FROM THE SECOND-STORY WINDOW of the Kearny Detective Agency office Easy could see the Star of Manila pool hall and a narrow barber shop down on Columbus Avenue. The Filipino barber was sitting in his own chair with a guitar across his lap. A beautiful blonde call girl in a leopard-spotted dynel maxi walked by the shop on the arm of a black pimp in a yellow midi-length double-breasted coat. Fog was beginning to drop down out of the afternoon sky.
“Quite a panorama, isn’t it?” said the stalky dark man who came into the office where Easy had been waiting. “Kearny is down in Palo Alto de-bugging somebody, John. Can I help you?”
“Thought I’d stop in before I head over to Ross,” said Easy. “Anything new for me, Joe?”
Joe Cruz put his tongue over his upper teeth, shaking his head. “Nothing else on Jill Jeffers, alias Jillian Nordlin, or her car. Who’s in Ross?”
“Dean Constance,” said Easy.
“The C. B. De Mille of porn.” Cruz moved behind his wooden desk, dropped into his swivel chair.
“Know anything about him?”
“He grossed eight hundred thousand last year,” said Cruz. “The citizens of Ross are not too happy with him in their midst. Over there they think culture is something that’s done at the Art & Garden Center. People who make blue movies about Swedish nymphets being balled by motorcycle heavies they consider vulgar. You know how conservatives are.”
Easy rested his buttocks on the window sill. “That reminds me,” he said. “I may want you to watch somebody for me.”
“Who?” Cruz eased a memo pad over.
“Mitzi Levin,” said Easy. “She’s given me several interesting variations on the truth. I think she may know where Jill Jeffers really is.”
“Can’t you lean on her a little harder than you have?” asked the stalky detective as he wrote Mitzi’s name on the pad.
“I will,” answered Easy. “She tells me she left Jill at a party of Dean Constance’s on Saturday. We’ll see what Constance has to say.”
“Want me to put somebody on the Levin broad now?”
“Not yet,” said Easy.
Cruz left his chair, wandering to a bookcase. The top shelf contained not books but silver and gold loving cups. “I wonder if any of this business with your Jill has something to do with the Nordlin stash.”
“What stash?”
Polishing a trophy with the tip of his necktie, Cruz said, “I got all these for body building. The way I’ve been going the last couple of years, I’m afraid they’re going to come and ask for their cups back.” He set the silver trophy down. “There used to be rumors floating around that Nordlin had taken in quite a bit of extra dough during his years in office. Money from kickbacks, bribes, slush, and other under the counter political activities. All in cash, the kind of money you don’t tell the IRS about. A good part of it was supposed to be hidden away somewhere.”
“What would that have to do with Jill?”
Cruz said, “Maybe she took a few days off to go dig up some of daddy’s dough.”
Easy scratched at his shaggy head. “I don’t think so, Joe,” he said. “If she did, where would she go. Carmel?”
“Maybe.” Cruz gave a shrug. “I think the old senator also had a hideaway up north, someplace in Sonoma County. I don’t know where.”
“Can you find out?”
“Is it important?”
Easy grinned. “One never knows.”
Getting back behind his desk, Cruz made another note. “Think about that, John. Dean Constance makes almost a million off pornos. Old Nordlin made ten times that by being on the take. Does that tell you something?”
“Maybe we ought to make a dirty movie about graft.” Easy took one last look out the window. The barber was still playing the guitar. “I’ll talk to you again tonight sometime.”
“Do you know how to get over to Ross?” Cruz shook hands with Easy, led him to the door.
“Ross I can find,” said Easy.