Free The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

"Please accept
    my apology," he said. "I'm sure you've been in the
    business long enough to understand that most independent operatives are scumbags. Even the corporate security people are frighteningly ugly beneath that slick
    exterior they maintain."
    "Thanks."
    "For what?"
    "For not thinking I have a slick exterior."
    "You're welcome," he said, glancing at my faded
    Levis and worn work-shirt and laughing. A bit too long
    to suit me. "Rosie explained everything, Mr. Sughrue,
    and I am sorry for acting so hastily."
    "That's okay," I said. "I'm used to it. "
    "Well, I am sorry," he repeated. I wished he would
    stop. "Rosie even said that you told her it was probably
    a waste of time and money," he said, then smiled sadly.
    "Let me tell you that it is definitely a lost cause."
    "Why's that?"
    "I was a student at Berkeley when Betty Sue ran
    away," he said, "and I spent all my spare time for two
    years searching for her in the city. Let me tell you, my
    transcript showed it too. I nearly didn't get into law
    school," he said dramatically. I wasn't impressed yet.
    "I never turned up a single lead: Not one. It was as if
    she walked away from my car that afternoon and off the
    edge of the world, off the face of the earth. I even had a
    friend from law school-he's in Washington-check her
    Social Security payment records, and there hasn't been
    a payment since she worked a part-time job the
    summer before she disappeared." He sucked on his
    whiskey glass, his hand trembling so badly that the lip
    60
    of the glass rattled against his teeth. "I can only assume
    that either she doesn't want to be found or that's she's
    dead. Though if she is, she didn't die in San Francisco
    or any place in the Bay Area. At least not in the first
    five years after she ran away."
    "How do you know that?"
    "I checked Jane Does in county morgues for that
    long," he said softly, as if the memory made him very
    tired.
    "You went to a lot of trouble. "
    " I was very much in love with her," he said, "and
    Betty Sue was a very special lady."
    "So I've heard," I said, then regretted it.
    "From whom?" he asked in a voice that tried to be
    casual.
    "Everybody."
    "Which everybody, specifically?"
    "Her drama teacher, for one," I said.
    "Gleeson," he snorted. "That faggot son of a bitch.
    He didn't know anything about Betty Sue, didn't care
    anything about her. He encouraged her acting so she
    would think he was a big man, that's all. She was good
    at it but she didn't even like it. She used to tell me,
    'They just look at me, Albert, they don't see me.' "
    "I thought Marilyn Monroe said that. "
    "Huh? Oh, perhaps she did," he said. "I'm sure it's a
    common psychological profile among actresses. Betty
    Sue was very sensitive about her looks. Sometimes
    when we would be having a . . . spat, she would cry
    and tell me, 'If I were ugly or crippled, you wouldn't
    love me.' "
    "Was she right?" I asked without meaning to.
    "Damn it, man," he answered sharply, "I haven't
    seen her in ten years and I'm . . . I'm still half in love
    with her."
    "How does your wife feel about that?"
    "We don't talk about it," he said with a sigh.
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    "Could Betty Sue have been serious enough about
    the acting to have run off to Hollywood or New York,
    something like that?"
    "Do girls still do that?" he asked, glancing up at me.
    "People still do everything they used to do," I said.
    "What about her?"
    "Oh, I don't think so," he said, then asked if he
    could freshen my drink. When I shook my head, he got
    up and made himself a new one. "I don't think so at
    all," he said from the bar. "She enjoyed the workrehearsals and all that-but for her, the play wasn't the thing." He sat back down. "She suffered from passing
    enthusiasms, you know," he said, as if it were a disease
    from which he had been spared. "One month it would
    be the theatre, the acting just a preparation for writing
    and directing, and the next month she would be
    planning to go to medical school and become a
    missionary doctor.