Gravedigger (22 page)

Gene Molloy started across the brown grass toward two narrow strips of cracked cement that were a driveway. “I’ll drop you off.”

“So you’ll have the car to run around to bars all day, wasting gas?” She jerked open the screen door. “Like hell you will.” Dave was right behind her. She marched for the rear of the house, and so did he. In a kitchen that smelled of burned toast, and where spoons leaned in cereal bowls on a steel-legged table with a yellow Formica top, she snatched up a soft leather handbag from a yellow Formica counter beside a steel sink, and reached for the back door.

“Please wait,” Dave said. She swung around sharply, surprised and annoyed that he was still here. He said, “I have bad news. Call your brother and sit down, all right?” He turned a steel-legged chair with yellow plastic padded back and cushion out from the table. Crumbs strewed the seat. He brushed them off. She didn’t move. She glared at him. He said, “Your husband didn’t fall asleep. What happened to him was not an accident. Any more than what happened to your face was an accident.”

She said, “Look, mister, I don’t know who you think—”

Molloy appeared at the back screen door. “What’s going on?” He came inside, glanced at angry Angela, scowled at Dave. “Listen, friend, this is my sister.”

“Sit down, please.” Dave hooked another chair by the leg with his shoe and swung it out from the table. “The Sheriff’s lab men have been examining the wreckage of Paul Myers’s truck. It’s taken a week, but now they’re sure. He didn’t have an accident. Someone attached an explosive device under the cab, and blew it up.”

“No.” Angela clutched Molloy’s arm, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. She was more than surprised. She was frightened. She looked up into Molloy’s unshaven sulky boy face, as if he could change the truth. “They wouldn’t do that. Why would they? He was tired. He drove off the road.”

Molloy regarded Dave. “You sure about this?”

“The technicians are sure. It was detonated by remote control. Someone followed him and set it off when he reached that particular curve. They meant for it to look like an accident. Trucks have gone off there before.”

“Silencio,” Molloy said. He helped Angela to a chair She collapsed onto it. She was shivering. Molloy said, “I’m calling the cops.” He moved to leave the kitchen.

“Save your dime,” Dave told him. “They’re on their way. Lieutenant Jaime Salazar, Sheriff’s homicide.” He checked his watch. “He was supposed to meet me here. Is there any whiskey?”

“Huh?” Molloy gaped. Dave nodded at Angela. Molloy looked at her and understood. “Yeah, sure.” He climbed on a chair and from a high cupboard brought down a fifth bottle with a red label,
SLIM PRICE
.
He unscrewed the cap and poured from the bottle into a glass that had held orange juice. He pushed the glass at Angela. “Here. This will make you feel better.”

“I can’t go to work with liquor on my breath.”

“You can’t go to work anyway. You have to tell them about Ruiz in the courtroom, what he yelled when the judge sentenced him. He was going to kill Paul. Isn’t that what you told Mom? He was going to kill Paul when he got out?”

She leaned back in the chair, sighed, shut her eyes. “They get excited and say crazy things. Mexicans.”

“Angie, it had to be him. It happened just after he got out. You heard that deputy.” He took her hand, folded the fingers around the glass. “Drink that, will you? You look like you’re going to pass out.” She opened her eyes, drank, made a face, shuddered. Molloy said to Dave, “Who in hell else could it be? Didn’t it have to be him?”

“It was a sophisticated device,” Dave said. “I understood Ruiz was a street punk.”

“There’s training shops in prisons,” Molloy said.

Dave sat down. Angela sat with her eyes closed, the whiskey forgotten in her hand. He reached out and gently touched her arm. She opened her eyes.

“Mrs. Myers—who beat you up?”

A corner of her mouth twisted. “Who always beats women up? Husbands. You look old enough to know that.”

Dave looked up at Molloy. Molloy seemed surprised. Dave said, “Didn’t you do anything about it?”

“Me? I wasn’t here. You think he’d let me live here? Forget it. Not for years.”

“He wouldn’t let you live off him,” Angela said dully.

Molloy told Dave, “I came after he got killed. Has to be a man in the house. In Gifford Gardens? You better believe it. Anyway, Angie always wanted me here. It was Paul that hated my guts.”

Angela found Molloy’s hand and smiled up at him with gentle reproach. “He didn’t. He just wanted you to stand on your own feet. As long as you could live here with us, free meals, free rent, pocket money, you never would. He did it for your own good. Just like Daddy and Mama.”

