Chance (26 page)

At around eight thirty he saw her leave her apartment. She was in her car, a small gray Honda, ordinary to the point of near invisibility. He followed as far as the campus where she parked and got out and entered the grounds. He parked too. He could find no sign that she had been followed by anyone other than himself and after what felt to be some appropriate amount of time, he left his car and went in after her.

He came upon her at the koi pond in a part of the campus known as the Oriental Garden, alone on a small bridge, looking down into the dark water. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved top. He stood watching her then crossed the garden, lit only by a number of small lanterns hung among the trees, and came onto the bridge. She turned at his approach, eyes widening. He came to her straightaway, taking her hands in his own. His impulse was to turn them palms up, to see the scars for himself. What he did instead was launch into a tortured apology for what had happened with Janice, for his coming upon her unannounced. “I want you to know I’m not quitting on you,” he said.

“You can’t be here,” she told him, surprise giving way to something more like panic. “He has my daughter . . .”

“What do you mean by ‘has’?”

“They can’t find her. She hasn’t been to classes but I know it’s him. He’s got her somewhere. Or
they
do.”

“They?”

“The mob, the Romanian mafia. Whatever you want to call them. I’ve told you he was dirty, that he has friends, that he can have things done . . . If he finds out that you’re still in the picture . . .”

“You were at my apartment,” he said.

She ignored this. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

He squeezed her hands. “I need you to do one thing for me. I want a letter of consent, allowing me access to Myra Cohen’s files.”

The name registered. “She’s dead.”

“I know.”

“It was horrible . . .”

“I want to try something,” he told her.

“You were trying something before.”

“This is something different. I’ve never known a therapist who didn’t back up their files. I want to find out who sold her property. It was probably a family member. There may be a way . . .”

She put an end to it by stepping toward him, her cheek coming to rest on his chest, her hair brushing his lips, her scent in his face. “You’re so good,” she said. When she pulled back there were tears in her eyes. “But there’s nothing you can do. I’m his. I know you want to help. You’re just not strong enough. No one is.”

“You’re better than this,” he told her.

“It’s what you want to think.”

“Wanting is where it starts. We can find a way. There’s always a way.”

“I guess you know better than that.” There was mostly sadness in her face, that and something like pity that cut to the bone.

“Tell me about Myra Cohen.”

“You already know.”

“I don’t know what you talked about. I don’t know if he knew. I don’t know why she died. I don’t know if it was a random act of violence or something else. I’m asking what you think.”

The expression on her face did not change. “What does it matter?” she asked. “You can’t fix this, and you can’t fix me. I’m too broken.”

“There are no victims, Jaclyn, just volunteers.” The line with which he had so recently quarreled seemed suddenly to fit. She laughed in his face before reining herself in. “This won’t end how you think.” She let go of his hands and stepped back.

He began again but she was already walking away. When he took a step in her direction she seemed to hear it and began to run. There was a part of him that wanted to run after her, to what end was another matter. He went back in the direction from which he had come, this time crossing with a young man who might have been a student. He was of that age. But there was something about him . . . the lithe athletic physique, the fashionably ragged clothes . . . so that Chance was seized by the sudden and jealous certainty that what he had really done just now, coming upon her in the way that he had, was to thwart some clandestine and romantic meeting. So strong was the feeling that he actually did turn around and began to run after her. Forget that she was on to him. He went headlong, as if propelled by some force beyond his reckoning, all the way to the koi pond where he found her gone. Nor was there any sight of the man.

The night so ended, he was at Allan’s Antiques the following day. It was late afternoon. Nearly two full days had passed since D’s hire. One might, in the wake of the disastrous East Bay outing, have thought him discouraged but like the man said, there’s a time for everything under heaven. Hypomania no doubt exacerbated by sleep deprivation came to mind but why go there? Half a dozen soporifics came to mind as well but he was eager to see if the big man was getting anywhere. He would not have been surprised to find him out and on the job. He found him in the alley at work on the Starlight coupe.

“Yeah . . .” D said, giving the word time to breathe when Chance had raised the subject. “Needed to finish up on a couple of things around here.”

“It’s been two days,” Chance said.

D nodded. “Maybe you could hand me that socket wrench.” He was pointing at a toolbox near Chance’s feet.

Chance handed him the wrench. “I guess I don’t understand. I thought you were ready to go on this.”

D examined a spark plug before setting it into the block and giving it a turn with the wrench. “Start right now if you’re up for it?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Chance said once more. “I thought we
had
started.”

D just looked at him.

