The McCone Files Page 15

  Now Hank loomed over me, still grinning. I could tell how much he was going to enjoy watching me suffer through an improbable, humiliating, asinine experience. I smiled back—sweetly.

  “’Your sexual preference.’ Hetero.” I checked the box firmly “Except for inflating my income, so I’ll look like I have a lot of good stuff to steal, I’m filling this out truthfully,” I said. “Who knows—I might find someone wonderful.”

  When I looked back up at Hank, my evil smile matched his earlier one. He, on the other hand, looked as if he’d swallowed something the wrong way.

  My first “date” was a chubby little man named Jerry Hale. Jerry was very into the singles scene. We met at a bar in San Francisco’s affluent Marina district, and while we talked, he kept swiveling around in his chair and leering at every woman who walked by. Most of them ignored him but a few glared; I wanted to hang a big sign around my neck saying, “I’m not really with him, it’s only business.” While I tried to find out about his experiences with All the Best People Introduction Service, plus impress him with the easily fenceable items I had at home, he tried to educate me on the joys of being single.

  “I used to be into the bar scene pretty heavily,” he told me. “Did all right too. But then I started to worry about herpes and AIDS—I’ll let you see the results of my most recent test if you want—and my drinking was getting out of hand. Besides, it was expensive. Then I went the other way—a health club. Did all right there too. But goddamn, it’s tiring. So I then joined a bunch of church groups—you meet a lot of horny women there. But churches encourage matrimony, and I’m not into that.”

  “So you applied to All the Best People. How long have you—?”

  “Not right away. First I thought about joining AA, even went to a meeting. Lots of good-looking women are recovering alcoholics, you know. But I like to drink too much to make the sacrifice. Dear Abby’s always saying you could enroll in courses, so I signed up for a couple at U.C. Extension. Screenwriting and photography.”

  My mouth was stiff from smiling politely, and I had just about written Jerry off as a possible suspect—he was too busy to burglarize anyone. I took a sip of wine and looked at my watch.

  Jerry didn’t notice the gesture. “The screenwriting class was terrible—the instructor actually wanted you to write stuff. And photography—how can you see women in the darkroom, let alone make any moves when you smell like chemicals?”

  I had no answer for that. Maybe my own efforts at photography accounted for my not having a lover at the moment….

  “Finally I found All the Best People,” Jerry went on. “Now I really do all right. And it’s opened up a whole new world of dating to me—eighties-style. I’ve answered ads in the paper, placed my own ads too. You’ve always got to ask that they send a photo, though, so you can screen out the dogs. There’s Weekenders, they plan trips. When I don’t want to go out of the house, I use the Intro Line—there’s a phone club you can join, where you call in for three bucks and either talk to one person or on a party line. There’s a video exchange where you can make tapes and trade them with people so you’ll know you’re compatible before you set up a meeting. I do all right.”

  He paused expectantly, as if he thought I was going to ask how I could get in on all these eighties-style deals.

  “Jerry,” I said, “have you read any good books lately?”

  “Have I …what?”

  “What do you do when you’re not dating?”

  “I work. I told you, I’m in sales—”

  “Do you ever spend time alone?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Oh, just being alone. Puttering around the house or working at hobbies. Just thinking.”

  “Are you crazy? What kind of a computer glitch are you, anyway?” He stood, all five-foot-three of him quivering indignantly. “Believe me, I’m going to complain to Best People about setting me up with you. They described you as ‘vivacious,’ but you’ve hardly said a word all evening!”

  Morton Stone was a nice man, a sad man. He insisted on buying me dinner at his favorite Chinese restaurant. He spent the evening asking me questions about myself and my job as a legal researcher; while he listened, his fingers played nervously with the silverware. Later, over a brandy in a nearby bar, he told me how his wife had died the summer before, of cancer. He told me about his promise to her that he would get on with his life, find someone new, and be happy. This was the first date he’d arranged through All the Best People; he’d never done anything like that in his life. He’d only tried them because he wasn’t good at meeting people. He had a good job, but it wasn’t enough. He had money to travel, but it was no fun without someone to share the experience with. He would have liked to have children, but he and his wife had put it off until they were more financially secure, and then they found out about the cancer….

  I felt guilty as hell about deceiving him, and for taking his time, money, and hope. But by the end of the evening I’d remembered a woman friend who was just getting over a disastrous love affair. A nice, sad woman who wasn’t good at meeting people; who had a good job, loved to travel, and longed for children…

  Bob Gillespie was a sailing instructor on a voyage of self-discovery. He kept prefacing his remarks with statements such as, “You know, I had a great insight into myself last week.” That was nice; I was happy for him. But I would rather have gotten to know his surface persona before probing into his psyche. Like the two previous men, Bob didn’t fit any of the recognizable profiles of the professional burglar, nor had he any great insight into how All the Best People worked.

  Ted Horowitz was a recovering alcoholic, which was admirable. Unfortunately, he was also the confessional type. He began every anecdote with the admission that it had happened “back when I was drinking.” He even felt compelled to describe how he used to throw up on his ex-wife. His only complaint about Best People—this with a stern look at my wineglass—was that they kept referring him to women who drank.

