The phone and I stared at each other for a time. I was debating whether or not I ought to call DeKalb and tell him about the red-haired woman. But there didn't seem to be much point in it just yet. I still had no idea who the woman might have been; for that matter I couldn't even be certain that it was the redhead's bones we'd found yesterday. Some other woman's, maybe. Hell, Crane might have had a steady stream of women up there at Tomales Bay, Dancer's opinion notwithstanding. Better to keep on digging on my own. I had more incentive than DeKalb did anyway: I was getting paid for this specific job, and I was a lot more interested in what had happened in late October of 1949 than he was.
I stared out the window some more. Would Amanda Crane have any idea who the red-haired woman had been? Not likely. From all indications she had worshipped her husband; if she'd had any inkling that he was having an affair or affairs, particularly in view of the fact that her frigidity was the probable cause, she was the type of woman who would have put on blinders and refused to admit the truth even to herself. And her mental state being what it was now, it would be cruel to subject her to that kind of questioning. Not that I could even get to see her again, what with that niece of hers on guard.…
The niece, I thought. Would she know anything about Harmon Crane's extracurricular activities? She couldn't be more than fifty, which made her a teenager when Crane had died; but teenagers are just as perceptive as adults sometimes—and sometimes even nosier—and there was also the possibility that she had picked up knowledge later on, from Mrs. Crane or from someone else.
What was the niece's name again? It took me a few seconds to remember that it was Dubek, Marilyn Dubek. Shortterm memory loss—another indicator of creeping old age. I got the number from Information and dialed it, the idea being to determine whether or not she was home yet. If she'd answered I would have said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up and then driven over to Berkeley for the third time in two days. But she didn't answer. Nobody answered.
Temporary impasse.
I decided it was just as well. After four now—almost quitting time. And rush-hour traffic would be turning the bridge approaches into parking lots at this very minute. Who needed to breathe exhaust fumes for an hour or more? Who needed to put up with idiot drivers? Who needed to go to Berkeley to talk about a dead redhead when a live redhead would soon be available in Diamond Heights? Who needed the company of Petunia Pig when the company of Kerry Wade could be had instead?
I closed up half an hour early and hied myself straight to Diamond Heights.
Kerry and I went to a movie down at Ghirardelli Square. It was a mystery movie—“a nightmarish thriller in the grand tradition of Alfred Hitchcock,” according to the ads. It was a film to give you nightmares, all right. And both it and its damned ads were a lie.
Filmmakers these days seem to equate suspense with gore: you're supposed to sit there damp-palmed and full of anticipation for the next gusher of blood, the next beheading, the next Technicolor disembowelment. Hitchcock knew different; every film noir director in the forties and fifties knew different. Character and atmosphere and mood are the true elements of suspense, cinematic or literary; it's what you don't see, what you're forced to imagine, that keeps you poised on the edge of your seat. Not blood, for Christ's sake. Not exposed entrails and rolling heads. Not human depravity of the worst sort.
Seven minutes into this piece of crap, the first bloody slashing took place. One minute later, while it was still going on, we got up and walked out. I've seen too much blood and carnage in my life as it is—real blood, real carnage. I don't need to be reminded of all the torn flesh, all the violated humanity, all the shattered hopes and futile dreams, all the goddamn waste. And I don't need my guts tied into knots by phony bullshit special effects that make a mockery of violent death and a mockery of its victims.
I said all of this to Kerry after we were outside the theater. I was pretty steamed up and when I get angry I tend to rant a little. Usually she just lets me rant without saying much, Kerry being of the opinion that if somebody is going to throw a tantrum, he ought to do it and be done with it. Very rational, my lady, which can be annoying as hell sometimes. This time, however, she did some ranting of her own; she doesn't like splatter movies any more than I do, especially the ones that employ name actors and hide behind the guise of “thrillers in the grand tradition of Alfred Hitchcock.”
We went over to my place, ranting all the way, and had a couple of drinks to get rid of the bad taste, and then ate leftover roast and watched I Wake Up Screaming on the tube. That, by God, was a suspenseful film. Even Victor Mature had turned in a halfway decent performance for a change.