"I told him not to," said Sally Rainwater. "He said he was going to do it anyway. Pure Pete. I assumed he was kidding me because he kidded me about a lot of things."
"Apparently not this."
"What did he want to do, exactly?"
"Nobody can find the letters."
It was eight that night and the rain had stopped. McMichael and Sally walked south down the shoreline of Imperial Beach. The sand was cold and the stars bright and the pier lights made pools of silver on the rough black sea.
"You should have told me," said McMichael.
"It seemed insane," she said. "And totally for show, so I didn't tell you. He was going to change his will for me. It's got an ugly ring to it and it implies ugly things about me. If I had known that he had done it- I would have told you. I apologize if I screwed up your investigation, but I don't think like a cop."
"You still should have told me."
"You should have asked."
"I need to know everything."
"Then that's going to be an awful long talk," said Sally. "I worked for him for eight months. Forty hours a week is one hell of a lot of time. Ask me anything and I'll tell you, but I can't read your mind. Come on."
They walked down the pier, past the place where Hector had parked just a week ago to watch the monstrous waves roll past.
"I don't see how a law firm can just lose letters," she said. "What's going on there?"
"The old man is forgetful and confused. But I think it's more than that. His son says the letters were about the Church. Not you."
Sally laughed quietly and shook her head. "Pete was pissed at the Catholics, I know that. I think he wanted a new church named after himself."
"So says Grothke Junior."
"Will you hold my hand, or am I a suspect again?"
"No. Sorry."
Taking her hand McMichael felt angry and stupid and he knew he could either kick Sally Rainwater or himself or just let it go. It was not in his nature to let things go.
"Cheer up," she said. "You need wine and dinner."
They got a booth in a little steakhouse near the pier. There was a good fire in the fireplace and hardly any customers. McMichael drank a glass of red wine, felt better. He looked at Sally and was glad to be here with her, anger and stupidity aside. She wore light makeup and she'd brushed her straw-colored hair out long and loose. A black turtleneck sweater and jeans and the same kind of low-heeled boots she'd worn at Pete's that night. Pearls in her ears. In the warm orange light of the table candle she seemed singular and exotic.
She told him a story about Pete and her trying to hook up a new VCR, how Pete got so mad he ended up throwing it out a window, then tried to return it to the store and told them it was like that when he took it out of the box. She told him about cruising Point Loma for hours some nights, her driving and Pete yapping about the old days and the Portuguese, about the uncle who drowned when a line caught around his foot and a big fish pulled him overboard and swam down with him, the cousin who lost her hand at the Westgate Cannery, Mary's triplets and Frank's polio and Crazy Eva who had her heart broken and shot the guy twice but didn't kill him and when he got out of the hospital she ran over him with a car, which did. Sally said whenever they'd cruise Point Loma they'd stop at St. Agnes's and say prayers and sometimes Pete would leave the place with tears on his cheeks and sometimes he'd have that twinkle in his eye and she figured he'd prayed for God to fix his enemies. And the nights with Victor- lots of nights just hanging around with Victor- hit a restaurant or burger place then the Waterfront while father and son talked and argued and remembered the old days.
"I'm trying to tell you everything," she said. "How do I know what's important and what's not?"
"Keep going. I'm interested in enemies."
"He had a lot of them. He thought people were after him, after his things. He didn't trust most people. Didn't even trust his granddaughter, Patricia."
McMichael looked at her over his menu. "Tell me about that."
"He said if she ever asked me for a house key the answer was no. I asked him why and Pete said it was none of my business. Then that Pete smile- the one where you couldn't tell if he was wicked or just amused. I dropped it, because I figured it really wasn't any of my business, but I think she'd disappointed or hurt him in some way. Could have been years ago, for all I know."
The waitress took their orders and brought more wine.
"So," said McMichael. "Did Patricia ever ask you for a key?"
"No. Never."
McMichael leaned back and let the warmth from the fireplace seep into him. He watched Sally Rainwater stare into the flames.
