Cold Springs(12)

Mallory wasn't sure what she was waiting for. Katherine to wake up and answer the phone. Her parents to come home and answer it. Someone. Anyone.

Years later, Mallory would wonder if she'd ever stopped waiting, if she'd ever left that black chair, staring at Katherine's doorway, waiting for someone who would never come back.

PART II

2002

1

Talia Montrose was an hour away from a whole new life.

She had twenty grand in a leather satchel in the trunk of her LeBaron, a receipt in her pocket for two hundred thirty thousand more, just deposited in a brand new BofA account.

Her old checking account was closed, her meager savings liquidated. She'd quit her job at Pay-Rite, told her general manager, Caleb, to go f**k himself for once instead of the teenage cashiers.

Talia had three sets of winter clothes, a photo album, a box of Tampax and a down ski jacket, all folded tightly into a single paisley suitcase.

Her palm was still warm from the rich man's handshake—her fingers cramped from signing and initialing the contracts. She could still smell his cologne—alien and spicy, like a Middle Eastern drink. She could still see the cold eyes of the Mexican who stood behind him.

After making sure she understood the deal, making sure she had signed in all the right places, the rich man had smiled, and given her the satchel, and said, “Off you go.”

Too easy. She was still in shock.

Eight A.M., Vincent would be waiting for her at the Pancake & Chicken House on Broadway. Vincent had a gun. He could protect her, and the cash. They would turn the LeBaron toward Tahoe, and they would never look back.

So why was she going back to the house—the place she had been so anxious to be rid of?

She turned on Poplar, drove through the neighborhood she knew too well—the grave-sized yards, the pastel siding, the aluminum-foiled windows and cement flower planters that looked like Easter baskets. Brand-new cars and satellite dishes marked the drug dealers' houses. Old Mr. Benjamin was out in his white tank top and his U.S. Navy cap, watering his grass.

Wasn't a bad-looking neighborhood. People heard West Oakland on the news, they heard about the homicide rate and drugs and gangs, they thought about a war zone—fires in trash cans and burned-out buildings and evil-looking kids with machine guns.

Truth was scarier than that. Truth was West Oakland looked like a normal place. Clean, tidy, most of the residents hardworking, decent people. You had to look close to spot the bullet holes in the doorjambs and the windowsills. You had to be unlucky, or just plain stupid, to catch a drive-by. And the kids—you couldn't tell the dangerous ones by looking at them. Talia knew that firsthand.

She took a left on Jefferson, past the homes of childhood friends—more and more of them dead, the older she got. She passed places where she'd grown up, raised her children, met her men.

Six houses down on the left, the great brown stumps that used to be her palm trees years ago rose up in the front yard like a leper's fingers. The house's siding, once bright yellow, had faded to the color of stained underwear, tattooed with rust from the years it had spent under a ton of Johnny Jay's ornate metalwork. The roof sagged. Half the windows were webbed with cracks.

Place wasn't worth a quarter million, even if the rich man's bullshit was true about a redevelopment project. No, this wasn't going to be the next Emeryville. They weren't going to put up any f**king artist lofts here. He'd just paid her off, plain and simple—paid her to go away. And she'd jumped at the chance.

She backed the car up the driveway, took her satchel out of the trunk. No way she was gonna leave that much money unattended.

The autumn air felt like satin.

A pumpkin was smashed on her porch. Somebody had put a paper black cat on the door, too. Not her, she hadn't been home in four days. Been planning with Vincent, doing his coke, dreaming of fifties and hundreds. They wouldn't have gotten any trick-or-treaters here anyway. Never did.

She put the key in the lock and found the door was open. Damn. She hoped the kids hadn't trashed the place. She figured the deal was final with the house, but she didn't know—hadn't understood half the stuff she signed. She didn't want anything going wrong.

She stood in the living room and wondered why she felt guilty. Wasn't a thing here except hardwood floors, the old green sofa, the particleboard table. Morning sun was soaking through the windows, filling the old gray curtains with light.

She had lived her whole miserable adult life in this house, failed over and over with her children, her relationships. Her first husband, Johnny Jay, the metalworker, spent years caging up the house in decoration, as if it could make up for the fact that he couldn't keep Talia home with his manhood. Her second husband, Elbridge, gave her four more children and a world of hurt before getting himself shot to death. A dozen other men—Bill, the night manager at the Pay-Rite, who supplied her kids with prescription drugs; Ali, the Nation of Islam bodyguard with his friggin' bow tie, who thought Johnny Jay's metalwork was satanic and worked every weekend to tear it down, painted Talia's bedroom for her and paid the utilities and turned out to like little girls better than he liked her. And those were only the highlights. All of them had left marks on Talia, and her kids, and this house.

So why was she back here?

She thought about Vincent—with his gun, his silver tooth and his brilliant smile. Doorman at the Royale Club, he had some fine manners. He'd been nice to her—even nicer since she'd told him about the money.