Trace nodded and took the phone.
Michael Mabley spoke fast, as if he was worried about being interrupted.
“Mr. Tracy, this is Michael Mabley. I got your message about the insurance policy. Sorry I couldn’t pick up the telephone right away, but I was working with a client. I don’t like to get on the phone when I’m with a client ’cause I like to give them my undivided attention. That’s the way we operate here at the Mabley agency. Every client is number one in our book. Número Uno. That’s the way this agency’s been built and that’s why we’re the 287th largest agency in California, not counting car-insurance agencies.” He finally paused for breath and Trace said, “Very commendable.”
“You said something on the telephone about a policy?” Mabley said.
“Yes, but that was a lie,” Trace said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That was a lie. I just wanted to get your attention,” Trace said. “I’m Devlin Tracy Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“I’m with Garrison Fidelity. Marks asked me to call you.”
“Oh. You’re the investigator he mentioned.”
“What did he say about me?” Trace asked.
“He said you worked for them sometimes.”
“Did he seem pleased with my work?”
“He sort of said that you had a personality problem, actually,” Mabley said. “Nothing serious, mind you. Just that you were difficult to get along with sometimes.”
“Good,” Trace said. “That’s the way I always want Groucho to think of me. He said you had a problem.”
“Groucho. That’s a hot one. Is that his nickname?”
“No. Actually Walter is his nickname,” Trace said. “His real name is Groucho, but he doesn’t like to use it because…well, you know the insurance business. People are pretty conservative. They might not feel right handing their money to somebody named Groucho Marks. But he really loves the name. It was a favorite of his father, Karl, too. Next time you talk to him, tell him I told you. So what’s your problem?”
“I don’t think it’s a real big problem,” Mabley said. He had the voice of a natural insurance man, Trace thought. It treaded through life’s waters, never judgmental, never anything but monotone. It was a voice without a bone in it. He was saying, “Just a problem about procedure, but I don’t know what’s the best thing to do. That’s why I called Walter.”
“Groucho. Remember. Groucho,” Trace said.
“Right. I’ve got to remember that. Groucho Marks. That’s a good one.”
“So what’s the problem?” Trace repeated.
“Listen, could I see you tomorrow? It’s too complicated maybe to go into on the telephone.”
“That’s kind of a pain in the ass,” Trace said. “You see, I’m at this real swinging convention and I’d hate to miss a moment of it.”
“I’m in the city,” Mabley said. “I could meet you. I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Your restaurant doesn’t serve octopus, does it?” Trace asked.
“I don’t think so. I could probably get them to get some for you, though, if it’s real important.”
“No, no,” Trace said. “Just leave things the way they are. I’ll come down tomorrow. Around noontime.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting for you.” Mabley gave Trace an address in San Francisco’s rundown Mission District and said, “You can’t miss it. There’s a big sign of a hand over the front door.”
“Open, no doubt,” Trace said.
“That’s a hot one,” Mabley said, and Trace hung up.
He had many drinks more while waiting for Chico. She never did come into the bar. When he went up to his room just after “last call,” he listened at the adjoining door. Trace could hear two sets of little Japanese snores, mother and daughter, and he went to bed annoyed and frustrated.
First, though, he took a piece of hotel stationery, wrote a note, and slid it under the door.
It read: “Chico, Please don’t disturb us. We’ll probably sleep late.”
In the morning he found a note under his side of the door: “Dear Trace, The four of us didn’t see your note until this morning. Hope we didn’t make too much noise. Love, Bob and Chico and Ted and Emmie.”
4
It was going to be a fun day at the convention. That was for sure. Trace met Chico and her mother emerging from the hotel’s coffee shop, and Chico went back inside with him to have another breakfast. She gave him a complete rundown on the convention schedule.
First there was going to be a lecture on Japanese industry and its place in a changing world. In Japanese. And then there was going to be a lecture on Japanese film and its place in a changing world. Then they were going to show a film, Seven Brides for Seven Samurai, in Japanese.
Then they were going to a lunchtime lecture on Japan’s cuisine and its place in a changing world, in an effort to find out what they had eaten for lunch.
“That’s easy,” Trace said. “Say octopus if they ask questions.”
Trace ordered a half-piece of toast and coffee. Chico ordered something called the Fisherman’s Breakfast, which included pancakes, eggs, and fried oysters, among other things.
“I thought you just ate,” Trace said.
“I did. But I had the Cable Car Special Breakfast and I was wondering what was in this one,” she said. Her mouth full of Trace’s toast, she said, “I think the way you close your mind to other cultures is the mark of a small person.”
“You mean all this Japanese culture around here?” he asked, and she nodded. “Well, that’s how little you know,” he said. “I happen to like other cultures very much. Greek, French, English, I am very big on all those cultures.”
“You wish,” she said.
“Are you really going to all these lectures?”
“Mama-san says we go, we go. You don’t have to,” Chico said.
“And what do I do?”
“Wander the streets,” she said. “Borrow one of my mother’s cameras. She’s still got the six you gave her. Take pictures of the local flora and fauna and fagola.”
“I just may buckle on my tape recorder and go do some work,” he said.
