Steve Martini - Undue Influence

We make idols of rock stars and bobbing heads doing gangsta rap, people whose contribution to life is as fleeting as the pixels that carry their image to our televisions screens. Nothing enduring. It is a measure of our spiritual poverty. He was from a different time.

A rectangular pile of lava rocks ringed by a pinioned chain just a few inches off the ground. The headstone, unpolished gray granite, a soft cursive script:

Charles A. LindberghBorn, Michigan, 1902Died, Maui, 1974

‘If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea’ CAL

As I look up, the aspect of the little church looms before me through the hanging frowns of trees that ring it. Whoever took the snapshot had done so from this location.

There is no sign of Kathy Merlow. I turn and walk toward the fence, the cliff fifty yards away; undulating blue waters, and the glint of sunlight on crested waves.

The old woman is packing up, folding her easel, the afternoon’s work done. She is in on a section of grass beyond a gate, a sign hanging on the fence.

KIPAHULU POINT PARK

This seems to merge with the grass of the cemetery.

I plant myself by the fence and wait, looking at the sea, hoping that Kathy Merlow will appear. I look at my watch — after four-thirty. I wonder if Opolo has had any luck with the mail carriers, whether Dana is frantic looking for me.

I see a big blue sedan out on the highway. It cruises by at a slow speed. Stops at the gate. The driver, his head a dot in the distance, stops to read the sign on the gate. Then he drives off.

The Asian couple have made their way to the car, the thunk of doors being closed, the engine started. Pretty soon they will be closing the gate on the road. My chances of slipping back here tomorrow are not good. Dana and Opolo will want to know where I’ve been, the third degree.

The old lady is drifting by on the grass, thirty yards away, struggling with her easel and a small stool, a wooden box of painting paraphernalia. I look at the parking lot. Except for my car it is now empty. I watch as the old lady moves away from me now, toward a small opening in the fence, near the entrance to the park, and suddenly it hits me — not the gait of an old woman.

I am off the fence, moving toward her at a good rate. Ten feet away, staring at her back.

‘Excuse me.’

She turns. Not the wrinkled and weathered countenance of age, but tan and more vigorous than our last meeting, the vacant gaze of Kathy Merlow.

She looks the part of the chic art set from the thirties, a loud silk kimono with wide sleeves, open down the front, like the academic gown on some Oxford don. Underneath she wears white cotton slacks and a blue top. Capping it all is a broad-brimmed straw hat, cocked at an angle for the sun, and oversized dark glasses.

‘Yes?’ Kathy Merlow’s smile is somewhat artless. ‘Can I help you?’ she says.

She’s burdened by the folded artist’s stool and easel hanging heavily in one hand. The box of paints and brushes in the other.

‘You don’t remember me?’ I say.

Wary eyes.

‘I’m Paul Madriani. We met the night Melanie Vega was killed. Out on the street in front of her house.’

‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.’ She turns and starts to walk.

I take her gently by one arm. ‘I don’t think so. But maybe you could take off the glasses,’ I say.

‘Take your hand off of me,’ she says.

I let go.

‘I have to meet someone and I’m running late.’ She gives me the look of upper-crust arrogance, done so well behind dark glass, and dismisses me.

‘Can I help you with that?’ I reach for the stool and the easel.

She pulls them away.

‘I can manage,’ she says. ‘Now leave me alone.’ She takes a step backward, full retreat, and walks out of one of her sandals. She trips, drops the easel and stool.

I grab her arm again.

The lid to the box of paint supplies has opened as she jostles for balance. Tubes of paint and tiny brushes all over the grass.

‘Now see what you’ve made me do.’

I let go, and she steadies herself.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not here to cause you any problems. I just need information.’

‘I’ve told you, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.’

‘You aren’t even curious as to how I found you?’

She’s picking up the paints. I help her.

‘Marcie Reed,’ I tell her.

She gives me a look. If there is any curiosity written in her eyes, it is hidden by shaded glass. But she curls her upper lip and bites it a little.

‘I don’t know any Marcie Reed,’ she says.

‘The ring on your finger,’ I say. ‘The cameo. Is that the one Marcie sent to you general delivery?’

She stops picking up tubes of paint and covers the back of her right hand with the long sleeve of her kimono.

‘We could ask the people at the post office,’ I say.

The outside of one of the tubes of paint is sloppy with green acrylic paste, and what appears to be the drying swirls and ridges of the owner’s thumb. She’s looking into my face at this moment. I pick the tube up by the cap and deftly slip it into my jacket pocket so she doesn’t notice. Last month she was going by ‘Merlow.’ This week no doubt she is called by another surname that I do not even know. It would be nice to have her real name.

She says nothing.

‘I think you remember me,’ I say.

‘How did you get here?’ The first crack in the wall of denial.

I gesture toward my car in the parking lot.

‘I think you should get back in it and go,’ she says.

‘Not till we talk.’

‘We have nothing to talk about,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t be here. There’ll be trouble if they find us together,’ she says.

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘Never mind.’

Having captured all the colors of the rainbow, she closes the latch on the wooden box.

I pick up the easel. She grabs it from my hand and starts to walk away, across the thick grass, as fast as sandals will allow, like some geisha in flowing gowns.

‘Do you have a car?’ I ask.

No answer.

‘I could give you a lift.’

‘No, thanks.’ She’s opening the gulf between us, twenty yards away.

I start to run, trailing in her wake. ‘I have to talk to you.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘Marcie Reed is dead,’ I tell her.

Suddenly she stops. I nearly run over her from behind.

She turns to look at me over one shoulder.

‘Marcie?’ she says.

I nod. ‘Yesterday afternoon in Capital City,’ I tell her.

She doesn’t say a word, but the news of Marcie’s death, a woman she claims not to know, has suddenly turned her composure to mush. The easel and stool are back on the grass. As if in slow motion the handle of the box slips from her fingers, the sound of wood on wood as it clacks down on top of the easel. One hand comes up, so many fingers in her mouth I think she’s going to swallow them. Deep in thought, she turns away from me. I can no longer see her face. But with a hand she reaches up and takes the glasses off.

‘How did it happen?’

‘A letter bomb delivered to the post office by a private courier.’

When she turns I see her eyes for the first time, tired, dark edges, tracks like a thousand birds in the dried mud at some watering hole on a parched savanna. She’s calculating the barbarity of death in this fashion, looks at me, searching eyes, the sense of one tortured by fear, now rendered fearless by fatigue.

‘Poor Marcie,’ she says. ‘I should never have involved her. She was only doing me a favor.’