“Oh, boy.” Molloy gave a sour laugh and asked Dave, “Can you figure that? Just out of high school. Your folks kick you out, your brother-in-law kicks you out. No job, no money, no place to sleep. And they call it love.”

“They call a lot of things love,” Dave said, “and some of the most unlikely ones turn out to be just that.”

Molloy snorted. Cigarettes lay on the table. He pulled out a third chair, sat on it, shook a cigarette from the pack, lit it with paper matches whose print urged him to complete his high-school education at home. He blew out the flame with a stream of smoke and asked Dave, “Does it make some difference to the insurance company if he was murdered or died by accident?”

“It could. In either case, I’d be here.”

“What for?” Angela said. “I already told the police all I know. I don’t know anything. Gene’s right. It has to be Silencio, doesn’t it? Ruiz?”

“Sometimes,” Dave said, “we know things without knowing we know them. Paul Myers went for years without life insurance. Then, suddenly, a month ago, he took out a policy for a hundred thousand dollars.” Dave glanced at the shabby kitchen, faded yellow paint, scuffed vinyl tile, crooked cupboard doors. “That’s expensive. What happened to make him do that?”

She shrugged. “Ossie Bishop died. It scared Paul. It happened so fast. No warning. He didn’t want to leave me and the kids and my folks high and dry.”

“Ossie Bishop!” Molloy jumped up, making the movement noisy, scraping the chair legs. He went to the stove. A glass coffeepot stood there, half full, over a low flame. He turned up the flame. Anger was in the sharp twist of his wrist. “He’d have that jig in the house. He wouldn’t have me—his wife’s own brother.”

“Ossie was Paul’s best friend,” Angela told Dave. “I didn’t like having one of them in the house, but he wouldn’t hear a word against Ossie. And that wife of his, Louella—big, fat, black thing. Always trying to be friendly, asking me to go to that nigger church with her, wanting our kids to play together. Paul didn’t see anything wrong with it, but I don’t believe in it. I wasn’t raised that way.”

“This is a mixed town,” Dave said. “Surely, in school—”

“I don’t let them go to public school. White kids get mugged and knifed and raped at public school in Gifford Gardens. That’s the reason I waitress. So I can pay to send them to the Kilgore School.”

“Was Ossie Bishop an independent trucker too?”

She nodded. “It was him who told Paul about the nightwork. He was doing it trying to save up enough to buy a second truck so his oldest boy could drive it when he got out of high school.”

Molloy banged mugs onto the table among the milky cereal bowls, whose spoons tinkled from the jar. “Jesus, have you told Dad that? That even a nigger thinks of his own flesh and blood first? I’m sure as hell going to tell the old bastard.”

“Gene,” she said wearily, “that’s all past and gone. It’s no good eating yourself up inside over something that can’t be changed. He’s sick, anyway. Leave him alone. You never wanted to be a truck driver.”

“I sure as hell never wanted to be a carpenter.” Molloy brought the coffee pot and filled the mugs. “Not for free, for Christ sake. He paid his other apprentices. I was his kid—so I didn’t get paid. Beautiful.” He set the coffeepot back on the stove.

Dave asked Angela, “What happened to Bishop? A road accident?”

“He got sick. He was away from work a couple of days. Then he died. In the middle of the night. He couldn’t get his breath. Louella called a doctor, but it was too late. Big healthy man, still young. It scared Paul.”

Dave tasted the coffee. Hot but weak. He lit a cigarette. “When was Silencio Ruiz locked up?”

Angela wrinkled her forehead. “Two years ago? Eighteen months?” Her laugh was bitter. “The sentence was five years. It didn’t mean anything, did it?”

“Not much,” Dave said. “Ossie Bishop died a month ago?” He reached across the table for the ashtray. “I don’t think Silencio Ruiz killed your husband.”

A
BOVE HIS RAISED COFFEE
mug, Molloy squinted at him. “What the hell do you mean? What’s Ossie got to do with it?”

“Ossie just got sick,” Angela said.

“Maybe somebody made him sick,” Dave said.

“What for?” Molloy twisted out his cigarette. “Paul fingered Silencio for that holdup. That’s why Silencio killed him. Where does Ossie come in?”

“He got Paul the nightwork.” Dave turned to Angela. “What was he doing up in Torcido Canyon at three in the morning? What was he hauling? Who was he working for?”

“He—never told me.” The bag fell from her lap with a muffled thud. She snatched it up, rummaged in it, brought out a little mirror. She touched her bruises. “I’m a mess.”

