Damn! Why hadn’t she made up her mind to call him sooner? She’d been thinking about it all day, hadn’t she?—she hadn’t slept much at all last night thinking about it. And she’d known darned well that she was going to do it, because she simply had to talk to Steve; this way wasn’t any good at all. She had to talk to him and get it all said and done with, say all the words she’d been afraid to say to him before: words like “divorce” and “property settlement” and “good-bye.” She didn’t want to say them, ever, they were like lashing epithets, but this way—her way—had been a fool’s errand from the very beginning, a defense against those words but an ineffective one, only prolonging the inevitable. At long last, she was woman enough to admit that she had been wrong. And so she had driven here from Duckblind Slough, through the wind and the rain to the nearest telephone because the Miramonte Marina and Boat Launch was closed for the night; but it had been for nothing, Steve wasn’t home...
A sudden thought struck her.
Suppose the reason he wasn’t home was because he had moved out? Suppose he had packed up his things and gone—but where? To a hotel? To a new apartment? What if he had left San Francisco altogether? What if he had just run away? Oh God, how would she find him if that were the case?
Wait a minute now. Well, for crying out loud, if he
Steve, she thought. Oh Steve!
She took her dime from the return slot again and slid it into the circular opening above and dialed the number of Mrs. Yarborough, the building manager. She had to know, she had to know right now. She held the receiver in both hands, as she had before, waiting, and through the wet glassed walls of the booth, across the puddled blacktop, she could see the wide-faced clock mounted on the wall above the door to the Shell station office.
The hands and the numerals, their luminosity eerily blurred by the rain-mist, designated the time as 11:10.
The rain fell heavily, in a diagonally silver cascade, on the James Lick Freeway just below Candlestick Park. The onrushing yellow headlamp eyes of the northbound traffic, the desperately flashing blood-red taillights on the southbound automobiles strung out ahead, commingled to form a kaleidoscopically distorted montage—surrealism in motion, a wild hallucinogenic excursion into the depths of a nightmare.
This is the Twilight Zone, Steve Kilduff thought inanely, detachedly; enter Rod Serling on a fade-over with his soporific voice explaining the intricacies of the plot...
Off on his left, the black moving water of the Bay stretched cold and lonely on a flat plane toward the jeweled but half-obscured lights of the East Bay. The wind blew and whistled in a kind of ghostly charivari at the slightly open wing window, the windshield wipers worked in hypnotic metronome cadence on the rain-drenched glass, and the treble voice of a disc jockey on the too-loud radio sent discordant vibrations of sound echoing through the car —all serving to heighten the sense of unreality which pervaded Kilduff’s mind.
He sat stiffly erect, with his hands clenching the wheel tightly and the muscles cording in his forearms. He had left Twin Peaks just before eleven, driving mechanically. He had been thinking only of Drexel; and what it was Drexel had found out, or had done, in Granite City; and what Drexel would say when he told him about Commac and Flagg—the two polite, soft-spoken cops who knew; and what Drexel would decide their next move to be; yes, and how he, Kilduff, would end up going along with it whatever it was.
Green and iridescent-white exit signs appeared, and then vanished, in the hazy aureoles of light from his head lamps.
GRAND AVENUE-SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
SAN BRUNO AVENUE—SAN BRUNO
SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MILLBRAE AVENUE—MILLBRAE
BROADWAY—BURLINGAME
19TH AVENUE—SAN MATEO
HOLLY STREET—SAN CARLOS
WHIPPLE AVENUE—REDWOOD CITY
When would this phantasmagoria that was an all-too-real reality end? he asked himself as he sent the car hurtling along the rain-swept highway. How long would it be before the law of averages caught up with him? He was living on borrowed time, walking on eggshells, balancing one mile-high tightrope, there was no way he could possibly come out of it unscathed; there was no way, simply no way, he could ever return to the former status quo security.
The radio disc jockey announced the time just as EMBARCADERO ROAD—PALO ALTO loomed into view ahead.
It was 11:23 and thirty seconds.
13
11:28.
Larry Drexel poured himself another glass of
Goddamn it! he thought, drinking from the glass, moving with long, fluid strides the width of the darkly somber room, turning at the fieldstone fireplace, retracing his steps, turning again. Where the hell was Kilduff? Sure, he’d told him eleven-thirty, but you’d think the bastard would—
Euphonious chimes echoed through the darkened house.
Reflexively, Drexel’s hand went to the .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver in the side pocket of his suit coat. He touched the grip, and the feel of the cold, rough metal seemed to relax him. He took a slow breath, thinking: Easy, now, it’s Kilduff and it’s about time. But he went slowly, silently, along the front hallway and drew back the tiny round cover which guarded the peephole in the arched wooden door —no use in taking chances even if it was Kilduff, especially now...
But it wasn’t Kilduff.
It was Fran Varner.
He pulled open the door, his nostrils flaring with sudden anger and splotches of crimson flecking his smooth cheeks. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you tonight.”
She took off her plastic rain hat and shook her brown hair. Her eyes probed his imperiously. “I have to tell you something, Larry,” she said softly. “And it simply can’t wait.”
“The hell it can’t! Go home, Fran...”
“No,” she said. She held the rain hat clutched tightly in both hands, twisting it between her long, slim fingers. “No, I won’t go home until I’ve talked to you.”
Drexel thought: You silly, clinging bitch. “Listen,” he said, “I can’t talk to you now. Don’t you understand that?”
“Why not, Larry?”
“I’m expecting someone.”
“Who?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Another girl?”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Is it, Larry?”
“No, it’s not another girl. It’s business!”
“At eleven-thirty at night?”
He wanted to hit her. He wanted to lash out with his balled fist and knock her flat on her soft round little ass,