“I’m sure you may,” she said. She returned a quarter-slice of toast to his plate and bent down over her own breakfast.
Back in his room, Trace taped the small tape recorder to his right side. A long wire plugged into the microphone jack and he threaded the wire under his shirt and through a buttonhole and attached it to the tie clip shaped like a golden frog. The gold mesh that covered the frog’s mouth was the cover for a very strong microphone.
Trace checked that the machine was working, put an extra tape into his jacket pocket, and left the hotel.
It was cool and cloudy—good weather for San Francisco—so Trace decided to walk to Michael Mabley’s office.
Walking along, Trace decided that it wasn’t that he disliked California. The fact was that he didn’t understand it. The state was certainly physically beautiful. Everything God had managed to cram into the world had a counterpart in California, from desert to mountain, from prairies to forest.
But the state had no discernible soul. It reminded Trace of a Christmas package. The box was beautiful and decorated with gold and silver; and inside, there was a layer of beautiful wrapping paper, and then another layer of wrapping paper more beautiful than the first. But no matter how long you dug or how deeply you rooted around inside the box, you never found anything more than beautiful wrapping paper. No soul.
New York had its nasty busy-ness and Chicago had its feel of muscled corruption. Even New Hampshire looked nice, but underneath was the knowledge that everybody in the state would steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes.
But California had no feel, and neither did Californians. There was a quintessential New Yorker and Alabaman and Texan, but no quintessential Californian.
Unless it was a movie producer. They were perhaps the only indigenous Calif
ornia creatures that could not be transplanted elsewhere and feel right at home.
What an epitaph for a state: “It gave us the movie producer.”
He amended that fifteen minutes later when he met Michael Mabley. California spawned both movie producers and people who wanted to look like movie producers.
Mabley wore a white-on-white silk shirt, open at the throat, with enough chains around his neck to make Mr. T look like Mahatma Gandhi. He was a little soft around the belly and his hair was frizz-curled with a permanent wave to make it look less thin. His French cuffs held large golden helmet cuff links that looked like a promotional giveaway from Caesar’s Palace, and he wore red suspenders. His lips were almost invisible, his mouth just a slit in the Pillsbury Doughboy puff that was his fleshy face. His eyes were dark and looked watery. The creases in his pants were so sharp they could have cut steak, and he wore a large golden-buckled cowboy-style belt.
Trace got the feeling he would know the year-to-date gross of every film made in Hollywood so far this year.
He pumped Trace’s hand inside his office and said, “How are you, Mr. Tracy? Hot enough for you?”
“It’s not warm at all,” Trace said.
“I know,” Mabley said with a smile that visited his mouth for only a millisecond before vanishing. “I always say that. Sort of like a trademark.”
“Oh, I got it. Like the suspenders and the gold chains and the cowboy belt.”
“Right. Exactly. Something like that makes it easier for people to remember you,” Mabley said.
“Asking people if it’s hot enough when the weather’s freezing will probably get them to remember you too,” Trace said.
“Sure,” Mabley said agreeably. Another quick smile vanished without a trace of its ever having been there. “You up for lunch?”
“That’s another good one,” Trace said. “Up for lunch. Sure. I’m up for lunch. I’ll take a lunch with you.”
“Then we ought to get this show—”
“On the road?” Trace said.
“Right, as rain. Wait, I’ll get my jacket,” Mabley said.
He walked to the back and Trace looked at the pictures on the wall behind Mabley’s desk. There was one of the agent surrounded by twenty blond young boys, doomed to grow up to be surfers, under a banner that read: “MABLEY’S MAULERS, LITTLE LEAGUE CHAMPIONS.” There was a picture of Mabley shaking hands with someone who must have been a California politician because he managed to look both healthy and corrupt at the same time. There was a citation from the press office of the Insurance Institute of America, giving Mabley the coveted Needham Award for excellence in public relations, and another citation from the Bay Area Artisans’ Craft Guild thanking him for his generous financial sponsorship and his service as a director.
At least there wasn’t a picture of him shaking hands with Richard Nixon, Trace thought.
Mabley came back inside wearing a red plaid jacket that looked as if it had been won in a crap game with a horse.
Based on that garment, Trace expected a restaurant with balloons hanging from the ceiling and a go-go girl dancing on the bar, but the restaurant, only two blocks away, turned out to be wood-paneled and not brightly lit. They had a table in a far corner away from the kitchen and the customer traffic.
Their waitress was a cute blonde wearing improbably high-heeled shoes and with improbably beautiful legs. She was chewing gum.
She called Mabley “Señor Mabley” and he chuckled and ordered “my usual.” Mabley looked at Trace knowingly.
Trace said, “I’ll have my usual too.”
“What’s your usual, pardner?” she said.
“Do you have anything with an umbrella in it?”
She bellowed over her shoulder. “Hey, Charlie, we got any drinks with umbrellas in them?”
“No,” came the return bellow.
“No,” she told Trace.
“Finlandia vodka. Rocks,” he said.
“Very good,” she said.
As she walked away, Mabley said, “Nice legs, huh?”
