Thin Air

Dr. St. Claire nodded a shrink nod that acknowledged what I'd said without indicating a reaction. I had an impulse to lie on the table and recall my childhood.

"You found. her at the Pomona Detox Hospital."

"Yes. I work there once a week."

"Is she an alcoholic?"

"No. She was drinking far too much and living self-destructively. But she was not addicted to alcohol. She was able to control her drinking."

"So she could have a drink, when you knew her, without having six more."

"When she left me she was able to use alcohol in moderation," Dr. St. Claire said.

"Given your knowledge of her, Doctor, is she likely to have shot her husband?"

"From ambush, you say?"

"Yes."

"No. I do not believe she would have shot him from ambush."

"But she could have shot him under other circumstances?"

"I don't know could or couldn't. I will say that Angela lived a very harsh life, in very difficult circumstances. She had fewer restraint mechanisms perhaps than some women might have, and she harbored a lot of rage."

"At whom?"

"At her father, at her boyfriend, at men in general."

"Lot of whores hate men," I said.

"And have reason to," Dr. St. Claire said with a smile.

The waiter arrived. Dr. St. Claire ordered the Cobb salad. I did not.

"Would she have left her husband without a word?" I said.

"I don't know. She is not the same woman she was when she was with me. She became almost totally caught up in her own rehabilitation. She never missed an appointment with me. She read every book she could about self-destructive behavior, alcohol dependency, sexual relationships. She was fairly indiscriminate about it, and I used to urge her to be selective. I'm not sure all that reading helped her."

Dr. St. Claire smiled.

"An odd side effect was that while she was uneducated in general, because of all her reading she developed a highly sophisticated vocabulary, so that at one moment she talks as if she were a drill instructor, and the next she is discussing problems of identity and cathexis, or using words like `adroit' or `manipulative.' "

"True of a lot of self-educated people," I said.

Dr. St. Claire nodded.

"Whether this is still the case, I don't know," Dr. St. Claire said. "Time passes, people grow."

"Or dwindle," I said.

"That too," she said. "But in truth I wouldn't really be able to answer your question if I had just finished with her this morning. Humans behave unpredictably."

"There's some evidence of a former boyfriend on the scene. Guy named Luis Deleon," I said.

Dr. St. Claire shook her head.

"The name means nothing to me," she said.

"He appears to be a bad man," I said. "Record of arrests for assault, rape, and dealing narcotics."

"That is the kind of man that would have attracted her," Dr. St. Claire said. "She often expressed the wish to see her father again. Her father was a drinker and a brawler, in trouble often with the police. When he left her mother he kidnapped her and kept her for several months on the run. He didn't want her. He just wanted her mother not to have her."

"Father knows best," I said.

"It is her pathology," Dr. St. Claire said. "Angela experienced love as cruelty and exploitation. Seeking love she returns to cruelty and exploitation. The boy she ran away with is an example."

"Do you know his name?"

"I can perhaps recall it. It was an odd name. Oddly juxtaposed."

"Elwood Pontevecchio?" I said.

"Yes, that's the name. Isn't it an odd one?"

"He became her pimp," I said.

"Yes, I know. We were able to get her to separate herself from him. Though it was a struggle."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"He was abusive, and he was concerned with her only as he could use her. He seemed to hold her in great contempt."

"Ever meet him?"

"No. I know him only through Angela's description."

"You know where he is now?"

"No."

"She married a dead honest, straight-ahead, older guy," I said. "Who's a cop. You have anything to say about that?"

"An encouraging sign, I should think. Someone who might protect her from her worst impulses, or from their consequences."

"You know her father's name?"

"Richard, I assume," Dr. St. Claire said. "You think she would go looking for him?"

"I don't know. Perhaps the men she found were a sufficient substitute. Perhaps they weren't."

The waiter brought the food. Dr. St. Claire had some Cobb salad. I took a bite of my chicken sandwich and washed it down with a swallow of decaffeinated coffee.

"Know anyone involved in her life named Vaughn?"

"No, I don't."

"Maybe she didn't want the cop's protection any more," I said.

"Or perhaps she needs it more than ever."

"Her husband can't provide it right now."

"Then perhaps you'll have to," Dr. St. Claire said. "You look very competent."

I sipped from my cup again.

"My strength," I said, "is as the strength of ten because my coffee is drug free."

Dr. St. Claire smiled at me. "How very noble," she said.

He pointed up. The tenements had flat roofs, like most three-deckers. She could see a man with a rifle leaning against one of the chimneys. There were other people up there as well, moving about.

"We have gardens up there, dirt dug from the courtyard, carried up by the bucketful until there is enough to grow our food. We have tomatoes up there, and beans. We have peppers, squashes. We grow cilantro. I will show you someday, chiquita, but not now. It is too soon. People might be watching. They might see you."

The thought that someone might be watching sent a jagged shock of excitement through her. She felt it in her buttocks, in the palms of her hands, at the hinges of her jaw.

"Have you seen someone?" she said, trying to keep her voice flat.

"No, but we are careful. I do not want you snatched away from me again."

She stared up at the rooftop, the man with the rifle, the people growing beans, she looked at the children playing in the excavated mud of the enclosure, and at the rickety porches that hung from the backs of the sagging gray buildings. She listened to the faint whir of the video camera as the young man with the braids moved about them, taping everything, preserving the moments. It had begun to rain lightly again. It never seemed to reach the level of a downpour, but it was frequent and often steady and everything had a wetness about it. The whole building complex seemed damp. It smelled of mildew. I'm not some debutante, she thought. I've seen worse than this. I've done worse than this. I've been worse off than I am now. And I've gotten out of it. I'm tougher than the son of a bitch, and smarter, and I'm not crazy, and he is. I'm going to get out of this.

She believed what she said to herself, but she also knew she had to control her fear, and what she didn't know yet was if she could.

Chapter 21

I sat in my blue hotel room while Susan ran up and down the stairs at the UCLA Track Stadium, and looked up Pontevecchio in the phone book. I found Woody Pontevecchio under Pontevecchio Entertainment, no street address, and a phone number in Hollywood. Spenser, master detective. I dialed the number and got his answering machine.