THE MOVERS had come for my office furniture. All that remained was for me to haul a few cartons to McCone Investigations’ nearly new van. I hefted one and carried it down to the foyer of All Souls’ big Victorian, then made three round trips for the others. Before I went downstairs for the last time I let my gaze wander around the front room that for years had been my home away from home. Empty, it looked battle-scarred and shabby: the wallpaper was peeling; the ceiling paint had blistered; the hardwood floors were scrapped; there were gouges in the mantel of the nonworking fireplace.
A far cry from the new offices on the waterfront, I thought, but still I’d miss this room. Would miss sitting in my swivel chair in the window bay and contemplating the sagging rooflines of the Outer Mission district or the weedy triangular park below. Would miss pacing the faded Oriental carpet while talking on the phone. But most of all I would miss the familiar day-to-day sounds of the co-op that had assured me that I was among friends.
Only in the end friends here had been damned few. Now none were left. Time to say goodbye. Time to move on the McCone Investigations’ new offices on one of the piers off the Embarcadero, next to the equally new offices of Altman & Zahn, Attorneys-at-Law.
I took the last carton downstairs.
Ted’s old desk still stood in the foyer, but without his personal possessions—particularly the coffee mug shaped like Gertrude Stein’s head and the campy lamp fashioned from a nest-stockinged mannequin’s leg—it was a slate wiped clean of the years he had presided there. Already he’d be arranging those treasures down at the pier. I set the box with the others and, both out of curiosity and nostalgia, went along the hall to the converted closet under the stairs that had been my first office.
Rae Kelleher, its recent occupant, had already taken her belongings to McCone Investigations. With relief I saw she’d left the ratty old armchair. For a moment I stood in the door looking at each familiar crack in the walls; then I stepped inside and ran my hand over the chairs back where stuffing sprouted. How many hours had I sat there, honing my fledgling investigator’s skills?
A cardboard box tucked under the angle of the staircase caught my eye. I peered at it wondering why Rae had left it behind, and saw lettering in her hand: “McCone Files.” Early ones, they must be. I’d probably neglected to remove them from the cabinet when I transferred my things upstairs. I pulled the box toward me, sat down in the armchair, and lifted the lid. A dry, dusty odor wafted up. On the files’ tabs I saw names: Albritton, DiCesare, Kaufmann, Morrison, Smith, Snelling, Whelan, and many more. Some I recognized immediately, others were only vaguely familiar, and about the rest I hadn’t a clue. I scanned them, remembering—
Morrison! That damned case! It was the only file I hadn’t been able to close in all my years at All Souls.
I pulled it from the box and flipped through. Interesting case. Marnie Morrison, the naïve young woman with Daddy’s American Express card. Jon Howard, the “financier” who had used her to help him scam half the merchants in San Francisco. And Hank in turn had used the case’s promise to lure me into taking the job here.
But I hadn’t been able to solve it.
Could I solve it now?
Well, maybe. I was a far better investigator than when I’d operated out of this tiny office. The hundreds of hours spent honing my skills had paid off; so had my life experiences, good and bad. I picked up on the facts that I might not have noticed back then, could interpret them more easily, had learned to trust my gut-level instincts, no matter how far-fetched they might seem.
I turned my attention to the file.
Well, there was one thing right off—the daily phone calls Jon Howard had made to the car dealership in Walnut Creek. When I’d driven out there and talked with its manager, neither he nor his salesman could remember the memorable young couple.
I took a pen form my purse, made a note of the dealership’s name, address, and phone number, then read on.
And there was something else—the conversation I’d had with the salesman at European Motors here in the city. My recent experience with buying a “pre-owned” van for the agency put a new light on his comments.
My office phone had been disconnected the day before, and the remaining partners would frown on me placing toll calls on All Souls’ line. Quickly I hauled the file box out to where my other cartons sat, threw on my jacket, and headed downhill to the Remedy Lounge on Mission Street.
