“I had a hunch Bill didn’t get around to introducing you. Gail’s an old associate of your husband’s,” I told Catherine. “She holds his cloak and dagger.”
She took in our hostess from hair to heels. “He never told me. Are you with the government?”
“Not anymore,” Gail said quickly. “It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Sahara. Welcome to the Canaveral.”
I finished my Scotch in the silence that followed. The empty glass caught Gail’s eye.
“I’ll send the girl over with another round,” she said. “If you need anything else, holler. Nobody goes home unhappy.” She hung a smile on her face and left.
Catherine picked up her glass and held it to her chin. “Gail Hope. Isn’t that—?”
“Nice,” I said. “Everyone was nice in the sixties until the Beatles came. Why should anyone be following you?”
“I’m seeing someone. Bill knows, or suspects. I’m no spy, but I’m not blind.”
“What makes it he hired me?”
“I just said I’m stepping out on my husband. Don’t you disapprove?”
“What makes it he hired me?”
She took a drink and set it down again. “Two of those thugs he sometimes works with came to the house one night. I don’t sit in on Bill’s meetings but I know a punk when I see one. I put their coats away. Your name and home address was written on a piece of paper in one of the pockets.”
“But you’re not a spy.”
“I’m a wife. More of us ought to be spies. It comes naturally, or it did until some women only a blind man would ever propose to came along and liberated us. I checked the directory and found out you were still in the detective business.”
The redhead delivered our second round and went away with my empty glass. The band was playing “Harbor Lights” in the tempo the Platters used, with a spangled ceiling globe casting scales of reflected light on the dancing couples. “Go again,” I said. “A man in your husband’s business might have a hundred good reasons to engage an investigator that wouldn’t have anything to do with his domestic situation.”
“I know when I’m being followed. Besides, I saw the man. That’s why I thought you had a partner.”
“What did you see?”
“A week ago I went to the dining room at the Westin to meet the man I’ve been seeing. I was early. I ordered coffee and got up to go to the ladies’ room. The first thing you see when you open the door there is a mirror. He didn’t get out of the way in time.”
My inner smoke alarm had cut in. “What did he look like? Was he an older man, about sixty?”
“It was just a glimpse. He moved aside right away.”
I took the picture Sahara had given me of Frank “Papa” Usher out of my wallet and laid it on her side of the table. “Use your imagination; this shot is thirty years old. Did he look anything like this?”
“Where did you get this?” She had studied it for only a moment.
“Is it him?”
“Of course not. This is a picture of Edgar Pym. The man I’m seeing.”
“A
RE YOU SURE?”
I asked after a moment. “Look again. The picture was taken a long time ago.”
“He’s white-haired now and his hair and face are thinner, but that’s Edgar. I’ve seen him very close up on several occasions.” Her expression went from arch to furious. “So Bill does know.
Damn
being married to the government. He has access to everything.”
“I haven’t been tailing you. He specifically told me to stay away. What do you know about Edgar?”
“He’s a retired history professor from a small college in Alabama. His wife died last fall — they were married thirty-eight years — and he moved here to be near friends. We met at the A and P. In the frozen foods section, of course.” She tugged out the corners of her mouth in a way I remembered; being sardonic for the balcony.
“I’ll guess. He asked your opinion on how to thaw out a TV dinner.”
“Something like that. Oh, it was an obvious line. He was so awkward about it I had to respond. Bill was away that night. He so often is. We had dinner. In a restaurant. Edgar’s a warm and lonely man, and I’m just getting to an age where I enjoy someone I can pretend to be a little girl with. I don’t understand this rage to go out with younger men. You get so tired of sitting with your back to the light so your crow’s-feet won’t show.”
I didn’t see any crow’s-feet. When I knew her she’d had the largest assortment of oils and ointments on her night table this side of Madame Banzai’s Tokyo Massage Emporium. “Did you check out his story?”
“Oh, of course. He was obviously just getting close to me so he could run off with last year’s fox coat and my three-year-old Firebird with nine payments left on it. Why would an old man make up a boring past to impress me?”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“You mean sleeping with him. About two weeks. It started a week after we met.” She drank. “If that wasn’t your man I saw in the mirror, who is he? And what’s your business with Bill?”
