State’s Evidence Page 17

  “So what do you suggest? I could give you my bed, I suppose. And watch you myself.”

  She placed a slim hand on my forearm. The nails at the ends of the fingers were painted the color of tongues. “So who lives with you, Mr. Tanner?” Her voice was suddenly, oddly playful. “Wife? Lover? Cat? Mouse? Who?” Her lips were loose and generous.

  “I live with a television set and some printed words, Mrs. Blair. And a lot of dust. That’s about it.”

  “Whose words?”

  “Oh, Tolstoi, Dickens, Chandler, Macdonald.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “As opposed to shooting craps or hustling tennis bums, I suppose,” I countered. Some nastiness curled the edges of the words.

  “So you know about Tancy, too.”

  “Her and more, Mrs. Blair.”

  “Why am I so afraid of you, Mr. Tanner?”

  “I’m not sure, but it probably has more to do with you than with me, Mrs. Blair.”

  She turned away from me then, toward the far more splendid sights that surrounded her. Whatever she was thinking brought the frown back to her face. Her expression washed into familiar lines and creases. There were other signs of age as well, but none as prominent as the signs of beauty.

  “Would you consider a temporary boarder, Mr. Tanner? One more alive than Dickens?” Her eyes were bright. “I’d pay expenses, of course.”

  “Expenses?”

  “You know. Food and drink and such.”

  The “and such” sounded sumptuous. I didn’t think about it. “Come along, my dear,” I said with mock gallantry. Teresa Blair gripped my forearm more securely. Without another word we stood and marched back through the meadow, a knight and his lady at the close of a valiant day.

  When we got to the lodge, I asked if I needed to keep an eye on her while she packed. She said I didn’t, that I could trust her. Without good reason, that’s what I did.

  I waited in the lobby sparring mental questions. Why had Teresa Blair run away in the first place? Why did she give her sister the telephone number of a law office instead of the number of the lodge? Why didn’t she want to go home to her husband? Those questions and more darted at me, then soared off into space unanswered, in large part because they didn’t have to be. My job was to see that Teresa Blair showed up at the Fluto trial. Three days from now I would see to it that she did just that. The rest of it was fluff. Interesting, like all fluff. But fluff.

  We drove down the mountain in silence. It was only after we reached the valley floor and headed into Sacramento that Teresa Blair began to talk. “You investigated my life pretty thoroughly, didn’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “Who all did you talk to?”

  I told her, everyone from her friend Tancy to her boss Elliott to her sister Mary.

  “You saw Mary?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At her house. Winthrop Avenue.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Just her husband.”

  “Ted. How is dear Ted?”

  “Ted’s a bit distraught. He’s sick and out of work. Come to think of it, he gave me a message for you.”

  “What message is that?”

  “He said you’d better keep up your end of the deal. He said if you didn’t you’d be sorry.”

  “I’m already sorry,” Teresa Blair mumbled to herself. “As sorry as I’ve ever been.”

  “What sort of deal do you have with Ted Quilk?”

  “Nothing. It’s not important.”

  “It is to him. And from the look of it, to you, too.”

  She shook her head and frowned again. I flipped a mental coin, then left it where it was. The investigation was over. At most, I was a custodian. There was more to know, but it wasn’t my business to know it.

  “How’s Elliott and the store?” she asked a few more miles down the road. “Is he going crazy without me?”

  “Professionally or personally?”

  “He told you about his little crush?”

  “It sounded more like something out of a bodice ripper.”

  She laughed. “Poor Elliott. Did he tell you that just before he met me he’d convinced himself he was homosexual? I came along just as he was about to step out of the closet. Then he got the hots for me and now he’s all confused. I told him bisexuality was very in, but it didn’t seem to help.”

  We rolled on, buffeted by traffic and by speculation. I worried about staying awake. Mrs. Blair slept, on and off, making alternate sounds of contentment and distress. “Did you sleep with Tancy?” she asked quietly, as we rolled past Davis.

