The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (22 page)

She smiled at me and then looked at Marvin who must have given her a signal of some kind. She turned away and began shooing her customers back to their tables. She grabbed a waiter and pointed at us and a moment later he appeared at our table with menus. Marvin waved his away, but I took a look.

“So what does the Willamette shooting have to do with this?” Marvin asked.

“Did you have a body on that one?”

“No,” he said. “It would have been tossed over to us in homicide if there had been a body.”

“I'm pretty sure that's the apartment the killer was in when he called me,” I said.

“Who's the guy I just sent to jail?”

“I don't know who he is,” I said. “The killer in the Willamette apartment was calling himself J. Dotes. You get anything on that?”

“Far as we can tell, it's a totally fake identity,” Marvin said. “This wasn't our case, but we're getting good cooperation. It's too early to tell how good the fake is. It could be a complete dead end, you know.”

“That's probably exactly what it is,” I said. “Otherwise, things would be too easy.”

So J. Dotes was, as I'd suspected, a complete fake. What this meant from a more personal point of view was that while the Russians thought they knew who the killer was, they were wrong.

Yuri and Prudence had thought they were being so clever in their manipulation of me, but it turned out they needed a real detective after all.

The waiter returned.

Marvin ordered the prawns in Costa Rica sauce. I ordered the cold roast beef sandwich. With horseradish sauce? Sure, why not. With horseradish sauce. No way you could get out of the Whisper Café without sauce.

Marvin would start with a double latte. I would have a cappuccino.

“Now about this other matter,” I said.

“Hold that thought,” Marvin said. He put his napkin down on the table and stood up. “Mother. Look who's come to lunch.”

“Brian!” Mrs. Zivon said. “So, how is your dear mother these days?”

I got up. She put her hands out and I took them and gave them both a little squeeze. She was a large woman and tall but not so large and tall that you would immediately guess she was Marvin's mother.

“Mom's doing pretty well,” I said, not really fooling anyone since everyone knew Mom had finally gone around the bend and probably wasn't ever coming back.

Mrs. Zivon moved her gaze quickly from my face and pulled her hands away. “I'm glad,” she said. She touched my tie. “You must have looked very nice before your wrestling match today, Brian.”

Because she and my mother had once moved in the same circles, because we were all the right kind of people, she simply didn't understand that Marvin and I might not be buddies forever, that things had changed a lot since we were tap-dancing kids. In an orderly world, Marvin and I would have been partners in a local law firm or maybe doctors, and Frank Wallace, who came from the other side of the tracks, would have been in jail where he could never have lured Marvin into following him into a life of public service.

The waiter brought our coffee. He seemed unsure just what he was supposed to do when his customers were standing and the owner was hovering. He put the coffee down and then stood there for a moment, and then he just wandered off.

I looked at Mrs. Zivon. I looked at Marvin. They looked at me. They looked at one another. There wasn't anything more to say.

“Sit down,” Mrs. Zivon said at last. “Enjoy your lunch.” She turned away and walked back inside.

“Marvin,” I said. “Your mother wears tennis shoes.”

I could see the wheels turning. It was true; his mother did wear tennis shoes. Everyone wore tennis shoes. She was wearing a pair that very moment.

“Jesus, Brian,” he said, “you had to reach for that one.”

“Yeah, well, okay, back to the business at hand.”

“I won't beat around the bush,” Marvin said. “One of my guys spotted Elsie Wallace lunching with some guy at the Garden Party. Didn't think anything of it. The only reason he remembered at all is that he thought it was Frank and he was on his way over to suck up when he saw that he was mistaken and turned away just in time.”

“You're saying your crack operative mistook me for Frank Wallace?”

“It was the bushes,” Marvin said. “The place is full of weeds and bushes. Then a couple of days later he's walking past Frank's office and he sees you sitting there on the bench looking like you're getting ready to be fried.”

“So, why didn't he just tell Frank?”

