“With you for a friend,” Nancy said, “they shouldn’t worry.” She shook her head. “No more.”
Now, two days later, Nancy was seated in her car, observing the house which Davey Birdsong had visited so secretively. She had been there nearly two hours. It was approaching noon.
Yesterday, the day after Vickery’s final report, she spent completing an Examiner feature assignment, though she had not yet turned in her copy to the city desk. She would do so tomorrow. Meantime her time was her own.
The house she was watching was number 117 Crocker Street. It was one of a dozen identical row houses built in the 1920s and, a decade ago, refurbished by a speculative builder who believed the district was destined for revival and upgrading. The builder was wrong. Crocker Street remained what it had been—an unimpressive, drab thoroughfare where people lived because they could not afford something better. And the refurbished houses were slipping back into their former state, attested to by chipped masonry, cracked windows and peeling paint.
To Nancy’s eyes, number 117 seemed no different from the rest.
Cagily, she had parked her Mercedes a block and a half away, where she had a clear view of the house but believed she would not be observed herself. The presence of several other parked cars helped. She had brought binoculars but had not used them for fear of arousing the curiosity of some passer-by.
So far there had been little activity on the street, none whatever at number 117.
Nancy had no idea what to expect, if anything, nor had she any plan. As the morning passed she wished she might see something of the occupants of the house, but the wish went unfulfilled. She wondered if she had stayed long enough. Perhaps she should leave now and return another day.
A vehicle passed her parked car, as had several others during the preceding two hours. She noticed casually that it was a beat-up Volkswagen van, painted brown and with a broken side window. The window was roughly patched with cardboard and masking tape.
Abruptly Nancy became alert. The VW had swung across the street and was stopping in front of 117.
A man got out. Nancy risked using her binoculars. She saw that he was lean, with close-cropped hair and a bushy moustache: she judged him to be in his late twenties. In contrast to the van, he was neatly dressed in a dark blue suit and wore a tie. He went to the rear of the vehicle and open its door. The binoculars were powerful—she used them in her apartment to watch shipping in the harbor—and she caught a glimpse of the man’s hands. They appeared to be badly stained in some way.
Now he was reaching inside the van and he lifted out a substantial red-colored cylinder. It seemed to be heavy. Setting the object down on the sidewalk, he reached inside again and produced another, then carried the two toward the house. As he did, Nancy realized they were fire extinguishers.
The man made two more journeys between the VW and the house, each time carrying in two more red fire extinguishers. Six altogether. After the final pair he stayed in the house for about five minutes, then re-emerged and drove away.
Nancy wavered about following, then decided not to. Afterward she sat wondering: Why would so small a house need so much fire protection? Suddenly she exclaimed, “Shit!” She had not thought to note the VW’s license number, which she could have done easily. Now it was too late. She chided herself for being a lousy detective and thought maybe she should have followed the van after all.
Time to go, anyway? She supposed so. Her hand went to the ignition switch, then stopped. Something else was happening at 117. Once more she reached for the binoculars.
A woman had come out of the house; she was young, slight in build, and carelessly dressed in faded jeans and a pea coat. She glanced around her momentarily, then began walking briskly—in the opposite direction from the parked Mercedes.
This time Nancy did not hesitate. She started the car and eased out from her parking space. Keeping the woman in sight, she followed slowly, warily, pulling into the curb occasionally so as not to overtake her quarry.
The woman did not look back. When she turned a corner, Nancy waited as long as she dared before doing the same. She was in time to see the woman enter a small supermarket. It had a parking lot and Nancy drove onto it. She locked the car and followed inside.
The supermarket was averagely busy, with perhaps twenty people shopping. Nancy caught sight of the woman she had followed—at the far end of an aisle, putting cans into a shopping cart. Nancy got a cart herself, dropped in a few items at random from nearby shelves, then moved casually toward the other woman.
She appeared even younger now than she had at a distance—little more than a girl. She was pale, her fair hair untidy, and she wore no makeup. On her right hand she had what looked like an improvised glove. Clearly it covered some kind of deformity or injury for she was using only her left hand. Reaching out, she selected a jar of Mazola Oil and read the label.
Nancy Molineaux maneuvered her cart past, then abruptly turned, as if she had forgotten something. Her eyes met the other woman’s. Nancy smiled and said brightly, “Hi! Don’t we know each other?” She added, “I think we have a mutual acquaintance, Davey Birdsong.”
The response was immediate and startling. The young woman’s face went ashen white, she visibly trembled, and the Mazola Oil fell from her hand, shattering on the floor.
There was a silence lasting several seconds in which nothing happened except that a pool of oil spread rapidly across the shopping aisle. Then the store manager hurried forward, clucking like a worried hen. “My goodness! What a mess! Whatever happened here?”
“It was my fault,” Nancy said quickly. “I’m sorry and I’ll pay for what was broken.”
The manager objected, “It won’t pay for the cleaning up, will it?”
“No,” Nancy told him, “but think of the exercise you’ll get.” She took the arm of the other woman, who was still standing transfixed, as if in shock.
“Let’s get out of here,” Nancy said. Unresisting, abandoning her shopping cart, the girl in the pea coat and jeans went with her.
