Civil Twilight. Susan Dunlap
do you think? No! She . . . took . . . my . . . car!” He was almost yelling. Behind him people moved away fast. “What the hell got into her?”
“I don’t know, John!”
“You brought her here!”
“It was a fluke.”
“Fluke? Yeah, right!” He turned and strode back from the parapet, got a car-length away, charged back, planted himself inches from my face. “You brought her. How come?”
“I didn’t bring her. I’d just met her. She wanted to go for a run; I only had an hour. We were in Washington Square. This was just the logical place—”
“Washington Square, a minute from Gary’s office. Gary! He’s behind this,” he shouted at me, light dawning, “isn’t he?”
“Stealing a police car? Are you nuts? I’ve kept away from our family all of my adult life. I hardly know either one of you. But that’s just crazy.”
He was pulling in breath through clenched teeth, eyeing me like I was a suspect. “It’s Gary, isn’t it? What did he tell you?”
He told me to rabbits. Why had Gary insisted I not tell him? Gary was my buddy, but he was what I loved in guys—a brat. Could John possibly be right?
His face was growing purple. I’d never seen him this out of control. He dug his fingers into my arm. “Don’t you clam up to protect him.”
“Let go of me!”
His grip loosened. I jumped back.
“Not Gary, huh? You saying she set us all up? What do you know about her? You tell me! Why did Gary say to bring her here?”
Ah. “Gary didn’t. He only told her I’d take her running. He didn’t say where.”
“So you chose Coit Tower?”
“No, she wanted a high spot with a view and trees . . . oh.”
“Exactly. What did she say to you?”
“She’s getting a divorce. But she didn’t go into that. She just about got killed shoving a girl out of the way of a car. Driver was furious.”
“Really?” For an instant he seemed taken aback.
“Yeah, just as suddenly as she decided to take your car. People do lose it in divorces, you know.”
“What else?”
“A Zen koan; she talked about that, and about Mike.”
John barked out a laugh. “Your two favorite subjects!”
“Hey, I don’t—”
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing! No, wait. There was one last thing, but it’s not going to help you. She was trying to be kind. She said, don’t beat yourself up—meaning me—about Mike.”
He nodded, his lips tensed into a slight sneer I knew all too well. “So you liked her, right?”
“What’s wrong with that!”
He took a step back and shook his head. His expression said I was an idiot. “If someone’s your friend, they’re okey-dokey and the rest of the world just doesn’t understand. You’re sure you see something the rest of us’re too thick to get. Your friends, you’ll move heaven and earth to justify them. You’ve always been that way. Used to be Mike, now it’s Gary. So Gary couldn’t have set this up ...” His voice trailed off and I had the feeling he found it hard to believe Gary had purposely sabotaged him either. “If it’s Mike, he must’ve walked out of the house one Thursday in a bubble of innocence and been spirited off to another life. Because you adored him, there has to be some very fine, all-redeeming reason a forty-three-year-old man can’t walk back in the door now and just say, “I screwed up.”
I just stared. Then I said the only possible thing. “Fuck you!”
A patrol car, lights flashing, raced up the down lane of the exit road. When John spotted it, he jumped back and the expression on his face was not that of a police detective relieved to have a ride back to the station. Nor did he take the all too familiar gritted teeth inhalation of one prepared to take a ribbing. His expression was momentary; the next instant he was walking toward the car, leaning down toward the driver. But during that moment, I could have sworn his face showed a flash of fear.
4
I RAN TOWARD the patrol car.
John glanced back at me, got in and slammed the door. The car sped away down Telegraph Hill Boulevard.
“Damn you!” I was so furious—so hurt—and stunned by his attack, my temptation was just to let him deal or sink. What I needed to do was get to the location and get ready for my gag. It was already 5:30. In an hour I’d be turning the ignition key. But there was no way I could just let John go, not as out of control as he’d been.
I leapt the observation ledge, skidded between pines and cypress, pushed off and leapt for the plaza.
They were almost at the Lombard curve. I slid down the double railings, swung forward and hit the sidewalk.
John glared out the window. He still had that panicky look. The vehicle picked up speed, nearly hitting a cab. Both paused momentarily. John made some kind of signal, and the patrol car shot away.
I yanked the cab door open and flung myself in. “Hang a U.”
“I can’t do a U here!”
“Of course you can. John will cover for you. He’s not paying you to lose him.”
“He’s not paying me at all.”
“He will when we get there. If you don’t lose him, Webb.”
Webb Framington Morratt hung a U, shooting me across the leather seat, then hit the gas. He was on what he called an unofficial retainer from John. Very unofficial. I wasn’t sure the range of things he did for my brother or their legality. But he definitely wouldn’t want to offend him. “Keep him in sight.”
“He didn’t tell me to trail him.”
“Of course he didn’t. When he called you, he figured he’d be sitting back here with me. He didn’t figure you’d screw around so long a patrol car would get to him first.”
“I didn’t—”
“No matter. Just keep up because I don’t have the address.”
When we got there, John would be livid, Webb Morratt would be outraged, and the next time I needed to make use of Morratt I’d pay for it. But that would be then; this was now. “John uses you because you can tail a car in traffic. Because you say you can. Don’t give him reason to doubt it. Your record for honesty isn’t the best.”
He grunted, but did step on the gas.
I braced my feet as we shot through the narrow North Beach streets, the cab swaying as Webb whipped around corners.
What was with John? If he’d stayed up nights planning the cut, he couldn’t have pierced deeper. Mike was four years older than me; I’d adored him. In a family where siblings paired off, he was my other half. I told him everything; he told me . . . less than I’d realized. When he disappeared, I was fifteen. As a family we held together; individually and in private we fell apart. John, for his part, just plowed on. Why this outburst now of all times?
Morratt was watching me in the rearview mirror. I took a breath. “Tourist season, and you’ve still got time to hang around for John.”
Morratt scowled, his round pink head scrunched like a ball a retriever had just had a go at. The ball unwrinkled a bit. He hesitated, fighting his urge to sound off. It was a losing battle.