Bill Pronzini - Deadfall

Ozimas smiled and shook his head.

“This certain other collector you mentioned,” I said. “Someone here in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

He hesitated, but only briefly. “Margaret Prine.”

“Oh? So you know her, then.”

“I have sold her a few items in the past. Items Kenneth already had or was not interested in owning.”

“She’s an avid collector, I’ve been told.”

“Quite avid. I am sure she would have been eager to have the Hainelin box if I had approached her with it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“So she didn’t know before the party that you had sold it to Kenneth?”

“Not unless Kenneth himself told her.”

“How long before the party did he know you had it?”

“Perhaps a week.”

“And you gave it to him that night, around five o’clock?”

“Yes.” Amusement decorated his face again. “Do you think Margaret Prine might have murdered poor Kenneth? Because she wanted the box for her own collection?”

“Stranger things have happened, Mr. Ozimas.”

“Yes, but Margaret Prine? No, no, the idea is too amusing.”

“Hilarious,” I said. “Would you like to suggest a better candidate?”

“I believe I will leave such speculation to you.”

“How about Kenneth’s widow? What’s your opinion of her?”

“A very attractive woman. Very clever. She propositioned me once, you know.”

“Did she?”

“Do you find that difficult to believe?”

“No. Should I?”

“ I don’t think so. Not that I’m irresistible, of course; it was merely that she considered seducing a man of my tastes a stimulating challenge.”

“Uh-huh. Where did this happen?”

“Here in my home. Kenneth asked her to drop off some papers while she was in the city shopping.”

“Did you take her up on the offer?”

“I was severely tempted, I admit,” Ozimas said. “But I have certain scruples; I do not make love to the husbands or wives of business associates.”

“You’re a gentleman, you are.”

Another of his laughs. He was a guy who liked to laugh; he had a terrific sense of humor for a crook and a satyr.

I asked him, “Would you say Mrs. Purcell is capable of murder?”

“Aren’t we all, given the proper circumstances?”

“Would Kenneth’s money be her proper circumstances?”

“I hardly think so. He gave her as much as she wanted while he was alive, allowed her to go and do as she pleased.”

“Does that include affairs with other men?”

“Oh yes. Kenneth had affairs, too. Theirs was an open marriage.”

I asked bluntly, “Did he have an affair with you?”

The laugh again. “No, no. He was a confirmed heterosexual. He considered homosexuality an aberration and a sickness.”

“But you and he still got along?”

“Yes. Ours was a business relationship. One does not have to like one’s business associates to have a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

“You mentioned that he had affairs. Any woman in particular?”

“I don’t know. He seldom discussed his female friends.”

“How about Mrs. Purcell? Any man in particular?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Eldon Summerhayes, maybe? You know who he is?”

“Of course. Was he one of Alicia’s conquests, you mean?”

“Yes. Was he?”

“I really couldn’t say. You might ask her.”

“Would she tell me?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“How well do you know Summerhayes?”

“Mostly by reputation. He despises me, I’ve been told.”

“Is that so? Why?”

“Because I am wealthy, and a bisexual, and a Filipino.”

“Have you ever had any business dealings with him?”

“None. I despise him as much as he despises me.”

“Would you say he’s honest or dishonest?”

“A little of both. Aren’t we all?”

“Not necessarily. How did he and Kenneth get along, do you know?”

“If you are asking if I consider Summerhayes capable of murder,” Ozimas said, “the answer is yes. My candid opinion is that the man is capable of anything.”

Birds of a feather, I thought.

I asked him a few more questions, mainly about Melanie Purcell. None of his answers told me anything new, or gave me any fresh insights. As for the boyfriend, Richie Dessault, Ozimas claimed to know nothing about him, to have never met him. He seemed willing to sit there talking to me all morning, if that was what I wanted. It was the last thing I wanted; he and his apartment and his pretty, jealous, pouting houseboy and his spaced-out platinum blonde made me want to go home and take another shower. I hadn’t even touched the coffee the kid had poured for me. I did not want to drink Ozimas’s coffee and I did not want to put my mouth on one of his cups.

I stood up finally, and thanked him for his time, and he said, “Not at all. It was my pleasure. If Kenneth was also murdered I certainly want to see the person responsible brought to justice.”

“You believe in justice, do you?”

“Naturally.”

“Sure you do,” I said, and I left him laughing and showed myself out.

Eberhardt was still at the office when I got there. But he had nothing to tell me-there hadn’t been any calls or visitors-and he left after five minutes for San Rafael, to finish up the insurance investigation for Barney Rivera.

I called the Hall of Justice. Ben Klein was in but not very helpful. He didn’t know anything about Alejandro Ozimas; Ozimas’s name had not come up during his investigation into the Leonard Purcell homicide. He said he would run the name through the city, state, and FBI computers, and let me know if he turned up anything. He hadn’t talked to Margaret Prine-no need to, he said, considering her stature in the community-and he had no idea why she should have refused to see me. Unless, he said, she just didn’t want to be bothered by a private detective.

My second call was to Joe DeFalco, a Chronicle reporter and another poker buddy. He was away from his desk, but I left a message and he called back within five minutes. He didn’t know much offhand about Margaret Prine-just that she was a wealthy society matron whose late husband had been ambassador to China before the Communist takeover, and later on, in the fifties and sixties, a presidential advisor on Chinese affairs. But he said he would run a computer printout of her file for me and have it ready by mid-afternoon, if I wanted to stop by and pick it up. I said I would, and when I hung up I found myself thinking about how newspapers keep a file on everybody who has ever made news of any kind, so it’ll be handy for the obit writers when the person trundles off to his reward. Gives you a morbid little shiver when you think about things like that-or it does me, anyhow. I wondered what my file consisted of. Well, maybe I would ask DeFalco to run a printout one of these days. And maybe I wouldn’t; I was not sure I wanted to see it.

There wasn’t much else to do at the office. I locked up and got the car out of the garage and went to interview Kenneth Purcell’s horny widow.

Moss Beach is a little town on the coast halfway between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay, some twenty-five miles south of San Francisco. There isn’t much to it: a few dozen homes on both sides of Highway 1, some stores, a couple of restaurants, a somewhat dilapidated motel, and a year-round population of about four hundred. Some of the oceanfront and near-oceanfront homes are pretty nice, surrounded by wooded acreage and with easy access to the highway. The weather isn’t the best down along there-the fog likes to come in often and hang around for a while-or else Moss Beach would be prime Bay Area real estate. Even as it is, you needed to make a very comfortable living wage to afford property on the ocean side of the highway.