Monkey on a Chain (12 page)

She was slow to answer, and she spoke dreamily. “We had a room—near the fish market, I think. I remember how bad it smelled. I grew up there, in a little room on the third floor. We were together all the time. No one would play with me because I was half American. When I was old enough, I helped her. She had a shop, a little booth, really, on the street. She used to sell things. Cigarettes, batteries, newspapers, things like that. She taught me. I didn’t go to school much because of the things the teachers said about me. But I learned to read and write and use the abacus. I could make change very well, and I was proud that she let me do it. I loved her a lot. It was very hard to leave her, to get on the boat. I cried for days.”

“Did she have money?” I asked.

“Yes. I never thought about where it came from, but I can see now that there was more than she got from her shop.”

“Did she ever get letters from America?”

“You crazy? She might have been killed. People disappeared all the time.”

April turned to me and wiped her eyes. “My turn. Tell me about the first and last times you saw my mother.”

I stared into the night, toward the darkness that was Juarez. “The first time was in June of ’sixty-nine. I’d just been transferred to the MPs. Roy took me to the house. I knew that I was going to have to start paying for the transfer, and I was nervous and excited. Roy introduced me to your mother, but I didn’t pay much attention to her at the time. She left us alone, and he told me about the operation, about what I would do if I came in with him, about the others and where they were. Anyway, I just remember that Miss Phoung was wearing an Ao Dai and that she was pretty.

“The last time was in January of ’seventy-one. Roy had resigned his commission and taken a job in-country, with Air America, he said. He was being very mysterious. I rarely saw him. Toker and I were running the operation by ourselves, winding it down while the people we dealt with slowly finished their tours and rotated stateside. One day I went by the house and Miss Phoung was there with Max and some workers. The place was almost empty. She had a few boxes left that they were loading on a truck. She wouldn’t say where she was going. She just said goodbye and left. She was wearing an Ao Dai that time too, a white one.”

“White is a special color in Vietnam,” April said quietly. “Did you know that?”

“Yes. It’s the color of mourning.”

“Do you know who she was mourning?”

“No. She wore white almost all the time toward the end. Sissy was dead. Roy was gone. She was pregnant. Maybe she was mourning herself.”

“You said this Max Corvin was with her. Did she like him? Could he be my father?”

“Absolutely not! She hated him. He was…well, she blamed him for Sissy’s death, I think. I don’t know why he was there.”

“But it was his men who were loading her things on the truck?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to think about that.

“So she could have gone off with him?”

“I can’t believe that.”

“But she could have? Was she afraid? Did she act like he was forcing her to do something? To go with him?”

“It was more the other way around. He acted like he didn’t want to be there.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I didn’t say a word, April. I had nothing to say to the man. He used to be dangerous to us, but we’d pulled his teeth.” I rubbed my face. It was getting late. “Last question,” I said. “Just before Toker was killed, you wrote in your diary that you wanted to find your real father. Did you ever try?”

“No. I didn’t know how. And Dad had told me not to. I had to respect his wishes.”

“Did his attitude toward you change?”

“He seemed a little worried about something. I didn’t think it was me, though.”

I stood and stretched. “That’s it,” I said. “Bedtime.”

“Not yet.” She faced me. “I get my last question. When you said goodbye to my mother, did you kiss her?”

I blushed. Fortunately, it was too dark on the balcony for her to see. “No answer,” I said. “The game is over.”

“Not yet. Answer me or take the consequences.”

There must have been some power in the game, because I was reluctant to lie to her. “The consequences, then.”

She walked over and stood in front of me, staring up into my eyes. “Kiss me.”

I tried for her cheek, but she wasn’t having any of that. She turned her head and met my lips fully. She put her arms around me and pulled me tightly to her. Her breasts were soft against me, her mouth opened, and I folded my arms around her. Her back and her buttocks were soft under the thin dress. We stood like that for a long time, and I felt myself stiffening against her. I pulled away.

