Burning Time (24 page)

“The thing is there’s still the San Diego thing. I have a feeling it’s not over.” April smiled suddenly. “You know, Sergeant, I’ve never had Mexican food.”

Then she looked at her watch in alarm and realized she’d been talking so long she was going to be late.

The lights were off, and Jason was not in the apartment when Emma returned from her long lunch with Ronnie. There was no sign that he had been there, and no messages from anybody on her answering machine. That was strange. Usually there were three or four. She wondered if it had stopped recording again. Sometimes it did that for a day or two. The heads or something got stuck. She took off her jacket and, with her heart pounding, she started going through the stack of mail she had picked up on the way in. She knew she was doing this to take her pulse, to see if she was all right. There hadn’t been one of those letters in the mail for three days and she was afraid to hope there would be no more.

Because of their two addresses in the building, mail was a little confusing. Some of it was put on a table outside Jason’s office door, and some of it was left on the mat outside their apartment a few steps away. That day Jason’s mail, the thick pile of envelopes, checks from patients, correspondence, books and periodicals, was still on the table. If he had come home, he would have gone into his
office taking it with him. There were only bills, no personal letters to Emma in her and Jason’s joint mail. Not a sound came from the other side of the wall where his office was. She was still not all right.

A profound sense of aloneness overwhelmed her. The silence in the apartment was even more unnerving than the menacing sights and sirens on the street below. She was upset that Jason wasn’t there spying on her after all, and wondered if the creepy sensation she’d had outside, of being watched and followed around, was her own wish that he really had come back.

She shook her head. The truth was Jason wouldn’t take time off to spy on her. Time was everything to him. A lawyer could work at home, could work at the office when the client wasn’t there, would bill more hours than there are in a day, and no one could ever know. Heart surgeons could charge ten thousand dollars a day, could set their fee at whatever someone was willing to pay for a life. But a psychiatrist had only a few forty-five-minute periods in a day. And someone like Jason, who wrote and spoke, and did research, had to give away the price of every hour he spent on scholarship.

He didn’t waste his time without a good reason, and rarely had any for her anymore. It was a gift he used to give her, but not anymore. He was so involved with his work he didn’t enjoy the few occasions he had to cancel his evening patients to go see her in a play. For an opening night in Philadelphia, he had to miss much of the afternoon as well; he’d complained about it the next day. She hadn’t been at all surprised that he didn’t even consider giving up a three-day conference in Toronto to be there at her first screening. Often when she was alone in the evenings she dreamed about being a rich movie star, and buying
some of Jason’s hours so he wouldn’t always feel he was losing something when he was with her.

Apprehensively, she flipped through the envelopes, mostly bills, a few invitations to events they would never in a million years attend. Nothing dangerous so far. Maybe she was just being nuts, afraid of success, afraid of making things worse with her husband, like Ronnie suggested.

“Everybody goes through rocky periods in the business, you know that,” Ronnie said.

Emma nodded. In marriage, too.

“Look, better face it now. Success is harder to manage than failure. The
least
of it is nasty letters.”

Emma came to the last envelope. It was from Save the Wilderness. Maybe Ronnie was right and this thing with the letters had played itself out. No more were coming in. The incoming fire was over. She picked up her jacket from where she had tossed it on a chair and wandered around the apartment, checking to see if it was in order. Everything was exactly as she had left it.

She was feeling all right and then without warning, anxiety about Jason welled up in her again. Where was he and why hadn’t he called her all day? It wasn’t like him. Was he just so mad at her he finally turned to one of his many fans, some woman, like himself terminally nice and comforting, from the ‘caring profession’? Someone who both sympathized and empathized with his needs?

That’s what they always asked her whenever she met one of them. “Are you in the ‘caring profession’?”

“No, I’m in the uncaring profession,” Emma was always tempted to retort. For Jason’s sake, she never had.

