The Snatch

18

I parked in front of the first cafe I saw in Burlingame, went inside and ordered some coffee and soup and a mound of creamed cottage cheese with fresh fruit; after I had put all of that away I felt considerably better.

The thought of a cigarette came into my mind then, and to get rid of it I got up from the counter and went back to where a telephone booth was located between the rest-room doors. I put a couple of dimes in the slot, the price of a Peninsula toll call, and dialed Erika’s number.

She came on after a moment, and I said, “Hi, doll.”

“Oh,” she said, “hello, old bear.”

She sounded vaguely cold, vaguely distant, and I thought: Oh Christ, she’s still brooding over last night. Well, I was in a pretty decent frame of mind at the moment and I was not going to let one of her moods spoil it. I said, “I’ve got some good news. I found Gary Martinetti today-mainly through some blind luck. He’s all right and safe at home with his parents.”

“You found him?”

“Uh-huh.” I told her how it had come about.

She said, “Well, that’s very nice.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“What would you like me to say?”

“You could show a little enthusiasm.”

“For the boy-or for you?”

“Jesus, what’s the matter with you tonight?”

“Not a thing, I’m fine.”

“You don’t act like it.”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

I sighed inaudibly, and said, “All right. Listen, I should be back in San Francisco in about half an hour. I’ll come by and pick you up, and we can have a couple of drinks at my place before I go to bed-”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going out pretty soon.”

“Out where?”

“To dinner and cocktails.”

“By yourself? Christ, Erika-”

“No,” she said, “not by myself.”

The back of my neck felt a little cold. “With who, then? Some other guy?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your concern.”

“The hell it’s not! You’re supposed to be my girl.”

“You don’t own me,” she said. “I can go where I please, with whom I please.”

“What is this?” I said, and my voice was thick. “The goddamn brush-off or something? Is that it? If it is, you’d better tell me, Erika.”

“Maybe it would be best that way,” very softly.

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“You know why. I told you why last night.”

“Damn it, you’re being unreasonable …”

“I don’t think so. I thought it all out very carefully today, and I don’t think I am.”

“Erika, you know how I feel about you. Isn’t that enough? What the hell do you wantfrom a man?”

“That’s just it: I want a man. Not a stubborn and self-deluding adolescent trying to live the life of a fictional hero.”

“That’s a plain bunch of crap!”

“No it isn’t,” she said. “You’d better resign yourself to the fact that you can’t have that job of yours and me both. You’re going to have to choose between us, one or the other.”

“That’s a hell of an ultimatum to offer a man!”

“I’m sorry, that’s the way it has to be. I don’t want to see you for a while, until you make up your mind. When you bring my car back, you can just park it in the driveway and put the key in my mailbox.”

“Just like that, huh? Cold and reasonable, huh?”

“Yes.”

“What about this bastard you’re going out with tonight? Is that supposed to help me make up my mind, knowing you’re out with somebody else?”

“He’s not a bastard, and I’m going out with him because I don’t intend to sit home and wait for your decision-not when I’m pretty sure I know how you’ll choose.”

“All right then!” I yelled at her. “All right then, go out with whoever you want and go to bed with him, too, for all I care, get yourself good and laid, goddamn it, I hope you-”

“Goodbye, old bear, I’m sorry,” she said, and then she was gone and I stood there holding the phone like a dummy, panting, my face flushed and the nourishment I had just taken souring in my stomach. What was the matter with her, what the hell was the matter with her? Why couldn’t she understand, why couldn’t she empathize, didn’t she know how it was with a man and the work he had to do? For Christ’s sake, I loved her! I loved her, why wasn’t that enough?

I slammed the phone back in its cradle and went out of the booth and threw some money on the counter. Outside, the wind blew cool and soft along the street and the black robe of the night sky was sequined with coldly bright stars. I began walking, just walking, letting the anger build, the frustration, letting it spiral inside me, and I thought: Well, all right, Erika, I’m glad to find out now the way it really is with you, how you really feel about me. I came within a couple of inches of dying the other day, and instead of coming to me like a woman with love and compassion in your words and in your eyes, you rub acid in the wound, you jump on me with your claws unsheathed like a predatory cat, “Goodbye, old bear, I’m sorry.” Some succor, some understanding, some love- well, all right then, Erika, all right if that’s the way you want it that’s the way it will be, all right.

I kept on walking, and there was a cigar store on the opposite corner. I went over there and bought a package of cigarettes before I knew what I was doing, trancelike, but when I came out again with the pack in my hands, the spiraling had ascended to an ultimate zenith and there was nowhere else for it to go then but sharply downward. The anger vanished, and suddenly there was only a harsh, vacuous depression, a loneliness at the core of my soul that was almost painful in its fervor. But I did not want to be where people were, for it was not that kind of loneliness; it was, instead, the loneliness of rejection, the deep bleeding hurt of frustrated denial that only a woman can inflict upon a man.

