The Ancient Rain Read online

  Stella turned back to her chicken. The Chinaman was humming to himself. Stella was humming now, too, thumping at the chicken.

  Sorrentino went back into the restaurant.

  The picture of his son was at the other end. He and the boy fishing out at Shasta. Right before the kid had been shipped off to the Middle East. They’d eaten here after they got back from Shasta, him and the boy and a couple of his friends from the SFPD, and he’d given the picture to Stella to slide under the glass countertop. Nine months later, the kid’s truck flipped, out there in the desert. Sorrentino hadn’t looked at the picture since.

  And he wasn’t going to look now.

  They’re all watching me, Sorrentino thought. The old Italians. They know who I am.

  Marinetti and Pesci. The three dead bastards back in the shadows. Julia Besozi and her teacup, sitting with her knees crossed and her face pinched. Smiling right at him.

  She kept right on smiling—at the same dead space, even after he moved.

  It had been a mistake to come here. He threw his money on the counter and out he went.

  EIGHT

  After the arraignment, Dante had gotten a call from his boss, Jake Cicero. Cicero was on vacation, on a cruise boat somewhere off the coast of Italy—one of those small liners that worked the port towns. It was high season, but the occupancy was low, on account of the terror threat and the American buildup in the Middle East. He and his wife, Louise, had taken the trip anyway.

  “How’s the cruise going?”

  “Wonderful,” said Cicero. “I’m having the time of my life.”

  “And Louise?”

  “Everyone should take a trip like this.”

  The truth was, Dante knew, Cicero had not wanted to go at first, but he and his wife, Louise—his third wife—had been on the brink of divorce. Cicero had taken a second mortgage in order to afford the trip. And in the time leading up to the journey, his boss had changed.

  Cicero started playing tennis. His skin was tan. He bought a sports car.

  Meanwhile, the business slid downhill.

  “I’ve been talking with Moe Jensen,” said Cicero. His boss had known Jensen for years and done work for his firm in the past. “They want me to put you on this.”

  “My impression, they’re going to be strapped for cash.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Cicero. “We’ve got a retainer, for now.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Someone to shadow the prosecution case. To go back through the witness list, the discovery material.”

  “And Sorrentino?”

  “Yes, they’ll need to know what he’s been doing. And Elise Younger, too. Apparently she’s a little off in the head.”

  “I saw her speak.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t sound excited about this.”

  “The bail hearing—it’s still pending.”

  “Bail or no bail, they are going to need legwork.”

  “Unless Owens cops a plea.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen. You don’t like this case?”

  “Who’s going to take care of our other work?”

  “I have other investigators for that. I would think you would jump at this. You have trouble with Owens?”

  Dante had his doubts, but there were always doubts. Half your job in a case like this—any case, if truth be told—involved undermining the attacker, maligning the accuser, impugning not just the evidence, but the person who brought it forward. In this case, that would mean going after Elise Younger, and probably Sorrentino as well.

  “Marilyn and I were thinking of going away for a while.”

  “Are you getting married?”

  Dante hesitated.

  “Okay,” said Cicero. “You don’t have to answer that. But listen, this isn’t a good time to travel, anyway.”

  “I thought you said it was beautiful.”

  “All the saber rattling … It’s not a good time.”

  “That’s not what you said earlier.”

  “I’m just making the best of it. You’re better off where you are. There on the home front.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Of course I am.”

  There was a pause, and in that pause Dante imagined the blue sea slapping up against Cicero’s boat. He saw the coastline out there, and all those little pastel houses falling down to the sea, and the goats higher up the hills. He thought of Marilyn. He thought of Owens in jail. He heard the clink of cocktail glasses on the other side of the line, maybe, and a tennis ball bouncing on the deckside court.

  “But I like these European cell phones,” said Cicero. “They’re cheaper—and they don’t ever go dead.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Besides, I already told Jensen yes. My understanding, this case, there’s deep pockets in the wings.”

  NINE

  On the second day of Owens’s bond hearing, between sessions, Guy Sorrentino went with Elise Younger out to Judah Street. The bank itself had been torn down five years back, and a construction site now stood in its place, with a wooden fence ringing the block. Every year, on the anniversary of her mother’s death, Elise built a sidewalk memorial here. The anniversary had passed several weeks ago now, but Elise maintained the sidewalk memorial on account of the coming trial. The shrine had grown quite ornate with the publicity, strangers adding bits of ribbon, notes of appreciation, pictures of their own deceased. While Elise replaced the flowers, Sorrentino walked over to the wooden fence, gazing through a hole at the construction.

  Elise’s mother had been wearing a checkered blouse and black slacks, Sorrentino knew, because he’d seen the evidence bag, still intact after all these years. According to witnesses, she’d been standing in the queue when the gang rushed in through the glass doors at the side of the building. She’d turned abruptly, too abruptly, purse sliding from her shoulder, and one of the gunmen had let loose. She’d crumpled then, shot in the stomach.

  Sorrentino turned away. It was just workers down there now, concrete and rebar. He couldn’t look anymore.

