"Did she ever take advantage of that?" Larrabee asked. "Fool around with other guys, make him jealous?"
"She had sex with people sometimes, to help her career. But Ray didn't care about that. He'd even help set it up. Like those porn movies."
"Ray set up the movies, huh?" Larrabee said.
"When they were living in LA. It was a favor to somebody who was going to give her a part. It was supposed to be kept secret. She used a different name."
"Did she get the part?"
Josh shook his head sadly.
Larrabee cruised on through the curving side streets, where there was not much traffic to require his attention. Sacramento was essentially flat, but they were high enough here to get glimpses of its expanse, mile after mile of tree-lined streets cut by the blue bands of its confluent rivers and the speeding glittering glass and metal streams of the freeways.
"There's one big problem with all this, Josh," Larrabee said. "Your sister was all of a sudden spending a lot of money. She told Ray she inherited it from an aunt. Is that true?"
Josh lowered his eyes, then shook his head again.
"Where'd she get it, then? Do you know?"
He did not answer. His fingers twisted each other anxiously.
"I'll be real straight with you," Larrabee said. "When the police get in on this, the first thing they're going to look for is whether she was blackmailing somebody."
"No!" Josh looked up, starting to go teary-eyed. "She wasn't like that at all."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Eden was sweet, she really was," Josh said, suddenly defensive. "But she believed what she wanted to. Ray latched onto her when she was still in high school. She was the prom queen, and he came on like this big photographer, who was going to make her career. After that, she couldn't get away from him. He talked her into things, like those movies, but just loser things. She never would have done anything really wrong."
Monks hoped it was true, and allowed himself to feel a little better. If this was, in fact, the end of his career, maybe it had not been wasted on a hardhearted gold digger.
"But something was going on with her, huh?" Larrabee said. "Come on, you knew her better than anybody else. Suppose somebody did hurt her. You'd want to help us find out who, right?"
Josh squirmed in his seat. "She made me promise to keep it secret."
"It doesn't matter to her now, Josh. Sorry to put it like that, but it's true."
Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. He glanced somewhat theatrically to both sides, then leaned forward and said in a confidential whisper: "It was the man she went to San Francisco to be with."
"Could you be a little more specific?"
"Her plastic surgeon. Dr. D'Anton."
Larrabee, to his credit, kept driving smoothly, but Monks swiveled in his seat. Josh shrank back, looking a little frightened at his intensity.
"Eden was having an affair with Dr. D'Anton?" Monks said. "Are you positive, Josh?" As he spoke, he remembered her discharge form from the clinic, with method of payment marked: CASH.
"Oh, it was more than an affair. He was making her beautiful." Josh sounded dreamy now – maybe seeing himself in her place. "It wasn't just a fantasy. He had the power to really do it. And then, she was going to be somebody." The air-conditioning was on in the car, but Monks rolled his window down anyway. The fresh air, hot and gummy though it was, felt good sweeping across his face. He was starting to want a drink.
Chapter 19
They got back to San Francisco about five p.m. Monks picked up the Bronco at Larrabee's office and started the drive home. The rush-hour traffic was thick, and he spent a slow twenty minutes on Highway 101, getting through the floodgate of vehicles pouring on and off the Richmond Bridge. Even the two-lane country roads past San Rafael toward the coast buzzed with manic tailgaters. With relief, he pulled into the dirt parking lot of his favorite place to shop.
It was one of the few old general stores left along the coast, with scarred wooden floors and the palpable aroma of decades of meat, fish, sausage, and cheese. It was bigger than you thought when you first walked in, with counters of dry goods at the back – jeans and wool shirts, boots, fishing and camping gear, first aid and automotive supplies – a basic selection of just about anything you might need to get by. It was cool and dark and quiet. The owners were an extended Portuguese family, the stumpy beret-wearing padron, his always – black-dressed wife, and a fluid collection of children, grandchildren, cousins, and nieces and nephews.
The wife was behind the counter when Monks walked in. She greeted him with eyes that seemed sad, even reproachful.
"Dr. Monk. You don't come see us no more."
Monks realized guiltily that Martine had been doing most of the shopping for the past several months, and his usual twice-a-week visits had fallen off.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Lisbon. I've been terrifically busy. I'll do better, I promise."
She nodded slightly, accepting the excuse, if not entirely satisfied.
By way of reparation, Monks bought more than he had intended to: a large salmon fillet, chunks of brie and Jarlsberg, a Genoa salami and a string of linguica, a loaf of fresh sourdough bread, the makings for an avocado salad. He threw in half a dozen bottles of Carmenet wine, mostly cabernets, but two of the sauvignon blanc that Martine favored, just in case.
And liquor. It was more expensive than at the chains, but early on in the twenty-some years that he had been coming here, he had understood that there was an importance to this sacrament that transcended money – an arcane link between him and a way of life that had a kind of profundity, a connection to the way things were on some essential ancient level, that was missing in his own.
As he was about to make his selection, the padron came in the rear door with his heavy stumping walk. He spent most of his time at his bocce court out back, working on his game, or socializing with friends, or just sitting. But he always seemed to appear for this part of the ritual, whether by radar or something as mundane as a buzzer system. His wife faded back at his approach.
"What today, Doctor? The usual?" His face was the color of saddle leather, deeply creased, sprouting a gray stubble of whiskers. He had the worst teeth Monks had ever seen. They were exposed by a knowing grin, an understanding between two men of the world.
"Better throw in a couple extra, Antonio," Monks said.
"How many you want? Three, four?"
"Make it six or eight. Hell, make it a case." The old man's grin widened. His wife backed farther away, eyes anxious, lips moving slightly as if she were saying a rosary. Antonio's thick-fingered hands carefully placed bottles of Finlandia vodka into an empty carton.
"A little drink is good for a man," he said. He said it every time.
Monks made the requisite response. "It keeps the blood flowing."
He was back in the Bronco, just starting it up, when the store's front door opened and Antonio came huffing out, waving, with something in his hand. Monks realized it was a net sack of lemons.
"You almost forgot," Antonio called.
The lemons were beautiful, fragrant and smooth-skinned, promising succulent juicy flesh inside: the perfect complement to the vodka.
"Christ, thanks, Antonio," Monks said. He lifted up in the seat, reaching for his wallet.
"No, no," the old man said, waving the money away. "On me."
Stover Larrabee was in his office drinking a can of Pabst when the phone rang. The caller was a cop named Guido Franchi, who had been a rookie with Larrabee on the SFPD. Franchi was still on the force, a detective lieutenant now.