Читать книгу The Mural - Michael Mallory - Страница 9

CHAPTER FIVE

“Daddeeeee!” Robynn squealed when Jack walked in the door. She ran and launched herself into his waiting arms. “I missed you I missed you I missed you!”

“I missed you too, punkin,” Jack said, hugging her tightly. Glancing over at their nanny, he added: “Hi, Nola, how’s everything going?”

Nola Gutiérrez answered by rolling her eyes. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Jack?” she asked.

“Sure. Just hold on a second.”

Once Jack was able to peel himself away from Robynn, he took Nola into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it something with Robynn?”

“No, no, not with him,” she said in heavily accented English. It always amused Jack that Nola confused her gender pronouns. “Daniel was sent home from school again.” Daniel, Nola’s son, had just started middle school and was not having an easy time of it. He had been sent down to the principal at least once a week over the past month, usually for fighting. Jack had seen Daniel enough to know that he was not a bad kid, but like so many others he was dealing with pressures coming in from all sides, while living in a neighborhood that was heavily gang-influenced. Nola was a strong woman and was handling it the best she could, but Jack knew she had her hands full with the boy, particularly since she had to devote so much of her time and attention to Robynn. “I’d like to go home now, if that’s all right.”

Normally, Nola did not leave until Elley arrived home, even if Jack was already there, but today he said: “Go on ahead. Robynn and I will be fine here. I hope everything is okay.”

“Gracias.” Nola grabbed her purse and headed out as Robynn pulled Jack back into the dining room and showed him a drawing she had made that morning. It depicted her in the middle holding the hands of two big stick people, standing out in a field next to a house, under a bright yellow sun. Jack easily recognized himself—Robynn always used an orange ochre color crayon to color his light chestnut hair—while the other figure’s dark hair and enormous red lips signified Elley. Jack was always amused by the way his daughter managed to make her mother look like The Joker. Robynn’s own self-portrait was all eyes and hair and teeth and a line under her nose representing her scar. The three stick people walked happily in the sunshine with huge smiles on their face.

If it could only be like this. “This is beautiful, punkin, can I keep it?”

“Mm-hmmm.”

Once she had started in on another drawing and was working on it intently, Jack snuck away and called in to the office. At the other end of the line Jonelle, the receptionist, flipped through his messages for the last couple of days. None were terribly important, so Jack asked her to hold them until he came in tomorrow. “Does Mr. Broarty need to ask me anything?”

“Let me check,” Jonelle replied, and transferred the call to Yolanda Valdera, who greeted him warmly and then said: “I don’t know if Mr. B. needs you or not. He’s had the door closed most of the day. I know that Emac called earlier.”

“Do you know what he wanted?”

“Not a clue, but right after the call was when the door closed.”

“Oh.” Jack could not decide if that boded well or ill. Marcus might have worked up the balls to tell Emac that Wood City was a disaster zone, and if so, he was probably basking in his new-found authority. Or he might have been browbeaten by Emac for something or other and went into hiding, should anyone else call. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Jack said. “I’ll be in early.” He hung up and went to the kitchen and grabbed a Sam Adams from the fridge. It was 4:39...close enough to five-thirty. Then Jack retrieved his laptop, which was still by the front door, and carried it into the dining room, setting it up on the other end of the table Robynn was using to draw. He winked at her when she looked up. Powering up, he then pulled his microcassette out of his pocket, plugged in the earpiece, and played his notes back, transcribing them on the screen, minus the bits of commentary that were nobody else’s business. A slow typist, Jack had to rewind and play back certain parts over and over again, but two beers later, he was finished. He would put the notes on CD and take it into the office to finish his report there. Before powering the laptop down again he made sure that he also had copies of the pictures on the CD.

It was nearly seven by the time Elley got home, and by that time there were five empties lined up near the sink. “Looks like I missed the party,” she said, glaring at them.

“Hi, Mommy!” Robynn called, racing into the kitchen, her new drawing in hand.

“Hi, sweetie. This is a lovely picture, Robynn. Now go in the other room, okay? I need to talk to Daddy.”

