'. not worth much, but we'll be taking it out in the next few days. Until then, it's under police seal,' Anna said. 'They still need to process some fingerprints, so if you could keep your eye on the place, we'd all appreciate it.'
'If it ain't too torn up, he's got some deposit money coming back,' the manager said.
'Nice of you to mention it,' Anna said.
The manager was a chunky square-faced Iranian with a black beard and an accent that combined Detroit and Esfahan: 'Ain't my building. And the owner's an asshole. Why should he get the kid's cash?'
'Right on, brother,' Anna said.
Chapter 7
Along bad day, and still not over.
On the way home, Anna stopped at a traffic light on Santa Monica, and her eyes drifted to a Mobil station on the corner.
A man was washing the windshield on a Volvo station wagon, at a self-serve pump. He was wearing jeans and a loose, wide-sleeved white cotton shirt, such as might be advertised in The New YorkerSea Island cotton, like that.
The instant she saw himhis hair thinner, maybe lighter, maybe speckled with white, a few pounds heavier, but the way his hands connected to his body, something almost indefinablethe very instant she saw him, she thought: Clark.
She slid down in her seat, but couldn't tear her eyes from him. He finished with the squeegee, turned and deftly flipped the squeegee stick back toward a water can hung on the side of the gas pump. The sponge end of the stick hit and slipped perfectly through the hole in the water can: exactly as she'd seen him do it fifty times before.
'Oh my God,' she said aloud.
A car behind her honked, and her eyes snapped up to the rearview mirror, then down to the traffic light. Green. She automatically sent the car through the intersection, then pulled over and turned.
The Volvo was still there, but Clark had gone inside. A moment later, he came back out, slipping his wallet into his pocket, climbed in the car, turned on the lights, eased into the cross street, then zipped across Santa Monica and headed the other way.
She thought about following him.
Thought too long, and he was gone.
Clark.
She drove home on autopilot, random thoughts, images and memories scrambling over each other like rats. She stuck the car in the narrow garage, slipped sideways past the front fender into the house and, without turning on the lights, went to the phone.
She had messages waiting on the answering service: she ignored them, and dialed Cheryl Burns in Eugene, Oregon. She mumbled the number to herself as she poked it into the handset, praying that Cheryl would be in her shop. She was: she answered on the first ring. 'Hello, Pacifica Pottery.'
'Cheryl? This is Anna.'
'Anna!' Pleasure at the other end. They got together every year or so, when Cheryl and her husband brought a load of their wood-fired pots from Oregon down to the L.A. basin. In between visits, they talked on the phone, once every two or three months. Anna and Cheryl shared one of the close connections that time and distance didn't seem to affect. 'How are you? How is everything?'
'Sort of messy right now,' Anna said, thinking about Clark. 'A guy I work with. was murdered.'
'Not Creek!'
'No. A guy named Jason, he was a college kid we used part-time, you don't know him.' Awkward segue: 'Listen, what do you hear from Clark?'
There was an empty heartbeat there, then an almost masculine chuckle: 'Uh-oh. Are you seeing him again?'
'Not seeing him, but I just saw him,' Anna said. 'At a gas station. He's here in L.A. I saw him on Santa Monica.'
'I know. He called and asked for your phone number, last month sometime. I didn't give it to him.'
'He called! Why didn't you tell me?'
'Because you messed each other up so bad the first two times. I didn't want the responsibility.'
'Cheryl,' Anna said, pushing her hair up her forehead in exasperation. 'I can take care of myself.'
'No, you can't.' In her mind's eye, Anna could see her shaking her head. 'Not with Clark.'
'Damn it, Cheryl.'
'. But I saved his L.A. address and phone number in case you called and wanted it,' Cheryl said, with a teasing tone. 'I had the feeling you might hook up. Cosmic vibrations, I guess.'
A little jolt, there. Pleasure? 'What's he doing here?'
'He's got an artist-in-residence gig with UCLA. Composition. Two years, he said, so. he'll be around.' Another dead space, then Cheryl again. 'Well? You want his number?'
'I don't know.'
'I better go get it. then you can tell me about the murder.'
Cheryl read Clark 's phone number; Anna noted it, doodled around it as they talked. At six-thirty, still chatting, Anna casually picked up the TV remote, aimed it at the set in the corner, hit the power and mute buttons and flicked through the channels.
At CNN, the Harper kid was flying off the ledge, followed by ten seconds of talking head, then a shot of the pig taking out the Rat. They'd picked the Keystone Kops version.
'Cheryl, have you seen the TV news thing about the guy who jumped off the ledge here in L.A.?'
'Well, sure, everybody's seen it. You can't get away from it.' Then, excitedly, 'Was that you guys?'
'Yeah. It's getting around. Have you see the animal rights thing, at the medical center?'
'Oh, the guy with the pig. Cracked me up. Was that you, too?'
'About two minutes apart, story to story. And you're getting them way up there in Oregon?'
'Hey, it's not like we're in Tibet.'
As they talked, the Blue Shirt kid came upAnna had forgotten his namebut he'd been interviewed again, probably the day after the animal rights fight. The interviewer was not familiar. The kid was wearing a lab coat, had a fat lip, and a couple of grinning professor-types hung in the background of the interview. Louis had made him into the hero of the piece, and that had influenced the stations who'd picked it up: and it was still building.
What was his name? Like the mountain, right? Not Everest. McKinley. Charles McKinley. He was playing the role just right, Anna thought, watching the muted TV as Cheryl chattered in her ear, a sort of charming, little-boy bashfulness.
Anna and Cheryl were still on the phone when Creek arrived, doing his shave-and-a-haircut knock. Anna walked out to the end of the phone cord to let him in, said, 'Cheryl,' to him, and he called out, 'Hi, Cheryl,' and stuck his head in the refrigerator.
'Cheryl says she wants your body,' Anna said, as he emerged with a bottle of Leinenkugel Light.
'She can have it, as long as she gives it a good cleaning once in a while,' Creek said. As Anna repeated his answer, Creek popped the top on the beer and wandered down the hall. A moment later, Anna heard him tinkling on the piano.
When she got off the phone, she ripped dark's number off the scratch pad where she'd written it, looked at it for a moment, then folded it in two and stuck it under a magnet on the refrigerator.
Clark. She got a Coke from the refrigerator and sat on the piano bench with Creek, facing away from the piano. Creek smelled pleasantly of sun-sweat and turpentine.
'You're early,' she said.
'Thought you might like to talk, running around after Jason like that.' He was chording his way through a fake-book rendition of 'Autumn Leaves'.
'Yeah.' She'd told him that morning about the prowler, now she told him about the man in the apartment.
'Maybe I ought to look him up,' Creek growled, when she finished.
'I don't think so,' she said, reaching over to pat his back. His back felt like a boulder. 'He's got connections with the cops and the cops are talking drugs. You better stay low.'
'I don't want him fuckin' with you,' Creek said.
'I don't think he will,' Anna said. 'I talked to Wyatt about himI was scared, and called Wyatt, and he knew who he was. Oh, and Wyatt told me that his partner was over to interview you.'