by Robert Upton
McGuffin thought about it for a moment, then replied slowly, “I don’t know.”
“You must!” Kruger insisted. “You are the only one who could know! Think, for God’s sake, think!”
“It’s been eighteen years,” McGuffin protested. When he stirred in his chair, Schatze began to growl, but McGuffin went on, undeterred. “Somebody probably found it a long time ago and sold it off piece by piece.”
“No,” Kruger said. “That is not possible. The egg is somewhere - Dwindling had it - and now I must haf it. If I haf the egg, everything is possible - everything! Do you understand, Mr. McGuffin?”
“I can’t say that I do,” McGuffin replied. “But I know what you want and you know what I want. So what do you say to a deal?”
“What sort of deal?”
“You return my ex-wife and daughter and I’ll help you find the Fabergé egg.”
Kruger appeared from behind McGuffin, smiling. “But you haf already made such a deal vit Klaus.”
“I’m abrogating it.”
The old man laughed softly. “I think you are not a loyal employee, Mr. McGuffin. Nevertheless,” he said, hoisting himself up on the corner of the desk, “it is possible that ve might do business. But first you must bring me the egg, then I vill release your vife and daughter.”
“Uh-uh. First you release them, then I bring you the egg.”
Kruger laughed again. “Mr. McGuffin, you haf already betrayed Klaus. Surely you don’t think me such a fool that I vuld put myself in the same position.”
“It’s got to be my way or not at all,” McGuffin insisted.
Kruger shrugged. “Then I vill kill them.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I believe Mr. Dwindling said something very much like that, just a few seconds before I killed him.”
“I don’t get it, Kruger. Your beef is with me, not them. Why don’t you take me and let them go?”
“My plans haf changed, thanks to you, Mr. McGuffin. Suddenly I am filled vit love instead of hate. I see a vay to make up for everything I haf lost. But I need your help. Please help me, Mr. McGuffin, so that I won’t haf to kill again,” Kruger pleaded.
McGuffin stared into his round eyes and nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“How much time vill you require?”
“It could take a long time, maybe a month,” McGuffin answered.
“You haf a veek.”
“A week?”
“One veek from today, your vife and child vill be no more. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“Then I suggest you get started immediately.”
McGuffin climbed to his feet, stared uncertainly at the little man for a moment, then turned and started out of the room. Kruger stopped him before he got to the door.
“I’m sure I don’t haf to tell you not to involve the police in our business, Mr. McGuffin,” he called.
McGuffin stopped at the doorway and turned to the three men and their dog. “And I’m sure I don’t haf to tell you that if anything happens to Marilyn or Hillary, I’m going to kill all of you.” When Schatze growled, McGuffin added, “And that goes for your dog, too.”
Then he walked out of the house and down the hill to his car. He was halfway to San Francisco before he remembered that he had left his gun in the bottom of the grape wagon in the barn.
McGuffin awoke early the next morning to a damp, cold fog, put on his robe and slippers, and padded down to the engine cum storeroom of the Oakland Queen. Once more, he went carefully through the contents of Miles Dwindling’s old trunk, hoping to find a previously insignificant but now meaningful clue as to the whereabouts of the Fabergé egg. He turned Miles’ magical mystery bag upside down, strewing his burglary tools, disguise kit, and false credentials across the deck with everything else, then went carefully through each file, hoping to find a key or claim check or something that would lead him to the egg. It was almost noon when he returned to the wheelhouse, with nothing to show for his effort except the faded, framed photograph of the little girl with Shirley Temple curls. He propped the picture on his desk and began phoning his contacts, some legitimate, some not so legitimate, in the hope that one of them could lead him to Miles Dwindling’s daughter.
“Her name, if she hasn’t married and changed it, is Ivey Dwindling, and she’s probably in her early thirties,” McGuffin informed his man at the Chronicle who occasionally earned one or two U.S. Grants for the performance of such services. He gave him the names of both her parents, as well as the last known address of her mother, then phoned the same information to his moles at the county clerk’s office, the Federal Building, the telephone company, PG&E, and the San Francisco Police Department.
“Miles Dwindling,” Sullivan the cop repeated. “Wasn’t he the private you used to work for who got fuckin’ hammered about ten years ago?”
“More like twenty,” McGuffin corrected.
“Time flies. What the fuck you want with his daughter?”
“Just find her, and you’ve made five hundred,” McGuffin said.
“Big fuckin’ deal,” Sullivan said, then hung up the phone.
Soon after placing the last call, there was a loud knock on the wheelhouse door. “Who is it?”
“Elmo,” his landlord called. “Let me in.”
“Not now, Elmo, I’m busy.”
“So am I, so open up right now.”
“No.”
“If you don’t open the door, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble,” the architect warned.
“I’m already in a lot of trouble,” McGuffin replied. “So if you don’t mind, let’s do this some other time.”
“I can get a court order, you know.”
“But you won’t because that would mean hiring a lawyer, and we both know you’re too tight for that.”
“Okay, Amos, you asked for it. I tried to do this in a nice way, like two civilized people, but I see that won’t work with you.”
