After turning down the bed and making a backrest of four plump pillows, Krait discovered unwashed laundry in a basket in her closet. She had not been able to catch up with chores before leaving for New York.
In the dirty laundry, he turned up one stretch bra without hard couplings, two T-shirts, and three pair of panties. He draped these over the top pillow on his stack, against which he would lean while enjoying his tea, and on which he would eventually rest his face when the time came to sleep.
The sole reading material in the widow’s bedroom consisted of magazines that Krait found unappealing. He remembered seeing a few shelves of books in her den, and in a thrilling silken shimmer, he went downstairs to review them.
Evidently, Teresa was not a reader. Most of the volumes in her den fell into the genres of pop psychology, self-help, spiritual search, and medical advice. Krait found them all jejune.
The only books of interest were what, judging by the spines, appeared to be six novels. The titles intrigued him: Despair, The Hopeless and the Dead, Heartworm, Rotten…
The title Relentless Cancer particularly appealed to Krait. He slipped the book off the shelf.
The author’s name, Toni Zero, had a nice nihilistic flair to it. Clearly, it was a pseudonym, and it seemed to say to the reader You are a fool if you pay for this, but I’m sure you will.
The cover illustration struck him as sophisticated, brutal, and bleak. It promised a blistering portrayal of humanity as worthless, duplicitous ruck.
When he turned the book over to look at the back jacket, the author’s photo rocked him. Toni Zero was Linda Paquette.
Forty-Three
As Tim braked to a stop in an empty shopping-mall parking lot, more than an hour before stores opened, Linda called 411 for the number to Santiago Jalisco, the restaurant owned by Pete Santo’s cousin, alias Shrek.
When she used Tim’s name, the receptionist at once sent her through to Santiago Santo in his kitchen office, but in fact Pete took the call. He was surprised to hear her voice instead of Tim’s.
“I’ll put you on speakerphone,” she said.
“Hey, wait, I gotta know.”
“Know what?”
“What do you think?”
“Think what?”
“Of him. What do you think of him?”
“Why’s that your business?”
“It’s not, you’re right, but I’m dyin’ to know.”
Tim caught her attention, raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“I think,” she told Pete, “he’s got a lovely head.”
“Lovely? We can’t be talking about the same sand dog.”
“Sand dog. What’s that mean, anyway?”
“Speakerphone,” Tim said impatiently. “Speakerphone.”
She obliged, and told Pete, “You’re public now.”
Tim said, “Maybe I see why there’s nothing left of your marriage except a stuffed marlin.”
“Maybe what I’ve got is a dead fish and a shy dog, but neither one of them ever nags me.”
“So that’s what you’ve got, you poor schlump, but what do you have for us?”
“You remember the Cream and Sugar Coffeehouse in Laguna?”
“Drawing a blank,” Tim said.
“I know it. Knew it,” Linda said. “I used to go there. It was like three blocks from my house. They had a nice patio.”
“Terrific apple cake,” Pete said.
“With the almonds.”
“My mouth’s watering. Anyway, early one morning a year and a half ago,” Pete said, “just before Cream and Sugar would have been opening for business, the place burned to the ground.”
“An inferno,” Linda recalled.
“Fire marshal thinks accelerants were used, but they weren’t the usual crap, mondo sophisticated, hard to get a chemical profile on them.”
Tim said, “Yeah, I got it now. Never went there. Half remember driving past it.”
“When they put out the fire,” Pete said, “they found four badly burned bodies.”
“Charlie Wen-ching, he was the owner,” Linda said. “He was the sweetest man, never forgot a name, treated all his regular customers like family.”
“Real name, Chou Wen-ching,” Pete said, “but he used Charlie for more than thirty years. Immigrated from Taiwan. Smart businessman, good man.”
“Two of the other bodies were his sons,” Linda said.
“Michael and Joseph. Family business. The fourth victim was a niece, Valerie.”
Although they were surrounded by acres of empty blacktop, Tim continuously surveyed the parking lot, checked the mirrors.
Barely a breeze stirred at ground level, but a high-altitude wind drove a ragged fleet of clouds eastward, and the shadows of ghost galleons sailed across the pavement.
Pete said, “They all died in the walk-in cooler where the milk and pastries were stored. Coroner later determined they’d been shot to death before being set afire.”
“This is why I don’t follow the news,” Tim said. “This is why I just want to build some wall each day.”
“It’s a business district, a populated area, but no one heard any gunfire.”
“He’s a pro,” Tim said. “He has the right equipment.”
“Two people did, however, see someone leave the Cream and Sugar about ten minutes before it went up in flames. He crossed the highway to a motel directly opposite the coffeehouse, turned in his room key, and drove away. He had stayed there overnight, in Room 14. His name was Roy Kutter.”
“Those initials,” Linda said. “One of Kravet’s aliases.”
“I’ve got a printout of his driver’s license. San Francisco address. The same smiley-faced prick.”
Tim said, “But if someone saw him—”
“Forty-eight hours, he was a person of interest. Police wanted to talk to him. So they find him, and he says the witnesses have it wrong. Says he didn’t leave the Cream and Sugar, didn’t come out of it, because he never got into it. Says he went over there to get some take-out coffee, but they weren’t open yet, the door was locked. He couldn’t wait another twenty minutes till they started serving, he had to get to an important appointment.”
