My flight to Norfolk left on Wednesday. Roberta finished the transcript that morning so I could take it along.
She handed it to me, stapled neatly into a green folder, and demanded, “Do you really believe this, Tim?”
“Ellie’s on the up and up.”
“She may believe it all right, but that doesn’t make it true — all this seeing eye stuff.”
“Come on, Roberta — she’s convinced me.”
“I’ll just bet she did.”
I slapped the folder shut. “It’s not like that, Roberta, and you know it.”
“She’s leading you around by the nose. In fact, if that yarn is true she’s able to mess with you in a bigger way than any of the others.”
“What others?” I said incautiously.
“How about Lori? Or Anne, there was a gold-digger. And that little tramp Doreen. Even Ernie said you were a glutton for punishment that time —”
I grabbed the folder and fled. As a result I was an hour early for the plane. I spent the time usefully, skimming the typescript. While Ellie had been telling it I had in a sense hardly heard it. I had been too busy holding her hand, feeling with and for her. She was like a flower forcing its way up between two sidewalk slabs, searching for the light. I wanted to take care of her forever.
Now, surrounded by the hubbub of LaGuardia Airport, I could analyze it clinically. Tracking down Ruby Quartern meant forming an idea of how she ticked. Ellie’s picture must be a little distorted, no one ever sees a parent clearly, but it was invaluable. I thought about Ruby, a single mother, scraping a living by catering to who knows what nuttiness, running from town to town. The pressures on her must have been immense. Ellie had noticed some of them but surely not all.
And there I was thinking about Ellie again. Usually I don’t fall so hard. Lori, Doreen and so on had been distractions, surface annoyances. It was almost frightening now how deep in I was. I let myself go and enjoyed it to the hilt, immersing myself in a happy daydream of buying her a ring at Tiffany’s and proposing on one knee. Luckily they called my flight just then, or I would have sat there all day.
The last time I visited the Hampton Roads area was in the 50’s, when Norfolk was the Hong Kong of the Eastern seaboard. The town had changed some. A few bars had become discotheques or head shops, and the suburbs had sprawled. I found the Quartern house easily. It was a run-down place, a bit of flotsam caught between two subdivisions, definitely lower middle-class. I tried to imagine Ellie riding a bicycle across the balding lawn and couldn’t do it.
I banged on the weathered door and the tenant opened it. He wore striped pajama bottoms. I smelled stale beer on his breath. “Do you own or rent?” I said aggressively.
“Huh?”
“Do you own or rent this house? I represent Acme Siding and Shutter, and this month we’re offering a special deal on no-seam all-clad sculptured aluminum siding, in eighteen tasteful Williamsburg colors.”
“I rent,” he said, starting to shut the door.
I stuck my foot in. “Could you give me the name of your landlord? It can’t have escaped your attention, that this house could use new siding.”
He pondered slowly. “New siding. Would that take care of the roaches?”
Nothing, in my experience, takes care of roaches, but I said enthusiastically, “It’s sure to! An address or even just a phone number would be fine.”
“Lemme look.” He went away and came back with some envelopes, pre-addressed to a property management firm downtown. I copied the address, thanked him fluently, and wrung his hand before leaving. I love being creative.
It was too late now to call the management firm, so I found myself a room, in the recently renamed Apollo 7 Motor Lodge. More of our work than I care to think about involves lurking in or near hotel rooms, usually with a camera. This one was better than most New York City rooms, which is not saying much.
First thing next morning I was working the phone, checking in with Roberta, making an appointment with the local police. I left Bennegen Property Management until last. For them I did the credit check routine again. Mrs. Quartern had been an excellent tenant, they assured me. Rent paid on time every month in cash.
With the police lieutenant I was frank. The only other reasonable way to get a look at police files is to claim that it has to do with a security check. That works in smaller towns in New York state but I didn’t dare try it on here, in a town with so many ties to the military. What if I ran into a real G-man?
