I asked him if a Mr. Jack King was registered. He said, "I don't believe so, sir," and consulted a register or file that was hidden from me by the countertop. "No, Mr. King is no longer with us."
"When did he check out?" "Last Saturday."
"Did he leave a forwarding address?" Another under-the-counter consultation. "No, sir." "He was here about a month, is that right?" "Five weeks, to be exact."
"Would you happen to know if he was in the city on business?"
"I couldn't say, sir."
"His home town is New York, though, isn't it?" The clerk's mouth got puckery, as if he'd just bitten down on a persimmon cough drop; his snooty mode was the one he preferred and he seemed almost relieved to step back into it. "I'm sorry," he lied, omitting the "sir" this time, "I really can't provide personal information about our guests." After which he pointedly turned his back, dismissing me.
I was on my way out, taking my time about it, when one of two elevators disgorged a uniformed bell captain. The desk clerk still had his back to the lobby, so I detoured over and braced the captain. He was my age, just as worn around the edges, and inclined to be cooperative, especially after I steered him behind a pillar and gave him the same worried-father pitch I'd given to Candy One. His name, according to a little brass plate on the front of his jacket, was Harvey.
"Sure, I remember Mr. King," he said. "Kept to himself pretty much, but he seemed like a decent guy."
"I understand he's a salesman. He happen to mention what it is he sells?" "Not to me."
"Or what company he's with?"
"No. Might be on his registration card, though, if he took the corporate rate. Probably did, since he was here so long."
"Do you know if he had a car?"
"I believe he did."
"His own or a rental?"
"You got me there."
"Make and model?"
"Can't tell you that either."
"Broadmoor doesn't have a hotel garage, does it?"
"No. Likely he kept it up at Milton's Garage on the next block. We have an arrangement with them to validate parking for our guests."
"I'll check with them. Would you have any idea if King had a preference for any café or restaurant or bar in the area?"
Harvey shook his head. "Sid might know," he said. "He's the night captain."
"What time does he come on?"
"Six. I could ask him for you." He lowered his voice another couple of octaves, even though we were already speaking softly. "I can check the registration card, too, see if Mr. King's home address or company name is on it. Dawson, the desk clerk, won't tell you one way or the other; he thinks he owns the place."
"I know," I said, "I've already talked to him. One other thing you might do, if there's no home address and if King paid his bill by credit card: write the card number down for me. I might be able to trace him through that."
"Okay. And I'll ask Sid if he knows anything about Mr. King that might help you."
I gave Harvey twenty dollars to show him how much I appreciated his help. I also gave him my home phone number. He said he'd call as soon as he had anything to tell me and I believed him. He had an honest face. Besides, it was a good idea for me to maintain a certain amount of faith in my fellow man; I was cynical enough as it was.
* * * * *
Two parking attendants were on duty at Milton's Garage. One of them remembered Jack King; the other one looked as though he might have difficulty remembering his own name and where he lived. The brighter one said he thought King's car was a Buick, dark brown, and that it was a rental. But he couldn't remember the name of the rental company. And he couldn't tell me anything else about King.
* * * * *
There were half a dozen coffee shops and taverns within a two-block radius of the Broadmoor. I made the rounds of them, describing Jack King to waitresses and bartenders and patrons. Nobody owned up to having had a conversation with him or even to having laid eyes on him in the past five weeks.
I lingered in the last of the coffee shops long enough to eat a bowl of soup and some crackers and to use the restroom. On the wall above the urinal was some pseudointellectual graffiti: "Great minds write about ideas. Average minds write about things. Small minds write about people." Under that, in a different hand, somebody had added a fourth statement that was both ironic and more profound than the other three.
"Assholes write on walls."
* * * * *
On the way back to my car, struggling against what had evolved into a chilly twenty-knot wind, I had a minor altercation with a shabbily dressed white panhandler whose hair was so knotted and greasy it was like a mockery of a black man's dreadlocks. He wanted a dollar and he didn't ask for it politely; he got right up in my face so that I had a sickening whiff of body odor, bad breath, and cheap wine, and demanded it in an or-else voice.
I took him for one of the derelict substance-abusers and borderline thugs that roam the city these days, making the plight of the genuine homeless even more difficult. You can't always tell the real thing from the phony, though. There is plenty of anger and aggression among the homeless, too; and some of them, out of shame and bitterness and frustration, let themselves go to seed and take to liquor and drugs. I have compassion for anybody who is forced by circumstances to live on the streets, but I draw the line at threatening behavior, no matter the cause. You see more and more of this type of hard-ass panhandling in the city, and too often it results in violence. The mean streets, as far as I'm concerned, are too damned mean already.
I told this guy to back off; he didn't do it. So we played stare-down for ten seconds or so. He lost, as he'd have lost any other game he might have tried to play with me. We both got off lucky, because that was as far as it went. He told me to go fuck myself, not quite as belligerently as he'd demanded the dollar, and the wind blew him away.
Assholes writing on walls, assholes roaming the streets, assholes everywhere you looked, in all shapes and sizes and intellects and economic situations. Next thing you knew, they'd form a union and their own political party and then the country would really be in trouble.
