Where Echoes Live (13 page)

Rae said, “So that's where things stand with me. After I draft those two client reports I mentioned, which won't take long, I can get started on the skip trace on Earl Hopwood.”

It was nine-thirty on Tuesday morning. My assistant perched cross-legged on the end of the chaise longue in my office at All Souls, clad in jeans and a russet sweater that was a near perfect match for her freckles and curly auburn hair. Although Rae's wardrobe had steadily improved as Willie Whelan introduced her to the joys of deficit spending, she still tended to choose shades that blended with her natural coloring, thus conveying the totally false impression that she was a bland little person. Was this a last vestige of insecurity stemming from her early, emotionally abusive marriage? I wondered. Or did it have to do with the fact that she'd soon be a fully licensed private investigator and for some misguided reason thought she had to appear inconspicuous at all times?

“Shar? Are you still in there?”

“I'm here. My mind was wandering. Listen, if Tracy Miller at the DMV doesn't want to pull Hopwood's records so soon after the last time we used her, just let it go. This new privacy law has put her in a difficult position.” The law on confidentiality of Department of Motor Vehicles information had been sparked by the murder of an actress by a deranged fan who had hired a detective to find out her address. Now the DMV, long one of an investigator's most valuable resources, would reveal nothing except to law enforcement agencies and such automobile-related businesses as insurance companies. My friend Tracy was still willing to run the occasional check for me, but I hated to ask her unless it was very important.

Rae asked, “If she doesn't want to, where should I go next?”

“Concentrate on getting a current married name for Hop-wood's daughter and locating her. All I'm really hoping for from the DMV is a recent traffic citation on Hopwood that might tell us where he's been keeping himself—and that's a long shot.”

She nodded and made a note on the pad she held. “How about telling me more about the case?”

“Tomorrow I will. I'll even spring for lunch. But today I don't have a minute to spare before I have to pick up my mother at the bus station at five-thirty.”

Rae's blue eyes flickered and she quickly looked away. She was one of the All Souls people who had seen the coldly murderous side of me the summer before, and it was with her that I most noticed the seemingly unbridgeable distance. Before that she would have wheedled and badgered until I gave her the details of the case; now she merely arranged her face into coolly professional lines and awaited a dismissal.

I said, too heartily, “I meant to ask—how was your weekend?”

She shrugged.

“You and Willie do anything special?”

“Not really. Rented some videos, ordered in a pizza. Spent most of Sunday doing the wild thing.”

“… The what?”

“Wild thing. You know.”

“You mean …”

“Yeah, that.” She frowned, cocking her head, her earlier hurt forgotten. “You never heard it called that?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, what do
you
call it?”

“Making love.”

“No, I mean informally. What does your generation call it?”

My generation.
Quickly I reminded myself that Rae was over a decade younger than I; in many senses we
were
products of different eras. “Well, when I was in high school, we just said ‘doing it' at first. But that was in the sixties and everybody wanted to be shocking, so before long it was ‘fucking.'”

“And after that?”

“… I don't know. I guess we fucked pretty much through the seventies, and in the eighties we ‘significantly related' or some such godawful phrase. And now …I can't believe I'm having this conversation!”

“Why? This is historically significant stuff.”

“Sure it is.” But I had to admit it was far more absorbing than any other subject we might have been discussing. “In my older brothers' day, I think they said ‘going all the way.' My parents called it ‘taking a nap' and sent us all to my aunt's house.”

“When I was in school, it was ‘getting it on.' The grandmother who raised me called it ‘having carnal knowledge' and forbade it.”

“What a long way we've come—doing the wild thing. Can you also call it wild thinging?”

“Sure. You can even conjugate it: I wild thing, you wild thing, he wild things—”

“Conjugate
it!” I clapped my hand over my mouth and snorted.

Rae looked puzzled for a few seconds. Then her lips formed a little O and she started to giggle.

I laughed harder. Rae let out a whoop and doubled over. As I pounded the desk with my fist, she slid from the chaise to the floor. And Hank stuck his head through the door.

“Am I interrupting an important conference?” he asked.

