Dying to Tell (27 page)

I was going to keep track of him at the depot, with the bike and all, but I only lost him for a few minutes. He was waiting for a bus. When he got on one, I tagged along behind. I guess you don't know the city well?"

"Not at all."

"OK. Well, with the number of stops plus the traffic congestion, it's no problem to keep up with a bus on a bike. We crossed Market that's the main downtown street and headed north into Chinatown, where Clyde got off and hopped onto a California Street cable car. He rode that all the way to the terminus on Van Ness, then walked up into Pacific Heights. That's a pretty exclusive neighbourhood, with views of the ocean. I had to hang back quite a lot, so as not to be seen. But Clyde obviously didn't think he was being followed, least of all by me. He crossed Lafayette Park and went into an apartment block. A smart-looking place, porte red and all. I couldn't follow him in without giving myself away. And I was too far back to see which bell he'd rung."

"So what did you do?"

"I sat in the park, sheltered by the trees, with a good view of the entrance to the block, waiting to see how long Clyde would stay. After about twenty minutes, he came out. But he wasn't alone. There was this .. . old guy with him."

"How old?"

"About the age you said this guy here' she pointed to the photograph 'would be now."

"Did he look like him?"

"Maybe." She peered at Townley's face. "It's hard to say. People change. My grandfather's in his seventies and I've seen pictures of him as a young man in which he's barely recognizable. So, it's possible. That's about all I can say. They crossed over to enter the park, so I had to hightail it out of there. I never got a close view of the guy. He looked old -white hair and beard, cut short but he looked good for his age: upright, neither fat nor thin, holding himself together well. That's as much of a description as I can give you."

"Have you seen him since?"

"No. I went up there a few days ago after Clyde had gone away and hung around the park for a couple of hours, hoping I might see him coming or going. But he never showed." (Maybe, it occurred to me, because he too had gone to a funeral.) "That's when I decided to place the ad and see if I got an answer."

"Well, you did."

"Yuh, but not quite the one I was hoping for."

"Don't be so despondent, Maris. Seems to me I can do something you're not really in a position to do."

"What's that?"

"Well, if you started asking questions at the apartment block, word might get back to Clyde, right? Which I gather you're anxious to avoid."

"I sure am."

"So, let me ask the questions for you." I smiled benignly at her. "All you have to do is give me the address of the block."

The autumn light was failing by the time I got off the train back in San Francisco. According to Maris, the bus Clyde had caught from the station was the number 30, so I hung around the crowded stops until a 30 showed up, got aboard and stayed on while it traversed the centre and climbed the hill into Chinatown. The rush hour was in spate and nobody was going anywhere fast. When we crossed the cable-car tracks I got off, faithfully retracing the route Clyde had taken the day Maris had followed him.

The California Street cable car, crammed with tourists and home-going commuters, lumbered its up-and-down way west through Chinatown and Nob Hill towards Pacific Heights. It was slow-going all right, but the gradients would have been too much for me to manage on a bike, even at Maris's age. I could only thank God for Californian gym culture. Without it, we'd have had no idea where Clyde had gone.

Why he'd gone there was still something of a mystery, though less of one to me than to his sorely puzzled girlfriend. I got off at the end of the cable-car tracks on Van Ness Avenue and, finding myself at the door of the Holiday Inn, trailed in after a clutch of tourists and booked a room. From

there I called Maris to let her know where I was staying. Her number was unavailable again, so I had to leave a message. Then I headed back out, armed with a complimentary street map from reception and walked the two blocks to Lafayette Park as night closed over the city.

Egret Apartments stood close to the north-western corner of the park. It was a tall, slender, softly lit Art Deco block, presenting a broad and handsome frontage to Laguna Street and a high, narrow flank to the night-blanked vista of San Francisco Bay.

There was a gleaming brass bank of numbered bell-pushes beside the double-doored entrance, but no list of residents by name. Since I took it as certain that Townley if he was Townley would be living there under an alias, such a list wouldn't have told me much anyway. And the porter, who I could see leafing through an evening newspaper behind a lacquer-topped counter in the lobby, wasn't going to volunteer information about the residents to a stranger for no good reason. I wandered on west, turning the problem over in my mind.

