"Mid-thirties," I said, "heavyset, short brown hair, nice tan, small curved scar under his right eye."
No reaction. Just "No," and the same blank look.
To hell with Columbo and his tricks. Life never imitates art when you want it to, anyway.
* * * * *
On the way across town I used my mobile phone to call Harry Fletcher at the DMV and ask him to run Vernon Savarese's name, get me a home address. Harry bitched a little —his supervisors were riding herd, he said, ever since the new law prohibiting public access to private information about licensed drivers; and why didn't I quit calling him so damn often, if he lost his job it would be on my head. Harry's that way: a day without bitching is like a day without sunshine. The new law didn't have much to do with our working arrangement and he knew it as well as I did; it had been instituted to keep crazies from getting their claws on the home addresses and telephone numbers of celebrities. So I let him grumble, said some things to placate him, said I'd be at the office when he had the information, and rang off before he could start whining again.
When I got back to O'Farrell Street I found a locksmith working on the front door to my building, and the landlord, Sam Crawford—Sleazy Sam to those of us who didn't like him —throwing a minor tantrum in the presence of Martin Quon. Crawford wouldn't have cared if burglars had cleaned out everything belonging to his three tenants; he was upset because the door lock had been damaged and he had to pay for the installation of a new one.
He came after me as soon as I walked in. I hadn't told Martin that my office was the target of the break-in; nobody needed to know that but me. Let it look like an abortive B & E. But Crawford was cunning as well as penurious. He said, "This got something to do with you, don't it?" and poked me in the chest with his fat forefinger.
He had bad breath, body odor, and an outthrust belly that seemed to be trying to mate with mine. I said, "Poke me again and you'll be picking your fat up off the floor with both hands."
"What?" he said. "What? You can't talk to me like that—"
"Then keep your paws off me."
"I didn't hardly touch you. What's the idea?"
"I'm having a bad day and you're making it worse."
"Yeah? How'd you like your lease busted?"
"I wouldn't like it, Sam. Neither would you."
"That some kinda threat?"
"No more than the one you just made."
I shoved past him and into the elevator. The office was still shut up tight. No Eberhardt, and nothing from him on the answering machine. I would have been astonished if he'd been there or called.
I banged myself into my chair, caught up the phone—and froze with the receiver halfway to my ear as a paranoid thought worked its way through my head. Or maybe it wasn't paranoid; what did I know, really, about Blackwell? I unscrewed the mouthpiece, looked inside. Opened up the base unit and checked in there. No bug. Okay, so it had been a paranoid thought. The hell with it.
First call: Arlo Haas. Everything was status quo there. He'd just spoken to Constanza Vargas, he said. No change in Grady's attitude. I didn't tell him about the break-in last night; there wasn't any sense in adding to his load of worry. But I did mention the connection between Blackwell and Vernon Savarese, and promised to let him know as soon as I had an idea of its nature.
Second call: Jack Logan at the Hall of Justice. He took down the Blackwell, King, and Jones names and the man's description and agreed to run a check through the National Crime Information Center in Washington. He also agreed to run Savarese's name through the Criminal Justice Information System, California's computer link-up operated by the state attorney general's office. Then he said, "Eb's fiancee called Wednesday, said the wedding's been cancelled, but she wouldn't give me any details. What's up?" I told him what was up. He said, "Think it might help if I talked to Eb like a Dutch uncle?" I said it might but I knew it wouldn't.
Calls three through fourteen: Another canvass of the rental-car agencies on the dark brown Buick. This time around I provided the Blackwell name, but it got me no more than the King or Jones names had. If he'd rented the car locally, he'd used still another name. And it wouldn't have been his own either.
Fifteenth call: Eberhardt's home. I didn't expect an answer and I didn't get one; he hadn't even bothered to put his answering machine on today.
Sixteenth call: Kerry at Bates and Carpenter. The sound of her voice was enough to cheer me a little. I asked her if she'd like to have lunch. She'd like it, she said, but she couldn't; she was breaking bread with a client at one o'clock.
