True-Life Adventure

by Julie Smith

  So Sardis had spent a couple of hours in a hotel with Steve Koehler. Big deal. There was probably a conference room in there where they were having a meeting.

  Anyway, she’d been there with him and you’d think that would be enough to satisfy just about anyone’s curiosity, but you’d be wrong. I followed them all the way back to the parking lot where Sardis’s car was, watched them kiss— quite passionately, I might add— and then watched Sardis get in her own small, light-colored car.

  Then, having gone that far, I followed her home. By an incredible stroke of luck, I found a parking place not more than a half a block away from hers. But I thought I’d wait to go in till after she went in. I hadn’t yet decided whether or not to confront her with what I knew and I didn’t want it to be obvious that I’d tailed her.

  I watched her get out, lock her car, walk around it, and step up on the sidewalk. And then I saw a man step out of a doorway and walk toward her. Fast. I had to look away while I was getting out of my car, but I thought I saw him grab her arm and I thought I saw them start to struggle. Then I heard a godawful noise— the police whistle Sardis carried on her key ring.

  The man started running— right towards me. By this time I was running too, and I guess he figured I was going for him, so he turned around and ran the other way, around the corner. San Francisco being the kind of city it is, there was about a fifty-fifty chance of the route he chose being uphill. Uphill it was, and while I believe women find me all the more masculine owing to a trifling tendency to burliness, someone who meant to be unkind might suggest that I ought to lose weight. Thus I huffed and I puffed and I watched him put a couple of city blocks between us.

  Feeling ridiculous, I gave up and ambled back down the hill, trying to learn to breathe again on the way. Sardis was waiting at the bottom, looking white. She flung herself at me and I caught her, mumbling something like “Sorry I didn’t catch him.” She mumbled something like “Pish-tush,” and we didn’t say anything else, just held on to each other, until we got inside.

  Sardis’s apartment was small but very cozy— a brown velvet sofa, a rocking chair, quilts, that sort of stuff. At that moment it looked more inviting than the sumptuous den of the Count of Monte Cristo. Sardis poured us both a brandy, and I tossed mine back and held out my glass for more. I act macho when I’m terrified.

  Sardis sat down in her rocker. “He spoke to me, Paul. He knew me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Where’s Lindsay Hearne? I won’t hurt you if you tell me.’ And he grabbed my arm.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  She shuddered. “No. He had on a stocking mask. Horrible.”

  “How about the voice?”

  “He whispered.”

  “Are you sure it was a man?”

  “Oh, yes. A big one.”

  I sighed. “Shall we call the cops?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Let’s not. There’s nothing they can do except make us wait for forty-five minutes till they get here, and then take a report. I can’t deal with them now— tomorrow I’ll call Inspector Blick and tell him it happened.”

  I was relieved. The last thing I wanted in that velvety, quilty, cozy place was cops. Also, I didn’t want the interruption. Sardis and I had a lot to talk about.

  I started out nice and slow-like, kind of subtle: “How long have you been sleeping with Steve Koehler?”

  “What?” she said. She looked as if I’d asked her whether Spot barked much. The question didn’t seem to compute at all. Suddenly I felt like the two-bit turd I was.

  “I meant— uh— well, I went to the show at the One-Act Theater and I happened to see you walking out of a hotel with him. I just thought, well… you might like to tell me about it.”

  “I might, yes. First we had the carpaccio. And then he had the duck and I had some pasta. Fantastic. And then…”

  “There’s a restaurant in that little hotel?”

  Again she looked as if she thought I was pulling her leg. “Donatello— haven’t you been?”

  “On my income, I haven’t even heard of it.” If I spoke testily, it was because I was so embarrassed at being such a dumb shit that I felt the need to take it out on somebody.

  But Sardis didn’t seem to notice. “Anyway,” she said, “it was strictly a business date. We had some things to clear up about his C.I.”

  “Do you always kiss your clients so enthusiatically?”

