Thirteen Confessions Page 6

  “That depends on the insurance company administering the annuity. Why?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “Nothing. I was thinking about maybe traveling.” She blushed again. “It’s my boyfriend’s idea, actually.”

  Interesting, Marguerite thought. “‘Travel is a privilege of the young.’ I read that somewhere. Why didn’t your boyfriend come with you?”

  “He lives here. We just met.” The color in her cheeks deepened. “It’s sudden, I realize, and he’s really not my type but I’ve felt lonely here and he’s very kind. He introduced himself at the church service. You may know him, actually, he took care of my father.”

  Untamed Animal

  Andrew never strayed this deep into the Tenderloin except for a bowl of pho at Dat Thanh. He’d ordered brisket today and sat chafing his chopsticks, eyeing the garnish plate with its Thai basil and sawtooth herb, when someone passing his table abruptly stopped.

  “Andy Paysinger?”

  Andrew glanced up into a face he could neither clearly remember nor convince himself he might have forgotten. “Do we know each other?”

  Without waiting, the man pulled back the opposite chair. “Mind?” He wore a navy blue gabardine blazer, white oxford shirt, utterly unassuming, and that was the problem—the clothing jarred dramatically with the face, or the memory trying to rise up and claim the face.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

  The hair was short and rough, nutmeg brown, tapering into a widow’s peak that gave his harshly angled face a wolfish cast. Classic jaw, like a movie star’s—action genre, not romance. Andrew, often accused of being unobservant, at least when it came to people, feared he was staring.

  “I’m sorry to draw a blank …”

  He let the sentence fade away suggestively, invitingly, but the stranger refused the bait. An odd, doggish sort of merriment livened his eyes.

  “No need to apologize,” the man said. “It’s been almost fifteen years.”

  Andrew reversed into that era of his recall—grad school? Or shortly thereafter.

  “Richard Pascoe. You knew me as Richie. Had a shotgun flat on Russian Hill. Eva introduced us.” The smile darkened almost imperceptibly. “Eva Saccurato.”

  The name sailed across the table like a dart. Andrew set down his chopsticks.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. That’s quite a long time ago.”

  He struggled with a shameful sense of reckoning. Inadvertently, his eyes dropped to his bowl. The cooling broth had acquired an oily sheen.

  “Long time, you’re right,” Richie said. “Almost feels like it happened on the moon.”

  The waiter appeared, bearing a tea-stained menu. Richie lifted his hand. “I’m only staying a minute, catching up with an old friend.” The waiter bowed, retrieved the menu, and fled. Richie, turning back to Andrew: “Ironic I’d find you here of all places. Quite a hole in the wall, and not the smartest part of town. Then again, you always were—what’s the word …”

  “I discovered this restaurant a few—”

  “Thrifty,” Richie said. “That’s the word I was after. You were always … thrifty.”

  Andrew clenched his hand to conceal its trembling. “I never would have recognized you.”

  “I’ll bet. Thirty pounds heavier now, and I’m still underweight. Trimmed away the rat’s nest upstairs. So long, Richie the Freak. Whereas you,” he gestured as though putting the final touches to a display, “you’ve hardly changed at all. Little bulkier up front, little grayer on the side panels. Same face, though. You’ve aged well, Andy. Life must suit you.”

  “Listen, I don’t mean to be—”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to dredge up old scores.” Richie sat back, folded his hands. He couldn’t have looked more comfortable. “Though it’s sad how well things turned out for you and me, how bad for Eva.”

  Once again, Andrew glanced down into his soup. The coiled white noodles made him think of intestines. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I assumed you knew. Eva’s dead.”

  For the merest instant, Andrew caught the scent of charred onion and ginger in his broth.

  “Happened about a year after I was arrested. I thought, since you two were close—”

  “We were never close.” Andrew’s voice quavered. “We saw each other.”

  “Outside looking in?” Richie reached across the table, helping himself to Andrew’s glass of water. “You two were quite an item.”

  “An item,” Andrew said. “That covers a bit of ground.”

