At the end of fifteen minutes a middle-aged woman in a chartreuse pants suit came out of one of the consultation rooms. She didn’t look happy; maybe Muncon had told her — rightly, if so — that chartreuse not only wasn’t her color, it made her look like one of the victims in a green-slime horror flick. The receptionist took my card and the reason for my visit in to the doctor. He was gone a long time; evidently Muncon was trying to decide whether or not to grant me an audience. The decision, when it finally came, was in my favor, though probably not by much.
Muncon’s private office was small, cluttered, and ripe with the scent of the tweedy cologne he used. Muncon himself was about fifty, distinguished-looking, with a heavy blue-black beard shadow and penetrating hazel eyes. The eyes didn’t blink while he was talking to you. The entire upper two thirds of his face remained motionless, in fact; only his mouth moved — wide and thin-lipped, so that it made me think of a clam opening and closing.
He was a clam in the informational department as well. The first thing he said to me was “You understand that client-doctor confidentiality forbids me to discuss my professional relationship with Ms. Merchant.”
“Yes, I do. I’m not going to ask you to reveal anything of a confidential nature.”
“Just what are you going to ask me?”
“To begin with, if you’re aware that Nedra Merchant is missing.”
“Missing?”
“For the past three and a half months. Since sometime around May ninth.”
The penetrating eyes were like surgical lasers. I looked away, looked back quickly to see if I could catch him blinking. No. Maybe he never blinked; maybe, like a bird, he had some physiological quirk that kept his eyeballs perpetually moist.
At length he said, “You’re mistaken.”
That made me blink. “I am? You mean she’s not missing?”
“Away from the city, yes. Missing, no.”
“You’ve seen her recently?”
“Not recently.”
“Since May ninth?”
“No, not since early April.”
“You’ve talked with her, then?”
“She has communicated with me,” Muncon said.
“By telephone? By letter?”
“By card.”
“What kind of card?”
“Postcard.”
“Just one, or more?”
“Two, as a matter of fact.”
“In her handwriting?”
“Certainly.”
“When did you receive the most recent one?”
“Late last month.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what they said.”
“No. But I will tell you that Ms. Merchant is healthy, in good spirits, and plans to return to San Francisco shortly.”
“How short is shortly?”
A faint, noncommittal smile.
“Why did she go away without telling anyone? Why hasn’t she communicated with her clients or the man she’d been having a relationship with?”
“She has her reasons,” Muncon said.
“Reasons that satisfy you?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t satisfied when you called her home in May and June and left messages on her answering machine.”
“I hadn’t heard from her. I didn’t know the reasons.”
“Where were the postcards mailed?”
The faint smile again. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“At least give me a general geographical location.”
“I’m afraid not. Ms. Merchant specifically asked me not to reveal her whereabouts.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. He was starting to irritate me. Irrationally, maybe, but I have never reacted well to people with supercilious attitudes. And why the hell didn’t he blink? “Tell me this: Does the abbreviation ‘Thorn.’ mean anything to you? Short for Thornhill, Thorn wood, Thornbridge — something like that.”
“No. Should it?”
“Whatever or whoever ‘Thorn.’ is, she had a key with that name attached to it. The key is also gone.”
This time he shrugged and said nothing.
“Eddie Cahill,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Does that name ring any bells?”
The smile, the penetrating stare. Then, meaningfully, he looked at a thin gold watch on his left wrist. “I have a client coming at four,” he said. “It’s a quarter of now. I’m afraid I’ll have to terminate our conversation.”
“Sure thing,” I said. I got to my feet. “Just one more question. You wouldn’t happen to be one of Nedra’s lovers yourself, would you?”
It didn’t faze him. “In addition to my work here,” he said evenly, “I am involved in several programs to promote AIDS research. I live in the Castro and worked as a fund-raiser on Harry Britt’s last campaign for supervisor. My housemate’s name is Charles. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly clear.”
I went out feeling frustrated. And still irritated; the fact that Dr. Philip Muncon was gay didn’t make him any less supercilious and uncooperative. Or excuse the fact that he didn’t blink.
As of late last month, Nedra Merchant was healthy, in good spirits, and planning an imminent return to San Francisco? She had reasons for suddenly disappearing, for abandoning her work and her life-style for almost four months, that satisfied her shrink? Yes, it was possible. No, I didn’t doubt that Muncon had told me the truth as far as he knew it. Yes, Nedra Adams Merchant was a stranger to me — I had no idea of what motivated her or what might have driven her away from the city in early May.
But I wasn’t satisfied. Not at all.
Gut feeling: Something bad, very bad, had gone and maybe was still going down.
Chapter 11
Dean purchase was a big man physically as well as politically: a wide-body with beefy shoulders, thick waist, powerful legs and thighs, and not too much overlay of fat for a man of fifty-odd. Mane of silver-black hair that was more judicial than senatorial. He dressed conservatively except for his ties. Outlandish ties were his trademark; he’d been cultivating them so long that a local TV station had once done a feature on his collection and private citizens sent him the ugliest and most tasteless ones they could find. The one he had on today was a sort of robin’s-egg blue with bright red and yellow whorls and bright orange interlocking circles. Stare at it long enough and it might put you into a hypnotic trance. If it didn’t make you sick to your stomach first.
I walked into his offices at city hall at 3:40, and at exactly 3:45 he came out of his private sanctum, looked me over, smiled at me as if I were a campaign contributor, pumped my hand, and ushered me inside. I’d been wondering which of his public personas I’d get. He had severaclass="underline" Tammany Hall Jovial, Mr. Hard-Ass, Mr. Sincerity, Man-of-the-People, Hardline Liberal, It’s-a-Tough-Job-but-Somebody’s-Got-to-Do-It, The Humanitarian, The Fund-Raiser, The Comedian, The Confidant, The Bargainer. He could switch from one to another with the deceptive speed of a quick-change artist, as the situation called for; and watching him do it, you wondered if he had a real self left under all those public faces. Or if he — hell, most politicians these days — existed only as a public figure, in the eyes of his beholders. Was in effect just an animated hunk of clay in private, like a New Age state-of-the-art ventriloquist’s dummy waiting to be activated by the presence of an audience.