Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Even after dark Hickey made good time until he got stuck behind a navy convoy. It was nearly eleven when he caught a side street he knew through Anaheim, sneaked around the convoy and back onto 101, and yanked the throttle, still hoping to make Rudy’s in time to catch the girl’s last set.

There were big guns blasting in the dark hills of Camp Pendleton, a trio of ships, two destroyers and a carrier, heading south about a mile off the coast at Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Tanks prowled the sea cliffs of Camp Callan, north of La Jolla, and the rattle and pop of machine gun and rifle fire carried toward him on an onshore breeze.

The palms along Harbor Drive rustled and swayed. The flying silver fish fluttered and bounced like party balloons. Hickey turned up Broadway. Saturday night, 12:35, around the arcades, tattoo parlors, Greyhound depot, and YMCA, soldiers and marines lounged and strolled beside sailors from England, Russia, Brazil. A visitor from an earlier century might’ve thought every enlisted man in creation had showed up tonight on lower Broadway. Most of them whistled and catcalled at the few young women who strutted by, risking whatever virtue they had left. Across from the Pickwick Hotel and Greyhound depot, a drunken ensign steadied himself with his right arm wrapped around a lamp post, while his left hand cupped the bottom of every female who passed.

Hickey made a left on Fourth Street, coasted past three stop signs, wheeled into the lot behind Rudy’s. He dug into his briefcase for the drawing he’d found in Cynthia’s room, rolled and stuck it into his pocket, then got out and passed Skeeter the keys to his car.

“It’s swell we got Miss Moon back, boss,” the lot boy said. “Guys sure tip big after they watch her. When Martini’s singing, folks stiff me, like they’re blaming me he’s a bum.”

As Hickey stepped into the kitchen, LeDuc the chef and a waiter named Jaime rushed him, chattering complaints. Hickey raised his hands for peace and slipped around them. It had been twelve days since he’d heard Cynthia, and he didn’t want to miss a song.

He stood just outside the kitchen door and watched. Cynthia gripped the microphone with one bare hand, the other wearing a glove that matched her red silky gown, low cut, hemmed at the calves, slit on her right side to six inches up from the knee. The skin of her upper chest and arms looked whiter than ever. Her hair was down, curled into medium waves and flipped toward her left side so it covered part of that eye and cheek. On the right ear, she wore a dangling piece of turquoise. Above the ear, she had an orchid pinned into her hair. In red pump heels, she towered above Clyde, who stood close by, holding his baton still, watching the girl, her head cocked back a little, making her neck appear especially long and vulnerable, as if she were offering it to be kissed or chopped off, whatever you pleased. She sang, “I’ll Never Smile Again,” or laugh again, and hopelessly asked what good it would do. Her foot didn’t tap, her leg didn’t bounce or shimmy, both arms, as she let her hands fall away from the microphone, hung still at her sides. Her lips hardly moved. She glanced around the room with eyes dull and dry as sandstone. So mournful that the audience looked stunned, as if the girl had announced her decision to slit her throat. A waiter had stopped in passage holding a tray. He drew a sleeve across his eyes so tears wouldn’t plop into the soup. Hickey wondered if she were singing to the ghost of Emma Vidal. She bowed slightly as the drum rolled and clarinet riffed a fade.

After the hush, a few people sighed, others whistled, yelped. Most of them bashed their hands together as though trying to knock them off.

Phil the maître d’ materialized beside Hickey. A tall, sleek, blond young fellow who’d lost both kneecaps when he crashed a race car. The maroon dinner jacket looked as comfortable as if invented for him. “Good trip, boss?”

Hickey nodded. “How’d things go?”

“A few complaints, you know, cold soup, a suspicious particle in the salad. Only thing I oughta bother you with—Louie orders up a bloody rare prime rib, so LeDuc’s gotta hack into a new roast when he’s still working on the old one. He’s chopping and griping away, slices his finger. ‘Bastard wants bloody rare,’ he says, ‘I’ll give him bloody rare.’ Wipes his damn finger on the meat and sends it out.”

Hickey scowled, patted Phil on the shoulder, made a mental note to fire the savage as soon as he found a better chef, meanwhile to threaten the guy. He pardoned his way through a crowd of folks waiting for tables. Just inside the door, Paul Castillo leaned against the hatcheck counter whispering something to the cigarette girl. When he saw Hickey, the hint of a smirk crooked his lips. He lay his arm across Hickey’s shoulders. “Glad you can make it back, pal. It’s a killer of a drive for nothing.”

