"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.
61
"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.