“Couple of things, maybe.”
“Confidential?”
Cloudman shrugged. Then he leaned back in his chair and dug a fingernail into his hair and raked it around the way he had at the lake, grimacing. “Scalp infection,” he said. “Itches like hell sometimes.”
Neither Harry nor I had anything to say to that.
Cloudman fished a sheet of paper out of a basket on his desk and studied it for a time. At length he said to me, “Ever do any work for lawyers in San Francisco?”
“Once in a while.”
“Know one named Charles Kayabalian?”
“I don't think so, no.”
“He's heard of you,” Cloudman said. “You got your name in the Frisco papers a few times, I gather.”
“A few times.”
“Well, he seemed kind of interested in you when he showed up here this morning.”
I frowned. “In what way?”
“He didn't say. Just seemed interested, is all.”
“Is he connected with Terzian?”
“Indirectly. He handles the legal affairs of a lot of Armenians in the Bay Area-couple of other rug dealers and a few rug collectors among them. Seems he's been trying to work up a criminal action against Terzian on behalf of these people.”
“What sort of criminal action?”
“Contention is that Terzian was acting as a fence for a ring of Oriental rug and carpet thieves,” Cloudman said. “Kayabalian had ears and eyes on Terzian's operation in San Jose, and as soon as he got word of the murder he drove up.”
“Why would he do that-drive up?”
“He thinks maybe the reason Terzian came to Tuolumne was to deliver a carpet stolen four days ago near Frisco. Something called a Daghestan, worth a lot of money.”
“Does he have any idea who Terzian might have been delivering it to?”
“Not a one, he says.”
“Then why does he figure that's what brought him here?”
“He had somebody watching Terzian's place, like I said. Terzian gave Kayabalian's man the slip Saturday night and disappeared. It adds up, more or less.”
Harry said, “Why would this buyer kill Terzian?”
“We don't know that he did. There's still the hijacking angle, among others.” Cloudman scratched at his scalp again, sighed elaborately, and leaned forward to splay his hands on the desk top. “Well, I won't keep you fellas any longer. You'll hold everything I've told you in confidence, now?”
Harry and I said we would.
“Probably shouldn't have opened up in the first place,” he said in a musing way. “Trouble with me, though, is that I like to talk, like to get other people's ideas on things. Not always a good trait in a police officer, I've been told, but that's how I am.”
Uh-huh, I thought, sure it is.
“Either of you come across anything more, anything at all, you let me know right away,” he said, but he was looking only at me. “I can count on that, can't I?”
He was a wily old fox, all right. He had known exactly what he was doing in opening up to us-to me, really. He wanted to know more about this Kayabalian, and he wanted to know what the lawyer's apparent interest in me was; instead of making demands, the way some cops would have done, he was using friendliness and a certain amount of candor to ensure my cooperation in the event Kayabalian got in touch with me. I admired him for that. It takes a kind of faith in human decency to operate the way he did.
“You can count on it,” I said.
In the jeep on the way out of Sonora, Harry said, “You know, I just can't figure anybody buying stolen Oriental carpets in an area like this. Everybody knows everybody else up here; if there was a rug collector around, I'd have heard about it.”
“That's a sticking point, all right,” I said.
“I can't figure a hijacking either. The odds are pretty high against any of the locals knowing a valuable carpet from a worthless one, even if they could have gotten a look inside Terzian's van.”
I nodded. “And if Terzian shook the lawyer's man in San Jose, it doesn't seem likely anybody else could have followed him up.”
“Yeah. I wouldn't want Cloudman's job on a thing like this.”
“Neither would I.”
I slid lower on the seat and tried to ignore the sour grumbling in my stomach. The sun was westering now, but it seemed even hotter than it had been on the ride in. Heat mirage shimmered liquidly on the highway. The pocked landscape had a sere look, and the high forested summits to the north and east seemed remote, black- edged; above them, a few puffy cumulus clouds appeared to sit as motionless as holograms projected on the stark curve of the sky.
When we finally came down the county road into the parking circle, the camp looked somnolent and peaceful. The only person in sight was Cody, sprawled lazily in one of the chairs on Harry's front porch. And the Cadillac was still gone.
Cody watched us come over from the circle without moving; he had his feet up on the railing, legs spread, a can of beer balanced on his tanned chest. The only thing he wore was a pair of bright blue swim trunks so tight you would have had to be blind to miss noticing that he was hung like a stallion. Sourly, I thought that that was probably fitting, considering he was a horse's ass.
“Hey, dudes,” he said in his snotty voice. “What's happening?”
Harry said, “Something the matter with the front porch on your cabin?”
Cody grinned at him. “No view from up there. Too many trees. That's the trouble with this place-too many trees.”
Harry grunted and looked at me. “Want a beer?”
“I could use one.”
“You can bring me another horn too,” the kid said.
I saw Harry's mouth tighten. “You've got legs.”
“It's too hot to move, man.”
Harry stared at him, and his eyes were sharp with anger; then, abruptly, he turned and stalked around to where the cooler was.
Cody said to me, “Guy was around looking for you a little while ago.”
“What guy?”
“He didn't say.”
“What did he want?”
“Didn't say that either. Left you an envelope, though.”
He waved in the direction of the other chair, and I went up on the porch and found a plain white envelope, sealed, with my name written on the front in a strong masculine hand. The contents turned out to be a single business card. Black embossed printing on one side said Charles Kayabalian, Attorney-at-Law, and there was an address in a building on Sutter Street, near Union Square.
Written on the other side of the card was: May I see you at your earliest convenience regarding the death of Vahram Terzian? A meeting might benefit us both. I've taken a room at The Pines Hotel.
I was hardly surprised, after what Cloudman had told me. I put the card and the envelope in my pocket and went past Cody and down off the steps. Harry appeared just then, carrying three cans of Schlitz; he gave one to me, banged a second one down on the porch railing by the kid's foot.
“Hell,” Cody said, “now I'll get a foam bath.”
Harry ignored him. He said to me, “Let's go over by the lake.”
“Sure.”
We walked across, and Harry said, “Little bastard.”