“Pretty good,” Trace admitted. True was true.
“All the girls in here are knockouts. That’s why I come here.” He leered at Trace and rolled his eyes.
“Well, that one sure seems to know you,” Trace said.
“Yeah. They know me. And I know them. Bachelor’s paradise. I bring my dinner dates here too. Impresses the waitresses.”
This person deserved to be Walter Marks’ friend. He was a nasty, crass, little man just like Walter Marks. They were two peas from the same pod. Mabley might be a bigger pea, but then everybody was bigger than Walter Marks.
Trace wanted lunch to be over. He wanted to get out of there. But he didn’t want to go back to a Japanese convention. Maybe he would go to a movie. He hadn’t seen a movie since Deep Throat, and he had fallen asleep during that one before anything happened.
He wished Chico were there so she could see how he had carefully not called the waitress “honey” or “sweetheart.” Chico said he only did this because he was a sexist and didn’t understand how offensive it was to women. Trace said it was no more offensive than calling a man you didn’t know “chief” or “pal.”
She said he didn’t understand. He said he would never understand if she didn’t explain.
“It’s nothing like pal or chief,” she had said. “That’s an expression of equality. Sweetheart or honey is an expression of condescension and it’s patronizing. You’re immediately putting yourself in a position of superiority over the woman. A—because you don’t even have to bother to learn her name; and B—because you’re assuming intimacy as a given on your terms and she has no voice in the matter. This, Trace, is a fact, and you are insensitive not to understand it.”
“You’ve been reading the Spenser books again,” Trace had said. “You sound like Susan Silverman.”
“That is immaterial.”
“How, then, does one address a waitress, for instance, whose name one does not know but who seems nice and deserves to be called something more than waitress?”
“Try miss. Or ma’am if she is one of the few people in the world older than you are,” Chico had said.
“Not mizz?” Trace had asked.
“No, not mizz. Mizz always precedes a name. It never stands alone as a form of address.”
“God, just what I needed, a Japanese-Sicilian who’s not only treacherous but pendantic too,” Trace had said.
“And correct. Don’t forget correct,” Chico had said.
When the waitress came back with their drinks, Mabley said, “Thanks, darling.” His drink was pink and foamy.
Trace said, “Should I call you miss or ma’am?”
“Honey will do,” she said.
“I thought women didn’t like being called honey or dear or sweetheart.”
“I don’t mind. Honey’s my name.”
“Honey? Really?”
“Really,” she said. “Now don’t say that’s sweet. Please don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say that at all,” said Trace, who had been planning to say that exact thing. “I was merely going to ask you what your last name was. Does it start with a B?”
“Very funny, Honey B, I’ve heard it before. The name’s Johnson.”
“Thank you,” Trace said. When she left, he sipped his drink and asked Mabley, “What’s this all about?” He clicked on his tape recorder.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Mabley said.
“Another thing you always say?”
“No, I’m serious. When you didn’t want to talk in the car coming over here, I….”
Trace shook his head. Something had seemed wrong about the restaurant and now he knew what it was. He couldn’t smell garlic in the air. Any restaurant that didn’t smell of garlic was not to be trusted. This one especially because it smelled of fresh air. He looked around, suspecting that they had ionizers on, hidden in the room, to give everybody a thunderstorm high. What the hell, it was California.
<
br /> “No,” he said to Mabley. “I didn’t want to talk in the car ’cause I don’t like to talk in cars. At least, not business. You just get to a good part and all of a sudden some lunatic with M.D. license plates comes racing out of a sidestreet and if you escape with your life, you’ve got to start all over again. So now we’re here and we can talk.”
“Love the way you do business, baby,” Mabley said.
“I’m thrilled,” Trace said.
“Anyway, about two weeks ago, this guy and his wife called me to get an insurance policy.”
“Who are they?” Trace asked.
“His name is Thomas Collins and his wife is Judith. So they come to the office and they want an insurance policy on Collins’ life.”
“How big?”
“Two hundred thousand,” Mabley said. He waited for a moment until Trace nodded. “So we went through all the routine stuff, zip, zip, zip, and got the policy. Then last Friday, the finished policy came into the office, so I drove over to their house to deliver it. I talked to the wife, and you know, Tracy, there was like something funny going on.”
“Like what?”
“I didn’t know, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something. So I talked to the wife awhile and then it turns out that her husband is missing.”
“How missing? There’s all kinds of missing,” Trace said.
“He had been gone for three days and she hadn’t seen or heard from him. She was all teary about this, you know, and it took me a long time to get it out of her. I think she was glad to have somebody to tell.”
“I think the police would have been the somebody she should tell,” Trace said. “Why bother telling you?”
“I mentioned that. I said, tell the police. You never saw a woman so scared.”
“Why’s she afraid of the police?” Trace asked.
“Not the police. She’s scared of her husband. I guess he’s some kind of tyrant or something because, well, I finally figured it out, what it was is that she was afraid to talk to the cops: if she did and then her husband came home, he’d be mad because she embarrassed him. I wouldn’t put it past him that he’s some kind of wife-beater or something because she was scared to death of making him mad.”
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 3