  “Not quite,” I answered. “She was overbooked.”

  Teresa Blair smiled tiredly. “Poor Tancy. She values everything but herself. How is James?”

  “James is fine.”

  “James is always fine, always in pursuit of a majestic goal. Did he admit you to his temple?”

  “The house?”

  She nodded. “What did you think?”

  “Lovely.”

  “And sterile?”

  “A bit. But nice.”

  “A nice place to visit, maybe. You wouldn’t want to live there. Believe me.”

  “Is that what running up to Tahoe was all about? You and James are splitting?” I didn’t quite manage to keep the hope out of my voice.

  She gave me an enigmatic smile and dropped her head back against the car seat and closed her eyes. “Have you ever gone to court?” she asked after I thought she was asleep.

  “I’ve been in court a lot,” I said. “I used to be a lawyer.”

  One eye opened. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’m a little frightened. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Just listen to the questions, then answer them. Don’t volunteer information and don’t withhold it. If you don’t understand something, say so. If you don’t remember, say so. If you need to explain, say so. Don’t argue, don’t get mad. If you need help, ask the judge.”

  “That’s all there is?”

  “That’s it. Well, maybe one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell the truth.”

  I took I-80 to the Benicia cutoff, then 680 south to the Rock Valley Road exit. I stayed in my car while Mrs. Blair went inside the Silver Season. She stayed for almost an hour. When she came back out, I asked how it went.

  “She thought I was Mary. She thought you were my father. She thinks her father is lost in the building somewhere, calling to her for help. The nurse told me that last night she thought someone was trying to choke her.”

  “Sad.”

  “She was a lovely woman once. My father practically gave up his whole life for her. Can we go to your place now? I’m very tired.”

  I put the car in gear and took her home. Or almost. I was about to turn off upper Grant onto the street where I live when I spotted the green car parked half a block down the hill from my front door. There were two dark shapes inside it. I spun the steering wheel to the left and kept going straight. “I’m taking you to a hotel,” I said.

  “What?”

  “A hotel. I know a little place on Post. We can stay there till Monday morning. No one but the bellhop will see us.”

  We checked in as man and wife but we didn’t act like it.

  She slept until noon on Saturday, then made me go out for an omelet. While she was wolfing it down, I slipped out to a pay phone and called James Blair. Her husband. A man who had been ridiculously accused of killing her.

  “I’ve found your wife,” I told him.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Safe.”

  “But where?”

  “I don’t think I’ll tell you that. Not just yet.”

  “You’re working for me, Tanner. Remember?”

  “Not entirely,” I said. “And I wasn’t hired to deliver her to you, I was hired to deliver her to court. I’ll do that on Monday. What
happens after that is up to you and your wife. But until then I think I’ll keep her on ice.”

  “I take it she doesn’t want to see me.”

  “It’s not what she wants, it’s what I want.”

  “I don’t like it. Not at all.”

  “I don’t like it much, either,” I said, then hung up.

  It took three more calls to track down Ray Tolson. He was at police headquarters. I went through the same routine with him that I had with James Blair. Tolson didn’t like it, either. “Join the club,” I told him.

  “Come on, Tanner. I need to prepare her testimony before the trial. I want to put her through a complete cross-examination, just like she’s going to face on Monday.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll bring her in early Monday morning. Alert the boys at the back entrance, because I’m going to sneak her in. You can talk to her then.”

  “What’s your problem, Tanner? You in love?”

  “My problem is this case. It doesn’t hang together worth a shit. I can’t even sort out the teams, let alone the names and numbers of the players. Your man Detective Grinder tells me not to trust anyone in the DA’s office; at least two muscle-brains warn me off the case, one with hotfoot; you lie to me about what’s really at issue in the Fluto case; and now, worst of all, you tell me that one of Tony Fluto’s chief competitors in the mob scene is a guy named Wadley. Well, guess who I saw having dinner at Wadley’s restaurant last night?”

