Lifeblood (16 page)

Had he heard about her arrest? Had word spread to the water agency? Did everyone know? How long before her other clients would decide they didn’t want to do business with a thief?

She went up to the apartment. When she finally finished filling out the loan applications, it was time to close the garage.

But she didn’t do that.

Instead, she got into her own car, took Beverly north a mile or so, and pulled into a strip mall. The neon light in the bright window was blinking Budweiser.

She didn’t want beer.

She wanted vodka. The good stuff. The Russian stuff you could put in the freezer and it would go down like liquid silver, with a cold burn all the way. Something with a name that ended in O-V and cost a small fortune.

The store was brightly lit, the spirits arranged in alphabetical order. Vodka wasn’t hard to find. With an almost trance-like intensity, Rachel examined each bottle carefully and chose Danilov. She wasn’t sure whether she picked it because it was the most expensive, or because it had the ugliest label—a somewhat emaciated, weak-chinned gentleman with a pince nez perched upon his nose, and the word vodka spelled with barely recognizable letters, “BODKA.”

She paid, watched the clerk place the bottle first in a brown paper bag, then into a yellow plastic one.

Putting the bottle under the frayed army blanket she kept in the back of her old Civic, Rachel told herself the blanket would keep it from rolling around. But another part of her knew quite well the real purpose of the blanket was to hide the bottle—just in case someone was there when she got back—her dad, Irene, Goldie. Or maybe Hank made another quick trip down from Sacramento to ask for his ring back.

Wouldn’t want anyone to know she was drinking again.

She pulled into her usual slot. The garage was mostly empty, except for eleven vehicles whose owners were out of town. Sometimes people took a shuttle to and from an airport and arranged to leave their cars overnight.

She went through the garage-closing ritual, hearing the metal sections of the huge main doors clank into place, then locking those and the pedestrian doors.

That done, she retraced her way back to her car, opened the hatch, took out the yellow plastic bag, and walked up the ramp. The night lights shone in dusty yellow triangles along the walls. The muffled echo of her own footsteps seemed eerie, and twice she stopped to be sure she wasn’t hearing other footsteps as well.

Normally Rachel prowled the garage beaming a flashlight into most dark corners to be sure some street person hadn’t gone to sleep there, but the trip to the liquor store had up-ended her routine.

In the apartment, she removed the bottle from its brown paper sheath. Seeing there wasn’t much room in the freezer, she threw away the remains of a pint of ice cream, moved a Healthy Choice frozen dinner into the refrigerator, and laid the bottle with its clear liquid and ugly label across the ice cube trays.

The vodka would chill perfectly in about an hour. In the meantime, she would heat the Healthy Choice in the micro while looking forward to a much less healthy choice.

She overnuked the dinner. The broad, flat noodles were dry and chewy, but she had to eat. Booze on an empty stomach was not a good idea. For that matter, booze in her stomach at all was not a good idea.

She changed into her night shirt.

Forty minutes after she had put the bottle in the freezer, she took it out, put it on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa. Why wait? Get it over with so she could stop thinking about it.

She got up again and turned off all the lights. The streetlights outside the window were enough to see by.

She didn’t really want to see much, anyway. Staring at the bottle, Rachel tried to savor the look of it, the fact of it. She waited for the thrill of anticipation. It didn’t come.

All her good efforts, good intentions and hard work had come to this. If she couldn’t prove someone had planted that OxyContin on her—and how could she prove it?—she was looking at jail time. Where would they send her? A state prison? Chino? She didn’t know anything about the jail system, but she soon might be finding out a lot more than she wanted to know.

And there sure wouldn’t be any icy vodka there.

She deserved something nice for herself.

And she was going to have it.

Reaching for the bottle, Rachel felt the chill coming from it. She sat back before touching it and propped her bare feet on the edge of the coffee table.

She should drink it soon, or the chill would be gone.

She sat there for a long time.

Then she reached for the bottle.

This time, she picked it up.

Chapter Thirty

The bottle was cold. The streetlight from the window lit the big squarish letters that spelled BODKA.