In the kitchen she found the slip of paper Jason left for her with the hotel number in San Diego on it. She never called him when he was away. He frequently made her feel
guilty, but he didn’t like it when she made him feel guilty. She studied the number for a minute. Then she dialed it to see if he was really there.

The operator at the Meridien said there was no answer in his room. In a moment of pique at his secrecy, Emma didn’t care about the probability of bringing on his guilt. She left a message asking him to call her right away.

Jason had his hand on the doorknob and was desperate to get away when Bill Patterson offered to call Technical Drafting and tell the guy a reporter from New York wanted to talk to him.

“No. Thanks anyway,” he said as casually as he could. “I’m sure I can find it.”

Patterson crossed his legs the other way and did some more scratching of his short brown hair. “Not a chance. You won’t get anywhere near it. Security is pretty tight over there.”

“Oh.” Jason fell silent.

“They don’t let anybody wander around asking questions.” As he said that, Patterson’s eyes became suspicious for the first time.

Jason looked at his watch. It was way past time to get out of here. This was a defense company. Of course there would be security. Of course they wouldn’t like reporters. He cursed himself for not thinking of a better cover story. The last thing he wanted to have to do was say he had left his press card home.

“Well, I’ve got to get back downtown. I’m running late. Thanks for your help. I may give this guy—what’s-his-name—a call later.”

He swung the door open, and once again Patterson delayed his exit.

“Grebs,” he said, halting Jason’s progress.

Jason stopped and nodded. “Yeah, Grebs.”

“I’ll write it down for you.” Patterson picked up a pen and neatly printed the name and number on a piece of his monogrammed memo paper, then handed it over. He was right-handed.

“Thanks.” Jason returned to the desk to get it. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re not going to try wandering around here, are you?” Patterson said. “You reporters—”

“No, no,” Jason assured him. “It isn’t that kind of story.”

“Well, good luck then.”

Jason found a telephone in a restaurant a few blocks away and dialed his hotel to see if there were any messages. There was one from Emma. He called his office answering machine and took some notes of the messages left there. Nothing that had to be responded to immediately.

He looked at his watch, then dialed the home number and waited. On the fifth ring Emma’s voice told him she was not available to take his call, but if he would leave his name, his number, and the date, she would get back to him very soon.

His shirt was soaked and he was getting a headache. It wasn’t a lot of fun pretending to be a reporter. He wondered what time Emma had tried to reach him and what she wanted.

She knew he had a policy of checking in every few
hours. If she wanted to talk to him, why couldn’t she stay put and wait for him to return the call?

He punched his telephone credit card number into the phone and dialed the number Patterson had written down for him. It took a long time for someone to answer the phone.

“Drafting,” a woman’s voice finally said.

“Hello, I’m trying to reach Troland,” Jason said.

“Who?” she said.

“Troland Grebs.”

“Oh, yeah.” Pause. “He’s not here.”

“Not here forever?” Jason asked. “Or out to lunch?”

“He wasn’t here yesterday. He’s not here today.” The sound became muffled as she called out, “Anybody know where Willy is?”

She came back on the line. “He’s sick,” she said.

“You have an address for him?”

“You kidding?” There was a pause. “Who is this anyway?”

“Friend of a friend,” Jason said. “I have a gift for him.”

“Well, that’s a first. Can’t help you.” She hung up.

Jesus, he thought everyone in California was supposed to be so friendly. He tried Information. Nobody listed by that name in the San Diego area.

Shit, the San Diego area was a big place. Where else could Grebs be? He tried dialing Emma in New York again. She still wasn’t there.

The cashier frowned at Jason when he asked for the phone book, so he had to sit down and order a cup of coffee and a corn muffin to appease him. He realized as he studied the book and ate the muffin that he was hungry.

There were only two Grebses in the phone book. Gloria Grebs was way north and west according to Jason’s map. And the road going there was the merest squiggle that
actually looked like it thinned out to nothing in places. It didn’t seem worthwhile going all the way out there first, when Esther Grebs lived on Twenty-eighth Street, right in the heart of the city.

