The McCone Files (42 page)

I turned my attention to the file.

Well, there was one thing right off—the daily phone calls Jon Howard had made to the car dealership in Walnut Creek. When I'd driven out there and talked with its manager, neither he nor his salesman could remember the memorable young couple.

I took a pen form my purse, made a note of the dealership's name, address, and phone number, then read on.

And there was something else—the conversation I'd had with the salesman at European Motors here in the city. My recent experience with buying a “pre-owned” van for the agency put a new light on his comments.

My office phone had been disconnected the day before, and the remaining partners would frown on me placing toll calls on All Souls' line. Quickly I hauled the file box out to where my other cartons sat, threw on my jacket, and headed downhill to the Remedy Lounge on Mission Street.

The Remedy had long been a favorite watering hole for the old-timers at All Souls. Brian, the owner, extended us all sorts of courtesies—excluding table service for anyone but Rae, who reminded him of his dead sister, and including running tabs and letting us use his office phone. When I got there the place was empty and the big Irishman was watching his favorite soap opera on the TV mounted above the bar.

“Sure,” he said in answer to my request, “use the phone all you want. Yours is turned off already?”

“Right. It's moving day.”

Brian's fleshy face grew melancholy. He picked up a rag and began wiping down the already polished surface of the bar. “Guess I won't be seeing much of you guys anymore.”

“Why not? The bar's on a direct line between the new offices and the Safeway where we all shop.”

He shrugged. “People always say stuff like that, but in the end they drift away.”

“We'll prove you wrong,” I told him, even thought I suspected he was right. “We'll see.” He pressed the button that unlocked the door to his office.

At his desk I opened my notebook and dialed the number of Ben Rudolph Chevrolet in Walnut Creek. I reached their used-car department. The salesman's answer to my first question confirmed what I already suspected. His supervisor, who had worked there since the late seventies, was out to lunch, he told me, but would be back around two.

Five minutes later I was in the van and on my way to the East Bay.

Walnut Creek is a suburb of San Francisco, but a city in its own right, sprawling in a broad valley in the shadow of Mount Diablo. When I'd traveled there on the Morrison case more than a decade earlier, it still had a small-town flavor: few trendy shops and restaurants in the downtown district; only one office building over two stories; tracts and shopping centers, yes, but also, semi-rural neighborhoods where the residents still kept horses and chickens. Now it was a hub of commerce, with tall buildings whose tinted and smoked glass glowed in the afternoon sun. There was a new cultural center, a restaurant on nearly every corner, and the tracts went on forever.

Ben Rudolph Chevrolet occupied the same location on North Main Street, although its neighbors squeezed more tightly against it. As I parked in the customer lot I wondered why years ago I had neglected to call the phone number the SFPD had supplied me. If I'd phoned ahead rather than just driven out here, I'd have discovered that the dealership maintained separate lines for its new- and used-car departments. And I'd have known that Jon Howard's daily calls weren't made because he was hot on the trail of a snappy new Corvette.

I went directly to the manager of the used-car department, a ruddy-faced, prosperous-looking man named Dave Swenson. Yes, he confirmed, he'd worked there since seventy-eight. “Only way to survive in this business is to stick with one dealership, dig in, create your own clientele.”

“I'm looking for someone who might've been a salesperson here in the late seventies and early eighties.” I showed him my I.D. “Handsome man, dark hair and mustache, late twenties. Good build. Below average height. His name may have been Jon Howard.”

“No, it wasn't.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I know the fella you're talking about, but got it backwards. His first name was Howard John.”

Howard John—simple transposition. The salesman at European Motors had told me he knew enough about used cars to sell them, and he'd been correct. “John's not working here anymore?”

“Hell, no. He was fired over a dozen years ago. I don't recall exactly when.” Swenson tapped his temple. “Sorry, the old memory's going.”

“But you remembered him right off.”

“Well, he was that kind of guy. A real screw-up, always talking big and never doing anything about it, but you couldn't help but like him.”

“Talking big, how?”

“Ah, the usual. He was studying nights, gonna get his MBA, set up some financial company, be somebody. He'd have a big house in the city, a limo, boats and planes, hobnob with all the right people—you know. All smoke and no fire, Howie was, you had to hand it to him, he could be an entertaining fellow.”

“And then he was fired.”

“Yeah. It was stupid, it didn't have to happen. The guy was producing; he made sales when nobody else could. What Howie did, he took a vacation to Mammouth to ski. When his week was up, he started calling in, saying he as sick with some bug he caught down there. This went on for weeks, and the boss got suspicious, so he checked out Howie's apartment. The manager said he hadn't been back since he drove off with his ski gear the month before. So a few days after that when Howie strolled in here all innocent and business-as-usual, the boss had no choice but to can him.”

