“Oh, shut up.” The time, Pinata felt, had come. He reached into one of the desk drawers, brought out another pint of bourbon, and unscrewed the top. “Here. Help yourself to some courage.”
“You sound like a goddamn preacher,” Fielding said. He grabbed for the bottle and held it to his mouth. Then, without warning, he made a sudden lunge for the door, holding the bottle against his chest.
Pinata didn’t attempt to chase him. He was rather glad to see him go, in fact: the meeting between Daisy baby and her father wouldn’t have been any fun to watch.
He went to the window and looked down. Fielding was running along the sidewalk in the pouring rain, still clutching his bottle. His step was quick and light for a big man, as if he’d had a lot of practice running in his life.
Daisy baby, Pinata thought, you’re in for a surprise.
5
It is a thought that takes some of the ugliness out of these cruel years, some of the sting out of the tricks of time...
The lettering on the door at the end of the long, dark hallway spelled out STEVENS PINATA. BAIL BONDS. INVESTIGATIONS. WALK IN. The door was partly open, and Daisy could see a dark-haired, sharp-featured young man seated behind a desk, fooling with a typewriter ribbon. He jumped up when he became aware of her presence and gave her an anxious little smile. She didn’t like the smile. It was as if she’d dropped in on him unexpectedly and caught him doing something he shouldn’t.
He said, “Mrs. Harker?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Steve Pinata. Please sit down. Let me take your coat. It’s wet.”
She made no move either to sit down or to unbutton her pink plaid raincoat. “Where’s my father?”
“He left a few minutes ago,” Pinata said. “He had an engagement in L.A. and couldn’t wait.”
“He... he couldn’t wait even a few minutes after all these years?”
“It was a very important engagement. He asked me to be sure and tell you how sorry he was, and that he’ll be getting in touch with you soon.”
The lie came out easily. Practically anyone would have believed it, except Daisy. “He didn’t want to see me at all, just the money, is that it?”
“It’s not quite that simple, Mrs. Harker. He lost his nerve. He was ashamed of...”
“I’ll write you out a check.” She pulled a checkbook from her handbag with brusque impatience like a very efficient businesswoman who had no time or taste for emotional exhibitions. “How much?”
“Two hundred and thirty. The fine was $200, ten is my straight fee, and the rest is my ten percent commission.”
“I understand.” She wrote out the check, bending over his desk, refusing the chair he had pushed up for her. “Is this correct?”
“Yes. Thank you.” He put the check in his pocket. “I’m sorry things had to turn out like this, Mrs. Harker.”
“Why should you be? I’m not. I’m as much of a coward as he is, perhaps more. I’m glad he ran out on me. I didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see me. For once, he did the right thing. Why should you feel sorry, Mr. Pinata?”
“I thought you’d be disappointed.”
“Disappointed? Oh no. Not at all. Not in the least.” But she sat down suddenly and awkwardly, as if she’d lost her balance under the weight of something too heavy for her to handle.
Daisy baby, Pinata thought, is going to cry.
In his business Pinata had witnessed too many plain and fancy crying jobs not to know the preliminary signs, and they were all there, from the rapid blinking of her eyes to the clenching and unclenching of her hands. He waited for the inevitable, wishing he could prevent it, trying to think of something to say by way of encouragement, not sympathy; sympathy always pushed them over the line.
Two minutes passed, then three, and he began to realize that the inevitable wasn’t going to happen after all. When she finally spoke, her question took him completely by surprise. It had nothing to do with long-lost fathers.
“What kind of things do you investigate, Mr. Pinata?”
“Not much of anything,” he said frankly.
“Why not?”
“In a city this size there isn’t much call for services like mine — people who need a detective usually hire one from L.A. Most of the work I do is for private attorneys around town.”
“What are your qualifications?”
“What qualifications would I need to solve your problem?”
“I didn’t say there was any problem. Or that it was mine.”
“People don’t ask me the kind of questions you’ve been asking without having something in mind.”
She hesitated a moment, biting her under lip. “There is a problem. But it’s only partly mine. Someone else is involved.”
“Your father?”
“No. He has nothing to do with it.”
“Husband? Friend? Mother-in-law?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But you’d like to know?”
“I have to know.”
She lapsed into another silence, her head cocked at an angle, as if she were listening to some debate going on inside herself. He didn’t press her; he wasn’t even very curious. She looked like the kind of woman whose darkest secret could be bleached out with a little chlorine.
“I have reason to believe,” she said finally, “that on a certain day four years ago something very grave happened to me. I can’t remember what it was. I want you to help me find out.”
“Help you remember?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not in my line of work,” he said bluntly. “I might be able to help you find a lost necklace, even a missing person, but a lost day, no.”
“You misunderstand, Mr. Pinata. I’m not asking you to pry into my unconscious like a psychiatrist. I simply want your assistance, your physical assistance. The rest would be up to me.” She studied his face for any sign of interest or curiosity. He was staring, blank-faced, out of the window, as if he hadn’t heard anything she’d said. “Have you ever tried to reconstruct a day, Mr. Pinata? Oh, not a special day like Christmas or an anniversary, just a plain ordinary day. Have you?”
“No.”
“Suppose you were forced to. Say the police accused you of a crime and you had to prove exactly where you were and what you did — let’s make it two years ago today. This is the ninth of February. Do you remember anything special about the ninth of February two years ago?”
He thought about it for a time, squinting up his eyes. “Well, no. Nothing specific. I know the general circumstances of my life at the time, where I was staying, and so on. I assume, if it was a weekday, that I got up and went to work as usual.”
“The police wouldn’t accept assumptions. They would ask for facts.”
“I think I’ll plead guilty,” he said with a quick smile.
She didn’t return the smile. “What would you do, Mr. Pinata? How would you go about finding the facts?”
“First, I’d check my records. Let’s see, February the ninth two years ago, that would be a Saturday. Saturday night is usually a pretty busy time for me, since there are more arrests made. So I’d check the police files, too, in the hope of coming across a case I might remember.”
“What if you had no files or records?”
The telephone rang. Pinata answered, talked in monosyllables, mostly negative, for a couple of minutes, and hung up. “Everyone has records of some kind.”
“I haven’t.”
“No diary? Bank statement? Bills? Check stubs?”
“No. My husband takes care of things like that.”