On the parking lot, Nancy steered the girl toward the Mercedes. But as the passenger door was unlocked and opened she seemed to come alert.
“I can’t! Oh, I can’t! I have to get back to the house.” Her voice was nervously high-pitched, the trembling, which had stopped as they emerged from the supermarket, began again. She looked at Nancy wildly. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend. Look, there’s a bar around the block; I saw it on the way. Why don’t we go there, have a drink? You look as if you need one.”
“I tell you I can’t!”
“Yes you can, and you will,” Nancy said. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to phone your friend Davey Birdsong this afternoon and tell him …”
She had no idea how she would have finished the sentence but its effect was electric. The girl got into the car without further protest. Nancy shut the door alongside her, then went around to the driver’s side.
It took only a few minutes to drive to the bar and there was parking space outside. They left the car and went in. The interior was dark and smelled of mildew.
“Christ!” Nancy said. “We need a seeing-eye dog.” She groped her way to a corner table, away from the few other people already drinking. The girl followed.
As they sat down, Nancy said, “I have to call you something. What?”
“Yvette.”
A waiter appeared and Yvette ordered a beer, Nancy a daiquiri. They were silent until the drinks came.
This time the girl spoke first. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”
There seemed no reason to conceal the truth. “My name is Nancy Molineaux. I’m a newspaper reporter.”
Twice before, Yvette had exhibited shock, but this time the effect was even greater. Her mouth fell open, the drink slipped in her hand and, if Nancy had not grabbed it, would have gone the way of the Mazola.
“Take it easy,” Nancy urged. “Reporters only eat people when they’re hungry.
I’m not.”
The girl whispered, having trouble with the words, “What do you want from me?”
“Some information.”
Yvette moistened her lips. “Like what?”
“Like, who else lives in that house you came out of? What goes on there? Why does Davey Birdsong visit? That’s for starters.”
“It’s none of your business.”
Nancy’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom and she could see, despite the flash of spirit, that the other woman was still frightened. She tried a random shot. “Okay, I guess I should have gone to the police in the first place and …”
“No!” Yvette half rose, then fell back. Suddenly she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Nancy reached across the table. “I know you’re in some kind of trouble. If you’ll let me, I’ll help.”
Through the sobbing: “Nobody can help.” A moment later, with an obvious effort of will, Yvette stood up. “I’m going now.” Even in her acute distress, she possessed a certain dignity.
“Listen,” Nancy said. “I’ll make a deal. If you’ll agree to meet me again, I won’t say or do anything in the meantime.”
The girl hesitated. “When?”
“Three days from now. Right here.”
“Not three days.” Again the mix of doubt and fear. “Maybe a week.”
It would have to do. “All right. A week from today, next Wednesday—same time, same place.”
With a nod of agreement, Yvette left.
Driving away, Nancy was unsure whether she had handled the situation well or badly. And what the hell was it all about? Where did Davey Birdsong and Yvette fit in? Nancy’s reference to the police during her conversation with Yvette had been an offhand, impulsive remark. Yet the girl’s near-hysterical reaction suggested that something illegal was going on. If so, what kind of illegality? It was all frustrating, with too many questions, too few answers—like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without the slightest notion of what the end result might be.
14
For Nancy Molineaux, another piece of the jigsaw fell into place next day. It concerned the vague, overheard rumor—which Nancy hadn’t believed—that Birdsong’s p & lfp was seeking financial help from the Sequoia Club.
Despite her skepticism, she had put out feelers. One produced results.
A mailroom employee of the Sequoia Club, an elderly black woman named Grace, had once asked Nancy Molineaux’s help in obtaining city-subsidized housing. At the time, all it had taken was a single telephone call and use of the California Examiner’s influence to get her near the top of an official waiting list. But Grace had been grateful and insisted that if she could ever return the favor, she would.
Several weeks ago Nancy called her at home and mentioned the p & Ifp-Sequoia Club rumor. Would she try to discover, Nancy asked, whether there was any substance to it and, if so, whether anything had come of p & Ifp’s request?
A few days later she received a report: As far as Grace could learn, the rumor was untrue. She added, though, “Something like that could be secret, with not more than two or three at the top, like Prissy Pritchy [which was what the Sequoia Club staff called Roderick Pritchett] knowing about it.”
Today, Grace had used her lunch hour to go to the Examiner Building and make her way to the newsroom. Nancy happened to be in. They went into a soundproof glass cubicle where they could talk. Grace, who was heavily built, overflowed a tight, brightly colored print dress and wore a floppy hat. She was carrying a string bag and reached into it.
“Found out something, Miss Molineaux. Don’t know if it has to do with what you wanted, but here it is.”
“It” was a copy of a Sequoia Club memo.
Grace explained: Three outward-bound envelopes, all marked Private and Confidential, had come through the mailroom. That was not unusual. What was unusual was that one of the envelopes had arrived unsealed, probably through a secretary’s carelessness. Grace slipped it aside and later, when she was unobserved, read the contents. Nancy smiled, wondering how much other mail got perused the same way.
