Cases

Chapter Thirty-four

Pinned to the large woman’s robe was a carnation set in a spray of greenery. She beamed with warm crinkly eyes but a rather dreadful smile on the two people standing in front of her.

“By the authority vested in me by the State of California, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

The groom did, voraciously, as if devouring raw oysters.

Standing back against the rear wall of the San Mateo County office used for civil ceremonies, Dunc thought he wouldn’t mind kissing the bride himself. She was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties with brown hair and a cute little rabbit nose. He hated to do it to her new husband at their wedding, but Sherry had said this was the first time the guy had surfaced in six months.

He plucked a single yellow rose from one of the vases of flowers banking the corner of the room behind the justice of the peace, bowed slightly, and handed it to the new Mrs. McGowan.

“For the happy bride.” She beamed. To her husband, he handed a three-folded Summons and Complaint backed with heavy blue paper. “For the happy groom. Alex McGowan, you have now been legally served in the matter of Rossiter versus McGowan. Congratulations on your marriage.”

“You son of a bitch!” the groom yelled at him.

His beloved spat in Dunc’s face and screamed, “I hope your wife dies of syphilis.”

As Dunc walked out wiping the spittle from his nose with one of the spare handkerchiefs he had learned to carry for such occasions, he decided the new bride wasn’t so pretty after all.

He couldn’t see Penny until February, but the Kiely case had disappeared just as Drinker had predicted, and he was learning the detective trade. Even process-serving had its funny moments. At a birthday party for the live-in girlfriend of a San Francisco shipping tycoon, Dunc had shown up in a clown suit. Instead of a singing telegram, the girlfriend had gotten alienation of affection papers from the tycoon’s estranged wife.

They worked any kind of case for any kind of client. Dunc quickly learned to have no emotional investment in these cases, but to act as though he did. One week might be background checks on an insurance company’s clients; the next, collecting facts for someone suing that same insurance company.

Sherry was teaching him how to skip-trace as Drinker gradually introduced him to a vast army of informants: waiters, bartenders, newsies, hotel clerks, bike messengers, car parkers, even cops picking up a few off-duty bucks. He was learning fast, loving the City at night.

It was a week before Christmas, and Dunc had just come in off a two-night stakeout in the Sunset District. An address on a postcard to her sister had convinced a Dallas, Texas, husband his missing wife was shacking up with a lover in San Francisco.

Sherry asked, “So, is the wandering wife there?”

“Not unless she’s got a goatee and is going bald.”

“Give me the report when you finish. Meanwhile...” She tossed a case file on his desk, stood up to brush invisible lint from her skirt. “Wellman Industrial Design in Burlingame. See Drinker. The client wants action on it.”

Drinker was tipped back in his swivel chair with his feet crossed on the corner of his desk. An empty glass and a half-empty bottle of bourbon were resting on his desk blotter. Dunc sat in the client chair across the desk from him.

“What kind of a camera is worth ten thousand bucks?”

“An industrial layout design camera.” Drinker poured himself another modest shot. “A father-in-law slash son-in-law beef. The old man sets the kid up in some kind of design business that depends on this camera, the marriage goes sour, now the daughter wants hubby’s nuts in a paper bag.”

“Short of that, what do we do?”

“Without the camera the kid’s out of business. Daddy’s got the sales slip on it, Daddy wants us to steal it.”

“We’re working for the wrong guy,” said Dunc.

“What else is new? A technical expert from the camera’s manufacturing company is coming in on the one A.M. flight from Chicago. You and Nat pick him up at the airport — it’s such a delicate piece of equipment it’s gotta get dismantled just so.”

“We’ll need a truck,” said Dunc.

“Nat’s getting one. Haul it up to the client’s warehouse here in the City.” He slid an envelope across his desk. “Two keys. Alarm system, warehouse.”

“Where’s the Wellman Industrial Design key?”

“That’s why Nat’s the one I called to go with you. He’s handy with a set of lockpicks.”

Nat’s chocolate face wore a wide grin as Dunc climbed into the truck. “Hey, Dunc, remember Delia, working girl in my rooming house, wears perfume’d make a monk hike up his habit? Well, she’s been asking after you, lady thinks you’re cute.”

“Lady has impeccable taste.”

Gregory Stout didn’t live up to his name. He was a Jack Sprat kind of guy with horn-rims and quick, nervous movements and a mop of gleaming black hair he had to continually brush back. As they walked three abreast through SFO’s echoing, almost empty terminal, Dunc asked, “You need tools or anything like that?”

Stout patted his carryall with a sort of prim precision. “All I need is a screwdriver. I’ll fly straight back after I’ve dismantled the camera. I’ll sleep on the plane.”

The enclosed back of the three-year-old Dodge moving van was stacked with ropes and padded furniture blankets. Nat had slipped an airport cop a buck to leave it at the curb in front of the baggage area with the blinkers flashing. They left the Bayshore at the Broadway-Burlingame light. Dunc eyed his watch.

“We’ve got time, let’s check it out.”

Wellman Design was in a light industrial area between the Southern Pacific tracks and El Camino Real. Big shutters were down over the glass storefront windows.

“Looks like there’s a loading area in back that can’t be seen from the street,” said Nat, turning his head as they passed.

Gregory Stout said nervously, “Ah... what time will the person were meeting be here to let us in?”

“After the bars close,” lied Dunc.

Nat drove back to Broadway and a bright splash of bar light. They killed time until last call playing shuffleboard and eating pretzels and sipping draft beer. Outside, it was a cold, clear night; Dunc could see his breath. They got into the truck, Nat started the engine so the heater could cut the chill.

“We’d better keep moving around,” said Dunc. “Cops see three guys in a panel truck parked with the motor running...”

After half a block a cruising police car passed them going the other way on Broadway. Dunc kept his eye on the rearview.

“They’re turning into El Camino.”

“How long d’you figure their loop takes?”

“At least an hour.”

Stout said, “Why are you men so jumpy about the police?”

Nobody answered. Nat stopped in front of Wellman Design with his turn blinkers on. Dunc got out. He could feel his adrenaline kick in. Stout was looking around nervously. Nat was backing the truck into the narrow alley between the building and a chain-link fence with ivy on it.

“C’mon,” Dunc said to Stout, “we just walk down to the corner and back, talking, while Nat checks it out.”

Nat came hotfooting out of the alley, grinning. “Hell, they got a loading dock.” He took a small leather case off his hip, added appreciatively, “Plenty of street light.”

Dunc took out the alarm box key. “The alarm box is supposed to be on a post to the right of the door. I’ll have sixty seconds to deactivate once you’ve—”

“Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.” They both turned to look at Stout. “Wha... what are you guys doing?”

“Breaking and entering,” said Dunc.

“But... what if the cops come?”

“They’ll shoot us.”

He grinned, and Nat, bent over the door lock, snickered. But Stout was backing away, holding up a hand to ward off demons.

