“Mild concussion. I’m fine, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You idiot, of course I worry. What is it with you and murder cases? You just get your license back, you get a new client, and bang, here you are all over the news again. And with a concussion besides.”
I was awake now. I sat up, wiggled my hips until I had my back braced against the headboard, and ran my free hand over my face; it made a sound like a cat scratching on a door. My head didn’t hurt too much, which was a surprise. Neither did my bad arm. I was in great shape, all right. Another couple of days, I thought sourly, and I would be well enough to go out and play a strenuous game of checkers with the other old farts in the park.
“Don’t lecture me, okay?” I said. “I can’t deal with lectures until I’ve had my morning coffee.”
“One of these days you’re going to stay out of trouble on a case, and I’m going to be so surprised I won’t believe it.”
“Did you hear what I said about lectures?”
“You can be so damned exasperating sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I can think of a couple of things.”
“Hah.”
“Hey, can I help it if things keep happening to me? If I don’t have any luck?”
“No luck? You’ve got more luck than ten people, or else you wouldn’t still be walking around in one piece.”
“Nuts,” I said. “Did the law get Lester Raymond yet?”
“If they did it was too late to make the papers.”
Damn, I thought. Could Raymond pull off the same kind of vanishing act as he had fifteen years ago? The odds were against it. The first time around he’d been as lucky as Kerry claimed I was; this time the FBI would catch up to him before he could go to ground long enough to establish a new identity. It was only a matter of time.
Kerry said, “Are you going to lose your license again?”
“Huh? What makes you ask that? Is there something in the papers?”
“No, there’s nothing in the papers. But my God, you just got it back and now this. What if they take it away from you again?”
“They won’t do that.”
“No? How do you know?”
I didn’t know, but I said, “That’s what they told me up in Oroville. The FBI and the local cops. They’re not holding it against me that Raymond got away.”
“Well, if that’s what they told you…” She sounded relieved, which was more than I could say for myself at the moment. Then, after a couple of seconds of silence, she laughed wryly and without much humor.
I said, “What’s funny?”
“Oh, I was just remembering something you said to me the other night. About how you’d never hop a freight, and the closest you intended to get to one was the Oroville hobo jungle. Famous last words. You did hop a freight- and you did it just like a bindlestiff.”
“Yeah.”
“You could have ended up a stiff bindlestiff, too, like the character in Cybil’s pulp story, if Lester Raymond had been a little stronger.”
“Are we back on the lecture circuit again?”
“Not if I’ve made my point.”
“I got it the first time around. I’m fairly bright that way, you know.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “How does your head feel?”
“Not too bad today. But the bandage they put on probably needs to be changed. You want to come over and play nurse for a while?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not you’ve got any ideas about playing doctor.”
“Lady,” I said, “I don’t think I could play doctor today if my life depended on it. My caduceus is out of whack along with everything else; it might be days before it’s working again.”
She laughed. “Okay, comedian. Go put some coffee on; I’ll be there pretty soon.”
I got out of bed and doddered into the kitchen and put the coffee on. By the time it was ready, I had taken a quick shower, shaved two days’ growth of stubble off my face, and got my pants on. I was just pouring myself a cup when the telephone rang again.
Eberhardt. “I just been reading about you,” he said.
“You and everybody else.”
In the old days he would have made some smart-ass remark about my penchant for trouble. But the old days were gone. “You okay?” he asked.
“Not too bad, considering.”
“FBI give you a hard time?”
“Not really.”
“Oroville police?”
“No. I don’t think this is going to land me in hot water with the State Board, Eb. Everybody up there was pretty decent to me.”
“Good. Listen, you got some free time this afternoon?”
“I don’t know, maybe. Why?”
“I thought you might want to stop over. Shoot the breeze a little.”
Uh-oh, I thought. The partnership thing.
“It’s kind of lonely around here,” he said. “I could use some company. What do you say?”
I wanted to say no; I wanted to say, “Look, Eb, I haven’t had time to think about you and me working together, I haven’t made up my mind yet.” But I couldn’t do it. All I said was, “Sure, okay. Early afternoon? Kerry’s on her way over this morning…”
“Any time you want. I’ll be here.”
He rang off, and I replaced the handset and sat down on the edge of the bed and sipped my coffee. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, I thought. Then I sighed and played back the message tape on the answering machine, so I could write down the telephone number Hannah Peterson had left yesterday. Of the two Bradford sisters, she seemed the easiest to deal with first.
But when I dialed the number, there was no answer. I let it ring a dozen times, just to be sure, before I pushed the button down.
I looked up Arleen Bradford’s number in my book, steeled myself, and called her to get that conversation over with. Only she wasn’t home either. After three rings there was a click, and her recorded voice said, “This is Miss Arleen Bradford speaking. I am not available at present. Please leave your name and number, and I will return your call.”
So I left my name and number, feeling somewhat relieved. Feeling somewhat cynical too. You talk to my machine, I talk to yours. Everything was so damned impersonal these days; machines were taking over. “Hello. This is John Doe’s computer calling to hire your computer to investigate Jane Smith’s computer. Click. Whirr. Clang.”
I took my coffee back into the kitchen. There were some eggs and a package of bacon in the fridge; I cooked up some of each, and sat down to eat them. And then the downstairs door buzzer went off.
I thought it was Kerry; she had a key, but sometimes she rang the bell anyway from force of habit. I went out and punched the button that released the foyer door lock, without bothering to ask through the intercom who it was. Then I opened the door and waited for her to come up the stairs.
But it wasn’t Kerry who appeared in the hallway moments later. It was Jeanne Emerson.
I blinked at her, standing there in my undershirt with my belly hanging over the waistband of my pants. I sucked it in as she approached, for all the good that did; I still felt fat and old and sloppy. She was dressed in a pair of slacks and a tank top that did nice things for her breasts, and she had a big portfolio case in one hand. Her black hair glistened as if she had rubbed it with some kind of oil. The fragrance that came from her as she approached was spicy and exotic, full of Oriental mystery-or so my nose and my hot little brain imagined.
“I was hoping you’d be home,” she said, smiling in a grave sort of way. “Do you mind my stopping by?”