  Jim Rogers was an ad man who wore safari clothes and was into guns. I refrained from telling that I own two .38 Specials and am a highly qualified marksman, for fear it would incite him to passion. For a little while I considered him seriously for the role of burglar, but when I probed the subject by mentioning a friend having recently been ripped off, Jim became enraged and said the burglar ought to be hunted down and shot.

  “I’m going about this all wrong,” I said to Hank.

  It was ten in the morning, and we were drinking coffee at the big round table in All Souls’ kitchen. The night before I’d spent hours on the phone with an effervescent insurance underwriter who was going on a whale-watching trip with Weekenders, the group that god-awful Jerry had mentioned. He’d concluded our conversation by saying he’d be sure to note in his pocket organizer to call me the day after he returned. Then I’d been unable to sleep and had sat up hours linger, drinking too much and listening for burglars and brooding about loneliness.

  I wasn’t involved with anyone at the time—nor did I particularly want to be. I’d just emerged from a long-term relationship and was reordering my life and getting used to doing things alone again. I was fortunate in that my job and my little house—which I’m constantly remodeling—filled most of the empty hours. But I could still understand what Morton and Bob and Ted and Jim and even that dreadful Jerry were suffering from.

  It was the little things that got to me. Like the times I went to the supermarket and everything I felt like having for dinner was packaged for two or more, and I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to have over to share it with. Or the times I’d be driving around a curve in the road and come upon a spectacular view, but have no one in the passenger seat to point it out to. And then there were the cold sheets on the other side of a wide bed on a foggy San Francisco night.

  But I got through it, because I reminded myself that it wasn’t going to be that way forever. And when I couldn’t convince myself of that, I thought about how it was better to be tota
lly alone than alone with someone. That’s how I got through the cold, foggy nights. But I was discovering there was a whole segment of the population that availed itself of dating services and telephone conversation clubs and video exchanges. Since I’d started using Best People, I’d been inundated by mail solicitations and found that the array of services available to singles was astonishing.

  Now I told Hank, “I simply can’t stand another evening making polite chitchat in a bar. If I listen to another ex-wife story, I’ll scream. I don’t want to know that these guys’ parents did to them at age ten that made the whole rest of their lives a mess. And besides, having that security guard on my house is costing Dick Morris a bundle he can ill afford.”

  Helpfully Hank said, “So change your approach.”

  “Thanks for your great suggestion.” I got up and went out to the desk that belongs to Ted Smalley, our secretary, and dug out a phone directory. All the Best People wasn’t listed. My file on the case was on the kitchen table. I went back there—Hank had retreated to his office—and checked the introductory letter they’d sent me; it showed nothing but a post-office box. The zip code told me it was the main post office at Seventh and Mission streets.

  I went back and borrowed Ted’s phone book again, then looked up the post office’s number. I called it, got the mail-sorting supervisor, and identified myself as Sharon from Federal Express. “We’ve got a package here for All the Best People Introduction service,” I said, and read off the box number. “That’s all I’ve got—no contact phone, no street address.”

  “Assholes,” she said warily. “Why do they send them to a P.O. box when they know you can’t deliver to one? For that matter, why do you accept them when they’re addressed like that?”

  “Damned if I know. I only work here.”

  “I can’t give out the street address, but I’ll supply the contact phone.” She went away, came back, and read it to me.

  “Thanks,” I depressed the disconnect button and redialed.

  A female voice answered the phone with only the phone number. I went into my Federal Express routine. The woman gave me the address without hesitation, in the 200 block of Gough Street near the Civic Center. After I hung up I made one more call: to a friend on the Chronicle. J. D. Smith was in the city room and agreed to leave a few extra business cards with the security guard in the newspaper building’s lobby.

  All the Best People’s offices took up the entire second floor of a renovated Victorian. I couldn’t imagine why they needed so much space, but they seemed to be doing a landslide business, because phones in the offices on either side of the long corridor were ringing madly. I assumed it was because the summer vacation season was approaching and San Francisco singles were getting anxious about finding someone to make travel plans with.

  The receptionist was more or less what I expected to find in the office of that sort of business: petite, blonde, sleekly groomed, and expensively dressed, with an elegant manner. She took J.D.’s card down the hallway to see if their director was available to talk with me about the article I was writing on the singles scene. I paced around the tiny waiting room, which didn’t even have chairs. When the young woman came back, she said Dave Lester would be happy to see me and led me to an office at the rear.

  The office was plush, considering the attention that had been given to décor in the rest of the suite. It had a leather couch and chairs, a wet bar, and an immense mahogany desk. There wasn’t so much as a scrap of paper or a file folder to suggest anything resembling work was done there. I couldn’t see Dave Lester, because he had swiveled his high-backed chair around toward the window and was apparently contemplating the wall of the building next door. The receptionist backed out the door and closed it. I cleared my throat, and the chair turned toward me.

  The man in the chair was god-awful Jerry Hale.

  Our faces must have been mirror images of shock. I said, “What are you doing here?”

