The Ferguson Affair

chapter 19

THE TRAFFIC ON Wilshire and San Vicente alternately raced and crawled. It was past five when I got back to my office. Belle Weinstein was waiting at her desk.

She smiled rather thinly at me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gunnarson, I had no luck with your list. I didn’t have a chance to go through all the books. The telephone company tossed me out at five.”

I hated to give up on my idea. At bottom, I suppose, I was trying to justify my withholding of evidence from Wills.

Mrs. Weinstein saw the look on my face, and screwed up her own in commiseration. “If it really is so important, I think I know where I can get hold of some more directories. Velma Copley at the answering service has a fairly complete file.”

“Try her, will you? It really is important. Just between you and me, it’s the only important case I’ve had to date.”

“I’ll get over there right away.” She rose and took up her purse from the top of the desk. “I nearly forgot, a Dr. Simeon called. He said that he was going home for dinner, but he’ll be back at the hospital after dinner, if you want to talk to him.”

“Did he say what his findings were?”

“No. Is he the doctor who is looking after Mrs. Gunnarson?”

“God, no.” The very suggestion shook me. “Her doctor is Trench.”

“I thought so.”

“Dr. Simeon is the pathologist who does the official postmortems. I’ll meet you here after I have dinner and talk to him.”

Sally was sitting under the lamp in the living room with blue knitting in her lap. She was counting stitches, and she didn’t glance up. In the light falling softly on her, she looked like a pre-Raphaelite painting of herself. I stood and watched her while she finished counting.

“I’ll never learn to knit properly,” she said. “Nimmer und nimmermehr. And you’re no help, looming over me smirking like that.”

“I don’t loom. I’m not smirking.” I bent over and kissed her. “I was just thinking how lucky I am to have you to come home to. How did I ever trick you into marriage?”

“Ha,” she said with her wonderful slow smile. “I was the one with the wiles and the stratagems. You’ll never know. But what a perfectly lovely thing to say to me. You must have had a good day.”

“As a matter of fact it was a lousy day. The craziest mixed-up day of my life. What makes me feel so good now is the contrast.”

“We’re full of ornate compliments.” She gave me a long, encompassing look. “Are you all right, William?”

“I’m all right.”

“I mean really. You seem sort of peaked and fixed.”

“I’m fixed on you.”

But it didn’t sound right. I tried for her mouth again. She held me off and studied me. It was good to be looked at by such grave, bright eyes, but it made me nervous. I think I was afraid she’d see too much reflected in my eyes. The thought of Speare intruded like an odor.

“What happened today, Bill?”

“A lot of things. It would take all night to tell you.”

“We have all night.” Her tone was faintly questioning.

“I’m afraid we don’t, love. I have to go out again as soon as we eat.”

She caught her reaction and held it stiff on her face. “Oh. Well. Dinner’s in the oven. We can eat any time.”

“I don’t mean to rush things.” But I couldn’t help looking at my watch.

“Where do you have to go?”

“It would be better if I didn’t say.”

“What are you mixed up in, Bill?”

“Nothing. It’s just another case.”

“I don’t believe it. Something’s happened to you, personally.”

“Not directly. I ran into a couple of unusual situations, and people. They bothered me at the time. They don’t any more.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t mother me.”

I’d meant it to sound light. It sounded sharp. There was a contagion in the air, seeping in like invisible smog which hurt the eyes. I didn’t want Sally to be touched by it. I didn’t want her even to have to imagine it.

But she blinked as though her eyes had felt its sting. “Heaven forbid that I should mother you. You’re a big boy. And I’m a big girl, aren’t I? Big, big, big.”

She pushed her knitting aside with an abrupt gesture that disturbed me. I was beginning to catch on to the fact that I was in a chancy mood. We both were.

“Here,” she said, “give me a hand, will you? Mother Gunnarson is about to get up. It isn’t an earthquake, friends and neighbors. It’s only Earth-Mother Gunnarson levitating out of her chair. Alley-oop.”

She took my hand and rose smiling, but neither of us felt funny. As she walked toward the kitchen, her movements were heavy. My luck flipped like a coin in my mind, and I saw with breathtaking clarity what was on the other side: Sally carried in herself and in her body everything that I cared about in the world. My world hung by a membrane.

