“Is the farm his?” Trace asked.
“I guess so. I never asked.”
“You know, his wife and partner don’t know anything about it,” Trace said.
“About what?”
“About Collins owning a farm.”
“How’d you know, then?” Laurie asked.
“You just told me,” Trace said.
The young woman took a sip of her Perrier. “And here I thought you were just another pretty face,” she said.
“Behind this pretty face lurks a mind like a steel trap,” Trace said. “Tell me about the farm.”
“Must I? It’s—it’s tacky.”
“Me or eventually the police,” Trace said. “I’m a better bet. Where is the farm?”
“Over the bridge about a half-hour. Near a place called Nicasio. It’s just a small place, a little house, a couple of outbuildings. It doesn’t grow anything.”
“Why’d he buy it?” Trace asked.
“You don’t know?” Trace shook his head, and she said, “Maybe you’re not so smart after all. Thomas uses it to fool around. He brings women there.”
“And you were one of the women,” Trace said, speaking softly, making sure there was no accusation in his voice, only a flat statement of fact.
“Just once,” she said.
“When was that?”
“About a year ago, right after he got the place.”
“Was that the only time you ever slept with him?” Trace asked.
“Yes.”
“How did he keep his hands off you? Rose told me what kind of guy he is. How could he not be all over you?”
“He is all over me,” she said. “Since I first came to work here, he’s been pawing me, goosing me, propositioning me. At first I thought he was just another nerd and then I saw he was serious. Are you going to tell him anything I say?” she asked suddenly.
“Not a chance,” Trace said. “Not him and not anybody else.”
“I guess I believe you,” she said. “Should I?”
“I’m the only game in town,” Trace said.
She thought about that for a long while, long enough for Trace to wave to the waitress for another drink.
“Okay. Collins is a real mutt. He never lets up, he never stops hitting on you, no matter how much you tell him to back off, no matter how many times you say no. He’s not above telling you that he’s the boss and it would help you to be nice to him.”
“If you feel that way, how’d you wind up there with him?”
“I stood him off for three years and then one night I weakened. I just broke up with a boyfriend; it was kind of messy and I was feeling punk. Thomas was in the office late that night and so was I, and well, one thing led to another.”
“Why do you think he didn’t tell anybody about it?” Trace asked.
Laurie shrugged. “If he told his wife about the farm, what good would it be to him?”
“Why not tell Rose? They’re partners, after all. Do they have secrets?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What kind of women does Collins fool around with?” Trace asked.
“Ugly ones.”
“Present company excepted,” he said with a smile.
“You have to realize we weren’t close,” she said.
“That’s a given. Anything you can tell me would be appreciated and kept quiet.”
“He messes around with any woman who’ll mess around with him,” she said.
“Pros? Hookers?” Trace asked.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. I mean, the man’s got a few bucks, I don’t think he’d mess around with hookers. But waitresses, clerks, anybody, you name it, that man never stops sniffing.”
“All one-night stands?” Trace asked. “What about romance? Long love affairs? Anything like that?”
“I don’t know. We’re hardly pals.”
“How’d you stand him off after you went to the farm with him?” Trace asked.
“He came on to me after that like the Iranian army, swooping and screaming, but I told him no, never again, it was a mistake and leave me alone.”
“And he did,” Trace said.
“He never did. He was always after me, but I didn’t bend.”
“Did he ever talk about any other women? Do you remember any names?”
“He talked all the time, but never any names. You know, it was that kind of joke talk that a lounge lizard gives you with the raised eyebrows and the winks and all that crap, but always with a built-in out. Men like that can always tell a wife they were just joking. It was locker-room talk, embarrassing, from some guy on the make. I wonder if men know how women hate that kind of bull.”
“Men who talk like that are too dumb to care,” Trace said, feeling very noble. “Did he ever mention a woman named Mandy?”
“No. No names. Maybe sometime in his bragging he said something like that, but I wouldn’t remember. Is there a reason?”
“I found a note that said somebody named Mandy was at the farm with him,” Trace said.
“I’m sorry. The name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“What do you think of Mrs. Collins?” Trace asked.
“She’s your client. What can I say?”
“The truth is usually good,” Trace said.
“All right. Look up the word ‘mousy’ in any dictionary and you’ll see her picture. You know, if she calls the office, it’s ‘whisper, whisper, terribly sorry, don’t disturb him but can she speak to Thomas if he’s not busy.’ That kind of thing.”
“So she’s not a friend that you can chitchat to on the telephone?”
“No. I see her once a year at office parties. Maybe twice if we have a picnic.”
“She and Collins get along?” Trace asked.
“I guess so. I don’t think her daughter likes Collins, though.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She came to the office once with her mother when Thomas was there. Just the looks she gave him gave me that idea.”
“What do you think of Collins?” Trace asked.
“I detest him,” she said.