“Uh-uh. No! I’m not... I didn’t know you were...”

He turned, almost stumbling, and walked briskly away up the street toward Broadway without looking back. Dunc and Nat looked at one another, then both burst out laughing.

“I think maybe I handled that guy wrong,” said Dunc.

“Yeah. He’s takin’ all his screwdrivers back to Chicago.”

“That toddling town,” said Dunc, which was enough to break them up all over again.

Just over a minute later, Nat said, “We’re in.”

Dunc’s pencil flash showed the post with the red alarm box mounted on it. He keyed it, turning the red light to green.

Fluorescents flickered and then glared whitely. “Lights on, we look legit,” said Nat. “A flash bouncing around the walls will bring the cops knocking at our door.”

“Christ,” said Dunc.

The camera was a great black box mounted on a floor-to-ceiling steel pipe framework with a massive bellow lens pointed straight down at a four-foot-square metal-framed sheet of opaque glass.

“Wish that guy hadn’t run,” said Ned. “How much of this shit we supposed to steal?”

“Everything we can unfasten.”

“We can wheel the stuff right onto the truck with a hand dolly,” said Nat.

They found screwdrivers, started in. Nothing seemed delicate or too intricate to understand. Who needed an expert? When they had the four-foot sheet of framed glass loosed from the brackets that held it, Nat opened the loading dock door and they hand-carried it into the truck because of its fragility.

Nat wheeled and padded and roped while Dunc dismantled the camera and its metal pipe framework. They put the camera on its back in the truck with its lens pointing straight up at the roof.

“It’ll be safe unless somebody dive-bombs us,” said Nat.

The whole operation took just under an hour and a half. Dunc reset the alarms and they left.

The client’s warehouse was tucked up against the almost perpendicular base of the hill on the Chestnut Street stub just off Montgomery on the far side of Telegraph Hill. In just over another hour they had unloaded the camera and its accessories.

“I’ll pop for breakfast,” said Nat with a stifled yawn. “The Greek around the corner from the office’ll be open.”

“And I’ll leave Drinker a note after we eat.”

In Chicago, that broad-shouldered town, a disheveled technical expert walked into his supervisor’s office smelling of pretzels, beer, and stale bar smoke.

“Don’t ever send me to San Francisco again,” he said in his prim, angry voice. “It’s just a nest of thieves out there.”

Chapter Thirty-five

At 7:55 Dunc clumped up the interior stairs to the office. Drinker was waiting for him. “Good — I got a hot skip-trace and I gotta be out of the office and Sherry’s off sick. You got contacts in Vegas, don’t you?”

Dunc didn’t even remember telling Drinker of his weeks there. He still had a hard time thinking about Vegas, about Ned, about Artis. “Not really. I was friendly with a bartender and a blackjack dealer at the Gladiator Club, that’s about it.”

“Broad you’re gonna be looking for disappeared from the Fabulous Flamingo — isn’t that what they call it?”

“Have a heart, Drinker. I’ve been up all night, I just came in to type my field report before going home to bed.”

Cope’s sleepy eyes gleamed. “You got the camera? Good. Make your report meaty. The client’s good for a lot of dough.”

“I’ll make it meaty, all right. Your expert from Chicago crapped out on me. Don’t pay the bastard his fee.”

“You’re learning, kid.” Drinker pointed at the unlisted phone on Sherry’s desk that was always answered with Hello, never with Cope Investigations. “Use the skip-tracing phone. Read my notes on the file before you start in.”

As he went down the stairs in his topcoat, fitting his fedora on his head, Dunc leaned over the railing.

“Who’s the client on this?”

Drinker paused. “Don’t worry about long-distance phone charges, the client’s good for it.” Then he was gone.

Another of Drinker’s unnamed-client cases. Dunc opened the file. Kata A. Koltai. What kind of name was that? Something central European? Age twenty-five, listed address on Glover — a one-block street on Russian Hill above the Broadway Tunnel. No listed employment, no listed references. A sister in Portland, Oregon, with a different last name. Pride. Polly Pride.

Koltai had driven to Las Vegas a month ago in a new 1953 Mercury Monterey station wagon, then had disappeared. Drinker had called the SFPD for wants or warrants. None. He had also called around the western states to sheriffs and highway patrol offices. She had been arrested in Arizona two years before for running a “mitt camp” at a county fair midway. Mitt camp; palm reading, right? Anyway, she’d gotten off with a fine.

The motor vehicle departments of Georgia and Mississippi, where cars could sometimes be licensed with just a driver affidavit of ownership, had no record for her. Louisiana DMV, where fraudulently registered cars could often get a clear title that bypassed the original lien-holders, also had no record.

Was the car in her name in California? Did she hold the pink slip? Maybe Drinker knew there wasn’t any lien-holder who might have further leads to her, but Dunc didn’t. He had to find out. The Searching Registration Service in Sacramento would check DMV records for two bits and mail you the result. For a buck they’d do it in an hour. Dunc asked for the hurry-up service.

While waiting for their callback, he tried the TUxedo exchange number. No answer. The Polk cross-directory gave him phone numbers for the other five apartments in her building. Only a Marta Gold was at home, six drinks and a deck of Luckies into her day.

“Kata Koltai?” Sudden wariness. “Who wants to know?”

“California Savings on Geary Street. She’s three months delinquent on her Mercury Monterey and—”

“She ain’t had it three months.”

Oops. He tried to sound confused. “That doesn’t square with our records...” He took a flier. “Is her rent current?”

“Course it is. Ain’t her who...” Dunc waited through a coughing fit and a heavy-duty throat-clearing. “You got too damn many questions, buster.”

Dial tone. So. Somebody was paying Kata’s rent. He called Portland information and got the sister’s phone number. Polly Pride. After four rings a woman’s voice answered.

“Kata?” asked Dunc brightly.

“Polly. Haven’t seen Kata in months. Piss off.”

She slammed down the receiver. Hell, a long shot anyway.

SRS called back collect on the regular agency phone. The Mercury was in Kata’s name, she owned it, free and clear.

Owned it, drove it to Vegas, disappeared. Their client had to be the man keeping her. She had run out on him and he wanted her back. Dunc had to bite the bullet and call Vegas. Though Carny Largo was gone, the Gladiator Club’s new owners wouldn’t have dumped Nicky; good bartenders were too hard to come by. Dunc got put through to the lounge.

“Gladiator Club, hottest slots in town.”

“Gimme a Scotch Manhattan, Nicky.”

“Shit, Dunc!” exclaimed Nicky. “Howzit, kid? Ain’t seen you around, figured you left town after Ned and all. Terrible thing. Not that I miss fuckin’ Carny Largo, y’understand, or that little bastard that followed him around.”

“Rafe. Did they ever catch him for—”

“Hell, poetic justice got done for the little fucker. Somebody stuck a knife in him.”