After a long moment, Rachel stood up. Holding the bottle by the neck, she opened the apartment door and went out into the garage in her bare feet.

Shadows danced like gremlins across the floor.

She walked over to the wall opposite her apartment door and slammed the bottle of vodka against the concrete wall.

A couple of drops splashed on her bare ankles when it shattered. The odor of alcohol enveloped her.

Carefully, Rachel backed away, toward her apartment. She would have to get her shoes and clean up the mess. One of her clients might get a piece of glass in a tire.

A sliver stabbed her thumb while she was mopping up the last of the alcohol with a paper towel. She plucked it out with tweezers, and put on a Band-Aid. Then she changed back into her jeans and sweater and went out. Was Goldie working tonight? She couldn’t remember.

She had been sitting on the bench thinking dark thoughts for nearly an hour before she saw Marvin Porter, the relief cleaning crew supervisor, and remembered it was Goldie’s night off. As she got up, Peter, one of the kids on the crew, crossed the street toward her. He was carrying something.

He reached her breathless, his round face all grin.

“Hi, Peter. What is it?”

“Miss Golda not work today.”

“Yes, I know. I had forgotten, but now I remember.”

“You have los’ your purse,” he said.

“Yes,” Rachel said, then corrected herself. Goldie had told her not to “mess with the kids,” to tell them the truth and not talk down to them. “No. I didn’t lose it. Someone stole it. Right off my shoulder. They cut the straps and took it.”

“Gypsies,” Peter said wisely.

“How did you know?” she asked him.

“Irene said.”

“You know Irene?”

Peter nodded and held out what he was carrying—an Albertson’s grocery bag with something inside. “For you.” He turned to go back across the street.

“Peter, look both ways!” Rachel shouted after him.

“No cars,” he called back and kept running.

It was true. There were no cars. There weren’t many at this hour. But Rachel worried that one day when he didn’t look, there would be.

When he got to the other side, Peter turned, waved, then disappeared into the InterUrban Water Authority headquarters, where the crew was cleaning offices.

Rachel sat down on the bench. The sight of the bag’s contents made something prickle behind her eyes.

It was a purse. Not her purse and not a new purse, but a leather one. And nice. No telling where Peter might have gotten it. His older brother was once a thief and if he was out of jail, he might be back at his old tricks. But at the moment, Rachel didn’t care. Both eyes welled, but only one lone tear escaped.

Down’s Syndrome folks may be the lucky ones, she thought. For some reason, the tears made her feel better.

999

The voice on the phone was unctuous. “Rachel Chavez, please.”

“Speaking.”

“Milton Price. I represent Jefferson Medical Center. It seems there is a problem with the billing for the use of the helicopter pad on the roof of your garage.”

“What problem?”

“The leasing contract calls for the charge to be based on usage.”

“I am basing it on usage. Your client has sent parcels regularly, almost daily, weekdays. And I’m only charging for two deliveries a week, although there have been at least twice that.”

“You are billing through the end of the contract. Which I am told, by the way, will not be renewed.”

“I have been advised that it will not be renewed,” she said, her anger turning cold. “They paid for the parking spaces in advance, so I thought it would be appropriate to bill the helipad use the same way.”

“Jefferson Medical Center will not be using the helipad after November fourth.”

999

That next evening, after most of the cars were gone, Rachel again left the garage, this time on foot.

She hadn’t asked Irene to sit on duty. Hardly anything went on between six-thirty and ten, when she closed, just a few workaholics picking up their cars. She hated to deprive Irene of the money, but until this awful drug mess was cleared up, she wasn’t sure she could afford the cost.

It was nearly dark, but she was going only a few blocks and she would ask someone to give her a ride back to the garage.

There was no way to get there without going three blocks out of her way or walking past the hospital. Rounding a blind corner of Jefferson’s medical office high-rise, she nearly collided with someone who was also cutting the corner tight.

“Oops. Sorry,” she said, reddening when she saw it was Gordon Cox. Did he know? And worse, if Gordon knew, Gabe knew. Of course they knew. The whole world must. Everyone at Jefferson anyway.