“What appointment? What’s his business?” Tim asked.
“Crisis management.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Who knows. He supposedly worked for some federal agency.”
“Which one?”
“It’s always vague in the news stories.”
“But he looked credible?” Linda asked. “They set him loose, clean?”
“Here’s where I started reading between the lines of the news stories,” Pete said. “You can tell that the detective on it, also the chief, they wanted to lean on this Kutter some, even find a way to hold him.”
“So why didn’t they?”
“This is maybe reading too deep between the lines, but I get the feeling someone heavy leaned hard on them when they tried to lean on Kutter.”
“Like someone leaned on Hitch Lombard,” Tim said.
“Just like. Pretty soon, Roy Kutter wasn’t a person of interest anymore.”
A scattering of cars entered the vast lot, parked in different rows. The people who got out of them and walked to the mall might have been store employees, perhaps managers, coming in an hour ahead of the public. None of them seemed to have any interest in the Honda.
“So,” Linda said, “why does it matter that I went there for coffee? I didn’t go there the day of the fire. I don’t think I’d been there during the week before the fire, either. Why does somebody want me dead because I used to go to the Cream and Sugar?”
From the humble kitchen of Santiago Jalisco, where surely the world seemed more ordered and sane than it did out here where Kravet was probably even now seeking Teresa’s Honda by some sorcerous means, Pete said, “Are you trying to gut-kick me for fun, girl, or do you mean that, for real, someone wants you dead?”
“Feels like maybe it’s time I tell you wh
at this is about,” Tim suggested.
“Yeah. Like maybe.”
Succinctly, Tim recounted the events at the tavern, the two instances of mistaken identity.
“Sweet Jesus, Doorman.”
“So here we are,” Tim said, “nothing to prove it happened, and now it seems even if we had video of him shooting at us, we might not get anyone to so much as wag a naughty-boy finger at him.”
“Something’s happened since,” Pete guessed.
“Yeah. A bunch of something.”
“Gonna share?”
“I’m too tired for a blow-by-blow. Let’s just say Linda and me—we earned the right to still be breathing. Truth is, I’m surprised we are.”
“I know this can’t be news. But say you get lucky and punch his ticket, it’s still not over till you also punch whoever’s ticket he’s working for.”
“I have a hunch they’ve got a steel ticket.”
“And where do we go from here?” Linda asked. “We’re two mice, and a hawk is coming, and there’s no tall grass anywhere.”
No fear strained her voice, and she appeared calm.
Tim wondered about the source and the depth of her strength.
“I got one thing more,” Pete said. “It might be something. This friend on the Laguna PD, Paco, he’s as reliable as sunrise. I talked to him half an hour ago, on the QT, felt him out about the Cream and Sugar case. I know it’s an open file, but is it active? He says no, not active. Then Paco tells me Lily Wen-ching, she’s still so crazy with grief, she thinks it’s not done yet. She thinks whoever whacked her family is still taking care of whatever business those killings were part of.”
“Lily is Charlie’s wife,” Linda told Tim. “His widow.”
“What do you mean—still taking care of business?” Tim asked.
“She’s got it in her head that some regular customers of Cream and Sugar have died suspiciously over the past year and a half, since the fire.”
Linda hugged herself and shivered, as if a quirk in time had folded January into May.
“Died suspiciously?” Tim asked. “Who?”
“Paco didn’t say, and I didn’t want to push so hard his antenna popped up. What’s totally clear is, they don’t take Lily seriously. After everything the poor woman has lost, it’s easy to believe the crazy-with-grief angle. But what you might want to do is talk to her.”
“Soon,” Linda agreed. “I know where the family lived. If she’s still in the same house.”
“Paco says she is. She can’t let go of anything. Like if she holds on stubborn enough, she can bring them back.”
Tim saw in those expressive green eyes the fullest understanding of the obstinate sorrow that Pete had just described.
“Give me your new cell number,” Pete said. “I’m going right out and buy a disposable of my own. I’ll get back to you. Don’t call here again. I shouldn’t have involved Santiago, not even this much.”
Tim said, “I don’t see what more you can do for us.”
“If I can’t do a lot more than what I’ve done so far, then I’m a sorry-ass sonofabitch. Let me have your new number.”
Linda gave it to him.
“And one more thing you need to know, though you probably know it already.”
“What?” Tim asked.
“I’m not talking to you, Doorman. I’m talking to the pretty one. Are you listening, pretty one?”
“With both ears, holy one.”
“You probably know this already, but you couldn’t ever be in better hands than the hands you’re in right now.”
Meeting Tim’s eyes, Linda said to Pete, “I’ve known that since he walked into my house last night and said he didn’t understand modern art.”
“I guess you had to be there,” Pete said.
“The thing is,” she explained, “he could have said something else or nothing at all, and I’d still have known I was safe.”
Forty-Four
Sitting up in bed, reading Toni Zero’s Relentless Cancer, Krait soon forgot his green tea and biscuits.
