The Color of Light (16 page)

Max didn't need much time to consider that before he shook his head.

“You walk out on me,” she said, “and I'm toast with the network.”

“Television is a young man's business, Lana,” Guido offered, winking at me as he said it. He had more gray than black in his sideburns and a wrinkle or two; he was exactly my age. “A tough game.”

“Yeah?” Lana countered. “Well I'm neither young nor a man, Guido. As long as you can shoulder your cameras you'll be okay in the business. And you, Maggie, my little sister, with a nip and a tuck and some good highlights you can last another ten, fifteen years in front of those damn cameras. I don't have your advantage of makeup and lighting when I go into meetings with the children who run the network now.”

“By saying that, you aren't helping your case, my dear,” Max said. “It's time for you to test whether you have enough mojo left at the network to take care of Maggie and Guido. Tell your money goons that they have until noon Tuesday to release funding, or we walk with the project. And, maybe just for the exercise, we sue them for breach of contract.”

He snapped the phone off without uttering a sweet word of good-bye. Grinning, he said, “Bullshit. Pure manipulative bullshit.”

Guido wasn't so sure. “If they dump Lana, will they keep us?”

“No one is dumping Lana,” Max said. “She has too many of those goons by the
cojones
for them to release her.”

“I liked the little sister gambit,” I said. “Last Christmas she canceled our series without shedding any tears over it, and brought us back three months later without any fanfare or apology. If that's family, Guido my love, maybe we should run away from home.”

“Is that a decision?” he asked, looking hopeful. “You know what I want to do.”

“Lana was right about one thing,” I said, feeling every one of my years. “You have better job prospects than I do if we fall on our faces. I propose this: We give Lana until Tuesday noon to move the network to fulfill their end of the contract. But if the money isn't in our account by the stroke of twelve, then Max should accept the French offer for the project. After that, we'll see where we are. Whichever way it goes, I have a feeling that after this one, we'll be on our own again the way we were when we started out.”

“Suits me,” Guido said. “But is that a good or a bad thing for you?”

“Hell if I know,” I said. “Max?”

“Nothing we can do until Tuesday.” He fiddled with his snazzy watch. “I've started the countdown. Lana has exactly forty-six hours, eleven minutes to move her people. In the meantime, you two need to book your flight to Paris and pack your bags. I'll drive you to the airport, myself. One way or another, you will commence filming in Normandy by the first of August.”

There was a little more give and take, but that's where we left it.

Roy and Lyle had worn out Max with the clubbing the night before, so he went upstairs to take a nap. Guido and I sat down to talk about old business. There were still some continuity issues with the
Crooked Man
film we had been working on since late spring. The air date wasn't until fall Sweeps Week, but we had put in long hours to get it finished early so that we could leave for France as soon as the financing arrived.

We were happy with the film overall, but it still needed a final tweak for us to be completely satisfied with it. We made notes about what needed to be done, and then Guido headed off to San Francisco to use an editing bay at the studio of the network's local affiliate. He planned to work late and bunk overnight with Lyle and Roy. If all went well, by Monday afternoon he might have a finished version to show me.

I saw him off, turned my phone back on and checked for a message from Kevin: nothing. I texted him, “Call.”

As soon as I sent the text, the phone buzzed. Not Kevin, though, but my cousin Susan. Would I mind if she arrived just a bit later than planned? She had met some interesting people during her week at wine camp—her sommelier course—and wanted to join them for a last glass of wine before everyone took off. I told her she should have fun. There were no specific plans for dinner, except that we would dine out and Uncle Max would pick up the check.

The locksmith finished his work, showed me what he had done, and handed me a bill that made my eyes roll back in my head. I dug my checkbook out of my bag, and paid him. He handed me a receipt and a fistful of nicely labeled keys to add to the growing collection. I pulled a bowl out of a kitchen cupboard and dumped them all into it.

Fergie, my assistant, hadn't checked in to tell me what she had found about Thai Van, so I called her.

