“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Something to do with politics. All Silk ever said was that he was in trouble.”
“She didn’t say what kind?”
“No.”
“Then he died.”
“Two months ago.”
“How active was your sister in the antiwar movement?”
“She worked at it. She really did.”
“She didn’t have anything to do with the really far-left nuts, did she?”
“Like the Weather Underground?”
Durant nodded.
“You mean you think that some of them might be helping her to keep out of sight.”
“They know a lot about it.”
She shook her head. “Silk is a pretty devout anti-Communist. Most old-line socialists are. Papa was.”
“They have reason to be.”
“You a socialist?”
Durant smiled. “No, I’m a registered skeptic.”
“But you keep up, don’t you?” She nodded toward the wall of books. “All those books and Foreign Affairs on the coffee table. Or is that just for show?”
“I’m just curious about what they did then and what they’ll do next. Politicians, I mean.”
Lace dug the box of Shermans out of her purse again and lit one, after first offering the box to Durant, who shook his head no. “You’re not married, are you?”
“No.”
“You like women?”
“Why?”
“Well, I’ve been sitting here for half an hour and nothing’s happened — not a look, not a leer. So I just got curious.”
Durant stared at her a moment, then smiled slightly and said, “There’re clean sheets in the bedroom, Mrs. Piers, if you’d like to fuck.”
The pink flush started in her smooth neck and rose rapidly to her face. Some kind of reply sprang to her lips — something bitter, Durant decided — but she bit it back, actually clamping down on her lower lip. “None of that was necessary,” she said.
Durant shrugged. “It cleared the air.”
“Your private life is none of my damn business.”
“That’s right,” he said. “It isn’t. All I am is a hired hand who might or might not find your sister.”
“Do you think you can?”
“I have no idea.”
“When will you start?”
Durant let his eyes roam up and down her body. His gaze unbuttoned her blouse and took it off and then removed her pants. She crossed her legs.
“When will you start?” She said again.
He smiled. “To look for your sister?”
“Yes.”
He kept the smile on his face. “I’ve already started.”
Chapter 10
Artie Wu lived in a four-bedroom Spanish Mission-style bungalow on Ninth Street in Santa Monica, a sunbaked, somnolent city so quiet and devoid of commerce that it could offer free indoor parking to the occasional shopper who happened to stray within its limits.
The house on Ninth Street had a red-tiled roof, white stucco walls, arched windows, and a neat green lawn that was kept in shape by the heavy tribute Wu paid to the twelve-year-old buccaneer who lived next door. The backyard, which was the real reason Wu had rented the house, had a high fence, a sandbox, a nice grove of six tall eucalyptus trees, and some bare patches in the lawn that, after a rain, were useful for making mud pies. It was in the backyard that the two sets of Wu twins spent a lot of their time, watched over by nineteen-year-old Lucia Reyes, an illegal emigrée from down Sonora way who was teaching them Spanish, which the older twins had already begun to speak with a slight Scottish accent.
Durant parked his car in the driveway behind Wu’s Chrysler station wagon. The car was a five-year-old 280 SL Mercedes two-seater that was beginning to show its age. Durant had paid too much for it secondhand because he had liked its lines, and since then it had given him nothing but trouble. When he got out he slammed the door hard, hoping it would fall off so that he would have an excuse for trading it in on something sensible like a Volvo. Durant had never owned an American car. He wasn’t quite sure why.
The front door to the Wu house wasn’t locked, so Durant went in and called out, “Hi, honey. I’m home.”
“In here,” a female voice said from the living room.
Durant moved from the short reception hall into the living room, where he found Agnes Wu seated in a chair, an open book in her lap. She was a tall woman in her late twenties, nearly five-ten, with a cap of short, curling blond hair that framed a strong, handsome, full-lipped face softened by large gray eyes that looked innocent, but weren’t. She wore jeans and a yellow T-shirt. When Durant came in she closed her book, using her thumb to mark her place.
She looked up at Durant and smiled. “Ah, the misanthrope of Malibu.”
“Aggie,” Durant said, and twisted his head around, trying to read the title of her book.
She held it up for him. “Trollope’s Barchester Towers.” There was a soft burr to her R’s, but so slight that unless it was listened for it might be missed.
“That’s pretty racy stuff.”
“That’s all I’m reading — the dirty parts. We’re having a drink, aren’t we?”
“Sure. Where’s Artie?”
“Back in the kitchen preparing something Oriental and exotic called Reuben sandwiches, I believe.”
“Artie,” Durant called.
“Yeah,” came the answering call from the kitchen.
“You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
Durant moved over to a table that held a tray of bottles, an ice bucket, and some glasses. He put ice cubes into a glass pitcher, poured in some gin, added a dollop of vermouth, thought about it, added a drop or two more, and started stirring the mixture with a glass rod.
“How’re the bairns?” he said.
“Growing up straight and tall in true California style.” Agnes Wu loathed California. “They’ll all probably reach seven feet. Did I ever tell you I had an uncle who was seven feet tall? My uncle Jacob.”
“Old Jake Garioch,” Durant said. “Used to play for the Lakers, didn’t he?”
“The only thing Uncle Jacob ever played was cards, which he did incessantly and very badly and died broke, like all Gariochs.”
Durant poured the martinis into three glasses. “Have you got an olives?”
“No olives.”
Durant shrugged, picked up two of the drinks, moved over to Agnes handed her one, and then sat down on the red-and-white-striped couch. Artie Wu had rented the house furnished just after its owners, in a seizure of patriotism, had redecorated it in red, white, and blue. The couch was red and white, the rug was blue, a couple of easy chairs wore slipcovers of red-and-white and blue-and-white stripes, and the draperies, until Agnes had rebelled, had been red, white, and blue. Now they were a soft off-white.
Agnes Wu held up her glass and said, “To the California life-style.”
Durant grinned. “The next wet, cold, rainy day we have you ought to bring the kids out to the beach.”
“There’s never going to be another wet, cold, rainy day,” she said. “Forever and ever it’s going to be nothing but sunshine with tanned, smiling faces all insisting that I have a nice day whether I want one or not.”
“You didn’t like San Francisco either.”
She took a sip of her drink. “San Francisco. You know what San Francisco is?”
“What?”
“It’s Glasgow with hills.” She took a cigarette from a box of Parliaments, lit it, and looked at Durant. “What was she like, Quincy?”