“My home and office numbers are on the card,” I said. “Any time, day or night.”
“All right.” And then, almost plaintively, “She really is scared. Like a kid in the dark.”
“I know.”
“I can’t stand to see her like that. It makes me—”
He broke off and swung away, quickly, as if there was something in his face he didn’t want me to see. I had a pretty good idea what it was. Maybe he’d been a trophy collector in the past, what Tamara would call an “ass bandit,” and maybe he wasn’t that type at all, but in any event there was more to Trevor Smith than just a hunk’s body and a pretty face.
He was in love with Sheila Hunter. About as deeply in love as a man can be with a woman.
Thursday evening. No call from Emily Hunter, or Sheila Hunter, or Trevor Smith, or Dale Cooney.
Friday morning. Nothing from any of them.
Friday afternoon. Nothing.
All the silence worried me. Not so much Mrs. Cooney’s; boozers are unpredictable drunk or sober, and she figured to have the least amount of information for me. But why hadn’t Emily kept our appointment and why hadn’t she gotten in touch again? And had I scared her mother even more by taking the risk of confiding in Smith? For all I knew, whatever had caused the Hunters to change their identity ten years ago was a felony of major proportions, and in that case aiming Smith at her might’ve been the same as aiming a loaded gun. The last thing I wanted was to panic her, but I could have done just that. What would she do then? And how would it affect her daughter?
At four o’clock, just before I left the office to meet Kerry at Bates and Carpenter, I called the Emerald Hills Country Club and asked for the pro shop. The operator said it was closed today. No, Trevor Smith wasn’t at the club; he had called in ill. And no, she would not give me his home number, no matter what kind of emergency I said it was. I had Tamara look him up in the San Mateo and Santa Clara county phone directories while I tried the Hunters’ number. No answer there. And no listing for Trevor Smith.
“Goddamn it!” I said.
Tamara said, “Easy, boss. Remember what you always tell me about jumping to conclusions?”
“Yeah.” But suppose the conclusion I was jumping to was the right one? Suppose I’d screwed up the Hunter situation big time?
7
If there is one thing I’m not, it’s a party animal.
I do not deal well with large gatherings in enclosed spaces. Give me a job to do and a one-on-one or even a small-group circumstance and I relate well enough; I’m able to think on my feet and hold my own in a conversation. But plunk me down in the midst of a cocktail party where social interaction with strangers is required, and I curl up inside like a worm in a bottle. I’m no good at small talk. And not much of a drinker; too much alcohol in a party atmosphere has the opposite effect on me than it does on most people, making me withdraw even more. The bigger the crowd, the worse I feel. Crush of bodies, too-loud voices, the constant strain... I start out edgy and if I’m trapped long enough I tend to become claustrophobic. Not enough space or air to breathe.
So I knew going in to the party at Bates and Carpenter that it would be a two-hour ordeal. And the agitated mood I was in would only make it worse. But I’d promised Kerry, and if I got through the cocktail party, the dinner afterward would be a piece of cake by comparison. So on the way over to the ad agency I played a little self-psyching game, blocking out the Hunter case and reminding myself that this evening was a small price to pay for all that Kerry had done for me and promising myself rewards for being a good boy and making the best of what, after all, was only a couple of hours out of the rest of my life. The trick seemed to work at first: I was calmly resigned and wearing a half-hearty facade when I met Kerry in her office. She seemed relieved, as if she’d expected me to come in looking like a man attending his own funeral. She even commented on my “upbeat mood” as we went upstairs — Bates and Carpenter had two floors in an old building on lower Geary downtown — to the big conference room where the party was being held.
The psych job, though, began to develop cracks once we arrived. Twenty-five or so people were already there, most of them clustered around a full-service bar and a table of hors d’oeuvres at one end, chattering and laughing noisily. On a quick scan I saw several of Kerry’s co-workers, Jim Carpenter prominent among them, naturally, and two other faces I recognized: Kerry’s crazy friend Paula Hanley, who owned an interior design company and was a B&C client, and her tubby chiropractor husband, Andrew. Terrific. Paula was a magnet for every screwball fad that came along, had a passion for “improving” other people’s lives through prosleytism, and managed to set my teeth on edge in the best of circumstances. In a party atmosphere she might well be lethal.
Carpenter came over first, towing his latest conquest, a sloe-eyed blonde half his age. Handsome bastard, with his silver mane and dark (probably dyed) mustache. He shook my hand and asked how I was in his vaguely condescending fashion. He’d had a thing for Kerry once and his attitude toward her was still irritatingly proprietary; he kissed her — on the mouth, no less — as if he hadn’t seen her in weeks and let his hand linger on her arm. I stood by and watched this and smiled and thought about what his neck would feel like in a circle of my fingers.
Then came Mr. and Mrs. Anthony DiGrazia of DiGrazia’s Old-Fashioned Italian Sausages. They were both in their mid-sixties, both short and very round and very red-faced; the only physical difference between them, in fact, seemed to be that he was bald and she had a pile of expensively coiffed blue hair. Their personalities, however, were total opposites, like a photograph and its negative. He was smiling, outgoing, voluable, and prone to punctuating his words with hand and arm gestures in the classic Italian manner. She was silent, stiff, and wore an expression that said her shoes pinched her feet, her girdle was too tight, her stomach was upset, and she didn’t approve of occasions like this one or much of anything except maybe the diamonds and rubies on her fingers and at her throat. Dragon lady. And ruler of the DiGrazia roost, I had no doubt.
Mr. DiGrazia pumped my hand in an iron grip and asked in Italian after my health. I said, “Benissimo. Come sano uno cavallino.” He liked that; he laughed and slapped me on the back.
“So, paisan,” he said, “you eat plenty of sausage and salami, eh?”
“Sure. Plenty.”
“My sausage and salami?”
“I wouldn’t eat any other kind, Mr. DiGrazia,” I lied again.
“Tony. I’m Tony, you’re Phil.” For some reason he’d got it into his head that my first name was Phil and no attempt by Kerry or me or anybody else during the evening convinced him otherwise. “New world elegance, old world taste. What you think, Phil?”
“About what?”
“New world elegance, old world taste.”
He was looking at me expectantly. I said, “I’m not sure I—”
“What, Kerry, you don’t talk to your husband? Tell him what good ideas you got?”
“I only came up with the slogan today,” she said, and nudged my arm. “DiGrazia’s Old-Fashioned Italian Sausages. New world elegance, old world taste.”
“Oh,” I said. “Slogan.”
“You like it, huh. Phil?”
“I like it.”
“I like it, too. You like it, Roseanna?”
“No,” Mrs. DiGrazia said.
This nonplussed Kerry. “Well, you know, it’s only a preliminary working—”
“Sure, sure,” Tony said. “Kerry’s good, she’s the best, I’m not worried.” He clapped rue on the back again. “Listen, Phil, they got a whole table of my sausage and salami over there, plenty of wine, anything else you want to drink. You and me, we go over and eat some sausage, drink some wine, let the wives get better acquainted.”