A Stranger in My Grave Page 22

  “All there was to it,” she repeated. “You talk like a lawyer, Adam, in terms of cases and bringing charges, of proving or not proving. You don’t talk about justice.”

  “In this case, I think justice was done.”

  “Do you call it justice that Jim, who so desperately wanted to fa­ther a child, should cut himself off from his own flesh and blood?”

  “The arrangements were his.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I can’t believe that any man, let alone Jim, wouldn’t want to see his own child at least once.”

  “Jim did the only sensible thing under the circumstances,” Adam said. “And the circumstances weren’t in the least what you seem to imagine in your sentimental way. No sentiment was involved. The girl thought nothing of Jim personally, nor he of her. The child was not the product of love. If it’s still alive—and neither Juanita nor Mrs. Rosario would be in a hurry to inform us otherwise—it’s half Mexican, its mother is mentally unstable—”

  “Stop it. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “I must present the facts bluntly to prevent you from senti­mentalizing and perhaps doing something foolish which you might regret.”

  “Foolish?”

  Adam pushed back the hood of his sea jacket, as if the day had suddenly turned warm. “I think you hired the detective to find that child.”

  “So you know about Pinata?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Jim know, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” she said listlessly. “I don’t really care. I guess it’s time we laid our cards on the table. You’re wrong, though, about my reason for hiring Pinata. Why should I hire someone to find a child I didn’t even know existed?”

  “You knew. You were told.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You were told.”

  “Stop repeating it like that, as if forgetting were a cardinal sin. All right, I was told. I forgot. It’s not the kind of thing a woman likes to remember about her husband.”

  “Some part of you remembered,” Adam said. “Your dream shows that. The date on your tombstone was the day the first payment was made to Mrs. Rosario. It was also the day that Juanita left town, and, possibly, the day Jim confessed the affair to you. Was it?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  “Try to think about it. Where were you that day?”

  “Working. At the Clinic.”

  “What happened when you had finished working?”

  “I went home, I guess.”

  “How?”

  “I drove the car—no. No, I didn’t.” She was looking down at the water as if it were the deep dark well of memory. “Jim called for me. He was waiting in the car when I went out the back door. I started to cross the parking lot. Then I saw this young woman getting out of Jim’s car. I’d seen her around the Clinic before. She was one of the regular patients, but I’d never paid much attention to her. I wouldn’t have then either, if she hadn’t been talking to Jim and if she hadn’t been so terribly pregnant. Jim opened the door for me....”

  “Who was the girl?” Daisy said.

  “Her name’s Juanita Garcia.”

  “I hope she has her hospital reservations all set.”

  “Yes, so do I.”

  “You look pale, Jim. Are you feeling sick?”

  He reached out and took her hand and held it so tightly that it began to feel numb. “Listen to me, Daisy. I love you. You won’t ever forget that, will you? I love you. Promise never to forget it. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to make you happy.”

  “You don’t very often talk like this, as if you were going to die or something.”

  “The girl—the child—I’ve got to tell you—”

  “I don’t want to hear.” She turned and looked out of the car window, smiling the little smile she put on in the morning and washed off at night. “It gets dark so early, it’s a pity we don’t have daylight saving time all year.”

  “Daisy, listen, nothing’s going to happen. She won’t cause any trou­ble. She’s going away.”

  “The paper says there’ll be snow on the mountains again tomorrow.”

  “Daisy, give me a chance to explain.”

  “The mountains always look so much prettier with a little snow on them....”

  THE STRANGER

  17

  I have nothing to live for. Yet, as I move through the days, shack­led to this dying body, I yearn to step free of it long enough to see you again, you and Ada, my beloved ones still. . . .

  They had already visited five taverns, and Fielding was getting tired of moving from place to place. But Juanita was all set to go again. She sat on the very edge of the stool as though she were waiting for some whistle to blow inside her as a signal to take off. Aawouhee. . .

  “For Pete’s sake, can’t you settle down?” Fielding said. He was beginning to feel the drinks, not in his head, which was marvelously clear and sharp and full of wit and information, but in his legs, which were getting older and heavier and harder to drag in and out of doors. His legs wanted to sit down and rest while his head informed and amused Juanita or the bartender or the guy on the next stool. None of them was in his class, of course. He had to talk down to them, way down. But they listened; they could see he was a gentleman of the old school.

  “What old school?” the bartender said, and his left eye closed in a quick, expert wink directed at Juanita.

  “You miss the point, old chap,” Fielding said. “No particular school is involved. It’s a figure of speech.”

  “It is, eh?”

  “Precisely. Speaking of old schools, Winston Churchill went to Harrow. You know what people who went to Harrow are called?”

  “I guess they’re called the same names as the rest of us.”

  “No, no, no. They are Harrovians.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s God’s truth.”

