Spider’s Cage (5 page)

Woodruff proceeded to the low table between the couches and retrieved his drink. “Sorry,” he said to Windrow. “Damned nuisance.” He sipped his drink and looked at Mrs. Neil, who reclined against the back of the couch, smiled luxuriously, her eyes half open.

“It's alright dear,” she said distantly, her eyes on Windrow.
Woodruff walked over to the sideboard and stood next to Windrow, facing the wall. He sipped his drink and spoke out of the side of his mouth in a low voice. “She all right?”

Windrow looked at him and poured himself a drink. “Right where she wants to be, I guess,” he said. “How should I know? Don't you two live togeth—” He stopped, suddenly realizing what Woodruff had meant, and found himself wanting to deliberately misconstrue the man's meaning, just as Mrs. Neil had done to his own remark a few minutes before. He leveled his eyes with Woodruff's. “Not my type,” he said coldly.

Woodruff raised his left eyebrow and stroked his moustache with his free hand. “Quite,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Well, now what's this about another will?” His tone was louder, and he turned toward the rest of the room.

“I don't really think I should discuss it out of the presence of Miss Ryan,” Windrow said primly.

“Hah!” said a voice from the couch. “Silly bitch.”

Woodruff ignored the remark. “That was Jodie on the telephone just now,” he said matter-of-factly. “She's been unavoidably delayed. Something about a long recording session.” He paused. “She was tired, but she seemed very excited. About the session, I mean.” He sipped his drink. “Naturally, she sends her regrets.”

“Naturally.”

“Just between you and me, Mr. Windrow,” Woodruff said, watching Windrow, “she doesn't give a damn about the will, one way or another.”

“Not a damn?”

Windrow gestured toward Mrs. Neil on the couch. Woodruff shook his head. “Not a damn. It's her career that matters to Jodie, not her grand-dad's money.” He put a kindly hand on Windrow's shoulder. “Some people,” he said carefully,
“find that very difficult to understand.” His tone intimated that he could be a man of very deep sympathies.

“Hmph,” muttered Mrs. Neil.

Woodruff glanced in her direction, then back at Windrow. “We did too, at first. But we've learned to accept Jodie Ryan for who she is, and not as what we want her to be.”

“I see,” said Windrow.

“She's an artist, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I am merely a businessman—”

“Merely,” Mrs. Neil interjected.

Woodruff ignored her and made a little self-deprecating gesture with his shoulders and the free hand. “Accordingly, we look out for her interests in matters of business. Especially the family business. It works out quite nicely, really.”

“You the one signed her up with Lobe?” Windrow asked pleasantly.

Woodruff raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. “No, Mr. Windrow. Unfortunately, I was not invited to participate in that negotiation. It happened some time ago, before Jodie came to trust me completely. I've offered to have our lawyer look into the matter. But Jodie prefers to make her own bed and lie in it.”

Windrow wondered if that trust had happened at all, yet. “I came here to speak with Mrs. Neil. Who are you? What stake do you have in any will old man O'Ryan may have left?”

Pamela Neil cackled. “Yeah. What are you, anyway?”

Woodruff rested his eyes on the woman on the couch. “I look after Pamela's interests for her as well as Jodie's,” he said. “As you can see for yourself she's not particularly… oriented… towards business.”

“Myself, I think she's all business,” Windrow said. “Do you have her power of attorney?”

Woodruff smiled. “She generally takes my advice, concerning business matters.”

“Does that include your taste in art?”

“Art is an investment,” said Woodruff, “just like anything else.”

“Is cocaine an investment?”

Woodruff looked Windrow in the eye, deadpan. “Pamela has had a mild sinus disorder since she was a little girl,” he said. He turned toward Mrs. Neil. “Pamela, did you neglect to take your tablets today? Eh?” She ignored the remark. Woodruff turned back. “Really, Mr. Windrow. There is no reason, that I know of, for me to explain these things to you. On the contrary, it is you who should be explaining things to me. Where is this ephemeral will you dangle in front of us? Why should we even care about its existence?”

“I presume you and Mrs. Neil haven't married, so the two of you can continue to rely on her monthly support from Mr. O'Ryan?”

Woodruff paused. His eyes performed a loop-de-loop before they came to rest on Windrow, silently.

