Cocaine and Blue Eyes Page 8

  "Does Dani know about it?"

  "Probably not. How close were they, anyway?"

  "Oh, they were close," he said glumly.

  "Why did she leave him?"

  He weighed a ledger. "She thought leaving him was the only way he could straighten up." Jack looked at me. "Joey was bleeding her for money."

  "Why did she stay with him so long then?"

  He didn't want to remember. "He helped her out when she was in Seattle. This was several years ago. She had a lot of things on her mind then, and he helped her get her mind off them. She was grateful to him for that."

  "D'you believe that?"

  "Hey, she's my cousin. If that's what she wanted, I'm not going to tell her anything different. Maybe she thought she could make it work." His concentration was wandering.

  "Tell me about her," I said.

  "What's there to tell? She's my cousin. She's got blue eyes." He cast around for other obvious truths. "She has trouble keeping them closed when she's sleeping."

  "Did you get along together?"

  He bristled. "We get along fine. We grew up together. Went to the same high school, went camping together in the Sierras. We get along fine."

  "Does she do a lot of dope?"

  "That was in Seattle. That was years ago." He was vehement. "Sure, she was strung out pretty hard, downers and speed, but she's off dope these days. Just a little weed now and then." What he was saying sunk in. "Who put you up to all this? Where do you come in, anyway?"

  "Joey put me up to his. I was his best friend."

  Jack smirked. "He had no friends."

  "That makes me his best friend." My eyes kept going back to the sturgeon on the long table. The long fish fascinated me. It was like a corpse in the morgue.

  Jack saw me watching the sturgeon. "You said Joey was dead." He was tightening again.

  "He wanted me to find Dani. It was his last wish, I guess."

  "What do you expect from me?"

  "Do you know where she is?"

  He had the lazy smile all prisoners cultivate. "I wouldn't tell you if I did." He looked bored, but anxious men act the same way when they feel threatened. He'd probably be happier talking to a drill sergeant.

  And then the fish quivered. A shudder ran down its spine. Its gills and jaws moved like a drowning man, and I thought, of course, a fish would drown in the air.

  The quiverings and twitchings were just nerve spasms, reflexes, and all corpses do that for hours after death. There's nothing mysterious about rigor mortis. Still, I needed a cigarette.

  I started to light up.

  "You can't smoke in here. Health Department." He bolted upright from his stool. "Let's get outta here. I can't think in this goddam place."

  I didn't mind. It had been hard talking with him over the whoosh of the giant electric fans that dried the fillets of salmon. The sturgeon's eyes seemed to follow me. Its jaws quivered again, calling me back. I shut the door firmly.

  The clowns from upstairs were on the pier. They were still hollering at each other, this time over whose trawler would sail up the narrow creek first. Their crews scurried, stowing gear. Behind them the rusted black freighter coughed, emptying black oil and water from its bilges into the bay.

  The mist had thickened into a gentle rain. Those storm clouds from the Pacific Northwest were closer, changing into large purple ones. I figured I had ten minutes before the downpour began again.

  Jack watched the sky, too. "This is the shits," he told me. "This weather won't let up, and the boats want to go out." He was still a fisherman in a seafaring family.

  "You're sending them out, aren't you?"

  "First tide tomorrow." He looked determined. "We have to send them out, even if it's snowing. We need the fish. Shit, we're supposed to be wholesalers, but all we've been doing is buying fish from every other fish company on the coast."

  "Has business been that bad?"

  "Business has been okay. It's this goddam weather that's been keeping us in. Two weeks since we sent a boat out."

  A trawler lolled at the end of the pier. It was a big ship, nearly seventy feet long, and twice the size of the other Anatole ships. Workmen scrambled around her decks.

  "Is that part of the fleet?"

  Jack brightened. "She will be soon enough. The boys just finished overhauling her engines this morning." He thought of something. "Riki wants to take her out himself, see how she feels, but God knows when he'll have the time."

  "Riki looks like he belongs in an office."

