“You know better than that.”
“And you know more than you’re telling me. What’s going on, Brock?”
“Only my petty annoyance. It must be the heat. I apologize, Bernie.”
“For the second time, what is going on?”
“Nothing, I hope. If I learn more, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I had better be. Your apology is accepted.”
“I’m so glad!” I said, and hung up.
Jan was again in the shade of the overhang when I went out. “Well, Hawkshaw,” she asked, “what did you learn?”
“I learned that Baker is married to the former Felicia Rowan. Do you remember her?”
“Only by reputation.” She frowned. “Wait—I think Mike Antonio brought her to a party at my house one night.”
“He did. She remembers it, and me. Why did you call him Antonio?”
“Because that was his name at Hollywood High. He was president of our senior class. He changed his name to Anthony when he started to box.”
“And her reputation?” I asked.
“At the level where she operated, I guess you would have to call her a demimondaine. At the less expensive level, a hooker would be the word. How is it that she remembered you?”
I shrugged.
She studied me suspiciously. “Was Mr. Baker home?”
“Of course! How high did Anthony go? He never got a title shot, did he? He never fought the champion of his division?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I didn’t follow his career. The last I heard, he was a bartender somewhere.” She mopped her forehead with a towel. “Is it too early for a drink?”
“Not if we drink them slowly.”
We sat and sipped our vodka and tonics and thought our separate thoughts. Jan was probably wondering if Alan had been home. I was worrying about Corey. He could be in over his head.
He phoned when Jan was taking her shower. “What’s on your mind?” he asked me.
“You. I don’t like that set-up. I understand Baker hired you.”
“That’s right. I start tomorrow. What’s wrong with the setup?”
“I’m not sure. I’m … just uneasy about it.”
“Brock, I’m a big boy now. How am I ever going to get a downtown office with the penny-ante jobs I’ve been working? He gave me a five-hundred-dollar retainer!”
“Okay. Keep your wits about you. You are dealing with a slippery man. And if the going gets sticky—”
“I’ll call on old Uncle Brock, natch. Where else can I find free help? I’ll be careful. I promise.”
What was he to me? I was too young to be his father and he already had a father. I guess Arthur Miller said it best: They are all my sons.
Night came on, but the temperature in the house dropped very little. There was no breeze, the air too ominously quiet—what the superstitious natives call earthquake weather. Brush fires all over the southern counties dominated the eleven o’clock news on the tube. Thirty-eight homes had been destroyed in Los Angeles County, twelve in Orange County, none (so far) in San Valdesto County.
Jan and I slept in the den that night, one of the two air-conditioned rooms in the house. The other was Mrs. Casey’s room, one of the many fringe benefits of her employment. She knew how to take advantage of my addiction for Irish stew.
Was I worried about Corey, or was it envy I was feeling? Getting grounds for divorce had never been my favorite assignment—only slightly more interesting than credit checks. This case was shaping up to be more interesting than either of those.
A con man who had married an heiress under duress, divorced her and married a high-echelon hooker? Investigating that had to be more fun than splashing around in a backyard pool. And Baker may have been telling the truth; grounds for divorce may not have been his reason for hiring a private detective. Nobody lies all the time. Why, then, was he having her followed? That was the intriguing question.
I didn’t dwell on the questions over the weekend. I played golf. But maybe in my unconscious mind I was thinking about them. For whatever reason, I shot my worst eighteen-hole rounds of history. Which made Monday the wrong time for Jan to ask, “Golf again today?”
“Not in this heat.”
She smiled. “And not after the way you played with me yesterday. You’re restless, aren’t you?”
“Yup. The weather and the golf combined, I suppose. Do you have to go to work today?”
She nodded. “I have an appointment with a client at ten o’clock. Maybe you should have said yes to Mr. Baker.”
“Maybe.”
“Why,” she asked, “would any man marry a prostitute, especially a man as cunning as he seems to be? Could it be compassion, maybe love?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she told him, ‘No more until we’re married.’ It’s even possible that he was telling the truth; it might have nothing to do with infidelity.”
“That’s a lot of maybes, isn’t it? You used to relish those kinds of cases.”
I studied her suspiciously. “Why this sudden urge to get me back to work? You never approved of my trade before we were married.”
“I understand you better now,” she said. “And I love you even more. I want you to do anything that will make you happy.”
“Don’t fret about me, honey. Once this absurd weather goes away, I can get back to golf.”
“Golf will never be enough for you,” she said. “The real golf addicts play in typhoons and hurricanes. Why don’t you catch up on your reading?”
“A very sound idea.”
The work ethic, that is the curse of the middle class. If I had inherited ten times the money I had inherited, I still would be a middle-class middlebrow. As Heinie had explained to me during a philosophical interlude in his bar, no matter how much wealth some men accumulate, their shoes still turn up at the toes.
There were a half dozen current best-sellers in the den that I had sampled and found wanting. Some sage should explain to these hacks that sex is not a spectator sport, except to voyeurs. Their sales figures would indicate the voyeur population in this country is enormous.
