Larry shook the boy’s hand. Smart kid. Observant kid.
“You ever want a job as a private eye, give us a call.”
“I’m going to college in the fall.” The boy said it in an almost disappointed voice. “Harvard.”
They usually were, though not always Harvard.
Larry called in. “Like you thought. They switched cars.”
“Terrif!” said Giselle, sounding just like Kearny. “Eloise has a sister in Pacifica, Mrs. Ellen Winslett. A week ago she registered a new—”
“—gold Saturn?”
“I told you that you guys always have all the fun.”
“Seven’ll get you twenty Wiley’s wife tucked the ’62 ’Vette in her sister’s garage to leave us scratching our—” He stopped. “What’s that Pacifica address?”
“Just a sec, something on Palmetto Ave—”
“North Pacifica. This isn’t one of those houses red-tagged when the bluffs started sliding after all that rain in January and February, is it?”
“Palmetto is back from the bluffs.” She gave him the number, then added the favorite line of Kathy Onoda, who had been her predecessor as DKA office manager until a CVA had cut her down at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. “Go gettem, Bears!”
Eight
The delegates to the annual convention of the National Finance Adjusters, Investigators, and Repossessors crowded the sprawling new Congress Plaza Hotel and Convention Center on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, toddling town, meat-packer to the world, fog on little cats’ feet, etc. A plush air-conditioned conference room insulated them from the unseasonable May heat wave.
Over the decades the National had gone respectable. In the early years it had been skits that made fun of deadbeats and racial minorities in smoke-filled back rooms. When the dawn came up like thunder from Kalamazoo across the lake, you woke to a horrible, splitting, hangover headache with a woman from some raucous after-hours Rush Street strip-joint sharing your bed.
Now, Dan Kearny just wanted to get back to San Francisco so he could oversee the recovery of the missing classic cars. Maybe he could slip out, find a phone...
But the man at the podium said, “And now, with no further ado, I give you our featured speaker, DKA’s own Dan Kearny...”
No heat wave at Pacifica. Plenty of sun, but a strong onshore breeze to bring in chilly air, and soon, an afternoon fog bank unusual for May. More like August. Slanting Palmetto had some of the most breathtaking ocean views anywhere in the Bay Area, but the developers had, as usual, built the houses facing each other across the street instead of the blue Pacific. Duh.
The wide slanting driveway of the ranch-style Winslett house held a 2000 gold Saturn with paper plates. The attached one-car garage was shut. Because the Corvette was in there?
Larry pulled a U-ie, parked, got out with his repo order in one hand, in the other a set of pop keys, two heated and bent screwdrivers, and a three-prong hotwire. Tools of the trade now almost as classically outmoded as the ’62 ’Vette itself.
No kids playing in the street, no curtains twitching on the windows facing Larry from the far side of the road. He cupped his hands to peer in through the Winsletts’ garage-door window.
Yeah! The Corvette was between him and a washing machine against the back wall making dissonant slosh-gurgle harmony with the adjacent dryer’s thunk-whirl. He swung up the overhead door to slightly spronging springs. Give him sixty seconds...
Not to be. The inside door was nudged open by the hip of a very pretty blonde of about twenty-five who backed in toting a double-armload of dirty laundry. When she saw Ballard, she dropped her laundry. He almost held up crossed forefingers to ward off eviclass="underline" pregnant women were dynamite, and she was extremely pregnant. But the best defense was always a quick offense.
“Mrs. Ellen Winslett?”
At her name, the panic began ebbing from her face. “Y... Yes?”
He dug out a DKA card, remembering too late that it was one of Kearny’s; he’d run out of his own. “I’m, uh, Dan Kearny, here to take physical custody of this Corvette. It is out of trust and California-Citizens Bank has put out a recovery order on it.”
“I’m... I can’t... It isn’t our car...”
“Exactly. Out of trust and in the hands of a third party. I’m glad you understand.” The washer stopped. Against the continuing thunk-whirl of the dryer, he said, “Can I get those clothes out of the washer for you, ma’am?”
“No, I wait until the dryer’s stopped before — Say, are you allowed to just come onto someone’s property like this—”
“Oh, yes, ma’am” — making it up as he went along — “under California chattel-recovery rule 19350E we can enter any unlocked garage to effect recovery of the bank’s legal property.”
She gave a rueful little laugh and shrugged prettily.
“I’ll go get the keys.”
She returned with not only the keys but two cups of tea. They sipped and chatted like old friends. She even stood outside on the sidewalk watching him put the Corvette on the towbar. She smiled ruefully.
“I’m glad Garth isn’t home. He tends to get... physical.”
“Then I’d better be gone before he gets here.”
Irate husbands defending pregnant wives he didn’t need. But he went back to shut the overhead door for her. Even big with child she was aware of herself as a woman, and he liked her.
As he topped the hill, the Corvette riding comfortably behind his truck on the towbar, a red Cherokee passed him going the other way. He caught a heavy-faced, stubble-bearded profile behind the wheel. Something in that red face made him keep his eye on the rearview. Garth tends to get physical.
The Cherokee stopped, the man turned to stare intently at either Larry’s truck or the Corvette on the towbar. At thirty yards and moving, Larry couldn’t tell which. Then he was over the brow of the hill; too late for the husband, if that’s who he was.
Bart Heslip had drawn an UpScale Motors salesman named Romeo Ferretti. Romeo was supposed to be living in an old Victorian clinging to steeply slanting Elizabeth Street, which, half a block above, banged its pretty nose on Grand View Avenue.
There probably was a grand view down into Noe Valley from the second-floor bedroom windows; certainly the willowy young man — “that’s Chuckie with an ‘ie’ ” — seemed eager to take him up for a look. Bart declined.
“Do you know when, Mr., ah, when Romeo will be back?”
Chuckie made a pouting face. “Well, I hope never. He just moved right out with my absolutely divine 33 1/3 RPM set of Wilhelm Furtwaengler’s Götterdämmerung.”
“No! To take anybody’s recording of Götterdämmerung is Götterdämmerung cheek, but to take Furtwaengler’s!”
Chuckie with an “ie” started to giggle.
“Oh, make fun, I deserve it. But the Berlin Philharmonic is the best recording. He took our cat, too.” A sly sideways look from long-lashed eyes. “Pussy Galore.”
“I saw the movie.”
“Are you a...” Chuckie repeated the eye-thing. “Friend of Romeo’s?”
“Never met him.” Bart half-pulled an envelope from his inside pocket, thrust it back down again. “Insurance. He reported an accident, some damage to his car...”
“Oh no! Not that adorable old Ferrari convertible!”
“The very one,” said Bart quickly. It figured. What would someone named Ferretti try to embezzle except a Ferrari?
“But Romeo’s such a careful driver!”