Gods and Pawns (Company) Read online

  And for about thirty seconds she felt the sense of release, of relief, that she had expected to feel. Then the mental image of the old man, the shrunken, childish, infinitely vulnerable thing he had become, vanished away forever. All she could remember was her father the way he had been in her childhood, young Hector who had put on dance records and waltzed in the living room with his two little girls, one on either arm, as Lupe sang from the kitchen where she fixed breakfast…

  The memory went through Maria like a knife. She leaned against the car and wept.

  The next day it was in all the papers and even on the local news: how the Evergreen Care Home was being evacuated following the deaths of more than half of its residents and three members of its staff, of what was thought to be a new super-virus. Maria had to go to Kmart to buy clothes for Hector to be buried in, once his body was abruptly released, because she was unable to enter the Evergreen’s building; it was full of more men in hazmat suits, carrying equipment in and out. Too surreal.

  The funeral was surreal, too. Hector had been a member of the Knights of Columbus and they turned out for him in full regalia, a file of grandfathers in Captain Crunch hats. They were most of them too frail to be pallbearers—six sturdy ushers wheeled Hector’s coffin down the aisle—but they drew their sabers and formed an arch for him. Philip stared, absolutely fascinated, turning now and then to his mother and great aunt to point at the feathered hats.

  There were more old men at the cemetery, ancient rifle-bearing veterans, one of whom carried a cassette player identical to the one Hector had owned. He slipped in a cassette and set it down to salute as “Taps” played, tinny and faint. The veterans fired off a twenty-one-gun salute; Philip started in his mother’s arms and lay his head on her shoulder, trembling until the noise had stopped. At the end they folded the coffin flag into a triangle, just as Maria remembered the Marines doing at JFK’s funeral long ago. As a final touch, they zipped it into a tidy plastic case, presenting it to her solemnly. Before leaving they asked for a donation, and Maria fished in her purse for a five-dollar bill to give them.

  The old veterans left in a Chevy van painted with the Veterans of Foreign Wars insignia. The Knights of Columbus departed in two minivans and a Mercury Grand Marquis. Were Hector and Lupe going, too, away in a pink Cadillac to live happily ever after in the Land of the Dead?

  Maria and Tina were left staring at Hector’s coffin, poised on its gantry between the mounds of earth neatly covered by green carpet. Lupe’s grave was hidden by them, and so was Uncle Porfirio’s, but when the earth had been shoveled back in its hole the cemetery custodian would hose away the mud. They would lie there all three together, tidy, filed away, their stories finished. End of an era.

  As Tina was buckling Philip into his car seat, Maria noticed a man standing alone by a near grave, head bowed, hands folded. He wore sunglasses. Their black regard was turned on her, just for a moment. She stared hard at him; no, he wasn’t the man with the Cat in the Hat smile. He lowered his head again, apparently deep in a prayer for his dead.

  Maria shrugged and got into the Buick, wincing at the hot vinyl seat. She drove out carefully through the acres of manicured lawn, flat and bright in the sticky heat of the morning. Questing for the nearest freeway on-ramp, she passed Mission San Fernando. It sat like a postcard for Old California, orange groves, graceful adobe arches, painted wooden angels, pepper trees. The past stood guard on the past.

  They drove home in a weary silence that was not broken until they walked into the living room, when Maria played the messages on the answering machine. There were two.

  “Hi Maria, hi Tina, this is Rob O’Hara. I just thought I’d call and let you know again how sorry Isabel is that she can’t make the funeral—”

  Tina stormed out of the room with Philip, muttering, “Fucking selfish bitch!”

  “—know how much her father would have wanted her to do well, and the New York exhibit is turning out to be a terrific success. I’m sure he’s looking down from Heaven, very proud of all of you…”

  Rob’s message ended abruptly, cut off in mid-sentence, and Maria smiled involuntarily. She expected him to resume in the second recording. Instead, there was a moment of silence but for background noise, and a hesitant throat-clearing. Maria tensed.