“Elmo, there is nothing civilized about throwing a man out of his home and office - especially when he’s in the condition I’m in,” McGuffin informed him testily.
“On the sauce again, eh?” Elmo sniffed.
“No, I’m not on the sauce. And if you don’t get the hell away from my door right now, you’re going to have to add assault and battery to your evict action.”
“I’m going, but I’ll be back. And when I get back you’d better be gone,” Elmo warned.
McGuffin listened as the sound of Elmo’s leather heels on the deck faded and disappeared. Then he got to his feet, went into the bathroom, and quickly showered and shaved. He slipped one leg into his brown tweed pants, remembered that the matching jacket was now dog food, and stepped back out. He threw the pants in the corner with the shredded jacket and selected another suit, also brown tweed. It was never a conscious decision, but somehow all of his suits and sport coats were brown. Dressed in his new suit and looking much the same as usual, McGuffin started for the door, then stopped and returned to the desk. He removed Ivey Dwindling’s photograph from the frame and dropped it into the right-hand pocket of his coat, where he usually kept his gun. He supposed he would have to buy another one.
Ivey Dwindling’s last known address was a large frame house in the Avenues, not far from the Pacific Ocean. McGuffin glided to a stop directly across the street and peered at the building through the fog blowing in from the sea. What was once a one-family house was now a run-down building divided into several small apartments. McGuffin knew when he got out of the car that he was getting wet for nothing, but it was the only lead he had, and it had to be checked.
The front door stood partly open, revealing a worn linoleum corridor flanked on both sides by four flimsy, wooden doors. There was a row of mailboxes under the curved stairs leading to the second floor, only a few with names, and McGuffin knew even before he pushed the buttons that none of the buzzers worked. He pushed them all, waited for a minute, then walked down the corridor to the fi
rst door and knocked. A moment later a white-haired black man, wearing reading glasses, opened the door as far as the chain would allow.
“Yes?”
“My name is Amos McGuffin,” the detective said, showing the old man his choirboy smile. “I’m looking for some old friends who used to live here about eighteen years ago - a woman and her young daughter, named Dwindling.”
The old man smiled back. “I doubt if there’s anybody lived here as much as half that.”
“Where can I find the building manager?”
The old man laughed. “Ain’t seen one of them in all the time I been here. All I know is I’m supposed to send a check every month to something called Preferred Properties on Market Street. So if this is preferred, you know you don’t want to see no unpreferred.”
“You’re right, thanks,” McGuffin said, backing away. There was no sense going further. Ivey Dwindling was part of the unrecorded history of this building.
He walked out the front door, skipped down the front stairs into the fog and hurried across the slick, wet street to his car. He was about to get in when he noticed a group of children, unmindful of the dampness, grouped in front of the small grocery store at the corner. It was just the sort of place where Ivey would have stopped for ice cream, McGuffin decided, as he started for the store.
The kids ignored him as he pushed past them and opened the worn wooden door. A bell over the door jingled lightly when he stepped inside the tiny grocery store. There was no doubt the place had been here when Ivey was a little girl, perhaps even when Queen Victoria was a little girl. The wooden floor was worn to hills and gullies, and cartons and cans were stacked haphazardly wherever they could be fitted. McGuffin walked to the back of the small room as the curtains parted, and a stooped old lady appeared. The woman stared silently as McGuffin introduced himself and produced the picture from his coat pocket.
“Shirley Temple,” she said, nodding and smiling.
“You remember her?”
“Sure, I remember. She live up the street with her mama,” the old woman said, in what sounded to McGuffin like a Russian accent.
“Her name is Ivey Dwindling.”
“I call her Shirley Temple. Sweet girl, no trouble.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“What?” the woman asked fearfully.
“No, no,” McGuffin said, shaking his head. “I mean do you have any idea where she and her mother might have moved?”
The old woman thought about it for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “I don’t tink so. Her fadder was killed, I tink she get lots of money.”
“Why do you say that?” McGuffin asked quickly.
She shrugged. “One day she have nuttin’, the next she have a big car, den dey move.” It was obvious, the American dream. “Why do you want her?”
“To give her some more money,” McGuffin answered.
“Dat’s nice,” the old lady said. “I wish I could help.”
“You might have,” McGuffin said. Then he thanked her and left.
The coastal fog changed imperceptibly to rain as McGuffin wove eastward through Golden Gate Park to downtown San Francisco. He returned his car to Gino’s service station on the Embarcadero, then hailed a cab to Goody’s bar. The first of the after-work crowd had already begun trickling in by the time McGuffin arrived. Goody looked up from the beer he was drawing and called to McGuffin as he hurried to the phone at the end of the bar, “You find Hillary okay?”
“Not yet,” McGuffin answered, snatching the phone from the hook. He dropped a quarter in the slot and dialed his answering service. Mrs. Begelman picked up on the fifth ring.
“Amos McGuffin - any messages?”
“You know, Mr. McGuffin, it’s going on two months now I haven’t received your check?”
“I’m sorry, I’ll take care of it right away,” McGuffin promised. “Did anybody call?”
“Anymore I’ve got a new policy,” Mrs. Begelman went on. “First warning, I hold your calls until I get my check; second warning, I stop taking your calls; third warning, you’re gone.”