* * * * *
At the office I spent close to an hour on the phone checking car-rental agencies large and small. Nobody named Jack King or David Jones from New York or anywhere else had taken a long-term rental on a dark brown Buick within the past two months. Which meant one of three things: he'd rented the Buick in some other state and driven it to California; he owned the car and the attendant at Milton's had been mistaken; his name wasn't Jack King and he'd rented it under his real name or a different alias. In any of those cases, I was smack up against another dead-end.
The day was going downhill again. And the fact that Eberhardt still hadn't put in an appearance, or returned my earlier call, wasn't helping matters. Every time I glanced at his empty desk, with its unanswered messages and piled-up caseload, I got a little hotter under the collar. At four-thirty, after the tenth straight negative on the car-rental angle, I decided I'd had enough.
I closed up, went and got my car, and pointed it toward Noe Valley. Eb and I were going to get this wedding business and his selfish unprofessionalism settled today. Yes we were—one way or another.
Chapter 12
He was home, all right. He'd converted his garage into a workshop a while back, cramming it so full of woodworking equipment that he had to leave his car in the driveway or on the street; it was in the driveway today, canted at an off-angle that told me he'd driven it up over the curb. It also told me he hadn't been out of the house all day and that when he'd come home—last night, probably—he'd been potted. That made me even angrier. Drinking and driving, the damn fool. What if he'd hurt somebody?
I rang the bell, working it hard. No answer. I punched the bell some more, banged on the door and yelled his name, and still he didn't come. By then I was steaming. I went down off the porch, into what he laughably referred to as his garden, and got the spare key he kept under one of the decorative lava rocks an
d then went back up and let myself in.
He was lying on the couch in the darkened living room, shoes off and a blanket over his big frame. When I walked in there he hoisted himself onto one elbow and fixed me with a bleary-eyed glare. The room stank of the lousy pipe tobacco he smoked; he stank of bar whiskey and self-pity. I could smell him from ten feet away and I didn't want to get any closer.
"What the hell's the big idea?" he said.
"I got the same question for you. What's the big idea not answering the bell? You knew it was me."
"I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to anybody right now."
"Yeah," I said. "Two days now. How many more?"
He was deaf to that. He said, "I don't like you walking in here uninvited. You hear me?"
"I hear you. But I thought maybe you were dead. It's too bad you're not." I flipped the switch for the overhead light. He grimaced when it came on, made a pained noise and threw an arm up over his eyes like a vampire confronted with sunlight. His face was gray, beard-stubbled; if his eyes were any indication he was bleeding internally. "You look like hell," I said. "Two-day drunks look like seven-day drunks on you."
"Get out of here," he said. "Leave me alone."
Leave me alone. It doesn't matter. I don't care. An older, male version of Grady Haas. Another damn willing victim.
"Self-pity taste good, does it?" I asked him.
"Self-pity, my ass."
"You got another name for it?"
"You come here to rub my nose in it?"
"No."
"Then what the hell you want?"
"Why haven't you been to the office? Or at least been in touch?"
"Oh for Chrissake. I'm sick, can't you see that?"
"Sick, yeah. From being pig drunk two nights in a row."
". . . I got a right. You think I don't?"
"You got a right to drive drunk too?"
"A few blocks, that's all," he said defensively. "I was down at the Shamrock on Twenty-fourth, I closed the place, it was two A.M.—"
"I don't care where you were or how late it was. You could've killed somebody."
"All right, all right, I screwed up—"
"Man, you can say that again. In spades."
"Don't start on me."
"No? Why not? Somebody's got to lay it on the line and it might as well be me."
"I'm not gonna listen to you—"
"Yes you are. You're the one who bitched up the wedding, not Bobbie Jean. You and your fancy plans. Wedding cakes, musicians, limos to the airport . . . Jesus! It's a wonder she didn't call it off a lot sooner."
"You smug bastard, you think you know so much."
"I know a horse's ass when I see one."
He struggled into a sitting position. His jowly face was mottled red now, to match his eyes. "I don't have to listen to that crap in my own house. Who you think you are?"
"Your friend and your partner. Which is more than you can say right now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You haven't done enough work the past month to draw half pay," I said. "Your desk's piled high with unfinished business. I've spent half my time either doing your work or covering your ass."
"Oh fine, fine, now I get a guilt trip laid on me. On top of everything else I got to put up with . . ."
He hauled himself to his feet, put his back to me and walked unsteadily through the dining room into the kitchen. I went after him, watched him yank open the refrigerator and haul out a half-full carton of orange juice. He drank thirstily with his head tilted back—spilling some of it onto his bathrobe, making slurping noises that set my teeth on edge. I used to think I was a slob; he was a hell of a lot worse.
I said, "When are you going to grow up, accept responsibility for your own actions?"
He put the orange juice carton back into the fridge, even though it was empty, and slammed the door. Without looking at me he said, "You still here?"
"Yeah, I'm still here. Well?"
"Well what?"
"When are you going to accept responsibility?"
"For what?"
"For your own actions, goddamn it. For your mistakes."
