“If I scared her I didn’t mean to.”
“A man is responsible for the reasonable and natural consequences of his acts.”
“How was I supposed to know she had a history with the man I’m looking for? At that point, I didn’t even know he existed.”
“You take your victims as you find them, Mr. Tanner.”
“Can we lighten up on the tort maxims for a minute, Ms. White?” I took another sip. “What exactly is Emma’s problem?”
Christine adjusted her legs to a more comfortable curl, then draped an arm along the crown of the tattered couch. “She thinks you’re out to make more trouble for a man who’s already had enough of it.”
“Well, she’s wrong.”
She shrugged. “That’s what she thinks. She also thinks you’re working for Sebastian. Or Mr. Gillis, which is apparently the same thing.”
“I hereby authorize you to tell her that I’m not.”
“That’s what I already told her. But she’s convinced you’re trying to make trouble for a man she cares for very much. So she sent me over here to convince you that if you ever manage to find him, you should let her talk to him before you do anything else.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So he won’t make even a bigger mistake than he did the last time.”
“Last time being …?”
“The time he went to jail for something he didn’t do.”
“According to Emma.”
Christine White nodded. “Right. According to Emma.”
I glanced at the sports page that was lying on the floor beside the chair. The Warriors had yet to win on the road. They should never have traded Carroll. I looked up. “You know, I could wrap this thing up in an hour if someone would just tell me the guy’s name.”
“Wade,” she said simply.
I blinked. “For real?”
She nodded.
“Did Emma tell you to tell me that?”
Christine White shook her head. “I know you’re not a sleaze—Gill and Hook wouldn’t use you if you were. And I know Emma’s too hung up on this guy for her own good, and has been for years. She needs to resolve the situation so she can get on with her life, with him or without him.” She looked at the floor. “So I did something I shouldn’t have done.”
“Which is what?”
“I took this out of her desk.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a small white envelope and handed it to me. The postmark was mostly blurred, but the year it was posted was 1985. Emma Drayer was the addressee; there was no return. The print was masculine, bold and basic; the writing instrument a soft lead pencil. The envelope had already been slit open, and there was a letter inside.
I looked at Christine. “You might as well,” she said.
I extracted the letter and read it:
Dearest Emma,
I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is to be writing you from this place. I’ve tried to spare you from sharing my shame my omitting my name and address from the envelope, but of course the situation is not susceptible to simple solutions, is it?
There are many aspects of your letter that I want to address, so many that I haven’t sorted out my thoughts on all of them as yet (yours is the only personal letter I’ve received since I’ve been here, so I’m out of practice).
For now, suffice it to say that you’re right—I probably would not have written had you not done so first, though please know that I have thought of you every day since my incarceration. You’re right in another respect as well—my failure to initiate a correspondence is primarily a function of my anxiety about the questions you will ask should the relationship be continued and become meaningful, questions you would in that context have every right to ask, questions that I may not trust myself to answer for fear of loosening my tenuous grip on sanity.
But I will try. Because I owe you that much and more, and because I am in need of some answers myself. But not this time. This time I will simply say thanks, and ask of you a gift I have no right to—please write to me again. And soon.
Love,
Wade
“Wade,” I said when I had finished, my heart thumping with the realization that I had finally found my Dennis Worthy. “What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Emma never mentioned him?”
“Not that I can remember. Not by name. He was just this man, this teacher, she said she had been fond of while she was at Sebastian.”
“So she was sweet on him.”
“Let’s just say he came up on proof of her theory that all the good men were either gay of married.”
“There was no actual affair with the guy?”
“I don’t think so. Especially not if he was married—Emma’s not the type.”
I grinned at the way she said it, as though Emma’s attitude was as outmoded as Jansenism. “As opposed to your type, I assume.”
She shrugged. “I like dating married guys—they’re so grateful for everything, particularly a little creativity between the sheets. It has its problems, of course, especially if the wife thinks I want to take him away from her, which of course is the furthest thing from my mind, but it’s handy when I want to break it off.”
“You make romance sound a lot like liar’s dice, Ms. White.”
She met my eye. “You should be so lucky, Mr. Tanner.”
I drained my drink and got her glass and went to the kitchen and fixed us both another. “Well, what am I supposed to do?” I asked when I got back. “I can’t abandon the chase just because Emma’s afraid I’ll hurt her heartthrob’s feelings. The funny thing is, if she would cooperate with me, I could put her darling Wade in touch with the person who’s trying to find him and everyone would be better off, Wade and Emma included.”
“I don’t think you can convince her of that.”
“What if I promise that if she gives me his name I’ll try to persuade him to see her once I track him down?”
“I don’t think she’ll go along; she wants to talk to him before you do. She’s afraid if she doesn’t, something awful will happen.”
“Like what?”
“I think she’s worried that he’ll disappear from her life again. She’s been dreaming about a rendezvous for a long time; now that it may be close to happening she’s afraid something will spook it.”