  “(A),” she said, “I do not kiss my clients at all, and (B) I do not understand what the hell you’re getting at.”

  “(A),” I said, “I saw you kiss Koehler, and (B) what about Mr. A&L?”

  For a moment she didn’t speak. She just stood there looking as if I’d told her an earthquake had killed all her living relatives. Her cheeks flamed a becoming fuchsia. It was very scary. When she spoke, she spoke very slowly: “I’m going to ask you to apologize for B and explain A.” I had to admire her for that. She had paused to figure out exactly what she wanted from me and it was exactly the right thing. Reasonable as hell. Any peaceable adult would have obeyed instantly.

  I said, “Why the hell should I?”

  “Because you’re behaving like a prick and I—”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me—” The rest of her sentence stopped me:

  “I don’t really think it’s your natural state.”

  She just wasn’t taking any of the bait. There I was, ready to alienate her forever, get her to throw me out, convince her I was a madman and, when you got right down to it, a prick. I could have brooded about it for the next six months. And here Sardis wanted to be reasonable.

  Of course, none of that actually went through my mind at the time. I was too worked up, not thinking at all, just feeling. I started out feeling angry, of course, and that feeling progressed right on to angrier. But Sardis had got to me and now I just felt silly and ashamed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “about Mr. A&L. I don’t know why I said it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Neither of us spoke for a minute and then Sardis did again: “If you ever speak to me like that again, I’ll detooth you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “What did you mean about seeing me kiss Steve Koehler?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know why I said that, either.”

  “Dammit, you didn’t just decide to go to the theater and just happen to see us come out of that hotel. You tailed us.”

  Now that I really was ashamed of. I didn’t want to admit it worth a damn. Yet it was I who had brought up the good-night kiss. I certainly seemed to want it both ways.

  “Look,” she said, “I could get my feelings hurt, but I’m trying not to. I’m reminding myself that there have been two attempts on your life and that you never saw me before yesterday and you don’t know if I’m concealing Lindsay’s whereabouts or if I helped her snatch the kid or killed her or what. You’ve got every right to be suspicious. So I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I just tell you the names of the various places I stayed in Hawaii and you can check my alibi for yourself.”

  “That wasn’t why I followed you.” I was so taken aback I had made the tactical error of blurting out the truth. I tried to recover: “You seemed pretty eager to get rid of me when I came over to the boat.”

  “I know it seemed that way. But I wanted you out of there before Koehler got there. I figure the fewer people who know you and I know each other the better. But look. You don’t have to believe me. You’ll feel better if I give you those names.”

  She was being so decent I couldn’t stand it. I said, “Blick told me he checked you out. I know your alibi’s good.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, why the hell did you follow me then?”

  “Out of plain, childish jealousy.”

  She looked amazed. And very confused, as if she were trying to decide whether I was a madman or just somebody with a couple of kinks. Appa
rently, she decided on the latter, as she came down unexpectedly with a fit of the giggles.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She kept on giggling. “You looked so desperate when you said that, like you thought you’d be struck dead. Didn’t you ever tell the truth before?”

  “Not if it made me look this bad.”

  She was still giggling. “It’s not so bad. I think it’s sort of flattering.”

  I seized the advantage: “I wouldn’t follow just anybody, you know.”

  She crossed the room and stood close to me. “See that you don’t. And one other thing.”

  I moved closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. I put my mouth very close to hers. “What?” I whispered.

  “Follow me again and I’ll cut your spleen out.”

  “Kiss Koehler again and I’ll cut yours out.”

  “I was an innocent bystander. He planted one on me.” Our arms went around each other.

  “It didn’t look that way to me.”

  “Well, it was.”

  “I distinctly saw you—” I didn’t get to finish because she planted one on me. I saw how these things could happen.

  That night I didn’t sleep on the sofa. In fact, I hardly slept at all.