Jack Hayden had never felt so busted in his life. It was not simply the beers, though they were bad enough when he was supposed to be watching Robynn. But he harbored an irrational fear that Elley had somehow found out about Dani, and what they had done up in San Simeon...and done, and done, and done...until Little Jack had throbbed like it he’d stuck it in a hornet’s nest. Maybe he had. As soon as Robynn was gone, he said: “Look, if it’s about the empties—”

“I have to go to New York for several days,” Elley interrupted. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

“That’s a bit sudden, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t thrill me to the marrow either, but we’ve just landed a big new account and the company is based in Manhattan, so we’re throwing a kind of welcome party for them. I’ve been working on it all day.”

“Shouldn’t they be throwing the welcome party for you?”

“They’re paying for it. I’m not sure they realize that yet, but the cost of the party comes straight out of the fee they’re paying us. It’s our way of showing what we can do for a new client, impress them with a dog and pony show.”

“How long will you be there?”

“The event’s on Friday, so we’ve got a few days to make the final arrangements and set everything up, and then I’ll have to stay the weekend, maybe even into next week, to meet with all of the executives.”

“You the only one going?”

“Of course not. Blaise is coming as well.”

Jack looked at his wife. He had no proof that his wife was servicing Blaise Micelli, the founder of Orbit Marketing, but the thought had occurred to him quite regularly ever since that incident at Orbit’s office Christmas party last year, when Micelli had spilled a drink on his lap and mopped it up with a napkin, which picked up traces of bright red lipstick—Elley’s shade—from his zipper area.

“You’ll have no trouble taking care of Robynn while I’m gone, I presume?” Elley was saying.

“Why would I have trouble?”

Elley examined the five dead Sams by the sink, then gathered them all up, walked to the trashcan, and loudly dropped them in. “I can’t imagine.”

“All right, all right.”

“No, it’s not all right, Jack. I come home from a grueling day at the office followed by a miserable drive from Santa Monica to find you alone with our daughter, having consumed the better part of a six-pack. What proof can you give me that it won’t be a six-pack and a half tomorrow night, and even more while I’m gone? And where the hell is Nola, anyway? She’s supposed to be here.”

“Daniel’s in trouble again, so she had to go. And I’m sorry, really. I had a grueling day, too, and I just lost count. I’ll be good while you’re gone, promise. Is my word good anymore?”

Elley couldn’t hide her surprise at his rolling over so quickly and easily. “I’d like it to be,” she said, then: “Yeah, it’s good.”

He approached her and took her in his arms. “You know I’d never deliberately to anything that would hurt Robynn, or you.”

“I know that,” she said, hugging back. “It’s the accidental things I worry about.”

That makes two of us, he thought.

“Mommeeee,” Robynn called from the other room, “can I come back in yet?”

“Of course, sweetie,” Elley called back, pulling away from Jack as the girl rushed in to excitedly tell her that she had learned a new word from Nola today: basura.

“Basura, doesn’t that mean ‘trash?’”

“Mm hmmm. She was taking out the garbage when she said it. What’s for dinner?”

“Robynn, Mommy just got home. I was sort of hoping maybe Daddy would have fixed something, because Mommy’s got to pack tonight to go away tomorrow.”

“Why do you have to go away?” the girl whimpered.

“It’s Mommy’s work, sweetie. Sometimes I have to go.”

“Sounds like a take-out night to me,” Jack said, feeling a rush of guilt over sitting and drinking and pretending to work and not even thinking about providing dinner. “What’ll it be? Pizza? Chinese? Frog salad?”

“Yuuuuck!” Robynn cried, giggling.

“I’m not in the mood for Chinese and I don’t want the calories of pizza,” Elley said. “There’s a new fish place down on San Vicente. I drive by it nearly every day. I think the sign says they do take-out.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“Seafood something. Seafood Hut, Seafood Crate, I don’t know.”

“I’ll find out,” Jack said, scurrying back to his laptop, linking onto the web and putting in a search for Seafood West. L.A. San Vicente. Three choices popped up (including, for some reason, Amazon.com), but only one seemed like the candidate. “Could it be Seafood Shanty?”

“Yes, that’s it,” Elley said. Using the number he found online, Jack called in an order for the three of them: fish and chips for Robynn, salmon for Elley and sea bass for himself.

“Do they deliver?” Elley asked

“Yeah, but I’ll go pick it up,” Jack replied. “It will get here quicker that way.” The truth was, he wanted to get away and on his own, if even for a few minutes.

