They weren’t in the phone book. Jeri went back to her computer.
I picked up the phone book and looked up Schembri. And there it was, Carl and Joyce. How many Carl Schembris could there be?
I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Who’re you calling?” Jeri asked.
“Carl.”
“Carl—?”
I held up a hand. The phone was ringing. A man answered on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“Hello, is this Carl Schembri?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
Not the friendliest of voices. “Mortimer Angel,” I said, taking what I knew was a hell of a risk. After all, I was nouveau infamous.
“You’re shittin’ me,” he said, and then Jeri grabbed the phone out of my hand.
“Mr. Schembri, this’s Ms. Jeri DiFrazzia. Yeah, no, it was…yes, really. I…look, I…okay.” She handed the phone back to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I took the phone. “Mr. Schembri?”
“You kiddin’? You’re Mortimer Angel?”
“Yep. Call me Mort.”
“No shit. Jesus Christ, no shit. Seen you on TV about every night this week, man.”
“Uh-huh.” Jeri jammed her ear next to mine, trying to listen in. I caught a whiff of perfume or hairspray, something feminine, clean and flowery.
“No shit, goddamn,” Schembri said. “Uh, so why’re you calling me?” A hint of paranoia crept into his voice.
“It’s about Clair. I’m trying to locate her.”
“Clair?”
“You were married to her.”
Silence. Then, “Christ, that Clair. That was a coon’s age ago, buddy.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
“Hell, yes. Down in Carson. Name’s Hutson now, Mrs. Howard Hutson.”
“Uh, not DeMeo?”
“A million years ago, yeah. DeMeo was her second husband. A first-class dumb shit, I’ll tell you. We worked in Harrah’s together. Then it was Briscoe, then Hutson. Still is, last I heard. He’s a lost-cause dumb shit too, in case you’re interested. You gonna go talk to her?”
“I thought I’d try.”
“Better wear earmuffs, then. If she can still fire that sucker up, that is.”
I didn’t try to decipher that. He didn’t have an address for Clair Hutson, but Jeri would have that in no time. I thanked him, hung up.
“That schlub probably thinks he’s God’s gift,” Jeri said as she finished writing. She stared at her notepad. “Schembri, then DeMeo, then Briscoe, then Hutson.”
“Tells a story, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Men are pigs.”
“Ah—a clue comes a-whistlin’ on little airy feet.” I tried to put the comment to iambic pentameter for her. Succeeded, too.
“Lay off, Mort.” She opened the phone book.
“Clair’s bouncing around like that couldn’t possibly mean she’s the one with the problem, huh?”
“Her problem is that she always comes back for more.”
That was a door slamming if I’ve ever heard one. “Now what?” I said.
“Now we go talk to Clair.” Jeri found Hutson in the phone book and wrote down the address. Only one Hutson lived in Carson City.
“That’s thirty-plus miles,” I said. “And thirty back,” I added to be clear. “It’s getting late. How about we go tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I’ve got to work on something else. Sunday, too. I’ll have to put this thing with Sjorgen and Milliken on a back burner for a few days. Let’s go now.”
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to phone?”
“No. They can hang up on you. And you can’t see their eyes, so it’s harder to tell if they’re lying.” She headed for the door. “And I want to blow out the engine. You comin’ or not?”
* * *
I’d figured she’d been blowing out the Porsche’s engine every time a hundred yards of road opened up ahead. I was wrong. We hit a hundred thirty on that straight stretch of 395 through Washoe Valley. The Toyota couldn’t do that in freefall, though I’d be willing to give it a try. Not in it, of course.
“Jesus, Jeri…”
She gave me a still-angry look, then eased it back to ninety. By then I’d gained another second of life on Einstein’s clock, lost two years on the only one I care about—my own.
“What’s got you so pissed off?” I asked her.
“I’m not pissed off,” she said, sounding pissed off.
“If you say so.”
She was silent for nearly two minutes, then she let the Porsche drift down to barely seventy. “It’s not you,” she said quietly.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
“Not you.”
I guessed that was something of an apology. For what, I wasn’t sure.
Clair Hutson lived in a sweltering, seventy-year-old ranch house that needed painting, a new roof, and about ten thousand dollars in miscellaneous outside repairs. Her face said she’d been smoking two packs a day since those halcyon days at Reno High. It was cool at eighteen, but addictive in spite of being cool. Carbon monoxide eventually catches up. She was fifty-nine, looked seventy-five. Not a trace of that long-ago girl remained. She was stringy and dry, hair lifeless, fighting a growing case of emphysema.
She didn’t recognize me in the wig Jeri made me put on again, but I had the moustache jammed in a pocket like a dead rat. I’d had it with fake moustaches.
“Jonnie Sjorgen,” Clair sneered. “The oh-so-great mayor.” She stood in the doorway, not inviting us in. Behind her, the room was dark, shades pulled. A swamp cooler rumbled, filling the house with cool damp air. Howard Hutson stood two feet behind her holding a beer. He had a gut the size of a shoat, three chins, stubble, lots of nose hair. He stood flatfooted in grimy socks, blinking stupidly at us. If eighteen-year-old Clair had known it would come to this, she would have slit her wrists the day she walked off that stage in cap and gown.
“Did you know him well?” Jeri asked.
“Too well,” Clair replied.
“What can you tell me about him?”
“You’re the first to ask.” For a moment something younger was in her voice. It was softer, filled with a kind of hunger. At long last, someone was giving her a little recognition. “No one else has thought to care. How’d you find me, anyhow?”
“Just ordinary detective work, Mrs. Hutson.”
“It was Carl told you, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes.”
“That son’vabitch. He okay?”
“He sounded okay. We just spoke with him over the phone.”
Clair’s eyes shifted to me, then back to Jeri.