Windrow found himself with the familiar feeling of the fisherman who, having judged the water shoal and full of fish and cast his lure accordingly, now watches, nonplussed, as more and more of his line spills off the reel and sings through the eyes of the rod, disappearing after the unstruck lure into a fishless deep.

Woodruff smiled that smile again.

Windrow kept at it. “A will—any will—might change that.”

“It might.”

“Is Jodie the chief heir in the present one?”

“You should know that.”

“How would I know that? I'm just a detective.”

“What if I were to say Yes, she is.”

“Then it would seem to me that it would have been important to her to have been present this afternoon.”

“Yes, of course it was,” Woodruff said patiently. “But, obviously, you don't know Jodie. She's extremely interested in her career; to the exclusion, one might say, of any other consideration. But in fact, she authorized me over the telephone to take her part with you in this matter.” He spread his arms. “In any case, you don't say you have the will. You say you are aware of its existence. Obviously, you want the family to pay you to bring it to light.”

Woodruff walked over to the piano on the other side of the room, where he carefully adjusted the square of black velvet. Then he adjusted the stone on top of it.

Windrow watched him for a moment. “What about Sal?” he said. “Is she part of the family?”

Woodruff smiled and continued to minutely adjust the stone. “Oh, so you know about Sal, do you?”

“I know about Sal,” said Windrow. “And you know I know about Sal.”

Woodruff didn't turn around. Windrow moved so he could see him. “I do?” said Woodruff to the red stone.

Pamela Neil giggled.

“It's news to me that you know Sal, or even that you know she exists,” said Woodruff, touching the red stone gingerly as if he were teasing an insect. “Sal…” A silence of some seconds went by before Woodruff said, “Sal will be provided with a generous annuity by the will we're probating now. I doubt that any subsequent will would change that.”

“The same for Hardpan?”

“My goodness, Mr. Windrow. You have done your homework.” Woodruff turned away from the piano. “Hardpan was also well taken care of. Besides that, he owns about
fifteen percent of O'Ryan Petroleum, which should cover all the dry holes he might care to sink for the rest of his life. Look, Mr. Windrow. I'll have Jodie call you when she shows up. O.K.? As for this new will, what is your evidence that it exists?”

“Let's call it a hunch.”

“A hunch! You want us to spend money on a hunch?”

“If I don't find it, somebody else will.”

“You're convinced it exists?”

“Yep.”

Woodruff tapped his glass with a fingernail. “Alright,” he said. He held up a finger. “I'll give you one week to produce hard evidence of its existence. If you come up with that, I'll keep you on until you find the actual document or someone else does. Is that a deal?”

“Deal.”

“Good. Here.” Woodruff extracted a thickness of crisp bills from his pocket. They were folded once and held that way by a silver clip shaped like a painter's palette, complete with thumbhole. Along the circumference of the pallette, where daubs of oil paint might have been, gleamed tiny gems, each a different color. He showed a pair of bills. “Two hundred enough?”

Windrow looked at the bills. “I'll mail you a receipt,” he said.

Woodruff shot his cuff, though the sleeve was rolled up, and looked at his watch.

“If you'll excuse us…” he said, winding the stem and smiling.

T
HE TOYOTA REFUSED TO START.
H
E GROUND THE
starter until he knew it was useless and quit before the juice deserted the battery.

He opened the door and stood with one leg on the pavement, leaning on the roof. He felt like he hadn't changed his clothes in a long time, nor taken a bath. Or something. Around him the mansions stretched in every direction. Through the breezeway, between Pamela Neil's house and the one next door, he could see the hills of the Marin headlands, across the Golden Gate. Far below, on China Beach at the base of the cliff, children he couldn't see squealed and played. A seagull flew over his head, trailing another and a third. They glided over the Neil house chuckling, looking from side to side, then each in its turn collapsed its wings over the back of the house and dove exponential curves into the blue-green void over the entrance to the Bay.

Windrow shook his head. Hard to believe Woodruff went for that business about a second will. On the other hand, some people know next to nothing about the law. If there were another will, it would have been probated, and everyone would already know about it.

Windrow knew a thing or two about the law.

He'd just taken money on false pretenses.

