Danny reunites with Belle and asks about Ricky's whereabouts

Dan Davis’s meeting with Belle Gentry turns an old grievance into a search for Ricky: he sets aside revenge, questions Belle about her life with Miles and the fate of Hired Girl, Inc., and extracts the uncertain lead that Ricky went to live with her grandmother, possibly a woman named Haneker. Belle also reveals that Miles left his estate to his daughter, giving Dan a reason to hope she received something after the earlier seizure of his stock from her.

The Meeting and Its Immediate Purpose

Dan recognizes Belle and initially considers ending the encounter at once. He has concluded that revenge would not restore Pete and might only send him to jail. But he thinks Belle is likely to know where Ricky is, so he agrees to meet her. His purpose is not reconciliation: he wants information, and he refuses Belle’s invitation to dinner because he will not share a meal or drink with someone he does not regard as a friend.

Belle gives him the address of her cheap walk-up apartment in lower La Brea, a neighborhood not yet converted to the New Plan. Before he reaches her door, Dan infers from the accommodation that she has not retained the wealth she once bilked from him. When they meet, he sees that time and age have accomplished what revenge could not. The encounter’s balance of power has changed: Dan arrives with the grievance, but Belle’s diminished circumstances and their shared past make retribution feel belated rather than satisfying.

Questions About Ricky and Miles

Dan begins by reminding Belle that she and Miles drugged him before putting him into cold sleep. Belle responds that they acted for his own good because he was ill; Dan suspects she believes her own explanation. He moves past the argument to ask where Miles is and what happened to Ricky. Belle tells him that Miles died less than two years after Dan left them. She does not explain how he died, and Dan’s brief speculation about the circumstances remains unresolved.

Belle says Ricky went to live with her grandmother, but cannot give Dan a dependable location. She vaguely recalls Tucson, Yuma, or another place, perhaps Indio, then tries to redirect the conversation toward herself and Dan. Her uncertainty makes the exchange a limited breakthrough, not a reunion with Ricky or a confirmed destination. Dan persists because even an incomplete family connection may help him continue the search.

Hired Girl and the Aftermath of the Dispute

Dan also asks how Belle and Miles fared with the Mannix people and what they did with Hired Girl, Inc., after the Mannix deal fell through. Belle says they ran the company. After Jake Schmidt left, Miles wanted to shut it down, while Belle thought they should hire a capable foreman and continue; she believed the company would have been worth more that way. Her account exposes a disagreement over the company’s future, though it does not settle every detail of what followed.

The exchange touches on a cache of papers placed inside Flexible Frank during a hurried move. Dan recalls that he had built a temporary shelf across the wheelchair base for his tools, making it possible that Miles put the working files there. Belle says Miles had stuffed them inside the machine the night they moved it for protection. Dan does not pursue the question of how many papers could fit: the alleged crimes are already thirty years old, and he wants to know what became of the company. The buried files thus surface as a piece of unresolved history rather than the meeting’s main discovery.

Belle’s Loss and the Lead She Provides

Belle’s bitterness sharpens when she complains that Miles cheated her. She says he left everything to his daughter after Belle nursed him when he was injured, and insists Ricky was not even his biological child. For Dan, the disclosure is unexpectedly good news: although his own stock had earlier been taken away from Ricky, Miles’s will apparently gave her an inheritance. Belle’s grievance therefore supplies information that matters beyond her own resentment.

Dan tries again to pin down Ricky’s grandmother’s name and address. Belle becomes angry when she accuses him of having been in love with Ricky, and her mention of the cat provokes Dan’s anger because of Pete. He restrains himself from pursuing that outburst and asks how Miles addressed letters to Ricky’s family. Belle first refuses to talk, then says the grandmother’s name was Haneker, or something like it. She remembers seeing the woman only once, in court, when she came with Ricky to deal with Miles’s will, shortly after his death. The surname and courtroom recollection are the meeting’s most specific leads, but Belle’s uncertainty prevents Dan from treating them as a verified address.

Narrative Function

The scene shifts Dan’s attention from an old desire for revenge to the more immediate task of finding Ricky. Belle cannot offer a reliable location, yet her accounts of Miles’s death, the company’s closure, and the will fill in parts of the history Dan left behind. The contrast between Belle’s self-justifying recollections and Dan’s focused questions makes the encounter both an interrogation and a source of reluctant disclosure: the past remains compromised, but it can still point him toward Ricky.