“How’s the partnership going? With Rose. Are they making any money?”
“Mr. Rose is a great boss. I think he and Collins get along all right, but I don’t know anything about making money. Mr. Rose is always complaining, but that’s normal in the real-estate business.”
“All right. The real important question,” Trace said.
“What’s that?”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“It’s a good job and it’s been paying my way through law school at night,” she said.
“God. Another lawyer. Don’t we have enough lawyers?”
“Not enough good ones. There’s never enough good anything,” she said.
“That’s what I always tell my girlfriend. You graduating soon?”
“Another semester and I’ll be clerking.”
“Another thing,” Trace said. “You’ve been real open and honest with me and you didn’t have to be. How come?”
“No skin off my nose,” she said. “What are they going to do, fire me? I’ve already given notice that I’m leaving at the end of the month.”
Trace nodded and lunch dribbled away to small talk, another drink, and thanking her for her help.
Her real help was in verifying the existence of the farm and telling him where it was.
Now he wanted to go sit in a quiet bar somewhere and think about whether or not he wanted to do anything with that information.
10
Trace found Chico in the hotel cocktail lounge, where she was seated at a table in the corner, eating large handfuls of oyster crackers, sipping tea, and talking Japanese at the speed of light with Mr. Nishimoto.
When he saw Trace, he stood and bowed slightly. “Ahhh,” he said. “Bataan. Sorry I missed you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Trace said. “And, I hope we’ll be miss
ing each other again soon.” He slid into the banquette next to Chico and Mr. Nishimoto bowed and walked quickly away.
“What does that man want?”
“I told you—he’s interested in my mother,” Chico said.
“If he’s so interested in her, why doesn’t he talk to her?”
“That would be rude,” Chico said. “He is counting on me to let my mother know that he is interested in her. That way, if she is not interested, she can just continue to ignore him and she will not offend him by rejecting him.”
“And if she is interested?” Trace said.
“Then she can be nice to him, without running the risk of being rejected herself and having to commit suicide,” Chico said.
“That is just too goddamn inscrutable for me, and I thought that three years of living with you had made me real scrutable,” Trace said.
“Trust me. It’s the way it’s done,” Chico said.
“I don’t like the idea of you fixing your mother up,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Suppose she gets the idea to do the same for you?” he said. “Then where am I?”
“Hold that thought, barbarian,” she said.
Chico had finished all the fish crackers and Trace asked the waitress for more, along with a double vodka on the rocks.
“Where have you been?” she asked as he sipped from his drink.
“I was bored with this place, so I went out on the street to see if I could get lucky with one of these northern California beauties, but the two other straight guys in town had everything booked up for the day, so I came back here to you.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“And I thought, Trace, I thought, why are you fooling around looking for hamburger when you’ve got sirloin back at the hotel. That’s what I thought, I really did.”
“I’ve never been called a piece of meat with such éclat,” she said.
“You have a knack for seeing the dark side of everything,” he said. “Anyway, I thought to myself, Why don’t you go rescue your honey, who must be tired by now of this convention and who probably needs a break, and why don’t you take her for a ride in the beautiful California countryside?”
“The grand gesture,” she said. “I love it. Let’s go.”
“Will your mother be all right?” he asked.
“Yes. She’s at a lecture on flower arranging in a changing world.”
“Mmmm, sure you want to miss it?”
Trace loved driving in San Francisco. The first time he had ever been in the city, he had been walking somewhere from his hotel. Like most New Yorkers, he had stepped off the curb to get a head start crossing the street before the light changed. Instantly, cars coming from all four directions came to a screeching halt. Trace was perplexed: a tank blockade set up by transvestites couldn’t stop traffic in Manhattan. But a man standing next to him explained, “They stopped because you stepped onto the street.”
Trace hopped back onto the curb and the traffic roared to life again. This nearly mystical knowledge gave him a wonderfully insane sense of power and Trace took to Alphonse-and-Gastoning traffic as a hobby: “After you!” “No, please—after you. I insist.” Gridlock for miles.
To take his pastime behind the wheel was a natural; every time he drove he kept looking around for people standing—even lying—in the gutter so he could stop and snarl traffic.
He was doing it now and Chico said, “When you said you were taking me for a drive, I didn’t think you meant stopping at every corner.”
“All right,” he said. “A guy can’t even have a little fun.”
Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, he told her about Thomas Collins, the note from Mandy, and his lunch with Laurie Anders.
“It sounds to me like he’s left his wife,” Chico said.
“I think so too,” he said, “although I don’t know where he’s going to get a better deal. He’s no prize, and his wife is a pushover. He’s not going to find another one like her.”
They drove out through Marin County and then turned off on a small road just before the town of Nicasio. Trace was trying to read road signs that were painted on concrete posts mounted at the corners, but the writing was sun-faded and dim and he couldn’t make them out.
“I thought we were going for a drive,” Chico said.
