Hector drove to Sally Rainwater's, looping onto Interstate 5 for the short run south. The second storm front had moved in behind the first, holding the city in a noisy gray torrent. The wipers couldn't keep up with the water. McMichael heard the rush of the tires and the roar on the roof and the metal shriek of a minivan that dreamily planed into the guardrail.
Hector finished his briefing on last night's possibilities- a couple of blonde beauties looking for love at the Sevilla bar. He'd gotten one phone number before the captain called him. "How'd IAD go?"
"They can't figure out why I didn't see it coming."
"Maybe because Jimmy's a sneaky little creep. You put somebody that green on the street, put him in with the dope and the girls, you're asking for it. They got to blame somebody. Bland Jerry- he'll pick you."
"How'd NCIC go?"
Hector shrugged. "Eight years ago, Sally Rainwater's boyfriend tried to kill her. Shot her in the throat with a twenty-two but it didn't hit anything too important. This was back in Miami. The boyfriend got out last month, skipped on his P.O. and dropped out. They don't know where he is and he's not supposed to know where she is. Dylan Feder, thirty-five- formerly employed as a lifeguard, model, actor, waiter and batterer. Beat her up in 'ninety-four but she didn't press. Stalked and shot her in 'ninety-five. She was twenty."
"Get mugs?"
Hector slipped a twice-folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his coat and handed it to McMichael. Feder was crybaby handsome: curly dark hair, pouty lips, bedroom eyes. Six three, two fifteen.
"I don't understand women like her," said Hector. "Could have any guy she wants, but she connects up with this loser, lets him beat her up. I'll never get that."
"It has to do with a low opinion of yourself."
"I don't get that, either. Total babe like her."
"It's not how you look."
"Yeah, yeah. All right. Mr. Female Insight understands what makes 'em tick but not the savage Hector."
"I've just known a few, they get hurt and think they deserve it. And they always think the guy's going to change. My sister's that way."
"Raegan? Really?"
"Somewhat."
"Whatever. I find that guy in San Diego I'll wrap his balls around his fuckin' neck."
Hector pulled onto the Imperial Beach Pier because he wanted to see the waves. They rolled along, the railings coming slowly past the windows and the rain shooting off the wooden deck in front of them. There were fishermen out, bundled in slickers and hats, staring at their rods. Hector drove halfway to the end and put the car in Park. The waves were huge and disorderly, looming in at competing angles, building on each other. And fast, with big plumes hissing backward off the tops. Walls of pale green water rose up and thundered in at them then passed out of sight under the car, and McMichael felt them explode through the pier caissons and the cement deck and the car tires and into the bones of his feet. Hector didn't surf but he liked the waves, the bigger the better, never drove past a pier in a storm that he didn't roll out and watch. McMichael did surf but not in anything like this. The savage power before him was hypnotic. It miniaturized you. He watched the storm but he thought of Johnny and Steff and wondered how he'd managed to lose so much so fast. Seven years of marriage and a perfect son- one gone forever, the other down to Wednesday nights and weekends.
A different kind of storm.
"McMichael and Paz, Ms. Rainwater. May we come in?"
It was ten-fifteen and the sky was almost black now. A river of water poured from the eaves of the cottage, forcing McMichael and Paz to pick a side or get drenched.
They had moved up close to the barely opened door.
"Go away."
"We'll just be back in an hour with a search warrant."
"Based on what?"
"Missing paintings."
She pulled the door open and stepped back. She was wearing loose quilted Chinese pajamas, black with birds-of-paradise on it. And black Chinese slippers with plastic soles. Her face was pale and puffy and McMichael's eye went straight to the tattoo low and right on her neck. A copy of the one on the other side. He saw that it was neither a flame nor a tulip, but a bird taking flight. The center of its breast almost hid the bullet scar.
She caught him looking, walked away with a shake of her head, and returned a minute later with a faded denim jacket buttoned up high.
McMichael looked at a director's chair that said "Sally R." on it but he didn't sit. Instead he set his tape recorder on the canvas seat and clicked it on.
"Okay?" he asked.
"I don't care," she said.
Hector took one end of the couch. "Got any coffee?"
She stood between them, looking first at Hector then McMichael. Her face looked softer than the night before.
"I'll make another pot."
She walked past Paz and into the kitchen. Hector watched her, then looked at McMichael deadpan.
