by Sue Grafton
The man’s mouth drooped with skepticism. “I seen him on Monday and then he gone off again. Only other peoples must want him too. He acts like a man who’s runnin’ and don’t want to be caught. What you want wid him?”
“He wrote me a bum check.”
He shot me a look of astonishment. “You take a check from a man like that? Lord God, girl! What’s the matter wid you?”
I had to laugh. “I know. It’s my own damn fault. I thought maybe I could catch him before he skipped out permanently.”
He shook his head, unable to sympathize. “Don’t take nothin’ from the likes of him. That’s your first mistake. Comin’ ‘round this place may be the next.”
“Is there anybody here who might know how to get in touch with him?”
He pointed the blade of his knife toward an apartment two doors down. “Axe Lovella. She might know. Then again, she might not.”
“She’s a friend of his?”
“Not hardly. She’s his wife.”
I felt somewhat more hopeful as I knocked at apartment 26. I was afraid he’d moved out altogether. The door was a hollowcore with a hole kicked into the bottom about shin high. The sliding glass window was open six inches, a fold of drapery sticking out. A crack ran diagonally across the pane, held together by a wide band of electrician’s tape. I could smell something cooking inside, kale or collard greens, with a whisper of vinegar and bacon grease.
The door opened and a woman peered out at me. Her upper lip was puffy, like the kind of scrape children get falling off bicycles when they first learn to ride. Her left eye had been blackened not long ago and it was streaked now with midnight blue, the surrounding tissue a rainbow of green and yellow and gray. Her hair was the color of hay, parted in the middle and snagged up over each ear with a bobby pin. I couldn’t even guess how old she might be. Younger than I expected, given John Daggett’s age, which had to be fifty plus.
“Lovella Daggett?”
“That’s right.” She seemed reluctant to admit that much.
“I’m Kinsey Millhone. I’m looking for John.”
She licked uneasily at her upper lip as if she was still unfamiliar with its new shape and size. Some of the scraped area had formed a scab, which resembled nothing so much as half a moustache. “He’s not here. I don’t know where he’s at. What’d you want him for?”
“He hired me to do some work, but he paid me with a bum check. I was hoping we could get it straightened out.”
She studied me while she processed the information. “Hired you to do what?”
“Deliver something.”
She didn’t believe a bit of that. “You a cop?”
“No.”
“What are you, then?”
I showed her the photostat of my license by way of reply. She turned and walked away from the door, leaving it open behind her. I gathered this was her method of inviting me in.
I stepped into the living room and closed the door behind me. The carpeting was that green cotton shag so admired by apartment owners everywhere. The only furniture in the room was a card table and two plain wooden chairs. A six-foot rectangle of lighter carpeting along one wall suggested that there’d once been a couch on the spot, and a pattern of indentations in the rug indicated the former presence of two heavy chairs and a coffee table, arranged in what decorators refer to as “a conversational grouping.” Instead of conversation these days, Daggett apparently got right down to busting her chops, breaking anything else that came to hand. The one lamp I saw had been snapped off at the socket and the wires were hanging out like torn ligaments.
“Where’d the furniture go?”
“He hocked it all last week. Turns out he used the payments for his bar bill. The car went before that. It was a piece of junk, anyway, but I’d paid for it. You ought to see what I’ve got for a bed these days. Some peed-on old mattress he found out on the street.”
There were two bar stools at the counter and I perched on one, watching as Lovella ambled into the small space that served as a kitchen. An aluminum saucepan sat on a gas flame on the stove, the water in it boiling furiously. On one of the other back burners, there was a battered aluminum kettle filled with simmering greens.
Lovella wore blue jeans and a plain white tee shirt wrong-side out, the Fruit of the Loom label visible at the back of her neck. The bottom of the shirt had been pulled tight and knotted to form a halter, leaving her midriff bare. “You want coffee? I was just fixing some.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
She rinsed a cup under the hot water faucet and gave it a quick swipe with a paper towel. She set it on the counter and spooned instant coffee into it and then used the same paper towel as a potholder when she reached for the saucepan. The water sputtered against the edge; of the pan as she poured. She added water to a second cup, gave a quick stir to the contents, and pushed it toward me with the spoon still resting up against the rim.
“Daggett’s a jerk. They should lock him up for life,” she remarked, almost idly, I thought.
“Did he do that to you?” I asked, my gaze flicking across her bruised face.
She fixed a pair of dead gray eyes on me without bothering to reply. Up close, I could see that she wasn’t much more than twenty-five. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter, her coffee cup cradled in her hands. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts were big, as soft and droopy as balloons filled with water, her nipples pressing against the tee-shirt fabric like puckered knots. I wondered if she was a hooker. I’d known a few with the same careless sexuality – all surface, no feeling underneath.
“How long have you been married?”
“You care if I have a cigarette?”
“It’s your place. You can do anything you want,” I said.
That netted me a wan smile, the first I’d seen. She reached for a pack of Pall Mall 100s, flipped on the gas burner, and lit her cigarette from it, tilting her head so her hair wouldn’t catch fire. She took a deep drag and exhaled it, blowing a cloud of smoke at me. “Six weeks,” she said, answering my question belatedly. “We were pen pals after he got sent to San Luis. Wrote for a year and then I married him the minute he got out. Dumb? Jesus. Can you believe I did that?”