  When Elise was done with the flowers, they walked to a diner down the way, and as they walked Sorrentino could see her agitation. Part of the reason had to do with the bond hearing. Originally the court had scheduled an additional session this morning to hear from people who might be affected by the bail—and that included Elise as well as members of the Owens family.

  At the last minute, though, the session had been pushed back till the afternoon, while council convened in chambers.

  “What’s this delay about? I don’t understand,” said Elise.

  She was skeptical of Blackwell and the other government attorneys. Sorrentino couldn’t blame her. She’d been through a lot trying to get the case to trial. Even so, she seemed a little too obsessed on the matter of the bail. Now that Owens had been jailed, she didn’t want him back out.

  “Don’t worry,” said Sorrentino. “It’s the usual thing.”

  “I got a call from one of Blackwell’s assistants. She told me not to wear yellow. Or talk to the press.”

  Elise scoffed, and he did, too. They both took pleasure in scoffing at the feds, at Blackwell and his obsequious assistants. Part of him understood, though. Elise had a tendency to go off sometimes.

  “Well, anyway, what you are wearing now,” said Sorrentino, “I think you have made a nice choice.”

  Elise was in gray—a longish dress with pleats and a faux collar. The collar was white. He didn’t know much about these things, but the gray wasn’t so dark as to be funereal, and it gave her a touch of dignity. She had bought a rash of new outfits, and part of him wondered about the money for it all. Regardless, the shadows under her eyes were plain enough. She had not been sleeping, he knew. Partly this had to do with the trial, and the events surrounding it, and her desire to keep the case in the public eye. Also, there was the Remembrance Day march, upcoming i
n Sacramento, a victims’ event at which she’d been asked to speak.

  “I don’t think I can take it if they let Owens out on bail—if they just let him walk out of there.”

  “If he gets bail, it will be high,” Sorrentino said. “That’s the important thing.”

  “They can’t set it high enough.”

  He reached out and put his hand on hers, trying to reassure her. At an adjacent table, a woman saw the gesture—saw, maybe, how Elise smiled at him—and he could see the disapproval on the woman’s face. He didn’t care.

  Anyway, it wasn’t like that. People could think what they wanted.

  * * *

  Sorrentino had met Elise maybe three years ago at one of those grief groups, or survival circles, whatever they were called. Sorrentino had not been there by choice, but on account of a road-rage incident on the El Camino. To avoid charges he’d agreed to see a counselor, and the counselor had sent him to the group.

  Elise had told her story that first night, or part of it anyway, and she’d told him the rest sitting with him in his car in the parking garage under the psychologist’s office. Maybe she had told him because he used to be a cop, and she thought he could do something. Or just because he listened. No matter, she told him how she’d spent years trying to ignore the past, but there had been a gaping hole. After her father had died, she tried to fill that hole. She became obsessed with the case—with trying to reopen it. Until eventually the victims’ advocates and the state legislators and the people in the DA’s office went cold at the sight of her.

  She’d gotten divorced in the process. She’d had a breakdown. At one point, she’d followed Owens and his family on the street …

  “It’s all about career with these people, the prosecutors, all of them,” she said now. “Whatever’s expedient. I have seen them operate. I heard the promises made to my father, but nothing ever happened.”

  “It’s different this time.”

  “If they let Owens out on bail, what that means to me—it means they are getting ready for a plea bargain.”

  “That’s a leap.”

  “What?” Elise snapped.

  “The atmosphere,” he tried to explain, “the political climate, it’s not the same as it was thirty years ago. They won’t just let him walk.”

  Elise glared. She was angry and did not like to be contradicted, and she regarded him as if he had somehow joined the enemy. It wasn’t fair. She got up from the table, pushing her chair back. For a second, he thought she might leave him there—but no, she just went outside and stood there smoking, looking toward the site where the bank had been.

  He wished she wouldn’t act that way. He did not like how the woman at the next table smirked at him now, as if a point had been proved.

  Still, he understood Elise’s skepticism.

  He understood how dead this case had been—how far out in the cold. He’d felt that coldness, firsthand, when he’d approached Blackwell on her behalf, maybe six months before 9/11. But now things had changed. After the towers went down, there was a different atmosphere. Antiterror laws, public fear. People out to settle old scores. So Blackwell had reopened the case.

  When Elise came back, he tried to apologize.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  Her mood had shifted. Elise was like that. She smiled at him, and he felt his heart leap. She was a young woman, and he couldn’t help the effect she had on him sometimes. She had blonde hair, more freckles than you might expect on a woman her age, a gap-toothed smile. The old biddy was still watching them, making her assumptions, but Sorrentino had seen the expression before: the same slant-eyed look, full of suspicion, that people gave to anyone who wasn’t content to die alone in his room.

  “I want to pay you, for all you’ve done,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  They’d been through this before. He knew her financial situation.

  “I told you. I got a check recently for the fund. There are people who want to help. And the first thing—”

  “There’s always strings, those donations.”

  He didn’t quite believe her. Her father had set up a legal fund years ago, but it had gone dry a long time back. Her attempts to raise money, they never worked, and it wasn’t necessary anymore, now that the state was involved. But before he said any of this, she squeezed his hand a little harder.

