Gone, No Forwarding

Five

When Interstate 580 went through Oakland a few years before, it had reduced MacArthur Boulevard to a freeway-feeder street. The motels which once had catered to through-travelers slid — at the same time that girls from nearby recently black residential areas were growing up hungry for the good life.

Ballard drove north along MacArthur past quite a few who had found it. Maybe. On every street corner, in front of almost every motel, all he could see was legs. Long legs, short legs, thin legs, heavy legs — under short, scruffy, artificial fur jackets, or red blazers with brass buttons, or no jackets at all, just T-shirts and blouses. Many of the legs were covered only by body stockings and black boots, or outdated hotpants. He was glad to turn off and drive over a few blocks to the 3000 block of Thirty-fourth street, where Verna Rounds was supposed to live.

It was a run-down frame house with an old-fashioned front porch, its roof supported by squat, square pillars. One of the street numbers was missing from beside the open doorway, but the paint where the metal numeral had been was a different color from the house’s current hue. The front walk had broken into three separate sections tilted in three different directions. There was a three-inch gap between the top of the sunken concrete front steps and the porch. He knocked on the doorframe, unheard over the voices raised within.

“Whut you sayin’ to you mother?”

“Sayin’ I put thutty dollar in de pinball machine down to de rib joint.”

“Samuel, where you get dat sorta money?”

In a momentary silence, Ballard knocked again. A huge fat black lady came up the straight hallway from the kitchen, talking as she came. Her remarks seemed addressed more to herself than to the husky teen-age boy behind her. “... de baddest boy I ever did hear of...”

“Hey, Ma, I was kiddin’ you. Spent a dollar.”

This stopped her just short of the door. “Dat God’s truth?”

“Ask Ophelia.”

The fat woman shook her head, starting to grin. “I swear you bad to de very minnit, Samuel, fool you poor dumb mammy dat way.” She turned the grin on Ballard. “Yassuh?”

Ballard returned it. “I’m looking for Verna Rounds. Is she—”

“Ain’t no Verna Rounds here.” The face had closed like a fist.

He took a chance and said softly, “You’re her mother, aren’t you?”

“And if I is? Verna ain’t here.”

“It’s very important that I get in touch—”

“Look, caint you leave that poor girl alone?”

Ballard held up a placating hand. “She’s not in trouble—”

“Lot you know ’bout trouble.”

He stood without moving for a few moments, staring at the door just slammed six inches from his nose. “Terrific,” he finally said and went back to his car.

He had to try three pay phones to find one that was working. With it he called Giselle. “Oh, Larry, good, I didn’t want to put this out on the radio.” So she was over her mad, anyway. “Donna Payne worked for six weeks in the credit office of Royal Foods on Valley Drive in that industrial park down in Brisbane. She lists a Mary McCarthy there as a personal reference.”

“You got anything on her in Nevada? She might be there.”

“Nevada?” There was a rustling of papers. “No. Cincinnati, Ohio. And I remember her saying that’s where she was from.”

“Okay, I’ll hit the McCarthy reference tomorrow. Tonight I’ll check on the Jeffrey Simson residence address. And I’m going to ask Bart to work the file clerk. I’m the wrong color.”

By the time Ballard had gotten a hamburger and driven back to San Francisco, dusk had fallen and the fog had rolled in. He parked on Valencia around the corner from Simson’s Twenty-fourth Street address. A narrow foot passage led to the small court on which the apartment opened. There were potted plants and a strong catbox smell, but no lights in the apartment and no answer at the door. He left one of his business cards in the slot of the mailbox, which his flashlight showed bore the names BETTE and MILFORD DENNISON.

On his original employment application, Simson had listed a father living in the 1300 block of Stevenson Street. Ballard drove in on Valencia, contemplating once more his insight that straight arrows were as hard to track down as flakes and deadbeats. On the way he passed Eighteenth Street; half a block over on Linda Street lived Maria Navarro and her new husband. He didn’t even know her married name. And was surprised to realize he hadn’t even thought of her since hearing of Kathy’s death.

The father lived in a detached bungalow. He was a benign-countenanced, round-faced man with a fringe of white hair and a limp. He balanced himself on his good leg while admitting he was Ellis Simson and waving away Ballard’s apologies with his cane. “No, no, glad of the company. It beats television.”

“I’m trying to get in touch with your son Jeff.”

In the act of turning away, Ellis Simson stopped abruptly. He put the rubber tip of his cane against Ballard’s stomach and smiled tightly. “You a fag?” he demanded in a challenging voice.

“Huh?”

The cane was lowered. “Come on in.”

“Gotta blame myself, I guess.” Ellis Simson and Ballard were each having a can of beer. “Moved out on his ma nearly twenty years ago.”

“She never remarried?”

“Too ornery. Good-looking girl then. I was a merchant sailor, met her during the war...”

The three-room apartment was that of a man who’d grown used to small living quarters which had to be kept neat. Handmade hardwood bookshelves held a sailor’s reading: The Bible and Shakespeare, Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad, Matthiessen’s Far Tortuga; books to be read and reread during the long still watches far at sea.

“So she raised him alone?” prompted Ballard. All he needed was Jeff Simson’s address, but the old man was lonely and his beer was good.

“From six years old on. When we were docked in San Pedro I had to deliver the alimony payments in person. She liked that. Wouldn’t remarry because that would let me off the hook. A good hater, that woman. After I got this” — he slapped the bad leg — “I used the settlement to buy this place. At least it’s four hundred miles away from her.”

Ballard drained his beer. Out into the foggy foggy night.

“You said you have a recent address on your son...”

“Son!” he snorted. “Didn’t lay eyes on him for eight years, despite the support payments, then he showed up two years ago.”

He limped over to the old-fashioned rolltop desk which had been restored and hand-oiled to a soft glow like distant fires. As he rummaged in the center drawer he kept up his rapid-fire talk. “Jeff came to me with a lot of talk about his roots, authority figure, father figure — what really happened was his mother got wise to him and threw him out. Not that it stopped the alimony payments. They’ll go on until the day she dies. Or I do.”

“So Jeff got the apartment nearby?” asked Ballard.

Ellis Simson nodded. “So he could live near me, he said. Had a roommate called Ferdie. Should have known.” He came back with a sheet of scratch paper. “Here’s the address.”

Ballard copied it down. Way out in the avenues, almost to the beach.

“Dropped by his place one afternoon, got no answer from the bell and the door was open so I went in. Him and Ferdie were in bed together. I was sick on the bedroom rug.” His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “Maybe, if I’d stuck with Eleanor...”

“And maybe not,” said Ballard.

At the address on Forty-third Avenue just off Balboa, Jeffrey L. Simson was listed for Apartment One, but Ballard’s flashlight through the uncurtained window showed there was no furniture and the place was being repainted. Ballard went home and dreamed he was being attacked by a water buffalo in the paddock at Golden Gate Park off Chain of Lakes Drive.