“To Miranda.”
“Long may she live. Alone.”
The beer was too warm and too sweet.
“Christ, I need something stronger than this,” Grady said. “You don’t have grass on you, do you?”
“No.”
“Those kids in the van had some, I could smell it, but they weren’t sharing... Listen, about Miranda and me, it wasn’t working. It wouldn’t have worked even if you hadn’t shown up with the news about the money.”
“I’m glad I didn’t ruin anything good.”
“Maybe she thinks so. I don’t. Like I said, I’m not a forever guy. I feel trapped half the time and guilty the rest. She’s so dependent. When I do some perfectly innocent little thing like taking the kid for a ride in my Porsche, she makes out like I abandoned her. It’s kind of crazy anyone being dependent on me. Nobody ever was before. It gives me the creeps.”
“About the Porsche,” Aragon said. “I gather you don’t have the pink slip for it.”
“The car’s mine. She gave it to me. I’m not conceited enough to claim I earned it, but it’s mine. Hell, she can’t even drive it, she doesn’t know how to shift gears.”
“All that has no bearing on the ownership of the car. As of now it may be the only thing she has left.”
“Then how could she afford to come to an expensive place like this?”
“She sold some of her jewelry and other things to a dealer in Santa Felicia.”
“Then she’s honest-to-God broke.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s a whole new ball game, with me stuck out here in left field.”
“She’s out there with you. She didn’t plan it that way, it’s not her fault.”
“She shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“There are people who lie,” Aragon said, “and people who want to be lied to. They’re often the same people.”
Grady drained his glass and put it down on the multicolored tile table. The tiles looked handmade. None of them matched and none of them came out even at the corners. Aragon wondered which of Dr. Ortiz’s relatives had worked on it, perhaps a third-cousin-by-marriage who was considered too artistic for one of the menial jobs like Pedro’s.
Without being asked, Pedro brought two more beers, wiped off the table with the hem of his apron and reminded Grady of their date to race the wind at seven in the morning.
“The essential thing now,” Aragon said, “is to get her back home under the care of her own doctor. She looks pretty spaced-out. What kind of stuff has Ortiz been giving her?”
“It’s powerful, I can tell you that much. Knocks her for a loop. Also, she’s beginning to ask for it too damn often. She uses the slightest excuse to send me over to get a capsule from Ortiz. He won’t let her have more than one at a time.”
“How long is she scheduled to stay here?”
“Another two weeks.”
“I don’t think that would be wise.”
“Then you tell her,” Grady said. “I already have, for all the good it did. Every time I try to tell her anything she gets a pain in her stomach, her head, her appendix, her butt, you name it. Then she takes one of Ortiz’s capsules and conks out. When she wakes up she can’t remember what I told her. Half the time I can’t either. She has me confused. She always makes me feel I’m in the wrong even when there’s no right or wrong involved, just ordinary things.”
“Equal alternatives.”
“Yeah, that’s it, equal alternatives. I’m beginning to think she’s a little crazy. She even talked once about having a child. It was grotesque. She’s fifty-two. She admitted it, but I knew anyway. Ellen Brewster, the secretary of the club, told me, she looked it up in the files.”
“Why would Ellen do that?”
“She wanted to clue me in. For my own good.”
“That was kind of Ellen as far as you’re concerned. Miranda might feel somewhat different about it.”
“It was the truth. I had the right to be told the truth.”
“Knowing the truth obviously didn’t alter your course of action.”
“It never has.” Grady’s voice was somber. “Maybe I’m crazier than she is. Give me your honest opinion, do you think it’s possible?”
“Lots of things are,” Aragon said. He didn’t give the rest of his honest opinion, that this was more possible than most.
It was after seven and almost dark when Aragon reached the outskirts of Tijuana. He had intended, if all went well, to stay on the freeway and drive right through to Santa Felicia, reaching there about midnight. But he was getting tired and the afternoon had been depressing. He checked in at an American franchise motel, had tostadas and beer at a nearby café and returned to his room.
He closed the windows to block out the noises of the street, which was just coming alive for the night. Then he called Charity Nelson at her apartment and told her he wouldn’t be in the office the next morning.
“Where are you, junior?”
“Tijuana.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Nothing.”
“Nobody does nothing in Tijuana.”
“Okay, I’m boozing it up with a couple of hookers.”
“That’s more like,” Charity said. “Did you find Mrs. Shaw?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you say anything more than plain ordinary yes?”
“I can but you might not want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“She’s at Dr. Ortiz’s rejuvenation clinic in Pasoloma with her friend Grady Keaton.”
“The lifeguard?”
“Yes.”
“Is he cute?”
“What do you mean by cute?”
“Cute is cute. You know, like Robert Redford.”
“He is not like Robert Redford.”
“Oh. I wonder what she sees in him, then. To me Robert Redford is—”
“You can tell me about your fantasy life some other time, Miss Nelson,” Aragon said. “I’m reporting in that the documents are ready and I’ll have them at the office by late tomorrow afternoon.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it, considering you might even get a bonus if I play your cards right.”
“Ha ha ha. Is that better?”
“What’s bugging you, junior?”
“This is a dirty business. The lady is doped up and a little crazy, maybe a lot crazy, and I walked out of there and left her.”
“You couldn’t very well bring her along. The lifeguard wouldn’t like it, would he?”
Aragon didn’t respond.
“Junior?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“I never figured you for the emotional type. This isn’t such a dirty business when you look at other dirty businesses.”
“Thanks for helping me see things in a new light, Miss Nelson.”
“That’s my specialty.”
“I can believe it. Goodbye.”
“Wait a minute. I haven’t finished.”
“I have,” Aragon said and hung up.
He left a wake-up call with the operator for five thirty the next morning.
His return to Pasoloma was slowed by fog and by an unexpectedly heavy procession of vehicles heading into Baja, mostly vans and campers and motor homes with California license plates. The fog started to lift when he reached Pasoloma and the clinic was emerging from its shroud. There was activity around the main office and the hospital building, though it wasn’t the kind of activity seen around an ordinary hospital or clinic. People seemed to move very slowly, as though they had — courtesy of Dr. Ortiz — all the time in the world.
Aragon drove directly to the cottage shared by Miranda and Grady. The yellow Porsche was missing from the carport. In its place was Pedro, the boy from the café, talking to a stout middle-aged woman with a cartful of cleaning equipment. Pedro nodded good-morning but he didn’t smile or speak. As for the woman, she ducked around the side of the building in a surprising show of speed, pushing the cart in front of her. It sounded as if it had a square wheel.