  "Yeah, I know." He couldn't believe it, either. "Some guys are like that. They got their whole lives in some office, but what they really want to do is play Marlboro Man."

  "She looks like a fit ship."

  "She oughta be. She's powered by a 275 Cat V-8. Her cruising range is twenty-five hundred miles. Seventy-five feet long. All the rest are thirty-footers, warped hulls and all."

  "Do you still go out in the boats?"

  "Oh no. I'm retired from the sea. Doctor's orders. I got a bullet through the elbow in 'Nam, and it acts up in bad weather. Like arthritis, only worse."

  "That's a shame."

  He didn't think so. "This is a dying business. Like sardines down in Monterey. They've been fished out for forty years, and they'll probably never come back. Anchovies are nearly gone, herring's just about gone, king salmon's weighing less every year."

  Above our heads a pair of broad-winged seagulls chased each other in wide arcs over the narrow estuary, fighting for a piece of fishmeal one had scrounged.

  "It used to be," he told me, "you could fish a school for two full weeks. These days you're grateful for two days over a school. And those goddam Russians, they got giant trawlers, whole fleets of them, dragging the ocean for a dozen square miles at a time. No, it's a dying business, that's for sure."

  "The way I understand it, you have enough money—you don't have to do this unless you want to."

  "Where'd you get that idea?"

  "Riki. Something about trust funds and your grandfather."

  "Hey, I'm doing this because I have to. Orestes, that's grandfather, he figured none of us would scale fish, not if we could help it, so he set it up so we collect only if we work. We don't and he cuts us off."

  "How can he do that? You got your money. You can always drop out, can't you, and live off what you've already gotten?"

  "But there's not enough money to live off of. The funds are gradual. You get some every few years, whenever you reach a certain age. When you reach twenty-one, you get ten percent. You get another ten percent every fifth birthday after that, and the balance when you reach forty, if you've been working in the fish company. You only get what you work for. Orestes is always preaching self-reliance."

  "Self-reliance? More like locking you in."

  He agreed. "That's why everybody hates him so much."

  "Well, it's his money to give out."

  He had no answer, and it pissed him off.

  "What happens to the money if you don't scale fish?"

  "It reverts back to him."

  "Not to the other cousins?"

  "He said he loves us too much for that. He said, if it didn't, that would promote Murder Incorporated. Like signing our death warrants."

  "Like an insurance policy, right?" It made sense in a macabre way. The more cousins who died, the more money the survivors would get. But it was a gruesome way to view your family. "Does everyone get the same amount?"

  "Oh no. His favorites get more."

  "Why should they get more?"

  "Because they don't need him."

  "Oh yeah? Who are his favorites?"

  "Dani and Catherine." He looked over. "Have you met Dani's sister yet?"

  "Yeah. She's got a nice pad."

  "Nobody else wanted it." He snorted his contempt. "She doesn't associate with the family much. We smell like fish."

  "How does she get off not working?"

  "When she hit twenty-one, her fiancé invested her share in Mexican
imports. A couple of years after she married him, he's suddenly an asshole and she can't stand him, so she divorced him. But those import companies still make good money for her."

  "How does she get along with Dani?"

  "Their parents died when they were in high school. Dani took it worse than Catherine did. She went into herself, didn't come out for anybody. Catherine figured she needed another mother."

  "And she took the job," I said.

  "Dani just wants to live her life in peace, but she's always had to fight for it. Dani only wants to be left alone."

  "How come she's grandpa's favorite?"

  "Orestes spits in our eyes, everybody's eyes. We don't spit back, no matter what he does. Dani hates him just as much as we do, but she's never cared about his money, so she's never tried to appease him. That makes her look like her own person, and that makes her his favorite."

  "That's crazy."

  "No, it isn't. Dani left home and worked in a fish company in Seattle. She didn't use her right name and she didn't tell anybody about it before she went and did it. And she bought a houseboat when she came back. It was just coincidence, but she's always led her life just the way he wanted her to lead it. She's just the person he always wanted her to be."