  He said, “You’re not J. D. Smith. You’re Sharon McCone!” Then he frowned down at the business card he held. “Or is Sharon McCone really J.D. Smith?”

  I collected my scattered wits and said, “Which are you—Dave Lester or Jerry Hale?” I added, “I’m a reporter doing a feature article on the singles scene.”

  “So Marie said. How did you get this address? We don’t publish it because we don’t want all sorts of crazies wandering in. This is an exclusive service; we screen our applicants carefully.”

  They certainly hadn’t screened me; otherwise they’d have uncovered numerous deceptions. I said, “Oh, we newspaper people have our sources.”

  “Well, you certainly misrepresented yourself to us.”

  “And you misrepresented yourself to me.”

  He shrugged. “It’s all part of the screening process, for our clients’ protection. We realized most applicants shy away from a formal interview situation, so we have the first date take the place of that.”

  “You yourself go out with all the women who apply?”

  “A fair amount, using a different name every time, of course, in case any of them know each other and compare notes.” At my astonished look he added, “What can I say? I like women. But naturally I have help. And Marie”—he motioned at the closed door—“and one of the secretaries check out the guys.”

  No wonder Jerry had no time to read. “Then none of the things you told me were true? About being into the bar scene and the church groups and the health club?”

  “Sure they were. My previous experiences were what led me to buy Best People from its former owners. They hadn’t studied the market, didn’t know how to make a go of it in the eighties.”

  “Well, you’re certainly a spokesman for your own product. But how come you kept referring me to other clients? We didn’t exactly part on amiable terms.”

  “Oh, that was just a ruse to get out of there. I had another date. I’d seen enough to know you weren’t my type. But I decided you were still acceptable; we get a lot of men looking for your kind.”

  The “acceptable” rankled. “What exactly is my kind?”

  “Well, I’d call you…introspective. Bookish? No, not exactly. A little offbeat? Maybe intense? No. It’s peculiar…you’re peculiar—”

  “Stop right there!”

  Jerry—who would always be god-awful Jerry and never Dave Lester to me—stood up and came around the desk. I straightened my posture. From my five-foot-six vantage point I could see the beginnings of a bald spot under his artfully styled hair. When he realized where I was looking, his mouth tightened. I took a perverse delight in his discomfort.

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave now,” he said stiffly.

  “But don’t you want Best People featured in a piece on singles?”

  “I do not. I can’t condone the tactics of a reporter who misrepresents herself.”

  “Are you sure that’s the reason you don’t want to talk with me?”

  “Of course. What else—”

  “Is there something about Best People that you’d rather not see publicized?”

  Jerry flushed. When he spoke, it was in a flat deceptively calm manner. “Get out of here,” he said, “or I’ll call your editor.”

  Since I didn’t want to get J.D. in trouble with the Chron, I went.

  Back at my office at All Souls, I curled up in my ratty armchair—my favorite place to think. I considered my visit to All the Best People; I considered what was wrong with the setup there. Then I got out my list of burglary victims and called each of them. All three gave similar answers to my questions. Next I checked the phone directory and called my friend Sandy in the billing office at Pacific Bell.

  “I need an address for a company that’s listed by number in the directory,” I told her.

  “Billing address, or location where the phone’s installed?”

  “Both, if they’re different.”

  She tapped away on her computer keyboard. “Billing and location are the same: two-eleven Gough. Need anything el
se?”

  “That’s it. Thanks—I owe you a drink.”

  In spite of my earlier determination to depart the singles scene, I spent the next few nights on the phone, this time assuming the name of Patsy Newhouse, my younger sister. I talked to various singles about my new VCR; I described the sapphire pendant my former boyfriend had given me and how I planned to have it reset to erase old memories. I babbled happily about the trip to Las Vegas I was taking in a few days with Weekenders, and promised to make notes in my pocket organizer to call people as soon as I got back. I mentioned—in seductive tones—how I loved to walk barefoot over my genuine Persian rugs, I praised the merits of my new microwave oven. I described how I’d gotten into collecting costly jade carvings. By the time the Weekenders trip was due to depart for Vegas, I was constantly sucking on throat lozenges and wondering how long my voice would hold out.

  Saturday night found me sitting in my kitchen sharing ham sandwiches and coffee by candlelight with Dick Morris’ security guard, Bert Jankowski. The only reason we’d chanced the candles was that we’d taped the shades securely over the windows. There was something about eating in total darkness that put us both off.

  Bert was a pleasant-looking man of about my age, with sandy hair and a bristly mustache and a friendly, open face. We’d spent a lot of time together—Friday night, all day today—and I’d pretty much heard his life story. We had a lot in common: he was from Oceanside, not far from where I’d grown up on San Diego; like me, he had a degree in social sciences and hadn’t been able to get a job in his field. Unlike me, he’d been working for the security service so long that he was making a decent wage, and he liked it. It gave him more time, he said, to read and to fish. I’d told him life story, too: about my somewhat peculiar family, about my blighted romances, even about the man I’d once had to shoot. By Saturday night I sensed both of us getting bored with examining our pasts, but the present situation was even more stultifying.