Labyrinth

EIGHTEEN

I stayed frozen, half in and half out of the window, the damned bottle in my right hand and hanging out where Greene could see it. Fear climbed up into my throat and lodged there like a glob of bitter mucus. The light burned against my eyes; I squeezed the lids down to slits.

“All right,” he said. “Let go the bottle.”

“Listen, Greene-”

“Now, goddamn it!”

I released the bottle, heard it clatter on the dock and roll back in against the wall. At the same time I turned my head a little so I was no longer looking directly into the glare. Tendrils of fog curled through the beam, capered at its edges like will-o’-thewisps. And gave Greene, behind it, a dark ectoplasmic look, as if he were something only half-materialized. The wet touch of the mist against my face made my skin crawl.

“Back inside,” Greene said. “Nice and slow. Then turn around and walk away from the window.”

The muscles in my arms and legs were cramped with tension; the joints did not seem to want to bend, so that when I forced myself back off the sill it was in awkward, mannequin-stiff movements. The jet of light dipped lower, came forward through the opening. I pivoted away from it, blinking, licking at the gun-metal taste in my mouth. And then began to pace toward the shellfish tanks.

Behind me Greene made scraping sounds as he climbed through the window. The skin on my back was still crawling; it was bad enough to face a man with a gun, even when you couldn’t see him, but to have him behind you in the dark was twice as unnerving.

When I reached the first of the tanks, ten paces away, Greene’s voice said, “That’s far enough.” I stopped, made a careful three-quarters turn back toward him. He was moving laterally to his left, along the inner wall; the flash beam stayed centered on me, flickering a little with his movements. Then he came to a standstill, and seconds later there were a series of faint clicks. The darkness shrank into random pockets of shadow as high-wattage bulbs strung along the rafters winked on.

I did some more blinking. Greene shut off a big four-cell flashlight, jammed it into the pocket of a blue pea jacket; then he motioned me over toward the locked entrance doors, where there was nothing for me to get my hands on, and halved the distance between us when I got there. His face was expressionless. But the deep-sunk eyes looked as cold and flat and deadly as the Browning 9 mm automatic in his right hand.

Looking at him, I felt swirls of black rage under the fear. Rage at him, at Kellenbeck, at what had been done to Jerry Carding and his father. And rage at myself for coming here like a damned fool, breaking the law, getting caught up this way. Stupid. Stupid.

We stood watching each other for eight or ten seconds. Then I said, “What happens now, Greene?” My voice had sounded cracked when I started to speak at the window, but these words came out in the same hard monotone he had been using.

“What do you think happens?”

“You call up Kellenbeck. He calls up the county police and has me arrested for breaking-and-entering.”

Greene showed me his teeth. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he said.

“Why should I like it?”

“Go ahead, play dumb if you want. But you don’t bluff your way out of this.”

“Neither do you,” I said. “Not any more.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I’m not the only one who’s onto you.”

“Bullshit. Cops knew anything, they’d be here, not you.”

“They’ll be here before long. Count on it.”

“Not tonight. Not while you’re still around-”

There was a sudden banging sound in the front part of the building, where the tacked-on shed was. Greene tensed. I half turned, looking up toward a closed door adjacent to the bank of machinery-but the glimmer of hope inside me died in the next second when the door opened and Gus Kellenbeck came shambling through.

“Andy? I saw the lights, I-” He quit talking and pulled up short, gaping at me and at the gun in Greene’s hand. His eyes had a glassy look and there was a slackness to his mouth; he seemed to sway a little. “Jesus, Andy,” he said in a different voice. “Jesus.”

I moved sideways a couple of steps, carefully, so I could see both of them without swiveling my head back and forth. The Browning moved with me.

When Greene looked at Kellenbeck again his upper lip flattened in against his teeth. “You goddamn drunk,” he said, and that told me all I needed to know about how things stood between the two of them. Maybe the bootlegging had been Kellenbeck’s scam in the beginning, and he had brought Greene in for the use of his boat; but whether or not that was it, Greene was the one running the show now.

“I only had a few,” Kellenbeck said, “I lost track of the time.” He slid a hand across gray-stubbled cheeks, across his slacked mouth. “What’s he doing here, Andy? Why’d you bring him here?”

“I didn’t bring him here. I saw him snooping around your house and decided to follow him, see what he was up to. Good thing I did. He came straight here, busted in, and searched your office; I nailed him on the way out.”

Damned fool, I thought again. It must have been Greene in that low-slung sports job in Carmet. And him again in the car that passed after I parked down the highway; I had been too intent on getting into the building, on playing the souped-up detective, to notice it was the same car both times.

“He knows, then,” Kellenbeck said. He sounded sick and frightened.