  “Who?”

  “James Blair.”

  “Christ. What does that mean?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea. Which is why I’m keeping Mrs. Blair under wraps until Monday. If I were you, I’d give some thought to my ethical obligations in this case. If Teresa Blair’s a plant by Wadley to put Fluto away, then I don’t see how you can even put her on the stand.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what my fucking ethical obligations are, Tanner,” Tolson roared. “The only thing I can’t do is knowingly introduce perjured testimony at the trial. Well, as of now I don’t have one single goddamned hint that Mrs. Blair’s testimony against Fluto will be perjured. So you can go to hell.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will.”

  “There is one thing you ought to know,” Tolson said.

  “What?”

  “Someone tried to kill Tony Fluto’s son last night. Close but no cigar. Kid’s in Mercy Hospital with a bullet hole in his thigh.”

  “How does that relate to Mrs. Blair?” I asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “You’re taking on a big responsibility, Tanner. If someone takes Mrs. Blair out, I’m going to prosecute you.”

  “If someone takes her out, they’ll have to take me out first,” I said, and hung up.

  On Saturday night Mrs. Blair complained of cabin fever and persuaded me to take her out of the hotel. I allowed myself to be persuaded because by then I was more afraid of what I might try to do to her there in the hotel room than of what Tony Fluto might try to do to her outside it. We caught a movie out in the Avenues and had a burger afterward at Bill’s. Sunday brunch on Union Street; Sunday afternoon at the de Young; Sunday evening a Basque dinner at the Obrero Hotel. We spent the rest of the evening in the room, with brandy and Tootsie Rolls and KQED.

  “Where did you grow up?” she asked me some time around midnight. They were her first words in over an hour.

  “Iowa,” I said.

  “Nice place?”

  “It didn’t seem so then. It seems so now.”

  “Nothing gets worse with time except women,” she said, running her hands down her flanks.

  “And bananas.”

  “Were you rich?”

  “Not rich, not poor.”

  “I was poor. In the beginning we were rich, and then we were poor. I didn’t realize it till I started school. Then the other kids made sure I knew exactly where I stood. By the time I was twelve, I knew I’d do anything not be poor when I grew up, I’d do anything not to end up like Mary.”

  “Is that why you went to Vegas?”

  “That was part of it.”

  “What was the other part?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No. Not for a while longer.”

  “Why was your first husband killed?” I asked quietly.

  She didn’t answer for several minutes. “I don’t know for sure. Frankie was in someone’s way, and then he wasn’t.” She laughed, musically and madly, then fell silent again.

  “Someone tried to kill Tony Fluto’s son yesterday,” I said after a while.

  “Really?”

  “You know anything about it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “And I guess I don’t want to know.” Then I smiled.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “About what your sister told me about Tancy Verritt running around in a parade with nothing but a gorilla mask on.”

  She laughed, too. “That wasn’t Tancy, that was me.”

  When the doors to the courtroom opened on Monday, and the Policeman’s Ball began, the arm Teresa Blair was on was mine.

  15

  The courtroom was a vintage chamber complete with twelve-foot ceilings, hand-carved moldings, a high-backed judge’s chair, and a swinging, squeaking gate through the bar of the court. Unlike the newer civic centers, the appointments weren’t pressed wood and plastic but real oak and real walnut, scratched in spots, nicked in others, maintained reluctantly but regularly by persons who spent their nights in the county jail. The public pews were yellowed by time and stain and buffed to a shine by the seats of sliding spectators. The counsel tables were worn round at the edges by the acid palms of lawyers waiting to win or lose. I remembered a friend who used to tell what happened when his clients were found guilty: “The guy usually turns to me and asks, ‘What do we do now?’ And I just tell him, ‘Well, you go to jail, and I go to lunch.’”

