by Jack Lynch
She folded her arms and rocked slowly from side to side. "You're quite sure that you're not working for Jerry's wife, Mr. Bragg?"
"No, I'm not working for his wife. When I first arrived this evening I didn't even know if Jerry's friend was a man or a woman. But I've talked to Jerry's wife. She's pretty young. A little hardened in some ways, soft in others. His being gone is starting to rattle her. My job is to find him, not to delve into any of his relationships,"
"Now whoa, mister. Jerry and I are friends, period. We rap a lot. Like a number of other people I know, he just likes to chat about things. I guess I'm a pretty good listener."
"So I gathered," I told her, looking over to where Joe Dodge was smoking and drinking and gesticulating.
"Yes," she replied without emotion.
"Do you know where Jerry is now?"
"No, I don't. I thought he'd returned home."
"This girl in San Francisco is a nurse who tended him last year when he was in the hospital with a back ailment. She and Jerry struck up a friendship. She said he told her on the phone that this friend in Barracks Cove had advised him to go back to his wife and try a little harder. Was that you?"
She nodded slightly. "Yes, but it's not really the sort of thing I'm comfortable talking about, Mr. Bragg. It was kind of a heavy, personal conversation. Not the sort of thing you pass along to a stranger."
"Please try not to think of me as a stranger. Try to think of me as the best friend Jerry might have right now. He had good reason not to drop out of sight. He was coming into a sizeable inheritance, and he knew it. I've gotten the impression he's the sort of boy who would like that."
She nodded in quick assent.
"So I figure he's gotten himself into some trouble. I'm not bad at my work, Miss France. I could probably help him, if only I could find him."
She thought about it for a minute. "All right. I'm ready to leave here anyway. I don't have a car. You can drive me back to town and we can have a drink somewhere, if you'd like."
"Be happy to."
"But I'll need a little solitude on the drive back, trying to remember."
"That makes sense."
"One other thing," she told me. "Do you have something showing you're who you say you are?"
I showed her the photostat and gave her a business card. She compared the license with the card, then walked over to a group of elderly persons.
"Mr. Hanson?" she addressed one of them, a balding fellow with an alert face. "This is Mr. Bragg, from San Francisco." She gave Hanson my card. "He's giving me a ride back to town, so I won't be needing a lift after all."
"I see," said Hanson, taking a good look at me. "You're the one this fellow was looking for then."
"I guess so. I'll see you all later."
She rejoined me and led me up the back stairs to the Parsons' kitchen, where Minnie and Big Mike were tidying up. Allison thanked them for the party, told them the same story she'd told Hanson and asked me for another business card. She gave it to Big Mike, then we went back out and around to the parking area in front. I cleared my throat.
"I have another ten or twenty cards on me if you'd like to spread them around."
She gave me a little smile. "That won't be necessary."
"You're a pretty smart girl, aren't you?"
"You betchum."
She climbed into the car beside me. Moonlight silhouetted her figure.
"Just one thing before you lapse into your trance, Miss France."
"Yes?"
"Who the devil are the Lodi Buckeyes?"
She laughed. "I don't really know. This is just something I picked up for a dime at the Salvage Shop in town." She paused, then added, "Call me Allison, if you'd like."
"Swell. I'm Pete." I put the car in gear and headed back to town.
NINE
Allison directed me to a large, stucco-walled establishment on the opposite side of the Square from the frame and art shop. It was a bar and restaurant called the Ten O'clock.
"I do a little waitressing here from time to time," she told me. "It's owned by a lovely old gentleman called Frisco."
We sat in a corner booth, across a floor full of tables from the long bar. Several people were still eating and the bar stools were filled with noisy drinkers. The waitress took our order, a Scotch for Allison, a bourbon for me, and I looked around the place.
"It's quaint. Do you like living up here in the boonies?"
"Very much so. I come from right out of West Hollywood. It was okay when I was a kid, but you must know how Los Angeles is these days. And up here, oh, you know, the people are a little more loose and friendly, and God, the scenery. When it's sunny it's gorgeous, all the green hills and crashing waves. And when the fog rolls in it's like something out of nineteenth-century England. It's a great place to work."
The waitress brought our drinks and we touched glasses. "What is your work?"
"Lots of different things. On the serious side I'm still exploring with techniques, themes, color and design. I'm not sure where that's apt to take me. On the more practical side I design greeting cards, which have sold fairly well to some of the larger companies. I also do some pop art for fairs and festivals. I pretty much live off the greeting cards and art fairs. I only wish it didn't take up so much of my time, keeping me from these other things I'm trying to work out inside of myself."
"Back at the party, Benny said you're a hard worker."
"I guess I am. I have a lot of things to get done. That's one of the reasons—oh, I was thinking about it on the way into town. How maybe I should have spent a little more time with Jerry that night. He wanted to hang around longer and talk some more and things. But after three or four hours I shooed him out. I had to get up early the next morning. I was running late on a greeting card contract."
"He wanted to talk—and things?"
