“William thinks everybody’s half dead. What do the doctors say?”
“They don’t seem optimistic. It’s not what they say; it’s the look in their eyes,” he said. “I’ll be glad to have you home. What time do you think you’ll get in?”
I checked my watch again. It was now 1:22. “Not for another couple of hours.”
“Why don’t you plan on having supper here? You’ll be tired and you’ll need a glass of Chardonnay.”
“Sounds good.”
We were winding up the conversation and I was close to hanging up when he said, “Oh! I almost forgot. Your friend Dietz is on his way down from Carson City. He says he should be here by six, so I invited him for dinner, too.”
I could feel myself squint. “Dietz? What’s he want?”
“I guess there’s a problem with that job referral.”
“Job referral?”
“That’s what he said. I figured you’d know what he was talking about.”
“I have no idea.”
“You can ask him yourself when he gets here,” he said.
And with that, he hung up.
23
Naturally, the rest of the trip was uneventful and the miles flew out behind me at warp speed. Just when I longed for a delay (a minor car wreck, perhaps, or a sudden bout of the runs that would have me getting off the highway at every other exit lest I mess my underpants), there was no such luck in store. Feeling crabby and out of sorts, I brooded about Ethan Dace hammering a nail into my tire and then, as if I wasn’t sufficiently annoyed, I took a little trip down memory lane, summing up my relationship with the aforementioned Robert Dietz.
I’d met him five years before, in May of 1983, when I found myself on the hit list of a small-time Nevada punk named Tyrone Patty, who’d been charged with attempted murder in the shooting of a liquor store clerk. He’d fled to Santa Teresa and I was assigned the task of tracking him down, which I did. He was sent back to Nevada, where he was tried, convicted, and thrown into prison. From that point on, his life had spiraled out of control and he held four of us personally accountable: me; the Carson City DA; the judge who’d sentenced him; and Lee Galishoff, the public defender who’d represented him. Never mind that Tyrone Patty was a persistent felon long before we entered the picture. Like many whose poor choices have led them astray, he accepted no responsibility as long as he had someone else to blame.
Once out of prison, he’d gone right out and murdered three more hapless victims—also our fault, no doubt—but while still in prison, he’d put out feelers for a contract killer to whack the four of us. Galishoff had gotten wind of it and called, urging me to hire a bodyguard, which I thought was absurd. Who can afford a bodyguard twenty-four hours a day? Was he nuts? He’d suggested Robert Dietz, a PI who specialized in personal protection. I’d recognized the name because I’d put a call through to him the year before when I needed a quick job done and it made no sense for me to travel to all the way to Carson City.
Galishoff gave me his number again and I jotted it down with no real intention of contacting him. I’d just picked up a new job and I was on my way to the Mojave Desert. I didn’t take the threat seriously until someone ran my VW off the road and into a ditch. I ended up in the hospital and that’s when I called Dietz. He agreed to escort me back to Santa Teresa. In that same phone call, he told me the judge had been gunned down in front of his own home despite the presence of the police.
Dietz showed up in my hospital room and drove me home in his little red Porsche. Once the jeopardy passed and life returned to normal, if Dietz and I ended up in the sack, that was really nobody’s business. What followed was a three-month live-in relationship, at which point Dietz took off for Germany, where he was under contract to the military to conduct antiterrorist training. I was miffed by his departure, but what choice did I have?
He’d said, “I can’t stay.”
I’d said, “I know. I want you to go. I just don’t want you to leave me.”
We connected again in January of 1986 after an absence of two years, four months, and ten days. That visit bled over into March, a period during which he had knee-replacement surgery and I agreed to drive him back to Nevada. By the time we parted company, I’d spent two weeks at his place in Carson City playing nursemaid, a role in which I have never been known to shine. I’d driven a rental car from there to Nota Lake, picking up an investigation that would have been his to handle if he hadn’t been laid low. I hadn’t seen him since.
I’m not an on-again, off-again kind of girl, and Dietz wasn’t good at staying put, so emotionally we were always at odds. To be fair about it, neither one of us was suited for a long-term commitment. Dietz was afflicted with wanderlust and I was chronically self-protective, having been married and divorced twice.
Here’s how it seems to work in my life: Usually when you say good-bye to a friend, it’s a casual matter because it doesn’t occur to you that you might not see that certain someone again. It’s an à bientôt kind of thing . . . a term I remember from my high school French class. These are the few phrases I committed to memory even though I never got better than a C on a test.
À bientôt . . . see you soon.
À plus tard . . . see you later.
À demain . . . see you tomorrow.
À tout à l’heure . . . see you in a while.
When it comes to partings, the French are ever the optimists. My outlook is bleak. While my attention is fixed on the totally wrenching boo-hoo of an impending separation, the French language conveys hope and expectation, the happy assumption that in a short period of time, they’ll be bonjouring each other all over again. My lifelong “good-bye” experiences lean toward finality and pain. My parents died. My aunt died. My first husband died. I’m dead set (as it were . . .) against having a pet because the risk of loss would soar into the stratosphere and I’ve got troubles enough as it is.
After our last parting, I’d set Dietz out on the curb, metaphorically speaking, in hopes the alley fairies would come along and cart him away. It’s not that I never thought of him, but by and large, people in my life knew better than to mention his name. Now here he was again and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
I pulled up in front of my studio apartment at 4:25. I grabbed my shoulder bag and duffel, locked my car, and made my way through the squeaky gate and around to my front door. I left my Smith-Corona in the trunk of my car, intending to take it into the office with me first thing Monday morning. There was no sign of Henry, but the backyard smelled of pot roast and freshly baked bread, both of which he does to perfection. I let myself in and carried my duffel up the spiral stairs to the loft. I’d been telling myself Dietz’s arrival didn’t matter one way or the other, but I postponed my official appearance at Henry’s door until I’d slipped into a change of clothes. I stuck to my standard outfit: black turtleneck, blue jeans, and boots. I didn’t want it to look like I was trying too hard. I skipped the makeup, which I seldom wore in any event. I did floss and brush my teeth, and then stared at myself in the bathroom mirror.
In novels, the protagonist is forever doing this because it affords the author an opportunity to describe the character’s physical traits. That ploy won’t work here because I always look exactly like myself. This can be discouraging. Sometimes when I’m standing in a supermarket checkout line, I’ll spot the cover of a tabloid magazine plastered with candid photos of well-known actresses the paparazzi have caught off guard. What a shock it is to see legendary beauties looking washed-out and furtive, with matted hair, puffy lids, and splotchy complexions; flaws made all the more alarming for the images we carry of them, creamy-skinned and doe-eyed with tresses artfully tousled and sprayed to a hard shine. My looks fall somewhere between the two extremes, but closer to the puffy end. To my credit, I don’t misrepresent my basic attributes with a lot of gunk. Anyone who’s startled to see me looking splotchy hasn’t been paying attention.