“The consequence was a kiss,” I said. “A kiss is all you get. And stay in your own bed tonight.”

“Sure,” she said.

She was lying, of course. I stripped down to my shorts and crawled into bed. She headed for the bathroom. When she slipped in beside me, she was naked again. The lights were off. My back was to her. She propped herself up on her elbow and leaned over my ear. I felt her nipple rubbing against my shoulder blade. “One last time,” she whispered. “Truth or Consequences.”

“No.”

She slipped her arm around me, put her hand on my chest, and then ran it down my belly. She wrapped it around my testicles and squeezed. “Yes,” she said. “Truth or Consequences. One last time.”

She had me. “What’s the question?”

“My mother. You loved her, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer, and she squeezed me again. “Yes,” I said tightly. “I loved her. In a way.”

“But you aren’t my father?”

“No.”

“You never had sex with her?”

“No.”

“But you wanted to?”

“Yes.”

“Did she know you loved her?”

“Maybe. I didn’t tell her, but she might have known.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I couldn’t. I never had a chance with her and I knew it.”

April squeezed her hand again, but it was gentler, more of a caress. “That’s why you don’t touch me. Because you loved my mother.”

“I touch you,” I told her. “Just this afternoon, I grabbed your toe.”

“That’s no big thing.”

“Maybe not to you. It’s a good toe.”

“Then it’s because of me. You like Oriental girls, and I’m half American.”

I rolled over onto her. She spread her legs to accommodate me and hooked her heels behind my knees. My secret was pressing into her belly.

“Does it feel like I don’t like you?” I asked.

“No,” she said softly, and kissed me.

I returned the kiss with a passion I could barely control. “Then stop being silly,” I whispered. I rolled back off her and said, “Now go to sleep.”

A long time passed in the dark before our breathing calmed. Just before I drifted off, I heard her laugh quietly to herself. It sounded like the tinkling of silver bells.

It was early when I woke. I showered and dressed before shaking April. I told her I’d meet her in the restaurant and left. She smiled at me, said nothing about last night, and was all business at breakfast.

We began at the county records office. I made a list of the properties and corporations I remembered Roy owning and the names he’d used. Time had passed, though, and it was a short list. A woman named Felicia showed us how the deeds were filed, and we began working our way through the land titles.

The idea was to follow the transfers of title. One of the properties was the Paseo Del Norte Office Complex. I had helped Roy buy it in 1972, using a middleman named Teletex Investments. At that time the price had been six hundred thousand, with a hundred down and an assumable note for five hundred. It was immediately traded to a New Mexico corporation named Quintana Holding Company. In 1973, Quintana traded it to Grimmuth Investments for a ranch near Tierra Amarilla.

Grimmuth operated the property until 1981, when it was sold to Pascuale Enterprises. In 1988, Pascuale sold to Prism Corporation, and three months ago Prism had sold to De Angelus Holding Company. The chain ended with De Angelus. They had paid $2.4 million and assumed what was left of the note. So, in nineteen years, Roy had turned a $100,000 down payment into over $1.75 million. He had gotten a decent income while he was waiting, and he probably still hadn’t paid a dime in taxes. All more or less legally. That was Roy.

We followed the same routine for the other four properties I could remember. A couple of the names involved were familiar to me, but they were all suspect. Roy could be anyone he wanted, just by signing a couple of pieces of paper. I knew that better than anyone.

The work was tedious and slow. It was early afternoon by the time we finished. We broke for lunch, then returned to the hotel and dug out the phone book. Eight of the names we’d found were still listed.

I copied out their addresses and we went out to do some drive-bys. Most of the names were easy to eliminate. They were legitimate, going businesses. Large offices, receptionists, secretaries, managers. Not Roy’s style at all. Only Prism Corporation looked promising. Its office was a post office box in the downtown area.

I drove to a pay phone and called the appropriate branch of the post office and asked to speak to the postmaster. I identified myself as an attorney, James Madison. You can get away with anything, given the present state of education. I could probably have been George Washington if I’d wanted.

