TWENTY-THREE

The phone was ringing when Earl got back inside.

‘What?’ he answered.

‘Where were you?’

‘Talking to the guy you sent over,’ Earl said.

‘Someone I sent over?’ the voice replied.

‘Fuck, you did. Don’t deny it.’

‘Earl, I didn’t.’

‘Chinese guy. A fag.’

‘Earl, listen. Don’t go crazy on me. I’m on your side. You do what you do because you have to. I understand it. It’s what you need. Like air or water. The world’s a tough place. You’ve got to survive. I know that. Everybody does what they have to do. I could go on for hours about all the stuff that people do to each other – all legal. Killers. Make things that get people addicted and kill them. And society thinks you’re bad. It’s what you get by with. That’s all that counts.’ There was a pause, then the caller continued: ‘You didn’t have it easy did you?’ Another long pause. ‘Who cared about you?’ Nothing. ‘Tell me.’ There was more silence. ‘Earl?’

‘What?’

‘Who cared about you?’

‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’

‘Who gives a shit about how you feel? Who understands how lonely you are? Who in the hell ever talked to you like you were a human being? Like you were a decent guy? Who ever held you, loved you, wanted to protect you? Who calmed you after your nightmares? Who cares about whether you live or die? That’s what I’m talking about.’

Earl thought about Grandma O. She was separate. He never talked about her to anyone. If he did, it would spoil it.

‘No one, I guess,’ Earl said.

‘See, that’s the point. The only one who cares about you is you. You have to protect yourself.’

‘Yeah? From who? You?’

‘No, Earl. I’m trying to help, remember? From this woman who saw you on the hill, above Haight, remember? She can identify you. She can identify your car.’

‘I’m tired,’ Earl said.

‘Go to bed, Earl. Get some sleep. I’ll let you rest, OK?’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome, Earl. We’ll talk later.’

‘I just don’t know,’ she said to Paul after explaining what had happened. ‘Since I’ve been back, everything seems dark, more desperate. A nightmare. For a moment I thought that this guy up there in the window was him. Why not? It could have been. It’s like I’m waiting for the moment when he returns or when some other monster comes out of the dark.’

‘I know.’

‘I panicked. But I’m afraid I’m going to go from one panic to another. I’m scared. I’m scared of being scared.’

‘Don’t apologize, Jules.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I normally take these things in stride. Now I feel sorry for the poor pervert across the alley. Just lonely and screwed up.’

For a moment she looked as lost and forlorn as she had in the hospital. As she did then, Julia Bateman stared down at her hands.

‘Don’t leave me here alone,’ Paul said to her, remembering how she’d been at the hospital – staring at her hands and lost. ‘You just got here. I need you.’

‘It’s all just too strange, Paul.’

‘That it is, dear girl,’ he said putting on an Irish brogue. ‘But Father O’Chang is here for ya, lass.’

‘That’s good to know. What part of your life did I screw up by beeping you?’

‘Neither of us will ever know.’

He wasn’t about to tell her.

‘You want me to stay the night?’ he asked.

‘No. But go lock the window, will you. I really don’t want to see him.’

‘You could come stay with me. I’ve got one of those things people take along on camping trips . . .’

‘Those things with the zippers?’

‘Those very things.’

‘I don’t know what you call them.’

‘I can’t think of it either,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ve been trying to find an excuse to sleep in it. What’s his name left it.’

‘What’s his name left the whatchamacallit?’

‘Right.’

‘Bradley,’ she said.

‘Yeah, him.’

‘You miss him?’

‘I don’t know. I kept thinking life was going to be like the Brady Bunch.’

‘How was that supposed to happen?’ Julia asked.

‘I don’t know, exactly. We could get some puppies and name them Greg and Peter and Bob and . . .’

‘And Marsha and . . .’ she said.

‘I forget the girls,’ he said.

‘Go home.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can handle it. Some milk and cookies and Hawaiian music and I’ll drift off to Paradise.’

‘Bye toots,’ Paul said, kissing her on the forehead. ‘I’m a phone call away and I won’t be going out anymore tonight. I’ll just pack up some of Bradley’s depressing artwork and his strange diaries.’

Morning streamed in through the side window. Only the general, dispersed light nagged Julia from sleep. It was quiet. Strangely normal. For a few moments she had forgotten the months in Iowa, the trip back and the tiny attacks of panic gaining a hold for the final, sorry disturbance across the alley.

A car door slammed down on Ivy Street. She slipped out of bed, went to the little white tiled mosaic bathroom. She checked out the fact of her existence by looking at the mirror.

