Bernhardt's Edge (24 page)

Accidentally on purpose
…

It was something they'd said when they were kids, one of those catch phrases, one of the things kids say, words that meant nothing. And nothing times nothing was nothing, the story of his life, when he was young. Sometimes it seemed like a dream: all those years, one long nightmare, fading now—finally fading, finally leaving him in peace. But then, at odd times, odd places, the nightmare came back, as real as a hand at his throat, strangling him: the sights, the sounds, the smells, they all could come back, demons from out of nowhere.

Especially the smells.

Everything he did, then, everywhere he went, there was a smell to it, a smell for everything: garbage, piss, shit—sex—they all had smells. Sometimes it seemed like his life had its own smell, a smell he'd never forget.

Ahead was the circle, the center of Borrego Springs. He slowed the Camaro, flipped the turn signal lever, checked the mirror, everything squared off, everything righteous.

Why was it, right about now, making his plans, this close to doing it, why was it that scenes from the past popped and sputtered through his mind like electrical flashes gone wild, arcing in the dark, lighting up a place, a face, a fight, or a body, some bodies alive, some of them dead? Why couldn't he concentrate, make his mind do what it had to do? Because it was all he had, his mind. Whatever you thought, that's how you acted, how you were. He knew that now. Just about now: twenty-eight years old, going on twenty-nine. Just about now, he was figuring it out. Everything. Every little thing he needed to know. Finally.

Everything, and nothing.

Idling along, turning out of the circle and heading west, passing through the center of town now—by now familiar—he ticked them off: on the north side of the main street, Palm Canyon Drive, there was a restaurant, a hardware store, a variety store, a real estate office, a small, off-the-street shopping mall—and the sheriff's office, with a squad car parked in front.

Earlier, he'd seen a policeman standing beside this same car, talking to a man and a woman. He'd been a young man, the policeman, not more than thirty years old, short and stocky, wearing a khaki-and-green uniform and a wide-brimmed felt hat, hick Western. No question, it was a deputy sheriff he'd seen, probably one of two or three deputies. Plus the sheriff, certainly more than thirty years old.

Gently, he increased the pressure on the accelerator. He was passing a larger shopping mall on the left, very fancy, built to attract the people who came for the winter—the rich ones, with the big, expensive houses…

…the houses that, around the clock, the police would be watching, checking them out every round they made, especially now, before the season started, with most of the houses still empty.

While he'd been driving around, systematically checking out the town, he'd only seen one of the sheriff's cars, on patrol. They'd met each other east of town, between the town limits and the airport, on Palm Canyon Drive. The limit was forty-five, east of the central circle, so there'd only been a second that they'd been able to see each other. He'd decided to look at the sheriff, keeping his face expressionless, look him straight in the eye. And, yes, the sheriff had looked at him—a different sheriff from the one he'd seen earlier, or the one he'd just seen. Older, maybe the real sheriff, not a deputy.

His motel was ahead on the left, at the western edge of the town. Except for a gas station, on the right, the motel buildings were the last ones in town. It was here that the terrain began to rise, as the string-straight desert road began curving up into the foothills, only a few miles to the west. Looming above the foothills, the low mountains were close, less than ten miles away…

…ten miles to safety. Especially at night, in the mountains, with dozens of side roads to take, and at least two small foothill towns between the desert floor and the Los Angeles basin. And once in the basin, on a freeway, one car among thousands, traveling in darkness, he would be safe. He would drive to LAX, turn in the car, get a room at the airport Hilton, and wait until Saturday, when he'd get the rest of the money. He'd get a suite, and he'd rent another car, a Mercedes, or a BMW, this time, and he'd drive over to Rodeo Drive. He'd find a place that sold shirts for five hundred dollars, and slacks for three hundred. And he'd buy two of everything—all on “Fisher's” credit card.

