They're Watching (2010) (21 page)

Now that I was here, confronting that locked trunk, my convictions seemed less clear. Removing the paper from my pocket, I unfolded it and read my scrawled handwriting. I received an anonymous e-mail telling me to come to this car, or a woman would die. The key to this car was hidden in a fake rock in my front yard. I don't know what's in the trunk. I don't know where this will lead. If something bad happens, please contact Detective Sally Richards of the West L.A. station.

Of course, if I did get caught in some transgression, any idiot would still think I was guilty and that I'd just written the note for insurance. But it was better than nothing.

Two minutes left. My spine felt stuck to the seat. The digital clock--one of the few things on the dashboard I hadn't smashed--stared back at me unwaveringly. The final minute seemed to last forever, and yet I felt I had no time left at all. They'd made me responsible. If she died, it would be as though I'd murdered her myself. But was it worth potentially risking my life for a woman I didn't even know?

FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

The clock ticked to the hour.

I got out, my breath echoing in my hollow chest. I jogged across the street, paused at the mouth of the alley to collect myself. But there wouldn't be time for that.

I reached the Civic. Relatively clean, specked with dirt, moderate wear on the tires--it was ordinary in every way. Except it had no license plates. I pressed my ear to the trunk but could hear nothing inside.

There was no one deeper in the alley or at my back, closing in on me. Just the whir of passing traffic, oblivious people on their oblivious way. I fought the key into the lock. The pop of the release vibrated up my arm. I took a deep breath, then let go, stepping back quickly as the trunk yawned open.

A duffel bag. My duffel bag, the same one I'd kicked into the sewer. It was stuffed full, blocky imprints shoving out its sides.

I leaned over, hands on my knees, and finally exhaled. The zipper came reluctantly, and after a nerve-grinding pause I threw it open.

Dumbfounded, I stared down, breathing the rich scent of money. Stack after stack of ten-dollar bills. And lying on top of them a map with a route traced in familiar red marker.

In person, $27,242 seems like a lot more than it is. When it's composed of ten-dollar bills banded in packs of fifty, it seems like half a million. Pulled over in my car in the far reaches of a nearby grocery-store parking lot, duffel in my lap, I'd counted. The bundles kept coming and coming, uniform save the one made up of disparate bills. If the movies weren't lying, tens were untraceable, or at least harder to trace than hundreds or twenties. The ramifications of that were almost as troubling as the rest of it.

The Honda had proven as inscrutable as the altered voice on the phone. No registration or anything else in the glove box, nothing hidden under the floor mats--even the skinny Vehicle Identification Number plate had been unscrewed from the dash.

I couldn't stop staring at the map. The red line started at the freeway entrance nearest the alley, snaked east along the 10 for a good hundred and fifty miles, and finally dead-ended in Indio, a broke desert town east of Palm Springs. A small square of paper with an address--produced, no doubt, by my printer--was taped beside the terminus. Beneath it was typed 9:30 p.m. If I didn't hit traffic, I'd get there by then. That was the point--just enough time to react.

A truck throttled by in the parking lot, and I quickly zipped the bag back up. For a moment I sat with my hands on the steering wheel. Then I called Ariana from my crappy prepaid phone. The matching one I'd gotten her went straight to automated voice mail, so I dialed her office line. It was likely monitored, but I had no other way to get hold of her.

"I'm not going to be home," I said carefully. "Until late."

"Oh?" she said. I could hear the whine of the lathe in the background. Someone shouted something at her, and she answered tersely, "Gimme a sec here." Then back to me: "What's this about?"

Had she forgotten that we could speak openly only on the prepaid phones?

I said, "I just . . . have to take care of some stuff."

"Just when we're getting on track, it's back to this? Another double feature after work? Anything to avoid being home?"

Was she acting right now because we weren't on a secure line? And if so, how could I signal that there actually was a problem?

"It's not like that," I said lamely.

"Have a nice night, Patrick." She hung up. Hard.