Jason nodded absently at the offer of another cup of coffee. It was only one-thirty. He still had all afternoon. He wrote down the two addresses and studied the San Diego map he had bought in the hotel gift shop. Twenty-eighth Street was not far from downtown. It was on the west side of the highway, at least in the direction of his hotel. He paid the cashier the dollar fifty for the coffee and muffin and left two dollars on the table for the use of the phone book.

Before he went out into the sunshine, he tried Emma one more time. Still no answer. He shrugged. Couldn’t have been too important if she didn’t leave a number. He got back in the car, all too aware that he was wandering around a strange city like an idiot for reasons that were not entirely clear, and hadn’t really learned a thing.

He drove south and after a few exits got off. He was amazed at how quickly the neighborhood changed. South of the airport and west of the highway was shabby enough to qualify as a slum. Turning off Martin Luther King, Jason saw a huge open water or sewage pipe dripping into a culvert. The structures around it were more like shanties. Some of the cracks in the streets and sidewalks were big enough to have small trees growing out of them. There was graffiti everywhere.

But even here was the powerful smell of California. Bougainvillea, oranges. And now beans and garlic. He studied the streets. A row of warehouses with the back halves of trailer trucks parked inside a chain link fence on one corner. Spare parts shops. Then rows of tiny houses, all dilapidated. Weeds everywhere. Not many people around.

On Twenty-eighth Street he pulled to a stop in front of a faded wooden house, a little bit different from the others on the street. It had gabled windows on the second floor.
All the rest of the houses squatted flat on the ground, with no more than three rooms.

At some time the house had been painted yellow, but now the color was left only in patches. Where the paint had come off it was all gray. The porch in front sagged around the steps. The railing looked loose. Four wicker chairs made a straight line across the porch, but looked too fragile to sit in. The number on the door read 3525. The last number had lost a screw and was tilted sideways.

Jason got out of the car. Some boys in jeans with the arms cut out of their shirts were gathered on the other side of the street around a junker that was missing a couple of wheels. They were smoking, and watching him sweat. He locked the car and walked around an ancient Pontiac parked in the field of weeds that was the front lawn.

By the time he walked up the creaky steps, there was a woman standing by the window. She, too, was smoking a cigarette, scowling.

“They’ve already been here,” she said, cracking the door just enough to get her words out. “I told them to go away, and don’t send no one else.”

“Who?” Jason asked, thinking right off that she was either drunk or insane.

“Don’t make it hard on yourself. I hate you Jesus people. No way I’m going to let any of you in. So beat it.”

“I’m not a Jesus person,” Jason said. “I’m a journalist.”

“You can’t fool me. You look just like that man who was here last week. Had a pretty little girl with him. You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves, using little children like that.”

Jason considered telling her she’d won a trip to Paris, or a washing machine or something, then decided that was not such a good idea. “Are you Esther Grebs?” he asked.

“Esther Grebs is dead,” she said flatly. “Dropped dead
years ago. Who’s asking?” She peered at him through the crack in the door.

“Frank Miln. I’m a reporter. I’m looking for a man named Troland Grebs. He used to live here.” I
hope
. Jason smiled in a hopeful way.

The woman stepped back and opened the door. She had a lot of extra weight on her and was shaky on her feet. “That was an awfully long time ago. How’d you find out?”

“It’s not a common name.” Jason felt elated, but didn’t want to take credit where it wasn’t due.

“What’s he done?” she asked peevishly.

Jason smiled encouragingly. “Nothing. I’m just doing a story, looking for background material.”

“Background. What kind of background?” She backed out of the door so he could come in. Her curiosity, or her loneliness, or his unthreatening way of grabbing people’s attention got her.

He smiled encouragingly as he came in. “My story’s on North High School graduates of his year. ‘80. Just picked a few at random to see where they came from and what they’ve done with their lives. That kind of thing.”

“Well, that’s
something.”

“Do you know Troland Grebs?” Jason asked.