Cocaine and Blue Eyes Read online

  "Where can I find her?"

  "She lives in Sausalito."

  "She's collecting food stamps from here."

  She stared and didn't blink. Then she lifted her golden butt onto the edge of the desk. She set her sunglasses beside her. "Are you from the police?"

  She gained a decade removing those glasses. Wrinkles were already showing up around her eyes. Like her kid sister, Catherine had blue eyes, but hers had a washed-out look to them, as if they'd been bleached by a bright sun.

  I've never understood what makes blondes think sunlight is good for their skins. Most are fair-skinned, and they peel and blister easily. It takes time for a woman like Catherine Anatole to acquire such a rich tan. In order to keep her skin from drying, she had kept it greasy with lotions. Too much sun had dried and brittled her hair, and her freckles were darkening like liver spots.

  "This is a private investigation," I told her.

  "I'm going to call my lawyer." But she didn't move. "What do you want her for?"

  "I'm trying to locate her for a client of mine."

  "How did you find out about the food stamps?"

  "I was at your sister's houseboat earlier." I passed the authorization card in front of her eyes, but wouldn't let her get her hands on it. It was trump only if I kept it.

  She scanned it as if it were a parking ticket. Only her eyes moved. "Who wants to find her?"

  "I can't divulge a client's identity."

  Her eyes caught fire. "The creep!" she hissed.

  "Who's the creep?"

  She was so angry, she couldn't think of his name. "That clown she's living with. Was living with. He's been calling every day now for the past four weeks."

  "Why do you say was?"

  "She left him. He's a creep. I knew he was a creep. I told her that a hundred times. I'm glad she left him, and I hope she never sees him again."

  "How does Dani feel about him?"

  She tapped fingers on the desk. "She doesn't know what she thinks about him." It sounded honest.

  "Why doesn't she go back with him?"

  "Look, Dani's a grown woman. She makes up her own mind, and she's perfectly capable of making rational decisions. Since she's chosen to leave him, I feel it's none of my business to interfere."

  "But you've interfered before."

  "How would you know?"

  "That's what families are for."

  She shook her golden hair and snorted.

  "Do you know where she is?"

  "If she were here," Catherine said, "d'you think I'd still be mailing her food stamps to Sausalito?"

  "You haven't answered my question. You already know she doesn't live in Sausalito any more. Food stamps come tomorrow, the first of the month. You've probably already received the vouchers in the mail. Will you be mailing them to her, or will you just save them and let her pick them up here?"

  "You don't know Dani. You don't understand her."

  I debated the idea. "Okay. Tell me about her. Just enough so I get a feel for things. Just enough so I know what kind of person we're talking about."

  She was relieved. "Dani," she finally brought herself to say, "grew up with too much money. She's never had to face up to reality. She's stubborn. She does whatever she feels like doing."

  "What about her folks?"

  "They died when she was in high school." A hard line had formed at the edge of her mouth. She was traveling back in time, and like all time travelers, she was troubled by ghosts and memories.

  "How did she accept their deaths?"

  "I don't know. She never talked about it. Nobody said much anyway. Our grandfather took us in. He was running the family business then, a fish company. He didn't have much time to spend with her—with anyone, for that matter. He was just a man. A man doesn't know what's right for a woman. And he's her grandfather, too, so he just let her get away with murder until she went off to college."

  "Which college did she go to?"

  "Mills. I don't expect you to know it. It's a private school for young women in Oakland. We thought it would be just the thing for her. For a while it was, but she went off to school at the wrong time."

  "Why was it the wrong time?"

  "The Sixties. You know how they were. Rhetoric and politics. You start questioning everything, and lose track of who you are. It's just a short-lived thing, or it should be, but it's very frightening to watch."

  "How did it change her?"

  She found it hard to say. "Dani rejected her family. We were parasites, robber barons. Not just great-great-grandfather, either, but all of us. Her wealth, her position, was a curse."

  "You didn't agree with that," I said.

  "Well, that is a little much. I mean, wealth and position can be a curse. You wonder what you did to deserve it, and it's easy to become paranoid. You can also be very lonely when you're wealthy. You have to resolve those problems, or money does become a curse."

  Anywhere else in the world, Catherine Anatole would've been a fluke, an anachronism, a dinosaur. But in San Francisco she was a part of old San Francisco Society, a society dame.

  And I was bored. "How did she escape the curse of money?"

  "She dropped out." Catherine made dropping out sound like giving up. The thin line had crept back to her mouth. "She went to Seattle. A friend of ours runs a salmon cannery there. She went to work for him. Filleting fish."

  "How did she like filleting fish?"

  "What do you expect? She hated it." Catherine jutted her chin out with wounded pride. "Seafaring does run in our family."

  "But you don't go to sea any more."

  She tightened. "Dani had to prove that money wasn't an albatross around her neck. It's understandable, I think. You don't know how wealth can make you paranoid. People talk behind your back ..." She changed course abruptly. "I'm very proud of her. She hated what she was doing, but she stayed there all those months. She made her mistakes, but she also learned from them. She's quite a woman."

  "How long was she up there?"

  "Six months. Something like that."