"How about tonight, then?" I asked. "Can you get away?"
"If Cybil's in good spirits. She was this morning."
"Good. I need a friendly ear."
"Among other friendly parts of my anatomy, hmm?"
"Always. But the friendly ear most of all."
"What's the matter? You sound down."
"Lousy day. And it's not even half over."
"Eberhardt?"
"He's one of the reasons. I went out to see him yesterday afternoon and we had a fight."
"So what else is new."
"No, I mean literally. I knocked him down."
"Oh, God. You didn't hurt him?"
"Just some more of his pride. But I feel guilty as hell about it."
"Have you talked to him since?"
"No. He didn't come in again today, naturally. I tried calling him a few minutes ago, but if he's home he's not answering the phone."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. That's why we need to talk. Maybe between us we can come up with an idea that'll get him and Bobbie Jean back together. And some way to patch things up between him and me."
We settled on seven o'clock at my flat. Unless there were problems with Cybil, and then Kerry would call and let me know.
I considered calling Bobbie Jean at work—she was a secretary to a real-estate broker in San Rafael—but I still couldn't seem to nerve myself up to it. What was I going to say to her? I was trying to think of something when the phone bell went off.
Harry Fletcher at the DMV. "You owe me big this time," he said. "Super caught me and I had to lie like a congressman to save my ass."
"I feel for you, Harry. How about if I throw in an extra five bucks per cheek?"
"Funny," he said. "But I'll hold you to the extra ten."
"You haven't earned it yet. Savarese's home address?"
"Eighty-two hundred Gellert Drive."
"Here in the city?"
"Here in the city."
"What kind of car does he drive?"
"You didn't ask me to find that out."
"Come on, Harry. You know me and I know you—I didn't ask, but you checked it anyway. What kind of car?"
"Plymouth Voyager. 'Eighty-eight."
"License number?"
He gave it to me.
"You're a prince, Harry. Don't let that super do anything to your ass."
He said cleverly, "Screw you, pal," and hung up on me.
Chapter 15
I had to look up Gellert Drive on my city map. It was out on the western rim, in the Parkside District—close to Lake Merced and not far from the zoo. One of San Francisco's older middle-class residential neighborhoods, not quite as affluent an address as I'd expected for the owner of a fairly large import-export company.
I drove out there, and the house wasn't much even by neighborhood standards. It was on the part of Gellert that curves around to parallel Sunset: small, boxy, made of cinnamon-colored stucco with a brick facade, fronting on a narrow parkstrip that separated Gellert from Sunset's four-lane expanse. The garage was attached—door closed, no car in the driveway or parked in front—and on top of it was what looked to be a sundeck, wood-railed and lined along the front edge with potted palms.
Nobody answered the doorbell. Soft scraping sounds—not from inside but from somewhere overhead—kept me from pushing it again. The sundeck? I turned off the porch, and when I looked up a plumpish b
lond woman with a bright green scarf tied around her head was leaning against the rail between two of the potted palms, staring down at me.
"You want something?" she said.
No, I thought irritably, I'm just going around the neighborhood ringing doorbells; it's not much of a hobby but it keeps me from mugging old ladies. I said, "Vernon Savarese. Is he home?"
"No."
"Went down to China Basin, did he?"
"He didn't say where he was going."
I said, "Can you tell me—" but she wasn't there anymore.
I hesitated, listening to her move around up there. Then I walked over to the far side of the garage and along a narrow strip of lawn to the rear. A set of stairs, built onto the back of the garage, led up to the sundeck. I climbed them, calling out that I was coming so I wouldn't startle her.