Castillo never missed a shot at proving himself smarter than you. One of those guys whose nerves flutter and spook him into action anytime he’s less than top dog.

Though Hickey would’ve preferred to pâté the man’s nose, he only nodded, trying his damnedest to keep the peace between them, knowing that once they began to spar, Castillo wouldn’t stop for the bell, he’d go for the knockout. Because that was his style, and out of jealousy that Hickey had Madeline. If they got to quarreling, Hickey’d use impolite adjectives—greedy, crooked, phony—and probably a few unfriendly nouns. Castillo would escalate the language, find himself on the floor. Maybe jump up waving a gun. No matter how the skirmish got resolved, the golden goose would remain stewed. Hickey and family would be eating meat loaf once again, and to Madeline he’d once again be a loser.

“Good house,” Hickey said. “I gotta get some bread and water.”

Instead of taking his dinner in the office as usual, he grabbed the only unspoken-for stool, carried it to the end of the bar, cleared himself a spot between the martini olives and the cherries. He told Hwang, the bartender, to rustle him up a T-bone, potatoes, carrots, and a splash of Dewar’s.

Cynthia had transformed. Loose and vivacious, she invited everybody to Niagara, Saint Paul, Bermuda, any good place to get away from it all.

Hickey’s scotch arrived. He gulped half of it, started on the next gulp, and realized he had one of those thirsts it feels like you can quench with booze, a fight, mostly any wild pleasure, but you can’t even touch it. All you can do is wait it out. He put down the glass, got out his briar and Walter Raleigh, watched the stage, and tried to observe any new gesture of Cynthia’s, any change in her manner or voice. When his food arrived, he devoured the steak. If he hadn’t minded taking his eyes off the girl, he would’ve gone into the office and gnawed morsels off the bone.

Cynthia’s encore was “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” She let the final note carry long and high, then cut it off as if she’d suddenly gone mute, and without waiting to revel in the applause as usual, she swept off the stage and down the aisle to the bar, her eyes on Hickey all the way. She stopped a foot in front of him, hands clasped on her waist. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes damp and glinting.

“They love me,” she said breathlessly. “They’ve never seen anybody like me.”

“Yeah. Who has?” Hickey stood, took one of her hands. The skin felt at least a hundred degrees. He showed her around the bar to a quieter nook by the office. The rolled manila envelope started to fall from his coat pocket. He rolled it tighter and shoved it back in. “Let’s go someplace and talk.”

“Sure, get away from this joint,” she said tensely. “Around here I feel like the Maharani. Half the men want me to marry them and the others want to pounce on me. You’d think I was Susan Hayward.”

He gave the compliment she’d fished for, then stepped into his office and brought back her coat, a long fleecy number in eggshell white, and helped her into it. From a pocket she produced a second red glove, stretched it over her fingers and up her arm, watching all her motions carefully as though glad for the excuse to avoid his eyes. She hadn’t worn a hat because it would’ve crushed the orchid.

They left Rudy’s the back way, circled the block, and walked down Fifth, Cynthia keeping slightly in the lead though she held his arm. Twice or so every minute she looked back furtively. A cold, damp wind whooshed around them. It gusted hard straight up Broadway. Black clouds had massed low over the harbor. A few large raindrops splashed down, and crowds at the bus and trolley stops jogged for cover or hoisted umbrellas.

Cynthia whisked Hickey along faster, a block west and across Market Street to the part of town where charred buildings didn’t soon get rebuilt and music from rival Negro clubs clashed on the sidewalks. Dodging an occasional hooker, they strode the three blocks down to the Horton Grand Hotel, a place that must’ve been elegant about the year Hickey was born, with its cut-glass windows, Persian carpets, chandeliers, and doilies on every table in the cocktail lounge. Hickey tossed the doilies from their table onto a nearby Grand Rapids chair. He ordered scotch for himself, ginger ale for the girl, who sat stiffly wearing a petulant scowl, already defending herself against the questions she anticipated Hickey’d ask.

“Where you been?”

“You should know. You broke in to my room, then followed me five hundred goddamned miles.”

“Yep. And I learned a couple things. You’re going to tell me more.”

