“No,” I said. “She could have checked the newspapers for that. What I did was tell her that nobody was looking for her and that nobody seemed likely to want to look for her.”
“But why did she want to know that?” Powder shouted. “Why does she care? Why does she need to know badly enough to hire a stranger to find out? But not badly enough to ask someone herself? Why? Why?”
I said, “Already today I’ve been told to go away by half the world, and I’ve fallen in love, and I’ve listened to two grown people talking about a missing cat. That kind of thing takes what little intelligence I have to offer out of me.”
“What you did,” he said portentously, “was to indicate to her that it was probably safe to go ahead with her plans.” He sat back, leaned back. He rubbed his face.
I said, “What plans?”
“I don’t know what plans,” he said. “How the hell do I know what plans? But I can tell you this. She’s not far away.”
“You’re going to have to spell it out for me. Powder.”
He sat up and sighed. “She runs away from home. Two months later, having changed her appearance, she comes to Indianapolis and goes to you. She asks you to find out whether she is being actively sought and you tell her she isn’t. Now, to me that means she wants to do something somewhere around here. If all she needed to know was whether the law was after her, she didn’t have to dress up and give you a picture. The way I read it, she wants to pass casual inspection without being recognized, and she even used you to test how good her disguising was.”
“And if I recognize her,” I said, “all she does is walk out.”
“Mind you,” Powder said, “it’s a goddamn joke. Hires you to find someone sitting on the chair across the desk from you. Goddamn P.I.s. I always said they wouldn’t know the nose on their faces.”
I ignored the editorial comments. “She’s changed her appearance,” I said, “and she’s not being chased. She’s worried about being recognized.”
“Which means,” Powder said, “that she’s somewhere not a million miles from here.”
“More like within, say, a hundred.”
He smiled. “Which kind of brings it all into my line of country, doesn’t it, gumshoe?”
“You know so much,” I said. “What’s she doing out there?”
“I haven’t done that piece of thinking for you yet,” he said. “But I’ll tell you something else for free.”
“What?”
“She ran away alone.”
“Why?”
“Because if she’d just run away with somebody, she wouldn’t care whether she was being looked for. People leave with the milkman all the time. No big deal.”
“Unless she has something she has to hide.”
“Like killing a guy?” he asked.
“Could be,” I said.
And it could. I felt a cumulative sense of the growing insistence in Priscilla Pynne to control her own destiny. Possibly whatever the cost.
“O.K.,” I said, “she’s getting on with what she planned. She planned it on her own. It has to be done around here. What is it?”
“Fucking riddle,” Powder said. “Answer comes out of why she left, what kind of woman she was. Just the kind of blurry, wishywashy gruel that ought to be saved for private eyes to suck on.”
“Suits me fine,” I said. “And I’ve got some routine leather-pounding that seems just about right for you people.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mrs. Pynne drove her car to Bloomington in the middle of the night, but nobody knows where she went after that or how she went there. I’d say it was time to start checking taxis and buses. And in the building she parked outside, there’s a Ride Board, with student notices wanting riders to go all over the country.”
Seriously, he said, “How long ago was this again?”
“April twelfth, nearly seven months. But if you’re lucky maybe she took a cab in the middle of the night, either to the bus station or somewhere else. Maybe they’ll remember because of that and because she is a striking-looking woman.” I took the picture of Priscilla Pynne and flipped it across the desk to him.
He picked it up and raised his eyebrows.
I said, “And we can see who finds her faster. Wishy-washy private eyes trying to guess where she is, or routine-bound leather-scrapers picking up the trail after more than half a year.”
He put the picture down and rubbed his face again. “I might just be able to get some cooperation from Bloomington,” he said.
I left police headquarters to walk to the parking lot where I’d left my van. It was in the lot built on the site of the first office I’d been evicted from, on the corner of Ohio and Alabama.
I hadn’t parked there from the sentimentality to do with times past. I’d parked from the sentimentality of it being cheaper and the Market Square lot being full.
While I was waiting for the light on Wabash to change, a woman next to me said, “You! Cut that out!”
“What?”
“Oh, all innocence when somebody has the nerve to speak up. Just cut the crap and stop looking at me like that.”
The light changed.
She harangued me all the way to the other side. “People like you ought to be locked up,” she said, “I ought to call the cops.”
She turned left. I walked straight on.
I didn’t feel indignant, I had been looking at her. From the time I left Powder, I’d been looking at all women more carefully than usual.
I’d been looking for Priscilla Pynne, who was out there, somewhere.
Chapter Twenty Nine
When I got home, Glass Albert’s Caddy was parked outside my office. That meant he was in the back, shooting hoops. I walked around. When I got on court, his back was to me and he was about to shoot. I sneakered up and checked him from behind. Being able to move without being heard is why we wear gumshoes. You’re also silent when the soles of your shoes are thin as skin.
