Epitaphs Page 15

  “You want the card,” he said.

  “Like I told you, I have a job to do.”

  “If John ever finds out where you got it—”

  “He won’t find out from me. And you won’t have to worry about me showing up at your office or your house again either. We never have to see or talk to each other after this. Sound reasonable?”

  “If you mean what you say.”

  “You have my word. That is, if you keep the exchange confidential. And if you haven’t told me any more lies or withheld any more information.”

  The front door of his house opened just then and a pudgy teenage girl came out on the porch. “Father!” she yelled. “Telephone!”

  Morris didn’t move, didn’t speak for about five seconds. Then he said to me, “Take the card,” and executed one of his military about-faces and left me standing there. He didn’t look back.

  The iceman goeth. To hell with the iceman.

  Chapter Seventeen

  RAIN WAS NO LONGER threatening to dampen Bolinas. The sky out there was still overcast, but now it was with thickening patterns of fog that had already blurred the outlines of the hilltop homes. There were more people in the village center, moving in and out of the grocery and liquor stores—commut—ers home from their jobs and stocking up for the evening or the weekend.

  A parking space was free in front of one of the art galleries; I claimed it, rather than taking a chance on Wharf Road. Before I quit the car I unclipped the .38 from its hiding place under the dash. Smith & Wesson Bodyguard, Airweight model, with a two-inch barrel and a five-round cylinder capacity. Not much of a gun, really, for any use other than sport shooting—but I didn’t want much of a gun. I don’t like the things, never have; hadn’t owned one in several years, before this one. I’d bought it after the incident in the Salinas Valley in April, when I had needed a firearm and hadn’t had one and as a result, with perfect irony, I had killed a man in another way. If I’d had a gun that day I might not have his death on my conscience now. So I’d bought the .38, gotten the proper permits for it. It was strictly for emergency service, to be carried only as a safeguard and used only under extreme duress.

  I checked the loads, slid the piece into my jacket pocket. It weighed less than a pound, with its lightweight frame; there was no telltale sag as I walked down to Chet Valconazzi’s pink cottage.

  The .38 turned out to be unnecessary. So did the second trip out here. Bisconte wasn’t in residence. No smoke came out of the chimney, no lights burned in the windows against the encroaching fog, and nobody answered when I banged on the door.

  Back in the car, I considered my options. Run a stakeout? The cold and fog said no; so did the dull weariness behind my eyes. Long day already, and I still had a fifty-mile drive back to the city.

  Call Harry Craddock, relay my suspicions to him? Not that either, not just yet. I had no proof that Bisconte had been staying here; the Kools and a hunch weren’t evidence. No point in crying wolf—particularly not if Chet Valconazzi had had anything to do with Gianna’s disappearance. Police interest might scare him into an even tighter cover-up.

  Which brought me to the prospect of infiltrating the Valconazzi ranch tomorrow afternoon. At the time I’d gotten the invitation card from Morris, it had seemed like a good way to ferret out information. But was it? Unfamiliar territory; hostile environment; enemy turf. Plus I did not know enough about cockfighting to run much of a bluff. If I wasn’t careful I could get myself arrested for trespassing ... or worse. Worth the risk?

  Worth it, I thought. A week nearly gone already since Gianna’s disappearance, and the more time that elapsed, the harder it would be to find out what had become of her. Evidence vanishes or gets successfully hidden; people forget or misremember useful details. There would be individuals at the ranch tomorrow who had been there last Saturday, who might know something. And if necessary I could do a little fast shuffling with the Valconazzis, padre e figlio.

  Maybe then I’d have something definite to pass along to Harry Craddock—and not just about the whereabouts of Jack Bisconte. I had a bad feeling that Gianna was going to turn out to be the same kind of police matter as Ashley Hansen.

  DUSK WAS SETTLING when I recrossed the Golden Gate Bridge into the city. As tired and hungry as I was, I drove straight to O’Farrell and the office.