The girl nodded. "Yes, which surprised me a little. I guess only because it had never come up before. He wanted to spend the night, and I don't mean on the front room sofa. I wouldn't let him."
"Where did he spend the night?"
"At a motel, I suppose."
"And you only saw him that one night?"
"Yes."
I took out the photo of Lind with his wife. "Just to make sure we're speaking about the same Jerry Lind."
She looked at the photo. "Yes. Is that his wife?"
"Yeah. Marcie's her name."
"She's very pretty."
"You've never met her?"
"No, I didn't even know he'd gotten married until he mentioned it this last time I saw him. He's funny that way, though. He seems to keep his life compartmentalized. You know, a set of people he works with. A set he raps with. A set he plays with. Although maybe now the lines of demarcation are softening a little."
"Because he wanted to spend the night?"
"Yes."
"It would be hard for a boy not to try."
"Most boys, perhaps. But I thought my relationship with Jerry was different from that."
"With you more the mother, or older sister."
"Yes, exactly."
"Jerry seems to bring that out in a lot of the women who know him. But not in his wife. This last time you talked to Jerry, did he talk about his wife much?"
"Not really. It was almost in passing. It made me sit up straight. Here he'd been carrying on about his tenuous relationship with this nurse, then it casually came out they have a tough time making it together because of her schedule and his wife."
She shook her head and had some of the Scotch. "So then I started asking about his wife, a little obliquely, which usually is the best way to learn things from Jerry. He was evasive. I asked if they fought. He said no, he just wanted more out of life than her. I had the impression he felt the same way about his job, but he was too lazy to do anything about that, either."
"He could afford to be, knowing he was coming into a half million dollars or more."
"That much?"
"That much for him and that muc
h for his sister. That's one of the reasons she hired me. If something terminal should have happened to Jerry before their rich uncle died, the entire estate goes to the sister. Do you know her, by the way?"
"No. I'm aware of course that she's that person on television. She doesn't strike me as anybody I'd want to spend a lot of time around."
"That's the one. So knowing about the money in the offing could leave Jerry impatient with his job, but still willing to bide his time. But his wife seems to think Jerry likes the job."
"Maybe he does, but he isn't happy with what he's accomplished so far. He thought it would be a little more romantic."
"His wife said he tends to pump it up more than it deserves. Apparently he thinks of himself more as some cloak and dagger figure than just a clerk who gets to travel some in his job."
"He at least used to think something more could come from it. May I have another drink, please? I pretty well curbed myself at the party. It's not really fair to you, but..."
"Don't worry about it. It goes on the expense account. Jerry's loving sister is paying for it."
Allison beamed. "Then make it a double, please."
I ordered more drinks. Another waitress was clearing food platters off a nearby table.
"I haven't had much to eat today," I told Allison. "The food here any good?"
"Yes, but I don't know if they're still serving. I'll find out."
She left the booth and crossed to the kitchen doorway at one end of the bar. She returned a moment later, prompting all the jolly gang at the bar to spin on their stools to watch her cross the floor. Allison leaned into the booth and took a sip of her fresh drink.
"Sorry, Pete, the cook's finished for the night. And I have to go to the John. Be back in a minute."
She put down the glass and crossed to a back hallway. One of the men standing at the bar was still ogling her. He was heavy-set with a large face full of little veins. He looked like the sort of guy you love to run into in a strange bar when you're with a girl who looks as sensational as Allison. I practiced some even breathing and waited.
When Allison returned she sat and threw back her head, closing her eyes. "I'm beginning to feel relaxed."
"Weren't you relaxed at the party?"
"No. The fellow I took the stroll with, Joe Dodge, is pretty uptight. Intense. He wanted to talk, and in order to carry on a conversation with Joe, your head has to gear up to his level, which is pretty far up. And out."
"I meant to ask what his problem was."
"Please don't," she said, opening her eyes and reaching for her drink. "It's only too bad I couldn't let go out there. Big Mike really puts on a spread."
"So I noticed. What brought Jerry up here?"
"He just likes to come up and visit once or twice a year. Usually we talk about painting. He dabbles at it himself. If I'm using a different technique or something he likes to know all the details. But this last time it was more as if he wanted to talk about his relationship with this girl, the nurse. It was really quite childish. I almost felt as if I were talking to an eighteen-year-old boy and not a very mature one at that, who was experiencing his first difficult relationship with a woman. And that was before I knew he was married, even. What makes a person do that?"
"In Jerry's case I think it was background more than anything else. He and his sister were orphaned at a young age. They pretty much clung to each other after that. She's older, and obviously the stronger of the two, and since he's grown up I think Jerry still looks for that sort of relationship with his women. This is just guessing, but his wife, though young, doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would accept that. She's a strong person, but I don't think she was looking for anybody to mother just yet. Not her husband, certainly. I think it intimidated Jerry. So he's casting around for ways to experience the earlier relationship. He's in a hospital, he's nursed, and that looks promising, but the girl probably didn't want to go on playing nurse once she was off duty, and Jerry probably was just learning that."
