Sue Grafton - V is for Vengeance

“So now you’re an environmentalist?”

“Don’t be snide. It’s unbecoming.”

“Well, you don’t have to sound so fucking righteous. I mean, give me a break.”

“Don’t push it off on me.”

“Fine. I’m just telling you the Hellers were offended you made such a scene.”

She leaned her head back against the seat. “Who cares about them?”

“What do you care about?”

“I’ve lost track.”

They made love that night, which was strange, given the strain between them. She initiated the sex, fueled by fury and despair. The reality of Channing with Thelma was like a dark aphrodisiac. If the woman was competition, then let her compete with this. She straddled him, pounding away as though riding him until the pleasure peaked between them, harsh and raw. He flipped her over on her back, dragging her to the edge of the bed and lifting her hips while he drove into her again, his legs braced. There was a barely suppressed violence in the encounter, something savage in the way they went at each other, and if what she felt wasn’t love, at least it was a feeling of some kind, intense and immediate.

Afterward, they lay together, winded, and when he turned his head and looked at her, she knew he was present. In his face, she could see the Channing she’d loved once upon a time, the Channing who’d loved her even while her heart was broken and she was half dead, emotion drained out of her, leaving only dust. She felt tears welling and she turned over onto her side so he couldn’t see her face. She might have regained her composure if he hadn’t seemed so kind. He said, “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. She turned onto her back and covered her eyes, feeling the tears seep into her hair. There was no holding back. She felt herself dissolve, and she wept as she had as a child when pain and disappointment were at their sharpest. She wept as she had as an adult when she’d been dealt a blow so bitter there was no coming back. She allowed him to comfort her, which she hadn’t done in months. She remembered how sweet he’d been and how patient. “Oh, god. It all seems so hopeless,” she said. She tucked the sheet under her arms and pulled herself up into a sitting position, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Not so. Not hopeless at all.”

He stroked her hair, which was tangled and wet from tears and from the sweat of their lovemaking.

She reached over to snatch a tissue from the bed table and blew her nose. “Don’t look at me. I’m hideous. My face is all swollen and my eyes feel like ping-pong balls.”

His smile was lazy in the half-light shining in from the street. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”

“I know I’ve been distant, but sometimes I can’t help myself. It’s just so much easier to zone out and shut down.”

“But you always come back to me. I look up and there you are,” he said. “Come here.” He opened his arms and she stretched out beside him, tucked into the crook of his shoulder. He was a spare man, narrow through the chest, and his skin felt two degrees cooler than hers. He smelled of sex and sweat and something sweet.

She spoke into the hollow of his throat. “What about you, Channing? Where have you been?”

“No place important. Go to sleep.”

Saturday morning, 6:00 A.M., I was back at my post. I’d managed four hours of sleep, after which I showered, dressed, and headed to the upper east side of town. En route, I stopped at McDonald’s and picked up a large coffee, an orange juice, and an Egg McMuffin. Before long, the coffee and OJ would send me in search of a public restroom, but I had to risk it for the moment. In times past, during surveillance work, I’ve used a tennis ball can for urinary emergencies. This was unsatisfactory. For women, strategy is problematic when it comes to body functions. Aim and positioning are more art than science, and I’d been wondering, of late, if a Rubbermaid food container wouldn’t be superior. Wide mouth, with an airtight lid. I was still running the pros and cons on the notion.

When I pulled around the corner onto Juniper Lane, I parked on the same side of the street as the Prestwicks’ mock Tudor house. I stationed myself fifty feet away from the driveway, which kept me just outside their visual range. Or such was my hope. It was still dark out and as I settled in to wait, I saw headlights swing around the corner from Santa Teresa Street. A car approached, moving at a crawl. I slouched down on my spine, peering out at the street under the lower edge of the screen. Even with the screen in place, I knew I’d be visible if someone passing turned to look directly at me.

I saw a newspaper fly out of the car window. I heard a thwop when it landed and then the car moved on. At the next house down, a second paper sailed out and into the yard. When the driver turned the corner at the end of the block, I got out and scurried around the side of the green stucco house. I plucked a plastic-wrapped newspaper from the steps and scurried back. In the car again, I removed the plastic sleeve and placed it on the passenger seat beside my camera and my clipboard. I made a note of the time in the interest of record keeping. There was no real imperative for me to do so. In theory, I was working off the hours Marvin had paid for, but he’d told me I could use the time any way that suited me without accounting to him. At this point, I was in it for the pleasure of the game, though I couldn’t afford to do so indefinitely. I had a business to run and bills to pay, matters I wasn’t at liberty to ignore.

When it was light out, I read the paper, occasionally peering through the holes Henry’d cut in the screen. Not that there was anything to see. I searched for a Diana Alvarez byline, but she’d apparently fired off her best shot. There were already six letters to the editor commenting on the subject of the proposed suicide barrier, half in favor and half against. Everybody was indignant about the opinions and points of view that didn’t line up with their own.

For the next three hours, I watched the neighborhood come to life. A jogger trotted into view on Santa Teresa Street, moving left to right. Three women walked their dogs, moving in the opposite direction. Two guys bicycled past in skintight bicycle shorts and what were surely shaved legs. It served no purpose to think about how bored I was. I went through my index cards, which I’d just about memorized. Surveillance is not for the fainthearted or for those dependent on external stimulation.

For a brief period, I filled in what I could of the crossword puzzle in the local paper, a version Henry disdains as too simpleminded. He likes thorny puzzles based on common sayings spelled backward, or puzzles where all the answers have a tricky common link-birds of a feather, for instance, or famous last words. I got stuck on 2 Down: “Patron deity of Ur.” What kind of person knows shit like that? It made me feel dumb and uninformed.

Idly, I registered a shriek of metal on metal and when I looked up, I realized the Prestwicks’ front gate was sliding open. The black Mercedes eased out of the driveway and into the street. I squinted through the hole in the cardboard screen and caught a flash of blond as the driver turned right. Mother or daughter, I wasn’t sure which. As she slowed at the corner and took a second right onto Santa Teresa Street, I turned the key in the ignition. I snatched the screen off the windshield and tossed it over the seat. I headed after her at a modest rate of speed, hoping not to call attention to myself.

At the corner, I nosed the station wagon forward and caught the dull red glow of two taillights a block down on my right. She’d reached the T at Orchard Road and stopped for two cars that were speeding around the bend. She turned left toward State Street. I gunned it to the end of the block and took the same left she had. The Mercedes waited at the four-way stop, allowing cross traffic to pass. She turned right. I goosed it again and reached the four-way stop moments after she had. I turned right, straining for sight of her.