“Okay... I pick you.”
“Fine.”
She had a check ready for him, $2,500 made out to Tomas Aragon and marked “Legal Services.”
“This should cover your airfare, car rental, living expenses, and of course, bribes. If anyone asks you, you can say you work for the local police. They may not believe you but they’ll believe the money. Are you familiar with Baja California?”
“I’ve been to Tijuana.”
“Then the answer is no. I’ve done a little research on my own. You can fly down as far as Rio Seco and rent a car there. It has the last car-rental agency until the southernmost tip of Baja. Bahía de Ballenas is roughly halfway between. It’s not marked on most maps. Just keep driving south until you come to it. There’s a new road that goes part of the way along the coast. They call it a highway but you’d better not expect too much.”
Aragon put the check in his wallet and then returned the letter from B. J. to its envelope. “Do you mind if I keep this for a while? The references might be useful.”
“Take it. By the way, let’s get something clear. I could hire any investigator for a job like this a lot cheaper than you’re going to cost me.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m paying for discretion, for the privacy of a lawyer-client relationship. You’re not to tell anyone the nature of our business, not Smedler, not the authorities, not even your wife. Do you have a wife?”
“Yes. I haven’t been seeing much of her, though. She’s in her first year of residency in pediatrics at a hospital in San Francisco.”
“Smart, eh?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Laurie Macgregor.”
“Why didn’t she take your name?”
“She already had one of her own.”
“All very modern and with it. I see... I bet she’s pretty.”
“I think so.”
“Describe her, nonlawyer style.”
“Nonlawyer style, she’s a dynamite chick.”
Gilly was staring pensively at her image in the copper hood of the barbecue pit. “I wonder, if I were in my twenties again, would anyone call me a dynamite chick?”
“On the evidence presented so far I would assume that you were and that you would be so designated.”
“Hey, that’s nice, Aragon. You and I are going to be pals. You know what else? You’ll make a very good lawyer.”
“Well, if I don’t, I hope I’ll be married to a very good pediatrician.”
Aragon hadn’t intended it to be funny, but she laughed as if he’d made the joke of the century. He suspected that the dynamite-chick business had left his new pal, Gilly, a little intoxicated.
Five
Violet Smith picked her way carefully around the side of the house past the thorns of the carissa and the spiked leaves of the century plants and the gopher holes in the lawn. She had seen Aragon’s car parked in the driveway and had been on her way to the barbecue room in the hope of overhearing something interesting when Mr. Decker’s bell rang. Reed was off duty and the day girl had already left, so it was Violet Smith’s Christian obligation to answer the bell. Mr. Decker had to go to the bathroom, which was messy and took forever, so that by the time she finished cleaning up, twenty minutes or more had elapsed.
Crossing the patio, she stooped to retrieve a stray leaf caught between two flagstones. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mrs. Decker talking to a strange man. She couldn’t make out the words but they must certainly have been funny because Mrs. Decker suddenly began laughing like some giddy young girl. Violet Smith transferred the leaf to the apron pocket of her uniform and slid open the screen door.
Mrs. Decker immediately sobered up and looked her age again. “You can see I’m busy, Violet Smith.”
“Mr. Decker is agitated. I think he heard a strange car come up the driveway and wants to know what is it doing here.”
“It’s waiting for Mr. Aragon,” Gilly said brusquely.
“Do I go back and tell him?”
“No. No, I’ll do it... Aragon, please stay here for a minute while I check my husband, will you?”
“Don’t hurry,” Aragon said. “I have lots of time.”
After she’d gone Violet Smith studied Aragon carefully and at length. “How come you have lots of time? Don’t you work?”
“I’m working now.”
“You give a good impression of just standing around.”
“Practice, Miss Smith. Years of practice... Mrs. Smith?”
“Violet Smith is my true name, both here and There. When people don’t call me that, I pay them no mind. I figure they might be talking to someone else. There are millions of Smiths.”
She had a point and Aragon guessed that she would cling to it even if it impaled her. He said, “I hope I haven’t disturbed Mr. Decker.”
“He’s agitated. That could be good or bad, depending. I never know. I can’t understand those monkey noises of his, meaning no disrespect. He heard a strange car and we don’t get many strangers around here.”
“Why not?”
“Mrs. Decker had Reed put up a lot of signs to scare people off, like No Peddlers, No Trespassing, Private Property, Beware of Dogs. We don’t even have a dog, except one of the gardeners brings his Airedale along in the truck which howls. The gardeners are both long-haired heathens... Have you been saved?”
“I think so.”
“Aren’t you sure?”
“It’s not the sort of thing one can be sure about until — well, until later.”
“If you think there’s any doubt, it would be better to find out now than then.”
“Yes, I guess it would.”
“You know, you kind of remind me of my son. I don’t see much of him anymore. I never raised a hand to that boy until the day he vilified the Lord. He diminished Jesus and I had to slug him. My hand pained me for several weeks. I could hardly hold my Bible.”
She began dusting the glass table with a piece of tissue which she produced from one of the half-dozen pockets of her uniform. It was apparent from her vigorous movements that her slugging hand had been completely cured and that Violet Smith was ready for another round at the sound of the bell. She was a powerful woman with thick wrists, and shoulders as wide as Aragon’s.
He said, “Why does Mrs. Decker want to scare people off?”
“They might disturb Mr. Decker. He’s pretty far gone, a real sorrowful figure. I overheard Reed asking the doctor one day if it wouldn’t be more humane to pull out the plugs. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about until the doctor used the word, ‘euthanasia.’ Then I stepped right up and said I was against it. The doctor was polite enough, but oh, that Reed has a dirty tongue in his head. I felt duty-bound to report the incident to Mrs. Decker. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“Wow, she threw a terrible fit, crying and carrying on and screaming how she wanted to have her plugs pulled out, too. Then she drank a lot of booze. I told her, ‘You can’t drown your troubles, Mrs. Decker, because troubles can swim.’ Well. If you think Reed has a dirty tongue in his head you should have heard her. My ears cringed. ‘Sticks and stones,’ I said to her, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ She told me what I could do with every stick and stone between here and Seattle.”
“It wasn’t one of your more popular nights, apparently.”
“Oh, I forgave her. I knew she was just scared like everybody else who won’t accept Jesus. Scared of the old man dying and leaving her alone, and scared of dying herself. I’m used to her bad language, anyway. She’s not a true-born lady like the first Mrs. Lockwood. Mrs. Decker was the second Mrs. Lockwood.”