“Mrs. Begelman, you’ll get your money just like you always do. Now will you please give me my messages?”
“Don’t shout, I’m looking.” He heard papers being rustled as Mrs. Begelman continued to mutter about delinquent accounts. “Here it is - Lieutenant Sullivan will meet you at Goody’s after work. That sounds terribly important.”
“Just the messages,” McGuffin said.
There were five more, from the Chronicle, the county clerk’s office, the Federal Building, the telephone company, and the PG&E, all of them presently unavailing, but not without some future hope. His federal contact couldn’t even find a Social Security number for an Ivey Dwindling, indicating that she had probably applied for her card under her married name, which would make the task that much more difficult. McGuffin thanked her, hung up the phone and walked slowly to the bar. Goody was waiting with a Paddy’s and soda.
McGuffin stared thoughtfully at it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“You’re on a case!” Goody exclaimed brightly.
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Big money?”
“No money.”
“No money!”
“I’m doing it for love.”
Goody was puzzled. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” Goody was trustworthy, but opinionated. If he knew that Hillary had been kidnapped, he might go to the FBI despite McGuffin’s objections. “How about a plain club soda?”
The barkeep splashed McGuffin’s drink in the sink, then filled the glass with club soda. He pushed it across the bar, and watched McGuffin as he drank. “This labor of love, it ain’t got nothin’ to do with Hillary, has it? I mean she ain’t a missin’ person, is she?”
“Of course not,” McGuffin answered.
“Then where is she if you ain’t found her? She’s been gone for two days, you know.”
McGuffin took another drink while he thought of an answer. “Marilyn took her on a trip.”
“Where?”
“Up north,” McGuffin answered, indicating the direction with his chin.
“Up north . . . Where up north?”
“Yosemite.”
“That’s east.”
“I was never good at geography.”
“You ain’t a very good liar either,” Goody informed him. “If this is none of my business, tell me. But don’t bullshit me, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” McGuffin said. “I’ll tell you everything just as soon as I can, but not right now.”
“Why later? Why not now?”
“You asked me to tell you if this is none of your business, didn’t you?”
“I’m not askin’ about the case. I’m only askin’ why you can’t tell me about it now. There’s a difference,” Goody explained.
“I can’t tell you about it now because it’s none of your business,” McGuffin replied sharply.
“I think I like you better when you’re drinkin’,” Goody said, then turned and waddled off.
McGuffin regretted his sharp tone, but knew an apology would only open the door to more questions. Until now, Goody had always been McGuffin’s sounding board, a faithful listener whose astute questions had often gotten a derailed investigation back on track. It would be hard for him to accept, even later, McGuffin realized, that his help could be fatal.
McGuffin was spared further guilt-filled ruminations by Sullivan’s entrance. He was hardly out of his raincoat before McGuffin was at his side.
“What have you got for me?” McGuffin asked.
“Wet as a motherfucker out there,” the big cop said, snapping his coat once before hanging it on the wall, spraying water on McGuffin.
“Did you find anything?” McGuffin persisted, following Sullivan to the bar.
“Can I get a fuckin’ drink first? Jesus fuckin’ Christ –”
Goody looked up, scowled faintly, then reached for Sullivan’s bottle.
“Now tell me about Ivey Dwindling,” McGuffin urged.
“Can’t tell you anything about Ivey Dwindling except that she’s the sole survivor of Mary Dwindling.”
“Her mother’s dead?”
“You got a quick mind, Amos. She died in Acapulco nine years ago, of natural causes, according to the death certificate, leaving a daughter, Ivey, resident U.S.”
“Where in the U.S.?”
Sullivan shrugged. “Don’t know. I should have a copy of the death certificate in a few days, but it won’t tell you that. And it’ll be in Mexican,” the cop warned.
“I’ll manage,” McGuffin replied. “What kind of place was she living in? Did she have money?”
“Now how the fuck would I know that? Goody, where’s my drink?” he hollered. “I didn’t come in here to sober up.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be drunk in plenty of time,” Goody promised as he approached with Sullivan’s drink.
“And give Judge Brennan a drink on me,” Sullivan said, with a wave to the man huddled over the end of the bar.
“The judge is passed out,” Goody said, slamming Sullivan’s drink on the bar.
“Then put one in front of him so he’ll see it when he wakes up - he’ll think it’s fuckin’ Christmas.”
“No more for the judge,” Goody said. “And if you’re askin’ about McGuffin’s new job or his daughter, forget it, he ain’t talkin’.”
“We’re not talkin’ about his daughter, we’re talkin’ about his ex-partner’s daughter,” Sullivan said, reaching for his drink.
“Miles Dwindling’s daughter? What’s he want with her? I’d ask him myself except it’s none of my business.”
“I’m looking for something, and she might know where it is,” McGuffin answered wearily.
“What?” Goody asked.
“An egg.”
“You see what I mean?” the barkeep asked, thrusting a thumb in McGuffin’s direction. Then he turned and walked away, muttering, “Ask a civil question and whattaya get?”
“Hey, Amos, why you abusin’ the old man?” Sullivan asked.