Hymn (7 page)

He let out a long, controlled breath. Don't be so goddamned ridiculous. Celia's dead. You saw her body, you saw it for yourself. They gave you back her charm bracelet, and they gave you back her purse.

He stepped into the kitchen, and turned immediately toward the back door. For a fraction of a second, he thought he glimpsed a pale fawn figure, ducking down. He heard footsteps brush quickly on the brickwork outside.

‘Come here!' he shouted. ‘If you run, I'm going to call the cops!'

Furiously, he twisted the key in the back door, and cursed as he forced back the bolts. He hardly ever used them, and they were so stiff that he chipped the heel of his hand on the edge of the metal. He hurled open the door, knowing how foolish it was, knowing that it was madness, but he was convinced that he had glimpsed a fleeting triangle of bright yellow, and a pale blur that could easily have been a raincoat.

He rushed out into his back yard, alarming a brace of California quail. There was nobody there. No yellow scarf, no raincoat. What was more, the sprinkler was glittering in the middle of the lawn, and if anybody had run away through the garden they would have had to pass directly through the spray.

There were no tracks across the silvery moisture-beaded grass, no sign that anybody had run that way. But sidling toward the fence was a cloud of slowly fragmenting smoke, like a ghost that was coming apart at the seams. Eventually, it rose in the breeze and was abruptly whirled away. No—not smoke, but steam, as if somebody had run through the sprinkler whirling a red-hot poker around their head.

His appetite wasn't as hearty as he had imagined it would be, and he left most of the pasta pushed to the side of his plate. Gino was hurt, and came out of the kitchen and stared at him with cow-like eyes.

‘There's something wrong? Maybe I should cook you some of my rognoncini di agnello saltati con cipolla.'

‘You've got to be joking,' Lloyd responded. ‘Gino, that was brilliant. Spaghettini like they make in heaven. But I guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach.'

‘Aren't you the man who said to me, “to waste food is to waste life itself . . .”?' Gino demanded.

‘Sure, but I'm also the man who said, “never eat anything you can't lift”.'

Gino sat down at the table with him and snapped his fingers for the waiter to bring them two glasses of verdicchio. ‘You tease me, Lloyd, you make fun,' he said, laying a hand on Lloyd's arm. ‘But you must miss her so much. Such a lady. Such elegance.'

‘Yes, well,' said Lloyd, and lowered his eyes. He was trying very hard not to think about the Celia that he could remember, but to concentrate on the Celia that he had obviously never known. The secret Celia, the Celia who had pretended that she had no parents. The Celia who had believed so obsessively in living for ever. The Celia who had gone to Otto's religious study group, and who had burned herself alive not five blocks from where he was sitting now.

‘What are you going to do?' Gino asked him. ‘Maybe you should take some time off?'

Lloyd nodded. ‘Two or three days, maybe. But I can't keep away from the job too long. You know what it's like. You take too much time off, you lose your edge.'

‘Hey . . . if you get bored, come back down here, and I will show you how to make insalatina tenera con la pancetta.'

‘What the hell is that? It sounds like a street direction to the Vatican.'

Gino swallowed wine and shook his head. ‘Lettuce, fried. It's wonderful. But I can't explain how to do it, I have to show you.'

Just then, Gino was called back to the kitchen to whip up some coste di biete saltate, and Lloyd was left to finish his wine on his own. He was glad of the chance to be silent. He was summoning up all of the courage he possibly could, so that he would have the strength to visit the place where Celia had died. He had to go. It was not just an investigation, it was a pilgrimage. He had to know exactly where it was before he could begin to visualize it, and then to understand. He couldn't imagine what pain had been suffered by wives in wartime, to learn that their husbands had been killed, but never to know exactly where. It seemed to him then that the place where somebody dies is even more important than where they were born.

He stood in the car-park opposite McDonald's with his hands by his sides, staring at the smoke-stained kerb. Some of the bushes had been scorched, too, so Lloyd could judge how fierce the fire must have been. He wished he had brought some flowers. Lilies had always been Celia's favourite.

What a place to die. Barren and public, noisy with traffic. He couldn't imagine why she had chosen such a dreary location.

He tried to say a prayer. He hoped that her soul was at rest. He hoped that she hadn't suffered. He hoped that she would forgive him, for not understanding that she was suffering so much that she wanted to die.

‘And one day we'll meet again, for sure. Amen.'

He was walking back to his car when one of the chefs came out of the side entrance of the McDonald's restaurant and began to walk hurriedly toward him. A bulky man, with a startling wide-apart cast in his eyes.

‘Pardon me!' he called. ‘Sir!'

Lloyd waited for him to reach him. He was in his fifties, grey-haired and sweating. He smelled strongly of hamburgers.