The Remedy had long been a favorite watering hole for the old-timers at All Souls. Brian, the owner, extended us all sorts of courtesies—excluding table service for anyone but Rae, who reminded him of his dead sister, and including running tabs and letting us use his office phone. When I got there the place was empty and the big Irishman was watching his favorite soap opera on the TV mounted above the bar.
“Sure,” he said in answer to my request, “use the phone all you want. Yours is turned off already?”
“Right. It’s moving day.”
Brian’s fleshy face grew melancholy. He picked up a rag and began wiping down the already polished surface of the bar. “Guess I won’t be seeing much of you guys anymore.”
“Why not? The bar’s on a direct line between the new offices and the Safeway where we all shop.”
He shrugged. “People always say stuff like that, but in the end they drift away.”
“We’ll prove you wrong,” I told him, even thought I suspected he was right. “We’ll see.” He pressed the button that unlocked the door to his office.
At his desk I opened my notebook and dialed the number of Ben Rudolph Chevrolet in Walnut Creek. I reached their used-car department. The salesman’s answer to my first question confirmed what I already suspected. His supervisor, who had worked there since the late seventies, was out to lunch, he told me, but would be back around two.
Five minutes later I was in the van and on my way to the East Bay.
Walnut Creek is a suburb of San Francisco, but a city in its own right, sprawling in a broad valley in the shadow of Mount Diablo. When I’d traveled there on the Morrison case more than a decade earlier, it still had a small-town flavor: few trendy shops and restaurants in the downtown district; only one office building over two stories; tracts and shopping centers, yes, but also, semi-rural neighborhoods where the residents still kept horses and chickens. Now it was a hub of commerce, with tall buildings whose tinted and smoked glass glowed in the afternoon sun. There was a new cultural center, a restaurant on nearly every corner, and the tracts went on forever.
Ben Rudolph Chevrolet occupied the same location on North Main Street, although its neighbors squeezed more tightly against it. As I parked in the customer lot I wondered why years ago I had neglected to call the phone number the SFPD had supplied me. If I’d phoned ahead rather than just driven out here, I’d have discovered that the dealership maintained separate lines for its new- and used-car departments. And I’d have known that Jon Howard’s daily calls weren’t made because he was hot on the trail of a snappy new Corvette.
I went directly to the manager of the used-car department, a ruddy-faced, prosperous-looking man named Dave Swenson. Yes, he confirmed, he’d worked there since seventy-eight. “Only way to survive in this business is to stick with one dealership, dig in, create your own clientele.”
“I’m looking for someone who might’ve been a salesperson here in the late seventies and early eighties.” I showed him my I.D. “Handsome man, dark hair and mustache, late twenties. Good build. Below average height. His name may have been Jon Howard.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I know the fella you’re talking about, but got it backwards. His first name was Howard John.”
Howard John—simple transposition. The salesman at European Motors had told me he knew enough about used cars to sell them, and he’d been correct. “John’s not working here anymore?”
“Hell, no. He was fired over a dozen years ago. I don’t recall exactly when.” Swenson tapped his temple. “Sorry, the old memory’s going.”
“But you remembered him right off.”
“Well, he was that kind of guy. A real screw-up, always talking big and never doing anything about it, but you couldn’t help but like him.”
“Talking big, how?”
“Ah, the usual. He was studying nights, gonna get his MBA, set up some financial company, be somebody. He’d have a big house in the city, a limo, boats and planes, hobnob with all the right people—you know. All smoke and no fire, Howie was, you had to hand it to him, he could be an entertaining fellow.”
“And then he was fired.”
“Yeah. It was stupid, it didn’t have to happen. The guy was producing; he made sales when nobody else could. What Howie did, he took a vacation to Mammouth to ski. When his week was up, he started calling in, saying he as sick with some bug he caught down there. This went on for weeks, and the boss got suspicious, so he checked out Howie’s apartment. The manager said he hadn’t been back since he drove off with his ski gear the month before. So a few days after that when Howie strolled in here all innocent and business-as-usual, the boss had no choice but to can him.”
“What happened to him? Do you know where he’s working now?”
Swenson stared thoughtfully at me. “You know, I meant it when I said I liked the guy.”
“I don’t mean him any harm, Mr. Swenson.”
