Illusions

7

I spent the evening alone in my flat, going through Eberhardt’s paper files. It was cheerless work, as much for what they told me about his deteriorating mental state as for the cold, bleak facts they contained. When I was done I had a pretty good idea of the shape and substance of his professional life over the past four years, and of how it had contributed to his suicide. But with the exception of a couple of small question marks that may or may not have had any significance, I could find nothing past or present that pointed to the trigger.

He’d never been a very conscientious report-maker or record-keeper; during our partnership days, all his paperwork — client reports, expense accountings, research data — tended to be sloppily organized and incomplete. But in the first year or so of Eberhardt Investigative Services he’d made an obvious effort to be more painstaking. You could see a kind of stolid enthusiasm in his early transcripts and correspondence, his detailed financial records. I’d speculated once that opening his own agency was his way of taking charge of what remained of his life, recapturing both his dignity and a self-worth that had been badly eroded by a combination of factors, among them a dependance on me and an inability to forgive himself for the one huge mistake that had ended his police career. Those first-year documents intimated that I’d pretty much been right. He’d tried the best way he knew how to make a success of his new venture. Taken a strictly professional approach in everything he did, to the point of buying and learning to use a computer.

And still he’d failed. Not immediately, but inevitably. The fault wasn’t his; the fault was competition, the stack of problems faced by every small businessman just starting out, the tenor of the times. There’d been a small flurry of activity in the beginning — friends and associates like Barney Rivera tossing bones to help him out. He’d done the work capably enough, but even when you build a string of repeat clients, as I had over a quarter of a century as an independent contractor, jobs are often sporadic. The big agencies, the ones with manpower and financial backing and technological know-how, get the cream; the rest of us have to scramble for the leavings. Eberhardt couldn’t compete. I’d gotten work that might have gone to him, even though he knew the clients as well as I did, because of my experience and success rate; the same was true of other established contractors. He’d got through the first year and a half all right, mostly on handouts, low-end divorce work, and one profitable three-week stint as an investigator for the defense in a felony trial. Even so, there were two stretches of more than two weeks each when he hadn’t worked at all, and his total gross income for the first five and a half months was only $13,800, the first full year just $23,000 and change.

His second full year he’d had a quarter fewer jobs and made six thousand less than the first. The third year: $9,987.00. And for the first four months of this year: $1,150.00.

The quality and quantity of his record-keeping reflected the downward spiral. The stolid enthusiasm disappeared after fifteen months or so; the reports grew thinner, less detailed, and if it was plain enough to me that he’d begun expending less effort on the skip-traces and insurance claims and divorce work, it had to’ve been just as plain to the clients. The professionalism had crumbled in other ways, too. By the beginning of last year he was cutting corners. There were indications that he overbilled on the number of hours it took him to finish a job. And I was pretty sure in two cases, both new corporate clients, that he’d done some expense-account padding — and none too creatively, since neither of the clients brought him repeat business.

This year, from January first to the last week in April, he’d had just three jobs: a personal background check, a Great Western claims investigation that he’d done a poor job on, and the liquor distributor’s theft stakeout. The first two had taken him eight days total, and he’d spent five days and nights on the O’Hanlon Brothers job. Thirteen days of work in four months. And the rest of the time? Drinking, brooding, building his own private gallows day by day, board by board. No clients, no prospects, no money. He’d never been much of a saver; as far as I knew, he’d had no more than a few thousand in the bank when he busted up our relationship. Most of that would’ve been spent in setting up his agency and the rest would’ve disappeared by the second year. The bank statements on his business account showed a balance at the end of last month of $36.18; they also showed periodic charges for overdrawn checks, nearly a dozen of them, and over the past eighteen months more than a dozen small deposits of between $100 and $300. So he and Bobbie Jean had been living on her salary at least that long and probably longer, and she’d also been feeding him enough cash so he could keep his office rent and utilities and other expenses more or less current. And her job at a San Rafael real estate brokerage company couldn’t have brought in much more than $35,000 a year gross. The Elizabeth Street house was paid for, but city property taxes are high and so are utilities; they must’ve been just squeaking by. More blows to Eberhardt’s pride. Another few boards for the gallows.

I took a close look at the three jobs he’d had this year. An item in the CURRENT file flagged my attention: one of the sheets of stationery headed “O’Hanlon Bros., Distributors” contained a list of eleven names and addresses. Employees or former employees of the firm? Possible suspects in the liquor thefts? A single name on the list had been heavily circled in felt-tip pen: Danny Forbes, with an address on Silliman Street in the Portola district. The circled name interested me enough to pull the sheet and set it aside.

