Deadfall (Nameless Detective) (18 page)

“Did you argue about anything else at that time?”

“We did not. Why do you ask that?”

“Your housekeeper said he was upset when he left the house. Any idea what he was upset about?”

“None whatsoever.”

“What did you do with the box after he gave it to you?”

“Put it with the other pieces in his collection.”

“Left it there after his death?”

“Until the next day, yes. Then I removed it.”

“Hid it, you mean.”

“Hid it. Yes. Are you satisfied now?”

“For the time being.”

“I suppose that means I’ll be hearing from you again.”

“I thought you wanted to hear from me,” I said. “I thought you were very concerned about things I’ve been finding out.”

She hung up on me again.

On the way down California Street I called Kerry’s number; I was starved—all I’d had to eat today had been some toast for breakfast—and I thought maybe she wanted to go out for an early dinner. But her line was busy. So I drove on home, and tried her again from there. Still busy. Talking to one of her women friends, maybe. Or her mother, Cybil, who was a former pulp writer and lived in Pasadena with Kerry’s father, Ivan the Terrible, also an ex-pulp writer, and who would cheerfully talk your ear off if you gave her half a chance.

I rummaged around in the refrigerator. There wasn’t anything in there I wanted to eat except an apple, and it turned out to be mushy and I threw it away after one bite. I opened the cupboard and found a can of ravioli and opened it and ate the little buggers cold, right out of the can. Kerry would have been horrified, but I’ve been eating cold ravioli for years; it’s the only way to eat the canned variety, which isn’t really ravioli at all. The kind native Italians make by hand and serve hot,
that’s
ravioli. The cold canned stuff is a whole different taste treat.

At five o’clock I tried Kerry again and finally got through to her. She’d been talking to Cybil, as it turned out—filling her in on our visit to the Church of the Holy Mission and the number she’d done on the Right Reverend Daybreak. She said dinner sounded fine, but she’d just had a sandwich and wouldn’t be hungry again for a while. We settled on seven-thirty and a fish restaurant we both liked out on Geary Boulevard.

I sat down in the living room with a can of beer. So now where was I, after the session with Margaret Prine and the telephone conversation with Alicia Purcell? I now knew for sure that Mrs. Purcell had hidden her possession of the Hainelin box from the authorities, that she’d sold it to Eldon Summerhayes, and that Margaret Prine now had it. So? Did the box have any direct bearing on Kenneth Purcell’s death? It didn’t look that way, unless Alicia was lying about her reasons for secreting the box, or holding something back. But why would she lie? What would she hold back? I had no good answer in either case. And that put me right back where I’d been two days ago, smack up against a dead end. The only concrete lead I’d turned up with all my running around and maneuvering, it seemed, was Danny Martinez. He was the key to the whole case. Without him, there was no way to make sense out of it, to put it all together.

Or was there?

The telephone rang. I went into the bedroom and answered it, and Tom Washburn said, “I just came back from the house. I … well, I couldn’t make myself go over there until today. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t.”

“Don’t apologize, Mr. Washburn. Did you find anything in Leonard’s papers?”

“Nothing pertaining to Richard Dessault or that man Ozimas.”

“Something else?”

“Well, I don’t know. A photograph.”

“What sort of photograph?”

“You’d better see it for yourself. I don’t know what it means; it probably doesn’t mean anything. But I think you should look at it.”

“Are you still at the house?”

“No. I’m back at Fred’s.”

“What’s the address there again?”

He told me, and I said, “I could come by around seven or so.” On my way to Kerry’s, I was thinking. “Is that all right with you?”

“Yes, fine. I’ll expect you.”

A photograph, I thought as I rang off. Which reminded me of the one I’d taken out of Danny Martinez’s farmhouse. I found it in the pocket of my other suit coat and looked at it again. And it bothered me again in the same vague way it had yesterday in my office. Or was it something associated with it that was responsible for the bother? I couldn’t seem to get a grasp on whatever it was. Too many things whirling around inside my head, too many confusing elements that kept me from seeing any of them clearly.

I started out into the kitchen to get another beer, and the telephone rang again. I did an about-face back into the bedroom, picked up, and a familiar voice said, “This is Melanie Purcell.”

She was one of the last people I expected to hear from. I said, “Yes, Melanie,” and managed to keep the surprise out of my voice. “What can I do for you?”

“You still want to see Richie?” The way she said it, I thought she might be angry or uptight about something.

“Yes, I do. Where is he?”

“At the houseboat. He came back a little while ago.” There was a pause. “He was gone two days,” she said.

“Gone where?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I don’t care anyway, not anymore. That’s why I called you.”

“Where are you?”

“One of the neighbor’s boats. I slipped out when he got into the shower. Listen, I think he’s going out again pretty soon. He acts all excited about something.”

“I can be there in half an hour,” I said. “Can you keep him around that long?”

“I guess I can try. But you better hurry.”

“What kind of car does he drive?”

“A white Trans-Am.”

“All right. Thirty minutes, Melanie.”