"It's all my fault, huh? All of it."
"Well isn't it?"
"No!"
"Call Bobbie Jean," I said.
". . . What?"
"You heard me. Call Bobbie Jean, apologize to her before it's too late."
"I got nothing to apologize for. Let her call me."
"She won't. She's the one with nothing to apologize for."
"That's right, keep on taking her side."
"I'm not taking sides here, I'm trying to talk some sense into that thick head of yours. Bobbie Jean loves you, she's the best thing that's ever happened to you, don't throw her away because your pride is hurt."
"Me throw her away? Me? I'm not the one called off the frigging marriage."
"She didn't call off the marriage, she called off the wedding. There's a big difference."
"Not from where I sit."
"So you won't apologize to her?"
"No. The hell with her."
"You don't mean that, Eb."
"I mean it, all right. I put two thousand bucks into that wedding, I wanted it to be perfect for her and she threw it all back in my face. How you think I feel, huh? Everybody laughing at me, feeling sorry for me—"
"Nobody's laughing at you or feeling sorry for you."
"—all my so-called friends, and why? Because she decides at the last minute she can't put up with the pomp and circumstance. That's what she said, pomp and circumstance . . . two thousand dollars worth of pomp and circumstance. Well, the hell with her."
"Mr. Wonderful," I said. "I thought you loved her."
"Not anymore I don't."
"Don't like me too much either, huh?"
"You got that right."
"So what're you going to do? Quit the agency, withdraw from the human race? Get drunk every night and lie around here every day feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Big man," he said. "Smart guy. Knows what's best for everybody except himself."
I had nothing to say to that.
Eberhardt said, "You think your head's screwed on so damn tight these days? Not since that kidnap business, it hasn't been."
"Don't bring that up," I said, hard and tight. "We're not talking about that."
"Why the hell not? You come into my house and dump shit all over me, now it's my turn. This past year you been hard to get along with and reckless as hell, busting laws left and right, putting both our licenses in jeopardy. Look at the Lujack case, look at all the harebrained crap you pulled—"
"Eb, shut up." I could feel myself starting to shake inside.
"Can't take it, huh? Dish it out but can't take it. Maybe you ought to go see a head doctor, buddy boy. You ever consider that, you self-righteous pain in the ass?"
"Back off. I've had enough of this."
"So have I. You think I haven't?"
"Then back off."
"No, you back off. Get the hell out of my house." A vein bulged and pulsed in his neck. "I'm not gonna tell you again."
"Suppose I don't want to leave? You going to throw me out?"
"If that's the way you want it."
"You can try," I said.
His eyes got flinty and he took a couple of steps toward me—close enough so that I could smell the stale-whiskey sourness of his breath. "Don't push me anymore," he said, "I'm warning you."
"You mean like this?" I poked his shoulder with the heel of my hand, hard enough to force him backward a step.
He growled something and came back at me in a bullish rush. But hangover had dulled his reflexes; the punch he threw was slow and I had no trouble avoiding it. I didn't think, didn't hesitate. I hit him once in the belly, short-arming the blow but not pulling it any. The air went hissing out of him. He staggered backward, folding at the middle; smacked into the drainboard and then sat down hard enough on the floor to rattle dishes inside t
he cupboards.
All the anger went out of me as swiftly as the air had gone out of Eberhardt. It left me feeling shocked, muddleheaded, a little sick. Neither of us moved for a little time; just stood and sat staring at each other in disbelief. Then, jerkily, I started toward him.
"Eb . . ."
"Stay away from me, you son of a bitch."
I'd put my hand out; he batted it away. His face had gone gray again and he was clutching at his belly. He used his other hand to clutch the edge of the sink, lift himself upright. When he was on his feet I saw his stomach convulse, heard the sickness bubbling in his throat. He spun away from me, lurching, and banged out of the kitchen and through the house to the downstairs bathroom.
I could hear him vomiting in there. I wanted to go to him, say something, tell him I was sorry, try to erase what had just happened between us, but I couldn't seem to move—not until the puking sounds stopped and I heard the splash of running water. Then I was able to make my legs work, but I didn't go to where he was. I went straight to the front door and out and down to my car.
I sat there. Feeling lousy, disgusted with myself. Ashamed. My hand hurt a little—the knuckles on the ring and little fingers, where they'd scraped against his rib cage. I looked at the hand but there wasn't any damage; just a faint quivering, as if something was causing it to vibrate internally. There was something clenched in my other hand, I realized then. His spare key. I looked at that, too, then got out of the car and went up and replaced it under the lava rock.
In the car again I remembered the one other time we'd fought: thirty years ago, at the police academy just a few weeks after we met. One of those cases of instant dislike between two people that forms for no good reason and builds out of nothing much into a confrontation: harsh words, an exchange of blows. I'd knocked him down then too. Right hook to the side of the head. And my hand had hurt afterward just as it was hurting now.
Kid stuff.
But in the funny way of things, that fight had made us friends. Friends for three full decades, partners for the last five years. Plenty of disagreements and crises large and small, plenty of words, but in all that time we had never again come to blows. Until today.
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