27

LATE THAT AFTERNOON ZEE was released on bail. Hadley and I were waiting for her when she and her aunt arrived home.

“I see you want some explanations,” said Zee tiredly when she saw us sitting on the front steps.

“This isn’t the right time,” Mrs. Reyes said, unlocking the door and making a kind of sweeping movement as if to drive away flies. “Go away now, girls, can’t you see Zenaida is exhausted? She has just spent a night in jail.”

“Come on in,” said Zee. “We’ll have some tea. And a talk. I enjoyed talking to you, you know, Pam, up in the attic.”

“We didn’t come just to interrogate you, Zee,” I admitted. I was recognizing for the first time how very bad the situation was for her and how well she was taking it. She couldn’t be guilty, I knew that. I knew it. “We also wanted to ask what we could do to help.”

“Thanks,” she said, catching my hand and pressing it. “But I guess I need to tell you some things, things I didn’t tell you before.” She sat down in the living room and brushed her thick black hair with both hands. Mrs. Reyes went into the kitchen without another word.

“When did I marry Jeremy and why? Is that what you have been asking yourselves? Well, I have too, you know. For months. I knew Jeremy first from his interest with one of the Filipino groups. He was liked, at least he was accepted. No one could very well understand what he was doing with us, but he explained that he had been in the Navy in the Philippines and that was making him completely anti-Marcos. We all said okay to that. If you believe in something so much yourself you don’t need so much convincing that other people believe it too. And well, you know, this was all around the time I was quitting the nursing school and trying to switch into graphics. My English still had some problems—Jeremy offered to help me—just as a friend. I thought he was a very good kind of person in some ways. And then I was having trouble with the immigration, you know, and suddenly he says to me, I will marry you if you want to—to help you—it won’t be serious.

“I don’t know why it seemed like such a good idea. I guess I had known some other people who had done it, mostly political men who did not want to be deported, with white women. And it seemed like a permanent solution. No more forms and waiting in lines, and always being afraid of having to go back to the Philippines. This time if I went back I would be the wife of an American. I would have some rights!”

Zee laughed scornfully. “That is the state of things there, you know, no rights as a Filipino, every right as an American. I had to ask myself how I felt about Jeremy and the answer was he seemed very kind and anyway I never planned to marry anyone else—not me! So we did it, without anybody but a few people knowing. And then it was funny, I don’t know, maybe just the fact of being married made us fall in love a little bit. There is so much solemn attached to it, this marriage thing, you can’t help but feel. Ah, we were sleeping together then and Jeremy wanted me to meet his family. That was when—his family weren’t so very nice to me. And I came back feeling like I could have nothing to do with a white man again, you know? There is always some way they try to make you feel dirty…”

I almost asked her about the porn magazines and if he’d ever…but Zee looked so uncomfortable already that I didn’t push it.

“I came back from Fullerton,” she repeated, “and I fell in love with Benny for some months. Then I didn’t want to say a word, a word about being married. And later, with Ray, the same. Now Carlos, but of course he knows…Jeremy was okay about it, I was surprised. He said he understood, he wanted only to help me and be my friend…”

I didn’t believe it had been so simple. “And he never pressed you…?”

“No,” said Zee quickly. “Never like that. We were friends.”

Like what? I wondered, but said only, “And so you told him about the job at Best Printing.”

“Yes,” said Zee, embarrassed, explaining, “He didn’t have a job right then so when Kay quits, quit, I just called up and tell him.”

“But you never told us you knew him.”

“I know…it was just a funny situation. And then, pretty soon, I didn’t like him so much anyways.”

“How do you mean?” Hadley asked.

“He wasn’t always that way,” Zee burst out, “that spaced-out way. It was only something he did, maybe to make people to trust him, I don’t know. But he could be different.”

“How different? Calculating, threatening…?”

“Just different.” Zee retreated.

I said, “Jeremy started about a year ago at Best. When did the forging start?”

“Six months ago.”

“And it was his idea.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t force you?”

“No.”

“I know you did the camera work at Best, but who did the typesetting, who did the printing?”

“Some people, another place,” Zee looked panicky. “We don’t need typesetting, we just get a form and copy it. And…some people, they’ve got a little press in their garage, they can run it.”

