It’ll be a little late to change your mind when they’ve dragged you back to him and he’s killed you.
She thinks about stopping at the apartment on Lankershim for the mail. Too hot. Do it later.
Poking along on the freeway she’s remembering her visit to Ray Seale last winter. That was the day when anxiety finally drove her beyond speculation into decision.
For the umptieth time she rehearses it in her mind: has she forgotten anything he told her? Done anything wrong?
She tries to review the details of the meeting.
25
It must have been not long after New Year’s Day. She remembers how she contrived it to look like a coincidental encounter.
She drove to Newark early that morning and went into the building where Ray Seale had his office, examined the building directory, and chose from it Dennis Nobles, D.C., P.C., and made a mental note of the suite number: 1127.
She got the number from Information and made an appointment from a pay phone in the lobby and then she took the elevator down two flights to the garage level and got in her car and locked the doors.
She waited more than an hour and had started to decide he wasn’t coming to the office today when she saw him drive in and park the Eldorado in the slot with his name on it. He waved to the garage attendant and walked toward the elevator.
It was ten after ten. She got out of her white Mercedes and went after him.
He was wearing a narrow steel-colored suit. His hard heels-Italian leather-struck the concrete floor with a crisp echoing that made her think of dice. He pushed a finger into the depressed plastic square and it lit up and he waited for the doors to open.
She came up beside him and gave the button an unnecessary push. She didn’t look at him; better to let him make the discovery for himself.
At first he gave her a surreptitious sidewise glance. Then a more direct look: surprise and recognition. Then hesitation-he’d be thinking about whether to speak or hold his tongue.
If he’d been less brash he’d have let it go. Knowing who she was he might have been afraid to speak to her; he could have pretended he didn’t recognize her-they’d only met once, after all, and it had been a crowded dinner party.
But she was counting on his nerve and he didn’t fail her.
Big beaming grin. “Hi. Mrs. LaCasse, isn’t it? Hello there.”
She gave him a startled look and one of those polite smiles you use when you’re accosted by someone you don’t recognize.
The elevator door opened and he held it for her. “Ray Seale? We met a few months ago at the Sertics’?”
“Of course.” She let the smile grow broader. “You’re the detective.”
“You got it.” You could see how pleased he was that she remembered him. He punched a button.
She said, “Would you push eleven please?”
“You bet.”
The doors slid shut and his eyes drifted restlessly down her body, unclothing her. She put on the polite smile again. “Are you-‘on a case’? Is that how you put it?”
“No ma’am. Just going to work. My office is on twelve.”
“Why, I didn’t know you were in this building. It’s my first time here. I have a little trouble with my lower back … someone told me Dr. Nobles is a very good chiropractor.”
“That so? I’ve got a little back trouble myself now and then. Good to know.”
The car stopped on the ground floor and several people boarded. She moved back into the corner and watched Ray Seale. He seemed uneasy; at first he gave her a little smile but then he stood with his head thrown back, watching the illuminated numbers climb. He didn’t speak again until the last of the other passengers got off at the ninth floor. Then he waited for the doors to close and said in a voice that was too offhand, “If you feel like it come on up and visit the office when you get done at the doctor’s.”
“I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”
“Be a pleasure to have some distraction from paperwork and telephones.” The doors had opened; he held his thumb on a button to keep them from closing. “Come on up. Show you how the real investigators operate.”
“Well, thank you very much. If you’re sure it won’t be a disruption.”
She stepped off the elevator and smiled at him until the doors shut.
On the remote chance that Seale might decide to check up on her story she made good on the chiropractic appointment, spent twenty minutes filling out a detailed medical history form, read part of an article about the world series of poker in an old New Yorker and submitted to half an hour’s chaste examination by the bald doctor, who listened to her complaint about recurring pains in the lower back and prescribed a number of exercises she could do at home and told her to come back Monday morning to begin a program of traction-machine treatments and chiropractic manipulations.
She thanked him very much and went out to the desk and made a Monday appointment that she would cancel later by telephone if she got everything she needed today from Ray Seale.
It was half past eleven when she went up to his office. The black legend on the frosted glass panels of the double entrance doors was in big bold lettering to inspire confidence. Seale amp; Edwards-Confidential Investigations.
The opening of the door made a bell jingle. There was a bullpen-eight desks behind a wooden railing. It was half occupied: three men and one woman on telephones and typing and reading stapled documents.
Most of them glanced up when she entered. The jingle of the bell above the door drew Ray Seale out of the private office across the room; he smiled when he recognized her.
An acned receptionist at a desk, fat rump overflowing the seat of her chair, was on the phone:
“I’m sorry. That’s Mr. Edwards’ special field. No, I’m afraid we haven’t got anybody else in the firm who can handle that kind of thing. Mr. Edwards? No, I’m sorry, he’s away on an important case. No telling how long he may be gone …”
She hung up and winked at Ray Seale, who came forward to greet his visitor. As he passed the reception desk and opened the low gate in the railing he said, “Who dat?”
“Some woman wanted us to find her Pekingese. I told her Mr. Edwards was away.”
“Old Edwards does spend a lot of time away, don’t he.”
He turned and welcomed her with a gesture and explained: “There’s no Edwards. Never has been. Seale amp; Edwards is a corporate name I just made up when I went into business for myself. In the event of complaints it’s useful to have a partner to pass the buck to. And there’s always the cases you don’t want to take.”
His smile was sly; his mannerisms were lubriciously ingratiating. He was narrow and slight with pointed shoulders and the small clever dark eyes of a ferret. His hair-possibly a hairpiece-was the color of dark stained oak, combed carefully into a high prow that jutted forward above his forehead; he probably thought it made him taller and more attractive. The face was boyish and unlined but there was a crosshatching of creases at his neck under the chin; he had to be well up in his forties, trying to pass for thirty-five. You got the feeling about him that there was an excess of oil in his skin and his hair.
He swept an arm around, indicating the bullpen. “Here’s where we do the job. You see four desks unattended. That’s because I’ve got a kid and two ex-cops out chasing leads this morning. That fourth desk belongs to a redheaded girl never turns up before ten-thirty, eleven, but that’s all right. Girl’s got the most amazing telephone voice-she can seduce more information over the phone than you can believe.”
He dropped his voice to a confidential level. “She’s got beady crosseyes and ugly buck teeth but you can’t see that on the telephone. She can come in at four in the afternoon for all I care, long as she keeps producing the kind of results she’s been getting. Well come on in the private office here. Gloria, this is Mrs. LaCasse.”
The name made its impression on the receptionist; she all but stood up. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”