“Do you know how many Thai Vans and Van Thais there are?” she asked. “I looked into the Vietnamese nationalist groups in Little Saigon, and didn't find your guy. A lot of people anglicize their names, so he could be calling himself Tommy Van or Vincent Thai, or Epaminondas, for all I know. But I did find his father, Thai Hung. That is, I found his obituary. The son is named in the obit, but that's it.”

I thanked her for her efforts and asked her to keep at it. And then I went back to work.

I was making my third trip to the garage with kitchen boxes when the service manager at the Ford dealership called with a bit of good news. Though their body shop was closed on Sunday, the police had just released the hold on my pickup, a surprise because Kevin had told me that the ballistics techs couldn't get to it until Monday. As soon as I came in and signed the repair estimate, the service manager would order parts so they could get to work on the truck first thing in the morning. I needed my truck back. I told him I would be right down.

I texted Kevin again, asking him to call ASAP this time and adding three exclamation points. Then I wrote a note telling Max where I was headed, took his car keys and drove his rented Caddy to the dealership on MLK, Jr.

“Looks like you got caught in the shootout at the OK Corral yesterday.” Bill—that's what his shirt said—at the service desk slid a sheaf of papers across the counter toward me. “You were the second vehicle we got in yesterday afternoon with gunfire damage. Everyone in your truck get through it okay?”

“Fortunately,” I said as I read over the estimate. I cringed: new side panel, new dashboard, new disc player, rear window, and on, and on. Insurance would cover all but the deductible, but from the list of work to be done, I wouldn't get the truck back as soon as I hoped. I signed the bottom and slid the paperwork back. “Everyone okay in the other car?”

“No injuries,” Bill said. “Side-view mirror was blown off, there are a couple of divots in the door frame. Shots must have gone straight through that car and into yours.”

“Small silver car?” I asked.

“A Ford Focus.” He looked up from separating my copy of the estimate from the original. “Did you see it get hit?”

“Everything happened pretty fast,” I said. “Who was driving?”

“I'm sorry,” he said, smiling as he handed me my copy. “We don't give out personal customer information. You never know who might be suing who, right?”

“Just curious,” I said. “When do you think I can have my truck back?”

He looked at the calendar on the wall behind him as he counted on his fingers. “Friday, maybe, if all the parts come in. More likely not until next Monday or Tuesday.”

“Peachy,” I said, dismayed. With luck and hard work, I would be at home, sleeping in my own bed by this Tuesday night. I needed the truck to haul things I was taking with me. Now it looked like I would have to rent something bigger than the van Guido drove from the airport, or hire a hauler. The next problem was getting my truck picked up and stored until I could get back up and fetch it. I could ask yet another favor of Lyle and Roy, but I was loath to. That big truck would be a pain to handle on the narrow streets of their San Francisco neighborhood. Maybe I could impose on Beto to pick it up and keep it for a little while.

As I folded the paperwork I saw the signature of the policeman who released the car. I asked, “When was Detective Halloran in?”

“He left just before I called you.”

Bill wrote my name in big red letters across the top of my work order and dumped it into a rack on the wall behind the desk. As he did, I saw the name atop the work order filed just ahead of mine.

I thanked Bill, and left.

Kevin was waiting for me outside in the parking lot. He opened the passenger door of his unmarked city car and said, “Get in.”

“What happened to
please
?” I said as I passed him on my way into the car. He just shook his head. He looked like hell, unshaven, edgy, but in his situation, who wouldn't? Beto told me Kevin had just signed his wife into rehab. When was the last time he'd had a full night's sleep?

While he fumbled for his seat belt, he asked, “What's the bite for your repairs?”

I pulled out my copy of the estimate and handed it to him. The amount on the bottom after the dollar sign made him blanch.

“Have you filed a repair claim with your insurance company yet?” he asked.

“It's taken care of,” I said.

Slowly, he turned toward me. “Is that a yes?”