It was full dark when I got to Mission Creek. There was not much of a moon tonight and patchy clouds mostly obscured its thin, pale hook-shape; but nightlights strung along the floating walkway and aglow in boat windows and portholes, lights both moving and stationary on the freeway terminus high above, made it easy enough to see. I cut my headlamps just after I made the turn off Fourth onto Channel Street, beyond Blanche’s Café.

On the way down here I had been of two minds as to what to do about Richie Dessault, assuming he was still around when I arrived. One was to brace him, see what I could wrangle out of him by guile and intimidation; the other was to hang around out of sight, wait for him to leave, and then follow him and see where he led me. I had pretty much decided that following him was the best of the two alternatives. Melanie had said he was excited about something. Maybe his emotional state had nothing to do with Danny Martinez or the Purcell murders—maybe he was just tired of Melanie, if not of Melanie’s money, and had found himself another bunny to burrow up with for a while. But if his excitement was related to the case, then I stood a better chance of finding out what it was by shagging him. I could brace him later, when we got to where he was going; or tomorrow or the day after that, if tonight didn’t pan out.

There was nobody that I could see on the embankment, and all of the dozen or so vehicles slotted in at its edge were dark. I let the car drift off the road to the left, lightless, and coasted to a stop in the shadows cast by an express company warehouse. From there I had a good look at the parked cars. One of them was a white Trans-Am. It was directly across the embankment from the nearest of the access ramps, fifty yards or so from where I was and at an angle to my left.

I shut off the engine, rolled down the window so I could listen to the night sounds. The swishing passage of freeway traffic, a ship’s horn somewhere in China Basin or out on the Bay, a woman’s skittish laughter from one of the anchored boats—all distant and random. Otherwise the creek area, surrounded as it was by industrial outfits and the Southern Pacific yards, all almost entirely deserted on a Sunday night, seemed even more isolated and self-contained than it did during the daylight hours.

I didn’t expect much of a wait and I didn’t have one. Less than two minutes had passed when Dessault came hurrying up the near ramp and through its security gate; the nightlight there made a pale nimbus of his blond hair, letting me identify him.

He moved across the flat of the embankment, startling a couple of the geese that appeared to live there—I could hear their annoyed honking, see one of them flapping its wings—and got into his Trans-Am. I waited until I heard the deep-throated roar of the engine before I started mine again. He backed out my way, pointed west toward Sixth; and that was the direction he went, not driving fast but not driving slow either.

I let him get a hundred yards down Channel Street before I put on my headlights and pulled away from the warehouse. Following him dark would have been foolish business. If he was the kind of driver who checked his rearview mirror periodically, there was enough light in the area to let him see what was behind him; and he would be a lot more apt to pay attention to a car without its lights on than he would to just another set of headlights.

He made the turn onto Sixth and I did the same. It was deserted and much darker down along here—drayage and freight-forwarding companies and part of the SP freight yards on the east side, and on the west, fenced-in lots mounded with creosote-soaked lumber and other materials that the railroad used for repair work. Here and there nightlights cast thin yellow wedges above empty loading docks. The only other illumination came from the beams on Dessault’s car and the beams on mine.

We went about a quarter of a mile. Dessault was nearing the intersection with Sixteenth when he surprised me by making an abrupt left-hand turn; the Trans-Am disappeared between two of the warehouses. When I got to that point I found an unpaved, unmarked access road that served a drayage firm on one side and some kind of truck storage yard on the other: big diesel cabs and unhooked trailers looming up out of the darkness, both inside and outside a high chain-link fence. The Trans-Am was about seventy-five yards along, its lights picking up a low, metal Stop sign anchored where the road widened out past the warehouse and the storage yard.

I slowed, thinking, Some kind of shortcut. He knows this area, he knows a faster way to get where he’s going.

Up ahead, the Trans-Am moved on past the Stop sign and its lights splashed over rough ground that fronted a criss-cross of SP sidings; splashed over a string of oil tankers, another of boxcars, as Dessault veered to the right. I made the turn just before he passed out of sight, and when he was gone I punched the accelerator a little. I didn’t want him to get too far away.

Even though the Trans-Am was no longer visible I could see the glow of its lights against the dark sky, bouncing erratically because of the uneven ground. And then, suddenly, they stopped bouncing and the glow wasn’t there any more … as if he’d braked fast and shut off the beams. And just as suddenly I knew that was what he
had
done—I knew this wasn’t a shortcut at all, I knew what it
was
, and the knowledge put the brassy taste of fear in my mouth.

Trap, goddamn trap. And I had blundered into it like a witless amateur.

I spun the wheel hard left, sent the car into a slashing turn that made the tires squeal and spin up gravel and dirt. But it was too late by then—too damn late. The trap car was hidden over that way, in the clotted black alongside the last of the drayage company’s loading docks; it came shooting out at me, dark and formless, like some kind of phantom. Before I could complete the U-turn, it banged into my right front fender … impact, crunch of metal … and the wheel twisted out of my hands and the car slewed around and came to a shuddering stop that stalled the engine. I shoved back off the wheel and reached for the door lock with my left hand, for the flashlight under the dash with my right —the only weapon I had in there.

