Nightlife: A Novel Read online

  Hugo Poole put his telephone down and stared at the office wall. It was clear that he had just managed to duck while Calvin Dunn’s resentment had whistled past him. Dunn was said to be very good at what he did, but he was too temperamental. Hugo didn’t like having to be tolerant of jealousies and fits of egotism.

  The call made him wonder what Pitt was doing. It could be the little policewoman, Catherine Hobbes. She was single and a very nice little handful. The whole thing could be completely harmless—Pitt going up to Portland to spend time with Catherine Hobbes. Hugo reached for his telephone, but held his hand. It was not a good idea to call back. Calvin Dunn had seen her in Flagstaff, and he was smart enough to figure the rest out. If Hugo was right, he gained nothing, and if he was wrong, he would weaken his position with Calvin Dunn.

  Calvin Dunn was not somebody he had ever wanted on his payroll. Hugo had resisted the idea for a long time. He had tried waiting for the Portland police to handle things, and then tried hiring Joe Pitt—a reputable detective who had some appreciation of the complexities of Los Angeles life that might have caused a killing way up there in Portland. What more could anybody expect? Hugo had been as patient as he could be, but he’d had a limited period of time.

  He had needed to be sure that unfriendlies in L.A. didn’t get the idea that Hugo Poole would permit someone to kill a member of his family without paying for it. He had to be sure that the friendlies didn’t get the same idea and conclude that they had to make common cause with the unfriendlies. He had to be sure that the people who worked for him weren’t put in danger by the rumor that he couldn’t protect or avenge them. He had been in this life for so long that he had seen all of the moves in advance. He had given the authorities all the time that he could. Then he had hired Calvin Dunn.

  He had also owed it to his aunt Ellen to do something. She was his aunt because she had been briefly married to his father’s brother. She had barely known Hugo’s mother, who had never even lived with his father, let alone married him. Hugo had been conceived on a late-night pickup in a bar. After Hugo’s mother died, Ellen had come to the funeral and then driven him back to the apartment to pack and come with her.

  She had put him into a bedroom to share with her son, Dennis, and explained that they were cousins. Then she had treated them exactly the same. Everything she had bought for Dennis, she had bought two of and given one to Hugo. Anytime she’d gone out, she’d carried three pictures in her wallet—her ex-husband, Dennis, and Hugo.

  When he was seventeen, Hugo had left Ohio and come to California. He had not talked to Aunt Ellen again for four years, then called her on the telephone and asked her how she was. She had cried so much that he had barely understood anything except that she had been worried about him. He had told her that he was sending her a present, and he had mailed her a check for fifty thousand dollars.

  He had kept calling her and sending her checks. Half of every conversation had been about Dennis—some degree he had earned, some job he had gotten, some promotion he’d won. When Dennis had started his own computer business, Aunt Ellen had put up half the money. It had come from Hugo’s checks.

  A few days after Hugo had heard about the new business, Dennis had called him. “Is this Hugo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Dennis.”

  “Hey, Dennis. I hear from your mother that you’re doing great, starting your own business and everything. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Hugo,” said Dennis. “That’s really why I called after all this time. I wanted to tell you about it. The place is a computer sales business. I’m good at the technical part of it, but I’m finding that I need help. I wondered if you want a job. You could be vice president, and help me handle the people.”

  Hugo had been paralyzed for a moment: Aunt Ellen had not told Dennis where the money had come from. Dennis had simply decided that because he’d had some luck he would share it with his cousin Hugo. Hugo had needed to answer. “Dennis. I want you to know that I’m honored. It makes me happy that you would do this. But I can’t accept.”

  “Why not?”

  “Here are three reasons. I’ve got a good job here, and I’m happy in L.A., and I don’t know a thing about computers. I really appreciate it, though, Dennis.”

  He remembered hearing his own voice and being shocked. People always said that they regressed when they talked to their parents, became themselves as children. Hugo didn’t have any parents. What he did that day when he talked to Dennis was go all the way back to the fork in the road—the day he had left Ohio—and take the other choice. He sounded like the Hugo who would have existed if he had stayed in Ohio.

  Hugo might be a failure and an embarrassment to people like his aunt Ellen and his cousin Dennis, but he was considered an enormous success in this part of the world. It was a place where things were for sale. If a man had a name for his wish, or if he could only describe it, somebody could be paid to make it happen. At least Hugo could do this. He could get the one who had killed the poor, ignorant sucker Dennis.

  40

  As soon as her telephone service was working, Judith bought a laptop computer and printer and signed up for Internet service. She entered the online telephone directory and typed in Catherine Hobbes’s telephone number to find her address. When she had it, she began to get restless.

  The night was coming again, and Judith was always restless in the early evening. It was the time when other women were putting on their most attractive clothes and makeup. She had always loved dressing to go out at night. Even when she was a little girl on the pageant circuit, she had pretended she was getting ready to go out dancing instead of just out past the flat pieces of scenery and the electrical circuit board and onto the stage. The beginning of an evening out was the best that a person ever looked, the best that she could be—the most beautiful, the most excited, and the most eager.