‘I'm sorry to bother you, sir,' he said, wiping the palms of his hands on his apron. ‘But I couldn't help noticing you standing over there.'

Lloyd said, ‘I'm not one of your sensation-seekers, if that's what you think. The girl who was burned . . . well, she was my fiancée.'

‘I figured something like that. Well, I saw the BMW. Your average ghoul doesn't usually turn up to gawp in a BMW.'

He held out his hand. ‘Bob Tuggey. Most people call me Unca Tug.'

‘Lloyd Denman.'

Bob said, ‘I was here when it happened. I tried to stop her. It was terrible.'

‘You were the one with the fire-extinguisher?'

Bob lowered his eyes, and nodded. ‘I tried, believe me, but I just wasn't fast enough. Fifteen seconds sooner, and I could have saved her.'

Lloyd looked back toward the burned bushes. ‘I appreciate what you did.'

‘I saw her walking across the car-park, swinging this yellow can. I should have guessed right away what she was planning on doing.'

Lloyd shook his head. ‘I don't think anybody could have guessed what she was planning on doing.'

‘I was in Saigon,' Bob told him. ‘I saw one of those monks setting himself alight. Your young lady sat right down, crosslegged, exactly the same way that monk did, and then I knew for sure what she was going to do. I just wasn't fast enough.'

‘Well, thanks anyway,' Lloyd told him.

‘Hey, listen . . .' said Bob, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘I found something afterwards, in the bushes. I was going to take it to the police yesterday but I didn't have the time. It must've been hers, so I guess the best person to give it to is you.'

Between finger and thumb, he held up a small gold charm, discoloured by heat. Its link was broken, as if it had been tugged from a chain or a bracelet. But Lloyd had never noticed it on Celia's bracelet. Certainly he hadn't given it to her, and she had never mentioned buying it.

‘I don't recognize it,' he frowned, holding it flat on the palm of his hand. ‘It must be somebody else's.'

The charm was a circle, and inside the circle was a lizard, with its head bent sideways and its legs and its tail bent sideways, too.

‘You're sure?' asked Bob. ‘I found it right where it happened, the same afternoon. I kept meaning to take it in.'

‘I could show it to her mother, see if she recognizes it.'

‘Okay,' Bob agreed.

‘Do you want a receipt for it?' asked Lloyd.

Bob gave him a smile. ‘Don't worry about it. You're not going to get very far in a white BMW with a registration plate that says FISHEE.'

‘I guess not. Listen, Mr Tuggey—I run Denman's Original Fish Depot, at La Jolla Cove. Here—here's my card. Why don't you call by sometime, and have a drink on the house?'

‘Thanks. I might just take you up on that.'

They shook hands. Bob returned to McDonald's, and Lloyd walked back to his car, holding the charm tightly in his fist, as if he were afraid it might jump out of his hand. He unlocked his car, but as he was about to climb into it, he noticed a red neon sign on the opposite side of Rosecrans announcing Copie Shoppe: Xerox, Printing, & Fax. He picked up the sheets of libretto from the passenger-seat, relocked his car, and crossed the road.

As Bob reappeared in the kitchen, Sally the manageress called out to him, ‘Unca Tug? You just missed a phone call.'

‘Oh, yeah, who was it? Not the President again, asking for advice on the Middle East? I wish he'd formulate his own policies, for God's sake, and leave me alone.'

‘It was a girl. She sounded sexy, too.'

Bob looked up from the grill. ‘A girl?'

‘Sure. Real hoarse and provocative, know what I mean?'

‘For me?'

‘Well, not specifically for you. She wanted to know if anybody had handed in a gold charm. Apparently she lost it in the parking-lot.'

Bob put down his spatula in exasperation. ‘Would you believe it? I just gave that charm to that guy out there. Well, he was out there. He's gone now.'

‘What did you do that for?'

‘He said that girl who burned herself was his fiancée. I was sure the charm must have been hers.'

‘This girl sure didn't sound dead.'

‘Well, the guy didn't recognize the charm, either, so I guess it couldn't have belonged to his fiancée, after all. Damn it.'

‘Do you know who he is?' asked Sally.

‘Oh, sure. He owns a fish restaurant at La Jolla. Guess I'll just have to call him and get it back.'

‘I told the girl on the phone you had it,' said Sally. ‘She said she'd call by later to collect it.'

‘She described it?'

‘Sure, kind of a lizard, in a ring, that's what she said.'

Bob nodded. He left the kitchen and went through to the corridor, and picked up the payphone. He punched out the number of Denman's Original Fish Depot, and waited while it rang.

Waldo answered. Bob explained what had happened, but Waldo told him that ‘Monsieur Denman weel not veezeet ze restaurant aujourd'hui. Pairhaps tomorrow.'