Three blocks took me to the neighbourhood shopping street, where the scents of coffee and cinnamon wafting out of a wayside cafe reminded me that I was more than a little hungry. I sat on a stool near the door, munching a waffle and sipping a super-heated hot chocolate while I formulated a tentative plan. If I was going to strike any kind of terms with Townley, I first had to contact him. The chances were that he, like Clyde, was out of town. When he returned, I had to be ready for him. And finding out what he called himself was the obvious way to start. But how?

An answer came to me as I watched customers coming and going at the bookstore next door. After I'd panted down the last of my chocolate, I went in and bought a glossy tourist guide to Japan. A plastic bag bearing the name of the shop came with it. Then I dug out the Tokyo street map I'd been given at Narita Airport, marked with the names and locations of the Golden Rickshaw and Eurybia Shipping, and slipped it inside the cover of the book. I reckoned that was sure to get Townley's attention.

Back at Egret Apartments, the porter was still absorbed in the sports pages of the San Francisco Examiner. He looked up as I entered and laid the paper aside. "Good evening, sir."

"Good evening. I wonder if you can help me with a tricky little problem. Last week, I got chatting to a guy in a cafe down on Fillmore Street who happened to mention that he lives here. We'd both bought books at the bookstore next door and, when we left, well, our books got mixed up. We took the wrong ones. He got mine, I got his." I flourished the bag. "Easy mistake to make."

"You want to do a swap, right?"

That'd certainly be neat. Unfortunately, I didn't get the gentleman's name."

"What did he look like?"

"Well, knocking on, but in good nick. Short white hair and beard. Carried himself well. Sixties, seventies that sort of age."

"Sounds like our Mr. Duthie. He's out of town right now. Back in a few days. If you care to leave his book, with a note of your name and phone number .. ."

"OK. Do you have a piece of paper?" He handed me a sheet and I scribbled on it: I know who you are. I guess you know who I am. We need to talk. I will phone after your return. I slipped that in beside the map and passed the bag to the porter. "I can't be reached on the phone, I'm afraid. Maybe I could call Mr. Duthie when he's back. Do you know when that'll be? You said a few days."

"By Friday, for sure."

"OK. And the number?"

"Here's the general number." He gave me a small card. "There's always someone here."

"Thanks a lot." I'd hoped for Mr. Duthie's personal number, but perhaps I'd hoped for too much. I'd got a toe-hold in his life and that was enough. Smiling, I made my exit.

Back at the Holiday Inn, I checked the phone book, but found no Duthie listed at Egret Apartments. Somehow, that wasn't really a surprise. Then I called Maris again. This time, her phone was switched on.

"Clyde's friend is called Duthie. He's also away at the moment. I'll speak to him when he gets back, which I'm assured will be by the end of the week."

"How will you explain tracing him without dragging me into it?"

"I'll say Rupe mentioned his name."

"And then?"

"I'll see what he says in response."

"What if he says nothing?"

"I don't plan to give him that option."

The brave words were partly attributable to my febrile state of mind. Chronic stress and a haywire body clock were playing havoc with my normally acute instinct for self-preservation. I angled round the corner in search of a congenial bar, settled for an uncongenial one instead, and, two-thirds of the way through my second Ragin' River, was hit by a runaway lorry-load of accumulated fatigue. A totter back to the hotel was swiftly followed by a descent into sleep several levels deeper than the norm.

Half of Wednesday had vanished when I rejoined the ranks of the conscious. Since my itinerary wasn't exactly clogged, this represented no problem whatever. After a large lunchtime breakfast, I became a tourist for the afternoon, riding the cable cars to Fisherman's Wharf and shelling out for a boat trip round the Bay.

As the boat nosed out through the swell towards the rust-red span of Golden Gate Bridge, I thought some more about the cut-and-run policy Shintaro Yamazawa had tacitly recommended to me. It was still tempting, but now only in principle. I was going to see this thing through whatever it was, wherever it led.

