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‘Okay, Mr. Esguio, I know you’re upset –’
Esguio lunged toward Paul and shoved him backward. They grappled. It was like watching a strongman contest where the leading contestant was charged with pushing a semi. Paul skidded a half step back, losing ground as Esguio moaned and smacked a hand to his heart and flopped forward. Paul managed to brace himself and catch Esguio before he toppled.
‘Oh, my God,’ Paul said. ‘He’s having a heart attack. Is he okay? Ask him.’
Grace asked him in rapid-fire Portuguese. Esguio cracked open an eye and answered, his voice pitiful. His eyes were the same dark brown as hers, making him look vaguely familial. He was as old as her aunts. They probably all went to school together. Dated. Divorced each other at least once.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘He wants to know how long you’re keeping the van.’
‘About his health.’
‘He’s fine.’
‘The van,’ Esguio prodded. Paul tipped him to his feet.
‘Try two or three years,’ Paul said. ‘He’s okay, though, right? You okay?’
‘Two or three years!’ Esguio moaned in English.
‘You should have thought of that before getting a killer to drive it,’ Paul said. ‘Did you even check Eddie’s license? Did Eddie even have a license?’
‘Now listen here,’ Esguio bristled.
Grace laid a hand on his arm and smiled winningly at him. ‘How about I take you out for breakfast. Would you like that, sir?’
Esguio stiffened with pride and yanked his arm free. He started moving through the cars and Grace fell into step next to him.
‘Wait.’ Paul trotted after them. ‘Mr. Esguio. Sir. You can’t go with her. You’re not supposed to tell anybody anything.’
‘Paul.’ Grace stopped, her voice reasonable. ‘Say for a second maybe there was a TV-remote setup in there. Was there audio and video equipment in your taco van, Mr. Esguio?’
‘What?’
‘TV stuff. To take pictures.’
‘No TV. Just a grill and a refrigerator. What are you talking about?’
She turned back to Paul. ‘Say there was a TV-remote setup. Say Eddie really was trying to warn me. That means somebody very bad might be after me. And if he is, Eddie’s made it clear the bad guy doesn’t have plans to invite me to his mother’s house for dinner either, unless she lives in the Bates Motel. So if Mr. Esguio can help me find the bad guy first, before he finds me and kills me – and that could be the plan here, Paul, to kill me – that’s good. Works for me.’
Mr. Esguio looked from Paul to Grace. His chins moved like a hula dancer.
‘I could use a cup of coffee. Decaf.’
SEVEN (#ulink_a2c050ac-2da6-5c3b-bf6b-a7b780de8b0c)
Esguio tapped three pills into his hand and swallowed them dry. ‘Thyroid, heart. Cholesterol. Take my advice. Never get old.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
They sat in a vinyl booth at the back of Denny’s on Rosecrans, a couple of blocks from where Esguio said he lived. Grace ordered French toast; Esguio stuck with coffee. He had wide lips and took small sips of air as he talked, as if breathing was hard work.
‘Descanso. You one of Francisco Descanso’s grandkids?’
‘You knew my grandfather?’
‘Sure. Everybody knew him. Terrible thing, what happened to his son.’
Grace blinked and looked away.
She could feel his face change. She should have expected it. Esguio was Portuguese. Of course he’d know about her father. Back then everybody Portuguese lived in a tight community in Point Loma, fished on boats passed down to their sons.
‘Must have been, what? Thirty years ago?’
‘Twenty-one. I was eleven when he washed overboard.’
Eleven when Lottie dragged her and her kid brother, Andy, out of the warmth and safety of Point Loma, into a life on the road. Grace had spent the last of her childhood shuttling from one beer-soaked bar to another, living out of cardboard suitcases while Lottie warbled in bars, living out her fantasy of becoming a country-western singer.
If her father had lived, Grace wouldn’t feel so damaged today. By any standard but her own, Grace had done well, but every step along the way had been punctuated with failure and despair and terrible doubts. Goodness was a fragile thing, chipped daily out of the rocky soil of her spirit. Lottie, on the other hand, soared like a vast overwrought blimp, gliding over the wreckage of Grace’s childhood, never coming down to earth long enough to be tethered to anything as pesky as consequences.
‘Your father was a good man,’ Esguio said. ‘You know that.’
Grace shrugged. ‘Thanks. Always good to hear.’
Esguio sipped his coffee. She could feel him watching her, probing the pain, and in a courtly way stepping back. He frowned and shifted gears.
‘Wait. You’re the one we sent to Guatemala, right? From the parish. We were in Portugal that year. We heard she died over there. Sister Mary Clare.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, she did.’ The bad things crowded into her mind, fresh from their naps and grinning, wanting to play.
‘We heard there was a fire.’
A bad thing bared its blunt teeth and cocked its shaggy head, and Grace could feel the whiff of its breath on her face. Her heart was starting to hammer. She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to find her quiet place, quiet the demons.
‘We heard you were going to be a heart doctor. Work with kids. Then you quit.’
Grace studied her hands and looked up. ‘Mr. Esguio, I’m sorry about your van. They have to process it for prints and –’
‘That doesn’t take two years.’
The waitress put down the plates. Esguio gazed longingly at her French toast.
‘No, but when something’s been used in the commission of a felony, when somebody’s been murdered and that was the vehicle used to transport the suspect …’
Esguio watched as she poured syrup, a slow dawning growing across his face. He looked pained. ‘I’m never going to see that van again in my lifetime, am I?’
‘Probably not.’ Grace shoveled in a forkful of food and washed it down with orange juice. ‘Mr. Esguio, somebody bad is after me. Somebody Eddie knew.’
‘No kidding,’ Esguio marveled. ‘Do the police know?’