Green AstroTurf on the sundeck, some rusty outdoor furniture, and the blonde standing there watching me with hostile eyes, one hand on her hip and the other clutching a plastic watering can as if she were getting ready to throw it at me. It was colder up there than down below. Even though the cloud cover was breaking up and there was sunlight on the deck, the wind blowing straight in off the ocean had a salty bite to it. It was rough in her hair and playful under the scarf, billowing and flapping the green cloth.
"What's the idea?" she said. "You think he's hiding up here? I told you, he went off" somewhere."
"I just wanted to ask you a couple more questions," I said through a reassuring smile. "I didn't want to shout them for the neighbors to hear."
She made a derisive sound. "Fuck the neighbors."
What do you say to that?
"So what are you," she said, "a bill collector?"
"No. I've got other business with Mr. Savarese."
"I'll bet. Another damn bill collector."
"May I ask who you are?"
"Why?"
"I understood he was divorced. You wouldn't be his wife?"
"Me? Hell no. I'm his bimbo."
"His what?"
"His bimbo," she said and laughed, but not as if she thought anything was funny. "I'm the reason he got divorced."
"Oh."
"Yeah," she said. "His wife called me a bimbo, her lawyer called me a bimbo, the neighbors call me a bimbo, so I guess that's what I am, right?"
"Not necessarily."
She had a wide mouth, painted now with fuchsia lipstick, and she worked it into a self-mocking pout. The wind had loosened her scarf; she pulled it back into place, managed to retie it under her chin without letting go of the watering can. She was in her early thirties, attractive in a crusty, hard-edged sort of way, like a sugar cookie baked too long and then allowed to go stale. "So what is it you want, if you're not a bill collector?"
"I told you, I have some business with Mr. Savarese. It has to do with Mr. Blackwell."
"Who?"
"Blackwell." I described him. "You know the man?"
"No. Why should I?"
"I thought maybe he'd been out here to see Mr. Savarese."
"Well, he hasn't been. Not while I was here anyway. Vern doesn't do business at home if he can help it. Not that he does much business anywhere, these days."
"Things slow, are they?"
"You ought to know."
"My business with him has nothing to do with the import-export trade."
"No? What does it have to do with?"
"That's between Mr. Savarese and me."
"I don't give a shit one way or another," she said. "Unless you got some money for him. You don't, I suppose?"
"No," I said.
"Good-bye," she said, and showed me her back and walked over to one of the potted palms.
I called to her, "One more question before I go. What time did he leave this morning?"
She started to water the palm, stopped, and kicked the pot instead. "Why the hell do I bother?" she said to herself. "Stick with me, baby, he says, you'll live in a mansion. Yeah. A rented mansion in the fogbelt, watering somebody else's fucking palm trees."
I asked the question again: "What time did he leave this morning?"
"Half an hour ago," she said without looking at me. "When you track lover boy down, tell him something for me, huh?"
"What's that?"
"Tell him Gloria said stick it in his ear."
* * * * *
Savarese wasn't at his warehouse.
The sparrow woman, Mabel Butler, was not pleased to see me again so soon. No, she said through pursed lips, he hadn't come in yet. No, he hadn't called. No, she certainly didn't know where he was—and her tone added that she wouldn't tell me if she did.
I went back outside and sat in my car. It was one-fifteen by my watch. I kept on sitting there, waiting—half an hour, forty-five minutes. No sign of Savarese.
Hunger and restlessness finally prodded me into movement. But I didn't go far, just down to a café on Third Street. At two-thirty, full of a crabmeat sandwich and a glass of something that had been false-advertised as iced tea, I drove back to Savarese Importing. No Plymouth Voyager van among the cars parked inside and outside the front fence. I took myself upstairs again anyway, spoiled some more of Mabel Butler's afternoon and some more of mine: same questions, same answers. As Yogi Berra once said, it was just like deja vu all over again.
* * * * *
Back to my office, because I had no place else to go. And ten minutes after I arrived, I had a visitor: Bobbie Jean Addison.
"I hope you don't mind me just dropping in like this," she said. "I know you're busy. . . ."
"No, no, I'm glad you came."