  “Maria, Isabel, this is Frank Colton. Will you give me a call? I’m still at the same number in Seal Beach. I have some information for you.”

  Frowning, Maria sorted through the junk on the phone table for the family address book. She flipped through it. Who on earth was Frank Colton? She found a listing for him, seeing with a pang that it was in her mother’s handwriting. As she dialed, she began to place the name: a long-ago Saturday drive to the beach. She had been twelve. Hector and…yes, his name had been Frank, had sat together on the sand and talked about Uncle Porfirio. They had both gotten drunk, and Lupe had had to drive home.

  She remembered him as a young man, with freckles and a crew cut: Uncle Porfirio’s partner. He must be a retiree now. His voice had sounded old, tired. Maria dialed the number, hoping he wouldn’t be home. But: “Colton,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Mr. Colton? I’m Maria Aguilar. I’m sorry I didn’t call you in time—”

  “Oh! Hector’s daughter. Right.”

  “You were the lieutenant who worked with my uncle, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” There was a long pause. “Look…I’m retired now, but I still get news. Your uncle’s case was never solved, you know, and when anything related turns up, they…I get told. I heard you had some trouble, you thought, with a stalker?”

  “Somebody was stalking me,” Maria said. “My dad had some, uh, property stolen from his room. It tuned up in my apartment, with a threatening note. The cops took it away to test for fingerprints.”

  “Yeah, honey, I know. That’s what I was calling about.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded embarrassed. “Hector’s teeth, of all things. I guess we all get older, huh? Anyway…they’re not going to tell you this, but they didn’t find anything. No usable prints.”

  “Usable?”

  “Well, there was a partial. Hector’d mended his teeth with Superglue, apparently, and that was where the print was. They ran it through, but—”

  “No records on file?”

  “None that made sense. Some kind of file error. The nearest match they could get was a guy who died in 1937. No prints on the note at all. So, ah, it doesn’t look as though the investigation is going to go anywhere. I thought you should know, though.”

  “Thanks,” said Maria dully.

  “Tell your dad I’m still working on the murder, will you?”

  “What?” Maria cried.

  “Tell Hector, I’d like to maybe come up there sometime, talk over the old days—”

  “Mr. Colton—Mr. Colton, I’m sorry, I thought you’d heard. My father passed away last week. He was at the Evergreen Care Home. It’s been in the news—”

  “Oh, my God.” For a moment the voice on the other end of the line sounded young again, in its shock. “He was there? Oh…oh, son of a bitch!”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Colton—”

  “Son of a bitch! Ambrose Muller!”

  “Mr. Colton?”

  “But that makes no…” Suddenly the life drained out of the voice, and it was an old man’s once more. “Miss, I’m sorry, please excuse my language. I just—”

  “Who’s Ambrose Muller?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Maria could even hear distant surf, the cry of a seagull.

  “He was the guy who committed suicide in 1937,” said the voice. Frank Colton’s breathing was labored now. It sounded as though he took a sip of water. “The one whose partial they thought they found on your dad’s teeth. He, uh, was a doctor who worked in an old folks’ home. Arrested on suspicion of poisoning his patients. Never stood trial; he committed suicide in his cell, like Hermann Goering. It just startled me, you know, th
e coincidence. This Evergreen Care Home thing.”

  “Right,” said Maria, feeling slightly stunned.

  “Listen, I’m so sorry about Hector. So sorry. I…will you call me if anybody bothers you again? Promise?”

  “Okay,” said Maria, wondering if he was about to cry.

  “God and His angels protect you, sweetheart,” said Frank Colton, and he did begin to cry, and hung up abruptly.

  She went back to work the next day, having used up her Compassionate Leave time. Just after morning break all the employees were called into a meeting, where the sword fell: the new owners were relocating the company to South Carolina. Severance pay and unemployment benefits, or relocation incentives to work for one third her present salary a continent’s width away from her family…

  Maria walked back to her desk, almost tranquil, observing the black tidal wave of anger rising but not feeling it yet. Her supervisor stepped in front of her, and she blinked at Yvette in mild surprise.