‘I am the police.’ Or close enough. ‘That’s why I’m asking these questions and why it’s important you tell me what you know. How did you come to hire Eddie Loud?’
‘This recruiter came to the Portuguese Hall. Trying to place these folks. I got a card here someplace.’ Esguio fished it out of his wallet and passed it over the table.
NEW LIFE
giving those ready a second chance
CURTIS CRUMWALD, DIRECTOR
an outreach of the Center for BioChimera
‘He told us how the Center sounds like a science place, but it’s got a big hospital there, too. Where they do research, helping people. Eddie had problems, but he’d been in a halfway house three years, no incidents. It was all monitored. He’d never even had a parking ticket, Grace. Nothing. He even liked to cook.’ A small lost laugh.
‘Can I keep the card?’
‘Sure. I’m not going to be needing it. Know how much money is tied up in that van? I can’t believe it. Gone, poof, just like that. Damn. Two in one day.’
Some antenna tweaked. ‘What happened to the other van?’
‘Wasn’t a van, just a food cart, thank the good Lord and all His Saints.’ Esguio crossed himself. ‘Still.’
‘Tell me about the other guy you hired for the food cart. What happened to him?’
‘Woman.’ Esguio made a face and drained his water glass. ‘Heartburn. Acid reflux.’ He eyed her untouched water glass and Grace passed it over.
‘Thanks.’ He took a deep drink and crunched ice. ‘Where was I?’
‘The woman you hired to work your food cart,’ Grace prompted. ‘Something went wrong with it.’
‘Jazz Studio, that was her name. Should have been my first tip-off, right? Somebody with a fake name isn’t going to think twice about trashing the cart. I blame Eddie, though.’
‘How’s that?’
‘They had a big fight right beforehand. I think whatever he said got her stirred up.’
‘How’d they know each other?’
‘Hired them from the same place.’
Grace studied the card.
‘So this Jazz Studio and Eddie Loud are both outpatients at the Center for BioChimera. What were they being treated for?’
‘They never said what exactly. “Patient confidentiality.” That’s where they get you over the barrel. I should have stuck to distributing turkeys to St. Vincent’s at Christmas.’
‘Did Eddie Loud ever talk about video, or TV recording, or hidden cameras?’
‘Never. Although when he was really tired, he’d start acting like he thought somebody was after him, out to get him.’
Grace mulled that over. ‘Where’d you have Jazz working?’
‘The Center. Nice easy job, no stress. Everybody loves the food cart, right? And I thought it would be familiar. They had Jazz working in Records for a while so she knew the building.’
‘What happened?’
‘Her first day on the cart’s yesterday, Sunday? Gave her that on purpose, because it’s a light day at the Center, only people there are those who have to be. So she takes the cart to Records, where she used to work? Hadn’t been there ten minutes when she causes this ruckus and her old boss has to call security.’ Esguio shook his head.
‘Ever find out what set her off?’
‘No. But something scared her. Bad.’
Grace pushed the plates out of the way. ‘Any idea where she lives?’
Esguio shook his head. ‘Or Eddie either. They keep that part quiet. Jazz could be living at the Center now in a nice padded room, for all I know.’
‘Could I have your home number, if I have any more questions?’
He scribbled it on the back of a napkin and passed it over. ‘Know where it is? That Center for BioChimera?’
She looked away. ‘Oh, yeah.’
EIGHT (#ulink_1acbe08f-a8aa-565a-a44f-a107292ed65c)
The Center for BioChimera was part of a strip of high-end biotech research centers, hospitals, and the University of California, San Diego, in an area of La Jolla known as Biotech Mesa. Grace took 5 North to Genesee and Torrey Pines Road and made the familiar climb.
The view sweeping to the Pacific didn’t engage her; Grace was preoccupied with what she’d learned. Eddie Loud was mentally ill. How did a mentally ill outpatient at the Center for BioChimera driving a taco van get her name? What did Eddie Loud have to do with her?
The Center slanted in two wings facing the ocean, its back in a V toward the road. Three stories low to the ground, it resembled a Frank Lloyd Wright structure hewn out of the side of the ridge. Research labs and administrative offices fanned out in one wing; the other wing was a hospital specializing in transplants and immunological disorders.
The entrance to New Life was tucked behind Emergency in the hospital wing and faced out over a damp lawn, a tangle of trees, and the high Plexiglass fence closing off the steep drop leading to the waves smashing four hundred feet below. Grace wondered if they had jumpers.
She parked the car and entered the New Life waiting room, giving the receptionist her name. No, no appointment. Yes, she’d wait.
Pastel plaid chairs faced a coffee table covered with magazines. Grace read the bulletin board, a crammed assortment of admonishments to take meds, numbers to call if a client fell apart, a map of the hospital with an ‘X: You Are Here,’ and tips on ‘How to Put Your Best Foot Forward’ when going after that special minimum-wage job.
She sat. Five minutes later, a short man in his forties with glasses and a crew cut came through the door from the back rooms, face pink with exertion. ‘Grace Descanso?’
She stood up and extended her hand. ‘Yes, and you’re …’
‘Curtis Crumwald.’ A hard grip for a soft man. ‘Sorry for the wait. Had to drive my wife to a hair appointment. We’re down to one car.’
Crumwald made a face and motioned her through the door to the back. He wore neatly pressed Dockers and a shirt under a Stanford sweater pushed up his freckled arms. They passed a room set for a group – chairs in a circle, a second room with a copier, ratty sofa, and a Mr. Coffee. Tossed newspapers and Styrofoam cartons littered the laminated coffee table.
‘Harriet said you were interested in our program. Have job opportunities?’
‘No. Just questions.’