  Teresa Blair and I took seats near the back of the courtroom and watched people drift in and out. Tolson had told us to meet him there, but he hadn’t arrived yet, nor had any other court personnel except a corpulent bailiff who lay back in his tilting chair in an unimprovable imitation of sleep.

  I took Mrs. Blair’s hand and gave it a squeeze. It squeezed back. The telephone on the table beside the bailiff buzzed once. Mrs. Blair’s fingers jumped in mine like live bait. The deputy listened to the receiver, then stood up. “Is there a Mrs. Blair in here?” he called out asthmatically. I raised my hand and pointed to her. “The DA wants to see you, lady. Room three-oh-four. Next flight up. And make it snappy.”

  I started to go with her but she pushed me back. “I’m on my own now,” she said flatly. “Thanks. For everything. Maybe I’ll see you afterward. If you want to. If they let me.”

  I nodded encouragement and patted her shoulder as she slipped past me.

  The second hand made a tour of the clock on the wall. More of the regulars drifted in, men and women retired and pensioned off, looking for a place to park their bodies and their time. One man wore a pair of Oshkosh bibs as soft and faded as a battle flag; he was ready to work but there was no one to work for. One woman wore a black dress and a matching pillbox hat with a ragged veil dangling from it, in mourning for something, perhaps her youth. Others filed in silently, heads bowed, shoulders hunched, braced for breeze or insult. We all, the regulars and I, sat equidistant from each other, as though to prevent our several afflictions from spreading. Each time the door opened a dozen heads and two dozen eyes turned toward it.

  A minute later Conway Grinder came in, looked at me and nodded as he walked past, took a seat on the front row and stuck a match in his mouth. Then the little man with the chipped tooth who’d confronted me outside the Moran Building entered the courtroom and took a seat against the far wall. He twitched nervously and looked at nothing but the flag; I don’t think he saw me. I wondered what was in the
briefcase he was carrying. By ten past nine the room was full and rumbling. Suddenly the rumbling stopped.

  It was Tony Fluto, no question about it, hulking but dapper, hair and flesh of pewter, eyes sweeping the room like scythes. He moved down the center aisle, wordless and resolute, more annoyed than frightened at being where he was. Two young counselors fluttered around him, eyes white, mouths desperate, foreheads bright with sweat. When you work for guys like Fluto, it’s peaches and cream unless you lose or develop a conscience. Then it’s dreams of chemicals in the eyes and bombs in the car and quotes on a coach ticket to Brazil, one-way. A third man, Fluto’s chief counsel at a guess, trailed behind the others, lithe and luxuriously groomed, even more indomitable than his client.

  Fluto had been in court before. He led his entourage to the table nearest the jury box, took a seat in the center chair, and prepared himself to wait. The glance he threw at the bailiff almost knocked him over. Briefly, Fluto swiveled so he could see the rest of us, but the rest of us didn’t interest him. His lawyers arranged themselves around him like thorns around a rose, fishing briefs and motions from their satchels and Maalox and mints from their vests.

  My eyes were still on Fluto when I saw him nod, grimly and silently, to someone coming in behind me. I turned and looked into the sky-blue eyes of James Blair. He frowned when he saw me, started to say something and stopped, then took a seat several rows in front of me. When I looked back at Fluto, he was facing forward once again, his back as broad and erect as a gravestone. A dozen feet away from him Conway Grinder’s jaw was bulging. I was glad I couldn’t see his eyes. Fluto’s chief counsel walked over to the man with the chipped tooth and whispered something that caused the man to swear.

  The bailiff’s eyes popped open once again as Tolson and his assistant swept into the room, looking harried but confident. Tolson flashed me the thumbs up sign as he walked past, then sat at the second counsel table on which his assistant arranged papers like the china for a twelve-course meal. Tolson didn’t look at Fluto, and vice versa, but each man’s mind must have been on the other. This was war and they were the generals. I sat back and got ready to enjoy a good fight.