“No?” He waited.
Quickly I considered several stories, rejected all of them, and told Swenson the truth. He reacted with glee, laughing loudly and slapping his hand on his desk. “Good for Howie! At least he got a few weeks of good life before everything went down the sewer.”
“So can you tell me where I can find him?”
“I still don’t know why you want him.”
I hesitated, unsure myself as to why I did. No one was looking for Howard John any more, and the organization that had assigned me to find him had ceased to exist. Finally I said, ”When you have a sale pending that you think is a sure thing and then if falls through, does it nag at you afterwards?”
“Sure, for years, sometimes. I wonder what I did wrong, why it didn’t fly.”
“I’m the same way about my cases. This is my last open file from the law firm where I used to work. Closing it will tie off some loose ends.”
“Well…” Swenson considered some more. “Okay. I don’t know if Howie’s still there, but I saw him working another lot about three months ago—Roy’s Motors, up in Concord.”
Concord was a city to the north. I thanked Swenson and hurried out to the van.
Concord, like Walnut Creek, had developed into a metropolis since I once worked a case at its performing arts pavilion, but the windswept frontage road where Roy’s Motors was located was a throwback to the early sixties. An aging shopping center with a geodesic dome-type cinema and dozens of mostly dead stores adjoined the used-car lot; both were almost devoid of customers. Faded plastic flags fluttered limply above Roy’s stock, which consisted mainly of vehicles that looked as though they’d welcome a trip to the auto dismantler’s; a sign proclaiming it HOME OF THE BEST DEALS IN TOWN creaked disconsolately. I could make out a man sitting inside the small sales shack, but his features were obscured by the dirty window glass.
A young couple were wandering through the lot, stopping here and there to examine pick-up trucks. After a few minutes they displayed more than passing interest in a canary-yellow Ford, and the man got up and came out of the shack. He was on the short side and running to paunch, with thinning dark hair, a brushy mustache, and a face that once had been handsome. Howard John?
As he approached the couple, the salesman held himself more erect and sucked in his stomach; his step took on a jaunty rhythm and a charismatic smile lit up his face. He shook hands with the couple, began expounding on the truck. He laughed; they laughed. He helped the woman into the cab, urged the man in on the driver’s side. The chemistry was working, the magic glowing. This, I was sure, was the man who years before had scammed the greedy merchants of San Francisco.
A few short weeks of living like the high rollers, I thought, then dismissal from a good job and a series of steps down to this. How did he go on, with the memory of those weeks ever in the back of his mind? How did he come to his windswept lot every day and put himself through the paces?
Well, maybe his dreams—improbable as they might seem—had survived intact. He’d done it once, his reasoning might go, and he could do it again. Maybe Howard John still believed that he was only occupying a way station on the road to the top.
But what about Marnie Morrison?
I found Howard John’s residence by a method whose simplicity and effectiveness have never ceased to amaze me: a look-see into the phone book. The listing was in two names, and the wife’s was Marnie.
The shabby residential street was not far from the used-car lot: a two-block row of identical shoebox-style tract homes of the same vintage as the shopping center. The pavement was potholed and the houses on the west side backed up on a concrete viaduct but big poplars, arched over the street and, in spite of the hum of nearby freeway traffic, it had an aura of tranquility. The house I was looking for was painted mint green and surrounded by a low chain link fence. A sign on its gate said SUNNYSIDE DAYCARE CENTER, and in the yard beyond it sat an assortment of brightly colored playground equipment.
It was close to five o’clock; for the next hour I watched a steady stream of parents arrive and depart with their offspring. Ten minutes after the last had left a woman came out of the house and began collecting the playthings strewn in the yard. I peered through my shade-dappled windshield and recognized an older, heavier version of Marnie Morrison. Clad in an oversized sweatshirt and leggings that strained over her ample thighs, she moved slowly, stopping now and then to wipe sweat from her brow. When she finished she trudged inside.
So this was what Marnie had become since I’d last seen her: the overworked, prematurely aged wife of an unsuccessful used-car salesman, who operated a daycare center to make ends meet. And one of those ends was her periodic hundred-dollar atonement to her parents’ favorite charity for the credit-card binge that had bought her a few weeks of high living and dreams.