  “Your friend’s getting crocked,” the bartender told Juanita.

  Juanita gave him a blank stare. “No, he’s not. He always talks that way. Hey, Foster, are you getting crocked?”

  “Absolutely not,” Fielding said. “I’m feeling absolutely shape-ship. How are you feeling, my dear?”

  “My feet hurt.”

  “Take off your shoes.”

  Juanita began tugging at her left shoe, using both hands. “They’re genuine snakeskin. I paid $19 for them.”

  “Your tips must be good.”

  “No. I got a rich uncle.”

  She put the sharp-toed, needle-heeled shoes side by side on the counter in front of her. She had ordinary-sized feet, but out of their proper place the shoes looked enormous and misshapen, as if they belonged to some giant with a taste for pain.

  Fielding’s drink seemed extremely small in comparison with the shoes, and he pointed this out to the bartender, who told Juanita to put the shoes on again and quit messing around.

  “I’m not messing around.”

  “When I come over to your joint for a drink, I don’t undress and leave my clothes on the counter.”

  “Well, why don’t you?” Juanita said. “I think it’d be a riot. I can just see Mrs. Brewster swelling up and turning blue.”

  “If you want to do a striptease, sit in the back booth so the police patrol can’t see you. Saturday night they go past maybe ten times.”

  “I’m not scared of the cops.”

  “Yeah? You want to know what happened up in Frisco the other day? I read it in the paper. This girl wasn’t doing nothing except walking around in her bare feet, and by God, the cops arrested her.”

  Juanita said she didn’t believe it, but she pic
ked up the shoes and her half-finished drink and headed for the back booth, trailed by Fielding.

  “Hurry up and finish your drink,” she said as she sat down. “I’m sick of this place.”

  “We just got here.”

  “I want to go where we can have some fun. Nobody’s having any fun around here.”

  “I am. Can’t you hear me laughing? Ho ho ho. Ha ha ha.”

  Juanita was sitting with both hands clenched around her glass as if she were trying to crush it. “I hate this town. I wish I’d never’ve come back. I wish I was a million miles away and never had to see my old lady again or anyone else. I’d like to go where everybody is a stranger and don’t know anything about me.”

  “They’d find out soon enough.”

  “How?”

  “You’d tell them,” Fielding said. “Just the way I did. I’ve hit a hundred towns as a stranger, and inside of ten minutes I was talk­ing to somebody about myself. Maybe I wasn’t speaking the truth, and maybe I was using a false name, but I was talking, see? And talking is telling. So pretty soon you’re no stranger any longer, so you head for the next town. Don’t be a patsy, kid. You stick around here, close to that rich uncle of yours.”

  Juanita let out an unexpected little giggle. “I can’t very well stick close to him. He’s dead.”

  “He is, eh?”

  “You sound like you don’t believe I ever had a rich uncle.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “When I was a kid, he came to visit us. He brought me a silver belt, real silver made by the Indians.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “New Mexico. He had important cattle interests there. That’s how he made all his money.”

  He didn’t have any money, Fielding thought, except a few bucks on Saturday, which were gone by Sunday because he couldn’t help drawing to an inside straight. “And he left this money of his to you?”

  “To my mother, on account of she was his sister. Every month she gets a check from the lawyer, regular as clockwork, out of the—I guess you call it the trust fund.”

  “Did you ever see any of these checks?”

  “I saw the money. My mother sent me some every month to help feed the kids. Two hundred dollars,” she added proudly. “So in case you think I’ve got to work in a crummy dive like the Velada, you got another think coming. I do it for the kicks. It’s more fun than sticking around the house watching a bunch of kids.”

  To Fielding, the story was getting crazier by the minute. He signaled the bartender to bring another round of drinks while he did some rapid calculation. An income of $200 a month would mean a trust fund of around $50,000. The last time he’d seen Camilla, the man had been unemployed and trying desperately to raise the money for some food and clothing. Yet Juanita didn’t appear to be lying. Her pride in having a rich uncle with impor­tant cattle interests was as obviously genuine as her pride in the $19 snakeskin shoes. The whole thing was beginning to smell like a shakedown, but Fielding felt almost certain that if Juanita was part of it, she had no knowledge of her role. The girl was being used by someone more intelligent and cunning than she was. But that’s crazy, he thought. She’s the one who gets the money; she’s admitted it.

  “What was the name of the lawyer?” he said.

  “What lawyer?”

  “The one who sends the checks?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because we’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t know if we’re friends or not,” Juanita said with a shrug. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “That’s because I’m interested in you.”

  “A lot of people have been interested in me. It never got me nowhere. Anyhow, I don’t know his name.”

  “Does he live in town?”

  “Are you deaf or something? I told you I never saw the checks, and I don’t know the lawyer. My old lady sent me the money every month from my uncle’s trust fund.”

