LITMIR.BIZ

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gold-rimmed glasses and high forehead gleamed in the overhead light. The lawyer stood up and waved as Lindsey crossed the room. His perfectly cut three-piece suit and solid gold cuff links gave him a look of elegant grace despite his rotund form. Lindsey always felt shabby in Coffman’s presence.

      “Lindsey! Have a libation!”

      “Don’t mind if I do.” Lindsey slid into a leather chair.

      “I’m one ahead of you.”

      “So I notice. How can you drink those things, Eric?”

      “Abominations? Why, these are ambrosia. Got in the habit when I was in college and we paid fifty cents a gallon for drinking alcohol.”

      A waitress had arrived, and with another horrified look at the awful scotch concoction that Coffman had invented, and insisted upon drinking, Lindsey ordered a mineral water.

      Coffman fingered his heavy beard. Lindsey had heard him say a hundred times that his hair was slowly migrating from the top of his face to the bottom; when the process was complete he’d move to Australia and start it going the other way.

      “What’s the matter, Lindsey? You look glum, chum.”

      Lindsey didn’t know where to start. He just shook his head.

      “Work? Lousy love life? You mother again?”

      “No, she’s doing all right. You know, she gets a little better, then she gets a little worse. Sometimes I don’t know what’s happening.” He told Coffman about last night’s incident, about his mother singing the Woody Woodpecker song.

      “And you thought she’d gone round the bend?”

      Lindsey nodded.

      “Can’t blame you. Cackling away like that, coming at you like Norman Bates in his mama suit. But you say she was all right after all?”

      “Well, yes. And Mrs. Hernández is there.”

      Coffman said, “You’re lucky to have her. That woman is a saint, working as a grown-up babysitter.”

      Lindsey nodded. “And a good thing Mother likes her. But lately Mother’s even well enough that Mrs. Hernández can leave at four most days. Mother can stay alone for a few hours now, without getting into trouble. And Joanie Schorr comes over when I need her to help out. But I can’t help thinking, one of these days.…” He made a vague gesture.

      “Just hang in there, pal. What about Marvia, you still seeing her?”

      Lindsey looked up. His mineral water had arrived, and another Abomination. Lindsey and Coffman ordered—a shrimp louie for Lindsey, a sirloin on toast for Coffman.

      “I have a funny claim,” Lindsey said. The waitress had bustled away.

      Coffman looked at him over the rim of his glass.

      “Somebody stole a car in Oakland Saturday night.”

      “No! That’s amazing! How come it wasn’t on the network news, Lindsey? At least on CNN. Somebody’s slipping! Next thing they won’t report kids going truant from school. What’s Murrica coming to!”

      Lindsey frowned. “Don’t kid around. This wasn’t any ordinary car theft. This was a 1928 Duesenberg. It’s worth $425,000.”

      Coffman’s head popped back. “You do get the odd ones, don’t you? What was that weird case you had a while ago, the stolen comic books?”

      “Yeah. They were worth a quarter million. And they got a couple of people killed, too. A UC professor wound up in jail for murder. He’s there now.” Lindsey didn’t tell Coffman that the comic book killer had also, it turned out, been involved in the death of Lindsey’s own father thirty years before. Yes, the elder Lindsey had been burned to death aboard Lewiston, but he could have been saved, and as far as Lindsey was concerned he was more a victim of murder than a casualty of war.

      If there was any difference.

      “And now you’ve got an even bigger one,” Coffman said. The food had arrived and Coffman’s steak knife flashed, his silver fork skewered a gobbet of red meat and transferred it to the hole in his beard. He chewed for a few seconds. “Any clues? You getting any help from the cops?”

      “I don’t know about clues.” Lindsey speared a couple of bay shrimp and ate them. They were delicious, the best thing that had happened to him all day. “I don’t know about clues,” he repeated. “I talked to a man who saw the car being driven away, but he was drunk at the time and he couldn’t tell me much. And I talked to an Oakland cop. I don’t know if he’s going to help me much at all. I don’t know, Eric.”

      Coffman chewed more steak.

      Lindsey speared another shrimp.

      A telephone burbled from under their table and Coffman pulled a morocco attaché case onto his lap, opened it, lifted out a handset and muttered into it. He put it back in the attaché case. He managed to get the remainder of his steak into his mouth and to mumble around it. “Gotta go, pal. Jury’s in. We’ll settle up next time, hey? And I’ll hear more about your love life.” He wiped his mouth delicately with a linen napkin before moving away from the table.

      Eric Coffman lumbering across Max’s Opera Plaza, attaché case in hand, looked distinctly like Raymond Burr.

      Lindsey settled the bill. No point in even trying to claim it as a business lunch. International Surety would never let him get away with putting this one on the expense account.

      Back in the office, Ms. Wilbur said, “Ms. Smith called you from Oakland. Message on your desk.”

      Lindsey grunted.

      “You’re a grumpy one this afternoon. What happened, get stuck with a lunch tab you can’t write off?”

      “None of your business.” Lindsey sat down and tried to ignore Ms. Wilbur’s happy cackle. Maybe she could get together with Mother and do a Woody Woodpecker duet.

      The message read, Going to visit Mr. Kleiner at Kaiser Oakland. Call me there if you want. There was a telephone number and an extension.

      Lindsey decided not to phone. He wanted to talk to Kleiner himself as well as Jayjay Smith—if Kleiner were in any shape to talk. Well, he’d find out.

      Early afternoon traffic was light, even though Lindsey didn’t like spending this much time on the freeway or in Oakland. It beat driving in rush hour, anyway.

      He parked near the hospital and stopped at the desk to ask for Mr. Kleiner’s room number. The receptionist was polishing her nails and carrying on an impassioned dialogue with a colleague, an embarrassingly specific comparison of their respective boy friends.

      Finally Lindsey got their attention, learned Kleiner’s room number, and was directed to a bank of elevators.

      The old man turned out to be in a ward. Jayjay Smith sat in a straight-backed chair, conversing softly with a middle-aged man. Kleiner was sleeping.

      Jayjay Smith turned toward Lindsey. “Bart! I thought you were going to phone. Why did you come here?”

      “Well, I thought Mr. Kleiner.…”

      Jayjay shook her head. The middle-aged man shot Lindsey a peculiar look, partly hostile, partly appraising. Come to think of it, the man looked vaguely familiar to Lindsey, too.

      Lindsey turned his glance from the man standing beside old Kleiner’s bed, to Kleiner, then back. There was a definite resemblance even though the old man was a wizened figure, little more than a flesh-covered skeleton, while the younger one was broad-shouldered and beefy. There was some similarity of feature that Lindsey couldn’t place. It was like an unreachable itch.

      Jayjay said, “Bart, this is Morton Kleiner. Mr. Kleiner’s grandson.”

      Morton Kleiner nodded to Lindsey. “You’re the insurance man, hey?”

      Lindsey

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