A surprising wave of relief went through Dunc. Rafe had paid for Artis, and Dunc was safe — if he’d ever been in danger.

“Listen, Nicky, who’s running the place now?”

Nicky got his mouth closer to the phone. “Would you believe, the fat guy with the Scotch Manhattan?”

And the Lana Turner look-alike buried in the desert. He said, “Listen, Nicky, you know anybody out at the Flamingo?”

“Couple bartenders. And Henri of course.”

“Henri the blackjack dealer?”

“Yeah, he’s a pit boss there now.”

Henri seemed genuinely glad to hear from him. He demanded, “Remember Sabine? Left with the bouncer with the seventeen pounds of dangling meat?”

“I don’t remember her putting it just that way, but—”

“Anyway, I guess it was so heavy he couldn’t get it up, so, zut! alors! she’s back wiz Henri, ze fantastique lover.”

They laughed, Dunc congratulated him, told him the story.

“A missing lady? Sure, give me the dope on her and I’ll run it past the registration desk. Ten minutes.”

Kata had checked in under her own name a month earlier, had checked out the next day. “That quick? Any phone calls?”

“Not to her room. And she didn’t make any calls out.”

“Anybody else asking about her?”

“Funny thing, I asked that, everybody got glassy-eyed.”

That explained why the client had taken a month to hire Drinker Cope. He had Vegas connections, had been looking for her himself, had struck out. Where to look next? Why wasn’t Sherry there to tell him? What was Drinker doing that was so damn important?

“I plan to die in the saddle, babe,” gasped Drinker Cope.

He withdrew, rolled onto his back, blew out a big breath. Sherry Taft reached for the tissues on the bedside table.

“Better not do it in my saddle, buster,” she grinned.

He sat up against the headboard, flushed from sexual exertion. His muscles were smooth under almost hairless skin. Sherry sat beside him, knees drawn up. Afternoon sunlight, muted by lace curtains, gave her racehorse body a seductive golden glow.

He put two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them, stuck one between Sherry’s lips. There were whisker burns on her chin.

“I’m going to look a sight tomorrow, Drinker.”

“What’s the diff? I’ve got you out sick today.”

She feathered smoke, looked over at him. “Why’d you want to put Dunc on this woman? He’s learning to skip-trace, but—”

“Wants to be a detective, he’s gotta learn sometime. And it’s as good a way as any to find out about his Vegas contacts.”

She shook her head fondly. “Drinker, you like living dangerously. What do you care about his Vegas contacts? If Mr. David knew you had him skip-tracing on this...” She paused. “Why do you? Really?”

“You know I hate skip-tracing and we were overdue for a day in the sack.”

“I’ll work on her tomorrow,” she promised.

He sucked hungrily on his cigarette, looked at the glowing tip, sucked again, and reached over to mash it out in the ashtray.

“How about you work on me right now?” he asked.

Dunc worked on Koltai for the rest of the afternoon, but the first break came from one of Drinker’s highway patrol calls.

“Is Inspector Cope there?”

Dunc put a cop’s boredom into his voice. “Eddie? He’s down in records checkin’ a file. I’m coverin’ his phone.”

“Tell him his suspect got a speeding ticket outside Rancho Mirage nine days ago. Driving a 1953 Mercury Monterey.”

Rancho Mirage. Dunc checked the California map. Near Palm Springs. Long-distance information had no new listings for Koltai in the area. Was she living there? Just passing through? With some new guy? If not, what was she doing for money?

Hey! Busted for palm reading in Arizona two years before! Ran off from Las Vegas. Nine days ago, a speeding ticket near Palm Springs. Deserts. Always deserts. This was thin. Really thin. Still, a lot of deserts. Deserts and palm reading. Palm reading under what name? Madam Kata? Madam Koltai?

If the sister up in Portland knew, could she be tricked into telling? He studied approaches to her like a coin dealer examining Spanish doubloons, picked one, called her again.

When she picked up, he asked, “Polly Koltai?”

“Polly Pride.” She gave a half-belch. “Pride for short but not for long.” Some drinking had been going on. Loud music in the background. “Gonna d’vorce him. Bastard got sent to the state pen for five-to-ten on an ADW beef ’n’ left me hangin’.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” said Dunc solemnly.

“Damn right.”

“Your sister mentioned your name and where you lived, and, well, I took the liberty of getting your phone number and—”

“Damn right you took the liberty. Well?”

“I met her in a... well, in a bar here in Palm Springs, to tell you the truth, a week, ten days ago.”

“Palm Springs? Hell she’s doin’ there?”

“She told my fortune, and... I gotta talk with her again.”

“Hey, mister, ’m shorry I can’t help you, but I din’ even know she was in Palm Springs. Her an’ her goddamn deserts! Me, gimme rain an’ pine trees an’...” A bottle tinked against glass. “Why’d you say you wanted to see her again?”

He put desperation in his voice. “Okay, look, I’ll level with you. She’s... We, ah, spent an evening together and... and I fell for her. Okay? I called around to a bunch of bars for a Madam Kata or a Madam Koltai, reading palms, but—”

“Hell, she never uses her own name! Madam Pollyanna.” She giggled. “Get it? My name’s Polly an’ her middle name’s Anna.”

“That’s really clever!” exclaimed Dunc. “She must think a lot of her little sister, use your name that way.”

“How’d you know I was younger?”

“You sound so much younger.”

“Damn right.” Another pull at her drink. “Prettier too. You tell her that when you see her, okay?”

“Sure. If you could tell me where she—”

“Hey, wait a minnit, I’m talkin’ too damn much...”

And she hung up, as if suddenly regretting her gabbiness. Dunc kissed a finger and laid it on the phone. Yes! Kata had to be somewhere around Palm Springs, reading palms under the name of Madam Pollyanna. Had to be. Now, a lot of phone work...

He settled lower in Sherry’s now-comfortable chair. Madam Pollyanna, always gave a rosy-futured reading. If she was Madam Pandora, she could foretell only dire events for her...

“Wake the hell up.” Drinker Cope loomed above him in topcoat and fedora, wide as a house, shaking him by the shoulder. “Hell of a way to cover the phones.”

Dunc sat up, stretched. “Just resting my eyes.”

“Then your eyes snore. Whadda ya got on Koltai?”

Dunc recounted everything he had done on the file. It sounded thin to him now. He didn’t know she was in Palm Springs...

“I, uh, haven’t had time to start calling around for—”

“I saw how busy you were, sacked out in Sherry’s chair.” Then he punched Dunc in the shoulder and gave a triumphant laugh. “I’ll be a son of a bitch, that’s great work — connecting up deserts and that old mitt-camp charge. We got her, kid.”

Energized, Dunc said eagerly, “Can I go look for her?”

“Hell no. We’re out of it from here on... Close and bill. The client’s got business interests in Palm Springs, they’ll ask around, when they find her he’ll send one of his own people down to get her.”

