Cast in Stone (15 page)

She
worked hard on the fourth copy, working the shape of the eyes,
rounder, bigger, smaller, giving her an Asian visage, then wide-eyed
with surprise. Finally, in a fit of pique, she crossed out the
right eye, then quickly looked at the picture and back at me.

"It's
the eyelids," she said. "She needs heavier eyelids. She had
those eyes men like that always looked like she was half sleep."

"Fix
them," I said, handing her the last copy.

It
only took her about thirty seconds to make the changes.

"There,"
she breathed. "God, that's close now, even with the red marker."
She held it at arm's length.

"If
he could do something about the expression . . . I don't know . . .
just, you know, put some life in it, we'd be pretty close."

I
took the image and scrawled across the bottom.
Lips fine. Face too
thin now. Do eyelids like this. Can you fix blank expression?

I
fed the paper into the machine, dialed Carl's number, and waited as
our copy went through the box. I was on my way back to Marge when the
machine clicked again. About face.

Yours
or hers?????? was printed thickly on the page.

"That
was quick," Marge commented.

I
crumpled the page into a ball and lofted it toward the basket. It
rimmed off, joining its brethren on the floor.

"Just
Carl being cute," I said apologetically. I picked up my
notebook. "What else?" Marge waved me off.

"Oh,
I don't know, Leo. After a while, I stopped listening to her. It was
just so much garbage. It always sounded to me like some bad TV show.
That's all I can remember right now."

"Was
she working when she met Nick?"

"Selling
real estate."

"Where?
For who?"

"Leschi.
Not Windermere, but something that sounds like it. It's'right-in that
same little complex

with
Daniel's Broiler. I dropped her at her car there once."

She
ran me through a long list of vague deals, both residential and
commercial, that Allison supposedly had in the works.

"It's
a place to start. Real estate requires a license. A license requires
documentation. Documentation requires a background."

Marge
hadn't heard me. She was somewhere else.

"Maybe
we should just stop all of this, Leo," she sighed.

"All
of what?"

"This
. . . this wild goose chase. All of it. I'm beginning to think, I
don't know, maybe we're just grasping at straws here. This is all
just so off the wall. You said it yourself. This is like some
comic-book plot. Maybe we ... I don't know," she said finally.
"I'd better get down to the hospital."

"I
think we've just started. I think it's not going to take all that
much to discredit Heck's conspiracy theory. We've got a line on a
paper trail here. We've almost got a picture. I think we ought to
keep at it."

Two
images arrived. Across the first Carl had written: focused the
eyes for expression. Eyelids okay? How's the face for width? The
second was identical without the writing.

I
placed both of them facedown on the desk in front of Marge.

"But
listen, Marge. This is your party. If you want to quit, we quit. Any
time you think this is too painful or too expensive or too whatever
you just say the word, and—"

As
she listened to me, she turned over the pictures on her desk.

She
pulled a loud breath into the back of her throat. I stopped talking
and watched the blood leave her face and then surge back with a
vengeance.

"That's
her. That's perfect. God, that's amazing that he could do that.
That's her," she repeated.

I
walked behind and looked over her shoulder. The benign face of the
first picture had taken on an almost spiteful look—a gaze that
said, "You should get so lucky, fool." It was easy to see
how the boy had become entranced. Allison Stark was a stunner.

"Well,"
I started. "What do you want to do?"

There
was no hesitation this time.

"Seeing
her again—I'm sure now. I need to know. Stay at it," she said.

Marge
got to her feet.

"I
have to go. Heck's been restless. He had a rough night last night.
Call me if you need anything or if you find out anything."

She
reached into the top small drawer of her desk and drew out a blank
sheet of letterhead. She wrote, Thanks for everything. If there's
anything I ever can do to repay you for your excellent work, please
call. Signature and phone number.

She
strode across the room, fed it into the fax machine, and pushed the
redial button. "I have to get down to Heck," she said as
she slipped into a full-length red wool coat and headed for the door.

The
fax was doing its thing again. I wandered over and retrieved the
message. How about a shot of those hooters? Use the copy machine.

Marge
looked at me quizzically.

"Carl
says you're welcome," I said, pocketing the page.

Was
that the sound of my mother running? Or was she dancing? I strained
to hear. The thin clicking of her heels faded slowly, now a dull echo
in distant rooms, on lower floors, nearly silent. Then . . . still. I
relaxed again and drifted. Without warning, she was back, dancing
flamenco furiously in the hall outside the door to my room. The
rhythm left me reeling. I'd never seen her either run or dance. I'd
never seen her any way except moving between tasks at her unhurried
gait. Her great sense of purpose left little choice but to imagine
her having been born busy. The organized had no need to hurry, her
cadence seemed to say. Running would be somehow confessional. No
running.

And
dancing? Dancing was the province of savages, of those with no
self-respect—worst of all, those without enough to do. Every aspect
of her being decried the squandered moment, the lost opportunity.
The very sound of her incessant feet, sensible heels tapping the
meter, served as a cautionary tale of perpetual motion to the idle,
the slackers, the self-satisfied. Dancing, too, was pretty much out
of the question.