Unsure as to why I was doing it, I continued to watch the mint green house. I’d found Marnie. Why didn’t I give up and go back to the city? There were things I should be doing at the new offices, things I should be doing at home.
But I wanted an end to the story, so I stayed where I was.
Half an hour later a Ford Bronco passed me and pulled into the John’s driveway. Howard got out carrying a bouquet of pink carnations. He let himself into the yard, stopping to pick up a stuffed bear that Marnie had missed. He held the bear at arm’s length, gave it a jaunty grin, and tucked it under his arm, his step was light as he moved toward the door. Before he got it open his wife appeared, now dressed in a gauzy caftan, and enveloped him in a welcoming embrace.
I’d reached the end of the tale. Leaving Marnie and Howard to their surviving dreams and illusions, I drove back to All Souls for the last time.
The big Victorian was mostly dark and totally silent. Only the porch light and another far back in the kitchen shone. It was about eight o’clock; none of the remaining partners lived in the building, and they rarely spent more time there than was necessary. The new corporation they’d formed had the property up for sale and would move downtown as soon as a buyer was found.
Moving on, all of us.
I was about to haul the cartons I’d left in the foyer down to the van when I heard a sound in the kitchen—the familiar creak of the refrigerator door. Curiosity aroused, I went back there, walking softly. The room was dim, the light coming from a single bulb in the sconce over the sink. A figure turned from the fridge, glass of wine in hand. Hank.
He started nearly dropping the glass. “Jesus, Shar!”
“Sorry, I’m not up to talking to any of the new guard tonight, so I tiptoed. Why aren’t you down at the pier helping everybody shove the new furniture around?”
“I was, but nobody could make up their mind where it should go, and I foresaw a long and unpleasant relationship with a chiropractor.”
“So you came here?”
He shrugged. “Why not? You want some wine?”
“Sure. For old times’ sake.”
Hank went to the fridge and poured the last of the so-so jug variety that had been an All Souls staple. He handed it to me and motioned for me to sit at the table by the window. As we took our places I realized that they were identical to those we’d occupied the first afternoon I’d come here.
I said, “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“You haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“I meant to be gone hours ago, but wait till you hear my news!” I explained about closing the Morrison file.
He shook his head. “You do believe in typing up loose ends. So what about those two—do you think they’re happy?”
I hesitated. “What’s happy? It’s all relative. The guy still brings her flowers. She still dresses up for him. Maybe that was enough too.”
“Maybe.” He took a long pull at his wine, took a longer look around the kitchen. His expression grew melancholy. This room and this table had been a big part of Hank’s life since leaving law school.
“Don’t,” I said, “or you’ll get me going.”
His eyes moved to the window, scanning the lights of downtown. After a moment they stopped and his lips curved into a smile. I knew he was looking at the section of waterfront where the law firm of Altman & Zahn had recently rented offices next to McCone Investigations on a renovated pier. We finished our wine in silence. Around us the big house creaked and groaned, as it did every evening when the day’s warmth faded. I felt my eyes sting, blinked hard. Only an incurable romantic would find significance in tonight’s particular creaks and groans. And I, of course, had not a romantic bone in my body.
So why had the last creak sounded like “goodbye?”
Hank drained his glass and stood. Carried both to the sink, where he rinsed them carefully and set them on the drain board. “In answer to your earlier question,” he said, “I’m here because I forgot something.”
“Oh? What?”
He came over and rapped his knuckles on the table where we’d eaten and drunk, played games and talked, celebrated and commiserated, fought and made up, and—now—let go. “This table and chairs’re mine. Marin County Flea Market, the week after we founded All Souls. They’re going along.”
“To our joint conference room?”
I nodded.
“Then give me a hand with them, will you?”
I stood, grinning, “Sure, but only if…”
“If what?”
It was a stupid sentimental decision—one I was sure to regret. “Only if you’ll give me hand with that ratty armchair in my former office. I can’t imagine I forgot it.”