Man on a Leash

6

“If the first supposition is right, then the second one has to be too,” he told Mayo. “Richter missed it, and now I’ve missed it; but it still has to be there.”

“Not necessarily,” she replied. She was wearing the housecoat and a pair of mules, but she’d combed her hair and put on lipstick. She was perched crosswise in a big armchair in the living room, sipping coffee. “You’re projecting your hypothesis from an opinion, not a known fact, when you say it couldn’t have been kidnap. It could have been a girlfriend.”

“A quarter million dollars?”

“Men as tough and as promiscuous as your father have turned out to be vulnerable, the same as anybody else, thousands of times. In which case he’d have come in alone to get the money. It wouldn’t have been voluntary, by any stretch of the imagination, but they wouldn’t have to be there.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re missing the key to the whole thing. They wouldn’t have had to be there to force him to sell the stock either. You ever hear of kidnappers coming in to discuss the thing in person? The threat comes by note or telephone. We couldn’t care less how you raise the money, Jack; just raise it.”

“But you don’t know they were there. Opinion again.”

“Yes, they were there. He wasn’t alone when he was talking to Winegaard; that’s implicit in the whole conversation. There are two phones in that house, one in the master bedroom and a wall-mounted extension in the kitchen, and one of the bastards was listening in while the others applied the pressure.

“Look—in kidnap or blackmail, a specific sum is demanded, and you raise it to suit yourself within the time limit. That being the case, he would have sold selectively, or at least he’d have let Winegaard express an opinion. But he wasn’t trying to raise a specific sum; he was selling a list of stocks with a gun against his head, knowing Winegaard was going to protest in a minute and he had to shut him up before he could mention some stocks that weren’t on the list.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“Sure. And utterly pointless, so far. After they’d done all that, there was no way in Christ’s world they could get the money. Except that they did.”

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

He considered. At the moment he could see two possible leads, both very tenuous and both calling for a hell of a lot of legwork. One was Jeri Bonner, and the other the Mercedes. He couldn’t explore both avenues at once, so the best thing would be to get some help doing the bloodhounding and backtracking here while he went back to Nevada. He had an idea about the car, something Brubaker had overlooked or dismissed as unimportant, and he had a hunch he could find the place. It would just take a lot of driving. He’d had enough of that highway up through Sacramento and across the Sierra, so he’d fly up and rent a car in Reno. He told her.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“Tomorrow night, probably.”

“Can I go too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That desert’s hotter than the floor plates of hell. And you’d just be bored, and choked with dust—”

“Spare me the bullshit, Romstead. I can’t go because it might be dangerous, right?”

“Dangerous? Of course not.”

“You’re looking for a place, but you don’t have the faintest idea what the place consists of or who’s going to be there. If it’s the people who killed your father, they’ll invite you in for a drink—”

“I don’t intend to carry a sign.”

“So of course they’ll think you’re the Avon lady. Or you could disguise yourself as a jockey. You and your goddamned CIA ... I might as well get dressed and go home.” She got up and flounced out of the room but reappeared in the doorway a moment later, looking contrite and worried. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

“Sure,” Romstead said. He brought out his address book and looked up Jeff Loring’s number. Loring was a college classmate who’d been with the FBI for a while and now was practicing law in San Francisco. They’d had lunch together a couple of times in the months Romstead had been in town. Loring was in, and if the question surprised him, he concealed it.

“Private investigator? Sure, I know several, personally or by reputation, but they specialize a lot: divorce, skip tracing, background investigation, security—”

“Skip tracing, in that area. General police experience.”

“Murdock sounds like your man. Larry Murdock. He runs a small agency on Post Street. I haven’t got his number handy, but you can get it from the book.”

“Thanks a lot, Jeff. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“No sweat. Give me a call, and we’ll have lunch.”

He looked up the number and dialed. He introduced himself and said he was calling on Loring’s recommendation. “I’d come there, but I’ve got some more phone calls to make.” He gave the address. “Could you send one of your men over?”

“I’ll come myself,” Murdock replied. “Half hour be all right?”

“That’ll be fine.”

