Inga was slight and slim, with an almost wistful porcelain cameo face. Big blue eyes, a hint of smile lines at the corners of a small mouth, long taffy-blond hair parted in the middle with one heavy roll falling in front of her shoulders, the other behind.
She was wearing a Mother Hubbard, subtle rosebud against heather; all that was missing was a big sunbonnet.
“Hi, Ing,” said Paul offhandedly. He waved at Giselle, went Bogart in The Big Sleep. “This is the lady private eye who’s gonna keep us all safe, sweetheart. Name of Doghouse Reilly.”
“Doghouse Reilly? I don’t get it,” said Inga.
“Giselle Marc,” said Giselle rather hurriedly.
She stuck out her hand and Inga took it. A soft and tentative handshake like that of a little girl uncomfortable among the grown-ups.
“I’m Inga. You sure are tall.”
“She didn’t mean to be,” crowed Paul, continuing his Bogart takeoff. “Let’s play Trivial Pursuit.”
Trivial Pursuit? Another pet hate. Giselle said, “Your mother and Mr. Warren should be here momentarily.” Why so negative after getting the bodyguard job? Maybe because she hadn’t expected to be guarding the body of a bogus Bogart.
Paul, setting up the game on a folding card table, told Inga, “Pick a category.”
“Um... Entertainment.” Ken and Bernardine came in as she read off the card in her little-girl’s voice, “What was the last line of the 1941 John Huston film classic The Maltese Falcon?”
Giselle silently mouthed “Trivial Pursuit” to Ken’s look of puzzlement.
“Hnuh?”
“No fair!” exclaimed Paul waspishly. “She never would have gotten it without your help!”
“I don’t get it,” said Inga.
“Tea is served in the drawing room, madam,” a maid said stiffly to Bernardine from the doorway.
By a Mad Hatter, no doubt.
It was an old Russian Hill apartment house in the 900 block of Greenwich below Jones, faced with weathered cedar shingles once stained brown. Stan was in a sort of panic: mid-rush hour and he hadn’t phoned his wife to say he’d be late. Now he couldn’t: Dan might think he was a wimp who had to report in.
Kearny pushed the button marked MANAGER, they were buzzed in, went down the off-white hallway. A whip-slim bright-eyed desperately gay man popped out of Apartment 101. He wore a shirt open to the navel and skintight black toreador pants. His feet, long and bony and bare, had prehensile-looking toes.
The bright light faded from his eyes when he saw Kearny’s stolid bulk filling his doorway.
“Oh. What can I do for you?”
“Eddie Graff.”
“Handsome, isn’t he?” Speculation livened his face. “Are you telling me he’s... but of course not! He has that plain little mouse of a girlfriend, thinks nobody notices her sneaking up to his apartment. But...” He gave a light little laugh. “The Shadow knows!”
“Does the Shadow know if he’s home now?”
“You’re no fun at all! Go knock on his door and find out for yourself. You look butch enough to handle it.”
Kearny climbed to the second floor with Stan puffing along behind. The door of 237 was opened by a nice-looking husky guy with black curly hair and long soulful eyelashes that didn’t make his face any less tough. He was wearing a black T-shirt that showed his weight lifter’s definition and read EAT RIGHT, LIVE WELL, DIE ANYWAY. His eyes got thoughtful taking in the two men on his doorstep.
“Peter Pan downstairs send you up?”
“Karen,” said Kearny.
“Karen hired herself a private eye?” He laughed, started to shut the door. “Tell her I have enough life insurance.”
Kearny’s foot was in it. Just to be saying something, he rumbled, “How about the plain little mouse of a girlfriend? You couldn’t really call Karen that.”
Graff’s face changed, became almost ugly, without laughter. “Okay, pal, that’s enough.” He jerked a thumb at the hallway behind them. “Out.”
For the second time in this apartment house, a door was shut almost in Kearny’s face. He chuckled and turned away. Stan caught up with him at the head of the stairs. Whining.
“Dan, what do I tell Karen Marshall?”
“His address.”
“I mean about the girlfriend.”
“Nothing.” Kearny stopped so abruptly on the stair landing that Groner almost ran into him. “Like you said, Stan, whatever this is about, it isn’t a record collection.”
Chapter Eight
Darkness, along with fog so wet it was almost drizzle, had fallen on Eureka. Before last night’s hospital visit, O’B had closed out three assignments — a collection, two repos — and had worked five other files inherited from Tony d’Angelo; now he was pounding out the reports on Tony’s portable typewriter in the converted garage.
Two of the subjects had skipped Eureka’s lousy weather and worse employment stats, but he’d put leads in the reports for the San Francisco skip-tracers to work. Two were collections, the third a REPO ON SIGHT O’B was sure he would catch at the subject’s home or employment. He’d also tossed the fear of God into the potential bankrupt, then hired a moving outfit to go in and clear out the man’s storeful of stuff still owned by DKA’s office furniture company client. He’d beat the sheriff by a day.
Whistling to himself, he pulled the final report from the typewriter, put the white original and the yellow copy into the San Francisco mail, stapled the pink face-out to the back of his assignment form, put the green into Tony’s assignment folder.
Tomorrow, that new in-town collection assignment, make the last remaining repo from Tony’s files, get a line on the truck tires. Maybe drive way to hell out toward the coast on Fallen Tree Road after the Dodge Dakota. Meanwhile, tonight, the Rainbow Dancehall where the rock band was playing, find out their schedule and what they looked like, start trying to figure out how to take their instruments away without having his head bashed in.
And, he told himself sternly, no more than two beers, tops.
Fog also in San Francisco. Larry Ballard street-parked in the 200 block of Eddy just before 9:00 P.M. A raunchy-looking man in his 30s, with gray slacks and wild blondish hair and smelling of stale sweat, passed him crossing Jones, talking to himself in tongues. He yelled “I love it” at an Asian woman with a little boy standing on the far corner, did a wild tamure dance at her, thrusting his pelvis suggestively all the way across the intersection, then shook hands with her, tousled the child’s hair, and went on without a backward glance.
Years ago at Mood Indigo, Ballard had repo’d the bartender’s Ford Falcon — twice. First time, the guy stole it back from the dealer; second time, Ballard had been saved from a fistfight only by a beat cop chancing by. Needless to say, that time the Falcon had stayed in the barn for good.
Mood Indigo had gone downhill, not that it had ever been very far uphill. But back then, despite its lousy location, it had been a live blues club. Real music had blasted out through a dark blue facade lit up with bright blue lights outlining the doorway and shining out across the littered Tenderloin sidewalk.
The narrow storefront was still dark blue, but the entryway now wore a steel antithief grillwork — opened for the night trade — and the outside lights were gone. Now just a black curtain around which dim blue light and canned music seeped.
Inside was a single track of narrow-beam blue spots over a bar running the length of the left wall. At the back was the raised stage that Ballard remembered, the upright piano, silent now, still set at an angle to one side. Squarely in front of the stage was a jukebox, but somebody had taste: it was playing Mississippi John Hurt’s “Coffee Blues” rerecording that had helped launch the ’60s blues revival.