G is for Gumshoe (13 page)

Someone peered out of the kitchen at us with uncertainty. Maybe they thought we were from the health department inspecting for rat turds. There was some sort of whispered consultation and then a waitress appeared. She was short and heavyset, a middle-aged Mexican in a white wraparound apron decorated with stains. Shyly, she tried out her language skills. My Spanish is limited to (approximately) three words, but I could swear she offered to serve us squirrel soup. Dietz kept squinting and shaking his head. Finally, the two of them rattled at each other in Spanish for a while. He didn't seem fluent, but he managed to make himself understood.

I studied him casually while he fumbled with his vocabulary. He had a battered look, his nose slightly flattened, with a knot at the bridge. Mouth wide and straight, turning lopsided when he smiled. His teeth were good, but my guess was that some of them weren't his. Looked too even to me and the color was too white. He turned back to me.

“The place just opened yesterday. She recommends the menudo or the combination plate.”

I leaned toward him, avoiding her bright gaze. “I don't eat menudo. It's made with tripe. Have you ever seen that stuff? It's white and spongy-looking . . . all these perforations and bumps. It's probably some internal organ human beings don't even have.”

“She'll have the combination plate,” he said to her blandly. He held up two fingers, ordering one for himself.

She shuffled away in huaraches that she wore with white socks. She returned moments later with a tray that held glasses, two beers, a small dish of salsa, and a basket of tortilla chips still sizzling with lard.

We snacked on chips and salsa while we waited for our lunch.

“How do you know Lee Galishoff?” I asked. The beer bottle had a little piece of lime resting on the top and I squeezed some in. Both of us ignored the glasses, which were still hot from a recent washing.

Dietz reached for his cigarettes before he remembered that he'd thrown them out. He caught himself and smiled, shaking his head. “I did some work for him, hunting down a witness on one of his first trials. After that, we started playing racquetball and became good friends. What about you?”

I told him briefly the circumstances through which I'd ended up tracking Tyrone Patty for him. “I take it you've done security work before.”

He nodded. “It's a lucrative sideline, especially in this day and age. Tends to limit your personal life, but at least it's relief from straight private-eye work, which is a yawn, as you know. Last week I sat for six hours looking at microfiche in the tax assessor's office. I can't stand that stuff.”

“Lee told me you were feeling burned out.”

“Not burned out. I'm bored. I've been doing it for ten years and it's time to move on.”

“To what?” I asked. The beer was very cold and made a nice contrast to the fiery salsa, which was making my nose run. I kept dabbing surreptitiously with a paper napkin, looking like a junkie in need of a fix.

“Don't know yet,” he said. “I got into the business in the first place by default. Started out doing repos, serving papers, stuff like that for a guy who eventually took me into his agency. Ray hated doing fieldwork—too rough for his taste—so he did all the paperwork and I dealt with the deadbeats. He was the cerebral type, really had it up here.” He tapped his temple.

“You're using past tense. What happened to him?”

“He dropped dead of a heart attack ten months ago. The guy jogged, worked out lifting weights. He married this gal, gave up alcohol and cigarettes, gave up dope, gave up staying out all night. Bought a house, had a baby, happy as a pig eating shit, and then he died. Forty-six. A month ago, his widow started talking like she expected me to step in and fill the gap. It's bullshit. No thanks. I had her cash me out.”

“You've lived in California?”

He gestured dismissively. “I've lived everywhere. I was born in a van on the outskirts of Detroit. My mother was in labor and the old man didn't want to stop. I got hauled all over hell and gone as a kid. Pop worked the oil rigs so we spent a lot of time in L.A. . . . this was in the late forties, early fifties when the big boom was on. Texas, Oklahoma. It was dangerous damn work, but the money was good. Pop was a brawler and a bully, very protective of me as long as I was tough myself. He was the kind of guy who'd get in a bar fight and tear the place apart . . . just for the hell of it. If he had a clash with the boss or decided he didn't like what was going on, we'd pack up and hit the road.”

“How'd you manage to go to school?”

