Giselle found herself caught up in his mad mad mad mad world. “You don’t have to do anything to please mother, you have plenty of old family money, you can do anything you—”
“No. Mother controls that money. My father didn’t trust my judgment, neither does Mother, so I don’t have a dime of my own. To Mother, I’m still twelve years old, playing with the computers in my father’s office.”
“So until you sign this contract—”
“I can do anything I want as long as it fits Mother’s image of who she thinks I am. And she doesn’t like me being married to Inga. Mother thinks Inga is... involved in all these things that have been happening, and I know you do, too, but she isn’t. Once I have my own money from my own work, Inga and I will—”
“Here you are!” exclaimed Mother, sweeping into the solarium. “Hiding in the jungle.”
“Damn,” muttered Giselle under her breath. Ten more seconds and she would have had the goods on Inga. Or at least a clue to what Inga was up to.
Paul immediately quoted, as if finishing another of his unending evocations of Bogart’s Sam Spade, “ ‘Maybe you could have got along without me if you’d kept clear of me. You can’t now. Not in San Francisco. You’ll come in or you’ll get out — and you’ll do it today.’ ”
“Oh, Paul, love, you’re so literary!” said Bernardine offhandedly, not hearing a word he was saying. To Giselle, she said sharply, “Where is Mr. Warren? I haven’t seen him at all today.”
“He... um... he’ll be along directly.”
She hoped. She could feel a Rochemont headache coming on.
Inga appeared in one of her flour-sack smocks, looking once again like the ingenue of an eighth-grade play.
“I’ll be mother,” she said brightly, reaching for the teapot, adding to the company at large, “one lump or two?”
“Hnungh,” said Ken Warren from the doorway.
“I don’t get it,” said Inga, confused.
“None,” explained Giselle. “No sugar for Mr. Warren.”
Ah, yes. The whole cast together yet again. Having tea in an African jungle in the middle of Marin. All of them just about to dive back down the rabbit hole.
They had finished their beer and Ballard had moved up to the bar where he was drinking Bev’s coffee and watching her wash glassware as she talked.
“And that’s it,” she finished up. “That’s every single thing I remember Danny saying or doing that last day.”
Nothing. He had been hoping she would have something — maybe even something she didn’t know she had — but Danny had just vanished into thin air. And Ballard was starting to get afraid something bad really had happened to him. If not, why wasn’t he getting in touch with someone? Anyone? Maybe it would be just as good for the cops to get wind of the fact he was missing, and start digging around for him...
And here they came walking into Jacques Daniels, just as they had walked into Mood Indigo two nights before: maybe they could find Danny, but there was nobody he’d rather less see than Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. Do it often enough, and they’d eventually make him from Mood Indigo and Ace in the Hole afterward. Which would be disastrous for Bart.
Bev took her blue-gloved hands from the steaming water and said, “Sorry, gents, we aren’t open for another half hour.”
They held up their shields. “Homicide, we got questions.”
“About your partner.”
“We understand he’s missing.”
“Unless you know something we don’t.”
Beverly began, “Well, I was just telling Larry here...”
She ran down. They both were looking at Ballard.
“Larry what?”
“Ballard,” said Ballard. “Larry Ballard. Just an old friend of Danny’s. Bev was worried about him—”
“Good friend of the beauteous and curvaceous Beverly, too, perhaps?” asked Rosenkrantz with a smirk.
“Is this going to help you find Danny?” Beverly demanded.
“Might could. If, maybe, good old pal Larry here didn’t like that Danny was spending all of his time with you, and—”
“For Chrissake, grow up!” snapped Beverly. “Danny’s my partner, not my lover. Do you two clowns sleep with each other just because you ride around in a car together all day?”
The two cops looked at one another goggle-eyed.
“Is she suggesting an unnatural sexual relationship between us?” Rosenkrantz demanded of his partner, then added, “If a straight has a mirrored ceiling, what does a fag have?”
“A rearview mirror.”
They turned to Ballard in unison, like vaudeville performers in a brother act. “Do we know you? We think we know you.”
He met their scrutiny blandly, casually, avoiding a staredown contest. “I don’t know you. I’d’ve remembered.”
After another moment of staring, Guildenstern said, “You hear about the Irishman who couldn’t find his glasses?”
“He drank from the bottle instead,” said Ballard.
“How can you tell an Irishman in a topless bar?”
“He’s there to drink.”
“Shit, he’s no fun,” muttered Guildenstern.
But their moment of automatic and professional suspicion seemed to have passed. Rosenkrantz jerked a thumb at the door.
“Well, Larry, good-looking guy like you probably has a hot rocket waiting home in bed, and our questions of this lovely young lady are kind of private-like.”
“If you don’t mind,” added Guildenstern in a voice that dared him to mind.
Ballard sighed and got off his stool. He caught Bev’s eye. She didn’t know he was shielding Bart Heslip, of course, but she’d picked up his cue.
“Thanks, Larry. It was nice to have someone to worry at.”
Outside, he started walking in on Lincoln, leaving his car behind. He didn’t want them getting interested enough to take his license number. That would lead them to DKA, which would lead them to Bart Heslip... He felt bad about leaving Bev alone with them, but if he’d stayed they’d have made him for sure.
And they would cover all the usual things in the Danny hunt, now that they were on the hunt. As was Larry Ballard. Or was he? Because Amalia would be off work in half an hour. He’d wait a few minutes, then go back and get his car and drive over to her place. He couldn’t help Bev here, but he could help himself a lot over at Amalia’s. He could already feel the tingle in his groin just thinking about it.
Chapter Twenty-five
On his way back to the office, Kearny swung by Eddie Graff’s apartment on Russian Hill. Nobody home, no answer at the apartments on either side of Graff’s. He could have picked the door lock, but that was a felony and he didn’t have enough to justify the risk. Not yet, anyway.
Back behind his desk, he phoned Chief Ernie Rowan in Larkspur, who told him that nobody had gotten a sniff of Frank Nugent, Paul’s apparently murderous partner.
“But we found out from the family that Nugent’s going to be an ex-partner after this weekend,” said Rowan. “That’s when Paul’s signing with Electrotec is supposed to take place.”
“If somebody doesn’t scrag Paul first.”
Rowan gave a snort of laughter and said in his tough, laconic voice, “Yeah, well, that’s your lookout, isn’t it? I’m damned glad good old DK and A is on the job. Takes our department off the hook if anything goes wrong.”
“Thanks just a hell of a lot,” said Kearny, and both men chuckled and hung up.
He called the Rochemont estate, found out that Ken had shown up and that the signing was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The glittering private party in its honor was that same night at the Officers Club at Fort Mason army base down near the Marina Green. Taking over the whole place.