  "Is that where she met Joey Crawford?"

  The thin line grew thinner, if possible, as if she were smiling and biting a bullet at the same time. "They worked side-by-side on the gutting line. He was poor and worked with his hands. He caught the flu or something, and Dani nursed him back to health. It's a touching story." She still couldn't believe it.

  "How long have they lived together?"

  "Four years." Her voice had dropped an octave.

  "Four years is a long time."

  Her chin quivered. "Yes, it is, isn't it?"

  I wanted to laugh at her frustration. For four years she had fought romance, interfering wherever she thought she could, and now she had been suckered out of victory by Dani's free will. "What made her leave Seattle?"

  "She was ready to settle down," Catherine said. "She wasn't a little girl any longer. She was a woman, ready to accept a woman's responsibility."

  "How did you hear she was leaving Joey?"

  "She called me just before Thanksgiving. The family had a get-together planned. She begged off, saying she needed the time to think. She was thinking about leaving him."

  "She didn't call the day she left?"

  "No, she didn't. The creep called and asked if she were here. I said she wasn't." Catherine's eyes challenged mine. "It was the truth."

  "Were you upset because she didn't call?"

  "Of course not. She needed some time off by herself. I thought, if she didn't call me, she had a reason. Maybe she was afraid I might say I told you so."

  "Which is how you felt, right?"

  "I know that." She had gone waspish again. "Nobody likes admitting that they're wrong. Anyway, she called me a couple days later."

  "What did she have to say?"

  Catherine furrowed her golden brows. "She said she was tired of him, that he frightened her. His behavior was growing more and more erratic. She thought he was losing touch with reality. He was too possessiv
e. She wasn't ready to give him what he needed. He felt she didn't care anymore, that there were other men in her life. He kept demanding more and more from her. He needed more and more reassurance. She just wasn't ready to give him that."

  It was quite a litany of sins. I wondered why Catherine had gotten so involved in Dani's problems. Unless she was also talking about herself, as well as her sister. But I had no way of knowing, and hunches are always suspect.

  "Were there other men?" I asked.

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Joey thought there were."

  "Yes, he did," she said, bitterness rampant in every word. "I never could stand the little creep. I told her that, when she brought him back with her from Seattle, and she chose to ignore me. Luckily, since then, she's smartened up and left him. And that's all there is to that."

  "I think there's more," I said. "More than just living with some creep. More than just a simple split-up. More than just ripping off the food stamp people for a lousy fifty bucks a month. Fifty bucks a month doesn't feed anybody these days, but that's between you and your conscience. That creep, well, he's a cold fish face up at the county morgue."

  Her eyes grew like a startled burglar's. "He's dead?"

  "Oh yeah. You didn't know?"

  "No. No. How could I? How did he ... ?"

  "The SFPD could explain better than I can."

  Sure, maybe I could end the case right now, but maybe I couldn't. Dani was probably staying with friends or relatives. Her sister was only a single source of info, but her actions and reactions were clues to the Dani puzzle. A little melodrama helps draw blood sometimes.

  "The police. Do they know about Dani?"

  "They asked about her," I said.

  "How did he die? Was it... murder?"

  "The police don't confide in me," I lied.

  "No. I guess they wouldn't."

  I knew she didn't consider herself impolite, but she irritated me. It wasn't much of an irritation, sort of like a car parked in the fast lane.

  Like many who belonged to Old San Franciscan families, she treated everyone as her inferior. Brusquely, incautiously, impatiently, as if money makes one righteous. She had the confidence that comes from a lot of old and dusty money. Her life was spent in leisure, and I was interfering with that leisure.

  I didn't think it would be that hard to shake her self-assurance. Just treat her the way I'd handle a junkie. Kid gloves one minute, melodrama the next. Money and dope are first cousins, anyway. Like dope, money's beneficial in moderation. Too much and you lose track with reality.

  The wealthy have the same fears as the junkie, and they cope with them just about as well. Their vanity makes them a hall of mirrors. Afraid of being misunderstood, they take offense easily, overreacting like a child throwing a temper tantrum. They're secretive and clannish, not realizing the mark of money is as noticeable as needle tracks on the beach. They think they know what you're saying about them behind their backs, and they're right about what you're saying, but they don't dare challenge you about it. What you say might threaten their security. So they hide their fears and worry a lot, which just makes them more vulnerable and more paranoid.

  It was about time for a touch of that melodrama. "Did you know he was a dope dealer?"

  "How do you know that?"

  "He was busted for that. The cops told me that much."

  "Oh, it could have been years ago."

  "He had fifteen hundred bucks on him when he died. Another sixteen hundred in his boots on the houseboat. For a dealer, even, that's a lot of hard cash. For a runt on Aid to the Totally Disabled...."

  From her expression, she didn't understand.

  "Another of his scams. He was busted for that, too. It's like ripping off food stamps when you don't need them."

  "He's been doing that?"

  "Probably. He didn't have a job, and nobody can live on welfare. Some people moonlight with a second job. Street punks moonlight, too. A couple of scams at the same time to supplement their income. Dope dealing was probably his specialty."

  "You know a lot about him."

