“Most things do nowadays. Did he say anything about Richie Dessault?”
“No connection with Martinez that he could find,” Eberhardt said. “Dessault has a record of two arrests, both in San Mateo County. One six years ago, when he was eighteen—suspicion of grand theft, auto. The second last year—possession and attempted sale of cocaine. Both charges eventually dropped for insufficient evidence. Translation: the D.A.’s office doesn’t bother going to trial on small-potatoes cases unless they’ve got a lock on a conviction.”
“Don’t be so hard on them. All D.A.s have a tough row to hoe these days.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks to the shysters.”
“Let’s not get started on the shysters,” I said, even though I agreed with him. “Anything else I should know?”
“Ben says no.”
“Okay, thanks. So what are you up to today?”
“I dunno yet. Maybe I’ll drive over to Berkeley, take in the Cal game. You want to come along?”
“I don’t think so.” But then I thought about it, and I said, “Hell, maybe I will. What time’ll you leave?”
“Before noon. One-thirty kickoff.”
“Let me make a few calls, see how the day shapes up.”
“You’re a workaholic, you know that? Drop dead of a heart attack one of these days, you don’t start taking it easy. All right. Give me a buzz by eleven-thirty if you want to go.”
I said I would and rang off. He was probably right about my needing to take it easy; Kerry kept telling me the same thing. It was a nice day, perfect football weather; why not take the afternoon off, go to the Cal game, soak up some sun and a few beers? I had no leads that needed immediate attention. Except for Richie Dessault—but I didn’t have any idea where he was and I was not about to hang around Mission Creek all day, waiting for him to show up. I thought about calling Tom Washburn, but he hadn’t got in touch with me and that meant he either hadn’t gone back to Leonard’s house yet, or if he had, hadn’t found anything among Leonard’s papers worth telling me about. I could drive down to Moss Beach again, try to find somebody who knew Danny Martinez, maybe knew where Eva’s family lived in Mexico; but Klein already had somebody working on that. No point in duplication of effort. I still wanted a talk with Margaret Prine, and one with Eldon Summerhayes, but they could both wait until Monday. Besides, to get either of them to see me on their home turf today, I would need ammunition—and I wasn’t exactly loaded at the moment.
I fidgeted around for a time, while I drank the rest of my coffee. I wanted to go to the game with Eberhardt and yet I kept having mind’s-eye flashbacks to that bloody night in Leonard’s house—little messages of guilt. I told myself I was being obsessive. I reminded myself that I had been working plenty hard on this case, that I had already made some headway by ferreting out Danny Martinez’s name. And I just about had myself convinced to go ahead and call Eberhardt, take the rest of the day off, when the telephone rang again.
“This is Elisabeth Summerhayes,” the voice on the other end of the line said, surprising me. “I am glad I reached you. I didn’t know if you would be available today and I want to do this before I change my mind.”
“Do what, Mrs. Summerhayes?”
“Talk to you about what you told me yesterday,” she said. Her voice was flat but I thought I detected an undercurrent of anger. “About Kenneth Purcell’s collection.”
“I see.”
“But not on the telephone. Can we meet?”
“Of course. Would you like to come here?”
“No, I can’t. My husband is out and my car is being repaired.”
“I could come to your home …”
“No. He might return.” She paused and then said, “Do you know Sutro Heights Park?”
“Yes.”
“The parapet above the Great Highway?”
“Yes.”
“I can be there in one hour.”
“So can I. No problem.”
“In one hour, then.”
She hung up and I did the same, feeling relieved in spite of myself. Partly because the stirring up I had done yesterday seemed to have produced results, and partly because now I could spend the afternoon working instead of loafing at the Cal game, even though the Cal game was where I really wanted to be.
A bundle of ambivalences and inconsistencies, that was me. A living, breathing paradox, groping through a Saturday that might not turn out to be so blue after all.
Chapter Seventeen
There is an old superstition among San Franciscans that Sutro Heights is either haunted or cursed (nobody seems able to decide which). Not the park itself, which stretches for a couple of blocks south and west from Point Lobos Avenue, above Cliff House. Just the part along the rim of the promontory that contains the ruins of Adolph Sutro’s once-palatial estate.