by Jack Lynch
“Did Jerry talk about her around the office?”
“No. Come to think of it, that was kind of funny, I guess. I’ve known people having domestic problems. Heading for a breakup of their marriage. They never talked about their home life, either. Hmmm. I’ll have to think about that some.”
“There’s something else I’d like to go back to for a minute. I had the feeling there might have been something more you could tell me, only you decided it wasn’t important enough or something.”
“What was that?”
“About the mother instinct you said he brings out. Everywhere he went. Did you ever see it outside of the office?”
She lowered her eyes and thought about it. She was either making up her mind or falling alseep.
“Who hired you?” she asked, looking up.
“His sister, Janet Lind. Know her?”
“Yes, the newsgirl. She came up to the office one day. Well, she made a wise choice. You’re quite good.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice. Want to tell me about it?”
“I suppose I should. Frankly I’d forgotten about it until you brought it up just a moment ago. I saw Jerry one evening here in Sausalito, by accident. Do you know the No Name bar in town here?”
“I ought to. Even worked there one time when I was at loose ends with myself.”
“Well, about a month ago a girlfriend and I were having a drink there one evening. We were off in a corner, where people going in and out aren’t apt to notice you unless they’re looking for someone. And I saw Jerry come in from the back patio with a girl. They left together and didn’t notice me. I recognized her too. Jerry had a back injury, around last Christmas. He spent a week or so in the hospital. Some of us went up to visit him a couple times. The girl I saw with him at the No Name was a nurse I’d seen at the hospital.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. I was never introduced.”
“What hospital was it?”
“Horace Day, on Masonic.”
“Do you remember the room number or floor that he was on?”
“It was the third floor, near the south end of the building.”
“Was the No Name the only place you saw the two of them outside of the hospital?”
“Yes. Just that one time.”
“Did they seem to be on friendly terms when you visited Jerry at the hospital?”
“I never noticed. But she had that maternal quality about her. She was a small girl, but very brisk and efficient.”
“What else can you remember about her appearance?”
“She’s younger than I am. Probably twenty-five or -six. She has rather sharp features. Small, dark eyes. And good teeth. Very white.”
“You have a good memory.”
“I saw her both times I visited the hospital, then in town here. She’s quite attractive really. I think I remembered her because of that, and the take-charge quality I mentioned.”
I finished my drink and my mind began edging toward the door.
“Let me fix you another.”
“No thanks. I’ve got some work to do, and you look as if you could do with some rest.”
She formed another sloped smile. “Yes, I sort of overdid it before you got here. I’m sorry. I guess I was thinking some funny things.” She followed me to the door, her arms hugging herself. “I guess I practically came right out and asked if we could get something started between us.”
“I’m flattered. Under the right circumstances you wouldn’t have to practically come right out and ask. You’re nice looking.”
“Come on…”
“Seriously. I watched your legs and bottom all the way into Stoval’s office today.”
“That’s something, at least. My number’s in the phone book if the circumstances ever get better.”
“I’ll remember that. Oh, I almost forgot something else.”
“What’s that?”
“I asked Stoval for a rundown on the cases Jerry was working on when he dropped out of sight. Stoval mentioned a fire report that later was given to somebody else.”
“Yes. Howie Brewster looked into it. Very routine. Cigarette meets mattress.”
“Then he mentioned a couple of thefts. A painting from the Legion Palace Museum and a Mercedes out in the Sunset district.”
“That’s right.”
“How about another?”
“What?”
“I think your boss was holding out on me. There was another case sheet in Jerry’s file that he didn’t tell me about. I’d like to know what it was.”
“That’s supposed to be confidential, you know.”
“I suppose it is. But if Stoval’s holding something back, I have to wonder why.”
“All right. I’ll find out Monday for you.”
“Thanks. Incidentally, the company can quit worrying about having to pay for the missing Mercedes. It belongs to a man named Thorpe. He got into a lover’s quarrel with his boyfriend and the boyfriend took the car. Thorpe finally got the car back, but I’m not sure about the boyfriend. He’s having a tough time.”
Laurel Benson opened the door and gave me a frank stare. “At least he has somebody to quarrel with.”
I got on out of there. At the top of Spencer there’s a fire station with a parking area and outside phone booth. I drove up to it and dialed directory assistance to get the number of the Horace Day Hospital in San Francisco. Then I called the hospital and asked to be put through to the nurses’ station at the south end of the third floor, or the nearest thing to it. A woman who identified herself as Mrs. Burke answered. I told Mrs. Burke that I was Dr. Frank Thatcher and that I was trying to locate a nurse who had been working in that area of the hospital in December, tending one of my patients. I repeated Laurel Benson’s description of the woman she’d seen with Jerry Lind.
“Oh yes, Doctor, that would be Donna Westover. She’s not on right now, and I know for a fact she isn’t at home, either. We tried to get her earlier, to work a shift for one of the other girls.”
“Can you tell me when she’s due back?”
“Just a minute, please.”