“I’ve given you the money.”

“Oh yeah . . . we’re cool with that . . . just a little short on wheels right now and the old man’s down with the flu.”

Chance was a moment in assimilating the statement’s various and sundry implications. “Are you telling me you don’t drive?”

“I’m not saying that,” D told him. “I used to drive all over the fucking place. It just didn’t go well.”

I
T WAS
to this end that Chance’s days acquired a new and heretofore unimaginable pattern. As it turned out, D was more than short on wheels. He was without a driver’s license as well, having failed to renew the old one since returning from his last tour of duty. Road rage had been a problem, but that was only one of several. And so it began. Chance would work till late afternoon then drive to the Mission to retrieve Big D. From there they would strike out in pursuit of Raymond Blackstone.

On a number of occasions they took the Olds. Once they took the Studebaker. Other times they would rent something so as not to become conspicuous by virtue of repetition. In this and apparently all other matters Chance had given himself almost entirely to the counsel of Big D. Later, usually after a dinner consumed in one of the cheap, high-calorie restaurants favored by his companion, they would return to the old warehouse to discuss the day’s discoveries, or lack thereof.

Such discussions might last well into the night, including, as they often did, lengthy digressions on the part of Big D regarding any number of topics, everything from the warrior’s mind-set to the origins of such metalwork as had been brought to bear on Chance’s furniture,
the chemical makeup of a particular acid wash, or the means by which the patterns once made by the natural sponge might in fact be duplicated. These in turn might give way to a twenty-minute dissertation on the proper way to prepare a grilled cheese sandwich.

Carl, once recovered, was often there too, pondering his books, crunching numbers. He’d hear the two come in and be around back in a matter of minutes. It didn’t take long for Chance to see that the two had no secrets, though it was usually the old man who, after joining them for a time, was also the first to opt out. “He can go on all night,” he once said in reference to Big D. “He doesn’t sleep.” And it was true, as near as Chance could tell, he didn’t. No mention was ever made about Chance’s furniture or the message he’d left on Carl’s machine or the old man’s response. As far as that went, no mention was ever made about Chance’s having taken over what apparently was to have been Carl’s job, that of Big D’s wheelman, but there were never any weird vibes about any of it either. It was the church of Big D and Chance was just one of the gang.

He’d spoken exactly once to his daughter during this period. He found her contrite but less than forthcoming. Still . . . there had, according to Carla, been no further incidents. She was attending classes. If she was seeing the guy, she was at least spending her nights at home. Chance’s insistence that she never be alone seemed to fall on deaf ears. Trying to have her stay at his place, in light of both recent and potential events, seemed altogether out of the question, though as part of their forays across the bay Chance had taken to scouting neighborhoods in appropriate school districts, sometimes stopping to take down the number of a place for rent then listening as Big D offered his critique. D was big on risk assessment with respect to break-ins and general defensibility in the event of martial law. Nor was the possibility of a full-blown zombie apocalypse to be taken lightly. The big man paid particular attention to window height and door placement together with angles of sight. Fences were of interest, as was the proximity of power lines and trees.

The absurdity of all this was not lost on him, the sheer outrageousness of it. D was cutting him some slack on the bill in return for his willingness to drive. “You never know what you’re capable of till you find out what you’re capable of,” the big man was fond of saying. And so it was proving to be. The thing was . . . he was finding a kind of contentment in his work, not at the office but here, at the wheel of the aging Oldsmobile, Charlie Parker on the stereo, Big D filling up the seat at his side. He felt that he was actually doing something.
What
he was doing was a little sketchy it was true, a little fucked up, possibly dangerous. On the other hand, he was spared the tedium of his own company, spared too from any more disastrous solo outings, and in that regard, Big D, with his talk of feeders, receivers, and frozen lakes, a kind of stand-in for the tranquilizers he had thus far declined.

It was true that sleep was down to no more than three hours per night but there were benefits in this too. Acuity felt sharpened. He was more aware, more present for the patients who continued to come and go. Mornings passed quickly in anticipation of the afternoons. Afternoons passed in a sepia tone blur, shadows lengthening into night. He could no longer recall if this was what it had been like before, the elevator lift to a full-blown mania worthy of a bipolar 1 diagnosis ending in flames and blood, a suicide watch lasting the better part of a month. But then he no longer gave it much thought. There was no time and those moments of existential dread in which he was seized upon by his own absolute inability to explain himself were growing fewer and farther apart. The thrill of the hunt was upon him, the seminal imperative of mortal blood.