  Judith Nathan could not dress that way tonight. She slipped on the black pants and sneakers, the blue sweater and the jacket Tyler had left her, then put on Tyler’s baseball cap and went out to walk. Night in Portland was much cooler and wetter than she liked, but she knew that she could get used to it if Catherine had. She walked toward the Adair Hill neighborhood, overlooking the west side of the river south of the downtown section, because that was where Catherine lived. It was a long walk, but she amused herself by watching the few stragglers driving home from work, while others were coming out of their houses in nice clothes, getting into their cars to go to restaurants and bars.

  People didn’t really see her as she walked by, her hair under Tyler’s baseball cap and her hands in the pockets of the jacket. In the dark she was just a shape that was merely human, and even when the headlights from a turning car swept over her and she became female, she was just another young woman who walked after business hours to keep in shape.

  She found the right street at around ten. She stared up the block cautiously, getting a feel for it before she dared go farther. It seemed fitting that Catherine would live up a hill, where she could look down on the city but not be touched by it, or even seen.

  Judith studied the neighborhood, but saw nothing that looked threatening. It seemed to be the kind of residential area where people walked, but there was nobody out now to see her. East of the Willamette River and to the northwest of it, Portland was laid out on a north-south, east-west grid. It was only here, below West Burnside Street, that streets angled off a bit, and Catherine’s street wound and cut back to get up the hill.

  Judith liked it, because the curves in the road kept headlights from settling on her for more than a second or two. Before a car came around a bend she would see the cones of the headlights shining on the trees, and then the pair of lights would appear like eyes opening for only a second, and they would go past.

  Catherine probably walked along this street fairly regularly, Judith decided. Maybe she even ran. Judith had not been going for her morning runs since she had needed to leave Los Angeles, and she could feel
this climb exercising her calves and thighs.

  Because she was on foot, Judith could watch the house numbers closely, and she became aware of each house that she passed. The core of the neighborhood was old houses built in the 1920s and ’30s, and the details and proportions were different from the few brand-new houses. The old ones had narrow, arched doorways and steep, pointed gables that held small windows divided into many panes. The trees and shrubbery had been given whole lifetimes to grow and thicken around the walls, so some of the houses looked as though they were from the illustrations of children’s books.

  As the road climbed, the trees thinned and the yards were less heavily planted and impenetrable. At the top, the land leveled to become a rounded bluff, and there was a whole row of small, nearly uniform houses that seemed to have burrowed into the cliff. Each had two stories, with a garage on the lower level. There was a set of steps on the left side of each house leading up the hill to a back door.

  There it was, number 4767. It was white with a bright yellow door. The lights were off except for a couple of automatic outdoor floods that had sensors to switch them on at dusk. Judith stood across the street where the lights did not reach her, studied the house for a long time, and then moved on.

  Three nights later, Judith began to wonder what was going on in Catherine Hobbes’s life. There seemed to be something going on, because every evening when Judith walked by Catherine’s house on Adair Hill the windows were dark. Judith kept taking her walks later and later, and still Catherine was out. Judith began to be afraid that Catherine Hobbes was out of town scouring some other city for signs of Tanya Starling. She didn’t want her doing that. Catherine Hobbes had to be home. She had to be in her bed up on the upper floor, in a deep, peaceful sleep.

  On the fourth evening, she arrived on Catherine Hobbes’s block at one-thirty A.M., just as the garage door below Catherine’s living room opened and a small car pulled into the garage. Judith Nathan sidestepped onto the grass strip in front of the nearest house and knelt behind a fragrant, flowering bush to watch. Judith could see the car was a new Acura, teal blue. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew Catherine had chosen the model and color so it wouldn’t be anything like the unmarked cop cars that Catherine drove at work. She saw Catherine get out of the car in the lighted garage, then walk to the side of the garage and press a switch on the wall. As the door rolled down, Catherine’s head, then shoulders, then torso, legs, and feet disappeared.

  The lights on Catherine’s main floor came on. Judith walked past, looking at the other houses in the row. Judith could see that all of the houses must have been built by one contractor from a single set of blueprints. All of them had balconies facing the river except Catherine’s; she had a set of greenhouse windows in place of the balcony.

  Judith could see identical bowl-shaped light fixtures in the center of the ceilings of two of the houses, and the rest seemed to have replacement fixtures in the same spot. The garage doors were wide enough for two cars. The straight, plain staircases to the upper floor were all on the left sides of the houses. As Judith walked home, her body seemed weightless, her step was light, and it seemed to her that a day was beginning instead of ending. Things were starting to seem clear to her. That was really all that Judith asked, that she be able to discern what she should do.

  In the morning she got the Tribune and the Oregonian and began to look at the ads for Acuras. The dealers were really the only choice, because she wanted hers to be in exactly the right color, and no private owner who had one seemed to be trying to get rid of it. She needed to have exactly the right one. She decided to let the question simmer in her brain for a time while she concentrated on settling into the new city. Judith kept herself busy most of the time, and she found that it gave her a kind of contentment. She had missed the sense that everything she did contributed in some way to a practical goal, and now she had it again.

