about anything? I took a swallow of beer to drown the sharp words that were on my tongue; there was nothing to be gained in telling her off.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m still here.”
“You were hired to do a specific job,” she said. “I assume you wish to continue doing it. Is that correct?”
I had already asked myself the same question. If I backed off the case she would only hire someone else- assuming she could find someone else to take it on, as unorthodox as it was. Maybe there wasn’t much Bert and Milo and I could do to protect Martin Talbot from himself or from somebody else, but at least we could try; at least three people who understood the situation would be keeping a steady watch on him.
And I needed the money. I needed that money, damn it.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then I’ll thank you not to bother me again with your opinions. You’re to call only if you have something to report about Victor Carding. And you’re to send me a detailed written report at the beginning of next week. Is that understood?”
“Understood.”
“Fine. Good-night, then.”
“Good night, Mrs. Nichols.”
I made the kind of gesture Italians always use to convey disgust and banged down the receiver. Some lady, Laura Nichols. Some nice sister. No mental illness in her family, by God. No brother of hers could have come unhinged enough to take his own life. Poor Martin was just a little eccentric, that was all. He’d snap out of it eventually; it was only a matter of time.
Poor Martin, all right.
Poor bastard.
FIVE
On Thursday morning I spent a couple of hours in my office, going through the mail and catching up on some paperwork. There were no messages on my answering machine and I had no calls while I was there. No one had rung me up at home either, so I assumed that nothing much had happened at Talbot’s during the night. Nothing, at least, that Bert or Milo knew about.
I called the Hall of Justice at ten o’clock to check in again with Eberhardt. But he was out on a field investigation, the cop I talked to said, and was not expected back until early afternoon. The cop was not at liberty to say if there were any new developments on the Christine Webster homicide. At eleven-thirty I tried again, just in case; Eb still had not returned. I would just have to wait until tonight, when my shift on Talbot was finished, and then call him at home for an update.
I locked the office, picked up my car, and headed over Twin Peaks to Stern Grove. The weather was better today: still cold and windy, but the overcast had lifted and patches of blue sky were visible between shifting cloud masses. It would make surveillance a little easier because I could spend more time moving around in the park and less time sitting like a lump in the car.
Milo Petrie was waiting for me, standing just inside the park gate, when I came down Wawona off Nineteenth. I made a U-turn alongside the Talbot house, parked where I had yesterday, facing east, and went over to join him.
“How’d it go, Milo?”
“Quiet,” he said. He was a lean, hawk-nosed guy in his sixties, bundled up in a heavy car coat, a longshoreman’s cap, and a pair of gloves. Like Bert Thomas, he was a retired patrolman out of the Ingleside station. “And goddamn cold, too. I haven’t been on an early-morning stakeout in twenty years; almost froze my balls off.”
“Anything happen on Bert’s shift?”
“He said no. Subject stayed inside and didn’t have any visitors. Lights were on all night, like maybe he didn’t go to bed.”
“Talbot come out this mourning?
“Yep. A little after eight. He walked all the way down Nineteenth to the Stonestown shopping center. Gave me a chance for some exercise, anyway.”
“What did he do in Stonestown?”
“Nothing much,” Milo said. “Wandered around, sat in the mall for awhile. No contact with anybody. He led me straight back here about thirty minutes ago.”
I nodded. “Okay. No need for you to hang around; you look like you could use some coffee and hot food.”
“And a stiff shot of brandy.” He hesitated, glancing over at the house. “This Talbot’s in a pretty bad way, you know? Funny look in his eyes-like he’s half-dead inside.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’ve seen that look before,” Milo said. “Jumper on the Golden Gate Bridge had it back in ’68; I tried to talk him out of going over but he jumped anyway. You ask me, Talbot’s a potential Dutch.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing. But his sister doesn’t believe it, and she’s the only one who could have him committed for observation.”
“If I was her, I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about him knocking himself off than anyone else trying to do it for him.”
“Me too,” I said. “But the way things are, I don’t see anything we can do except play it her way. And hope for the best.”
Milo shook his head. “People,” he said.
When he was gone I went through the gate into the park. There were a few more people around today: a couple of kids throwing a football back and forth, a man walking an Irish setter on a leash, an elderly couple carrying a small silver-flocked Christmas tree that they had probably bought at the lot over on Nineteenth and Sloat. I stood on the park road and watched the kids. The one nearest me missed a catch and the ball rolled to a stop about twenty feet away; when he picked it up I called out for him to peg it to me-just being friendly, trying to pass the time. He threw it back to the other kid instead, grinned at me, and gave me the finger.
Christmas trees before Thanksgiving. Citizens letting their dogs crap all over a public recreation area. Young kids giving the finger to adults old enough to be their grandfather. And a twenty-year-old girl lying in the morgue with two bullets in her body. And an honest man, a moral man, tearing himself apart with guilt. And a stubborn, narrow-minded woman who would rather believe in an unlikely threat than in the real danger of mental illness.
People, Milo had said.
Yeah. People.
I walked over to the driving range. Came back to the gate. Walked up the park road again. Watched the kids again, staring at the one who had given me the finger until it made him nervous enough to stop playing catch and head down into the grotto with his friend. The cold was beginning to bother me, as it had yesterday, and I was also a little hungry; I had eaten nothing for breakfast except some cereal. Before leaving my flat, though, I had made some sandwiches, and I had bought a thermos near my office and filled it with coffee. Time for lunch, I thought. I turned back for the gate Just in time to see the taxi come gliding along Twenty-first Avenue and pull up in front of the Talbot house.
The driver blew his horn a couple of times. Immediately the front door opened and Martin Talbot appeared, wearing the same tweed overcoat of yesterday. There seemed to be purpose in his stride as he came down the stairs and crossed to enter the cab.
I was running by then, out through the gate and around the front of my car. The taxi pulled away, left on Wawona, as I fumbled the door open and slid inside. If the driver had caught the light at Nineteenth, I might have lost them; midday traffic was pretty heavy along there, clogging all three southbound lanes. But the signal was red, and it stayed red long enough for me to swing out and close to within half a block.
