The Shake
didn’t know why her husband’s search had taken him to Vacaville on the day of his murder.Nothing in the file suggested any progress toward explaining Arnaud’s death. There were a few other entries consisting of sentence fragments ending in one or more question marks. At the bottom of the second page, Hamilton had printed “Ron Richardson?” followed by “North CA drugs. Major Player?” Then some time later, with a different pen, he’d added the word “Bloodsucker,” the same thing Francine had written on the photo I’d found in her closet. I wondered which of the two, Hamilton or Francine, had first used the word to refer to Richardson.
Coincidences have a way of proliferating themselves, compounding themselves, attracting more coincidence, like a spider building a web, until an interrelatedness becomes visible and tangible. This is really just a convenient way to think about it. The webs of interrelatedness are there all the time. We don’t notice them because connections are mostly hidden in an overabundance of details, like the fibers hidden inside a rope. The only way to see the individual threads is to unravel the rope. Humans are generally too busy with the rope to be bothered with the threads. People have things to do, lives to live, responsibilities to attend to. Their very survival depends on their ability to filter out most of the inconsequential details and focus on their priorities. Life is short, so people attend to what they can. The rest becomes background noise.
Hamilton’s priorities required him to do the opposite: unravel the rope to see where the threads went. But apparently he hadn’t gotten very far. Conspicuously absent from his case notes was any mention of Danny Weiss. Which meant, I suppose, either Hamilton hadn’t made the connection to Weiss, or that Hamilton didn’t keep good notes.
I put everything back in the folder and returned it to the file cabinet. I went through the other drawers, but didn’t find anything of interest. It looked like most of Hamilton’s work was marital related surveillance. On my way out, I peeked through the living room curtains. The street looked quiet, so instead of leaving the way I’d come in, I walked casually out the front door, retrieved my bike and rode away.
Chapter 12
Karla sent me an email the next evening.
Shake,
Ever use iChat?
KL
I was pleased to see that whatever conflicts may have arisen over the events in Sloughhouse, she was apparently able to resolve them in favor of keeping her job.
I wrote back:
Karla
Occasionally. My screen name is ‘darkMatter.’ Since I’m writing, I’d like you to pick me up at the footbridge on Thursday evening at 9:00 p.m. There’s a movie playing at the Tower Theater I’d like to see. If you’re not interested in watching the film, you can drop me off at the theater and pick me up when it’s over. If you’d like to see it, you’re welcome to accompany me. It’s a Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers.
Shake
Thursday night was cold, with a light, steady drizzle. Karla was waiting when I got to the footbridge. I shook the water off my umbrella, closed it and placed it on the floor in front of the seat before getting in. I could feel her watching me. When I looked, she was smiling.
“Hello, Karla.”
“Hello, Shake.”
“Is something amusing?” I asked.
She put the car in gear and pulled away. “I was just noticing how tidy you are.”
“Tidy? Is that a euphemism for something?”
My question seemed to fluster her. “No, I didn’t mean anything by it. I guess I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“Making any headway?” I asked.
The expression on her face suggested she’d given it some serious thought. “None at all.”
“Aitken Roshi says the point isn’t to clear up the mystery, but to make the mystery clear.”
“What’s an aching roshi?” she asked.
“Roshi means old teacher. It’s a term of respect used in certain Zen sects. Aitken is the man’s name. Robert Aitken.”
Her attention was taken up with driving as she accelerated onto the freeway heading downtown. After we’d merged into the flow of traffic, she returned to the conversation. “Are you a Zen Buddhist?”
“I’m more interested in the art than the religion.”
“You could be, though. A Zen person, I mean. However you say that. I think that’s kind of what I meant by tidy. Zen tidy, not like, I don’t know... not anal-retentive tidy.”
“Not to change the subject, but are you going to drop me off or come in and watch the film?”
“Come in, if that’s all right.”
“Good choice,” I said. “Have you seen any of Jarmusch’s films?”
“No, but after I got your email, I went online and read a review of Broken Flowers. And a little about Jim Jarmusch, too.”
“I’ve been a fan of his since Stranger Than Paradise, one of his early movies, back in ’84, I think. A bit before your time.”
The Tower Theater and the Crest Theater on J Street were the only two remaining pre-mall-era theaters in Sacramento. They were the only two theaters that screened independent alternatives to the big studio productions. Developers had been scheming for years to tear the Tower down. But so far, community resistance had held off the wrecking ball. I didn’t particularly like the theater itself. It was old and musty, though not entirely without charm. The staff, to their credit, hadn’t been completely homogenized by a corporate image. They looked a bit fringe, leaning toward the gothic or grunge or something along those lines, which meant my own somewhat funereal pallor didn’t raise eyebrows at the ticket counter.
It was the last show on a Thursday night, so there wasn’t much of a crowd. I didn’t mind crowds so much, but people sometimes unconsciously sensed danger in my proximity. It was probably something coded in their genes. Most of the time, they didn’t even know it was happening, but their reactions were always tangible to me, like a very mild electric current in the air. I liked it, but it made me hungry, so it