“The hell I am.” She turned toward the lobby and pressed the heels of her red gloved hands to her eyes. After a minute she dropped the hands, slowly peeled off the gloves, folded and crammed them into the pocket of the coat hanging over the back of her chair. She reached out for Hickey’s hands. “Sorry. I don’t like to swear. See, I didn’t want you to know about my family. My mother the swami’s whore. My daddy…” Her voice choked and faded.

“Hey, you’re not the only one with creeps in the family.”

She made a hiss with her tongue. “Go on, tell me about yours.”

“First, outta curiosity, what were you doing with the gun?”

She tried doeing her eyes their widest, but the innocent look wouldn’t hold. Her lips curled as if to spit and she slapped a hand onto the table. “I rode the bus, nitwit. You know what I do to men.”

Hickey wagged his head, figuring the more riled she got, the more likely she’d come clean.

“What do you think I had it for, you old crook? See, Pop, I know Rudy’s is a front for the mob and that you stink as much as anybody.”

At three tables away, the navy high brass and their girls Hickey’d seen working the Playroom, the lovey couple, and four dowagers had turned to listen and stare.

“Swell. We’re gonna talk about that anytime you please. After you tell me where you went and why.” Hickey sipped his drink and gazed around until the eavesdroppers turned back to gabbing. He leaned over the table close to Cynthia. “You shoot Emma Vidal?”

“Oh God, you’re a fool,” Cynthia yelled. She lifted her glass as if to throw it, then lowered it slowly, set it on the table, and raised a finger to one of her weepy eyes. “I can’t make it with her gone,” she blubbered. “She was the only person who cared about Daddy and me. The only one who could’ve saved us.”

“Saved you from who?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Daddy’s dead and so am I.” As if to prove her claim, she looked up with dry, vacant eyes and a face so calm it spooked him.

Maybe he could shock her back to life. He reached to his pocket for the manila envelope. He’d only gotten the drawing halfway out of the envelope when she recognized it. She sprang to her feet, knocking over the chair, grabbed the drawing, and bolted for the door.

Hickey tripped over his own chair and hers. By the time he reached the sidewalk, she was turning the corner onto Island. Raindrops the size of hailstones pelted the street. As he ran, he noticed one of Cynthia’s red shoes in the gutter. He slid around the corner onto Island and spotted her half a block ahead, running in her stockinged feet, the slit on her tight dress torn almost to her hips so her long legs could stride freely.

He sprinted, weaving like a halfback to dodge pedestrians. They raced and skidded, down and across Island, up Third, across Market, and around two more corners. As he slid onto G Street—having gotten close enough to hear her feet slapping over the noise of wandering crowds and motors—he slammed into a troop of sailors and marines milling in front of the Hollywood Burlesque. About ten feet ahead, Cynthia was busy slapping a guy. Hickey lowered his shoulder and plowed through, bellowing. The instant Cynthia had tugged her arm free from the grip of the man she’d belted, Hickey reached her and snatched the envelope. In one motion, he rolled and stuck it under his belt, then grabbed Cynthia’s wrist.

“Get off me! Get him off,” she screamed, as if he were a tarantula.

Hickey got broadsided, then a big arm choked him. His knees started buckling. He only saw a blur of arms and legs firing at him, until a wild kick he threw found its mark and one sailor lurched away howling. The others, startled, backstepped to regroup, which gave Hickey the instant he needed to catch his balance. Backing away, he growled, “Come on, boys. A couple more of you this time. See if you can wake me up.”

Several voices hollered for cops. Somebody touched his sleeve, then gripped his arm as if they had a date to go strolling. Melinda, a hooker he knew. She gave him a cheery wink. “You like redheads, Tom, I’m yours.”

Hickey wheeled a half circle and spotted the girl, running, tailed by a couple sailors. They disappeared around the corner of Second and G while Melinda snuggled against him. He gave her a peck on the cheek, broke off, and walked away, secured the envelope under his belt. His fury transforming to a knockout headache, stiff, sore, drenched, and worried about the girl, he trudged back through the gentler rain toward the Horton Grand, to pay the tab and retrieve Cynthia’s white coat.

Chapter Nine

On Sunday morning Hickey woke to the buzz, whoosh, and splash of the first speedboat out on the bay. A kid ran past his window, trying to launch a kite.

