Part 69 (1/2)

'Not many out last night,' he said. 'I guess they feel safer in daylight.'

'You were here last night?'

'Just driving around. He picked up Cookie around here, then drove out Queens Boulevard. Or did he take the expressway? I don't guess it matters.'

'No.'

We took Queens Boulevard. 'Want to thank you for coming to the funeral,' he said.

'I wanted to come.'

'Fine-looking woman with you.'

'Thank you.'

'Jan, you say her name was?'

'That's right.'

'You go with her or - '

'We're friends.'

'Uh-huh.' He braked for a light. 'Ruby didn't come.'

'I know.'

'What I told you was a bunch of s.h.i.+t. I didn't want to contradict what I told the others. Ruby split, she packed up and went.'

'When did this happen?'

'Sometime yesterday, I guess. Last night I had a message on my service. I was running around all yesterday, trying to get this funeral organized. I thought it went okay, didn't you?'

'It was a nice service.'

'That's what I thought. Anyway, there's a message to call Ruby and a 415 area code. That's San Francisco. I thought, huh? And I called, and she said she had decided to move on. I thought it was some kind of a joke, you know? Then I went over there and checked her apartment, and all her things were gone. Her clothes. She left the furniture. That makes three empty apartments I got, man. Big housing shortage, n.o.body can find a place to live, and I'm sitting on three empty apartments. Something, huh?'

'You sure it was her you spoke to?'

'Positive.'

'And she was in San Francisco?'

'Had to be. Or Berkeley or Oakland or some such place. I dialed the number, area code and all. She had to be out there to have that kind of number, didn't she?'

'Did she say why she left?'

'Said it was time to move on. Doing her inscrutable oriental number.'

'You think she was afraid of getting killed?'