“I didn't if I could help it. I hated school. I couldn't see
the point. To me, it all looked like preparation for something I didn't want to do anyway. I was never going to work in a feed store so why did I have to know how many bushels in a peck? Is that an issue that comes up for you? Two trains leaving different cities at sixty miles an hour? I couldn't sit still for junk like that. Nowadays they call kids like me hyperactive. All those rules and regulations, just for the sake of it. I couldn't stand it. I never did graduate. I ended up with an equivalency degree. Took some kind of written test that I aced without ever cracking a book. The system's not designed for transients. I liked phys ed and shop, woodworking, auto mechanics . . . stuff like that. But nothing academic. Doesn't make any sense unless you start at the beginning and work straight through. I always showed up in the middle and had to leave before the end. Story of my life.”

Lunch arrived and we paused to study our food, trying to figure out what it was. Rice and a puddle of refrieds, something folded with cheese leaking out, something flat. I recognized a tamale because it was wrapped in a corn husk. This was real basic fare—no parsley, no orange slice twisted open and resting on the top. My plate was so hot, I could have used it to iron a shirt. The cook appeared from the kitchen shyly bearing a stack of steaming flour tortillas wrapped in a cloth. The two hospital meals had left my taste buds craving astonishment. I wolfed the food, slowing only long enough to suck down another cold beer. Everything was excellent, the sort of flavors that make you whimper. I reached the finish line slightly in advance of Dietz and wiped my mouth on a paper napkin. “What about your mother? Where was she all this time?”

He shrugged, mouth full, waiting till he could speak. “She was there. My granny, too. The four of us traveled in an old station wagon with our gear shoved in the back. Everything I know my mom or my granny taught me in a moving vehicle. Geography, geology. We'd buy these old textbooks and work our way through. Usually, they'd be drinking beers and cutting up, laughing like lunatics. I thought that was neat and learning was a hoot. Put me in a classroom, I withered from the quiet.”

I smiled. “You were probably the kind of kid I was afraid of in school. Boys mystified me. I never understood where they were coming from. When I was in fifth grade, we used to give these plays every Friday afternoon. Improvisational stuff we'd rehearse in the cloak room. The girls would always do love stories full of tragedy and selfsacrifice. The boys had sword fights . . . lots of mouth noises and bumping. They'd stagger against the wall and then fall down dead. I couldn't figure out why that was fun. I didn't much like what the girls did, but at least people weren't getting stabbed with imaginary rapiers.”

He smiled. “Were you raised in Santa Teresa?”

“I've lived there all my life.”

He shook his head in mock amazement. “I couldn't even list all the places I've been.”

“Were you in the service?”

“I was spared that, thank God. I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. I'm not sure I could have passed the physical in any event. I had rheumatic fever as a kid . . .”

The waitress returned and started clearing our plates.

“Can you tell me where the ladies' room is?” I said to her.

“Gracias,”
she said, smiling at me happily while she loaded the tray.

“El cuarto de damas?”
Dietz supplied.

“Oh
sí, sí
!” She laughed at herself when she understood her mistake. She gestured toward the kitchen. I pushed back my chair. Dietz made a move as though to accompany me, but I stopped him. “God, Dietz. There are limits here, you know?”

He let it pass, but I noticed that he watched me carefully as I moved toward the back door. The
damas
did their business in a mop closet in the rear. While I was washing my hands afterward, I caught sight of myself in a shard of mirror that was propped up on the sink. I looked worse than I had the night before. My forehead was black and blue, my eye sockets smudged now with lavender. The red streaks beneath my eyes made it look like I had conjunctivitis. The dry desert climate had affected my hair, causing it to look like something I'd swept up from under the bed. I couldn't believe I'd been out in public without having people shriek and point. My head was starting to pound again.

By the time I reached the table, Dietz had paid the bill. “You okay?” he asked.

“You don't happen to have any pain pills, do you?”

“I have some Darvocet in the car.”