“Sure he knows. What’s the matter with you?”

“How did he find out?”

“How do you think? You and that fucking hooch. I told you not to keep any of it around.”

Kellenbeck moved forward a couple of steps. A belch came out of him; he wiped his mouth again. “Andy,” he said, “Andy… ”

“Shut up.”

“Let him say it, Greene,” I said. The rage was stronger, blacker, inside me now-and that was good because it smothered the fear. Blood made a surflike pounding in my temples.

“You shut up too.”

I looked at Kellenbeck. “He’s planning to kill me, all right. Is that what you want? Another murder on your conscience?”

“Andy, for Christ’s sake…”

“Killing me won’t get you off the hook,” I said. “What do you think will happen if I disappear like Jerry Carding-two disappearances within a week? The cops will be all over this place. And they’ll find out, Kellenbeck, just like I did-”

“One more word,” Greene said, “I’ll blow you away right now.”

He meant it; I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes when I faced him. I locked my teeth together, made myself stand still. Made myself not think about dying, because if I did the rage and the thin edge of panic would prod me into doing something crazy, like trying to jump him for the gun.

“He’s right, Andy,” Kellenbeck said. His face had a collapsing look, as if all the muscles had loosened at once. “You know he is.”

“The hell he’s right. We can cover this one too.”

“How?”

“Get rid of any more hooch you’ve got stashed, stay out of touch with the people up north. Let the cops come around; there won’t be anything for them to find.”

“But suppose he’s told somebody something?”

“He hasn’t told anybody anything. He’s just a smart-guy private dick, that’s all. Working on his own.”

“I don’t know, Andy. Another killing… I don’t know if I can handle it, face the cops again, all those questions…”

“Sure you can, Gus. You’ll be fine, baby.”

There was something in the way Green said that, something in his voice that jarred an insight into my mind. Kellenbeck was a drunk and he was coming apart; it was a good bet he would let something slip to the police, maybe even blurt out a confession, when the pressure got too heavy. And Greene knew that as well as I did.

He was planning to kill Kellenbeck too.

I wanted to say something to Kellenbeck, try to turn him against Greene. But I knew if I did that, Greene would use the gun on me without hesitation. He was in total command; there was nothing I could do and nothing Kellenbeck could do.

Not yet, I told myself. Not yet.

Kellenbeck belched again, sickly. “Okay,” he said. “I guess we got no choice. But Jesus, let’s get it over with.”

“Your car right out front?”

“Yeah.”

“You sober enough to drive?”

“Yeah.”

“Head out, then. Get the car started.”

Kellenbeck nodded, put his back to us, and went into the shed with uneven jerky strides. When the outer door banged a few seconds later Greene said to me, “Your turn. Move.”

I moved. The joints in my legs still felt stiff and there was a tight prickling sensation in my groin. I had an impulse to grab hold of the door on my way through, try to slam it shut between us; but it was standing too wide, and Greene had crowded up close behind me. The shed was full of boxes, tools, machine parts-none of them within reaching distance. I opened the outer door, kept my hand on the knob for a second. Greene jabbed me with the automatic. And I let go, struggling with my control, and went out into the cold darkness.

Fog crawled over the highway, obscured all but a three-hundred-yard strip of it. No headlights showed anywhere in the mist. Kellenbeck’s Cadillac was slewed in near one of the hoists a few feet away; the engine was running and the lights were on. Greene told me to get into the back seat, slide over against the far door-and waited until I did that before he got in with me, holding the Browning in close to his body so there was no chance of me making a lunge for it.

“Okay,” he said to Kellenbeck. “You know where.”

Nothing from Kellenbeck. His breathing was rapid and irregular; I could smell the sour whiskey fumes even from where I was. The shape he was in, I thought he might kick the accelerator hard enough to buck the car and throw Greene off-balance. I braced my feet and body, tensing. But Greene anticipated that too; he issued a sharp warning to take it easy, drive slow. And Kellenbeck, obeying, crawled the damned car out of the lot and onto the highway, northbound.

I sat with my hands fisted on my knees, watching Greene in the faint glow of the dashlights. He was sitting half-turned toward me and he still had the gun pulled in against his chest. I thought: God, if I could get my hands on him I’d tear him in half. I thought: I’m being taken for a ride, private eye being taken for a goddamn ride just like in the pulps. I thought: Is this how Jerry Carding felt-twenty-year-old kid, scared, shaking, on his way to die?

