cigarette in seventeen months, ever since finding out about the lesion on my left lung, but I had averaged two packs a day before that. Maybe the walls and furnishings had permanently absorbed the smoke odor. But probably it was just a ghost smell-a similar kind of thing to the imagined sensations an amputee feels once he has lost an arm or a leg. When you live with something for most or all of your life you never quite adjust to the fact that it’s gone.
The first thing I did was to check my answering machine. Up until the beginning of this year, I had subscribed to a regular service; but then inflation had forced them to raise their rates, and that in turn had forced me to go out and buy the machine. It was something I should have done years ago, maybe, except that I had an old-fashioned outlook on the conventions of the private detecting business.-I suppose because I identified strongly with the fictional eyes and cops in the pulp magazines I had read and collected for more than thirty years. I had always wanted to emulate the Spades and Marlowes and Race Williamses, and if that was childish and self-deluding, as a woman named Erika Coates had once claimed, then so be it. It was my life and the only person I had to justify my feelings to was myself.
I did not expect to find anything on the machine: I list my home number on my cards and in the phone book in case anybody decides on the weekend that he needs a private investigator, reasonable rates, strict confidence at all times. But I had had at least one call because the little window on one corner had a round white spot in it. I worked the controls and listened to my voice play back the message I had recorded. Then a woman’s businesslike voice said, “Yes, this is Mrs. Laura Nichols. Would you please call me as soon as possible?” She gave a number, repeated it-and that was all.
I wrote the name and number down on a pad. Then I went over and fiddled with the steam radiator until the pipes began banging and thumping. Took my coffeepot into the alcove, emptied out the dregs of last Friday’s coffee, filled it with fresh water from the sink tap in there, and put it on the hotplate to heat. Morning ritual.
Sitting at the desk, I opened the letter from my landlord. It said what I expected: my rent was being raised thirty dollars a month, effective December 1. No explanation, no apology. Nice. Some time ago the California voters had passed the Jarvis-Gann tax-reform initiative, Proposition 13, which gave property owners a 60 percent tax cut per annum; and ever since the governor had made a lot of noise about owners passing on some of that savings to renters. Result: a thirty-dollar increase on an office in the goddamn Tenderloin.
I threw the letter into the wastebasket. The thing with Christine Webster and my business card had already made it a lousy Monday; this was just the icing. Well, maybe Mrs. Laura Nichols, whoever she was, had something positive to offer. Like a job. I had not worked at anything in five days and I needed both the activity and the money.
So I pulled the phone over, dialed the number I had written down. While I waited I sat looking at the poster blow-up of a 1932 Black Mask cover that I had tacked up on one wall. It was not exactly appropriate for a business office, but I liked it and that was what counted. Eberhardt, on one of his infrequent visits here, had said that it made the place look like something out of an old Bogart movie. Me and Bogie and Sam Spade The same businesslike female voice said hello in my ear. I asked, “Mrs. Nichols?” and she said yes and I identified myself.
“Oh, yes-good. Thank you for calling.”
“How can I help you, Mrs. Nichols?”
“Are you free to accept a confidential job? It would be on a full-time basis for at least two weeks.”
“Yes, ma’am. Depending on what it involves, of course.”
“It’s a rather delicate family matter, concerning my brother. I’d prefer not to discuss the details on the phone, but it isn’t anything unseemly. We can discuss it at my home, if you don’t mind driving out. I’m sure it will be worth your time.”
“When would you like me to come?”
“As soon as possible,” she said. “The address is 2519 Twenty-Fifth Avenue North. In Sea Cliff.”
I raised an eyebrow. Sea Cliff is a synonym for money in San Francisco; you don’t live there unless your yearly income is around six figures. “I can be there within the hour,” I said.
“Fine. I’ll expect you.”
She rang off, and I cradled the handset, gazing again at the Black Mask poster. Full-time job for at least two weeks, working for a lady in Sea Cliff? It was the kind of thing that always happened to the pulp private eyes, but that happened to me about as often as a woman who said “yes” on the first date. So there figured to be a catch in it somewhere that I was not going to like. The last time I had worked for a rich client-one of the few times in my career-I had wound up in the hospital with a knife wound in my belly. I still had the scars, one you could see and one you couldn’t.
But then, why expect the worst? Maybe it was all going to be fine; maybe for a change I was going to get a break. I stood up and poured myself a quick cup of coffee. Then I locked the office and went down and out to pick up my car.
THREE
Twenty-five nineteen Twenty-Fifth Avenue North turned out to be a massive beige stucco house separated from its neighbors by a lot of bright green lawn. Its architecture was so old-California Spanish that it looked as if it belonged in Los Angeles instead of San Francisco: red-tile roof, decorative wrought-iron balconies framing all of the windows, front portico with a black-beam archway, wall patterns here and there done in four colors of mosaic tile. There were even mosaic tile inlays in the series of terraced steps that led up from the street.
I parked in front and climbed the steps. The rain had stopped, but the morning was still damp and dismal- gray with overcast; the wind here was blustery, knife-edged. Behind and on both sides of the house you could see the broad choppy sweep of the ocean and the entrance to the Bay, and through the low clouds the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, the brown hills of Marin, the cliffs at Land’s End. The view would be spectacular on a clear day, which was what made the Sea Cliff area prime real estate; even now it was pretty impressive.
A big brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head sat in the center of the front door, but I found a doorbell button and used that instead. Chimes sounded faintly inside, faded to silence. Another ten seconds went by before a peephole above the knocker opened and an amber-colored eye peered out at me. A woman’s voice, different from the one on the phone, said “Yes?” in the tone people use on door-to-door salesmen.
I gave my name and added that Mrs. Nichols was expecting me.
Pause. “You’re that private detective.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Another pause. Then the voice said, “Just a moment,” and there was the scraping of a lock, the door opened, and I was looking at a tall slender woman in her early twenties. She had fine, pale-blonde hair cut short in the style we used to call shag and a pale sensitive face dominated by high cheekbones. The amber eyes were wide and striking. She wore one of those long button-down skirts that are supposed to be popular now, a white blouse and a little black knit vest.
“Come in, please.”
I went in. She shut the door, locked it again, waited for me to give her my coat, and then hung it away in a closet-all without smiling, speaking, or even looking at me. We went down a dark hall and through another of those Spanish archways into a living room. The floors were tiled and carpetless; my heels clicked so loudly that it made me a little self-conscious, the kind of feeling you get when you walk through a church or maybe a museum.
The young woman gestured to a large bulky sofa. “I’ll tell my mother you’re here,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She went away through the arch. I sat on the sofa with my hat on my knees and looked at the room. The Spanish effect seemed overdone, as if the people who lived here were trying too hard to create an atmosphere of old-world gentility. The antique furniture included a refectory table, a pigeonhole desk, several big chairs with flat wood arms and bare wood backs; a massive rococo chandelier hung from the ceiling. On the far side a set of narrow glass doors gave access to a patio that had a mosaic tile floor and a lot of bushes and plants growing out of brown urns. It was all dark and ponderous, a little depressing. There was not much color anywhere; even the old paintings on the walls were somber-hued. About the only modern things in the room were a stereo unit and a typewriter on the desk, and they seemed out of place.
