“Did anyone else hear the conversation?” Donnally asked, hoping that something in Brown’s story had a bit of truth, some kind of starting point from which his stream of consciousness flowed and toward which Donnally could work back.
“Anna’s mother, Trudy. Trudy was there.” Brown grinned. “She knows R2D2. She told me so.”
Chapter 31
K atrisha Brown’s flight from Seattle to San Francisco arrived an hour late. The fog layer eclipsing the airport had kept incoming planes grounded all over the country under the theory that if there was no place to land, there was no reason to take off.
She handed her black duffel bag to Donnally, who was waiting by the TSA security checkpoint, then looked past him toward the terminal’s automatic exit doors.
“I need a cigarette,” she said, “and to have my head examined.”
Donnally smiled at her. “You’ll be going to the right place.”
Katrisha had told Donnally over the telephone that she’d never divorced Charles Brown. She’d filed in San Francisco, but her process server couldn’t find him. Then, after Brown was arrested for the murder of Anna Keenan, there was no way she would chance letting him know where she was living, much less appear in court to face him, until Donnally called her.
The consequence was that since she was a navy veteran and Brown was still her spouse, he was eligible for psych treatment at Fort Miley.
J anie was waiting just inside the monolithic Mayan Deco entrance to the hospital lobby. Donnally introduced Katrisha, and then Janie guided them toward a waiting room crowded with hobbled veterans and their families. Katrisha paused at the threshold and scanned the faces until she spotted Brown sitting by himself in a corner, head down, face shaven, hands in his lap.
Katrisha jutted her chin toward him. “You clean him up for the occasion?”
Donnally glanced over at Janie and smiled. “It was a joint effort. You want to talk to him?”
“Let’s just get the paperwork over with.” Katrisha jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a bar stool a couple of blocks down with my name on it.”
Brown rose and walked toward them.
“Shit. If that asshole touches me,” Katrisha said, “I’ll break his neck.”
Donnally intercepted Brown a few steps away, then put his arm around his shoulders and whispered, “Just do what we agreed, nothing more. Okay?”
Brown nodded, but Donnally could see in his eyes that his mind was racing, on the edge of a manic episode.
Janie walked over and took hold of Brown’s hand, now trembling like he had Parkinson’s, a side effect of the new drugs she’d put him on. Finding medications he could live with had been one of the things Janie hoped to accomplish once he was admitted.
They approached Katrisha. Brown pulled his arm free of Donnally. Katrisha half turned and raised her palms in defense, but Brown simply extended his hand and looked at her, his face wide and innocent with an expression of hesitant expectation.
Katrisha accepted his hand.
Brown looked at Donnally, then back at her and said, “Thank you, Katrisha. I’ll try my best.”
Her eyes welled up as if she had just glimpsed the twenty-year-old she’d married concealed inside the wreck he’d since become. She let go of his hand and wiped away her tears with the cuff of her jacket.
“I know you will, Charles.”
A n hour later, Katrisha was perched next to Donnally on the bar stool she had coveted. She took a sip of her beer, then flipped the bird at the “No Smoking” sign hanging by the tavern door.
“You know how many times I’ve heard him say he’d try?” Katrisha said, spinning her cigarette pack on the bar in front of her. “Dozens. You know how many psych wards I went trekking to, getting him committed? How many court appearances I made begging them to keep him locked up?”
Donnally nodded. “I know it was a struggle.”
She looked over at Donnally.
“It’s not going to work,” Katrisha said. “He’ll be off his meds and back on the street in no time. That’s just the way he is.”
Chapter 32
S onny Goldstine grinned when he saw Donnally walking toward where he sat on his porch in West Berkeley. The yard was as overgrown as when Donnally last saw it.
“I saw you on television a while back,” Sonny said. “Man you looked pissed.”
“I still am.”
“I figured. I went the no-contest route myself a couple of times. Practically made me feel innocent. Kind of like a purification ceremony.” Sonny looked up at the noon sun, then rose to his feet. “You want a beer?”
Donnally nodded as he climbed the three steps. Sonny pointed at a second rocking chair, then walked inside the house. He returned a few minutes later with two cans of Coors and handed one to Donnally.
Donnally held his up and inspected it. “I didn’t think you sixties types drank Coors. Something about their right wing politics. Heritage Foundation and all that anti-farmworker stuff.”
“I draw the political line at beer.” Sonny took a long drink, smacked his lips, and said, “I got… to have… my beer.” He dropped into the chair next to Donnally. “What brings you back to Shady Acres?”
“I need to talk to Trudy.”
Sonny smirked. “You and everybody else. It ain’t gonna happen.”
“Yes it is.”
“How do you figure?”
“You’re going to take me.”
“Not a chance.”
“Either that or I’ll start tearing things up.”
“The cops have tried that already.”
“I can do things they can’t.”
“What? Kidnap me and make me take you to her?”
Donnally looked over. “It’ll be my second one this week.”
Sonny’s head snapped toward Donnally, who shrugged, as if to say, Don’t ask. I’m not telling.
Sonny gazed toward the street for a few moments, then took a sip of his beer.
“I’m too old to hide out,” Sonny said. “I’ll call somebody who’ll call somebody who’ll call somebody. I’ll let Trudy be the one who decides whether or not she wants to talk to you.”
T wo days later, Donnally sat in the passenger seat of Sonny’s 1955 Willys Wagon. The springs in the seats creaked as Sonny backed into the street, and the gears ground as he shifted into first and headed toward the freeway.
“You sure this thing is going to make it?” Donnally asked.
Sonny grinned as if to say that he knew Donnally didn’t have a clue where Trudy was living.
“Just how far do you think it has to go?” Sonny asked.
“Nineteen seventy-five.”
S onny skirted north around San Francisco Bay, dropped off the freeway at San Rafael, headed though the rolling hills of Marin County, then along the coast. The gusting ocean wind buffeting off the rattling Willys made it sound like an airplane taking off.
They pulled into a parking lot in Fort Bragg just after sunset and entered the Dead End Cafe. Sonny pointed at a table along the window facing the commercial fishing harbor, then walked through the swinging double doors into the kitchen.
Donnally wondered whether Trudy Keenan would follow Sonny back out.
He got his answer two minutes later.
Sonny returned alone.
“What was that about?” Donnally asked, after Sonny sat down across from him.
“Just checking to make sure nobody followed us up here.”
“How would they know?”
Sonny tilted his head toward the freeway they’d traveled. “The hills have eyes.”
“And what did they see?”
“Two guys in a Ford Expedition were on our tail as far as San Rafael, but they got trapped in city traffic.”
“Trapped?”
“Let just say that somebody who used to live with us at New Sky still hasn’t learned to parallel park.”
A waitress in a tie-dyed shift walked up and took their orders. She was old enough to have been at the commune in the seventies, but Donnally couldn’t detect any sign that she was Sonny’s contact at the cafe.