“Compatible, you mean. The club… all brothers?”
“That’s right. Businessmen, professional people like myself. What business are you in, Mr. Stewart?”
“Computers. Bayside Computer Sales and Service. One of our sidelines is providing computers to schools, mainly those in impoverished sections of the Bay Area.”
“I see. Admirable.”
“Married, two kids. But my wife and I… well, I won’t go into that.” Stewart cleared his throat again. “Anyhow, I think I might fit in. I’ve been a sports nut all my life, all kinds, especially football and basketball, I like talking sports to other knowledgeable guys, and I… well, I’m married, as I said, but I like to get out once in a while, have a good time with guys who feel the same. You know what I mean?”
“Perhaps.”
“So do you think I might fit in?”
“Perhaps,” Hawkins said again.
“Well… maybe we could get together, get to know each other, talk it over. Zeller, too, if he wants to join us.”
Four-beat. Then, “I think that might be arranged. Suppose you let me have your phone number, Mr. Stewart.”
“Deron. Call me Deron.”
“Let me have your number and I’ll get back to you.”
“How soon?”
“Soon.”
“Before the club meets again?”
“Yes. Before then.”
Hawkins provided his cell number and they ended the conversation. Tamara reslotted Bill’s phone, went back through the connecting door. Stewart grinned up at her from the client’s chair.
“How was I?” he asked.
Probably the same question he asked his conquests as soon as they finished doing the nasty. Self-centered types like him always cared more about their performance than anything or anybody else. And if he got any rating less than a rave, he’d blame the woman for being a lousy lay.
Tamara said, “Believable.” Why give him any more satisfaction?
“Yeah, I thought he bought it. I’ll be hearing from him.”
“That company name you gave, Bayside Computer Sales and Service-”
“My brother-in-law’s company. I’ve used it before. He’ll know what to say if Hawkins checks up.”
Stewart’s attitude toward women was sexist lousy and his ego overinflated, but she had to admit he was good at his job. Some agency should’ve put him on full-time by now. Racism? She’d never come up against any of that crap in her dealings with other agencies, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there under the surface.
He said, “I think Hawkins will agree to the get-together. You?”
“No reason why he shouldn’t.” Unless the phony Lucas or somebody else talked him out of it. “But I’m not so sure about Zeller.”
“I figure he’ll want to scope me out, too. Only problem I can see is that I’ll be a stranger to them. Might lead to questions, suspicions.”
“It’s been over a month since the sports show,” Tamara said, “and Moscone was packed that day. Not too likely they’ll remember everybody they talked to.”
“Not even a handsome guy like me?”
She let that pass. “You ought to be able to convince them.”
“Never been in a situation yet I couldn’t handle.”
“Okay. When you hear from Hawkins and you’ve got a time and place, let me know right away. My cell, day or night.”
“Will do,” Stewart said. “If Zeller does show up, you want me to follow him afterward, find out where he lives? Tail jobs are my specialty. He’ll never know I’m there.”
“Uh-uh. You leave Zeller to me. And take along a voice-activated recorder so there’s a record of everything that’s said.”
“Your client must really want this guy put away.”
“Oh yeah,” Tamara said. “Real bad.”
9
I didn’t feel like going to work on Wednesday morning. Neither Kerry nor I had gotten much sleep, and I was tired, depressed, cranky. My curmudgeon’s mode, she calls it. But she wasn’t in much better shape. This thing with Emily had both of us down and reeling.
The kid had stayed in her room all last evening, lying on her bed with Shameless beside her and her iPod headphones plugged into her ears. Music was her passion-she wanted to be a singer and she had the voice to make it happen; when she was upset, she retreated into music as completely as she withdrew into herself. Even if we’d taken the iPod away from her, we wouldn’t have been able to reach her. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t communicate. Kerry went in once and asked her point-blank if she was experimenting with sex. Emily said no, of course not, and looked hurt again, and that was the end of that.
Breakfast this morning hadn’t been any more productive. She’d sat at the table with her eyes on her plate, picking at her food, speaking in polite monosyllables when she spoke at all. Kerry had brought up the cocaine again, quietly, but Emily’s nonanswers were the same as the night before. “I promised I wouldn’t tell. I can’t break my promise. I’ve never tried drugs of any kind.”
I believed the last statement. She simply did not lie; it wasn’t in her nature. If there were such a thing as an Honest Teenager of the Year Award, she’d win it hands down. Reassuring, but there was still the box and that tube of coke. And her steadfast and misplaced loyalty to whoever they belonged to.
What do you do in a situation like this? How do you find the answers without stirring up a hornet’s nest?
What the hell do you do?
Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I went to work anyway. That had always been my escape-Kerry’s, too-from unpleasant and difficult personal problems. Retreat into the job the way Emily retreated into music and other people buried themselves in books or films or booze.
Patterson Realty Company, Inc., was a storefront hole-in-the wall on Balboa near 46 ^th Avenue, within hailing distance of the Great Highway and Ocean Beach. Coming to this part of the city always gave me pangs of nostalgia, even on a day and in a mood like this one. It was where Playland-at-the-Beach used to be, and Playland-a ten-acre amusement park in the grand old style, once the largest on the West Coast-had been where I’d spent a good portion of my youth.
Playland. Some exciting place when you were young and full of piss and vinegar. Attractions galore. Laughing Sal, the gap-toothed, red-haired plaster icon at the entrance, whose cackling mechanical laugh scared the hell out of generations of little kids. Shooting galleries. Sideshow lures that included a two-headed duckling and a radiation-deformed carp. The Fun House with its moveable sidewalk and “spinning wheel” and mirror maze. The creaky old Big Dipper roller coaster, the Whip, the Aeroplane Swing, the Dodg-’Em cars, and other rides. The penny arcade called Knotty Peek and the Tip-a-Troll and Ring-the-Bottle games.
The first date I went on as a teenager was to Playland. And the night I lost my virginity, in the backseat of my old Chevy coupe parked out on Land’s End, was after another Playland date-both the girl and me with our hormones raging after a succession of thrill rides on the Big Dipper and the Whip. Memory’s a funny thing. I remember the girl’s name, Cricket, and the sensations she stirred in me, but her face is dim and everything else about her is a total blank; yet all I have to do is close my eyes and I can see Playland exactly as it was, in every detail-I can even smell the popcorn and saltwater taffy, the hot dogs and bull-pup tamales, all the rich odors mixed together with the tang of cold salt air, and I can hear the shrieks and excited laughter of the kids.
All gone now. Nothing left of the park except bright ghost-images in the memories of graybeards like me. The
