J is for JUDGMENT Read online

“I’ve never known Dick Mills to make a mistake. Will you do it?”

  “I’d have to make sure I can clear my schedule here. Can I call you in an hour and give you an answer then?”

  “Well, sure. That’s no problem.” Mac checked his watch and stood up, placing a thick packet on the corner of my desk. “I wouldn’t take much more time if I were you. You’re on a flight leaves at one for Los Angeles. Connecting flight’s at five. Tickets and itinerary are in there,” he said.

  I started laughing. California Fidelity and I were back in business.

  Chapter 2

  *

  Once my commuter flight landed at LAX, I had a three-hour delay before the Mexicana flight took off for Cabo San Lucas. Mac had given me a folder full of newspaper articles about Jaffe’s disappearance and its aftermath. I settled myself in one of the airport cocktail lounges, sorting through the clippings to educate myself while I sipped a margarita. Might as well get into the spirit of the thing. At my feet I had a hastily packed duffel bag, including my 35-millimeter camera, my binoculars, and the video recorder I’d given myself as a thirty-fourth birthday present. I loved the impromptu nature of this trip, and I was already feeling that heightened sense of self-awareness that traveling engenders. My friend Vera and I were currently enrolled in a beginning Spanish class through Santa Teresa’s adult education program. So far, we were confined to the present tense, short, mostly declarative statements of little known use – unless, of course, there were some black cats in the trees, in which case Vera and I were prepared to point and make remarks. ¿Muchos gatos negros están en los arboles, sí? Sí, muchos gatos. I saw the trip as an opportunity to test my language skills, if nothing else.

  Along with the clippings, Mac had included several eight-by-eleven black-and-white shots of Jaffe at various public functions: art openings, political fund-raisers, charity auctions. Judging by the events he attended, he was certainly one of the select: handsome, well dressed, a central part of any group. Often, his was the one blurred face, as if he’d pulled back or turned away just as the camera shutter clicked. I wondered if even then he was consciously avoiding being photographed. He was in his mid-fifties and big. Silver hair, high cheekbones, jutting chin, his nose prominent. He seemed calm and self-possessed, a man who didn’t care much what other people thought.

  In a curious way, I felt a fleeting bond with the man as I tried on the idea of changing identities. Being a liar by nature, I’ve always been attracted to the possibility. There’s a certain romance in the notion of walking out of one life and into another, like an actor passing from one character role to the next. Not that long ago I’d handled a case in which a fellow, convicted of murder, had walked away from a prison work crew and had managed to create a whole new persona for himself. In the process, he’d shed not only his past, but the taint of I the homicide conviction. He’d acquired a new family and a good job. He was respected in his new community. He might have continued pulling off the deception except for an error in a bench warrant that resulted in a fluke arrest some seventeen years later. The past has a way of catching up with all of us.

  I checked my watch and saw that it was time to go. t I packed away the clippings and grabbed my duffel bag. I moved through the main terminal, cleared security, and began the long trek down the concourse to my posted gate. One immutable law of travel is that one’s arrival or departure gate is always at the extreme outer limit of the terminal, especially if your bag is heavy or your shoes have just begun to pinch. I sat in the boarding area and rubbed one foot while my fellow passengers assembled, waiting for the gate agent to call our flight.

  Once I was seated on the plane with my duffel stowed in the bin above, I pulled out the glossy hotel brochure Mac had enclosed with the tickets. In addition to my flights, he’d booked accommodations for me at the same resort where Wendell Jaffe had been seen. I wasn’t convinced the guy would still be in residence, but who was I to turn down a free vacation?

  The picture of the Hacienda Grande de Viento Negro showed a three-storied structure with a stretch of dark beach faintly visible in the foreground. The blurb under the photograph boasted of a restaurant, two bars, and a heated swimming pool, with recreational activities that included tennis, snorkling, deep-sea fishing, a bus tour of the town, and complimentary margaritas.

  The woman in the next seat was reading over my shoulder. I nearly shielded my paper as if she were cheating on a test. She was in her forties, very thin, very tanned, and sleek. She wore her black hair in a French braid and was dressed in a black pants suit with a tan shell underneath. There was not a hint of color on her anyplace. “Are you headed for VN?”