“What happened to him? Do you know where he's working now?”

Swenson stared thoughtfully at me. “You know, I meant it when I said I liked the guy.”

“I don't mean him any harm, Mr. Swenson.”

“No?” He waited.

Quickly I considered several stories, rejected all of them, and told Swenson the truth. He reacted with glee, laughing loudly and slapping his hand on his desk. “Good for Howie! At least he got a few weeks of good life before everything went down the sewer.”

“So can you tell me where I can find him?”

“I still don't know why you want him.”

I hesitated, unsure myself as to why I did. No one was looking for Howard John any more, and the organization that had assigned me to find him had ceased to exist. Finally I said, ”When you have a sale pending that you think is a sure thing and then if falls through, does it nag at you afterwards?”

“Sure, for years, sometimes. I wonder what I did wrong, why it didn't fly.”

“I'm the same way about my cases. This is my last open file from the law firm where I used to work. Closing it will tie off some loose ends.”

“Well…” Swenson considered some more. “Okay. I don't know if Howie's still there, but I saw him working another lot about three months ago—Roy's Motors, up in Concord.”

Concord was a city to the north. I thanked Swenson and hurried out to the van.

Concord, like Walnut Creek, had developed into a metropolis since I once worked a case at its performing arts pavilion, but the windswept frontage road where Roy's Motors was located was a throwback to the early sixties. An aging shopping center with a geodesic dome-type cinema and dozens of mostly dead stores adjoined the used-car lot; both were almost devoid of customers. Faded plastic flags fluttered limply above Roy's stock, which consisted mainly of vehicles that looked as though they'd welcome a trip to the auto dismantler's; a sign proclaiming it HOME OF THE BEST DEALS IN TOWN creaked disconsolately. I could make out a man sitting inside the small sales shack, but his features were obscured by the dirty window glass.

A young couple were wandering through the lot, stopping here and there to examine pick-up trucks. After a few minutes they displayed more than passing interest in a canary-yellow Ford, and the man got up and came out of the shack. He was on the short side and running to paunch, with thinning dark hair, a brushy mustache, and a face that once had been handsome. Howard John?

As he approached the couple, the salesman held himself more erect and sucked in his stomach; his step took on a jaunty rhythm and a charismatic smile lit up his face. He shook hands with the couple, began expounding on the truck. He laughed; they laughed. He helped the woman into the cab, urged the man in on the driver's side. The chemistry was working, the magic glowing. This, I was sure, was the man who years before had scammed the greedy merchants of San Francisco.

A few short weeks of living like the high rollers, I thought, then dismissal from a good job and a series of steps down to this. How did he go on, with the memory of those weeks ever in the back of his mind? How did he come to his windswept lot every day and put himself through the paces?

Well, maybe his dreams—improbable as they might seem—had survived intact. He'd done it once, his reasoning might go, and he could do it again. Maybe Howard John still believed that he was only occupying a way station on the road to the top.

But what about Marnie Morrison?

I found Howard John's residence by a method whose simplicity and effectiveness have never ceased to amaze me: a look-see into the phone book. The listing was in two names, and the wife's was Marnie.

The shabby residential street was not far from the used-car lot: a two-block row of identical shoebox-style tract homes of the same vintage as the shopping center. The pavement was potholed and the houses on the west side backed up on a concrete viaduct but big poplars, arched over the street and, in spite of the hum of nearby freeway traffic, it had an aura of tranquility. The house I was looking for was painted mint green and surrounded by a low chain link fence. A sign on its gate said SUNNYSIDE DAYCARE CENTER, and in the yard beyond it sat an assortment of brightly colored playground equipment.

It was close to five o'clock; for the next hour I watched a steady stream of parents arrive and depart with their offspring. Ten minutes after the last had left a woman came out of the house and began collecting the playthings strewn in the yard. I peered through my shade-dappled windshield and recognized an older, heavier version of Marnie Morrison. Clad in an oversized sweatshirt and leggings that strained over her ample thighs, she moved slowly, stopping now and then to wipe sweat from her brow. When she finished she trudged inside.

So this was what Marnie had become since I'd last seen her: the overworked, prematurely aged wife of an unsuccessful used-car salesman, who operated a daycare center to make ends meet. And one of those ends was her periodic hundred-dollar atonement to her parents' favorite charity for the credit-card binge that had bought her a few weeks of high living and dreams.

Unsure as to why I was doing it, I continued to watch the mint green house. I'd found Marnie. Why didn't I give up and go back to the city? There were things I should be doing at the new offices, things I should be doing at home.

But I wanted an end to the story, so I stayed where I was.