The Stalker (4 page)

“Shut up, you fat ugly useless bitch,” the limping man whispered softly, fervently. He turned and began to walk rapidly toward the south end of the level.

The fat woman made a surprised hennish sound deep in the folds of her throat. Spots of crimson fired her cheeks. She raised one trembling arm and pointed it after him, still making the sounds; fat jiggled on her upper arm like an inverted gelatin mold. The other passengers watched her. They had not heard the limping man’s words.

A moment later, he stopped at an enclosed booth representing one of the car rental agencies. A man in an ostentatious Madras jacket smiled unctuously at him from behind the counter. “Yes, sir?”

“I want a compact Chevrolet or Ford, light-colored, quiet engine.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“I’ll need it for a week. Ten days at the most.”

“May I see some identification, please? Driver’s license and any major credit card.”

The limping man set the pasteboard suitcase on the floor at his feet and took his wallet from the inside pocket of his faded brown suit jacket; he did not set the briefcase down. The unctuous man studied the driver’s license and an oil company credit card in the proffered wallet, nodded, and then consulted a list by his left elbow. “Would a Ford Mustang be acceptable, sir?”

“That’s all right.”

The unctuous man lifted a telephone, spoke briefly into it, and then rotated a pad of contract forms. The limping man filled out the single-page contract, signed it, and was given the last two pages in a card folder upon which the clerk had written the license number of the Ford Mustang and the stall where it could be located in the outside parking area.

The limping man picked up the pasteboard suitcase, went quickly to the far end of the level, and stepped through a door into the gelid afternoon.

Ice drops stung his skin and the wind whipped mercilessly at his sparse brown hair; but he seemed oblivious to the cold as he walked among the rental cars to his designated stall. A bearded boy in a white uniform with the agency’s name in bright blue across the back waited there for him. The boy looked at the card folder, inclined his head, and held the door open. The limping man ignored a tip-waiting hand and slid beneath the wheel of the Mustang. The keys were in the ignition.

He proceeded through the parking area fronting the airport and entered the northbound ramp leading onto the James Lick Freeway. The speedometer needle climbed to seventy and seemed to lock there; the limping man drove with both hands competently on the steering wheel, his eyes leaving the broken white line before him only to check the side-and rear-view mirrors prior to changing lanes.

Fifteen minutes later, he bore right at the Skyway and Central Freeway junctions, following the Skyway to the Seventh Street exit. He had been in San Francisco only once previously—two months ago-but he had memorized this route, and several others, with precise care. He had been over each more than once.

At Sixth Street, he crossed Market to enter Taylor; at the corner of Taylor and Geary, he turned into a parking garage. He left the Mustang with an attendant and carried the two cases along Geary to a small, unpretentious hotel called the Graceling.

Fingers again working in metronome cadence on the surface of the briefcase, he spoke to the polite, if somewhat bored, hotel clerk and signed the register. An aging bellhop with a faintly sour smell about him responded to the clerk’s summons, picked up the limping man’s suitcase, and led him over to a self-service elevator at the near end of the lobby. On the fourth floor, the bellhop unlocked the door to Number 412, placed the key on the lacquered dresser inside, laid the suitcase on an aluminum luggage rack near the window, and then returned to the doorway. He stood waiting. The limping man’s eyes, unblinking, met the bellhop’s liquidy blue ones; after a moment, the bellhop coughed nervously, averting his gaze, and retreated into the hallway.

When he had closed and locked the door, the limping man sat on the wide double bed and opened the briefcase with a tiny key from the breast pocket of his suit. From inside, he extracted a thick ten by-thirteen manila envelope and put it on his lap; he did not touch the heavy Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver which lay in a chamois cloth at the bottom of the case.

Opening the manila envelope, he removed two sets of three folders each, both sets being fastened with thick, sturdy rubber bands. The folders were of the type used by college students for term paper assignments, and were of different colors. Those in one set were blue, gray, and red; those in the second were yellow, green, and orange. He glanced cursorily at the first set—blue and gray and red—and then returned it to the manila envelope. He slid the rubber band from the second set and placed its three folders side by side on the floral bedspread.

Each contained several sheets of ruled notepaper filled with lines of writing in an almost illegible backhand, and a Mobil Oil Travel and Street Map. The writing consisted of daily journal-like reports, over a two-week span, which the limping man had made on his first trip to California two months previous; they were detailed with names, numbers, dates, places, habits, and observations.

He sat staring at the names inked in large block letters on the front of each folder. Which one next? he asked himself silently. Well, it didn’t really make a great deal of difference, it would all be over within the week anyway—for him, and for each of them.

At length he selected the yellow folder, lay back on the bed, and began to study its contents, even though he had long since committed to memory each fact represented there.

It wasn’t the money at all.

But Steve will believe it is, Andrea Kilduff thought. Oh yes, that’s exactly what he’ll believe.

She drove the little tan Volkswagen carefully, allowing five carlengths between herself and the station wagon ahead. She was just coming into San Rafael now, some twenty miles north of San Francisco, and the Saturday afternoon traffic on U.S. Highway 101 was badly congested. Andrea wished she hadn’t put off leaving the city so long—what had she expected to happen, sitting there in that virtually empty café on Parnassus for more than two hours: her conscience or guardian angel or something to come and sit on the stool beside her like in those silly television commercials and talk her out of it? Well, it wouldn’t be long before she reached Duckblind Slough, and she was thankful that Steve hadn’t decided on Antioch or Stockton, both of which had also been under consideration that summer six years ago; driving in heavy freeway traffic always unnerved her, especially when any appreciable distance was involved.