Eberhardt’s appointment calendar had no notations for the week before his death and only one for last week. That one was for the day prior, his last full day on this earth: Disney, 2:00, Tues. The name was unfamiliar and I couldn’t find it in his address book.

The book had about twenty-five entries, a couple of which were scratched out — one, a bail bondsman I’d worked for a few times, with such apparent anger that the pen he’d used had ripped through the paper. Only five of the names were unknown to me, all of which appeared to be businesses of one kind and another. But he hadn’t dealt with any of them recently, judging from his phone bills and copies of his correspondence.

The most recent phone bills were among the handful of envelopes I’d lifted from the mailbox. No long-distance or toll calls from his office number; whatever calls he’d made from there had been local and Pac Bell doesn’t list those on its statements. The other bill was from Cellular One, which does list all outgoing cell phone calls. Why Eberhardt had continued to pay high mobile-phone rates, when he and Bobbie Jean were living hand to mouth, escaped me — unless a cell phone had been some sort of symbol to him, an independence lifeline that hadn’t done him a bit of good. He’d given up his life before he’d given up his portable phone. In any event, that bill listed a total of six outgoing calls over the ten days prior to his death: the first and last to his home number, the one to my office, one to Barney Rivera at Great Western, one that I matched to O’Hanlon Brothers, and one that I was unable to match to any in his address book or elsewhere. That one had been made at 1:07 last Tuesday afternoon, and had lasted a minute or less. A connection to the two o’clock appointment with Disney, whoever Disney was? I wrote the name and number down in my notebook.

Finished, I sat looking at all the papers piled on my desk and on the living-room floor. Nearly four years of a man’s professional life, and every damn bit of it would go into the trash. Not a single scrap of paper worth saving. And all I knew now that I hadn’t known when I started was that Eberhardt’s four-year descent had been a little worse than I’d originally believed. He hadn’t just been a despondent drunk; he’d turned into a careless and pettily deceitful drunk. If he’d set out to recapture his dignity and self-worth, he’d wound up trampling on what was left of both.

Sad, pathetic. And one more piece of proof that the real Eberhardt had been hidden from me all along, that the one I’d called my friend for thirty-some years had been shadow and silhouette, sham and mirage.

From the office Friday morning I called the number I’d copied into my notebook. A recorded voice came on after three rings. “You have reached the offices of Richard H. Disney, Ph.D. If you would like to make an appointment, or if you have other business, please leave your name and number at the tone. Office hours are Monday through Thursday, nine-thirty to four-thirty...”

I hung up without waiting for the rest. The Ph.D. after the man’s name could mean a few different things, but the one I thought of first was head doctor. I dragged out and consulted the city’s yellow pages. And under Psychologists I found Richard H. Disney, Ph.D., with an address on Church Street.

So Eberhardt had been seeing a shrink. The combination of booze and depression must have driven him to it. And yet unburdening himself to another person, and a psychologist at that, didn’t seem to be something he would’ve done; he’d always expressed distrust of and contempt for “brain pickers.” That was one facet of the man I felt pretty sure I was right about. No way could I picture him in a psychologist’s office, admitting he was a drunk and a failure and that he’d lost his will to live.

Bolt Street was a hive of activity early on a Friday afternoon. Semis, trailers, pickups, forklifts, workmen, engine noise, and a miasma of diesel clogged its dead-end half block so thoroughly that I didn’t even try to penetrate it. I turned onto the cross street and found parking there instead. And at that, walking the alley was more hazardous than driving it: a reckless jitney driver nearly mowed me down before I reached the O’Hanlon Brothers’ loading dock.

Two of the three bays were occupied, and half a dozen men wheeled hand trucks back and forth between the open maw of the warehouse and the yawning backsides of two big trailers. I asked one of the men where I might find T. K. O’Hanlon; according to Eberhardt’s CURRENT file, that was the brother who’d hired him. “In his office, probably,” the guy said, and pointed out a tunnellike walkway that led through the warehouse to an office area at the rear. I did some more talking there and was eventually granted an audience with T. K. O’Hanlon in his private sanctum. Which turned out not to be very private: one entire wall was made of glass and looked out into the cavernous warehouse with its crates and cartons and pallets and bins and shelves of enough varieties of booze to make Andrew Volstead and Elliot Ness revolve in their graves.

O’Hanlon cut an impressive figure, in the sense that a large and crudely crafted outdoor sculpture is impressive. He looked as though he’d been assembled out of a bunch of different-size square blocks tightly fitted together: square head on top of square shoulders on top of a square torso. Even his hips seemed square, his legs and arms squarish elongations. The face block had gouges for eyes, a crooked slash for a mouth, and a knob for a nose, and was surmounted by a colorless bristle like dried-up moss on a rock. The eyes were quick and shrewd, though. Anyone who formed an opinion about T. K. O’Hanlon based solely on his appearance would be making a serious error in judgment.

