She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me (21 page)

To fulfill these complicated needs might take two or three jobs, but not a retainer, not a regular thing with Karim. No drug transactions that I would know about. Nothing on my conscience or in evidentiary records that anybody could discover. No sir.

Nothing that could provide material for the commission in Sacramento that oversaw PI licensing; no evident felonies, no misdemeanors if feasible; nothing that Karim could store up to use in asking for further services.

I was deeply engaged in the usual delusions that appetite provides.

Karim watched me with interest as thoughts traveled their various routes through my body, bumping into each other, lighting up, moving on. In his soul he sincerely hoped I was a sincere person, not responding to any threat about the board in Sacramento. He sighed, having things to do on a sunny morning under the palm trees on Guerrero.

Within my present capabilities was one job, for distraction's sake and to pick up some useful, probably tax-exempt cash.

Maybe it was just like a legal collection, merchandise, a loan, a matter simply too delicate to get all bruised and depleted from being pushed through the crowded dockets of the court system. Sometimes legal orders just waste everybody's time. Demands-to-comply and foreclosures are a pain in the butt to the entire society, an ecological disaster in how they waste computer time, legal-size paper, electricity, messenger boy sweat, process servers having to stand there and wait outside someone's door with hard-boiled eggs in their pockets in case lunchtime came and went—oh, the digestion is wrecked—the whole crudeness of an overgrown legal system. Whereas face-to-face human contact with the warm glow of personal threat … I could help Karim cut through the crap for everybody.

“Okay,” I said. “Just point me in the direction we're going. We're in business.”

Karim was a happy man today. The name he handed me, on a slip of paper, was G. Press, and the address was the Clay-Jones Tower. He let me look at it and then took the paper back.

“You don't need this. You'll remember,” he said. “Twelfth floor.”

“Almost like the preppy clothes, J. Press.”

“What?” he asked. “G,” he said.

I would think George. I knew the Clay-Jones building on Nob Hill, elegant old San Francisco, with a doorman. “How do I get in?”

“You'll get in,” he said. “Seven o'clock evening is a nice time to call. Details I know you're good at.”

“Tell me about this person.”

“Do you need such answers, Dan? That's one more thing I like about you—you know how to accomplish the job without unnecessary fuss. But it does take time for you to make up your mind, doesn't it, my friend?”

Karim had a way of staring silently above his fluent gab, remaining on a different plane despite the chatter; and now he was doing it in fluent silence, nodding a little at a passing thought, staring into my eyes, seeping his attention into me, settling in places where I did not want him. He trespassed. I had the right to blow up. Or, since he had won me over, convinced me, I wouldn't do that. I could still see hurting him for my pleasure. If profit came with the pleasure, so much the better.

I met his dark-lined eyes without flinching until he smiled again and nodded to dismiss my gaze. I could go now. “Friends?” he asked.

“Why not,” I said.

The idea of giving him what he wanted had been late in coming to me. In my own way, for my own purpose. We didn't discuss fee. Karim's prideful expanse of chest and belly, the generous body type, convinced me he would not stint. I thought, What the hell? I could use some unstinting tax-free cash and distraction. I was starting over in life. I was starting from the beginning and bound to prove myself if I could. G. Press. Gee, pressed to prove myself. No problem remembering details if you've read the Sunday magazines about how the stars do it. I was in business again.

*   *   *

I dressed for Nob Hill and Le Club, the lobby restaurant owned by a scavenger king known as Captain Garbage. What his fleet of clanking trucks collected in the early morning was not necessarily what they served evenings in the hushed and opulent restaurant—white linens, little lamps here and there, a romantic rendezvous for old folks and their parents. The doorman let me in because I said I was meeting Herb Caen. That was a fib. Maybe my nose got a little longer, but who was measuring?

“He doesn't have a reservation,” the doorman said, creaking in his shoes.

“Herb Caen,” I announced, “doesn't need a reservation.”

He looked at my clothes, which make the man. The man these clothes had made was no longer Kasdan, PI. It was a San Francisco personage wearing a gray fedora like one of the famous newspaper columnist's.

