She glanced at her watch and stood up. “I have an appointment. Please let me know if you hear from him.”
“May I ask what you want with him?”
“I’ve been urging Mother to file for divorce, but so far she’s refused. Maybe I can persuade him instead.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t divorce him years ago.”
Her smile was cold. “She says she married him ‘for better or for worse.’ To date, there hasn’t been any ‘better.’ Maybe she’s hoping for a taste of that before she gives up.”
“What about his imprisonment? What was that for?”
Something flickered in her face and I thought at first she wouldn’t answer me. “Vehicular manslaughter,” she said, finally. “He was drunk and there was an accident. Five people were killed, two of them kids.”
I couldn’t think of a response and she didn’t seem to expect one. She stood up, closed the conversation with a perfunctory handshake, and then she was gone. I could hear her high heels tapping away down the corridor.
Chapter 5
By the time I closed up the office and got down to my car, the clouds overhead looked like dark gray vacuum cleaner fluff and the rain had begun to splatter the sidewalk with polka dots. I stuck Daggett’s file on the passenger seat and backed out of my space, turning right from the parking lot onto Cannon, and right again onto Chapel. Three blocks up, I made a stop, ducking into the supermarket to pick up milk, Diet Pepsi, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. I was into my siege mentality, looking forward to pulling up the drawbridge and waiting out the rain. With luck, I wouldn’t have to go out for days.
The phone was ringing as I let myself in. I put the grocery bag on the counter and snatched up the receiver.
“God, I was just about to give up,” Jonah said. “I tried the office, but all I got was your answering machine.”
“I closed up for the day. I can work at home if I’m in the mood, which I’m not. Have you seen the rain?”
“Rain? Oh yeah, so there is. I haven’t even looked out the window since I got in. God, that’s great,” he said. “Listen, I have some of the information you’re looking for and the rest will have to wait. Woody’s got a priority request and I had to back off. I’m working tomorrow so I can pick it up then.”
“You’re working Saturday?”
“I’m filling in for Sobel. My good deed for the week,” he said. “Got a pencil? Polo’s the one I got a line on.”
He rattled out Billy Polo’s age, date of birth, height, weight, hair and eye color, his a.k.a., and a hasty rundown of his record, all of which I noted automatically. He’d picked up the name of Billy’s parole officer, but the guy was out of the office and wouldn’t be available until Monday afternoon.
“Thanks. In the meantime, I’m nosing around on my own,” I said. “I bet I’ll get a line on him before you do.” He laughed and hung up.
I put groceries away and then sat down at my desk, hauling out the little portable Smith-Corona I keep in the knee hole. I consigned the data Jonah’d given me to index cards and then sat and stared at it. Billy Polo, born William Polokowski, was thirty years old, five-foot-eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, no scars, tattoos, or “observable physical oddities.” His rap sheet sounded like a pop quiz on the California Penal Code, with arrests that ranged from misdemeanors to felonies. Assault, forgery, receiving stolen property, grand theft, narcotics violations. Once he was even convicted of “injuring a public jail,” a misdemeanor in this state. Had this occurred in the course of an escape attempt, the charge would have been bumped up to a felony. As it was, he’d probably been caught scratching naughty words on the jail house walls. A real champ, this one.
Apparently, Billy Polo was pretty shiftless when it came to breaking the law and had never even settled on an area of expertise. He’d been arrested sixteen times, with nine convictions, two acquittals, five dismissals. Twice, he’d been put on probation, but nothing seemed to have affected the nature of his behavior, which appeared nearly pathological in its thrust. The man was determined to screw up. Since the age of eighteen, he’d spent an accumulated nine years in jail. No telling what his juvenile record looked like. I assumed his acquaintance with John Daggett dated from his latest offense, an armed robbery conviction, for which he’d served two years and ten months at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, a medium security facility about ninety miles north of Santa Teresa.
I pulled out the telephone book again and checked for a listing under the name Polokowski. Nothing. God, why can’t anything be simple in this business? Oh well. I wasn’t going to worry about it for the moment.
By now, I could hear the rain tapping on the glass-enclosed breezeway that connects my place to Henry Pitt’s house. He’s my landlord and has been for nearly two years. In dry weather, he places an old Shaker cradle out there, filled with rising bread. When the sun is out, the space is like a solar oven, warm and sheltered, dough puffing up above the rim of the cradle like a feather pillow. He can proof twenty loaves at a time, then bake them in the big industrial-sized oven he had installed when he retired from commercial baking. Now he trades fresh bread and pastries for services in the neighborhood and stretches his Social Security payments by clipping coupons avidly. He picks up additional income constructing crossword puzzles which he sells to a couple of those pint-sized “magazines” you can purchase in a supermarket checkout line. Henry Pitts is eighty-one years old and everyone knows I’m half in love with him.
I considered popping over to see him, but even the fifty-foot walk seemed like too much to deal with in the wet. I put some tea water on and picked up my book, stretching out on the sofa with a quilt pulled over me. And that’s how I spent the rest of the day.
During the night, the rain escalated and I woke up twice to hear it lashing at the windows. It sounded like somebody spraying the side of the place with a hose. At intervals, thunder rumbled in the distance and my windows flickered with blue light, tree branches illuminated briefly before the room went black again. It was clear I’d have to cancel my 6:00 A.M. run, an obligatory day off, so I burrowed into the depths of my quilt like a little animal, delighted at the idea of sleeping late.
I woke at 8:00, showered, dressed, and fixed myself a soft-boiled egg on toast with lots of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. I’m not going to give up salt. I don’t care what they say.
Jonah called as I was washing my plate. He said, “Hey, guess what? Your friend Daggett showed.”
I tucked the receiver into the crook of my neck, turning off the water and drying my hands. “What happened? Did he get picked up?”
“More or less. A scruffy drifter spotted him face down in the surf this morning, tangled up in a fishing net. A skiff washed ashore about two hundred yards away. We’re pretty sure it connects.”
“He died last night?”
“Looks like it. The coroner estimates he went into the water sometime between midnight and five A.M. We don’t have a determination yet on the cause and manner of death. We’ll know more after the autopsy’s done, of course.”
“How’d you find out it was him?”
“Fingerprints. He was over at the morgue listed as a John Doe until we ran the computer check. You want to take a look?”
“I’ll be right there. What about next of kin? Have they been notified?”
“Yeah, the beat officer went over as soon as we made the I.D. You know the family?”
“Not well, but we’ve met. I wouldn’t want to be quoted on this, but I think you’ll find out he’s a bigamist. There’s a woman down in L.A. who also claims she’s married to him.”
“Cute. You better come talk to us when you leave St. Terry’s,” he said and hung up.
The Santa Teresa Police Department doesn’t really have a morgue of its own. There’s a coroner-sheriff, an elected officer in this county, but the actual forensic work is contracted out among various pathologists in the tri-county area. The morgue space itself is divided between Santa Teresa Hospital (commonly referred to as St. Terry’s) and the former County General Hospital facility on the frontage road off 101. Daggett was apparently at St. Terry’s, which was where I headed as soon as I’d rounded up my slicker, an umbrella, and my handbag.