True-Life Adventure

by Julie Smith

  But it didn’t come close to explaining why three people had been killed. It also didn’t explain why the Koehlers had reneged on our interview. If Jacob was worried that his precious daughter was in the hands of some quack, why wouldn’t he do anything he could to get her back? Could he have thought publicity would put her in further danger? Who knew? He was an odd duck.

  And so, for that matter, was Joan. After her alternate laughings and cryings, I was damned glad to be heading toward the soothing presence of Susanna.

  I found her staring out at her freeway. Sardis had called her about Tillman. Also, Blick had been there. She was too upset to work and I was going to have to upset her further. “Susanna,” I said, “I’ve found out why Lindsay took Terry and left. But it’s pretty awful.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Terry’s sick. She’s going to die.”

  It took her about half a second to put that together with what she already knew. “Cancer!”

  I nodded.

  “That explains why she was so excited about that show.” Her face was glowing. She was positively cheered up. “And why she left. And where she probably is.”

  I breathed a man-size sigh of relief. I’d thought I was in for more tears. But Susanna was a journalist, and it was probably no accident she’d become one— she was just like all the others I knew. The thing she hated worst was not knowing something. She could take bad news a lot better than suspense and unanswered questions.

  “You think,” I said, “that she’s taken Terry to some cancer quack?”

  “Sure. The question is which one.”

  “I thought you might have some ideas on that. Were there any that particularly impressed her?”

  Susanna shook her head. “Not that I know of. Let’s ask the cameraman.” She called him in and we did. He said that while she hadn’t been her usual cynical self on the story, had seemed much more open-minded than usual, she hadn’t exactly singled out any of the quacks for praise.

  We decided to watch the tape of the show. Seeing Lindsay on screen was as much a pleasure as it always had been. Her hair was taffy-colored, her eyes green, her voice low and lovely. But the best part, as always, was the sense of quick intelligence at work, with a stark honesty behind it. Like Walter Cronkite, she had the knack of making you believe her.

  But the show gave us no hints whatsoever— if Lindsay liked one of her quacks well enough to take her daughter to him, the home TV audience didn’t get inkling one. She was professional as hell.

  Watching the show wasn’t a total waste of time, though. We got the names of the guys she’d talked to— eight of them, scattered from Mexico to Reno. If she put that show together in a week, no wonder the tech crew complained.

  Anyway, I now had the names of the eight most likely quacks (though maybe Lindsay had gone to one she didn’t interview), but where did that get me? I could hardly phone them and ask to speak to her— for one thing, who knew what name she was using? For another, she certainly wouldn’t be taking calls. The only thing to do was talk Joey Bernstein into letting me go prowl around the various cure-halls— if Lindsay could do it in a week, so could I.

  But Susanna thought that was a dumb idea. “People are dying at the rate of one a day,” she pointed out. “We don’t have a week.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “We have to tell the cops.”

  I started to answer, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Seizing the advantage, she kept talking: “Your life is in danger, Paul. And so is Sardis’s as long as you’re staying with her.”

  There was a chance, of course, that her own and Joan’s were too. And maybe Jacob’s and Marilyn’s. She was unquestionably right. If Lindsay was at some hospital, the cops would find her in about twenty-four hours. And if I’d given Blick the damn Koehler file in the first place, Brissette and Tillman might still be alive. This was no time for wasting time.

  I picked up the phone and got Blick. “Howard,” I said. “I have information that may lead to the arrest and conviction of a killer.”

  “Stick it where the sun don’t shine, Mcdonald.”

  “I’m not kidding, Howard. This is big.”

  “Yeah? So’s your dick.”

  Now what was that supposed to mean? I ignored it. “Stay there. I’m coming down to the Hall.”

  The Hall of Justice was what I meant. What a building. Not only was the cop shop there, so was the DA’s office, all the Municipal Courts, several Superior Courts, city prison, and county jail. It was worth your life just to ride in the elevators.

  But I did, clear up to Homicide, where I did not expect to be received cordially and where I was not disappointed.

  Blick’s potato face was unsmiling. I started out slow: “I heard the Koehlers’ case reports were stolen too.”

  “Now how’d you hear that?”

  “But I presume the Koehlers filled you in on what they said.”

  “How come you’re so concerned all of a sudden? You coulda filled me in your own sweet self.”

  “Did they tell you that both Mike Brissette and Peter Tillman were ex-lovers of Lindsay Hearne?”

  “What’s it to you, Mcdonald?”

  God, he was making it hard. “Did you talk to either of them before they died?”

  “What do you think, you son of a bitch? If I didn’t, whose fault was it?”

  “Look, Howard— I should have given you the damn file, okay? I’m sorry, okay? What do I have to do, send you a dozen roses? Look, I’m here because I think I know how to find Lindsay Hearne. That’s one reason. Another reason is, I think three murders might have been committed instead of one. I think I might have mentioned to you that somebody tried to kill me once. Last night he burned my house down, which I took to mean he was trying again. But that’s not a reason why I’m here, because you told me you didn’t give a shit about it. However, if somebody’s killed three people and tried to kill me, maybe he’ll kill somebody else and I thought you might give a shit about that. So that’s another reason I’m here.”

