She waggled her finger at me—the thing she’d poked into my back—and said cheerfully, “Hi, Wolf.”
I tried not to wince. Wolf. She’d got that from a newspaper story that had appeared a few years ago in which some smart-ass yellow journalist had referred to me as “the last of the lone-wolf private eyes.” Other people called me that and I got annoyed and told them to cut it out. But with McCone I couldn’t seem to muster up the effort. I just grinned and took it like a nice old papa.
But I was still glad to see her, so my answering smile was genuine. “Sharon McCone,” I said. “Well, this is a surprise.”
“I can say the same.”
“That cheap outfit you work for send you?”
“Not exactly. San Diego is my hometown and it’s a good chance to visit my family. I paid for the gas driving down, All Souls picked up the registration fee.”
All Souls was a legal cooperative she worked for that undertook cases for people who didn’t have much money, some of whom had backgrounds that were questionable at best. It was an aboveboard operation, but that couldn’t make it any more pleasant to work for.
“You ought to get a better job, Sharon.”
“I know, but what better outfit would have me?” She glanced away for a moment, as if someone in the crowd had caught her eye. Then she said, “What about you? I didn’t think you went in for stuff like this.”
“I don’t usually. I let Eberhardt talk me into it.”
She nodded. And then gave me an up-and-down look, as if she’d just realized that there was less of me than the last time we’d seen each other. She said approvingly, “You’re looking svelte, Wolf.”
“Yeah. I took off about twenty pounds.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Lots of eggs. Rabbit food. And I gave up beer.”
“What! No beer at all, even now?”
“Well, just the light stuff. It’s beer-flavored water, but it’s better than none.”
She started to say something else, but a fat woman in a muumuu that looked like a paint-factory explosion got between us. McCone backed up, and somebody bumped into her and spilled the plastic cup of wine she was holding, and somebody else got in my way. Conventions. Crowds—I hated crowds. Somebody was always shoving his way into your space.
McCone called, “Let’s have a drink sometime this weekend,” and I said, “Sure. I’ll be around,” and then two more guys, both of them wearing suits, blocked my view of her and I said the hell with it and went away to find a quiet corner to grumble in.
“Why not go to the convention?” Eberhardt had said when the Society’s flyer came in the mail. “Talk to some other private cops, get a different perspective on things. It’ll be good for you and good for the agency. I can take care of business here for three days.”
“I’d love to go to San Diego,” Kerry had said later, “but you know I can’t get away that weekend. The new Bowzer Bits dog-food commercial is being filmed on Friday and Saturday and I’ve got to be there in case they want any last-minute changes in the promo material. But you go ahead. It’ll do you good to get away for a few days, be among people in the same profession.”
So here I was, among people in the same profession—people who wore hideous muumuus and Bermuda shorts and looked like tourists from Cincinnati and talked about worblegang veeblefetzers. I felt like a guy who had just stepped off a time machine, or maybe into another dimension. I felt like an anachronism. I felt obsolete.
This, I thought, is going to be a lousy weekend.
3 McCONE
Elaine Picard was as slender as ever, her sleekly styled dark hair frosted with the lightest touch of gray. She wore an impeccable beige linen suit and tasteful gold jewelry, and, as I remembered, exuded an air of control and confidence. Strangely missing, however, was the impression of bursting health and vitality that she usually conveyed. There were tired lines around her mouth and dark circles under her eyes; she looked almost haggard.
She smiled at me, though, and said, “I’d hoped you’d be here, Sharon. How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Quite well, thank you.” She studied me, faint amusement in her eyes. “I see you haven’t grown up yet.”
I glanced down at my tailored blouse and jeans. “Good Lord,” I said, “and I even wore high-heeled sandals for this occasion!”
