“Nothing,” Eberhardt said. “As far as she knows, Lockridge conceived and executed the whole thing himself.”
Donleavy yawned and patted his mouth the way Oliver Hardy used to do it; all he needed was a derby hat and a wide silk tie and a little mustache under his nose. He said, “Why do you suppose Lockridge brought the girl into it? It doesn’t figure that she was part of any conspiracy, if there is one-and from what you told me over the phone, she only knew it was a kidnapping when Lockridge took the boy to the San Francisco house.”
“Well, she said she was in love with the guy,” Eberhardt said. “Maybe it was reciprocal, and he felt he could trust her. Maybe he figured it would be better to have somebody with the kid the whole time, and thought she was too dumb to tumble to the kidnap idea.”
“I guess we’ll never know about that now,” Donleavy said sadly. “It doesn’t figure this silent partner- again, if there is one-knew about her.”
“I’d say it was pretty unlikely.”
We kicked around what Lorraine Hanlon had told Eberhardt and me for a little while, and then Donleavy sighed and got up on his feet again. He went to the desk and put the phone bug in his pocket; the way he was handling it, he had already gone over it for prints-and the fact that he had not mentioned that, told me there had been none. He yawned again and looked at me and said, “Martinetti told me he’d hired you to do some investigating on this business. You planning to keep on with it now the boy is home?”
“If he still wants me, and you don’t object, I guess I will,” I told him.
“I figured as much,” Donleavy said. “You seem to be all right, and you’ve been on this thing from the start; that’s why I let you sit in just now. I can trust you to notify the office if you come up with anything, can’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ve got my sanction then. I need all the help I can get.” He said the last without irony.
There was a knock on the door, and Donleavy went over and opened it and spoke in low tones to a thin guy with a brushlike mustache. Then he shut the door again and came back and said, “That was one of the men I sent out to scout the area. None of the neighbors remember anybody hanging around before the snatch or after it; they turned up exactly nothing.”
He puffed out his lips and sighed and looked at Eberhardt. “Do me a favor, would you? Ring up your Hall and see if Reese is still there?”
Eberhardt made the call for him, and Reese had not left as yet. Donleavy spoke to him, briefly, and put the receiver down and said, “I’m going to talk to the Hanlon girl myself, if you don’t mind. Reese has a tendency to be too eager in his questioning, and he overlooks things; besides that, I like to be in on it first-hand. I told him to wait for me to get there.”
Eberhardt inclined his head. “Listen,” he said, “can I ride up with you? Hot shot here probably wants to talk to his client, and I got to get back.”
“Glad to have you,” Donleavy said.
We left the study then, without having reached any conclusions or made any startling discoveries after the revelation of the phone tap. It was just like most police work: a lot of conjecture, a little bullshit, and a constant rehashing of pertinent facts. Sometimes you clicked on something, and sometimes you didn’t; but it was time well spent, because in the long run that was the way most cases were solved.
* * * *
17
After Eberhardt and Donleavy had said their goodbyes to the Martinettis, I went with them out to the street. It was dark now, and very cool and still; the night air contained the faint, almost anachronistic presence of woodsmoke. It was a nice evening, all right.
I asked Donleavy, “When are you going to release the news of the boy’s homecoming to the press?”
“Later on tonight, probably, after I have a talk with the Hanlon girl.”
“Don’t worry,” Eberhardt said. “We’ll see that you get the hero’s mantle, hot shot.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said.
They got into the dark brown Ford-the Plymouth was gone, now-and Donleavy took it away up the street. I watched it turn right at the first corner and leave Tamarack Drive empty and silent again.
I retraced my steps across the footbridge and through the gate. I was conscious of a gnawing sensation in my stomach now, but it had nothing to do with the knife wound; I had eaten nothing all day except a couple of pieces of toast while I waited for the taxi this morning. After I talked with Martinetti, I decided I would drive into Burlingame and get something to eat before returning to San Francisco.
I went along the gravel path, and Martinetti was on the terrace, at the outdoor bar, motioning to me. I angled across the lawn on the circular stepping stones and walked across the terrace to where he was standing. The drapes across the bay window were parted in the center, and as I passed by I could see Karyn Martinetti still sitting on the couch with her son. I could not tell if they were alone, or if Proxmire was in there with them.
Martinetti had a tall, thin glass in his hand, filled with a darkly amber liquid. He raised it slightly as I reached him, and said, “Would you like a drink?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not just now.”
He sat on one of the leather-topped stools and leaned his elbows on the marble surface of the left-hand bar face, rolling the glass distractedly between his palms. He did that for a time, and then turned his head and looked at me somberly. He said, “Will you continue working for me now?”
“If you like, Mr. Martinetti.”
“Yes. Yes, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
He looked at his glass again. “I’d better tell you something, then,” he said. “I didn’t tell Donleavy or the other investigator this, but I suppose somebody should know. It’s … a little painful.”
I waited, not speaking.
He took a full, tired breath and put his eyes back on my face. He said, “Dean Proxmire is having an affair with my wife.”
The surprise in my expression was due to his blunt admission of the fact, his knowledge of it, and not to the fact itself. I had considered telling Donleavy myself about the affair, what I had overheard the night of the ransom drop, but I hadn’t done so simply because it seemed purposeless to air a lot of dirty linen unless it was absolutely necessary. Apparently Martinetti, at this point, felt it more necessary than I did.
I said awkwardly, because it was the thing to say, “Are you certain of that, Mr. Martinetti?”
“Yes.” He raised the drink and swallowed some of it and ran his tongue over his lips with the open-mouthed carelessness of a toothless old man. “I’ve known about it for some time. Months, in fact.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Almost a year now, I think.”
“And you haven’t done anything about it in that time?”
“What would I do?” he asked. “Confront them with the knowledge, like an indignant cuckold? No, I’m afraid not. Karyn and I have been … out of love for a long, long time now. We haven’t shared the same bed in more than a year. The only reason we’ve stayed together at all is because of the boy.”
I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable in this kind of discussion, but it was necessary enough from an investigative standpoint. I said, “You could have fired Proxmire.”
“Would that have ended the affair?”
“I suppose not.”
“The fact of the matter is, I’m a practical man,” Martinetti said. “I’m also a relatively virile man, I think, and I understand the biological urge very well; I’ve had a number of casual affairs myself this past year, frankly. Why should I deny Karyn her release?”
That was what the progressive liberals referred to as being “the modern outlook.” My uneasiness gained magnitude, and I did not speak.
“Besides that,” Martinetti went on, “Proxmire is an extremely capable secretary. From a purely selfish point of view, it was simply easier to keep him on as long as he performed his duties as well as he has.”