  “Maria, I’m so sorry this had to come at this particular time, for you,” she said. “If you need to take the rest of the day off, ah…”

  The black wave broke.

  “Oh, so now I’m a human being and not just a machine part?” Maria said. “Don’t you pretend they care anything about us! I’ve been here seventeen years and I was good at my job, and that counts for nothing? Jesus, there weren’t even computers when I started working here. And now I’m forty-six, and where the hell am I going to find another job?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Yvette, and burst into tears. “They don’t care. They have to look at the big picture. I feel just awful, but what can I do? It’s not personal, Maria.”

  “You bet it’s not. Clerical workers don’t matter a damn to anybody. But if the new owners think they can find Hispanics who’ll work for nothing in South Carolina, good luck to them,” Maria snapped. She stormed out to the Buick, where her rage abruptly guttered to ashes in her shame at having played the race card. She drove away. The morning sunlight looked strange, unreal.

  There were black plastic trash bags lined up on the curb in front of the house, when she drove up; Tina had been cleaning again, scouring away the pointless past. She met Maria at the door with a preoccupied frown.

  “Auntie? What are you doing home?”

  “I was laid off,” said Maria, and watched the effect.

  “But you’ve been there for seventeen years!” Tina shrieked.

  “Bummer, huh?” said Maria, and walked past her and sat down on the couch. Philip came rolling up at once, reaching for her. She lifted him out, held him close.

  “Those bastards!” Tina slammed the door. “Well—well, look, it’s going to be okay. They never appreciated you there anyhow. You’ll get another job right away, I know you will.” She peered closely at Maria. “You’re white as a sheet. You want a drink?”

  “No, thank you,” said Maria with great care, feeling the black wave begin to crest again. “Remember all those little talks we’ve had, about how alcohol doesn’t help us in a crisis?”

  Tina glared at her. Then she looked down, unclenching her fists.

  “Somebody from Evergreen called. It’s okay to go get Grandpa’s things, now.”

  The tide went out abruptly, leaving a surreal landscape full of melted clocks. Maria stood up, dazed. “Well, let’s go, then. We can get some lunch at a drive-through, eh? My treat. You can even have a Happy Meal.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Tina muttered, but went to the hall closet for Philip’s car seat.

  Hector’s boom box, his tapes, his statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe went in a big raffia purse that had belonged to Lupe. His clothes went into a black trash bag. Tina hefted it down to the car while Maria did a last check of the room. She pulled the bed, already stripped of its linen, away from the wall to be certain nothing had dropped down the side; there was only a book of crossword puzzles there, the last one she’d brought Hector, the one he had insisted had been stolen. Sighing, she picked it up. She opened the drawer in the bedside table to see if anything had been left there.

  Yes, something white. An envelope. She picked it up. Something was written on the outside, in a familiar hand.

  REALLY, MARIA, ISN’T IT BETTER THIS WAY?

  She stared at it a long moment.

  “All right, you bastard,” she murmured. “You’re dead, you know that? If I ever get my hands on you, you’re dead as nails.”

  She slipped the envelope into her pocket as Tina returned with Philip.

  In the car, Maria said: “Let’s go to the library.”

  She left Tina and Philip in the Children’s Room and made her way to the reference desk, where she explained what she needed. The slim young man on duty was friendly and helpful, and Maria retired at last to a microfilm viewer with file spools for all the major Los Angeles papers for the year 1937.

  What a lost world, she thought. William Randolph Hearst sounded off on matters of national policy; real estate was painfully cheap, making her wish she had a time machine so she could buy a three-bedroom house for eleven thousand dollars. Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen were hot. The advertisements were charming, quaint. The classified ads were so absorbing that she lingered over them, and so took a while to find her quarry.

  But there it was at last in the Los Angeles Times on October 14, 1937, the headline story: DOCTOR INDICTED ON MURDER CHARGES. Ambrose Muller. Brilliant young physician. Resident at the Avondale Home, a hospital for the elderly. Staff shocked. Relatives demanding answers. “ANGEL OF DEATH” MULLER? Names of the pitiful deceased, their ages, the suspicious circumstances surrounding their departure into the next world. And here was the picture, Dr. Ambrose Muller in handcuffs between two big cops, the three of them caught by a barrage of flashbulbs exploding.