Wan smile.
"Sit down," I said. "How about some coffee?"
She accepted the first invitation, declined the second. She was wearing an electric blue pantsuit, and a little blue cap, and more makeup than she usually applied—an effort, I thought, to present a bright and cheerful facade. But there wasn't much cheer in her lean, angular face, or in the dark smudges under her eyes that powder and paint couldn't quite conceal. Normally Bobbie Jean is an attractive, animated woman who looks five years younger than fifty-one. Today, in spite of the window dressing, she looked five years older. Even her voice, usually husky, with traces of a drawl that betrays her South Carolina origins, had a flat intonation.
"I drove in to see Eb," she said. "I thought . . . well, that I could get him to talk things out. It's been three days now; one of us has to take the initiative."
"But you didn't see him?"
"No. He wasn't home."
"Not working either. Not for the past few days."
"I didn't expect to find him here. I came to see you."
"Oh?"
"I called Kerry a little while ago," Bobbie Jean said. "She told me about the fight yesterday."
Bobbie Jean and I have always been at ease in each other's company, but not today—at least not in my case. I felt acutely uncomfortable, and when I feel that way my hands turn into great twitching lumps of flesh. I put them in my lap, out of sight under the desk.
I said awkwardly, "I wanted to tell you about it myself. I started to call you last night and again this morning, but . . . well . . ."
"I know, you don't have to explain."
"I wanted to call Tuesday night too. But I'm just not good with words at times like that."
The wan smile again.
"I'm on your side in this, Bobbie Jean. One hundred percent. I want you to know that."
"I know it," she said. "It's why you had the fight with Eb, isn't it?"
I nodded. "Stupid, a stupid thing. Me hitting him, I mean. I shouldn't have done it—it only made things worse."
"He'll get over it."
"Sure," I said. "Sure he will."
Bobbie Jean was silent for a time. Then she said, "He's still angry at me, I suppose. Angry and bitter."
"Yes. I tried to talk some sense to him, get him to accept responsibility, but he wouldn't listen."
"Was he drinking?"
"Not then. But he had been�
��a two-day toot."
"You think he still is?"
"Last night, probably."
"He won't . . . I mean, you don't think he'll . . ."
"No, no way. A three-day bender is about his limit. Then he gets sick as a dog and can't stand even the smell of the stuff. That's how it was after his divorce and a couple of other times I know about."
"Well, at least I don't have to worry about that. "
"After he sobers up he'll listen to reason. Not from me, maybe, not after yesterday, but from you."
"I hope so," Bobbie Jean said. She ran her hands together in her lap, a dry raspy sound. "I keep telling myself I did the right thing, calling off the wedding, but I don't know . . . he's so angry and hurt . . . I didn't think he'd take it this badly."
"It's his pride. He's got too much stubborn pride."
A nod, a sigh. "I should never have said yes in the first place. But he was so insistent, he kept after me and after me. . . ."
"He loves you."
"And I love him. Truly. Just not enough, I guess."
"Why do you say that?"
"If I loved him enough, I'd have gone through with the wedding no matter what. I tried to go through with it, God knows, but I just couldn't."
"That doesn't mean you don't love him enough."
"Maybe not. I had this feeling—I still have it—that if we got married the way he wanted us to, with all the pomp and circumstance, it wouldn't last. I've had two failed marriages, you know that, and I don't believe I could stand to go through another divorce. Not from Eb. Especially not from Eb."
"Did you tell him that?"
"Yes. He said I was being foolish."
"I don't think you're being foolish."
"But I shouldn't have waited so long," she said. "I should have put my foot down when he first started changing plans."
"What's that old saw? Hindsight's a great teacher?"
"Isn't it, though."
"You'll work it out, Bobbie Jean. You and Eb together."
"You really think he'll still want to?"
"Even if he won't admit it yet. I've known him thirty-odd years; sometimes I think I know him better than he knows himself."
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