in turbulent currents of air, and seemed about to screw itself out of the ground. At a Shell station, two attendants in yellow rain slickers moved with their heads bowed and shoulders hunched; the tails of their glistening vinyl coats flapped against their legs and whipped out behind them. A score of bristly tumbleweeds, some four or five feet in diameter, bounced-rolled-sailed across tiny Baker's only east-west street, swept in from the desolate landscape to the south.
Ben tried to call Whitney Gavis from a pay phone inside a small convenience store. He couldn't get through to Vegas. Three times, he listened to a recorded message to the effect that service had been temporarily interrupted. Wind moaned and shrieked against the store's plate-glass windows, and rain drummed furiously on the roof — which was all the explanation he required for AT&T's troubles.
He was scared. He had been badly worried ever since finding the ax propped against the refrigerator in the kitchen of Eric's mountain cabin. But now his fear was escalating by the moment because he began to feel that
In spite of his fear, frustration, and eagerness to hit the road again, he paused long enough to grab a few things to eat in the car. He'd had nothing since breakfast in Palm Springs, and he was famished.
The clerk behind the counter — a blue-jeaned, middle-aged woman with sun-bleached hair, her brown skin toughened by too many years on the desert — sold him three candy bars, a few bags of peanuts, and a six-pack of Pepsi. When Ben asked her about the phones, she said, “I hear tell there's been flash flooding east of here, out near Cal Neva, and worse around Stateline. Undermined a few telephone poles, brought down the lines. Word is, it'll be repaired in a couple of hours.”
“I never knew it rained this hard in the desert,” he said as she gave him change.
“Don't rain — really rain, I mean — but maybe three times a year. Though when we do get a storm, it sometimes comes down like God is breaking his promise about the fire next time and figures to wipe us out with a great flood like before.”
The stolen Merkur was parked half a dozen steps beyond the exit from the store, but Ben was soaked again during the few seconds needed to get to the car. Inside, he popped open a can of Pepsi, took a long swallow, braced the can between his thighs, peeled the wrapper off a candy bar, started the engine, and drove back toward the interstate.
Regardless of how terrible the weather got, he would have to push toward Vegas at the highest possible speed, seventy or eighty miles an hour, faster if he could manage it, even though the chances were very high that, sooner or later, he would lose control of the car on the rain-greased highway. His inability to reach Whit Gavis had left him with no alternative.
Ascending the entrance ramp to I-15, the car coughed once and shuddered, but then it surged ahead without further hesitation. For a minute, heading east-northeast toward Nevada, Ben listened intently to the engine and glanced repeatedly at the dashboard, expecting to see a warning light blink on. But the engine purred, and the warning lights remained off, and none of the dials or gauges indicated trouble, so he relaxed slightly. He munched on his candy bar and gradually put the Merkur up to seventy, carefully testing its responsiveness on the treacherously wet pavement.
Anson Sharp was awake and refreshed by 7:10 Tuesday evening. From his motel room in Palm Springs, with the background sound of hard rain on the roof and water gurgling through a downspout near his window, he called subordinates at several places throughout southern California.
From Dirk Cringer, an agent at the case-operation headquarters in Orange County, Sharp learned that Julio Verdad and Reese Hagerstrom had not dropped out of the Leben investigation as they were supposed to have done. Given their well-earned reputation as bulldog cops who were reluctant to quit even hopeless cases, Sharp had ordered both of their personal cars fitted with hidden transmitters last night and had assigned men to follow them electronically, at a distance from which Verdad and Hagerstrom would not spot a tail. That precaution had paid off, for this afternoon they had visited UCI to meet with Dr. Easton Solberg, a former associate of Leben's, and later they had spent a couple of hours on stakeout in front of Shadway Realty's main office in Tustin.
“They spotted our team and set up their own surveillance half a block back,” Cringer said, “where they could watch both us and the realty office.”
“Must've thought they were real cute,” Sharp said, “when all the time we were watching them while they watched us.”
“Then they followed one of the real-estate agents home, a woman named Theodora Bertlesman.”
“We already interviewed her about Shadway, didn't we?”
“Yeah, everyone who works with him in that office. And this Bertlesman woman wasn't any more cooperative than the rest of them, maybe less.”
“How long were Verdad and Hagerstrom at her place?”
“More than twenty minutes.”
“Sounds like she might've been more open with them. Have any idea what she told them?”
“No,” Cringer said. “She lives on a hillside, so it was hard to get a clear angle on any of the windows with a directional microphone. By the time we could've set it up, Verdad and Hagerstrom were leaving anyway. They went straight from her place to the airport.”
“
“No. John Wayne Airport here in Orange County. That's where they are now, waiting for a flight out.”
“What flight? To where?”
“Vegas. They bought tickets on the first available flight to Vegas. It leaves at eight o'clock.”
“Why Vegas?” Sharp said, more to himself than to Cringer.
“Maybe they finally decided to give up on the case like they were told. Maybe they're going off for a little holiday.”
“You don't go off on a holiday without packing suitcases. You said they went straight to the airport, which
I suppose means they didn't make a quick stop home to grab a change of clothes.”
“Straight to the airport,” Cringer confirmed.
“All right, good,” Sharp said, suddenly excited. “Then they're probably trying to get to Shadway and Mrs. Leben before we do, and they've reason to believe the place to look is somewhere in Las Vegas.” There was a chance he would get his hands on Shadway, after all. And this time, the bastard would not slip away. “If there're any seats left on that eight o'clock flight, I want you to put two of your men aboard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have men here in Palm Springs, and we'll head to Vegas, too, just as soon as we can. I want to be in place at the airport there and ready to track Verdad and Hagerstrom the moment they arrive.”
Sharp hung up and immediately called Jerry Peake's room.
Outside, thunder roared in the north and faded to a soft rumble as it moved south through the Coachella Valley.
Peake sounded groggy when he answered.
“It's almost seven-thirty,” Sharp told him. “Be ready to roll in fifteen minutes.”
“What's happening?”
“We're going to Vegas after Shadway, and this time luck's on our side.”
One of the many problems of driving a stolen car is that you can't be sure of its mechanical condition. You can't very well ask for a guarantee of reliability and a service history from the owner before you make off with his wheels.
The stolen Merkur failed Ben forty miles east of Baker. It began coughing, wheezing, and shuddering as it had done on the entrance ramp to the interstate a while ago, but this time it did not cease coughing until the engine died. He steered onto the berm and tried to restart the car, but it would not respond. All he was doing was draining the battery, so he sat for a moment, despairing, as the rain fell by the pound and by the hundred-weight
