Murder in the Collective (13 page)

The next morning I felt, at least temporarily, much better. The sun was shining through the kitchen windows and buttering the counters and floor with its light when I came down to make some coffee. It was about ten o’clock and no one else was around. There was a note on the table from Penny:

“Pam—didn’t sleep too well and got up to go down to the shop. Don’t want to let things get too much out of hand there. Hadley picked up her truck, said not to wake you. Will call you later about alphabetizing.”

Alphabetizing? I stared at the word a few minutes before realizing that Penny was referring to Zee up in the attic. XYZ we’d sometimes called her for a joke. God, I’d forgotten about her. She was going to roast up there if she stayed the day. Was it really so necessary to hide her? In the light of the morning it seemed very cloak and daggerish.

I made two cups of coffee and took them both to the small door upstairs, across from the bathroom. It was locked.

“Zee. It’s Pam. I’ve got some coffee.”

I heard her coming down the stairs inside, then the door being unlocked.

“Do you really think that’s necessary?” I asked, handing her a cup.

“I don’t know. But I do it anyway.”

She turned and I followed her up. The attic had at one time been Penny’s and my favorite playing place, and it still held happy associations for me, even though it was now little more than a storage area for trunks and boxes and old mattresses, skis and sleds, hoola-hoops and roller skates. It wasn’t so warm up here as I’d thought, not so early in the day.

Zee sat down on her mattress, and sipped the coffee thoughtfully. Barefoot, without make-up and with her hair pulled back, she looked far more serious than usual. Younger, too.

“Are you going down to the shop, too?” she asked.

“I haven’t decided. I know there’s work to do but it kind of gives me the creeps to be there. Everything has been so up in the air the past few days, too. I don’t know what to think. I feel like I could put it all together if I had some time.”

“Don’t get too involved, Pam, not if it’s going to mean trouble.”

“You tell me not to get involved, when we’re hiding you up here and you’re involved….What are you scared of, Zee? You think the cops will figure out you and Jeremy were helping illegals to stay?”

She nodded without meeting my eyes.

“But you took the negatives. And there’s nothing to connect you to Jeremy, is there?”

Zee paused. “No,” she said. “But all the same, some funny things were happening the last few weeks. They make me nervous. One guy, a guy we helped with a labor certification, got turned down from a job he wanted, he didn’t know why. They kept his papers. Lucky they were under a false name and we got him new ones, but this keeping the certification, it’s unusual, it’s frightening.”

“Have all the people you’ve helped been political? I mean, anti-Marcos?”

“Anti-Marcos, yes, but we mean a lot of different things by that, you know. Lots of people in the Philippines are anti-Marcos now, but not everybody does anything about it. Well, and they can’t always,” Zee added, looking over at me as if wishing I could understand. “It’s very dangerous. Thousands are in jail, and some of them because they did just one little thing, maybe only talking back to some local mayor or something. One old guy I heard of, he just went and asked for his pension, the pension that was owing him, and they put him in jail, they beat him, you know, and put him in jail. That’s the way there now.”

“But the Filipinos you know in America, are they anti-Marcos too? Do they care if they’re not living there?”

Zee looked at me curiously, as if trying to gauge the extent of my interest.

“Well, you’ve got to remember,” she began slowly, “there are different kinds of Filipinos here, different groups: first wave, second, third. They say the first wave is the ones who were brought over and who came over to work in the fields in California. You know Carlos Bulosan, the writer? No…well, he wrote about that life, a very beautiful novel, you know—
America is in the Heart.
These men, they were mostly men, sometimes went back, sometimes stayed, and brought over a girl, married, had families. They’ve been here as long as lots of immigrants from Europe….

“The second wave, they were those guys, from the war, you know.” When I looked puzzled she explained patiently, “The Filipinos fought for the United States in the war; they thought that because they were governed by the U.S., had treaties and like that, the U.S. would protect them from the Japanese. Oh no, the Japanese invaded, killed thousands; Manila was the worst-bombed city in the whole war, you know, worse than Warsaw. You didn’t know that, did you? No, Americans don’t know that…But after the war Congress passed a bill saying that all the Filipinos who fought in the war could become citizens. So they did, and they came over here, to have the good life. Everything they wanted—car-house-television, that’s what they heard. We all hear that, all our lives, how great life is in America.”

