by Jack Lynch
“That’s a cruel little story. But what does it have to do with the pattern of harassment you suspect?”
“Somebody said the black dude is working for the Shores project.”
“But I’ve been told Beamer is a part of the Shores project too. He’s got a piece of the action.”
“I don’t know about that. But it shows you the sort of people they have working for them.”
“Did you hear a name for the black dude?”
“I did, but I don’t remember it.”
“Cookie Poole?”
“That’s it. You know him?”
“We’ve met. I’ll agree he isn’t a sterling character, but it still doesn’t make sense he’d be a part of trying to get you people to move.”
“Then you tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t do that exactly, either. But I do agree with you that the fire is serious business. If I get a chance later tomorrow, I’ll try asking a few questions for you.”
“That would be damn fine of you, Pete. I don’t know how much of your time we could afford…”
“Never mind about that. I have to go into the city and write a report, then go see a client who isn’t going to like what I have to tell him. Then, unless something important has come up at the office, I’ll have a little free time. I’d still like to talk to Red Dewer, anyhow, for my own peace of mind. And now it’s about time I got some sleep. Want me to fix you another drink first?”
She shook her head and drained the glass while I got to my feet. “Want me to pull out the bed for you?”
She got up as well. “Nope. I’m a big, strong girl. I’ll do it myself. And Pete,” she said, stepping a little closer, “thanks for everything.”
One thing a fellow can tell when he gets to my age, unless he’s been raised by coyotes and never met another human being, is when a girl would like him to kiss her. I held her shoulders lightly and our lips touched in tentative fashion, which ordinarily is how I go about that sort of thing, when it’s the first time with a given woman. I’m never sure just how serious they are, or how much I should take it to heart.
Shirley, it turned out, was pretty serious. She had an extraordinary mouth, and she loaned me the luxury of it. At the same time, she let her body sag a little into my own. I put my arms the rest of the way around her. She made a little sound in her throat that gave me the impression she liked that. After a moment or two, without taking her lips away from mine, she tugged my shirt tail loose and ran her hands up my back. She used her fingernails some, not breaking the skin, but just drawing them across the small of my back, then up and down the spine, all the time continuing this little sound that she made. It was a remarkable sensation. I wasn’t feeling sleepy any longer.
When our lips parted, she still kept her body pressed against mine. When she drew back her head, her mouth looked like it was ready to break into that sunshine laugh again. She raised her hands to do some fiddling with my shirt collar.
“You know, I’d really rather not spend the night out here alone on the sofa.”
I cleared my throat. “I’ll get the lights.”
TWELVE
I spent a lot of my idle time the next day thinking about Shirley. She had a number of remarkable sides to her. And she was just as perky and pretty in the morning as she was at any other hour. After her shower, she didn’t get dressed right away. It got the morning off to a slow start.
I did a lot of watching as she moved around the small apartment doing this and that. I was enjoying it, and she enjoyed my enjoying. She even wanted to spend a couple or three days there, but I had to tell her that it wouldn’t work. My landlady, who lived in another upper unit that had been added onto the original structure, was up-to-date enough to countenance overnight guests. But she didn’t want anybody additional as a live-in, even for a few days. She felt that everybody needed a certain amount of space to themselves to have harmony in their lives. She felt that Pinky Shade, who lived upstairs, me underneath, and herself in the elevated unit over the carport were just the right balance for the space the dwelling offered. Besides, Pinky Shade and I had to get out and hustle for a living most days, and she liked the feeling of solitude it gave her while we were out.
I told Shirley she was a charming dear and that I loved her about as well as you can love somebody you’ve only known for a couple of days, but I had to send her packing. As she drove off she stuck her tongue out at me.
I drove over to San Francisco and walked up to the suite of offices I share with a couple of attorneys on Market Street named Sloe and Morrisey and typed up the report to Samuel P. Moss. It wasn’t too long. I didn’t go into every little thing I’d learned about his steamy daughter, because that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, although it of course lay at the dead center of all the business going into the written report itself. Depending on how the meeting I set up with him for later in the morning went, I thought I might supplement the report with a few additional observations and conjectures, but I pretty much limited the report to some of what Cookie Poole had told me—what had led me to Sam’s brother, Arthur, and what Arthur had to say when I confronted him with the information from Cookie. I was glad that the night before and the morning had been as sensational as they had been. I didn’t anticipate great pleasure from the meeting with Moss.
Ceejay, our receptionist, secretary and den mother, typed up the report from my rough draft in about seven minutes. Longer reports she farmed out to an agency of legal secretaries, as she did most of the paperwork for the counselors. Lawyers seemed to think they were important enough so that speed wasn’t all that necessary on every matter. Not on practically any matter, if the truth be known.
Nothing else was pressing, so I told Ceejay I’d be out for the rest of the day, at least. Maybe the next day as well. I was becoming interested in the Marinship Shores project. Not so much in the detective sense as in the newspaper reporter sense. I used to be one of those, and felt I could still sniff a good story when I stumbled over it, and maybe the Shores project was a prime candidate to have a little of the glare of publicity shone on it. I still had friends at the Chronicle who could make good use of any leads I gave them.
