Or was there?
The telephone rang. I went into the bedroom and answered it, and Tom Washburn said, “I just came back from the house. I… well, I couldn’t make myself go over there until today. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t.”
“Don’t apologize, Mr. Washburn. Did you find anything in Leonard’s papers?”
“Nothing pertaining to Richard Dessault or that man Ozimas.”
“Something else?”
“Well, I don’t know. A photograph.”
“What sort of photograph?”
“You’d better see it for yourself. I don’t know what it means; it probably doesn’t mean anything. But I think you should look at it.”
“Are you still at the house?”
“No. I’m back at Fred’s.”
“What’s the address there again?”
He told me, and I said, “I could come by around seven or so.” On my way to Kerry’s, I was thinking. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes, fine. I’ll expect you.”
A photograph, I thought as I rang off. Which reminded me of the one I’d taken out of Danny Martinez’s farmhouse. I found it in the pocket of my other suit coat and looked at it again. And it bothered me again in the same vague way it had yesterday in my office. Or was it something associated with it that was responsible for the bother? I couldn’t seem to get a grasp on whatever it was. Too many things whirling around inside my head, too many confusing elements that kept me from seeing any of them clearly.
I started out into the kitchen to get another beer, and the telephone rang again. I did an about-face back into the bedroom, picked up, and a familiar voice said, “This is Melanie Purcell.”
She was one of the last people I expected to hear from. I said, “Yes, Melanie,” and managed to keep the surprise out of my voice. “What can I do for you?”
“You still want to see Richie?” The way she said it, I thought she might be angry or uptight about something.
“Yes, I do. Where is he?”
“At the houseboat. He came back a little while ago.” There was a pause. “He was gone two days,” she said.
“Gone where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I don’t care anyway, not anymore. That’s why I called you.”
“Where are you?”
“One of the neighbor’s boats. I slipped out when he got into the shower. Listen, I think he’s going out again pretty soon. He acts all excited about something.”
“I can be there in half an hour,” I said. “Can you keep him around that long?”
“I guess I can try. But you better hurry.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“A white Trans-Am.”
“All right. Thirty minutes, Melanie.”
Chapter Twenty
It was full dark when I got to Mission Creek. There was not much of a moon tonight and patchy clouds mostly obscured its thin, pale hook-shape; but nightlights strung along the floating walkway and aglow in boat windows and portholes, lights both moving and stationary on the freeway terminus high above, made it easy enough to see. I cut my headlamps just after I made the turn off Fourth onto Channel Street, beyond Blanche’s Cafe.
On the way down here I had been of two minds as to what to do about Richie Dessault, assuming he was still around when I arrived. One was to brace him, see what I could wrangle out of him by guile and intimidation; the other was to hang around out of sight, wait for him to leave, and then follow him and see where he led me. I had pretty much decided that following him was the best of the two alternatives. Melanie had said he was excited about something. Maybe his emotional state had nothing to do with Danny Martinez or the Purcell murders-maybe he was just tired of Melanie, if not of Melanie’s money, and had found himself another bunny to burrow up with for a while. But if his excitement was related to the case, then I stood a better chance of finding out what it was by shagging him. I could brace him later, when we got to where he was going; or tomorrow or the day after that, if tonight didn’t pan out.
There was nobody that I could see on the embankment, and all of the dozen or so vehicles slotted in at its edge were dark. I let the car drift off the road to the left, lightless, and coasted to a stop in the shadows cast by an express company warehouse. From there I had a good look at the parked cars. One of them was a white Trans-Am. It was directly across the embankment from the nearest of the access ramps, fifty yards or so from where I was and at an angle to my left.
I shut off the engine, rolled down the window so I could listen to the night sounds. The swishing passage of freeway traffic, a ship’s horn somewhere in China Basin or out on the Bay, a woman’s skittish laughter from one of the anchored boats-all distant and random. Otherwise the creek area, surrounded as it was by industrial outfits and the Southern Pacific yards, all almost entirely deserted on a Sunday night, seemed even more isolated and self- contained than it did during the daylight hours.
I didn’t expect much of a wait and I didn’t have one. Less than two minutes had passed when Dessault came hurrying up the near ramp and through its security gate; the nightlight there made a pale nimbus of his blond hair, letting me identify him.
He moved across the flat of the embankment, startling a couple of the geese that appeared to live there-I could hear their annoyed honking, see one of them flapping its wings-and got into his Trans-Am. I waited until I heard the deep-throated roar of the engine before I started mine again. He backed out my way, pointed west toward Sixth; and that was the direction he went, not driving fast but not driving slow either.
I let him get a hundred yards down Channel Street before I put on my headlights and pulled away from the warehouse. Following him dark would have been foolish business. If he was the kind of driver who checked his rearview mirror periodically, there was enough light in the area to let him see what was behind him; and he would be a lot more apt to pay attention to a car without its lights on than he would to just another set of headlights.
He made the turn onto Sixth and I did the same. It was deserted and much darker down along here-drayage and freight-forwarding companies and part of the SP freight yards on the east side, and on the west, fenced-in lots mounded with creosote-soaked lumber and other materials that the railroad used for repair work. Here and there nightlights cast thin yellow wedges above empty loading docks. The only other illumination came from the beams on Dessault’s car and the beams on mine.
We went about a quarter of a mile. Dessault was nearing the intersection with Sixteenth when he surprised me by making an abrupt left-hand turn; the Trans-Am disappeared between two of the warehouses. When I got to that point I found an unpaved, unmarked access road that served a drayage firm on one side and some kind of truck storage yard on the other: big diesel cabs and unhooked trailers looming up out of the darkness, both inside and outside a high chain-link fence. The Trans-Am was about seventy-five yards along, its lights picking up a low, metal Stop sign anchored where the road widened out past the warehouse and the storage yard.
I slowed, thinking, Some kind of shortcut. He knows this area, he knows a faster way to get where he’s going.
Up ahead, the Trans-Am moved on past the Stop sign and its lights splashed over rough ground that fronted a criss-cross of SP sidings; splashed over a string of oil tankers, another of boxcars, as Dessault veered to the right. I made the turn just before he passed out of sight, and when he was gone I punched the accelerator a little. I didn’t want him to get too far away.
Even though the Trans-Am was no longer visible I could see the glow of its lights against the dark sky, bouncing erratically because of the uneven ground. And then, suddenly, they stopped bouncing and the glow wasn’t
