“You’ll talk to yourself if you do. You won’t get in.”
There was nothing more to say. I put my back to them and went to the door. But Dessault followed me, so that when I turned coming out on deck, he was about two feet away.
I couldn’t resist the impulse; I said, “ ‘Gold in the hills and valleys of my mind, the big gold rush.’ That’s real good stuff, Richie. Ferlinghetti would love it.”
“Fuck you,” he said, like the poet he wasn’t, and for the second time in twenty minutes he shut the door in my face.
Chapter Seven
Back in the car, I used my new mobile phone to call Directory Assistance. No listing for Alex Ozimas or anybody named Ozimas. I called the office, to ask Eberhardt to check our copy of the reverse directory of city addresses-but all I got was the answering machine. So then I rang up the Hall of Justice, to see if Ben Klein was familiar with Ozimas-and he was out, too, and there wasn’t anybody else around who knew anything about the Purcell case.
I made a U-turn and drove across the Fourth Street drawbridge and uptown to Union Square, where I deposited the car in the underground garage. Powell Street was jammed with tourists, as it almost always was these days: there are several good hotels along its length and it contains the main cable car line between downtown and Fisherman’s Wharf. I made my way up to Post Street, and along there until I found the Summerhayes Gallery-one of dozens of art galleries of different types in the area.
It didn’t look like much from outside, just a narrow storefront with drapery covering its one window and discreet gold lettering on the glass; but you only needed one good look around the interior to know that this was a high-class place. The floor was parquet, polished to a high gloss, and there was nothing on it except half a dozen Plexiglas cubes, a couple of the smaller ones on pedestals, and glass-fronted and — topped display cases along two walls. The other wall, on my right, had a closed door in its middle. The only decoration was a big tapestry-Turkish, maybe — that hung above the display case directly opposite the entrance. There weren’t any paintings in sight; it was not that kind of gallery. There weren’t any people in sight, either, but I doubted if I would be allowed to remain alone for very long. A little tinkly bell had announced my arrival.
I wandered a little, looking at what was in the cubes and display cases. Antique boxes, some enameled and some bejeweled and some fashioned of mother-of-pearl. Carved ivory flower arrangements. Exotic paperweights made out of crystal, ivory, intricate patterned glass. Porcelain eggs. A small selection of snuff bottles and boxes, all of curious design, some that looked hand-painted and some that had scenes engraved on their surfaces. Much of the stuff appeared to be Oriental or Far Eastern in origin, with China being the predominant supplier.
I was peering at something I took to be an incense burner-a big bronze elephant that seemed to have a camel’s hump on its back and that also seemed to be trying to goose itself with its trunk — when the woman’s voice said, “May I help you?” about two feet away.
It made me jump a little because I hadn’t heard her approach; she walked softly for a big woman. And big she was: a fiftyish gray-blonde at least six feet tall, with wide hips and a substantial chest encased in a cream- colored designer suit and a mauve blouse. She was smiling politely, but there was a wariness in her gray eyes. I was not the sort of person she was used to seeing in here.
I said, “Yes, thanks. I’d like to see Eldon Summerhayes.”
“I am Mrs. Summerhayes,” she said. She had a faint accent-Scandinavian, I thought, maybe Norwegian. “My husband is busy at the moment. Is there something I can do?”
“Well, yes and no. I’d prefer to talk to both of you at the same time, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s about the Purcell family tragedies.”
Her nostrils pinched a little and the smile went away. She said, “Are you a policeman?”
“Not exactly. A private investigator.”
“I see. For whom are you investigating?”
“Tom Washburn.”
“I’m afraid I don’t… oh. Leonard’s friend.”
“Yes.”
“But why do you come to us?”
“You were at Kenneth’s party the night of the accident,” I said. “Mr. Washburn believes there’s some sort of connection between Kenneth’s death and Leonard’s murder.”
She sighed the way she walked: so softly you could barely hear her. “I’ll speak to my husband,” she said. “Please wait here.”
I watched her move off toward the inner door and disappear through it. When nothing happened after about thirty seconds I took another look at the bronze incense burner. Definitely trying to goose himself, I thought. But the hump was what really intrigued me. Why would an elephant have a hump? What artist in his right mind would give an elephant a hump? Well, I thought then, there’s your answer. The artist wasn’t in his right mind; like most artists in one way or another, he was screwy. But the hump still bothered me. It was one of life’s little mysteries, and I don’t like unsolved mysteries, little or otherwise.
I was looking over at the inner door when it opened again, after a good three minutes. Mrs. Summerhayes appeared and gestured to me, not without some evident reluctance. I went over there, and she backed up and let me walk into a smallish office with two desks set facing each other in its center. The office would have been larger except that a good-sized vault took up most of one wall-a Mosler, one of the best and most expensive.
The man standing behind the far desk, between it and the vault, was somewhere between fifty-five and sixty, ruddy-faced and white-maned. The ambassadorial type. He wore a pin-striped suit, a bow tie, and a scarab ring on his right hand that was so oversized it caught my attention immediately. He looked sleek and well-fed and self- assured and on the snooty side. I thought that I was not going to like him very much.
He said as the woman closed the door, “I am Eldon Summerhayes.” He waited until I had introduced myself and then said, “May I see your identification, please,” making it sound like an order rather than a request.
Uh-huh, I thought. She’d forgot to ask for an ID, and he’d let her hear about it, too. I got my wallet out, opened it to the photostat of my investigator’s license, and handed it to him. He studied it carefully for about thirty seconds, as if he were examining one of the Dead Sea scrolls for authenticity. Then, with a vaguely martyred expression, he shut the wallet and gave it back to me.
“Very well,” he said. “I would ask you to sit down but as you can see, there are only two chairs.”
“I don’t mind standing.”
“Elisabeth tells me you’re working for Leonard’s… friend, Washburn.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time. Leonard’s murder was unfortunate, but I don’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with poor Kenneth’s accident.”
A man is murdered, a man dies in agony crawling through his own blood, and it’s “unfortunate.” I was not going to like Summerhayes one damned bit, I decided.
I said, “So you’re convinced that Kenneth couldn’t have met with foul play.”
“Of course we’re convinced. We have told everything we know to the authorities-several times, I might add.”
“I understand he wasn’t very well liked. Are you one of those who disliked him, Mr. Summerhayes?”
He scowled at me. “I find that question impertinent.”
Impertinent, yet. I said, “Were you a personal friend of his? Or was your relationship business- oriented?”
“He was a very good customer of ours.”
“Antique snuff containers?”
“Among other items, yes.”
“Did you sell him the one he was showing off at the party?”
“The Hainelin? No.”
“Do you know who did?”