“What do you think we’re doing, space-walking?”
“I think you’re slowing down at each corner looking for something. That’s not a drive, it’s a mission.”
“I’m looking for Collins’ farm,” he said. “I thought it might be nice to visit.”
“Do you think he has goats and chickens?” she asked.
“Yes. And horses and donkeys and sheep and big moo-cows and a very mean bull that everybody must stay away from.”
“Good. Where is the farm?”
“I don’t know. I can’t read the street signs,” he said.
“Stop and ask for directions.”
“That never works.”
“What do you mean it never works?” Chico asked.
“Every time I stop and ask somebody for directions, he turns out to be the only person in three states who doesn’t speak English. Or, if he does speak English, he just visiting here and doesn’t know where any place is. Or if he speaks English and isn’t just visiting here, he is sure to be the dumbest bastard who ever lived and he couldn’t find his foot in his shoe without directions.”
“Well, I’ll ask,” Chico said. “I’m real lucky. And here comes a live one.”
Trace pulled off to the side of the road as a man on foot approached down the thin sliver of sidewalk.
“What’s this place we’re looking for?” Chico asked.
“It’s called the old Walters farm. It’s on Palmer Road.”
“Just watch me,” she said.
Chico rolled down the window, and as the man drew abreast of the car, she called out, “Excuse me, sir.”
The man stopped and looked at her. He was in his sixties, and he was wearing a dark brown suit that was dirty and didn’t fit. Under it was a tee-shirt.
“God is coming,” the man intoned. “Will you be ready?”
Trace laughed. Chico jabbed him in the ribs with her pointy little elbow. “Shut up, heathen,” she hissed.
“We’re going to try to be ready. Really try,” she told the man.
“It is too late. All are doomed.” The man raised a hand over his head, pointing to the sky as if to show where doom came from.
“Well, if we’re all doomed anyway,” Chico said, “I can’t think of a better place to be doomed than the old Walters farm on Palmer Road. Where is that place anyway?”
“There is no hiding,” the man shouted.
“We’re not going to hide there. We’re just going to milk the cows before Armageddon,” Chico said.
“Can I leave now?” Trace said.
“Not on your life. We’re getting close. I can feel it,” Chico said.
The man was still babbling, now about Armageddon.
“The old Walters farm. We’re all meeting there. Where is it?” Chico asked the man.
He stopped in midsentence. “Who’s all meeting there?”
“The children of the book,” Chico said. “Oh, the power that is ours. The glory forever. Where is the old Walters farm?”
“The glory forever,” the man said. He waved his arm down the road. “Down there on the right. A half-mile. It has a sign.”
“Praise be,” Chico said. “Thank you.”
“The end is coming,” the man said.
“And not a moment too soon,” Chico said.
“Glory, glory,” he said.
“Hallelujah, hallelujah,” Chico said.
“Have a nice day,” Trace shouted to the man, and drove off.
The farm was just where the lunatic said it would be, on the right, at the end of a long unpaved drive that led up a slight hillock to where the house stood overlooking the roadway.
There was no g
arage; the roadway just trickled to an end near the house. Off to the left side of the homestead, about thirty yards away, Trace saw a rickety frame building that looked, in size, like a cross between a barn and a utility shed. So far as he could tell, nothing was grown on the farm except fruit trees, and they looked as if they had been left to shift for themselves, with wildflowers and tall uncut grass growing high around their trunks.
“What are you looking for?” Chico asked.
“Collins’ car. No sign of it. I guess he’s not here,” Trace said.
“All it shows is that his car’s not here,” Chico said. “Let’s see if anybody’s to home. That’s what us country folk say. ‘To home.’”
The front door faced the roadway. It was at ground level without even a single step for a porch. There was no answer to the doorbell and the door was locked.
They found another door around the back of the house. Looking through its glass panes, they could see it led into the kitchen, but also there was no answer and again the door was locked.
“Well, too bad,” Trace said. “My only hope was that we’d luck out and find him up here.”
“Yeah, too bad,” Chico said. “Nice little house. Would you like to live in the country, Trace?”
“After all the bugs and mice move out,” Trace said.
“Stupid. That’s part of the charm of the country.”
“If it’s so charming, why did you threaten to kill the condo manager that time you discovered a mouse in the apartment?”
“That was different. That was a surly city mouse. Out here the mice are right out of Walt Disney. They sing you to sleep at night,” Chico said.
“Well, that might be a welcome change,” Trace said. “Someone pleasant to share my bedroom. It beats having two snoring Orientals in the next room.”
“Aaaaah, you lack the romantic spirit, Trace.”
“I have an excess of the romantic spirit. That’s why I hate sleeping alone,” he said.
Chico walked away from him back toward the front of the house. When he finally caught up with her, she was standing by the front door, wearing the evil smile he had come to know and distrust.
“Why are you smirking?”
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 7