"It sure fits in with the conversation we had, though I had no idea what was behind it."
"Like I said, I'm just guessing."
Allison was looking at something behind me. I turned around and there was redneck Charley from the bar, sort of rocking back and forth with a big grin on his face, staring at Allison as if she were what he found on the table when he came in from a hard day in the woods.
"We don't want any," I told him, turning back to Allison. "Do you know the guy?"
"I've never seen him before."
"That's good news. Maybe he's a newcomer in town himself."
"I'm sure he is."
The stranger went down the hallway leading to the Johns.
"Maybe we should leave," Allison said.
"Not yet. I haven't been chased out of a barroom since I was a boy. We can go when we finish our drinks. Did Jerry talk much to you about his job?"
"Not really. He always said he was trying to build it into something more significant."
"What did he mean by that?"
"He said many times he couldn't pursue things to his own satisfaction. Just to the company's."
"What sort of things?"
"He wasn't too specific. He said the company only was interested in keeping its losses to a minimum. Once his investigations showed little possibility of recovering anything more without prohibitive expense, they would take him off what he was doing and put him on something else."
"That makes sense from a business standpoint."
"I suppose it does. But it grates on Jerry."
The beefy-faced stranger returned about then and began to grate on me. He pulled up a chair to the booth and waved a five dollar bill in the air.
"Let's all have a drink," he said, looking around for a waitress. "Girl!"
"I guess you didn't hear me earlier," I told him. "We're not looking for any more company right now."
He ignored me. A waitress approached with a worried look.
"Drinks all around," the stranger said.
"No, thanks," I told the waitress. "No more drinks. And we don't care for this gentleman's company."
Over at the bar people were beginning to turn around to watch the fun. The bartender was a skinny little fellow who didn't like the looks of what he saw. I decided he wouldn't be much help.
"My name's Homer," the stranger told Allison. "It's not a pretty name, but it's got a history behind it." He laughed, and reached across to nudge her arm.
Allison shrank from him and I slid out of the booth, stepped around and yanked Homer's chair out from beneath him. He fell heavily. Across the room there was a door with an unlit exit sign over it.
"Where does that lead?"
"An alley," Allison told me. "He's awfully big, Pete."
"I know. That's why I want some room."
After a couple of surprised grunts Homer rolled over so he could get to his feet. As soon as he was up I stepped around and clamped one hand on his shirt collar and with the other jerked up the seat of his trousers so the material pinched his crotch. It makes you want to step out when somebody does that to you. Homer almost ran to the side door. I managed to get us both through it and the door slammed shut behind us. My closing the door gave Homer a chance to bust free and turn and plant himself. I was in a hurry. I didn't want to spend the rest of the night rolling around in the alley, and I didn't want all the fellows from inside to have time to gather around and watch. Homer raised his hands, either to defend or to attack, I didn't know which. I just kicked him in the groin. It brought both his head and hands down. I stepped in and clapped my palms hard against his ears. Homer screamed. I grabbed his collar again to hold him still and pumped a fist into his face several times. It wasn't all that necessary, but the marks and bruises would stay with him for a few days, and maybe he'd think twice next time, if he ever thought at all.
I let go and Homer fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I pulled my coat straight and tried to catch up on my breathing before I stepped b
ack into the Ten O'Clock. Half a dozen men from the bar were just crossing to the door. When they saw me come back in they stopped and tried to scuttle back to their drinks in a nonchalant manner. It wasn't easy to do, but they gave it a good try.
I went over to the booth. "Okay, we can go now."
My breathing was still a little ragged. Allison stared at me while she finished her drink. She got up, hesitated, then turned and walked over to the alley door. She opened it and peered outside. Then she closed the door and rejoined me with a little smile. Out on the street she touched my arm.
"What did you hit him with, a telephone pole?"
"Just a secret punch I learned from the comic books when I was a kid." I opened the car door on the passenger side and held it for Allison to get in, then straightened and stared around the Square.
"Come on," she said, reading my thoughts. "There's nothing else open now. Take me home and I'll see what's in the refrigerator."
She lived in a funky old frame home on the edge of town. The front walk ran between a pair of willow trees that shielded the house from the street. Allison had difficulty opening the door.
"I think this woman's been drinking," she told me, rattling her key around the lock.
We went into a cluttered room lit by a lamp in one corner with a red shade. The place wasn't untidy or dirty, it was just very full of furniture on the floor and paintings, portraits, posters and prints on the walls.
"This is where I do my proper entertaining. The kitchen's out this way."
We went through a small dining room to the kitchen. It was large and airy compared to the other two. Allison opened the refrigerator and poked around.
"I can give you a cold roast beef sandwich with leftover potato salad. Or there's some cold chicken. Or I can heat a can of soup." She turned, blowing a whisp of hair from in front of her face. "I'd offer to fix bacon and eggs, only I'm out of bacon and I'm afraid I'd burn the eggs tonight."