“And the third wave?”

“It’s mostly professionals—doctors and nurses, engineers, computer programmers and things like that. It’s not hard to come if you have some money and some relatives—almost everybody has some relatives here—and a skill. Or you’re a student. Marcos doesn’t care so much if professionals leave. Because the Philippines can’t support them, and they just get liberal and dissatisfied. And besides, everybody sends money back home. He doesn’t lose much.”

“What about the students, the radicals?” I asked. “Aren’t they some kind of fourth wave?”

“If we were truly so radical,” Zee smiled a little bitterly, “we would stay in the Philippines and join the guerillas. You,” she made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the downstairs, “have your own special ideas about what is radical. But listen, okay,” Zee’s voice got hard. “We have been years and years under American imperialism and we hate it. Hate the Coca-Cola and the soldiers and sailors and air force at Subic and Clark, hate the way our women are prostitutes and our men are black marketeers or the way we have to work for your companies in factories making little pieces of things, not even the whole thing! But we come to the U.S. anyway when we’re in trouble or to study, because where else can we go? We come here, we can stay with relatives or go to school—your nice, your such nice universities with their student centers and swimming pools—and we can sit in the library and read all the Marx and Fanon and everybody we want to, and nobody is going to bother us, you know, cut our toes off one by one or put electrodes on our genitals or anything…”

“Zee,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “Zee…”

She shook me off. “We come to America because we are middle-class or upper-class and we don’t know how to fight wars or if we want to, and because we
can
come here.” And she was crying now, holding her arms close to her sides. “But if you do anything here, the more visible you become, the more you can’t go back. You just have to keep staying. You don’t influence the Americans, because they don’t hear you, they don’t believe you when you talk about what’s happening in the Philippines. You just stay, you just stay. And gradually you lose touch, and it’s a little unreal to you, too. You live in a country like this, and you forget; it starts to seem impossible. You don’t believe it either.”

The morning sunlight was falling now in a straight path over her shoulders and my legs, as we faced each other, both crying now.

“You’ve never really liked me, Pam, have you?” she said, after a minute.

“I…I’m sorry Zee, how I’ve been. Can we start again?”

“Yes,” she nodded and put her hand out.

We shook on it, a little solemnly, then couldn’t help laughing.

Zee said, “…You know, Ray and I, it’s not…”

“I don’t want to hear about you and Ray. I don’t mind, really, I don’t mind at all. I’m happy for you, and embarrassed about my bad manners. But that’s really the least of our worries now.”

“But Pam, really…”

Then the doorbell rang.

I
WENT TO THE
window of the attic and looked out. I didn’t see a car I recognized in the street, only a plain navy blue sedan. I couldn’t imagine who it was.

“I’ll lock the door after you,” said Zee.

I went downstairs quickly and got to the door as the bell rang again. I opened up on a man in a polyester suit, the same color as his car. Oh Christ, the FBI.

“Ms. Nilsen?” he asked, showing me his card. Fred Parker, Lieutenant Detective, Seattle Police Department.

“One of them.”

“May I come in? I have a few questions to ask about one of your employees, Jeremy Plaice.”

I motioned him inside. He was a tall, fair man with a clean-shaven, friendly face. He moved dragging one leg a bit and compensating with his other, as if it were an old injury.

We sat down in the living room. I felt as if I were entertaining a distant relative or friend of my parents.

“Tea or coffee?” I couldn’t help asking.

Lieutenant Detective Parker shook his head politely. He’d taken out a small pad and pencil.

“Pam or Pamela?”

“Pam. Penny, my sister, is at the shop.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve seen her.”

He got up early. I hoped Penny had acquitted herself well. It made me nervous, though, that she hadn’t called to alert me. What if our stories clashed?

“What can I do to help you?” I said less than eagerly. “I already had my statement taped that night.”

“Let’s start by going over the events the night of the murder. Can you tell me first what you were doing earlier in the evening and then what you saw when you arrived at the shop?”