“You weren’t curious about what he was doing? You said it worried you, how tired he was making himself.”

“It paid well. That’s all he said. He wanted to help my folks.” She glanced at Molloy. “Our folks. Dad had a stroke. He was always strong as a horse, so naturally he didn’t have any health insurance. They used up all their savings practically overnight—doctors, hospital bills. He’s a carpenter, and you know how much work they’ve been getting lately. They were running out of money even before he got sick.”

“What about the union?” Dave said.

Molloy’s laugh was dry. “He didn’t believe in unions. He wasn’t going to shell out dues every month so some fat wop racketeer could sit with his feet up on a desk drinking beer while he earned a living for the son of a bitch.”

Dave watched Angela apply fresh lipstick. Her hand trembled. He said, “Every man doesn’t feel so responsible for his in-laws.”

Molloy made a sound of disgust. “Dad bought Paul his first semi, started him out as an independent. Do you think he did the same for me when I got old enough? Forget it.”

“Paul still owed him for the truck?” Dave asked.

“He paid that off long ago.” Angela closed the lipstick and dropped it into the bag. “No. Dad was good to him when he needed help. Paul wouldn’t forget a thing like that. Dad was in trouble. Paul did all he could.”

“He doesn’t sound like a wife-beater,” Dave said.

“He was tired and strung out. He was taking pills to keep him awake. Amphetamines. Truckers always have them. Pass them around to their buddies at rest stops.” The mirror was propped against her coffee mug. She dropped the mirror into the bag now and zipped the bag closed. “He wasn’t mean. It was too much pressure for him. He was frantic, and I got him sore, nagging at him to give it up. He was kind and patient before.” Her eyes leaked tears. She wiped them away with a finger. “You ask the kids.”

“Amphetamines can make a man edgy,” Dave said.

“Where the hell is your County friend?” Molloy was reading a five-dollar digital watch. “Silencio will be in Mexico by now. In Argentina.” He laid his cigarette in the ashtray, picked up his mug. “What did you say this deputy’s name is?”

“Salazar,” Dave said.

“Jesus, another spic.” Molloy choked on coffee. “Don’t they hire white people anymore? What’s a guy named Salazar going to do about a guy named Ruiz?”

“Whatever has to be done,” Dave said.

Angela got to her feet, clutching her bag. “I have to get to work.”

“You’d better phone in sick,” Dave said.

“I’ve already been off a week. They’ll replace me with some other girl. I have to have that job.” She unzipped the bag again to dig keys out of it. “I have children to feed and bills to pay.”

“I don’t like to sound heartless or anything,” Molloy said, “but you’ve got a big fat insurance check coming.”

“Hah.” She looked glumly at Dave. “Have I?”

Dave gave her a little half smile. “Possibly. Tell me Louella Bishop’s address.”

“She left town. I don’t know.” Angela pushed open the back screen door. “I don’t care. I’m glad she’s gone.”

“Lieutenant Salazar will want to talk to you.”

“Paul’s dead,” she said, “and you say someone killed him. That’s all I know. There’s nothing to talk about.” The screen door fell shut behind her. He went to it. The backyard was patchy grass, clotheslines, a twiggy lemon tree. She hoisted a garage door that creaked. “Tell him I couldn’t wait.” She went into the garage, a car door slammed, an engine started, stalled, started again. The motor raced hard and loud for a moment. Smoke poured out the garage door.

Dave asked Molloy, “What restaurant is it?”

“Cappuccino’s,” Molloy said. “They won’t like the cops coming to talk to her there.” He made to pass Dave, to go out and stop her. But the car, a dented, ten-year-old Toyota station wagon in need of a wash, bucked backward out of the garage and rolled quickly from sight along the side of the house. It jounced noisily across the gutter out in front. Molloy ran barefoot through the house. The front screen door rattled. Molloy called, “Angie, wait!” But the car went off up the street. Dave heard it.

He began opening drawers in the kitchen. Papers lay in one of the drawers. Supermarket tally tapes, receipts for electricity, water, gas, phone. Canceled checks in bank envelopes, old income-tax forms, property-tax forms, ownership registrations for a 1973 Toyota and an eighteen-wheel rig, and loan papers on the house at 12589 Lemon Street. He pocketed a check and a bankbook. There were no slips of paper with addresses scribbled on them.

Molloy came in. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Looking for Louella Bishop’s address. Your sister is too frightened to tell me about Paul’s nightwork. Maybe Louella Bishop will tell me.”