I felt better when I came out four hours later, but not much. When I got home the flat smelled of dust and lingering traces of Kerry’s perfume. You really are a horse’s ass, I told myself as I made a sandwich and opened another beer. Lone-wolf private dicks don’t act like this. You know what Phil Marlowe would do if he walked in here right now? He’d laugh his head off, that’s what he’d do. He’d fall on the floor laughing.
The hell with Phil Marlowe, I thought. I’m not Phil Marlowe; I’m me. I’m me, damn it, and I love that lady.
I went to bed. And pulled the covers over my head, like a kid alone in a big, empty house.
* * *
There was a woman waiting for me when I got down to Drumm Street on Tuesday morning.
She was hovering around the hallway, looking annoyed, and when I unlocked my office door she followed me inside. “Are you the detective?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“You’re supposed to be open for business at nine o’clock,” she said accusingly. “That’s what your ad in the telephone directory says. Do you know that it’s almost nine-thirty?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m running a little late this morning.”
“I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes,” she said. “I was just about to leave and go find someone else.”
“I’m sorry if you were inconvenienced,” I said, with more tact than I felt. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Of course there’s something you can help me with. Would I be here if there wasn’t?” She made a sniffing noise. “My name is Edna Hornback.”
She looked like an Edna Hornback. She was thin and pinch-faced, with vindictive eyes and a desiccated look about her, as if all her vital juices had dried up a long time ago. I took her to be somewhere in her mid-forties, although she had herself arranged-dyed blond hair, stylish clothes, plenty of makeup-to look ten years younger. She wore rings on eight of her ten fingers, at least a couple of which sported precious stones. Because of the obvious value of the rings, I decided I would keep on letting her be rude to me. Up to a point.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Hornback,” I lied. “Come into my private office. We’ll talk there.”
I took her through the anteroom and pointed out one of the chrome-and-corduroy clients chairs. She sat down, put her purse on her lap, and promptly lit a cigarette. Her eyes, moving over the surroundings, showed disapproval.
“I can’t say much for your decor,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m an interior designer,” she said. “The color scheme is all wrong; the colors clash. There’s no harmony.”
“I didn’t design the place, Mrs. Hornback.”
“Yes, well, it offends.”
So do you, lady, I thought. I went over and picked up the coffeepot. “Would you care for some coffee?”
“No, thank you. I had some earlier.”
I decided I didn’t want any, either, and came back and sat down. “What can I do for you?”
She sighed out a lungful of smoke, straight across the desk at me. I waved it away with my hand. I used to be a two-pack-a-day man, until my doctor found a lesion on one lung; now, three years after I quit the things, cigarette smoke irritates my sinuses and makes my chest feel tight.
“I’m here about my husband,” she said.
“Yes?”
“He’s a miserable, no-good son of a bitch,” she I said, “and I’m going to fix his wagon. I am definitely going to fix his wagon.”
There isn’t much you can say to a statement I like that. I just sat and watched her vindictive I eyes and waited.
“He’s got another woman,” Mrs. Hornback said. I “I don’t suppose that surprises you.”
God, no, it didn’t. But I said, “Things like that happen.”
“Typical male response.” She made a vicious production out of jabbing her cigarette into the desk ashtray. “But that’s not the worst of it. He’s also a damned thief.”
“Thief?”
“That’s right. Over the past three years Lewis has stolen at least a hundred thousand dollars from Hornback Designs.”
I frowned at her. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Damn right it is.”
“You’re partners in this design firm?”
“We were partners. I stupidly let him handle the books. I trusted him, the bastard.”
“How did he manage to steal so much money?”
“We have a very successful business,” she said; “we have a yearly income in the high five figures. It wasn’t that difficult for him. He overcharged some of our customers, pocketed cash payments from others, and falsified the books. I think he also took kickbacks from suppliers.”
“How did you find out about it?”
“We’ve had an exceptional year so far, but our bank balance doesn’t reflect it. I began to suspect something funny was going on a few weeks ago. Then I found out about this bitch of his, and I knew something funny was going on.”
“Have you confronted him?”
“Yes. He denied everything, of course. I have an auditor going over the books now, but that takes time.”
“So you haven’t gone to the police.”
“I can’t do that without proof. And I’m afraid he’ll run off with the money and his bitch before lean.”
“This woman-who is she?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Hornback said. “That’s what I want you to find out.”
“I see.”
“Every day lately he leaves our office-Hornback Designs is on Union Street-every day he leaves there at five o’clock, and he doesn’t come home until after midnight. It’s her he goes to. I found a woman’s comb in his car, cigarette butts with lipstick on them in the ashtray. That’s how I know he has a bitch on the side.”
A woman’s comb and lipsticked cigarette butts didn’t prove Lewis Hornback had a girl friend; those things could have belonged to customers or acquaintances. But I didn’t tell her that. Edna Hornback was not the kind you could tell anything to, once she had her mind made up.
“I think she’s the one who’s keeping the money for him,” Mrs. Hornback said. “I’ve been through his things; he doesn’t seem to have an extra savings account or another safe deposit box. Or if he does, she’s got the passbook or the key. Find her and you’ll find my money. It’s as simple as that.”
