Scattershot

FOUR

At four-fifty that afternoon I was illegally parked in a red-marked bus zone on Union, just off Laguna. Hornback Designs was a block and a half behind me, between Gough and Octavia, and the parking garage where Lewis Hornback kept his Dodge Monaco was just thirty yards ahead. As long as a cop didn’t come and chase me away or give me a ticket, I was in a good position to see Hornback coming and to follow him when he left the garage.

I sat with my rearview mirror turned so I could watch the intersection behind me and thought about Kerry. She had been on my mind all day; I kept wondering about that dinner last night with handsome Jim Carpenter, who was Kerry’s age Hid who did not have a beer belly. I had considered stopping somewhere and calling her, but I hadn’t got up enough gumption to do it. I would call her at home later on-and not because I wanted to see if she was home. Or so I told myself. The day itself, so far as tracking down the elusive Lauren Speers was concerned, had been a bust. I had talked to her hairdresser, a man named Mr. Ike; I had talked to the head of a local charity she supported; I had talked to a woman she’d gone on a Caribbean cruise with last year and, through her, to Speer’s travel agent. Zero. I had also stopped by the Cow Hollow address of her secretary, Bernice Dolan; nobody had been home. Do-Ian hadn’t been there for weeks, according to the building manager, but he didn’t know where she’d gone. And her rent was paid through the end of the month, so he didn’t seem to care.

I was running out of possibilities, and I wasn’t sure what to try next. I could not get my head into figuring angles, at least not now. Later tonight, or tomorrow morning when I checked Brister’s file again.

Time passed. People moved up and down the sidewalks, most of them young and on their way to the saloons along the Union strip; this was a popular area, one of the city’s current “in” places. The weather had turned almost cold, with scattered clouds, but there was no sign of fog above Twin Peaks or over near the Golden Gate. Which was something of a relief. Tail jobs are tricky enough as it is, especially at night, without the added problem of poor visibility.

Lewis Hornback showed up at 5:04. Which was also a relief; I had been illegally parked long enough not to want to push my luck any further. I recognized him right away. He came walking across Laguna behind me, wearing a light-colored suit, no tie, a gold chain glistening between the open collar wings of his shirt. He looked exactly like his photograph, and he wasn’t smiling now, either. He came up onto the sidewalk, drifted past me, and entered the parking garage.

Two minutes later the Dodge Monaco appeared, turned left on Union; I could see Hornback clearly through the windshield when he passed me. He made a right on Laguna and headed up the hill. I gave him a half-block lead before I pulled out into a U-turn and swung up after him.

Where he went was straight out Broadway to North Beach, to a little Italian restaurant not far from Washington Square. I parked a block from where he did, illegally again in another bus zone because there were no other street vacancies, and followed him inside the restaurant. Meeting the girl friend for dinner, maybe, I thought-but that wasn’t the way it turned out. After two drinks at the bar, while I nursed a beer, he took a table alone. I sat at an angle across the room from him, treated myself to polio al’ diavolo, and watched him pack away a three-course meal and a half-liter of house wine. Nobody came to talk to him except the waiter; he was just a man having a quiet dinner by himself.

He polished off a brandy and three cigarettes for dessert, lingering the way you do after a heavy meal; when he finally left the restaurant it was almost eight o’clock and twilight was settling down on the city. From there he walked over to Upper Grant, where he gawked at the young counterculture types who frequent the area, did a little window-shopping, stopped in at a newsstand and a drugstore. I stayed on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards or so behind him-about as close to a subject as you want to get on foot. But the walking tail got me nothing except exercise: Hornback was still alone when he led me back to where he had left his Dodge.

When I got to my own car there was a parking ticket fluttering under one of the windshield wipers. Terrific. But it was going to wind up being Mrs. Hornback’s problem, not mine. As far as I was concerned, things like parking tickets were legitimate expense account items.

Hornback’s next stop was a small branch library at the foot of Russian Hill, where he dropped off a couple of books. Then he headed south on Van Ness, west on Market out of the downtown area, and up the winding expanse of Upper Market to Twin Peaks. There was a little shopping area up there, a short distance beyond where Market becomes Portola Drive; he pulled into the lot in front. And went into a neighborhood tavern called Dewey’s Place.

I parked down near the end of the lot. Maybe he was meeting the girl friend here or maybe he had just gone into the tavern for a drink; he seemed to like his liquor pretty well. I put on the gray cloth cap I keep in the glove compartment, shrugged out of my coat and turned it inside out-it was one of those reversible models-and put it on again that way. Just in case Hornback had happened, casually, to notice me at the restaurant earlier. Then I stepped out into a cold wind blowing up from the ocean, crossed to Dewey’s Place.

