“He’s been gone a week. You should have called them a long time ago.”
“Just give me one day,” she said.
Trace shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You seem to think that I’m some kind of real detective who can found out things like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Then what are you?” she asked.
“I’m a bumbler. I fumble around. I never figure anything out. I just annoy people. I never catch anybody. I’m not a detective, I’m an annoyance clerk. I should work in a department store.”
Mrs. Collins stared at Trace for a long time. Then her shoulders shuddered as if from an explosion deep within her body, and she dropped her head toward her chest and began to sob uncontrollably. “Please, Mr. Tracy. Please.”
Trace sighed. He could never resist good manners.
8
The Collins-Rose Real Estate Developers, Inc. office was sunken into a small shopping mall that was hidden in a corner of San Francisco near the Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently the mall was one of those places where kids congregated at night because the parking lot was littered with empty beer cans. In San Francisco, as elsewhere, police seemed to have adopted a hands-off policy where normally active adolescents were concerned. In an empty parking lot teenage morons don’t bother anybody but themselves.
Collins’ office was surrounded by entrepreneurial originality. On one side was a place that advertised the best alfalfa cookies in the world, and on the other, a video store that offered a full weekend of sex for six dollars, with club membership.
Trace looked in the video-store window and a woman at a checkout counter inside yelled out at him. “Why you looking in the window? Come on in. Only six dollars.”
Trace looked at the woman. She had all the charm of a laundry hamper. He said, “I usually get more than six dollars.”
“Smartass,” she said. “Faggot.”
But once inside the Collins-Rose office, he met a girl for whom he would gladly waive his usual six-dollar weekend fee. She was a tall blond with sun-warmed skin and blue eyes as light as thick ice. She was enough to make a man want to take up surfing.
The nameplate on her desk read LAURIE ANDERS and Trace marveled at another California name. Where were all the ethnics in California? What happened to all the Carluccis?
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Rose,” Trace said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“He is in a meeting right now. What does it concern? Perhaps one of our salesmen could help you?”
“I don’t think so,” Trace said. “It’s a personal matter. I’m a friend of Mrs. Collins.”
“Oh,” she said, and Trace thought a faint cloud drifted over the sunlight of her face.
“If you want to wait, I think Mr. Rose should be free soon,” she said.
Trace followed her gaze to a sofa alongside the wall near the door. He sat down, flipped through the stack of magazines. He had read them all. He glanced up to catch the young woman looking at him.
“Is Mr. Collins in today?” he asked casually.
She shook her head. “I didn’t ask your name,” she said.
Trace gave her one of his business cards and asked if he could get her some coffee.
“No,” she said.
“Then can I go next door and get you a movie?”
“No, thanks,” she said and rose from the desk and walked toward the back of the building with his business card in her hand.
Trace was back on the couch when she returned a few minutes later. “Mr. Rose can see you now,” she said.
“Thank you.” He followed the young woman, who wiggled her way down a long corridor, past a lot of small cubbyhole offices like the kind salesmen had at a new-car agency.
“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘walk this way,’” Trace said.
“I know, you’d throw a hip out of joint,” she said. “I know that Groucho Marx joke.”
“How about Chico?” Trace said. “I can play the piano just like Chico Marx. You got two lemons, I’ll show you.”
“We don’t have a piano,” she said.
“It’s just as good on a desk. I play the desk with lemons and I’m real good at it, even if it did put an end to my business career.”
“How about Harpo?” she said.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“No talk,” she said.
“Well, if you’re going to be that way about it,” Trace said.
She led him into an office where a dark-haired man wearing an immaculate pin-striped suit with a lightly figured dark tie sat at one side of a long conference table facing the door.
“This is Mr. Tracy,” Laurie said. Trace noticed that he was holding Trace’s business card.
“Thank you. Mr. Tracy, would you like some coffee?” Rose asked.
“No, I can’t play the desk with coffee. Only lemons,” Trace said.
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind,” Trace said. He noticed Laurie was smiling.
“Thank you, Laurie, that’ll be all,” Rose said. He did not stand up, nor did he offer his hand to Trace. His fingernails were manicured and shiny, and Trace had the suspicion that Rafe Rose might be a health and cleanliness freak who did not shake hands with anybody for fear of contracting an incurable disease.
“Laurie said you’re a friend of Mrs. Collins?” Rose said.
“An acquaintance,” Trace corrected.
“You live around here?”
“No. Las Vegas.”
“Well, any acquaintance of et cetera, et cetera,” Rose said. Not a hint of a smile flickered across his face, though, Trace noticed. “So what can I do for you?”
“Mrs. Collins asked me to look for her husband,” Trace said.
“He’s not home? That’s where he usually is,” Rose said.
“I think she’d know if he was home,” Trace said. “Doesn’t he spend much time in the office?”
“No, he goes long stretches without being in here at all. Just what’s this all about. Where’s Judith?”
“Judith is home. She hasn’t seen her husband in a week,” Trace said. “I told her I’d look for him.”