  "What did the old guy think of Joey?"

  "Oh, he hates him." Jack was matter-of-fact. "Joey was a little shit coward. Orestes almost cut her off, just because she was living with him."

  "Why didn't he?"

  "She's his favorite. And he hates the rest of us more."

  "Could she have gone back to Seattle again?"

  "Maybe. But it wouldn't be like the last time. If she went back again, it would be a positive thing."

  "Which means what?"

  "The last time she split to escape. She needed to get away because everyone was pressuring her. It was tearing her apart." He stopped and doused his cigarette in the creek waters. He straightened like a man facing a firing squad. "You never stop pushing, do you?"

  "Do you know where she is?"

  He was amazed. "You're a leech."

  "Do you know where she is?"

  "No, I don't, dammit."

  "Thanks. That's what I wanted to know."

  Riki came up behind us. He carried a parcel wrapped in freezer paper. "Looks like the two of you had a good time." He turned to me first. "If there's anything else we can do, we'll be glad to do it, but we all have to get back to work now."

  I stamped out my cigarette. "I get the hint."

  "This is a holiday weekend," Riki said. "New Year's Eve and everything, and we're very busy. The trucks haven't gone out yet. They should've left early this morning."

  We headed back towards the smokehouse, and the rain began pouring down on the piers. The two captains were cursing their crews, while the men scurried like hose-drenched seagulls.

  "Did you learn anything?" Riki asked.

  "A couple of things." I looked at Jack.

  "There's nothing to learn here," Jack said.

  I laughed. "There's one thing I've learned as a private investigator," I told him. "There's an infinite number of sides to every story. You don't expect to know every one of them. You settle for as many as you can get. If you get enough, you even know what's a lie and what isn't. It all comes together in a crazy pattern. Juggle the pieces long enough and the puzzle solves itself."

  Jack hated my guts. "So what's that mean?"

  "There was enough," I said. I told him I'd be seeing him again. Then I followed Riki from the smokehouse.

  Riki sensed my thoughts. "He's changed a lot since Vietnam." He slumped his shoulders. "The army did that to him. He came back a volcano. It's always simmering beneath his skin." He sighed. "When he erupts, it's with the wrath of God."

  "How stable is he?"

  "Oh, he's gentle. Unless you say something that strikes him wrong. He's just seen too much. If he could just look on the positive side of life ..."

  I turned and looked back. Jack was dialing out on the telephone outside the smokehouse. I wondered who he was calling. I hoped it wasn't Dani.

  We cut across the plant towards an exit. Riki's step had quickened and his spine seemed straighter. Maybe it was the bustle of his employees. Maybe he felt more at home with them, or more in control. Maybe he just needed a lot of people near him.

  We found the exit nearest the parking lot. The rain was coming down heavier now, and we were both silent facing it. Riki seemed to be wrestling with a problem, and I was just chicken to race the rain.

  "This is yours." He passed me the parcel. "Enjoy it."

  "What is it?"

  "Five pounds of rex sole."

  "Is this a bribe?"

  His laughter was almost hearty enough. "Just good business." He tried being familiar with me. "I wish I could give you some of that Johnny Walker, but that's for tonight's party. I know how you private eyes like booze, if you know what I mean."

  I knew what he meant. "Thanks for showing me around."

  "Any time." He had pinned his problem before I had found my courage. "Do you think you'll find her?"

  I didn't know. "Oh yeah."

  "She's very independent," he said. "You might never find her if she doesn't want to be found."

  "I'll find her."

  "Well, I wish you luck." He shook my hand, told me again to come back any time, then headed back towards the smokehouse.

  My car was on the leeward side of the building. I sprinted through the rain to it, jumped inside and rolled up the window I'd forgotten earlier, then stuffed the fish into the glove compartment.