“Son of a bitch,” Glass Albert said as the ball trickled out of his hands and down his back.
“You take the ball over your head to shoot,” I said. “Makes you vulnerable from behind. Keep it in front, where your hairline used to be.”
“You didn’t tell me you were a private eye just because you were between coaching jobs,” he said.
“Best of twenty free throws for an empty glass bottle?”
“You mock, whitey,” he said. “Just wait for the fortune I make out of this.”
“I’m only trying to keep you around,” I said. “The longer you’re here, the longer your gas guzzler’s parked out front. It raises my prestige among the neighbors.”
“I’m glad somebody besides me likes it,” he said. “My wife calls it a nigger car and drives around in a box of matches.”
After I beat him on free throws, we went inside and shared the can of beer I found in my refrigerator. Being in work doesn’t leave a lot of time for shopping.
We sat in the room I’d made my kitchen. “This is where the guy who owned it before me killed himself,” Glass Albert said. “I told you that, didn’t I?”
He hadn’t. “Thanks a lot,” I said.
“There was a woman came around just after I got here,” Glass Albert said.
I sat up suddenly.
“What’s the matter? Spring pop through the cushion?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Says you hadn’t called her and she wanted to see if you had been swallowed by the earth.”
I sat back. “I’ve been neglecting family and friends,” I said.
“She family or friend?”
“Friend.”
“Bit young for you, isn’t she?”
“No, I’m too young for her. Inside.”
“Take some advice from a rich man,” Glass Albert said. “Never let your career get so important that it breaks into the time you spend with people close to you.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Who did you think this lady was?”
he asked.
“There is a woman out there,” I said, waving a pointed finger rudely at the surrounding world. “And I’ve got to find her.”
“And you thought she’d saved you the trouble by coming here?”
“I can hope.”
“How do you set about finding a woman’?”
“I think she’s within a hundred miles.”
“Still lots to choose from. What do you do first?”
“I try to think where I would be if I were her.”
“And when that doesn’t work?”
“I think some more.”
“Think like a woman? What she would do?” He shook his head. “Shit.”
“What do you mean, ‘think like a woman’? What kind of atavistic concept is that?”
“It’s not my concept,” I protested.
“It’s just tanto, tanto!” Lucy, the daughter, said.
“Isn’t it your bedtime?” I asked.
“So that you can get yours?” she answered back.
“If you’re not going to be civil, Lucille,” her mother said, “then you will leave the room. We made a deal and I expect you to stick by your side of the bargain.”
“What kind of life is this?” Lucy asked. “When you have to bargain with your own parent. And her so-called friends.”
She curled her lip. That was beyond the limit. “On your way, young lady.”
“I’m all right to talk to when it’s not convenient for him to be around,” Lucy said. “Then I can stay up late, whether it’s school night or not. But when he does deign to appear, because he can’t think of any work to do, then no, it’s ‘Lucy off to bed,’ even before the sun sets. Well, good night! And do enjoy yourselves!”
The living-room door closed firmly behind her.
“You look as if you’re in shell shock,” I said to my woman.
“How long does adolescence last?” she asked.
“A lifetime every day, I hear. Look, do you want me to go?”
“Certainly not.”
“Thank heavens for that,” I said.
“Not until you tell me what ‘think like a woman’ is supposed to mean.”
“I told my landlord that the next stage on my job is to try to think what I would do if I were the woman I am trying to find. It was he who generalized the particular. You got the wrong Albert, lady. Or rather, you have the right one but you’re pointing the finger of accusation at the wrong one.”
She let me off. “Trying to find a woman, huh?”
Work was not a customary subject, but I hadn’t been around for some time. And it was on my mind.
“I’ve even enlisted the help of the local law.”
“Your friend Miller?”
“No. Guy in the Missing Persons called Powder.”
“Leroy Powder?”
“The same. You know him?”
“From the same time that you know him,” she said. “You found one of my girls who ran away, between you.”
“Oh yes,” I said, remembering.
“How is he?”
“Prickly, as usual.”
“Yes,” she said. After a while she said, “And he’s helping you trace this woman you’re hunting.”
“Yes.”
“Where are you looking for her?”
“Somewhere comparatively close by.”
“Why? What’s she doing?”
“We don’t know. But we think she is in the state, more or less.”
“What kind of work does she do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What sort of job qualifications does she have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She graduated from high school.”
“College?”
“No. She went, but she blew it and dropped into the drug scene for a while.”
“Is that the way she is likely to go again?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“And you don’t think she has run off with anybody?”
“The only candidate got dead instead.”