I shrugged noncommittally. She didn’t really care if I believed it or not. “How’d you connect in the first place?”
“A buddy of his. Guy named Billy Polo I used to date. They’d sit and talk about women and my name came up. I guess Billy made me sound like real hot stuff, so Daggett got in touch.”
I took a sip of my coffee. It had that flat, nearly sour taste of instant, with tiny clumps of coffee powder floating at the edge. “Do you have any milk for this?”
“Oh, sure. Sorry,” she said. She moved over to the refrigerator where she took out a small can of Carnation.
It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but I added some to my coffee, intrigued as evaporated milk rose to the surface in a series of white dots. I wondered if a fortune teller could read the pattern, like tea leaves. I thought I spied some indigestion in my future, but I wasn’t sure.
“Daggett’s a charmer when he wants,” she said. “Give him a couple of drinks, though, and he’s mean as a snake.”
That was a story I’d heard before. “Why don’t you leave?” said I, as I always do.
“Because he’d come after me is why,” she said snappishly. “You don’t know him. He’d kill me without giving it a second thought. Same thing if I called the cops. Talk back to that man and he’ll punch your teeth down your throat. He hates women is what’s the matter with him. Of course, when he sobers up, he can charm your socks off. Anyway, I’m hoping he’s gone for good. He got a phone call Monday morning and he was out of here like a shot. I haven’t heard from him since. Of course, the phone was disconnected yesterday so I don’t know how he’d reach me even if he wanted to.”
“Why don’t you talk to his parole officer?”
“I guess I could,” she said reluctantly. “He repo
rts to the guy every time he turns around. For two days he had a job, but he quit that. Of course, he’s not supposed to drink. I guess he tried to play by the rules at first, but it was too much.”
“Why not get out while you have the chance?”
“And go where? I don’t have a nickel to my name.”
“There are shelters for battered women. Call the rape crisis center. They’ll know.”
She gestured dismissively. “Jesus, I love people like you. You ever had a guy punch you out?”
“Not one I was married to,” I said. “I wouldn’t put up with that shit.”
“That’s what I used to say, sister, but I’ll tell you what. You don’t get away as easy as all that. Not with a bastard like Daggett. He swears he’d follow me to the ends of the earth and he would.”
“What was he in prison for?”
“He never said and I never asked. Which was also dumb. It didn’t make any difference to me at first. He was fine for a couple weeks. Just like a kid, you know? And sweet? Lord, he trotted around after me like a puppy dog. We couldn’t get enough of each other and it all seemed just like the letters we wrote. Then he got into the Jack Daniel’s one night and the shit hit the fan.”
“Did he ever mention the name Tony Gahan?”
“Nuh-uh. Who’s he?”
“I’m not sure. Some kid he asked me to find.”
“What’d he pay you with? Can I see the check?”
I took it out of my handbag and laid it on the counter. I thought it best not to mention the cashier’s check. I didn’t think she’d take kindly to his giving money away. “I understand Limardo is a fabricated name.”
She studied the check. “Yeah, but Daggett did keep some money in this account. I think he cleaned it out just before he left.” She took a drag of her cigarette as she handed back the check. I managed to turn my head before she blew smoke in my face again.
“That phone call he got Monday, what was it about? Do you know?”
“Beats me. I was off at the Laundromat. I got home and he was still on the phone, his face as gray as that dish rag. He hung up quick and then started shovin’ stuff in a duffel. He turned the place upside down lookin’ for his bank book. I was afraid he’d come after me, thinkin’ I took it, but I guess he was too freaked out to worry about me.”
“He told you that?”
“No, but he was cold sober and his hands were shaking bad.”
“You have any idea where he might have gone?”
A look flashed through her eyes, some emotion she concealed by dropping her gaze. “He only had one friend and that was Billy Polo up in Santa Teresa. If he needed help, that’s where he’d go. I think he used to have family up there too, but I don’t know what happened to them. He never talked much about that.”
“So Polo’s out of prison?”
“I heard he got out just recently.”
“Well, maybe I’ll track him down since that’s the only lead I have. In the meantime, would you find a phone and call me if you hear from either one?” I took out a business card and jotted my home address and phone on the back. “Call collect.”
She looked at both sides of the card. “What do you think is goin’ on?”
“I don’t know and I don’t much care. As soon as I run him down, I’ll clean up this business and bail out.”
Chapter 3
*
As long as I was in the area, I went by the bank. The woman in charge of customer service couldn’t have been less helpful. She was dark haired, in her early twenties, and new at the job I gathered because she greeted my every request with the haunted look of someone who isn’t quite sure of the rules and therefore says no to everything. She would not verify “Alvin Limardo’s” account number or the fact that the account had been closed. She would not tell me if there was, perhaps, another account in John Daggett’s name. I knew there had to be a registered copy of the cashier’s check itself, but she refused to verify the information he’d given at the time. I kept thinking there was some other tack I might take, especially with that much money at stake. Surely, the bank must care what happened to twenty-five thousand dollars. I stood at the counter and stared at the woman, and she stared back. Maybe she hadn’t understood.