  “Not this time,” she said. “I’ve got the money.”

  She pushed her food away. She hadn’t eaten half of it. She seldom did. The first time he had gone out with her, he’d had to fight the impulse to finish it for her.

  “I want to pay you back. I know how far behind you are—on your alimony, on all that. It isn’t right, you shouldn’t have done all this work for nothing.”

  She wore new earrings, new shoes. The other day she’d been wearing a yellow dress, matching heels—a new wardrobe as well, though at the time he hadn’t thought about it much. Most of the women he’d known, no matter what their situation, somehow always managed to come up with money for clothes, and anyway he didn’t begrudge her. He hadn’t done this for money, but it was true, he’d worked a lot of hours with little reward.

  “All right,” he said. “But not now. Maybe later. You can pay me, if that’s what you want to do.”

  * * *

  When they entered the courtroom, Sorrentino could feel Elise prickling beside him. Murder trials were not the friendliest of things, but there was an enmity here between the attorneys as well: Blackwell and his assistants on one side of the aisle, stiff-necked and earnest, court briefs stacked in neat folders; then Jensen’s blustering crew on the other. Elise had her supporters, but the defense had filled the room with people who had worked with Owens these last years, old friends and cohorts, and the looks she got—and Sorrentino as well—were sharp-eyed and accusatory, bemused, full of condescension. Or this was how it seemed to him. Owens’s wife, by contrast, they regarded with compassion—she with her copper-colored hair and her demure skirt, carefully chosen, and the two kids on either side of her looking battered and forlorn. In a little while, the bailiff brought out Owens himself, dressed in a suit and tie, his hair trimmed. He nodded to his wife and children, and by the way he leaned, you could see for an instant his desire to embrace them.

  Sorrentino felt a stab of sympathy, but almost immediately that emotion was superceded by a wave of disgust.

  Owens’s manner was too deliberate, too staged.

  Sorrentino had no interest in hearing about what a good father Owens was, what an upstanding member of the community. How he worked long hours in a dangerous profession, searching for the truth on behalf of those who otherwise might be abandoned. He knew Elise did not look forward to it either. She sat stoically, suppressing her anger, face flushed, the red blooming from beneath her collar.

  The judge took the bench and engaged in the usual paper shuffling. Called counsel to the bench. Shuffled some more. Then addressed the courtroom.

  “After meeting with the attorneys, the prosecution has waived their right to further testimony in regard to this issue. Bail is set in the amount of two million dollars.”

  The noise rose and the judge gaveled it down.

  The amount was high enough to cripple the defense. Sorrentino saw Owens hang his head, and the wife slacken in her seat, and the two kids glance around in confusion. On the other side, Blackwell smirked into his assistant’s ear. Elise, though, sat stone-faced. Then she buried her head into his lapel and started to weep. The judge gaveled again.

  A little later, out in the hall, she seemed under control. Her makeup was ruined, though, the mascara running.

  “I am going to take care of my face,” she said.

  She seemed calm enough, but you could never tell with Elise, and Sorrentino sensed a fury underneath. She was not satisfied. She had wanted her chance to speak all these years. She had not wanted Owens out on bail at all.

  Then he saw.

  Elise headed toward the reporters congregated o
n the steps. Sorrentino went after her but it was too late.

  “This is a travesty,” Elise said. “My mother’s murderer has been let free again. The way things are in this country, today … I can understand why people might take justice into their own hands … I can understand…”

  Sorrentino put a hand on her shoulders. “Don’t, Elise, no…” Blackwell’s people were a step behind, attempting damage control, but the exchange got into the paper anyway, along with a picture of Sorrentino and Elise, earlier in the courtroom, in her moment of rage and grief, when she’d collapsed onto his lapel.

  On his face, in the picture, he noticed, oddly, a look of pleasure.

  TEN

  The next afternoon, Dante and Marilyn headed down to his father’s old place on Fresno Street. The tenants had cleared out rather abruptly, and Dante had not made any effort to fill the vacancy. Partly he blamed the case—he had already begun his work, digging backward in time. Meanwhile, he and Marilyn had discussed posting the listing on one of those swap boards, where you traded places with someone in a foreign city, but he had not, in fact, stepped inside the house for some time.

  On the way there, Marilyn’s cell went off.

  “Damn.”

  “Ignore it.”

  “I should,” she said.

  Instead, she took the call. She turned her back on Dante, huddling against the noise from the street. As she did, he glanced down along the sidewalk: at a woman standing flat-footed on the corner; at a man in shades; at a pock-faced drunk sneering his way down the block. It was his habit to look, to study the street—but there was another reason. Yesterday there’d been a call to the office. A crank—displeased that Cicero had taken the case.

  “Real-estate business,” Marilyn told him. “I need to swing by Prospero’s office, just for a minute.”

  “I’ll walk up with you.”

  “It’s client stuff.”

  “Then maybe not.”

  “I’ll meet you up there, on Fresno. I shouldn’t be too long.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll bring some pictures off the swap board,” she said. “That place in the Costa Brava, down along the Spanish coast…”