Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice Read Free Page B

chest-high drawer. “Actually I don’t have too much in my private information files on Joanna.” He drew out a manila folder. “Some composites from her modeling days, two or three clippings from when she opened a boat show or handed out oranges at a supermarket premiere.”
    Easy took the thin folder and flipped through it. “Smaller breasts than most of your girls.” Finally he closed the folder and handed it back.
    “Most vulnerable girls have small tits.” Hagopian refiled the material on the missing Joanna. “Anything else? You know I have the largest private clipping collection in greater Los Angeles.”
    “Know anything about a psychiatrist named Gill Jacobs?”
    Hagopian’s left eye narrowed as he thought. “Nope.” He walked to the end of the row, turned right. “I’ll check for you, but I think not. I’m sure he hasn’t written a book or been on any talk shows. He hasn’t invented a new therapy.” He turned down a new aisle of cabinets, stopping at a J drawer. “Is he someone Joanna may have run off with?”
    “It’s possible,” said Easy. “Except I have an appointment to see him over in Santa Monica late this afternoon. I think Joanna may be further away than Santa Monica.”
    “Not a good hideout town, no.” Hagopian gave his head a negative shake. “Nothing on Dr. Jacobs. What does her husband think, by the way?”
    “He thinks he needs me to find her,” answered Easy. “He says he has no notion about where she is, or who she’s with. Though he did give me a few leads on people and places.”
    Hagopian shut the J drawer. “I apologize for my morgue’s blankness on this Jacobs guy. Anything else?”
    “There’s a possibility she’s been spending time over in San Ignacio, at a place called the Maybe Club.”
    “Ah,” said Hagopian. “Joanna’s hitting a better-class rotten and rundown dive these days. The Maybe Club is a high-class sewer.” He trotted off, still in sweatsocks and no shoes, to a new row of files. “Here. A write-up from the San Ignacio Pilot weekend section a couple months back.” He unfolded a full tabloid page and gave it to Easy.
    “ ‘Controversial Club’s Owner Defends Liberal Views,’ ” Easy read the headline. “Is he in politics, too?”
    “He thinks it’s okay to screw other peoples’ mates,” explained Hagopian. “In San Ignacio that’s a pretty liberal view.”
    Easy looked at the photo of the Maybe proprietor leaning against the bar in his club. “This is Sunny Boy Sadler. …”
    “Right, onetime singing cowboy of the B movies,” said Hagopian. “I spent many happy afternoons in the Forties with his films. Little did I realize then that Sunny Boy was usually so juiced they had to practically glue him to his horse.”
    Easy refolded the clipping and rubbed it against his chin. “Despite his denials, the Maybe Club is a swingers’ hangout, isn’t it?”
    “A wife swappers’ enclave, sure.”
    “According to the rules of the game, Joanna would have to have a mate to swap, wouldn’t she?”
    “Yeah, somebody besides poor Jim sitting at home with a light burning in the window.”
    “I’ll have to find out who that was,” said Easy. He asked his friend to look up Darrel Skane, the psychodrama therapist Joanna was supposed to have seen, and a couple of friends whose names her husband had provided. Hagopian came up with one news story on Skane, nothing on the others.
    After refiling the Skane clip, Hagopian said, “You’re probably going to have to spend some time in San Ignacio.” He walked Easy back to the parlor area of his warehouse.
    “Yeah. Why?”
    Hagopian sat, reaching again for his tennis shoes: “No town is goofier than our own beloved LA, John, but San Ignacio runs a close second. They don’t say this in the guide books, but San Ignacio is a good town to stay out of,” he said. “And be careful you don’t step in any corruption.”
    “Corruption? I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
    “I listen in