  "I know his type. With his background, he could easily put small-time dope deals together. You'd be surprised how easy it is unloading a few pounds of weed on the streets. People want to buy it. They don't ask questions. Throw in some scams on the side, like welfare or ATD or food stamps, and Joey could make enough money to carry a bankroll like that."

  "That little crook!" She was livid.

  "He was streetwise. He knew how to survive out there. He'd been there before. He was only doing what came naturally."

  "I knew he was a crook."

  "You couldn't survive half as well as he did."

  "You sound like you admire him."

  "I knew where he was coming from."

  "Is Dani involved in this?"

  "That's hard to say. Dealers play games with other dealers, with pushers and smugglers. Some of those folks play rough when you interfere with them. They don't have to know you to hurt you. And if you've been messing with them, you're presumed guilty, and you have to prove your innocence. That is, if they let you prove it. Dani was close to that lifestyle. How close is a matter of speculation. Maybe you know how close that was."

  She rose and walked around the desk to the sideboard and its bottle of Grand Marnier. With her back to me, she poured a large dollop in her snifter and gulped down more than she added.

  I expected something from the gold woman with the Grand Marnier, but not the staccato of questions she unleashed. She wanted to know if the police might come to her house. She seemed annoyed that they might prowl her hallways and corridors. She said she had never been too keen on the creep. Dead, he was still causing trouble. She wanted to know if the Anatoles, especially Dani, could be kept out of this mess. She wanted to know how much that would cost.

  "Are you trying to hire me?"

  "Are you trying to collect from two clients?"

  "Sure. Why not? Lawyers do it all the time."

  She sipped more brandy. "How much do you charge?"

  "Two hundred a day plus expenses." The back of my neck itched when I said it. I knew better than to scratch the itch. Pacific-Continental had charged two bills a day for my services, but they paid me closer to forty for the same services. I thought I was worth the money, but then I didn't have to pay it.

  "That's a high price for blackmail."

  "It's not blackmail. A private investigator exercises the same confidentiality that a lawyer does." Sort of.

  "What do I get for my money?"

  "That's hard to say." I tried to remember the nonsense Pac-Con told potential clients. "You get confidential services, if it's possible, which is to say legally permissible."

  She hadn't been listening. "What expenses? You're to keep Dani's name out of the newspapers, not solve some imaginary case."

  "Sometimes it costs money not to be published."

  She opened the desk drawer. I tensed, wondering what she would come up with. Absently she pushed the pistol away and came up with the checkbinder and the pen. "I suppose you need a retainer," she said.

  "That would be nice," I said.

  She was hiring me to keep the family name from the headlines. I was the stooge who kept things under wraps. The one who had to sling the red herrings. There were a lot of old families like hers in the city. It's just good PR to hire someone to put your name in the paper and hire someone else to keep it out.

  I could understand that. But why was she worried about Dani's name appearing in print? It didn't make sense. Nobody cares about such things nowadays, except gossip freaks, and nobody cares about them. You can do anything you want nowadays, and five minutes later nobody remembers you. Unless Catherine figured Dani had been up to something best kept out of print.

  Sure, maybe Dani smoked marijuana or had an abortion or blew the family fortune on chrome-plated vibrators. If I came across something like that, well, that's what I was being paid for. I wouldn't turn anybody in for that. But Ca
therine had to know I couldn't cover up anything illegal. I wasn't putting my ass in a sling so a client could come out smelling like roses.

  Of course Dani might not be involved in anything. Maybe my presence upset her sister. A lot of people do foolish things when they hear a private investigator's been around. Some people, you don't have to do anything, and already they're paranoid.

  Catherine stared at the completed check. Maybe she saw a written confession. Whatever was troubling her was something bigger than a simple toke of weed or an interrupted pregnancy. It need not even be illegal, though the odds favored it. I tried not to think what it could be. Only a fool tries to second-guess a woman.

  She resented giving it to me. "I hope I can trust your discretion."

  I glanced at the amount. She had written it for five hundred dollars. One helluva retainer. I hoped it wouldn't be too hard to earn. I'd hate returning it. I just passed thirty and I'm tired of being poor. I asked her where Dani was.

  "I don't know where she is."

  "Where did she go after she left Joey?"

  "She hasn't told me."

  "Then you have seen her?"

  "I told you I did."

  "No, you didn't."

  "Then I'm telling you now."

  "How is she fixed for money?" I asked. "Does she have any of her own? Does she receive an allowance? Does she work for a living?"

  "She has some. I don't know what she does with it, though."

  "Could she have left town?"

  "San Francisco?" Catherine hadn't heard me right. "She was born here. She wouldn't leave San Francisco. Maybe a vacation, but certainly not permanently." She was a golden pain in the ass.

  "Could she have gotten a place by herself?"

  "I don't know. She might've."

  "Any friends she would've gone to live with?"

  "Oh, you'd have to take it up with her."

  "Does she have any friends?"

  "Mr. Brennen, must you—"

  I cut her short. "How did Dani do with the boys?"

  "I don't follow you."

  "Was she popular? Was she a wallflower? Did she chase the boys, or did they chase her? Was she a lesbian? How did she do with the boys?"