But McMichael's attention was already on the painting, a schooner tacking into a hard starboard wind. Browns and blacks and chill grays- a seascape in earth tones. The skipper was tiny against the ocean, and far too confident for McMichael. Like he could sail through this or any huge sea, no problem. This attitude reminded McMichael of his father's stories from his days with the tuna fleet, of the arrogance that always seemed to pave the way for tragedy. The schooner captain had it. According to McMichael's father, Gabriel, Pete Braga had it, too. Which was why he'd allegedly cheated Gabriel's father- young Franklin McMichael- out of the first quarter share he ever earned as a purse-seining thirty-three-year-old fisherman aboard Braga 's Cabrillo Star.
"Cool picture," said Hector, glancing up and behind. "How many missing from Braga 's?"
"Five, according to Patricia and the spaces on the walls."
A brain thorn started to form as McMichael's gaze wandered the kitchen, as the tall pretty woman made the coffee, as the rain slowed on the roof. A blue-and-gold vase sat on the kitchenette table to Sally Rainwater's right. It was half hidden by a thick phone book and filled with bright orange paper poppies.
"There's another painting in the study," she said without turning. "To your right off the hall. The hallway bulb burned out so don't bother turning it on. I've got three more in my room, which you are not invited to enter. I'll bring them out if you'd like."
"Thank you," said McMichael. "Be right back, Heck."
The study had an old couch stacked with books, a cheap folding party table with a computer on it, two walls of brick-and-board bookshelves, and one nice glass-fronted lawyer's bookcase by the window. The window faced south, toward the Tijuana Slough and the river mouth and the border. McMichael had surfed the TJ Slough as a youngster because tough guys surfed the slough. It was shark infested and polluted by the Tijuana River and filled with fickle currents that might nudge you with the body of a desperate young man who had dreamed of a job in the Estados Unidos. When you surfed it you were right there on the watery border between a powerful nation and a hungry one. You could sit there on your board, look one way and see neat little Imperial Beach apartments, or look the other and see the decrepit Tijuana shacks and shanties clinging to the hills. After a rain like this, there would be fewer of them. He saw nothing through the window now but a square of gray shot with silver rain.
The painting hung low on the computer table wall, so you could easily look up and see it. It was a small canvas, no more than twelve by twelve inches. A forlorn boat struggled in a violent orange sea while an ice-white moon- or maybe sun- shone down with brilliant disregard. The boat was twisted and stripped down to almost nothing. No sail. No mast. No men. Even with the bright white sun or moon in it, this was the darkest and saddest- and also the most powerful- painting that McMichael had ever seen. It wasn't even signed. Talk about arrogance. It looked like one of Pete's.
He wondered if Rainwater would let him photograph the paintings so he could show them to Patricia. If she'd stolen them, she sure wouldn't, but if she'd stolen them why hang them on her walls and invite the cops in for a look?
And why hang the autographed baseball mitts on the wall opposite, for all the world to see? He touched the leather below Ruth's faded signature.
Sally Rainwater was starting to intrigue him.
He stepped back and scanned the titles on the simple bookshelves: mostly textbooks in the natural sciences- biology, chemistry, anatomy. Several on geography. And a few novels.
The lawyer's bookcase contained only four volumes all on the middle shelf, all held in place by heavy-looking copper bookends shaped like a whale's flukes.
He read the titles: Heart of Darkness, Typhoon, The Secret Sharer and The Complete Works, all by Joseph Conrad. All in clear plastic slipcases. And all, if signed by their author, likely boosted from Pete Braga. The windowed doors of the case were locked.
Rainwater was handing Hector a cup of coffee when he walked back in.
"Where did you get the paintings?" McMichael asked.
"Pete gave them to me."
"And the vase on the kitchen table?"
"He gave me that, too. It's Chinese, from the eighteenth century."
Hector deadpanned McMichael again, the coffee cup frozen halfway to his mouth.
"What else did he give you, Ms. Rainwater?"
"Some autographed books and baseball gloves. A mounted calico bass. A necklace of big perfect pearls he bought in Japan for his wife a long time ago. And a pair of pearl-and-sapphire earrings that were hers, too."
She looked down at Hector, then back to McMichael. "That's all."
"What about the Beetle?" asked Hector.
"He gave me the down payment- ten thousand."
"Gave or loaned?"
"Gave."
"Why?" asked McMichael.
Rainwater walked into the kitchen and came back with cups of coffee for McMichael and herself.
"We were good friends."
Her steady dark eyes went from McMichael to Hector and back again, and it struck McMichael that he was no longer running this show.
