“But he’ll want to know why I hired Mr. Spring.”
“I know, but you don’t have to tell him, although I think you should.”
“He’ll just tell Roland.”
“No, he won’t. Not if you engage him as your own lawyer.”
“Okay,” she said after a pause. “I’ll do this much. You tell Mr. Potter about the police and that my name is in Mr. Spring’s files. Then he can talk to me about it if he wants. But don’t tell him about Mr. Spring looking for my mother and father. I don’t think I want him to know about that. Not yet.”
“Okay. I think you should retain me as your lawyer also.”
“I thought you were a private detective.”
“I am, but I’m also a member of the bar. If you hire me in that capacity I can keep anything you tell me confidential.”
“Consider yourself my lawer.”
“Good. I’ll send you a bill for a buck and a half as a retainer.”
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I talk to Andy Potter and you stay near a phone until you hear from him. I still think we should tell him the whole story.”
“No. Not unless I absolutely have to. You just find the killer, Mr. Tanner. Then all my problems will be over.”
You have to be pretty damn young to think all of your problems will ever be over, but I told her I’d do my best. She said she had complete confidence in me and I laughed and we hung up.
When I called Andy Potter his secretary told me he was expected back at any time. With lawyers that usually means you’ll hear from them in a week or two, but I told the secretary I wanted an appointment as soon as possible and went to the office and waited for him to call. By the time I got through the mail his secretary called back and told me Mr. Potter would like to take me to lunch if I could be at his office in thirty minutes. I told the secretary I thought I could manage to be there and she sounded happy for me.
I was about to snap off the lights when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was insistent. “This is Freedman. At the Institute. It’s important.”
I asked what I could do for him.
“We’re an armed camp over here, Tanner. It’s unbelievable. Word got out that we bumped up against the Bollo organization over the investigation into the Langdale clinics and that we received some threats, and now the troops are chomping at the bit. The place is galvanized. As usual Roland’s hesitant, but we’re going to proceed against the clinics. The staff will revolt if we don’t.”
“Good luck,” I said. “Make sure your Blue Cross is paid up.”
“We’re aware of the dangers,” Freedman said piously, “but we are not without power ourselves. But that’s beside the point. The purpose of my call is to advise you not to become involved in this in any way. Don’t even come around here.”
“Why not?”
“Word has also gotten out about your connection with the Bollo incident. Someone on the staff identified you as a detective.”
“Andrea Milton, I’ll bet. Administrating and associating all over the place.”
“I don’t know. But there is a feeling that you may have been the source of the leak to the Bollo people. There is a natural suspicion of outsiders here, so I believe for your sake it would be wise to avoid the Institute for the foreseeable future.”
“How do you plan to bring down Duckie?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that. I’m sure you understand. One premature disclosure of our tactics is enough.”
“Okay, Freedman. I’ll go along with you if I can. But just for the record, I said nothing to Bollo or anyone else about the plan to infiltrate the clinics.”
“Your statement is noted,” Freedman said crisply.
“Good,” I said and put down the receiver and left the office.
Andy Potter was a partner in the law firm of Geer, Goldberg, and Potter. His office was on the fourteenth floor of the Alcoa Building, a handsome brown edifice that stood out from the neighboring buildings in the Embarcadero Center like a hunk of licorice in a bag of butter cremes.
The waiting room was as warm as a womb and as dim as a movie theater at intermission. A beautiful blonde sat behind a beautiful oak table and asked if she could help me. When I told her I was there to see Mr. Potter she invited me to take a seat and I sank a foot into the nearest couch.
Andy’s firm wasn’t the biggest in town, but a lot of people thought it was the best. Andy himself hadn’t been hurt any by his representation of Roland Nelson. A couple of times a year he got his picture in the paper standing next to Nelson, and the publicity had helped him assemble an impressive list of clients who were suitably liberal without being embarrassingly radical. Andy and I had been pitted against each other on a case once. I’d gotten his client to admit he had all his money in a Swiss bank, which led to a nice settlement for my man, and since then Andy called every few years and tried to convince me to come to work for his firm. Every year it got easier to say no.
A door opened and Andy came in and greeted me with a grin and a slap on the back. He had lost some hair and gained some pounds since I last saw him. For the first time it struck me that he looked a lot like Gene Autry.
We strolled down a corridor lined with books and secretaries and went into his office. It was bigger than my entire apartment and had a view from there to Alaska. The walls were abstract paintings and African masks, the furniture chrome and glass, and the books bound in leather. Andy had made it all the way.
We told each other we were doing fine. Then he told me he was getting a divorce. I told him that was too bad, he told me it was lucky there were no children involved, I told him that was true, and he told me he was in love with a beautiful girl he had met at a convention in LA and was going to be married again in a couple of months. I congratulated him. He asked me if I was in love and I told him I wasn’t, but it occurred to me I might have been lying.
