P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 01 - Heavy Mental (3 page)

I loved the way Dad raised up all tight-assed when Jamal, who was filling in as wait staff that day, dropped off the tasty corn muffins that came with every Gold Rush meal. Unlike most of the servers, ex-con or not, Jamal didn’t need a notepad and rattled off the special of the day, and he didn’t forget my dad’s multiple picky requests about putting feta cheese on the side, making sure the romaine wasn’t dripping with water and leaving the barbecue chicken juicy, yet not undercooked.

Dad’s meal came out just right, but I could tell Dad wanted something to complain about. Unfortunately for him, he found the feta in the correct position. He turned over the romaine and inspected it for sogginess. No luck there. He chewed the barbecue that was his main course and declared it flavorful. He seemed disappointed that he couldn’t find anything wrong with Jamal or the food, although he did say once Jamal was safely out of earshot, “That tattoo is going to look ridiculous when he’s an old man.”

When Jamal moved outside to the valet position, I struck up a few conversations with him. He had the kind of memory that could help me out. At first, he was understandably skittish talking to a private investigator. He’d been talked into bad situations and didn’t need to be making money on the side, especially if he was trying to clean up his record.

He liked the valet gig because he loved working with cars—he had stolen many of them, in fact—and was a “people guy,” as he told me, but he also wanted to be a high-school science teacher. He figured that the kids were already stealing wheels at that age, so they may as well know how cars worked.

Once I promised him straight money, plus a glowing job reference, Jamal agreed to pay a little closer attention to the conversations in the Gold Rush BBQ restaurant and take a few messages for me. That was all he needed to do. Eventually, word got around that, if my customers wanted to be truly discreet, they should talk to Jamal first. Between Jamal and the Cho-Singh Answering Service, I had a better network than the Internet.

By the time I got to the valet station, Jamal stored a few keys he had just collected while a few well-heeled dinner guests waited for their friends. When the guests were safely inside and he was alone, he stepped toward me and said, “Somebody asked for you by name today. Wanted to know if you were busy.”

As a matter of fact, not only was I busy with Sabrina and her necklace problem, but I also had a bunch of small jobs lined up for the week. I had to leave a little spare time for the band, after all. But rent was high in San Francisco. “There’s always room for more. What do you know?”

“Seems more important than your average customer.” Jamal proceeded to offer up one of his profiles, which started broad and funneled down into specifics. Since he’d mingled with hustlers high and low, he was an excellent reader of personalities. He also didn’t waste any time. He began to count off qualities on his fingers: “Blue BMW. White dude. Gray hair. Red eyes. Loud. Fat. Good suit. Didn’t see a wife. Had a wedding ring. He has wrinkles. Doesn’t sleep much. Dumb jokes. Shiny cuff links. Nails done. Shitty tipper. I mean shitty. Smelled like cigars. Scared of me. And he cannot drive for shit.”

Jamal then twisted his face into the vague, beady expression worn by corporate types, and he launched an impersonation of the gentleman in question: “Huh-huh. Bet you had a joyride in the Beamer, huh, fella!” Jamal rolled his eyes. “
Fella
. My
ass
.” He scowled. “You should have seen it. His car was all over the damn road!” He held up his hands as if they were on a steering wheel and threw in some screeching sound effects.

Then a Gold Rush BBQ patron drove up. Jamal’s face transformed into a stiff welcoming expression, which relaxed as soon as he had the keys and the patron walked inside.

Judging from the profile Jamal provided, I thought that the potential case sounded like a breeze. An overweight rich guy with a wedding ring who liked to flash his wealth was likely being cheated on and wanted to catch the wife in the act. Along with the occasional insurance fraud case, adultery was my bread and butter. It was easier money than being the opening act at one of the local clubs.

Most of my jobs involved sitting in my Mercury Topaz, which I had christened “Cherry 2000,” after the movie in which a red-haired Melanie Griffith played a sci-fi bounty hunter. The car was a beater, a mid-90s model that ran like it was made in ’85, but it was still a sexy maraschino red, a shade that isn’t too far off from my hair color. From Cherry 2000, I trained my binoculars on faceless suburban ranch houses in San Jose, hillside homes in Marin County, or leaf-shaded cottages in Berkeley, watching my targets do boring things like getting the mail and waiting to see the silhouettes of errant husbands frolicking with their mistresses.