‘Just tell him the gold charm didn't belong to his fiancée, please, and maybe he could call me.'

‘Avec plaisir, monsieur.'

Bot put down the phone, and went back to the Big Macs and the Fillet-o-Fishes and the Egg McMuffins. The afternoon passed quickly: his shift was due to end at seven-thirty. Tonight he was planning on bowling with his friend Stan Kostolowicz, another marooned penpusher from the Far Eastern embassies of the 1960s.

As it gradually grew dark, however, he failed to notice the large silver-grey Mercedes saloon with darkly-tinted windows which drew up outside the restaurant, and which remained parked there, even though none of its doors opened. Whoever was inside it had obviously decided to remain inside it, waiting.

Lloyd arrived outside Sylvia Cuddy's downtown apartment building a little more than ten minutes early, and Sylvia wasn't yet ready. He walked up the tile-flagged steps to the second floor, and Sylvia let him in.

‘Excuse the chaos,' she said, kissing his cheek.

Like the living accommodation of many people he knew, even successful musicians and restaurateurs and interior designers, Sylvia's apartment was tiny. Real-estate prices in San Diego had risen stunningly, and even a cramped two-room apartment was beyond the reach of all but the most affluent.

Only one drawer had to be left open, or one newspaper dropped on the floor, and the whole place looked untidy.

Sylvia's ‘chaos' amounted to nothing more than a coffee-cup left in the kitchen area, and an open file of drawings for the San Diego Opera's forthcoming production of Mefistofele.

‘Have a seat,' she said. ‘There's wine in the icebox. Or Perrier. Or freshly-squeezed pineapple. There's even some stuffed olives. Or some strawberry Jell-O.'

Lloyd poured himself a glassful of cold Cakebread chardonnay, and stepped out on to Sylvia's tiny redwood balcony. The balcony had been built up to chest-height to give her extra privacy, and to mask the view of watertowers and warehouses and tract housing rooftops. If you didn't peer over the edge, all you could see was Banker's Hill and the Coronado Bay, glittering gold in the distance.

‘You've worked miracles with this place,' he told her, turning around with his back to the parapet. ‘I love this dark green wallpaper, and all these drapes.'

‘I have to have drapes because I don't have room for closets,' she called back. ‘I'm so tired of living in Lilliput, you know? It's so damned small here I can do swan-dives off the ironing-board, straight down the toilet.'

She stepped out onto the balcony beside him. She was short, only a little over five-three, with a wild tangle of backbrushed Titian hair, an owlish pair of Paloma Picasso spectacles, lips as plump as pink-silk cushions, and huge rounded breasts that were wrapped up like well-ripened canteloupes in a crimson-and-green floral blouse by André Laug.

‘You know what Celia used to say about this blouse?' asked Sylvia. ‘She said it was like somebody shouting in the jungle. Wasn't that just typical?'

‘I went to see the place today,' said Lloyd. ‘The place where she died.'

Sylvia didn't answer, but waited to hear what Lloyd would say next.

‘It's a car-park, that's all,' he told her. ‘A concrete carpark. What a goddamned awful place to die.'

‘Any place is a goddamned awful place to die,' Sylvia told him, taking his hand and squeezing it. ‘Come on, let's go find ourselves a real drink.'
They left the apartment and Lloyd drove them out to Harbor Island Drive, to Tom Ham's Lighthouse. Apart from being a bar and a restaurant, Tom Ham's was a genuine certified coastguard lighthouse, with a spectacular view of the harbour. It was dark now, except for a last diagonal streak of grainy orange light across the horizon. They sat at a window table, looking out over the dipping lights and the reflections of downtown San Diego. Sylvia ordered a Kahlua on the rocks, but Lloyd stuck to whisky. There were times when only whisky was any use.

‘You said you thought there might be some connection between Celia and Marianna,' said Syliva.

‘I don't know. I don't have any proof. It seems too much of a coincidence, that's all.'

‘Coincidences do happen.'

‘Well, sure . . . but I've got a weird kind of feeling about it. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to this Otto character.'

‘I'm afraid I haven't had any luck finding out about him. Don hasn't heard of him, but I'm sure that Joe North sometimes used to go along to see him, with Celia and Marianna. He's back at the theatre the day after tomorrow. I'll ask him then.'

‘Thanks,' said Lloyd. Then, ‘Do you happen to know what was the last opera that Wagner ever wrote?'

‘That's a peculiar question.'

‘Some pretty peculiar things have been happening.'

Sylvia frowned at him. ‘Listen, you've had a dreadful shock. Are you sure you're okay?'

‘I'm not too sure of anything, to tell you the truth. But tell me what was Wagner's last opera.'

‘Well,' she said, ‘the last opera that Wagner wrote was Parsifal, 1882. In 1883 he went to Venice and died of a heart attack.'