"You'd only known him seven months," said Hector. "And he gives you diamonds and pearls and half a car and a bunch of pictures and a baseball mitt signed by Babe Ruth?"
"Yes," she said.
"Explain why again," said McMichael.
"He wanted to give me some of his things."
"You having sex with him?" asked Hector.
"That's none of your business."
"They'll ask you in court."
"It's still none of your business."
Hector smiled and McMichael saw the gleam in his partner's eyes.
"I'd arrest her," said Hector. "Possession of stolen property. Murder in the act of committing a robbery, which can get you executed. Throw in prostitution and elder abuse so she'll have to plead down from a mountaintop."
Her dark eyes dismissed Hector and looked to McMichael. "I have proof," she said. "Wait here."
She went past him, down the short dark hallway and into her bedroom. The door shut. McMichael popped the snap on his shoulder holster. Hector slipped his nine from the leather and stretched his gun hand out along the couch back, dipping the weapon behind a cushion.
The bedroom door swung open and the woman came into the dim hallway, pointing toward McMichael something long and round with a hollow end.
He cleared holster and jacket in a short arc. Hector bounded forward with his gun in both hands, exhaling in a loud hiss.
"Drop it! Drop it goddamnitrightnow!" yelled McMichael, staring at her over the front sight, his heart pounding hard and a metallic ringing in his ears.
She froze, dropped the thing and raised her hands.
He glanced at the wood floor and saw what looked like a tube of rolled-up white paper. He upped the barrel of his Smith & Wesson toward the ceiling.
"I dropped it!"
"But what the hell else you got?" Hector barreled past, kicking the tube and with his left hand turning Sally Rainwater to the wall. "Hands up and against the wall. Hands up and against the wall, lady."
Hector patted her quickly: hands, coat collar, armpits, back, outside hip and thigh, behind the knees, then moved her around to face him.
"Keep your hands up," he said.
Her voice was not much more than a whisper. "They're up! They're up!"
Hector felt around her middle- no higher or lower, McMichael was certain of that- then hips again, then ran his hand over her calves and ankles.
"Okay, I think she's clean."
"Jesus Christ, you guys." Her voice was so faint McMichael could barely make out her words. "Jesus."
"Step back, Heck," he heard himself saying. He thought of the bullet holes in her neck and he saw the cold hard fear in her face. He felt the jittery spike of adrenaline shooting through him and his heart was still banging against his ribs. "It's okay, Ms. Rainwater. Now just come back into the living room here. Move slowly, please, just come back in here and sit on the couch. Okay? Everybody's okay. Everybody's okay."
Hector eased away, gun aimed up, snatching the roll of paper from the floor. He backed past McMichael into the living room.
But Sally Rainwater didn't move. Even in the bad light he saw that her face had gone white. She opened her mouth and her jaws moved just a little but no words came out.
McMichael heard a faint tapping sound on the wood and saw the puddle between her slippers. Her legs were shaking.
He stepped closer and like a waiter motioned her to her own bathroom. "Clean up. It's okay."
But she still didn't move from the wall. McMichael watched her dark wide eyes find his own. He offered her his hand, palm up. She got his wrist. He had to pull her, gently, to get her moving toward the bathroom. Her hand was cold and electric and strong. She tried to cover her wet pajamas with the other as she walked in and shut the door.
He heard the roar of the shower.
Hector was sitting at the kitchen table, reading. McMichael looked over his shoulder. The sheets were still curved at the tops and bottoms where Rainwater had formed them into a loose cylinder. A rubber band lay beside the blue-and-gold Chinese vase.
To Whom It May Concern,
I gave a painting to Sally Rainwater on December 4 of this year. It's a genuine Albert Pinkham Ryder but he didn't sign it so it's not ever been proven or authenticated but that's not why I bought it in the first place. It's a beauty, about a foot square and it shows a little boat with no sails or crew pretty much getting the shit kicked out of it by Mother Nature. It's in a black frame. It's Sally's painting now and she can do what she wants with it.
Truly,
Peter Augustino Braga
McMichael read Pete Braga's signature, then the notary stamp and date: San Diego, roughly a month ago. Witnessed by one Charles Hyams, notary public. The body of the letter was typed in an ordinary font style and size.
"Hmph," said Hector. "You can fake these."
"Easy enough to find out."
"I'm not good with what just happened, Tom. But, man, something about her coming out from the room. Dark hallway. And when I saw you reach…"
"Me too. It's just what happens. Better safe."