The number of adultery assignments I got peaked in October. The sudden, unusual warmth that invades San Francisco at that time melted brains and impaired otherwise decent judgment. Any other detective I had met in the area agreed that adultery—gay, straight, bi, animal, vegetable, or mineral—boomed in October. I could not even imagine what business was like in the cities that got really hot in summer.

Jamal must have read my mind because he immediately altered that avenue of thinking: “I don’t think it’s the usual fuckery. He’s got something else going on. He kept looking behind him like someone was watching him, like he’s gonna get jumped or something.” He took a moment to hiss at his fellow valet and the restaurant host, who were busy making exaggerated hand gestures to approximate certain aspects of the female form as a curvy woman walked into the restaurant. “The fuck is wrong with you? You’re on the clock!”

“So are you!” the host yelled. “You gonna park that car, or what? Hello, Miss Parker.”

“Hello, yourself.” It was time to make my exit. “Did you get his name?”

Jamal imitated the stuffy voice of a well-bred white guy. “Peter D. Buckner. Vanity plate of ‘Bucky.’” He returned to his regular voice and headed for the car. “You’ll probably find him before he finds you. You can’t miss this guy.”

I was surprised by the last name of “Buckner.” It had to be Sabrina’s husband, but why would he want to see me independent of his wife? Was his presence in the neighborhood enough to make her run off before I could find out what she wanted? And, if that was the case, how did she know he was looking for me? “You sure no one was with him?” I asked. “No woman in a yellow dress? Skinny with Olsen Twin sunglasses?”

“Just him and his stomach. He ain’t no Olsen twin.”

“I’m getting home right now to wait for him.” When the other valets were distracted by another local lovely, I slipped Jamal five twenty-dollar bills. “You tell me when you want to go into business for yourself, you hear?”

As I turned around to walk back to South Park, Jamal, who was already in the car, honked the horn, leaned out the window, and called out, “Hey, did you get a bassist for the band yet?”

I cringed and shrugged. Jamal had talent. He remembered everything, even the stuff I’d rather forget. If I could have only solved the bassist problem, my late San Francisco summer would have been perfect.

CHAPTER 5

TWO SOCIALITES

T
HE
C
HO-
S
INGH
A
NSWERING
S
ERVICE HAD
its hands full while I was indulging in catharsis with the Marquee Idols and picking up messages from Jamal. Not only did Sabrina return, but she returned with my mother. Anmol and Harold were sitting on the steps, just drinking. The chess game sat on a card table, ignored.

“You two look like you’re up to something,” I said.

“She’s baaaack …” Harold said. “And your mother brought her here.”

Anmol sighed. “Clancy, I believe your mother is more determined than you are.”

I stood up straighter and started looking around. “Where are they?”

“Your office,” Harold replied, jerking his head in the direction of the door. “She let herself in.”

“She said you wouldn’t mind,” Anmol added.

“Oh, boy.” Now I had not one, but two socialites in my office, and my mother was probably already trying to redecorate. I love my mother, but she requires an unusually high amount of energy.

Katherine Charlotte “Kit” Parker Whitman, an heiress to a toothpaste company, was always flashing her pearly whites and tossing her blonde mane at San Francisco’s gala events. The “Whitman” came with her second marriage when she married an heir to a resort chain that featured golf-centric hotels. The guy didn’t last long, but the new last name stuck.

Some of Mom’s frenemies said me and Mom were like Christmas—red hair, green eyes, and gaudy decorations. Mom had gone blonde so no one could deliver the Christmas tree insult again, but it was hard to change eyes so green they practically glowed in the dark.

After my parents divorced when I was nine, I bounced from coast to coast, parent to parent, bad cop to good cop, eventually going to college closer to Mom. She always supported my unconventional pursuits, whereas Dad would just call a few times a month from the Cape and lecture me in a Kennedyesque braying voice. Sometimes I wondered if Mom was such a cheerleader and sent me clients because she loved nothing more than ticking off her ex-husband.

I took a deep breath. “I’m going in.”

Harold and Anmol applauded, and Harold started humming the tune from
Rocky
.