I stared at the phone, unsure what to do next.

A few seconds later, it vibrated in my hand, and I clicked on. I could tell from the scratchy connection that she'd called back from the Batphone. "Hi, babe," she said.

I exhaled with relief, reminding myself that I should never underestimate my wife's acuity.

"What's up?" she asked.

I told her.

"Jesus," she said. "This could be anything. Ransom money. A laundering operation. A drug deal. For all you know, you could be delivering payment to a hit man for your own murder."

"I need to be driving"--I checked the clock--"five minutes ago. There's no time."

Someone shouted in the background, and then I heard her footsteps and it got a little quieter. "What are you gonna do?"

I lowered the visor, looked at that picture of us from the college formal. The color in our smooth cheeks. All the time in the world in front of us. Nothing to worry about but morning classes and whether we had enough money for import beer. "If something happened to that woman because I didn't go, I don't think I could live with myself."

"I know," she said quietly. Her voice wavered, only a beat, but I caught it. The screech of machinery filled the pause. "Look, I . . ."

I reached up to the photograph, touched her smiling face. "I know," I said. "Me, too."

Halfway there, on a stretch of highway, I almost ran out of gas. On occasion I still forgot that the damn fuel gauge was broken on full, but the odometer caught my eye, telling me the tank was due, and I eked it out to the next exit. My mouth had cottoned up, so I ran into the mart to buy a pack of gum. Outside again, pumping gas, I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. It stared back skeptically, figuring me for a fool.

The housing tracts in Indio felt like Legoland--all the same pieces configured differently. Five or six house designs, alternating minutely in color or size, the streets and cul-de-sacs laid down along the same few templates. I got lost, and then lost from where I was lost, driving through the oppressive repetition, concern rising to panic once the clock passed 9:15. I prayed that my Nikes with the embedded tracking device were alerting them that I was almost there.

Finally, through a miracle, I reached the proper housing loop, prefabs thrown around a dirt circle of road. At the end, angled off by itself in a manner to suggest privacy or loneliness, was the house from the photo.

I parked a good ways up the road and climbed out, the duffel bag straining at my shoulder, BoSox cap sitting protectively low over my eyes. It was 9:28, and my breath was coming hard. I'd forgotten how damn cold the desert got in winter. Cold enough to freeze the sweat across your back.

Crunching over dead leaves, I approached. I couldn't see the interior through the drawn blinds, but a bluish flicker from the TV played along the seams. Despite the time, the other houses were as still as midnight, their windows black. An early-to-bed community of workers getting in their sleep before the early desert sun.

I didn't have time to detour to peer in the window or inspect the area. Whatever was waiting for me in there--a bound woman, a crew of cigar-chomping kidnappers, a DVD holding another mystifying piece of the puzzle--I would meet it. Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped up on the two wooden stairs, pulled back the screen door, and knocked softly.

Rustling inside. The shuffle of footsteps. The door creaked open.

The woman. I recognized her from the heap of curly dark hair, shot through with gray. She was foreign. I wasn't sure how I knew, but something in her features and manner spoke of Eastern Europe. Her eyelids were pouched, flecked with skin tags, and rimmed red with exhaustion or crying. She seemed to personify a type--the doleful eyes, the homely features, the nose crooked just so. An inch or two over five feet. Her irises were striking, crystal blue and nearly translucent. She looked to be sixty, but I guessed she was younger and just worn down.

She said, "You're here," in a thick accent I couldn't place.

"You're okay," I stammered.

We looked at each other. I swung the duffel down off my shoulder, held it by my side. The small living room behind her seemed to be empty. She said, "Come in."

I stepped into the house.

"Please," she said. "Shoes off." Her accent turned "off" into "uff."

I complied, setting my Nikes on a hand towel laid to the side of the door. The humble place had been maintained with a lot of pride. A wicker bookshelf held dustless porcelain cats and snow globes from various American cities. The counters in the little kitchen area gleamed. Through an open door to a tiny bathroom, I saw a candle flickering in a wall sconce. Even the couch looked brand new. Oddly, a plate holding three or four banana peels sat on a side table, the bottom ones brown.

