‘Name’s Hardy, from Australia.’ I pulled out the investigator’s licence and was just balanced and quick enough to avoid the kick he aimed at my head. I stepped back and he came after me, leaping with the hands out ready to smash me down. The leap took him through the doorway but left him a bit close to the wall; I used the space I had to push him into it, hard. He hadn’t learned coming-off-walls and I showed him lesson one which is to avoid going-into-the-same-wall-again. Lesson two is much the same and it can go on until someone gets tired. He did.
‘All right’, he gasped, ‘you’re bruising me.’
‘Truce’, I said. ‘Parley.’
‘Okay.’ He got to his feet and I watched all of him carefully.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘For practice. You guys are supposed to be on guard at all times aren’t you? It’s hard to find anyone on guard.’
‘Shit.’ I stuffed my hands down tight into the pockets of my jeans. ‘I am officially off guard-all right?’
‘Sure. You’re good man, what was that you wanted to know?’
‘About Vin, my compatriot.’
He nodded and ushered me straight into a room which was like a good-sized motel room, except that it had a bookcase, which I’ve never seen in a motel.
‘Beer?’ He bent to the door of a compact fridge which fitted in between the bookcase and the stereo system.
‘Thanks.’ He handed me a can which had more pictures on it than a Walton’s catalogue. Coors didn’t seem like much of a name for a beer, but it was good. He watched me as I took the first sip.
‘Terrific’, I said.
‘That’s what Vin thought.’
‘Good man is he?’
‘Was.’
‘And you are…?’
‘Percy Holmes.’ He flexed a bicep and jutted his jaw. ‘More Holmes than Percy, if you take my meaning.’
‘I do. You know Vin well?’
He scratched his chin and stayed in the squatting position, giving the thighs a work-out. ‘Just because you whipped me doesn’t mean I’ll spill my guts to you. What’s the problem?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I drank some more of the beer and decided it was very good. ‘Diane Holt’s father hired me to find her. You know her?’
He nodded. ‘Sure, a young fox. She was around when Vin came back and pulled outa here. And gave up beer. He was different, like weird.’
I’d seen a photograph of Harvey, courtesy of Raymond Evans. He had dark hair, a short beard and what you might call brooding eyes, but he didn’t look weird.
‘This is nothing heavy’, I said. I waved the nearly empty beer can and tried a smile. ‘Di’s dad seems like a man of the world to me, know what I mean?’
His dark brown brow furrowed. ‘No’, he said.
‘I want to find out if the girl’s okay and what’s happening. I won’t touch Vin or even speak to him in a loud voice unless he’s making her do what she doesn’t want to do.’
He seemed to find that very funny. He let out a short laugh and then a longer one. He reached into the fridge, got out two cans of Coors, tossed one to me and popped the other himself.
‘You got it round the wrong way man. That Di, she’s got him here.’ He gripped his crotch.
We both drank some beer and I started to put together an easy scenario for myself: Australian-raised girl with fantasies about America grabs the first chance she gets to take the trip, rages for a while, gets sick of it and is happy to come back to good old Sydney University with dinkum detective. Then he had to go and complicate it.
‘She wanted to go to Santa Cruz’, Holmes said. ‘That was the place for her, “dreamland”, she called it. They had the biggest fight right here.’
‘Santa Cruz-what’s that?’
‘UC campus-south of here, funky place.’
‘Harvey can’t transfer his PhD there can he?’
He shook his head. ‘No way. Look, I roomed a while with Vin, he’s okay. You sure that’s all straight-just findin’ the chick and all?’
‘Yes.’ I finished the beer to prove it.
‘Okay. Vin, he’s through with the PhD, he says. He says it’s meaningless, I’m not sure why. He’s pretty freaked out, that’s why he put Santa Cruz down so hard. A cop-out he says. He’s into, like anarchy, you know? And the chick wants to hang out in Santa Cruz, shit.’
He seemed to remember that he wasn’t exercising anything at the moment while sitting on the floor. He did some squats, it was time to go before he started shadow-boxing in the confined space.
‘So where did they go?’ I said.
‘San Francisco-where else?’
‘Driving what, Percy? Living where?’
He grinned. ‘Drives a Volkswagen van. Ah’m sorry suh, ah don’t know the number.’
‘Okay, okay, sorry. Do you happen to know where he lives in San Francisco, Mr Holmes?’
‘No, Mr Hardy, I don’t; but you’re in luck, he’s going to be right here tonight.’ He got up and rummaged among papers on top of the bookcase. He handed me a roughly printed notice which said that Harvey would be giving a lecture entitled ‘Owning the Air’ on the subject of the media and politics. The lecture was sponsored by the Stanford Committee for Responsible Social Science and was scheduled for that evening at eight p.m.
‘Will you be there?’
‘Not me. I’ll be playing basketball.’
‘Are you tall enough for basketball?’
‘No, I play for fun.’
I drove back to Palo Alto and found a place called a Creamery in which you could eat and drink and read. I ate a salad, drank a beer and read the San Francisco Chronicle. The food and drink were better than the paper but I did learn that Michael Spinks was defending his cruiserweight title against nobody that afternoon on TV. I asked the kid behind the counter if I could watch it and he nodded and turned on the set mounted high on the wall.
‘Who’s Michael Spinks?’ he said.
‘Brother of Leon.’
I let him bring me another beer while I watched the fight. The beer was fine but Spinks wasn’t so good. His opponent was a dark, chunky guy who looked like a blown-up middleweight and Spinks took about three rounds longer than he should to put him away.
I did the crossword in the paper, had another beer, walked around for a while and filled up with gas. I drove very cautiously; all the cops I’d seen so far wore black uniforms with big guns tucked up high, wicked-looking nightsticks and discontented expressions. Cops have a way of spotting men who are in a similar line of work, and of being nasty to them. I wasn’t licenced to blow my nose in California and I knew what one of those nightsticks in sweaty hands could do to a sensitive man like me.
I gave a boy and his girlfriend a ride to the campus because they looked so forlorn walking. Everyone else was in a car or on a ten-speed cycle. I asked the kid if he was going to the media lecture.
‘Naw’, he said.
‘Freaks’, the girl said
A campus patrol car came alongside and the boy waved insolently at the driver. I swore silently at him but the cop just gunned his motor and cruised past.
‘Pigs’, the girl said. I wondered if they limited themselves to one-word statements. I dropped them near one of the student dormitories; the boy waved, he was a good waver; the girl said ‘Thanks.’