  “You lost your house, huh?”

  I nodded, thinking he might say something sympathetic, like “tough break.” He didn’t. He yawned. “So how do I find the Hearne broad?”

  “Don’t you care what was in the case reports? Can’t you see I’m trying to tell you, asshole?”

  “Well, now, that surprises me, Mcdonald. I thought you had some sort of confidentiality agreement with your client. I thought I was supposed to get that information from Koehler.”

  He was really rubbing my nose in it. Well, hell. At least I’d called him asshole and he’d only called me son of a bitch. But he was still a few insults ahead of me. I decided to take this opportunity to even the score.

  “Howard,” I said, “you are an unmitigated scumbag; an unparalleled douchebag; a double-dog, triple-crown asshole of heroic proportions. You have the brains of a nematode; your face looks like a potato; and if you are married, your wife must be a…”

  He was getting redder and redder. Now he doubled up his fist.

  “…saint,” I finished.

  “Huh?” he said. He was so surprised he lost his rhythm completely. He caught on right away that he couldn’t hit me for calling his wife a saint, but by the time he realized he had ample provocation on his own account, he was worn out from all that thinking and didn’t have the strength. He just sat there and looked confused.

  “I think I’ll be going,” I said, and got out of my chair.

  “Sit your butt down, Mcdonald.”

  I complied.

  “Now, to the best of your recollection, what was in those reports?”

  “I thought you didn’t need to know, Howard. I thought Koehler told you.” It just popped out. Too late I realized we were getting right back on the same merry-go-round. So I took corrective steps. “Look, let’s be reasonable. I’ll trade you what I know for what you know.”

  “Mcdonald, are you crazy? I already know what was in the goddam reports.”

>   “You need confirmation and you know it.”

  “Yeah, and you’re going to give it to me. There never was any question of that and you know it.”

  “Tell me something, Howard— was there digitalis mixed in with Jack’s saccharine, like I said?”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of persimmons?”

  “Well, I was kind of wondering, you know, if a digitalis tablet really looks like a saccharine pill— I mean, wouldn’t they make them a different size so you wouldn’t mistake one for another?”

  “Now how many people put them in the same bottle, jerkoff?”

  “So Jack’s were in the same bottle.”

  “You ain’t as smart as you think you are, Mcdonald. But you ain’t wrong all the time.”

  “Fine. Now about those reports—”

  “You mean that’s what you wanted to know?”

  “Part of it. As I recall, Koehler gave Birnbaum four names to check out— Joan Hearne, Susanna Flores, and Mr. and Mrs. Timothy A. Hearne.”

  “Only four?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Five. Sardis Kincannon was on the list, but Jack never got around to her. She was on vacation at the time in, uh—”

  “Maui. Well, Maui and Honolulu. She stayed with some friends on Oahu for a few days.”

  Good. Very good. I had had kind of a block about checking Sardis’ alibi— for some reason, it was just something I didn’t want to do. It wouldn’t exactly have been betraying a trust or anything, but I didn’t want to do it.

  So now I knew two things— so far, Jacob had told Blick the truth and Blick had done my dirty work. He was showing off, letting me know he’d checked Sardis’s alibi, and now I knew it was good. Not that I’d ever doubted.

  I went on and told Blick how Joan had said Lindsay called her the day of the snatch, and also how she’d supplied Peter Tillman’s name, and how Tillman had said Lindsay broke a date with him the night before the snatch, and how Susanna had told about Lindsay calling in sick and had mentioned Mike Brissette, and how Brissette had said he’d recently talked to Lindsay on a “legal matter” but wouldn’t say what it was, and how the Timothy A. Hearnes had been thoroughly checked by Atlanta operatives.

  Every now and then I left out some little thing, the way I left out Sardis’s name, to see if it would make Blick ask a question. It did, every time. That meant Jacob had filled him in thoroughly, telling exactly the same story I was telling. Unless, of course, he’d embellished.

  When I was done, Blick said, “Is that all?”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was jacking me around or whether Koehler had told him stuff that I didn’t know about. Stuff that was either true or that he’d made up.

  “That’s everything I wrote,” I said. “If there’s anything—”

  Blick waved a meaty hand. “Forget it. So where’s Lindsay Hearne?”

  “Howard, about those pills. Do you think you could call the crime lab and—”

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “It’s been nice talking to you. See you around sometime.”

  “The pills were shaved, douchebag.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody took a knife and very carefully carved them into smaller pills that looked like saccharine tablets. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  I just nodded, I was so shocked. It was true I’d already said I wanted to know about the pills, but I was amazed that Blick remembered and that he’d remembered to ask the crime lab in the first place. Maybe he’d been taking smart lessons.

  “So where is she?” he asked. “The Hearne babe.”

  I told him about Lindsay and the cancer quacks, extracted a promise to let me know when he found her, and turned over the eight names.

  Then I left, thinking I still owed him two or three after that interview. Twice I’d come damn close to leaving without telling him what I’d come there to tell him; he’d goaded me with a lot more relish than good sense. What the hell kind of cop would do a thing like that? What kind of man was so stubborn, so hell-bent on revenge, that he’d endanger other people’s lives to get it?