Chapter Thirty-six

The stewardess was checking reservations. “Name, please.”

“Simmons,” said Falkoner.

During the thirty-five-minute flight from Los Angeles his startling blue eyes, slightly askew in a sun-tawny face, studied the woman huddled across the aisle with melancholy contempt. She wore a cheap brown hat and clutched an old straw purse. Updrafts over the rim of the desert made her fists whiten with strain and her eyes burn with fear. He found her disgusting. Death was swift, casually given.

A slight sandy-haired man in a short-sleeved sport shirt, khaki pants, and open sandals of crisscrossed brown leather took his arm when he left the plane at Palm Springs. Falkoner’s only luggage was a briefcase that held his shaving gear and a change of underwear, just in case. Not that he thought he’d need it.

“I bet Mr. David sent you down,” said the sandy-haired man in too-intimate tones. “I’m Langly. My car’s here in the lot.”

It was a blue-and-white 1952 Chrysler. On the two-lane blacktop beyond the airport the sun was hot but the air dry and fresh. Scraggly clumps of dusty green vegetation of no interest to Falkoner spotted the flat tan desert.

“It’s so dry around here they all have these just huge root systems to suck up whatever moisture they can and—”

“Shut the fuck up and drive,” said Falkoner.

Langly lapsed into hurt silence. They passed a man and woman on horseback, wearing riding breeches, who waved gaily. Langly waved back. “He’s a director at RKO. They—”

“Shut the fuck up and drive.”

An Eldorado roared by like an escaped rocket, piloted by a pair of bleached blondes goggled with bright-rimmed sunglasses.

“Who’re they, the Bobbsey Twins?” Before Langly could respond, he demanded, “Where’s the woman, goddamn you?”

“She’s got just a horrible shack in a date grove near Rancho Mirage — it’s a new section this side of Palm Desert — and reads palms at a Mex place in Palm Desert. The Caliente Club. She goes in at five in the afternoon, she’ll be home now.”

“She’d better be.”

But Langly could not be silent. His voice tingled ripely.

“Mr. David must want her terribly badly, I just notified Los Angeles last night, today here you are from Frisco to—”

“Just take me out to her place.”

This guy was not only a pain in the ass; he might be dangerous. Beyond the plush Thunderbird Club and before the Shadow Mountain Club, they turned left on a dirt road. Dust swirled behind them.

“When word came she’d been telling fortunes in Scottsdale a few years ago, and had disappeared from Vegas, well, I just put my thinking cap on. It just seemed to me that she might try it here — I mean, the country’s just almost the same. Then I—”

“A San Francisco skip-tracer told you she liked the desert. Told you she was picking up traffic tickets here. Told you she was readings mitts as Madam Pollyanna.”

“But that was all so vague, so tentative. I spotted her at the Mex place from her name and photo, and—”

“And megaphoned Mr. David’s name all over. Are we close?”

Beyond an old wash, the date groves started. Langly said snidely, “Next road to the right, if you must know, first house on the left.” Almost grudgingly, “Only house.”

“Drive past the mouth of the road, not past the house.”

“I’m not stupid, you know, Mr. High-and-Mighty.”

“You sound stupid,” said Falkoner. “You act stupid.”

Twenty yards in on the narrow dusty track through the date grove, the tail of a black ’53 Mercury Monterey station wagon with wood paneling protruded from behind a palm. The shack itself was hidden by the date trees.

“Turn around and let me off and go back to town.”

Langly was a spoiled child. “But you’ll need me to—”

“I need you to shut your face.”

He walked around the car to drop an envelope in through the open window onto Langly’s lap. The envelope crinkled.

“Your thirty pieces of silver.” He smiled his not-nice smile. “What sort of work do you do, nance?”

“I... I’ve been parking cars at one of the clubs.” His voice got almost shrill with malice. “But I did good work on this and I’m going to make sure Mr. Dannelson in Los Angeles knows all about it and about how you’ve treated me.”

Falkoner leaned into the Chrysler. “You ought to write mystery novels, you got that kind of pansy imagination. Mr. David wants her back, he’s fond of her, he asked me to drive her back up in her car. Capisce?”

“I...” Langly was looking straight ahead. “I... yes.”

“You don’t call Dannelson, you don’t call anyone, you never heard of me. Capisce?” Langly jerked his head stiffly in acquiescence. Falkoner nodded dismissal, said, “Go park cars.”

He removed the Mercury’s distributor cap, eased the hood back down. Something, probably a palm rat, gnawed with cautious haste in the palm fronds clicking drily on the roof of the shack. His shoes made the noise of cats’ feet on glass as he crossed the sagging porch. He cupped his eyes to peer into the living room.

A beaten-down green couch, a red easy chair that looked almost new. One leg of the wooden table in the middle of the room had been cracked and stapled. A plaque that read GOD BLESS OUR HAPPY HOME with embossed flowers around the frame. Foot traffic had worn certain areas of the linoleum almost white.

He knocked on the door frame with his knuckles. A woman’s voice called from somewhere, “I’m not doing any readings today.”

Falkoner kept on knocking. Kata came through the inner doorway. An intricately colored silk scarf was twisted twice around her neck; her striking figure was displayed by a tight black dress. She was nearly as tall as Falkoner’s six-one. Her arms were raised and her hands were fooling with her hair; three hairpins were between her thin hungry lips.

“I told you I’m not doing any readings until tonight at the club.” Her face was fine-featured: straight nose, high cheekbones. Her usually husky, seductive voice was thick with anger. “Now, get to hell away from here or I’ll call Pablo...”

The screen door was unlocked. Falkoner stepped in.

“You don’t have a phone,” he said.

Her face went stark white. Her mouth dropped the hairpins. She tried to push him back out the door, slanted dark eyes smoky with terror.

His almost gentle hands on her shoulders pushed her off. “Pablo, huh? Quite a comedown for you, Kata.”

“Goddamn you, he’s the bouncer at the club.”

“The Caliente Club,” he said with indifference.

Through the archway was a bedroom with a double bed that looked as if two large animals had been fighting on it. Stiff yellowish stains on the sheets testified to Pablo’s virility. The whole setup was perfect — except for the nance, Langly.

Drawing on a pair of thin gray gloves, Falkoner sauntered back to the living room. Kata was standing stiffly in the middle of the floor like a songbird mesmerized by a snake.

“What does he want from me? The Mercury? I earned it.”

“On your back,” he said in brutal indifference.

“Under you a couple of times when he was out of town,” she said shrilly. Her anger died. “I got tired of men like him and men like you. Money and power and women, that’s all you—”

“The men at the Mex place are different?”

“I have to eat. I didn’t steal anything from him, did I?”

“How about his peace of mind?” suggested Falkoner.

Her hands crawled like broad white spiders up the black dress to her breasts, squeezed them brutally, unconsciously.

“I, look, I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything. I’m no threat, I...” In a low, almost throaty whisper, she asked, “Why can’t he let me live in peace?”

