I smelled the sweet, heavy fragrance of pot hanging in the air. A familiar, nostalgic aroma in keeping with the presence of the two men occupying the sofas.
California State Assemblyman Rod Peebles and the Reverend Lucas Slaughter rose to greet me. I doubt whether I had seen either of them in the flesh for fifteen years or more. They looked essentially the same, just incongruously older: young people disguised behind the masks of middle-aged folks. Beyond the good wool clothes and the expensive, Establishment haircuts, a micro-millimeter under the surface, I knew I would find the same old radicals.
Flint was literally sniffing the air. But he said nothing. He went straight to the television, turned it on, and with the sound off, watched the screen out of the corner of his eye.
Rod and Lucas were both reaching for me.
“Good to see you, kid,” Lucas said. He mashed me against the packets of room service sugar and a hotel pen he had squirreled away in his shirt pocket. “Deja vu, huh? All of us waiting for Emily.”
“Where the hell is Emily?” Rod Peebles gripped my hand quickly. “We’re worried sick. We’ve been here since five o’clock.”
“She isn’t coming,” I said. I dropped the bomb: “Emily has been shot.”
Suddenly Max had no color. “How bad?”
“She’s in a coma.”
“But she’s alive?”
“Technically,” I said. “There’s a lot of brain damage. Even if by some miracle Emily survives, we’ve lost her.”
Max looked as if he would collapse. I took him by the hand and guided him to sit beside me on the sofa. Lucas clearly was devastated, speechless. Rod Peebles’s face I saw only through the bottom of his scotch glass.
Flint perched on the edge of a table facing us. He was the first to break the shocked silence. “Need anything?” he asked. Max slowly shook his head.
I squeezed Max’s hand. “What was this meeting all about?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you. Please, for Emily, help me.”
“I wish I could.” He stood and made an attempt to pull him-self together. At least, he tucked in his shirt and pulled up his suspenders. “Where’s the goddamn coffee I ordered?”
He settled for the bottle of scotch. I gave him time to down a hefty shot before I pressed him.
“Please, Uncle Max,” I said. “I need you.”
“Uncle Max,” he repeated, slurring his words a little. He swallowed another shot. “Therein lies the problem. Uncle. Uncle sounds so dependable. They always made me babysit you three, you and Marc and Emily. I was just a kid, too, for chrissake. Whatever mess you got into, I couldn’t say no to because it was always more interesting than anything I could think up. And more dangerous. You just sucked me along in your wake. All of you. When you got into trouble, everyone thought it was my fault. I was the fucking uncle. I always had to tidy up after you. And the bigger you three got, the tougher the cleanup got.”
He glared at me, his body swaying boozily. “Don’t you sit there, little Maggot, with your eyes wide and innocent. You were as bad as Marc and Emily. No, you were worse. You never knew when enough was enough.” He pointed at me. “But I do. I’ve had enough. Your messes are too big now for anyone to fix.”
Flint, Rod, Lucas, took this in with grim-faced chagrin. I think they were all too embarrassed to look at me.
“Sit down, Max, before you fall,” I said, getting up and walking over to him. “You delivered that speech very well, sounded just like Marc. Have a tantrum when someone calls you to account, and they back off. But it’s me you’re sounding off to, and I’m inured. I also know you’re one of the most capacious drunks in town. Half a bottle of scotch shared with friends and spread over an evening is nothing for you.
“You’ve got good technique,” I said. “But save it for the uninitiated. Tell me what Emily was up to.”
Max had the grace to smile.
Lucas applauded. “God, how I’ve missed this.”
“Max,” I said. “Now that you’ve circled the camp, don’t you think it’s time to enter the breach?”
Flint gaped. “I can tell you’re related,” he said. “What’s it like when the whole family is together?”
“Noisy,” Lucas said.
“It used to be,” I said. “But it’s gotten awfully quiet. Go ahead, Max.”
He nodded toward Flint. “What about him?”
“He stays,” I said. “And no more bullshit. Emily was planning to do something dramatic today. It has to do with Marc, and the date, and Aleda, and a man I think I used to know. And that’s why she was shot. So, what was up?”
“I don’t know.” Max was back at the scotch bottle. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She said to meet her at her apartment at four. She told Mom and Dad she would be bringing someone home for the holidays.”
He thought about that for a moment. “She told me to come down to L.A., get a hotel room in the general vicinity of Chinatown. She said people would be coming to see her-she didn’t say who-and that I was to keep them all fed and entertained until she arrived. She said she had a surprise. She said she wouldn’t be alone and there might be legal complications. But she was really happy.”
“And?” I said.
“That’s all. Except for mass. She arranged a midnight memorial mass for Marc and she wanted us all to go.”
I turned to Rod and Lucas. “Is that why you’re here? Emily called?”
“That’s it,” Lucas said.
“That’s enough,” Rod nodded. “But I can’t stay for mass. Previous engagement.”
“Oh, yes?” Lucas winked at me. “Don’t get the idea that our Assemblyman Rod is a heathen, Maggie. It’s just that he has persuaded himself that his constituents have forgotten about his radical origins. He doesn’t want to be seen in public with his old comrades, lest his flock are reminded that he was once the personification of the ‘L’ word-Liberal. Our Rod has changed his political raiment. I always counsel him to summon the doubters as the Lord summoned Moses, and tell them, ‘I am who I say that I am.’ And if they give him any guff, he should follow the Lord’s example and set the place on fire. Rod certainly remembers how it’s done.”
“Fuck off, Lucas,” Rod said. He poured himself a stiff drink and drained it. “You always think you’re so damned funny. Let’s show a little respect here. Or didn’t it sink in what Maggie just said? Emily was shot.”
Lucas was puffing up for a retort, but Flint raised a hand and cut him short.
“Hang on,” Flint said. He reached over and turned up the volume on the television.
On the screen, we saw the videotaped image of Inez Sanchez standing in front of French Hospital. There was some residual grousing between Lucas and Rod, so we missed part of her set-up speech. But Flint and I had heard it before:
“Dr. Emily Duchamps, one of our nation’s leading figures in health care for the poor, was found earlier this evening, gravely wounded by an unknown assailant.”
The camera pulled back, brought Flint and me into the frame. I did my short bit, Flint did his, then the screen faded to a piece of file footage from the late sixties: the front of the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco, zoom on a cheering group on the steps, all of them with raised fist salutes-Emily, Rod, Lucas, Emily’s ex husband, Jaime Orozco, the late Arthur Fulham Dodds, Celeste Baldwin. And Aleda Weston.
The magic of television took us back to Inez, live now, at the Los Angeles airport. She wore the same coat, new makeup. She was standing on the sidewalk outside a terminal building, waiting for Aleda and her federal marshal escort to come out.
Inez was out of the rain, but the traffic around her was relentless. The effect was something like broadcasting from a freeway shoulder. Passing buses and vans regularly overpowered the sound transmission and blew her hair across her face, lifted her coattails.