FOG CAME SWIRLING UP over the dark edges of the high black cliffs, cold as the black night ocean.
Easy was standing next to his car watching the chunky middle-aged gas station man rub his windshield with a blue paper towel.
“I’ll do this anyway,” the attendant said. “Even if you’re not buying any gas. Keeps me in shape.”
“What about this girl?” Easy was holding a photo of Jill Jeffers.
The station man crumpled the dirt towel into a jagged ball, came back to take another look at the picture. “Boy, there’s somebody who’d make you cream in your jeans for sure.”
“Have you seen her? She drives a red ’68 Porsche.”
“They always do, the pretty ones,” said the chunky man. His left canine tooth was missing and when he smiled he poked the tip of his tongue through the gap. “You get class conscious working in proximity to Carmel. I try to keep my place. I never get wise with any bimbo who isn’t in an American car.”
“Whether or not you tried to pick her up, did you see her?”
He shook his chunky head. “Wish I had. I like to look, even when I can’t touch. Know what I mean?”
Easy got back into his Volkswagen and drove on toward Carmel. None of the gas stations on the coast highway near the town had produced anyone who remembered seeing Jill Jeffers.
Parking on a nameless Carmel side street beneath a pine tree, Easy got out. There was a tea shop immediately to his left, with arched windows and strawberry-patterned cafe curtains. Old women in silk dresses were eating sensible dinners by candlelight. Next came an art supply store with a red tile roof and then a souvenir shop with its windows filled with abalone shell ashtrays and decorative pine cones.
Around the corner was a small whitewashed adobe hotel, built around a tiled courtyard. The hotel clerk was behind a carved-wood check-in desk, wearing what appeared to be part of somebody else’s bullfighter suit. “Good evening, sir,” he said, glancing up from the local shopping paper he was studying.
Producing the picture, Easy asked, “Has this girl been here within the last week? I’m an investigator from Los Angeles. We’re trying to locate her.”
The dark-haired clerk studied the photo. “Why, that’s …” He stopped.
“That’s who?”
“I was going to say she looks quite a bit like Senator Nordlin’s daughter. I see there’s a different name attached to the picture.”
“Has this girl been here?”
“No, sir. If you were better acquainted with Carmel you’d know our hotel is rather a sedate one. Not a likely place for a single young girl to stay.”
“What would be a likely unsedate hotel?”
“You might try the Casa Piña, two blocks toward the beach on your right,” suggested the man in the sequined coat.
Easy tried that and two other inns. No one admitted seeing Jill Jeffers or registering her, though at the Casa Piña the chubby desk man showed the same guarded flash of recognition the sequined clerk at the first hotel had evidenced. After the hotels and inns Easy checked the cocktail lounges.
When he stepped out of an ivy-fronted bar on a side street near the ocean two large men left the shadows of a sidewalk walnut tree and drifted toward him through the cold night mist. They were as tall as Easy and each was considerably heftier. Both wore double-breasted blazers and bell-bottom pants. Each had his right fist shoved in his right blazer pocket.
“Mr. Easy, isn’t it?” asked the one on the left.
“Nope,” answered Easy. “My name is Frank Luther Mott and I’m just passing through your town on my way back home to Salinas.”
“Ha, ha,” said the one on the right.
“We mean you no immediate trouble, Mr. Easy,” explained his partner. He stepped close enough to Easy to nudge him with his pocketed revolver. “Won’t you come for a little walk with us?”
“Where?”
“Down to the beach. It’s sparsely frequented tonight, making it a good place for a talk.”
“I can talk to you right here.”
“We’re not the ones who want a conversation with you. Please come along now, Mr. Easy.”
The gun barrel nudged harder. Easy turned and commenced walking downhill toward the black water.
The scent of jasmine and sandalwood blended with the thick hanging fog. Standing a few feet from Easy on the moon-colored sand was a tall slender man of forty. He was tanned and narrow-faced, wearing a short-cropped blond wig. He had the same color hair as the cowboy actor’s fat poodle. “I thought we had satisfied your curiosity via the telephone, Mr. Easy,” he said in his careful voice.
“You’re Montez, huh?”
“I am Cullen Montez, yes. Private secretary to Leonard Nordlin.”
One of the large men flanking Easy asked, “Is the senator any better, Cullen?”
Montez said, “I’m afraid not, Neil.” To Easy he said, “I can assure you Jill Jeffers, as she now prefers to call herself, is not in Carmel. Nor has she been here recently.”
“I’m trying to confirm that.”
“Let me make something quite clear to you, Mr. Easy.” Montez touched his fingertips to the corner of his eye. “My employer is quite seriously ill. Your barging around Carmel, waving Jillian’s picture, stirring up speculation … none of it helps, Mr. Easy.”
“The guy in the trick suit,” said Easy.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The hotel clerk who looks like Zorro on a bad day. He’s the one who told you I was in town.”
“You can see what I mean now, can’t you?” Montez let his little finger slide down from his eye to rest at the edge of his small thin mouth. “Everything gets back to us quite rapidly. So far I’ve been able to screen all your talk about Jillian’s supposed vanishment from Mr. Nordlin.”
“I don’t have to ask any more questions …”
“Splendid.”
“If you’ll co-operate with me, Montez.”
“I am co-operating. I’ve come out at this uncomfortable hour to have this amiable chat.”
“Jill called someone from Carmel this past Saturday,” said Easy. “I want to know where she was.”
“Has it occurred to you Jillian or this person she supposedly called may have been lying?”
“It occurs to me everybody I’ve talked to all day may be lying,” Easy told him. “You seem to be plugged in to the village communication system here in Carmel, Montez. Why don’t you ask around?”
Montez smiled a small thin smile and the tip of his little finger slipped into his mouth momentarily. “I already have. I’m concerned about the girl’s fate much more than you. Should she be in trouble, which is highly likely knowing her, it could well produce unpleasant news. Unpleasant news of such a magnitude I might not be able to keep it from my employer.”
“You’re afraid she’s killed herself?”
“With Jillian, whom I know a good deal better than you or your anxious client, the possibility of suicide is always present. I needn’t cite the tragic maternal precedent.”
Easy shifted one foot on the gritty sand. “So what did you find out?”
“It is as I told you. Jillian has been nowhere near Carmel in quite some time,” Montez assured him. “Now I suggest you return to your unkempt little VW and tool back to the Land of the Angels, Mr. Easy.”
Easy looked from the sweet-smelling Montez to the two men framing him. “What happens if I don’t?”
“Ha, ha,” repeated one of the large men.
Fog came spinning between Montez and Easy, briefly blurring the private secretary. “A great many unpleasant things can reward stubbornness.” Montez took his hand away from his face and reached inside his suit. From a flat black wallet he took ten fifty-dollar bills. “Would five hundred dollars give you sufficient reason to go away?”
Easy caused a frown to touch his forehead. “I have a client.”
“You won’t be betraying your client, since I can positively assure you Jillian is nowhere near Carmel.” He pushed the ten bills toward Easy.
Finally Easy said, “Okay, I’ll go look someplace else.”
Montez’s smile grew a fraction broader. “Very good, Mr. Easy. You’ve done the sensible thing.”
Easy took the money and put it in his own wallet. “Good night, all,” he said. Patting both the large men on the shoulder, Easy backed off. He pivoted, went walking across the sand.
When he retrieved his Volkswagen, he ran a finger across the hood. “You’re not unkempt,” he said, getting behind the wheel. He drove off.
After he was certain he wasn’t being tailed, Easy headed the car inland toward the Carmel Valley where the private hospital of Dr. James Duncan Ingraham was located.