I wiped tears from my eyes and waved him in. Apparently he had a court appearance later that day, because he wore a gray suit and one of what he calls his “serious” ties. As he surveyed us he scratched his head, which every year resembles more closely a pad of steel wool, and behind his horn-rimmed glasses his eyes were bemused and begging to be let in on the joke.

Rae looked up from where she sprawled on my Oriental rug. “We were discussing conjugating,” she said and burst into another fit of giggles.

Hank blinked. “You mean like ‘I am, you are, he is'?”

“More like … never mind!” She stood up, grabbed her notepad from where she'd dropped it, and pushed past him.

Her cackling was audible until her office door slammed downstairs.

I swiped at my eyes again, wondering if our mirth hadn't been exaggerated by mutual relief at finding we could still laugh together. Maybe such small shared moments would eventually bridge the distance, make it unnecessary for me to confront the issue….

Hank took the place Rae had vacated on the chaise. “What was that all about?”

“We were discussing sex, more or less.”

“So that's the significance of the leer she gave me when she left. God, the woman has a smutty laugh.”

Briefly a silence fell between us—but a companionable one rather than the emotionally charged ones I experienced with Rae. If anyone should have changed in his feelings toward me, it was Hank: because I'd failed to adequately protect him, he had been near-fatally shot last summer, and in the aftermath I'd come close to killing the sniper in cold blood. But unlike those who witnessed my rage, Hank—one of my oldest friends and, in some ways, my dearest friend— had grown even closer. He is a man with that rare gift of viewing events on the positive side; in his opinion, I hadn't failed to protect him, but had saved his life by pushing him out of the path of a bullet. And my violence toward the sniper had only served to make him realize how deep my very platonic love for him runs.

After a moment he said, “Sex isn't a topic I care to dwell on just now, seeing as my wife has been away a total of twenty-three days. How does she seem to you?”

“She looks terrific, sounds terrific, too. Hank, it's as if she's come alive again.”

“That's the impression I get from our phone conversations.

To be happy, Anne-Marie needs a cause she can fight for; this job with the Coalition's given her that.”

I hesitated, then asked a question I hadn't posed to Anne-Marie for fear she'd feel I was pressuring her. “Do you think she'll ever come back to All Souls?”

“No. And I wouldn't want her to. When we were fresh out of law school and just establishing the co-op, this was a stimulating atmosphere for her. But now … hell, we
are
establishment.”

“What's wrong with that? We've gotten across the idea that people with low incomes are entitled to quality legal representation. Gotten it into the mainstream.”

Hank took off his glasses and began polishing them on his handkerchief. “Nothing's wrong with that at all. I like being mainstream. I like having one of the deputy mayors call me up to pick my brains. Hell, I even like lunching with the crowd from City Hall. But Anne-Marie—she needs to be on the cutting edge of change.”

“Even if it means spending so much time away from you and her friends?”

“Even if. And I wouldn't have it any other way.” He put his glasses back on and stood. “I'd better let you get back to work. If you need extra time on this case of Anne-Marie's, take it. She promised me last night that the Coalition will reimburse us handsomely for your time.”

“Handsomely?”

“Maybe she said adequately.”

“Sounds more like it.”

He winked at me and left the office.

I smiled as the door closed behind him. Our brief talk had reassured me that Hank and Anne-Marie's marriage was firmly on track. After their initial difficulties they'd settled into a relationship that was both close and free, supportive and hands-off. Maybe marriage didn't have to be such a confining institution after all….

My eyes rested on the long-stemmed yellow rose in the vase on my desk. It had been delivered shortly after nine, wrapped in waxy green paper and tied with a yellow ribbon. No card, just a single perfect rose. On impulse I dialed the number of George's condominium on Russian Hill, even though I knew he'd be teaching a class at Stanford by now.

After the beep that his recorded voice warned me to wait for, I said, “Hi, I'm back—but I see you know that. Ma gets in at five-thirty. We'll be at your place with bells on at seven. Well, skip the bells. We'll just wear normal clothes and bring the wine and dessert as planned. See you then.”

