Final Notice

Fifteen

After spotting the big red Caddy street-parked on Child, a little half-block alley above Grant, Heslip left his car and trotted up the slanting concrete walk between nearly waist-high foliage. He didn’t stop at Chandra’s front door, however, but continued on down the side of the house to check out the yard. It was choked with a wild profusion of shrubbery and old bushy gnarled miniature trees a dozen feet high which kept out the morning sunlight. The whole yard was enclosed by a solid wooden fence the same height as the trees.

No door cut in it. Which meant she came out by the front steps or not at all. Good. Made his job easier.

She opened the door to his knocking. “Yes?”

“Just checking.” He left, feeling her puzzled eyes on his back.

And until dawn the next day, that was that. She left the house only twice, once to go down the hill to the Napoli Market, the other to trudge up the hill to her studio. On neither foray did she seem to be looking for or to notice Heslip across the street in his car.

In which he spent a miserable night.

Giselle spent the night in ecstasy with Petie, result of his call to inform DKA that final notice had gone out to Chandra the previous Friday morning. He instructed DKA to pick up the Caddy on Wednesday unless he told them different, and instructed Giselle to meet him at Rocca’s after work. If the car was repo’ed, the account would be declared in jeopardy and final payoff demanded. Giselle already knew what would happen if she met him after work.

Larry Ballard’s night, also in his car, equaled Bart’s for misery. Only it was spent 335 miles south, in Santa Barbara.

Leaving the underground garage of the building her boutique was in at 2:00 P.M., Wendy Austin had turned right instead of left, and had just kept going. Ballard had unclipped his mike.

“Subject taking Turk Street on-ramp to Skyway.”

Giselle’s voice came back loud and clear from the office just a block away. “Don’t lose her, Hotshot.”

“This is SF-6, not SF-3.”

Which ought to make Bart’s day, he grinned to himself.

The Jag went south toward San Jose, not east toward the Bay Bridge. When they had passed the Cow Palace cutoff, Ballard radioed he was leaving the city. This time Kearny was on the radio.

“She trying to run away from you, SF-6?”

“Holding a steady sixty-eight, over.”

“Report by phone if she takes you out of radio range.”

She took him out of radio range. The Bayshore Freeway runs down the west side of the Bay, through the connected string of peninsula towns which expanding population has congealed into one long narrow strip of urban sprawl, and she ran right through all of it. Passing the giant gray hangars of Moffett Field, Ballard radioed DKA his last report with a wing of Navy jets screaming by overhead and his voice transmission breaking up.

Eight miles south of San Jose they lost the freeway where town after dusty valley town dropped speeds to forty-five, thirty-five, twenty-five. School zone, fifteen miles an hour. Coyote. Madrone. Morgan Hill — with stoplights, yet.

Finally Gilroy, with the westering sun glinting off hot chrome. Ballard closed up to three blocks, in case she tried to slip into California 152 where it trudged up through Pacheco Pass to Interstate 5.

She stayed on 101. Open highway again, with twilight making things glimmer. South of the Watsonville cutoff he had to switch on his lights. She held a steady sixty-eight, sixty-nine, a good smart driver — CHP would give you seventy before they ticketed you.

Meanwhile, Ballard had started to get worried. Those Jags had big tanks, she might just run him down to Empty and lose him without even knowing it. But at the Airport Road turnoff a few miles south of Salinas, she flicked on her turn signal. Whew. Salinas was the last large town until San Luis Obispo, 125 miles south and on the coast.

Ballard filled up the Plymouth while she locked the Jag, and with long athletic strides, went into the twenty-four-hour Denny’s.

He followed her in, took the end stool at the counter, got a coffee there and a coffee, cheeseburger and fries to go. He used the men’s room while the coffee cooled, phoned DKA collect to report, and was outside unlocking the Plymouth before she had even paid the cashier. He kicked his tires while the Jag was serviced, then followed her through the southbound freeway entrance ramp.

Flat country, the Salinas Valley, with far hills ghosting against the horizon. Ballard ate his cheeseburger, played the radio, played games in his mind. Her destination. Hopping into bed with her. From what Bart had told him of that porno film...

Soledad, the Salinas River glinting under a nearly full moon. King City. San Ardo. The river off to his left, hordes of oil pumps bobbing in the rich wide bottom land. By the time he had followed the Jag through ghostly deserted Camp Roberts, he had switched his mind to Giselle, on the phone all the time with that slick cat from the bank.

He yawned, a real jaw-creaker. He’d handled yesterday’s stakeout while Bart had been sneaking over to see Corinne,

Gilmartin. Could Giselle have something going with that son of a bitch? Not that he cared, Giselle was just...

Ballard slammed on the brakes. The Plymouth shrieked down the highway skew-ass. He felt it trying to go and gave the wheel to the skid and goosed it, shot across the far lane, hit the shoulder in a cloud of dust and drumming of gravel against the inside of the fenders, got it back and picked up speed toward the Jag’s twinkling taillights.

His heart was pounding. They weren’t kidding with their warning signs. Goddamn deer. At least it had waked him up.

After Atascadero the road started to climb up canyons between high hills which cut off the moonlight. He went by a hoglike semi grunting its way up the long grade. On the far side of La Cuesta Pass the road dropped steadily, so he could see the speeding tracer-bullet of the Jaguar far below. A cut in the hills showed him the lights of San Luis Obispo against the dark sea stretching to the horizon.

