“How long were you there?”
“Four lousy years. Up on the Oregon coast for a while. Portland. Back to Mendocino and then down here.” Meineke swallowed bourbon, wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. The bottle was almost empty. He’d guzzled close to a pint in under fifteen minutes, but color in his sunken cheeks was the only visible effect. His voice was a steady, emotionless monotone, the voice of a hollow man. “Should’ve been the good life,” he said. “Was for a while, I guess, but we went through the fifty thousand like shit through a goose. Food, liquor, rent, new car, all kinds of crap we didn’t need. Didn’t work much, either of us — no money coming in. Broke by the time we quit Mendocino the first time. Lived hand to mouth after that. And Pete and Ellen down there in Greenwood with their fancy house, fancy lifestyle. We drove down one time, didn’t tell ’em we were coming, and they were pissed. Didn’t want us to see how much they really had. Bastards lied about how much they got from Cotter, all right. Owed us better for sticking with ’em, that’s what Lynn said. Never’ve gotten away with it if we hadn’t disappeared along with ’em.”
He was right about that, I thought. Still, the planning had been good, careful, and they’d had luck on their side. Statistics, too: fifty thousand people disappear every year in this country, a large percentage without a trace. The police, with all their resources, can’t find them; private investigators, with all our resources, can’t find them. The irony was, if any outfit could have tracked the four down, it was organized crime with all their resources. But Pete and Ellen hadn’t ripped off the mob. Cotter’s bonds, Cotter’s cash, and Cotter was at most a low-level underboss, more likely a private-sector recruit used strictly for the money laundering. They might’ve given him some help in the beginning, as a favor, but it would not have involved much manpower or funds and it would have had a time limit. Organized crime’s capos can’t be bothered in the long run with personal problems or personal vendettas.
I asked Meineke, “How much more money did Pete and Ellen give you?”
“Not enough. Never enough. Christ, I hate to beg. Lynn don’t mind, she’ll lick your ass for fifty bucks. Licked their asses often enough, that’s for sure.”
“That why the two of you split up?”
“One of the reasons. Nothing left between us, we weren’t even screwing any more after she got so goddamn fat. Couldn’t stand living with her anymore. Caretaker job came up — not this one, another one up in Elk — I took it and walked. Lynn, she kept right on licking their asses. But not me, not anymore.”
One last pull and the bottle was empty. He held it up, peering at it or through it. I thought he might heave it over the cliff to shatter on the rocks below, but he didn’t; he tucked it carefully into his coat pocket. Maybe because the ocean was one of the two things he had left, as he’d said, and he did not want to befoul it with the remains of the other thing.
I said, “Ellen’s been up to see Lynn. She brought your niece with her.”
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“How would I know? Told you, I don’t have nothing to do with any of ’em anymore.”
“She left Emily with Lynn. Supposed to come back and get her, but she hasn’t shown up. That’s why I’m here.”
“Running again? Ellen?”
“Looks that way.”
“Why? You don’t work for Cotter, you said.”
“It’s a long story. You care enough to want to hear it?”
“No. Fuck her and Lynn both.”
“Your niece, too? She’s ten years old, Meineke.”
“Their kid, ain’t she?”
I stepped away from the bench. The wind had kicked up and the incoming fog had taken away most of the sunlight; my hands were cold even inside the coat pockets. “Okay, we’re finished,” I said.
He swiveled his head to look at me. His eyes had a ravished look. “No cops, huh, like you said?”
“No cops.” I started away.
“Hey,” he said, and I stopped again. “What about Cotter? You think he’ll find us someday? Any of us?”
“Could be he’s dead by now.”
“Could be,” Meineke said, but he didn’t believe it.
“Does it matter much if he does?”
No answer. I left him sitting there staring out to sea, all alone with Philip Cotter and the rest of his demons.
16
So now I had the full story. Or did I?
None of what Meineke had told me explained Sheila Hunter’s sudden disappearance, unless the sadistic Philip Cotter had finally found her after ten long years and that was too much coincidence to credit. The stolen bearer bonds and the rest of the scam didn’t explain Dale Cooney’s death, either. There was more going on here, whether it was related to the actions of four morally bankrupt individuals a decade ago or to something in the present lives of the two principal players. My best guess was the latter. The Hunters might have been a close-knit unit in the beginning, when they were on the run with their ill-gotten gains, but time and the ever-present fear of being caught had pulled them apart. Each had taken lovers, and that could have led to deadly secrets of a different kind.
Emily was on my mind again as I drove back down the coast. Innocent caught in the middle. Father dead, mother missing, unwanted by either unstable aunt or alcoholic uncle. I doubted I could ever bring myself to tell her the meaning of crazybone, or the fact that she was the illegitimate daughter of a bigamous mother, or any of the other ugly things I’d just learned.
I kept thinking of her waiting with Karen Meineke. Of how unpredictable and irrational people could be when they were teetering on the edge of panic. She wouldn’t harm Emily, wouldn’t lock her up again in that cold shed — not under normal circumstances she wouldn’t. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and besides, I didn’t really know the woman at all. How could you be sure of what a stranger would or wouldn’t do, given the wrong tick or enough provocation?
I shouldn’t have left that .38 there, I thought. She’ll comb the house for it, and even if she doesn’t find the cartridges in the garbage sack, she can always go out and buy more...
Coming into the outskirts of Gualala now. The turnoff for Port Creek Road was just up ahead. When I spotted it I slowed and made the turn without any hesitation. Karen Meineke’s mental state and that frigging gun. A question I’d neglected to ask Emily, too. But those weren’t the real reasons I was going back there. The real reason was Emily and the fact that I could not come to terms with abandoning her as I had. To hell with the strict letter of the law and the risk to me; leaving a child alone in the charge of an unstable relative was fiat-out wrong.
The first thing I saw when I reached the end of the access lane was that the carport was empty, the VW van nowhere in sight. It put a knot like a fist under my breastbone. I barreled up the driveway, jammed on the brakes, and came out running.
I was on the stairs when I heard the house door open. I slowed then, looking up, as light footfalls sounded on the deck above. Emily. She appeared and stood looking down at me, brushing her hair out of her eyes, smiling a little tentatively.
The knot loosening, I went up the rest of the way. She seemed all right, the same as before except that there was animation in her face, relief in her smile.
“You came back,” she said.
“Where’s your aunt?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. She packed some of her clothes and some money she had in a jar and went away.”