Mayo came out dressed for the street while he was looking up the Nevada area code. “You want me to call about flight times?” she asked.

“Yeah, if you would, honey. I’ll be tied up here for the next couple of hours.”

She leaned down to kiss him and went out. Her apartment was in another building of the same complex.

He called directory assistance in area code 702 for Mrs. Carmody’s number and dialed, praying she’d be in. The information he could give Murdock would be sketchy until he could get hold of her. Carmelita answered. Mrs. Carmody was out by the pool. One moment, please.

“Eric? Where in the world are you? I thought you went back to San Francisco.”

“That’s where I’m calling from. How are you?”

“Fine. But still a little shook about Jeri.”

“I know. But she’s why I called. Do you by any chance know what her address was here? Or where she worked?”

“No-o. I don’t think I ever did. The only person who would know would be Lew, but for God’s sake, don’t tackle him. I know what you’re trying to do—”

“Right. It’s almost a cinch there was something between her and the old man. And Bonner suspected it. Remember, he was bitter as hell even before he knew she was dead, there in the house.”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “that’s right. But it wasn’t entirely over Jeri.”

“I understand.” He’d suspected that already; Bonner had a thing for Paulette Carmody himself and was jealous. Sister and girlfriend both, he thought; it was no wonder he hated the name Romstead. “It seems to me he’d have been one of Brubaker’s prime suspects.”

“Oh, he might have been except he was in his store until two o’clock that morning and then in a poker game with five or six other men until after daylight. No, it wasn’t Lew. He’s violent and pugnacious as hell, but straightforward about it. If he’d done it, it would have been on the steps of city hall in front of two hundred witnesses. Which is why I said don’t even think of calling him about Jeri. He’s out on bail now for beating a man almost to death in a bar last night. Some ranch hand he overheard say something about Jeri and Captain Romstead.”

“Don’t worry,” Romstead said. “I intend to give him all the room he needs ... Well, could you give me a description of her?”

“She was about five feet five, around a hundred and ten pounds. Blue eyes, dark-red hair, nose just a little on the baby side, but cute. Leggy for a girl who wasn’t very tall.”

“Good. You don’t know what type of work she did?”

“Clerical. She’d had some business courses—typing and so on—at San Diego State. Wait—I just remembered something. Last winter she bought Lew a tape deck at employee discount; she was working for some electronics supply outfit.”

“You can’t recall the name?”

“No, I’m sorry. But it seems to me he said it was on Mission Street.”

“Fine. That’s enough for a start. Thanks a million.”

After he’d hung up, he remembered something else he’d intended to ask her. It was about the crewman the old man had turned over to the narcs for having heroin aboard his ship. Until you had a solid lead to follow, you had to consider everything a possibility. Well, he’d call her tomorrow from up there.

He brought out a bag and began to pack. The phone rang. It was Mayo. There was a flight at three o’clock, with space available. He asked her to make the reservation for him.

“Okay. I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“You’re an angel.”

“With an angel’s sex life. I might as well be having an affair with a whaler.”

Just as he hung up, the doorbell chimed.

Larry Murdock was a lean-faced man in his middle forties with coolly watchful gray eyes and an air of quietness about him. He introduced himself and produced a wallet-sized photostat of his license. Romstead closed the door and they sat down.

“You’ve had police experience, no doubt?” he asked.

“Yes. Fifteen years, here in San Francisco. What is it you want done, Mr. Romstead?”

“Just more of the same. Ringing doorbells and asking questions. I’m trying to backtrack two people to see if they knew each other, and how well, and what other people they knew. It’ll probably go faster with two men on it, if you’ve got somebody available. Okay?”

“Yes. I think we can handle it.” Murdock took a notebook from a pocket of his jacket and undipped a pen.

“Fine. There’s a lot of background you’ll need.” Romstead told him the whole thing, from the discovery of his father’s body to and including his interviews with Winegaard and Richter. He wound up with descriptions of his father and Jeri Bonner and the address of his father’s apartment on Stockton Street. Murdock listened without interruption, now and then taking notes.