  Sardis and I were very good together. I couldn’t remember being as excited by a woman as I was by her. I couldn’t remember wanting somebody so much for so long (forty-eight hours, wasn’t it?) and having it turn out so well. Come to think of it, the way my life had been going, I couldn’t remember much about women at all.

  But I’m being silly. The truth is, it was a night of flashing lights and calliope music. The next morning I felt as if I’d risen from the dead.

  I felt so good I cooked breakfast— cheese omelets, homefries; I even whipped up some biscuits. It was Saturday, so we had champagne with our orange juice. Neither of us even brought up the subject of Lindsay until the paper was read.

  But the last Sardis knew was that Tillman was dead and I’d gone off to warn Joan. She had to be brought up to date. So when she had a sufficient amount of champagne inside her, I told her about Terry’s illness and about sending Blick to find Lindsay in Quackland.

  Once over the shock, she remembered something that seemed related. Steve Koehler had consistently refused to reveal the nature of Kogene’s projected product, even to her. But last night, for the first time, he had hinted broadly about it.

  “I told him flat out I couldn’t design a logo without knowing what he’s selling and he gave me all this garbage about how it should signify health and feeling good and the fountain of youth. And then he said I should imagine feeling the worst kind of hopelessness, being absolutely sure you were going to die, and then getting a second chance. That was what the logo should convey, he said. So I said, ‘Like if you had cancer and somebody came up with a cure for it?’ And he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Exactly like that.’”

  “It’s got to be a cancer cure.”

  She nodded. “He all but spelled its name.”

  “But it’s something other than interferon.”

  “Right. But I’m afraid we digress. I just wanted to tell you while we were on the subject. Back to Lindsay— did Jacob and Marilyn mention Terry’s illness when you went out to see them?”

  “No. And I think that’s pretty strange, don’t you?”

  ‘‘Paul, there’s something creepy about all this.”

  “More than one thing.”

  “I mean about Jacob.”

  “You said he’s always been crazy.”

  She sighed. “True. I keep forgetting he can’t be expected to behave like a normal person.”

  All of a sudden my brain felt tired. “Oh, hell,” I said. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  And that’s how the weekend went. I don’t mean to give you the impression it was nothing but speculation about the case interspersed with galvanic, white-hot lovemaking. It was nothing of the sort. That was the last speculating we did until Monday.

  After two days of unspeakable bliss, you can imagine how eager I was to reenter the world of journalism. But Sardis went to her office, so it was either that or play with my toes.

  I had no idea in hell what to do next. But I figured I’d better let Joey Bernstein know I was still alive, just because it was good psychology, so I ambled into my office. And there I found a message from none other than Jacob Koehler, the Nobel laureate himself.

  CHAPTER 14

  The message was dated that day, Monday. Jacob had called me first thing that morning. I was flattered.

  I dialed Kogene Systems, asked for Jacob Koehler, and waited confidently. The receptionist said she would check to see if he was in. Then she said he wasn’t.

  The number he’d given me was the office, but undaunted, I called his house. No answer.

  I was getting annoyed.

  There being nothing else to do, I brought Joey up to date, telling him about the fire and little Terry’s leukemia and how I had single-handedly figured out where Lindsay was and put the cops on the trail.

  No matter how much you give them, editors always want more. Joey asked if I’d checked with Blick to see if he’d found her. The truth was, I hadn’t thought of it because he said he’d call me, which just shows you how overconfident a person can get when a woman like Sardis looks at him twice.

  Obligingly, I called Blick.

  He was his usual charming self: “I don’t want to talk to you, you son of a bitch.”

  “What’d I do now?”

  “Look. We had a little personal difference or two, so you gave me a bum steer to get even. Very funny, Mcdonald. Very amusing. Only I used a lot of man-hours checking out those addresses you gave me, and that was taxpayers’ money. Maybe you think I’m a dumb cop, hotshot, but I take my job seriously. I can’t prove two people wouldn’t of got killed if you hadn’t played games with me, but I can prove I wasted a weekend checking out some phony lead for some two-bit intellectual. Next time I see your fat face I hope it’s smashed in about eight or ten places.”