When I phoned Samuel P. Moss to set up the meeting, he wanted to know what we needed a meeting for. I told him I’d found out what he wanted to know.
“That fast? How can you be sure you’re right?”
“It’s my livelihood. I’m right.”
I didn’t know what he had expected, maybe something a lot more complicated that would have taken more of my time. He didn’t want it to be simple, and he was disappointed by my phone call.
What I had to offer him when I got out to his house didn’t cheer him up a bit. He sat at the table in the dining room again, and read the report with a fine mist on his dark forehead. His fists were mushed into his cheekbones, propping up his head, as he read the sheets on the table in front of him. He made a gusty sigh or two. When he was through, he got up and walked over to look out the window at the ships riding at anchor on the Bay, his hands in his pockets.
“I can’t believe that stuff you have in there,” he told me.
It was going to be more difficult than I’d thought, even. “It’s true. You can check it out for yourself.”
“My own brother?”
“Your own brother, who is a politically ambitious animal, if my guess is right, but faint-hearted where his own family comes into play. He didn’t have the stomach to come to you about it himself. He dreamed up this convoluted plan, hoping you’d hire somebody like me to do the job for him.”
“Yeah, but that’s the part I don’t understand, and you’re not too clear about it in your report, either. What is it that’s supposed to be so awful going on that he wanted me to know about?”
“As I indicated in the report…”
“No, I’m tired of people indicating things. I want someone to tell me, in plain language.”
“As I indicated in the report, Arthur seems to feel tha
t some of Melody’s activities are not completely wholesome, and that in turn, since she is engaged to be married to Duffy Anderson, her activities might pose a threat to the successful completion of the Marinship Shores project.”
“The fact that Melody’s a model?”
“Something like that. He seems to feel that some of her modeling—take the photos he sent you—he seems to feel they go over the borderline into obscenity. Every man has his own standards by which he judges such things. In Arthur’s case, they seem to have been violated.”
“And you said something about movies.”
“That’s right. Melody has been involved in making movies in which people take off their clothes. The photos your brother sent you were publicity stills from one such movie. Melody described them to your brother as art movies, similar to how the sketches or photography of nude models are called figure studies.”
“And that’s what Melody says they are—art movies?”
“That’s what your brother said she told him. I haven’t talked to her about them.”
He stared at me a moment. “I told you not to, didn’t I?”
“That’s right.”
He looked away. “I wish now you had.”
I got up and raised my voice some. “Mr. Moss, for God’s sake, why don’t you talk to her? If it bothers you, ask her about it. Otherwise, forget it. I’ve never seen such a family for choking back what it wants to say to one another. Communications. That’s what it’s all about. It’s why we’re not all still swinging around up in the trees.”
He wasn’t looking at me. “I couldn’t talk to her about that stuff. Not ever.” He glanced up. “What kind of movies do you think they are?”
I took a deep breath and sat back down at the table. He wanted me to articulate things he couldn’t face up to in his own mind—that his only daughter was at best an opportunistic little tramp, which means, or would mean in his own mind, that he had failed miserably as a father. I’d known men to put a revolver in their mouths and pull the trigger for less.
“I can tell you honestly that I don’t know. Melody says art. Arthur suspects pornography, but all he has to go on are those photos, and, as porn photos go, those are pretty tame. Another man I know, who’s seen a film made by the people who made the one your daughter was in, wouldn’t call it hard-core. So my guess is that it’s probably somewhere in between. But that isn’t what you hired me to do, remember? You hired me to find out who sent you the photos, and why. Arthur sent you the photos. He did it in hopes you would talk to your daughter and try to get her to stop some of her free-lance work. He thinks it threatens the Shores project somehow. Now you’ve gotten a lot more than you hired me for, and I think I’m going to get on out of here.”
“Now hold your horses. Just sit back down there.”
I hesitated.
“Please.”
I sat back and wiped a hand over my face. Samuel P. Moss stared out the window some more.
“If this was just a one-shot deal, maybe there’s no reason for anyone to be getting excited about it,” he offered.
“It’s not a one-shot deal. I don’t know about her acting in them herself, but she is still engaged in making moving pictures.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I saw her yesterday directing a scene. Up along the coast. At your cabin.”
“The kind of movie she was in?”
“I don’t know. I just saw some people romping around out on the beach.”
“Did they have their clothes on?”
“They were in swimsuits, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t be in them much longer once they went inside the cabin.”
He turned back to the window. “Damn.”
“Why don’t you write her a letter?”
“Huh?”
“Write your daughter a letter, if you can’t stand to ask her about these things to her face. Tell her what’s bothering you. In a nice way. Just tell her you’d like to stay current with her life. Ask her to write back, telling you about things.”
