“Oh, I liked him. He was funny in a silly sort of way, very much like his books and pulp stories. He drank a lot, but then we all did in those days.”
I thanked her and we said our good-byes. Dancer, huh? I thought as I put the receiver back into its cradle. I had crossed paths with Russell Dancer twice in the past six years, once on a case in Cypress Bay down the coast and once here in San Francisco, at the same pulp magazine convention where I'd met Kerry and her parents. Dancer had managed to get himself arrested for murder at that convention, and I had proved him innocent and earned his slavish and undying gratitude. Or so he'd claimed when the police let him out of jail. That had been two years ago and I hadn't seen him since; had only had a couple of scrawled Christmas cards, one from Santa Cruz and the other from Redwood City, some twenty-five miles down the Peninsula.
The prospect of seeing Dancer again was not a particularly pleasing one, which was the reason I hadn't bothered to look him up. Dancer was a wasted talent, a gifted writer who had taken the easy road into hackwork thirty-odd years ago and who still cranked out pulp for the current paperback markets-adult Westerns, as of our last meeting. He was also a self-hating alcoholic with a penchant for trouble and a deep, bitter, and unrequited love for Cybil Wade. A little of him went a long way. Still, if there was a chance he had known Harmon Crane, it would be worth getting in touch with him. Assuming I could find him, in Redwood City or elsewhere: he moved around a lot, mostly to keep ahead of the IRS and his creditors.
I swung away from the telephone table. Kerry was standing by the sliding glass doors to the balcony, her arms folded under her breasts, looking out at the lights of the city and the East Bay. I said her name, but she didn't turn right away. And when she did turn she gazed at me for a few seconds, an odd expression on her face, before she spoke.
“It's cold in here,” she said.
“Is it? Well, I'll light the fire-”
“No, don't.”
“Why not?”
“Let's go to bed,” she said.
“Bed? It's not even nine o'clock…”
“Don't be dense,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Now. Right away.”
“Big hurry, huh?”
She came over and took hold of my arm. Her eyes were bright with the sudden urgency. “Right now,” she said, and pulled me toward the bedroom.
It wasn't that she was hot for me; it wasn't even sex, really. It was a belated reaction to the quake-a need to be close to someone, to reaffirm life, after having faced all that potentially destructive force. Earthquakes have that effect on people too, sometimes.
SIX
The morning Chronicle was full of quake news, not that that was surprising. I seldom read the papers anymore-I have to deal with enough bad news on a daily basis without compounding it-but my curiosity got the better of me in this case; so I skimmed through the various reports while I was having coffee and waiting for Kerry to get dressed.
There was more damage than originally estimated, though none of it involving major loss or casualties. Some mobile homes had been knocked off their foundations down in Morgan Hill, and a freeway overpass in San Ramon had suffered some structural ruin. Out along the coast, especially in West Marin, several earth cracks had been opened up, one of them fifty yards long and three feet wide on a cattle graze belonging to an Olema dairy rancher. He claimed one of his cows had been swallowed up by the break, even though it wasn't very deep and there was no physical evidence to support his contention. “For all I know,” he was quoted as saying, “that cow's all the way over in China by now.”
I got a chuckle out of that, and so did Kerry when I read it to her. The lighter side of a grim subject.
Before we left her apartment, I girded myself and told her about dinner with Eberhardt and Wanda. She didn't say anything for fifteen seconds or so, just looked at me the way she does, and I was certain I was in for a little verbal abuse; but Kerry is nothing if not unpredictable. She just sighed and said, “What time?”
“I don't know yet. I'll call you after I talk to Eb.”
“God, the things I do for you.”
“Come on, babe, it won't be so bad.”
“That's what you said last time.”
“Was last time really so bad?”
“Was the Spanish Inquisition really so bad?”
“Well, I admit it did rack up a few people.”
She glared at me, cracked me on the arm, said, “You and your puns,” and then burst out laughing. Another potential disaster averted.
I followed her Mustang down off Twin Peaks and then detoured up Franklin and over to my flat on Pacific Heights. In a burst of energy last weekend, Kerry had forced me to help her clean the place up; it was spic and span, no dust mice nesting under the furniture, no dust clinging chummily to my shelved collection of some 6,500 pulps, which covered two full walls. It didn't look right and it didn't feel right. The home of an unrepentant slob ought to have some dust in it, for God's sake, if not a scatter of dirty dishes. Neatness depresses me.
I went over to the secretary desk in the corner and rummaged around in one of the drawers until I found the box full of old Christmas cards. Dancer's was on the bottom, naturally. I copied down his Redwood City address, guessing at one numeral and a couple of letters in the street name-Dancer had never won any awards for penmanship. In the bedroom I pawed through the bookcase where I keep my modest collection of hard-covers and paperbacks. I used to pile them up in the closet, on the shelves and on the floor, but they fell over on me one day when I opened the door, in a kind of Fibber McGee chain reaction; when I got done cursing I went out and bought the bookcase. It takes me a long time to learn a lesson sometimes, but then it damned well stays learned.
I had only two of Harmon Crane's Johnny Axe novels-the first, Axe Marks the Spot, and Axe of Mercy. It had been a while since I'd read either one, and it seemed like a good idea to refamiliarize myself with his work when time permitted. I tucked the two books under my arm and went back into the nice, neat living room. And right out of it again. It was lonely in there, now that Kerry had murdered all my old friends, the dust mice.
Eberhardt wasn't in yet when I got to the office; he seldom shows up before nine-thirty and sometimes not until ten. I opened the window behind his desk to get rid of the stale smell of his pipe, after which I filled the coffeepot from the bottle of Alhambra water and put it on the hotplate. Morning ritual. I completed it by checking the answering machine and discovering-lo! — that there weren't any messages.
I sat down and rang up San Mateo County information and asked the operator if there was a listing for Russell Dancer. There wasn't. Damn. Now I would have to drive all the way down to Redwood City, on what might well be a wild goose chase. The way Dancer moved around, one hop and two skips ahead of his creditors and the IRS, he could be somewhere else in California by now. Like in an alcoholic ward, or maybe even in jail. With Dancer, anything was possible.
Well, I had one other lead to follow up first: Stephen Porter, Amanda Crane's friend. I dialed the number I'd copied out of the directory yesterday, and this time I got an answer. The right one, too, for a change. A scratchy male voice, punctuated by coughs and wheezes, informed me that yes, he was Adam Porter's brother and yes, he would be willing to talk to me, either before eleven or possibly after three, though he might be busy then, because he had classes between those two times, not to mention lunch, heh, heh (which was either a feeble chuckle or some sort of nasal gasp). I said I could come over right away and he said fine and gave me the address. After which he hacked again in my ear, loud enough to make me wince, and hung up.
The telephone rang almost immediately after I cradled the handset. Michael Kiskadon, bubbling over with eagerness and curiosity. How was my investigation going? Had I found out anything yet? Who had I talked to? Who was I going to talk to? I gave him a brief verbal report, assured him I would be in touch as soon as I had something