I took out the photostat of my license and pointed. “Look,” I said, “You see this? I’m a private investigator. I’ve got a real problem here. I was hired to deliver a cashier’s check, but now I can’t find the man who gave it to me and I don’t know the whereabouts of the person who’s supposed to receive it and I’m just trying to get a lead so I can do what I was hired to do.”
“I understand that,” she said.
“But you won’t give me any information, right?”
“It’s against bank regulations.”
“Isn’t it against bank regulations for Alvin Limardo to write me a bad check?”
“Yes.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with it?” I said. I really knew the answer… eat it, dum-dum… but I was feeling stubborn and perverse.
“Take him to small claims court,” she said.
“But I can’t find him. He can’t be hauled into court if nobody knows where he is.”
She stared at me blankly, offering no comment.
“What about the twenty-five thousand?” I said. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I have no idea.”
I stared down at the desk. When I was in kindergarten, I was a biter and I still struggle with the urge. It just feels good, you know? “I want to speak to your supervisor.”
“Mr. Stallings? He’s gone for the day.”
“Well, is there anybody else here who might give me some help on this?”
She shook her head. “I’m in charge of customer service.”
“But you’re not doing a thing. How can you call it customer service when you don’t do shit?”
Her mouth turned prim. “Please don’t use language like that around me. It’s very offensive.”
“What do I have to do to get help around here?”
“Do you have an account with us?”
“If I did, would you help?”
“Not with this. We’re not supposed to divulge information about bank customers.”
This was silly. I walked away from her desk. I wanted to make a withering remark, but I couldn’t think of one. I knew I was just mad at myself for taking the job to begin with, but I was hoping to lay a little ire off on her… a pointless enterprise. I got back in my car and headed toward the freeway. When I reached Santa Teresa, it was 4:35. I bypassed the office altogether and went home. My disposition improved the minute I walked in. My apartment was once a single-car garage and consists now of one room, fifteen feet on a side, with a narrow extension on the right that serves as a kitchenette, separated from the living area by a counter. The space is arranged with cunning: a stackable washer-dryer tucked in beside the kitchenette, bookshelves, drawers and storage compartments built into the wall. It’s tidy and self-contained and all of it suits me absolutely. I have a six-foot convertible sofa that I usually sleep on as is, a desk, a chair, an endtable, and plump pillows that serve as additional seating if anyone comes over to sit. My bathroom is one of those preformed fiberglass units with everything molded into it, including a towel bar, a soap holder, and a cutout for a window that looks out at the street. Sometimes I stand in the bathtub, elbows resting on the sill, and stare at passing cars, just thinking how lucky I am. I love being single. It’s almost like being rich.
I dropped my handbag on the desk and hung my jacket on a peg. I sat on the couch and pulled off my boots, then padded over to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of white zinfandel and a corkscrew. At intervals, I try to behave like a person with class, which is to say I drink wine from a bottle instead of a cardboard box. I pulled the cork and poured myself a glass. I crossed to the desk, taking the telephone book from the top drawer, trailing telephone cord, directory, and wine glass over to the sofa. I set the wine
glass on the endtable and thumbed through the book to see if Billy Polo was listed. Of course, he wasn’t. I looked up the name Gahan. No dice. I drank some wine and tried to think what to do next.
On an impulse, I checked for the name Daggett. Lovella had mentioned that he once lived up here. Maybe he still had relatives in town.
There were four Daggetts listed. I started dialing them in order, saying the same thing each time. “Oh, hi. I’m trying to reach a John Daggett, who used to live in this area. Can you tell me if this is the correct number?”
On the first two calls, I drew a blank, but with the third, the man who answered responded to my query with one of those odd silences that indicate that information is being processed.
“What did you want with him?” he asked. He sounded like he was in his sixties, his phrasing tentative, alert to my response, but undecided how much he was willing to reveal.
He was certainly skipping right down to the tricky part. From everything I’d heard about Daggett, he was a bum, so I didn’t dare claim to be a friend of his. If I admitted he owed me money, I was going to have the phone slammed down in my ear. Ordinarily, in a situation like this, I’d insinuate that I had money for him, but somehow I didn’t think that would fly. People are getting wise to that shit.
I laid out the first lie that occurred to me. “Well, to tell you the truth,” I said, “I’ve only met John once, but I’m trying to get in touch with a mutual acquaintance and I think John has his address and telephone number.”
“Who were you looking to get in touch with?”
That caught me off-guard, as I hadn’t made that part up yet. “Who? Um… Alvin Limardo. Has John ever mentioned Alvin?”
“No, I don’t believe so. But, now, you may have the wrong party. The John Daggett that used to live here is currently in prison and he’s been there, oh I’d say nearly two years.” His manner suggested a man whose retirement has invested even a wrong number with some interesting possibilities. Still, it was clear I’d hit pay dirt.
“That’s the one I’m talking about,” I said. “He was up in San Luis Obispo.”