Nancy moved her hand toward a drawer in the rolltop desk, hesitated, then opened the drawer and took out a small rosewood frame. “I’m a good mother, Ray. And I wasn’t the worst wife, either.” She handed the frame to me. “I put it away when I knew you’d be coming in. That’s why I had you wait outside.”

The picture was slightly more recent than the one I kept in my wallet.

She asked, “Okay?”

I handed it back to her. “Yes. I’m sorry.” She gave me one slow nod. “And thanks for trying to help me.”

She started to put the frame on top of the desk, but thought better of it and kept it in her hands, facedown. “Thanks for coming out here,” she replied. “I’m sorry if it was a waste of your time. Maybe I’ll see you again before you leave town. Here’s my telephone number.” She scribbled something on the back of a business card and handed it to me. “If you lose it, I’m in the telephone book, under Carmack.” I put the card in my wallet and gave her a clumsy hug good-bye.

Just around the corner from Sally Rand’s was an area called the Scotch Village, and God knows I liked Scotch as well as the next man. In this case, the next man was on the bar stool to my left in the Village’s Tam O’Shanter Inn. Usually I didn’t drink before eight, but the way my meeting had ended, I needed one.

I probably didn’t need the two further that I had. I wasn’t ossified, but I wasn’t sober either. In the twenties, we used to call this state “soaked with a bar rag.” I walked out of the Scotch Village with my nerves still on edge, but the bathos in the booze was making me feel sorry for myself as well. A bad sign.

To reach the ferry back to Oakland, I had to walk through the enclosed sideshow part of the Gayway. I disliked freak shows intensely, particularly where they were real. Luckily, most of the attractions here were either circus art, such as sword swallowers or human pincushions, or patently fake, like the Headless Man, or this one here—

“Sealed in a glass coffin without food, water, or oxygen for over two months, owing to her amazing ability to suspend her heartbeat and intake of oxygen. Step inside and see this lovely young thing buried alive, and yet she survives!”