across; the five of them converged on the alley mouth, guns drawn, and I could see another team of officers sealing off the Pine Street mouth. The balding guy and the other one had no chance to fight and no place to run; they had gun muzzles in their bellies and handcuffs on their wrists within seconds. Quartermain and Favor had taken the newsstand, jerking open the alley door, rushing inside; they came out with the valise and with the tall guy, hands shackled behind his back, just as one of the local black-and-white cruisers was pulling into the passageway from Pine Street.
I let go of the table edge and sat back limply and said 'Oh Christ!' aloud with soft reverence.
It had been just that kind of happening.
Twenty
I went to City Hall again. By previous agreement the prisoners had been taken immediately to the larger jail and police facilities in neighboring Monterey, and a trip over there would have been pointless for me; there was no way I would be allowed to sit in on the interrogation of the holdup men-and I was in no physical condition or frame of mind to deal with reporters. I also did not trust myself to make the drive, as short as it was; the few blocks to City Hall were tortuous enough.
Donovan had long since gone off duty and there was a sergeant named Cole, whom I had met earlier, behind the front desk when I came in. I asked him if he had any identification on the three bank robbers, and he said yes, word had just come in: they were Androvitch and Collins and Sarkelian. That was all the information he had at the moment; he did not know which was the balding man. I thanked him and asked him if I could go into the Chief's office to await Quartermain's return, and he passed me through immediately.
When I got down there and opened the door into the anteroom, I saw that someone else was waiting for Quartermain. Robin Lomax sat primly in one of three upholstered chairs across from the secretary's desk-hands folded in her lap, knees together, back rigid-still wearing the white sleeveless dress of the morning, still looking fresh and innocent and tawny-gold healthy. But her eyes were different now; the fear was gone, leaving them old and defeated like ancient, intelligent entities forever trapped in the body of a mannequin.
The eyes moved up and over me as I entered, touching me with dull hatred, and her unpainted mouth betrayed her distaste at my appearance. Dirty old man. Gaunt-eyed and stubble-cheeked, wearing soiled clothes, smelling sour. Dirty old private detective. Subhuman species. Trash. Something odorous, something unclean: a four-letter word. The quirk of her mouth told me all that, and the old and defeated eyes confirmed it, and I felt a sudden and unreasoning anger take hold of me. What gives you the right to disparage me, lady? I thought. What gives you the right to hate me without knowing me or what I am or what I stand for? I'm no threat to you or to your shallow little existence; I'm no threat to anybody, I'm just a tired, half-assed do-gooder living in a world I never made…
And then I thought: The hell with it, the hell with it, she wouldn't understand and you can't take it out on her, she's hurting in her own way too. The anger faded into mild irritation and then into nothing at all. I closed the door and walked over toward her and said, 'Hello, Mrs. Lomax.'
'Hello,' cold and remote.
'Have you been waiting long?'
'A few minutes.'
'The Chief might not be back for some time.'
'So I've been told.'
'Is there something I can do?'
'You've done quite enough, thank you.'
Yeah, I thought. I said, 'All right, Mrs. Lomax,' and turned and went over to the secretary's desk. He had been sitting there watching and waiting patiently. We exchanged nods, and I asked, 'Is it okay if I go into the Chief's office to wait?'
He knew me well enough by now, but he was still hesitant. 'Well, I don't know…'
'All I'm after is that couch in there. I've been up for going on thirty-six hours and if I don't get a place to lie down pretty soon I'm going to fall flat on my face. I'm not kidding you.'
He saw the truth of that in my eyes, and it made up his mind for him. 'I guess it's all right, then,' he said.
'Thanks.'
I looked at Robin Lomax again, but as far as she was concerned I was no longer there. I went into Quartermain's office and shut the door and moved directly to the old leather couch and stretched out supine with my head on one of the rounded arms. The leather was soft and cool beneath my enervated body, and I closed my eyes and put one arm across them to shut out additional light.
Thoughts-questions-began to tumble fretfully across the surface of my mind. How was Quartermain making out in the interrogation of Androvitch and Collins and Sarkelian? Had one of them killed Paige and Winestock? The balding man? Would he confess to it if he had? And Robin Lomax-why was she here? What had made her come down to sit and wait for what might be hours? Why did she want to talk to Quartermain? Why was the fear gone from her eyes, to be replaced by tired resignation? Where was her husband? And on and on and on.
I concentrated, finally, on blanking them out; they were questions that could have no answers until Quartermain returned from Monterey. One by one, they faded until they were all gone-and immediately, perversely, something else began tugging at my mind, a thought that was not a thought, an evanescent scrap, something very important, a sentence or two sentences that someone had spoken today or last night. I reached for it mentally, but a kind of warm fog seemed to be unfolding inside my head and my consciousness commenced sinking into it and I could not quite grasp the thought even though I kept on reaching and reaching and reaching…
Someone began gently shaking my shoulder, and I came up out of fevered and fitful darkness with a groggy sense of disorientation at first and then with returning awareness. Pain went to work in my temples in a dull, steady cadence, and harshly in my throat as I tried to swallow. I forced myself into a sitting position and pried my eyes open. Light burned at my retinas, and then diminished, and I could see all right.
Quartermain gave me a pallid smile and said, 'Sorry to wake you, but I thought you'd want to talk. And I had some coffee and sandwiches made up; we both need a little nourishment.'
'It's okay, Ned, thanks,'
'Did you get much sleep?'
'I don't know, what time is it?'
'Quarter of seven.'
'Christ, that late? I guess about three hours, but it feels more like three minutes.'
I put my head in my hands and tried to gather enough strength to get up on my feet. My mouth felt cottony, and my head and throat kept on hurting. I took several thick breaths and heaved up and moved shakily over to the desk and sat down again in one of the armchairs. I was fully awake now, and I remembered the evanescent thought I had been trying to grasp just before falling asleep; but the thought itself seemed to be gone for the time being, vanished into my subconscious.
Quartermain walked around behind the desk and sank into his chair. His long face was so deeply lined that the creases looked like knife cuts, and his eyes seemed to be bleeding. I said, 'You've got to get some sleep yourself pretty soon. You look dead on your tail, Ned.'
'Don't I know it?' He poured coffee for both of us and slid one of the cups over to me. 'But Christ knows when I'll get to bed now, or when any of us will.'
'Problems?'
'Yeah. Paige's death. The bald guy-his name is Sarkelian, Edward Sarkelian-claims he didn't have anything to do with the stabbing of Paige. The other two, Androvitch and Collins, claim the same thing.'
'They couldn't be lying?'
'No reason for them to lie, not now. We've got them cold on the Winestock killing. One of the guns stuffed into the valise with the bank's money was the murder weapon; a ballistics check proved that. Androvitch, the tall one that waited in the newsstand, says it's Sarkelian's gun. He also says Sarkelian shot Winestock; he's trying to
