‘It might,’ I said. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’m leaving for Germany tomorrow.’
‘Germany? You mean Elaine Kavanaugh is sending you all the way over there?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That seems like a hell of a shot in the dark.’
‘Maybe it is, but it’s about all we’ve got left.’
‘You think you can find out about the portrait over there?’
‘That’s what I’m hoping.’
‘I guess Elaine is getting desperate, and I don’t blame her. If I were in her place, I’d probably have you do the same thing. It’s better than just sitting around, waiting.’
‘That’s for certain.’
Rosmond wished me luck, and I told him I would be in touch-unnecessarily, because of Cheryl-and we said a parting. I went into the living room and stood at the bay window and looked out through the curtains at the approaching darkness, the subtle transformation of chill bright gray into ebon black. The sharp winter wind blew eddies of dust in a series of miniature tornadoes along the gutters, slapped at the glass with the thin, cold fingers of a crone.
But I was thinking of Cheryl, and that made it a very nice evening in all respects.
The telephone was ringing.
And ringing and ringing.
I pushed my way up through the folds of a deep, warm, comfortable sleep-the first good rest I had had in days. The bell was strident, demanding, in the darkness of the bedroom. I lay quietly for a moment, reluctant to let go of the warmth and the comfort, waiting for the bell to stop. It kept on ringing. I lifted my left arm and looked at my watch, and it was twenty past one. Some time of night for a telephone call; and it will be a wrong number, sure as Christ made fools and drunks, it will be a wrong number.
I swung my feet out of bed and stumbled over to the phone, on the dresser where I had put it earlier. I got the handset up to my ear, a little groggily, and muttered, ‘Yeah? Hello?’
A muffled, neuter voice whispered, ‘If you go to Germany tomorrow, you’re a dead man, mister. And Elaine Kavanaugh is a dead lady. I’m not kidding, mister-you think I’m kidding, you go ahead to Germany and see what happens.’
The line buzzed atonally, emptily.
I stood holding the receiver, fully awake now, and I had a ridiculous urge to burst out laughing. A threatening telephone call. For Christ’s sake! Pulp detectives got threatening telephone calls in six stories out of ten, they were always getting them. And then the irony left me and I felt a coldness that was born of anger rather than fear settle across my shoulder blades; anger crept up into my throat, too, and forced itself out in the form of several sharp, savage words. I slammed the receiver down and went to the nightstand for a cigarette.
Hendryx? I thought. Gilmartin? Doug Rosmond? One of those three, goddamn it, it almost has to be one of those three, nobody else knew I planned to leave for Germany tomorrow, not unless Elaine or one of them told someone, and that isn’t probable. Well, whoever it was has to be the same one who broke in here-
And the phone rang again.
Two in a row, is that it? I made the dresser in two strides and swung the handset up viciously-and Elaine Kavanaugh’s voice said in a broken, frightened, liquid rush, ‘Somebody… somebody on the phone… he said he would kill me… and you… oh God, my God, he said he’d kill us both if you went to Germany!’
So that was the way he was playing it. Her first and then me. Cover all bets. One of us would scare off-that was the reasoning, the son of a bitch. I said thinly, ‘Easy, Miss Kavanaugh, try to calm down.’
‘But you… you don’t understand…’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I got the same kind of call, just two minutes ago. The same threat.’
‘For the love of God,
I spoke softly to her for several seconds, getting her calm. When she seemed in control again, I said, ‘Did you recognize anything about the voice-anything at all?’
‘No, it was muffled, disguised.’ She released a stuttering breath. ‘Do you… think he meant what he said? About… killing us?’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know what kind of man we’re dealing with here-his motivations, anything about the way he thinks. He might be bluffing, and then again he might not be.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘That’s up to you, Miss Kavanaugh,’ I said tightly. ‘I’m not particularly brave, but I don’t like voices in the night telling me what to do. As far as I’m concerned, nothing’s changed. But I don’t want you harmed; if you want to call the trip off, we’ll do it that way.’
‘This is all so… insane,’ she said. ‘Death threats and Roy missing-I don’t know what to do, what to think.’
‘Maybe we’d better just forget the whole thing.’
‘No. No, we can’t do that. I’m… afraid, but I have to know about Roy. I have to know where he is, if he’s all right.’
‘Then I’ll have to go to Germany as we planned.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice broke faintly, as if she had undergone a violent shudder; then, more firmly, ‘Yes.’
‘You’re certain that’s what you want?’
‘I’m certain.’
Good girl, I thought. I said, ‘Then it’s settled. But I want you to promise me that you’ll pack your things and check out of that hotel early in the morning. Will you do that?’
‘Where will I go?’
‘To another hotel. Any one you like, but make it some distance from the Royal Gate. Register under another name-anything but Smith or Jones. You can call me at my office tomorrow and tell me where you’ve gone.’
‘All right. If you think that’s best.’
‘While I’m in Germany, I want you to stay in your room. Don’t go out, don’t tell anyone- anyone at all-where you are, and don’t open your door to anyone but a member of the hotel staff. You can have your meals sent up, and books to read or a television to help pass the time. It’ll be hell for a few days, but you’ll have to do it. Do you think you can?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, and I believed her.
‘You’ll be okay tonight. Take a couple of sleeping pills, if you have them, and try to get some rest. I’ll do all that’s humanly possible to find Roy Sands for you; I hope you can believe in that.’
‘I can.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘because we’ve got one thing going for us now, one thing those threatening calls told us for sure.’
‘What?’
‘That there’s something damned important to be found out in Kitzingen, Germany.’
CHAPTER TEN
It was raining in Frankfurt, Germany.
I had never been able to sleep on airplanes, and when we arrived it was almost seven o’clock in the evening and I had been awake for something like thirty hours, discounting the nine-hour time difference between California and Western Europe. The TWA flight to London, in one of the big new useless 747s, had taken close to twelve hours, and I had gotten entangled with a huge customs line at Heathrow Airport and a lot of red tape because bad weather had socked the place in for two days and all flights were either canceled or well behind schedule. My Lufthansa connection to Frankfurt was delayed two hours, but I had not been able to sleep in the waiting room
