Walkers (7 page)

‘Well,’ Paulette smiled, her eyes
sparkling at him, ‘you go down to the beach every morning, don’t you? You have
to jog, because of your leg.”

‘That’s right,’ Gil agreed. ‘It’s
part of the therapy. But I still don’t see...’

She lifted a finger to silence him.
He didn’t know why, but he was silent. She said, quite sweetly, ‘You’re almost
always the very first person down on the beach, aren’t you? Sometimes you’ re
down there as soon as it’ s daylight. So if anything was washed up during the
night, anything at all, you’d be the very first person to find it.’

Gil looked at her closely. Then he
looked away, and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his sawn-off jeans,
and made one of those faces that means hey, hold up a minute, what exactly in
hell is going on here? Paulette watched him, her soft smile never wavering
once, and Bradley watched Paulette. His face was saying, it isn’t fair.

The nearest living thing I’ve ever
seen to a
Hustler
centre-spread walks
right into my life, and wants to talk to Gil, not me.

Gil said, at last, ‘Have you been
talking to anybody?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Have you been talking to Susan
Sczaniecka? Or that old guy who lives along the beach?’

‘Who’s Susan Sczaniecka when she’s
at home?’ Bradley wanted to know.

Paulette didn’t answer Gil’s
questions, but said in the simplest of voices, ‘You’ve found one or two
interesting things washed up on the beach, haven’t you?’

‘I found a case full of Johnny
Walker once. My dad made me hand it over to the Coastguard. I expect they drank
it. I’m pretty damn
sure
they drank
it.’

‘And then of course you found what
you found today.’ Paulette’s mouth may have been smiling, but the expression in
her eyes was completely serious.

‘You talked to Lieutenant Ortega?’
asked Gil.

‘Gil,’ Paulette coaxed him, ‘all I
want to do is to write my article. You don’t have to be mentioned by name. All
you have to do is describe what happened to you, how you felt about it.’

There was no doubt that Paulette was
almost irresistibly attractive. If Gil had seen her in a crowd of girls, he
would have picked her out straight away. She was exactly the type of girl that
turned him on the most. Long brunette hair, sooty-lashed eyes, and the kind of
figure that just had to be felt to be believed. She was standing even closer
now, so that her breasts were almost touching his arm, and he could see the
tiny green flecks in the irises of her eyes.

The tip of her tongue ran lightly
across her lower lip. Gil melted inside, into white-h t liquid boy. He was
confused by Paulette, and irritated b how much she knew about him. She even
frightened him
.
just a little. But
he knew that whatever she suggested, he wouldn’t be able to refuse, because a
girl who looked like this would probably never walk into the Mini-Market ever
again, not in a trillion years, and what a dork he would look if he chased her
away.

Who cared what she knew? Who cared
what she wanted? His throat was dry and his shorts were uncomfortably tight and
she was so goddamned nice, as well as sexy, as well as beautiful, and, if she
went to the second-hand bookstore and bought books with names like
Day Sortie Ledgey,
as well as
intelligent, too.

‘What exactly do I have to do?’ Gil
asked, cautiously.

‘You have to answer some questions,
that’s all,’ Paulette told him. ‘There’s nothing to it.’

‘Questions about. . .what I found on
the beach?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You really want to know about
that?’

There was a look in her eyes that
warned him not to ask her any more, not in front of Bradley, at least.

‘We can’t do it here,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you meet me this evening? We could talk over dinner.’

‘Sure, if that’s what you want.
Sure.’ He tried to sound off-hand.

‘Okay, then,’ said Paulette. ‘Meet
me at seven at Bully’s North. You know Bully’s North?’

‘Well, yes, but I can’t afford to
buy you dinner there.’

‘That’s okay,’ Paulette smiled. ‘The
magazine will pay for the meal. Expense account.’

Just then, Phil Miller came up to
the front of the store. He nodded to Paulette, and then said to Gil, ‘Aren’t
you going to introduce me?’