"Hope she sees it that way."
"We had a right to protect ourselves."
Sheet number two was dated November 11 of last year and stated that Pete had given Sally Rainwater a baseball glove signed by Babe Ruth. "I saw him play once at Yankee Stadium. Second best day of my life, right behind marrying Anna. The ink is kind of faded out but you can still read his name under the pocket." Signed by Pete and witnessed by the same notary.
Sheet three listed four more autographed baseball gloves given to Rainwater: Williams, Mantle, McGwire and Gwynn. "The McGwire and Gwynn ones are personalized to me, Pete," he wrote. "But they're property of Sally Jane Rainwater now, just like the rest." Signed and witnessed October 7.
The next four pages accounted for four more paintings, one pearl necklace, one pair of pearl and sapphire earrings, one handmade and hand-painted Chinese vase, four books autographed by Joseph Conrad and one mounted calico bass.
"This now worthless fish weighed six pounds two ounces when I caught it on two-pound test and an anchovy off Pt. Loma about a thousand years ago. It now belongs to Sally Rainwater, freely given to her by me with a clear mind, a mostly shot liver and a full heart."
All signed by Braga and witnessed by Hyams.
McMichael noted that the fish was the first thing he'd given away to his newfound friend- August 19 of last year, a month after she'd come to work for him.
"I almost believe these," said Hector.
"You should," she said quietly, sitting on the couch and staring straight ahead. Her hair was slicked back, her face still white, her eyes dark and distant. She had a faded pink robe pulled up tight to her chin, jeans underneath and fluffy pink slippers.
"Pete had a hummingbird made out of jewels. He'd bought it for his wife. Did he give that to you?" asked McMichael.
"No. He showed it to me once."
"What did you think?" asked Hector.
"It was the most beautiful man-made thing I've ever seen."
"Where did he keep it?" asked Hector.
"I have no idea."
McMichael followed her gaze through the front window to the pier and the heaving gray-black sea. "We found five wall spaces at Pete's house, where paintings used to hang," he said. "Do you know if your paintings are the ones that used to be there?"
"Yes, they are. He was going to put up more, but never got around to it."
"Who'd you call last night from Ye Olde Plank?" asked Hector.
She looked long and hard at him, but McMichael thought he saw the fight going out of her. "Robin, a friend from school."
"How come?" asked Hector.
"You give CPR to a dead man some night, see if you don't feel like talking to someone about it. You can arrest me now or go. I need to start looking for another job."
"We'd like to take these documents with us," said McMichael.
She looked over at McMichael, then to Paz. "Try not to lose them."
Hector stood awkwardly and looked at her. "I apologize for what happened. I was wrong. But don't ever point something like that at a cop."
Hector threw open the door and headed for the car. McMichael hesitated, then pulled the door shut against the weather. "What did you pay for that firewood at Ralph's last night?"
"Four ninety-nine a bundle. Got two."
"Box boy help you out with them?"
"I carried them myself."
"Remember the checker?"
"A handsome Mexican man. Fifty."
"There's no Ralph's Market on Rosecrans in Point Loma."
She nodded but didn't look at him. "Yeah, well- Ralph's, Von's, Albertson's- something like that. I don't pay much attention to the names of markets."
"What was the cross street?"
"Talbot or Canon. Half a mile from Mr. Braga's house, maybe. It's not my neighborhood."
They were still in Imperial Beach when McMichael's cell phone rang.
"Mark and I walked the beach outside Pete's house about an hour ago," said Barbara Givens. "The rain let up for just a minute and we got some decent light. I found a pair of latex gloves and a bloody warm-up jacket stuffed down in a city trash can. About thirty yards from Pete's wall, maybe ten yards shy of the high-water line. They were both jammed down so far the rain didn't really get to them. They've got blood and God knows what else on them. This might be our break, Tom."
"What color on the jacket?"
"Black."
"Nice work, Barbara."
McMichael gave her the Notary information and rang off.
"Bloody latex gloves in the sand by Pete's wall," he said. "Wrapped in a black warm-up jacket."
Hector shook his head. "I still think the nurse had something to do with it. A partner, a boyfriend, something. Maybe that dirtbag with the chick lips and the dreamy eyes."
"Why kill the old man if he's giving her all that cool stuff?"
"Maybe she got herself into his will. Maybe she wants the really cool stuff. Like a house at the beach."