Not Exactly a Brahmin (17 page)

“I’ve heard high praise of Sam Nguyen myself.”

“Oh, he’s the best. No question. Jake Trent keeps close tabs on his mechanics. With our customers, if anything’s out of place there’s hell to pay. But Sam—well, Sam doesn’t consider himself in the same class as the other mechanics. He’s an artisan. He doesn’t deal with the mechanics at all, except when he needs to have one of them lift a fender or hold a cable out of the way. He struts in in the morning like he owns the service bay. When the union guys break for coffee, Sam keeps on working. At noon, the union guys stop for lunch; Sam works. But then, at one on the dot, he puts down his tools and drives to the Bien Hoa Vietnamese Restaurant in Oakland. I went there with him once.” He smiled as if to say that he had passed Nguyen’s strict muster. “At the restaurant they treat him like a king. When he arrives, a masseuse is at the door. She gives him twenty minutes. And when she’s done, his lunch is waiting, all five courses. The waiters hover, the owner grovels. Sam compliments them. The other Vietnamese smile. And then Sam’s car is brought around and he leaves. By the time he gets back to the shop it’s two-thirty or quarter to three.”

“And your boss doesn’t mind?”

“Sam could come back at six and it would be okay with Jake Trent. Trent’s no dummy. He’s pleased to have Sam as long as Sam will stay.”

I finished my drink.

Cap signaled the waiter, with the same aplomb that I imagined of Sam Nguyen.

“So you sell the cars to drug dealers for their opera windows and Sam Nguyen. For everyone else it’s just snob appeal?”

The viola stopped. It had been so soft that it was a moment before the twelve or so of us patrons applauded. Cap cocked his head slightly, as if he were pondering a quizzical situation. “I’m afraid you credit the drug dealers too highly, Jill. They’re as much into snob appeal as the next guy. They love being the men with the cash; it flatters them to have someone with a cultured accent pulling out the ashtrays and opening the hoods for them.” He sighed. “Snob appeal is one of the few constants in life—it cuts through all social strata. Even in ‘Society,’ where I am accepted because of my very proper forebears, there’s as much clawing to get to the very top. You’re judged by who you know, how much money you have, and what family you are connected to. Lucky for me.” He laughed. “Because I am a New England Danziger I can be invited places no ordinary car salesman would be permitted.”

“Sounds like the Danziger breeding is to your friends what opera windows are to the dealers.”

“Exactly. Only in Society the rules are stricter. If they knew I laughed at them like this …”

“Or was drinking with a common cop?”

“Once would be okay. I could even bring you, in all your ‘commonness’ ”—he favored me with a grin—“to a charity ball. But if they found out that I had abused the code … if I did it again … Well, twice is just not acceptable.”

I had promised myself I wouldn’t think about the case tonight. But I couldn’t resist asking. “I’m dealing with a woman—very attractive, an actress, who met her husband at one of these Society affairs. As far as I know she had no family connections. How do you think she managed to be accepted?”

The waitress leaned over the table, picking up the ashtray and replacing it with a fresh one, even though the original was unused. She glanced at our glasses then moved on.

“One of the advantages of having social connections, other than in business—I do sell a few cars to men I’ve met at those affairs. Jake Trent isn’t above appreciating their patronage. He gets to be a snob to the other Cadillac dealers. But the amusing advantage is having its odd customs to talk about. It keeps people from finding me too dull.”

“So how did this woman make her way into the magic circle?”

“Well, she might have met her man on her first try before anyone discovered she was not sterling but silver plate. Or as an actress, well, actresses are in a class by themselves. But most likely, if she wasn’t offensive, was decorative, and did and said the right things and—and this is important—sincerely believed in the overriding importance of Society, she could hang on for a while as a not-quite-respectable fringe member. But it would be easier if her family had a name, and money.” He lifted his glass and took a swallow. “But enough chatter about me and my peculiar connections. What about you? Do you have a line on your murderer yet? It is a murder, I assume, since you’re a Homicide officer.”

“Murder cases require a lot of legwork before any lines are clear.”

“Don’t you get hunches? Don’t you come to sense who’s being honest with you and who’s trying to put you on?”