Back to the legendary heroes of my formative years, back to Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. I was deep in my umpteenth reading of The Great Gatsby when the phone rang.
It was Bernie. “I’ve been checking the background of that Alan Baker and his wife.”
“Why?”
“Why not? You were the man who alerted me. Some history they have, right?”
“Nothing that should interest a homicide detective. I don’t remember mentioning his wife to you.”
“You didn’t need to. She’s famous—in her way. And I got report this morning that they went to see Joe Farini yesterday.”
“Who would report that to you, and why?”
“We have a reason, at the moment, for keeping him under surveillance.”
“What reason?”
“That would be police business. I phoned to find out if you recommended any other agency in town to Baker.”
“That would be private investigator business,” I said. Thanks for calling, Bernie, and good-bye.”
“Wait, damn you!” he said. “What’s with you lately? You got boils or something?”
“I’m allergic to police arrogance,” I explained. “I tell you everything. You tell me nothing. I pay your salary, buddy.”
“No, you don’t,” he said in his patient voice. “You live in the county. I work in the city.” A moment’s silence.” All right! We don’t know what Farini is up to, if anything. All we have are rumors, so far, from a possibly unreliable snitch who has reason to hate Farini. If we learn more, and you want to know, I’ll tell you about it over some of your expensive Scotch some evening. Now you.”
“I recommended Corey Raleigh.”
“That punk?”
“He is not a punk. He is a mature and perceptive private investigator who learned his trade under a master.”
“You?”
&nbs
p; “No. Hercule Poirot. Is there some other master you can think of in this hick town? He learned under me.”
“Do you know if Baker hired him?”
“He did. To shadow his wife.”
“Are you going to pay the kid’s bail if he gets out of line?”
“I’m sure Mr. Baker can scratch up enough money to pay for a bail bond. Is that all? You interrupted me in the middle of a good book.”
“I apologize, sir. When will I learn not to annoy the citizens of the upper class?”
“Screw you,” I said, and hung up.
Bernie always has to play cop. He is a cop first, a friend second. But I guess that is the way it has to be if you’re a good cop, and Bernie is certainly that.
There was no reason to connect the Bakers’ visit to Joe Farini’s office with Alan’s husbandly suspicions. There was a reason to suspect Alan had not completely retired from his larcenous profession. Joe Farini confined his practice to criminal law. And also to something more dangerous than that, as an intermediary between the law and the lawless.
That could involve some hairy characters. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had sent a boy out to do a thug’s work. Corey was equipped to handle a case of wife watching. He was neither physically nor emotionally equipped to handle violence. I tried to ease my sense of guilt by telling myself that Alan was a con man and con men rarely indulge in violence. I didn’t convince myself.
I climbed into my car and headed for Reservoir Road. There was no Plymouth parked in the shelter of the eucalyptus trees on either side of the Baker driveway. I drove down to the station, but Bernie wasn’t there.
I went home and finished Gatsby, and those four last paragraphs knocked me on my ass as they always had. The twenties, that had been America’s golden age—and they had happened twenty years before I was born.
Mrs. Casey and I ate lunch in the cool den, along with a glass of good Irish whiskey for her, bourbon for me. When Jan isn’t home, Mrs. Casey and I live it up.
Then I stayed in the den to make another futile attack on William Faulkner. She went to her air-conditioned room to watch her soap operas on the nineteen-inch color television set that Jan and I had bought her for Christmas.
Faulkner had eluded me again; I was back in the pool when Ian came home earlier than she had expected to be.
“Put on your suit,” I suggested, “and join me in a game of underwater grappling.”
“I’ll put on my suit,” she said, “but we’ll save the grappling for tonight.”
A breeze from the north began to drift in after dinner. We opened all the windows to cool off the house and sat in deck chairs on the front lawn.
A little before eleven, Jan said, “Let’s not watch the news on the tube. All we’ll see are liquor-store holdups, car crashes, fires, and milling crowds chanting hate slogans from the troubled Middle East. Let’s go to bed and start grappling.”
“If you insist,” I agreed.
Chapter Three
I WAS ON MY second cup of coffee in the morning when Mr. Raleigh phoned. “That crazy Corey,” he told me, “didn’t come home all night. His mother was worried stiff! Then he phones us early this morning from Donegal Bay. What is he doing up there?”
“I have no idea, Mr. Raleigh. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Not him. Confidential, he called it. Huh! But I thought as long as you were working with him, you might know.”
“Did he tell you I was working with him?”
“Not right out. When does he ever say anything right out? Let’s say he led me to believe you were.”
“He had a reason to,” I explained. “I did tell him I would help him any time he needed help. Evidently, he hasn’t needed it.” I took a breath and said, “If he was on an all-night stakeout, he probably didn’t have a chance to phone you before this morning. I think you underrate your son, Mr. Raleigh. He is more mature for his age than you seem to think.”
“When he gets mature enough to pay us some room and board and rent for the garage, I’ll be ready to agree with you. Mr. Callahan, as one adult to another, if you learn anything I should know, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I lied. “Tell Mrs. Raleigh not to worry.”
