“So it could have been silver.”
“Yes. Yes, it could.”
“About the man himself. Did you get a clear look at him?”
“Not very clear, I’m afraid. His coat collar was pulled up.”
“Did you have an impression of height, weight? Big, small, thin, fat?”
Mrs. Conti worked her memory, one hand stroking the old cat on her lap until Big Girl made a burbling sound like water boiling. “Well, he wasn’t fat. Tall? No, not really. But not short, either… I’m sorry, the only image I have in my mind is of a moving shape.”
“Could you estimate his age?”
“No… except that he seemed young to me. He moved the way a young man does, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, ma’am. Did you tell the police about him?”
“The police? Why, no. No one from the police came to see me.”
No surprise there. A woman dies from a fall inside a locked house, with no signs of forced entry. Verdict from the beginning: accident. None of the investigators had seen a need to canvass the neighbors, so they hadn’t bothered.
Mrs. Conti said, “Should I call and tell them?”
“No, that isn’t necessary.”
“But if you believe that man had something to do with poor Mrs. Mathias’s accident… That is why you’re investigating, isn’t it?”
“It’s part of my investigation, yes. If I find out that the man you saw was responsible, I’ll contact the police myself.” Before I got to my feet I reached over and rubbed the tortoiseshell’s ears. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Conti. You’ve been a huge help.”
“Have I? I’m so glad. I don’t have much opportunity to be helpful to anyone since Adam passed on. My children don’t need me anymore. It’s I who need them. Isn’t that sad?”
Very sad.
And very lonely.
G aunt. Overworked. Nervous. Those were the three descriptive adjectives that came to mind on my first look at Philomena Ruiz. She was not much more than forty, but her black hair was already streaked with gray and the lines in her face were etched deep. She hadn’t been home long when I got there a couple of minutes past seven; she still wore work shoes and a twinged expression when she moved, as though her legs bothered her and she hadn’t had a chance to sit down yet.
In the doorway, after I explained that I was working for Celeste Ogden, she said, “I told everything I know to the police. And to Mrs. Ogden when she came to see me.”
“I’m sure you did. I just have a few questions-I won’t take up much of your time.”
She let me come in, with a certain amount of resignation, and conducted me into a tidy living room packed with old, well-used furniture. The chin-whiskered teenager hovered around us, but not in a protective way. When Mrs. Ruiz and I were seated, the kid said rudely, “No te pases tanto tiempo con ese anglo viejo y gordo. Tengo hambre y quiero mi comida.”
My Spanish is rusty, but not that rusty. What I said to him came out pretty quick, if not particularly fluid: “Ciudado con lo que dices, jovencito. Deberias mostrar mas respector a tus mayors.”
He blinked at me, openmouthed. Mrs. Ruiz seemed to be trying to hide a smile behind a raised hand. In sharper terms she told him the same as I had, to show some respect for his elders, and also to go fetch his own dinner for a change. He beat it out of there in a hurry. When he was gone she used more formal language to apologize for his rudeness and to say, politely, that I spoke Spanish very well. I thanked her; but my command wasn’t all that good, I said, and would she mind if we had our conversation in English.
“What is it you wish to know?”
“Well, to begin with, how long did you work for Mrs. Mathias?”
“Nine years. One full day, one half day, every week.”
“Was she usually home when you were there?”
“Not when she was married to Mr. Ring. She was very busy at that time-she had many friends, many activities.”
“And after she married Mr. Mathias?”
“Then she was home often when I came.”
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“My work.”
“Personal matters? Did she confide in you?”
“No. Never. We spoke only of my work and things of no importance.”
“She never said anything about her relationship with Mr. Mathias?”
“No. Never.”
“What’s your opinion of the man?”
“I do not know him. I met him only a few times.”
“How did he treat you?”
No response.
“Mrs. Ruiz?”
“As some men treat their servants,” she said. She said it without inflection, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in the words. “As if only he was a child of God.”
“Did he treat Mrs. Mathias as a man should treat his wife-as a friend, an equal?”
“No. I do not think so.”
“Yet she never complained about him.”
“She was a woman in love. Women in love do not complain to those who work for them.”
“Do you think she was still in love with him at the time of her death?”
Long pause before Mrs. Ruiz said, “Perhaps not.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to change her feelings toward her husband?”
“No.”
“The last few times you saw her,” I said. “Did she seem different to you, as if something was weighing heavily on her mind?”
“Yes. I thought so.”
“Do you have any idea what it was?”
“No. But her headaches seemed worse… you know she have bad headaches?”
“Migraines, yes.”
“She suffered very much from them.”
“Was she seeing a doctor about the headaches?”
“I asked her the last time. A doctor in San Francisco, she said.”
“San Francisco?”
“A specialist.”
“What kind of specialist?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she mention his name?”
“No.”
“Or how long she’d been seeing him?”
“No.”
That was all Mrs. Ruiz had to tell me. I left her to her rude son and her dinner, headed for home and a late dinner of my own.
Making progress. But even so, I didn’t have a good feeling about the direction we were heading. A case like this one is like driving through a bad neighborhood at night: the streets seem familiar and you’re pretty sure you’re on the right one, but your instincts keep telling you that sooner or later you’ll come to a dead end.
17
JAKE RUNYON
Conflicting reports, conflicting images. Every time somebody handed him a verbal picture of Jerry Belsize, it was as if he was looking at the same person with a different face. Like the picture of Dorian Gray. And now the same thing was happening with Sandra Parnell.
The girl was Belsize’s devoted soul mate, the one person he was able to turn to in a time of crisis. She wasn’t the girl he thought she was and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. She was decent, loyal. She was a dope-smoking slut. She was strong willed, with Jerry’s best interests at heart. She was a weak and easily fooled punching bag.
It was even worse with Belsize. He was an innocent victim of circumstance. He was guilty as hell. He was a good, clean-cut kid who got along with everybody. He was a wild and crazy kid who bought and distributed marijuana, drove like a maniac, ran down dogs for the thrill of it. He got along fine with Manuel Silvera. He murdered Silvera in cold blood in a particularly vicious way. He treated his girlfriends in a normal fashion. He was a borderline rapist who slapped them around when he got high. He was good; he was evil; he was a little bit of everything in between.
More: He spent all day Friday in Lost Bar, buying half a kilo of weed from Gus Mayerhof and getting his car fixed. He wasn’t in Lost Bar at all on Friday. He was a regular customer of Mayerhof’s. Mayerhof didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox. He was so afraid of Kelso he’d opted to hide out at the migrant camp rather than go home and proclaim his innocence. He left the camp for no apparent reason and went somewhere else. He torched the camp. He didn’t torch the camp.