Dragonfire

Twenty

I knelt there, staring down at him, for more than a minute. The tension leaked out of me, until there was nothing left but a kind of inner numbness. I could not seem to feel much. A small sense of relief, but that was all.

It was not supposed to end this way. It was supposed to end in confrontation, maybe a fight, maybe death — but not this kind of death. Ten days of hate, three days of finding out who he was, tracking him down, building toward a final showdown, and it had all come down to this: accident, suicide, whatever. It had all come down to nothing.

I had never seen his face; I couldn’t see it now in the rain and fog. All he’d done to me and to Eberhardt, and I had never laid eyes on him in person, or even spoken to him. Never spoken to Jimmy Quon either, never saw his face until he was just a broken lump of clay. So personal, and yet not really personal at all.

Emerson, dead of a crushed skull. The same way he’d ended Quon’s life. The same way he’d ended Polly Soon’s. Irony in that. And more than irony, maybe — a kind of cosmic justice. Vengeance wasn’t mine; Kerry had been right about that. So had the Bible. Vengeance wasn’t anybody’s on this earth.

I got to my feet, shivering, aware for the first time of how tired I felt, of how much pain there was in me. I was still hanging onto the .38, and when I looked at it I felt a sudden revulsion. Black and ugly, an alien thing. That wasn’t mine, either. And I did not want it anymore, in my hand or in my pocket or anywhere near me. Milo Petrie would never understand, so I wouldn’t bother to tell him. Not even when I paid him what he thought it was worth.

I reversed the gun in my fingers, so that I was holding it by the barrel, and hurled it away into the mist and the raging sea.

Orin Tedescu was still unconscious when I got back to the house. I took off my sodden overcoat, went into the downstairs bathroom, and used a towel to dry myself off. In the kitchen, I found a kettle and a big pitcher and filled both of them with water. The kettle I put on the gas stove to boil; the pitcher I carried into the parlor and dumped over Tedescu’s head.

It brought him out of it. He sat up groggily, sputtering, and gave me a blank look. He had forgotten about our little scene earlier; I watched him recognize me all over again with the same befuddlement. A belch came out of him, then a low moaning noise. He started to fumble around for the bourbon bottle.

I said, “Uh-uh,” and hoisted him to his feet and marched him out into the kitchen. He had trouble walking and I had to hang on to his arm; but he came along all right, without struggling. I sat him down at the table, gave his head a rough rubdown with the towel I’d used on myself. When I was done with that he sat slumped forward, gray and sick-looking, supporting his head between the heels of his hands.

The water in the kettle started to boil. I hunted up ajar of instant coffee and a couple of mugs, made the coffee, and put one of the mugs down in front of him. “Drink that,” I said.

He stared at it. “No. Don’t want it.”

“You’re going to sober up one way or another. You want me to take you upstairs and throw you in the shower?”

“No.”

“Then drink the goddamn coffee.”

He drank it. He tried to pick up the mug at first, but his hands were too shaky; he had to lean forward and sip from it where it sat. I finished what was in my own mug, and that warmed me a little, got rid of the shivering. Then I made second cups for both of us.

Tedescu said, “Jesus!” in an anguished voice, and when I turned around he was staring at the tabletop with the anguish all over his face. Some of the liquor haze had cleared out of his head and he was remembering again what had happened between him and Emerson. “Carl...”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Dead...” He squinted at me. “How you know?”

“I saw him out there on the rocks.”

“Accident,” he said thickly. “Swear it was. Swear it!”

I pushed the fresh mug under his nose. “Keep drinking the coffee. You’re not sober enough to talk yet.”

“No more. Need another drink...”

“Forget that. Do what I told you.”

He didn’t give me any more argument; he seemed to be the kind of man who was used to obeying orders. As soon as he finished the second cup, I fed him a third. He gagged a couple of times, but he got all of it down and kept it down. He had the habitual drinker’s strong stomach, and the habitual drinker’s ability to sober up in a fairly short time. The third cup of coffee did it; his eyes lost some of their confusion, if none of their anguish, and he said in a steadier, less slurred voice, “Christ, why didn’t you leave me alone. Why didn’t you let me stay drunk?”

“I want to know what happened here today. You’re the only one who can tell me.”

He grimaced. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe not, but you’re going to.”

I sat down across from him. He squinted at me again, over the top of his mug. “You’re James,” he said. “Andrew James?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t understand. Why’re you here, way up here?”

“I came to talk to Emerson.”

“Why?”

“Personal reasons. Now suppose you tell me why you’re here?”

“Business. Contracts had to be signed.”

“What contracts?”

“Important contracts. Told him that when he called.”

“He called you? When?”

“Last night, late. Said he was going to Mendocino for few days, didn’t want to be bothered for any reason; said Phil Bexley and I should handle things at the office. Tried to tell him about contracts, but he wouldn’t listen. Sounded strung out.”

“So you went in to Mid-Pacific this morning and got the contracts and drove up here with them. Is that it?”

“Yes. No choice. Somebody had to do it.”

“What happened when you got here?”

Another grimace. “He’d been drinking. Looked half-wild... Christ, never saw him like that before.”

“How did he act?”