It probably wasn’t as simple as that, but I didn’t tell her that, either. I said, “You want me to follow him, is that it?”
“Yes. Find out where he goes at night, who his bitch is.” She paused. “What are your daily rates?”
“Two hundred, plus expenses.”
She winced. And then got her face under control and drew herself up in the chair. “Well, I don’t mind paying for results,” she said. “And if you find my money, I’ll give you a five-hundred-dollar bonus. How does that sound?”
It sounded fine, in theory. But it didn’t thrill me very much. I was not convinced that Mrs. Hornback was correct in either of her allegations. Maybe old Lewis had misappropriated a hundred grand of their firm’s money, but then again, maybe he hadn’t; she had not given me any proof of it, nor did she seem to have any real proof of it herself. It could all be a fantasy concocted by a vengeful woman. And even if old Lewis did have another woman, as she claimed, I would be willing to bet he had justifiable cause. Not that that part of it was any of my concern. It was up to God to make moral judgments; it was up to me to make an honest living for myself.
I debated. She was not someone I cared to work for, right or wrong in her accusations. On the other hand, her money was as good as anyone else’s, and if I didn’t take the job she would find someone who would. I already had two clients to attend to this week, but the Mollenhauer job was not until Saturday and the Speers investigation could be handled during regular business hours. There was no real reason why I couldn’t spend a few of my evenings trailing Lewis Hornback- particularly now that Kerry was spending her evenin
gs with presentations and one of her bosses.
Mrs. Hornback was in the process of lighting another cigarette. “Well?” she said.
“All right, I’ll do what I can. Do you have a photograph of your husband?”
She had one, which she fished out of a fat wallet and handed to me as if it were contaminated. Lewis Hornback was about the same age as she, with dark brown hair, a mole under his right eye, and nondescript features. He was not smiling in the photo; I had the feeling that he never smiled much. Considering Mrs. Hornback, it was not difficult to understand why.
I put the photograph into my coat pocket and got a contract form and filled it in, making sure to add a clause about the five-hundred-dollar bonus. When I gave it to her she read it over three times, the way George Hickox had yesterday, before she affixed her signature. Her scowl as she made out a retainer check was close to being I ferocious.
I asked her a few more questions-the address of their Union Street office, their home address an apartment on Russian Hill), the make and license number of her husband’s car and where he parked it during the day. Then I promised to tender daily reports by phone and got her out of there. The air in the office seemed thinner after she’d gone; she occupied a lot of space, that woman.
With the Speers file in front of me, I planned out an itinerary for the day. Unless I ran into problems, I ought to be able to cover all the legwork possibilities I had established yesterday; and maybe I would get lucky enough to wrap up the Speers thing right away. In any event I figured to be finished in plenty of time to be waiting for Lewis Hornback on Union Street when he quit work at five.
My love life may have been in an uncertain state these days, I thought as I left the office. But business, for once, was booming.
FOUR
At four-fifty that afternoon I was illegally parked in a red-marked bus zone on Union, just off Laguna. Hornback Designs was a block and a half behind me, between Gough and Octavia, and the parking garage where Lewis Hornback kept his Dodge Monaco was just thirty yards ahead. As long as a cop didn’t come and chase me away or give me a ticket, I was in a good position to see Hornback coming and to follow him when he left the garage.
I sat with my rearview mirror turned so I could watch the intersection behind me and thought about Kerry. She had been on my mind all day; I kept wondering about that dinner last night with handsome Jim Carpenter, who was Kerry’s age Hid who did not have a beer belly. I had considered stopping somewhere and calling her, but I hadn’t got up enough gumption to do it. I would call her at home later on-and not because I wanted to see if she was home. Or so I told myself. The day itself, so far as tracking down the elusive Lauren Speers was concerned, had been a bust. I had talked to her hairdresser, a man named Mr. Ike; I had talked to the head of a local charity she supported; I had talked to a woman she’d gone on a Caribbean cruise with last year and, through her, to Speer’s travel agent. Zero. I had also stopped by the Cow Hollow address of her secretary, Bernice Dolan; nobody had been home. Do-Ian hadn’t been there for weeks, according to the building manager, but he didn’t know where she’d gone. And her rent was paid through the end of the month, so he didn’t seem to care.
I was running out of possibilities, and I wasn’t sure what to try next. I could not get my head into figuring angles, at least not now. Later tonight, or tomorrow morning when I checked Brister’s file again.
Time passed. People moved up and down the sidewalks, most of them young and on their way to the saloons along the Union strip; this was a popular area, one of the city’s current “in” places. The weather had turned almost cold, with scattered clouds, but there was no sign of fog above Twin Peaks or over near the Golden Gate. Which was something of a relief. Tail jobs are tricky enough as it is, especially at night, without the added problem of poor visibility.