Sometimes he thought of Fisher as a real person, a living, breathing person. It was important to do that, Venezzio had told him—important to get inside the person you create, the paper man, the front, the cutout, whatever. Because that man could be your only protection, the only thing between you and the gas chamber. And that's what he'd done: made up a real man, as real to him as a TV character. There was a real address, a small apartment way across town from his own apartment. Twice a month, at least, he got dressed in Fisher's clothes, and put Fisher's wallet in his pocket, with Fisher's driver's license, and Fisher's social security number, and Fisher's bank passbook—and, most important, Fisher's VISA card. And he stayed a night or two, in Fisher's apartment, telling people he'd been out of town, out of the country, whatever, on sales trips. Because Fisher was a salesman, a wholesale candy salesman, he'd decided. He'd even hired a kid, a good, dependable kid, to check the apartment, keep the hallway outside picked up. He'd been amazed, how easy it had been to create a man, a whole man, out of nothing. First he'd started a bank account—a cashier's check for eight thousand dollars. Then he'd gotten the apartment, and the driver's license, and the social security number. Every week, he churned the bank account, depositing, withdrawing, writing checks, thousands of dollars in and out. And after a year, he'd gotten what he needed: the VISA card, his passport to anything, anywhere.

Just ahead, he saw the last turnoff before the upgrade to the foothills began, a road that led north, toward a collection of expensive homes and condominiums surrounding a golf course with an artificial lake, everything lush green, with palm trees that waved in the strong desert wind, just like Palm Springs, where “shacks,” someone had told him once, cost a “half million, give or take.”

He could write a check, for a shack like that. He could walk into the real estate office, and smile, and sit down at someone's desk, some branch manager who made maybe twenty thousand a year, and he could write a check for a half million dollars.

He slowed at the intersection, checked traffic in both directions, then made a U-turn, back toward his motel, and the town center. He would make another pass down Borrego Springs Road, to the south. He would drive past the Ram's Head Motel, checking to see that her car was still there. Every twenty or thirty minutes, ever since he'd arrived, he'd driven past the motel, checking on her car. Once, about two hours ago, the car had been gone. For a moment, one instant, he'd panicked. No, not panicked. The word was “clutched,” the new word. No car, no Betty Giles. No Betty Giles, no payoff at the airport—no twenty-five thousand dollars, to add to the twenty-five thousand already tucked in his suitcase. The money would be a casualty, another new word.

Once, years ago, he decided to learn one new word a day, for the rest of his life. And he'd done it, too—for a week or so.

The twenty or thirty minutes between drive-bys at the Ram's Head, they were his window of vulnerability, one more new word, from what a politician had said on the six o'clock news, just the other night. Because if she left the motel during that time, he'd lose her, probably never find her, because there were three ways out of town, so his chances of following her, finding her, were only one chance in three. But he didn't have a choice. He had to give her that window of vulnerability. Because otherwise, he'd have to stay parked on Borrego Springs Road, where he could see the motel driveway. And a black face in a black Camaro, parked on one road for hours, would stick out, way out. Even if no one checked on him, questioned him, the sheriff and the state police, they'd remember him. They'd slow down, take his license plate, run the number. And a rented car wouldn't do much to smooth out what they were thinking.

So, clutched, wound up tight, he'd done the only thing he could. He'd driven into town, looking for her car. And there it was, the blue Nissan, parked in front of the grocery store at the circle, one of only two grocery stores in town.

He was back at the circle—his tenth or fifteenth time around town. He turned down Borrego Springs Road, slowed opposite the Ram's Head—

—and saw her sitting beside the pool.

She was dressed in a colorful blouse and beige slacks, and she was talking to a man, both of them with their chairs pulled close, as friends would sit—or strangers, talking seriously. The man was about forty, tall, dark-haired, long nose, lean face.

Should he stop the car opposite the driveway, fixing the stranger's face in his mind? Should he risk it, risk her remembering him, the black man in the fancy black car? She hadn't seen him in Santa Rosa, he knew that, was positive of that. But the Santa Rosa police could've told her that a black man had done the job on her boyfriend. And if the stranger she was talking to should be a policeman, one from San Diego, only sixty miles away, or even from Los Angeles, then he'd be risking more than he'd gain, if he stopped.

So he kept the Camaro moving, kept driving south, toward the open desert. The dashboard clock read 6:50
P.M.
Two more hours before it would be fully dark. There was time, then. Plenty of time to get ready.

