“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s changed so much, I can’t be certain this is the place. There were some clapboard bungalows, five or six of them, scattered along the bluff. The Browns lived in one of them, if memory serves me.”
We got out and walked toward the edge of the bluff. A couple of hundred feet below, the sea wrinkled like blue metal against its base, and burst in periodic white explosions. A mile to the south, under the shelter of the promontory, a cove of quiet water lay in a brown rind of beach.
Bolling pointed toward the cove. “This has to be the place. I remember Brown telling me that inlet was used as a harbor by rum-runners in the old Prohibition days. There used to be an old hotel on the bluff above it. You could see it from the Browns’ front porch. Their bungalow must have stood quite near here.”
“They probably tore it down when they put in the road. It wouldn’t have done me much good to see it, anyway. I was hoping I’d run across a neighbor who remembered the Browns.”
“I suppose you could canvass the tradesmen in Luna Bay.”
“I could.”
“Oh well, it’s nice to get out in the country.”
Bolling wandered off along the edge of the bluff. Suddenly he said: “Wheel” in a high voice like a gull’s screak. He began to flap his arms.
I ran toward him. “What’s the matter?”
“Wheel” he said again, and let out a childish laugh. “I was just imagining that I was a bird.”
“How did you like it?”
“Very much.” He flapped his arms some more. “I can fly! I breast the windy currents of the sky. I soar like Icarus toward the sun. The wax melts. I fall from a great height into the sea. Mother Thalassa.”
“Mother who?”
“Thalassa, the sea, the Homeric sea. We could build another Athens. I used to think we could do it in San Francisco, build a new city of man on the great hills. A city measured with forgiveness. Oh, well.”
His mood sank again. I pulled him away from the edge.
He was so unpredictable I thought he might take a flying leap into space, and I was beginning to like him.
“Speaking of mothers,” I said, “if John Brown’s wife had just had a baby, she must have been going to a doctor. Did they happen to mention where the baby was born?”
“Yes. Right in their house. The nearest hospital is in Redwood City, and Brown didn’t want to take his wife there. The chances are she had a local doctor.”
“Let’s hope he’s still around.”
I drove back through the housing-tract until I saw a young woman walking a pram. She shied like a filly when I pulled up beside her. In the daytime the tract was reserved for women and children; unknown men in cars were probably kidnappers. I got out and approached her, smiling as innocuously as I could.
“I’m looking for a doctor.”
“Oh. Is somebody sick?”
“My friend’s wife is going to have a baby. They’re thinking of moving into Marvista Manor, and they thought they’d better check on the medical situation.”
“Dr. Meyers is very good,” she said. “I go to him myself.”
“In Luna Bay?”
“That’s right.”
“How long has he practiced there?”
“I wouldn’t know. We just moved out from Richmond month before last.”
“How old is Dr. Meyers?”
“Thirty, thirty-five, I dunno.”
“Too young,” I said.
“If your friend will feel safer with an older man, I think there is one in town. I don’t remember his name, though. Personally I like a young doctor, they know all the latest wonder drugs and all.”
Wonder drugs. I thanked her, and drove back to Luna Bay in search of a drugstore. The proprietor gave me a rundown on the three local doctors. A Dr. George Dineen was the only one who had practiced there in the thirties. He was an elderly man on the verge of retirement. I’d probably find him in his office if he wasn’t out on a call. It was only a couple of blocks from the drugstore.
I left Bolling drinking coffee at the fountain, and walked to the doctor’s office. It occupied the front rooms of a rambling house with green shingle walls which stood on a dusty side street. A woman of about sixty answered the door. She had blue-white hair and a look on her face you don’t see too often any more, the look of a woman who hasn’t been disappointed:
“Yes, young man?”
“I’d like to see the doctor.”
“His office hours are in the afternoon. They don’t start till one-thirty.”
“I don’t want to see him as a patient.”
“If you’re a pharmaceutical salesman, you’d better wait till after lunch. Dr. Dineen doesn’t like his mornings to be disturbed.”
“I’m only in town for the morning. I’m investigating a disappearance. He may be able to help me to find a missing man.”
She had a very responsive face, in spite of its slack lines of age. Her eyes imagined what it would be like to lose a loved one. “Well, that’s different. Come in, Mr.–”
“Archer. I’m a private detective.”
“My husband is in the garden. I’ll bring him in.”
She left me in the doctor’s office. Several diplomas hung on the wall above the old oak desk. The earliest stated that Dr. Dineen had graduated from the University of Ohio Medical School in 1914. The room itself was like a preserve of prewar time. The cracked leather furniture had been molded by use into comfortable human shapes. A set of old chessmen laid out on a board stood like miniature armies stalled in the sunlight that fell slanting from the window.
The doctor came in and shook hands with me. He was a tall high-shouldered old man. His eyes were noncommittal under shaggy gray brows which hung like bird’s-nests on the cliff of his face. He lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. His head was partly bald; a few strands of hair lay lankly across the top of his scalp.
“You mentioned a missing person to my wife. One of my patients, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. His name was John Brown. In 1936 he and his wife lived a few miles up the coast where the Marvista tract is now.”
“I remember them very well,” the doctor said. “Their son was in this office not so very long ago, sitting where you’re sitting.”
“Their son?”
“John, Junior. You may know him. He’s looking for his father, too.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t know him. But I’d certainly like to.”
“I daresay that could be arranged.” Dr. Dineen’s deep voice rumbled to a stop. He looked at me intently, as if he was getting ready to make a diagnosis. “First, I’d want to know the reasons for your interest in the family.”
“I was hired to make a search for the father, the senior John Brown.”
“Has your search had any results?”
“Not until now. You say this boy who came to see you is looking for his father?”
“That is correct.”
“What brought him to you?”
“He has the ordinary filial emotions. If his father is alive, he wants to be with him. If his father is dead, he wants to know.”
“I mean what brought him here to your office specifically? Had you known him before?”
“I brought him into the world. In my profession, that constitutes the best possible introduction.”
“Are you sure it’s the same boy?”
“I have no reason to doubt it.” The doctor looked at me with some distaste, as if I’d criticized some work he’d done with his hands. “Before we go any further, Mr. Archer, you can oblige me with a fuller response to my question. You haven’t told me who hired you.”
“Sorry, I can’t do that. I’ve been asked to keep my client’s identity confidential.”
“No doubt you have. I’ve been keeping such matters confidential for the past forty years.”