Inside, there were maybe a dozen customers, most of them at the bar. Hornback was down at the far end with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other-but the stools on both sides of him were empty. And none of the three women in there looked to be unescorted.

So maybe I’d been right and there wasn’t a girl friend. It was almost ten o’clock; if a married man has a lady on the side, you’d expect him to get together with her by this time of night. But so far, Hornback had done nothing unusual or incriminating. Hell, he hadn’t even done anything interesting.

I sat at the near end of the bar and sipped a draft beer, watching Hornback in the mirror. He finished his drink, lit a fresh cigarette, and gestured to the bartender for a refill. I thought he looked a little tense, but in the dim lighting I couldn’t be sure. He was not waiting for anybody, though, you could tell that: no glances at his watch or at the door. Just killing time, aimlessly? It could be; for all I knew, this was how he spent each of his evenings away from the Russian Hill apartment- eating alone, driving alone, drinking alone. And his reason might be the simplest and most inno cent of all: he left the office at five and stayed out until midnight because he didn’t want to go home to Mrs. Hornback.

When he’d downed his second drink he stood and reached for his wallet. I had already laid a dollar bill on the bar; I slid off my stool and left ahead of him, so that I was already in my car when he came out.

Now where? I thought as he fired up the Dodge. Another bar somewhere? A late movie? Home early?

None of those. He surprised me by swinging back to the east on Portola and then getting into the left-turn lane for Twin Peaks Boulevard. The area up there was residential, at least on the lower part of the hillside; the road itself wound upward at steep angles, made a figure-eight loop through the empty wooded expanse of Twin Peaks Park, and curled down on the opposite side of the hill.

Hornback stayed on Twin Peaks Boulevard, climbing toward the park. Which meant that he was probably not going to make a house call in the area; he had bypassed the only intersecting streets on this side, and there were easier ways to get to the residential sections below the park to the north. I wondered if he was just marking more time, if it was his custom to take a long, solitary drive for himself round and about the city before finally heading home.

Since there was almost no traffic I dropped back several hundred feet to keep my headlights out of his rearview mirror on the turns. The view from up there was spectacular; on a night like this you could see for miles on a 360-degree curve-the ocean, the full sweep of the bay, both bridges, the intricate pattern of lights that was San Francisco and its surrounding communities. Inside the park, we passed a couple of cars pulled off on lookouts that dotted the area: people, maybe lovers, taking in the sights.

Hornback went through half the figure eight from east to west, driving without hurry. Once I saw the brief faint flare of a match as he lit another cigarette. When he came out on the far edge of the park he surprised me again: instead of continuing down the hill he slowed and turned to the right, onto a short, hooked spur road where there was another of the lookouts.

I tapped my brakes as I neared the turn, trying to decide what to do. The spur was a dead end; I could follow him around it or I could pull off the road and wait for him to come out again. The latter seemed to be the better choice, and I cut my headlights and started to glide off onto a turnaround. But then, over on the spur, Hornback swung past a row of cypress that lined the near edge of the lookout. The Dodge’s brake lights flashed through the screen of trees; then his headlights also winked out.

I kept on going, made the turn and drifted onto a second, tree-shadowed turnaround just beyond the intersection. Diagonally in front of me I could see Hornback ease the Dodge across the flat surface of the lookout, bring it to a stop nose-up against a perimeter guardrail. The distance between us was maybe seventy-five yards.

What’s he up to now? I thought. Well, he had probably stopped over there to take in the view and maybe do a little brooding. The other possibility was that he was waiting for someone. A late-evening rendezvous with the alleged girl friend? but the police patrol Twin Peaks Park at regular intervals, because adventuresome kids had been known to use it as a lovers’ lane and because there had been trouble in the past with youth gangs attacking parkers. It was hardly the kind of place two adults would pick for an assignation. Why meet up here when the city was full of hotels and motels?

The Dodge gleamed a dullish black in the starlight; there was no moon. From where I was I could see all of the passenger side and the rear third of the driver’s side. The interior was shrouded in darkness. Pretty soon another match flamed, smearing the gloom for an instant with dim yellow light. Hornback was not quite a chain-smoker, but he was the next thing to it-at least a three-pack-a-day man. I felt a little sorry for him, considering my own bout with the specter of lung cancer.