“I don’t think he was ever in the apartment in that period from the sixth to the fourteenth, but I haven’t seen the building and don’t know what the setup is in regard to privacy of access,” he concluded. “But you can see what I’m after.”

“Sure. Whether anybody at all saw him around the place, whether he was alone if they did, and if the girl had ever been seen in the area or with him. Since it’s all right with you, I’ll start another man checking out the girl, beginning with the electronics supply places.”

“Good. Personally, I think she was on the lam from something or somebody, or she wouldn’t have gone home. She was a junkie, and her chances of making a connection in that town would be close to zero.”

“Yes. Unless her, sources had dried up here and she remembered that deck stashed in your father’s place.”

“That’s a possibility, of course,” Romstead conceded. “But there’s another thing about that I can’t quite buy.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Murdock said. “If she knew about it at all, why didn’t she know it was uncut? So why the OD?”

“Right,” Romstead replied. “Maybe she didn’t run far enough.” He was beginning to have a solid respect for the other man. He went over to the desk by the window and wrote out a check for three hundred dollars. “I’ll be in Coleville tonight, and I’ll give you a call.”

Murdock thanked him for the retainer and left. Romstead finished packing the bag, put in his binoculars, and called Mayo. She was ready. He carried the bag down to her car. They swung up onto the freeway and headed out Bayshore. The car was a new Mustang, and she handled it with cool competence. He relaxed, which he seldom did when someone else was driving.

“Very flattering,” she said, passing Candlestick Park.

“What?”

“When a man keeps his eyes on your legs instead of traffic. Sort of overall endorsement.”

“Well, you are a good driver,” he agreed. “That’s why they wouldn’t let you in medical school.”

“And the legs?”

“They’re why you didn’t need to get into medical school.”

“Chauvinist pig.”

It was overcast at the airport with a chill wind whipping the bay and fog pushing in over the hills above South City like rolls of cotton batting. She had to double park at the unloading zone. “Call me,” she said.

“Tonight.”

“And tomorrow.” They kissed, and she clung to him tightly for a moment until the inevitable horn sounded behind them. He lifted out the bag and watched her drive off. He went inside, checked in, and paid for his ticket with a credit card. The flight was only a little late in taking off, and they were down in Reno’s heat shortly after 4 P.M. He rented an air-conditioned Chevrolet, asked for a Nevada highway map, and drove into town.

Finding a place to park, he unfolded the map. Coleville was in Steadman County, but only fifteen miles from the boundary of Garnet County, adjoining it on the south. He’d need both to give him a radius of twenty-five miles all the way around. He looked up a sporting goods store and bought the two large-scale county maps of the type put out for hunters and fishermen. “Better give me a gallon water cooler, too,” he told the clerk.

Traffic was heavy now, and it was slow going until he was past the outskirts of town. He took time out for some dinner at a highway truck stop, and it was a little before eight when he pulled into Coleville. He parked under the porte cochere at the Conestoga Motel and went inside.

A rather sour-faced man of middle age was at the desk this time and checked him in without a smile of any kind, commercial or otherwise. He drove back with the key and let himself into room 16. Unfolding the two maps on the bed, side by side in their proper orientation, he pulled up a chair and bent over them with a frown of concentration.

No doubt Brubaker was right in that there were countless miles of tracks and old ruts out through the sagebrush flats and that checking them all out would have been a hopeless task from the start, but the car hadn’t been on any of these. The significant fact wasn’t merely that it was covered with dust, but that the dust was unmarred by streaks along the sides as it inevitably would have been in running through brush. It had been on a graded road, which narrowed the possible routes immensely.

The roads were coded on the maps: paved highways, gravel, and graded dirt roads. Gravel, of course, could be almost as dusty as plain dirt, so he’d have to cover those too. The main highway, which he’d just come in on, ran roughly north and south. This was crossed in town, at Third Street, by an east-west blacktop, the road his father’s place was on. Beyond the old man’s house it continued on westward for another twenty or thirty miles to a small community on a lake, but there were no unpaved roads leading off it. So it had to be north, south, or east of town. From that fifty-four miles unaccounted for on the odometer you had to subtract four for the old man’s return home after having the car serviced. That left fifty miles round trip from the house, or forty-two miles round trip from the center of town.