“I
N SOME CULTURES,” BERNHARDT
said, appreciatively pushing his plate away, “it would be considered polite to burp after an omelette like that—a long, loud burp.”

She laughed: a full, rich chuckle, a ladylike belly laugh. Bernhardt nodded to himself. A belly laugh was propitious, a sign of confidence. And he'd need it badly, her confidence.

“Cooking eggs right is an art,” he said. “My mother always said so. And now I see what she meant.”

“It just takes lots of butter and high heat, at least initially. There's no mystery to it.”

“For Horowitz, there's no mystery to piano playing, either.”

This time, responding, she only smiled. The belly laugh had been an aberration, then, only fleetingly erasing the sadness, the wariness that still shadowed her dark, searching eyes. Yet, if she didn't trust him, didn't believe what he'd told her, beside the swimming pool, they wouldn't be here, in this tiny kitchenette, sitting at this platter-size Formica breakfast table.

“So you're just starting your own business, is that right?” She spoke conversationally.

He nodded. “Right. At age forty-three, I've decided I'm probably not very employable, not a very good team player, I guess.”

“I saw you writing. All afternoon. You looked very serious about it.”

“Do you ever go to little theaters, in San Francisco?”

Puzzled, she frowned. “Sometimes. Why?”

“The Howell Theater?”

She nodded. “A few times, yes. Are you—?”

“I direct at the Howell. And act, too, sometimes. And I write plays.”

“So—” She moved her head in the direction of the pool. “You were writing a play.”

“That's not something I always admit, at least not to strangers.”

“Have any of your plays been produced?”

“One was produced off-Broadway, years ago. So far, that's it. So, to keep from starving, I moonlight.”

“As a private investigator.”

He nodded. “Right.” He smiled across the table. “That's my shameful secret.”

“I still don't know why you've come here—all this way, at your own expense.” As she said it, he saw the suspicion return to her eyes, heard the caution in her voice.

“I've already told you—I want to find out whether I was used to set Nick up. And, frankly, I thought you might be in danger, too. I wanted to tell you that it could've been a professional, who killed Nick. Apparently you thought you were in danger, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't've run away from Santa Rosa.”

He watched her eyes drop, saw her head lower—saw the sudden agony that bore down her, a palpable weight. She sat like some hopeless penitent in the confessional, all hope abandoned. “I shouldn't've done it,” she muttered. “I shouldn't've run away. I—I'll always regret it.”

He let a long moment of silence pass as he watched her. She was vulnerable now, burdened by a sad, nameless regret, by a deep, festering guilt. This could be his chance, his one chance to press, to finally open her up. This one moment, these next few words, they might be all he'd have.

“Who's DuBois?” he asked. “Why would he have done it—hired people to find Nick, then hired someone to kill him?”

Still sitting with her head bowed, hands lying inert in her lap, she spoke softly, with infinite regret:

“It was me, really. It was what I did—what I knew, that's how it started—how everything started.”

Aware that he must prod her gently, cautiously, he said, “Why don't you start at the beginning? That's the easiest.”

She sat silently for a last, long, lost moment. Then, as if she were exhausted by the effort it took to keep her thoughts secret, she began speaking in a low, lifeless monotone:

“I suppose it started about three years ago. I was working for Standard Oil, in San Francisco. I was an art major in college, and I got a job as a curator, with Standard. That was the job description, ‘Fine Arts Curator.'” Briefly, she smiled: a wan, resigned twisting of her mouth. “It was a wonderful job, a better job than I ever thought I'd have. Because Standard encourages art, you see—all kinds of art. They have a two-million-dollar-a-year budget, just for art. They encourage the executives to hang paintings in their offices, and all their architectural specifications include statuary, or whatever. They encourage local artists, too—sponsor exhibitions, things like that. And I did it all. I arranged for the art to be rotated, and I did the acquisition, too. And after a while, when we had a piece for a certain length of time, I'd sell it, and buy something else. So I was a trader, too, just as if I'd been running my own gallery. It was wonderful, just wonderful—” She said it wistfully, regretfully.