Wild thoughts. Breeding more wild impulses. The rage and the fear boiling inside me now like gases coming to an explosion point. I had to do something to keep the lid on my control; if I didn’t, if I gave in to the impulses I said, “Where are we going? Your boat, Greene, is that it? A little trip out into the ocean?” Talking was the answer. Making words to keep from making myself dead. “Sure. The deep-six. Take me out a mile or two, shoot me or knock me out, weight my body, and I’m gone without a trace. Just like Jerry Carding.”

Greene had nothing to say.

“Let’s see if I can put it together,” I said. “How did Jerry find out about the bootlegging? Overheard the two of you talking, maybe, when you didn’t know he was around. Sure, that makes sense. So he does a little investigating, gets hold of a bottle of hooch or the label off of one. But instead of going to the police right away he decides to write an article first; that way, when the story breaks, he can have it published immediately. He’ll not only be a full-fledged hero, he’ll be an overnight sensation as a journalist.

“He finishes the article on Sunday night, takes the original and his only carbon down to the post office. But he doesn’t mail both of them. Just the carbon, to somebody for safekeeping; the original he keeps with him. Then he heads straight for the-”

“Shut up,” Kellenbeck said. “Andy, tell him to shut the hell up. I don’t want to listen to this.”

Greene said, “Let him talk. The hell with it.”

“Then Jerry heads straight for the fish company,” I said. “Why? Because he’s found out Sunday is the night you take the boat out to pick up a load of whiskey-not every Sunday but once or twice a month, say-and he’s also found out you leave from the warehouse when you do go, sometime after ten o’clock. If you’re heading out that night he’ll call in the Coast Guard and have them waiting when you get back; and he’ll also have the original of his article ready to turn over to one of the San Francisco papers. If you’re not going out, he’ll carry the article back to his room and wait another week or however long it takes until you do.

“When he gets to the fish company he hides somewhere to watch and wait. And the two of you show up. Then something happens-maybe he makes a noise, maybe he’s not hidden as well as he thinks-and you grab him. You find the article, you read it, you know he’s onto you. It’s the kid’s death warrant.”

We had reached the north rim of the bay. Ahead, through the windshield and through swirls of fog, I could see the turnoff for the road that looped around to Bodega Head.

“But first you’ve got to know if there are any other copies of that article. You force him to tell you about the carbon, who he mailed it to, and it turns out to be his father down in Brisbane. You can’t get the carbon out of the post office; you’ve got to wait until it’s delivered. So the next day you go down to Brisbane and watch Victor Carding’s mailbox until the mail is delivered and then check for the carbon.

“Only it doesn’t show up on Monday, or on Tuesday or Wednesday either; the mail service being what it is, the envelope isn’t delivered until Thursday. But Carding gets to the box before you can, maybe because he’s looking for some word from his son. He picks up the mail-the article and a couple of bills-and opens Jerry’s envelope right away and starts to read. That leaves you no choice. You brace him with the. 38 you were carrying then, take him into the garage, and shoot him. Then you put the gun in his hand-make it look like suicide, keep the police from doing too much digging.”

Kellenbeck had made the turn and we were starting around toward the marina. I could just make out the ghost shapes of masts and hulls through gaps in the fog screen.

“But even if Martin Talbot hadn’t arrived a few minutes later to screw things up, it wouldn’t have worked. No nitrate traces on Carding’s hands or powder marks on his clothes: he couldn’t have shot himself. The police would still have known it was murder.

“You see how it is, Greene? It’s the little things people like you always overlook, the little things that trip you up. It’ll be some other little thing, or a combination of them, that finally puts your ass in the gas chamber.”

That got a small noise out of Kellenbeck. Greene said, “Smart guy. You like to listen to yourself trying to be smart? Go on, talk some more. Talk all you want while you still can.”

But I was through talking. And through teetering on the brink of panic. The wildness was gone; I had talked myself calm, gotten a lock again on emotions and impulses. Intellect was going to get me out of this if anything was. If I panicked, there was no way out: I was a dead man for sure.

We had drawn abreast of the marina now. Vague shimmers of light marked the location of houses along the Head, but there were no lights among the boats just pale night bulbs scattered above the ramp and the floating walkways. The road, as it had been all the way over from the main highway, was a wet empty stripe in the darkness.

Kellenbeck eased the Cadillac onto the shoulder opposite the ramp. Greene got out first, waited for Kellenbeck, and then motioned me across the seat. There was more wind here and it stung my cheeks with icy wetness; the air was painfully cold in my lungs. I glanced down the road, up at the outlines of the nearest house, over at the boat slips. Nothing stirred anywhere. No help anywhere.

We went across the road and up onto the ramp, Kellenbeck in front of me and Greene behind me by six paces. Sounds drifted out of the fog: the creak of caulked joints and rigging, the thud of a hull against a board float, the buoy bells. I kept moving my head in quadrants, looking for something, anything, to give me an opening, a chance for escape. Fog, wind, empty boats, black water-nothing.