  “Yes. Do you know the area?”

  “Yes, I do, and I hope you’re not planning to stay there,” she said. She was pointing at the brochure with a little moue of distaste.

  “What’s the matter with the place? It looks fine to me”

  She pushed her tongue along the inside of her cheek as though she were checking her gums. Her brow lifted slightly. “It’s your money, I guess.”

  “Actually, it’s someone else’s money. This is business,” I said.

  She nodded, clearly unconvinced. She occupied herself with her magazine, a look on her face like she was trying not to butt in. After a moment I saw her murmur a comment to the man on her right. Her traveling companion, in the window seat, had a wad of Kleenex hanging out of one nostril, stanching a nose bleed that had apparently been induced by increasing cabin pressure as the plane prepared for takeoff. The twist of tissue looked like a fat hand-rolled cigarette. He leaned forward slightly to get a better look at me.

  I turned my attention to the woman again. “Really. Is there a problem?”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” she said faintly.

  “Depending on how you feel about dust, humidity, and bugs,” the man interjected.

  I laughed… heh, heh, heh… on the assumption that he was kidding. Neither one of them cracked a smile.

  Belatedly, I learned that viento negro means “black wind,” a fair description of the blizzard of dark lava soot that swirled up from the beach late every afternoon. The hotel was modest, an upside down V-shape painted apricot yellow with little balconies across the front. Alternate patios had planters affixed to the railings with bougainvillea tumbling down in a waterfall of magenta. The room was clean but faintly shabby, looking out across the Gulf of California to the east.

  For two days I cruised both the Hacienda Grande and the town of Viento Negro, looking for anyone who even halfway resembled the five-year-old photographs of Wendell Jaffe. If all else failed, I could try to quiz the staff in my amateur Spanish, but I worried that one of them might tip him off to the inquiry. If he was there, that is. I hung out by the pool, loitered in the hotel lobby, took the shuttle into town. I tried all the tourist attractions: the sunset cruise, a snorkling expedition, a bumpy ass-agonizing jaunt on a rented all-terrain vehicle, roaring up and down dusty mountain trails. I tried the two other hotels in the area, local restaurants, and l bars. I sampled the nightly entertainment at the hotel where I was staying, all the discos, all the shops. There was no sign of him.

  I finally managed to get a call through to Mac at home and filled him in on my efforts to date. “This is costing a lot of money if he’s already blown out of here… assuming your friend actually saw Wendell Jaffe in the first place.”

  “Dick swore it was him.”

  “After five long years?”

  “Look, just keep at it for another couple of days. If he doesn’t turn up by the end of the week, you can head home.”

  “Happy to oblige. I just like to warn you when I don’t get results.”

  “I understand that. Keep trying.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said. I learned to like the town, which was a ten-minute taxi ride from the hotel down a dusty two-lane road. Most construction I passed was in a state of incompletion, raw cinder block and rebar abandoned to the weeds. A once stunning view of the harbor was obscured
now by condominiums, and the streets were filled with tots selling Chiclets for a hundred pesos apiece. Dogs napped in the sunshine, sprawling on the sidewalks wherever it suited them, apparently trusting the local citizens to leave them unmolested. The store-fronts that lined the main street were painted harsh blues and yellows, bright reds and parrot greens, as gaudy as jungle flowers. Billboards proclaimed far-flung commercial influences from Fuji color film to Century 21 real estate. Most cars were parked with two wheels on the sidewalk, and the license plates suggested an influx of tourists from as far away as Oklahoma. The merchants were polite and responded with patience to my halting Spanish. There was no evidence of crime or civil rowdiness. Everyone was too dependent on the visiting Americans to risk offense. Even so, the goods in the market stalls were shoddy and overpriced, and the fare in the restaurants was strictly second-rate. Restlessly, I wandered from one location to the next, scanning the crowds for Wendell Jaffe or his look-alike.