  Hell of an interesting topic.

  I may never start liking Blick, but that day I started giving him credit— he’s taught me a thing or two abut myself by setting an even worse example than I could.

  It was getting close to six o’clock, so I thought I’d go see if Sardis felt like dinner pretty soon. She’d said she was going to be working late, and I figured she’d still be at work.

  At that time of night you have to ring a bell to get in— I mean aboard. I did, said who I wanted, and someone directed me to Sardis’s cubicle. She was drawing something.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Paul!” She looked alarmed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just thought we could… I mean—”

  “Listen, you shouldn’t have come here. We really shouldn’t be seen together.”

  She was right, of course. But I hadn’t realized she was so nervous about it, and finding out made me feel bad. I guess I must have hung my head or something.

  Sardis mustered up an unconvincing smile. “Sorry,” she said. “We can talk about it later. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “See you at home.”

  The thing was getting to her. Maybe because of Tillman’s death. Whatever the reason, she was much more nervous than she had been. I was going to have to think about finding another place to stay. It was the only gentlemanly thing to do.

  No, it wasn’t. I remembered she didn’t have her car. I went back to her tiny office. “Sardis?”

  She looked at her watch. “You’re still here.”

  “I thought if you want to call me when you’re through, I could come get you.”

  She smiled, again a little thinly, I thought. “No, thanks. I went home and got my car after we left Susanna’s. Now you run along.”

  I did, not feeling so hot.

  I headed toward the parking lot two piers down from the Pandorf boat, thinking I didn’t like the idea of Sardis walking along the Embarcadero alone. It was foggy and spooky even now, getting more so by the second. And it was practically deserted. There was only one other guy there now. You could easily step back in the shadows and hide until your victim came along if you had that sort of thing in mind. I did it, just to get the feel of it.

  The other guy— my projected victim— passed me. It was Steve Koehler.

  CHAPTER 13

  Stunned, I watched him go to Pandorf Associates. I don’t know why I was so stunned, really. He was having his C.I. done and had a perfect right to be there. On the other hand, maybe he’d come to kill Sardis. There were other people on the boat, so he wouldn’t do it there. I decided to wait where I was.

  In about ten minutes they came out arm in arm. Sardis and Steve. I let them walk past me and then I followed them to the parking lot. They got in Steve’s car while I got in mine. They pulled out and turned right on the Embarcadero. So did I. That was the way to Sardis’ house, which was the only place I had to go. So, of course, I turned right.

  After a while Steve turned left. He was no longer heading toward Sardis’, but I turned left, too. I admitted to myself that I was following him. I was at loose ends and not getting anywhere with the story and didn’t know what to do next, and I was a little bit afraid for Sardis. That was why I was doing it, I said to myself. It was probably partly true, too. The fact that I am also a jealous and small-minded person who wanted to find out exactly what Sardis was doing with that jerk probably had no more than about ninety percent to do with it.

  Steve had some sort of small, light-colored car. I got a most perfunctory look at the car that tried to hit me, but I could swear it was something like Steve’s. I myself was at the wheel of a beige Toyota even as I thought this, and Sardis had a cream-colored Honda. I wondered idly if I should also look at Jacob’s, Marilyn’s, Joan’s, and Susanna’s cars. Maybe I could rule out anybody who had a big, dark car. But I decided against it. You
could always borrow, steal, or rent a car if you wanted to kill somebody. You probably would, in fact. Maybe you’d even hire somebody to drive it.

  Okay, so I didn’t really have anything on Steve Koehler. But he seemed as good a suspect as anybody, and I didn’t like the idea of Sardis being with him. She was my hostess, after all, and my life was in her hands. Maybe she was conning me. Maybe she had lured Lindsay to Hawaii and bumped her off there and now she and Steve were in cahoots to… to what? I was being dumb. I was still trying to justify following an innocent citizen out on a harmless date.

  I wasn’t succeeding, but I was still following. I followed that small, light-colored car right to downtown San Francisco, where it turned into the Downtown Center Garage at Mason and O’Farrell. I put my press parking card on my dashboard, parked illegally, and waited for them.

  They came out and walked up Mason to Geary and crossed it. Then they kept walking until they got to the Pacific Plaza Hotel. I stopped following when they went in. It was getting undignified.

  And it got a lot worse. I waited for them. Of course, I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I realized it had been a long time since I’d been to the One-Act Theater Company, which is right across from the Pacific Plaza. I thought maybe I’d just have a sandwich at the Stage Door Deli and then take in the show.

  The One-Acters usually present three or four one-act plays, just as their name suggests they might, loosely related by some common theme. Tonight it was “Three Women Playwrights,” which is about as loosely related as you can get.

  The first two were pretty good, and Mittie Smith, my favorite local actress, was the star of the third, so it promised to be even better.

  But for some reason I left at intermission. I couldn’t explain it. I just had this wild urge to go outside and get some air. I stayed reasonably back in the shadows while I was getting the air, and I took in lungful after lungful. I didn’t really feel like I’d done quite enough breathing until Steve and Sardis came out of the hotel, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later.