“I don’t think she needs to worry about that; he’s got some unfinished business to take care of.”
Christine White looked at me. “You mean like vengeance? An eye for an eye, and all that?”
I blinked. “What made you think of that?”
Her shrug was casual. “Emma mentioned something about it the other day.”
“It would help me to know exactly what she said.”
“I don’t remember. I suppose I should have asked her what she was talking about, but somehow I didn’t really want to know.”
As though it would redress her decision to remain ignorant of the particulars of her roommate’s tribulations, Christine leered at me, broadly and bawdily. “Emma said for me to use all my wiles to convince you to help her find her friend. Since Speedo didn’t turn you on, I brought something else that might.” During a lurid and swollen glance, she reached for her purse.
There is a natural law that’s seldom mentioned in the science texts that says that as soon as things start to get interesting with a woman, the telephone will ring. When I picked mine up I was talking to Charley Sleet.
“The vehicle’s registered to something called Double L Creations,” he began without preamble. “The address is on Fell, just above Masonic.”
“The Panhandle,” I said.
“Right. Does any of that make any sense to you?”
“I think so.”
“I’m glad.” He paused to light a Camel, which is Charley’s signal that he wants to talk. “You want play-off tickets if I can get them?”
“Niners? Sure.”
“Might cost scalpers
’ prices; I don’t have a line on anything legit.”
“In that case, I don’t know; I’m not real flush of late.”
“I can probably get them from the Mouse, if I can find him. If I run him down, I’ll go over and—”
“The Mouse’s tickets are forged, Charley.”
“Not all of them.”
“Most.”
“I can tell the difference.”
I glanced at the woman on the couch. “Can we do this another time? I’m kind of tied up right now.”
“Yeah? With Peggy?” For an instant, Charley’s voice became as unbridled as a child’s instead of as encumbered as a lonesome cop’s—Charley wants only the best for me.
“Sorry,” I said, hating to disappoint him, wishing, despite the attractions sitting next to me, that he was right.
“Yeah? Well, too bad,” Charley said quickly, embarrassed by his mistake and the sentiment behind it. “Have a nice night.”
Charley was gone and I turned back to my guest. “Where were we?”
Her lawyer look turned sleepy. “We were talking about how I was going to persuade you to let Emma talk Wade out of becoming a vigilante.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“So how?”
She pulled her purse to her side and flipped it open; it was big enough to hide a bear. “What I thought was, first I’d go in the bedroom …” The singsong words came slowly, as though they passed through syrup.
“That’s a good way to start.”
“And take off all my clothes …”
“That’s even better.”
“And then I thought I’d take some of this”—she reached in her purse and pulled out a tiny bottle, extracted the stopper, and tipped it briefly onto the tip of her index finger—“and put some of it here”—she touched behind each ear—“and here”—she touched either side of her neck—“and maybe here”—she placed her index finger between her breasts, at a point above the last buttoned button on her blouse.
“Definitely there,” I voted.
She ran her tongue across her upper lip; her look was loose and languid. “And maybe here”—she swayed from side to side, so she could dab at the swells of her buttocks.
“There would be nice, too.”
She met my eye. “And maybe here.”
She lowered her hand to her lap, where it pressed against the skirt that was a tight as a drumhead above her pudendum, the perch of her finger as tender and intense as the weight of my excited gaze.
“That sounds like a wonderful plan,” I said. “If I had to take a guess, I’d say the odds are twenty-to-one for it working.”
“And then,” she said, reaching for the purse again, “I thought I’d put on this.”
With the flourish of an illusionist, she pulled forth a tiny teddy, silken and sheer except for a couple of lacy ornaments and two tiny yellow bows.
“That would be very nice.”
“Temporarily, of course.”
“Temporarily,” I agreed.
“And then I thought we’d play.”
“I’m always up for games.”
“That will certainly be a help.”
I never thought I was perfect. But such was the spell of St. Stephen’s, for a long while I was able to think my life was. When the bubble finally burst, no trace of such sanguinity remained.
Homage to Hammurabi, p. 223
18
The Panhandle to Golden Gate Park is a glorified boulevard median that separates Fell Street from Oak Street along the nine-block section between Stanyan and Baker, due east of the park’s main entrance. During most of its life it has functioned primarily as a pleasant place to stroll, grassy and shaded, a neat transition to the expanse of the park itself. But tranquility vanished when the Haight-Ashbury began its bloom and the Panhandle became an important venue for the melodrama of the counterculture—a place for flower children to couple under the stars, eat free food doled out by the Diggers, and experience the visions of a drug-invaded consciousness. During those years, the Panhandle was the stage for a seemingly unending celebration, featuring free concerts by the Grateful Dead, be-ins by freshly enlightened mystics, and demonstrations in favor of everything from moral rearmament to universal fornication. Somehow, the Panhandle survived all that and more, until the sixties self-destructed. But as with most public places in our cities, no one would any longer call it lovely.