Her narrative drive was strong, her prose luminous and assured. She understood the necessity of understatement but also the value of hyperbole.
Most of all, he liked the seductive despair, the deeply settled hopelessness, the corrupting bitterness that gave no quarter to any optimist who might wish to debate this dark worldview.
From Zero’s book, the apprentice demon Wormwood could have learned much about turning innocent souls away from the light. And even old Screwtape himself might have picked up a trick or two.
Krait also approved of her anger. The anger remained always subordinate to despair, but she served it up in small doses that were enthrallingly vicious and vindictive.
For a while, he thought she might be the writer of the century, or at least that she would become his favorite above all others.
Gradually, however, she revealed a frustration with the willful ignorance that is an abiding human trait, an indignation at the cruelty that people visit upon one another. She might see the world as hopeless, but she believed it did not have to remain that way.
Worse, she yearned for a world in which promises were kept, in which trust was not betrayed, in which honor mattered, and in which courage inspired courage. Because of this, she finally forfeited Krait’s adoration.
Clearly, the despair on the page was not what she sincerely felt, but was what rough experience or a good professor had convinced her that she ought to feel. By contrast, the moments of anger burning in the book were real, but they were neither intense enough nor numerous enough for Krait’s taste.
Touring Paquette’s house the previous evening, he had reviewed the shelves of books in her living room, but he had not seen her Toni Zero novels. The fact that she had consigned them to a closet or had boxed them in the attic suggested that she might have recognized her own lack of conviction in the writing.
Indeed, the ’39 Ford coupe, her collection of novels by other writers, and her decor suggested an annoyingly hopeful heart.
He took her book into the bathroom and dropped it in the toilet. He emptied his bladder. He did not flush, but closed the lid to let the novel marinate.
This act did not harmonize with his penchant for cleanliness, but it was necessary.
In bed again, he found that the thermos had kept the tea warm. The biscuits were tasty.
When he settled down for a two-or three-hour nap, he kept the Glock under the covers with him, and he held the cell phone loosely in his hand.
He would wake in the precise position in which he had gone to sleep, and the phone would remain in his hand. He never dreamed and he was never restless in his slumber. He truly did sleep like the dead.
Forty-Five
While Linda drove the Honda, Tim plugged his new electric razor in the cigarette lighter, and shaved without benefit of a mirror.
When he finished, he said, “I just can’t stand that feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“Stubble, the way it itches. Clothes so full of sweat and stink you feel you’re in a pot of boiling cabbage—that doesn’t bother me.”
“Maybe it should.”
“Lice, lips so cracked they bleed, prickly heat, that dry gray fungus, the fancy cockroaches they have—give me all that and more if you can spare me stubble itch.”
“Most guys don’t reveal their affection for dry gray fungus on the first date.”
Returning the razor to its travel case, he said, “Most first dates aren’t this long.”
“Fancy cockroaches?”
“You don’t want to know. What is Mrs. Wen-ching like?”
“A petite dynamo. She worked at Cream and Sugar like the rest of the family. She was usually there lunch to early evening. She wasn’t scheduled to work the morning it happened.”
The Wen-ching residence was a sleek Moderne-style home in the hills of Laguna, cantilevered over a canyon.
Queen palms flanked the diamond-cut slate walkway and cas
t wings of raven-feather shadows on the variegated stone.
Lily Wen-ching answered the doorbell. Fiftyish, with porcelain-smooth skin the color of aged ivory, slender, wearing black silk pants and a matching blouse with a high collar, she stood perhaps five feet tall but had a presence bigger than her weight and height explained.
Speaking before they had a chance to introduce themselves, Lily said, “Is it…Linda? Double espresso, lemon peel on the side?”
“Exactly,” Linda said. “How do you do that, especially after all this time?”
“It was our lives, and such a satisfaction to see people happy with what we provided to them.”
Her voice was mellifluous. She made even common words sound like spoken music.
“You weren’t a regular,” she said to Tim, “and even if you came once in a while, I wouldn’t forget what a giant drank. How do you like your coffee?”
“Black or espresso, or intravenously.”
Smiling at Linda, Lily Wen-ching said, “I would remember him if he had come even a few times.”
Linda said, “He leaves an impression like a sudden silent falling stone.”
“How perfectly put,” Lily said.
Linda made introductions, and then said, “Mrs. Wen-ching—”
“Lily.”
“Thank you. Lily, when I tell you why we’re here, I hope you won’t think I’m crazy. Most people would. I suspect someone is trying to kill me…because I had coffee at the Cream and Sugar.”
The widow’s eyes, as dark and clear as a fresh-brewed Jamaican blend, neither widened nor narrowed. “Yes. The possibility exists.”
Lily Wen-ching led them into a living room with a stepped ceiling one shade lighter than the glazed apricot walls.
Lustrous bronze-colored drapes were gathered at each end of a wall of windows with a view of the purple morning sea and Catalina Island and a sky wrung dry of all but a few tangled scraps of scrim.
Linda and Tim sat facing the view in dark zitan-wood armchairs with red seat cushions and peony medallions in the wide back splats.