“I see.” Giselle seemed incompletely mollified. “We are concluding some business here, monsieur. If you will excuse us, I will see you in the gallery tout de suite.”
“Like I said, sister, no time. This the artist?”
I shouldered my way toward the small dark woman, hand extended, my most friendly aspect making my face a sunflower. “Happy to meet you, little lady. You sure know how to paint yourself a picture, I’ll tell you that. All them tomaters need is a little salt.”
When I was as close to her as I was going to get, I lowered my voice. “I need to speak with you privately. About your husband.”
I had hoped to keep it between the two of us, but Giselle had decided to attend to me. “What is this? Who are you, anyway? I must ask you to leave, immediately.” Both the charm and the accent had disappeared.
Despite Giselle’s harangue, my eyes were on the artist. At my approach, she had begun to edge away, and when I whispered my request to speak with her she pressed her back against the door as though the building had just caught fire. “Is it Paul?” she asked as I looked at her. “Has something happened to Paul?”
“This is absurd,” Giselle interrupted, grasping my arm, trying to pull me away from her client. “Pay no attention to this gentleman, Lily. Mr. Takahara, please come this way; I’ll show you out the front. Joy, if this man hasn’t left the premises in twenty seconds, call Juan. Better yet, call the police. I’ll be right back, Lily. Don’t worry about a thing.”
The customer bowed again, this time including me in the gesture, then allowed Giselle to lead him down the hall and through the door to the main gallery. In their wake, Joy was nonplussed by her assignment; the artist was irritated at being sacrificed to the needs of a monied patron; and I was grasping for an effective gambit.
“Please, Mr. Tanner,” Joy said. “You must leave the gallery. Giselle will—”
“Just give me one minute, then I’m out of here.” I turned toward the woman still pressed against the door. “I’m a private detective. I used a ruse to see you because I’m looking for your husband. It’s important to a lot of people that I find him. If you could—”
“He’s at home, isn’t he? I just left there. If he isn’t, then—”
I shook my head. “Your former husband. The one who went to jail.”
I was still feeling my way, but the splay of worry across her face suggested I was on track. “The information I have is that your husband has just been released from prison,” I continued rapidly. “I was wondering if you’d heard from him, or have an idea where he might be.”
Although she had begun shaking her head when I was halfway through my spiel, I kept going. “That’s all I need to know. This doesn’t have anything to do with your life now. If I can get a line on your ex-husband, I’ll be out of your way.”
“But I know nothing,” she murmured. “Leave me alone. Please.”
“He hasn’t tried to contact you?”
As she shook her head I heard the door open at my back. “The police have been called,” Giselle said as she marched toward me.
I gave Lily Lucerne one last look. “Then give me his name.”
She was rigid with fear. I reached for a business card and held it in front of her. “Please call me. Especially if you hear from him.”
Striking from behind me, Giselle slapped the card from my hand. I turned on her and snarled. “If you make another mistake like that, I’ll tell Darryl Dromedy you’re still pushing pictures of trucks.”
When I turned to make a final plea to the skittish artist, I was talking to the black hole of an open doorway.
“Let me tell you precisely where I am,” I wrote in the first letter I was brave enough to mail. “I am where Charles Manson is.”
Homage to Hammurabi, p. 211
15
By the time I was free of the clutches of Joy and Giselle and out the rear door of the Grasshopper and into the narrow alley of Campton Place, there was no one in sight, at least not a tiny artist in a baggy black turtleneck with an expression of abject terror on her face. I cursed myself for bungling it when I had gotten close enough to speak to her—like a politician, I’d spent too much time running the race and not enough thinking about what would happen if I won.
I trotted to the front of the gallery on the chance Lily Lucerne might have parked in the vicinity, but there was no luck there either, not even when I ran to the Stockton corner and looked in every direction but up. Defeated all around, I headed for my car, which was buried in Union Square in the garage that was sunk like a burial vault beneath it.
I was walking down the ramp toward the elevators, fishing in my pocket for the claim check while trying to remember what level I was on and whether I was carrying enough cash to cover the toll, when the fates took unaccustomed pity—Lily Lucerne was sitting behind the wheel of a trim Toyota, waiting for her change at the pay booth, urging the attendant to hurry with every ounce of psychic energy at her disposal. For the first time in my life, I was grateful that the city possessed such limited parking options.
She was still frightened, strangely so, looking to her left and right in quick spasms of panic, so desperate to get on her way she must have been convinced my powers were such that I could materialize at will in any place and time. Little did she know. I backed out of her line of vision, then tried to creep up on her from the rear as she was busy getting her change from the attendant, not certain of what I was going to do if I penetrated her defenses.
When I was five feet away I spooked her. She had gotten her change and was putting it in her purse, but in the process she glanced in the rearview mirror. And there I was, as unwelcome in the glass as a trooper with his lights flashing.
