Bill Pronzini: Savages

I told him Kerry was doing well, and he nodded and smiled and said he and his wife were praying for her. A man I’d known less than three months, a part-time employee, and he was including the wife of one of his bosses, a woman he’d never met, in his prayers. I needed people like Alex Chavez in my life, now more than ever. People who took the edge off my general cynicism and helped to renew some of my faith in humanity.

“What’re you working on, Alex?”

“Anderson case. Joseph Anderson, nonpayment of child support?”

“Right. Any leads on his whereabouts?”

“A couple. I’ll find him sooner or later. If there’s one breed I can’t stand, it’s deadbeat fathers.”

“Same here.”

“My old man was one,” he said.

“Oh? Sorry to hear it.”

“Not a problem anymore. I found him, years ago, over in Tucson. Made him pay up most of what he owed my mother. He didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t have any choice when I got through talking to him.”

“Good for you.”

“So guys like this Anderson are a piece of cake,” Chavez said, and went out smiling.

In my office, I found three messages waiting for me. Out of the agency loop for nearly a full week, and all I had were three messages. And two of those were from professional acquaintances concerned about Kerry. The lack of business communications was a reminder-as if I needed another one-that I was no longer an essential part of the agency I’d founded and built up and nurtured for nearly thirty years. Hadn’t been for some time. It was Tamara’s now; she ran it with far more efficiency than I ever had, was making it grow and prosper. Runyon and now Chavez carried out most of the fieldwork I’d once handled almost entirely on my own. There wasn’t much for me to do even at the best of times. Retirement is a concept I don’t much like-I don’t play golf, the only hobby I have, collecting old pulp magazines, doesn’t take up much time, and I chafe under enforced inactivity-so I kept on working whenever I could, as much as I could. But except on infrequent occasions, it wasn’t the same anymore. Everything changes, sure, and this was exactly why I disliked and resisted change.

The third message was clipped to a case-file folder. Tamara’s scrawl read: Call Celeste Ogden. Followed by a phone number and the comment Deja vu all over again.

The name Celeste Ogden meant nothing to me until I opened the folder. Then I remembered her, and not with any pleasure. One of my cases, some four years old. Routine stuff, or should have been. I was scanning through the report, refamiliarizing myself with the details, when Tamara finished her call and came in through the connecting door.

I was struck again, as sometimes happened when I hadn’t seen her for a week or more, by what a handsome, poised young woman she was-a far cry from the grunge-dressed, wiseass militant she’d been when she first came to work for me. A lot had happened in her life in those five years, personal and professional both, the combination of which had matured her, added character and patience and determination. She was still very much her own woman, but she had goals and direction now, where before she’d been something of a loose cannon. What she wanted now was for this agency to be successful enough to rival McCone Investigations and the other big outfits in the city, and by God she intended to have her way. I envied her. For her drive and her youth and her health and all the possibilities that lay in her future.

She said, leaning against the doorjamb, “Good news on Kerry’s checkup or you wouldn’t be here.” Making it a statement rather than a question. She’d been a hundred percent supportive during the crisis; you couldn’t have asked more of a friend and business partner.

“So far so good,” I said.

“How you doing? Getting enough sleep?”

“Now I am. You don’t need as much when you get to be my age.”

“Right,” she said. “Old Father Time.”

“Sixty-two must seem ancient to you.”

“Nope. Pop just turned sixty and he can still outrun me in the hundred-yard dash.” She came closer, the better to give me a critical once-over. “Worry lines, not age lines,” she said. “They get any deeper, you’re gonna look like a map of the Mojave Desert.”

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“Not gonna change anything by worrying. But it’ll change you in the long run.”

“Tamara Corbin, philosopher. How’s Tamara Corbin, young woman about town?”

“You asking about my love life?”

“Peripherally.” She’d broken up with Horace, her longtime boyfriend, three months ago-or rather, he’d quit her, long-distance from Philadelphia, for another woman-and it had been rough on her for a while. “Just wondering how you’re doing.”

“I’m cool. My love life’s ice-cold.”

“Still haven’t met anyone new?”

“Not looking. Just me and Mr. V, for now.”

“Who’s Mr. V?”

“My vibrator. We’re going steady. Practically engaged.”

I should know better by now than to ask an outspoken young person like Tamara personal questions; they produce more candid information than an old fart can comfortably process. I said, “Moving right along,” and tapped the Celeste Ogden message slip attached to the file folder. “What’s this all about?”

“Same as before-her sister and brother-in-law. That’s all she’d say. She wants you, nobody else.”

“When did she call?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Told her you might not be available until next week.”

“Didn’t put her off?”

“Not her. She got pushy, I pushed back, and she hung up on me. But then she called again a few minutes later, all stiff and formal, and tried to make nice. She even said please have you call her as soon as possible. I said I’d give you the message and hung up on her.”

“The Tamara method of winning friends and influencing people.”

“Most of ’em like it when I go that route. Detective’s supposed to be tough, right? No-nonsense. Makes clients feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.”

“Ex-client, in her case,” I said. “I’m not interested in putting up with her obsession again.”

“For a big fee, we can put up with anybody’s obsession. That’s our new agency motto-I just made it up.”

“Then let Jake deal with her.”

“She wants you. Besides, his plate’s full. Hollowell skip-trace, a subpoena to deliver up near Red Bluff, and witness interviews and legwork for the defense team on a homicide case starting next week.”

“What homicide case is that?”

“Parking garage shooting in North Beach six weeks ago. The defendant has enough bucks to afford Avery Young as his attorney. And Young handed the investigative job to us two days ago.” Tamara’s eyes shone. “We do a good job on this one, and we will, it won’t be the last for his firm.”

“Nice.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Score!”

“What’s Alex got other than the Anderson job?”

“Enough preliminary work on the Young case for two operatives. So Celeste Ogden is up to you.”

“Lucky me.”

Tamara’s phone rang and she retreated into her office to answer it. I opened the file folder again, thinking: So now I’m the mop-up guy. Weirdos and recalcitrants, my speciality. Yeah, lucky me.

All right. Background investigation requested by Mrs. Celeste Ogden on one Brandon Mathias, who at the time, nearly four years ago, was engaged to marry her widowed older sister, Nancy Ring. Mrs. Ogden neither liked nor trusted Mathias; she considered him cold, ruthless, self-involved, pathologically ambitious, and several other unflattering things and was convinced he was marrying her sister for her money and the business Nancy Ring had inherited from her first husband. The business, RingTech, was a small but very profitable manufacturer of computer software for businesses, located in Palo Alto.