An oil tanker steamed into view out the window and I wondered what it would be like to live on water and decided that if I planted a few trees on the poop deck I could survive at sea as well as I was surviving on land. Which wasn’t saying much.
After a brief monologue on the gastronomy of downtown eating establishments, Andy decided we would go to L’Odeon. On the way to the restaurant Andy told me all about the vineyard he had just bought up near Napa and the airplane he was thinking about buying so he could go back and forth efficiently. There were tax advantages of course—deductions and shelters and deferred income and all the rest. At some point all lawyers want to be something else, and Andy had reached that point.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded. We had a couple of drinks and ordered right away. It had been years since I’d eaten French cuisine during daylight; it seemed vaguely like an unnatural act. After his second martini Andy asked me what was up, so I asked him if he still represented Roland Nelson.
“Sure,” he said, “unless you know something I don’t.”
I didn’t. “Could you represent Claire and keep whatever she tells you confidential, even from Roland?”
“I guess so, unless Roland’s involved in some way. Then I’d have a conflict and Claire would have to get someone else. What happened, did Claire crack up her little car or something?”
“No. Claire’s involved in a murder investigation. Or soon will be.”
Andy almost choked on the paté. His face reddened, then paled under the whitewash of panic. “Murder?” he sputtered. “Get serious, Marsh. Jesus Christ, you want to give me a coronary?”
“I am serious. I’ll tell you the situation but first I want to make sure that nothing I tell you will get back to Roland. Not until Claire authorizes it.”
“Not get back to Roland? You mean his daughter is caught up in a murder case and Roland doesn’t even know about it?”
“That’s what I mean. Can you keep what I’m going to say quiet, at least for now?”
“I guess so.” Andy shook his head. “I can’t believe this, Marsh. What the h
ell’s going on?”
I told him about Harry and about Claire. When I was finished he asked me what Claire had wanted with a detective.
“I can’t tell you that. Claire may tell you or she may not. It’s up to her.”
“Come on, Marsh. I have to know. What’s she think she’s going to tell the cops?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s going to refuse to tell them anything.”
“Great. That’s just great. I can see it. They’ll probably haul her to San Bruno just out of spite.”
“I thought you ought to know the situation. I had to work a little to persuade Claire to let me tell you.”
“Thanks a pantload, Marsh. Just for this you get stuck with the check.” Andy’s hand brushed his glass and spilled some red wine onto the tablecloth. The stain bloomed like a spring flower. Andy didn’t even notice.
“Do they have any idea who killed your friend Spring?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I was out there yesterday. They’re still calling it a mugging, but it wasn’t.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Andy leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling and around at the tables closest to us. I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
“I guess you know Spring’s wife pretty well,” he began quietly.
“Pretty well.”
“Couldn’t you go over there and slip Claire’s file out of Spring’s office? Then the cops won’t get her name and we can avoid this whole mess. It’s not like she’s involved in this thing, after all.”
I gave Andy a point for trying but it still made me angry. “I make it a practice never to tamper with evidence in a murder case,” I said. “Just a peccadillo of mine. Ridiculous, of course. Completely irrational to a finely honed legal mind such as your own.”
“Okay, okay,” Andy said. “Enough with the sarcasm. I’m sorry I asked. I knew you wouldn’t do it, but I thought I’d see how it sounded. Even I didn’t like it.”
“It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” I said. “Claire Nelson’s more involved than you know. I’m practically convinced that Harry Spring was in Oxtail working on Claire’s case when he got shot.”
“What possible connection could Claire have with that godforsaken place?”
Our conversation wasn’t doing anything for Andy Potter’s image. He was perspiring heavily, and had the look of a teamster who had just been told by his son he had decided to become a hairdresser. I felt sorry for him. He was going to struggle to keep the lid on, but it was going to blow off anyway, no matter what any of us did, and when that happened we were all going to get burned.
“I think you’d better talk to Claire as soon as you can,” I told him. “And make sure she can reach you when the cops show up on the doorstep.”
“Okay. Christ. Roland’s going to hate having the police around. He’ll think it’s all some kind of plot to discredit the Institute. And Jackie. She got a speeding ticket one time and almost got hauled in for assaulting an officer. If she hadn’t been married to Roland she probably would have been.”
“Just try to keep them under control. The cops won’t get nasty with someone as well connected as Nelson, at least not at first. But if they get provoked they may blow their cool, and it won’t take much to provoke them. Nelson and his Institute are on the same list as the Panthers and the Supreme Court as far as the cops are concerned. I’d hate to see Claire end up in jail.”
“Don’t even joke about it,” Andy said.
“Well, I’ll be around if you need me.”
“I probably will. What will you be doing?”
“Trying to find Harry’s killer.”