With a cry of alarm she tossed the change on the seat, grasped the wheel like a life preserver, then stomped on the accelerator. With a squeal of rubber I would have thought impossible given a Toyota’s torque, the car careened up the ramp and out of the lot, leaving the toll attendant shaking his head and two tourists shaking their fists at the boxy blue missile that had just threatened to dismember them and me chugging and puffing up the ramp in a pursuit that was futile before it began. Left in the dust, all I could think to do was write the Toyota’s license number in my little black book, then go back the way I’d come.
A few months ago, a young television actress was murdered in Los Angeles by a fan whose idolatry had evolved into a homicidal mania. The fan tracked the victim to her home by getting the license number off her car and employing one of the services that will for a fee obtain the DMV registration records of any given license number, home address of the owner included. As a result of that incident, legislation has been passed that restricts access to such data. I still have a mole in the department, but she has to be careful not to spark the suspicions of the aroused bureaucracy, so when I need fast action these days I rely on Charley Sleet.
I used the phone on the wall of the garage and tracked Charley down for what seemed like the hundredth time that week. It must have seemed that way to Charley, too. “I’m busy,” he grumbled when he came on the line.
“DMV check.”
He swore. “You’re pushing it, pal.”
“I’ll buy you a meal.”
“The Balboa.”
“Capp’s.”
“Wine included.”
“No older than ’eighty-six. No dessert more exotic than pie.”
“When?”
“Whenever.”
Charley mellowed. “What’s the number?”
I read off the Toyota’s plate. “Name and address, please.”
“This have anything to do with those book pages you gave me?”
“Yep.”
“This something I should get up to speed on?”
“Not yet, I don’t think.”
Charley hesitated. “I’m not as solid since the shake-up after the Dolores Huerta mess.”
“I know that, Charley.”
The reference was to the department’s late
st scandal, the beating administered by crowd-control cops to a longtime farmworkers’ activist during a protest during the last election campaign. As a result of the overreaction of the police and the plodding pace of the internal investigation, the mayor had made several adjustments in the police command structure. Apparently some of Charley’s mentors had taken a hit in the process.
“It wouldn’t do either of us any good if I got pushed into an early retirement,” Charley was saying. “So don’t do anything dumb.”
“That’s my new motto. I’m having it engraved on my card: ‘John Marshall Tanner—Private Eye: He Won’t Do Anything Dumb.’”
Charley only grumbled. “Speaking of your less-than-brilliant behavior, how’s your secretary?”
“Last I heard, she was in Vancouver with her daughter. Her place in the Marina got wiped out in the quake.”
“She okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“I hear it’s nice in Vancouver.”
“I wouldn’t know. That was almost a month ago,” I calculated, more for myself than for Charley.
“Still like that, huh.”
“Pretty much.”
“When she gets back, send her some flowers. Flora always forgave me if I brought home flowers.”
I sighed. “I already did that, Charley.”
“What happened?”
“She sent them back.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How’d she send them?”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t know; I just wondered.”
“Bike messenger.”
“Sparky? Jesus.”
“All that was left was the thorns.”
I hung up before Charley could commiserate any further, then found my car. Although it was late, it was time to check in with my client—all of a sudden, the shape of the case was starting to look more like a circle than a straight line.
The place I found to park was uncomfortably close to the building at Sixth and Bluxsome that had crumbled in the quake and killed six people in the cars that got buried in brick. It was so uncomfortable, in fact, that after getting out and locking up, I immediately got back in the Buick and moved it a block away. It occurred to me that despite Charley’s warning I was being dumb—the best thing that could happen to my transportation situation was for the Buick to become a total loss.
Periwinkle’s main entrance was closed, but there were both lights and music leaking into the evening from up above. When I pressed the after-hours bell and spoke my name at the intercom, someone eventually buzzed me in. The someone turned out to be Margaret, and she was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
After we exchanged a well-modulated greeting, she ushered me into the conference room—stately without Matilda and the revelers—and sat me down directly across from her, virtually nose to nose. “What have you found out?” she demanded.
I bowed my head. “It’s nice to see you, too, Margaret. I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
She shook her head impatiently. “There’s no time for pleasantries—things are happening and I don’t know why.”
“What things?”
“These things.”
She took a newspaper off the table beside her and thrust it at me. It was the afternoon Examiner, opened to the gossip column. “Fourth paragraph,” Margaret instructed.
I read it: “Local literary lions are all agrowl with the rumor that Bryce Chatterton’s Periwinkle Press is about to launch a steamy new novel that insiders insist is a thinly disguised exposé that will blow the lid off some of Cow Hollow’s sexiest secrets. When asked for comment, the publisher would say only, ‘Mum’s the word at this point.’ The author’s name and the price Bryce paid for the book are among the many mysteries that surround the much-anticipated event, so stay tuned.”
When I finished I looked up. “Well?” Margaret demanded. “Is it true?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What does Bryce say about it?”
“‘Mum’s the word,’” she mimicked.
“That’s it?”
She nodded. “He claims he doesn’t know where they got their information.”
