The McCone Files (22 page)

Jim Rogers was an ad man who wore safari clothes and was into guns. I refrained from telling that I own two .38 Specials and am a highly qualified marksman, for fear it would incite him to passion. For a little while I considered him seriously for the role of burglar, but when I probed the subject by mentioning a friend having recently been ripped off, Jim became enraged and said the burglar ought to be hunted down and shot.

“I'm going about this all wrong,” I said to Hank.

It was ten in the morning, and we were drinking coffee at the big round table in All Souls' kitchen. The night before I'd spent hours on the phone with an effervescent insurance underwriter who was going on a whale-watching trip with Weekenders, the group that god-awful Jerry had mentioned. He'd concluded our conversation by saying he'd be sure to note in his pocket organizer to call me the day after he returned. Then I'd been unable to sleep and had sat up hours linger, drinking too much and listening for burglars and brooding about loneliness.

I wasn't involved with anyone at the time—nor did I particularly want to be. I'd just emerged from a long-term relationship and was reordering my life and getting used to doing things alone again. I was fortunate in that my job and my little house—which I'm constantly remodeling—filled most of the empty hours. But I could still understand what Morton and Bob and Ted and Jim and even that dreadful Jerry were suffering from.

It was the little things that got to me. Like the times I went to the supermarket and everything I felt like having for dinner was packaged for two or more, and I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to have over to share it with. Or the times I'd be driving around a curve in the road and come upon a spectacular view, but have no one in the passenger seat to point it out to. And then there were the cold sheets on the other side of a wide bed on a foggy San Francisco night.

But I got through it, because I reminded myself that it wasn't going to be that way forever. And when I couldn't convince myself of that, I thought about how it was better to be totally alone than alone
with
someone. That's how
I
got through the cold, foggy nights. But I was discovering there was a whole segment of the population that availed itself of dating services and telephone conversation clubs and video exchanges. Since I'd started using Best People, I'd been inundated by mail solicitations and found that the array of services available to singles was astonishing.

Now I told Hank, “I simply can't stand another evening making polite chitchat in a bar. If I listen to another ex-wife story, I'll scream. I don't want to know that these guys' parents did to them at age ten that made the whole rest of their lives a mess. And besides, having that security guard on my house is costing Dick Morris a bundle he can ill afford.”

Helpfully Hank said, “So change your approach.”

“Thanks for your great suggestion.” I got up and went out to the desk that belongs to Ted Smalley, our secretary, and dug out a phone directory. All the Best People wasn't listed. My file on the case was on the kitchen table. I went back there—Hank had retreated to his office—and checked the introductory letter they'd sent me; it showed nothing but a post-office box. The zip code told me it was the main post office at Seventh and Mission streets.

I went back and borrowed Ted's phone book again, then looked up the post office's number. I called it, got the mail-sorting supervisor, and identified myself as Sharon from Federal Express. “We've got a package here for All the Best People Introduction service,” I said, and read off the box number. “That's all I've got—no contact phone, no street address.”

“Assholes,” she said warily. “Why do they send them to a P.O. box when they know you can't deliver to one? For that matter, why do you accept them when they're addressed like that?”

“Damned if I know. I only work here.”

“I can't give out the street address, but I'll supply the contact phone.” She went away, came back, and read it to me.

“Thanks,” I depressed the disconnect button and redialed.

A female voice answered the phone with only the phone number. I went into my Federal Express routine. The woman gave me the address without hesitation, in the 200 block of Gough Street near the Civic Center. After I hung up I made one more call: to a friend on the
Chronicle.
J. D. Smith was in the city room and agreed to leave a few extra business cards with the security guard in the newspaper building's lobby.

All the Best People's offices took up the entire second floor of a renovated Victorian. I couldn't imagine why they needed so much space, but they seemed to be doing a landslide business, because phones in the offices on either side of the long corridor were ringing madly. I assumed it was because the summer vacation season was approaching and San Francisco singles were getting anxious about finding someone to make travel plans with.

