his pocket organizer in his left hand, his gold-plated International Surety pencil in the right. Anybody could get a wooden International Surety pencil, or a plastic company pen, but only top performers got the gold-plated models.
“Did you want to talk to Joe?” van Arndt asked.
“He actually saw the car stolen? Saw the thief get in and drive off in it? How did he start the car? Were the keys left in it? Or did he tow it away?”
“I didn’t see. Wally and I were dancing. The orchestra was playing Star Dust. Roberts must have gone outside for a breath of air. I’m afraid he’d had a few sips more than he should have and he wanted to clear his head. At least, that’s what I think.”
“Yes, yes.” Lindsey kept his patience.
“Well, you tell it, Wally, m’dear.”
“He came in shouting,” Wallis furnished. “Waving his arms and shouting, ‘It’s gone, they stole the Dusie!’ And then he fell down.”
“What?”
“Right on the dance floor.”
Van Arndt said, “He was dizzy. Poor chap passed out. He’d had a bit too much, I mentioned that, didn’t I? I’m afraid the excitement and the sudden change did it. You know, it was pretty stuffy in here. Roberts had just gone outside a few minutes before for some fresh air, when he saw the car taken and came running back in.”
“And you say he left? He took a cab? I hope he didn’t try to drive.”
“No. He gave his statement to Officer Gutiérrez. Did the best he could, anyway.” Van Arndt looked up. Lindsey followed his gaze. Mrs. van Arndt had tipped her glass up and emptied the last drop from it onto the tip of her tongue. She swayed to her feet and made her way from the room.
“Roberts,” Lindsey prompted.
“Dr. Bernstein took him home.”
“Dr. Bernstein?”
“Martha Bernstein.”
“M.D.?”
“Ph.D.”
Lindsey put on his best listening-with-eagerness expression, his gold-plated pencil poised to jot notes.
“Dr. Bernstein is in the Sociology Department at Cal.”
“She an Art Deco enthusiast?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But she’s a member of the club? Or was she here as guest?”
“Oh, she’s a member all right. I was against her, too. Like young Roberts. But she insisted on joining.”
“You couldn’t stop her? Don’t you have a membership committee, or a screening, what do you call it? A blackball?”
“The Kleiner Mansion is municipal property. We have to let anyone join who wants, if we want to meet here. I’d be all for moving to private property, myself. The Kleiner Mansion is a wonderful meeting place, but we could get another clubhouse where we could run our own affairs. But the board of directors voted to stay, so we have to deal with these bureaucrats and their pettifogging. Oh!”
He raised his eyebrows and grinned, got to his feet. Mrs. van Arndt had returned, her martini glass filled again with sparkling clear fluid, an olive floating in it like a red-irised, green eyeball harpooned on a sliver of pine. Van Arndt took his wife’s free hand and raised it to his lips. “So good to see you again, m’dear.”
“I couldn’t stay away,” Mrs. van Arndt said. “Have you boys been entertaining yourselves? Haven’t you offered Mr. Lincoln a drink, Ollie? Where are your manners?”
“Lindsey,” Lindsey said.
“Mr. Lindsey, please forgive me. Would you care…?”
“No, thank you. What about Dr. Bernstein?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. van Arndt made a sour face.
“You don’t like her either?” Lindsey asked.
“Don’t like her looks, don’t like her manners, don’t like her clothes, don’t like her attitude.”
“I can see you don’t like her. But—could you be more specific than that? Did she do or say something in particular?”
“I don’t think she loves 1929.”
Lindsey felt his eyes go out of focus. Wasn’t anyone willing to cope with the present? He had enough trouble, constantly dragging his mother back from 1953, her favorite year, or from whatever other era she happened to wander into.
In Mother’s case there was a reason if not an excuse. She’d been a pregnant young wife, little more than a teenaged bride, when Lindsey’s father was killed aboard ship in the Korean war. Mother had never got over the shock. She was forever expecting her husband to come home, forever waiting to resume her life. Her doctors had urged Lindsey to institutionalize her, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do it.
But now this—what kind of craziness was this about 1929?
“She lives now,” Mrs. van Arndt amplified.
“Don’t we all?”
“I mean,” she paused and sipped at her glass, swaying slightly and rubbing her cheek against her husband’s tuxedo shoulder. “I mean, we all formed our club because we all love Art Deco and the era it symbolizes. That’s what the New California Smart Set is all about. We all know that things used to be better than they are now. Some of our older members actually recall the old days. They were here, they lived through the Crash of ’29.”
“We almost called it the HarCooHoo Club,” van Arndt interrupted. “In honor of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Those were the days, Mr. Lindsey.”
Mrs. van Arndt said, “After the Crash, everything went to hell in a handbasket, Mr. Lindsey.”
He noted that she got his name right that time. “But not Dr. Bernstein?”
“Tweedy mannish woman.” Her eyes flashed, not so tipsily. “She studies us. Studies us, can you imagine that? Like specimens under her microscope.”
The van Arndts had sat down facing Lindsey. Van Arndt took his wife’s free hand between his two and massaged it. To Lindsey he said, “She gets agitated now and then. But it has become a sordid, ugly world, Lindsey. You wouldn’t live in a slum if you could move to a decent neighborhood, would you? As far as I’m concerned, the whole world has turned into a giant slum.”
Lindsey said, “What do you mean, studies you, Mrs. van Arndt?”
She had lifted her martini glass to her lips and looked at Lindsey, apparently baffled by the challenge of trying to sip and speak simultaneously.
Her husband answered for her. “Dr. Bernstein wants to publish a paper about us. Publish or perish,