I slouched down behind the wheel, tried to make myself comfortable. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Behind me, half a dozen sets of headlights came up or went down the hill on Twin Peaks Boulevard; none of them turned in where we were. And nothing moved that I could see in or around the Dodge.

I occupied my mind by speculating again about Hornback. He was a puzzle, all right. Maybe a cheating husband; maybe a thief; maybe an innocent husband and an innocent man-the victim of a loveless marriage and a shrewish wife. He had not done anything of a guilty or furtive nature tonight, and yet here he was, parked alone at 11:10 P.M. on a lookout in Twin Peaks Park. It could go either way. So which was it going to go?

Twenty minutes.

And I began to feel just a little uneasy. You get intimations like that when you’ve been a cop as long as I have, vague flickers of wrongness. The feeling made me fidgety, — I sat up and rolled down my window and peered across at the Dodge. Stillness. Darkness. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Twenty-five minutes.

The wind was chill against my face, and I rolled the window back up. But the coldness had got into the car; I drew my coat tight around my neck. And kept staring at the Dodge and the bright mosaic of lights beyond, like luminous spangles on the black-velvet sky.

Thirty minutes.

The uneasiness grew, became acute. Something wrong over there. A half-hour was a long time for a man to sit alone on a lookout, whether he was brooding or not; it was even a long time to wait for a rendezvous. But that was only part of the sense of wrongness. Something else …

Hornback had not lighted another cigarette since that one nearly a half-hour ago.

The realization made me sit up again. He had been smoking steadily all night long, even during his walk along Upper Grant after dinner. When I was a heavy smoker I could not have gone thirty minutes without lighting up; it seemed funny that Hornback could or would, considering where he was and that there was nothing else for him to do in there. He might have run out, of course- but I remembered seeing a full pack in front of him at Dewey’s Place.

What could be wrong over there? He was alone in the car, alone up here except for my watching eyes. Nothing could have happened to him. Unless-

Suicide?

The word popped into my mind and made me feel even colder. Suppose Hornback wasn’t playing around and suppose he was also despondent over the state of his marriage, maybe over his alleged theft. Suppose all the aimless wandering tonight had been a prelude to an attempt on his own life- a man trying to work up enough courage to kill himself on a lonely road high above the city. It was possible; I didn’t know enough about Hornback to be able to judge his mental stability.

I wrapped both hands around the wheel, debat ing with myself. If I went over and checked on him, and he was all right, I would have blown not only the tail but the job itself. But if I stayed here, and Hornback had taken pills or done Christ knew what to himself, I might be sitting passively by while a man died.

Headlights appeared on Twin Peaks Boulevard behind me. Swung in a slow arc onto the spur road. I drifted lower on the seat and waited for them to pass by.

Only they didn’t pass by, — the car drew abreast of mine and came to a halt. Police patrol-I sensed that even before I saw the darkened dome flasher on the roof. The passenger window was down, and the cop on that side extended a flashlight through the opening and flicked it on. The light pinned me for three or four seconds, bright enough to make me squint; then it shut off. The patrolman motioned for me to roll down my window.

I glanced past the cruiser at Hornback’s Dodge. It remained dark, and there was still no movement anywhere in the vicinity. Well, the decision on whether or not to check on him was out of my hands now, — the cops would want to have a look at the Dodge in any case. And in any case the job was blown.

I let out a breath, wound down the glass. The patrolman-a young guy wearing a Prussian mustache-said, “What’s going on here, fella?”

So I told him, keeping it brief, and let him have a look at the photostat of my investigator’s li cense. He seemed half-skeptical, half-uncertain; he had me get out and stand to one side while he talked things over with his partner, a heavyset older man with a beer belly larger than mine. After which the partner took out a second flashlight and trotted across the lookout to the Dodge.

The younger cop asked me some questions and I answered them. But my attention was on the older guy. I watched him reach the driver’s door and shine his light through the window. A moment later he appeared to reach down for the door handle, but it must have been locked because I didn’t see the door open or him lean inside. Instead he put his light up to the window again. Slid it over to the window on the rear door. And then turned abruptly to make an urgent semaphoring gesture.

“Sam!” he shouted. “Get over here, on the double!”

The young patrolman, Sam, had his right hand on the butt of his service revolver as we ran ahead to the Dodge. I was expecting the worst by this time, only I was not at all prepared for what I saw inside that car. I just stood there gawking while the cops’ lights crawled through the interior.

There were spots of drying blood across the front seat.

But the seat was empty, and so was the backseat and so were the floorboards.

Lewis Hornback had disappeared.