“They’re very stylish, but the general impression remains the same.” There was no censure in her voice. When I’d gone to work for Elaine just after graduating from high school, she’d realized there was no way a true child of the sixties would be believable in the suburban-housewife pose that Huston’s female security guards usually assumed. So she’d encouraged me to wear the bell-bottoms and Indian cloth blouses that were popular then, to go barefoot and let my long hair hang free. The costume had worked, placing me beneath the suspicion of shoplifters; and as I’d lurked among the racks of clothing with a walkie-talkie in my macramé bag, I’d become one of Elaine’s most effective operatives. It was also to her credit that she didn’t attempt to hold her people back; she had been one of the first to suggest I might be wasting my time by not going to college.
The big man in the red shirt whom Elaine had been talking with earlier was still standing next to her, holding a drink that looked like whiskey. He must have brought his own bottle or got it from the hotel bar, because all they had at the drink table here was wine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and cleared his throat.
Elaine said, “Sharon, I’d like you to meet Jim Lauterbach, one of our local investigators. Jim, this is Sharon McCone, from San Francisco.”
Lauterbach extended his hand. He was about six-two, overweight, and nondescript. Although there was no obvious reason for it, the phrase down at the heels flashed through my mind. I shook his hand briefly.
“Great convention, isn’t it?” he said. “Lots of good people, and these manufacturers’ tables are terrific.” He motioned at the booths displaying electronic gear. “All the latest equipment, better even than a lot of the stuff I’ve got.”
Elaine said, “Jim was just telling me that he recently moved here from Detroit.” Usually you couldn’t sense much of what Elaine was thinking or feeling; she had a very polished and polite surface manner. But something about the way she spoke told me she didn’t like Lauterbach. Maybe it was the heavy sprinkling of dandruff on the collar of his shirt—that would offend a fastidious woman like Elaine. Come to think of it, it offended me.
“How do you like California?” I asked him.
“Oh.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “Compared to Detroit . . . well, there’s no comparison. Detroit’s a depressed area. Very depressed. So many out of work. And the winters . . . well, you can’t imagine the winters.” His words were slightly slurred, as if he had been drinking for some time.
“Do you have your own agency here?”
“Yes. I took over a friend’s. An old Navy buddy, Jack Owens—the Owens Agency, on Sixth Avenue, downtown. He couldn’t take the grind anymore, so I’m running the business for him. And believe me, since I’ve been at it things are looking up.”
I glanced at Elaine and saw she was staring off in a preoccupied way. When I caught her eye, she moved her head slightly in the direction of the door.
“Well, I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Jim,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll be running into one another again this weekend.”
“Yeah, sure.” He nodded curtly, clearly annoyed at the dismissal. Elaine took my arm and steered me toward the exit. “God, what a dreadful person,” she said “He’s been boasting and breathing booze at me for what seems like hours. Let’s go downstairs and get a drink. The smoke in here is starting to get to me.”
I set my plastic cup on a nearby table and we went out onto the mezzanine. The air out there was definitely clearer.
“At least the bar has proper ventilation,” Elaine said. “And we can put it on my expense account.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I followed he
r down the wide staircase to the lobby. “An expense account—my, my. I have one too, but every time I turn in a report, it’s like the Spanish Inquisition before they’ll reimburse a dime.”
Halfway across the lobby, we encountered two men standing close together, in an apparent conference. The one facing us put out his hand and stopped Elaine. He was slim and elegant-looking in a light summer suit, and had thick blond hair. The man with him half turned, and I saw he was younger, maybe thirty-five to the other man’s fifty, vaguely effeminate, and appeared to be of Mexican descent.
“Elaine,” the first man said, “the security at the bungalows—” He stopped, looking at me.
Elaine removed her arm from his grasp and said, “Sharon, this is Lloyd Beddoes, manager of the Casa del Rey.” Now her tone, under the polite words, was cold.
Lloyd Beddoes nodded and shook my hand.
“And Victor Ibarcena, our assistant manager.”
Ibarcena bowed slightly. “How do you do,” he said in accented tones. “Sharon,” Elaine added, “is one of my former employees from Huston’s Department Store—and a private investigator herself now. She’s here for the convention.”