Rose’s face wrinkled up around the eyes. “This might be serious,” he said, “couldn’t it?”
Trace nodded.
“Did she call the police? They haven’t been here,” Rose said.
“I think she’s afraid to. She acts a little bit timid where her husband’s concerned.”
“I can understand that,” Rose said. “Hold on.” He dialed two digits on the phone and said, “Laurie, when was the last time you talked to Thomas?” He nodded and said, “Do you know of any appointments he’s had out of town this past week? I want to reach him.”
He waited a while, said thanks, and hung up.
“Laurie’s our office manager but she doubles as Thomas’s secretary when he’s in the office. But she hasn’t talked to him in a week and she doesn’t know of any appointments he’s lined up. You know, Judith called me last week and asked if Thomas was here. I didn’t think it was important.”
“Maybe it isn’t yet,” Trace said. “Was Collins working on anything special that you know about? Something that might have taken him out of town?”
“Thomas is pretty closemouthed. He usually comes in with a deal only after he’s put it all together, and then we fight about it. So I wouldn’t normally know about anything special he was doing.”
“It sounds to me like you do most of the work around here,” Trace said.
Rose shrugged. “I put in the most hours, that’s for sure. But Thomas’s deals make lot of money, probably the biggest part of our income. So it works out.”
“How long have you two been partners?” Trace asked.
“Eleven years. We both had small agencies and we merged them. I took over the straight day-to-day stuff and Thomas got the big jobs.”
“You think it’s fair?”
“Maybe you’d like to call Mrs. Collins and have her verify that I’m here on her behalf,” Trace said.
“Why? I don’t have any reason to doubt you.”
“Okay. I just wanted you to have the opportunity,” Trace said, “because sometimes questions get sticky?”
“Such as?” Rose asked.
“Does Collins fool around? Does he have a girlfriend maybe stashed somewhere, where he might be hiding out sick or something?”
Rose spun around and looked at the wall where certificates in a half-dozen real-estate organizations were framed and hung. Then he spun slowly back to Trace.
“All right,” he said. “Thomas would screw a snake if he could get his body low enough. He does a lot of business trips, but he does a lot more trips just to play around. Fact is, I always envied him. He goes off to Las Vegas, makes believe it’s a business trip, and winds up in the sack with somebody for the weekend. I’d do it if I didn’t think my wife would find out and kill me. He’s a world-class swordsman, Mr. Tracy. Does that help?”
“It’d help more if you could point me toward a couple of his scabbards,” Trace said.
“You never know with Thomas,” Rose said. “None of them matters to him. I mean, women are just women. He doesn’t talk about them a lot except, well, you know, to brag about somebody’s tits or something. Usual locker-room talk. I couldn’t give you a name.”
“Are his women always out of town?” Trace asked. “Maybe he’s got somebody stashed here in the city?”
“He could have, but I wouldn’t know,” Rose said.
“How about in the office? He have anybody around here? What about Laurie? Does she have a little romance going?”
For a moment Rose’s face looked puzzled, as if he were considering the possibility for the first time and not liking it. Finally he said, “I don’t think so. And not Laurie. She just doesn’t like Thomas at all.”
“She ever say that?”
“She doesn’t have to. He’s always passing remarks about her ass or legs or something, and I can tell she doesn’t care for it. And there’s nobody else in the office that Thomas’d fool around with. He told me once, you know, you start bopping your secretary and ten days later your wife knows about it because your secretary suddenly starts sounding different on the phone. Women can’t help hinting, he said.”
“Probably true,” Trace said. “Men brag and women hint; it all works out the same. Anybody screws anybody and everybody knows about it. You ever hear him talk about a girl named Mandy?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Rose said.
“You know anything about any farm he might visit or might go to? Or any friend of his who owns a farm?”
Rose looked puzzled again. He had a way of wrinkling up the corners of his eyes when he did not feel comfortable with questions, but he answered quickly. “No. But I do know that those are pretty specific questions coming from somebody who claims he doesn’t know anything about Thomas’ whereabouts.”
“There was a note from somebody named Mandy. It talked about meeting Collins on a farm somewhere. A farm with a hot tub.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Rose said.
“Do you think Laurie might?”
“Maybe. She doesn’t do much else for Thomas except take his phone calls, but you could ask her. Should I call her in?”
Trace glanced at his watch. “No,” he said. “Just don’t complain if she goes to lunch with me.”
“You want me to be your dating service?” Rose asked with a smile.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary with my charm,” Trace said.
“Okay. Are you going to tell her that Thomas has taken a powder?”
“Not if I can help it,” Trace said. He rose and walked to the door. “One last thing,” he told the real-estate man.
“Sure. What’s that?”
“Why is everyone so formal about Collins? Why do they all call him Thomas?”
“Would you want to be called Tom Collins?” Rose asked.
“It’s not so bad. I knew a stripper once named Brandy Alexander,” Trace said.