Yes, it was one Julia Bateman, not too much the worse for last night. Actually not too much worse for the last year or so. The body the attacker left her – broken and bruised – was almost back to normal. The broken nose showed only the slightest bump now. She smiled to show herself her teeth. The new dental work was good. Though they weren’t all real, she might have a slightly better smile. She had aged faster than the calendar. A kind of five years for one toll, she now felt better about exchanging for the gift of life.

Actually, in some ways, with the jogging and exercise in Iowa City, she was probably in better shape than before. She was certainly trimmer.

‘Get on with it,’ she said to her image, applying that to both the day and the rest of her life. Funny, after all these months, the scent of the spilled perfume still lingered.

The phone rang. It was Inspector Gratelli.

Apparently she wouldn’t be getting on with it without dragging a bit of the past along behind her.

‘I’m sorry to be bringing this up again,’ Gratelli said, settling on the small chair opposite the one by the desk where she sat. He had quite a day ahead of him. This interview, then a quick drive up to Petaluma for the viewing. McClellan’s widow had asked him to come. Had asked him to speak at the funeral later the same day. He would rather have faced a firing squad. But he agreed. ‘It’s important.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said, thinking perhaps she had been a little too curt.

‘Are you OK now?’

‘Yes, I am. I’m pretty sure.’

‘You’ve just gotten back, I know. Are you sure you want to talk about this now?’

‘It’s fine, really.’ It wasn’t fine. She just wanted to get on with it. With all that had gone on yesterday and last night and a rough sleep, Julia was on edge. On top of that she had fed her jangled nerves three cups of coffee in the half-hour between the inspector’s call and his arrival.

‘Have you thought about this at all?’ Gratelli asked.

‘Yes . . . but I’m not really sure what you mean.’ She stood. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’

‘Sure,’ Gratelli said. ‘But what you need is a shot of bourbon.’

She laughed. ‘I know. I know.’ She sat back down. ‘You want to know if I can remember anything more than I did when we last met.’

‘Right.’

‘No. I don’t remember anything. Nothing solid anyway. Coffee?’

‘Sure.’

‘Cream? Sugar?’

‘I’m not particular Miss Bateman.’

‘I have both.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gratelli said. ‘I take my coffee black. What I meant was I wasn’t particular about your memories being solid or not.’

‘It’s vague.’

‘What?’

‘It’s crazy,’ she said.

‘Good.’

‘Butter.’

‘Butter?’

‘Butter. The smell of it. Makes me nauseous. I don’t know why. Well, I’m not sure I know why, except that I associate it with what went on that night.’

‘I don’t mean to be indelicate,’ Gratelli said. ‘Did he use it in some way? On his body perhaps?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just don’t remember feeling it. I remember smelling it.’

‘Was it like coconut butter?’

‘I don’t think so. No.’

‘I remember smelling butter and . . . leather.’ She felt nauseous, just recalling the scent.

Gratelli squirmed in his narrow seat. He seemed like a Frankenstein trying to sit in a child’s chair.

‘Leather,’ he said as if trying to lodge it in his memory. ‘Was he wearing leather, you think?’

‘I don’t know. I remember seeing a dark form, something covering the face, but only for a split second. The light was shining at me, directly. Then it swirled. And he hit me with it, I guess.’

‘I’ve read the reports over and over. Nothing. I would think . . . though I can’t be sure . . . that there would have been some mention of butter or an oily presence on you. There wasn’t.’

‘Did you find anything other than blood?’

‘No. Nothing. Unreasonably so. Your blood, your hair . . .’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Enough of that. Did you have a sense of size, height or weight?’

‘What I said. I remember. Average. It was. Average.’

‘Fat, muscle? What?’

‘I don’t know. Solid, I suppose.’

‘The butter,’ Gratelli said, his face showing a switch in his thoughts. ‘Could it have been on his breath?’

‘Yes, perhaps. Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Cologne?’

‘Yes,’ she shrugged, then smiled. ‘Perhaps, maybe. Then again, it could have been my body reacting to the shock. With the medicine I took, sometimes food tasted metallic. Maybe I was smelling myself.’

The phone rang.

‘Bateman Investigations,’ she said, beginning the one-sided conversation Gratelli easily overheard. ‘Oh hi.’ (Pause) Thanks, but I’m afraid I can’t. (Pause) I’m going out of town. (Pause) I know I just got into town. It’s not Iowa City. Going to check on the cabin. (Pause) I know. I know. (Pause) I appreciate that. Thank you.’ She put the phone back down on the desk. She looked at Gratelli whose interest was now obvious. ‘I know. But I need to do this.’

The phone call over, she took their cups to the little kitchenette and refilled.

