“No.”
“You have any idea where he lives?”
“In the city someplace, I think.”
“Anything else you can tell me about him?”
“No.”
Dessault punched out his cigarette in an abalone shell ashtray and moved up to stand alongside the girl. He put one hand on the back of her neck, began to rub it, and she shivered visibly and leaned against him. She had it bad, all right. But then, maybe he was what she deserved.
He said, “Listen, we’ve had about enough of this. We’ve got things to do. Haven’t we, Mel?”
She looked up at him; but with the cockeye, it seemed as if she were still looking at me. “Yes,” she said. “Lots of things to do.”
“So why don’t you just get out of here,” he said to me. “Right now.”
I could have pushed it; I felt like pushing it. These two had put me in a foul mood. But I had run out of questions to ask, and besides, the atmosphere of the place was oppressive and I was as sick of them as they were of me.
“Okay,” I said. “But maybe I’ll be back.”
“You’ll talk to yourself if you do. You won’t get in.”
There was nothing more to say. I put my back to them and went to the door. But Dessault followed me, so that when I turned coming out on deck, he was about two feet away.
I couldn’t resist the impulse; I said, “ ‘Gold in the hills and valleys of my mind, the big gold rush.’ That’s real good stuff, Richie. Ferlinghetti would love it.”
“Fuck you,” he said, like the poet he wasn’t, and for the second time in twenty minutes he shut the door in my face.
Chapter Seven
Back in the car, I used my new mobile phone to call Directory Assistance. No listing for Alex Ozimas or anybody named Ozimas. I called the office, to ask Eberhardt to check our copy of the reverse directory of city addresses—but all I got was the answering machine. So then I rang up the Hall of Justice, to see if Ben Klein was familiar with Ozimas—and he was out, too, and there wasn’t anybody else around who knew anything about the Purcell case.
I made a U-turn and drove across the Fourth Street drawbridge and uptown to union Square, where I deposited the car in the underground garage. Powell Street was jammed with tourists, as it almost always was these days: there are several good hotels along its length and it contains the main cable car line between downtown and Fisherman’s Wharf. I made my way up to Post Street, and along there until I found the Summerhayes Gallery—one of dozens of art galleries of different types in the area.
It didn’t look like much from outside, just a narrow storefront with drapery covering its one window and discreet gold lettering on the glass; but you only needed one good look around the interior to know that this was a high-class place. The floor was parquet, polished to a high gloss, and there was nothing on it except half a dozen Plexiglas cubes, a couple of the smaller ones on pedestals, and glass-fronted and -topped display cases along two walls. The other wall, on my right, had a closed door in its middle. The only decoration was a big tapestry—Turkish, maybe —that hung above the display case directly opposite the entrance. There weren’t any paintings in sight; it was not that kind of gallery. There weren’t any people in sight, either, but I doubted if I would be allowed to remain alone for very long. A little tinkly bell had announced my arrival.
I wandered a little, looking at what was in the cubes and display cases. Antique boxes, some enameled and some bejeweled and some fashioned of mother-of-pearl. Carved ivory flower arrangements. Exotic paperweights made out of crystal, ivory, intricate patterned glass. Porcelain eggs. A small selection of snuff bottles and boxes, all of curious design, some that looked hand-painted and some that had scenes engraved on their surfaces. Much of the stuff appeared to be Oriental or Far Eastern in origin, with China being the predominant supplier.
I was peering at something I took to be an incense burner—a big bronze elephant that seemed to have a camel’s hump on its back and that also seemed to be trying to goose itself with its trunk —when the woman’s voice said, “May I help you?” about two feet away.
It made me jump a little because I hadn’t heard her approach; she walked softly for a big woman. And big she was: a fiftyish gray-blonde at least six feet tall, with wide hips and a substantial chest encased in a cream-colored designer suit and a mauve blouse. She was smiling politely, but there was a wariness in her gray eyes. I was not the sort of person she was used to seeing in here.
I said, “Yes, thanks. I’d like to see Eldon Summerhayes.”