But Gordon didn’t act like anything odd had happened since last they met. Instead of avoiding her eyes, he tapped her arm, smiling as though delighted to see her. “Rachel. Gabe and I were just saying we’ve been missing you. Are you out for a stroll? Do you have time for a drink?”

“N-no,” she stuttered, “I…uh…I have an appointment. Maybe some other time. Thanks, though.” She was grateful he wasn’t shunning her. But surely he knew. He had to.

“Will you be long? Maybe we could go after. I mean Gabe hasn’t left yet. We could all meet at the Pig later.”

Rachel shook her head and said something that was at least half true. “I’d love to, Gordon, but I can’t tonight. I’ll be at least an hour or so, and then it’ll be time to close the garage.”

“Some other time then? Like maybe next week? I’ll talk to Gabe.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sorry. I’ve got to go. I’m late.”

Turning onto Wilshire, she could see the white brick storefront two blocks down. She broke into a jog and arrived a little out of breath. The front windows and the door had been painted white, but yellow light shone through the glass in the small window above the door.

She pushed the door handle and went in.

Chapter Thirty-one

The aroma of fresh coffee permeated the room. A table along one wall held two aluminum urns, one with a handwritten sign that read Coffee, the other marked Hot Water. Ten or twelve people were milling about, chatting, and sipping from Styrofoam cups. All eyes swung toward the door as it opened.

A tall coffee-colored man with short-cropped hair and modish steel-rimmed rectangular eyeglasses moved toward Rachel. He held out both hands and took hers. He wore a three-piece suit, white shirt and striped tie. He was a police captain who credited his rank to an early slide into alcoholism, which, as he put it, gave him enough time to wriggle out and still have a life. “Rachel, this is wonderful. It’s been a long time.”

“Hi, Brian,” she said. “Too long, I’m afraid.”

“Oh-oh,” said the man who had come up behind Brian. “Does that mean we’ve been naughty?”

“No, Miles,” she said. “Well, not exactly, but almost.”

“A miss is good as a mile.” Miles was a dental hygienist. Rachel figured he spent his salary with his employer. The teeth he flashed looked too perfect to be natural. He was short and so blond it was hard not to credit bleach, especially since his eyebrows were handsomely dark. His eyes were the deep blue of special contacts and his biceps spoke of lifted weights. Lots of weights. He wore spotless red sweats and she was sure he never sweated into them.

Someone touched Rachel’s shoulder as she was opening the spigot of the coffee urn over a Styrofoam cup. “Carol!” she said when she turned and saw the heavy-set woman with very thick glasses. The bookish look was for real. Carol was a librarian.

“How nice to see you,” the woman said. “It’s been months, well…since Lonnie….”

“I guess it has. Nice to see you, too.” Lonnie had worked for Rachel. He had died from an overdose of something he thought was a street drug.

“Well, cutie. It’s about time you showed that pretty face.” This man looked to be in his twenties. He was small, slight, with dark hair and a neat mustache. He was dressed to the teeth and sported a navy blue ascot.

“I just couldn’t stay away from you any longer, Roger.”

“Frankly my dear, I do give a damn,” Roger said, taking her hand theatrically and kissing the back of it.

“Favor?” Rachel asked. “I came on foot. Can you drive me back to the garage after?”

“Sure.”

There were a number of faces she didn’t know, and she realized it had been a long time since she had come to a meeting.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats, it’s time to start.” Brian was standing behind a podium in front of two semi-circles of folding chairs.

People immediately began to head for second-row chairs. A few sat at the ends of the first row. Rachel looked back toward the door as a gust of air entered with a latecomer—a large man with dark hair and a belly that strained at his belt. Manny.

“Tonight we have someone with us whom we haven’t seen in a while,” Brian announced when the room had quieted. “Rachel? Would you like to say something?”

She got to her feet and made her way to the podium.

“My name is Rachel. This is my fourteen hundred and twenty-first day of sobriety—I think that’s right.” She paused, then said in a quavery voice, “I almost didn’t make it past fourteen hundred and twenty.” She rested her elbow on the podium and put her hand to her forehead.

The room went totally silent. Carol started to get up from her seat in the second row, but sat back down again.