  Richie put the water glass aside so he could lean forward, lower his voice. “How about I put it this way. You met Eva when she was working. Working for me. That’s what she did. Troll downtown for guys like you. Guys alone at the bar, guys throwing money at the cocktail waitresses so they’d talk to you. She readjusted your focus. Made you feel special. Laughed at your jokes, touched your arm, maybe your face. Looked at you like you were worth looking at. And that got you ready to throttle up and go all night. Only one thing lacking. That’s why she’d ask if you could make a little detour, this friend she knew, Richie on Russian Hill. And you didn’t mind, no one ever did. Goin’ to a party, gotta powder your nose.”

  Andrew glanced around, checking for eavesdroppers. “I wasn’t disputing any of that. I was objecting to you insinuation—I’m sorry, your inference—”

  “You remember what you said to me? And fuck you by the way, ‘insinuation,’ what the hell is that? But you remember what you said? You were coming by three times a week by then, stoking up for another shot at the wonder girl. Seriously, regardless how it started, you two hit it off.”

  “We had an arrangement.”

  “Yeah, you arranged to buy the coke and she arranged to drain your dick. And when you stopped by to honor your half of the bargain, you always wanted to share a toot, remember? Like we were the blow brothers. I figured, Christ, what the hell. Customer’s always right. It’s a service industry. But one time, when it was just you and me there, mano a mano, you said—about Eva—you said, ‘She’s got the body of an untamed animal. Unfortunately, she’s got the mind of one too.’”

  “I wasn’t being pejorative.”

  “Whatever the hell that means.” Richie took another swig from the water glass, ending with a shake of the ice. “Know what else you said? Remember like it was goddamn yesterday—always such a chatterbox, Andy, but then the smart ones always are. ‘Sex on cocaine,’ if I may quote, ‘is like coming with God. Only thing better? Fucking a beautiful woman you absolutely, utterly cannot stand. And she not only gets that, she hates you right back.’”

  “I believe I was talking figuratively.”

  “You were talking about working the kinks out.”

  “That is totally untrue.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “If that were true, why wasn’t I interviewed when she was killed?”

  Richie broke into a thin-lipped smile. “How do you know she was killed?”

  “You told me—”

  “I said she was dead. I never mentioned how.”

  Andrew felt a sudden pressure behind his eyes, like something was trying to push its way out of his skull. “And I never said I was unaware of her death. Or its circumstances. I said I didn’t know exactly what you meant by—”

  “Oh come on, Andy, you can’t just sit there—”

  “I think this little visit, as pleasant as it’s been, has pretty much run its course, don’t you?”

  “Let you in on a secret, Andy. I always thought she was the one who rolled. Made the call, handed me up so she could walk. She was a mess by then. I’d kicked her to the curb, utterly unreliable, dangerous really, and that turned out to be, like, too true. Of course, you’d also stopped coming around by then.”

  “I went through a rough period.”

&nbs
p; “Rough—that what it was?”

  “I straightened my life out.”

  “Well, good for you. I was trying to do the same thing, just wasn’t as focused I guess. Any event, one day, knock knock, there they are. ‘Here’s your copy of the warrant, Mister Pascoe, please have a seat.’ No forewarning, Had the stuff out, for fuck’s sake—powder, scales, Levamisole, the whole bit. Sloppy. And the cops, they’re happy as cupcakes, bunch of goddamn comedians, cracking jokes like we’re all on Leno.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that.”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen.” The lines fanning out from his eyes compressed. “Anyway, it’s a year later, and I hear from my handler—”

  “Your handler.” Andrew glanced around the room. They were the only two roundeyes there. Not that that settled anything. “You were an informant?”

  “I’ll get to that. But yeah, I’m talking with my handler and he lets me know Eva’s body showed up around the warehouses near Bluxome and Fourth. Guy walking his dog discovered her under a car, like she’d dragged herself there, trying to find someplace safe, or just someplace to die. Cut to ribbons with a razor. Never did find the guy. Never found her shoes for that matter—body was barefoot when they found her.”

  He looked off for a second, through the steamy window into the street.