  On Wednesday afternoon-day two and a half of my stay – I finally gave up the search and retired to the pool, where I lathered myself with a glistening coat of sunscreen that made me smell like a freshly baked coconut macaroon. I had donned a faded black bikini, boldly exposing a body riddled with old bullet holes and criss-crossed with pale scars from the assorted injuries that had been inflicted on me over d1e years. Many people seem to worry about the state of my health. At the moment I was faintly orange, having recently applied a primer coat of Tan in a Can to disguise my winter pallor. Of course, I’d missed in places, and my ankles were oddly splotched wid1 what looked like tawny hepatitis. I tipped my wide-brimmed straw hat down across my face, trying not to think about the sweat collecting on the underside of my burnt umber knees. Sunbathing has to be the most boring pastime on the planet. On the plus side, I was disconnected from telephones and TV. I hadn’t any notion what was happening in the world.

  I must have dozed because the next thing I became aware of was the rattle of newspaper and a conversation in Spanish taking place between two people on the chaises to my right. Here’s how a conversation in Spanish sounds to someone with my limited vocabulary: blah, blah, blah… but… blah, blah, blah, blah,… because… blah, blah, blah… here. A woman, whose accent was clearly American, was saying somed1ing about Perdido, California, the small town thirty miles south of Santa Teresa. I perked right up. I was in the process of lifting the brim of my hat so I could see who she was when her male companion responded in a rift of Spanish. I adjusted my hat, turning by degrees until he came into view. Shit, it had to be Jaffe. If I made allowances for aging and cosmetic surgery, this guy was certainly a distinct possibility. I can’t say he was a dead ringer for the Wendell Jaffe in the pictures, but he was close enough: the age, the build, something about the man’s posture and the way he held his head, characteristics he probably wasn’t aware were part of the image he projected. He was scanning the newspaper, his eye moving restlessly from one column to the next. He sensed my scrutiny and flashed a cautious look in my direction. His gaze held mine briefly while the woman rattled on. Emotions shifted in his face, and he touched her arm with a warning look at me. The flow of talk was halted temporarily. I liked the paranoia. It spoke volumes about his mental state.

  Smoothly I reached down and retrieved my straw tote, fussing in its depths until his attention was focused elsewhere. And me without my camera. I was kicking myself. I pulled out my paperback, which I opened to the middle. I flicked an imaginary bug from my calf and then inspected the site, conveying (I hoped) a complete lack of interest. They took up their conversation in lowered tones. Meanwhile I was running a set of mental flashcards, comparing the guy’s face to one in my folder. It was the eyes that betrayed him: dark and deep-set under platinum brows. I studied the woman with him, feeling reasonably certain I’d never seen her before. She was in her forties, very small and dark, tanned to the color of polished pecanwood. She had breasts like paper weights in a halter made of hemp, and the arc of her bikini bottom indicated she’d been waxed where it hurt.

  I settled down on my chaise with my hat across my face, eavesdropping shamelessly on the escalating conflict. The two chattered on in Spanish, and the nature of the dialogue seemed to shift from simple upset to intense debate. She broke it off abruptly, withdrawing into one of those injured silences men never seem to know how to penetrate. They lay on adjacent chaises for much of the afternoon, hardly speaking, interaction at a minimum. I would have loved to snap some pictures.

  Twice I considered a quick run up to the room, but I thought it would look weird if I came back moments later loaded down with photographic equipment. It seemed better to wait and bide my time. The two were clearly guests of the hotel, and I couldn’t imagine them checking out this late in the day. Tomorrow I could take some pictures. Today I’d let them get used to the sight of me.

  At 5:00, the wind began to rattle through the palms and a haze of black dust spiraled up from the beach. I could feel the sand blow against my skin like talcum powder. I tasted grit and my eyes were soon watering in response. The few hotel guests within range of me started packing up in haste. I knew from experience that the gusts of soot would abate automatically once the sun began to set. In the meantime, even the towel boy working the concession stand closed his booth and fled for cover.