The seagulls made him feel better. He released the
handbrake, turned on the switch and pushed the Toyota out of its parking place. This was San Francisco. There was a hill around here someplace.

As he leaned into the chore, one hand on the doorframe, the other on the steering wheel, the thought occurred to him, again, that he had little or no justification to be making a case out of this business. Jodie might have been trying to tell him, not that she was in trouble, but that she was in Reno on her honeymoon, and that she never wanted to see him again. The phone connection went dead because she'd decided not to waste another dime. Then again, the syllable had sounded like ‘troub' rather than Reno. Trouble, trouble. Big money big trouble. Neil and Woodruff were the kind of people you didn't mind knowing as long as you didn't have to socialize, eat or do business with them. It bothered Windrow more to know he knew people like Lobe, but, of course, he knew plenty of that type.

He had thought the street was going downhill, but the car didn't seem to agree. It was rolling of its own accord, but just barely. He jumped into the driver's seat, depressed the clutch and pulled the gear lever into second. The Toyota lurched twice and stopped dead. He returned the shift to neutral, got out and started to push again.

It's tough, needing help, he thought to himself. It makes you insecure, especially in these spacious, clean, rich neighborhoods, where it's so quiet you can hear yourself think dirty. There's this flood of nuance in the silence. A woman decides to smile at you, and you're looking behind you to make sure she's not seeing some dude back there with a tan and good teeth and a car that starts, and she is. You hit a rich man up for a fee for some work you're likely to perform better than he can, and he looks at you with a gleam in his eye that's
somewhere between understanding and pity. If pity, maybe he's seen the Toyota. Understanding likewise; even though it violates his ethical code, he wants to give the detective a tip on a sleeper stock. But hell, if he's working, he can't afford it. So the moment of understanding passes, and the detective is hired to go through the trash and find a piece of paper that's going to dump another fortune into the rich man's pockets, and earn the detective two or three hundred dollars.

The Toyota was rolling again, a good thing, as Windrow was winded and in a sweat. He jumped in, threw the machine into second gear, and with a little chirp from the tires, it stopped dead.

And when the pretty girl allows her guardian angel to beat the poor guy up, what's he to think of their relationship? Of himself?

Windrow laid his head against the steering wheel, breathing hard. His breath whistled slightly through the phlegm in his throat.

He's a sap, that's what. Grade A sugar syrup in a plastic jug, and too thick to pour.

Leaving his head on the rim of the steering wheel he reached up for the radio switch. Instantly, a top 40 tune blared out of the speaker at freeway volume.

Perfect, though too loud. He was reaching to change it when a tremendous crash at the rear of the Toyota jerked the knob beyond his reach. The car leaped forward, and Windrow's neck bent around the top of the seat back. Before his head snapped forward again, he automatically depressed the clutch. In the short silence that followed he noticed that
the car's motor was running. Having been left in second gear with the switch on, it had started with the impact of the collision. Windrow wagged his eyebrows and leaned out of the window to thank whoever had plowed into the back of him, only to see smoke boiling out of the rear fender wells of a black Cadillac limousine. Whoever was driving was in reverse with the accelerator stuck to the floor.

Windrow surmised that the driver had been knocked unconscious by the impact, and that the Cadillac was out of control. Putting his own car in neutral and setting the brake, he jerked his door open, thinking to make an attempt to stop the thing. But before he could put a foot on the pavement, the Cadillac suddenly leaped forward, rammed the Toyota again, and kept going.

Windrow desperately grabbed the steering wheel. The Toyota's rear wheels were screeching down the street because the brake was set. Windrow depressed the clutch, pulled the gears into second. Releasing the brake, he stepped on the accelerator as hard as he could and released the clutch. The little car leaped forward, opening a gap, but could not outrun the Cadillac, which rammed him again, over-revving the Toyota's engine. Pushed by the Caddy, the two cars only went faster. He threw the lever into third and glanced at the rear view mirror. Though the Cadillac's windshield was heavily tinted, he could make out a thick pair of sunglasses framed by long gray hair spilling down from the brim of a ten-gallon hat, these surmounting a large number of teeth exposed by a maniacal grin beneath the rim of the Cadillac's steering wheel. The radio blared loudly.