When I hung up this time Kerry said, “What are you going to do now? About Ozzie Meeker, I mean.”
That was a good question. I could take all these suppositions and half-truths to Eberhardt, but what good would it do? They were inconclusive, and they had no direct bearing on Colodny’s murder or his case against Dancer. Besides which, his marital problems were keeping him from being as open-minded as he usually was.
“I think what I’d better do,” I said, “is have a talk with Meeker. If I handle him right, I might get him to admit something definite.”
“Talk to him in person, you mean?”
“Well, if I tried it on the phone he’d probably hang up on me. And I couldn’t gauge his reaction either.” I stood up and came around the desk. “It’s only a two-hour drive up to the Delta. I can be there by midafternoon if I find out his address and get the rest of my stuff packed in a hurry.”
“Damn,” she said. “I’d like to go with you.”
“You would, huh?”
“Yes. It’s fascinating watching you work.”
“Sure it is. Just like watching the plumbers plumb.”
“No. I’m serious. It really is.”
“Is that my attraction for you? The fabled mystique of the private eye?”
“Frankly, yes-part of it. Private eyes have fascinated me ever since I first read one of Cybil’s pulp stories. You’re not offended, are you?”
“No,” I said, and I wasn’t. It did not make any difference why she had picked me as a lover; she had picked me, and that was enough. “Fact is, you’re pretty nice to have around. If you hadn’t come around this morning and made that comment about artistic touches, it might have been days before I made the connection. When I get rich I’m going to hire you away from Bates and Carpenter as my secretary.”
“Oh you are?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t mind having you around all the time.”
That last sentence seemed to hang in the air between us for three or fours seconds, heavy with implication that I hadn’t really meant. Or had I? Our eyes locked for those few seconds; then we both moved at the same time. Kerry straightening up from the desk, me hiding my big, awkward hands inside my trouser pockets. Oddly, for the first time in months, I had a craving for a cigarette-and whatever that meant psychologically, I didn’t want to pursue.
“Well,” she said, “I’d better go have my business lunch. Will you be back in time to have dinner with me tonight?”
“I should be. If there’s a delay, I’ll call you.”
When she was gone I telephoned East Bay information, asked for a Hayward listing on Lloyd Underwood, and then dialed the number I was given. Underwood was home and surprised to hear from me. He was also as antic as ever, nattering away at top speed.
“Ozzie Meeker?” he said. “Yes, he lives on Yoloy Island up in the Delta. Is there any special reason you want to talk to him? Does it have anything to do with poor Frank Colodny being shot through the heart at the convention?”
“It’s a private matter, Mr. Underwood. Where would Yoloy Island be, do you know?”
“Near Grand Island, I think, east of Rio Vista. I’ve never been there myself. It’s an Indian word meaning a place thick with rushes. Yoloy, I mean. Did you know that?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. I still can’t believe Russ Dancer is a murderer. Do you really think he did it?”
“I have my doubts.”
“You do? Who do you think it was, then?”
“I don’t know. But I’m trying to find out.”
“Well, if it wasn’t Russ Dancer I hope you do.” He made a clucking sound. “What a tragic end to the first Western Pulp Con. Don’t you think so? Of course, the publicity might work in favor of a second Western Pulp Con and bring the dealers and fans out in droves next year. You just never know about people-”
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Underwood,” I said. And hung up on him.
It took me another ten minutes with the telephone to locate a small trucking outfit that charged reasonable prices and was willing to pick up this afternoon and deliver right away to the new address on Drumm Street. Then I finished cleaning out the alcove, emptied my desk, and pushed all the packing cases together in the middle of the floor. Then I went down the hall to the office of a CPA named Hadley, told him I’d given the moving company his name, asked him if he’d let them into my office when they came, and turned my key over to him. Then, not without reluctance, I got out of there for the last time.
I had my car on the Bay Bridge, headed east, before the noon hour was half gone.
FIFTEEN
The weather was better on the east side of the Bay: mostly clear with scattered banks of wind-driven clouds. Traffic bunched a little heavy on Highway 24 coming out of Oakland, but when I picked up 680 outside Walnut Creek, it thinned down quite a bit. I turned the radio on, just to have some noise, and let my thoughts wander the way you do on an easy freeway drive.
Where they wandered to first off, and lingered on, was Kerry. Our relationship. We were pretty fine together in the sack, but there was more to it than that. How much more I wasn’t sure yet. Ego was part of it; ego always is when an old fart gets himself an attractive woman a dozen or more years younger than he is. The depth of her personality was part of it too; and her sense of humor; and that knack she had of making me feel like a dumb little boy one minute and a hell of a man the next. All those things, yes-but still something more?
I remembered what she’d said to me on Saturday morning, after the night we’d spent together: “You’re a nice man, a nice gentle pussycat private eye.” More than that for her too, though-and more than the sex and my great wit and charm. Hell, she’d confessed it herself this morning-she had been fascinated by the mystique of the fictional private investigator ever since she was a kid. Rock stars and athletes have groupies; why shouldn’t a private eye have one?
Hey, come on, I told myself, that’s not fair. So she’s attracted to private detectives, so what? Are you any better? Maybe the bottom-line attraction for you is that she’s the daughter of a pair of pulp writers, one of whom wrote your favorite detective series. Maybe you’re a pulp groupie. Think about that one, wise guy.
I thought about it, and it began to make me feel uneasy. There seemed to be a certain element of truth in it-maybe more truth than I cared to accept-and it opened up disturbing possibilities. The pulps had been a central part of my life for three and a half decades; I had already admitted to myself that from my own youth I had tried to emulate the pulp detectives I admired. Suppose those pulps had become so central that I had subconsciously allowed them to govern my emotional and sexual responses? Suppose the only woman I was capable of loving now was one with a connection to those yellowing old magazines and the people who had written for them?
Suppose it was the pulps, not Kerry, that I had gotten off on Friday night and Saturday morning and yesterday-afternoon?
No, I thought, no. No. I’m a lot of things but that kind of abnormal isn’t one of them. Is Kerry abnormal because she likes private cops? Was it Sam Spade or Phil Marlowe she had her orgasms with instead of me? Bullshit. We had pulps and private detectives in common-they were what had drawn us together in the first place-but that was all there was to it. It was me, the man, she cared for; it was her, the woman, I cared for, and wanted, and was touched by inside.
With an effort I herded all the psychological nonsense into the back of my mind and walled it off there, the hell with it. Think about something else-Eberhardt’s marital crisis, what I would say to Ozzie Meeker when I got to Yoloy Island, theories on the murder of Frank Colodny and the solution to the “Hoodwink” enigma. Too much self-analysis only led you into ugly little byways you had no business exploring. And ended up driving you half crazy.