“Why?”
“There were reports of prowlers in the neighborhood, a burglary down on Cragmont. He said the gun was for protection.”
“But you don't think so?”
“I don't know what to think.”
“Has he ever threatened to use it on himself?”
“No. But I don't like the idea of it in the house. You can't blame me, can you?”
I didn't say anything. It wasn't a question I could answer.
“Then, there's this obsession with his father,” Mrs. Kiskadon said. “It's just not healthy.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it isn't. It's all he talks about lately, all that seems to interest him. He spent close to two thousand dollars collecting all of his father's writings, and now he wants to spend God-knows-how-much more on a private investigation. We're not rich, you know. We're not even well off anymore.”
I had nothing to say to that either.
She said, “You're not even getting anywhere, are you? How could you after all those years?”
“I might be,” I said carefully.
“I don't care if you are. What does it matter why Harmon Crane shot himself? It's Michael I care about. It's me. Don't think my life hasn't been hell this past year because it has.”
“So you want me to quit my investigation.”
“Yes. It's foolish and it's only feeding his obsession.”
“My quitting wouldn't do any good,” I said. “As determined as he is, he'd only hire someone else. Someone not as scrupulous as I am, maybe; someone who'd cost him, and you, a lot more money in the long run.”
“I didn't mean to imply that you were dishonest…” She broke off again and stared up at the big cedar, as if she thought insight and sympathy might be hiding among its branches. “I don't know what to do,” she said in a small voice.
“Have you tried to get him into counseling?”
“A head doctor? He'd never go.”
“But have you tried?”
“I mentioned it once. He threw a fit.”
“Then I'm sorry, Mrs. Kiskadon, but that's the only advice I can give you.”
“You're going to go right on investigating,” she said with some bitterness.
“I have to; I made a commitment to your husband. If he asks me to quit, then I will; but it's got to be him. Meanwhile there's a chance, given enough time, that I'll come up with an answer that will satisfy him.”
“How much time?”
“I can't answer that yet.”
“More than a week?”
“Probably not.”
She gnawed flecks of lipstick off her lower lip; one fleck stuck to her front tooth like a dark red cavity. “I suppose you're right,” she said at length. The bitterness was gone; she sounded resigned now.
I said, “Why don't you talk to his doctor? A physician might be able to convince him that counseling is a good idea.”
“Yes, I'll do that.”
I got up on my feet. “You want me to go over first?”
“Please. I'll come in later; he'll think I've been out for a walk.”
I left her sitting there, huddled and feeling sorry for herself, and went back along the path and across the green to Twelfth Avenue. Lynn Kiskadon struck me as a self-centered and self-pitying woman, at least as concerned with her own difficulties as she was with her husband's; but I still felt sorry for her. There was no question that she'd had a rough time of it since Kiskadon's illness was diagnosed, and she had stood by him throughout. It would have been nice to do something for her, something noble like take myself off the job as she'd asked, or refuse payment for services rendered. But I wasn't feeling particularly noble these days. Besides which, I like to eat and to pay my bills.
It took Kiskadon almost a minute to answer the doorbell, but he didn't look as if he'd been asleep. He'd been eating something with mustard on it, if the little yellow blob on his chin was any indication. As soon as he saw me his eyes got bright with anticipation. He said, squirming a little, “Come in, come in. Have you found out something?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Kiskadon.”
“Then why…?”
“I'll explain inside.”
He let me in, still eager, and limped with me into the big family room. I told him what I'd been doing since we last talked, and why I was here now, and watched him hang on every word as if I had just brought news of a possible miracle cure for his medical condition.
“You're making progress,” he said. “I knew you would, I knew it. I'll check the Axe books, you wait right here.”
“I can do it…”
“No, no, I think I know which one it is,” and he thumped out on his cane, moving more quickly than he had on my last visit here. When he came back after a couple of minutes he said, “It's the last book he wrote, Axe and Pains. I was pretty sure it was. The murderer's name is Bertolucci, Angelo Bertolucci.”
He handed me the book and I opened it to the last chapter to check the spelling of the name. Kiskadon watched me, rumpling his already tousled clump of black hair.
I asked him, “Does the name mean anything to you?”
“No, nothing.”
“No one you talked to mentioned it?”
“I'm sure I'd remember if they had. Are you going out to Tomales now?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow morning.”
“And then what?”
“That depends on what I find out in Tomales.”
He had other questions for me, pointless questions that I answered with more patience than I felt. I wanted to get away from there; it was almost six-thirty, and I was picking Kerry up at seven. But that wasn't the only reason. After my talk with Mrs. Kiskadon, the house and Kiskadon's pathetic eagerness were having a depressing effect on me.
I managed to extricate myself with a promise to call him tomorrow, as soon as I returned from Tomales. He insisted on shaking my hand at the door; his palm was damp and a little clammy, and I had to resist the impulse to wipe my own on my coat when I let go.
Outside, there was no sign of Mrs. Kiskadon. I wondered if she'd slipped into the house while I was there; I hadn't heard her, if so. Or maybe she was still over on that bench in the park, looking for answers to her problems in the branches of the big cedar tree.
NINE
Dinner that evening was more of a disaster than the previous night's earthquake. And I don't mean that metaphorically.
To begin with, I should have known from its location what Il Roccaforte would be like. San Bruno Avenue is not exactly one of the city's ritzier neighborhoods, adjoining as it does the Southern Freeway interchange and the Hunters Point ghetto. I know a guy who lives in that area and he says it's not bad-blue-collar residential, mostly. But it's one of the last places you'd go looking for haute cuisine and an elegant, atmospheric dining experience.
The owners of Il Roccaforte had never heard of either haute cuisine or elegance. But the place was definitely atmospheric-in the same way a condemned waterfront pier is atmospheric. And without a doubt eating there was one hell of an experience.
It was in a building all its own, so old and creaky-looking it might have been a survivor of the 1906 earthquake, sandwiched between a laundromat and a country-and-western bar called the Bull's Buns. Kerry said, “My God!” in a horrified voice as we drove up, and I couldn't tell if she meant Il Roccaforte or the Bull's Buns or both. She didn't have anything else to say. She had been conspicuously silent since I'd picked her up, which was always a storm warning with her: it was plain she'd had a very bad day in the advertising business, running ideas up flagpoles and seeing if they saluted, or whatever the current Madison Avenue slang expression was, and that she was in no mood for what awaited us inside Il Roccaforte.
Please, Lord, I thought, let it be an uneventful evening. Not a good one, not even a companionable one-just uneventful.
But He wasn't listening.
We got out of the car and went inside. The motif, if you could call it that, was early Depression: some dusty Chianti bottles on shelves here and there, the corpses of three house-plants of dubious origin, a cracked and discolored painting of a peasant woman stomping grapes, tables with linen cloths on them that had not been white since the Truman Administration, and the smells of grease, garlic, and sour wine. Some people might have called the place funky, but none of that type had discovered it yet. The people like myself who called it a relic and a probable health hazard were the ones who, having taken one good look at it, no doubt stayed away in droves. The only customers at the moment, aside from a waiter who looked as if he might have been stuffed and left there for decoration, were Eberhardt and Wanda, tucked up together at a table in one corner.