The phone booth I was in was about fifty yards from where Highway 101 crests Wolfback Ridge. I could hear traffic buzzing home from the city. A light blue patrol car of the Sausalito police pulled into the lot from the frontage road that parallels the highway. The lone patrolman dimmed his lights and stared in my direction. A moment later another powder blue car came up Spencer and drove in alongside the first car. The two officers talked. I’d noticed over the years that the Sausalito cops did a lot of that sort of thing, as if the two-way radio hadn’t been invented yet.
Nurse Burke came back on the line. “Doctor Thatcher? Miss Westover is due in tomorrow at noon.”
“Thank you very much.”
I had seemed to run out of things to do for the night. While trying to decide whether to go down into town for a drink or to go home for a drink I called in to my answering service. They gave me something more to do. They’d had a call thirty minutes earlier from Marcie Lind. She needed help.
SIX
I turned off Madrone and drove up the road toward the Lind home, dimming my lights. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I pulled up below the house at the end of the road things seemed calm enough. There were lights on inside, nobody was screaming and there weren’t any police cars or ambulances around. I hustled up the stairs and rang the bell. The door was opened by a tall, slender black woman with snapping eyes. She was wearing a long, striped gown.
“I’m Peter Bragg. I received a message that Mrs. Lind wanted to see me.”
“I’m Xumbra,” she said simply, swinging open the door.
Marcie came up behind her. “Oh, Pete, thank God. Come in.” She turned to the black girl. “Thanks so much, Mary. It’ll be all right now.”
Xumbra-Mary gave me a sharp appraisal. “You sure about that, baby?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
The black woman went
out past me as if she harbored strong doubts.
“I’ll phone you in the morning,” Marcie called after her. She closed the door and leaned back against it. She was wearing light blue denim pants and a white shirt with the tail hanging out. They both looked as if they’d been to war, but Marcie Lind still managed to look sensational.
“Xumbra?” I asked.
“Oh,” said Marcie with a wave of her hand. “She tries to lay down that back-to-Africa crap on people she doesn’t know, but it’s all bullshit, because she never signed any enlistment papers or changed her religion or whatever. So far as I’m concerned she’s still Mary Becker who lives down the road and is a good friend. Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thanks. What’s the trouble?”
Marcie crossed the room and sat on the edge of the sofa. She’d cleaned up the place some.
“Mr. Stoval was here.”
“What did he want?”
“I’m not so sure now. I thought I did at first.” She lifted her hands over her eyes, as if she were trying to remember something. But then her shoulders began to tremble and I could see she was crying. She looked up, angry with herself, and sniffed back tears. “Mr. Stoval said I’d better get used to the idea that Jerry is dead. Or might be dead. Or something like that.” She blew her nose and got better control of herself. “I guess I’d never really considered that.”
“When was he here, Marcie?”
“He left about twenty minutes ago. Thank God for Mary. She’d been to a movie and just stopped in to say hello. Between the two of us we got him out of here. Mary can come on pretty strong.”
“I noticed. How long had he been here?”
“Almost an hour. It was okay at first. He was very business-like. Then he asked the way to the john. I got a whiff of his breath and could smell booze on it. I gave him directions and he was in there for quite a while. I finally went and listened outside the door. He was poking through the medicine cabinet. It spooked me. That’s when I called your number.”
“Don’t you suppose he might have been trying to make a play for you?”
“Well yes, finally,” she said, getting to her feet and pacing briefly around the room. “You’d think I was still fourteen, I acted so dumb. I really fell for it, you know? He hit me with this very heavy trip to do with Jerry, and how decisions would have to be made in the office about how long to leave him on the payroll—meaning my getting a weekly check—and that they have to be business-like about things. Then I realized he’d been ogling my fucking chest, like if I unbuttoned my shirt, there’s next week’s paycheck. Shit!”
She sat back down on the sofa. “But the things he said, Pete, about Jerry’s disappearance being so strange. About something maybe happening to him. It’s true, and it really shook me.”
“Marcie, he’s just trying to psych you. It isn’t the first time he’s made a play for somebody else’s wife. He knows I’ve been hired to find Jerry, and he knows it isn’t going to take me until the Fourth of July to do it. You’re a sexy broad, Marcie, and he’s probably wanted to take a shot at you for a long time. He figures the best time to try it is while Jerry’s away.”
“But Pete, the things he said. They’re still true, even if he does have a hard-on for me.”
“The things he said are a tub of baloney. Any number of things could explain Jerry’s absence. He might have found himself in a situation too embarrassing to explain right now. He might have gotten walloped on the head and temporarily lost his memory. He might be trying to pull off some convoluted entrapment. You told me yourself that he gets a little fanciful at times.”
“But not tell his own wife?”
“You might unwittingly be involved, by knowing somebody who’s a part of the intrigue.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe Stoval, even. I’m not saying that’s the way it is, but it could be. And you’ve got to keep control of yourself, Marcie. Since I’ve seen you I’ve come up with a couple of leads. It’s too late tonight to check them out, but I’ll be back working on it the first thing in the morning.”
“What did you find out?”
“Like I said, I have to check them out. Now why don’t you just fix yourself a stiff drink and go to bed?”