He bought a can of Coke and we took it with us when we left. I watched him scan the parking lot as he unlocked the car. He opened the door for me, waiting until I was safely tucked in before he moved around to the driver's side. Once in his seat belt, he searched the glove compartment for the vial of pills.

“Let me know if this doesn't do the job. I've got prescriptions for everything.” He checked a label or two, found what he was looking for, and shook a pill out onto his palm. I murmured a thank-you. He popped the can of Coke open for me and I washed the medication down. Within minutes, the pain began to recede. Shortly after that, I fell asleep.

I woke as we crossed the Ventura County line. I could smell the ocean before I even opened my eyes. The air was moist and briny, the surrounding countryside lush with green, a peculiar juxtaposition of junipers and palms. After the lean monotony of the desert, the coastal vegetation seemed lavish and strange. I could feel every cell in my body respond, drinking in the damp. Dietz glanced over at me. “Better?”

“Much.” I sat up and ran my hands through my hair, scratching at the flattened strands. The medication had erased the pain, but I was feeling slightly out of it. I leaned my head back again and slouched down on my tail bone. “How's the traffic been?”

“We're through the worst of it.”

“If I don't get a shower soon, I'll have to kill myself.”

“Twenty-five miles to go.”

“No sign of a tail?”

His gaze crept up to the rearview mirror. “Why follow us? He probably knows where you live.”

“A happy thought,” I said. “How long is this whole thing likely to go on?”

“Hard to say. Until he gives up or gets caught.”

“And who's doing that?”

He smiled. “Not me. My job's to look after you, not catch bad guys. Let's leave that to the cops.”

“And what's my responsibility in all of this?”

“We'll talk about that in the morning. Most of what I want is ‘obedience without whining.' Very few women master it.”

“You don't know me very well.”

He peered over at my face. “I don't know you at all.”

“Well, here's a hint,” I said dryly. “I was raised by my mother's sister. My folks were killed in an accident and I went to live with her when I was five. This is the first thing she ever said to me . . . ‘Rule number one, Kinsey . . . rule number one ...'—and here she pointed her finger right up in my face—‘No sniveling.' ”

“Jesus.”

I smiled. “It wasn't so bad. I'm only slightly warped. Besides, I got even. She died ten years ago and I sniveled for months. It all came pouring out. I'd been a cop for two years and I gave that up. Turned in my uniform, turned in my nightstick . . .”

“Symbolic gesture,” he interjected.

I laughed. “Right. Six months later, I was married to a bum.”

“At least the story has a happy ending. No babies?”

I shook my head. “Not a one.”

“With me, it's just the opposite. I never had a wife, but I've got two kids.”

“How'd you manage that?”

“I lived with a woman who refused to marry me. She swore I'd leave her in the end and sure enough that's what I did.”

I stared at him for a while, but he subsided into silence. Soon afterward, the outskirts of Santa Teresa began to speed into view and I felt an absurd rush of joy at the notion of home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found a parking spot for the Porsche two doors down from my place and unloaded the trunk. By the time we pushed through the gate and rounded the corner to the rear, Henry had emerged from his back door to welcome me home. He stopped in his tracks, his smile faltering as his eyes shifted from my face to Dietz's. I introduced the two of them and they shook hands. Belatedly, I remembered what my battered visage must look like.

“I was in an accident,” I said. “A guy ran me off the road. I had to leave the car in Brawley and Dietz gave me a ride back.”

Henry was visibly dismayed, especially as he was in possession of only half the tale. “Well, who was the fellow? I don't understand. Didn't you file a report with the police down there?”

I hesitated, uncertain how much detail to get into at this point. Dietz settled the matter for me. “Let's go inside and
we'll fill you in on the rest of it.” He was clearly uneasy about standing around in the open air, exposed to view.

I unlocked the door and pushed it open, moving into the apartment with Henry behind me and Dietz at the rear, herding us like a sheepdog.

“I'll just be a second. I want to get things squared away,” I said to Henry. And then to Dietz, “Henry designed the place. It was just finished two days ago. I've spent exactly one night here.”