Contract Null & Void

Chapter Fourteen

When the old Redwood Highway had been turned into six lanes of freeway in the late ’50s, San Rafael’s Francisco Boulevard had been split right down the middle to become an access road for the skyway going through the center of town. Francisco had ended up as two boulevards zoned light industrial — East and West, according to which side of the freeway you were on. Odd numbers on the east, even on the west.

Dan Kearny knew Prestige Motors was on Francisco — DKA had done repos for them over the years, in the genteel sort of way a Mercedes dealer in Marin would prefer. But he had forgotten about East and West, so he ended up cruising the length of Francisco East without spotting his dealership. Plenty of auto agencies — Lexus, Ford, Infiniti, Toyota, Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth-Jeep... But no Mercedes.

Lost again. Christ, was he getting senile?

He did a loop-the-loop using Fourth Street and Heatherton by the tidy new bus depot and found Prestige Motors on Francisco West next to a shopping center that specialized in heavy-duty appliances. He parked in an angled visitor’s slot.

Prestige fit its name, sprawling futuristic buildings of glass and dull silver metal designed with Germanic efficiency. On the front left corner glittered a three-story turret from which Rapunzel would have had a hell of a time hanging down her hair for Prince Charming to climb, since there were no windows: just tall glass panels separated by wide strips of that dull-polished silver metal.

Elegant salesmen scattered about, able to sell Bibles to bishops without working up a sweat. Maybe they’re holograms, thought Kearny as he entered the glittering glass cage.

“Sales manager,” said Kearny.

A Bible salesman said, “You want Peabody Chumley.” He whipped a miniature microphone from a nearby table. “Mr. Chumley to the floor,” he said, his projected voice booming out from the speakers in the corners of the sales floor a nanosecond after he spoke.

Peabody Chalmondeley was tall, lean-faced, beautifully tanned, dressed in soft tweeds: Stewart Granger in his King Solomon’s Mines days, minus only the broad-brimmed safari hat with the leopard skin band.

“Chumley here,” he said.

“Kearny here. I’m meeting Mr. Paul Rochemont—”

“Sorry, old chap, he’s already gone.”

“I left word for him to wait.”

“Quite so. But you see, someone posing as an auto mechanic took Mr. Rochemont’s auto for a ‘test run’ from the garage this morning and did not bring it back—”

“Rochemont’s car is sitting in front of his garage full of bullet holes.”

Chalmondeley was amused. “Oh, that’s his old SL600 convertible roadster. He ordered a new one as soon as the sacrilege had been perpetrated upon the old. Just as Mr. Rochemont arrived, the chappie who had taken it rang him up.”

“Rang him up? Here?”

“Exactly. He told Mr. Rochemont it was a wonderful auto and gave him an address where it could be found. We gave Mr. Rochemont, old and valued client that he is, a car and driver to take him there. Understand?”

“Despite the call from the police? What address?”

Chalmondeley was drawing a line in the sand. He stiffened up sharply. “Now see here, my man, client information is confidential. I have no intention of allowing you to—”

“Oh, you’ll tell me, all right. You wanted him to get to his car in a hurry so you wouldn’t face the liability of having it stolen from the dealership.” He seized the microphone and raised his voice, filling the showroom floor. “Attention all customers! Attention all—”

“Louie!” yelled Chalmondeley in an accent no further east than the East Bay, “give this guy the address Andy drove that Rochemont kid to, Pronto!”

Meanwhile, Inga had gone shopping at The Village alongside the freeway in Corte Madera, a sprawling upscale mall with Macy’s at one end and Nordstrom’s at the other. In between were countless shoppes and boutiques and business establishments selling everything from foreign currency through clothing and jewelry and lingerie with easy-access panels to exotic foods and pricey housewares and hyperex-pensive down pillows and spreads.

Inga was in a very exclusive boutique called tres chic — no caps, no accents — trying on a formal evening gown. Giselle, skulking behind potted palms and racks of clothing, had to admit she looked good in it.