On my way back to the hotel, I stopped off at the uncongenial bar. All the talk there was of sensational developments in the presidential election that I dimly recalled noticing some mention of in the paper. They might as well have been discussing the presidency of Mars for all I cared. I was engaged in my own brand of politics, but the time for counting votes hadn't yet arrived.

It is, however, as they say, always later than you think. At the Holiday Inn, Maris was waiting for me. And it was pretty obvious from the expression on her face that she didn't want to reassure herself that I'd enjoyed the sights.

"I got another answer to my ad."

"Who from?"

"Mr. Duthie." There was an accusation detectable in the anxiety that I could hear bubbling in her voice. "He wants to meet me."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There was less than an hour to go till Maris's eight o'clock appointment with Mr. Chester Duthie in the bar of the Fairmont Hotel. I knew her apprehensiveness about the encounter would turn to terror if I told her what really lay behind it. Even so, she seemed grateful to me for volunteering to take her place, though not as grateful as I was to her for rejecting Duthie's suggestion that she call on him at home.

"He's bound to tell Clyde about this, Gary. I absolutely wanted to avoid him finding out."

"Maybe I can persuade Mr. Duthie to keep his mouth shut."

"How?"

"Not sure. But there may be a way."

"Yuh? Like there was a way for you to approach him without implicating me? Seems to me you've done a fine job of landing me right in it." (This was true, if faintly unfair. She'd done a good deal of the landing herself.)

"Hold on. He doesn't know you're Clyde's girlfriend."

"It won't take him long to work that out."

"I think it might."

"Why?"

"Because, when he meets me, your involvement will fall right off the top of his agenda. I promise."

That was one promise I could feel confident of keeping, although the exact nature of Mr. Duthie's agenda was disturbingly unclear. He'd obviously rumbled us big time. It was idle to suppose he hadn't connected Maris's advert with the anonymous book donor. But he couldn't have made all the connections. There was a chance I'd be able to take him unawares. (And an even bigger one that it would be the other way round.) At least the venue for our meeting sounded safe. Maris and I took the cable car up to Nob Hill, where the Fairmont and several other swanky hotels competed for panoramic views. We agreed to meet in an hour or so at the Ritz-Carlton, a little further down California Street. Making the appointment, I was aware that the hour or so in question could prove to contain more than the average sixty minutes' worth.

The bar of the Fairmont was quiet too late for cocktails, too early for after-dinner drinks. Spotting Mr. Chester Duthie wasn't difficult. He looked at his ease, if not in his element, dressed in a dark-blue suit and open-neck maroon shirt an outfit that only emphasized the whiteness of his hair and beard, as well as the robin's-egg blue of his eyes. The set of his shoulders and the tilt of his chin suggested he'd made few compromises to age or indeed very much else. His face was lined, but frail was the last description that fitted him. Even sitting in a leather armchair, he had an unmistakable physical presence. It would have been easy to feel afraid of him. And that's exactly what I did feel.

For a man expecting to meet a twenty-year-old girl, Chester Duthie met my approach with a noticeable lack of surprise. I had a nasty feeling he'd known exactly who I was and what I wanted from the moment I'd entered the bar.

"Mr. Duthie?"

"Yuh." He drew on his cigarette. "You must be the guy I met in the cafe on Fillmore Street last week." His voice was surprisingly soft, as if raising it had long since ceased to be a necessity. "I believe your name's Lance Bradley."

A denial would have been pointless, even if my expression hadn't given me away as I feared it must have done. "And I

believe your name's Stephen Townley," I said, trying to recover the ground I'd already lost.

"Why don't you sit down?"

"OK."

"Cigarette?"

"No thanks."

"How about a drink?"

"Fine."

He summoned the waiter with a raised forefinger. "Another large J and B on the rocks for me and the same for the gentleman."

"I don't take ice in my whisky," I said after the waiter had bustled away.

"Time you started."

"If you say so."

"Let's hope you take the same line on some other recommendations I have for you."

"Can't promise."

"No? Well, promises are cheap. Look at Miss Nielsen's promise to meet me here."

"She's just worried about Clyde. Nothing else."

"I guessed that. Just like I guessed you'd turn up in her place."