She smiled bleakly. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”
I went on down to the car. Near the bottom of the road I saw lights on in a small frame bungalow. More interesting was the glow of a cigarette being passed from one person to another on the front porch of the place. I stopped the car and got out. The people on the porch quieted as I crossed over to them.
“Xumbra?”
“What is it?”
“It’s Peter Bragg. The guy who was just up talking to Marcie Lind.”
“So?”
“I’ve been hired to find Jerry. By his sister. But Marcie seems pretty anxious to have him back too, so I figure I’m trying to do her a favor at the same time. Marcie said you’re a pretty good friend. I’d like to talk to you.”
“All right,” she said after a minute’s reflection. “Sam, honey, how about waiting inside?”
Sam, honey, was the white dude with long hair sitting beside her with his cowboy boots up on the porch railing. He exhaled a lungful of smoke and got to his feet haltingly.
“Leave the joint, please,” she told Sam firmly. Sam handed it to her with a grunt and went on inside.
“One thing you might as well know right now,” she told me. “I don’t much like white people. Sam there’s a cool dude who goes back a long way in my life and mind. But as for all you others…”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a bitch,” I agreed, climbing up the stairs and resting on the railing. “I didn’t used to think that way. Thought it would happen sooner. But I figure now it’ll take at least another generation to make us comfortable with one another. Cal Gentle is a little more pessimistic. He figures closer to half a century. But I told him I thought…”
“Cal Gentle?”
“Yeah.”
“The Oakland Panther?”
“Ex-Panther. He’s trying some other things these days.”
“How come you know Cal?”
“I testified at a trial. About a cop he was supposed to have roughed up.”
“Sheeeit! You’re the one who got old Cal off.”
“I might have helped. At least it got that particular cop off the Oakland force, where he had no business being.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Peter Bragg.”
“Well, Pete, you just lost some of your paleness,” she said, holding out her funny smelling cigarette. “Want a toke?”
“Not now, thanks.”
“I went to school with Cal. How did you get to know him?”
“We ran into each other a couple months after the trial. Took time out for a talk. A pretty long one. Since then we’ve done some things together.”
“Work or play?”
“Both.”
“Huh. What do you know. Marcie still calls me Mary. She just laughs at Xumbra. How about you?”
“I’ll call you Mother Superior with a straight face if you want, so long as you’ll talk to me.”
She made a cackle and put aside the dope to light a legal cigarette. “Call me Zoom, then. I really like that. I’ll bet you’re a mean dude too, huh Pete?”
“I can be brought to that point.”
“Extraordinary. I could see it in your face up at Marcie’s. You came in looking ready to beat up on people.”
“How long have you known her, Zoom?”
“As long as she’s lived here. A couple years. We hit it right off.”
“How about Jerry?”
“Oh, you know, he’s her husband. We say hello.”
“But the two of you don’t really hit it off.”
“Neither of us goes out of the way.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. I guess I might have intimidated him some. Not meaning to, but some things are my nature. And I think he puts o
n some. If not Marcie and the rest of us, maybe himself.”
I waited in the stillness. “I was hoping you’d go on to give an example.”
“I’m trying to think of one. Bear in mind, Marcie and I have a tight time together. We would even if she was married to the neighborhood zero. So I haven’t spent all that much time trying to figure out Mr. Jerry Lind. But he’s a strange dude. A couple of things do come to mind. Some days around here in the summer it gets wickedly hot, and I sort of drift around without my clothes on. Marcie was here visiting on one of those days, and Jerry came down to fetch her for some reason or other. So he comes on in and gets a little peek of my fine black skin. And whoooeee! He gets all stammery and red in the face…”
“That’s usually just upbringing, Zoom. Doesn’t mean much.”
“Now you hear me out, Peter Bragg. I don’t care what sort of hangups he has, he just isn’t consistent that way. Another time they were both down here at a party I threw one night. I had just a whole lot of people in. Some a little spaced out. Some from here, some from there. Even had some gay lib types I’d met in the city. They didn’t come on hard about it, more funny and arty. Anyhow, there was a little black girl tagging along with them. Called herself Moxie or Foxie or something.”
“Did she go the gay route?”
“I think she went whichever way the boat was going. Anyway, Jerry Lind picked up on that chick the minute she came through the door. She was a little girl with a big grin for everyone, wearing a sloppy pullover and a pair of cut-off jeans that just barely covered her tight little ass. Jerry was pretty cool about it, but I saw him watching her. Then, I guess after he’d had enough to drink inside himself, he made his little move. I was hustling ice or something out in the kitchen when I saw them through the screen door over in a corner of the back yard necking up a storm. I didn’t have time just then to worry about it. That sort of thing happens at parties. But a few minutes later I was out getting something else from the refrigerator and I heard them coming back toward the house. They seemed to be having some sort of argument. I heard her tell him, ‘Not now. Call me in the city some time.’ Mind now, Pete, I haven’t even told Marcie about this, but later on in the night, before little steamy buns left, I cornered her in an out-of-the-way place and sort of interrogated her to find out what Jerry was after. I suspected sex, but I wanted to confirm.”
