Джо Горес - Cases

“How about a rematch?” The big guy was deceptively soft-looking; under his flowered sport shirt were thick arms and a wide chest.

“You’re on!” exclaimed Dunc. Penny hadn’t been there to see him win, but she was smiling confidently, serenely now. He really wanted to beat this guy in front of her.

His opponent tried for a full house again, this time got it. He turned to Dunc. “Beat that one, kid.”

Dunc put four consecutive bullets into the ace card.

“And Christmas, too,” he said to Goodie.

Penny hugged him, laughing in delight. “My hero.”

The big man drew him aside, stuck out his hand. “Eddie Drinker Cope. Everybody calls me Drinker.”

“Pierce Duncan. Everybody calls me Dunc.”

“Where in hell’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Going out plinking gophers and blackbirds with a .22 back in Minnesota. Bluejays, sparrows, squirrels, chipmunks, feral cats — just about anything that moved and wasn’t a songbird.”

“None of the above for me,” said Drinker Cope. “I learned mine in the Marines.” He paused, frowning. “Duncan. Pierce Duncan. Yeah!” He snapped his fingers. “The alien-smuggling case — goofy religious cult, hod carriers’ union, some racketed-up immigration guys. You did some great detective work there.”

“Are you a cop?” asked Dunc.

“Used to be. Believe me, you got the knack, you could develop into a top-notch investigator.” He gave Dunc a card.

“Ever up my way...” said Drinker Cope.

On Tuesday morning Dunc packed and carried everything out to the Grey Ghost. Uncle Ben shook his hand and Aunt Pearl cried again. Even Grandma Trabert gave him a careful hug.

“You have a good life, Dunc. I’ll pray for you.”

“I’ll pray for you, too, Grandma.”

Before he got in the car and drove off, he promised them that he’d keep in touch, knowing that he wouldn’t. He was already starting to feel like a balloon slipping its tether.

At the nicest motel he could find close to Aunt Goodie’s house he got a room, picked Penny up at seven and promised to have her home by midnight. Her train left at ten the next morning.

For the first hour they just lay in one another’s arms and talked. Then Penny started sobbing quietly.

“Oh, Dunc, what are we going to do? I’ll have to spend Christmas with my mom and my sister’s family in Dubuque.”

“I know.” He was lying on his back with her head in the crook of his neck. “How about semester break? When is it?”

“End of February. But we only get a week.”

“Use both weekends, you can stretch it to nine or ten days.” He kissed the dimple at the side of her mouth. “Smile.” He did it again, she giggled and dodged and caught him in a long kiss on the mouth that ended in frantic loving, then laughing, then Dunc holding her and stroking her head while she cried again.

Aunt Goodie and Uncle Carl, with their usual understanding, asked Dunc if he could drive Penny to Union Station. They clung to each other, hardly noticing the stucco-colored Art Deco station walls, not getting a chance to finish their coffee and tea and Danish before Penny’s train was called.

“I feel like I’m in Casablanca, ” she said sadly.

Once inside, she opened her compartment window and leaned out. By stretching up, Dunc could just reach her hand.

“Write to me,” she said.

She was crying again, but he couldn’t hold her and stroke her head this time. Far down the track the conductor called “Board!” and the train gave a sudden lurch, was slowly moving.

“You too.” He was walking along beside her, holding her hand. “You forgot to give me your sorority house number.”

The train was moving faster. Dunc was now trotting to keep up, holding on to her fingers as long as he could.

She called despairingly, “Where can I mail it to you?”

Their hands parted. Almost running now, he was still falling behind. He yelled, “General Delivery, San Francisco!”

The train had rumbled away from him, its metal wheels going ca-chunk ca-chunk on the joins where two sections of rail came together. He stood, watching until it was out of sight; Penny’s sweet small arm never stopped waving out of her window.

Dunc drove north on Highway 99. That way he had started through familiar territory, going across the San Fernando Valley past Eagle Rock, out past the mission and half-completed seminary buildings. Then up and over the San Gabriel Mountains on the Grapevine and down into California’s great central valley. This was a three-hundred-mile oval bowl with the Sierra on one side, the Coastal Range on the other.

When he got to Chowchilla, the sun was near the tops of the Coast Range, silhouette after receding silhouette of hills the most intense purple he had ever seen. From here California 152 meandered west some one hundred miles to Highway 101, which would take him up through the Peninsula into San Francisco itself.

At Gilroy he turned north on 101. It was dark and he was tired and hungry, so he ate steak and eggs and cherry pie and drank three glasses of milk at the diner attached to the all-night station where he gassed up. He felt lonely and depressed; where was Penny right now?

The way north became endless: endless lights o£ oncoming cars, endless light-festooned trucks to pass when the opportunity offered, then, after San Jose, endless stoplights where important Peninsula arteries joined 101.

So he almost missed it: stopped by a red light for University Avenue, he was already moving before he saw a city limits sign: PALO ALTO. Palo Alto, where Jack Falkoner lived, the man with his duffel bag and precious notebooks in the boot of a little red MG.

He jerked the wheel over for a right turn, wandered around until he found a narrow raised earthen road that went out across a vast mud flat stretching too far for his high beams to reach. No houses, no traffic. Perfect place to find a wide place in the track and go to sleep.

At morning light he stretched, yawning, and stepped out to take a whiz and look around. He was so startled that he yelled “Hey!” out loud. He was surrounded by water a bare two feet below the road. Last night it had been five mud feet below the track.

He started to laugh. He’d obviously parked on a tidal mud flat and the tide had come in. What did a Minnesota kid know about tides? Good thing nobody had seen his momentary panic. Something to write Penny about. Penny...

Jack Falkoner was in the phone book. Dunc parked the Grey Ghost in front of a brown-shingled bungalow on the corner of Melville and Bryant off a wide through street called Middlefield Road. A sparkling neighborhood with overarching trees.

A curving walk led up between two carefully trimmed pine trees to the front door. The woman who answered the bell came to his shoulder, a vest-pocket Venus with an oval face and full sensuous lips. A tight halter and skimpy shorts barely contained rounded breasts and molded hips. She had it all: easy to imagine her handling a couple of lovers and a husband besides.

Except she had a beauty of a shiner, the flesh almost purple around her right eye. She must have reconsidered divorce.

Dunc managed to ask, “Mrs. Falkoner?” in a normal voice.

“Yes, I’m Ginny Falkoner.”

“Does Jack, uh, still live here?”

“Of course he does, why...”

She had a quick, almost strident voice. Dunc explained who he was and why he was there.

“Oh, that guy. Well, Jack’s at the gym, working out.”