“Can you turn that shit down?” I yelled.
He nodded, moving to the stereo, which he flicked off. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Have a seat.”
His place was about half the size of mine and jammed with twice the furniture. King-sized bed, a big chest of drawers in pecan-wood plastic laminate, the stereo cabinet, sagging brick-and-board bookcases, two upholstered chairs with shredded sides, a space heater, and one of those units the size of a television console, housing sink, stove, and refrigerator. The bathroom was separated from the main room by a panel of material hanging on a length of twine. The room’s two lamps were draped with red terry-cloth towels that muted their two-hundred-and-fifty-watt bulbs to a rosy glow. Both chairs were filled with cats, which he seemed to notice about the same time I did.
He gathered one batch of them up by the armload as if they were old clothes and I sat down in the space he had cleared. As soon as he tossed the cats on the bed, they made their way back to their original places. One of them kneaded my lap as if it were a hunk of bread dough and then curled up when he was satisfied with the job he’d done. Another one crowded in beside me and a third one settled on the arm of the chair. They seemed to eye each other, trying to figure out who had the best deal. They appeared to be full-grown and probably from the same litter, as they all sported thick tortoiseshell coats and heads the size of softballs. There were two adolescent cats curled up in the other chair, a buff and a black, tangled together like mismatched socks. A sixth cat emerged from under the bed and paused, pointing each hind foot in turn. Gus watched this feline activity with a shy smile, his face flushed with pride.
“Aren’t they great?” he said. “I just never get tired of these little peckerheads. At night, they pile on the bed with me like a quilt. I got one sleeps on my pillow with his feet in my hair. I can kiss their little faces anytime I want.” He snatched one up and cradled it like a baby, an indignity the cat endured with surprising passivity.
“How many do you have?”
“Six right now, but Luci Baines and Lynda Bird are both pregnant. I don’t know what I’m gonna do about that.”
“Maybe you could get them fixed,” I said helpfully.
“Well, after this batch is born, I guess I should. I’m real good at finding homes for the kittens, though, and they’re always so sweet.”
I wanted to mention how good they smelled too, but I didn’t have the heart for sarcasm when he was clearly so crazy about his brood. There he was, looking like a police artist’s composite of a sex killer, making a fool of himself over this collection of domesticated furs.
“I guess I should have spoken up sooner about this stuff,” he was saying. “I don’t know what got into me.” He crossed to the bookshelf and sorted through the mess on top, coming up with an address book about the size of a playing card, which he held out to me.
I took it, leafing through. “What’s the significance? Did Bobby fill you in?”
“Well no. He told me to keep it and he said it was important, but he didn’t explain. I just assumed it must be a list or a code, some kind of information he had, but I don’t know what.”
“When did he give you this?”
“I don’t remember exactly. It was sometime before the accident. He stopped over one day and gave it to me and asked me if I’d just hold on to it for him, so I said sure. I’d forgotten all about it until you brought it up.”
I checked the index tab for B. There wasn’t a Blackman listed there, but I did find the name penciled inside the back cover, with a seven-digit number beside it. No area code indicated, so it was probably local, though I didn’t think it matched the number for S. Blackman I’d found in the telephone book.
“What did he actually say at the time?” I asked. I knew I was repeating myself, but I kept hoping to solicit some indication of Bobby’s intent.
“Nothing really. He wanted me to hang on to it is all. He didn’t tell you either, huh?”
I shook my head. “He couldn’t remember. He knew it was important, but he had no idea why. Have you ever heard the name Blackman? S. Blackman? Anybody Blackman?”
“Nope.” The cat was squirming and he put it down.
“I understand Bobby had fallen in love with someone. I wonder if it might have been this S. Blackman.”
“If it was, he didn’t tell me. A couple of times he did meet some woman down at the beach. Right out in that parking lot by the skate shack.”
“Before the accident or afterwards?”
“Before. He’d sit in his Porsche and wait and she’d pull in and then they’d talk.”
“He never introduced you or mentioned who she was?”
“I know what she looked like but not her name. I saw ‘em go in the coffee shop once and she was built odd, you know? Kind of like a Munchkin. I couldn’t figure that out. Bobby was a good-lookin’ guy and he always hung out with these real foxy chicks, but she was a dog.”
“Blond wispy hair? Maybe forty-five?”
“I never saw her up close so I don’t know about her age, but the hair sounds right. She drives this Mercedes I see around now and then. Dark green with a beige interior. Looks like a ‘fifty-five or ‘fifty-six, but it’s in great shape.”
I glanced through the address book again. Sufi’s address and telephone number were listed under the D’s.
Had he been having an affair with her? It seemed so unlikely. Bobby had been twenty-three years old and, as Gus said, a good-looking kid. Carrie St. Cloud had mentioned a blackmailing scheme, but if Sufi was being blackmailed by someone, why would she turn to him for help? Surely it wasn’t a matter of her blackmailing him. Whatever it was, it gave me a lead and I was grateful for that. I tucked the book in my handbag and looked up. Gus was watching me with amusement.
“God, you should see your face. I could really watch the old wheels turn,” he said.
“Things are beginning to happen and I like that,” I said. “Listen, this has been a big help. I don’t know what it means yet, but believe me, I’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so. I’m just sorry I didn’t speak up when you asked. If there’s anything else I can do, just let me know.”
“Thanks,” I said. I shifted the cat off my lap and got up, shaking hands with him.
I went out to my car, brushing at my jeans, picking cat hair off my lip. It was now ten o’clock at night and I should have headed home, but I was feeling wired. The episode at Moza’s and the sudden appearance of Bobby’s address book were acting on me like a stimulant. I wanted to talk to Sufi. Maybe I’d stop by her place. If she was up, we could have a little chat. She’d tried once to steer me away from this investigation and I wondered now what that was about.
Chapter 19
I pulled into the shadows across the street from Sufi’s place on Haughland Road in the heart of Santa Teresa. For the most part, the houses I had passed were two-story frame-and-stone on large lots complete with junipers and oaks. Many lawns sported the ubiquitous California crop of alarm-company signs, warning of silent surveillance and armed patrols.
Sufi’s yard was darkened by the interlacing tree branches overhead, the property stretching back in a tangle of shrubs and surrounded by a picket fence with wide pales. The house was done in a dark shingle siding, possibly a muted brown or green, though it was hard to tell which at this hour of the night. The side porch was narrow and deeply recessed with no exterior light visible. A dark green Mercedes was parked in the drive to the left.
It was a quiet neighborhood. The sidewalks were deserted and there was no traffic. I got out of my car and crossed to the front of the house. Up close, I could see that the place was massive, the kind being converted now to bed-and-breakfast establishments with odd names: The Gull and Satchel, The Blue Tern, The Quackery. They’re all over town these days: renovated Victorian mansions impossibly quaint, where for ninety bucks a night, you can sleep in a bed with a fake brass frame and struggle, the next morning, with a freshly baked croissant that will drop pastry flakes in your lap like dandruff.