  Two-bit intellectual! I wished he’d go back to “asshole”. I should’ve hung up then. There was no reasoning with that ape. But like a fool, I tried anyway: “It was an honest mistake, Howard.”

  “Like hell.”

  “I thought she’d be there, I swear to God.”

  “You know little Terry’s father, Jacob? He says the kid ain’t sick.”

  “The kid’s aunt says she is.”

  “The kid’s aunt’s a loony.”

  Joan might be at that. She certainly had been. She still changed moods a lot faster than the average person and sometimes she displayed what the shrinks call “inappropriate affect.” But even if she was a loony, what reason would she have to make up a story about Terry’s fatal illness? To throw us off the track, so we’d waste time looking for Lindsay in the wrong place? In that case, why not tell the police instead of me? I didn’t get it, and that made me cross. But since I was a two-bit intellectual, my finely tuned wit was in no way affected by my mood. I handled Blick as brilliantly as always.

  “Takes one to know one,” I said. And hung up.

  I tried calling Jacob again. He still wasn’t in. I asked when he would be. I might as well not have bothered.

  The hell with it. I’d go there and wait for him. Unless he was sick— in which case he’d be home, which he wasn’t— he was bound to turn up soon. He was probably at the dentist’s or something.

  So I got in my small, light-colored car, drove to Emeryville, and stormed Kogene.

  “Is Jacob in?” I asked, using his first name like we were tennis partners.

  “Sorry, he’s not,” said the receptionist. “I don’t know if he’s coming in or not.”

  “Isn’t that sort of unusual? I mean, I thought he came in every day.”

  She shrugged. “Dr. Koehler does pretty well what he pleases.”

  “I think I’ll wait awhile if you don’t mind. See if he turns up.”

  “Of course
. Can I get you some coffee?”

  I said yes and she disappeared and came back with it. She seemed a nice lady. Probably she was the one who’d brought in the stack of elderly Reader’s Digests that were all there were to read.

  Within, say, half an hour, I knew a new way to lose weight, a half dozen new jokes, and some interesting facts about teenage alcoholics. It was stimulating, but I had a murderer to catch. Maybe Steve or Marilyn would know where Jacob was.

  I asked if I could see Steve.

  “Mr. Koehler is in a meeting,” she said, looking infinitely regretful.

  “How about Marilyn?”

  “I’ll see.” Again she got up and walked out.

  She came back more regretful still. “Dr. Markham is in the same meeting.”

  I stuck it out for about another half hour. Then I had the nice lady check to see if the meeting was over, which it wasn’t. So I told her I’d give Jacob a ring and I left.

  I’m just not good at waiting. There’s something about it that makes my muscles tense up and gives me a headache and generally makes me want to chew up a few sets of crockery. So maybe I pulled out of my parking place and drove towards San Pablo Avenue a little more carelessly than I should have and a good deal faster than the law allows. It was tempting because there were no other cars on the street. Emeryville’s like that— sometimes completely deserted, sometimes crawling with mile-high semis. Right now it was deserted and I took advantage of it.

  Park, the street I was on, dead-ended at San Pablo, where there was a traffic light. The fact that it was green probably saved my life. Because when I braked to turn onto San Pablo, nothing happened. That is, nothing I wanted to happen happened. I neither stopped nor started, for I had no brakes. I jerked the emergency brake. It offered no resistance and no comfort. I started taking that turn a lot faster than seemed sensible if I wanted the car to remain on four wheels, so I rethought it, took lightning action, and found myself headed for one of Emeryville’s more venerable poker parlors. I realized I probably wasn’t going to hit it, though. I’d probably hit one of the cars parked in front of it, or if I missed those, I’d go up over the curb and the impact of that would probably flip me over. Or maybe it wouldn’t; maybe I would hit the poker parlor.