‘I’m sorry Dad. This is Paulette
Springer, from
San Diego
magazine.
She wants to write an article about some of the things that people find on the
beach. Paulette, this is my dad.’

They shook hands. ‘Good to know you,
Mr Miller,’ said Paulette. ‘How’s your insurance problem?’

‘Oh, I guess we’ll get the money
eventually,’ said Phil. ‘The insurance company’s been arguing that a brown-out
doesn’t constitute a black-out, and so none of our freezer-food was covered;
but our lawyer seems pretty hopeful about it.’

He suddenly stopped himself, and
frowned at her. ‘How do you
know
about
that?’ he asked her.

She smiled at him, half knowingly,
half provocatively. ‘ Word gets around,’ she said, winking.

‘Word gets around about three
hundred dollars’ worth of spoiled pizzas?’

Paulette wouldn’t say any more, but
gave Gil’s hand a squeeze and told him, ‘I’ll see you later. Don’t be late.
Bully’s North, at seven.’

‘I’ll be there,’ Gil promised.

All three of them watched her walk
out of the store, and the way that she moved in her tight white shorts. Bradley
whispered, in a reverential voice, ‘No panties, did you see that? Not a
pantie-crease in sight.’ He stared wide eyed at Gil, and clenched his fists,
and said, ‘God! I could hit myself in the face with a brick.’

‘It might do you some good,’ said
Phil.

Gil just stood behind the
cash-register staring at the open door of the Mini-Market as if he couldn’t
believe that Paulette had actually been real.

Phil said, ‘You’re seeing her
tonight?’

Gil nodded. ‘She’s buying me
dinner.’

Phil laid his arm around his son’s
shoulders. ‘You know something?’ he said. ‘There do seem to be times when you
can fall on your feet.’ He glanced behind him, but Gil’s mother was still in
the stockroom. ‘Just make sure, you know, that you take all the necessary
precautions. She might be a lovely young lady, but I don’t know her well enough
yet to entrust her with my first grandchild.’

Bradley wrenched his golfing-hat down
over his head. ‘Precautions! What are you doing to me? I could hit myself in
the face with two bricks.’

Phil laughed, and gave Bradley a
playful punch in the stomach. Bradley coughed and spluttered and pretended to
expire.

‘Listen,’ said Phil, ‘I’ll do you a
favour. You can have that
Hustler
at
fifty per cent discount.’

‘While he goes out with Miss Super
Bosom, 1986? Are you kidding?’

Gil served behind the deli counter
until lunchtime. Then he made himself a salt beef and onion submarine, and took
off for San Pasqual Valley, out by the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where his
friend Santos Ramona lived. Santos had briefly attended the same business
college as Gil, but after two semesters his father had been hospitalised with
emphysema, and he had been obliged to give up his education and work in the San
Pasqual vineyards to support his family. Bradley was fun; but Santos was the
man to see if you felt serious or reflective. Santos had sampled peyote and
yage, the mind-expanding drugs taken by the Jivaro Indians.

Santos claimed that he could see the
future.

Gil ate the salt beef submarine as
he drove one-handed along the winding road that led up from Solana Beach to
Rancho Santa Fe. Beyond the quiet retirement community of Rancho Santa Fe, with
its whitewashed houses and its neat streets, the road ribboned out into more
mountainous country, around the edge of Lake Hodges, and out into the San
Pasqual Valley. Hot and sheltered, with slopes of dry, tawny soil, the San
Pasqual Valley was ideal for growing grapes. The vines stood hand-in-hand on
the hillsides, their green leaves fluttering in the afternoon breeze like
tattered shirts.

Santos Ramona’s house was set close
by the road, in a steep sloping hollow, so low down that its clay-tiled roof
was almost on the same level as the pavement. Gil steered the Mustang down the
dusty gradient into Santos’s front yard, and five or six chickens scattered
around his wheels. Santos himself was out back, with a spanner in one hand and
a can of Mexican beer in the other, staring without much optimism at a battered
John Deere tractor, and occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead with
the back of his arm.