Grace had used one of the Sequoia Club’s Xerox machines to make the copy. Nancy read the confidential memo carefully.
From: Manager-Secretary
To: Members of Special Executive Committee
For your information, the second donation to B’s organization from the contingency fund, and agreed to at our August 22 meeting, has now been paid.
It was initialed “R.P.”
Nancy asked, “Who was the envelope addressed to?”
“Mr. Saunders. He’s a board member and …”
“Yes, I know.” Irwin Saunders, the well-known lawyer-about-town, was a Sequoia Club wheel. “How about the other two envelopes?”
“One was to Mrs. Carmichael, our chairman. The other was addressed to Mrs. Quinn.”
That would be Priscilla Quinn. Nancy knew her slightly. A snob and socialite.
Grace asked anxiously, “Is it what you wanted?”
“I’m not sure.” Nancy read the memo again. Of course, “B” could mean Birdsong, but it might also mean other things. For example, the mayor, whose last name began with “B,” headed an organization called “Save Old Buildings,” which the Sequoia Club supported actively. But in that case would a memo be “private and confidential”? Perhaps. The Sequoia Club had always been closemouthed about its money.
“Whatever you do,” Grace said, “you won’t let on where that came from?”
“I don’t even know you,” Nancy assured her. “And you’ve never been here.”
The older woman smiled and nodded. “I need that job. Even though it don’t pay much.” She stood up. “Well, I’ll be getting back.”
“Thanks,” Nancy said. “I appreciate what you did. Let me know when you need anything.”
Favors for favors, she had discovered early, were part of journalism’s commerce.
Returning to her desk, still wondering if the memo referred to Birdsong and p & lfp, or not, she met the city editor.
“Who was the old lady, Nancy?”
“A friend.”
“You hatching a story?”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me about it.”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
The city editor regarded her quizzically. He was a graying veteran of newspaperdom, good at his job but, like many of his kind, he had reached the outer limits of promotion. “You’re supposed to be part of a team, Nancy, and I’m the coach. I know you prefer being a loner, and you’ve gotten away with it because you get results. But you can push that game too far.”
She shrugged. “So fire me.”
He wouldn’t, of course, and they both knew it. Leaving him frustrated, as she did so many men, she returned to her desk and began telephoning.
She tried Irwin Saunders first.
A secretary declared he was not available, but when Nancy mentioned the Examiner, he came cheerfully on the line.
“What can I do for you, Miss Molineaux?”
“I’d like to discuss the Sequoia Club’s donation to Mr. Birdsong’s power & light for people.”
There was a second’s silence. “What donation?”
“It’s our understanding …”
Saunders laughed aloud. “Bullshit! Nancy … may I call you that?”
“Sure.”
“Nancy, that kind of I-already-know-but would-like-some-confirmation statement is the oldest reporter’s ploy in the book. You’re talking to a wily old fish who doesn’t take those baits.”
She laughed with him. “I’d always heard you were sharp, Mr. Saunders.”
“Damn right, kiddo.”
She persisted, “But how about a linkup between the Sequoia Club and p & lfp?”
“That’s a subject, Nancy, about which I’m unlikely to know anything.”
Score one for me, she thought. He had not said I don’t know. Only I’m unlikely to know. Later, if he had to, he could claim he hadn’t lied.
He probably had a recorder going at this moment.
“My information,” she said, “is that a Sequoia Club committee decided …”
“Tell me about that alleged committee, Nancy. Who was on it? Name names.”
She thought quickly. If she mentioned the other names she knew—Carmichael, Quinn—he would be on the phone immediately to caution them. Nancy wanted to get there first. She lied, “I don’t have any names.”
“In other words, you don’t have a damn thing.” His voice was suddenly less friendly. “I’m a busy lawyer, Miss Molineaux, with a heavy case load. Clients pay me for my time and you’re wasting it.”
“Then I won’t waste any more.”
Without replying, he hung up.
Even while talking, Nancy had been leafing through a phone directory in search of “Quinn.” Now she found it: Quinn, Dempster W. R. Trust Priscilla Quinn’s old man to have one more name than most other people. Nancy dialed and after the second ring was informed by a male voice, “This is the Dempster Quinn residence.” It sounded like the sound track of Upstairs, Downstairs.
“Mrs. Quinn, please.”
“I’m sorry. Madam is at lunch and may not be disturbed.”
“Disturb her,” Nancy said, “by telling her the California Examiner intends to mention her name, and does she want to help us get the facts straight?”
“One moment, please.”
Not only moments passed, but several minutes. Eventually a cool female voice inquired, “Yes?”
Nancy identified herself.
“What is it you want?”
“Mrs. Quinn, when the Sequoia Club executive committee, of which you are a member, met last August and decided to team up with Davey Birdsong’s power & light for people, what was …?”
Priscilla Quinn said sharply, “That committee meeting, and the entire arrangement, are supposed to be confidential.”
Bingo! Unlike lawyer Saunders, Quinn was not a wily fish. Nancy now had the confirmation she had sought, a confirmation she would never have obtained by asking direct questions.
“Well,” Nancy said, “word seems to be around. Maybe Birdsong talked.”