my face and grinned. “Don’t look so surprised, you’re a lawyer — don’t you know an ex-con when you see one?”
“Not always.”
He tossed the empty bottle at the cat. She scampered but it caught her broadside. With a shriek, she hopped into the underbrush.
“I knew this guy,” he continued, “only he wasn’t a king, more like a queen, understand? A real lady.” He laughed. “She was pretty and proud, like Edward.”
“Were you lovers?”
He lurched forward in his chair. “Hell, no. I was just a punk trying not to get raped in the showers.” He looked at me. “That’s another story. But this queen was married to this big white dude.”
“What happened to her?”
“The niggers got her,” he said. “Beat the shit out of her, raped her, just to get back at her old man. She walked around for days like she had a broken bottle up her ass. Her old man didn’t want her anymore. He said she led the niggers on. She never complained, never said anything bad about anyone.” He stroked his chest, fitfully. ‘‘She just bought some pills and went to sleep.”
“Suicide?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me. “Like that kid you were defending. What’s his name, Pears.”
“He wasn’t successful,” I replied.
“That’s a shame,” Tom said. “I’d kill myself before I went back to the joint.”
“What were you in for?”
“Being young and dumb,” he said. “I’m going to get some more wine.” He stood up.
“I’ve got to get back into town,” I said, also standing. “You want a ride?”
“What’s your hurry?” he asked, moving toward me. “You don’t think I brought you out here just to talk?”
He unbuttoned my shirt and laid his hand against my chest. I stepped away. His hand dropped to his side.
“Don’t you want me?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t much like myself afterwards.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
He looked at me and then yawned. “You don’t know what you just turned down.”
“I think I do,” I replied and walked away.
I pulled out of the long, dusty driveway and Tom’s house disappeared behind the screen of trees. I rolled down the windows and the air poured in, blowing the card with Good’s number across the seat to the floor. At the traffic light, I picked up the card and examined the drunken scrawl. There wasn’t much to choose between Tom Zane and Tony Good, I thought, remembering Good’s come-on at the party.
“You’re kinda cute, Henry. You got a lover?”
No, that’s what Josh Mandel said over the telephone the night Jim tried to kill himself. I looked up at the light as it flashed from red to green. That seemed wrong. Even drunk, Josh would never have said something as obvious as that. I crossed the intersection and merged into the traffic on the Coast Highway. And then I remembered something. There had been three calls that night. I had answered two of them. The third caller hung up before I could reach the phone. A car horn blared behind me. I glanced at the speedometer and saw that I had slowed to twenty. But my mind was racing, and, suddenly, I understood.
I stopped at the first phone I could find, which was in a bar called “Land’s End.” The receptionist at the Yellowtail informed me that Josh had called in sick and would give me neither his prognosis nor his home phone number. According to information, his number was unlisted. The cheerful male voice that gave me this data was sympathetic but would also not give me his number. The next call I made was to Freeman Vidor.
“I tried to call you,” Freeman said, after the preliminaries. “That Mandel kid has run off.”
“What do you mean, run off?” I asked, pressing a hand against my ear to drown out the background whine of Tammy Wynette.
“Hey,” Freeman said impatiently. “He’s gone, man.”
“You’re sure?” A thin woman in a halter and blue jeans smiled at me suggestively from her bar stool. I looked away.
“He was going to meet me this morning to tell me about that key,” Freeman said. “He didn’t show. The restaurant said he called in sick.”
“Yeah, I talked to them.” The halter had moved herself back into my line of vision. She gave me the finger.
“I went over to his place and looked around.”
“You broke in, you mean.”
“Whatever,” Freeman said.
I glanced at my watch. “I want you to meet me at his apartment in about a half-hour.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said, with mock offense.
“There might be a clue to where he’s gone.”
Now, truly offended, Freeman said, “You think I wouldn’t pick up on that?”
“It’s not just what you see,” I said. “It’s what you know.”
“If you think screwing the guy gives you better insight — “ Freeman began.
“I’m sorry, Freeman. I want to look around for myself, okay?”
“It’s your money,” he said, unmollified. “Thirty minutes.”
“Right.”
On my way out, the halter stopped me. She was drunk. Even in the black and red bar light she looked bad. “You talking to your boyfriend, honey?” she sneered.
“That’s about the size of it,” I answered.
19
Driving back from Malibu I got caught in a traffic jam on Sunset just west of UCLA and arrived at Josh’s apartment twenty minutes late. Freeman was leaning over the railing on the second floor landing tipping cigarette ash into a potted plant. When he saw me, he made a show of consulting his Rolex.
“Traffic,” I explained, coming up the stairs.
The door to the apartment was open. “And here I thought you were just being fashionably late.”
“Is anyone home?” I asked, indicating the door.
“Come in and see for yourself,” he said, and led the way. As soon as we stepped in, he disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later he came back with a bottle of beer. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll take notes.”
There was a cigarette butt in the ashtray on the coffee table. Not a Winston, Josh’s brand, but a Merit — what Freeman smoked. Otherwise the living room looked just as it had two nights earlier. Freeman followed me into the bedroom. The bed had been hastily thrown together, a blue blanket slipping to the floor beneath a red comforter, but this looked to be its normal condition. I sat down and examined the contents of the night stand. They consisted of a paperback edition of Siddhartha, fourteen pennies, a pack of matches from the Yellowtail, and an empty water glass smudged with fingerprints, some of them, doubtless, mine.
Freeman picked up the book and said, “I never could get into this.”
“You just weren’t a hippie.”
“Can’t say that I was,” Freeman agreed pleasantly.
I went through the bureau. The sock and underwear drawers were cleaned out but another drawer held a few shirts. A couple of other shirts hung in the closet along with some slacks and a herringbone sports coat.
“He plans to come back,” I said.
“Good sleuthing,” Freeman replied, behind me.