Suddenly Zee had become guarded, distant. I hesitated to push her, but I wasn’t satisfied.

Hadley spoke up, “I don’t believe you killed him, Zee. But do you have any idea who did?”

“I’ve thought and thought,” said Zee, looking down, not at us. “But it gets so complicated. Somebody maybe whose papers were wrong—who gets caught. Maybe they killed Jeremy and make it so I’m punished.”

“But if Jeremy were informing on Filipinos in the community,” I said. “And if someone found out…”

I pulled out the newsclippings I’d found in Jeremy’s room. “Do any of these names look familiar to you?”

Zee regarded them closely. “But yes, there’s Rodrigo Villaron, and Maria Gallego too, listed as members of the student group from some years ago, they’re in San Francisco now…And Amado, that’s Benny’s brother I was telling you about—the one who was killed when he went back. Where did you find these?”

“Jeremy’s apartment.”

“I didn’t want to think it, Pam, that he could really do this to us.”

“But you did think it, on occasion.”

Zee’s voice sank low. “The questions he asked me sometimes—like personal questions about people. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know.”

“Did you know he had hundreds of dollars in his pocket when he died?”

Zee just stared at me.

“He wasn’t blackmailing anyone, was he, Zee? He wasn’t blackmailing you?”

“No!”

“Threatening to talk to the authorities about what you were doing?”

“No. No. No.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Reyes, appearing at the kitchen door without the tea we’d been promised. “That this is enough.”

“Guess you watched a lot of Perry Mason as a kid,” said Hadley as we went down Mrs. Reyes’ driveway to her truck.

“Was I that bad?”

“No, you were rather good, in fact. It just seemed hard on Zee. That style of questioning, I mean.”

“Well, we found out a few things,” I said, stung. “Do you really think I was too brutal?”

Hadley paused. “You know, she didn’t exactly admit to anything you were asking.”

“Nope. She denied everything I suggested. Very convincingly. But I’m sure now that Jeremy was informing on them and that he was probably blackmailing Zee and possibly others to keep quiet. That doesn’t mean that’s why he was murdered of course…”

“So how’re you going to find out?”

“I think we should start with Benny and Carlos tomorrow.”

“You don’t think you’re getting a little too carried away with this?”

“What do you mean? I thought you liked being a detective?”

“I do—sort of. On the other hand, have you noticed that car down the street with the two men in it, watching us?”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, breaking out in a sweat. “Let’s just act normal, get in the car and…”

We jumped into the truck like star athletes and roared off down the street. The car stayed parked where it was.

We were still shaking by the time we pulled up in front of my house. All the thrillers I’d ever seen were playing in technicolor in my brain: shoot-outs on the freeway, free-falls from the forty-ninth floor, bombs under the car…We’d better get some guns if we were going to continue this investigation. But I didn’t want to shoot anyone!

“Hey, we haven’t had dinner yet,” Hadley remembered.

“You can think about eating?”

“I can always think about eating.”

“I want to call Zee and tell her there’s two men watching her house.”

“Okay, and then we’ll go out to eat. Maybe a pizza—do you like pizza?”

There were some people in the living room when we came in: Penny, Ray and a couple I didn’t recognize.

“Pam,” called Penny.

“Just a sec.” I ran to the phone and dialed Zee.

“She’s in the shower,” said Mrs. Reyes.

“Mrs. Reyes, there’s a car with two men parked near your house. They may be watching you. I just wanted to tell you.”

There was a pause while she looked out the window. “Oh, yes, thank you, Pamela.”

“You’re not worried?”

“It’s Benny and Carlos,” she said. “Keeping an eye on things.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s good, just checking…”

“Thank you, Pamela. Now good-bye.”

“Benny and Carlos,” I muttered to Hadley.

“Our latest suspects,” she said. “Maybe we should go back and invite them out to dinner.”

“No way. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

“Pam,” called Penny impatiently from the living room. “Come on.”

I went in, followed by Hadley. The woman on the couch looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place her. Blond curls and pretty like Elena, though with a considerably pudgier figure. She looked like the housewife Elena had never become—kindly, cheerful, a little martyred. The man next to her was probably her husband, a blue-collar worker with thick arms and a hardbitten face.