It was a waste of time anyway. Ruby Quartern wasn’t in any police record. No complaints, no traffic violations, not even a parking ticket. Even the Dowson kid’s complaint in ’65 had been tossed, probably dismissed as schoolgirl mischief. Just for good measure I had them check Ellie’s name. The shoplifting incident was there.
After lunch I drove to the Sunoco station. Ellie’s description of the manager implied a hulking bestial fellow, steaming with unnameable passions. Robert B. Candle turned out to be a small gray man, very shiny on top. If he was a beast he was a bald sheep — he had that long meek face. I watched while he rang up two quarts of Pennzoil for a customer. It was kind of interesting, to speculate what his kink might be.
When he turned to me I introduced myself and added, “I’m investigating the whereabouts of Mrs. Ruby Quartern.”
His grayish face turned white instantly, as if someone had twiddled his brightness control. His mouth opened but no words came out. I sighed. “Perhaps we could talk in your office.”
He nodded shakily, and opened the door into the repair bay. “Cy, take over the pump a bit, will you? I have to talk to this gentleman.” I followed him into the back room. It was a dim little cubicle, its shelves cluttered with decaying auto parts and the desk heaped with papers. There didn’t seem to be any convenient place to use for wild and innovative sex.
Candle sat in the desk chair, leaving me to stand. “Never heard of her,” he quivered.
“Oh come, Mr. Candle,” I said mildly. “Do I have to tell you about it? How her old car broke down and your tow truck brought it in? In the spring of ’63, I think that was. And the Rambler Nash, light gray with a red vinyl interior ...”
He moaned in terror. “You want money, right? How much you want?”
I straightened up indignantly. “Are you offering me a bribe? I’ll have you know I’m an agent of the —” I swallowed the name of the agency. “I ought to report you!”
“No, please! I didn’t mean it, I was just upset!”
I put on a show of simmering down. “We’re only trying to determine her whereabouts, Mr. Candle. The details of your business with Mrs. Quartern don’t interest the agency. Yet.”
“I don’t know where she is, I swear to god!”
“When did you see her last?” I perched on some cases of motor oil and took out my notebook.
It seemed that Ruby Quartern had become ‘different’ in the latter half of 1967. I pressed him to be more specific and Candle finally said, “Depressed, I guess. Drinking. She didn’t, uh, keep herself in shape any more.”
I decided I didn’t want to know the details, and asked about their last meeting. It had been after the New Year, and he had gone to her place after work. In early February when he returned the house was empty.
“Tell me about her place, that last time in January. Were the suitcases out? Any sign of packing?”
“No — I mean, it was such a dump, I don’t know.”
“What about in February? Was the furniture gone? “
“The house was empty — and the car was gone.” I could tell the loss of the car bothered him the most. The car was the key to this. You can lose a person, but a car is big. “Tell me all about the Rambler,” I said.
He was able to give me vehicle ID numbers, the mileage in l967, the brand name of the tires, the color of the floor mats — everything. As he recited the repair and maintenance record from memory I decided they must have done it in the back seat.
With something solid to go on I went back to the motel and phoned Roberta. She could set the wheels in motion at the various state car registries — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, the District, West Virginia, and Delaware for starters. The way I read it Ruby tried to be inconspicuous. An out-of-state license plate gets noticeable after a while. Wherever she was, she would update the car’s papers and license plate like a good citizen. Then I booked a flight home for tomorrow, Friday. It might take a few weeks for word to trickle in, and it would be pointless to hang around here for it.
I sat on the bed, my hand on the phone. I can never resist temptation. So I dialed the Plaza Hotel and asked for Ellie. She picked up almost immediately.
“It’s me, Tim. I’m in Norfolk.”
“Oh! Have — have you found her?”
“Not yet,” I said, a little nettled. What did she expect, a miracle? “I’m on the track of the Rambler. Your mom would never get rid of the car, would she?”
“No.” Ellie sounded positive. “She’d be stranded without it.”
“So, we find the car, we find Ruby. But it’ll take a little while yet. I’ll be back in town tomorrow. Will you have dinner with me?”
