"She's in Santa Barbara," he said.
I wondered where he thought he was, then I answered my own question: Montecito wannabee.
"This unpleasantness," he said. "It isn't anything that would- impinge upon my school, is it? I don't want publicity, the police traipsing around."
"Did de Bosch's students ever impinge?"
"No, because I made sure they didn't. For all practical purposes, this property line was as impermeable as the Berlin Wall." He drew a line in the gravel with the toe of one wingtip. "Some of them had been to reform school. Fire setters, bullies, truants- all sorts of miscreants."
"Must have been difficult being this close."
"No, it wasn't difficult," he reprimanded. "If they chanced to wander, I sent them hopping right back."
"So you never had any problems?"
"Noise was a problem. There was always too much noise. The only untoward thing occurred after they were gone. One of them showed up and made quite a nuisance of himself." Smile. "His condition didn't speak well of the Frenchman's methods."
"What condition was that?"
"A tramp," he said. "Unwashed, uncombed, high on drugs- his eyes had that look."
"How do you know he was an alumnus?"
"Because he told me he was. Said it in those words: "I'm an alumnus.' As if that should have impressed me."
"How long ago was this?"
"Quite a while- let's see, I was interviewing the Crummer boy. The youngest one, and he applied around… ten years ago."
"And how old was this tramp?"
"Twenties. A real churl. He barged right into my office, past my secretary. I was interviewing young Crummer and his parents- a fine family, the elder boys had attended Bancroft quite successfully. The scene he created dissuaded them from sending the youngest lad here."
"What did he want?"
"Where was the school? What had happened to it? Raising his voice and creating a scene- poor Mrs. Crummer. I thought I'd have to call the police, but I was finally able to convince him to leave by telling him the Frenchman was long dead."
"That satisfied him?"
The eyebrows dipped. "I don't know what it did to him but he left. Lucky for him- I'd had my fill." A big fist shook. "He was insane- must have been on drugs."
"Can you describe him?"
"Dirty, uncombed- what's the difference? And he didn't have a car, he walked away on foot- I watched him. Probably on his way to the highway. God help anyone who picked him up."
• • •
He watched me leave, too, standing with his arms folded across his chest as I drove away. I realized I hadn't heard or seen any children at his school.
Bullies and fire setters. A tramp in his twenties.
Trying to dig up the past.
The same man who'd called Harrison?
Merino.
Silk. A thing for fabrics.
Hewitt and Gritz, two tramps who would have been in their twenties back then.
Myra Paprock was killed five years ago. Two years after that, Shipler. Then Lerner. Then Stoumen. Was Rosenblatt still alive?
Katarina was, just a few miles up this beautiful road. That gave us something in common.
I was ready to talk to her.
• • •
Cabrillo Boulevard swept up past the ocean, cleansed of the weekend tourist swarm and the bad sidewalk art. The wharf looked depopulated and its far end disappeared in a bank of fog. A few cyclists pumped in the bike lane and joggers and speed walkers chased immortality. I passed the big new hotels that commandeered the prime ocean views and the motels that followed them like afterthoughts. Passed a small seafood place where Robin and I had eaten shrimp and drunk beer. People were eating there now, laughing, tan.
Santa Barbara was a beautiful place, but sometimes it spooked me. Too much psychic space between the haves and the have-nots and not enough geography. A walk up State Street took you from welfare hotels and mean bars to custom jewelers, custom tailors, and two-bucks-a-scoop ice cream. The fringes of Isla Vista and Goleta were as hard as any inner city, but Montecito was still a place where people ate cake. Sometimes the tension seemed murderous.
I pictured Andres de Bosch trolling lower State for day laborers. His daughter listening and laughing as he dehumanized those he'd found…
Cabrillo climbed higher and emptied of pedestrians, and I caught an eyeful of endless Pacific. Sailboats were out in force at the marina, most of them floundering as they searched for a tailwind. Nearer to the horizon, fishing scows sat, still as artist's models. The boulevard flattened once again, turned into Shoreline and got residential. I began checking the numbers on the curb.
Most of the houses were fifties rancheros, several of them in renovation. I remembered the neighborhood as well planted. Today, lots of the plants were gone, and the ones that remained looked discouraged. The drought had come hard to this town kissed by salt water.
The lawns were suffering the most, most of them dead or dying. A few were vivid green- too green.
Spray paint.
Santa Barbara, trying to free itself from dependence on Sierra snowpack, had declared mandatory rationing long before L.A. Now the town was returning to desert, but the addiction to emerald was hard to shake.
I reached Katarina's house. Older than its neighbors and considerably smaller, a pale blue, English country cottage with two turrets, a slate roof that needed mending, and a big dirt expanse in front. A privet hedge rimmed the plot, uneven, and picked apart in spots. What had once been a rose garden was now a collection of trellised sticks.
An old-fashioned wire-link gate was fastened across an asphalt driveway, but as I pulled up I could see it was unlocked. I got out and pushed it open and walked up the drive. The asphalt was old and cracked, stretching a hundred feet to the tail end of a small, Japanese car.
Drapes whited all the windows of the house. The front door was paneled oak, its varnish bubbling, a NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH sticker affixed just below the lion's head knocker. Below that was another one, bearing the name of an alarm company.
I rang the bell. Waited. Did it again. Waited some more. Used the lion. Nothing.
No one was around. I could hear the ocean.
I went around the side, past the little white car and a high-peaked garage with sagging swivel doors left half open. The backyard was twice the size of the front plot and denuded. The borders with its neighbors were obscured by thick plantings of dead citrus and dead avocado. On the ground were shapeless patches of lifeless shrubbery. Even the weeds were struggling.
But a couple of giant pines toward the back had survived nicely, their roots deep enough to tap into groundwater. Their trunks yearned for the ragged cliff that overlooked the beach. Through their boughs, the ocean was gray lacquer. The property was at least a hundred feet up, but the tide was a drum roll, loud enough to block out every other sound.
I looked at the rear of the house. Buttoned up and curtained. Near the cliff was an old redwood table and two chairs, guano specked and faded to ash. But half of the table was covered with a white tablecloth, and on the cloth were a cup and saucer and a plate.
I walked over. Coffee dregs in the cup, crumbs on the plate, and an orange smear that looked like ossified marmalade.
The ocean grumbled and seabirds shrieked in response. I walked to the edge of the cliff. To the spot where Katarina had photographed her father, slumped in his wheelchair.
Dry dirt. No fence, easy fall. I peered over and a splinter of vertigo pierced my chest. When it subsided, I looked over again. The hillside was gouged with erosion- giant fingermarks that traced a dead drop down to the rocky beach.
The gulls screamed again- a reprimand that reminded me I was trespassing.
The coffee and crumbs said Katarina was in town. Probably gone out for an errand.
I could wait here, but the more efficient thing would be to call Milo and catch him up on Becky Basille's notes, Harrison, and Bancroft.