"Pete talked a lot about Anna," said Sally. "She's only been gone three years. They got married when they were seventeen. Pete quit school at fourteen to fish. He got his first boat at fifteen, to work the market trade. But he said the Italians had the markets cornered and the fish were getting thin, so he needed a bigger boat for longer runs. Anna's family didn't have much money, but Pete convinced them to loan him six hundred dollars for a bigger boat. He paid them back in two years. Ten years later he bought them a two-story house off of Rosecrans."
"Sounds like Pete talked more about Pete," said McMichael.
"Always! He really was an arrogant old man. But he was sweet, too. He told me the only regret he had was all the worry he caused Anna. He wished he'd have been gentler with her, because life was just as hard for a woman left onshore as it was for a man who went to sea. Three, four months sometimes. Pete said all the money and gifts in the world didn't make up for the days and nights they'd never get to spend with each other. He really, genuinely missed her. He wanted that lost time back, now that he couldn't get it. Don't we all?"
He saw how Pete Braga could have fallen for Sally. It wasn't only youth and beauty and character. It was something simpler, too. She was there to receive what Pete never gave Anna enough of- his hours.
"What did he say about his will?"
Sally sipped her wine. "He told me once that he was going to make sure I got the house when he died. The first time he said that I think I ignored him. The second time I told him I didn't want his stinking house. He liked that. He laughed at that. He said it did stink- it stunk like tuna fish. That was all he ever said about the topic."
With a cool little wobble of nerves, McMichael remembered Hector's words: Maybe she wants the really cool stuff. Like a house at the beach.
"Why didn't you want it?"
She looked at him steadily. It struck McMichael that she was weighing something in him rather than in herself.
"It didn't seem right," she said. "I did accept gifts from Pete- you saw some of them. I told you about the ten grand for the car. I thought about those gifts before I took them. I thought a lot about what was right and what wasn't. I guessed at his fortune to understand what these things were costing him. And I came to believe it was good for me to take them. But his home? Where he'd lived with his wife and raised a family? No, that had a completely different meaning to me."
"What did he want in return?"
"Nothing."
"You believed that?"
"I did and still do. He ordered me to his bed the second week I was there. I told him I wouldn't, and if he brought it up again I'd have to quit. He didn't, and that was that."
McMichael said nothing, thinking of Pete and Angel and Victor.
"It surprised me, Tom. I was ready for that second pass. I was ready to go find another job. But what he wanted was my time and my company. Though he understood all along that for me it was work. He understood that I gave my time for his money."
"Maybe he was going to rewrite his will for you anyway."
"I guess Pete was capable of that."
"Old Grothke said so."
"Pete also loved to needle and tease and taunt and shock," she said. "When he gave somebody something, he wanted credit for it. He wanted to be thanked and lauded and praised. So I think if he'd made that change, he'd have told me."
McMichael told her about Pete's calls and visits to the firm, his meetings with Grothke Jr. at the Seamarket Restaurant after mass at St. Agnes's. "He kept the mailing receipts in his wallet, that's how important those letters were. By early January Pete was ready to change law firms. He was talking to Myron Camlin about taking over his legal affairs. A few days later he was dead."
She studied the fire for a long while. "He didn't say one word about any of that to me."
They had another glass of wine after dinner. They talked about Johnny and autographed guitars and Sally's life at the age of seven: dirt poor in the town of Hagville, Kentucky – a place she said she would never go back to so long as she lived. McMichael saw the darkness pass over her face as she said this, realized it was no joke at all. Once… when I was hardly more than a girl, a man died and I could have prevented it…
"I got a job," she said. "Elderly woman out on Coronado. Very nice. I'll be with her five nights a week from five until eleven. You can get me there on the cell, anytime."
"I'll call," he said.
She smiled and brushed his hand lightly.
Behind Sally's little house they stopped under a streetlight and kissed. He wondered idly if they looked like a movie. Her hands were cold underneath his jacket. McMichael surrendered to the taste of her, his vision focusing south to the great blackness of the borderland and Tijuana, where the faint lights dotted the hills. He felt strong and protective and tender. She led him by the hand from the sidewalk to her room, letting go only long enough to fish the keys from her purse.