But I was still glad to see her, so my answering smile was genuine. “Sharon McCone,” I said. “Well, this is a surprise.”
“I can say the same.”
“That cheap outfit you work for send you?”
“Not exactly. San Diego is my hometown and it’s a good chance to visit my family. I paid for the gas driving down, All Souls picked up the registration fee.”
All Souls was a legal cooperative she worked for that undertook cases for people who didn’t have much money, some of whom had backgrounds that were questionable at best. It was an aboveboard operation, but that couldn’t make it any more pleasant to work for.
“You ought to get a better job, Sharon.”
“I know, but what better outfit would have me?” She glanced away for a moment, as if someone in the crowd had caught her eye. Then she said, “What about you? I didn’t think you went in for stuff like this.”
“I don’t usually. I let Eberhardt talk me into it.”
She nodded. And then gave me an up-and-down look, as if she’d just realized that there was less of me than the last time we’d seen each other. She said approvingly, “You’re looking svelte, Wolf.”
“Yeah. I took off about twenty pounds.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Lots of eggs. Rabbit food. And I gave up beer.”
“What! No beer at all, even now?”
“Well, just the light stuff. It’s beer-flavored water, but it’s better than none.”
She started to say something else, but a fat woman in a muumuu that looked like a paint-factory explosion got between us. McCone backed up, and somebody bumped into her and spilled the plastic cup of wine she was holding, and somebody else got in my way. Conventions. Crowds — I hated crowds. Somebody was always shoving his way into your space.
McCone called, “Let’s have a drink sometime this weekend,” and I said, “Sure. I’ll be around,” and then two more guys, both of them wearing suits, blocked my view of her and I said the hell with it and went away to find a quiet corner to grumble in.
“Why not go to the convention?” Eberhardt had said when the Society’s flyer came in the mail. “Talk to some other private cops, get a different perspective on things. It’ll be good for you and good for the agency. I can take care of business here for three days.”
“I’d love to go to San Diego,” Kerry had said later, “but you know I can’t get away that weekend. The new Bowzer Bits dog-food commercial is being filmed on Friday and Saturday and I’ve got to be there in case they want any last-minute changes in the promo material. But you go ahead. It’ll do you good to get away for a few days, be among people in the same profession.”
So here I was, among people in the same profession — people who wore hideous muumuus and Bermuda shorts and looked like tourists from Cincinnati and talked about worblegang veeblefetzers. I felt like a guy who had just stepped off a time machine, or maybe into another dimension. I felt like an anachronism. I felt obsolete.
This, I thought, is going to be a lousy weekend.
3: McCone
Elaine Picard was as slender as ever, her sleekly styled dark hair frosted with the lightest touch of gray. She wore an impeccable beige linen suit and tasteful gold jewelry, and, as I remembered, exuded an air of control and confidence. Strangely missing, however, was the impression of bursting health and vitality that she usually conveyed. There were tired lines around her mouth and dark circles under her eyes; she looked almost haggard.
She smiled at me, though, and said, “I’d hoped you’d be here, Sharon. How are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Quite well, thank you.” She studied me, faint amusement in her eyes. “I see you haven’t grown up yet.”
I glanced down at my tailored blouse and jeans. “Good Lord,” I said, “and I even wore high-heeled sandals for this occasion!”
“They’re very stylish, but the general impression remains the same.” There was no censure in her voice. When I’d gone to work for Elaine just after graduating from high school, she’d realized there was no way a true child of the sixties would be believable in the suburban-housewife pose that Huston’s female security guards usually assumed. So she’d encouraged me to wear the bell-bottoms and Indian cloth blouses that were popular then, to go barefoot and let my long hair hang free. The costume had worked, placing me beneath the suspicion of shoplifters; and as I’d lurked among the racks of clothing with a walkie-talkie in my macrame bag, I’d become one of Elaine’s most effective operatives. It was also to her credit that she didn’t attempt to hold her people back; she had been one of the first to suggest I might be wasting my time by not going to college.
The big man in the red shirt whom Elaine had been talking with earlier was still standing next to her, holding a drink that looked like whiskey. He must have brought his own bottle or got it from the hotel bar, because all they had at the drink table here was wine. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and cleared his throat.
Elaine said, “Sharon, I’d like you to meet Jim Lauterbach, one of our local investigators. Jim, this is Sharon McCone, from San Francisco.”
Lauterbach extended his hand. He was about six-two, overweight, and nondescript. Although there was no obvious reason for it, the phrase down at the heels flashed through my mind. I shook his hand briefly.
“Great convention, isn’t it?” he said. “Lots of good people, and these manufacturers’ tables are terrific.” He motioned at the booths displaying electronic gear. “All the latest equipment, better even than a lot of the stuff I’ve got.”
Elaine said, “Jim was just telling me that he recently moved here from Detroit.” Usually you couldn’t sense much of what Elaine was thinking or feeling; she had a very polished and polite surface manner. But something about the way she spoke told me she didn’t like Lauterbach. Maybe it was the heavy sprinkling of dandruff on the collar of his shirt — that would offend a fastidious woman like Elaine. Come to think of it, it offended me.
“How do you like California?” I asked him.
“Oh.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “Compared to Detroit... well, there’s no comparison. Detroit’s a depressed area. Very depressed. So many out of work. And the winters... well, you can’t imagine the winters.” His words were slightly slurred, as if he had been drinking for some time.
“Do you have your own agency here?”
“Yes. I took over a friend’s. An old Navy buddy, Jack Owens — the Owens Agency, on Sixth Avenue, downtown. He couldn’t take the grind anymore, so I’m running the business for him. And believe me, since I’ve been at it things are looking up.”
I glanced at Elaine and saw she was staring off in a preoccupied way. When I caught her eye, she moved her head slightly in the direction of the door.
“Well, I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Jim,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll be running into one another again this weekend.”
“Yeah, sure.” He nodded curtly, clearly annoyed at the dismissal. Elaine took my arm and steered me toward the exit. “God, what a dreadful person,” she said “He’s been boasting and breathing booze at me for what seems like hours. Let’s go downstairs and get a drink. The smoke in here is starting to get to me.”
I set my plastic cup on a nearby table and we went out onto the mezzanine. The air out there was definitely clearer.
“At least the bar has proper ventilation,” Elaine said. “And we can put it on my expense account.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I followed her down the wide staircase to the lobby. “An expense account — my, my. I have one too, but every time I turn in a report, it’s like the Spanish Inquisition before they’ll reimburse a dime.”