South on the highway there were two possibilities. About thirteen miles out the pavement was crossed by a gravel road running east and west. North there were also two, twelve miles out and sixteen, both dirt roads taking off in a generally westerly direction. East there were three. Nine miles from town a graded dirt road left the blacktop running north, and after about four miles it forked, one branch veering off to the northeast. Also, at about seventeen miles from town another gravel road left the pavement in a southerly direction. Out and back each time, if he had to cover all of them, added up to 108 miles of chuckholed and dusty off-the-pavement driving. It was going to be a long day. He rang the office and left a call for five thirty in the morning.

Dialing the long distance operator, he put in the call to Mayo. She apparently grabbed the phone up on the first ring, and it was obvious from her voice that something was wrong.

“Eric! I’ve been poised over this phone for hours!”

“What is it?”

“Your apartment’s been burglarized. I didn’t know what motel you were in, so all I could do was wait—”

“All right, honey, just simmer down; he probably didn’t get much. But how do you know?”

“Know? How do I know? Eric, I’m trying to tell you. I talked to him—I walked right in on him—”

He broke in swiftly. “Are you hurt?”

“No. He didn’t do anything at all. I pretended to believe him.”

He sighed softly. Thank God for a smart girl. “Okay, Crafty, just start from the beginning.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “On the way back from the airport I decided while I had the car out I might as well do some grocery shopping, and I bought some things for you too—a steak and a bottle of rosé and some tonic water, oh, a bagful of stuff. After I’d put mine away, I thought I’d take yours over and tidy up the apartment a little. So I went over and took the elevator up, and when I opened the door, I almost dropped the bag and my purse and everything. There was a man standing right there in the living room, with a kind of tool bag open on the rug. But it was funny—I mean, I was scared blue, but he didn’t seem to be startled at all. With my arms full like that I must have fumbled around for maybe fifteen seconds getting the door open—I had the wrong key at first—so he had some warning. He just smiled and said, ‘Good afternoon, are you Mrs. Romstead?’ and leaned down to get something out of the tool kit.

“By then I’d got my heart down out of my throat and could speak, so I asked him what he was doing there. He took a slip of paper out of a breast pocket—he had on a white coverall—and said, ‘Mr. Romstead called us to check out the simalizer and put a new frammistat in his KLH.’ That wasn’t what he actually said, of course, but some technical jargon that didn’t mean a thing to me, and he had the console of the KLH pulled out from the wall as if he were going to work on it. He said the manager let him in, which I knew was a damn lie—the office wouldn’t let anybody in an apartment when the tenant’s not there—but I didn’t know what to do. If I started to run, he might grab me and drag me inside to keep me from calling the police.

“And, believe me, I didn’t want to go on into the kitchen with those groceries, either, because then he’d be between me and the door, but there didn’t seem to be anything else I could do without making him suspicious. He’d know I’d opened the door for something. Anyway, he was so cool and professional that by then I’d about decided he really was an honest, card-carrying burglar and not a creep of some kind, so I told him I was just a friend that had stopped by with this stuff for you. So I went into the kitchen and shoved the things in the refrigerator—I mean, all of it, and fast, in case you ever wonder why there’s a package of paper napkins and two bars of toilet soap in your freezer. I came back out. He was humming under his breath and fiddling with the back of the KLH. I said something about being sure the door was locked when he left and eased out. I didn’t think my knees would ever hold up till I made it to the elevator.

“When I got to the office, of course, I had to explain what the hell I was doing in your apartment. We got that straightened out, and they called the police. A squad car pulled up in two or three minutes, and the manager went up with the two officers. He was gone by then, of course, but they found enough evidence he’d been there so they didn’t write me off as some kind of nut. It seemed to be your desk he was interested in—or that’s as far as he’d got—because everything in it had been pretty well shuffled. Of course, they don’t know if anything’s missing, but they said the chances were he got the hell out of there the minute I was out of the corridor.”

Alarm circuits were tripping all over the place, but he was merely soothing—and admiring. “Honey, you handled it beautifully; you really used your head. Anyway, there was nothing in the desk but correspondence, old tax returns, bank statements, and so on. Could you describe the guy?”