As early on Sunday morning as I could manage it, I left Christine White asleep in my apartment and my car in the garage on Masonic and walked a block down Fell, to the address of Double L Creations, the registered owner of Lily Lucerne’s Toyota. As I suspected, the house was a combination home and studio that occupied one of the restored Victorians that faced the Panhandle from the Fell Street side. Because it was far too early in the day for me to have a plan of action, I passed the Double L front steps without turning in. When I got to the corner I leaned against the bus stop and tried to decide what to do.
I didn’t want a run-in with the new husband, but after our confrontation at the gallery, there was no reason to suspect Lily Lucerne would be any more forthcoming on her home turf than she had been down on Post Street. Five minutes later I was still waiting for divine intervention but all I was getting were suspicious looks from the guy pruning back his hybrid teas two doors down the street. Since I didn’t want to hear what Christine White would have to say to me after stumbling around my apartment all morning trying to find the makings of a bath and a breakfast, I returned to Double L and rang the bell.
It was opened by a genial lummox whose gray beard and matching sweatpants bracketed a Giants’ T-shirt and a pair of half glasses dangling from a narrow leather thong. To complete the image of sporty intellectualism, he had a pencil behind his ear and grass stains on his fingers. “Yes?” It was more an admonition than a question.
In tribute to his size, if I’d been wearing a hat I’d have taken it off. “My name’s Tanner,” I began, then wondered if my voice sounded as meek to him as it did to me. “I’d like to see Ms. Lucerne.”
He shook his head. “She’s working.”
“It will only take a minute. It’s about some things we were discussing at the gallery the other night. I just …”
To put me in my place, the big guy glanced over his shoulder at a small office tucked into an anteroom off the vestibule. A computer monitor on the desk glowed with a list of something vital as a fax machine spit up an electric message, probably from someone across the street.
“If I could just peek into her studio for a second, I could—”
When he turned back to me he blocked the view. “That fax is from Lily’s gallery in Los Angeles. They’re mounting a retrospective next month; I’m helping them track down some early canvases. See? Over there on the Mac? That’s a list of every piece Lily’s produced since we met, and the eventual disposition of the product—purchaser, gross sales price, gallery commission and expenses, net profit, subsequent sales history, plus a running record of her highest price at auction per square inch of canvas. She’s hung in forty states,” he concluded proudly. “A four-by-six just sold in Florida for twenty-three thousand. A new P.R.”
“What?”
“Personal Record.”
“Impressive.”
“Damn right. When I married her, she still hadn’t cleared four figures.”
A bleep from the fax brought him out of his rapture. He crossed his arms and regarded me the way he would the tax assessor. “If you know anything at all about the artistic process, you know the artist must remain in touch with the product for as long as possible. Interruptions, no matter how brief, can destroy the link. Days can be lost reestablishing the creative connection. In this office, mornings are for work—there are no exceptions.”
“Even on Sunday?”
He smiled, though not in jest. “We believe God will understand.”
I was about to try a more secular line of argument when I heard thudding sounds from somewhere down the h
all that led off the sunless vestibule. The big man turned toward the noise and yelled, “Don’t forget your lunch.”
“Okay,” a voice—young, male—called back.
“And be sure to be home by five.”
“Do I have to?”
“Your mother wants you to go to the animal rights lecture with her, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Okay,” the hidden voice conceded grudgingly, then punctuated his reluctance with the bang of a closing door.
The big man turned back to me. “If you call the office after three, perhaps Lily will agree to see you. If I could know the nature of your business, it would help—”
“Are you Paul?” I interrupted.
He frowned. “Have we met?”
I shook my head and edged to where I could see the perpetually humming fax. “I take it you’re also her manager.”
“Among other things.”
“Do you know anything about her former husband?”
“Wade?” He shrugged without agitation. “Not much, except that he has caused Lily a lot of pain and heartache. Why?”
“I’m trying to find him.”
“And you expect Lily to help?” He grinned. “Good luck.”
“I can’t think of a reason for her not to help me.”
Somewhere another door slammed. “There’s goes the best one right there.”
“Their son?”
He nodded. “Why are you looking for Wade? Has he done something else to degrade himself?”
His tone left no doubt that sex was the adulterant he referred to. “I can’t go into it,” I said.
“Well, Lily knows nothing about it. She wants nothing to do with Wade. I suggest you save both your time and ours.”
“Okay, I will.” I glanced at the Macintosh. “I wouldn’t want to put a crimp in the assembly line.”
The big man’s big hands became fists that looked capable of denting my chest. “Get out of here. Now. Or I’ll throw you off the porch.”
“Her bouncer, too,” I said, admiringly. “Pretty versatile of you, Paul. A utility player, like Tony Phillips of the A’s. Remember him in the Series? Should have been the MVP.”
“You’ll need an M.D. if you don’t get off this porch.”
Book Case Page 15