Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini Page A

you?"
    "Not much, I guess. I always wondered where he got the money he used to spread around so freely. Was he arrested around here?"
    "No. In Santa Barbara."
    "Maybe he just never got caught in this area."
    "Maybe not."
    She moved restlessly on her chair. "Well, if any woman waited four years or more for Walt Paige, she's the biggest fool in creation. Or just plain blind."
    "That happens—too often."
    "Don't I know it!" Beverly said. "The radio mentioned that Walt had a wife and that you were doing some kind of job for her. Did it have to do with this woman, the one here in Cypress Bay?"
    "Yes. He'd been leaving his wife alone on the weekends, and she wanted to know why."
    "And now she knows."
    "Not yet. She isn't ready to know."
    "She must be taking it pretty hard."
    "Pretty hard."
    "What's she like?"
    "Nice. Very nice and very young."
    "I thought she might be. That's the only kind of woman Walt Paige would have bothered marrying. She'll be all right, though; you learn to accept the crap life deals out to you."
    "Sometimes you do."
    "You have to if you want to get along in this world," Beverly said. "Voice of experience."
    "Has it been that rough for you?"
    "And then some. I've led a hell of a life." She shrugged. "But then, I've made my own bed most of the time—literally as well as figuratively."
    "What do you do for a living, if I can ask?"
    "I'm a potter. How about that?"
    "I didn't think there was any money in it."
    "There is when you make cheap souvenirs for the tourists," she said, and shrugged again. "Well—do you have any more questions about Walt Paige?"
    "Not directly," I answered. "Did your brother know Paige very well?"
    She seemed to tense slightly, but I could not be sure in the room's lighting. "About as well as I did, I suppose."
    "Do you think he might know anything that would help?"
    "I doubt it."
    "Is he here now?"
    "No, he went out earlier today. I can ask him about Walt when he gets home, and have him call you if he can help by some chance."
    "I won't be pursuing things much further—as a matter of fact, I'll probably be returning to San Francisco tonight—so you'd better have him call Chief Quartermain at the City Hall."
    "All right."
    "One last thing, Beverly. Do you know a short, bald guy in his forties, dark and heavy-featured?"
    "That doesn't sound like anybody I know. Why?"
    "Paige talked with him not long before he was killed."
    "A stranger in Cypress Bay?"
    "There's no way of knowing just yet," I said. I got up on my feet. "I guess that's about all, Beverly. Thanks for your time and cooperation."
    "Not at all."
    She smiled and rose, and she was standing close enough to me so that I could look into her eyes. There was nothing there for me; I had simply not registered with her. So we went to the door and I did not say any of the tentative things a man says to a woman who appeals to him. But maybe it was just as well, I thought. She would not want another loveless affair, a man who had an itch to scratch, a man who was thinking of her only as pure sweet hell in bed; and I had absolutely nothing to offer her along any other lines.
    We said goodbye on the porch and touched hands very briefly, and I went down the slab-stone steps without looking back at her. Bonificacio Drive was empty and quiet, like a street in Old Monterey when the air and the land and the sea were clean and you could take your time about living—and the tomorrows were all filled with promise.

 
    Nine
    The Cypress Point estate belonging to Robin and Jason Lomax was located on Inspiration Way, and I decided to make that my next stop. I took my car down to Ocean Boulevard and along to where it swung sharply to the east and became San Lucas Avenue. From there I could see Cypress Point—thickly wooded, rolling, moneyed acreage—extending into the aquamarine Pacific to form the southern boundary of the bay. Inspiration Way, according to my map, was a short street like the cross bar of an A, running north to south between two