When I walked into my office, I saw Mom with Sabrina, both of them sitting on the Barcalounger the wrong way. In the span of a few hours, Sabrina’s dress had wrinkled up, and the buttons on her jacket weren’t lined up. By contrast, Mom looked great in a navy shirtdress paired with a red sling.

Mom didn’t need accessories. She wore plenty of slings and casts. My poor mother may have been blessed in the looks and money department, but she was a klutz, and she had the most fragile bones of any person alive. There were very few times I remembered her being without a cast, a crutch, or a sling.

This didn’t stop her from leaving the house and mingling with society, though. She had a reputation for wearing the snazziest casts in town. She would hire local painters to dress up her injury of the month—or week—with detailed landscapes. Once, when she broke her collarbone while navigating a wine cellar staircase in perilous pumps, she had a sling custom-made with a copy of Warhol’s Marilyn.

Another time, Mom even braved Slim’s one night when the Marquee Idols opened for an act out of Austin. I left messages with Mom to bring earplugs and to leave the nice clothes at home—not because she wouldn’t fit in, but because she was used to well-lit gallery openings, and a dark, boozy bar might bring out her awkward side.

Alas, I couldn’t save Mom from herself. My mom’s first and last visit to one of my shows ended early and badly when she bumped into a burly barfly while trying to secure a table. Not only did the barfly accidentally spill a glass full of beer all over her and her Louis Vuitton clutch, but he also shattered her wrist. No matter. After a trip to the emergency room, Mom had a cast made that matched the brown-and-gold pattern on her clutch.

Despite her physical limitations, Mom’s one good arm was busy. She gave Sabrina a steady stream of tissues, and Sabrina was slumped over, pressing the tissues into her face and crying.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Sabrina. I’m glad you came back,” I said, tiptoeing in and gently placing my guitar case on the ground. After what I had seen before, I didn’t want to startle Sabrina with any sudden moves.

In the middle of tissue-passing, Mom slowly spun her free index finger around the side of her head, warning me what was to come with the universal sign for crazy. She mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

That reaction wasn’t normal for Mom. Most of the clients Mom sent my way were good ones who paid on time and just wanted to wreak havoc on the lives of their ex-husbands. But Sabrina’s needs were unclear, and I wasn’t sure if her needs were even clear to herself.

I nodded to Mom and flashed a thumbs-up to indicate that I could handle whatever was coming. I pulled my rolling desk chair alongside the Barcalounger. Then I crouched down close, as if I were merely a confidant instead of a hired gun.

“I … I can’t say it …” Sabrina sobbed.

“Detective-client privilege,” I said and looked at Mom. “Mom, thank you for bringing her here. Do you think you can hang out with Harold and Anmol for a while?”

Mom shrugged and stuck out her lower lip. She hated to miss out on the action. She adored nothing more than gossip. “Well, I guess so. Are you sure, Sabrina?”

Sabrina nodded.

Mom patted Sabrina on the leg and left, walking toward the front door, but she kept looking back as if she hoped Sabrina would change her mind and let her listen in.

I wouldn’t put it past Mom to listen in at the door. While Sabrina smothered her face in tissues, I mouthed, “Don’t even think about it.”

She mouthed back, “Love you, too.”

CHAPTER 6

NOT-SO-SMALL POTATOES

O
NCE
M
OM WAS GONE,
S
ABRINA
pressed her tissues into her face even harder, muffling the words that followed. “I wanted to give away my necklace for a good cause! Your mother wouldn’t understand!”

I leaned in. We had reached the point where I was going to have to pretend like I knew what she was talking about so I could draw out information. “I just want you to tell me where you left it. I’m not going to judge. And Mom’s lost plenty of jewelry herself. Believe me, compared to what I’ve seen, lost jewelry is small potatoes.”

Then Sabrina lowered her tissues and turned to me with a look of fear that almost made me want to call the police. “Two million dollars worth of small potatoes?”

I gulped. I figured the jewelry she was talking about was expensive and probably had a high sentimental value since she mentioned her husband. I had guessed that Sabrina was mostly concerned with hiding her bungle from her husband and family and kicked Mom out because she was afraid it would get back to them. Knowing Mom, it probably would have. But a two-million-dollar loss wasn’t going to be glossed over easily. I got angry with myself when I lost the little things—a guitar pick, a barrette, a pen, my Crackberry on occasion—but I couldn’t imagine losing something so small, yet so valuable.