‘Are you done with the cabin?’ she asked Gratelli when she returned.

‘What do you mean?’ Gratelli was also curious about the phone call. Who was she telling about a trip to the cabin? Whoever it was must have been angry because the caller had not given Julia a chance to say ‘goodbye,’ or Julia was angry because she didn’t say ‘goodbye.’

‘Can it be disturbed? Evidence or something?’ she asked. ‘Paul said he went up there after – I guess it’s been awhile – and it was still roped off, taped off, I think he said.’

‘Should be OK now.’ Gratelli looked puzzled. ‘Are you going up there?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded but seemed to be thinking of something else. Then she focused again on Gratelli’s presence. ‘Just some things to wrap up. Papers, cleaning. Get it ready to sell. Despite what you may think, I don’t want to live there.’

‘You could have someone else do it.’

‘I don’t want it haunting me.’

‘I could go up with you,’ Gratelli said.

‘No, that’s all right.’ She knew she was being stubborn. But it wouldn’t help if she couldn’t face life on her own terms, without her father, without Paul even and certainly without the police.

‘We could talk on the way,’ Gratelli said.

The two of them talked for another forty-five minutes. Gratelli picked up nothing else that was helpful, not even permission to go up to the River with her.

Earl’s day at the dock wasn’t going well. He’d gotten in late and suffered a barrage of remarks from his supervisor. When he buried himself in his work, his fellow dockhands thought he was trying to show them up.

‘You’re moving too fast Falwell,’ said a pot-bellied redhead.

Earl said nothing, but slowed down some. He was trying to get some thoughts out of his head. For a while, after getting out, Earl was able to work hard, come home tired and forget. Forget the girls, forget the guy on the telephone and the fucking woman who could I.D. him and his Camaro, forget Cobra, forget that kid he killed on the back steps of the apartment building. But last night stirred things up again. Not just the phone call. There was the Chinese guy spying on him and Earl spying on the Chinese guy. The possibilities. What would have happened? What did Earl want to happen?

The pattern Earl had before getting locked up and screwed over was part of then, not of now. What was now? He didn’t fucking know.

‘What’s it gonna take to slow you down, fuck up?’ asked the redhead, his face in Earl’s.

A couple of others came toward the two of them.

‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Falwell said. ‘I just want to do my work and when it’s time to go home, go home. So leave me alone.’

‘You keep working at that pace, you might have an accident,’ the redhead said.

‘You are an accident, you fat ass. Beat it.’

This wasn’t the first time they’d been rude to him. But it was the first time he’d been rude to one of them.

The redhead was in his face. Earl couldn’t understand what the guy was saying after the first few obscenities. What the redhead was doing was sweating and spitting. His mouth became an ugly gaping hole and his tongue just a wiggling piece of red flesh. The guy’s breath smelled like garbage. It was like the gaping garbage mouth was going to eat him.

Earl punched him. Seemed like he punched him before he even thought about punching him. The guy’s face spurted blood. The face didn’t go away and Earl punched it again. He didn’t know how many times he punched the face. Suddenly he was being pulled backward by tentacles curling around his body, tightly around his arms and his neck and his waist, tugging at him, pulling him away.

It didn’t matter what the weather was in San Francisco. More than likely, a few miles north or south, the sun would be shining and all those who believed California was the land of golden light generally had their preconceptions reinforced.

The light came in with some force, through the blues, yellows and reds of the stained glass window. It was a small church. McClellan’s body was not there. His family was. Beth and her two college-aged kids, a blond boy and a blonde girl – the ones whose photos were in McClellan’s wallet that night – sat in the front pew.

There were others in attendance. Aside from the dozen members of Homicide and the lieutenant, there were maybe a dozen more. Gratelli guessed them to be family.

It was Gratelli’s time to speak. He hadn’t wanted to, but Beth had indicated if he didn’t, no one would. And it was important, she said, that someone say something.

‘Despite the raunchy, hateful words he had for the general population and every single adult member in it, he held out hope for the young, the very young. He was able to see the last glimmer of innocence in the eyes of children. That was enough to keep him going. He thought perhaps this one or that one would make it. Maybe this one or that one wouldn’t be corrupted by greed or stupidity or fear. For all his pessimism, he still held out hope that the world would be what it was supposed to be. He ran out of hope.

‘Mickey McClellan is dead. He wasn’t as tough as you thought he was, as he tried to be. The world didn’t turn out right and he lost all hope that it ever would.

‘I wish I could tell you otherwise.’

Gratelli sat down. The minister stood, went to the front of the congregation.

Gratelli heard only the first few words before he tuned out. ‘We must all have hope, Inspector . . .’