  “Eva and her goddamn shoes. Anyway, my handler, he tells me this and I’m still pissed at her, I guess, suspicious to boot, and I pop off. ‘Well, you know what they say. Karma’s a bitch.’ He gets where I’m heading with this, and he doesn’t want to work a snitch with a body on his back. So he fronts me up, asks me point blank: Where was I, who can verify it, the whole bit. I tell him: Look, I’m torqued that she dimed me out but I didn’t waste the bitch. He looks at me like I’ve got gravy coming out my nose. Know what he told me? Sentimore, guy’s name was, SFPD, inspector in Narcotics. But you know that.”

  “Yes.” Andrew’s stomach was churning like a kettle now. “I know that.”

  “He’s the one told me—Eva had nothing to do with handing me up. They popped you on a fix-it ticket, that’s how lame this whole thing is. Pulled you over for a goddamn taillight. Guess you were coming from my place and they caught you cresting the hill and hit the lights, pulled you over—sitting there behind the wheel, buzzing like a chainsaw, pupils the size of Michelins. Good boy that you are, you defer to authority. ‘May we search your car, Andrew?” ‘Why yes, officer.’ Two hours later you’re blubbering about how you can’t afford to have this on your record. Got a degree in math from Michigan, masters from Chicago, you just wrapped up a second masters in accounting—”

  “Actuarial science,” Andy said.

  Richie looked like he’d been poked with a fork. “What?”

  “My graduate degree from Stanford is in actuarial science.”

  Richie cocked his head, like a terrier. “Well, actuarial, I don’t care. You whined about how you were too damn important to take the fall, you’d just scored a new job at big time money from some four-barrel insurance firm here in town. That all disappears if there’s so much as a sniff of this arrest. You’ve got a future. Can’t let that vanish. And so they introduce you to Inspector Danny Sentimore. And he lays it out—tit for tat, you scratch my back. You knew just which name to use. Useful for them, forgettable to you. Six weeks later, I’m sitting in the very same chair.”

  “And apparently,” Andrew said, “making much the same choice.”

  “I’m no dumber than you are. My suppliers were these two Salvadoran brothers, Hector and Leopoldo Duque. Daddy funded death squads, so they liked to say, but here they were just a couple chuckleheads.”

  “Look, Richard, I’m sure it’s cathartic to get all of this out—”

  “Andy, I won’t say this again, you shut … the fuck … up.”

  Using two fingers, he fished some ice cubes from the water glass, popped them in his mouth like lozenges.

  “Two years of my life I spent setting up the Duque brothers. Part of that I was working with a task force. DEA agent, guy named Refice, he liked my mustard, bumped me up to federal. So after the Duque trial I’m working Vegas and Phoenix and LA. Somehow the next six years stream by and if I’d been smart I woulda done what all snitches do, run my own game on the side, used my juice, built a nest egg. Know what stopped me? The thought of Eva under that car.”

  His eyes locked on Andrew but his focus seemed elsewhere. After a second, he broke the spell with a shrug.

  “Put me undercover, I could finesse a crocodile. If it was an act, I was stellar. But for real, I was done. I got scared. And when Refice retired, I thought: What now? Tried to go back to Sentimore but he’d transferred into Robbery, had as much use for me as a third tit. So I took off, traveled a couple years, Asia mostly, Philippines in particular. Very generous people, Filipinos, once you get to know them. But, you know, all good things come to an end. Am I right? Except for you. For you, the hits just keep rolling.”

  He took a folded set of papers from the inside pocket of his sport jacket, opened them to read.

  “Took a look at your resume—gotta love the Internet. Christ, got more letters after your name than a junkie’s got excuses. Testified before Congress on commodity hedge funds and derivative risk. Guest faculty at Yale and Dartmouth, guest lecturer at Cambridge and Trinity College.”

  He clucked his tongue softly, folded the pages over again and nudged them back into his pocket.

  “You were right, Andy. You did have a future. Bet you still do. View looks pretty good from where you sit. I wouldn’t know, of course. But I wouldn’t mind finding out.”

  “I wondered when you’d come around to it.”

