Blowback

Eight

Sonora was an aged and crumbling gold country town beneath a modern facade, like an old lady proudly displaying herself after a face-lift. You got a little of the flavor of the nineteenth-century Mother Lode, but mostly the restored and newly false-fronted buildings gave you the impression of a whimsical, Disneyland kind of village, a replica rather than an authentic landmark. Washington Street was teeming with cars and with tourists dressed in garish clothing and weighted down by camera equipment. I had an idea that the founding miners would have been appalled if they could have seen it this way-but maybe that was just my mood.

The courthouse was another of the carefully modernized structures, not far from the Tuolumne County Historical Society Museum; it was just past one o'clock when Harry parked his jeep in front and we entered the annex that housed the Sheriffs Department. The annex was air-conditioned, but they had it up so high that thirty seconds after we came in the sweat on my body dried cold and clammy, bonding clothes to skin. We gave our names to the deputy on the desk, and waited five minutes before Cloudman came out, greeted us gravely, and then ushered us into a private office.

“Appreciate your coming in,” he said. In the bright artificial light of the office he looked older and thinner than he had last night. His eyes were a light gray, steady and watchful but with that hint of humor you always find in the gaze of a basically happy man.

We sat down in chairs facing the desk, and he gave us typed statements and watched while we read them over and then signed them. When I passed mine over to him I said, “Any new developments on the case?”

“Couple of things, maybe.”

“Confidential?”

Cloudman shrugged. Then he leaned back in his chair and dug a fingernail into his hair and raked it around the way he had at the lake, grimacing. “Scalp infection,” he said. “Itches like hell sometimes.”

Neither Harry nor I had anything to say to that.

Cloudman fished a sheet of paper out of a basket on his desk and studied it for a time. At length he said to me, “Ever do any work for lawyers in San Francisco?”

“Once in a while.”

“Know one named Charles Kayabalian?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“He's heard of you,” Cloudman said. “You got your name in the Frisco papers a few times, I gather.”

“A few times.”

“Well, he seemed kind of interested in you when he showed up here this morning.”

I frowned. “In what way?”

“He didn't say. Just seemed interested, is all.”

“Is he connected with Terzian?”

“Indirectly. He handles the legal affairs of a lot of Armenians in the Bay Area-couple of other rug dealers and a few rug collectors among them. Seems he's been trying to work up a criminal action against Terzian on behalf of these people.”

“What sort of criminal action?”

“Contention is that Terzian was acting as a fence for a ring of Oriental rug and carpet thieves,” Cloudman said. “Kayabalian had ears and eyes on Terzian's operation in San Jose, and as soon as he got word of the murder he drove up.”

“Why would he do that-drive up?”

“He thinks maybe the reason Terzian came to Tuolumne was to deliver a carpet stolen four days ago near Frisco. Something called a Daghestan, worth a lot of money.”

“Does he have any idea who Terzian might have been delivering it to?”

“Not a one, he says.”

“Then why does he figure that's what brought him here?”

“He had somebody watching Terzian's place, like I said. Terzian gave Kayabalian's man the slip Saturday night and disappeared. It adds up, more or less.”

Harry said, “Why would this buyer kill Terzian?”

“We don't know that he did. There's still the hijacking angle, among others.” Cloudman scratched at his scalp again, sighed elaborately, and leaned forward to splay his hands on the desk top. “Well, I won't keep you fellas any longer. You'll hold everything I've told you in confidence, now?”

Harry and I said we would.

“Probably shouldn't have opened up in the first place,” he said in a musing way. “Trouble with me, though, is that I like to talk, like to get other people's ideas on things. Not always a good trait in a police officer, I've been told, but that's how I am.”

Uh-huh, I thought, sure it is.

“Either of you come across anything more, anything at all, you let me know right away,” he said, but he was looking only at me. “I can count on that, can't I?”

He was a wily old fox, all right. He had known exactly what he was doing in opening up to us-to me, really. He wanted to know more about this Kayabalian, and he wanted to know what the lawyer's apparent interest in me was; instead of making demands, the way some cops would have done, he was using friendliness and a certain amount of candor to ensure my cooperation in the event Kayabalian got in touch with me. I admired him for that. It takes a kind of faith in human decency to operate the way he did.

“You can count on it,” I said.

In the jeep on the way out of Sonora, Harry said, “You know, I just can't figure anybody buying stolen Oriental carpets in an area like this. Everybody knows everybody else up here; if there was a rug collector around, I'd have heard about it.”

“That's a sticking point, all right,” I said.

“I can't figure a hijacking either. The odds are pretty high against any of the locals knowing a valuable carpet from a worthless one, even if they could have gotten a look inside Terzian's van.”

I nodded. “And if Terzian shook the lawyer's man in San Jose, it doesn't seem likely anybody else could have followed him up.”

“Yeah. I wouldn't want Cloudman's job on a thing like this.”

“Neither would I.”

I slid lower on the seat and tried to ignore the sour grumbling in my stomach. The sun was westering now, but it seemed even hotter than it had been on the ride in. Heat mirage shimmered liquidly on the highway. The pocked landscape had a sere look, and the high forested summits to the north and east seemed remote, black-edged; above them, a few puffy cumulus clouds appeared to sit as motionless as holograms projected on the stark curve of the sky.

When we finally came down the county road into the parking circle, the camp looked somnolent and peaceful. The only person in sight was Cody, sprawled lazily in one of the chairs on Harry's front porch. And the Cadillac was still gone.