“Yes sir,” said the doorman.

“Here, for you,” I said, looking away fastidiously, putting the five-dollar bill in his hand, bored with all this haughty negotiation, then glancing at my watch—
Where's Herb?

“Yes sir!” barked the doorman, now improved in spirits about the whole deal.

He went to blow a whistle for a cab (the parent of an old folk feeling poorly). I went for the elevator. G. Press, twelfth floor. Karim didn't know everything, but he knew I'd remember a helpful detail, such as where the perpetrator lived.

On the door there was a little plaque, greenish where it had corroded, and the engraved letters
GP.
Tasteful copper corroding, done professionally; how antique, how decorator.

Where did it hurt with the tension and fear when I knocked on this door? No place. It hurt no place.

I had telephoned, heard the phone pick up, knew someone was home—no worry there. I had the usual inexpensive advantage of surprise, the person being visited suffering the disadvantage of maybe eating onions and worried about breath, or needing to make number two, or in the middle of a nap. People don't enjoy neighborly drop-ins these days. But I was on track, no tension at all for me, and counting on some for the person heading toward a quiet dump when there's a sudden rapping, buzzing, or belling at the door. In some other land, I could just nail a dead cat to the gate, preferably black, and go about my business, but in the U.S.A. we like to make personal contact with the client and urge him to do what's right.

Why wasn't I nervous?

Need I be troubled by this phenomenon?

Unless I backtrack and maybe pay the doorman to let me
out
of the building, explaining that Herb Caen just called on my cellular phone—I don't see no fuckin' cellular phone, sir—asked me to meet him instead at Wendy's … unless someone answers real soon, I'm stuck and should let loose the nervousness I'm not feeling.

I heard a lock and then a chain being worked. Someone was there, someone was responsive to my mute appeal, someone was confident enough of security to open the door. My first words were sort of planned, like a beer commercial: “It isn't going to get any better than this.”

“What?”

As I stepped firmly inside: “Let me explain.”

That was the plan. I wasn't worried. I didn't care if the door opened with a gun stuck in my face. This should have made me nervous, not being nervous.

The door opened and a thick-waisted middle-aged lady in a gold lamé jacket, dressed for God knows what lovely occasion, maybe me, was stuck in my face. “Is Mr. G. Press here?” I asked.

“There's no mister. I'm G. Press.”

“I'm from Karim.”

Her eyes flicked over me. They were heavy-lidded fishy eyes, and I had to give her credit for rising above cosmetic surgery. “What do you want, From? Mind if I call you that?”

“Dan Kasdan. May I come in?”

The eyelids twitched, tired tiny muscles working beneath the untreated fatty tissue. It was very like a smile. “You wish to visit my flat? Why, if you wish to, please do.”

I moved aside and she shut the door behind me. I was in a land of showroom antiques, someplace dark, densely layered in rugs, gilt, weavings, hangings, with no child, other human tenant, or animals except for one sleeping ceramic cat on the couch and another (they must have been sold as a pair) curled up and stagnant at a painted mouse hole in the corner where the Persian carpet, telling the story of Xerxes with his boat over the Hellespont, came to its logical end by meeting a deep green wall. The fleet stopped here. The woman had a sense of history or humor, but the woman didn't smile much. G. Press seemed to confine expressions of charm and amusement to subtle movements deep in the puffy terrains of her upper eyelids. A little slow-phlegm ripple, more alive by several layers of organic nature than her ceramic cats.

With the heavy curtains and myth-laden rugs, the heavy furniture, the general stockiness of decor—even the air seemed thick with heat and motes—I felt as if I were in Boston, Philadelphia, doing a job on the East Side of New York, not in breezy northern California. We don't do the Hellespont in San Francisco, we do Scandinavian or Japanese simplicity or maybe Spanish mission rusticity. The lady was overdressed for expecting no visitors, but maybe she had plans or liked to give herself early-evening fashion shows. There was a long mirror on one wall and reflections of reflections in a glass door behind me. G. Press could see around any unexpected movements.