The receptionist was more or less what I expected to find in the office of that sort of business: petite, blonde, sleekly groomed, and expensively dressed, with an elegant manner. She took J.D.'s card down the hallway to see if their director was available to talk with me about the article I was writing on the singles scene. I paced around the tiny waiting room, which didn't even have chairs. When the young woman came back, she said Dave Lester would be happy to see me and led me to an office at the rear.

The office was plush, considering the attention that had been given to décor in the rest of the suite. It had a leather couch and chairs, a wet bar, and an immense mahogany desk. There wasn't so much as a scrap of paper or a file folder to suggest anything resembling work was done there. I couldn't see Dave Lester, because he had swiveled his high-backed chair around toward the window and was apparently contemplating the wall of the building next door. The receptionist backed out the door and closed it. I cleared my throat, and the chair turned toward me.

The man in the chair was god-awful Jerry Hale.

Our faces must have been mirror images of shock. I said, “What are
you
doing here?”

He said, “You're not J. D. Smith. You're Sharon McCone!” Then he frowned down at the business card he held. “Or is Sharon McCone really J.D. Smith?”

I collected my scattered wits and said, “Which are you—Dave Lester or Jerry Hale?” I added, “I'm a reporter doing a feature article on the singles scene.”

“So Marie said. How did you get this address? We don't publish it because we don't want all sorts of crazies wandering in. This is an exclusive service; we screen our applicants carefully.”

They certainly hadn't screened me; otherwise they'd have uncovered numerous deceptions. I said, “Oh, we newspaper people have our sources.”

“Well, you certainly misrepresented yourself to us.”

“And you misrepresented yourself to
me
.”

He shrugged. “It's all part of the screening process, for our clients' protection. We realized most applicants shy away from a formal interview situation, so we have the first date take the place of that.”

“You yourself go out with
all
the women who apply?”

“A fair amount, using a different name every time, of course, in case any of them know each other and compare notes.” At my astonished look he added, “What can I say? I like women. But naturally I have help. And Marie”—he motioned at the closed door—“and one of the secretaries check out the guys.”

No wonder Jerry had no time to read. “Then none of the things you told me were true? About being into the bar scene and the church groups and the health club?”

“Sure they were. My previous experiences were what led me to buy Best People from its former owners. They hadn't studied the market, didn't know how to make a go of it in the eighties.”

“Well, you're certainly a spokesman for your own product. But how come you kept referring me to other clients? We didn't exactly part on amiable terms.”

“Oh, that was just a ruse to get out of there. I had another date. I'd seen enough to know you weren't my type. But I decided you were still acceptable; we get a lot of men looking for your kind.”

The “acceptable” rankled. “What exactly is my kind?”

“Well, I'd call you…introspective. Bookish? No, not exactly. A little offbeat? Maybe intense? No. It's peculiar…you're peculiar—”

“Stop right there!”

Jerry—who would always be god-awful Jerry and never Dave Lester to me—stood up and came around the desk. I straightened my posture. From my five-foot-six vantage point I could see the beginnings of a bald spot under his artfully styled hair. When he realized where I was looking, his mouth tightened. I took a perverse delight in his discomfort.

“I'll have to ask you to leave now,” he said stiffly.

“But don't you want Best People featured in a piece on singles?”

“I do not. I can't condone the tactics of a reporter who misrepresents herself.”

“Are you sure that's the reason you don't want to talk with me?”

“Of course. What else—”

“Is there something about Best People that you'd rather not see publicized?”

Jerry flushed. When he spoke, it was in a flat deceptively calm manner. “Get out of here,” he said, “or I'll call your editor.”

Since I didn't want to get J.D. in trouble with the
Chron
, I went.

Back at my office at All Souls, I curled up in my ratty armchair—my favorite place to think. I considered my visit to All the Best People; I considered what was wrong with the setup there. Then I got out my list of burglary victims and called each of them. All three gave similar answers to my questions. Next I checked the phone directory and called my friend Sandy in the billing office at Pacific Bell.

“I need an address for a company that's listed by number in the directory,” I told her.

“Billing address, or location where the phone's installed?”

“Both, if they're different.”

She tapped away on her computer keyboard. “Billing and location are the same: two-eleven Gough. Need anything else?”

“That's it. Thanks—I owe you a drink.”