“I called my agent yesterday. She got the incident report from the Highway Patrol and gave approval to the dealership to make the repairs. Other than waiting for the repairs to be done and paying the deductible, I'm finished.”

All the blood drained from his face. He started to say something, but his eyes filled and he looked away.

“Take your time,” I said, pulling a tissue from the box in the console and handing it to him.

He blew his nose and drew a couple of shaky breaths, started the car and drove out of the lot. At the first red light, he reached behind his seat, grabbed a blue three-ring binder and handed it to me.

“This what you want?” he asked.

I looked at the binder's spine, saw the name TRINH “TINA” ­NGUYEN BARTOLINI, the date of her death and her case number. When I texted Kevin earlier and asked for the investigation log—the murder book—I now held in my hands, I had expected a big argument, and for legal reasons there probably should have been one. But with no whining, bribery or cajolery, he had brought me the original old-style, paper-and-ink murder book that was assembled by the detectives who originally worked Mrs. B's case over thirty years ago. The paper was yellowing and smelled of dust and maybe some mildew. I could see finger marks and penciled notations, and foxing on the edges of pages thumbed by detectives one year after the next ever since. No digital file could ever have the authenticity this hard-copy record bore.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The crime scene,” he said. “Indian Rock Park. Okay with you?”

“Fine with me,” I said, scanning the log of evidence collected by the coroner: gunshot residue, blood type, fingernail scrapings, hair, pubic hair, sexual assault kit, bullet(s), clothing. The coroner's narrative report and a diagram followed.

Even though the Deputy Medical Examiner's choice of words, meant to be objective—just the facts—revealed no emotion, I found it difficult to remain detached. I kept seeing Mrs. B as I had known her in life and as I saw her in her coffin, dressed in white, as serene as a Botticelli angel. I had witnessed autopsies where case-hardened medical examiners wept, but still wrote their reports with bland objectivity. Nowhere did the report on my lap mention that Mrs. Bartolini was a beautiful young mother when she died, or that her death affected an entire community. Had Alameda County Deputy Medical Examiner R. Suzuki known how special my friend's mother was? Was she handled with dignity? Or was she merely the next victim in the assembly line of victims to be dealt with?

The medical examiner's report said the cause of death was a through-and-through gunshot wound to the chest. The victim had a large contusion and abrasions on her right hip, contusions on the right shoulder, contusions and abrasions on the right temple area. The injuries were consistent with a fall onto a hard, flat surface. Carpet fibers found in the hip abrasions suggested she was unclothed when they occurred. Though there was evidence of recent sex, and semen was collected, there were no vaginal or anal contusions, abrasions, or tearing. No tissue was found under her fingernails. The blood inside her mouth could have been her own.

Kevin stayed on MLK, Jr. to Hopkins. I didn't look up until he took the hairpin loop to connect with Indian Rock Avenue so fast I had to grab onto the hand rest to stay upright. I said, “Careful, Officer, you'll get a ticket.”

Finally, a trace of smile crossed his face, but it wasn't much. Something was up with him, and I had a very bad feeling I knew what it was.

Kevin pulled over near a park entrance, got out and waited for me. I brought the murder book along, opened to the plastic sleeves that held the Polaroids taken of Mrs. Bartolini lying among the boulders nearby.

According to the first homicide investigation report, Mrs. B's body was discovered by a mailman who stopped on his route during his lunch break to fill his water bottle at the fountain near the park sign. But because there are no rest rooms in the park, before he filled his bottle he went between some boulders to relieve himself, and that's when he saw her.

Feeling a little queasy to be standing on the spot where she was found while looking at photos of her body, I turned to look down across the Bay, saw that the sun had already dropped into the fog bank obscuring the Golden Gate. It was late in the day, already cooling off. The rocks around us would radiate accumulated heat for hours after the sun disappeared. Mrs. Bartolini had been found before noon on a cool but sunny fall day. She was lying in the shade, but the rocks around her would have been warm.

I looked back and forth between the Polaroids and the place.

“Kevin, what time did we head off for school in the morning?”