On the south side of the fence there was a driveway that led into a smallish two-car garage. I paused there, pretended to stretch, and tried to determine if the garage was occupied. Couldn’t do it; the angle was wrong and the door was window-less. Not that it mattered much either way.
I walked most of the distance to Devonshire, still taking my time. Nothing had changed at the red house when I came back past it. I sat in the car for another five minutes, to make the surveillance a full half-hour in length. Victor Runyon was still inside when I finally went away from there.
Offices are lonely places at night. Mine in particular: big, half-empty loft in an old building on O’Farrell that is deserted after five-thirty, the other two tenants being the Slim-Taper Shirt Company on the second floor and Martin Quon’s Bay City Realtors on the ground floor. Ghosts walk here after dark — the ghosts of past cases and a friendship and partnership suddenly and inexplicably dead four months ago. I don’t come to the office at night much since Eberhardt walked out on me; I don’t like the ghosts or the emptiness. But tonight I had a reason, and I was not going to hang around long enough for the after-hours atmosphere to depress me.
Maybe DeFalco’s right, I thought as I switched on my desk lamp. Maybe I ought to get out of here, rent a smaller, cheerier space in a better neighborhood. There was nothing keeping me in this gloomy garret except inertia. Eberhardt wasn’t coming back; even if he failed with his own agency, his pride wouldn’t let him. And my pride wouldn’t let me, either. Too much hurt, too much damage that couldn’t be undone. Long, close friendships die hard; but once they’re dead, they’re better off buried for good.
I dragged out my copy of the reverse city directory. Number 77 °Crestmont was owned by Nedra Adams Merchant — sole ownership, no other property holder listed. Her occupation was given as graphics designer. She was also the sole occupant of the house, at least insofar as the city census was concerned.
Nedra. Nedra Adams Merchant. Nice euphonious name. Nice person, too, even though she happened to be screwing a married man? Be a relief for all concerned if it turned out that way.
I looked up her name in the Yellow Pages, under Graphics Designers. No listing. Operated her company under another name, or worked for somebody else. Or had some other source of income, and called herself a graphics designer as a cover. Easy enough to find out which way the wind blew by running a background check on her.
Well, at least it hadn’t required much time or effort to identify the object of Victor Runyon’s obsession. If his nemesis, the mysterious telephone caller, was half as simple an ID, I could wash my hands of this whole unpleasant business in a day or so and get on with the routine and impersonal tasks of tracing skips and investigating insurance matters. And the next time Joe DeFalco came sucking around with one of his “favors,” I would cheerfully kick his ass out the door.
When I got to my flat in Pacific Heights I called Kerry again, this time at her apartment, and got her machine; she was still working, even though it was getting to be pretty late. After the beep I said, “Hi, babe. It’s eight-thirty; I’m home alone and pining away for you. Call me when you get in, if it’s not too late. We’ll talk dirty to each other.”
I ate a light dinner and took to my lonely bed. Read for a while and then turned out the light and lay there hoping the phone would ring before I fell asleep.
It didn’t.
Chapter 3
In the morning I ran the background check — and a credit check — on Nedra Adams Merchant. She turned out to be thirty-three years of age, divorced, and in fact a fairly prosperous graphics designer who owned and operated Illustrative Image Designs, Inc. Fancy name for a one-woman outfit that specialized in business brochures, convention and sales-promotion posters, and magazine layout. Her business address was different from her home address — a number on Third Street that put it in the SoMa area, within a couple of blocks of the building in which Victor Runyon had his office. That was no surprise. Architect and graphics designer meet somewhere in the area, café or restaurant or maybe one of the showrooms, strike up a conversation, find out they have things in common personally and professionally, one thing leads to another... yeah. Affairs were all so damned cut-and-dried once you got past the emotional baggage and down to the basics. Hell, most things in life were. Emotions are what make the human animal the complex mess he is.
The house at 77 °Crestmont had gone to Nedra as part of her divorce settlement five years ago. Her ex-husband, Walter Merchant, had shared it with her for the five years previous. He was an attorney. It was her first and evidently only marriage and there had been no children.
Her credit rating had been excellent since the divorce — until approximately four months ago. Then, for a period of three months, she had quit paying her bills. Her gas, electricity, and water had all been shut off at the end of July for nonpayment; in early August she’d ponied up the full amounts owed plus penalties and the utilities were now back in service. Last October she’d bought a new Mercedes 540XL, paying one third of the purchase price of more than fifty thousand dollars as a cash down payment. All payments on time until May, then no payments until the first of this month, just in time to forestall a repossession order being issued by her bank.
Again until May, Nedra Merchant had been an active user of half a dozen different credit cards, with a history of prompt payment of the total amount on each card each month. Over the last three and a half months she hadn’t used any of the cards even once. Nor had she paid her April Visa, MasterCard, and American Express bills until early August. Again, then, all payments to each company in full.
What all of this seemed to mean was that she’d had some sort of sudden financial crisis in May that had lasted for at least three months and to some extent might still be going on. It would have had to be pretty devastating to wipe out any savings she might have had and to take up so much of her income that she could no longer afford to pay even her utility bills. None of my business what the crisis was unless Victor Runyon was somehow involved. Supporting her since the financial crash? Gave her a lump sum at the end of last month, loan or gift, so she could keep herself afloat? Kay Runyon hadn’t mentioned any unaccounted-for expenditures; but it was possible he had cash resources that his wife knew nothing about.
How about Nedra Merchant’s ex-husband? Did he know anything?
I opened the Yellow Pages to Attorneys. Walter Merchant was listed, with an address on Eucalyptus Drive, under the subheading of Personal Injury & Property Damage. He even had a little boxed ad:
Uh-huh, I thought. I wondered if he was one of the breed of attorney who will take on any case, no matter how ethically marginal, if they see an edge or a loophole or just the bare-bones potential for a fat settlement; the shysters who clog up the court dockets with their money-grubbing briefs, who could not care less if real justice is done, because their only interest in the law is how it can best serve them. More and more of that ilk every year, it seems. Used to be that even the worst of them kept their ambulance-chasing out of the public eye, but this is the age of the Big Hype and the Big Buck; what chance do such abstract concepts as professional ethics and integrity stand against rampaging capitalism? Nowadays the personal-injury boys and girls are all over the media, particularly in saturation TV ads in which they and their “satisfied clients” ballyhoo their dubious accomplishments like pitchmen peddling snake oil. “Joe Smith, the dirt bike lawyer, got me $350,000 even though the police report said the accident was my fault and I was charged with felony drunk driving.” Was it any wonder there was so much lawyer-bashing these days? Q. How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A. Two. One to stick his finger in the socket and the other to file suit against the electric company.