Brooks? I didn't think so. I hadn't really heard enough of Merryman to judge. Needle-nose? Once again, I'd only heard a few words. I knew this voice better, somehow.
"Yo," Dexter said through the speakers. He made his offer again and I was reaching out to eject the tape when I heard another click. I hadn't played it all the way through.
"Hello?" a woman's voice said. "Is this the right number? I mean, I know it's somebody's number, but is it the number I dialed? That message could be anybody. Anyway, this is Rhoda Gerwitz and I've thought of something that might be something. Something important, I mean. Oh, and have you found Sally yet? If this is the right number, call me. I'll be up until Letterman's over. Unless it's a rerun. If it is, call me in the morning. Good-bye, I guess."
Just off Highland I found a phone booth that, miraculously, still had a directory in it. Gerwitz, R., lived on Yucca, at the foot of the Hollywood hills.
She answered the door in a surprisingly short and fluffy nightie. "Whoosh," she said, peering out at me, "I thought you were going to call."
"I was in the neighborhood."
"Well, hold on until I slip into something a little less comfortable, could you? I mean, I can't let you in like this. Well, I suppose I could. You're not going to eat me. You know, you asked me about poor Sally's religion and then you ran away. Not even an exit line, and there I was alone with all those disc jockeys."
"You said something about letting me in."
"Boy, did I get swacked," she said, opening the door. "And then I did like you said, I went home and washed my hair, just like Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, except with me it worked. I washed what's-his-name right out of my system, mixed metaphor, and then I called Mom. She wasn't too happy, but then she didn't know him, the lox. Him, I mean, not Mom. Jesus, I'm talking about anything just to avoid talking about Sally. Listen, you go into the living room and sit down and I'll be right back."
The living room was a comfortable, messy little nest dominated by a big color television from which David Letterman grinned in a gap-toothed fashion. The couch was a litter of magazines, curlers, and wadded paper tissues. The magazines were largely back issues of People and Us. The tissues had makeup on them.
"I had a good cry tonight," she said in an explanatory fashion, coming back in. "And then I laughed till I cried again." She'd put on a caftan. "You know stupid pet tricks? They had them tonight, one dog like a Labrador or something, he sat at the dinner table and drank beer. Looked just like Herbert. There, I've said his name and I didn't even blink. And to think I was considering changing shampoos. Do you believe in Shampoo Buildup?"
I said I really didn't have much of an opinion one way or the other.
"You're probably part of that eight percent that's always in the polls. Do you think nuclear war would be good or bad for the world? Sixty percent bad, thirty-two percent good, and they're probably dupes of the military-industrial complex, and eight percent undecided. On the other hand, if I had hair like yours I could probably wash it in Cascade and it wouldn't make any difference. I mean, it would still look good," she added hurriedly. "Should I turn this down?" She extended her chin reluctantly in the direction of the television set.
"If you don't mind."
She came back from the set and plopped herself down on the couch, scattering the magazines. "Geez, what a mess," she said. "But who knew? Do you want a drink?
"No, thanks. Tell me about Sally."
"Sally." She reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I'll have a little one. A greyhound. Sure you won't join me? Well, never mind. The road to hell is probably paved with greyhounds. Or paced by them, anyway." She poured a little grapefruit juice into a glass from a bottle on the table and added about a pint of vodka. "See?" she said, hoisting it. "Vitamin C and everything."
"Especially everything."
"Oh, well. Girls just want to have fun. So ask."
"You said you'd remembered something about Sally."
"Boy, did I. But you left just when we started talking about religion."
"And this had to do with her religion." I felt like a painless dentist faced with a difficult extraction.
"If you want to call it that. Still, I guess it was the only one she had. Although why anybody would need one is beyond me."
"Cultural uncertainties," I said pontifically, with Bernie's voice in my ears. "Seeking after values."
"If you say so," she said politely. "Or just being scared of everything."
"Was Sally scared?"
"Well, you know, out here from some plotzy little town in upstate New York or somewhere. Trying to make it in, you should excuse the expression, the big city. Anyway, yeah, she seemed scared at the end."
"At the end."
"About a week before she… she disappeared. Before that prick, whoever he was, killed her," she added bitterly. "Maybe not scared exactly, but upset and confused. Scratch all that. She acted scared."
"What did she say?"
"This was one day at lunch. I was going on about the Herbert Question as usual, like it was the only thing in the world, and she all of a sudden broke in and said she was glad I hadn't gone to a church meeting with her, she had found out that the people who ran it were a bunch of phonies. Crooks, that was what she said. And I said, well, that's religion for you, look at all those awful popes, always claiming the Alps for their kids, and they weren't even supposed to have kids. At least I don't think they were."
"What did she find out?"
"That one of them was a big crook. I said, what, only one?"
"Did she say who?"
"I don't think I gave her a chance," she said reflectively. "I talk a lot."
"Did she tell you what she was going to do?"
"That was the trouble. See, she still believed in the religion. She said it had really helped her. With her problems and everything. I guess Sally had more problems than she let on. Than I let her let on." She picked up a wad of Kleenex and snagged at it with long, manicured nails. "Why can't I ever shut up?" she asked David Letterman.
"Don't worry about it. It can't help Sally."
"No, but I could have. Maybe." She swallowed half of her drink and shuddered. "I've been drinking more since the day she vanished," she said with an air of self-discovery. "I thought it was Herbert."
"Well, that won't help her either. Rhoda, what was she going to do?"
"She said she'd heard of this other man," she said, rolling the shredded Kleenex into a tight little ball. "He had left the church or something and he had his own setup but he still believed in the same junk. Only it wasn't a church, exactly."
"It was a congregation," I said.
"Yeah," she said. "That's it. A congregation."
Chapter 21
"Go away," Sister Zachary said at the door. In the bright morning light her fat face was bumpy and pitted, as though there were loose gravel beneath the skin. The tentlike dress was crumpled and dirty.
"Mrs. Jenks," I said, "it's either me or Homicide. You and Jinks may have even fewer choices in the immediate future."
"Homicide?" she said, not even noticing the use of her name. "What's Homicide got to do with it?"
"They haven't traced Sally Oldfield here yet. They'll be real curious when they do."
"Why shouldn't she come here?" she said defiantly.
"Even more interesting, why should you two and Jinks lie about it?"
She caught the name this time. Her face stiffened. Her features were all squeezed tightly into its center, making her look like the end of a cigar that's been crimped and bitten off.
"What do you know about Jinks?"
"Not as much as I'll know in fifteen minutes."
"We told you she didn't come."
"And I know differently. Now, are we all going to sit down for a chat, or am I going to come back with the cops?"