The band had switched to a skull-rattling rendition of “House of the Rising Sun,” complete with snarling basses and a psychedelic light show. I waited until it was over. “Do you know anything about your husband’s work?”
“He sniffs out subversives in dangerous positions. As far as the neighbors are concerned he goes to the Federal Building every day, where he audits the books in some departments, but the truth is he can’t balance a simple checkbook. I’m assuming you know all this. Otherwise I’m guilty of treason.” She patted back an elaborate yawn.
“He says he’s an assassin.”
She gave it a beat. “He just came out and said that?”
“Well, counterassassin. Uncle Sam says attack and he rips out somebody’s throat. He says.”
“Bill doesn’t even believe in hunting.”
“Nobody pays you to go hunting.”
“Do you believe him?”
“It isn’t the kind of thing you lie about,” I said. “He also says he wants out.”
“I always thought he liked his work, whatever it was.”
“It gets worse.” I tapped the picture. “He gave me that. He thinks your Edgar has been sent after him by Washington because they get nervous whenever a field man starts thinking about changing professions.”
“Oh, please.
Bill
told you all this?”
“If what he really wants is to get me to scrape up evidence of your fling it’s a bass-ackwards way of doing it, even for an employee of the government.”
“What did he say he wanted you to do?”
“That’s confidential.”
“That’s a crock.”
“It makes a lot more sense if he’s telling the truth,” I said. “It would explain why Edgar — Sahara says his name is Frank Usher — sought you out, to keep tabs on your husband.”
“Except he’s never asked me anything about Bill.”
“Didn’t you wonder about that?”
“Maybe he’s more interested in me,” she said. “Maybe he’d rather spend time with me than leave me alone at home while he runs off to make the world safe for democracy. While we’re talking about what makes sense, who the hell
is
following me and why?”
“Ask whoever it is who’s following you.”
“You
ask him. He followed me here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I told you I’m not blind. Don’t ask me where he’s sitting. I was too busy fighting with you from the moment we laid eyes on each other to notice.”
“Let’s forget him for now. Do you and Edgar talk about Bill?”
“As little as possible, and not nearly as much as I’ve told you, since you already know what he does. I don’t mean kill people; I’ll never buy that. A wife knows
something
about her husband. Remember?”
“If you did maybe we’d still be married. And maybe if I knew something about you, too. We sure made a muck of it.”
“Water over the dam.”
“Are you thinking of leaving Sahara?”
“I haven’t gotten that far in my thinking. Why?”
“I was just going to tell you to wait.”
“For what?” The hardness was back. “Is something going to happen?”
“Probably. It usually does. I’ll tell you about it another time. Right now I want you to go to the ladies’ room.”
“What?”
“Take your purse.”
She started to look around, stopped. Understanding set in. “What do I do when I get there?”
“That’s up to you. Just take a long time doing it. Don’t come out until I send word. I want him to think you crawled out a window or something.”
She picked up her purse, a red leather item with a gold clasp, just big enough to hold a lipstick. “You won’t make a scene.”
“What do you care?”
“Same old Amos.” She rose.
I stood politely. “Do you and Edgar Pym ever discuss literature?”
She tugged out the corners of her mouth. “You mean like
Fanny Hill?”
“I mean like
The Voyage of Arthur Gordon Pym,
by Edgar Allan Poe. He also wrote ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ ”
“That’s pretty thin,” she said after a moment.
I moved a shoulder. “Spies.”
She went.
Alone, I sat back down and lit a Winston. I hadn’t touched my second drink; I was on call. The redheaded carhop came over twice and I sent her away both times. The band played “It’s My Party” and “Blue Moon.” A few couples danced. The set ended. Some of the tables emptied. After a while the second wave came in, smelling of popcorn and talking animatedly about movies. The musicians mounted the platform again. He made his move then.
He jumped up from a table on the other side of the platform, almost knocking the table over. He caught it, tugged down his jacket with dignity, and started toward the rest rooms, skipping on every third step, trying not to run. He was a little guy with a pumpkin face and very fine blond hair over a pink scalp. He was wearing a green bow tie and a green-and-yellow houndstooth jacket that fit in at the Club Canaveral like a clown face at a funeral. I put out my cigarette and went after him. He was as hard to trail as Amtrak.