He sized me up, too, as we shook hands, and evidently I passed muster. His tone was cordial enough when he said, “Friend of Eberhardt’s, eh? Hell of a thing, him bumping himself off out there on the street. We had cops in here asking questions and getting in the way most of the morning after it happened.”

I had no comment to make on that.

He said, “So what brings you here now? I’m not in the market for any more private cops, if that’s it. Not yet anyhow.”

“That’s not it, Mr. O’Hanlon. I—”

“T. K.,” he said. “Everybody calls me T. K.”

“All right, T. K. I’m not looking for business, I’m looking for answers. To why he killed himself.”

“Little late for that, isn’t it?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

O’Hanlon shrugged. “You were his friend and you don’t have any idea, how should I? Drunks do crazy things. I should’ve known better than to hire a drunk. Like hiring a fat woman to catch a thief in a candy factory.”

“If you knew he had a drinking problem going in, why did you hire him?”

“He worked cheap, that’s why. My brother and I can’t afford to pay what some of you guys charge. I called around, I got some estimates, he gave me the one we could afford. You get what you pay for, like they say.”

I let that pass, too.

“No offense,” O’Hanlon said. “He’s dead, it’s a hell of a thing, but facts are facts. One thing T. K. O’Hanlon doesn’t trade in and that’s bullshit. My wife says I got as much tact as a rolling pin.”

“About the job you hired Eberhardt to do, T. K.”

“Find out which one of our employees been ripping us off, yeah. More than a hundred cases the past few months — single-malt Scotch, sour-mash bourbon, Napoleon brandy. Ten, eleven thousand bucks’ worth, and the insurance don’t even begin to make up for it.”

“Was he getting anywhere?”

“Nope. I ask what he’s finding out, he tells me he’s working on it, these things take time. Far as I could tell, he mostly just sat out there on the street nights hoping for something to fall into his lap. And he wasn’t there all the time he said he was.”

“How do you know he wasn’t?”

“I came in last Saturday night about eleven, doing a favor for a friend. He wasn’t on the street then. Chances are he wasn’t there part of Sunday night, either.”

“No?”

“Nick and me got ripped off again that weekend. Nick’s my kid brother. Played pro ball with the Detroit Lions in the seventies, maybe you remember him? Three years, linebacker and special teams before he screwed up his knee.”

“I remember him,” I lied. “How much was stolen that time?”

“Five cases of Glenlivet and two of sour mash, part of a special order for a customer. Shipment came in on Saturday morning — we work half days on Saturdays — and the inventory was short on Monday.”

“What did Eberhardt say when you told him about it?”

“Admitted he was gone part of Saturday night. Hour or so, he said, to get something to eat. Buy more booze for himself is more like it. Said he was here all of Sunday night. You know what I think? If he was here Saturday and Sunday, he was passed out in his car both nights. Whole squadron of thieves could’ve emptied the warehouse, carried everything out right past him and he wouldn’t’ve noticed.”

His bluntness nettled me, even though he was probably right. I held down a sharp retort, handed him the sheet of company stationery containing the list of names and addresses. “Did you give this to Eberhardt? I found it in his files.”

“Yeah. He asked for it first thing, people I had any reason to suspect. Former employees, most of ’em.”

“Who circled that one name? You or him?”

“Wasn’t me. Forbes, eh? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“If Danny Forbes is the thief? Why do you say that?”

“We got twenty people working for us, a dozen in the warehouse. I’d lay odds seventeen, eighteen are either stone honest or too timid to steal from us. I figure maybe three guys still on the payroll have the balls to do it. Forbes is one.

“Why him specifically?”

“Why?” O’Hanlon thought about it. “He’s got an attitude, that’s one reason. Little guy, good worker but always acting tough, like it’ll make him bigger than he is. Got in a fight with a teamster on the loading dock once, man almost twice his size — nearly had his head torn off. Got the crap beat out of him the weekend those last seven cases disappeared, too.”

“Oh? Here, you mean?”

“In some bar near where he lives. Showed up on Monday morning with his nose bent out of shape and a cut over one eye. Guy shoved him, he shoved back, boom! he’s on his ass and breathing sawdust. That kind never learns.”

“Does he have a key to this place?”

“Key? Him? Hell, no. Nick and me are the only ones have keys. New locks. I had ’em changed when the thefts started, not that I expected it’d do much good.”

“Why not?”