Gil brought the Mustang to a halt,
and a cloud of sandy-coloured dust drifted away through the eucalyptus trees
which shaded the back of Santo’s property. Gil jumped out, and walked over to
stand next to Santos and join him in staring at the tractor.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked Santos.

‘You’ve been eating onions,’ Santos
remarked.

‘So what? What’s wrong with the
tractor?’

‘Won’t go.’

‘Do you know what’s the matter with
it?’

Santos swallowed beer, and then spat
into the dust. ‘If I knew what the matter with it was, I’d fix it.’

‘Maybe the fuel line.’

‘Maybe the fuel line what?’

‘Well, maybe it’s clogged. That
happens with tractors, working in dirty conditions.’

Santos stared at the tractor for a
moment or two longer, then let the spanner drop on to the ground with a clank.
‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Do you feel like a beer? Where have you been for so
long? These past two months, I’ve hardly seen you.’

They walked into the house. It was
shadier inside, but not much cooler. In the blue and yellow-tiled kitchen,
Santos’s mother was making empanadas, and occasionally flicking away flies with
the fringe of her black embroidered shawl.

‘How’re you doing, Mrs Ramona?’ Gil
asked her.

‘Phoof, don’t ask me,’ Mrs Ramona
replied. Her face was thin and wrinkled and her eyes were as black and
glittering as two beetles, nestling in the sockets of her skull.

‘My husband is still sick, you know;
the winery is cutting their workforce; who knows what will happen?’

Santos went to the icebox and took
out two more beers. He lobbed one across the kitchen to Gil, and Gil caught it
left-handed.

‘Come through,’ said Santos, and
they walked through to Santos’s bedroom. Santos kicked the door shut behind
them, and suddenly Gil felt peaceful and quiet and very enclosed.

To look at Santos, it was almost
impossible to guess that he had a room like this. He was short and podgy, and
his shirt was always hanging out of his jeans. He had one of those Mexican
faces that reminded Gil of Mayan masks, flat as a pancake, and featureless. His
black hair was combed into a 1950’s crest at the front and duck-tailed at the
back. He spat a lot, by way of punctuation.

His room, however, was almost
monastic. It was white painted and cool. The bed was neatly draped with a plain
light-blue cover. There was a pale oak closet with brass hinges and a shelf
with half a dozen books on it, all in Spanish and all concerned with mysticism.
On the wall between the two shuttered windows there was a large gilt and enamel
crucifix, set with red glass rubies and pieces of mirror.

The Christ that hung on it was like
a pink-painted doll, with an almost ludicrously agonised expression on His
face.

‘Well, what worry brings you here?’
asked Santos, prizing off his sweaty loafers and sitting cross-legged on the
bed. He tugged the ring-pull of his beer-can, and sucked at the opening before
it could foam out too much.

‘Does it have to be a worry? Maybe I
just felt like shooting the breeze with my old friend Santos.’

‘You sound more and more like a bad
cowboy movie every time you come here.

What’s the matter? You’re forgetting
those times we had, those bottles of wine we drank, those things we talked
about?’

Gil shook his head. He hadn’t opened
his beer yet. He kept the ice-cold can pressed against his chest. ‘It was
because of those things we talked about that I came this afternoon.’

‘Which things in particular?’

‘Magic. You know, people who can
work magic. Shamans, medicine men, people like that. People who can make
themselves invisible, and people who know everything about you even though
they’ve never met you before.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ asked Santos. He seemed
unimpressed, but Gil could tell that he was interested.

Gil said, simply, ‘I went out
jogging on the beach this morning. I found a dead body.

Well, me and this girl and this old
professor-type guy, we found it together. It was a girl, a naked girl, and she
was way up on the sand, way beyond the weed-line.’

Carefully, with very little
embellishment, he told Santos all about the girl’s body, and the eels, and what
had happened to the policeman. Then he told him about Paulette Springer,
especially the way that Paulette Springer seemed to know everything about him.