I walked down the narrow hallway paneled in cheap imitation wood with its framed stills from Gail Hope’s pictures and two doors near the exit identified by cutout photographs of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. The little guy in the noisy jacket was crouched with his ear to Marilyn’s right breast. I went up and stood in front of him. His reaction when he saw my shoes was one for the album. He straightened quickly, almost butting my chin with the top of his head.
“Is this the men’s room?” He was looking me square in the Adam’s apple.
“The other one,” I said. “The one without cleavage.”
He mumbled thanks, stepped around me, and went through that door. I followed him in.
It was a small room, smelling of salt and lemons, with two urinals and two stalls and mirrored tiles over the pair of sinks. We were alone in it. A square speaker piped in “Dead Man’s Curve” from the band platform. The little guy was washing his hands. I stood right behind him. He glanced up at our reflections, then down. He pumped sweet-smelling soap from the dispenser and scrubbed his knuckles and palms, rubbed it under his nails. They looked gnawed. He washed everything twice and took his time rinsing. He cranked two stiff brown paper towels out of the chrome container on the wall next to the sink and wiped his hands thoroughly. Not looking at anything. Finally he took a cheap red plastic comb out of his hip pocket, wet it under the faucet, and spent a few minutes carefully combing his thin blond hair, patting it down with his free hand. He had a doughy complexion, a small nothing of a nose, red lips, and long pale lashes. You could have traced his face around a pie tin.
A skinny kid of eighteen or so in a fatigue shirt and torn jeans, with his hair in rolls of green and magenta, came in whistling “Dead Man’s Curve,” used one of the urinals loudly, and left without looking at us or washing his hands. While he was there, the little guy started to leave, but I poked a stiff finger into his back through my coat pocket and he stayed. I was unarmed that night; ex-wives hardly ever shoot.
When the kid left I poked the little guy again and checked him for weapons. He had none. I stepped back and frisked his wallet, a hand-tooled one like you find in souvenir shops, held together with a cowhide spiral. One driver’s license made out to Herbert Selwyn Pingree. One snappy picture ID announcing that Herbert S. Pingree was licensed to practice private investigation in the State of Michigan. One friendly reminder from Herbert’s dentist that he was scheduled for a cleaning next Tuesday at 3:00 P.M. Sixteen dollars in cash. I gave him back the wallet.
“You oughtn’t to carry that much money around without a gun, Herbert. Or do you prefer Herb? It’s my experience that men your size don’t like to be called Herbie.”
“What do you want?” He counted the bills and put the wallet away.
“For starters, why you’re following Mrs. Sahara. Later we’ll get around to who’s paying you.”
“Who are you?”
I showed him my ID. “It’s not as new as yours.”
The air went out of him then. He leaned back against the sink. “I must stink pretty bad.”
“On ice, brother. Where’d you get your training?”
“I was a cop in Rouge for four years. I got tired of pulling skinny-dippers out of the river — the
Rouge,
for gosh sakes, it’s a wonder they had any hide left — so I quit and hung out my shingle. Eight months ago it was. I guess I got a lot to learn.”
“The lady spotted you right away. What’s the action?”
“I’m just supposed to follow her, see where she goes and whom she meets and report back.”
“Report back to who?”
“Whom.” He actually blushed. “Sorry. My girlfriend teaches fifth-grade English in Dearborn. I can’t tell you the name of my client. That would be unethical.”
“Her husband, right?”
He said nothing.
The door started to open. “Out of order.” I leaned it shut. “Herbert, Herbert. What are we going to do about this stalemate, Herbert?”
His face got a sly look. It was like watching Elmer Fudd coming up with a forty-watt idea. “Listen, I can use some help on this. You can’t tail someone alone. I lost her twice already when I was in my heap because she found a parking space and I couldn’t and I didn’t have anyone to get out and shadow her on foot. Are you for hire?”
I looked at him for a long time. “I just had drinks with the lady. How do you know you’re not offering a job to the other side?”