An Equal Opportunity Death Read Free

and was back leaning on the bar. His face showed no change, none of the anger that had been in his voice. I wondered if he were presenting me with his professional face. “Vejay,” he said, “I’m sorry, really disappointed, but I’m going to have to take a raincheck”—he threw a wry look at the window—“on that trip to the city with you.”
    “Do you mean you’re not going?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, my face as professional-looking as his. I suspected my performance wasn’t up to his standards.
    “No. It’s just that the things I have to do there are going to require more of my attention than I thought.”
    “I’ll bet.” I didn’t have to add, She, whoever she is, wants all your attention. Frank understood.
    “No, Vejay. That’s just being silly.”
    I stood up. “It’s not being silly. I expected better of you. I would expect that of any friend. I don’t like to be discarded when something better comes along.”
    “It’s not that. Believe me.”
    There was nothing more to say. I grabbed my slicker, and stomped out the door, feeling at once like Barbara Stanwyck in some old movie and like any twelve-year-old. I knew that when the rum wore off, any suggestion of Stanwyck would be gone.

CHAPTER 2
    M Y ANGER HAD PROPELLED me down the steps before I stopped to put on my slicker. I was soaked. I stood there in the rain, pushing one and then the other thoroughly wet arm into the sleeves, then fiddled with the zipper. My truck was only twenty feet away. I could have run for it, without my slicker, and been drier.
    When I looked up, zipper zipped, a battered black pickup was stopping in the lot. The horn blew a greeting and, before I could move, Chris Fortimiglio climbed out.
    “Vejay. You off today?” Chris, tall and muscular, was one of those blond Italians. He was younger than I, maybe twenty-five, but already he was running the fishing business that had been in his family for three generations. The Fortimiglios were pillars of the old river families, never making much, but always surviving, always with some relative on the city council, or selling tickets for the St. Agnes pancake breakfast. There had been a period when fishing, particularly salmon fishing, provided a good income—when the Fortimiglios had added two bedrooms and a family room to their house—but now the whole area was overfished. The Russian trawlers came in close a couple of years. There had been an oil spill. The Fortimiglios were still surviving, but I knew that they closed off those new bedrooms in the winter, and the family room was used for storage.
    “No. Listen, Chris, I’m sick. I’m supposed to be home. I should never have left the house. Don’t tell anyone you saw me here, okay?”
    “But why?” He moved closer, eyeing me diagnostically.
    “I called in sick to work. If they suspected I wasn’t really sick they could give me a bad time, even suspend me.”
    “Oh. Okay. But as long as you’re here, why don’t you come in and have something to drink?”
    “No.”
    “Wow! You mad?”
    “No.… Yes. I don’t know. I’m just annoyed with Frank. I suppose it will pass.”
    “Did you have an argument?” It sounded so soap-opera-ish as he said it that I could almost see him recategorizing Frank’s and my friendship. And I could see the entire Fortimiglio clan discussing it. And Sam Fortimiglio, Chris’s uncle, worked for PG&E.
    “No. It’s nothing,” I said. “But really, Chris, please don’t mention to anyone that you saw me here today. Promise?”
    “Sure.”
    “No one. Not even family.”
    “My family wouldn’t …”
    “No one.”
    He sighed. “Okay. It seems odd to me. But you city types do weird things. So, okay.”
    “Thanks, Chris.” I squeezed his arm and headed to my truck. As I settled in the seat, I could see Chris start up the steps, stop, as if thinking, then turn and walk back to his pickup.
    I hoped I didn’t make Chris think badly of Frank. And I hoped I didn’t make