“Crazy... like a crazy man. Yelled at me, called me names. Wouldn’t sign contracts. Told me to go away, leave him alone.”

“Then what?”

“Tried to reason with him, make him understand how important contracts were. But he shoved me, knocked me down. No warning... just shoved me, knocked me down.”

“What did you do?”

“Got up and hit him,” Tedescu said. A look of awe crossed his bleary features, as if he could not believe he had done anything like that. “Never liked Carl, never got along with him... always wanted to hit him. This time I did it. Knocked him down, by God.”

“Did he retaliate?”

“No. Screamed at me, told me get the hell off his property. Then he ran out.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. I think” — the awed look again — “think he was afraid he might kill me.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He had a gun. Big gun... Jesus, a cannon.”

One of Jimmy Quon’s puppies, I thought, the one Emerson had taken off Quon’s body after he killed him. I said, “You mean he pulled the gun on you before he ran out?”

“No. Later, on the cliff.”

“Is that where he ran off to?”

“Yes.”

“And you went after him. Why?”

“Not sure. I was confused. Thought I could calm him down, apologize for hitting him, smooth it over. If I hadn’t chased him...” Tedescu shook his head. Sweat glistened on his face, made the ruptured blood vessels look like fresh wounds.

“What happened on the cliff?”

“He was just standing there, looking down at ocean,” Tedescu said. “But when he heard me coming... he went berserk. Pulled gun out of his jacket, kept yelling he was going to shoot me. Never been scared like I was then — never.”

“So you jumped him,” I said.

“What else could I do? Didn’t even think, just... ran at him. Hit him with my shoulder and he lost his footing... went over... I knew he was dead soon as I saw him down there...”

“What about the gun? Did that go over too?”

“Yes. Caromed off rock into the sea.” Tedescu’s eyes were imploring now. “An accident, you see? Self-defense. I didn’t mean for him to die, swear I didn’t...”

“All right,” I said.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe you.”

I got up and went over to stand by the sink, looking out at the gray rain. I still was not feeling much. Just tired — scooped out inside.

Behind me, Tedescu said miserably, “What makes man like Carl start carrying a gun? What makes him go berserk all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I did know. Guilt, depression, a feeling of persecution. Polly Soon’s death had been an accident, or at least unpremeditated, and he’d been able to deal with that, rationalize it; he’d been able to deal with having Eberhardt shot, too, because he wasn’t pulling the trigger himself. But Jimmy Quon’s murder, the one he’d done with his own hands, had broken him down. That was why he’d come up here last night, and all the lonely hours before Tedescu’s arrival had intensified the breakdown. So had the drinking, probably. He was on the ragged edge when Tedescu showed up, and the scuffle in here had pushed him over, just as the scuffle on the headland had pushed him over that other edge to his death.

I turned from the window. Tedescu was trying to light one of his cigars with shaking fingers; it took two matches before he got it going. “What do we do now?” he said. “Call the authorities?”

“Do you want to talk to them?”

“God, no. I couldn’t call them after it happened; tried but I couldn’t. Booze... that’s all I could do.”

“I don’t want to talk to them, either,” I said. Because it would mean explaining why I was here, bringing the whole thing with Eberhardt and Jimmy Quon and Polly Soon out into the open. And I was not ready to do that yet. Maybe I would never be ready to do it. “Emerson’s death was an accident. There’s no point in either of us going through a police interrogation.”

He looked relieved. But it didn’t chase away the anguish in his eyes; that, and the memory of what had happened here today, would stay with him a long time. “But what about Carl’s body? We can’t just leave it out there.”

“No. How many people know you came up here today?”

“Only our secretary, Miss Addison. Contracts delivered to her this morning; she had them on her desk when I got to office.”

“Okay. I’ll take the phone off the hook before we leave. When you get back to the city, tell Miss Addison that Emerson wasn’t home when you got here. You waited around but he didn’t show up. Have her try to call him; she’ll keep getting a busy signal. Tell her you’re worried about Emerson and get her to call the county sheriffs office. They’ll find the body when they come out to check. Can you handle it that way?”

“Think so. Yes.”

“You’re in no condition to drive back tonight,” I said. “Neither am I, for that matter. We’ll go put up at a motel; then I’ll bring you back here in the morning to pick up your car.”

He gave me a long, bewildered look. “Why you want to help me like this? Don’t understand that. Who are you?”

“Andrew James,” I said.

“Yes, but... did you know Carl?”

“No, I never met him. And I’m glad I didn’t; it wouldn’t have been a good thing for me.”

“But you came here to see him. You said personal reasons...”

“It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead; my business with him is finished. Yours, too. Maybe things will be better for Mid-Pacific with him gone.”

“Maybe will,” Tedescu said. “He was a bastard. Not sorry he’s dead, you know? Only sorry I had to...” He shuddered, wiped a hand across his face as if wiping away guilt. “You’re right,” he said, “over and done with. Carl’s dead. You and me, we have to go on living.”

I nodded. But as I started to clean up the kitchen, I thought that it wasn’t over and done with, not quite, not as far as I was concerned. There were still two important matters to be resolved.

There was still Eberhardt.

And there was still the bribe.