Shackles

“My realtors. And you? Who would you be?”

I told him my name. And I showed him the photostat of my investigator’s license.

“I don’t understand,” he said. His curiosity was a little stronger now, but I had the impression that it was superficial-that he didn’t really care who I was or why I was here or what might have happened at his Deer Run cabin. “Is the new tenant some sort of criminal?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Lanier. That’s why I’m trying to find him. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me his name.”

“I don’t remember it, I’m sorry. Susan has all the paperwork on the transaction.”

“Susan?”

“The woman I deal with at Richards and Kirk. Susan Belford.”

“Can you tell me when the cabin was rented?”

“In October, I think it was. No, early November. Susan was very pleased because it was for six months over the winter. That was the first time she was able to rent it over the winter.”

“Would you do me a favor, Mr. Lanier?”

“Favor?”

“Call Susan Belford and ask her to give me the name of the man who rented the cabin. His name and address.”

Lanier considered that. “All right,” he said at length. “If the man is a criminal… yes, all right.” He started toward the house, stopped after half a dozen steps, and turned to me again. “Is it nine o’clock yet?”

I looked at my watch. “No, not yet. Fifteen minutes.”

“Richards and Kirk doesn’t open until nine. Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee while we wait?”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all.”

He went onto a narrow porch, opened the door, led me into a bright, clean, comfortably furnished living room that had the stamp of an old-fashioned woman on it: antimacassars on the arms of a couch and two chairs, knick- knacks on tables and wall shelves, a framed embroidered wall motto that said: Dear House, You Are Very Small-Enough Room for Love, That’s All On an end table was an overlarge photograph of a woman in an ornate silver frame. I glanced at it as we walked by. Smiling, buxom woman of about sixty, as nondescript in her way as Lanier was in his.

I said politely, indicating the photo, “Your wife?”

It stopped him as suddenly as if I had caught his arm and yanked him still. And such an expression of naked pain came over his face that it made me wince. It lasted only a moment or two; then the mildness smoothed his features again, like a veneer over scarred wood. “My wife Clara,” he said in his emotionless voice. “She… died three years ago last December.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. She was…” He broke off, stood rigidly for a few seconds, lost in some brief, sharp memory. Then he smiled his small smile and said, “Please sit down,” and went through an archway toward the rear of the house.

I sat on one of the chairs. I could see the wall motto from there: Enough Room for Love, That’s All. And I looked elsewhere, because it made me feel Lanier’s pain again. There was no impatience in me today, for some reason; it seemed to come and go, like a malarial fever.

Lanier came back with a full coffee service on a silver tray, set in on a coffee table, poured for both of us. I said I would have mine black, and as he handed me my cup he said, “I always load mine with cream and sugar. You learn to do that in the service.”

“What branch were you in?”

“Air force. Twenty years. I probably should have stayed in; Clara thought I should have. She never minded the travel…” He broke off as he had before, as a memory took hold of his mind. Pretty soon he said, as if there had been no long pause, “But I had a good job offer. Electronics company in Sacramento. Design work, good salary-jobs like that don’t come along every day.”

“No,” I said, “they don’t.”

He sat down with his coffee. “Bought this place, bought the cabin in Deer Run, sent our daughter to college. Ruth’s.married now, lives in Menlo Park-her husband teaches history at the junior college there. I tried to give them the cabin after Clara… well, I knew I wouldn’t go back up there alone. But they didn’t want it. Too isolated, Ruth said. She never did like it much and Jim, well, he prefers water to mountains. They have a sailboat, spend most of their free time sailing on the Bay-” Abruptly he quit talking. Blinked, seemed to shake himself, and then said in a different voice, “I’m babbling. Bad habit of mine. I don’t know why I do it.”

I knew. But I said, “Don’t apologize, Mr. Lanier.”

“Ruth says I should get out more, see people, do things. She’s right, of course. I belong to the Moose Lodge and I go down there two nights a week now, play cards, play chess. Bowl one night a week too. But that’s only three nights. Movies once in a while, but what else can I do? Go to seniors dances, try to meet someone else? My God, I-” He stopped again, took a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m boring you. You don’t want to hear my tale of woe.”

“I don’t mind. I know what it’s like for you.”

He raised his head. “You’ve lost someone too? Someone you loved deeply?”

“Not the way you have. Not permanently.”

“Cancer,” he said with sudden savage anger, “goddamn cancer. I watched her die. I watched her waste away and die and there was nothing I could do. She was always such a strong woman, rosy-cheeked, healthy… she weighed ninety-six pounds when she died. Ninety-six pounds.” And he began to cry.

There was nothing for me to do or say. I sat there with the coffee cup and saucer in my hands and watched him mourn and thought about Kerry, what she’d been through the past three months, because that is what you do in this kind of situation: You turn a stranger’s grief inward, personalize it.

Lanier’s breakdown lasted less than a minute. I watched him take control of himself, the way you take hold of something with both hands. When he looked at me again it was with embarrassment. I wanted to tell him not to be embarrassed, there was no shame in weeping over the tragic loss of a loved one; but those words from me would have sounded hollow, and he wouldn’t have listened to them anyway because he was already on his feet, moving away from me. He stood facing the empty fireplace, drying his eyes and face with a handkerchief. When he turned back toward me his movements were once more slow and methodical and his expression was a studied blank. The emotion had been dammed up again behind the wall of mildness and disinterest.

“It must be nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ll try Richards and Kirk now. Susan always comes in at nine, unless she happens to have a showing.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to speak to her yourself?”

“That might be best. If you’ll explain who I am first.”

He nodded and went to where a telephone sat on a rattan table. Susan Belford had come in on schedule, it developed. She gave Lanier an argument when he told her what he wanted and what I wanted, but only a small one: There were maybe two minutes of discussion before he said, “I’ll put him on, Susan, thank you,” and motioned for me to come take the receiver.

“Ms. Belford?”

“Susan Belford, yes. Mr. Lanier said… you’re a private detective?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, you know, we… it isn’t out policy… I’m only doing this as a favor to Mr. Lanier.” She had a twitchy, middle-aged voice that kept going up and down register so that some words had a shrill intonation, as if they were being goosed out of her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, well… about the man who rented Mr. Lanier’s property in Deer Run… what did you want to know? I have the file here in front of me.”

“His name, first of all.”

“Lawrence Jacobs.”

Another one that meant nothing to me. “And his address?”