“Maybe somebody already did,” I said. “Blow his head off, I mean.”
“Are you back on that kick again?”
“If he isn’t dead-dead since last Tuesday night-why hasn’t there been a trace of him since?”
“I can think of ten reasons-”
His telephone bell cut him off and put an end to the argument.
While he took the call I glanced through my mail, discarded all but a small check I’d been expecting, and then dealt with my one phone message. It was from Barney Rivera, an old friend and chief claims adjuster for Great Western Insurance’s local office. Periodically he tossed bones our way, little ones that the company’s small investigative staff was too busy to bury on its own, and I caught another one when I called him back-a home-accident claim in which fraud was a possibility.
As I hung up I saw that Eberhardt was reading the magazine tear sheets again, with the same expression of mild horror that he’d worn earlier. I said, “What is that you keep reading?”
He blinked, put the sheets down. There was a silence; then he sighed and said, “Article from some magazine. Bobbie Jean found it.”
“Article about what?”
“She thinks it’s the funniest thing she ever read.” He scowled. “I don’t think it’s a damn bit funny,” he said.
“Well, what’s it about?”
“Private parts.”
“… Say that again?”
“You heard me. Private parts.”
“Whose private parts?”
“Men’s. The, uh, dingus.”
“Dingus,” I said.
“Yeah. You think it’s possible for a guy to break it?”
“Break it?”
“His dingus. You think it could happen?”
“What do you mean, break it?”
“Just what I said. You know what ‘break’ means.”
“Impotency? Is that what you’re-”
“No, goddamn it. Break it. Fracture it like a bone.”
I stared at him “You mean while it’s erect?”
“No, while it’s dangling like a piece of linguine! Sure I mean while it’s erect!”
“I don’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I said.
“All right then, forget it. Just forget it.”
Neither of us said anything for a time. Eberhardt sat fiddling with one of his pipes, his shaggy brows pulled down in a glower. His face was red.
“Eb,” I said finally, “let me see the article.” He didn’t object, so I got up and went over and read it standing beside his desk.
The title was “You Broke YourWhat?” and it was written in a wryly humorous style. But it contained quite a few anatomical facts and medical case histories that made it seem all too authentic. It said that in the penis there are two tubelike masses of tissue called the corpora cavernosa, which become filled with blood during sexual arousal and thus cause an erection. Each of these tubes is covered with a fibrous sheath that stretches thin-so thin that in certain freak instances it can be made to rupture. Also at danger, in even rarer cases, are the outer sheath of the penis and the urethra.
There have been close to two hundred documented cases of penile fracture, the article said. In about half of them, the fracture occurred during intercourse or attempted intercourse — a freak accident, what the French call a faux pas de coit, in which the man either “missed the introitus” and hit a solid portion of his partner’s anatomy, or rammed his member into a mattress or other object disassociated from his partner, or performed so vigorously and “in such an unusual position” that the penis literally cracked as if it were made of glass. In other reported cases, the victim had caused fracture by means of careless masturbation, catching his organ in his pajamas, falling out of a tree, and swatting his erect member with his hand so he wouldn’t have to get out of bed and urinate. One man had even done the damage, so the article said, in a corral on a horse ranch; facts on this case history were mercifully vague.
On the one hand, all of this was painful to read about and to contemplate; on the other hand, it was pretty amusing stuff and I couldn’t help smiling a little and chuckling a couple of times. This only increased Eberhardt’s glower. When I finished reading and handed the tear sheets back to him, he said, “You think it’s funny too, huh?”
“No, not really. Still, some of those cases …”
“Yeah, I know. How the hell could you miss the target? Or ram your dingus into the mattress?”
“I guess it all depends on the circumstances,” I said.
He quit scowling and gave me an anxious look instead. “You don’t think it’s all a hoax? You think it could really happen?”
“Sounds plausible to me.”
“Jeez,” he said. Then he said, “What do you suppose they do in a case like that?”
“Who?”
“Doctors. Don’t be dense.”
“How should I know?”
“Well, I mean, do they treat it like they would a busted arm? You know, put it in some kind of cast?”
The image that conjured up brought another chuckle out of me. “Sure,” I said, “a great big one. So the guy can impress his friends, have everybody sign it.”
“Ha ha,” he said sourly. “Big joke. How would you like it if it happened to you, wise guy?”
“I wouldn’t, but there’s not much chance it will. You worried it might happen to you?”
“Hell, no. What makes you think I’m worried?”
“You sound worried.”
“Bullshit. It’s just … I can’t think of anything more humiliating, that’s all. You’d never live it down if anybody found out. And what if the damage was permanent? What if you could never have sex again?”
“That’s a pretty sobering thought, all right.”
“Break your dingus,” he said. “What’ll we find out next?”
* * * *
Chapter 14
After a late lunch at Zim’s I drove out to foggy Daly City for another check on Teresa Melendez’s house. Still no Buick Skylark in the vicinity. And at first, no Honda Civic. But when I circled the block and came back for a final drive-by, there it was, laboring uphill on Atlanta Street, farting smoke through a defective exhaust.
I slowed, and so did the Civic to make the turn into the cottage’s driveway. La Melendez was the woman behind the wheel. As near as I could tell from a distance, she was alone in the car.
I pulled over in front of the house and got out and walked fast up the drive. I was fed up with all the skulking around and the game of Is she Rafael Vega’s girlfriend or isn’t she? The time had come for a direct approach. If the answer was yes and Vega got told I was on his tail and why, maybe it would bring him out into the open where I could get at him. And if the answer was no, then I could quit sniffing around Teresa Melendez and do my hunting elsewhere.
She was leaning into the Honda’s backseat when she heard me coming. She backed out in a hurry, clutching a bag of groceries in the crook of one arm, and gave me a tense, wary look. There was no immediate recognition in it; maybe she was afraid I was a rapist, or at least a dirty old man. She was wearing a belted raincoat and a scarf over her black hair. Her lipstick was too red; it made her mouth look like a bloody slash.
“Afternoon, Ms. Melendez,” I said. “Remember me?”
“No,” she said, but now she did; I could see it in her eyes. I could also see that she liked having me there about as much as she would have liked confronting a rapist. She remained tense, wary. Her other persona-the bored, aloof sexpot-was nowhere to be seen.
“Sure you do. The private detective. My partner and I were at the factory the other day, to see your boss.”
“Oh … yeah. What you want here?”
“Talk to you.”
“Why?”
“I think you know the answers to some questions.”
“I don’t know nothing. And you don’t work for Mr. Lujack no more.”
“He tell you that?”
She licked her mouth, made it glisten like freshly spilled blood. A sudden frown pulled the corners of it down, giving her a pouty look. Some men would think she was hot stuff, but I didn’t happen to be one of them.