“He can’t let you live at all, Kata.”

She tried to twist away, but his quick hands were already closing about her scarfed throat like an act of love. She scrabbled wildly at the iron-hard forearms, tried to claw his eyes, tried to knee his crotch with the strength of desperation.

But his hands had the strength of death. He spun her about, shoved her facedown on the couch, got a knee in the middle of her back as his hands found the ends of the scarf. He dragged it tight around her throat.

Her black skirt was up around her waist, opaque black panties molded the ripe globes of her buttocks. Her thrashing body under his, her smell of sweat and perfume and fear made his erection immense; but the M.E. would find his semen in her, there would be questions. If he took her away with him, he wouldn’t put it past Mr. David’s minions to check her body cavities.

He couldn’t chance it. Her movements became erratic, lost volition, ceased. He stepped back and blew out a long breath. He was drenched in sweat as from a heavy workout.

When he rolled her over, her face was almost black and her tongue, pink as a baby’s thumb, was sticking out of one corner of her mouth. She sprawled in a lewd doll-pose of surrender, but there was nothing seductive about voided bowels and loosened kidneys. Her eyes stared beyond him into death with a sort of infinite horror. His lip curled with contempt. Dying was easy.

And Kata was just a disposal problem, just cooling meat.

Chapter Thirty-seven

As the bleating sheep swung past him, strung up by a leg on the conveyor loop, the big Negro jabbed his gleaming needlepoint spike into its ear. The animal gave a convulsive jerk and was carried away, dripping blood from its nose, to be skinned and eviscerated. The big slaughterer reached for the next one.

Out on the loading dock, Dunc transferred the sheep’s carcass from his shoulder to the last empty hook in the Niarchos Meats van. A burly man in a blood-splattered white smock chomped his cheap cigar and made a check mark on his clipboard.

“That’s the one we been looking for,” he said.

Dunc made ritual reply. “Too bad they saved it ’til last.”

He inserted his time card, the clock punched out 6:13 — almost forty-five minutes past quitting time. Maybe tonight would be the night. He added his card to the others already in the rack.

The locker room was filled with tall rows of double-stacked metal lockers with wooden benches in between. A few stragglers still pulled on street clothes after their showers. As Dunc entered, a redheaded Irishman with freckles and overmeaty earlobes paused in the doorway to raise a fine tenor in song:

There was sudden silence in the locker room. Dunc had been working there only three days, he knew Flaherty didn’t like him, but this was the Irishman’s first direct challenge.

“I guess you know the color of your own nose,” he said.

And pushed past into a locker room now noisy with laughter. He kept going, down between a row of lockers, cursing himself for saying anything. He wasn’t here to get into a brawl; that could spoil everything. But as he stripped off the bloodstained white smock and stuffed it into an already bulging canvas laundry bag, he breathed a silent sigh of relief: Flaherty’s voice, bragging as if he had won the confrontation, was retreating down the hall.

When Dunc came back with wet hair and a towel wrapped around his middle, the big colored man was at the next locker.

“You ever get into a fight with that guy, watch out,” he said in a rumbling bass voice, “he’s good at kicking kneecaps.”

“Hey, thanks.”

The Negro flashed a big grin and was gone. Dunc dressed slowly. By the time he was tying his shoes, he was alone. He’d jimmied the storage closet’s lock the first night, so he went in, pulled some boxes out from the back wall just far enough to slip behind them, and sat down with his legs stretched out in front of him. He leaned back against the sidewall to wait.

Falkoner leaned against the window of the gas station pay phone on South Palm Drive, smoking a cigarette and waiting for his connection to a SUtter exchange number in San Francisco.

The operator said, “I have a collect call for anyone from a Mr. Simmons in Palm Springs. Will you accept the charges?”

A flat voice answered, “Put him on.”

“Go ahead, sir. Your party is ready.”

Falkoner ground out his cigarette against the window, said “Yes” into the phone, and hung up without waiting for a reply.

After paying for his gas, he drove the Mercury out of Palm Springs and westward across the desert. He’d strangled Kata with the scarf to avoid finger marks on her throat: he’d intended to leave her strung up as a suicide. Even without a note, suicide would have been accepted. A woman used to the good life, reduced to telling fortunes in a Mexican bar and sleeping with the Mexican bouncer, takes a hard look at her future, the scarf is already around her neck, the ridge beam is convenient... He would have left the car and walked back to town.

But he’d decided he just couldn’t risk it: Langly had a leaky face. So he’d packed the clothes and personal items she would take when moving on, had put them in her suitcase that was beside him on the Mercury’s front seat. Kata herself he had wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in the trunks spare-tire well.

Dunc listened to the cleaning crew leave the locker room, went down the corridor and out across the slaughtering floor. He had twenty minutes until the 8:00 P.M. arrival of the night watchman. The blood had been washed down the drains, and the conveyor belt was silent, but the smell of death lingered; the very walls were impregnated with it.

On the mezzanine was a walkway in front of glass-fronted offices. Dunc let the tight little O of his pencil flash lead him to the personnel file cabinets. In the drawer marked “F—J” he found FLAHERTY, DENNIS MICHAEL. Pulled it out.

Yes! The Social Security numbers matched!

He’d nailed the bastard. Six months ago a certain Shamus Herron had been working as a butcher at McSorley’s Meats in East Orange, New Jersey, when he had lifted $25,000 in cash from the safe. Since McSorley made book on the side, the cash was unreported and he couldn’t go to the police.

But last week Herron had given the pay-phone number of a San Francisco bar to his former girlfriend, Margie McConnell, back in East Orange. McSorley had offered a rather extravagant cash reward for information about him; Margie had cashed in.

Dunc had snooped around and had learned enough to get a job at the slaughterhouse on Evans Avenue in the Hunter’s Point district. Tonight he’d confirmed that Dennis Flaherty’s Social Security number was also Shamus Herron’s. Social Security withholds were recorded primarily by account number, not name.

He drove in on Third Street past the Wessler — poor old Kiely was already retreating into memory — and parked across from Ma Booger’s. At Tommy’s Joynt he had a ninety-nine cent roast turkey leg with mashed potatoes and stuffing, and went up to bed.

At U.S. 99, Falkoner went north to Colton, then cut across to U.S. 66 on a dirt road, once again pointed the nose of the Mercury at the far thin glow of Los Angeles. He counted bugs as they squashed against the windshield, and at nine o’clock ate Mexican food in a small adobe diner. The bright serapes decorating the walls reminded him of the Red Arrow.

Tomorrow night back in Palo Alto he would use each of his wife’s orifices in turn. It had begun after his first two kills, the personal ones, had continued and intensified after each of his three professional assignments from Mr. David. She had chosen to whore around, what did she expect? Red roses?