I'd
never seen her any way except fully and properly dressed—no
chenille robes, no pink curlers. She materialized from her room each
morning at precisely 6:30 a.m. like Dracula risen from the grave.
Reanimated. Rejuvenated. Eternal. The spitting image of the day
before. Hair perfect, tasteful jewelry in place. When I was young,
I'd imagined that she slept that way, fully dressed, standing up like
a horse in its stall, emerging the next morning as an exact,
unrumpled reproduction of the previous day. In those days, my life
had been timed by the clicking of those metronome heels on the
oak floors of our house.

My
old man used to call her the Drum Major. On those occasions when the
business of influence peddling allowed him a night at home, he
and I would curl up in the study and, warmed by a fire in the grate,
lit by the blue glow of the oversized television set, eat the
contraband Hershey bars he'd secreted in his pockets. Plain for him,
almonds for me. He had radar. His extra years of practice had blessed
him with an even more delicate and refined ear than mine for the
tapping.

"Better
hide those wrappers and wipe your mouth, son," he'd say as we
watched the Russian bears on "The Toast of the Town." "Here
comes the Drum Major."

I'd
cock an anxious ear but hear nothing. He was always right, though. A
minute or two later, I would pick up the staccato cadence of her
approach. Once an hour or so, she'd poke her head in to confirm her
worst fears concerning our wastrel evening and, most importantly, to
make sure the old man wasn't polluting my system with any of the
accursed junk food. My mother was a health nut long before it was
chic.

"You're
not feeding that boy a bunch of trash, are you? You know he has
nightmares if he has too much sugar."

"No
sugar," the old man would say.

"I
want him off to bed right after this program."

"One
more show."

"No,
I want him—"

"You're
letting a draft in," he'd reply.

The
heels Would then recede. Louder than before. Angry.

"Son,"
he'd always say as she stalked away, "for the life of me, I will
never understand why anybody who's having so precious little fun here
on earth is so damned intent on living forever."

I
never had an answer.

We'd
wait for the sound of the stairs. The groan of the fourth step. Once
she went upstairs, she didn't come back down until morning, when the
unremitting parade of progress would begin anew.

She
began each day at the kitchen sink with a crystal pitcher of ice
water and colorful pile of pills and capsules the size of a modest
cow fritter. She got her rest, avoided sweets, abhorred grease, and
was still in possession of her girlish figure when she gamboled into
the grave at fifty-nine, the victim of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
The old man, who was ten years her senior and had for better than
thirty years started each day with a jelly doughnut and a cup of
Irish coffee because he claimed they contained the four basic food
groups—caffeine, sugar, grease, and alcohol—lasted another seven
years. Go figure.

I
awoke with a start. Dark volleys of raindrops, driven horizontally by
a blustery wind, clicked rhythmically onto the window above my
bed, brittle, insistent with their still-frozen centers. I sat up and
checked the street. Out on Fremont, the icy rain was bursting and
dancing, forming a moving carpet of frozen mist six inches above the
black glistening pavement. Mary Sloan's white VW Bug, parked in
perpetuity half a block north, rocked slightly on its aged springs as
if cowering under the violent onslaught. In spite of the
protective windowpane, I found myself squinting into the abrasive
wind. So much for Indian summer.

After
liberating my favorite pair of blue sweats

out
to the kitchen to make coffee. Mechanically, I opened the fridge.
Nada. It all came back to me. Knowing that I was going to be
shepherding Tony Moldonado, I'd purposely allowed myself to run out
of everything even remotely perishable. This, of course, included
milk for my coffee. Shit. It was either head to the store or do
without. As if to assist me with the decision, a fresh barrage of
sleet ratcheted against the front windows of the apartment, rattling
the ancient sash. I opted for the suffering.

I
padded over to the front door, and pulled my Sunday Times in from the
hall. The story of my aborted evening was plastered across the front
page: "Four Dead in Fiery Southcenter Crash." Rebecca and I
had planned dinner and a movie. We'd managed neither; her beeper had
put a stop to any such foolishness. I had watched her thin face take
on added weight as she held the receiver to her ear.

"Fifteen
minutes," she'd said into the receiver and hung up.

"Bad?"

"Sounds
like it. Traffic accident. Three, maybe four dead."

"At
least you'll look good," I commented weakly. "Doesn't sound
like it's going to matter. Lock up for me, will you, Leo?" I'd
promised I would.

Rose
Moldonado had, as usual, messengered her check over as soon as Tony
arrived home. I'd plucked it from my mailbox as I'd sulked home last
evening. The money had proven small consolation. I'd moped around the
apartment, waiting for it to get late enough to go to bed.

On
two separate occasions I'd picked up the pale green bag full of the
stuff Heck had collected, and twice I'd failed to muster up the
initiative to do, anything useful. Pulling out the collection of
bills and receipts, gazing absently at the dates and amounts,
stuffing them back in, finally lobbing the bag back onto the kitchen
counter in disgust. The sack's wrinkled countenance still gazed
speculatively at me from the counter. After freeing the sports
section from the paper, I used the bulk of the Sunday edition to
intern the insolent bag.

The
Sonics were still undefeated at home. Ten and zero. Eighteen and two
overall. What else could a serious sports fan ask for? Coffee, that's
what. Maybe a fresh onion bagel with some . ..