“So she’s got to make a living somehow.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Or is she the type to latch on to somebody?”
“She just cut loose,” I said, “but I don’t know.”
“You don’t really think she would, do you?”
“No. When I met her, she felt irredeemably alone.”
“So she’s trying to go it by herself. You say she went to college once. What were her high-school grades like?”
“She did well in high school.”
“O.K.,” she said. “You should look for her in colleges. That’s where she’s gone.”
I thought about it. “She could have done that at home,” I said. “More easily. Her husband worked at I.U.”
My woman didn’t say anything. She might have been asking me whether the husband would have encouraged that.
“But the husband wouldn’t have encouraged that,” I said.
She didn’t even nod. She just sat looking wise.
“But if she goes to college,” I said, “why not somewhere else? Why the risk of staying around here?”
“Money.”
“What do you mean?”
“If she were just looking for a job, she could do that anyplace. But she’s an Indiana resident, right? She can go to a state university a lot cheaper than she can go anywhere else.”
I chewed on that one for a moment. It tasted good. Not wishywashy at all.
Chapter Thirty
Saturday morning was not, I felt, the best of times to turn out the records departments of the various state university campuses in Indiana. Not if you were Joe Citizen.
I called the Police Department. Powder was off duty.
“But he’ll call later this morning,” the officer on the Missing Persons extension said. “He always does, just to see what’s happening.”
“I’d like to talk to him now,” I said. “Can you give me his home number?”
“No. Not allowed.”
I left my name.
Then I picked up the phone book. Cops don’t generally have their phone numbers listed. Unless maybe it’s under their wife’s name. But, being Powder . . .
It was there.
“Yeah?” he said when he answered.
“There was just this one and the Powder Puff Beauty Salon listed in the book,” I said. “I had a hard time choosing the right number.”
“Who’s that?” he asked. No imagination.
I told him.
“Oh,” he said. “I called you last night. But all I got was a goddamn machine. Why don’t you get a secretary? I hate those machines. I won’t talk to them. So what do you want?”
“I hope I interrupted something,” I said. Then, before he could reply, I said, “No, I don’t. What is it that makes me want to irritate you, Powder?”
“I don’t know, but you’re good at it,” he said.
“I called to ask you to loosen up some police channels to get some information.”
“What?” Quite a civilized question, considering.
“I think Priscilla Pynne has enrolled at one of the Indiana state universities. I figure you have a better chance of finding which one, quickly, than I do.”
“What twinkie-bright idea makes you think she’s gone to college, shamus?”
I explained.
“You think of this all by yourself?”
“No.”
“You disappoint me.”
“It seems a reasonable starting place,” I said. “A little more specific than trying all the employment offices.”
“I tried them,” he said.
“Oh.”
“I didn’t have the broad’s maiden name, though. Bound to use it. That’s what I called about.”
“Pitman,” I said. “Priscilla Howell Donohue Pitman.”
“I’ll run out of ink writing all that down.”
I gave him what little detail I had of her educational background.
“All right,” he said. “I was just about to go out to my garden to clean it up for the winter. When I get back, I’ll make a few calls.”
“Come on!” I said. “What the hell’s important around here? A garden, or getting a grip on this lady who may have killed a guy?”
“Pity you didn’t call a few minutes earlier, gumshoe,” he said sourly. “I already got my galoshes on.” He hung up.
I sat and looked at the telephone for a minute. The guy irritated me. Maybe that was why I liked irritating him.
I went to the icebox and got some orange juice, and came back to the phone. I had one or two other calls to make.
I dialed Powder’s number.
It was busy. Galoshes or not.
Then I called Kenneth Catherman in Springfield, Massachusetts.
A man answered. “Hello?”
“Mr. Catherman?”
“I’ll get him.”
I heard the voice which answered the telephone say, “Some fella for you.”
When Catherman came on, I identified myself.
“Ah, the man looking for the erstwhile Miss Pitman.”
“I would appreciate a little help,” I said. “I’d like the name and phone number of the person at your high school who would be responsible for sending out copies of high-school grade transcripts.”
He was silent.
“Mr. Catherman?” Again, “Mr. Catherman? Are you there?”
Finally, he said, “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Is this still a matter of tracking Priscilla?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think she may be attending a college hereabouts and she will have needed to produce her high-school records.”
He hesitated again. “I suppose you could do this without my help anyway?”
“The name of the person in charge of transcripts? Yes. From the principal, and I can get that from the police or the board of education. I just thought it would save time to ask you.”
“Then perhaps you would wish to know that I sent Priscilla a copy of her records.”
“I thought you hadn’t heard from her.”
“If I recall correctly,” he said, “you asked if I knew where she was, which I don’t exactly, and when I had last spoken to her, which is more than nine years ago.”
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