I told him I was trying to settle the estate of John Arbuthnot, who had owned stock in Prism. I needed to contact them about a stock repurchase, but the post office box was the only address I had and my letter had been returned. I asked if they were still using that box.

The postmaster excused himself and returned in a few minutes. The box had been closed, he told me. There was no forwarding address. I asked what name had been on the card when the box was rented. He sounded annoyed, but excused himself again. When he returned, he told me the card had been signed by the vice-president of Prism, Mr. Walter Johnson.

There were several Walter Johnsons listed. I called each number in turn and asked for Mr. Johnson. There was no response at any of them, but at one the woman who answered spoke only Spanish. She said there was no Señor Johnson there.

Bingo.

By that time, it was late in the afternoon. We were both tired, and we called it a day. We headed back to the hotel and dinner. April watched television for an hour or so, then crawled into bed. We went to sleep without conversation.

The next morning I called the Texas State Corporation Commission with a list of all the corporations we hadn’t eliminated the day before. Only one of the fourteen suspects on the list was currently in the telephone book, Prism Corporation. The others were either no longer in business or no longer looking for business. To chase them down, I called the state government.

The clerk at the corporation commission was only willing to look up three names for each call. Policy, she said. She seemed to feel that a polite citizen would make her job easier by asking his question through the mail. That would have given her four to six weeks to get the information I wanted instead of the three hours, five phone calls, and half a roll of Tums my curiosity wound up costing me.

Every corporation doing business has to have a registered agent for service of notices. In case somebody wants to sue, they know who to deliver the papers to. I got the name, address, and telephone number of the registered agent for each of those fourteen corporations. The agents all had different names and addresses, but eight of them had the same telephone number, the one answered by the Spanish-speaking lady who didn’t live with Señor Rodgers. The problem was finding a way to get past her.

The direct approach is always nice, when it doesn’t get you killed. I thought it might be a good idea at least to scout it out, so I ran April through a fast-food hamburger joint that wasn’t fast and was only food in the FDA’s rather loose definition of the term.

April ordered a cheeseburger, large fries, and a Coke. She dug into them while I picked at my burger, Tums, and coffee. As soon as she finished her fries, she started talking. She seemed to think the job was all but done. I told her to slow down a bit. Enthusiasm is a fine thing if you can sit back and watch, preferably with a drink in your hand, but it can be painful if you’re expected to share it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “We’ve almost got him, haven’t we?”

“What would you do next?” I asked.

“Call the number again. Make that woman put him on, or at least give him a message!”

I shook my head. “If he’s involved, that’ll just tell him we’re in town, maybe let him set us up. And say he isn’t. Roy is a lot spookier than Walker ever was. If he gets a third call on that line, he may just close it down. Hell, he may have closed it when he got the call asking for Johnson.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

“Let’s see if he has a back door. Let’s find his phone. If that doesn’t work, there’ll be plenty of time to call again.”

After we finished lunch, I found a business in the neighborhood that had a reverse directory and didn’t mind letting me take a peek at it, but the number was unlisted. That left the telephone company. I called the business office, gave the operator Roy’s number, and told her I was interested in getting information on some of their extended services.

She was happy to oblige. “What services in particular, sir?”

“Well, you have call waiting, call forwarding, automatic messaging, and I’ve been thinking some about getting WATS service. Are those available in my area?”

“Of course. They’re available to all our customers. Which one do you want?”

I asked her for details on them, then asked about prices. She talked for a while and I listened politely, then told her that it sounded like I already had the call waiting. I wasn’t sure. My bills were higher than I thought they should be, and I hadn’t been getting them regularly. She called up the records for the number and told me that I had only the basic service. I asked her to verify my billing address. She gave me a post office box number and I confirmed that it was correct.

“But why am I getting so much static on the line?” I asked her. “Really, I’m not sure that something like WATS would work when I can’t hear people calling from across town as it is.”