Beddoes’s eyes flicked to me. They were sharp and assessing. “One of your protégées, Elaine?”
“You might say that.” Her tone was even more frosty. I glanced at her, but her face was set in its usual cordial mask. “Now, what about the bungalows, Lloyd?”
“Never mind,” he said. “I can see you’re busy. Victor will handle it.”
“If it’s a security problem—”
“No problem, Elaine. Just a nuisance that will be taken care of.” Beddoes motioned to Victor Ibarcena, and the two went off across the hotel lobby toward the reception desk.
Elaine watched them, her eyes narrowed, then said, “Let’s get that drink now.”
The bar was at the back of the hotel, overlooking a terrace with white wrought-iron furniture, the beach, and the ocean. Spacious and dimly lit, the lounge was furnished with old-fashioned red plush sofas and chairs grouped around low mahogany cocktail tables. The bar itself was a mammoth carved affair that, I recalled, had been imported years ago from some European castle. Elaine signaled to the waitress and led me to a window table. The waitress followed and took our orders.
While we waited for our drinks, I gazed out at the ocean. The water sparkled in the late-afternoon sun, as if to prove the peninsula’s claim to the name Silver Strand. When I looked back at Elaine, her face was pensive, and once again I noticed the lines of tension and the dark circles under her eyes that belied her relaxed, assured manner.
Probably the new job was taking its toll, I thought. Nothing much in Elaine’s background had prepared her for the task of dealing with guests of a hotel such as Casa del Rey—or with the delicate problems that could come up there. Although her rise in hotel security had been rapid in the five years since she’d left Huston’s, she’d previously supervised a small staff of twenty-five whose primary responsibility had been apprehending shoplifters. And before that she’d been merely a saleswoman in the cosmetics department, a brighter-than-average employee who had been pulled from the ranks and thrust into a management-training program.
The waitress returned and placed our glasses of wine—white for me, red for Elaine—on the table. Elaine raised hers to me and sipped.
I said, “How’s the new job going?”
She shrugged. “Like any job, it takes some getting used to.” “What’s Lloyd Beddoes like to work for?” I wanted to explore the tension I’d sensed between them, to see if perhaps it was the cause of her haggard appearance.
“Lloyd?” She picked up her glass again and drained off a good third of it. “Lloyd’s an arrogant, officious bastard—but I can handle him.”
Well, that hadn’t taken much probing. “And Victor Ibarcena?” “He’s Lloyd’s whipping boy. He takes what Lloyd dishes out and smoothes everything over when he starts getting to people.” She sipped her wine more slowly this time. Seeing the concern on my face, she added, “Oh, it’s not all that bad. I’ve taken on more than I can handle lately—a new job and a new house in Chula Vista all at the same time— and I tend to dramatize my difficulties. But what about you? How’s the job with the law co-op?”
“It’s pretty good, actually. A lot of the time the work is routine and boring, but I’ve stumbled onto a few big cases over the years. And I like the people there—they’re casual and easygoing.”
“Like you.”
“Like me, yes. Every now and then I think of going out on my own, but . . .”
“But the law co-op is security.”
“Well, security on a low economic plane. I did manage to scrape enough together to buy a house this year, though.”
“Ah, another homeowner. What’s the place like?”
“Peculiar. It’s one of the cottages built by the Relief Committee after the earthquake of ’06. Only it’s been added onto and improved—somewhat. I redid the living room because the ceiling was about to fall in, and now I’m contemplating the bathroom. It’s a top priority, since the toilet’s currently in a cubicle on the back porch, and that’s going to be mighty cold on some of those winter nights.”
Elaine smiled and signaled at the waitress for another round of drinks. “I take it you haven’t married,” she said.
“No. Somehow I don’t think a wedded state is compatible with being a private eye. I’ve got a boyfriend, though.” Just saying it gave me warm glow.
“You look like you’re in love.”
“Yes, I guess I am. I know I am.”