  Among the half-dozen messages on my machine were two from Dominick Marra, both worded pretty much the same. He wanted to talk to me; he would either be home or at the Sons of Italy social hall. I called both places and he wasn’t at either one, though he’d been at the social hall until about twenty minutes ago. Went to have dinner at Giacomo’s, the man I spoke to said. I thought about calling the restaurant, one of the older and better family-style eateries in North Beach, but then I remembered that one of their specialties was tortelli di erbette—a spinach-stuffed ravioli prepared the old-fashioned way. The thought of their tortelli made my juices run.

  Next stop: Giacomo’s.

  BY THE TIME I found parking and walked to the crowded, noisy place, it was eight-thirty. Dominick was still there, occupying a table in back near the kitchen. That was the good news. The bad news was that Pietro Lombardi was sitting there with him.

  The two of them wore dour expressions and my appearance did nothing to lighten their moods. A half-eaten dish of cannelloni sat in front of Dominick; the spaghetti and meatballs Pietro had ordered was hardly touched. But they’d done all right with the carafe of red wine on the table: it was almost empty.

  I said, “All right if I join you?”

  “Sure, sure,” Dominick said without enthusiasm, “sit down.”

  I sat down. Pietro turned his seamed face toward me, and the look of his eyes was a shock. Lifeless, moist with pain and disillusionment—the eyes of a dog that has been whipped by a master he adored. I could feel their hurt penetrate deep inside me.

  He knows, I thought. Somehow he found out.

  Nobody said anything until a waiter had appeared and taken my order for the tortelli and a glass of Chianti. Then Dominick asked, “You got some news for us, hah?” His tone said that he was afraid of the answer.

  “No.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “But you have some for me.”

  He glanced at Pietro and said gloomily, “You already know, I think.”

  “Who told Pietro? You?”

  “Sì.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to, but he’s get it out of me. Old friends like us, is not so easy to keep secrets.”

  “Is better I know,” Pietro said. Flat, empty voice, belying the words.

  I wanted to say something comforting, meaningful. But all I could think of was, “I’m sorry, Pietro. I wish none of it had turned out this way.”

  “It don’t matter.” Another lie; it mattered a great deal. The knowledge of what his granddaughter was had shattered him, just as I’d feared. Why the hell hadn’t Dominick kept his vow of silence?

  There was a short awkward time during which none of us had any words. Dominick ended it by speaking to Pietro in a rapid-fire Neopolitan dialect, so I wasn’t able to follow much of it. When he was done Pietro shrugged, pushed back his chair, and went off in the direction of the bar. Old man’s stride, more shuffle than walk—old, old man.

  “What’d you say to him?” I asked Dominick.

  “Leave us alone for little while, go have some more wine.”

  “So you and I could talk.”

  He nodded. “The messages I leave for you, I mean I want to see you alone. Just you and me, private.”

  “I didn’t know Pietro was here with you or I wouldn’t have come.”

  “He don’t want to stay home, all alone. So we go to Spiaggia’s, we go to Sons of Italy, we come here.”

  “You wanted to tell me Pietro knows about Gianna.”

  Another nod. “You don’t find her yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you know why she’s disappear?”

 
“Part of the reason, maybe, but none of the details.”

  He waited. I didn’t elaborate.

  “You don’t want to tell me, hah?”

  “I don’t want Pietro to know.”

  “You think I tell him?”

  “You told him the truth about Gianna.”

  Dominick looked pained. “You think I do that on purpose? Cristo e Madonna, I rip my tongue out before I hurt Pietro like that.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He’s smart man, he’s hear about Gianna’s roommate and he’s see in my face something’s wrong ... he’s make good guesses. I try to lie, but I can’t do it—I can’t lie to Pietro.”

  I was being too hard on him; I squeezed his arm. “I don’t blame you, Dominick.”

  He muttered something in Italian. I let it pass; the words had the sound of a lament that was better left untranslated.

  The waiter brought my Chianti and a basket of hot garlic bread. I’d been ravenous when I came in; not anymore. Even the aroma of the garlic bread did nothing to revive my appetite.

  “About Gianna,” I said. “I’ll know more tomorrow or Sunday. Then I’ll give you the whole story.”

  “Could be she’s just go away, hah?” he said hopefully. “Nothing bad happen to her, she’s just go away?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You think she’s dead?”