I laughed. “No one is honest with the police. Not totally. Even people who are only remotely connected to the case are uneasy in the presence of a cop. They consider their answers. They fidget. They say too little or too much. They look guilty as hell. As a rule, the killer looks no more suspect than the rest.”

He finished his drink and leaned back in his chair. “So how do you decide who to concentrate on? In the case you’re working on now for instance, you must have a few suspects. How do you narrow down the field?”

“Actually, I don’t in this case. The problem is not too many suspects but too few.”

The waiter arrived with our drinks.

Cap fingered his glass. His hands were long, his fingers slender but surprisingly firm, as if they belonged to a sculptor. But unlike a sculptor’s hands, which would have shown the cuts and bruises of misaimed hits, Cap’s hands were smooth. They suited his patrician accent. They were hands his customers would approve of. They were hands that seemed capable of caressing and controlling.

Aware that I was staring, I moved my gaze to the candle. Before I realized it, I had yawned.

Cap laughed. “I told you I had to keep talking about my Society connections or you’d find me dull.”

“It’s certainly not you,” I said quickly. “This is the most pleasant evening I’ve had in a while. It’s just that I was up till three this morning”—I couldn’t resist adding—“at the morgue.”

“You’re going to tell me then you had to set your alarm for six?”

“We have to be up before our prey.”

“What time is that?” He took a swallow of his drink, making an effort to finish it.

“Detectives’ Morning Meeting is at quarter to eight.”

“That’s not too uncivilized.”

“It wouldn’t be,” I said, picking up my own glass, “if it weren’t for the parking.”

Perhaps it was the lack of food—I had eaten only the taco on my taco special plate this evening. Perhaps it was my embarrassment at yawning or maybe just the effect of Cap Danziger himself, but I felt distinctly uneasy, and in that unease I talked about the department’s parking problems. I talked about them as we left the bar, as we walked to the car, and by the time I was driving down the hill, I was telling Cap Danziger about my bet with Howard and my failure to discover his costume. Howard’s costume seemed to hold special interest for him, as if he were entering the game.

“My best guess is he’ll come as de Gaulle.”

“French restaurants,” he said.

“What about them?”

“Some have pretty fancy waiters. I wouldn’t put it past the more ornate ones to have a Grand Charles maitre d’.”

“Really?”

“Ludicrous as it sounds.”

I sighed. “Halloween’s tomorrow. It would take me plenty longer than that to call every French restaurant in the Bay Area.” I slowed down.

“I think I can help.”

“You can?”

“A friend of mine is a maitre d’. I can give him a call. He’d know where any de Gaulle is working.”

“That’s great.”

“Why don’t we stop at your place. I can call him now. This is a good time for him, the early rush will be over, the after-theater crowd won’t be in yet. Then I can walk home.”

“It’s raining.”

“Just a drizzle. I have a raincoat.”

I tried to remember what shape I had left my apartment in. At the best of times I was not a good housekeeper. My cleaning standards matched my eating habits. Neither provided examples I would want to be seen by my mother, or by Cap Danziger. Only my lack of possessions saved the place from being a real shambles.

I pulled up in front of the Kepple house. As I reached for the car door, I started to warn him that he wasn’t headed to a place he’d be likely to see in
Architectural Digest.
But he would find that out soon enough.

I led him around the side of the Kepple house to my jalousied porch apartment. In summer the jalousies on three sides allowed the cool breeze to flow through. Sleeping there was like camping out. In winter it was definitely like camping. The aluminum walls beneath the windows and the aluminum siding that covered the rear wall of the house were icy. I opened the door and flicked on the light. To my right my sleeping bag lay in a heap where I’d tossed it. The green indoor-outdoor carpet had been vacuumed a week or so ago and wasn’t in too bad shape. Even the puddles under the jalousies had shrunk during the day and could be cleared in one step. If it hadn’t been for the white wicker table, the place would have been passable.

