arched patio entrance.
2
United Airlines Flight 69, non-stop from Philadelphia, arrived at San Francisco International Airport at 1:26 P.M., four minutes ahead of schedule. One of the first passengers to disembark—when the mobile exit ramp had been locked into place at the fore and aft doors—was a small, rather nondescript man who walked with a noticeable limp. He had ridden the blue-carpet coach, and had slept through a technicolor movie with Gregory Peck and the passage of the two-limit cocktail cart and the distribution of chicken cordon bleu by two blonde stewardesses with portrait smiles; but as soon as the wheels of the DC-8 had touched the approach runway, he had been instantly alert, piercing sand-colored eyes peering intently through the window on his left, fingers drumming impatiently on a thin leather American Tourister briefcase which had never left his lap.
He passed through the railed observation area at Gate 30, and moved with surprising speed for a limping man along the north wing of the terminal. Outside the glassed outer wall, fog eddied in gray waves, like mounds of steel wool, across the pattern of concrete runways—but he took little notice of it.
In the main lobby, a blue and white sign above a set of escalators read: BAGGAGE CLAIM. He rode down to the lower level and waited by the huge revolving baggage carousel which was designated by his flight number. Some of the other passengers began to arrive, and a fat woman wearing an incongruous plumed hat came over to stand beside him. She had sat across the aisle on the plane.
“This takes forever,” she said in a strident voice. “You’d think the airlines would be more efficient. Things haven’t changed a bit since my first flight to San Francisco in 1947. Not a bit, mind you.”
The limping man glanced at her briefly, and then looked away. The first pieces of luggage began to flow out of the conveyor chute in the center of the sloping chrome carousel.
“Look at that,” the fat woman said, pursing her lips and pointing one huge arm at the chute. “They come out of there so fast, they get all banged up when they hit the sides. My best overnight bag has a crease on one end because of that. Why can’t they find another way to get the luggage out of the plane, some way that doesn’t damage everything you own.”
The limping man unwound two fingers from the handle of the briefcase and began to tap them irritably against the leather. He said nothing.
“If there’s another crease in any of my bags, I’m going to demand the terminal replace it with a new one,” the fat woman said. “They’re responsible, after all.”
A dun-colored pasteboard suitcase with a cracked plastic handle came out of the chute. It slid down to the rubberized bumper ringing the bottom sides of the carousel. When it had revolved to where he was standing, the limping man lifted it out quickly. The woman said, “You’d better examine the end of it. It probably has a crease in it, just like my—”
“Shut up, you fat ugly useless bitch,” the limping man whispered softly, fervently. He turned and began to walk rapidly toward the south end of the level.
The fat woman made a surprised hennish sound deep in the folds of her throat. Spots of crimson fired her cheeks. She raised one trembling arm and pointed it after him, still making the sounds; fat jiggled on her upper arm like an inverted gelatin mold. The other passengers watched her. They had not heard the limping man’s words.
A moment later, he stopped at an enclosed booth representing one of the car rental agencies. A man in an ostentatious Madras jacket smiled unctuously at him from behind the counter. “Yes, sir?”
“I want a compact Chevrolet or Ford, light-colored, quiet engine.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I’ll need it for a week. Ten days at the most.”
“May I see some identification, please? Driver’s license and any major credit card.”
The limping man set the pasteboard suitcase on the floor at his feet and took his wallet from the inside pocket of his faded brown suit jacket; he did not set the briefcase down. The unctuous man studied the driver’s license and an oil company credit card in the proffered wallet, nodded, and then consulted a list by his left elbow. “Would a Ford Mustang be acceptable, sir?”
“That’s all right.”
The unctuous man lifted a telephone, spoke briefly into it, and then rotated a pad of contract forms. The limping man filled out the single-page contract, signed it, and was given the last two pages in a card folder upon which the clerk had written the license number of the Ford Mustang and the stall where it could be located in the outside parking area.
The limping man picked up the pasteboard suitcase, went quickly to the far end of the level, and stepped through a door into the gelid afternoon.
Ice drops stung his skin and the wind whipped mercilessly at his sparse brown hair; but he seemed oblivious to the cold as he walked among the rental cars to his designated stall. A bearded boy in a white uniform with the agency’s name in bright blue across the back waited there for him. The boy looked at the card folder, inclined his head, and held the door open. The limping man ignored a tip-waiting hand and slid beneath the wheel of the Mustang. The keys were in the ignition.
He proceeded through the parking area fronting the airport and entered the northbound ramp leading onto the James Lick Freeway. The speedometer needle climbed to seventy and seemed to lock there; the limping man drove with both hands competently on the steering wheel, his eyes leaving the broken white line before him only to check the side-and rear-view mirrors prior to changing lanes.
Fifteen minutes later, he bore right at the Skyway and Central Freeway junctions, following the Skyway to the Seventh Street exit. He had been in San Francisco only once previously—two months ago-but he had memorized this route, and several others, with precise care. He had been over each more than once.
At Sixth Street, he crossed Market to enter Taylor; at the corner of Taylor and Geary, he turned into a parking garage. He left the Mustang with an attendant and carried the two cases along Geary to a small, unpretentious hotel called the Graceling.
Fingers again working in metronome cadence on the surface of the briefcase, he spoke to the polite, if somewhat bored, hotel clerk and signed the register. An aging bellhop with a faintly sour smell about him responded to the clerk’s summons, picked up the limping man’s suitcase, and led him over to a self-service elevator at the near end of the lobby. On the fourth floor, the bellhop unlocked the door to Number 412, placed the key on the lacquered dresser inside, laid the suitcase on an aluminum luggage rack near the window, and then returned to the doorway. He stood waiting. The limping man’s eyes, unblinking, met the bellhop’s liquidy blue ones; after a moment, the bellhop coughed nervously, averting his gaze, and retreated into the hallway.
When he had closed and locked the door, the limping man sat on the wide double bed and opened the briefcase with a tiny key from the breast pocket of his suit. From inside, he extracted a thick ten by-thirteen manila envelope and put it on his lap; he did not touch the heavy Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver which lay in a chamois cloth at the bottom of the case.
Opening the manila envelope, he removed two sets of three folders each, both sets being fastened with thick, sturdy rubber bands. The folders were of the type used by college students for term paper assignments, and were of different colors. Those in one set were blue, gray, and red; those in the second were yellow, green, and orange. He glanced cursorily at the first set—blue and gray and red—and then returned it to the manila envelope. He slid the rubber band from the second set and placed its three folders side by side on the floral bedspread.
Each contained several sheets of ruled notepaper filled with lines of writing in an almost illegible backhand, and a Mobil Oil Travel and Street Map. The writing consisted of daily journal-like reports, over a two-week span, which the limping man had made on his first trip to California two months previous; they were detailed with names, numbers, dates, places, habits, and observations.
He sat staring at the names inked in large block letters on the front of each folder. Which one next? he asked himself silently. Well, it didn’t really make a great deal of difference, it would all be over within the week anyway— for him, and for each of them.
At length he selected the yellow folder, lay back on the bed, and began to study its contents, even though he had long since committed to memory each fact represented there.
It wasn’t the money at all.
