“He’s sort of, I don’t know his official title, a general contractor. For the state, and sometimes the W.P.A. He seems to make sense out of complicated construction projects. Anyway, he helped build Treasure Island, if you can build such a thing, and I guess you can.”

I remembered reading about an R. W. Hewett in some of the pamphlets Culpepper had given me to read while I waited in his office earlier today. I asked Gail if “her” Hewett was the fellow who had brought in the Army Corps of Engineers for the building of the island.

“That’s our boy,” she nodded. “The island is his baby. He’ll be overseeing its conversion to an airport when the fair closes in October. Not what you’d call a profound guy, but he earns an honest living, does the right thing with the public’s money.” She looked a little alarmed. “Oh, but listen, when you meet her, please remember that you don’t know anything about her and Russ. It’s their shady little secret.” She fidgeted in her seat. “What about you, what are you hiding?”

So as not to seem evasive even as I was being so, I told her all kinds of useless details about myself. That I grew up in New York, worked there almost entirely until about ten years ago. That I was divorced. Why not let her know I’m single? “And then I decided I’d work the Midwest, towns I’d never been to.”

“You wanted to see new places, make new friends,” she put forward.

“No, I wanted to be anonymous. When you’re always in places where you have no past history and never will, you’re close to invisible. It’s like having a Saturday afternoon to yourself in a strange town and you walk into a football game between the Dayton Some-things and the Eureka So-and-Sos. The winning side jumps for joy; the losers are crushed. And lucky you, you don’t feel anything.”

She looked like she was trying to understand why I’d think this was a good idea, and ventured, “I get stage fright sometimes. I suppose it would help me if I thought I was playing for people I’d never see again.” She gave me a very direct look that I knew had something good in it for me. “Of course, some people I’d definitely want to see again. Do you come to California very often?”

I tried to give her an intelligent answer even as my mind was turning to creamed farina. “As a matter of fact, Gail, before this booking, I hadn’t been back to California since I first started playing in the business. I wasn’t even eighteen at the time.”

“Where were you playing?” she asked.

“About five feet from where you’re sitting.”