`Nevada, I guess. It's always been his favorite hangout. When he has money he can't stay away from the tables.'
`Where did he live when he worked on the South Shore of Tahoe?'
`They were buying a trailer but he lost that when he lost his barkeep job. His boss said he got too rough with the drunks. After that they moved from one place to another, mostly motels and lodges around the lake. I couldn't give you any definite address.'
`What was the name of the club he worked at?'
`The Jet. Carol worked there, too, off and on. She was sort of a singing waitress. We went to hear her sing there once. Lila thought she was lousy, but I thought she was okay. She sang pretty sexy songs, and that's why Lila-' I interrupted him. `Do you have a phone? I want to make a couple of collect calls.'
`It's in the front room.'
I took the rifle with me, in case he got further ideas about shooting himself, or me. The walls of the front room were crowded as the walls of a picture gallery with Harold's photo graphs. Old Man, Old Woman, Young Woman, Sunset, Wild flowers, Mountain, Seascape; and Lila. Most of them had beer hand-tinted, and three portraits of Lila smiled at me from various angles, so that I felt surrounded by toothy, flesh-colored face.
I went back to the bedroom. Harold was putting on his shoes He looked up rather resentfully.
`I'm okay. You don't have to keep checking up on me.'
`I was wondering if you had a picture of Mike.'
`I have one. It's nearly twenty years old. After he got into trouble he never let me take him.'
`Let's see it.'
`I wouldn't know where to find it. Anyway, it was done when he was a kid and he doesn't look like that anymore. It's an art study, like, of his muscles, in boxing trunks.'
`What does he look like now?'
`I thought you saw him.'
`It was dark at the time.'
`Well, he's still a fairly nice-looking man, I mean his features. He quit fighting before he got banged up too bad. He has brown hair-no gray-he parts it on the side. Mike always did have a fine head of hair.'
He scratched at his own thin hair. `Greenish-gray eyes, with kind of a wild look in them when he's got something going. Thin mouth. I always thought it was kind of a cruel mouth. Teeth not so good. But I dunno, he's still a nice looking fellow, and well set-up. He keeps himself in pretty good physical shape.'
`Height and weight?'
`He's an inch or so under six feet. He used to fight light-heavy, but he must be heavier now. Maybe one eighty-five.'
`Any scars or distinguishing marks?'
Harold jerked his head up. `Yeah. He's got scars on his back where Dad used to beat him. I got some of my own.'
He pulled up his undershirt and showed me the white scars all up and down his back, like hieroglyphs recording history. Harold seemed to take his scars as a matter of course.
`Are your parents still living?'
`Sure. Dad's still running the farm. It's on the Snake River,' he said without nostalgia. 'Pocatello Rural Route 7. But Mike wouldn't be going there. He hates Idaho.'
`You never can tell, though,' I said as I made some notes.
`Take my word. He broke with Dad over twenty years ago.'
As an afterthought, he said: `There's a portrait I did of Dad in the front room. I call it 'Old Man.'
'Before I sat down with the telephone I looked more closely at the portrait: a grizzled farmer with flat angry eyes and a mouth like a bear trap. Then I called Arnie Walters in Reno and gave him a rundown on the old man's son, Mike Harley, ex-sailor, ex-fighter, ex-bartender, gambler, kidnapper, wife-beater, putative murderer and driver of a 1958 Plymouth two-door, California license number IKT 449.
`You've been busy,' Arnie said when he finished recording my facts. `We have, too, but we haven't come up with anything. We will now.'
He hesitated. `Just how much muscle do you want put info the operation?'
`You mean how much can I pay for?'
`Your client.'
`I lost my client. I'm hoping this stuff I've uncovered will get me another one, but it hasn't yet.'
Arnie whistled. `What you're doing isn't ethical.'
`Yes it is. I'm temporarily an investigator for the local sheriff's office.'
`Now I know you've flipped. I hate to bring this up, Lew, but you owe me three hundred dollars and that's a charity price for what we've done. Tomorrow at this time it'll be six hundred anyway, if we stay with it. With our overhead we just can't work for nothing.'
`I know that. You'll be paid.'
`When?'