Andy was silent for a minute. Then his face darkened. “Do you realize what would happen to me if Roland Nelson weren’t my client? Do you? I’d be bankrupt, Marsh. Immediately. The divorce. My ranch. So don’t let anything go wrong. Just don’t.”
Urgency bloated the words, made them grotesque. I told Andy the stress would improve his circulation, but the joke didn’t take and when I left him he was staring into his water glass, as though some tiny part of him were drowning in it.
I fiddled around in the office for the rest of the afternoon, paying bills and posting the books. I had just settled back to read an article about a man who had written an entire novel without using the letter e when Mrs. Nelson called. “Andy Potter was just here,” she said levelly. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“If you’ve talked to Andy then you know as much as I can tell you,” I said.
“He claims Claire may be involved with some murder in Oxtail. Are you responsible for that nonsense?”
“If you mean did I tell Andy about it, then yes.”
“But that’s ridiculous. How did Claire come to know this man Spring, anyway?”
“Did Claire tell you?” I asked.
“She refuses to say anything. Roland and I are going out of our minds.”
“I can’t tell you anything about it.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Some of both.”
“Where were you yesterday? And last night? I spent hours trying to reach you.”
“Yesterday I was in Oxtail. Last night I was in Paradise.”
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she answered impatiently. “Are you involved in this so-called murder, too?”
“In a way. The dead man was a friend of mine.”
“So that’s what you were talking about at the Institute.”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about my problem? The one I thought you were working on?”
“It’ll have to wait. I don’t think it will make any difference to you in the long run.”
“Well, I do. I want you to concentrate on the situation we talked about. So far you haven’t learned anything, have you?” Her scorn was only a little less weighty than the bus that was rumbling by in the next block.
“No,” I said calmly. “Which might mean there’s nothing to learn. In any event I’m going to clear up things in Oxtail first. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“I don’t want you in Oxtail, I want you here in San Francisco, finding out why my husband’s acting so strangely. Now there’s some new fight at the Institute and he and Bill aren’t speaking, but no one will tell what it’s about.”
There was no point in telling her what Freedman had said, so I just told her I was sorry to hear it and that I couldn’t work on the case until I cleared up Harry’s death.
“Then I have no choice but to fire you.”
“I guess not.”
During the silence that followed I decided I was more relieved than upset. I didn’t enjoy shadowing a man like Roland Nelson, and I was even less excited about seeing him slip in and out of Sara Brooke’s apartment. Now I could work on Harry’s case with a clear conscience.
“My husband is upset with you anyway,” Mrs. Nelson went on. “It appears you knew about Claire’s relationship with this Spring man and didn’t tell Roland about it. He doesn’t want to see you around the house anymore.”
“Your husband’s been treated like a king for so long he thinks the whole world owes him fealty. My responsibilities are to myself and my clients, not Roland Nelson.”
“Apparently we’ve said all there is to say.”
“Apparently.”
“I may not keep my dissatisfaction with you a secret, you know. I do have some influence in the business community in this city. You may pay for this decision, Mr. Tanner. Literally.”
“That gives me enough threats to start a collection,” I said.
There was a pause. “I apologize,” she said. “I really do. I’m upset about Roland. He hasn’t been himself and I don’t know why. And now this thing with Claire and the problem at the Institute. I’m afraid he may have a breakdown.”
“I understand. But I just can’t help you out right now. I’m sorry.”
“Then I assume you still inten
d to pursue the situation in Oxtail, whatever it is.”
“I do.”
“Please send me a bill for your services to date.”
I told her I would be happy to. She hung up. Almost immediately the phone rang again. It was Sara Brooke. She asked if she could come over right away and I said sure.
“Donna Rae called from Oxtail,” she said. “It’s unbelievable. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
SEVENTEEN
I had shared a bed and something more with Sara Brooke the night before and I guess I wanted to see some sign of it, but there was nothing there. There never is.
I thought she wouldn’t even mention it, but she did. “Do you want to talk about last night?” she asked as she sat down across from my desk.
I shrugged. “Not unless you do.”
“It can wait,” she said. “Just so you know that I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.”
“And that I can’t guarantee it will ever happen again.”
I nodded.
“I don’t do things like that very often,” Sara added in afterthought. “Not with someone I barely know.”
“Neither do I.”
“I think that’s why it happened. You didn’t make me feel like just another entry in your little black book.”
“My black book just lists my accounts receivable.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
The subject was ended, possibly forever. I asked what her friend had said on the phone.
“Donna Rae called less than an hour ago,” Sara answered quickly. “She dug up the birth records for me. For us. She sounded quite proud of herself for doing it, although she’s still afraid she’ll get into trouble. I told her she wouldn’t. I hope it wasn’t a lie.”
“How many babies were born there that day?”
“Just one.”
“Makes it pretty easy.”
Sara nodded. “If your friend was right about Claire Nelson being born in Oxtail, then I know who her natural parents are. Or were.”
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