“Why don’t you take Robynn with you? I have to start packing, and she’d only get in the way.”

Jack sighed. She’s your child, too, for Christ’s sake, he wanted to shout back, but didn’t. Instead he turned to Robynn and said, “Hey, punkin, want to go catch some fish?”

Her face lit up? “Really? Like on a lake?”

“No, from a restaurant. But I’ll bet they have a lobster tank there.” Wouldn’t it be fine if the place had a bar, too? He could grab a quick one. Just one more would be okay.

“Okay!” Robynn cried.

Jack scooped up his daughter and carried her out to the driveway. “Let’s take Mom’s car,” he said, opening the back door of Elley’s silver Lexus to let Robynn in, and carefully buckling her in the car seat that lived there. Only when he was behind the wheel and sticking his key in the ignition did Jack Hayden begin to feel something of the five beers. He was not buzzed, exactly; rather it was a sensation he usually enjoyed that he could only describe as comfy. While he felt perfectly aware and in control—it took more than five for him to start to wobble—he wondered if he might be over the legal limit. Then again, who would know as long as he gave them no reason to suspect? “I’ll drive carefully,” he muttered aloud, starting to back out of the driveway.

“What, Daddy?”

“I said, ‘Here we go.’”

“Didn’t sound like it.”

“I was speaking another language, punkin, the language of Dad.”

“Oh. I don’t know that one ’cause I’m a girl.”

Jack smiled. “You’re the best girl,” he said, wondering if there wasn’t some way he could wrap up all the basura in his life, take it out and dump it in a can, where it would be picked up and taken away.

They had gone only two blocks before Jack’s confidence suffered a serious challenge: a black-and-white police cruiser was coming toward him. He slowed down, giving the policemen no reason to watch him or follow him, and he made certain that the Lexus came to a complete stop at the stop sign. He even counted to five before starting through the intersection. The police cruiser passed through as well without slowing. But once it was behind Jack, he heard the siren blare on and saw in his rearview mirror the flashing lights as the cop car made a fast U-turn and charged up behind him.

“Shit!”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing, punkin.” Jack’s stomach dropping as he pulled over to the curb. Just fucking swell, he thought, bitterly, pulled over, probable DUI made worse by the fact that there’s a child in the car. If he had to call Elley from the police station, she would probably come down to retrieve Robynn and then leave him there to die. But to Jack’s tangible relief, the police car did not pull up behind him. It did not stop at all, or even slow. Instead it sped past him, apparently responding to a call that had nothing to do with him or his good buddy Sam Adams. He was guilty of nothing more than being a good citizen and pulling over to let the cop car zoom past on its way to an emergency. “Fuck me,” Jack exhaled.

“What, Daddy?”

“Nothing, Robynn.”

“You’re talking a lot of Dad stuff tonight.”

“Sorry. I’ll try to talk punkin from now on.”

“Where was that policeman going?”

“Off to catch a criminal, I guess. We just had to get out of his way so he could go.” Jack pulled the Lexus away from the curb knowing he had been spared by whatever cosmic court bothered to look down his way, but not knowing whether he deserved the pass. But having been spared, he would not temp fate further by having another one at the restaurant while waiting for the food.

That became moot since the Seafood Shanty—a dreadful name for a fairly upscale fish market and grill—did not have a bar. It was, however, packed with customers. As he had figured, Robynn was captivated by the lobsters in the slightly scummy water tank, their claws bound with rubber bands so that they would not fight. It was not a consideration for the safety of the animals, which were, after all, about to become dinner, but so that they did not mar or damage any of their succulent meat. Jack had never quite gotten used to the idea of popping a living thing, even one so ugly, into a vat of boiling water and letting it scald to death in the name of fine dining.

While waiting for his order, drinking in the enticing aromas circling around him, Jack tuned in and out of various conversations in the waiting area. Most of it was static, but one thing cut through the buzz: the word split-face. Turning around into the direction of the word, Jack spotted an older couple sitting on a bench and waiting for a table. The woman was at least seventy, badly made up, and speaking with the kind of clarion voice that indicated she was partially deaf. The man sitting with her was of equal age and appeared bored to tears. “I said, she’d be such a cute little thing if not for that hideous scar on her mouth,” the woman was shouting to him. “Looks like someone took a tomahawk to her.” Jack quickly glanced over at Robynn, who was still studying the lobsters, and he was relieved to see that she had apparently not heard the comment.

