Most of the women in SOS would probably say that Andre’s charm was more powerful than his looks, but at the moment, neither was in evidence. He looked like hell. He was dabbing a handkerchief across a perspiring forehead and he was pale. His blue eyes watched nothing but the carpet as he hurried along. I thought he might be headed for the restroom, but his destination was one of the telephone booths. Like everything else in the Terrace, the phone booths are old-fashioned-real booths with doors made of wood and glass. By the time I figured out that Andre hadn’t gone into the restroom, he was returning to the dinner party. It was on his way back that he spotted me. His eyes widened, then his face screwed up in anger. For a moment it looked as if he would storm his way over to me, but then he seemed to notice Frank.
Frank had realized some moments before that I was watching someone, and had turned in his chair and started watching, too. I couldn’t see Frank’s face, but Andre’s seemed to go pale again. Andre hurried down the hallway to the dining room.
Frank turned back to me, a self-satisfied grin on his face. “Well, well, well,” he said, and finished off his drink.
“Out with it.”
“That, I take it, was the old boyfriend?”
I cringed. “Do I go around reminding you of your mistakes?”
He laughed. “No. But none of my old girlfriends have whole societies dedicated to honoring their memories.”
“What are you talking about? SOS isn’t about Andre.”
“You sometimes call it ‘Survivors of Selman,’ right?”
“As a joke.”
He didn’t say anything, just sat there looking bemused. His smug mode. He was inviting a fight, but escalating the argument in the middle of the Terrace was an unappealing idea. I had the feeling this topic could get loud. I kept my eyes on the hallway and changed the subject.
“Tell me a Bakersfield story,” I said.
After a brief moment of hesitation, during which he probably figured out that he had pissed me off, he said, “Okay. This one happened not long after I made detective.”
The story was about a hardware store owner who had disappeared. His wife reported him missing, and she was convinced that the guy’s business partner had done him in. They questioned the business partner at the store and didn’t learn much, but Frank thought he seemed nervous. Frank’s partner, a senior detective, agreed, and they kept an eye on the guy. Frank talked to a nosy neighbor. The neighbor was full of complaints about the suspect: didn’t keep his lawn mowed, left his garbage cans out for a day or two after pickup, his house needed painting, his leaves needed raking, so on and so forth. Only thing the guy cared about was his car. Then the neighbor mentioned that the suspect had changed one habit lately: he had been leaving his car out in the driveway, instead of parking it in the garage.
The story was interrupted when we heard a commotion near the front door. I turned to see the maître d’ blocking the way of a dark-haired man wearing jeans, refusing him entrance.
Frank pushed his chair back. The man at the door hovered over the maître d’, saying angrily, “I don’t want to dine in your goddamned restaurant! I’m just here to take someone home. Move out of the way!”
Although I hadn’t seen the man in many years, his face was immediately familiar. “It’s Jerry Selman,” I said. “Andre’s son.”
Before the maître d’ could reply to Jerry, Corbin Tyler came bursting out of the private dining room, panic-stricken. He looked blindly around the room, his gaze finally settling on me. “Help!” he shouted. “He’s having a heart attack!” He ran back down the hall.
Frank was out of his chair and moving after him in no time, pausing only to shout back at me, “Call 911!”
Jerry and I rushed past one another as I made my way toward the maître d’, who was already dialing the phone. I waited until I heard him asking for an ambulance, then went back to the private dining room.
I realized as I walked into the room that I had assumed that Corbin had been shouting about Andre; as it turned out, the assumption was true. In a quick glance, I took in Corbin Tyler, Booter Hodges, Allan Moffett, and Keene Dage all watching nervously from the other side of the room. Roland Hill was with them, too, but seemed merely curious, not at all upset. Frank and Jerry were on the floor with Andre. Frank straddled Andre, doing chest compressions while Jerry knelt near his father’s face, giving him mouth-to-mouth.
“Stay back,” Booter Hodges warned.
“I know CPR,” I said, moving a chair and kneeling down on the floor.
“Pulse,” Frank said between counts.
I reached toward Andre’s neck, my fingers searching for his carotid artery. At first, I felt nothing, and then, a few seconds later, it was there. “He’s got a pulse!” I said.
Frank stopped, felt for it, too. “She’s right.”
“He’s breathing,” Jerry said, and started weeping.
We stayed there, not speaking, waiting to make sure our luck would hold. I heard someone leaving the room, but I was too focused on keeping my fingers on Andre’s pulse to see who it was. Andre’s color changed from a claylike gray to a shade that still didn’t look great, but wasn’t half as frightening.
Paramedics arrived, and at last we stood and moved away. I turned to see that only two of Andre’s friends were still there: Roland Hill and Keene Dage. Keene said, “If you need me, I’ll be in the bar.”
Roland lifted an eyebrow, then said, “Really? Well, I don’t suppose I’ll need you this evening. We can talk about our business tomorrow.” He nodded toward me on his way out, cool as the shady side of an iceberg.
Frank had an arm around Jerry’s shoulders, and talked to him as they followed the paramedics outside. I was left standing alone in the room. I had that wobbly knees feeling that sometimes come after the adrenaline leaves your body, so I sat down for a moment.
I wondered how hard Lisa would take it if her father died. There had never been much affection between them, but that wouldn’t mean that she still didn’t hope for his approval. Jerry-well, Jerry would probably be crushed. I didn’t wish that kind of suffering on him. And even though Andre was a genuine shitheel, I didn’t wish pain or death on him, either. I considered the fact that I had never really known Jerry, who was away at college when I was dating Andre, and that Andre was all but a stranger to me now. They might have changed over the years. Might have. Seemed unlikely in Andre’s case.
Had something upset him this evening, something besides seeing me? I didn’t for a moment believe I meant enough to him-good or bad-to give him a heart attack. I looked around the table.
Most of the dinner dishes had been cleared; it appeared that the meal had been at the coffee-and-dessert stage. I got up and slowly walked around the table, but nothing of importance had been left behind. Even if I had known who was sitting where, all I would have learned was who drank his java black and who took cream and sugar. There was no point in sticking around. I left the room.
Keene Dage was at the bar, doodling on a cocktail napkin.
“What are you having, Keene?” I asked, sitting next to him.
“Just finished a club soda,” he said, standing up. “Not much of a headline, is it?”
He walked off.
I waited until he was out of sight, nabbed his cocktail napkin, and left enough cash to cover our bill before hurrying out to follow my quarry. A cold wind made me hold my coat around me with both arms as I stepped outside. I didn’t see Frank or Jerry, but Keene Dage was waiting for the valet parking attendant.
I called out a greeting.
He stared stonily ahead.
“Now, Keene, this just isn’t like you. You’ve never been rude to me.”
Keene Dage was a big, rough-hewn man, and even at seventy he looked like he could build a skyscraper with his bare hands. He had been in the management end of construction for decades before he retired, but he had come up the hard way and hadn’t forgotten it.