anything pleasurable or relaxing I felt like doing alone. All I felt like doing was working. This Purcell business- Leonard and Kenneth both-kept tumbling around inside my head, frustrating me because there were so damned many angles to it. I was convinced that Tom Washburn was right, there was a definite link between the two deaths; but what link? I couldn’t make the angles fit the right pattern without more information, without a clearer idea of the common denominators, and until I did make them fit I was not going to have much peace.
Blue Saturday. Blah Saturday. But maybe not, you never know; maybe the day would turn out to be a good one after all. You just have to plug away and hope for the best.
It was not far down to Blanche’s-I could see it clearly from where I stood, a weathered, rust-red building with a long pier behind it jutting out perpendicularly into the creek-but I didn’t feel much like walking. I got into the car and drove down there and parked among a scattering of other cars. The place didn’t seem crowded, judging from the number of cars, and it wasn’t. There was one customer at an inside table, another picking up his breakfast from a woman behind an order counter; neither of them was Melanie Purcell. I went out through a side door, onto the pier. Seven or eight people were sitting out there, at wooden tables set among a jungley profusion of potted plants and trees, and dozens of green gallon wine jugs that served as vases for a variety of flowers.
Melanie was there, sitting alone at a table next to the pier’s picket-fence railing. She wore shorts and a baggy T-shirt; her legs were so thin they were like white stalks. She was drinking coffee and fiddling with a mostly uneaten blueberry muffin, and she didn’t look happy. She looked even less happy when I came up to her and said, “Hello, Melanie. Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Oh, shit, you again. What do you want now?”
“A few minutes of your time. Mind if I sit down?”
“I don’t have to talk to you,” she said.
“That’s right, you don’t. Where’s Richie today?”
Some sharp emotion-I took it to be pain-darkened her eyes and pulled her mouth out of shape. She looked away from me before she said, “None of your business where he is.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Sure I know. Why wouldn’t I know?”
“What’s the secret, then?”
“There’s no secret.” I sat down across from her as she spoke. She looked at me again, but the one cockeye made it seem as though her gaze was still somewhere else. Her expression had changed to one of bluff and anger. “What do you care where Richie is?”
“I want to ask him some questions,” I said.
“What questions?”
“About Danny Martinez.”
“Who?”
“Danny Martinez.”
“I don’t know anybody named Danny Martinez.”
“No? Well, Richie does.”
“Am I supposed to care about that?”
“You should. Danny Martinez knows who murdered your father.”
Her mouth opened, closed again; the surprise seemed genuine. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re full of shit.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Kenneth wasn’t murdered,” she said.
I still didn’t say anything.
“You’re making it up,” she said. “There’s nobody named Danny Martinez.”
“Yes there is. He used to work for Cabrillo Market in Moss Beach, delivering groceries and liquor. He made a delivery to your father’s house the night he died, right about the time he died. He saw or heard what happened. A couple of weeks ago he contacted your Uncle Leonard and tried to sell him the name of the person who pushed Kenneth. Maybe he did sell him the name; maybe that’s why Leonard was shot. I don’t know yet. I won’t know until I find Martinez.”
She was shaking her mouse-brown head. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I don’t believe any of that.”
“It’s true, Melanie.”
“No,” she said. Then she said, “Even if it is, what does Richie have to do with this Martinez?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. He was at the Martinez farm in Moss Beach yesterday afternoon. I saw him there. The place is deserted now; Martinez split for Mexico a couple of weeks ago. I think Richie was searching the house.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
“Why would I lie to you?”
“You’re trying to get something on Richie-”
“Melanie,” I said, “where is he?”
“I’m not going to tell you!”
“Did he come home last night? Has he been home since yesterday afternoon?”
She got up fast, so fast she almost upset her chair. “You son of a bitch!” she said, loud enough so that her voice carried to everyone on the pier. They all turned to look at us. “I don’t have to listen to any more of this! You hear me? No more of this!”
Her face had gotten red and she was trembling; she had worked herself into a state, and quickly. I stood up, too, and just as I did a brawny guy in a sheepskin vest came over from one of the nearby tables. He said to Melanie, “Some trouble here, kid?”
I said, “No trouble,” but she said, “He tried to pick me up. He offered me money to go to a motel with him, the goddamn creep.”
Ah Christ, I thought, that’s all I need.
The guy put his eyes on me. He was one of these macho types, the kind that see themselves as champions of law, order, and virtue — the kind to whom violence is the answer to every problem and Stallone’s Rambo is the great American hero. This attitude of blind-leap heroism and distorted patriotism was rampant in the country these days. Nobody seemed to be thinking much anymore, including the politicians; it was all might makes right, action and reaction, and never mind how many innocent people might get hurt in the process.
True to form, the guy balled up his fists and said, “That right, asshole? You try to molest her?”
“No, it’s not right.”
“She says it is.”
“She’s playing games. Look at her.”
“Pervert,” Melanie said between her teeth. She was backing away now, fading into the small crowd that had gathered from the other tables. “Lousy goddamn pervert.”
“I ought to break your face,” the guy said to me.
“Lay a hand on me, you’re in big trouble. Melanie, come back here!”
But she was moving away now, not looking back. I wanted to go after her, but if I made a move the brawny guy would jump me. The rest of them were liable to jump me, too; it was that kind of potentially ugly scene. I stayed where I was and let her go.
“You’re the one who’s in trouble, pal,” the guy said. “Hey, somebody go call the cops.”
“I am a cop,” I said, making it sound tough. “How about that, asshole?”
It was the only way to handle the situation, the only way to keep it from turning any uglier; I was not about to get myself manhandled on little Melanie’s account if I could help it. And it worked, too: it took the edge off their righteous anger, made them uncertain and suddenly uneasy.
“Cop?” the brawny guy said.
“You got it. That girl is a suspect in a murder case. Her name is Melanie Purcell, she lives down on the creek. Maybe one of you knows her. Her uncle was murdered last week.”
One of them did know her, one of the other men. He said, “Yeah, that’s right. He’s right.”
The brawny guy said in a backing-down voice, “Then why’d she say you tried to pick her up?”
“Why the hell do you think? So she could get away. Now do we break this up and let me get on with my job or do you people want some hassle for obstructing justice?”
