“Yeah? Who is it?” Tim unlocked the door.
“Me, Gus.”
“Come on in. Some commotion around here, huh?”
“I’ll say.”
“What’s up?”
“I want to give you something toward next month’s rent.”
“The rent? I thought you was gonna give the place up.”
“Nope.” There was a note of pride in his declaration. “I’m staying. I got me a roommate.”
“And who might that be?”
“Sebastian, the brush man. He’s decided to leave the Blind Center and put in with me.”
Tim grunted. “You sure you can afford it?”
“Sure I can!” Gus said indignantly. “I’ve got plenty of money.”
“Okay, then give me some.”
“Will fifty hold it until I get the rest?”
“Sure, I’m easy. Let me give you a receipt.”
I risked a look through the curtain. Tim rummaged on his cluttered formica table for a receipt book. Gus wandered around the room, reading the inscriptions on the ashtrays.
“Raining like a bastard out there,” he commented. “This is the strangest June we’ve ever had. I got to go over to the Superette in it and get some TV dinners so they’ll be defrosted by lunch time.”
I suppressed a snort of laughter. Sebastian had been right: Someone would have to teach Gus to cook.
Apparently Tim wasn’t much of a hand in the kitchen, either. He merely said, “Getting all settled up there, huh?”
“Sure am. It’s a nice place. I never appreciated it when I lived there with Molly. By the way, the funeral’s tomorrow. You coming?”
“You bet.”
“I hope the rain quits. Folks won’t want to drive all the way to Colma if it doesn’t.” Colma was the necropolis south of the city.
“Of course they will,” Tim said, writing laboriously. “Molly had lots of friends.”
“Yeah, she did.” There was a note of woe in Gus’s voice that could have been either for Molly or for his own relatively friendless state. He sidled across the room, glancing over his shoulder at Tim, who had his back turned.
Gus stopped in front of a bookcase by the door. With a final glance at Tim, he reached out and grabbed the nearest ashtray. Quickly, he stuffed it in his jacket pocket.
This time I had to suppress a gasp.
Tim turned. “There you go.” He extended the receipt. “See you pay up on time every month — and no wild parties, you hear?” He laughed boisterously.
Gus departed, giggling.
I stepped out of the closet. “Well, that’s a surprise. The last I heard, both he and Sebastian were broke.”
“Beats me where they’re getting it from. And the two of them as roommates — I bet Molly would’ve had a fit.”
“Why?”
“Molly didn’t approve of anything Gus did, unless she told him to do it first.”
“He’s developed an independent attitude rather rapidly.” A suspicion formed in my mind. “Tim, you’ve known both Gus and Molly a long time, right?”
“Since I first took over as manager here, about fifteen years ago. Of course, they lived together back then.”
“Then you must remember when she threw him out.”
“I sure do. She rented him that room up the hill and moved him lock, stock and barrel. At first he put up an awful howl, camped out on the front steps for a couple of nights. But once he got settled in up there, he seemed to like it.”
“Do you know why she threw him out?”
Tim swigged beer and belched. “Sure. She couldn’t take any more.”
“Any more what?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. Tell me!”
“Gus is a kleptomaniac — one of those folks who steals things and can’t help it.”
Of course. He had to be.
“Believe me,” Tim went on, “it was hard on Molly all those years while she worked at Knudsen’s. He’d come in to see her and steal stuff. A couple of times he got caught. She covered up for him and paid them back for the stuff he took. I guess it got to her, though, when she retired and had to be around him all the time. Anyway, she finally lost her temper and gave him the old heave-ho.”
I remembered Sebastian asking Gus if he’d taken some brushes off his parka. And Gus’s feigned innocence. It was disturbing.
“What’s wrong?” Tim asked. “He steal something from you?”
“He may very well have. He did from you.”
“Oh, yeah?” He glanced around suspiciously.
“Yes. Next time you see him, you should ask him for your ashtray from the Ensenada Inn.”
“Well, I’ll be darned. I’ll be darned.”
When I had washed up and gotten ready to leave, Tim was still shaking his head and looking anxiously at his beloved ashtrays.
19
There were no police cars, unmarked or otherwise, at the Blind Center. That could mean they had already picked up Neverman for questioning in his wife’s death. On the other hand, they might not be aware that this was his temporary abode. Either way, I was fairly sure I wouldn’t run into him here.
I hurried down the path to the church, keeping close to the shrubbery. The basement was cold and damp, and Neverman’s room was deserted. I went in and inspected the butts in the ashtray. They smelled long dead. The bag on the floor felt clammy and unslept-in. Neverman probably hadn’t come home last night.
To get a better feel for my prime suspect, I thumbed through the books on the crate. They were from the public library: a thick pictorial on the works of Paul Gauguin, a biography of the same artist, and several travel books on Tahiti. I opened the pictorial to a color plate. It was all there: the bold hues and graceful shapes which Neverman had tried to imitate in his dreadful mural.
Everyone, I thought, had his dream, however improbable. Did Neverman imagine an arty idyll on a tropic beach, bought and paid for with the proceeds of ripped-off gloves and shoelaces? And Clemente — did he see fencing as a way to escape this bureaucratic dumping ground of the maimed and the flawed, where red tape and denials of grants brought frustration and failure?
I shut the book.
The storeroom down the hall was crammed with cartons bearing the names of cosmetics manufacturers, apparel houses, and electronics firms. I found transistor radios and calculators, power tools and paint brushes, cashmere sweaters and crepe pans. I pawed through several cartons of stereo components, a stack of individually packed electric crock pots, and boxes of costume jewelry. All of it undoubtedly was stolen, but Clemente undoubtedly had bogus receipts to deny the fact. Although I stood in a treasure trove of hot merchandise, I might never be able to prove it.
A padlocked door at the back of the room must lead to more loot. I took out my collection of keys and tried the smaller ones in the lock. After a few minutes, it yielded.
The room was wall-to-wall wooden crates. I forced the lid on one and looked inside.
Fat green bottles with red seals. The distinctive packaging of Tanqueray gin. I lifted one and almost dropped it, as Mr. Moe had last night.
This gin had to be part of the two forty-foot container-loads stolen last week from Circle Wharf and Warehouse. It would retail at around four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Clemente, Neverman, and Mr. Moe would have invested a maximum of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the goods — the one-third of retail value that thieves customarily demanded but seldom got. No matter who they unloaded this gin to, they could easily double that investment.
I stared at the green bottle, pondering Mr. Moe’s role in all this.
A good drop for stolen goods was a place where many trucks unloaded cargo. A thief could offload his merchandise, then leave. The fence would be nearby in another truck. If no one resembling the law displayed interest in the hot goods, the fence would merely drive up and take it away to a permanent drop. The temporary drop — on the sidewalk — minimized the contact between thief and fence, thus safeguarding against arrest.