Hickey brushed his teeth, threw on trousers, a shirt, shoes, and a baseball cap so he wouldn’t have to bother with his hair, and walked to the bakery, a half mile around the bay and across Mission Boulevard. He bought a pound of strawberry Danish and a mug of coffee, which he drank on the seawall, watching the breakers crash and roll and inspecting the tent city.

San Diego, since Pearl Harbor, had fabricated twice as many jobs as homes. So a dozen camp towns had risen, where a factory worker could set up his family the day they arrived from Indianola, Dubuque, or Tulsa. Most of the tents were new and respectable. Window flaps, state flags atop the center posts, and laundry batted in the offshore breeze.

The place looked to have doubled its size in the past couple weeks since Hickey’d found the time to walk here. Before Rudy’s, he and Elizabeth, sometimes Madeline, used to roam Mission Beach three or four evenings each week. Walking ranked fifth, behind driving, in Hickey’s hierarchy of pleasure.

He took off his shoes, stuffed the socks in them, bow-tied the laces, and slung them over his shoulder, then sauntered along the shoreline, drawing lines in the damp sand with his toes and heels. Pencil-beaked cormorants zipped across the sky as if shot out of crossbows. Pelicans skimmed the foamy waves as though scratching their bellies. The rumble and slap of the water slowed Hickey’s heartbeat and quieted his brain.

On the way home he stopped at Caruso’s Market for a quart of fresh orange juice, and he thought about Cynthia. Instinctively, he didn’t believe she’d killed Emma Vidal. But his instinct had proved wrong a few thousand times. She might’ve killed Emma or somebody else. If the townies of Dunsmuir hadn’t learned about the avalanche or the funeral, he could deduce no reason they might not be ignorant of any tragedy or crime among the
Nezahs
. Nor, Hickey thought, was there reason to presume that Katherine had told the truth. Emma Vidal might still be alive. For all he knew, Katherine might be Emma with a haircut.

Elizabeth helped her dad scramble eggs, char bacon, and deliver breakfast in bed to Madeline, along with a poinsettia Hickey’d cut and laid on the tray.

He and Madeline collaborated on plans for the afternoon, then he and Elizabeth took the rowboat out. They labored over rough water, against the crisp breeze, the boat lumbering over the swells and splatting into the troughs as if it were a washtub. The fog burnt off suddenly. The sun looked small and dusty white. They rowed to Crown Point, beached the boat, and lay on the bayside grass. Elizabeth gabbed about a Point Loma boy named Tony she’d met at a party, whose family owned tuna clippers. Elizabeth was mad because her La Jolla friends snubbed the boy and his pal. Her La Jolla gang didn’t approve of the Portuguese.

Hickey could’ve given plenty advice, if he’d sensed she wanted any. She didn’t. He patted her arm, kissed the top of her head. They rowed across the bay to Quivera Basin. When Hickey’s arms and legs started to feel like they used to in the fourth quarter, he and Elizabeth drifted awhile and he told her about the trip to Mount Shasta. He said it looked like somebody’s gotten buried by an avalanche. Elizabeth frowned and, as if she took the news personally, grabbed a rusty fishing weight and slung it into the bay.

“Funny thing is,” Hickey said, “Dunsmuir’s one of these towns where everybody knows everybody else’s shoe size, but the gal I talked to, a waitress who’s as much of a gossip as Eva, hadn’t heard about any avalanche.”

“Whatta you think that means?”

“Means I should’ve stuck around a couple more days. But I missed my girls.”

Elizabeth smiled naughtily. “Which ones?”

Rather than take that remark as a line his daughter got from Madeline, he chose to splash her and grin. They rowed back along the west shore.

Madeline had fixed a lunch for the road and packed their jackets, mittens, snow caps, and toboggan in the car. They caught U.S. 80, a two-lane which followed the trickling San Diego River through Mission Valley, past the gravel pit, the dairy farm, the orphanage at Mission de Alcala. They passed the college, crossed the mesa. In El Cajon, a valley of groves and ranches, they cut north on Highway 67, through Lakeside and up the grade through the Indian reservation, along the narrow cliffside roads past huge mounds of boulders above which hawks and buzzards glided. They ate lunch in Ramona, on a park bench under oak trees. Hickey pushed both his girls on the swings. After Ramona the air started chilling. They rolled up the windows and drove into the pine forest singing dopey songs like one about three liddle fiddies fwimming.

