The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross MacDonald

much time, and it might save trouble in the long run. You always say you’re more interested in preventing crime than punishing it.”
    “What crime do you have in mind?”
    “Murder for profit is a possibility. I don’t say it’s probable. I’m mainly concerned with saving a naïve young woman from a lot of potential grief.”
    “And saving yourself a lot of potential legwork.”
    “I’m doing my own legwork as usual. But I could knock on every door from here to San Luis Obispo and it wouldn’t tell me what I need to know.”
    “What, exactly, is that?”
    “Whether Q. R. Simpson, or Burke Damis, has a record.”
    Colton wrote the names on a memo pad. I’d succeeded in arousing his curiosity.
    “I suppose I could check with Sacramento.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly four. “If the circuits aren’t too loaded, we might get an answer before we close up for the night. You want to wait outside?”
    I read a law-enforcement trade journal in the anteroom, all the way through to the advertisements. Police recruits were being offered as much as four hundred and fifty dollars a month in certain localities.
    Peter Colton opened his door at five o’clock on the nose and beckoned me into his office. A teletype flimsy rustled in his hand.
    “Nothing on Burke Damis,” he said. “Quincy Ralph Simpsonis another story: he’s on the Missing Persons list, has been for a couple of weeks. According to his wife, he’s been gone much longer than that.”
    “His wife?”
    “She’s the one who reported him missing. She lives up north, in San Mateo County.”

chapter
7
    I T WAS CLEAR late twilight when the jet dropped down over the Peninsula. The lights of its cities were scattered like a broken necklace along the dark rim of the Bay. At its tip stood San Francisco, remote and brilliant as a city of the mind, hawsered to reality by her two great bridges—if Marin and Berkeley were reality.
    I took a cab to Redwood City. The deputy on duty on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice was a young man with red chipmunk cheeks and eyes that were neither bright nor stupid. He looked me over noncommittally, waiting to see if I was a citizen or one of the others.
    I showed him my license and told him I was interested in a man named Quincy Ralph Simpson. “The Los Angeles D.A.’s office says you reported him missing about two weeks ago.”
    He said after a ruminative pause: “Have you spotted him?”
    “I may have.”
    “Where?”
    “In the Los Angeles area. Do you have a picture of Simpson?”
    “I’ll see.” He went into the back of the office, rummaged through a drawerful of bulletins and circulars, and came back empty-handed. “I can’t find any, sorry. But I can tell you what he looks like. Medium height, about five-nine or -ten; medium build, one-sixty-five or so; black hair; I don’t know the color ofhis eyes; no visible scars or other distinguishing marks.”
    “Age?”
    “About my age. I’m twenty-nine. Is he your man?”
    “It’s possible.” Just barely possible. “Is Simpson wanted for anything?”
    “Non-support, maybe, but I don’t know of any complaint. What makes you think he’s wanted?”
    “The fact that you can describe him.”
    “I know him. That is, I’ve seen him around here.”
    “Doing what?”
    He leaned on the counter with a kind of confidential hostility. “I’m not supposed to talk about what I see around here, friend. You want to know anything about that, you’ll have to take it up with the boys upstairs.”
    “Is Captain Royal upstairs?”
    “The Captain’s off duty. I wouldn’t want to disturb him at home. You know him well?”
    “We worked together on a case.”
    “What case was that?”
    “I’m not supposed to talk about it, friend. Can you give me Mrs. Simpson’s address?”
    He reached under the counter and produced a phone book which he pushed in my direction. Q. R. Simpson was listed, at 2160 Marvista Drive. My taxi driver told me that