I asked Kerry to stay the night again—we wouldn't be seeing each other tomorrow night because she'd made other plans—but she declined. She had to be up and at the office early in the morning, she said. Besides, she said, we had been making love altogether too often lately. All that exertion was bad for my heart, she said, an old fellow like me.
Her cockeyed humor again. But I was not amused.
After she left, the old fellow doddered off to bed and reread the first three chapters of Axe of Mercy. It had been written during World War II, and it was all about fifth columnists, the black market in rubber goods and gas-rationing coupons, a fat farm called the Spread Shed, and the “Mercy Fund for War Widows” that was anything but. Most of the characters were zany, including the fifth columnists and black-marketeers, and there were all sorts of humorous scenes, descriptions, and dialogue. The last time I'd read it, a few years back, it had struck me as hilarious farce. This time I was no more amused than I had been at the splatter movie or at Kerry's levity.
Somehow Harmon Crane just wasn't funny anymore.
Five minutes after I arrived at the office on Friday morning, an attorney I knew named Dick Marsten rang up with a job offer: a female witness in a criminal case of his had disappeared and he wanted me to track her down. I would have liked to lay it off on Eberhardt, but he wasn't in yet—as usual—and Marsten had to be in court at eleven. So I said all right, I'd come to his office right away and pick up the details. Never turn down a paying job, especially not when the only other one you've got is as iffy as the Harmon Crane investigation.
I spent forty-five minutes with Marsten. Then I returned to the office and made some calls to start the skip-trace working. Eberhardt still hadn't come in; he'd either gone directly out on the job—he had a skip-trace of his own that he'd been gnawing at since last week—or he'd taken another day off to further mollify the Footwear Queen. If it was the latter we were going to have a talk, Eb and I. Whether he got offended again or not.
By the time I called Stephen Porter, it was almost noon. He was in and as willing to help as ever; the only thing was, he didn't have anything to tell me. He couldn't remember any redheaded woman with milk-white skin and freckles who had been acquainted with the Cranes; in fact he seemed surprised and a little shocked that Crane had been having an affair with anyone. As far as he'd been aware, Crane had been devoted to Amanda. I didn't say anything to him about her frigidity; it wasn't the kind of knowledge that ought to be casually repeated.
I walked over to a chain restaurant on Van Ness, ate a soggy tuna-salad sandwich and drank some iced tea that tasted as if it had been made with dishwater, and walked back again. Still no Eberhardt. I called Marilyn Dubek's number. No answer. I debated calling Yankowski's home again and decided it would be a waste of time. I looked up the numbers of the novelist and the former confession writer who had known Crane, and called them, and that was a waste of time; neither man remembered a freckled redhead in connection with Harmon Crane.
If I had a number for Russ Dancer, I thought, I'd try picking his brain again. But I didn't have a number for him. Or did I? I dialed San Mateo County Information and asked for the number of Mama Luz's Pink Flamingo Tavern. Dancer was there, all right; but a fat lot of good that did me. He was already “about half shit-faced,” as he put it, and if he'd ever met the mysterious redhead he couldn't dredge up the memory from the alcoholic bog it was mired in.
I tried Marilyn Dubek again. Busy signal this time; I took that as an encouraging sign, puttered around for ten minutes setting up a file for the Marsten skip-trace, and then redialed her number. Four rings and La Dubek's voice said, “Hello? Marie, is that you?” I said, “Wrong number,” and hung up and went to get my hat and coat. Petunia Peg was somebody I would have to talk to in person if I was going to get anything from her other than short shrift.
The sun was shining in Berkeley this afternoon, which was more than you could say for San Francisco. Not that it was any warmer over there; a strong cold wind was blowing. The wind had tugged leaves and twigs off the trees lining Linden Street and carpeted the pavement with them; more leaves covered the Dubek lawn, littered the porch stairs. As soon as the wind stopped blowing, I thought, she would be out here with a broom—or maybe her vacuum cleaner—to tidy up. She was just that type.
She answered promptly when I leaned on the doorbell. Her dyed black hair was up in curlers, her fat lips looked as if they had been stained with blueberry juice, and she was wearing a housedress that was as colorful and puckish as a page from the Sunday funnies. In one hand she carried a saucepan full of stringbeans, holding it tight-fisted like a weapon. She was quite a sight. If there had ever been a Porky in her life he had probably run off screaming years ago, in self-defense.