Julian’s orchards were packed in snow. Sunshine glistened off the white-capped roofs of gold rush-vintage houses. The only cleared road was the main one through town. Kids sledded down the steep side streets, braked by crashing into barricades. Hickey and family stopped at the café for apple pie and cocoa, then drove a couple miles farther to the meadow they tramped across to get to the toboggan run. For a couple hours they sped down the hill, alone or in tandem, greeted each other’s arrival at the bottom with snowballs, chased and tackled each other, hiked up beyond the toboggan run to the crest of the hill because Elizabeth wanted to see the view.

All day Madeline only got off one lousy crack. While Elizabeth trudged up the hill for her last run, Madeline took off her scarf, flicked away snow that had gotten under her collar. As if Hickey had crammed the snow down her shirt, she turned and gave him a wicked smile.

“Did you remember to cancel our reservations at the Beverly Wilshire?”

“Naw,” Hickey said. “The social calendar’s your job.”

“It’s a tough job, Tom, scheduling the one night a month you dedicate to me.”

“You can handle it.” He watched her stoop to pack a snowball. He thought he’d get it in the face, but she heaved it at the sky instead.

On the drive home, Elizabeth bundled herself into a quilt and fell asleep in back. Hickey and Madeline sat quiet and moody. The sky kept brightening with new stars, as if heaven were shooting flares in advance of a battle. The radio picked up nothing in the mountains. Hickey didn’t like the silence, but he wasn’t going to break it by acting pleasant and phony, and he didn’t know how to pierce Madeline’s armor anymore. It seemed she’d collected a stone for every time over the years he’d wounded her pride or let her down, and now whenever he stepped into range she chucked one at him. He tried to shoo her out of his mind by thinking about Cynthia Moon.

Tonight he’d ask the girl, suppose Emma Vidal got murdered—what were the chances that Cynthia’d be next? With luck, there’d be enough truth in the notion to frighten her into talking. If that didn’t work, he’d grill her until he knew, at least got an idea, about who and where was this person she called the Bitch.

Madeline gazed straight ahead as stiffly as if her neck were in a brace. She was scratching her lips with her teeth, obviously pondering things. Hickey wondered how they could ride so long without speaking, how too many nights they could sleep so close without touching. The silence never got comfortable. But to speak or touch was more dangerous. One wrong move you get stabbed in the heart.

In the foothills Hickey tried the radio again. He picked up “Dreamland” from L.A. Harry James’ Orchestra live from the Rendezvous in Balboa. Hickey sat waiting for Madeline to crack, “Gee, Tom, we could’ve been there.”

She fooled him, didn’t even chuckle snidely. When Helen Forest crooned, “I’ve Heard That Song Before,” Madeline sang along. Madeline was better. So much that Hickey’s eyes misted, a rare occasion. It had been months since Madeline sang for him.

They got home before ten. Elizabeth went straight to bed. Hickey kissed her and switched the light out.

He made himself two nightcaps while Madeline used the bathroom. He was hoping she’d wear the same nightgown as last night. When she stepped into the bedroom, in pajamas, and found him sitting on the floor beside the bed holding a drink out for her, her eyes roamed for a moment, then she yawned. Hickey got the message.

Midnight at Rudy’s, the orchestra was on break. Hickey shook a few hands, listened to Daisy, a bleached chatterbox cocktail girl, complain because the chef goosed her. Hickey had started toward the kitchen to bawl out the chef—thinking how LeDuc, a pudgy character who was about as French as Pancho Villa, might’ve taken the name figuring it gave him a license to paw females—when he spotted Cynthia. In the dimmest corner, she sat at a cramped table across from a guy Hickey’d known professionally in L.A.

Charlie Schwartz. An old-time thug who’d risen from carpenter to union rep and upward. Charlie and his fat twin, Frank, used to bodyguard a bookie and whiskey runner, Arnold Rimmer. A few years ago, when Rimmer moved to Alcatraz, the Schwartz brothers headed south, muscled the takeover of a construction company. They owned about fifty apartment buildings around North Park and a couple mansions in Kensington.

Hickey walked over, pulled a chair up to the table, straddled it backwards, lay his hands flat on the table, and drilled his eyes into Schwartz’s forehead.

“So, Charles, should I clarify what I meant the last time, when I told you to beat it?”