“I’ll do that. She thinks a lot of you. And thanks.”
Donegal Bay was a beach hamlet about twenty-five miles north of San Valdesto. It had started as an artist’s colony in those long-ago days when land along the coast cost less than a million dollars an acre. The colony was still there, and the area was also a mecca for clam diggers and dune-buggy itinerants. The bluff above the beach held the impressive homes of the latecomers who could afford the current prices.
What, I asked myself, was Mrs. Alan Arthur Baker doing in Donegal Bay? Was she painting a picture, digging for clams, racing a dune buggy? Or perhaps visiting a wealthy lover on the bluff?
This case was getting more interesting by the hour. Jan had called it right; it was my kind of case, full of maybes. The first three maybes were doubtful—but who can be sure?
“Who was that?” Jan asked.
“Mr. Raleigh. Corey stayed out all night and he’s worried. I wish he would let Corey grow up. He’s twenty-one years old.”
“Only chronologically. Do you think something happened to him?”
I shook my head. “He phoned home this morning from Donegal Bay. He must have followed Felicia Baker up there.”
“And spent the night with her?”
“Watching her, not wooing her!”
“I know. It was my little joke. Why don’t you run up to Donegal Bay and question your protégé?”
A little joke followed by a little rhyme; my bride was chipper this morning. Grappling often had that effect on her. I said, “He’s probably on his way home by now—and it’s none of my business.”
She smiled.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Your little joke. Let Mrs. Casey know if you’re not going to be home for lunch. And now I must trudge off to my day of labor.”
She trudged off to her day of labor in her little Mercedes, and I went into the den to resume my remedial reading. I had lasted six rounds with Faulkner yesterday before throwing in the towel; how many rounds could I go against Joyce?
None. I couldn’t concentrate. I phoned the Baker house and the maid answered. I identified myself and asked for Alan.
Mr. Baker wasn’t at home, she informed me. “He went to Los Angeles early yesterday morning and we are not sure when he will be back. He’ll be phoning here this afternoon to tell us. Perhaps you could call back tonight?”
“Could I speak with Mrs. Baker?”
“Mrs. Baker is not home, either. She is visiting friends in Lompoc. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Yes. Please tell him I am worried about a young man we both know. He’ll know who I mean. The young man’s father is worried about him.”
Five minutes later, I decided to do what Jan knew I would. I told Mrs. Casey I wouldn’t be home for lunch. I told her that if a man named Baker phoned this afternoon, she should tell him I was out playing golf.
She looked at me suspiciously. “Is that a lie?”
“Yes. But it’s only a venial sin, not mortal. It’s not even venial enough for three Hail Marys.”
“And what if Mrs. Callahan wants to know where you are?”
“She’ll know. It was her suggestion.”
School was out. It was vacation time, and Highway 101 was loaded with vacationers, heavy with campers and house trailers. The petroleum shortage had turned into a petroleum glut and we were back to Mr. Veblen’s conspicuous consumption.
The Donegal Bay off-ramp was wide, the road it led into was narrow and pitted with potholes. I turned under the freeway and started to climb gradually toward the sea. It was a small rise. From its crest, the spread of Donegal Valley lay before me. It was studded with wild mustard blossoms and about a dozen large ranches.
The climb was steeper and longer coming out
of the valley. A cool breeze from the ocean drifted into the car about halfway up the grade. There had been avocado trees or cattle on most of these ranches at one time. Several of them were still working ranches; the others had been converted to leisurely spreads for the horsey set.
The road grew wider as I neared the top. At the bluff end, an even wider and unpitted macadam road lined with olive trees intersected it. This was the road that served the large homes looking down on the town and the sea.
I drove along it slowly but spotted no nine-year-old Plymouth. At the far end, the road narrowed and started its steep and sharply curved descent to the town and beach below. I stayed in low gear all the way down.
The main street of the town ran laterally with the beach; the five side streets that crossed it extended for only a block on each side. Back and forth I drove, covering every house. Corey’s car was not in sight.
He was probably home by now. I was about to turn for home myself after I had covered the final street. But then I saw the sign that read Einlicher On Tap.
It was a weathered building of unfinished barn siding with a shake roof. An immense rust-eroded anchor was set on a concrete base in the small patch of ice plant next to the parking area. The place was named (of course) the Rusty Anchor.
There were only two customers in the place. One was a tall, tanned, long-haired, blond, bearded youth wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. He was sitting at a corner table with a tall, tanned, long-haired, blonde but unbearded girl wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. They glanced up as I came in and then went back to consuming the immense bowls of clam chowder in front of them.
The ceiling was festooned with fishnets, the rough wooden walls were adorned with dried multicolored kelp. The man behind the bar could have passed for Clark Kent, except for the scar tissue over one eye and a slightly cauliflowered ear. That should have been the tipoff, but it had been a long time since I had seen Mike Anthony in action.
It was the blown-up photographs on the back bar that alerted me—Mike standing over Jess Leppert as Jess went down in the third round at Las Vegas, Mike’s murderous overhand right slamming Chico Maracho halfway through the ropes in their San Diego brawl.
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