“Frank's not real good with bad news of a personal nature,” Marvin said.

“What did he do when you told him?” I asked.

“I haven't told him.”

I let that sit there while the waiter put Marvin's salad down in front of him.

“Hey, I wonder what that would taste like as juice,” I said. It looked like spinach and tomatoes and avocado and bean sprouts and carrots and other things I couldn't identify.

Marvin must have thought I was paying too much attention to his salad. “You could have ordered one of your own,” he said.

“So, why didn't you tell Frank?”

“Frank's been acting weird,” Marvin said. “Maybe it's all connected. I wanted you to tell me what's going on first.”

“What do you mean he's been acting weird?”

“I'm supposed to be asking the questions here,” Marvin said. “The idea is I eat my salad and you tell me what you were doing with Elsie at the Garden Party.”

“Elsie and I are old friends,” I said. “You know that.”

Marvin made a show of forking up salad and saying nothing.

“It was just lunch, Marvin,” I said. “A couple of old friends having lunch. Like now. Well, sort of like now.”

Marvin waited for me to go on.

“Okay, Elsie thinks he's acting weird, too,” I said. “She just needed someone to talk to.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing more than that,” I said. “After we established the fact that Frank was acting weird, we mostly talked about old times.”

Marvin looked like he was going to ask another question but then he turned his attention back to his salad. I'd pretty much told all the lies I was going to tell about my lunch with Elsie.

Other people were beginning to notice that Frank was up to something. I supposed you could slip away to the Quack Inn only so often before your partner realized something unusual was happening.

“So Frank's up to something and he hasn't told you what it is?”

“Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that,” Marvin said.

The waiter came by and took away Marvin's empty salad plate.

“Just tell me straight out, Brian,” he said, “are you and Elsie messing around behind Frank's back?”

“That's a stupid idea, Marvin,” I said. “I lost that battle a long long time ago. If you ran that idea past Frank, he'd laugh in your face. If something's up with him, it's not because of me.”

“I had to ask.”

“So, are you going to tell him about it?”

“I don't know,” Marvin said. “I guess not. No, I don't see how that would do anyone any good.”

The waiter brought my sandwich and Marvin's prawns, and I didn't say anything until I had taken a big bite, chewed slowly, swallowed, had some coffee, and looked around at the people in the summer clothes they'd thought would hang in the closet until spring.

“That's probably wise,” I said finally.

Marvin forked a prawn out of the Costa Rica sauce. “Yes,” he said and ate the prawn.

“Okay,” I said.

“Right.”

“You're not going to tell me anything else about Frank, are you?”

“No,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

Marvin ate another prawn. Then another. He picked up speed. Soon he was eating his prawns like they might come alive again and get away.

A little later we each had a piece of his mother's new chocolate pie, and when we were done, Marvin signed the check. “I'd better go see what your wrestling buddy has to say. Frank will want to know about it when he gets back.”

I didn't bother to ask where Frank was going to be getting back from. Frank would be at the Quack Inn.

“You'll let me know what the bad guy has to say?”

“Probably not,” Marvin said. He got up, and I got up. “Stay out of trouble, Brian.” He tossed his napkin down on the table and walked away.

I went inside the Whisper Café to say a few nice things about lunch to Mrs. Zivon, and then I wandered back to the Saturday Market to see if Prudence Deerfield was still where I'd left her. If I could find her again, maybe I'd ask her to have dinner with me.

The band had finished and the dancing space was empty. I spent some time searching through the market, but I didn't find her.

I wanted to brag about the way I'd taken out the former KGB guy. I wanted her to be impressed by the way I'd solved the problem of the other Russian faction.

No Prudence.

I wandered through the farmer's market buying things to juice. By the time I was done I had way more than I could use in one day. The rest would probably spoil.

Unless I did something about it.

I spent the afternoon shopping for a small refrigerator, and finally settled on one a little taller than my knees. The deciding factor was that I could pick it up.