Schwartz took a puff off his cigar and popped a few smoke rings. Lean, yellowish pale, balding in the middle, with a tuft of greasy black hair at the crest of his forehead. Dressed in silk, a maroon shirt with yellow tie, a woolen zoot coat, alligator shoes. His voice was thin and glossy. “Yeah, it didn’t make sense, so I talked to Paul. He says you got a spike up your ass. When I heard your songbird was back, just couldn’t miss her.”

“You didn’t. Now scram, Charlie, unless you prefer I should walk you back to the dishwater and wash your mouth.”

Schwartz puffed once on his cigar, stubbed it out, and rose; he smiled and tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing to Cynthia. “Excuse me, dear. Rude fellas give me hives.” He strolled toward the rest room.

Hickey took Schwartz’s chair, across from the girl. There was red in the corners of her eyes, like tiny blotches of lipstick. Her lips quivered furiously.

“Go squeeze a buck out of somebody, old man.”

“You know Charlie’s a gangster.”

“Sure I do,” she hissed. “I know almost everybody who counts in this town.”

“They’ll tell you he’s gone legit. Don’t buy it.”

“I don’t care.” Her face began softening into a pout, as though a spell of fatigue had caught her.

“Maybe one of us ought to apologize about last night,” Hickey said.

She dropped her gaze to his hands. In a minute she reached over and began petting his index finger with her own. There was a new ring on her next finger over, a silver one with a large stone the same emerald color as her eyes, only duller.

“Look, babe,” he said while slowly withdrawing his hand, “I got a wife, and times on that front are rough these days. You know, the world’s full of snitches and folks who get their jollies making trouble.”

“Sure, Tom. I’m sorry. It’s just…There are things…you can’t imagine.”

“What things?”

She pantomimed tossing the things away, over her shoulder. “I need a favor. You’re the first person I’ll ask,” she said regally, as though bestowing nobility upon him.

“You didn’t already ask Schwartz?”

“Jealous?”

“What you need?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

Hickey rubbed his chin and stared, waiting for her to look up at him, but she kept gazing shyly at the fork and spoon.

“What’s it for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Hickey pondered a moment, then flagged a waiter, Julio, and called for scotch. The orchestra had started to gather on the bandstand. Hickey excused himself, got up and intercepted Clyde, asked him to let Martino thrill the folks with a couple tunes while he finished talking to Cynthia.

Without waiting for his drink, Hickey led Cynthia around the dance floor and through the bar to his office. On the way, most diners and drinkers had turned to watch the girl passing. A navy captain stood and lifted a hand in position to touch her shoulder. Cynthia’s look deflected the hand.

The office Hickey and Castillo shared had once been a pantry. It was large enough for a rolltop desk, two straight-backed chairs, a hat rack. With Hickey and Cynthia in there, the space left over might’ve held a broom or mop handle. They both crossed their legs and sat with knees touching.

“Two thousand dollars,” Hickey mused, “and you’re not going to say what for. Tell you what. I’ll think about getting you the money as soon as you tell me—and make me believe it’s the truth—why the trip to Mount Shasta, what that picture means. The one you wanted back so badly. Maybe a couple other things.”

Cynthia bolted out of her chair. “The hell with you.” She threw the door open, raged out, and slammed it. In a second she reappeared. “Listen, brother,” she yelped loud enough to instruct the crowd at the bar, “every man in the club wants me, and they’re all willing to pay. I only have to ask. I could get ten thousand, twenty thousand, more, couldn’t I?”

Maybe she could, Hickey thought. Even if he didn’t believe it, he wouldn’t have told her. It wouldn’t change her mind about anything, but it would break her heart.

“Couldn’t I?” she demanded.

He nodded. She threw her hair back and ran off.

Hickey stayed in the office through most of that set, the last of the night, trying to think but getting distracted by the girl’s voice, which carried into the tiny office and surrounded him. Her asking for money had distressed him fiercely. Things looked bad. The odds that she was in quicksand had doubled. Because Cynthia wasn’t much fascinated by possessions. He couldn’t see her buying a car, a mink coat, a huge diamond. According to her landlady and Clyde, she didn’t have close friends who might be in a fix. Almost surely, he thought, the money had something to do with her family—maybe to grab more land in Dunsmuir or on Mount Shasta—and clearly, anything dealing with her family meant trouble.

Still, if he didn’t lend her the money—he remembered the line from Cynthia’s book, “I promised Daddy I’d stay a virgin until Saint Ophelia brings me the Man.”