  The man I’d been watching pulled himself to his feet. His companion waved a hand in front of her face, as if to fan away a cloud of gnats. She gathered up their belongings, ducking her head to avoid getting dust in her eyes. She said something to him in Spanish and then moved off toward the hotel at a rapid pace. He took his sweet time, apparently undismayed by the sudden shift in weather. He folded the towels. He screwed the lid on a tube of sunscreen, tucked odds and ends in a beach bag, and ambled toward the hotel as she had only moments before. He seemed in no hurry to catch up with her. Maybe he was a man who liked to bypass confrontation. I gave him some leeway and then stuffed my belongings in my beach tote and followed. I entered the lower lobby, which was usually left open to the elements. Bright canvas sofas faced a television set. Chairs were arranged in small conversational groupings for the smattering of guests. The ceiling rose two floors to a railing above that marked the upper lobby with its registration desk. There was no sign of the couple. The bartender was bolting tall wooden shutters into place, barricading the room against the hot, stinging wind. The bar was immediately bathed in an artificial gloom. I went up the wide, polished stairs to the left, checking the main lobby which was located on the floor above. I headed for the hotel entrance on the off chance that the two were staying somewhere else, perhaps retrieving their vehicle from the hotel parking lot. The grounds were deserted, people driven indoors by the mounting fury of the winds. I moved back to the elevators and went up to my room.

  By the time I secured the sliding doors to the balcony, the sand was being blown against the glass like a sudden summer rainstorm. Outside, the day was shrouded in a synthetic twilight. Wendell and the woman were somewhere in the hotel, probably holing up in their room just as I was in mine. I pulled out my book, tucked myself under the faded cotton coverlet, and read until my eyes closed in sleep. At 6:00, I woke with a start. The wind was down and the overworked air-conditioning had made the room too cold for comfort. The sunlight was fading to the mellow gold of late day, brushing my walls with a pale wash of maize. Outside, I could hear the maintenance crew begin its daily sweeping. All the walks and patios would be cleared and the piles of black sand would be returned to the beach.

  I showered and dressed. I made a beeline for the lobby and began my circle of the premises, hoping to catch sight of the couple again. I scanned the hotel restaurant, the two bars, the patio, the courtyard. Maybe they were napping or having dinner in their room. Maybe they’d taxied into town for a bite to eat. I snagged a taxi myself and headed into Viento Negro. The town, at that hour, was just coming to life. The sinking sun briefly gilded all the telephone wires. The air was thick with heat and laced with the dry scent of the chaparral
. The only contribution from the gulf was the faint, sulfurous smell of wharf pilings and gutted marlin.

  I found an empty table for two in an open-air cafe overlooking a half-completed construction site. All the weedy cinder block and rusted fencing didn’t dull my appetite in the least. I sat on a rickety metal folding chair with a paper plate of boiled shrimp, which I peeled and dipped in salsa, forking the accompanying black beans and rice into a soft com tortilla. Canned music played, jittery and tuneless, brass harmonies blasting out of the speakers overhead. The beer was ice cold and the food, while mediocre, was at least cheap and filling.

  I went back to the hotel at 8:35. Again, I scanned the lobby and then toured the hotel restaurant and both bars. There was no sign of Wendell or the woman I’d seen with him. I couldn’t believe he’d be traveling under the name Jaffe, so there wasn’t much point in asking for him at the desk. I hoped they hadn’t decamped. I roamed the place for an hour and finally settled on the sofa in the lobby near the entrance. I rummaged in my handbag for my paperback novel and read inattentively until well after midnight. Finally I gave it up and returned to my room. Surely the two would resurface by morning. Maybe I could find out the name he was currently using. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with the information, but I was certain Mac would take an interest.

  Chapter 3

  *

  The next morning I got up at 6:00 for a run on the beach. The morning after I arrived I’d timed out a mile and a half in each direction. Now I reduced that to quarter-mile loops so I could keep the hotel in view. I kept hoping I would spot them… on the terrace above the pool, taking an early morning walk on the sand. Unlikely as it seemed, I was still worried they might have checked out in the night.

  After my run I went up to my room, took a quick shower, and dressed. I loaded film in my camera and hung it around my neck by its strap, returning to the sunroom off the upper lobby, where breakfast was being served. I chose a seat near the open door, placing my camera on the seat of the chair next to mine. I kept a restless eye on the elevator doors while I ordered coffee, juice, and cereal. I stretched out the meal as far as I could, but neither Wendell nor the woman made an appearance. I signed the check, grabbed my camera, and went downstairs to the pool. Other guests had appeared. A pride of prepubescent males pushed and shoved each other in the water while a pair of newlyweds played Ping-Pong in the courtyard. I circled the hotel and headed back inside, passing through the bar in the lower lobby as I went up the stairs. My anxiety was rising.