  Maria stared at his face. The picture was dreadful, grainy, must have been poor even by the standards of 1937. She studied it a long moment. Finally she got up and went back to the reference desk. She asked for, and got, LIFE magazine for the year 1937 on microfilm. It was a local scandal, not a national one, but even so she found an article in the issue for the first week of November. There was the same picture of young Dr. Muller and the cops, beautifully sharp and clear now. He was smiling into the bright lights, smiling as though at his own cleverness.

  She had seen him before, of course.

  Great, she thought, ghosts and vampires. My life has just become an episode of Kolchak.

  There was a quote from a noted psychologist on the subject of megalomania and delusions of grandeur. There was a photograph of one of the pieces of evidence that would have been produced at the trial, had Dr. Muller not committed suicide: a prescription for a diabetic patient, ordering a drug no sane physician would have given to anyone with that condition. With a feeling of resignation, Maria took out the envelope she had found in her father’s room and studied it.

  “Yep,” she said. Same handwriting. But families look alike, she told herself. Ambrose Muller died in 1937, right? So maybe this is his grandson, or something. Maybe he inherited his grandfather’s M.O. as well as his face. And handwriting? Riiight. Stranger things have happened…but not people rising from the dead.

  There was something in the envelope, something she hadn’t noticed in her anger. She opened it cautiously. It was a photograph, so old it had gone to sepia. Taken outdoors, it showed three young men, possibly vaqueros from their dress, standing together by an adobe building. One held the reins of a horse, quite a fine horse, obviously showing him off. In the background a fourth man had just walked into frame, blurred, frozen as he turned a startled face to the camera.

  What was this supposed to prove? Maria wondered, turning it over in her hands. She didn’t recognize the landscape. The men might have been Mexicans, or Indians; no other clue.

  She stuck the picture back in the envelope. She rummaged in her purse for dimes, fed the microfilm machine’s copier, and made three copies of the picture of Dr. Muller. Having returned the microfilm spools to the young
man at the desk, she hurried out to the Children’s section.

  Tina was sitting at one of the little tables with Philip on her lap, reading to him in a whisper from Madeline. Her high breathless voice sounded like a child’s voice. Maria vividly remembered holding Tina on her lap, pointing out Madeline at the end of the line of little orphaned girls…

  But that had been in the old library, the one with its quaint tiled mural of Our Lady Queen of the Angels that little Tina had insisted was a dolly. It was gone now, torched by an arsonist in the late seventies.

  Half my world is dead, Maria realized. Why shouldn’t there be ghosts and vampires?

  “Come on, mi hija,” she said, jerking her thumb at the door.

  In the car, Tina remarked: “You haven’t called me ‘mi hija’ in a long time.”

  “I’m getting old,” Maria replied.

  “So…are you going to move out of your apartment now?”

  “I guess so,” said Maria, feeling the last of her short-lived independence slip away.

  “It makes sense,” said Tina. “You’ll save money if you live with Philip and me. You don’t want to stay there alone anyway, right? Not with the stalker, or whoever he was, bothering you. This way, we can be there for each other.”

  You mean I can be there for you, Maria thought, downshifting. It made sense; for what else was she going to do with her life, now? Take up crafts? Run away to Tahiti and get a gorgeous young husband? Wait: maybe she’d become a fearless vampire hunter.

  Tina patted her on the shoulder.

  “Let’s stop by your apartment,” she said. “You can’t go on living out of your overnight bag. We’ll pick up some of your things.”

  They entered Maria’s apartment cautiously, but no one was lying in wait for them.

  “Philip says, ‘You better watch yourself, creepy man!’” Tina said, mock-fierce as she brandished him. “‘You mess with my Auntie and I’ll punch you in the nose,’ he says. Don’t worry, Auntie. You’ve got a little angel looking out for you!”