“What did the girl say?”
“She said that she was sorry. They both said they were sorry.” McEachern grinned, and the wrinkles fanned out from his eyes. “They didn’t say what they were sorry about.”
“But they had some kind of reconciliation?”
“That’s right. They went ashore together. I followed along, just to make sure that everything was all right. The girl had a taxi waiting on the dock. I helped them into it–”
“Both of them?”
“Yeah, and they tooled away as though nothing had happened. So maybe,” he added hopefully, “it wasn’t such a bad split in the family after all. I wouldn’t want to be judged myself by what I say and do when I’m plastered. By the way, would you like a short snort? I have some very fine Scotch which I picked up in Hong Kong.”
“Thanks, I don’t have time. I’m wondering where the two of them tooled away to.”
“Let’s see.” He tipped back his peaked cap and tapped his forehead, listening to the repeated clunks with a certain amount of approval. “I think the girl said to take her back to the St. Francis.”
“What kind of a cab was it?”
“Yellow.”
“Can you describe the driver?”
“I can try. Heavy set, late thirties or so, black hair and dark eyes, large nose, heavy black beard – the kind you have to shave twice a day if you want to have a clean appearance.” His hand rasped on his chin. “He looked like an Italian or maybe an Armenian – I didn’t hear him say anything. Oh yeah, he had a triangular white scar on the side of his jaw, like a little arrowhead.”
“Which side of his jaw?” I asked him with a smile.
He touched the side of his face with his right hand, then used it to point at my face. “My right, his left. The left side of his jaw, just below the corner of his mouth. And he had bad teeth.”
“What was his mother’s maiden name? You have a talent for faces.”
“Faces are my bread and butter, chum. My main job is keeping the passengers in their own classes. Which means I learn two or three hundred faces every couple of months.”
“Speaking of passengers, how did you size up Homer Wycherly?”
“I scarcely ever saw him. He stayed in his cabin most of the voyage – even had most of his meals there. I don’t think he likes people. What gives with him and his family, anyway?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Incidentally, the purser tells me the ship didn’t sail on schedule last November.”
“No, one of the engines broke down. We were supposed to sail at four in the afternoon, but we didn’t clear the harbor until the next morning.”
“Did all the passengers stay aboard during the delay?”
“We asked them to. We didn’t know how long the repairs were going to take. A few of them went out to the dockside bars.”
“Did Wycherly?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Who could?”
“Maybe his steward. Let’s see, Sammy Green had that stateroom last trip. Sammy isn’t aboard, though.”
“Where is he?”
“Probably at home. I’ll see if I can find his address for you.”
McEachern disappeared into the bowels of the ship. I walked around the deck and imagined that I was taking a long sea voyage for my health. The presence of the city interfered with my fantasy. I could hear the traffic on the Embarcadero. Beyond it rose the peopled hills. Coit Tower was bright in the sunset. I turned my back on it and looked across the water, but Alcatraz floated there like a shabby piece of the city cut adrift.
McEachern came back with a slip of paper in his hand. “Sammy Green lives in East Palo Alto if you want to follow through on him.” He handed me the slip. “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“The girl,” I said.
“She’s long gone, isn’t she?”
“Too long.”
“You could try the cab-rank at the St. Francis. Some of those drivers follow the same routine month in and month out.”
His suggestion was a good one. The dispatcher in front of the St. Francis, an old man in an overcoat and a yellow cap marked “Agent,” recognized my driver from the description.
“I don’t know his name,” he said. “All the boys they call him Garibaldi, but that ain’t his name.”
“Where’s Garibaldi now?”
“I dunno. He isn’t one of my regulars, I see him maybe every two-three days. Any cab in the city, ’cepting the radio cabs, can line up here any time–”
I interrupted his flow of information: “Do you know where he lives?”
“I believe he told me once.” He tilted back his cap and scratched at his hairline. “Someplace down the Peninsula, South San Francisco maybe, or Daly City. Likely he’s gone home for supper. You can try and catch him here tomorrow.”
I said that I would do that, and left him my name and a dollar.
I took my car down the ramp into the underground garage. While I was there, I asked the cashier if they had any record of Phoebe’s car. So far as he knew, no green Volkswagen had been abandoned there in the month of November.
I crossed the street, dodging a cable car, and went into the St. Francis. The lobby was full of conventioneers with name-cards pinned to their lapels. A man named Dr. Herman Grupp with Martinis on his breath offered me his hand, then saw that I had no name-card and withdrew the offer. From snatches of conversation I heard, all about spines and supersonic therapy, I gathered that it was a chiropractors’ convention.
I had to stand in line at the black marble desk. One of four harassed clerks told me they were full up. It was hopeless to try to question him about Phoebe Wycherly.
I had to stand in line again at the telephone booths. Willie Mackey’s office didn’t answer. His answering service told me under compulsion that Willie was up in Marin on a case. He hadn’t left any number to call and his home number was unlisted, even if I was a dear old friend of Willie’s. I wasn’t exactly, but we had worked together two or three times.
I stepped out of the booth sweating and frustrated. A chiropractor elbowed in past me. His name was Dr. Ambrose Sylvan.
Just for fun, I did the obvious thing and looked up Mrs. Wycherly in the local telephone directories. Her name was in the second book I opened: Mrs. Catherine Wycherly, 507 Whiteoaks Drive, Atherton; with a Davenport number.
When Dr. Ambrose Sylvan had muscled his way out of the booth, I called the Davenport number. A zombie voice told me with recorded politeness that it had been disconnected.
Chapter 6
Highway 101 divides into two branches on the Peninsula. The western branch, Camino Real, doubles as the main street of a forty-mile-long city which stretches almost unbroken from San Francisco to San Jose. Its traffic movement is slow, braked by innumerable stop-lights. The name of the endless city changes as you go south and cross the invisible borders of municipalities: Daly City, Millbrae, San Mateo, San Carlos, Redwood City, Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Los Altos.
The eastern branch of the highway, which I took, curves down past International Airport, roughly following the shoreline of the Bay. Mapmakers call it 101 Alternate; the natives of the region call it Bloody Bayshore.
A million people live here between the Bay and the ridge, in grubby tracts built on fills, in junior-executive ranchhouse developments, in senior-executive mansions, in Hillsborough palaces. I’d had some cases on the Peninsula: violence and passional crime are as much a part of the moral landscape as P.T.A. and Young Republican meetings and traffic accidents. The social and economic pressures make life in Los Angeles seem by comparison like playing marbles for keeps.
I turned off Bayshore, where the drivers drive for keeps, into the bosky twilight peace of Atherton. A sheriff’s car with San Mateo County markings passed me cruising. I honked and got out and was told where Whiteoaks Drive was.