She gestured, and I sat on the couch. After setting a bowl of cashews and a dish of tangerines on the coffee table in front of me, she took up on an armchair, displacing her knitting. We stared at each other awkwardly.

"I receive e-mail," she said. "I was told man would come with Red Sock hat. That I must see him." For some reason she was speaking in a hushed voice, which I inadvertently mimicked.

"Did you get any DVDs?"

"DVD?" She frowned. "Like movie? No. I don't understand. Why do you come?"

I glanced around, bracing myself for a bomb, a violent son, a SWAT-team entry. On the microwave, three more bunches of bananas. To the right of the cashews, a school photo of a young girl, maybe six, with a bright, forced smile. Frizzy brown hair, both front teeth missing, dressed in a smock checked like an Italian tablecloth. One pigtail had slid lower than the other, and a purple spot stained the front of the smock; whoever had dressed her up so carefully for picture day would not be pleased. Something in that grin--the eagerness to participate, to please--made her seem so damn vulnerable. Stuck to the frame was a Chiquita sticker--what was with the bananas? I forced my eyes back to the woman. She wore a plain gold wedding band, but somehow I knew that her husband had died. Her sadness was palpable, as was her kindness, conveyed in the small smile she'd shown me when she'd set down the bowl of nuts. I would have done anything to avoid upsetting her.

"I was told that you could be in danger," I said.

She gasped, hand to her chunky necklace. "Danger? Someone threaten me?"

"I . . . I think so. I was told to come see you. Or you'd die."

"But who would want to kill me?" It came out "keel me." "Are you come to harm me?"

"No, I--no. No, I wouldn't hurt you at all."

Though she was distressed, still she kept her voice quiet. "I am Hungarian grandmother. I am waitress at crappy diner. Who do I threaten? What do I do to hurt anyone?"

I leaned forward as if to rise, practically crouching over the cushions. What was I going to do? Enfold her in a comforting hug? "I'm sorry to upset you. I . . . look, I'm here, and we'll figure this out together and fix it, whatever it is. I came to help."

She balled a Kleenex and pressed it to her trembling lips. "To help what?"

"I don't know. I was just told . . ." I struggled to figure out the connection, the angle in, the nudge of the dial that would bring the picture into focus. "My name's Patrick Davis. I'm a teacher. What's your name, ma'am?"

"Elisabeta."

"Are you . . ." Grasping at straws, I pointed at the picture. "Is that your daughter?"

"Granddaughter." She couldn't say it without a smile lightening her face. But quickly the haggardness returned. "My son, he is in the prison ten year for he sell the"--she acted out shooting up in her arm, making a pccht-pccht sound as if she were shooing a cat. A shiny manicure made her nails surprisingly beautiful--that quiet dignity showing through again, a pride that felt oddly like humility. "His wife, she go back to Debrecen." She waved a hand at the photograph. "So I get her. My little jewel."

I got it finally, the hushed voice. "She's sleeping."

"Yes."

"Why . . . ?" I asked, looking around. "Why are there so many bananas?"

"She is not well. She take many pill, one type so she can urinate off extra fluid. Low potassium, they say from this. So the banana--it is game we play. If she get her potassium from banana, one less pill to take." She shook a frail fist. " 'We beat it for one pill today.' "

My pulse quickened. SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP. But how?

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"She have the surgery back when she is three. Last month I notice her shoes no fit again. The swelling . . ." Her hand circled. "I do not want to believe. Then she have the breathing"--she mimed shortness of breath--"again on the playground. And yes, it is the heart valve again. She needs new. But it is hundred of thousand of dollar. I cannot afford. I am waitress. I already spend second mortgage on this house for first surgery. It will give out. This valve"--she spit out the word. "Tomorrow or next week or next month, it will give out."