Cody watched us come over from the circle without moving; he had his feet up on the railing, legs spread, a can of beer balanced on his tanned chest. The only thing he wore was a pair of bright blue swim trunks so tight you would have had to be blind to miss noticing that he was hung like a stallion. Sourly, I thought that that was probably fitting, considering he was a horse's ass.

“Hey, dudes,” he said in his snotty voice. “What's happening?”

Harry said, “Something the matter with the front porch on your cabin?”

Cody grinned at him. “No view from up there. Too many trees. That's the trouble with this place-too many trees.”

Harry grunted and looked at me. “Want a beer?”

“I could use one.”

“You can bring me another horn too,” the kid said.

I saw Harry's mouth tighten. “You've got legs.”

“It's too hot to move, man.”

Harry stared at him, and his eyes were sharp with anger; then, abruptly, he turned and stalked around to where the cooler was.

Cody said to me, “Guy was around looking for you a little while ago.”

“What guy?”

“He didn't say.”

“What did he want?”

“Didn't say that either. Left you an envelope, though.”

He waved in the direction of the other chair, and I went up on the porch and found a plain white envelope, sealed, with my name written on the front in a strong masculine hand. The contents turned out to be a single business card. Black embossed printing on one side said Charles Kayabalian, Attorney-at-Law, and there was an address in a building on Sutter Street, near Union Square.

Written on the other side of the card was: May I see you at your earliest convenience regarding the death of Vahram Terzian? A meeting might benefit us both. I've taken a room at The Pines Hotel.

I was hardly surprised, after what Cloudman had told me. I put the card and the envelope in my pocket and went past Cody and down off the steps. Harry appeared just then, carrying three cans of Schlitz; he gave one to me, banged a second one down on the porch railing by the kid's foot.

“Hell,” Cody said, “now I'll get a foam bath.”

Harry ignored him. He said to me, “Let's go over by the lake.”

“Sure.”

We walked across, and Harry said, “Little bastard.”

“He'll get his ears pinned back one of these days.”

“Will he? That kind never does.”

I rolled the icy can back and forth across my forehead before I pulled the tab and had a long swallow. Then I told him about Kayabalian's visit and the business card.

“You going to see him?” Harry asked.

“I might as well.”

“What do you suppose he wants?”

“Hard to tell. But he's got me curious.”

“Well, try not to be gone too long, will you, buddy? I feel a hell of a lot better with you here.”

I finished the beer and then stopped up at my cabin long enough to change into a fresh shirt. I might have saved myself the trouble. The inside of my car was like a sauna, and opening both doors and all the windows did not do much good; the shirt was drenched with sweat before I had driven half a mile along the country road.

The hot, limp stillness was becoming oppressive. Nothing moved anywhere except a hawk and what looked like a pair of ravens gliding in slow, geometric sweeps above the hillside where the old pocket mine was located. The continual flux of sun glare and tree shadows bothered my eyes, even with the dark glasses I was wearing, and I was growing damned weary of that omnipresent red dust.

When I got to the intersection with the road that ran through The Pines, I had to wait for a string of slow-moving cars to pass. And while I was sitting there I became aware of the property directly across the way-a weathered frame house set behind a long split-rail fence; I had noticed it before, coming and going, but without paying any attention to it. In the yard, I saw now, were half a dozen apple trees and an elderly woman wearing a bandanna over her head and working on one of the trees with a small battery-powered saw. But that was not all. Swaggering along the inside of the fence, tail feathers spread in bright magisterial fans, were two fat long-necked birds.

Peacocks.

After the last of the cars had gone past, on impulse, I drove across the road in a wide turn and parked on the shoulder parallel to the fence. I got out and went over and leaned on the top rail, looking at the birds. Neither of them looked back. Thirty feet away on the hard-packed earth a single feather lay glistening iridescently in the sunlight.

Beside the apple tree, the woman had shut off the saw and was standing with a hand shading her eyes, peering in my direction. After a moment she came over to where I was in a long-legged masculine stride. She was in her sixties, sharp-featured and thin-mouthed, all bone and gristle.

“Hello,” she said warily.

“Hello.”

“Something I can do for you?”

“I was just admiring the peacocks.”

“Them? Nasty strutting parasites.”

“If you feel that way, why do you keep them?”

“My late husband fancied 'em.” She smiled without humor. “Come to think of it, they had plenty in common. He was kind of a nasty strutting parasite himself.”

“Do you sell their feathers?”

That got me a narrow look. “What for?”

“Well, some people use them for home decoration.”

“Do they?”

“I think so. Like cattails or pampas grass.”

“You want to buy some?”

“No. I was just wondering if you'd sold any recently.”

“To who?”

“To anyone.”

“I got better things to do than sell peacock feathers.”

I glanced again at the single dropped feather. More to myself than to her I said, “I guess it'd be easy enough for someone to stop and pick a few up. Just reach through or climb over when there was nobody around.”

“You think so, do you?”

“It's possible.”

“Well, you just get that idea right out of your head, mister. I got dogs too. Mean dogs.”

I smiled a little. “Don't worry. I haven't got any plans along those lines.”

“No?”

“No. Sorry to have bothered you, ma'am.”

“Tourists,” the woman said, and stalked off.

I got back into the car. Probably nothing in it, I thought. Why would hijackers or potential murderers take the time to gather peacock feathers? Still, it was an angle, and worth mentioning to Cloudman.