All that was visible of the table top was a circle in front of the chair where I’d sat to drink coffee and eat croissants last Sunday while I had read—what? An issue from the two-foot-high pile of Sunday
New York Times
on the table, or daily
Chronicles
stacked next to them, or one of the
New Yorkers
that went back to July? Or perhaps I had glanced at a NOW newsletter, or one from Friends of the Sea Otter. Or maybe I’d checked the UC Theater listings, or a catalog from Cal Extension or L. L. Bean, or Early Winters, Pepperidge Farms, Community Kitchens, J. Crew, Eddie Bauer, Sporting Dog, or any of the twenty or so others strewn there. The table resembled nothing so much as a recycling bin. I was just relieved that the coffee cup had made it to the kitchen.

There was nothing to do but ignore the mess. “The phone is next to the chaise lounge,” I said, indicating the far end of the room. The chaise lounge, another item more suitable to a campsite or at least the backyard, was plastic, but in deference to winter I had bought a flowered cushion to block out the drafts from the jalousies. When the lounge was empty, the cushion puffed up like an infected finger.

Cap didn’t comment on the room. He gave no indication of noticing anything untold. Was that, I wondered, what was meant by “good breeding”?

He picked up the phone and dialed. Sitting on the lounge he waited, then asked for Ivan Henry.

I started to take my jacket off, then remembered the salsa spot.

“Cap Danziger,” he said, and then repeated my phone number. Replacing the receiver, he looked up at me. “Ivan’s on break. They’ll have him call as soon as he gets back. That shouldn’t be long. I’ve been there; they don’t give their employees a minute more off than the union requires.”

“You might as well make yourself comfortable, then. Can I get you something? I’ve taken to having hot buttered rum on cold evenings.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

I could tell from experience with other guests that he was bemused at just how to go about getting comfortable. The only way to approach it was to crawl into the chaise lounge, lean against the back, and pull your feet up. Invariably that was an awkward thing for a guest to do. They felt ungracious leaving me to clear off a wicker chair.

But Cap Danziger adjusted himself further onto the lounge, resting his elbows on the chair arms. In his light brown suit, against the paisley cushions and the jalousies, he looked as if he’d just wandered in from safari.

When I returned with the drinks, I handed him his mug. “Take it by the handle; it’s hot.”

He stared down at the mug before taking hold.

“My ex-husband got the crystal,” I said by way of explanation. “He was going to be a college professor. We agreed professors are more likely to need crystal than cops.”

He glanced around the room again, pursed his lips as if trying to restrain himself, and then said, “What did
you
get?”

I laughed. He wasn’t the first to ask that. Both Howard and Pereira had surveyed this same bare room and been brought to the same inquiry.

“Half the
National Geographies,
for one thing. But mainly the car.”

Now he laughed. “At least you didn’t have much to fight over.”

I said nothing.

“It would have been nice if you’d gotten the bed,” he added.

“There was no bed. We slept on the floor.”

“You mean he got the floor?”

“Just about.”

He shifted toward the head of the lounge in unspoken invitation for me to join him on it. I sat.

“It’s a nice room,” he said, “like a basement recreation room where all the games are kept, where you can do whatever you want.”

I smiled. He was the first one who had understood that.

Still, I avoided his eyes, not sure whether I wanted to let myself fall under their mesmerizing gaze. I hadn’t planned to invite him in. Other than Howard, I hadn’t invited a man here at all. I’d wanted to keep control. But I hadn’t met a man as attractive before.

He drew me toward him with the slightest of touches, took the glass from my hand. His lips were teasingly soft, more distant than close, beckoning me.

The phone rang.

“Damn,” he said, releasing me.

I shook myself back to reality and reached for the phone. Involuntarily I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eleven, too late for any of my friends to call me on a work night.

“Hello?”

“Detective Smith?” The voice—a woman’s—was shaky.

“Yes?”

“Lois Palmerston. I … I called … before. No answer.”

“Are you all right?” She sounded as if she was falling apart.

“Yes … No … Look, I need … I don’t know. Can you come here?”

“Now, Lois?”

“Yes. Please, now.”

I hesitated momentarily, avoiding Cap’s gaze. “Okay. Give me a few minutes. You know how long it takes me to get my car up the hill.”

There was a small sound on the phone line—an inadvertent whine of fear. “Yes, but you will come, won’t you?”

“I’m coming now. I’ll be right there.” I put down the receiver.

Turning to Cap, I gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, really. It’s business and I have to go now. The drawbacks of being a cop.”