  Across the lot some Anatole fishermen and workmen stood beneath a catering truck's awning. I ran over and ordered a cup of coffee and a patty melt. The boiling coffee tasted like motor oil. The sandwich came infrared warm. It tasted like plastic explosives. I dumped the sandwich and headed back to my car.

  Chapter 8

  I opened my vent, and a woman called out. I looked around. The redhead stood by the elevator doors. She called again and waved her hand in the air. I rolled down my window.

  "Are you heading up towards Market Street?"

  "Sure. D'you need a lift?"

  "Oh, could you? Just up to Market?" She rushed from the doorway, her red skirt billowing in the breeze. Skidding between raindrops, she ran around to the other side and hopped in beside me. "This is awfully nice of you."

  I told her to forget it. Damn my charitable hide.

  "Oh, I can't wait to get home."

  "You had a long day?"

  "Well, if I don't get home and feed my cat..."

  "Here. Hold my coffee for a second."

  "Oh, where did you get this?"

  I hit the ignition. "A catering truck. Help yourself."

  She took a big sip. Then another. And another. When she passed it back, I told her to keep it. If she could drink it, she deserved it.

  In my rear view mirror, a beige Coupe de Ville with a white vinyl top was rounding the corner of the Anatole building. It was the kind of car you'd see ten years from now cruising past the jazz clubs in the ghetto.

  It picked up speed and whispered past like a ghost. Its windows were starting to defrost themselves, and I could see the outlines of Riki and Lilian Anatole. I put my car in gear and followed them out to Third Street.

  The Coupe de Ville was doing fifty when it reached Third Street. There were few cars and fewer traffic lights ahead of him. I gave him a block head start and followed at the same speed.

  "How did it go in there?"

  "I didn't get the job." She looked up from her coffee. "His wife was there." She frowned at the windshield. "God, she's a bitch."

  "Oh yeah? What did she say?"

  "She accused me of adultery. Right, adultery. Like I've been shacking with her husband for years. I only met him last night. I didn't know he was married."

  "Where'd you meet him?"

  "On Union Street. One of those disco places where the cab drivers take the tourists. He was the only guy who didn't make me
feel like a piece of meat. He seemed lonely, like he had no one to talk to."

  "But he was married."

  "Yeah. A married man. Just what I need."

  "D'you go there often? Union Street, I mean?"

  "I'll never go there again," she promised.

  Maybe she was different. Maybe staying in didn't drive her crazy. Maybe she wouldn't settle for any slumming shark in the Union Street ocean. Yeah, sure.

  "Do you pick out your own clothes?"

  "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

  "A job interview isn't a disco party."

  "It was the girl across the hall's idea. She thought maybe I could shame him into giving me a job."

  "Then there was no promise of a job?"

  "Let's just say I don't get to quit the one I have."

  "It could have been worse," I told the windshield wipers. "He could've led you on, made you believe you could share the wealth."

  "He's got that much money?"

  "His family does. Which means he doesn't sweat rent."

  "I didn't even know he was married."

  I slowed for the China Creek bridge. Two high-pitched whistles came through the rain, followed by a third one at a deeper tone. A watchman left his shanty to lower a guardrail behind us.

  "They must be going out," I said.

  "Who's going out?"

  I pointed over my left shoulder at the two trawlers dieseling up the narrow estuary. "The weather's supposed to change tonight, so the boats are going out fishing tomorrow."

  "They're going fishing?"

  "Right. Tomorrow. The first tide of the New Year."

  She twisted in her seat. "Are you a fisherman?"

  "No way. You'll never get me out on the ocean."

  "Then you're a salesman."

  "Self-employed businessman." Maybe I was. I didn't know.

  Riki knew the city well. He stayed on Third Street, not jumping over to the freeway downtown. The freeway was probably bumper to bumper with this rain, and that made Third Street the quickest way downtown.

  I stayed well behind him.

  "You said you have a job. What've they got you doing?"

  "I'm a babysitter," she admitted.

  "Where do you babysit?"

  "The hotels. I move from one to another, wherever a tourist needs me."