But Inga said, “It makes me look flat-chested.”

“Oui, madame,” said the saleslady automatically.

“Oh my God, do you really think so?”

“Mais non, madame,” said the saleslady immediately. “Absolument non! It makes you look, how you say, a la mode.”

“Like ice cream? I don’t get it. Oh! I need a phone.”

As Giselle watched Inga lean over the manager’s desk to reach the phone, the store manager and Store Security were giving Giselle the fish-eye from behind a potted plant of their own.

“I think I’ve seen a shoplifting flyer on her,” said Security with great confidence. She was a beefy woman with millimeter eyes whose last job had been as a Golden Gate Transit cop. Book ’em, Dano had been her credo there, and she saw no need to adjust it to this occupation.

“You’d better be sure,” worried the store manager. She was in her mid-30s with too much eye shadow and the stick-figure profile of a woman who peels her grapes before eating them.

“I’ll go get it,” said Security, “you keep an eye on her.”

Inga told the salesperson to charge it. Giselle began to move toward the door intent on a front-tail, but her way was blocked by the store manager.

“You found nothing to your liking, madame?”

“Just browsing,” said Giselle. Beyond the manager, Inga was heading for the door. “If you’ll excuse me...”

But Store Security had arrived with self-confidence high.

“Not so fast, sister. Let’s see what’s in that handbag.”

“Your job,” said Giselle. “If I open this bag for you here in the store, you’re out of work. Section 843.7 of the California Penal Code.”

“Penal code?” cried the store manager in alarm.

“False arrest, unlawful restraint, illegal detention...”

Giselle was moving toward the door and the woman was not quite stopping her, though Security was staying right with her.

“As you know, you were supposed to wait until I was out of the store before you detained me. My report will be on your superior’s desk in the morning!”

“Report?” said dazed Security.

“Superior?” said the confused manager. “I own the store!”

But Giselle was already gone.

Yew Wood Court was an unlikely named half-block stubbed-off street along the freeway on the northern edge of San Rafael. Finding it on his AAA map had lost Kearny a couple of precious minutes, figuring out how to get there a couple more. It was off Lincoln Avenue in a low-income area of rooming houses catering to recent arrivals from the hot countries to the south, leavened with the usual bottom-feeder public and private welfare agencies there to prey on the herbivores.

There were no yews, but tall old eucalyptus trees hung over Yew Wood Court, their leaves carpeting the curbs and gutters, giving it a slightly spurious midwestern look. They shaded old frame houses painted white too long ago.

Beyond a screen of bushes and chain-link fence between was a tall tan sound-baffle wall flanking the freeway. Parked up against these bushes facing out was a brand-new Mercedes 600SL convertible with the top down. Paul was nowhere around.

Kearny was in time.

He turned in, stopped. As he did, a Mercedes van went past him, stopped beside the convertible, let Paul Rochemont out, and backed out of the narrow dead-end street past him. Kearny, cursing, flung open his own door and jumped out.

Giselle had picked up Inga’s hot little Porsche in The Village parking lot and had followed it back into Paradise Drive and onto the 101 freeway north. At the central San Rafael exit, Inga went under the freeway, turned north on Lincoln. She started to swing into a narrow street called Yew Wood Court.

“Yew Woodn’t,” muttered Giselle to herself.

Inga suddenly swerved back into Lincoln and accelerated away. Giselle slammed on her brakes and swung to the curb on Lincoln, jerked on the handbrake and flipped her keys from the ignition, leaped out of the car. She had caught a glimpse of Dan Kearny just tackling Paul Rochemont at the stubbed-off end of the street, beside what looked like a new Mercedes convertible.

Giselle arrived at Kearny’s car as Dan dragged up the protesting Paul, who was swinging his elbows like an angry girl.

“What are you doing? Take your hands off me! That’s my car and—”

The new Mercedes blew up.

