“It’s too bad,” she said, “that you met my father before you met me. You were prepared to be suspicious of me before you even saw me, speaking of prejudice. My father and I aren’t in the least alike, although Mother likes to tell me we are when she’s angry. She even claims I look like him. Do I?”
“There’s no physical resemblance.”
“There’s no resemblance in any other way either, not even in the good things. And there are a lot of good things about him, but I guess they didn’t show up the day you met him.”
“Some of them did. I never judge anyone by his parents, anyway. I can’t afford to.”
She turned and looked at him as if she expected him to elaborate on the subject. He said nothing more. The less she knew about him, the better. Walls weren’t supposed to have family histories; walls were for protection, privacy, decoration, for hiding behind, jumping over, playing games. Bounce some more balls at me, Daisy baby.
“Camilla,” she said. “You’ll find out more about him, of course.”
“Such as?”
“How he died, and why, and if he had any family or friends.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll know.”
“Suppose it turns out to be the kind of knowledge that won’t do anybody any good?”
“We’ve got to take that chance,” she said. “We couldn’t possibly stop now. It’s unthinkable.”
“I find it quite thinkable.”
“You’re bluffing, Mr. Pinata. You don’t want to quit now any more than I do. You’re much too curious.”
She was half right. He didn’t want to quit now, but a surplus of curiosity wasn’t the reason.
“It’s 5:15,” she said. “If you drive faster, we can get back to the Monitor before they close the library. Since Camilla committed suicide, there’s sure to be a report of it, as well as his obituary.”
“Aren’t you expected at home about this time?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think you’d better go there and leave the Camilla business to me.”
“Will you call me as soon as you find out anything?”
“Wouldn’t that be a little foolish under the circumstances?” Pinata said. “You’d have some fancy explaining to do to your husband and your mother. Unless, of course, you’ve decided to come clean with them.”
“I’ll call you at your office tomorrow morning at the same time as this morning.”
“Still playing secrets, eh?”
“I’m playing,” she said distinctly, “exactly the way I’ve been taught to play. Your system of all cards face up on the table wouldn’t work in my house, Mr. Pinata.”
It didn’t work in mine either, he thought. Monica got herself a new partner.
When he returned to the third floor of the Monitor-Press building, the girl in charge of the library was about to lock up for the day.
She jangled her keys at him unplayfully. “We’re closing.”
“You’re ahead of yourself by four minutes.”
“I can use four minutes.”
“So can I. Let me see that microfilm again, will you?”
“This is just another example,” she said bitterly, “of what it’s like working on a newspaper. Everything’s got to be done at the last minute. There’s just one crisis after another.”
She kept on grumbling as she took the microfilm out of the file and put it in the projection machine. But it was a mild kind of grumbling, not directed at Pinata or even the newspaper. It was a general indictment of life for not being planned and predictable. “I like things to be orderly,” she said, switching on the light. “And they never are.”
Camilla had made the front page of the December 3rd edition. The story was headlined suicide leaves bizarre farewell note and accompanied by a sketch of the head of a gaunt-faced man with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones. Although age lines scarred the man’s face, long dark hair curling over the tips of his ears gave him an incongruous look of innocence. According to the caption, the sketch had been made by Monitor-Press artist Gorham Smith, who’d been among the first at the scene. Smith’s byline was also on the story:
The body of the suicide victim found yesterday near the railroad jungle by a police patrolman has been identified as that of Carlos Theodore Camilla, believed to be a transient. No wallet or personal papers were found on the body, but further search of his clothing revealed an envelope containing a penciled note and the sum of $2,000 in large bills. Local authorities were surprised by the amount of money and by the nature of the note, which read as follows: “This ought to pay my way into heaven, you stinking rats. Carlos Theodore Camilla. Born, too soon, 1907. Died, too late, 1955.”
The note was printed on Hotel Parker stationery, but the management of the hotel has no record of Camilla staying there. A check of other hotels and motor lodges in the area failed to uncover the suicide victim’s place of residence. Police theorize that he was a transient who hitchhiked or rode the roads into the city after committing a holdup in some other part of the state. This would explain how Camilla, who appeared destitute and in an advanced stage of malnutrition, was carrying so much money. Inquiries have been sent to police headquarters and sheriffs’ offices throughout the state in an effort to find the source of the $2,000. Burial services will be postponed until it is established that the money is not the proceeds of a robbery but belongs legally to the dead man. Meanwhile, Camilla’s body is under the care of Roy Fondero, funeral director.
According to Sheriff-Coroner Robert Lerner, Camilla died of a self-inflicted knife wound late Thursday night or early Friday morning. The type of knife was identified by authorities as a navaja, often carried by Mexicans and Indians of the Southwest. The initials C.C. were carved on the handle. A dozen cigarette butts found at the scene of the tragedy indicate that Camilla spent considerable time debating whether to go through with the act or not. An empty wine bottle was also found nearby, but a blood test indicated that Camilla had not been drinking.
The residents of so-called Jungleland, the collection of shacks between the railway tracks and Highway 101, denied knowing anything about the dead man. Camilla’s fingerprints are being sent to Washington to determine whether he had a criminal record or is registered with immigration authorities. An effort is being made to locate the dead man’s place of residence, family, and friends. If no one claims the body and if the money is found to be legally his, Camilla will be buried in a local cemetery. The Coroner’s inquest, scheduled for tomorrow morning, is expected to be brief.
It was brief. As reported in the December 5th edition, Camilla was found to have died of a knife wound, self-inflicted while in a state of despondency. Witnesses were few: the police patrolman who discovered him, a doctor who described the fatal wound, and a pathologist who stated that Camilla had been suffering from prolonged malnutrition and a number of serious physical disorders. The time of death was fixed at approximately 1:00 a.m. on December 2.
Probably, Pinata thought, Daisy had read all this in the newspaper at the time it happened. The pathos of the case must have struck her — a sick, starving man, fearful (“This ought to pay my way into heaven”), rebellious (“You stinking rats”), despairing (“Born too soon. Died too late”), had sent his final message to the world and committed his final act.
Pinata wondered whether the stinking rats referred to specific people, or whether the phrase, like the grumbling of the girl in charge of the library, was an indictment of life itself.