9
The only way Laurie Anders could get Trace to enter the lemon-bright restaurant that bragged of “fresh bean sprouts daily” was to assure him that the bar served real alcoholic drinks.
The place was a little touch of Old New York, Trace thought. Because the walls were of Formica and the ceiling of wood and there wasn’t a drape or a rug or anything in the place that could absorb or muffle noise, it sounded like the kitchen on a Chinese passenger boat—or the old Sardi’s. The only difference was that in New York they packed the tables close together, and here in California at least there was enough distance between the small tables so that your elbow didn’t wind up in somebody else’s blue-cheese dressing.
Trace hated the place. It was too bright, too noisy, and too damned self-consciously cheery for a man who spent his lunchtime just a little bit depressed in a room with a dungeon atmosphere. A little dampness wouldn’t hurt either, he decided. Every restaurant should have a small leak in the cellar. Sneaky as ever, he turned on his tape recorder.
“Is Laurie Anders your real name?”
“Of course. Why?”
“It’s like a California name. Something from a marquee. I was hoping you’d tell me your name was really Angelina Baccigalupa.”
“Sorry,” she said. “The name’s real. Everything in California is real, didn’t you know that?”
“Somehow that must have slid by me,” Trace said. “Did Mr. Rose order you to talk to me?”
“No. After I chased you out of the office, he ordered me to go to lunch with you. He didn’t say anything about talking. I was very upset, you know.”
“God, I’m not that homely,” Trace said.
“No, it sounded like ‘entertain the big spender from out of town.’ I don’t do that kind of work.”
“Set your mind at ease,” Trace said. “I’m not a big spender from anywhere. Actually, I’ve been figuring out how to stick you with the lunch tab. Did Rose tell you what I want?”
“No. He just asked me to try to be helpful. That’s what got my back up,” Laurie said.
“You figured I was going to whisk you off to the Econoline Six Motel for two hours of fun and frolic?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“I don’t go anyplace that I can’t rent for at least three hours,” Trace said.
“Your women must be very happy,” she said.
Trace shook his head. “Actually it’s that it takes me two and a half hours to sober up.”
The young woman really did have marvelously blue eyes, and sitting across from her, Trace could catch the faint scent of her perfume. It was a natural fresh smell. Too much perfume smelled like rancid flower paste. Trace liked perfumes that reminded him of trees and meadows, soft breezes and warm sunlight, especially since perfume was usually as close as he got to trees, meadows, breezes, or sunlight.
“What are you taking me to lunch for? And picking up the check,” Laurie asked. Her voice was as gentle as her good looks. She wore a beige blouse and a brown skirt that hugged her hips tightly. That was another thing he hated: balloon skirts that made women’s shapes look like tufted pin-cushions.
“I’ve come to put you into movies,” Trace said.
“Somebody’s told you about my kazoo solos? News really travels fast out here. Come on, sell me an insurance policy and let me go back to work.”
“I’m an investigator,” Trace said. “Well, sort of an investigator.”
“I saw your business card. You’re with Garrison Fidelity,” Laurie said.
“I investigate things for them once in a while when I’m feeling up to it.”
“And you’re feeling up to it now, is that it?”
“Yeah. I’m loo
king for Thomas Collins,” Trace said. “And I know, I should look for him home but he’s not home and nobody’s seen him for a week. I thought you might be of some help to me.”
“I haven’t seen him for a week either,” she said. “Does making it unanimous help you at all?”
“Not much,” Trace said. Laurie had a faint smile on her face; it was the look worn by women who were beautiful, had always been beautiful, and had always been accustomed to wrapping men around their fingers. Trace did not care for it.
“Did he tell you he was going out of town or anything like that?” he asked.
“No,” she said, dawdling with her fork over the large chef’s salad she had ordered, an unappetizing mixture of apparently inedible objects that looked like wine-bottle corks and frogs’ entrails. She looked up again, fixing him with her clear cold eyes.
“Is he really a missing-type person? Are the police going to find him in fifteen years suffering from amnesia and living in Dubuque?”
“Police haven’t been called. They may never find him anywhere,” Trace said.
“Isn’t that odd? Not calling the police?” she asked.
“I think she’s afraid of ticking him off if he’s just away on business. Speaking of which, you double as his secretary, right?”
“I take his messages. When he’s in the office, which isn’t very often, I do some typing for him.”
“Would you know if he was going out of town?” Trace asked.
“Nobody knows anything about where he goes and what he does. He doesn’t even tell Mr. Rose, so he wouldn’t tell me.”
“You know nothing? You mean I’m spending three dollars on this rabbit food and it’s going to be a total waste,” Trace said.
“I’m afraid it looks that way,” she said.
“Do you think he might have gone to the farm?” Trace asked.
“Not for a whole week,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I get the idea it’s a place he uses only…well, once in a while, you know, just overnight.”
“Have you been there?” Trace asked.
The young woman blushed for a moment, not quite as confident-looking as she had been a few minutes before, and said, “I refuse to answer on the grounds that my answers might tend to involve me.”
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 6