“Well, neither do I.”
“That’s begging the question.”
“No it isn’t—I don’t know whether the book’s an exposé or not.”
I was hoping she would leave it at that, but of course she didn’t. “You’re trying to find out, aren’t you? That’s why he hired you.”
I smiled serenely. “Your husband around?”
“I’d appreciate an answer to my question.”
“You know better.” I started to stand up, but didn’t. “How’s Jane Ann?”
The shift was unexpected and her eyes widened in something close to fear. “Why? Did something happen to her?”
“Not that I know of, I was just making conversation. Where’d she go to high school, by the way?”
Margaret frowned. “Why on earth would you want to know that?”
“Someone told me your ex-husband is the power behind the throne at the best private school in the city. I was just wondering if his problems with Jane Ann started when she enrolled in his precious school.”
“If you’re asking if Jane Ann went to Sebastian, the answer is yes. But as I told you before, she didn’t graduate.”
“What year was she?”
“The class of ’eighty-four.”
“Did her friend Lloyd go there, too?”
She nodded. “To the extent he was anywhere, that is. I want to know why you’re asking these questions.”
“Sorry,” I said. “He in there?”
I pointed to the door to Bryce’s office and when Margaret didn’t answer me I went over to it and knocked. When I heard a mumble I went inside.
“Marsh,” Bryce exclaimed when he looked up. “Good to see you, have you found him yet?”
I shook my head. “Nice hype in the Examiner, though.”
Bryce’s voice fell to a conspiratorial level. “He did it, don’t you see? He’s out there somewhere, planting leaks, spreading rumors, promoting the project, remaining invisible. It’s incredible, isn’t it? He must be a chameleon, don’t you think?”
“That’s one word for it, I suppose.”
Bryce was as ready for my attentions as a puppy. “So what do you have it tell me; what’s been going on?”
I sat down and crossed my legs, trying to decide how to put it. “This Hammurabi thing may be getting close to the bone, Bryce.”
“How do you mean?”
“The school in the book? St. Stephen’s? I think it’s a disguise for the Sebastian School here in the city.”
“But that’s where—”
“Your stepdaughter went. Right. And it looks like she was there when this all went down.”
Bryce sighed heavily, burdened by the possibilities. “You mean it’s true—there really was a scandal.”
“It looks like it.”
“So the Examiner was right. My God. He really is out there, manipulating me.”
Eyes glazed and distant, Bryce was in thrall to the fantastic. “I’m giving you a second chance, Bryce,” I said to interrupt the swoon. “Maybe you should put a stop to this right now, before anyone gets hurt. Maybe you should let it all stay buried.”
Bryce’s eyes gave off as many glints as a broken mirror. “But I can’t, don’t you see? It’s too late. He’s pushing it himself, he’s set the thing in motion and it won’t stop no matter what I do. The only decision left for me to make is whether I want to be on the inside or the outside—to be his audience or his publisher.”
His expression left no doubt that, regardless of the consequences, the decision had already been made.
The first letter I received in prison was from a lawyer, informing me that my wife was suing me for divorce. The second was from a realtor, asking if I wanted to sell my house.
Homage to Hammurabi, p. 173
16
> Four minutes after I got back to my apartment the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone, I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t have anything to say to anyone, but I opened the door all the same, proving that contrary to my reputation, I’m essentially gregarious.
The man facing me beneath the feeble light of the hallway bulb was big and impassive and totally unconcerned about disturbing a stranger at eleven o’clock at night. Since his somber outfit of gray jacket and slacks came complete with riding boots and a hat with a patent leather brim, I pegged him for someone’s chauffeur. When I tried to think if I knew anyone who had one, I came up empty.
“Are you Mr. John Marshall Tanner?” he asked when I was finished inspecting his raiment and he had finished tucking his hat beneath his arm and finding nothing of interest in the apartment at my back.
“What can I do for you?”
“You will please accompany me to the home of Mr. Marvin Gillis.”
“Except that you’re both big and polite, why would I do that?”
“Because Mr. Gillis has requested it.” He made the answer seem as sufficient as the theory of relativity.
“And if I don’t?”
“Mr. Gillis will be annoyed.”
“What does he do when that happens?”
I thought he smiled. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“You mean no one ever annoys him.”
“Precisely. As Mr. Gillis would say.”
“Well, hell. There’s enough annoyance in the world already. I mean, the fallout from Jim and Tammy Faye alone … What’s your name, by the way?”
“Fernandez, sir. And I’m authorized to inform you that Mr. Gillis will be happy to offer you supper if we have interrupted yours.”
I looked at my watch. “How long do you figure this is going to take?”
“No more than ninety minutes.”
“Where is it?”
“Baker Street, sir.”
“Near the school.”
He nodded. “Across the street.”
“I just put a tube steak in the broiler,” I said truthfully. “I’ll be with you as soon as I turn it off.” When I got back I flipped the light switch beside the door. “Let’s roll.”
Book Case Page 13