  Judith decided two days later, as dusk came on, that it was time for her to go out for the evening. She had a special problem, because her photograph had been on television many times, and probably most often in Portland. The color and style of her hair were different now, but she would have to be careful.

  In Portland there was seldom a reason not to be dressed for rain, so Judith Nathan could wear a black raincoat with a high collar that she could use to abbreviate the profile of her face, and carry a small umbrella. She tried on the outfit and the coat and studied her appearance in the mirror. Then she put on some flat black shoes and walked to the bar she had selected. It was called Underground, and it was decorated to look like a London tube station.

  Judith Nathan walked comfortably in the dark. It was her time. She had Mary Tilson’s revolver in her coat pocket and her right hand on the grips. It amused her as she walked to study the men who passed her on the street, imagining each one of them recognizing her from her picture. She would anticipate how each one would go about his offense—rushing toward her, or pointing at her and yelling—and then think through exactly how she would free the gun from her raincoat, aim, and fire. The pistol she was carrying wasn’t like Carl’s .357 magnum. She would have to fire five or six times to silence a full-grown male. She would place three in his torso to put him down, and then be sure to fire one into his head. She was sure she could do that.

  She found the bar, and looked at it warily as she walked up. It was impossible to determine anything subtle from outside, but she could tell that it was crowded, and that the lighting came indirectly from some tiny spotlights behind the bar and some jars with candles in them on the tables. She could see that men wore coats and women wore dresses and business suits.

  Judith Nathan slipped in the front door and used the bodies of a group of tall men to shield her from view while she verified her impressions. It was the sort of place where people went after work. Most of them bought their drinks at the bar and stood around talking rather than sitting at tables and waiting for the waitress. The one difficult part was that she had to come in, make her choice, and establish a relationship almost instantly. She glanced at the three men in front of her, and then sidestepped into one of them.

  He was about six feet two and had a sculpted body that he showed off by taking off his sport coat just inside the door. His only imperfection was that he had a terrible complexion. His face was rough and pitted by acne scars. She smiled up at him and said, “I’m sorry. I was just trying to slip through to the bar. If I’ve hurt you, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He seemed to overcome years of shyness to say, “I’ve got a longer reach. I’ll buy us both one.”

  She said, “Thanks so much. I’ll have a vodka martini.” Then she looked around her and said, “I’m right in the doorway. Can you find me if I go to a table?”

  “Sure.”

  That gave her a chance to pick a dark corner of the room and claim it while she waited. She sat down at a table and blew out the candle.

  The arrangement she had made held its own dangers for her. She knew nothing about this man, but she had grown up in a world that included date-rape drugs like GHB and Rohypnol, so watching her drink was a reflex. She saw the bartender ice a martini glass, pour vodka and vermouth in the silver shaker, fill the glass. She kept her eye on both of her new man’s hands as he held the two drinks level and made his way through the crowd to her.

  When he sat down at the small table she had chosen, she gave him another expert smile before she accepted her drink and took a sip. She felt the bright, icy liquid travel down her throat, and then a sudden glow as it reached her stomach. She had always imagined that reaction as small magic, a sudden warmth that exploded under her heart and spread outward to her toes and fingertips.

  She looked over the rim of the glass at the crowd around her. This was the first time she had dared come out to a nightspot since she had been in Portland. There was always a chance that somebody in a bar would have seen a picture of her on television and be able to spot her even with her new light hair and different makeup. But this
was a very dark bar, she was in the darkest corner, and the rest of the people here were fully engaged in trying to pick each other up. “Thank you very much,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. I’m Greg. And what’s your name?”

  “Judy,” she said. “This is a really good martini.”

  It was enough to trigger his prepared sequence of small talk. He said, “I haven’t seen you here. Have you been here before? Were you brought up in Portland? I was. What do you do? I design software. Where did you go to college? Are you dating anybody?” with such relentless rapidity that it was like a series of combination punches he had practiced so there would never be a moment of awkward silence.

  Judith Nathan needed to help him avoid the silences, so she answered each question, some of them as though she were blocking or diverting his blows, but others more carefully. She said, “I’m not working right now. I’m going to be an entrepreneur, but I haven’t figured out the best business to be in right now. It’s a tricky economy.”

  “What have you done before?” he asked.

  “I’ve tried a couple of things, but I haven’t hit the right one yet. I tried starting a magazine, and I wanted to do a gift-buying service for men but couldn’t get funding. If you’ve got any surefire ideas you’d like to share, I’d be delighted to hear them.”

  She also answered the one about college. She said, “I went to school in the East, at Boston University. I was only there for about three years, and then I left.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Fatal pragmatism.”

  “What’s fatal pragmatism?”

  “I was out alone like this. And I met a man.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I was being nosy.”

  “Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing mysterious. He was older. He had some money. I just compared what I was doing—being snubbed by snotty girls in the dorm and writing term papers—with what he was doing. His life was better, so I decided to do what he was doing.”