Final Notice

Twenty-two

What Heslip found was a real surprise. After Giselle hung up she went down to Kearny’s office to see if he could fit it into the ramshackle theoretical structure they were erecting. She figured it had to be significant, she just couldn’t see how.

“Dan, I’ve had Bart at the public library all morning, checking the Chronicle and Examiner files for anything that looked significant which might have happened in the month or so before Chandra came up with the five thousand. And...”

“Good thinking.” He waved her to the client’s chair. “How’re you getting along with Pete?”

“I don’t know,” she said, the telltale crimson mounting her cheeks again.

She didn’t know. Last night had been as always, physically, and yet... not as always. And Petie couldn’t see her tonight, and he still hadn’t told his wife, and dammit, was he just stringing her along? Oh Christ, what was the matter with her? She was sick with guilt, that was what was the matter.

Kearny was looking at her. When she met his eyes, he said blandly, “What did Bart come up with?”

Back to work, then. Thank God. Fixing her face to come to the office this morning, she’d suddenly burst out crying.

“Fazzino is married,” she said. “He filed for divorce from a Constanza Fazzino on May seventh, irreconcilable differences — the usual. I don’t know what significance it has, but—”

“May. Chandra got her money in July...” Kearny frowned and shook out cigarettes for both of them. “Doesn’t look like there could be much connection, but... Listen, have Pete find out when Nucci signed the contract on that Jaguar, Giselle.”

“Talk about no connection—”

“Just a hunch. I have an idea that little Wendy-baby gets well paid before she does any cooperating, even with Flip Fazzino. Goods or services. Meanwhile, Padilla’s death is still our best bet — hell, our only bet — for what Chandra had on Fazzino. Who do we know who’ll get us copies of the Highway Patrol investigation?”

Giselle thought, tapping the end of her ballpoint pen on the side of the desk. “How about Mrs. Noesting in DMV? She’s always been...”

“I’ve always been jealous of her.”

Bridget Shapiro was up on one elbow in the bed. She ran a finger down Ballard’s bare chest. He had never experienced anything like the past hour. Not ever.

She touched the bridge of her own nose. “It started with this. In high school all I could think about was getting it fixed, but plastic surgeons cost money and Mom and Dad didn’t have any. Not enough, not then. Wendy’s nose used to be like this, too.”

He could see it coming, but said, “And now it isn’t. So?”

“So the folks paid for it, for her but not for me. I’ve never been able to forget that.” Her eyes studied his face in a bedroom made dim by lowered shades. Her firm, heavy body was deeply tanned, so her breasts stood out whitely. “You were never in a porny flick with her, were you?”

Ballard met her eyes. He couldn’t get the easy he past his teeth. Not after the past hour. “No.”

“Do you even know her?”

“I’ve seen her. Followed her.” Suddenly he couldn’t meet her eyes any longer. He lay back and looked at the ceiling. “For thirty-six hours straight I followed her. I’m a detective.”

“I see.” Her voice was very soft, almost humble. “So when a hook-nosed substitute dragged you off to bed—”

Oh Christ, thought Ballard. “Come here,” he said in an emotion-roughened voice. He didn’t know what else to do for her.

“No.”

It was strictly verbal, demand and rejection. Neither of them had moved. They lay a yard apart in the king-sized bed, covered from the waists down by a flowered yellow sheet.

“She’s... made out of plastic,” said Ballard.

Bridget’s eyes suddenly filled. She dipped her head. “Thank you,” her muffled voice said against the pillow.

Then she, too, lay back to stare at the ceiling, her hands clasped behind her head. Ballard wanted to put his mouth against her breast, but didn’t move. He just lay there, thinking what a goddam fool her husband was.

“You’re the first one since I kicked Hiram out,” she said. “Almost eight months. I’ve been drinking too much... So lonely, so damned lonely, just me and Kathy. He sends me money each month from San Francisco, enough so I know that he’s just barely getting by, living in a residence club...”

“He’s miserable there and you’re miserable here. You should take him back.”

“I walked in on them, Hiram and Wendy. He was screwing her on the couch.” She said the harsh word harshly, deliberately cutting herself on its sharp edges. “I threw him out. If I’d thrown her out, then, she’d have gone back into Juvenile Authority custody.”

“Couldn’t your folks...”

“Dad died four years ago. Right after Wendy got her nose bobbed.” She laughed bitterly. “That’s how I measure time, how’s that for sick? Mom remarried a year later and moved back East. I was married to Hiram by then, and Wendy was running wild over in Berkeley. Pot and crash pads and those terrible underground films.”

“And then she got busted,” he supplied.

She nodded. “She left Hiram alone until this year. Then she... went to work on him. I found them on the couch in March, just two months before her probation was finished. She moved out in May. Two months, she couldn’t leave him alone. She had to... to prove to me that she could take him away from me. Two lousy little months...”

Her voice was rising. Ballard laid a palm over her mouth to calm her. She kissed his hand. It made him feel like a hunk of shit. “Have you seen her since?”

“Four times. Each time, she wanted the house to meet some other man.” The bitterness was in her voice again. “They used my bed. I always changed the sheets afterward.”

“You remember the dates? Ever see the guy?”

“No, I took Kathy to the movies. The dates...” She looked over at him and laughed softly. “Suddenly you’re working again, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

“I might be able to figure the dates out.” She hesitated. “Wendy’s in... real trouble, isn’t she?”

“Not so far. We have a theory...” He paused. “If it would turn out to be right, I still don’t know how deeply she...”

Bridget shook her head. “Funny, isn’t it? I seduced you because I thought she’d had you. Trying to hurt her — as if it would. And yet I’ve always looked after her, and here I am worrying about her again.”

“Bridget,” he said suddenly. “Take your husband back. She isn’t worth destroying your marriage over.”

“I know.” Her fingers closed convulsively in his hair to drag him down on her waiting body. “Once more, Larry. Oh God...”

It was twice more. It was early afternoon when he left. On the narrow walk he turned and looked back. The front drapes were open, but there was no silhouette at the window to wave goodbye.

In his imagination, the sound of sobbing drowned out her broken little cries of completion. He shivered. He didn’t know if he had used or been used. He didn’t think he liked himself very much just then. And he didn’t really even know why.

“What did you say?” demanded Dan Kearny.

“That you certainly know how to make a girl feel elegant.”

“Not you.” He pointed to Heslip. “You. Just before that.”

“Ah faidg gkat...”

Heslip quit trying to talk around half a hot dog and gulped it down, dropping a quarter-size dollop of mustard on his purple print shirt in the process. Giselle was using a plastic spoon to stir ersatz cream into bad coffee in a styrofoam cup. Her hot dog in the paper boat-shaped affair that took the place of even a paper plate was stone-cold.

“Elegant,” she said again. “Simply elegant.”

“I said that Wendy-baby has found a new dance studio.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Kearny had been watching without really watching a red-haired girl in a tight plaid wool suit when Heslip had spoken the first time, using “Wendy” and “dance studio” just when Kearny had been thinking the red-haired girl moved like a dancer, and that had done it.

“Let’s move.” He was already off the tiny stool, leaving an empty crumpled cigarette pack on the little round formica table. “Let’s go to Chandra’s and I’ll show you how she got the blackmail material.”