  “This uncle of yours, how did he die?”

  “He was killed.”

  “What do you mean, killed?”

  Juanita’s mouth opened in a yawn a little too wide and loud to be genuine. “What do you want to talk about an old dead uncle for?”

  “Old dead uncles intrigue me, if they happen to be rich.”

  “There’s nothing in it for you.”

  “I know that. I’m just curious. How did he die?”

  “He got in an automobile accident in New Mexico about four years ago.” In an attempt to appear detached, Juanita stared at a patch of grimy pink roses on the wallpaper. But Fielding had the idea that this was a subject which interested and puzzled her and which she actually wanted to discuss in spite of her apparent reluctance. “He was killed right away, before the priest could give him the last rites. That’s why my old lady’s always praying and burning candles for him, so he’ll get into heaven anyway. You saw the candle, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s funny her making such a fuss over a brother she never saw for years. It’s like she did something wrong to him and is trying to make up for it.”

  “If she did something wrong to him, he surely wouldn’t have left her his money.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know about whatever she’d done.” She reached out and began tracing the outlines of one of the pink roses on the wallpaper. Her sharp fingernail cut a path through the grease. “It’s like he only got to be important by dying and leaving the money. She didn’t even talk about him when he was alive.”

  He didn’t talk about her, either, Fielding thought. Only once, right at the end: “I’d like to see my sister Filomena before I go.” “You can’t do it, Curly.” “I want her to pray for me; she’s a good woman.” “You’re crazy to take a chance seeing anyone now. It’s too dangerous.” “No. I must say good-bye to her.” At the time he’d barely had a voice to say good-bye, let alone a cent to leave anyone.

  “Did he make a will?” Fielding asked.

  “I never saw it. She says he did.”

  “Don’t you believe her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you first hear about it?”

  “One day before Paul was born, she suddenly announced that Uncle Carl had died and left a will. If I did this and that, I would get $200 a month.”

  “And what was ‘this and that’?”

  “Mostly I was to leave town right away and have the baby born in L.A. It seemed kind of crazy him being interested in the baby when he never even sent the other kids anything at Christmas­time. When I asked my old lady about it, she said Uncle Carl wanted the baby born in L.A. because that’s where he was born. For sentimental reasons, like.”

  He was born in Arizona, Fielding thought. He must have told me a dozen times. Flagstaff, Arizona. And nobody knows better than me that he didn’t die in any automobile accident in New Mexico. He died right here, less than a mile from this very spot, with his own knife between his ribs.

  Only on one count was the girl’s story correct: there had been no last rites for Camilla.

  “I guess he must have been very sentimental,” Juanita said. “So’s my old lady sometimes. A funny thing, there I was in L.A. with everything going pretty good, and suddenly she gets this idea she wants to see me again, me and the kids. She wrote me a letter how she was getting old and she had a bad heart and she was lonely all by herself and she wanted me to come visit her for a while. Well, Joe had just lost his job, and it seemed like a good time to come. I must’ve been crazy. An hour after I stepped inside that door, she was screaming at me and I was screaming back. That’s the way it is. She wants me around, and she wants me far away. How the hell can I be both? Well, this time I’m going to settle it for good. I’m never coming back once I get out of this town again.”

 
“Just make sure you get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Be careful.”

  “What’s to be careful about?”

  “Oh, things. People.” He would have liked to tell her the truth at this point, or as much of it as he knew. But he didn’t trust her not to talk. And if she talked in front of the wrong people, she would put herself in danger as well as him. Perhaps she was already in danger, but she certainly seemed unaware of it. She was still busy outlining the wallpaper roses with her fingernail, look­ing as rapt and dedicated as an artist or a child.

  Fielding said, “Stop that for a minute, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Stop fooling around with the wallpaper.”

  “I’m making it prettier.”

  “Yeah, I know that, but I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “I came to town to see Jim Harker.” He leaned across the table and repeated the name carefully. “Jim Harker.”

  “So what?”

  “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “I never heard of him before.”

  “Think.”

  Her two eyebrows leaped at each other into the middle of her forehead, like animals about to fight. They didn’t quite meet. “I wish people would quit telling me to think. I think. Thinking’s easy. It’s not thinking that’s hard. I think all the time, but I can’t think about Jim Harker if I never even heard of Jim Harker. Think, hell.”

  The single monosyllable had destroyed her creative impulse as well as her good mood. She turned from the wall and began wip­ing the grime off her hands with a paper napkin. When she had finished, she crumpled the napkin into a ball and threw it on the floor with a sound of despair, that she had ever tried to make things prettier in the world.

  The bartender came around the end of the counter, frowning as if he intended to rebuke her for messing up his place. Instead, he said, “Mrs. Brewster just called, wanted to know if you were here.”