At the end of the ramp Kellenbeck went down the short metal ladder without turning; I heard the thump he made as he dropped off onto the nearest float. When I got to the ladder I turned to face Greene. But he had halted too, and there were still six or seven feet between us-too far for me to even think about making a play for the gun. He waited until I descended the ladder before he approached it, and then it was at an angle so that I had no way of lunging up at him between the handrails. There was nothing I could do except leave the ladder and sidestep along the swaying float. Watch him come down only when I got far enough away to suit him.

Kellenbeck was already on board the Kingfisher, standing with his back to the wheelhouse. The water was choppy enough to rock the troller; he had his feet spread wide and one hand up at his mouth, as if the motion had combined with the alcohol in his system to make him nauseous. I came up abaft, hesitated again. Greene slowed and made an impatient slicing gesture with the gun. Kellenbeck reacted as though it was meant for him too: He turned as I climbed over the gunwale and groped his way inside the wheelhouse.

I backed over there, adjusting my balance to the deck roll. Greene swung aboard. Binnacle lights went on inside, one of them a chart lamp that cut away most of the blackness. The wheelhouse, I saw as I stepped through the entrance way, was about ten feet square and empty except for operating equipment and a pair of wooden storage lockers; the bulkheads were all bare. On the port side was a narrow companionway that would lead belowdecks to Greene’s sleeping quarters.

I moved to the starboard bulkhead and put my back to it. Kellenbeck was next to the wheel; the glow from the lights gave his face a surreal cast. Greene stood framed in the entrance way, his left shoulder braced at its edge, the gun cocked toward me at his right hip.

“What the hell’re you waiting for?” he said to Kellenbeck. “Start the engine. You know where the keys are.”

Kellenbeck’s throat seemed to be working spasmodically. “I don’t feel so good, Andy. You got any liquor on board?”

“No.”

“You sure? Christ, I need a drink bad.”

“I said no. I want you sober; it’ll be tricky enough following the channel in this fog. Now get to it.”

In shaky movements Kellenbeck fumbled under the binnacle, came up with a set of keys, and spent fifteen seconds fitting one into the ignition and firing the diesel. The powerful engine made a guttural throbbing noise, like the magnified purr of a cat, and I could feel the vibrations beneath my feet.

Greene stepped inside and one pace to his right, toward me. “Cast off the lines, Gus.”

I watched Kellenbeck walk around behind him and disappear astern. My nerves were beginning to jangle again; the panic simmered just below the surface of my thoughts. Time was running out. Once we were out into the bay, my chances would be twice as slim as they were now-and once we passed breakwater at the Bodega Head jetty, into open sea, they would be all but nonexistent. Now was the time to make my move, while I was alone here with Greene. Except that I had no move to make. Maybe I would have to jump him sooner or later, but I could not bring myself to do it yet. It was the last thing to do, the last move, because in close quarters like these I knew it would probably be the last move I would ever make.

Two or three long minutes passed before Kellenbeck came back. One hand was hovering at his mouth again; he looked even sicker than before. When he took the wheel Greene backed over to the entrance way, braced himself the way he had earlier.

Kellenbeck put on the running lights, the windshield wipers, an outside spotlight that sliced a thin diffused beam into the mist. He worked the throttle and we began to creep forward out of the slip, into the narrow marina channel. Wind-swells increased the roll-and-sway of the boat; I put my hands flat against the bulkhead and widened my stance. At the wheel Kellenbeck began to make a series of liquidy gagging sounds that were audible even above the diesel pulse.

Through the windshield, fog churned and appeared to hurl itself in gray streaks against the glass. I could see patches of black water but nothing else: It seemed we were out of the marina now and into the bay.

Kellenbeck was still gagging.

The boat rolled left, pitched right, rolled left.

And Kellenbeck let go of the wheel, lurched around, said, “Andy, Jesus, take over, I got to puke.” And clamped both hands to his mouth and came staggering toward the entrance way.

Right between Greene and me.

My reaction was instinctive and immediate, without thought of any kind. I lunged off the bulkhead and into Kellenbeck, caught hold of his jacket to keep him in front of me-Greene yelled something, Kellenbeck gagged again and vomited through his hands-and propelled him into Greene and all three of us sandwichlike out onto the deck. The gun fired, cracking, but Greene’s arm had been thrown out to the side; the bullet hummed off into the night. He went down with Kellenbeck sprawled half on top of him, still yelling, kicking viciously to free himself. I stayed on my feet-but momentum and the deck-roll flung me off-balance against the starboard gunwale.

Greene got his arm free, swung the gun around.

I threw myself overboard.