Tiny, almost doll-like, she possessed that type of finely boned, aesthetic face which is coveted by fashion photographers and portrait painters. She felt, without vanity, that her mouth was just a little too small, her luminous black eyes under feathery natural lashes just a little too large; but each, in fact, contributed subtly yet prominently to a fragile, almost Dresden beauty. Her legs were perfectly proportioned in relation to her size, and her breasts were well defined, if rather small—she had always thought men disliked small breasts, but Steve had told her once, in bed, that the big-boob myth was just that, a myth, propagated by some Madison Avenue ad agency with a brassiere account, anything more than a mouthful was just wasted anyway. On this day, she wore a pair of tailored tweed slacks, a cardigan sweater, and a pale green silk scarf over her short ebon hair.

Watching the car ahead of her cautiously, she thought: He won’t recognize the real reason I’ve gone. If it enters his mind at all hell reject it, because he doesn’t know, hasn’t any idea, what has happened to him these past few years. And the terrible thing is, no matter what I do, he almost surely never will.

A person is able to endure just so much—emotionally as well as physically—wasn’t that a true fact? Alone in the apartment last night—listening to silence, waiting for Steve to call and knowing that he hadn’t gotten the cannery job, of course, that he was brooding childlike in his motel room the way he had done before—Andrea had been struck with the realization that since this was by no means the final failure, was in fact simply another link in the chain, it was also by no means the final night she would be left listening to silence, waiting for him to call or to come home with the news that still another job hadn’t gone through, still another opportunity had been cast adrift on the wind. She saw herself twenty years hence, hair graying, skin already crosshatched with furrows and lines and purplish wrinkles; she saw herself without hope, dying inside by degrees—the way it had already become with Steve—and she was terrified.

Even though she still loved him deeply, the thought of watching him become less and less of a man through the coming days and months and years was inconceivable. And there was nothing she could do to prevent it; failure in the past precluded success in the future, how long could you beat your head against the proverbial stone wall without even so much as chipping the mortar? She had to leave then, quickly and quietly, like a thief in the night, without tearful good-byes, bitter good-byes, without the painful, useless explanation. Andrea knew that if she waited for Steve to come back, and came to that final confrontation, she would not be able to handle things, would not, very possibly, be able to leave at all. She had tried to write him a short note, but the right words refused to come; after five attempts, five “Steve darling” salutations, she had given it up. When she had had time to prepare herself, after a few days alone to put it all together, she would call him and tell him the simple truth—even though he wouldn’t believe it. Then ...

Well, she would have plenty of time in the next few days to consider
then
.

Shivering a little, even though the windows were tightly rolled up and the Volkswagen’s heater was turned to high, and with a conscious effort of will, she gave her full concentration to driving.

It wasn’t until she had gone another five miles, leaving San Rafael behind her, that Andrea felt the wetness on her cheeks and realized she was crying.

It was a voice out of the past, dimly remembered in that first groping effort at placement but then becoming violently, jarringly, familiar; an insinuating, phlegmatic voice saying very distinctly over a telephone wire, “Steve? Steve Kilduff?”

Standing in the hallway, between the kitchen and the bedroom, Kilduff gripped the receiver so tightly that the tendons in his wrist began to ache. The back of his neck had suddenly grown cold.

“Steve?” Drexel asked again. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he answered finally. “Hello, Larry.”

“A long time, baby.”

“Not long enough.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Our agreement is still binding.”

“Not now, it isn’t ”

“What makes now special?”

“I think we’d better get together, Steve.”

“Why?”

“I can’t go into it over the phone.”

“Granite City?”

“Granite City.”

“How important?”

“Damned important.”

“Discovery?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

Dear God, Kilduff thought.

Drexel said, “But not the way you’re thinking.”

Steve transferred the receiver from his left hand to his right, wiping the moist palm on the leg of his trousers. There was a dry, lacquered taste in his mouth. “All right,” he said slowly. “When?”

“Tonight.”

“Where?”

“We’d better make it your place,” Drexel said. “Can you get rid of your wife for the evening?”

“She’s already gone,” Kilduff said, a trace of bitterness coming into his tone. He didn’t offer to elaborate. “Why does it have to be here?”

“Halfway house.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Between Bodega Bay and Los Gatos.”

“Where are you?”

“Los Gatos.”

“And Bodega Bay?”

“Jim Conradin.”

“Will he be here, too?”

“If I can reach him.”

“What about the others?”

“No, just the three of us.”

“If it’s Granite City, it concerns them, too.”

“Not any more, it doesn’t ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Drexel said, “Eight o’clock.”

There was a soft click from the other end of the line.

Kilduff stood holding the phone for a long moment, and then, carefully, replaced it in its cradle. He returned to the living room and stood in the middle of the buff-colored carpet. Discovery? he had asked. Maybe, Drexel had said; but not the way you’re thinking. What had he meant by that? Was it possible, after eleven years, eleven years, that somebody could have tied them to Granite City? No, that was completely inconceivable; the investigation had been dropped long ago, the Statute of Limitations had long since run its course. And even if it were somehow incredibly true, there was nothing the authorities could do, was there? Oh, they could bring it all out into the open, expose them all to the publicity, but that was really all, wasn’t it? Unless they would be able to demand repayment of the money, in spite of the fact that there was no chance of actual criminal prosecution. He couldn’t remember. Gene Beauchamp had been the legal expert, he had figured all the angles, all the probabilities and potentialities; he had been the one who told them that they had to remain in Illinois until the Statute ran out—three years. If you left the state during that time, and you were ever caught, you were still liable to Federal indictment for interstate flight to avoid prosecution for armed robbery.