Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Missy brightened. “Peachy keen. I love Ganny.”

“And Ganny loves you, too. But she’s pretty old, you know.” At least eighty by now. “You’re gonna have to be good, not give her any trouble.”

“No mischief,” Missy promised solemnly. But inside, she was giggling. Ganny Wilson didn’t care about mischief, only matches.

“Just so long as you don’t burn the house down, Princess,” she used to say. “Everything else, Ganny can fix.”

Two hours later, after helping Missy pack her pink valise and dropping her-and Tweety-off at Ganny Wilson’s little cottage in the West Berkeley flats, Simon had to upwardly revise his estimate of their former housekeeper’s age: the doddering old black woman looked to be closer to ninety.

It was worrisome, no denying that-sometimes Missy could be a handful, even for a caretaker in her prime-but as the Mercedes rolled across the Bay Bridge, top down, radio blasting Vivaldi’s ubiquitous Four Seasons from all eight speakers, Simon reminded himself that Dorie hadn’t left him much choice. He had to get to her before she talked to the FBI-or to anybody else, for that matter.

At the thought of Dorie, Simon’s pulse quickened again for the first time since Wayne Summers’s death. Ever since their first meeting at the convention, he had been so looking forward to playing the fear game with her-saving the best for last, so to speak. Would it be better, he wondered, to buy several masks at one store, or one mask at several stores? And if so, where?

He was still mulling that one over when the classical station cut to a commercial. Simon pushed the seek button, heard Tab Hunter crooning about young love, first love on the oldies station, and quickly punched seek again. He didn’t want to hear anybody romanticizing about young love, because his first affair, with Nervous Nellie Carpenter, had resulted in the worst beating of his life.

On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for his involvement with Nellie, Simon might never have discovered his life’s path, his obsession, the only sure cure for the blind rat, and, except for Missy, his only reason for living, so perhaps old Tab wasn’t so far off after all.

Ed Pender was not a religious man, but the feeling of awe and wonder that overtook him as he stepped up to the eighteenth tee at Pebble Beach was nearly overwhelming. The deep green of the fair-way, the roundness and whiteness of the ball, the orange sun poised at the edge of Carmel Bay-it was a moment of perfection in an imperfect world.

And Pender, jet-lagged, two months shy of fifty-six years old, fifty pounds overweight, and twenty-three strokes over par up to that point, was Jack, was Arnie, was Tiger, facing one of the greatest character tests in the wide world of golf. Play it safe, lay up right, take a makeable bogey, shoot a hundred. Or take a chance-a big chance, with his tired legs and duck hook-blast it over the water, go for the par, break a hundred.

He had to go for it, of course. Just don’t hook, he ordered the ball as he went into his backswing. Don’t hook, don’t hook, don’t-

Whack, quack, splash.

“Take a mulligan, kid,” urged Sid, who was far enough ahead to be magnanimous. “Nobody has to know.”

“I’d know,” said Pender, as his caddy sadly handed him a new ball-he’d placed a side bet on the bigger, younger guy with his fellow caddy.

Dorie Bell-who despised golf in general and the exclusionary, land-grabbing, prodevelopment, water-wasting bastards at Pebble Beach in particular-was putting the last touches on her painting of the sunset around the time Pender was hooking his drive at eighteen into it.

She worked with her palette in her lap, brush in her left hand, cloth in her right hand, and a stout walking stick leaning against her easel, with which to keep the dogs away. It wasn’t the best sunset she’d ever done-got the water, got the sun, missed the pearl-pink blush of the abalone sky by a mile. Sunsets were difficult-you had to work fast and capture the color values on the fly-but they sold well, at least for Dorie, whose plein air oils sold for between five hundred and five thousand dollars each, depending on the size of the piece. When they sold, that is-but Dorie couldn’t complain. She wasn’t making a fortune, but she was making a living, which was more than most artists could say.

Dorie painted until the light was gone, then slipped the canvas into the slotted box she used to transport wet paintings; it took two trips to load her gear into the back of her old Buick Roadmaster station wagon. She drove straight home, grabbed a bite to eat, and was upstairs changing when the doorbell rang. Musical clothes, she liked to call it: she’d start trying on outfits at least an hour before a social occasion, and whatever she had on when her date arrived or when she absolutely positively had to be out the door was what she’d end up wearing.

Tonight’s winning entry was a simple but elegant ensemble: man’s blue denim shirt (top two buttons open; no, three; no, two), tucked into a pair of Wranglers as soft as chamois and older than dirt, held up by a wide leather belt with a silver rodeo buckle a sweet young cowboy had given her, back in her sweet young cowboyin’ days.

“Be right down,” Dorie called, checking herself out in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door. Not bad, she decided, then asked herself why she was even fussing. It wasn’t like this was a date or anything-not by a long shot.

To tin-flash a badge-or not to tin, that was the question for Pender. It felt so weird, so unbalanced, to be standing on a stranger’s doorstep without a badge case in his hand. He had transferred his old DOJ shield-eagle, scales, blindfolded Justice in a pageboy haircut-to his wallet, to be used in the event of emergencies, such as getting pulled over for speeding, but he knew he had no business flashing it here. This wasn’t an official visit, just a favor for a friend.

As soon as the door opened, Pender knew he’d made the right decision. Dorie Bell was tall, striking, and buxom, with cornflower blue eyes, and although her long braided hair was a youthful brown, he could tell by the deep-scored laugh lines at the corners of her eyes that she was close enough to him in age that if things seemed to be tending in that direction, he could make a pass at her without feeling like a dirty old man. Not that that had ever stopped him before. And a pass would definitely have been out of the question if he had tinned her.

“Ms. Bell?”

“Agent Pender. Come on in.”

“Maybe you’d better call me Ed-I’m not here in an official capacity.” Out of habit, he started to take off his hat, a brown Basque beret, as he entered the vestibule, then changed his mind and left it on-he was still a little self-conscious, not about his skin head (he’d started going bald at eighteen), but about the ragged, trident-shaped scar transecting his scalp-a souvenir from an earlier serial killer investigation.

“In that case, call me Dorie.” She remembered to lock the door behind them; for a Carmel native, locking up was something that took a little getting used to. “And what exactly does that mean, anyway-’not here in an official capacity’?”

“Like I told you on the phone, I’m more or less retired-Agent Abruzzi’s taking over the investigation. But when I mentioned to her last night that I was going to be here, she asked me to stop by and check in on you.”

“Check in, or check up?”

“Both,” Pender admitted readily-the woman still might turn out to be crazy, but she was clearly no dummy.

“It’s all right, I don’t mind. I’m just glad anybody’ s willing to listen to me at this point. Where should we do this?”