“This is Jeremy’s sister and brother,” said Penny. “Karen and Don.”

“Oh.”

From the way Jeremy had talked about his older siblings I’d imagined them looking like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. These two were obviously down-to-earth regular types whose favorite group was probably the Beach Boys.

“Nice to meet you,” I remembered to say and introduced Hadley. “Jeremy used to talk a lot about you.”

“We came up to collect the kid’s stuff,” said Don, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“We thought you might have some things you could tell us,” said Karen apologetically. “Seeing you worked with him and everything. I guess you were the ones who found him—maybe you’ve got some idea who killed him.” Her voice turned pleading. “He was such a good kid.” She pulled out a photograph of a seven-or eight-year-old boy on a horse. Jeremy with a smile of sweetness and pride. “I’ve always kept this…Jeremy was the youngest, you know, he was really the pet. I got married and moved away when he was eleven but I always thought of him.”

“I know,” said Don gruffly, “that I didn’t always treat him seriously. Hell, I was eight years older and who wanted a little kid tagging along everywhere? But I liked him too, took him to his first baseball game.”

A mood of melancholic nostalgia was palpable in the room, as if a funereal hymn were playing softly somewhere overhead. Hadley snapped us out of it.

“We think Jeremy might have been into drugs, maybe a dealer,” she said matter-of-factly. Did we? I stared at her.

But Karen and Don didn’t look that surprised; embarrassed and defensive maybe, but not surprised.

“We knew he had a drug problem in the Navy,” Karen said. “Over there in the Philippines. It was so easy to get stuff there, you know. A lot of people took drugs, I guess.”

“But Jeremy got caught,” said Hadley, in the same matter-of-fact tone, as if she knew the whole story and was only asking confirmation.

“But he didn’t get punished or discharged or anything,” said Karen eagerly. “He just got a reprimand. He knew somebody, you see…”

“Karen,” warned Don. “This is just family stuff, we don’t want to tell them Jeremy’s life story—because he finished with that drug business a long time ago. He learned the hard way.”

Karen looked less convinced but she kept silent. I was thinking—a reprimand? In exchange for what? For supplying information? It was a far-fetched idea. How could they have known he’d be useful?

“When did Jeremy move to Seattle?”

“Well, pretty soon after the Navy,” said Karen. “Couple, three years ago I guess.”

“And you’ve seen him since then?”

They both looked uneasy.

“Once or twice,” said Don. “I don’t live in Fullerton anymore.”

“Don lives in Riverside. I live in Ventura,” Karen explained, once again apologetic. “We have families.” She paused. “We never met the girl he married. Heard about her from Mom. Course no one ever knew he got married.”

Don’s face had turned dark red. “She’s the one behind all this. And now she’s going to pay for it.”

“She’s not guilty,” Ray spoke up. “It’s some kind of mistake, man.”

Don looked at him as if Ray had just crawled out from under the sofa. “The cops don’t make mistakes,” he said contemptuously.

The magnitude of this error silenced us all temporarily. Then Karen spoke up, with quiet urgency, “But if you think, if he was a dope dealer or something, that maybe one of his customers…”

“These people are the ones who are probably dope dealers,” said Don. “Come on, Karen—they don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re the ones who hid that girl in their attic.”

Karen looked further apologies at all of us but got up and followed him out of the room and out the front door.

“Anyone want a good deal on some really fantastic Colombian?” asked Penny.

“They’re going to be great in court,” I said. “I can see it now. They’ll blow the photo of Jeremy and the horse up to life-size. ‘Of course I haven’t seen him for fifteen years, but I know in my heart he was the same sweet boy he always was.’”

“Do you really think he was into dope dealing, Hadley?” asked Ray. “Is that the explanation?”

“Anchovies,” she said. “Black olives, tomatoes, onions.”

“Half anchovies,” I amended.

“We haven’t had dinner either,” said Penny enthusiastically. “Don’t forget the green pepper and pepperoni.”

“And sausage, chorizo if they’ve got it,” said Ray. “But do you really think that, Hadley?”

I noticed that for the first time he was addressing her as a real person.

“I think I’d better get two pizzas,” she said. “That’s what I think.”