He looked back at the couple. Blood pulsed and pounded in his ears. He had taken a step toward her to confront her callousness head on when he heard his name being called. His order was ready. Collecting Robynn, Jack went to the register and paid, then picked up the bag of hot food and started to leave. But at the door he stopped. “Hang on a second, punkin, there’s something I’ve got to do,” he told Robynn. “I’ll be right back.” He walked to the table with the old couple and interrupted the woman mid-sentence. “Excuse me, lady,” Jack began, “but I heard what you said about my beautiful daughter.”

The woman looked startled. “What?” she said.

“Now you can listen to what I say. I read somewhere that three-thousand people each year die from choking on fish bones. I’m hoping that you’ll make it three-thousand-and-one, you miserable dried-up cunt.”

Even as it came out of his mouth, Jack could not believe what he had said.

The woman’s face dropped in total shock. “You...why...Harold!” she screamed at her husband. “Are you going to sit there and let this animal talk to me like that?”

Jack looked over at Harold and thought the old man was trying to stifle a grin.

“Where’s the manager?” she hollered, and Jack took that as an opportunity to head for the door. He had delivered his message, quite more forcefully than he had really intended to. Rushing back to Robynn, he took her hand and ran out to the car.

Driving back, Jack felt a rush of conflicting emotions: exhilaration at having actually taken a stand and shut the old cow up, but guilt at having done it so rudely. Mingling with those was something else: a touch of fear. His level of vituperation had shocked even him; where had it come from? Residual anger at Marcus Broarty? Or could he excuse it away by claiming that while it had been Jack Hayden speaking, the lines had been written by Sam Adams?

Ten minutes later Jack pulled the Lexus into the driveway, and then reached back and unbuckled Robynn, letting her slide out of the seat herself like a big girl. Grabbing the bag of food, he marched into the house, calling “Dinner!” upon entering. He set the bag down on the dining room table, which sat at the center of the pristine, white-walled dining room. Elley was on the other end of the table, standing like a statue. “Got your salmon,” Jack said.

“There was a phone call for you while you were gone,” she replied, frostily.

“Not Marc Broarty, I hope.”

“It was someone named Danica Lindstrom.”

“Oh...um, what did she say?”

Elley stared at him for a moment. “Not as much as the expression on your face.”

“Look, Elley—”

“I have to go pack. I’ll eat later.” She spun around and headed up the staircase, disappearing into their bedroom, whose door closed with a resounding slam.

Jack sighed.

“I’m hungry, Daddy.”

Turning, he looked at his daughter, whose warm brown eyes were opened wide like those of a cartoon character. “I’m hungry too. Let’s eat.”

Getting plates from the kitchen, he set them down on the table and started unpacking the food bag, setting out the Styrofoam container holding Robynn’s fish and chips in front of her, and putting his containing the grilled sea bass next to it, holding it carefully so as not to let any of the dark juice drip onto the snowy tablecloth.

“Isn’t Mommy coming?” Robynn asked.

“Mommy’s busy right now, she’ll be down later. But let’s you and I eat.”

“Mommy’s busy a lot.”

“I know.”

Jack scooped the fish and rice onto his plate and took a bite. It was excellent, but he was not really able to enjoy it. He had given Dani his cell and home numbers before leaving San Simeon, and gave her permission to call him if she discovered anything about the mural, but he had not expected her to do it so soon. If he hadn’t been so anxious to get out of the house, he might have intercepted the call, and pretended it was Yolanda. If he hadn’t been so intent on taking the time to insult the old bag at the restaurant he might have even made it back in time to catch it before Elley did. Earlier, if he hadn’t been so involved in making his notes and drinking his beers, he might have given some thought to dinner ahead of time. If he had only given Dani his cell number, this would not have happened at all.

If, if, if, if, if, if.

Well, he would talk to Elley. He’d have to. The noose he had managed to tie around his neck could not be totally undone, but maybe it was possible to slacken it up a little, just enough to breathe.

He got up and went to the fridge and pulled out the one remaining Sam Adams from the six-pack. Fucking bitch! he thought furiously, walking back to the table, no longer certain at whom he was directing his rage.