“I have a fitting at four,” she said. “How about afterwards, around 7:30?”
“Sounds good. Shall I pick you up? Oh, and tell me one more thing. How much did your mom usually drink?”
“You mean liquor? Not at all,” she said, puzzled.
“You’re sure.”
“Well, yeah. As far as I know.”
“There’s always that. Okay, that’s all. I’ll see you tomorrow.” If this were a divorce case that would be a line to explore — make the rounds of the local liquor stores with a photo, and lay out this drinking business nice and neat. But however much Ruby Quartern was putting away she wasn’t doing it here. It would have to remain another question mark for the moment.
I returned to the city and started preparations. I got a haircut, picked up my summer suit from the cleaners, had my shoes shined. My apartment, a studio in Murray Hill, was a hopeless dump. It hadn’t been cleaned in a year and I wasn’t going to do it now. Instead I tipped my garage man $5 to vacuum out my car. In a flush of crazy optimism I even bought some condoms. Even in my own mind I wasn’t sure how I wanted this first date to go. But it never hurts to be prepared — they taught us that in Boy Scouts.
At 7:30 on the nose I was double-parked in front of a garment workshop off Seventh Avenue. Ellie was prompt too. With a flash of shapely knees under her short skirt she strode down the steps and opened the passenger side door before I could help her in.
“I’m starving,” she announced. “Where are we going, Pico’s?”
“No, I thought we’d go to Chinatown. You like Chinese food?”
“I’ve never tried it.”
“You’re kidding, really?” She was still a small-town girl under that high-fashion gloss. “Then you’re in for a treat.”
Parking is always tough on Mott Street, but I persevered. If you cruise around and through the tangle of side streets sooner or later you get lucky and spot someone pulling out. The narrow sidewalks teemed with people, tourists and residents, so I held onto Ellie’s elbow. We strolled along slowly, annoying folks in a hurry behind us, so that she could take it all in.
“I never imagined there was a place like this in New York,” she said, gazing wide-eyed into a shop window. Shiny brown roasted ducks dangled from hooks inside. A Chinese with a huge cleaver sliced them up in double-quick time, just missing his fingertips with every whack. “It’s like another world.”
“Not much like the one you just left, huh?”
She smiled. “That one deals in illusion. This is real.”
I drew her arm through mine. “It’s real, but we’re not really inside it. We’re just tourists, white people taking in the local color. If you don’t speak the language you’re always outside.”
“You’ve been to Asia?”
“Yeah. Korea, Japan. Not China itself, that’s locked up tight, but Hong Kong. In fact, that’s where we’re going tonight.”
I pointed across the street, where the neon sign blinked “Hong Kong Harbor” in yellow and red. A goggle-eyed cement lion stood by the door, and menus in Chinese characters were taped in the window. Ellie stared at them and then at me. “And can you really read these?”
I laughed. “No, I use the English menu. Let’s go!”
I ordered all my favorite dishes, way too many for just the two of us but I wanted her to taste them all. The waiter brought forks but she insisted on trying chopsticks. Since I’m not too strong with them myself I switched to her side of the table to get her fingers lined up right. Bits of mu shu pork went flying everywhere and we laughed at our own clumsiness.
Suddenly I stopped laughing. When I looked down at her in the booth beside me, my heart seemed to swell in my chest. The words escaped before I thought. “Ellie, I love you.”
She crunched down on an egg roll. “How can you say that, when I’m going to need a fork after all?”
“Look at me — can’t you see it?”
Two little lines formed between her eyebrows. “I told you I’m not a mind reader.”
It was going sour. Hastily I changed the subject. “Tell me — tell me how you got into modeling.”
She looked at me, chewing. “Don’t tell me you have your tape recorder?”
I put down my chopsticks and covered my face. “I confess — it’s in the car.”
She laughed. “You are the nosiest person I ever met, Tim. You must have been a holy terror as a kid.”
“If I go back and get it you have to promise not to polish off the duck.”
“You better run, then.” She put another bite into her mouth. I never saw such a slim girl eat so well.