Shackles

The First Day

MORNING

Sluicebox Lane turned out to be a short, carelessly paved street a third of a mile from the Pine Rest Motel. Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating took up most of the second block on the north side-a good-sized combination of pipe yard, warehouse, showroom, and business office. It was twenty of nine when I walked into the office and showroom at the front.

Water heaters, sinks, and small color-coordinated mock-ups of a bathroom and a kitchen took up two-thirds of the interior; the other third was the office, with a couple of desks arranged behind a low counter. Only one of the desks was occupied, by a plump middle-aged woman with streaky, dyed blond hair and a demeanor that just missed being bovine. She stood when I approached the counter, smoothed out the tweed skirt she was wearing, and showed me teeth any dentist would have been proud of, real or not. “May I help you?”

“I hope so. I need some information?”

“Yes?”

“About a customer of yours six to eight years ago. The owner of a cabin up near Deer Run.”

Wrinkles appeared in her forehead, creating a V that pointed down the length of her nose. “I don’t understand…”

“I’d like the person’s name.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No, Ma’am. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why do you want to know his name?”

The impatience came crawling back; I could feel the muscles in my stomach draw tight. All right, then, I thought. Tell her who you are, show her the license. If she read or heard about the disappearance and makes the right connection, bluff it through.

I said, “I’m a private detective. Working on an investigation.” I got my wallet out and flipped it open to the photostat of my California PI license.

She said, “Oh,” with a small amount of surprise and nothing else in her voice, and looked at the license just about long enough to identify the state seal And if she noticed that I was clean-shaven in the photograph she didn’t comment on it. One of these placid types, born without much imagination or curiosity. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t give out information about our customers.”

“It’s very important-”

“Besides,” she said, “all our work orders and invoices are filed alphabetically. Without the customer’s name, I couldn’t very well… oh, Mr. Hennessey. Could you come over here a second?”

There was a door to the warehouse back beyond her desk and a silver-haired guy in his fifties, wearing a pair of overalls and duck-billed cap, had come through it. He angled over to the counter, smiled and nodded at me-I smiled and nodded back at him-and said to the woman, “What’s up, Wilma?”

“This man wants to know the name of one of our customers. He’s a private detective.”

The guy’s craggy face lit up at that, as if she’d told him I was somebody important or famous. He gave me a closer, appraising look and an even broader smile. “No kidding?” he said. “A private eye?”

“That’s right.”

“Like Magnum, huh? Mike Hammer, Spenser?”

“No,” I said, “not like them.”

“What, no fast cars and hot broads?”

“No.”

“Mean to tell me real private eyes aren’t like what you see on TV?”

“Not hardly. I’m just doing a job, the same as you.”

It was the truth and he liked it; it put him on my side. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. All that bang-bang, sexy stuff is so much crap, right?”

“Right.”

“Sure. It’s like I told my wife: Private eyes don’t get seduced any more than plumbers. I been in this business thirty years and I never had a customer try to get in my pants. Man or woman.” He laughed as though he’d made a joke, and winked at Wilma. She smiled dutifully, but without either humor or appreciation; the expression in her eyes said that as far as she was concerned, all men were little boys and sometimes it was a chore putting up with them.

I managed a small chuckle for his benefit. He liked that too. He said, “I’m Bert Hennessey, I own the place,” and poked a callused hand across the counter at me. I took it, gave him my right name-just the last one, in case he wanted to look at my license. But he didn’t. And the name didn’t seem to mean anything to him, any more than it had to Wilma. “So why do you want the name of one of my customers?”

“A case I’m working on.”

“What kind of case?”

“A confidential one.”

“Oh, sure. He live here in Sonora?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that he owns a mountain cabin up near Deer Run, on Indian Hill Road-or he did six to eight years ago. You installed a water heater for him, maybe ran some copper piping and did some other work on the place.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“The water heater’s got your tag on it.”

“Ah. Deer Run, you say?”

“On Indian Hill Road. Six to eight years ago.”

“Deer Run, Deer Run… oh, yeah, I remember. I don’t get many jobs up that way. Only reason I got the one you mean, the customer called three or four shops for estimates and I gave him a low one, even with all the travel time, on account of it was a slow spring and I needed the work.”

“Do you recall his name?”

“Well, I’m not sure.” He frowned, thinking about it. “Seems to me it was a sports name.”

“The same as an athlete’s, you mean?”

“Yeah. Baseball or basketball player… no, both. White guy used to play for the Giants. And a black guy played in the NBA, does those Lite Beer commercials you see on TV. The guy with the big feet; you know, they keep making jokes about his big feet.”

Talk, talk, talk. The impatience had built a jangling inside me; I clenched my hands tight to keep them still. Hennessey was enjoying himself, playing a little riddle game with me, and the only thing to do was to play along with him. If I pushed him he might decide I wasn’t such an interesting specimen after all and close up on me. You either encourage people like him or you leave them be and let them get it out in their own sweet time.

I shook my head and shrugged and smiled and said, “Guess I don’t watch enough sports on TV.”

“My wife says I watch too much,” Hennessey said. “She says sports on TV breaks up more marriages than nookie. Not that she knows much about nookie,” and he winked at Wilma again.

She smiled her dutiful smile. I waited.

“Lanier,” he said finally, as if he were answering a big-prize question on a TV game show. Proud of himself, because he knew something a private eye didn’t. “Hal Lanier, pretty good infielder with the Giants once, manages the Astros now. Bob Lanier, the black basketball player with the big feet.”

“Lanier,” I said. It was a letdown because the name meant nothing to me. “You’re sure that was his name?”

“Pretty sure.”

“What was his first name?”