At midnight some unease made him pull in at a motel near Glendora, two hours from the city. It was a single row of neat, freshly painted white cottages that had covered carports and doors leading directly inside. The cabin closest to the road had a red neon sign, MOTEL, with vacancy smaller underneath.

After he rang the bell twice, a light went on and an old man in an old-fashioned nightshirt that covered him from neck to midthigh came out rubbing his eyes.

“I have trouble sleeping if I can hear traffic passing,” said Falkoner. “Is your last unit in the line empty?”

Clicking his false teeth together, he leaned past Falkoner as if to make sure there was a last unit. Up close like this he had an old man’s incontinent smell of urine. “Yep.”

“How much?”

“Five bucks.”

“Commercial rates. Three-fifty. It’s after midnight.”

After a long moment, he gave a defeated nod. “Okay.”

Established as a commercial traveler on a budget, Falkoner wrote “Simmons” on the registration card in a slanting backhand script not his own; mixed up the license number in a way that could have been accidental; and took Kata’s suitcase with him before locking the car.

Kata herself he left in the spare-tire well: the cold night air would keep her fresh.

Chapter Thirty-eight

In the morning Dunc did two hours with the weights at the downtown YMCA on Golden Gate Avenue, then ran a mile on the oval track on the mezzanine above the basketball court. A half hour under a hot shower couldn’t wash away the slaughterhouse stink, because it was in his mind, not on his skin.

Tonight he would say the seventh of the dozen rosaries given him as pre-penance by the priest in Las Vegas five months ago. It was Tuesday, which meant the Sorrowful Mysteries.

“Let me talk to Danny,” said Falkoner into the service station/garage pay phone. He rubbed his eyes and cursed the gray fingers of smog reaching even out here from Los Angeles.

“Yeah, who’s calling?”

Morning traffic made it difficult to hear. “Falkoner.”

“Falkoner? I’m sorry, Mr. Dannelson is out.”

Falkoner squeezed the receiver with a hand gone suddenly sweaty. There were muttered angry words, a click, and Danny Dannelson’s jovial voice came over the line.

“Hello, Jack? That damn fool didn’t get your name right. We expected you last night, boyo. Where in hell are you?”

Falkoner hung up, thought for a moment, then went around behind the repair garage. With his Swiss Army knife he removed the license plates from a parked car, walked back to the motel with them under his jacket, and changed the Mercury’s plates.

The maid had made up the room. He turned on the radio, used one of the fresh towels to wipe everything he’d touched. Dannelson’s clumsiness had prepared him for the 10:00 A.M. news.

Police were investigating the disappearance and possible murder of a woman who had been telling fortunes at the Caliente Club outside Palm Desert under the name of Madam Pollyanna.

At the Olympus Cafe on Franklin Street between Bush and Sutter, Elias Stavropolous, a short wide swarthy Greek with a brigand’s mustache, put two English muffins into the toaster and brought Dunc a pot of tea without being asked.

The 10:00 A.M. news was saying that two boys playing near the woman’s house had seen a man carrying a blanket-wrapped body to her black station wagon just at dusk. They had told their parents, who had alerted the cops.

Dunc opened the Call-Bulletin and started reading what the Board of Supervisors had to say about Herb Caen’s proposal in the Chronicle to string a wire in the Broadway Tunnel so car radios wouldn’t die on the way through.

The police had found no sign of a struggle, no blood, said the newsman; the woman’s clothes and personal items and car had been gone. But under the paper lining of a kitchen shelf they had found over $700 in small bills.

“Who’s gonna run off on her own an’ leave that kinda money lying around?” demanded Elias as he returned with Dunc’s food.

Dunc nodded indifferently, crunched muffin, slurped tea.

Chester Langly, a parking attendant at the Blue Owl, had given the description of a hitchhiker he’d left off at the mouth of the road where the woman’s house was located.

Damn him, Falkoner thought as he sopped up the last of his egg yolk with his toast. Mr. David had given him the contract on Kata Koltai personally, so now Falkoner — because of Langly — was too compromised to be left alive.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas and San Diego — probably Tucson and El Paso, too. Seattle. Airports, bus and train depots, seaports like San Pedro to prevent him trying it by boat.

Where in Christ’s name wouldn’t they be looking for him?

He grinned to himself. Of course. It was what they should expect of Jack Falkoner. At the motel office he paid cash for three more days and told the indifferent clerk he wouldn’t need maid service. Kata went into the bathtub. Leaving the air conditioner on high might add a day before the smell got noticed.

Sherry was explaining over the phone, in clipped businesslike tones, that she had an application for employment from a Mr. Charles DeWitt and needed his current residence address. She tipped Dunc a wink, wrote things on her pad, hung up.

“Where have you been? Drinker’s having a fit.”

“Gee, Dunc, great job on Flaherty,” he said.

Her eyes widened theatrically. “So he’s our man! Good work, Dunc! I’ll tell Drinker to close and bill—”

“Dunc, goddammit, get in here!”

Drinker had the blinds turned halfway up to keep bands of sunlight from hitting the top of his littered desk. He pointed at the hardback chair. Dunc sat.

“You nailed Flaherty? Great. I got a hot one for you.” He put his elbows on the desk. “Old pal of yours skipped with a quarter million bucks worth of bearer bonds and our client don’t wanna move against his surety bond. So I want you to—”

“I don’t have any old pals that smart,” said Dunc.

“The client’s covering all the usual places himself — buses, trains, planes, airports, seaports. All they’ve come up with is a big fat zero.” He fixed his eyes on Dunc’s face. “I want you to tell ’em where to look.”

“What’s the joke? I don’t know anybody who—”

“Jack Falkoner. Guy you told me you was with at Juárez.”

“Hell, Drinker, I also told you I had a day on the road with him, a night in Juárez, and an hour in Palo Alto when I picked up my stuff.”

Drinker Cope adjusted the blinds again to keep the sun out, said almost vaguely, “Yeah, you did. But at least you know him. I’m grabbing at straws here, kid, but this’s a hell of an important client and you got the instinct.”

Dunc felt a little strange, trying to find someone he’d gotten drunk with and fought beside. But he didn’t owe Jack Falkoner anything; the man had stranded him in El Paso. And it was satisfying that Drinker was starting to think of him as a real private eye, after all.

He went back to his own desk in the rear of the office, put his feet up, and let Jack Falkoner stride through his mind.

Running around on me... I’ll deal with them...

Army surgeons wanted to cut my arm off... Fuck ’em...

In Mexico we can do more than we’re big enough to do...

Suddenly he knew what he had to do. He went into Drinker’s office without knocking. “I’m going down to Palo Alto.”

“For Chrissake, Jack Falkoner isn’t in Palo Alto.”

“His wife is.”

Dunc put his finger on the buzzer and kept it there. The brown-shingle bungalow at Melville and Bryant hadn’t changed in the three months since he’d last seen it. Ginny Falkoner finally opened the door to peer out fearfully.

