The usually malevolent California freeway gods must have been on new meds, for it was exactly six o’clock when I walked into the restaurant she’d named. It was in the Marina District, the kind of out-of-the-way place that she sought. Whereas television’s dark-haired and voluptuous Jennifer Gale was professional enough to welcome interest in her and her station, Jenny Galecki, a no-nonsense Polish girl from Chicago’s northwest side, sought privacy in her personal life. She chose restaurants where Jennifer Gale wouldn’t be stared at.
I knew to look in the darkest corner. She was there, in a beige suit that must have paled even the brightest oranges of the inorganic pumpkins she’d reported on that day.
We kissed, but not as long as the last time we’d seen each other.
She’d ordered me a single Scotch, neat. ‘I’ve been on the road for seven hours,’ I said. ‘This might knock me out.’
‘That’s OK. I live one block up. I can drag you there.’ She said it half-jokingly, watching my eyes to see my reaction.
I hid behind my drink, taking a small sip, though to my shame part of me wanted to wonder what it would be like to gulp the thing down and be dragged up the block.
‘You’re angry,’ she said after a moment. Jenny’s antennae were so very finely tuned.
‘Unsettled. A lying client.’
‘So, heading to Oregon?’ she asked.
‘The third of a trio of men I’ve been hired to look up.’ After making her promise that not one word of what I said would make the news, I told her about Rosamund Reynolds, Gary Halvorson, David Arlin and Dainsto Runney.
She leaned forward. ‘You think the third man, the preacher Runney, has also disappeared?’
‘The woman at his church was too vague about when he’d return. Until I see what I can learn up there, the only solid lead about the trio seems to be Arlin in Laguna Beach. There’s a cop there, a Lieutenant Beech …’
‘Beech, of the Beach?’ She laughed.
I laughed, too. We always laughed well together, Jenny and me.
‘Perhaps a delicate inquiry …?’ she asked.
‘From a foxy TV lady in San Francisco …?’
‘Might yield a little more information.’
‘Only as long as the foxy TV lady doesn’t go too far, or public – at least until I get up to Oregon.’
‘What can this mysterious Reynolds woman be up to?’ she asked.
‘It’s all I can think about.’
She began circling the rim of her own Scotch with a slow, suggestive forefinger. ‘Really? Nothing else?’
It was a perfectly formed forefinger, attached to a perfectly formed hand. ‘Well, perhaps something else did flit in and out of my mind.’ It was true enough; I can be a weak man. And though ours was an unformed relationship, we did have good history, Jenny and me.
The forefinger slowed. ‘Flit? That’s all it was, a flit?’
‘Perhaps a little more extended.’
The forefinger picked up the tempo just a little, ever so tantalizingly. ‘Extended?’ she whispered softly, teasing, sensing triumph.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. I had to look away from the mesmerizing forefinger.
‘What is it, Dek? What else is wrong?’
‘Not so much wrong.’
‘Amanda?’
‘We’re in touch,’ I said.
‘Your ever-present ghost.’
‘Yes.’
She reached across the table to touch the back of my hand. ‘I dream about my husband every night, especially about the last time I saw him. I told you once, remember? I was late for work and he was racing around the apartment packing, late himself to get to O’Hare, to a plane, to Iraq, to his death. I wake up in tears.’
‘You can’t do that, you know.’
‘Punish myself for brusqueness?’ She made a small laugh. ‘You know the difference between us, Dek? The only way I can live is in the present. No future. And God knows, my past hurts too much to want to think about. Yet it comes so very alive when I’m unguarded in my sleep. But you … you have a past that can become a future, a past that can become real again. Your ghost isn’t really a ghost, and that is very fine.’
My cell phone shattered the mood, whatever it was. ‘My elusive client, no doubt,’ I said, a man of dedicated professionalism and suddenly renewed self-control.
It wasn’t Rosamund calling. It was my pal, Leo Brumsky. ‘You’re not alone?’ he asked.
It was an odd thing for him to say. ‘Actually, no.’
‘Hmmm …’ He paused, as he does when he’s slithering toward something salacious. ‘That explains the turret’s being dark and my banging fruitlessly on your door for five minutes. You’re otherwise engaged. With Amanda?’
He was making no sense. Leo, always a romantic, always a believer in the possibility of righting old wrongs, thought I was inside the turret with my ex-wife.
‘I’m in California.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re here. You must be here.’ After the briefest of instants, he asked slowly, ‘Where … in … California, exactly?’
I could envisage the look spreading across his face. Five foot six, one hundred and forty pounds and no doubt garbed as always in a preposterous Hawaiian shirt and neon-colored trousers, the man knew how to offer up the filthiest of smirks no matter how ludicrous his costume.
‘Middle of the state.’ I was speaking to the phone but I couldn’t take my eyes off the forefinger. It had paused, barely moving side to side, but still restless, teasing, promising. I doubted Jenny was aware she was doing it.
‘San Francisco!’ he announced.
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘Tell Miss Galecki I love her.’
‘Leo says he loves you,’ I said to Jenny.
‘Tell him I love him, too, and that I’m waiting for him to come and rescue me.’
‘Listen,’ Leo said, ‘it’s nuts leaving this thing in your Jeep. People steal them for their copper content.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your furnace. It’s so small anyone can get at it. All they’d have to do is peel off some of the duct tape you’ve used to patch your top—’
‘Leo! Make sense.’
‘The furnace you left in your Jeep. It’s in a cardboard box that’s marked “Furnace,” an invitation to any thief—’
‘My new furnace can’t fit in the Jeep,’ I cut in, trying not to shout.
The restaurant had gone silent. Every head had turned toward me.
‘I’m looking right at it,’ he said.
‘A cut-down furnace box stuffed inside …’ My mind flashed through the possibilities of why I’d been sent out of town. The most horrible of set-ups suddenly seemed probable.
‘Get out of there, Leo!’ I yelled into the phone. ‘Get out of there fast.’