I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and face. Tonight it had the quality of a special ritual. I didn’t look at my face in the mirror over the sink.

Sally called from the kitchen. “Soup’s on! That is, it will be by the time you get to the table, slowpoke.”

I went to the kitchen door. “Sit down. Let me serve you for a change. It’s time you took it easier.”

She grinned over her shoulder. “Don’t father me. Dr. Trench says I should move around and do as much as I feel like. Well, I feel like. I enjoy serving you.”

She moved past me with two steaming bowls of soup.

“I made the noodles myself,” she said when we were seated at the table. “They’ve been drying on top of the refrigerator all afternoon. I admit they’re a little thick. It takes enormous strength to roll them out thin, I find. Do they taste all right?”

“Fine. I like them thick.”

“At least they’re not out of a can,” she said earnestly. “Eat them up, and then there’s a Spanish casserole.”

“You’re becoming very creative in the kitchen.”

“Yes. It’s funny, isn’t it? I used to abhor cooking. Now I keep getting all sorts of ideas. Even if I can’t knit.”

“Wait until you’ve had five or six. You’ll be able to knit.”

“I have no intention of having five or six. Three’s my limit. Three’s a horde. Anyway, that would be an awfully roundabout way to learn to knit. Like in Charles Lamb.”

“Who?”

“Charles Lamb, on the invention of roast pork. They thought they had to burn the barn down whenever they wanted roast pork. It would be cheaper and simpler to take knitting lessons. Think of the doctor bills it would save, not to mention the wear and tear on my frame.”

“Eat your soup,” I said. “Your frame needs sustenance. I’ve finished mine, and you haven’t touched yours.”

She looked down into her dish, guiltily. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat them, Bill. I spent so long making those noodles, I have a sort of maternal feeling towards them. Like pupae. Maybe I can be more objective about the Spanish casserole. I’ve never thought much of Spain since I read For Whom the Bell Tolls.” She started to get up, and sat down again. “Would you get the casserole out of the oven? I am a little pooped.”

“I know. You always go on a talking jag when you’re pooped.” I looked into her eyes again, and noticed how very large and dark they were, staining even the flesh around them with blueness. “Did anything happen today, Sally?”

She bit her soft lower lip. “I didn’t mean to tell you. You have enough on your mind.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, really. Somebody telephoned this afternoon. It gave me a little bit of a jolt.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t even know if it was a he. Whoever it was simply breathed at me. I could hear that heavy breathing on the line, but not a word. It sounded like an animal.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I hung up. Should I have done something?”

“Not necessarily. But if there’s more of the same, or if anybody comes to the door-anybody you don’t know well-I want you to call the police. Ask for Lieutenant Wills. If he’s not available, ask them to send any detective who is, except-”

I hesitated. I’d meant to say “except Sergeant Granada.” But I couldn’t say it, or ask Sally to say it. There was a certain solidarity among men which couldn’t be broken, even under the circumstances-a certain faith which couldn’t be violated. The rule of law that a man was innocent until proved guilty had become as much a part of my thinking as my love for Sally.

“Except who?” she said.

“No exceptions. Call the police if anyone bothers you in any way. And you better keep the door locked.”

“Is somebody after us?”

“I’m working on a criminal case. Certain threats have been made-”

“Against you?”

“Against several people.”

“Was that telephone call last night one of the threats?”

“Yes.”

“You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“I’m not scared. Honestly. You go ahead and do your job and I’ll look after myself. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You’re a great woman.”

“I’m an extremely ordinary woman. You just don’t know too much about women yet, Bill. I’m not a Victorian female given to fainting spells at the slightest provocation. I have your service revolver in the bedroom, and if anybody tries anything on Bill C., Jr., I’ll fight like a lady tiger.”

She spoke calmly enough, but her eyes were blazing, and her cheeks were flushed.

“Don’t get het up, Sally. Nothing is going to happen.”

I went around the table and held her head against me. It was precious, like golden fleece in my hands. Death had peered at her through the membrane like a thug in a rubber mask. But I realized obscurely that I couldn’t have and hold her by sitting at home. In order to keep what you had, you had to risk it.

“You know,” she said between my hands, “I am getting hungry. Never send to ask for whom the casserole cooks. It cooks for me.”