No tight halter and skimpy shorts to show her tempting figure: now a shapeless housedress. No black eye, but a drawn look and pasty skin almost jaundiced in color. And she’d lost weight. Her shoulders were hunched as if she feared a blow.

“Pierce Duncan,” he said. “I was here in Septem—”

“I remember. About your duffel bag. Jack isn’t here. I don’t know where he is. Jack never calls when he’s on the road.”

“They’ve been here, haven’t they?”

In almost a whisper she said, “Yes.” Dunc went in past her, she shut the door immediately. Somehow, they both knew he didn’t mean the cops even though he wasn’t sure who he did mean. “I told them what I just told you.”

“Did they believe you?”

“They left.”

They were standing just inside the door. The polished oak floor gleamed. “Did they tell you he stole a lot of money?”

“Jack? Jack wouldn’t steal.”

Something, maybe even fear, turned over in his gut like a striking bass. “Why didn’t you go through with the divorce?”

Her voice was just a whisper. “He said he’d...”

She stopped. This was the strangest conversation he’d ever had with anyone in his life, yet both of them understood it.

“And you believed him?”

“I... There were... I had two friends...”

“Lovers,” pronounced Dunc. “He told me about them.”

“It wasn’t like that!” she cried. Her momentary animation died. “Friends. Nothing more. I... They’re both... dead.”

Dunc couldn’t keep looking at her. Why had he ever wanted to be a detective? A brace of suitcases stood just inside the living room archway. He finally asked her, “How?”

“Jerry was found dead in an alley in San Mateo during a race meet at Tanforan. The police said it was a mugging.” Her eyes and voice faltered. “The other one, Tommy...”

“If he was in danger, where would Jack run to?”

Clear blue eyes met his. Her voice was suddenly strong. “Jack would never run. Jack is an implacable man.”

He almost didn’t call in. Something was awry about the stolen bearer bonds, but he knew he wouldn’t get any answers out of Drinker Cope. In the end he dropped coins into the same pay phone he’d used to look up Falkoner’s address three months ago.

“What?” said Drinker’s impatient voice.

“He’ll double back on them”

There was a long pause. “Shit, he’d be nuts to do that.”

“You say he’s nuts, his wife says he’s implacable. I say I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Wait a minute, it’s the middle of the goddamn afternoon.”

Dunc had hung up. He deliberately hadn’t said anything about Ginny Falkoner being all packed up to leave.

Drinker would think she was maybe going to join Jack, would want her shadowed. But Dunc knew that she believed she had to flee for her life, either from her husband or from his pursuers, and that she felt there was little to choose between them.

Chapter Thirty-nine

A light blue Ford pulled out behind Jack Falkoner on the traffic circle at Bakersfield. He cursed silently to himself; the tail job was clumsy, but why was the pursuer there at all?

North of Delano he squealed off old U.S. 99 near Earlimart to pull up in front of a little run-down country crossroads sort of store still occasionally surviving in the San Joaquin Valley.

A short man wearing a defeated face and dirty overalls came out chewing an outsize cud of tobacco.

“Fill it up — regular,” said Falkoner. The man unhooked the nozzle. The pump was old-fashioned, an overhead glass cylinder full of yellowish gas that gravity-flowed into the car’s tank. “You got a pay phone here?”

“Our own phone, out back — cost you a dollar to use it.”

Good. His follower couldn’t call anyone. “I can wait.”

How had this guy gotten onto him so quick? Mr. David? He didn’t have the kind of mind to foresee Falkoner’s strategy. Ginny? She knew him that well, but she’d be too scared to tell.

Three noisy barefoot children slammed through the screen door to clamor at the candy counter like puppies worrying a bone. A tall faded woman in a washed-out housedress came from the bowels of the store to scream harsh threats at them.

The blue Ford rounded the corner, braked sharply when the driver saw Falkoner walking around behind the building toward the outdoor rest rooms. The lean-to was flanked by latticeworks into which thick vines had grown. Falkoner slammed the door sharply, then slid out of sight behind the greenery.

Cautious feet scuffed the dust. Foliage rustled. Falkoner could see part of the man’s face through the leaves. Young, big, redheaded, homely, deceptively like a farm kid from Hicksville.

The redhead jerked open the door with a squeal of hinges. Falkoner slammed the knife edge of his hand on the kid’s wrist. The .357 Magnum fell to the dirt. The redhead made the mistake of going down to scrabble for it. Falkoner lifted a knee into his face, scooped up the Magnum, dragged him around behind the lean-to, and killed him with the gun butt. He removed the man’s identification and took the Magnum’s shoulder holster.

The surly man in the dirty overalls was still cleaning bugs from the Mercury’s windshield when the blue Ford, Falkoner behind the wheel, dug out to speed past the gas pumps.

Dunc was lying on the bed thinking about Ginny Falkoner when Ma Booger slid two phone slips under his door. He got up to look at them. Both from Drinker Cope. Call him at the office. Call him at home. Dunc lay back down. Ginny said Jack wouldn’t steal. Ginny said Jack was implacable. Drinker had lied to him.

They weren’t looking for Falkoner because he was a thief, they were looking for him because he was dangerous. Ginny’s bags had been packed. Maybe to escape Jack’s pursuers, but more likely Jack. She believed he had killed her two men friends. Dunc was pretty sure she was right.

So what did he do to stop Jack Falkoner before he maybe killed again? He’d already done it with his phone call saying Falkoner would double back; all that was left was his report. Reports seemed to be as close to writing as he got these days, so he worked hard at them.

But he just didn’t want to run into Drinker when he went into the office to write them.

He stepped over the phone slips and out the door. Half an hour later he paused outside a narrow joint on Bush between Taylor and Jones, the Say When club, from which jazz poured generously into the night. The sandwich board beside the door said BIG JAY McNEELY in big letters. A woman with ash-colored hair and wearing a man’s pea-coat and striped sailor’s jersey tapped her feet to the beat as she studied the placard.

“Is he any good?” Dunc asked her.

“What do your ears think?” she asked him tartly without breaking her rhythm. “Chet Baker got his start here at Say When. He was stationed at the Presidio during the war, and Charlie Parker needed a trumpeter. They’re all good here.”

Dunc edged through the doorway for a look inside. At that moment the long drink of water on the piano stool stood, grabbed a saxophone off its stand, and started blowing it sweet and rich.

“That’s Harry the Hipster, he’s no sax man,” she exclaimed, looking around Dunc’s shoulder.

He had to step back as the Hipster, wearing a rumpled suit and a day’s growth of beard on sallow cheeks, stalked out still blowing wild on his saxophone. The rest of the band kept right on playing. Harry got on board a passing bus without lowering his horn. They watched it pull away from the curb.

Patrons flowed out into the street, openmouthed, but were drawn back by Big Jay’s still-jamming combo. The girl went with them. Dunc looked at his watch. Pushing midnight. He could go type reports now without fear of running into Drinker.