Back in the office I put the new refrigerator next to the couch and plugged it in. I thought it looked pretty good there, like an unusual end table—a humming white cube. I put a lamp on top of it.

sixteen

The next morning I got up convinced it was time to take a look inside Frank's room at the Quack Inn. It wasn't likely he'd be there. I put my pants on and walked to the window behind my desk and pulled up the blinds. By stepping to the left and looking right, I could see a strip of street and sky, and I saw that fall had returned. The sky was full of comfortable clouds, a light rain was falling, and there were already puddles in the holes in the alley. I put my hand flat against the glass; it would be chilly out. This was not going to be another confusing summer day.

When I didn't make coffee in the office, I usually went out and bought an extra-large super-strong from a booth down the street and drank it while I shaved and showered and got into the getup of whoever I was going to be first. That morning I just didn't feel caffeine deprived, didn't crave that big cup of sludge so much. In fact I felt like having some juice.

I got down on my knees and opened my new refrigerator and breathed in the cool smell of fresh fruit and vegetables. I love new devices. Until a thing sits around a while, it is the star of my stuff. I liked the little white plastic tray under the tiny freezer (which they warned me was not to be used to keep frozen foods very long). There were a couple of neat little wire shelves that fit perfectly. And my piles of fruit and vegetables.

I grabbed a mango (chopped out the huge seed), two apples (one green and one red), a banana, some spinach (call me crazy), a lime, and a carrot, and extracted a big glass of juice. I cleaned up the equipment while I drank it. My trash can was getting a little overburdened with pulp. There was a ripe smell like something fermenting, and there were little black flies circling around inside. Or maybe those were little black spots before my eyes. I decided to think of them as flies, and I put the trash can out in the hall.

I shaved and showered, put on a fresh mustache and a quick shine to my shoes. Grabbed my coat, hat, and umbrella. Slipped my smallest camera into my coat pocket. I'd be inside and close up. No need for a long lens.

Locked up. Picked up the pulp-filled trash can. Waved away the flies. Took the elevator to the street. I opened my umbrella and ducked into the alley and emptied the trash can in the dumpster. I put the can on the ground. I'd probably forget it was there until I wanted to throw something away, and then I'd have to walk down here and get it.

I walked to the parking lot and my jeep. I glanced over at Lulu's Escort, mostly just to make sure it was still there and reminded myself to get her to fire it up soon so the battery would stay charged. She needed to check for mushrooms growing in the carpet, too. If we didn't watch out they'd be as big as people, and one day she'd run out here needing the car quickly and there would be no room for her inside.

I got in the jeep and circled around to Broadway. Broadway became Franklin Boulevard. I drove slowly by the Quack Inn and took a look. Frank wasn't parked anywhere I could see. I hadn't expected him to be there on a Sunday morning, but it's good not to get overconfident. You start seeing only what you want to see when your confidence gets too high. Unless you're confident because you have the situation under control, which was how I felt that morning.

I made a legal U-turn and swung by the Quack Inn once more. Things looked pretty quiet. The Tail Feathers Lounge wouldn't be open yet. There weren't many cars, so maybe there wouldn't be many people staying over, and if there weren't many people staying over, maybe the manager would decide to sleep in. I parked down the block and walked back to the motel. The rain had picked up some, and I was glad for it. Rain would cut down the visibility from the motel office. You might mistake me for a guy with a key, and I might be able to slip into Frank's room, before it hit you that, hey, that man is picking the lock! The secret is to look natural. Look like you know where you're going and what you're doing.

I stopped when I came even with the window of the motel office and glanced inside. No one behind the desk. I walked directly to Frank's door. I had my lock-picking tools out by the time I got there. I learned lock picking from a mail-order locksmithing course, and I had spent hundreds of hours practicing. It was one of the things I did really well. From some distance away I recognized the lock and knew just what to do.