But it was too late for that, too. They weren’t all in the trap car; one of them had been hidden somewhere else nearby, on foot, and he got to my door before I could lock it and yanked it open and lunged in at me. I fought him, but he was big, bull-strong: I had an impression of youth, of mindless exhilaration at what he was doing. He got one hand on the collar of my suit jacket, the other bunched in my hair, and hauled me out of the car.

The other two were there by then, big and young like the first one—faceless shapes in the darkness, without humanity of any kind, a trio of androids programmed for violence while the one who had activated them stood off somewhere, maybe watching, maybe not, depending on his stomach for this kind of thing. I fought all three of them in a kind of frenzy and for a few seconds I held my own, I did some damage: kicked one of them somewhere in the body, heard him grunt, hit another one in the face and felt his spittle spray my cheek. But I had no real chance against them, none at all. One of them kicked my legs out from under me and once they got me down on the ground I was finished.

I kept trying to fight, trying to get my legs under me again—until one of them hit me or kicked me in the head, full-force, behind the right ear. Then everything went a little crazy. I heard somebody yelling … and it was me because there was blood in my mouth and throat and my voice got caught in it, mired in it, and I felt as if I were strangling. All three of them were using their feet on me now and out of the pain and the craziness a thought swirled up: Cover your head, cover your groin, don’t let them hurt you down there. I managed to roll onto my side, to curl up with one arm over my head, one hand covering my privates. And they kept kicking me, and after awhile I stopped feeling anything and just lay there curled like a fetus with the blood raging in my ears, gagging, fighting desperately not to cry or whimper, I will not cry or whimper, I will not give them the satisfaction of that. Then they weren’t kicking me anymore and one of them was shouting something; but I couldn’t understand him and when he realized that he got down beside me, rolled me onto my back, yelled his message in my ear. Even then the words were filtered through the blood-roar, so that only some of them got through to me.

“Lay off,” he seemed to be saying. “No more investigate. Understand ? No more, drop the Purcell, next time kill you, understand?”

I passed out.

I must have passed out because the next thing I was aware of was pain, savage and pulsing in my left side, my head, my left hand. But nobody was hurting me anymore, or looming over me or shouting at me, and I sensed they were gone. I was still lying on my back, choking a little on my own blood. I turned my head, coughed my throat clear.

Quiet now, no more roaring in my ears, just the far-off warning blast from a locomotive. Hear that lonesome whistle blow, ask not for whom it blows it blows for thee, oh God they did a job on me, they beat me good, what if I wet my pants? I was suddenly terrified that I had lost control of my bladder. I felt down there—and I was dry. That calmed me, made me more lucid. I tried to open my eyes; the right one was stuck shut and when I put my hand up to it it felt swollen, sticky. Through the other eye I could see the clouds moving overhead, then a little of the crescent moon, then only the restless clouds again. The locomotive’s air horn sounded another time. Couplings clattered distantly; there was the steel-on-steel rattle of a train moving through the night.

I rolled over onto my side. The pain was so bad I almost bit through my lower lip. But I couldn’t just lie there, it was cold, I was aware of the cold all at once and I started to shake.
Freeze to death out here
. I tried to get up; the pain drove me back down again. I looked around for my car and it was there, over near the loading dock, driver’s door shut; the headlights were dark, they’d shut them off before they left because lights might attract attention. It seemed a long way off, halfway across the world. Phone, the mobile phone … what if they’d disabled it? Can’t drive in this condition. Can’t even walk.

I started crawling toward the car. It was slow work; I blacked out once, or maybe it was twice, and all the way the pain was like something eating at me, something tearing at me with claws and a muzzle that was smeared with my blood.

Pay for this, Dessault. Make you
pay
for this.

And I kept crawling, and finally I reached the door and pulled myself up a little at a time until I could take hold of the handle and depress the latch and pull it open. I crawled up onto the seat in stages, using the door handle and then the steering wheel. Lay there gasping, hurting.

The phone, pick it up.

Picked it up. Listened.

Working, it still worked.

I made a call somehow, didn’t even think about who I was calling, just did it. Please be home … and he was home. Eberhardt. I tried to talk to him but my mouth was broken, the words came out in little broken pieces that didn’t seem to make any sense. But they must have made sense to him, after a while, because I heard him say, “Don’t move, for God’s sake don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance. I’ll come there myself.”

I lay on the seat feeling dizzy, feeling sick. Knew I was going to vomit and tried to push myself back out of the car and couldn’t do it and vomited on the floorboards.

Passed out again.

And came to when the ambulance got there, and talked to the medics, and talked a little to Eberhardt when he showed up.

And passed out for the last time on the way to Mission Emergency Hospital.

Two cracked ribs. Concussion. Dislocated middle finger on my left hand. Bruises, cuts, abrasions too numerous to list. I was lucky, the doctor said. There didn’t seem to be any serious damage to my eye. Nor any internal damage. That was the main thing: no internal damage.

That’s what you think, doc. There’s internal damage, all right—plenty of it inside my head. And somebody’s going to pay for it. Dessault, Melanie, the three sluggers, anybody else who might have had a hand in this.

Lay off the Purcell case?

No way. No frigging way!