At least it got a smile out of him. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of, writing her a letter.”
“Why? You’re too tongue-tied to ask her directly. Let the post office do some of the work for you. They work cheaper than I do.”
He turned his head to look at me. “There’s an idea. How about if I change my mind about you asking her about things. Just keep working for me another day, and you ask her…”
I came out of my chair this time. “No-o way, Mr. Moss. I think I’ve done about everything anybody outside of family can be expected to do in this particular matter. Either you and your brother and Melody are all going to have to learn to talk to one another, or you’re just going to have to get used to sucking the hard knots in your throats. I want out. I got bigger things to look into.”
“What bigger things?”
I hesitated just a moment. “If it’ll help make you feel any better, and it probably won’t, I don’t like some of the things I’ve been hearing about the Shores project. I want to find out more.”
“Who you working for?”
“Nobody, at the moment. I’ve just grown to like some of the people I met living down in the Basin area. I told one of them I’d do a little snooping. The only reason I’m telling you is it might make you feel a little better. Your brother thinks Melody is up to no good. It’s just possible that Arthur himself is a part of something that smells a little fishy.”
“Tell me something, Mr. Bragg. What did you think of my brother? The truth.”
“Frankly, I thought he was kind of a stuffed shirt.”
Moss smiled, and came back to sit down at the table and tear the wrapper off a fresh cigar.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too. You know, it’s a funny thing, you talking about the Shores project like that. I was offered a little of the action down there myself.”
“What kind of action?”
He indicated a stack of betting slips to one side. “A fellow I go to once in a while to lay off some of the really big bets, he told me he had an inside road over there. That once the Shores project gets going, I could organize some of the help around the resort to solicit the action. I’d have it as exclusive territory.”
“What did you tell him?”
Moss shook his head. “Told him I wasn’t interested. I got about all the business I can handle comfortably right now. You start getting greedy, then’s when you have to look out for the law, and other people out looking to carve up your business.”
“Was this person disappointed?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so. He was trying to do me a favor, and it would have been pretty rich pickings, at that. But I’d have to add to the operation. Hire some more people. I don’t want that. Like they say, I’d rather stay lean and mean.”
“Mind telling me who made the offer?”
He dismissed the question with a wave and lit the cigar. “Can’t talk about that,” he said, shaking out the match.
“Why not? I’ve given you a lot more information than you were buying. How about if I mention a name? You tell me if I’m right or wrong.”
“Why you want to know?”
I shrugged. “It might be important somewhere down the line, when I’m asking people questions about the Shores project.”
He thought about it another moment. “Tell you what, I’ll make a swap with you. I’ll tell you if your guess is right, if you pass along anything more you might hear about Melody.”
“That’s too much. People get jealous of people as good-looking and ambitious as your daughter. They tell all sorts of lies about them, and I wouldn’t want to have to relay all the raw material. How about if I pass along anything Melody herself might have to tell me?”
“You’re going to be talking to her?”
“It might occur naturally, in the course of events.”
He studied the glowing tip of his cigar. “Okay, we got a deal.” He looked up at me questioningly.
“Elliott Fitzmorris.”
He nodded curtly. “He’s the one.”
THIRTEEN
I drove back over to Sausalito. On the way I was trying to put together in my mind various scenarios to do with the Marinship Shores thing. None of them made much sense. Especially the one Anderson and Arthur Moss had been spreading around the county civic center. In fact, that made the least sense of all, and I figured I should take a run up there sometime and ask them about it.
I parked in the Marinship Basin parking area. I noticed Dewer’s sports car parked there. I hadn’t seen it the night before, but maybe it had just been too dark to notice. I went out Six Pier, to Dewer’s boat. I still couldn’t raise anybody. Maybe he was up at the boat works. Shirley wasn’t home either. A couple of neighbors were watching my every move. Fires on the water did that to people.
Back at the parking lot, somebody was able to tell me that Herman Beamer lived out near the end of One Pier. I expected him to have better quarters than he did. His houseboat was roomy enough, with the housing built over a big, old barge. But nobody spent much time on upkeep, either on the outside or the inside. Beamer lived there with his daughter, Mae Jean, a slatternly-looking woman in her early thirties who still was wearing an old, green bathrobe in the afternoon. She could have been an attractive woman, in a dusky sort of way, if she’d put a little effort into it, but it seemed to be too much bother, same as with the boat.
Mae Jean greeted me at the door with bare feet, stringy brown hair with a few strands of gray in it and a barely curious expression. When I asked for Beamer, she led me through the place—a series of partitioned rooms and spaces that served various needs of the most rudimentary sort. I didn’t see any place where I’d be comfortable sitting. I followed her outside onto a rear deck where Beamer was all bundled up, sitting in a comfortable-looking deck chair. He was reading a magazine about fishing, and had an open bottle of beer on a low cable spool used as a table. Mae Jean left us and Beamer looked up at me with an eye that might have belonged to one of the marine creatures in the magazine.