There was nowhere for me to go. Home-the sanctuary? No, because home was the symbol of loneliness now, and the fragile lingering aura of Erika would be there and I did not want to be anywhere that reminded me of her, I did not want her car or her words whispering echolike in my mind and the remembered feel of her softness beneath my hands and beneath my body.

I looked at the cigarettes and I did not want one at all, and I wondered fleetingly if I had bought them as a subconscious defiance of Erika. I dropped the package into my overcoat pocket and started walking again.

I walked for blocks and crossed streets blindly and walked, and finally my legs began to ache and my belly began to ache and I knew that I could not walk much longer. I needed something tangible to hang on to, something to do, someone to talk to, perhaps, something, anything, to take my mind off Erika. I started along an unfamiliar block, cutting back to the main street off which I had somehow strayed, and in the middle of it I passed a storefront with a wide display window illuminated by a single large-wattage night light. Black letters printed on the glass read Books.

I stopped. Inside the window, hanging from twine strung between pegs the width of the display, overlooking the pocketbooks and encyclopedias and other dusty second-hand items like tired and aged sentries on sagging battlements, was a series of pulp magazines-something tangible, something immediate, a second and fittingly ironic defiance of Erika because of her strong contempt for them.

I went up to the window and peered in at the magazines. You did not find many stores that had pulps any more, and I could see immediately why this one was an exception. There were some strips of paper clipped to the upper corners of the front covers, and on them were prices; the cheapest of the ones displayed was ten dollars and that was too much for anything except a vintageBlack Mask or a Volume One, Number 1.

There were a couple of Weird Tales up there from the early forties, and an Argosy for 1936 and two copies of The Shadow from the late 1940’s. I was not particularly interested in any of those, but there was a rare, fairly good edition ofDetective Fiction Weeklyfor March 14, 1931, that caught and held my eye.

The distinctive dark blue-and-yellow cover depicted a detective who looked a little like Jimmy Stewart, throwing down on a heavy with a vial of something in his hand. Midway below the title, on the left-hand side, was a caption for the issue’s feature story, The Candy Kid, a Lester Leith novelette by Erie Stanley Gardner.

The Lester Leith stories, about one of Gardner’s earliest and most flamboyant detectives, were hard to come by these days in their original magazine appearance. They had been some of the best work of a master craftsman who had learned his trade in the pulps; Gardner had had a reputation in the old days

Gardner had had Gardner

Gardner.

Gardener.

Oh Jesus, gardener-the gardener!

The impact of the connection was strong and sharp in my mind, and suddenly I had something else to grasp, something potentially important, something pushing Erika and the hurt and the depressing loneliness away.

Burlingame Landscaping and Gardening Service.

Very clearly, then, I could see the green panel truck behind which I had parked that first afternoon on Tamarack Drive-the words stenciled across its rear doors. And I could see the young T-shirted guy kneeling on the strip of canvas, weeding the lawn, when I first entered the grounds-the gardener, one other person who could have known about the kidnapping of Gary Martinetti the day it happened, who could even be the hypothetical silent partner acquainted with the Martinettis well enough to set up things for Lockridge-the gardener, the damned gardener.

I turned away from the window and hurried up the street, thinking that I had to get in touch with Donleavy, wondering if he was still up in San Francisco at the Hall of Justice-but before I reached Broadway, I slowed down and some of the urgency left me. It was nothing, for God’s sake, but a shot in the dark, a fat straw, a possibility that was no better than any or all of the other possibilities. For all I knew, Donleavy or one of the other investigators from the District Attorney’s Office had already questioned the gardener and eliminated him as a suspect; Donleavy would not necessarily have mentioned it in my presence. Even if they had not questioned him, I had no evidence against the gardener, nothing to link him with the kidnapping or the hijacking, nothing at all which would induce

Donleavy to drop his investigation of the sixty or seventy people who had been at Martinetti’s party two nights before the boy’s abduction-people who were just as suspect — and rush out to the gardener’s place to interrogate him.

But it was still a lead, I could not deny that, and because it was-because I still needed that something tangible to hold on to, that weapon to ward off the loneliness — I could follow it up myself. Martinetti was paying me to investigate, and Donleavy had given me his blessings, if I needed any rationalizations-why not? If I learned anything of importance, then I could get in touch with Donleavy and let him take it over.

I began hurrying again, onto Broadway, along it to the cafe where I had eaten. In the phone booth at the rear, I opened the Peninsula directory; under the B section I found:

Burl Lndscp amp; Grdng Srv

87 Valldemar Dr (Bg) ………… 344-1134

I shut the book and went out to the Valiant and rummaged in the glove compartment until I found a series of maps I knew Erika kept in there, bound with a rubber band. I located the one for the San Francisco Peninsula and looked up Valldemar Drive.

It was on the western edge of Burlingame, near Cuernavaca Park. That was a residential area, and it seemed logical to assume that whoever the young guy was, he ran his gardening and landscaping service from his residence.

The steering wheel had the feel of Erika’s fingers on it as I drove away into the night.

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