It had been too late to call him when I'd returned home, to an ecstatic Ralphie and Allie, the night before. En route to the city that morning I'd stopped in Bridgeport, a town of some five hundred people that sprawled on a high plain fifteen miles north of Vernon. Most of its business appeared to be tourist-oriented, and their glossiness contrasted sharply with the 1880s charm of the white Victorian courthouse that sat on a wide lawn on the main street. In the modern sheriff's department building on the street behind it—oddly enough called Bryant, the same as the one where San Francisco's Hall of Justice is located—I spoke with Kristen Lark about the Erickson homicide. The medical examiner, Lark told me, estimated the time of death at no more than two hours before Nickles and her dancing partner had spotted the body in the lake; the murder weapon had been a .22 caliber automatic. The investigating team had turned up no leads to where Erickson had been shot, where he'd gone into the water, or where he'd stayed in the area. His fingerprints had not matched any lifted after the break-ins at Ripinsky's home, the trailers, or the cabins at the lodge. Lark had contacted the SFPD, who in turn had notified Erickson's wife of his death.

“I requested background information on the victim,” she said, “but I don't suppose I'll get much. They're backlogged there, and frankly, a killing in Mono County isn't a priority for them. Other than that he has a wife living at a fancy address and an office in a downtown high-rise, we don't know a thing about him.”

Ned Sanderman hadn't bothered to contact her or Gifford, then. Briefly I related what he'd told me, then asked, “Where is Erickson's office?”

“Embarcadero Center.” She took a business card from the file in front of her and pushed it toward me. “He had a little case full of these in the glovebox of that rented Bronco.”

I examined the card. It was of good quality, the blue letters embossed on a pearl gray background: Cross-Cultural Concepts, Inc. In smaller type it said, “International Marketing Practices” and gave Erickson's title as president.

When I looked up, Lark was eyeing me hopefully. “We'll probably have to send somebody down to talk with the wife and his employees,” she said. “That'll put a strain on our budget, and with upcoming vacation schedules, we really don't have anybody we can easily spare right now.”

I seized the opportunity she offered. “How do you feel about private investigators cooperating in your investigations?”

“We're much looser here than in a lot of other jurisdictions, mainly because our tax base doesn't support us the way theirs do.”

“I'd be glad to help by seeing what I can dig up on Erickson.” Lark grinned. “You know, I kind of thought you would.”

I promised to stay in touch and took down the name of her contact on the SFPD Homicide detail—Bart Wallace, a man I knew and liked. Then I continued my trip over the Nevada border to Carson City.

There I avoided the reasonably expensive Ormsby House and concentrated on those casinos that looked to be the sort a backcountry prospector like Earl Hopwood would patronize. I drew blanks, however, when I showed his photograph around to their security personnel. In Reno I got similar results until, at the end of the Strip, I came upon a shabby casino advertising senior citizens' discounts, RV parking, and early-bird dinner specials. The head of security there recognized Hopwood's photo immediately.

“He's been a regular for ten, maybe twelve years,” he told me. “When he's flush, blackjack's his game—the two-dollar tables. Otherwise he plays the slots—quarters, mostly.”

“Have you seen him during the past two weeks?”

The man thought for a moment. “Not since last summer, come to think of it.”

“Are you certain of that? Could he have escaped your notice or perhaps come in while you were on vacation?”

“No. Hopwood's a nice guy, the staff like him. Even if I didn't see him myself, somebody would have mentioned him being back. And I haven't had a vacation in over a year.”

And that put a sizable hole in the theory that Hopwood was in Nevada blowing the proceeds of his land deal.

By then it was well after five. I took the free-drink coupon the security man offered and had a glass of wine and played a couple of games of keno in the casino lounge. For a while I contemplated going back down the Strip and taking a room at Harrah's or the Sundowner. I could have dinner, do a little gambling, and drive home fresh in the morning. But I found that Reno depressed me; on each of my infrequent trips it seemed increasingly tacky, a decaying small city full of hard-eyed hustlers and losers whose only hope was the elusive big score. It has none of the natural beauty of Lake Tahoe, nor the upscale glitz of Las Vegas, and the friendliness on which it used to pride itself has stretched to a phony smile that barely conceals the malignant pursuit of tourist bucks.