She stood with a drill-sergeant spread to her legs, parade rest, watching me take in her “flat.” Thighs apart, catching the air. Then she felt it was time to take control. “What do you want?” she inquired. “And get the hell out here.”

It was essential that I not let her do what she had in mind, take control, and that I stop wondering why Karim didn't have the courtesy to tell me G. Press was a woman. Even these days, it can make a difference.

“Like to leave as soon as possible, ma'am,” I said.

“Right now would be best.”

And so with maximum precision I answered, “But not possible, since I'm engaged to leave with what I came for. Otherwise it would just be a wasted trip.”

“Mr. Kasdan. You might leave with a lot less than you came with.”

I wasn't going to fight a battle of the repartee with this thick-waisted person proudly modeling her gold lamé jacket and embossed eyelids. But I wasn't ready to go yet, either. I was preparing to stare at her instead. This basic PI move often proves surprisingly effective when I put my heart and soul into it. I concentrated. I stared. I spent the moment wondering why a person alone at home would wear this metallic garment, making her ineligible to pass through any self-respecting metal detector but of no use in case of armed conflict. Was it some kind of beauty motif in her mind? Gold lamé with beaded pockets? Her concept of a perfect design for living in her living quarters was also modified by the remains of a snack on one of those hinged monk's tables, a silver spoon sticking out of a cherry yogurt container that had been scraped pretty clean. But of course she hadn't expected my visit. Otherwise she surely would have put out a low-fat cherry yogurt for me.

I continued staring. The trick is to give the mind something to do while the eyes burrow in there. She nodded appreciatively.

G. Press didn't ask me to sit down, although the room contained ample chairs, an upholstered couch, a settee, more chairs, footstools, and that nice rug if we chose to squat crossed-legged amid the Persian fleet on the floor and negotiate her handing over to me what she owed to Karim. I didn't look forward to squatting cross-legged and catching intimidating glimpses up her thighs.

“I notice you enjoy my afternoon coat,” she said. “Lamay.”

“I can see.”

“Is it too obvious? I feel better about myself if I look nice. It's a question of self-esteem.”

Maybe she was a madam. Maybe she owed Karim for protection services. Maybe it wasn't drugs. Maybe he only supplied drugs for her girls. Maybe it was none of my business and only a real estate transaction that had gone bad, or down payment on a gold lamé jacket factory—maybe none of my business, inappropriate, better I didn't know. So I said, “Please stop shitting, ma'am. I don't work by the hour, so I'd like to do what I came here to do and be on my way.”

She smiled. Buffed teeth, very white, just the few brownish edges of a smoker. “You're not going to get it, Mr. Kasdan.”

I could have said, Yes, I am. I could have said, Isn't there a heavy-duty dentifrice for those nicotine tooth stains; said it nicely, open-faced, friendly. But G. Press was too easy with talk and therefore probably less so with silence. Old training in collections had provided examples of folks like this. They weren't usually Renaissance minds with equal skills in talk and silence. I was pretty sure a space of silence was the ticket. The eerie ceramic cats didn't move or purr.

She cleared her throat.

Good sign. A little self-esteem slippage.

She offered me a chocolate from a box.

I shook my head, not uttering “Allergic,” or just “No,” or even “Yes.” Silence was now the ticket if it didn't drive her to call upon the weapon I was sure she kept someplace within reach or the assistant she might have had waiting in one of the other rooms. She let me in, didn't she? She hadn't seemed surprised or distressed. She must have been confident. She was easy in her person like someone used to dressing her own way, decorating, having things proceed in her own preferred order.

“Cigarette?” White cork-tipped cartridges extended from a ceramic dish with a cat embossed and baked into it; lady liked kitties though not necessarily live ones. Like a fisherperson handling bait, she jerked the dish toward me again.

Shook my head. Stared. Didn't give a fuck.

Lady couldn't anticipate I'm a nonsmoker.

“I could,” she remarked mildly, “have you hurt, maybe right now. Might could do it myself.”

I stared.

She might could; she didn't.

I pursed my lips in the old Black Panther, Muslim, Muhammad Speaks middle-distance stare, guaranteed ominous.