Dan Kearny knocked Paul down, at the same time yanked Giselle to the ground and fell on top of her. His car shielded them from the blast, the ball of fire, the rolling smoke, the flying shrapnel.

After thirty-seconds, Kearny demanded, “Anybody hurt?” Nobody was. He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s get to hell out of here.”

Giselle jerked open the rider’s side door of Kearny’s car, shoved the seat forward, and stuffed a totally disoriented Paul into the backseat. She slammed the seat back to its proper position and jumped in as Kearny was sliding in under the wheel on the driver’s side.

He jammed it into reverse, shot backward with the horn blaring right across Lincoln to the far lane while traffic stood on its nose, floored it going south in the opposite direction from which Inga had gone. Just beyond a little independent deli he squealed left into narrow Linden Lane, an underpass connecting up with the residential eastern side of San Rafael isolated by the skyway all those years before.

Giselle cast a quick look into the back. Paul looked green. He would not be listening to anything she said. But she still leaned close to Kearny and spoke in a low voice.

“Inga made a phone call from a boutique in The Village, then she drove right here. She just kept going when she saw you grabbing Paul. I told you she was involved.”

The underpass had brought them into Grand Avenue in an old, quiet, gracious residential neighborhood near venerable Dominican College. Kearny slowed, just drove around.

He matched her low tones. “Involved I’ll grant you, Giselle. Now we have to figure out how — what it means...”

Paul suddenly came to life in the backseat.

“Wow, that was boss! Just like the Spirit! I’ve got all the Spirit comic book originals from the forties and fifties! He lives in a graveyard, and he comes out to solve crimes...”

Giselle twisted around to look at him. Paul was sitting up on the seat, covered with sweat, talking faster and faster.

“I remember this one, he’s fencing with this foreigner, and the bad guy says—”

“Paul,” said Giselle.

“ ‘I lunge’ when he tries to impale the Spirit with his sword, and—”

“Paul!”

“And the Spirit parries his thrust, and says, ‘A little early in the morning for “lunge” time, don’t you think?’ He—”

“Paul! Shut up!” Somehow, this silenced him. Giselle added, in a normal tone of voice, “You’re hysterical.”

“Oh.” Then he added in a little voice, “Boss.”

A nondescript Ford Taurus came barreling into Grand from Newhall, trying to ram Kearny’s car. Kearny went into an almost sideways skid to avoid the crash, at the same time reaching over the backseat with a free hand and ramming Paul down on the floor, keeping his hand on the back of Paul’s neck.

The pursuit car pulled up even, the driver fired two shots at Kearny’s car just as Kearny slammed on the brakes. His car stood on its nose as the bullets missed and the pursuer shot by ahead of them.

“I don’t feel so good,” said Paul from the backseat.

The Ford had skidded to a stop also, was burning rubber as it accelerated backward. Kearny floored his own car, bounced over the gutter to the sidewalk, and whipped by it on the wrong side of the street. Two more shots went astray as they roared past. Giselle was writing on a paper napkin she had jerked out of the glove box.

“I get carsick in the backseat,” warned Paul.

In his rearview, Kearny saw the Ford swing left into Locust and disappear. Paul broke loose from Kearny’s grip, which had never slackened during the attack, sat up, and proved he hadn’t been kidding about getting sick in backseats.

“Jesus!” said Giselle, not making it clear whether it was in response to Paul or to the attack. She smoothed the paper napkin over her knees. “I got the license number of his car.”

“Good work, but it’s probably stolen.”

He stopped at the curb for a moment. His hands were shaking on the wheel with delayed reaction he didn’t want Giselle to notice. Fifty-two goddam years old.

“Let’s find a gas station, get wonderboy cleaned up and the car hosed out, then go back and talk to the cops at the scene.”

He needed a little time himself. To think. Thing was, he thought maybe he had recognized the attacker driving the Ford.

And it hadn’t been Frank Nugent, Paul’s erstwhile partner and accused attacker of the night before.