“Too easy to get in and out, if you been working here long enough. Old doors, old windows, and too many for tight security. Guy like Forbes could figure ways in and out without too much trouble. Only real way for us to safeguard the inventory is to have all new doors and windows or an alarm system installed, and either one’d cost us five times as much as we been losing on the stolen liquor.”

“Why don’t you just fire Forbes and the other two?”

“You think I wouldn’t like to? I’d kick ‘em out in a New York minute if it wasn’t for their union. Nick and me, we treat our people right and we have good relations with all the unions, can’t afford to get ’em down on our necks, but sometimes the rules are a pain in the hinder... Ah, hell, why bitch about something you can’t do anything about?”

“You single out Forbes when you first talked to Eberhardt?”

“Not exactly. Just told him what I told you — Forbes and Barnes and King are the three still working for us that’re capable of it.”

But Eberhardt hadn’t circled Barnes or King; he’d circled Forbes. Why? If he’d found out anything incriminating against the man, there was no indication of it in his file...

O’Hanlon had turned to the glass wall and was surveying his domain. Pretty soon he motioned to me, and when I joined him he said, “See that guy over there by the liqueur bins? On your right there. That’s Forbes.”

Danny Forbes was a little guy, all right — thin, sinewy, with a mop of red hair and the kind of face that would contract into a belligerent glare three times as often as it would open up into a smile. He was stacking cases in a row of floor bins, working at a steady pace.

“If he is the one,” O’Hanlon said, “I’ll be the next man to knock him on his skinny ass. And it won’t be long, either. Another big shipment’s coming in next week and Nick and me got plans to stake out the place ourselves. Catch the son-of-a-bitch red-handed.”

“Suppose he lays off this one?”

“He better not. We haven’t got time to stake out every new shipment comes in. Bastard does lay off, maybe I’ll be in the market for another private eye after all. How much you charge by the day?”

“More than you’d be willing to pay. Not interested, T. K.”

“Too bad. I like you, the way you handle yourself — real professional. Too bad I didn’t pick you out of the phone book instead of that lush Eberhardt. We’d’ve got along fine, you and me.”

I doubted it. But I managed to get out of there without telling him so and lowering his already less-than-exalted opinion of private detectives.

On the way back downtown I detoured by the Hall of Justice to see Jack Logan. Jack is a lieutenant in General Works, Eberhardt’s old rank and detail. The two of them had worked together for a lot of years, been good friends before Eberhardt took his early retirement. But their friendship, too, had faded with the years. After the end of the regular poker game that had included the three of us, Joe DeFalco, and Barney Rivera, they’d seen little of each other. Jack hadn’t had any contact with him at all, he’d told me, in ten months.

He was in but busy, so I had to wait fifteen minutes before he called me into his office. He said he couldn’t give me much time; I said I didn’t need much, and told him briefly why I was there. A few more creases appeared in his lined face; he lifted a hand to rumple his already rumpled gray hair.

He said, “What makes you think this Danny Forbes might be involved in Eb’s death?”

“I don’t think that. I’m just poking around, trying to make sense of what happened. You know me, Jack.”

“Oh, yeah, I know you.” He punched up the file on his computer, studied the screen. “Nothing there at all. Forbes is a bowler, bowls Tuesday nights in a mixed doubles league in Daly City. He was in bed with one of the women in the league, her apartment in D.C., when Eb died.”

“That kind of alibi is never too solid.”

“In this case, it is.”

“Does Forbes have a record?”

He checked the file. “No felony arrests.”

“What about the alleged bar fight he got into two weekends ago?”

“What about it? Happened days before Eb shot himself.” Jack leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his paunch. He’s nearing retirement and tends now and then to adopt an avuncular pose, even with someone his own age. “You can’t make a murder case out of this.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Aren’t you? It was suicide and no mistake. Everything says so: his drinking, his mental state, the circumstances, the note in the glove box, the fact that it was his gun and only his prints were on it—”

“Three-fifty-seven Magnum,” I said. “That’s a big piece. Take some effort to angle it against your own chest. And why do it that way? Why not in the mouth, or against the temple?”

“For Chrissake, man, who knows what goes through a suicide’s mind in those last seconds? Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to eat the bullet. Maybe he was too drunk to be thinking much at all. A chest shot takes some maneuvering but it’s not uncommon. Powder burns on his shirt, nitrate traces on his hand — he fired the round.”

“All right.”

“Suicide. Period. The investigating inspectors know it and I know it and you know it, too. Nobody likes it when a cop, a friend, blows himself away, but it happens and it happened in this case. Why don’t you give yourself a break and accept it, put it behind you like the rest of us are trying to do?”

“Yeah,” I said, as much to myself as to Logan. “Why the hell don’t I?”