Lewis Hornback showed up at 5:04. Which was also a relief; I had been illegally parked long enough not to want to push my luck any further. I recognized him right away. He came walking across Laguna behind me, wearing a light-colored suit, no tie, a gold chain glistening between the open collar wings of his shirt. He looked exactly like his photograph, and he wasn’t smiling now, either. He came up onto the sidewalk, drifted past me, and entered the parking garage.
Two minutes later the Dodge Monaco appeared, turned left on Union; I could see Hornback clearly through the windshield when he passed me. He made a right on Laguna and headed up the hill. I gave him a half-block lead before I pulled out into a U-turn and swung up after him.
Where he went was straight out Broadway to North Beach, to a little Italian restaurant not far from Washington Square. I parked a block from where he did, illegally again in another bus zone because there were no other street vacancies, and followed him inside the restaurant. Meeting the girl friend for dinner, maybe, I thought-but that wasn’t the way it turned out. After two drinks at the bar, while I nursed a beer, he took a table alone. I sat at an angle across the room from him, treated myself to polio al’ diavolo, and watched him pack away a three-course meal and a half-liter of house wine. Nobody came to talk to him except the waiter; he was just a man having a quiet dinner by himself.
He polished off a brandy and three cigarettes for dessert, lingering the way you do after a heavy meal; when he finally left the restaurant it was almost eight o’clock and twilight was settling down on the city. From there he walked over to Upper Grant, where he gawked at the young counterculture types who frequent the area, did a little window-shopping, stopped in at a newsstand and a drugstore. I stayed on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards or so behind him-about as close to a subject as you want to get on foot. But the walking tail got me nothing except exercise: Hornback was still alone when he led me back to where he had left his Dodge.
When I got to my own car there was a parking ticket fluttering under one of the windshield wipers. Terrific. But it was going to wind up being Mrs. Hornback’s problem, not mine. As far as I was concerned, things like parking tickets were legitimate expense account items.
Hornback’s next stop was a small branch library at the foot of Russian Hill, where he dropped off a couple of books. Then he headed south on Van Ness, west on Market out of the downtown area, and up the winding expanse of Upper Market to Twin Peaks. There was a little shopping area up there, a short distance beyond where Market becomes Portola Drive; he pulled into the lot in front. And went into a neighborhood tavern called Dewey’s Place.
I parked down near the end of the lot. Maybe he was meeting the girl friend here or maybe he had just gone into the tavern for a drink; he seemed to like his liquor pretty well. I put on the gray cloth cap I keep in the glove compartment, shrugged out of my coat and turned it inside out-it was one of those reversible models-and put it on again that way. Just in case Hornback had happened, casually, to notice me at the restaurant earlier. Then I stepped out into a cold wind blowing up from the ocean, crossed to Dewey’s Place.
Inside, there were maybe a dozen customers, most of them at the bar. Hornback was down at the far end with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other-but the stools on both sides of him were empty. And none of the three women in there looked to be unescorted.
So maybe I’d been right and there wasn’t a girl friend. It was almost ten o’clock; if a married man has a lady on the side, you’d expect him to get together with her by this time of night. But so far, Hornback had done nothing unusual or incriminating. Hell, he hadn’t even done anything interesting.
I sat at the near end of the bar and sipped a draft beer, watching Hornback in the mirror. He finished his drink, lit a fresh cigarette, and gestured to the bartender for a refill. I thought he looked a little tense, but in the dim lighting I couldn’t be sure. He was not waiting for anybody, though, you could tell that: no glances at his watch or at the door. Just killing time, aimlessly? It could be; for all I knew, this was how he spent each of his evenings away from the Russian Hill apartment- eating alone, driving alone, drinking alone. And his reason migh
t be the simplest and most inno cent of all: he left the office at five and stayed out until midnight because he didn’t want to go home to Mrs. Hornback.
When he’d downed his second drink he stood and reached for his wallet. I had already laid a dollar bill on the bar; I slid off my stool and left ahead of him, so that I was already in my car when he came out.
Now where? I thought as he fired up the Dodge. Another bar somewhere? A late movie? Home early?
None of those. He surprised me by swinging back to the east on Portola and then getting into the left-turn lane for Twin Peaks Boulevard. The area up there was residential, at least on the lower part of the hillside; the road itself wound upward at steep angles, made a figure-eight loop through the empty wooded expanse of Twin Peaks Park, and curled down on the opposite side of the hill.
Hornback stayed on Twin Peaks Boulevard, climbing toward the park. Which meant that he was probably not going to make a house call in the area; he had bypassed the only intersecting streets on this side, and there were easier ways to get to the residential sections below the park to the north. I wondered if he was just marking more time, if it was his custom to take a long, solitary drive for himself round and about the city before finally heading home.
Since there was almost no traffic I dropped back several hundred feet to keep my headlights out of his rearview mirror on the turns. The view from up there was spectacular; on a night like this you could see for miles on a 360-degree curve-the ocean, the full sweep of the bay, both bridges, the intricate pattern of lights that was San Francisco and its surrounding communities. Inside the park, we passed a couple of cars pulled off on lookouts that dotted the area: people, maybe lovers, taking in the sights.
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