“Well, I worked at the shop until about six, along with Ray Hernandez. He was there too. Then I left…”

“Was Mr. Hernandez still there?”

“…Yes, he said he’d close up later.” I tried to sound firm rather than hesitant. I’d forgotten Ray was working on a job he wanted to finish. “So, anyway, I went and did a couple of errands—dropped something off at the cleaners, picked up some film I’d had developed—and at seven I met Hadley Harper for dinner at the Doghouse Restaurant. Sally Gassett, the waitress, will remember.”

He was writing all this down in shorthand. He asked me, “Ms. Harper is a friend of yours?”

I nodded. I didn’t feel like going into the merger business any sooner than I had to. I continued, “So we ate and everything, and then about eight-thirty we came by the shop. I wanted to borrow ten dollars from the petty cash. I, we, saw a red light from the darkroom and went in. Jeremy was lying on his back, but sort of crumpled, on the floor. He had a hole in his temple, there was some blood.”

“So this was about eight-thirty?”

“Around then, maybe a little later.”

“The call to the police came at 9:02.”

“Oh well, it must have been later…I didn’t have a watch.”

Lieutenant Detective Parker’s eyes flicked automatically to my wrist. If he’d lifted the watch face he would have seen skin that had never been touched by sunlight. Never lie to the police, I’d heard over and over again. But I didn’t want to tell him about Fran, to have to get into that whole thing—she and Elena and the merger—it was too messy.

Lieutenant Detective Parker said only, “There was no one else in the shop? No one else came in after you?”

“No,” I said. There it was. Perjury or whatever they called it.

He switched the subject. “How many employees at Best Printing?”

Hadn’t Penny set him straight? Or was he just testing me? “We don’t have employees. It’s a collective.”

He didn’t write that down, I noticed.

“The papers are in your and Penny Nilsen’s name,” he said.

“Yes…but we all share the profits and the work.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Didn’t Penny tell you?”

He just looked at me, neither patient or impatient. “It’s only a formality—to ask different people the same questions.”

I bet, I thought. I was beginning to sweat a little. He no longer seemed quite the innocuous friendly fellow he had at first.

“There are, were, seven. Ray Hernandez, Zenaida Oberon, Penny, me, Elena Perrault, Jeremy and June Jasper—you must know June, she was pulled in that night for questioning.” I got angry thinking of it, but Parker just nodded.

“Can you tell me about their movements that evening?”

“No, I don’t know where any of them were.”

“What can you tell me about Jeremy himself? What kind of person was he? Is there anything he was involved in that might have contributed to this…event?”

“I’ve heard,” I paused deliberately. “That he was an FBI informer.”

Lieutenant Detective Parker didn’t raise an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s interesting…You think he might have been killed because he was informing on you?”

“Well, I didn’t say that. I don’t know for sure either. You should be able to find out from the FBI though.”

“It’s not always that easy.” Parker gave me a surprisingly frank smile. “Informers go by aliases, and sometimes report to just one man…we’ll see what we can find out though….So you don’t think it was a lover’s quarrel,” he changed the subject abruptly. “No jealousy, nothing like that? What was his girlfriend so mad about?”

I shook my head. “June would never murder anybody.”

“Except her first husband,” Parker said smoothly.

I bit my lip with anger, but I had to admire his technique. Ever since he’d come he’d kept me constantly on edge. I had no idea what he really thought.

“What about the others?” asked Parker. “Zee, Ray, Elena? How did they get along with Jeremy?”

“Fine,” I said, a little dully. “Jeremy was really very easy to get along with. A little scatterbrained but likeable. As long as he had his stereo earphones on he was happy.” And his daily joint.

“We’ve had a hard time tracking down any friends or family,” Parker said.

“Oh, he’s got a family, parents, brother, sister, he was always talking about them. They’re in southern California someplace. He was planning to go visit them soon. Fullerton, I think.”

Lieutenant Detective Parker wrote that down. “Thank you, Ms. Nilsen. That will be all. We’ll contact you if we need any further information. If anything else springs to mind,” he glanced at my watch, “don’t hesitate to call me.” He gave me his personal card.