  Richie, leaning forward now, elbows on the table, hands folded, a shrug. “It is what it is.”

  “How tautological of you.”

  “Totally logical, that’s me.”

  “Yes, well.” Andrew eased forward as well, in order to lower his voice. “It is what it is indeed. And here, Richard, is what it is: Nothing. If you think I’m scared of you, you’ve misjudged me.”

  “You’re the one who said it, Andrew, not me. How much fun it is to screw somebody you absolutely cannot stand.”

  “A great deal has changed since all that happened. People change, Richard. Some do, anyway. They grow up. They wise up. Or they get stuck.”

  “You never got married, Andrew. I find that interesting. All that money, no one to share it with. Still thrifty, I guess.”

  “The only power you have over me is hearsay from a police inspector who, I’d guess, would never divulge the name of an informant for anything but official purposes. And shaking me down, no matter how much ‘fun’ you’d have, isn’t an official purpose.”

  “Know what I think? What happened to Eva eats at you as much as it eats at me. I don’t care how much you hated her or she hated you back. She was a skank, a liar, a coke whore, a thief. But you can’t get her outta your head anymore than I can. We’re not as different as you pretend. You’re stuck too.”

  Andrew stood, threw a twenty onto the table, almost twice his tab. “You’re wrong, Richard, but I’ll grant you one thing. Yes, I have a future. So do you. Neither of us knows what it is—that’s why it’s called ‘the future.’ But I can tell you one thing it’s not, and never will be. Me, paying you money, for anything whatsoever.”

  He collected his suit jacket from the back of his chair and shouldered into it. “I’m leaving now. This is the last time you and I will talk. Ever.”

  He turned and marched toward the restaurant’s glass door. From behind, Richie called out, “You’re not who you pretend you are.”

  Andrew walked two blocks before hailing a cab, feeling like a boy, one who’d just survived a fight. Once back at the office he did his best to act as though nothing had happened—counseling an associate on Tobit modeling for annuity lapse rates, reviewing with a fellow
partner linear regression channels in commodity pricing—but he could feel the feathery rush of his pulse, his breath unusually shallow, his sweat heavy and rank.

  At 6:30 he headed out, pausing in the lobby to look out through the two-story wall of glass and scan the street—not just for Richie Pascoe but anyone lingering, watching, waiting. When a cab appeared, dropping a couple off, he hurried out, claimed it, and told the driver his address, glancing over his shoulder more than once as they headed toward Rincon Hill.

  Once they neared his building he had the driver circle the block, the better to scour the sidewalks and doorways. Satisfied the coast was clear, he had the cabbie stop, tipped him generously, and hurried to the door where Rudolfo, the night guard, buzzed him in.

  Apparently his apprehension showed. Rudolfo, in his chirping Nicaraguan accent: “Some trouble, Mister Paísinger?”

  Andrew, suddenly realizing how much he was sweating, took out a handkerchief to mop his face and neck. “As a matter of fact,” he said sheepishly, “we did have a bit of bother at the office this afternoon. Disgruntled client, lost millions in the meltdown, blames everyone but himself, of course. In the heat of the moment, some threats were made. I’m sure it’s all hot air, but one can never be too careful.”

  Rudolfo produced a pen. “What is the name of this person?”

  “Richard,” Andrew began, then checked himself. “You know, that’s not so important. As long as the usual procedure’s in place.” He smiled weakly, wondering if a gratuity under these circumstances would seem appreciative or insulting. Don’t second-guess yourself, he thought, removing a hundred from his billfold. Third extravagant tip of the day, he thought, thrifty my ass.

  “Call before letting anyone up,” he said, “anyone at all.” Pressing the bill into Rudulfo’s hand, he added, “My apologies for being a bother.”

  In the elevator he at last began to breathe more easily. Rudolfo had worked front desk for a decade, and the security team was painstakingly vetted, the men compensated handsomely enough that no bribe, regardless how lavish, would reasonably tempt them. And Andrew doubted that Richie’s resources, given his tale of woe, would qualify as adequate, let alone lavish.