They gassed up at different stations near the Madonna Inn, that remarkable California institution with copper urinals and a waterfall that starts up when you take a leak. Ballard front-tailed back to the freeway, the Jag docile behind, then loafed until Wendy had passed him and he could fall in a few cars back. Southern California coastal now, kookieville, palm-readers and weathered beach houses and beat-up station wagons with surfboards strapped to the roofs or sticking out the rear gates.

The highway ducked inland to eat a lot of cross-traffic all the way to Santa Barbara, where it became limited-access again as solid phalanxes of lights showed up on both sides of the throughway. Heavy flanking foliage, the air crisp and clean and laden with chilly sea fog waiting for morning.

Lucky he d dropped back, or he would have overshot when she whipped into the La Cumbre off-ramp. At State she took a right, Ballard three cars behind. The Jag’s left blinker went on for the sprawling Pepper Tree Motel.

Ballard went by, U-ed, came back into the parking area just as she slid out of the Jag in front of the brightly lit office. All very posh, expensive planting, immense roof overhangs, lots of glass and rustic beams of fake redwood.

Chosen at random? Or to an existing registration?

She came out of the glass-walled office, trim and well rounded in her pants suit, drove back around the end of the building and out of sight down a narrow blacktopped drive between the boundary hedge and the two-decked motel block.

Ballard waited, followed, passed the Jag two-thirds of the way along the length of the building. He would have liked her room number, but she was just getting out her suitcase when he went by. Later for that. Now check for Fazzino’s Gran Torino and get the layout fixed in his mind.

At the far end of the property, the drive made a left turn along the blank unwindowed rear of the building. No parking there. Then it turned left again, back toward the street along the other side of the hollow rectangle of rooms. Parking there, but no Gran Torino. The drive made a right and then a left again to get around the office, which was built off the main rectangle. Ballard came out between it and the bar-restaurant to the front parking area.

Beautiful. No other way out. Not so beautiful, no Gran Torino.

Eight-thirty. Yawning, tired as hell and hungry. A few minutes later Wendy Austin showed she was hungry too. Dressed now in a miniskirt to display those fantastic legs. He waited until she had entered the restaurant-called the Tree House — before going over to one of the outdoor pay phones and reversing the charges to DKA.

“I thought it’d be Giselle,” he said when Kearny himself accepted the call.

“She had an appointment.”

Appointment, hell. A date. With Sly-Eyes from the bank? But he was married, a couple of kids. Giselle wouldn’t...

“Huh?”

“I said, this is my dime.”

Ballard reported in crisp sentences.

“And the Gran Torino nowhere around...” Kearny was momentarily silent. “Okay. Get what else you can. It sounds like she’s headed for either L.A. or the Mex border. You have the number of the agency we use down South in case you need extra men?”

Ballard said he did, and hung up. He opened the phone booth to let in some fresh air while he worked out his approach. Once you started winging it, the words had to come instantly or you blew it. Through the glass walls of the office he could see the check-in girl reaching for the phone to answer his ring.

“Pepper Tree Motel, good evening.”

“Yes, my name is Philip Fazzino. Can you tell me if my wife has arrived yet?”

“Just a moment, sir, I’ll check.”

Ballard wiped his hands, one after the other, down his thighs as he waited. He wished he could be like Kathy Onoda, who never seemed to tense up no matter how elaborate the structure of lies she was erecting.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Fazzino, we show no reservation—”

“Then check and see if my secretary has arrived,” he snapped, building anger into his voice that he might need later. “Wendy Austin.”

“Miss Austin checked in about forty-five minutes ago, sir.”

“Ring her room.” She wouldn’t be there, of course, since by turning his head he could see her in the restaurant, but...

“Sorry, sir, she seems to have stepped out. I could have her paged in the restaurant—”

“What’s the room number?”

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t divulge that information on the—”

“Goddammit!” he bellowed in calculated rage. “That goddam room was reserved by my goddam company and is being paid for by my goddam money, and you have the nerve to tell me—”

“I... Yes, sir. Three twenty-one, sir.”

He depressed the hook with his left hand but kept talking into the dead instrument for another fifteen seconds. If he could see into the office, she could see out to the lighted phone booth.

In the Tree House he had two cheeseburgers and three half-pints of milk and a piece of cherry pie at the counter while waiting for Wendy Austin to return to her room. Then he hit the phone booth again. It was the first time he had heard Wendy speak. She had a soft, sensual voice. He pictured her undressed for her shower, standing there talking to him. Further erotic fantasies flashed through his mind.

“Room-catering, Miss Austin. What time would you like your breakfast served in the morning, ma’am?”

“Oh! How thoughtful! Ah... Eight o’clock, how’s that?”

“As you wish, ma’am. And that will be...”

“Coffee, grapefruit and toast.”

Before returning to his car, Ballard went into the restaurant to order coffee, grapefruit and toast for room 321 at eight o’clock. He didn’t want her to realize in the morning that the call had been a fake. Meanwhile, he knew that she was alone; that Fazzino was not here and not expected; and that she wouldn’t be pulling out before eight-thirty or nine.

Now, if the cops didn’t spot him sleeping in the car, and push him around a little for not being either rich or retired...

They didn’t. But it was still a shitty night’s sleep.