“I did. But the time of the wedding has been moved up an hour, to accommodate the minister, so you’ll need to arrive by one. That’s the main reason I called.”
“One o’clock.” I said. “Fine.”
“Don’t forget to wear a tux,” he said.
“I won’t.”
The line went dead. I may have been given his vote of confidence, but I still didn’t rate a goodbye. Common courtesy was not one of Hickox’s long suits.
I finished typing up my statement for the press. It came out to a page and a half, double-spaced, and it sounded flat and defensive when I read it over; but it was the best I could do. Then I called the Chronicle and Examiner reporters and told each of them that I would be available for an interview at four o’clock. Both said they would be here and both sounded eager, like a couple of lions invited to a feast. Reporters, to my way of thinking, were in the same class as lawyers-feeders on the carrion of human misery. They may have been necessary creatures in the scheme of things, but that didn’t mean I had to like them much.
I had had enough of telephones; I sat and worried. About Mrs. Hornback and her damned public accusations. And about the disappearance and murder of her husband. For the fifth or sixth time I went over the events of Monday night. No plausible explanation presented itself this time, either; the pieces just would not fit together. What was the motive behind the whole business? Why would Hornback’s killer have taken the body away from Twin Peaks and dumped it later in Golden Gate Park? How could he have got it and himself out of the car without me noticing that something was going on?
The questions seemed to hang in my mind like spidersilk. I got up and made some coffee. I sat down and drank it. It got to be three-fifteen-and the telephone rang again.
Kerry. She had read the newspaper story, of course, and she was concerned; the concern made her voice intimate, without any of the distance I had perceived in recent days, and that in turn buoyed my spirits a little. I told her all about Mrs. Hornback and how Kayabalian and I were handling the situation. Then I told her about the killing I had walked into in Xanadu. Talking to someone who really cared was a relief; my head felt much less cobwebby when I was done.
She said; “My God, you’ve really had a week, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. Living my life to the fullest, that’s me.”
“I hate the detective business sometimes.”
“Me too,” I said.
“It’s all going to resolve itself, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not going to be hurt by what that Hornback woman is claiming?”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I lied. “Hey, are we still on for dinner tonight?’”
“Of course. I’m going to bake some lasagna.”
“Oh? I thought we were going out.”
“Well, I’ve got a great lasagna recipe, and I thought I’d try it out on you.”
“Sounds good to me. An intimate dinner at your apartment; I like that idea.”
“I thought you would.”
“And I’ll bring dessert,” I said.
“What did you have in mind?”
I told her what I had in mind. The only thing was, I said, I didn’t think I could fit it into a cake box.
She laughed. “I swear, you’re the horniest man I’ve ever known.”
“It’s a tradition among private eyes,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”
We settled on eight o’clock for dinner and then said our goodbyes. I caught myself smiling a little as I replaced the handset. She was still my lady; the doubts and the jealousy I had been feeling were gone, or at least tucked away in a dusty corner of my mind where they belonged. The week had started with my love life looking rocky and business on the boom. Now it seemed to be the other way around. Never a dull moment in the saga of Lone Wolf, the last of the red-hot private snoops.
I made out a bill and an expense-account sheet to send to Adam Brister. I was finishing up the report that would go with it when the first of the reporters showed up, dragging a photographer with him. The other reporter and his photographer got there five minutes later. I handed out the statement I’d prepared and then let the photographers blind me with their camera flashes for twenty minutes while I fielded questions. The reporters kept trying to goad me into maligning Mrs. Hornback; I managed to restrain myself, keeping my responses polite and low-key as per Kayabalian’s advice and my written statement. The four of them left at four-thirty looking mildly disappointed; the carrion I’d fed them had not tasted quite as good as they’d hoped.
At four forty-five Eberhardt called. He sounded less than sympathetic, even a little snottily superior-as if he found a certain small satisfaction in the predicament Mrs. Hornback had put me in. That sort of perversity was something new for I
i
him; maybe it was his way of fighting back at the world for the hurt Dana had caused him. But I still didn’t like it much.
“I told you you’d find your tail in a sling one of these days,” he said. “Welcome to hard times, hotshot.”
“Yeah. But I’ll get through, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worrying. But you should be.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning just that. What are you going to do if your license is pulled?”
“My license isn’t going to be pulled.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he said. “We’re getting some pressure along those lines already.”
“What? From who?”
“The Hornback woman’s lawyer, for one. A couple of others with some clout. The lady has a few friends around town, it seems.”
“Jesus Christ, Eb …”
“They’re clamoring for a suspension,” he said, “at least until the suit comes to trial.”
“You’re not seriously considering that-”
“I’m not, but then I’m not the Chief and I’m not on the State Board of Licenses.”
“But my record is clean, damn it!”
“That’s the big factor on your side,” he said. “It might be enough to let you keep your ticket. Then again, it might not be. We’ll just have to see which way the wind blows in the next few days.”
“And what are you doing, meanwhile?” I asked angrily. “You’re supposed to be a friend. Why the hell didn’t you put in a word on my behalf?”
“Maybe I did.”
“Sure. I’ll bet. What about your investigation? Haven’t you turned up anything in Hornback’s background?”
“Not so far,” he said. “He played it pretty close to the vest. Not even a whisper of a girl friend. No secret bank accounts or safe deposit boxes or large investments. The auditor Mrs. Hornback’s got going over the firm’s books claims to be able to prove shortages amounting to a hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, so it looks like she was right about that part of it. But that doesn’t do you any good, does it?”
“Crap,” I said. Which summed up everything I was feeling at the moment.
“You’ll hear from me if anything comes up, hotshot,” he said. “One way or another.”
And that was the end of that.
The eased frame of mind Kerry’s call had put me in was gone; a moody anger, laced with indignation, had hold of me now. I could not afford to have my license suspended. If that happened I would be out of business, twenty years of struggle and hard work down the drain. And then what the hell would I do? I was fifty-three years old; I had never been anything in my adult life except a cop; I was not qualified to do anything else. Get a job as a dishwasher or a ditchdigger or a delivery boy? Jesus. But I’d have to get some kind of job, because my meager savings wouldn’t last me more than a couple of months. Either that, or start selling off my collection of pulp magazines …
No, I thought. Damn it, no. They’re not going to pull my license; it won’t happen. They’ve got no right to do a thing like that, no goddamn right!
I needed to get out of there, before I started breaking things. The one thing I wanted to break most was Mrs. Hornback’s head, and that was a dangerous thought. I locked up the office and stalked to my car and drove home like a maniac, cursing other drivers, taking out some of my rage on them. There were no parking spaces near my flat; I put the car into a bus zone, the hell with it. When I came out later and found another ticket on the windshield I would tear it up and scatter the pieces. The hell with the city, too.