“He wasn’t real big, a little less than six feet, anyway, around a hundred and sixty pounds. About thirty years old. Very slender and dark, Indian-looking, with black hair and brown eyes. And cool, real cool.”

“Well, you’re pretty cool yourself, Hotshot,” Romstead said. While he didn’t like any of it, he still didn’t want to scare her over what so far was just a feeling. “But don’t let it go to your head. If there are prowlers working those apartments, keep the chain on your door the way I told you, and don’t let anybody in until you’ve finished the first two volumes of his biography. I’ll call you tomorrow, and I’ll be back early tomorrow night.”

They talked a few minutes more, and as soon as he’d hung up, he put in a call to Murdock. His answering service said Mr. Murdock wasn’t at his office or at home yet, but that he should report in shortly. Romstead gave her the number of the motel. “Ask him to call me as soon as he comes in.”

All he could do then was wait. And wonder about it. Too many things were wrong with the picture, Naturally, any prowler could get names off the mailboxes down below, but this guy wasn’t some punk who’d wandered in off the street with a strip of plastic or a credit card. He couldn’t have got in. Those were dead-bolt locks, and he’d turned the key when he left. Then there were the other touches, the coverall, the prop toolbag—both disposable down the nearest garbage chute—the calm assurance, the plausible patter, all of which bespoke a real professional—except that no professional in his right mind would waste his time prowling a single man’s apartment, even if you left him a key under the doormat. No furs, no jewelry—all the expensive baubles belonged to women. He’d get three or four suits that some fence might give him two dollars apiece for and the cleaning woman’s eight dollars if he could find it.

He could call Paulette Carmody, but he didn’t want to have the phone tied up if Murdock called.

He waited. He unpacked his bag and studied the maps some more. It was about twenty minutes before the phone rang. He grabbed it up. It was Murdock.

“I just got your call,” he said. “Anything new?”

“Yeah, some guy shook down my apartment this afternoon,” Romstead replied. “I can’t figure what he was after, but let’s take up your end of it first. You get any line on the girl?”

“Yes, we’ve had pretty good luck so far. I’ve just talked to Snyder again—he’s the man I put on her. He picked up her trail at Packer Electronics right off the bat. It’s a big outfit on upper Mission, handles everything in the electronics line: hi-fi components, radio and TV parts and tubes, transistors, ham equipment, and so on. She worked in the office there for about a year and a half, until last March. They let her go for tapping the till; apparently her habit was pretty expensive even then. Snyder got her last known address and checked that out. She’d been sharing an apartment with another girl named Sylvia Wolden out near the Marina, but she’d moved out of there in April. The Wolden girl didn’t know she was on junk but suspected she was shoplifting, from the things she’d bring home.

“She left no forwarding address, but Sylvia was able to give Snyder the name of an old boyfriend, Leo Cullen, who tends bar at a place on Van Ness. Cullen told Snyder he’d broken up with her along about Christmas, when she first got hooked on the stuff, and hadn’t seen her since but had heard she was shacked up with a guy named Marshall Tallant, who ran a one-man TV repair place in North Beach. Snyder went out there and found the place; but it was closed, and nobody in the neighborhood had seen Tallant in over a month. The girl had been living with him, though, and they’d both disappeared from the neighborhood about the same time.”

“Any idea how she was supporting her habit?” Romstead asked. “Tallant couldn’t have made much out of that shop.”

“No,” Murdock replied. “We haven’t got any line on that yet. If she was hustling, it apparently wasn’t in that neighborhood, though she might have been shoplifting downtown. And you’re right about the shop—Tallant couldn’t have paid for any forty- or fifty-dollar habit unless he had other sources of income. I gather he was plenty good, could fix anything electronic, but snotty and temperamental. He’d turn down jobs if they didn’t interest him, and some days he didn’t even open the place.