As he started walking back out Bush Street, a taxi pulled up and Harry the Hipster got out still blowing his sax, crossed the sidewalk back into Say When. He hadn’t dropped a note while he’d been gone. God, Dunc loved this town!

It was pushing midnight when Jack Falkoner parked the blue Ford. He checked the redhead’s Magnum carefully; he was going up against Mr. David himself. In Bible school as a kid he’d read about that other David, the one in the Old Testament, who had a falling-out with his God. Now it was Falkoner’s turn.

He walked downhill on the right-hand side of narrow, one-block Glover, crossed over, came up the other side, breathing heavier from the incline. No cars he knew, no dark shapes in any of the vehicles along the curb, no people at all.

Mr. David being here was a long shot, but he’d paid Kata’s rent and on Sundays had liked to watch Ed Sullivan with her. Even when she wasn’t here he’d come to think and plan, usually with only Jack for security. If he was here, an easy hit.

Falkoner climbed the stone steps. No lights. He used Kata’s keys to open the heavy oak door. After switching off the alarm, he went aprowling through the lush, five-room apartment, cocked Magnum m hand, rubber soles silent on the polished floors and thick carpets. The place was empty.

The hit was going to be a lot harder at Mr. David’s Seacliff home, but Jack knew a way in without tripping the alarm. And since he had kept the redhead from getting to a phone, nobody would be expecting him.

As he slid in behind the wheel, a gun muzzle was poked into the back of his neck. A hand came over his shoulder to lift the Magnum from its shoulder holster. A smooth voice spoke.

“Hands on the head, sweets, and slide over slow.”

He did. A dark figure crossed the street, opened the driver’s door, got in under the wheel. The interior light did not go on. Falkoner was oddly breathless.

He remembered his fucking wife’s second lover, that goddamn Tommy Exeter. “I’m not afraid of you,” Tommy had said.

A long black Cadillac drifted around the corner and crawled up behind them. It looked remarkably like an undertaker’s car. The Ford pulled out. The Cadillac followed them out Pine all the way to Presidio; they cut over to Balboa, drove decorously, like a midnight funeral procession, out through the dark still avenues flanking Golden Gate Park. His head ached; he felt a little sick to his stomach. Jack Falkoner is not afraid.

The driver was hunched over the wheel. His face was unfamiliar. Maybe Falkoner could... The unknown man in the backseat said, “Don’t try it, sweets.”

“How about a cigarette?”

He laughed. Later Tommy Exeter had cried and babbled and even prayed. Falkoner had laughed before shooting him in the face to spoil the pretty-boy good looks that had seduced Ginny.

Surf grumbled against the concrete breakwaters as the Ford turned left onto the Great Highway at Playland at the Beach, its rides and stalls closed against the chill December rain starting to blow in off the Pacific.

Just short of Sloat Boulevard, they swung in facing the ocean on a deserted dirt lot where neckers parked on moonlit nights. A hedge of dark cypress, bent and twisted by the wind, screened them from the houses on the other side of the highway.

Their lights illuminated wet sand dunes and windblown California bunchgrass; they were doused. The Caddy drew up behind them parallel to the Great Highway, lights dimmed.

Jack Falkoner is not afraid. Jack Falkoner is not afraid.

He shoved the cold, slippery door handle violently down to throw himself out into the night. Behind him something plopped twice and two bees stung him. He fell dizzily out of the half-open door to crash down on his shoulder on the hard-packed dirt.

Just another month, a week, a minute, a second...

Orange flame spurted. Lead ripped his throat. The man with the gun went over to the Cadillac and got in beside the driver. The Ford backed around to follow them away from there.

Mr. David chuckled and took a hundred-dollar bill from a slim leather folder in the inner breast pocket of his camel’s-hair coat. He had crisp wavy hair receding from a high brainy forehead, a generous nose, sensuous lips above a narrow chin.

He proffered the bill to the man beside him on the backseat of the Cadillac. This man was bulky, wore an indifferent suit, had a red face and graying hair combed straight back.

“Jack feared neither man nor devil,” said Mr. David. “He was a bad one, that’s for sure.”

“I like ’em bad,” said the man beside the driver, removing the perforated steel cylinder from the muzzle of his .32. “But Sweets was scared — I saw his face when he went under.”

“I’d be disappointed if that were the case.”

The killer realized he was, too. Fear was what he was here for, but he found it disgusting in Jack Falkoner. Hell, Falkoner of all people should have known how swift death was, how casually given.

Dunc stood at the office window. Below, the light turned green, late night traffic burst up Franklin Street like uncaged animals. Would Jack Falkoner double back to San Francisco as he’d suggested to Drinker Cope? If he did, what would...

Galvanized by a voice on Drinker’s police-band radio, he grabbed his jacket off the top of the desk and ran for the door.

Dunc pulled Grey Ghost Two into the dirt lot off the Great Highway, walked over to the rain-soaked huddle of people. Moaning wind tore his breath away. Water darkened the shoulders of his sport jacket and soaked his short-cut black hair. He could smell salt sea, wet sand, and, faintly, loosened bowels. A car whipped past, tires hissing on the wet pavement.

By the white glare of their prowl car spotlight, two cops in wet tunics lifted the corpse by a shoulder to see if it bore any life. Dunc stared for a moment, then turned away.

Frozen on Falkoner’s features, almost ferocious in its intensity, was an expression of pure terror.

Drinker Cope’s office door was thrown open with such force that it rebounded off the sidewall. Dunc slammed that morning’s folded-open Chronicle down on the desk, jabbing a forefinger hard at the headlines.

“You bastard, you set me up to get two people killed! Kata Koltai! I pinpoint her in Palm Springs, the client’ll send a man down to pick her up, you said. He sure as fuck did. Then—”

“A friend of yours, if I ain’t mistaken.”

“A goddamn killer. Working for one of your goddamn unnamed clients. Then you stuck me on him so I could—”

“Shut up!” roared Drinker. “What’d I tell you the first day you walked in the goddamn door bellyachin’ for a goddamn job?"

Dunc could get hot, Drinker thought, but he couldn’t hang on to it. Not a good hater, the Irish would say.

“You said you’d take any case from anybody.”

“That’s right. Anybody. Any case. And you said...”

“I said okay, but I wasn’t thinking about people I knew. Kata and Jack are dead because I figured out how to find ’em.”

“That’s what we do in this office — whatever the client hires us to do. Sure, we get lied to all the time, an’ sometimes we end up in a mess like this. But we ain’t in the morals business. If you got a problem with that, get out of the fucking detective trade. So what’s it gonna be?”

Sherry’s face appeared in the open doorway of the cubicle.

“Coffee’s made and there’s hot water for tea. What’s it going to be?”

Dunc had the suddenly almost paralyzing realization that he actually didn’t have a problem with what Drinker had said. What did that say about who he was becoming?

“Oh, what the hell? Tea”