for ten years," she said. "You think it’ll run you’re welcome to it. I expect you’ll be visiting Lillian tonight?"
In the background at my mother’s house I heard the sound of a pool cue breaking a setup. Somebody laughed.
"Mother—"
"All right, I didn’t ask. We’ll see you later on, dear."
After Gary had shuffled back over to the main part of the house, I checked my watch. Three o’clock San Francisco time. Even on Saturday afternoon there was still a good chance I could reach Maia Lee at Terrence & Goldman.
No such luck. When her voice mail got through explaining to me what “regular business hours" meant, I left my new number, then held the line for a second longer, thinking about what to say. I could still see Maia’s face the way it looked this morning at five when she dropped me off at SFO—smiling, a sisterly kiss, someone polite whom I didn’t recognize. I hung up the phone.
I found some vinegar and baking soda in the pantry and spent an hour cleaning away the sights and smells of the former tenant from the bathroom while Robert Johnson practiced climbing the shower curtain.
A little before sunset somebody knocked on my door.
“Mother," I grumbled to myself. Then I looked out the window and saw it wasn’t quite that bad—just a couple of uniformed cops leaning against their unit in the driveway, waiting. I opened the front door and saw the second ugliest face I’d seen through my screen door so far today.
"You know," the man croaked, "somebody just handed me this complaint from one Bob Langston of 90 Queen Anne’s Street. Guy’s a G-7 at Fort Sam, no less. Assault, it says. Trespassing, it says. Langston claims some maniac named Navarre tried to karate him to death, for Christ’s sake."
I was surprised how much he’d changed. His cheeks had hollowed out like craters and he’d gone bald to the point where he had to comb a greasy flap of side hair over the top just to keep up appearances. About the only things he had more of were stomach and mustache. The former covered his twenty-pound belt buckle. The latter covered his mouth almost down to his double chins. I remember as a kid wondering how he lit his cigarettes without setting his face on fire.
"Jay Rivas," I said.
Maybe he smiled. There was no way to tell under the whiskers. Somehow he located his lips with a cigarette and took a long drag.
"So you know what I tell the guys?" Rivas asked. "I say no way. No way could I be so lucky as to have Jackson Navarre’s baby boy back in town from San Fag-cisco to bring sunlight into my dreary life. That’s what I tell them."
"It was tai chi chuan, Jay, not karate. Purely defensive."
"What the fuck, kid, " he said, leaning his hand against the door frame. "You just about kimcheed this guy’s arm off. Give me a reason I shouldn’t treat you to some free accommodations at the County Annex tonight. "
I referred him to Gary Hales’s and my lease agreement, then told him about Mr. Langston’s less-than-warm reception. Rivas seemed unimpressed.
Of course, Jay Rivas always seemed unimpressed when it came to my family. He’d worked with my dad in the late seventies on a joint investigation that didn’t go so well. My dad had expressed his displeasure to his friends at SAPD, and here was Detective Rivas twenty years later, following up on low-priority assault cases.
"You made it out here awfully quick, Jay," I said. “Should I be flattered or do they normally send you out for the trivial stuff?"
Rivas blew smoke through his mustache. His double chins turned a beautiful shade of red, like a toad’s.
“Why don’t we go inside and talk about that," he suggested, his voice calm.
He motioned for me to open the screen door. It didn’t happen.
"I’m losing air conditioning, here, Detective," I said. We stared at each other for about two minutes. Then he disappointed me. He backed down the steps. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and shrugged.
“Okay, kid, " he said. "Just take the hint."
"Which is? "
Then I’m sure he smiled. I could see the cigarette curve up through the whiskers. “You get your nose into anything else, I’ll see you get some nice cellmates downtown."
“You’re a loving human being, Jay."
“To hell with that."
He tossed his cigarette onto Bob Langston’s "God Bless Home" welcome mat and swaggered back to I where the two uniforms were waiting for him. I