there wore greenish fur coats. But again, there was evidence here of haste either in packing for departure or in a rapid search. Cupboard doors stood open, drawers had been pulled out and left that way, the shards from a broken vodka bottle were scattered across the drainboard and among a tier of dirty crockery and utensils in the sink.
A dining area opened off the kitchen, but there wasn’t anything in it except a table and some chairs and a sideboard. Nothing in the little boy’s bedroom, either, except a bunk-style bed; the closet was empty except for a couple of dropped coat hangers, a toy soldier with its head twisted off, and the remains of a balsa-wood model airplane. I moved into the bath that separated that bedroom from the one where Martinez and his common-law wife had slept. The medicine cabinet door was open, revealing two empty shelves and one containing some used razor blades. A vial of cheap men’s cologne had been dropped and broken in the sink; but there was not much odor from it, even when I poked my nose down there, which meant that the vial hadn’t been broken recently.
The closet in the master bedroom was empty, too. So were the bureau and the two nightstands flanking the bed. The bed still had its sheets and pillows and blankets, all of them rumpled and not very clean. On the wall above it was another crucifix, this one made out of bronze with silver ornamentation. An oval mirror in a dark-wood frame hung on another wall, and what drew me to it were two color snapshots wedged between the glass and the frame on one side. One of the snaps was of a laughing little boy with huge brown eyes, like a child in a portrait by Keane. Danny Martinez’s son. I wondered, for no particular reason, what his name was. The other photo was of a man and a woman and the same little boy, the man holding the child in one arm, all three of them grinning. It had been taken at a beach somewhere; the ocean, spattered with sunlight, was visible behind them.
I took that one off the mirror and looked at it more closely. The woman was slim and attractive in a narrow- faced way, with shiny black hair that fell almost to her waist. The man-Danny Martinez, no doubt-was tall, heavy through the chest and shoulders, and sported a bandit’s mustache. They had made a nice-looking family, the three of them, back when this photo was taken. It gave me an odd, sad feeling, being here in the house they’d shared, a house emptied of all but the residue, the ghosts, of their years together. No more outings on the beach, no more closeness, no more laughter. Nothing left now but bitterness and pain and the wreckage of a man’s self- respect.
I stood for a time holding the snapshot, staring at it. Then, on impulse, I slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket and turned and left the bedroom, left the house. Nothing more for me there either. Like the barn, it too had become oppressive.
Chapter Fourteen
I drove around the area for a while after I left the Martinez farm. It took me all of five minutes to find the road and the gravel turnaround where Richie Dessault had parked his car. So he wouldn’t have had to know the area any better than I did in order to find the road himself and figure out that it was a short trek through the woods and over the hill to the Martinez place. And he hadn’t had to worry about anybody noticing him or the car because there weren’t any other houses within sight.
On the way back along Elm Street I stopped at the only neighboring house I’d seen in the immediate vicinity, the one I’d passed coming in. A middle-aged woman greeted me cordially and told me nothing useful. She knew Danny Martinez-“a nice young man,” she said-but she hadn’t seen him since his wife and son went away to Mexico, and expressed surprise to learn that he was gone too. She didn’t know any of his friends; and when I described Dessault she gave me a blank smile and shook her head. The only thing of any interest I got from her was the little boy’s name: Roberto.
From there I drove over to Highway 1 and headed up the coast over Devil’s Slide; there wasn’t anything more for me to do in Moss Beach today. I picked up the 180 freeway beyond Pacifica and followed it all the way downtown to the Fourth Street exit, where I got off and looped back around to Mission Creek. But that was a waste of time, too: if Dessault and/or Melanie were inside their houseboat, they were not opening the door for the likes of me.
I drove up Fifth, put the car briefly into the Fifth and Mission garage, and went across the street to the Chronicle building to collect the package on Margaret Prine. DeFalco had left it with the lobby guard, so I didn’t have to go upstairs; I was back in the car in three minutes, and on my way to the office three minutes after that.
Eberhardt was there when I came in, polluting the air with one of his smelly pipes. I don’t know where he gets his tobacco, but the stuff is as black as tar and smells like tar. It must be contraband, made in somebody’s basement; no reputable tobacco manufacturer would inflict crap like that on the public. Or was “reputable tobacco manufacturer” a contradiction in terms? I thought. They kept right on putting cigarettes on the market, didn’t they? Pre-fab cancer, all wrapped in nice bright packages, with sexy ads to entice teen-agers into the carcinoma fold. I wondered how many tobacco company executives had quit smoking, or never started in the first place, because they themselves were afraid the health warnings the government forced them to put on their product might be true.
I asked Eb, “What are you mulling over? Something profound, I trust.”
“I was thinking about getting laid,” he said.
“A very deep philosophical subject. You got any prospects?”
“Might have.”
“Yeah? Anybody I know?”
“Not yet. Maybe you will, though, if things work out.”
“What’s her name?”
“Barbara Jean. She’s from the South.”
Uh-oh, I thought, here we go again.
“South Carolina,” he said. “Charleston.”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“She works in Henderson’s office in San Rafael.”
“Whose office?”
“Henderson. The guy who wants the double-indemnity policy with Great Western. She’s a secretary.”
“And you’ve got a date with her, huh?”
“Might have. She gave me her number.”
“I’ll bet she did.”
“No wisecracks. She’s a lady.”
“Sure. That’s why you’re already thinking about getting laid.”
“Men always think about getting laid,” he said. “We’re just a bunch of animals.”
“Ain’t we though. She have a big chest?”
He gave me an injured look. “No. She’s no Wanda, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That was exactly what I was thinking. Wanda was his most recent passion, an unlovely lady with an enormous chest, three brain cells, and an irritating personality (or lack of one). They had been engaged for a while, until Kerry-leave it to Kerry-had got sloshed on wine during a dinner foursome at a place called Il Roccaforte, the worst Italian restaurant in the world, and dumped a bowl of spaghetti over Wanda’s dyed blond head. The convoluted repercussions of that had opened Eberhardt’s eyes, or at least had removed them from their blind fastenings on Wanda’s chest, and allowed him to see her for what she was. He had been down-in-the-mouth ever since the break-up, bemoaning the fact that he was getting old and women didn’t find him attractive anymore-all of which I took to be sexual frustration. A woman was just what he needed, as long as she was a good woman who was good for him. But ever since his wife Dana had left him a few years ago, he had had a knack for picking losers. Barbara Jean, from Charleston, South Carolina. Oh boy.
I said, “Well, good luck. I hope it works out.”
“Me too. I’ll let you know.”
“I can hardly wait. So did you wrap up the insurance thing?”
“Everything except the paperwork. I already called Barney.”
“Why aren’t you doing the paperwork now?”
“I hate that crap.”
“Who doesn’t? Hop to it. We don’t get paid until the report is delivered, remember?”