  “I’m afraid she is.”

  “Somebody’s kill her like the roommate?”

  “If she is dead, yes.”

  “Who? Bisconte?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He drained the wine in his glass. “Maybe is better we never know,” he said. “Maybe is better you don’t find out tomorrow or Sunday.”

  “Better for Pietro, you mean?”

  “For Pietro, for Gianna’s mamma, Gianna’s sisters—everybody.”

  “You’re the one who begged me to find her, Dominick.”

  “So I make mistake. Now I think is better you stop.”

  “I can’t stop. It’s too late for that.”

  “Why?”

  “Justice, my friend. If she was murdered, whoever killed her has to pay for it.”

  “Justice,” he said. “Pah!”

  “You’d rather her killer got away free?”

  “I tell you—”

  He broke off because Pietro was returning, a half-full glass of red wine in one hand.

  “In the bar they tell jokes, they laugh too loud,” Pietro said when he reached our table. “I can’t listen to that. So I come back.” He sat down, heavily. “You talk about her, hah?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “You find out where she’s go? Why?”

  “No.”

  “But soon, good detective like you.”

  I had no comment on that.

  “You do me favor, hah? When you find her.”

  “If I can.”

  “Ask her why she’s do this thing, bring disgrace on her family, sell her body for money like that bionda tintura she’s live with. You do that for me?”

  “Don’t you want to ask her yourself?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to see her no more. Never. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  He nodded; drank deeply from his glass; lit one of his black cigars with hands that were not quite steady. And I realized, belatedly, that he was more than a little drunk. He said to Dominick, “You finished talking?”

  “We finished?” Dominick asked me.

  “Yes.”

  Pietro got to his feet. “We go now. Too much noise here, too much ilarità. We go where is quiet, drink more wine.”

  Dominick gave me an appealing look, one more silent plea to drop my hunt for Gianna. I gave nothing back to him. Just too damned late for everybody concerned.

  Dominick sighed, stood, and I watched the two of them move away. Stooped with the burdens they carried, robbed of the peace that should have eased their last few years; victims of a world they no longer understood. And that was another reason I couldn’t and wouldn’t quit. Hell, the main reason. Justice was an abstract; victims were reality. I do what I do for the sake of the victims.

  The waiter brought my tortelli. At first I didn’t want it, just sat there looking at the steaming plate. Then its aroma began to work on me and pretty soon I picked up my fork and began to eat.

  I ate it all, scraped the plate clean. Ate all the garlic bread, and asked for more and ate all of that. Drank all my wine too. And ordered a double dish of spumoni for dessert.

  Sometimes you can’t eat; sometimes you can’t stop eating.

  Sometimes the human animal makes no sense even to himself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SATURDAY WAS ANOTHER FINE, clear day, with no trace of Friday’s mist and low clouds. San Francisco weather: as changeable as a politician’s campaign promises. Read my lips ... no new taxes. Read my lips ... today we’ll have perfect weather except for the possibility of fog by noon, thundershowers by three P.M., and light hail by dinnertime.

  The sunny skies helped put me in a more cheerful frame of mind as I drove up to Diamond Heights, and may or may not have had something to do with the high good spirits I found waiting in the occupants of Kerry’s apartment. She and Cybil had coffee ready for me, and a plate of hot sweet rolls to go with it. Cybil seemed particularly perky today, with as much animation in her eyes and her voice as on the occasion of our first meeting years ago.

  While we were having the coffee and rolls, Cybil sprang a little surprise on me. “I’ve decided to start writing again,” she said.

  That was good news and I said so. She knew how much I admired her work for the pulps. “Short stories again?” I asked.

  “At first, to prove to myself I haven’t forgotten how to write fiction; it’s been more than three decades, you know. Then a novel, I think. I’ve always wanted to try a novel.”

  “Detective novel?”

  “Well, probably.”

  “You have an idea in mind?”

  Kerry said, “Don’t bother asking. She has one, but she won’t even tell me what it is.”

  “It’ll just be for my own amusement,” Cybil said. “I doubt if I could write a salable novel after all these years.” Thoughtful pause. “Then again, Rex Stout was publishing well into his eighties and P. G. Wodehouse at ninety-two. Why not Samuel Leatherman at seventy-seven?”

