitive leaps. And my intuition wasn’t saying much. It had probably gone south for the winter.

  So I pushed the whole mess out of my mind and got busy with other things. After I persuaded the Buick to start, I hauled it up onto the beltway and then let it slide down the long slope toward the Flat River and the Valley.

  I was going to talk to Pablo Santiago’s parents.

  Like any normal acquaintance of the family, I hoped they would tell me that he was home safe and sound and maybe even a little bit reformed—chastened by experience, as they say. But I didn’t believe it. The disappearance of a kid who ran numbers hardly a day before the numbers boss turned up dead was more coincidence than I could swallow.

  The last time I’d seen Pablo, he’d been hard at work, doing what numbers runners do, traveling the streets either collecting bets or paying out winnings, depending on the day of the week. Saturday night the winners got paid. In my best Stern Uncle manner, I’d told him, A man does not run to do the bidding of those who are themselves not men enough to do their own running. Which was probably pretty funny, coming from me—even in Spanish. And you can’t change the world by giving it stern advice. Choosing between a quick buck and the advice of an oversized drunk, even a saint wouldn’t hesitate. So kids get caught up in it. After a few quick bucks, they become loyal to el Señor and all the opportunities he offers. In Pablo’s case, I felt vaguely responsible.

  For that reason, I took time I should’ve spent doing legwork for Ginny to visit Rudolfo and Tatianna Santiago.

  Their tiendita—the sign out front said “Grocery” in chipped gray paint—was down in the old part of town, at least half an hour and two entirely different worlds away from the Regency Hotel. It was distinct from what Puerta del Sol calls “Old Town,” where most of the buildings aren’t any older than I am, even if they are quaint as all hell, and the tourists are thick as flies on manure. Except in this case it’s the manure that eats the flies. Instead, the old part of town is as close as you can get to a barrio built out of three-hundred-year-old adobe.

  A century or so ago, it was the actual center of the city, but now it’s just a warren of dirty bars and fleabag rooming houses, abandoned buildings, businesses slowly crumbling to ruin, defeated old chapels where women go in the mornings to pray that their men won’t drink at night, sweat-holes where you can get into any kind of trouble your heart desires, and one cheap little park over on Tin Street.

  That’s just one more item on my long list of grudges against the city fathers. Everywhere you go in Puerta del Sol, the streets have names like Hidalgo and Paseo Grande and Mesa Verde—except in some of the newer developments, where the names are so cute they’ll give you diabetes. But in the old part of town, streets with three hundred years of history are called Tin or Coal or Seventh. And they’re crowded to the teeth with Chicanos, Mestizos, Indians, and bums of every description who grub their lives away or sell their souls for sums of money most Anglos think of as loose change.

  Some days it was the only part of town I understood.

  It was where I did my drinking.

  The Buick made good time getting there. It liked going downhill. And I didn’t have to worry about where to park it. Your average Mercedes has a street life of half an hour in the old part of town, but the Buick looked like it belonged. I pulled up in front of the Santiagos’ store and left my wheels there.

  Sidewalks were few and far between here, but on this block most of the buildings had low porches that served the same function. A winter wind was blowing—not hard, but full of implied bitterness—and dust and candy wrappers and cigarette butts eddied halfheartedly past my shoes. The sky wasn’t clear anymore. It’d turned the dead gray-white color of ashes. The temperature would start dropping soon.

  The Santiagos’ tiendita was o
ne of those places that never looks clean even when it is. The stains were too deeply ingrained, and the adobes of the floor didn’t stand up well to hard use. The whole store was only a little bigger than Ginny’s office, its shelves packed halfway to the ceiling. In spite of that, the merchandise was hard to see. The Santiagos kept the lights dim to save on electricity.

  Both of them were there. The store needed them, and they couldn’t close on a Monday. Their customers would suffer. Today probably a couple of hundred black-shawled grandmothers would come in to buy all the nickel-and-dime staples they could carry home in their old arms, to replace what they used for Sunday’s cooking. If the grocery closed on Monday, those women would have to carry twice as much on Tuesday.

  Rudolfo and Tatianna were both short—at least compared to me. She was so plump that the top of the apron tied around her waist disappeared into the folds of her body. She had a round face, and her coarse black hair with its white speckles was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck. But under her fat she had the muscles of a stevedore. I’d seen how she threw cases of canned beans around the store.

  By contrast, her husband was thin. You could see the bones of his forearms shift under the leathered skin when he moved his hands. His eyes were always downcast with habitual politeness. But his mustache was assertive enough to tell anyone that polite wasn’t the same thing as meek. He’d used so much wax that it was in danger of catching fire every time he lit a cigarette.

  They both had the kind of faces Chicanos develop in an Anglo world, sad-eyed and weary, capable of almost any amount of sorrow. Under other circumstances, they might’ve been glad to see me. When faces like theirs smile, it’s as good as a sunrise. This time they made the effort, but they couldn’t pull it off.