The drinks came, and Elaine raised hers in a toast. “Here’s to love, then,” she said with an odd note in her voice.
I sipped my wine. “What about you—any interesting males in your life?”
A barely perceptible shadow crossed her face. “No one worth mentioning.”
I remembered how reticent about her private life Elaine had always been. A number of the other security guards at Huston’s had speculated that she existed only for her work, but I had never bought that theory. She was too good-looking and vital not to have attracted someone equally dynamic and successful. Still, she had to be forty-seven by my reckoning, and she’d never married or—as near as I knew—even lived with someone.
“Tell me about this boyfriend,” she said.
I grinned broadly, always glad to talk about Don. “His name’s Don Del Boccio. He was a disc jockey in Port San Marco, where I met him while I was working on a case there. Last spring he moved to San Francisco. He’s still a d.j., but in addition he has a talk show, interviewing celebrities.”
“It sounds serious, him moving up there.”
“As serious as I’m about to let it get right now.”
“He doesn’t live with you?”
“No. He lives with a baby grand piano, three thousand records, a set of drums, and a full complement of gourmet cooking equipment.”
“My God, what an assortment.”
“He claims it’s all absolutely essential to his health and well-being. In college he trained as a classical pianist. And he’s an excellent cook—Italian, primarily, as you can tell from the name.”
“Ah, yes. Lasagna. Veal parmigiana ...”
“You’ve got it.”
Elaine sipped her wine, looking pensive once more, and I had the feeling that she was suddenly far away. I glanced over in the direction she was staring and saw a few occupied tables, but no one notable at any of them.
Finally she said, “I take it you’re staying with your family?”
“Of course. All Souls certainly wouldn’t spring for the Casa del Rey when I had free bed and board available. Actually, it’s good I am staying there—as usual, there’s a crisis.”
She smiled. She probably remembered the McCone family crises, which involved anything from grease fires on the stove to my two older brothers’ frequent scrapes with the San Diego cops. “What now?”
“Oh, John—that’s my oldest broth
er—is getting divorced. He’s decided he wants custody of the kids, even though his wife is willing to give him very reasonable visitation rights. My mother has tried to talk him out of it—she knows who would end up raising them—and tensions are abuilding.”
“And you think you can ease them?”
“I can try. John and I have always been pretty close.” I looked at my watch. “And speaking of that, I have to be going. There’s a big family barbecue tonight, in honor of my presence, and it starts in an hour.”
“Are you coming back for the program tonight?”
“Later, if I can.”
“Good. But please don’t wait for me now. I’m going to have another drink, and then I have some work to catch up on.”
“When can we get together again? I’d love to see the security setup here.”
“I have a breakfast meeting in my office tomorrow—the executive committee of the San Diego Professional Women’s Forum—but then I’ve got an hour free before I have to chair a panel.”
“Which panel?”
She smiled wryly. “‘Modern Techniques of Hotel Security.’ Eleven o’clock. It’s on your program. Why don’t you come by the office about ten? I’ll give you the grand tour.”
I agreed, thanked her for the drinks, and left. On the way out, I noticed Wolf seated alone at the bar with a beer and the convention packet spread open in front of him.
“Hiding in dark bars already?” I said in passing.
He looked up and I waved at him in the back-bar mirror.
4 “WOLF”
I got out of the convention room before long; the damned place, with all those people and all that electronics stuff, gave me claustrophobia. A cold beer was what I needed and a cold beer was what I went looking for.
The hotel bar was off the lobby, at the rear. A sign over its entrance said that it was called the Cantina Sin Nombre, but like the rest of the place it didn’t have much of a Spanish motif. Heavy dark wood paneling and furnishings, with a bank of windows at the far end to admit some natural light. The windows looked out on a terrace strewn with white wrought-iron furniture, and the beach beyond, and the ocean beyond that. It was cool in there, but not an icebox like the lobby, and not too crowded, and I thought that I would probably be spending a good portion of the weekend tucked away in here.
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