  She could do it. The old Cybil could do anything she set her mind to and it was the old Cybil doing the talking here.

  After breakfast we got her luggage loaded into the trunk of my car. Ordinarily, since I had business in Marin later in the day, I would have suggested that Kerry take her car too; but there was a stop I wanted to make in the city before I headed out to the Valconazzi ranch, so I’d already planned on making two trips over and back. Cybil was relatively talkative on the drive, but none of her conversation included the taboo word “marriage.” Kerry was no doubt elated.

  Larkspur, one of the old pocket communities south of San Rafael, is a pretty little town dominated by redwoods. The seniors complex was near the brief stretch of Magnolia Avenue that serves as the town center, a bigger and lusher setup than I’d expected. Seventy-five individual units, rec room, dining room, small clinic, swimming pool, and nine-hole putting green neatly arranged on five rustic acres. If you didn’t know it was a retirement complex you’d take it for a batch of expensive condos—a mitigating factor in Cybil’s decision to move there.

  We met some of the staff, were given the grand tour. Cybil’s apartment turned out to be four large rooms on the ground floor, with a fenced patio shaded by a massive redwood. Nice, private, comfortable.

  I did porter duty with the luggage. Then we drove to a small shopping center nearby, within walking distance for the complex’s residents who were carless, so Cybil could buy a few staples. It was eleven when we got back, and the movers showed up at eleven-thirty, half an hour early. Kerry and I were on our way fifteen minutes later; w
e’d have only been in the way if we’d hung around. I got a good-bye hug and kiss from Cybil. In solid again, all right.

  We stopped at Larkspur Landing for lunch, at a place where we could sit outside and watch the ferry boats making their slow way across the bay. It was one-ten when I dropped Kerry at her apartment.

  “If you get done with business early enough,” she said, “come on over. I haven’t had a man in my own bed in more than six months.”

  “Once you get me in, you may not be able to get me out again.”

  “Oh, I plan to keep you in for a long time. And I’m not just talking about my bed.”

  Bawdy woman. Hot damn.

  I was feeling pretty chipper as I drove over into Noe Valley; it had been a good day so far. But neither the feeling nor the quality of the day lasted much longer. Just until I got to Elizabeth Street. Just until I saw Eberhardt.

  BOBBIE JEAN’S SIX-YEAR-OLD Volvo was parked in front of his old two-story house. I’d have been surprised if it wasn’t. They spent most Saturdays together here; Eberhardt was a homebody at heart and Saturday was his day to putter, be a couch potato. Daytripping was reserved for Sundays, usually.

  Bobbie Jean answered my ring. Ambivalence in her greeting: she was glad to see me, but she knew why I was there without my having to say anything and it started her worrying again.

  “Eb’s in the backyard,” she said.

  “What kind of mood is he in?”

  “Not too good. He’s been ... distant, moody.”

  “Still not talking about me, his plans?”

  “No.”

  I went through the house, out the back door. Eberhardt was at the brick barbecue he’d built along the side fence, poking around inside it with an iron rod. In the air was the smell of burning charcoal flavored with mesquite. The smell and the sunstruck look of the yard yanked a grim memory out of my subconscious.

  Sunday afternoon in mid-August, five years ago. The two of us here in the yard, drinking beer, getting a little tight, while Eb prepares the coals for steaks. Down day for both of us: me because I’d had my license suspended for no good reason other than tight-assed city politics, him because he has dark things—the bribe he’d taken—preying on his mind. We step inside to get the steaks and potatoes ready, and that’s when the doorbell rings. Eb goes to answer it. I hear his voice exclaim, “What the hell—” and then the two gunshots, and I run in there and he’s down and the shooter stands framed in the doorway with the gun in his hand; and before I can react the shooter pops me once, high in the chest, and puts me on the floor too. He runs then and I crawl around in my own blood ... reach Eberhardt, see the hole in his belly and the wound on the side of his head, and I think he’s dead.... I think I must be dying too.... I think it’s finished for both of us ...