“No,” she said positively. “ ’Less you count the Nigra man was around on, let’s see, Tuesday it was. Told him just what I told you, ’cept about Cheri and all...”
So Bart had been here. More to point to Griffin as the one. He said, “Why didn’t you tell him about Cheri, ma’am?”
“Well, I told you. He was colored. He knew Cheri lives over there alone, he’d be after her, quick as scat. They can’t help it, of course, but... well, he was eyeing me before I shut the door...”
The topless place was on the corner of Concord and Bonifacio, just being redone, so the outside walls were black tarpaper with chicken wire over them, waiting for the plasterers. The abbreviated gravel parking area held twelve autos, foreign and small and sporty except for one bright irridescent blue Continental, a peacock in a chicken coop.
Above the door in fancy neon script was Dukum Inn, with a sign under it, TOPLESS, in big red painted letters, with NOW underneath that in smaller black letters.
Ballard went through the heavy door, leathered and brass-studded on the inside. It was jammed. A lot of couples and even more single men, young, the sort that wear their hair too long and comb it incessantly by the back-bar mirror. In back, where in less frenetic times a shuffleboard would have been, was a stage. On it was a four-man combo, and gyrating wildly in front of them, wearing nothing but brief panties and flying sweat, was Cheri, the girl from 1830. Her bared breasts lived up to their promise under the striped T-shirt.
“What’ll it be, sir?”
“Just a beer.” Ballard didn’t take his eyes from the girl and her heavy jouncing bust. No wonder she was so defensive; in a place like this, a lot of hands would have been reaching for that candy.
“Same price as whiskey, y’know,” warned the bartender absently, staring beyond him at Cheri with complacent lust.
“That’s okay, I’m driving. Ah... how many girls do you have?”
“Just the two. Her an’ Cleo. Ain’t she somethin’? Cheri Tart.”
Ballard opened his mouth, realized it was open, and shut it again. Cheri Tart. How would he cover that in his report? Topless, dying in the city, seemed very big — in several ways — in Concord.
“Griff been around lately?” he asked, very casually.
“Chuck Griffin?” He shook his head slowly, side-to-side, his eyes moving in their sockets so they stayed fixed on the stage. “Not for three, four months, anyway.”
“Hell! I’ve been at sea since the first of the year, just got in. Owe him some money and... Hey!” He let a light dawn in his eye. “Wasn’t he going out with one of these girls here or something? Sure! That girl. Cheri.” He picked up his glass and beer, turned toward a table a foursome was just vacating. “Tell her I’m here with Griff’s twenty bucks. She’ll recognize me.”
Ten minutes later she threaded her way directly to his table, wearing her slacks and T-shirt, barefoot and sullen-faced, slapping away eager hands. Behind her the combo was belting out, of all things, a bad rendition of the old Johnny Cash “Ring of Fire.” She pulled out the chair across from Ballard and flopped in it with a huge sigh.
“What the hell, it’s a living,” he told her discontented face. He laid a twenty on the table.
She laughed suddenly, then tapped the bill with a long red fingernail. In a moment of intense sexual fantasy, Ballard’s imagination felt the fingernail running languidly down his bare spine.
“This doesn’t buy you anything,” she said.
“What I said at the house was the truth, Cheri. I’m not on the make. I’m just trying to get in touch with Griffin.”
“A sweet guy,” she said unexpectedly. Her eyes were very clear under their tremendous overlay of mascara. “On the sauce too heavy, but a sweet guy. Gentle. And square, y’know? A real thing about his mother. Sometimes I think he dug me because I’ve got these big titties.” She put a hand under one of them and flopped it once, casually, as if it were a cow’s udder. “Like, the big mother image or something, y’know?”
“What was all this about kinky—”
“That was the other guy. Griff, he was strictly missionary-style.” She held her joined hands out, palms together as if in prayer but with the hands horizontal, not vertical, with the left on the bottom. She began rocking the right by raising the heel while the fingertips remained pressed to those of the left. It was almost shockingly graphic. “Like that, y’know? Always. Me Tarzan, you Jane.” Her eyes got a faraway look. “But a sweet guy.”
The combo paused after scattered clapping. Then a rebel yell went up as Cleo appeared.
“If he was so sweet, what happened?”
“He just took off.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. We had a big fight over this other guy—”
“The kinky one?”
“That’s him.” She suddenly shuddered. “Tall, good-looking guy. Griff brought him in to see me dance. February eighth it was, I remember it ’cause it was one month to the day after I moved in with Griff. Anyway, we all got loaded between gigs. At one o’clock the three of us went back up to the house and Griff went out for a bottle. This clown dragged me right into the bedroom like he owned me, y’know?” Her eyes were indignant. “Tore the pantyhose right off me, four-ninety-eight a pair, and you know what he wanted? To look up me. Honest. With a flashlight.”
Ballard had trouble keeping his face straight. “You let him?”
“No. I kicked him — where it hurts, even if you’re barefooted. Then I ran out. I slept over to my girl friend’s where I roomed before I went in with Griff. He came over the next morning, Griff, and I really lit into him. This guy came on so strong, I thought he had to have been told I was an easy lay or something, y’know? Real kinky guy. Griff felt terrible about it, he had no idea. Said he was gonna do something about it...”
Ballard nodded. “So when I showed up tonight—”
“Yeah. I thought, just like the other one.” She put out her hand impulsively. “I’m not that bitchy usually, honest.”
“What I don’t understand, if Griff was such a nice guy, why he just took off like that.”
“Yeah, how do you like that?” Cheri asked broodily, eyes dark with remembered injustice. “The next day, after we fought and made up so I thought everything was fine, he goes off to work and just keeps going. Walks out without a word. And then the next week guys start coming in, hauling out the furniture right from under me! Honest. Said they’d bought it from Griff, left checks made out to him. Finally, like three weeks or a month later — maybe early March or something — here comes this phone call from him.”
“Phone call?” asked Ballard almost sharply.
“From a bar somewhere,” she nodded. “He’s about half shit-face, y’know? The music so loud I can hardly hear him. Says he’s sorry it didn’t work out, would I, like, mail these checks for the furniture to him. I was pretty sore at the time, y’know, but I got something else going for myself now. Might even marry him, big deal.”
Ballard rubbed his jaw, hard. He said cautiously, “Ah... you wouldn’t remember that address you mailed the checks to, would you?”
“No. But I got it up to the house. I’ll run up and get it for you on my next break.”
The address was 1545 Midfield Road. In San Jose.
Ballard felt it was worth his twenty bucks.
Twelve
It wasn’t. It was a tract house and it was empty. Empty, by the look of it, for quite a while. The street light behind Ballard showed bare living-room walls and floors; the cheap ornamental mailbox on the porch was empty. Garage locked but empty. So much for 1545 Midfield Road in San Jose. Twenty DKA bucks down the tubes (if Kearny would even honor the payment), a forty-mile drive from Concord for nothing, another sixty to get back to San Francisco.