“There’s one possibility, though, and that brings me to my end of it. She could have had some kind of hustle going with your father. What, I don’t know, but she definitely had been in his apartment a good many times. Three people I talked to had seen her going in or coming out of the building over the past four months, but never with him. She might have been working as a high-priced call girl, with him as one of her list; I just don’t know. But I do think she had a key. One of the tenants I talked to saw her in the corridor on that floor on the Fourth of July, and you remember your father was in Coleville then. And I think it’s definite your father was never in the apartment any time between July sixth and fourteenth. Nobody saw him at all, not even the apartment house manager, and he and your father were good friends. He’s a retired merchant marine man himself, mate on a Standard Oil tanker, and when your father came to town, they always had a couple of drinks together.

“But here’s the strange part of it. You’re not the only one interested in her. There’s another guy; Snyder crossed his trail twice, and I saw him myself when he came to the apartment house. And that’s not all. Unless Snyder and I both are watching too much cloak-and-dagger on TV, this guy himself had a tail on him. We were a whole damn procession shuttling around town.”

“Are you sure of this?” Romstead asked.

“We’re sure of the guy; the tail’s only a guess. He was right ahead of Snyder at the electronics place and then came into the bar on Van Ness—where Cullen worked—while Snyder was still there. Real bruiser, big as you are but mean-looking, apparently just been in a fight. Had a cut place over one eye and a swollen right hand—”

“Wait,” Romstead interrupted. “Driving a green Porsche with Nevada plates?”

“That’s right. Then you know him?”

“I’ve met him. He’s her brother, Lew Bonner. I don’t get it, though, why he’s poking into it. He had it all worked out; my old man was to blame for everything that happened to her. But what about the tail?”

“As I say, we’re not sure. Could be just a coincidence, but seeing him in Bonner’s area three times in different parts of town is stretching it. Name’s Delevan; he used to be in the business but had his license yanked and did a stretch in San Quentin for extortion—”

“Can you describe him?” Romstead cut in quickly.

“He’s pretty hefty himself, about six two, over two hundred pounds, partially bald—”

“Okay,” Romstead said. “He’s not the one.”

“That shook down your apartment, you mean? When did it happen?”

“Just after I took off for Reno. I think he must have clocked me out, made sure I was on the plane, and then came back and let himself in.” Romstead told him the whole thing. He was puzzled also.

“Sounds pro to me, too, but what the hell would he be after? That’s a furnished apartment, isn’t it?”

“The only things in it that are mine are clothes, luggage, and that hi-fi gear and some records.”

“Planting a bug, maybe?”

“I thought of that, but why? They wouldn’t know I’m interested in them. I didn’t know it myself until this morning. You haven’t got a description on Tallant?”

“No, but I can get one damned fast. Let me call you back in about ten minutes.”

“Fine.” Romstead hung up, frowning. What was Bonner doing in San Francisco, checking back on Jeri? Had he held out on Brubaker or learned something new? He waited, consumed with impatience. When the phone rang, he snatched it up.

“I just called Snyder,” Murdock said, “and he checked back with one of the people he’d talked to in North Beach. Tallant’s about thirty or thirty-two, medium height, slender, black hair, brown eyes—”

“That’s enough,” Romstead cut in. “Have you got an extra man you can get hold of this time of night?”

“Sure. You want Miss Foley covered?”

“Like a blanket, every minute till I get back there. I don’t know what the son of a bitch is up to or what he had to do with the old man, but he sounds wrong as hell to me.”

“We’ll take care of it. What’s her apartment number? And description?”

Romstead told him. “That retainer I gave you won’t begin to cover this, but for references you can check the Wells Fargo Bank on Montgomery Street or the Southland Trust in San Diego.”

“That’s all right. You’re coming back tomorrow?”

“Sometime tomorrow. I guess I should have stayed there; that seems to be where it is. But as long as I’m up here, I might as well go ahead and finish what I started to do. Don’t let her out of your sight. And see what else you can find out about Tallant.”

After he’d hung up, he debated whether to call Mayo again but decided there was no point in getting her upset over something that could be miles into left field. He had complete confidence in Murdock, anyway.

He called Paulette Carmody’s number. She was out, playing bridge, Carmelita said, and would be back around midnight. Well, he could talk to her tomorrow.