back, and had persuaded the local paper to go along.
The waitress brought my breakfast. The eggs stared up from the plate like wide yellow eyes. The toast had a gunpowder flavor. I caught myself sitting tensely in the booth like a condemned criminal waiting for the executioner to throw the switch.
It wasn’t purely empathy with Donato: I doubt that there’s such a feeling as pure empathy. For no clear reason, I’d put myself in the position of withholding information about a major crime. And the man whose request I was honoring wasn’t even a client.
I sat there trying to convince myself that Ferguson had been having alcoholic delusions about his wife. Or that the whole thing was a publicity hoax. Movie actresses didn’t get themselves kidnapped in Buenavista. Most of our crimes were done in the lower town, cheap fraud or senseless violence. But my mind couldn’t evade the connection between the Broadman killing and the Ferguson case. And I knew in my bowels that the threatening call at midnight had been no hoax.
I left the ugly eggs on my plate and went to the police station. Wills wasn’t in yet, but the sergeant on duty at the desk assured me that he would have the men in the patrol cars keep an eye on my home. By the time I had walked the several blocks to the office, past the familiar faces of the downtown buildings, I felt better. Nothing could happen to Sally in Buenavista.
My office was one of a suite of two, with an anteroom between, on the second floor of an old mustard-colored stucco court behind the post office. In the middle of the imitation flagstone courtyard there was a fountain, a dry concrete concavity inhabited by a lead dolphin which had long since emitted its last watery gasp.
I shared the suite and Mrs. Weinstein with another attorney, a middle-aged man named Barney Millrace who specialized in tax and probate work. We were not partners. I was on my way up, I hoped; Barney Millrace was on his way down, I feared. He was a quiet drinker, so quiet that I sometimes forgot about him for days.
Bella Weinstein never let me forget her. She was a widow, fortyish, dark, and intense, who had appointed herself my personal goad. She looked up from her desk when I walked into the anteroom. Fixing me with her eye, she said in a congratulatory way: “You’re early this morning, Mr. Gunnarson.”
“That’s because I’ve been up all night. Rampaging and carousing.”
“I bet. You have an appointment at nine-fifteen with Mrs. Al Stabile. I think she wants a divorce again.”
“I’ll head her off. Did she say why?”
“She didn’t go into the gory details. But I gather Stabile’s been rampaging and carousing again. You see where it leads. Also, a man named Padilla tried to reach you.”
“How long ago?”
“Just a few minutes. He left a number. Shall I call him back?”
“Right away, yes. I’ll take it inside.”
I closed the door of my office and sat down at the ancient golden-oak roll-top desk which I had imported at great expense from the Pennsylvania town where I was born. My father had willed it to me, along with the small law library which took up most of the shelves along one wall.
It’s oddly pleasing to sit at your father’s desk. Diminishing, too. It’s a long time before you begin to feel that you’re up to it. I was beginning.
Padilla was on the line when I lifted the receiver. “Mr. Gunnarson? I’m out at Colonel Ferguson’s. He says I got to make this fast.”
“What is it, Tony?”
“I don’t want to go into it over the phone. Can you come out here?”
“Why don’t you come to my office?”
“I would, but I hate to leave the Colonel. He needs somebody to hold his hand.”
“The hell I do,” I heard Ferguson say. Then his voice roared in my ear: “Get off the line!”
I got off the line, and started out through the anteroom. Mrs. Weinstein detained me with one of her complex looks; it combined satire, pathos, and despair.
“Are you going out, Mr. Gunnarson?” she said in her polite, furious monotone.
“Yes. Out.”
“But Mrs. Stabile will be here in a few minutes. What can I say to her?”
“Tell her I’ll see her later.”
“She’ll go to another lawyer.”
“No, she won’t. Stabile won’t let her.”
chapter 10
FERGUSON’S HOUSE WAS IMPRESSIVE by daylight, a green and gray modern structure of stone and wood and glass, distributed in unobtrusive low shapes which blended with the landscape and the seascape.
The door opened as my car entered the turnaround. Colonel Ferguson came out, trailed by Padilla. Padilla looked a little soiled and sallow, but he managed a smile. Ferguson was grimly unsmiling. The lines in his face were deep and inflexible. Heavy beard, jet black and pure white mixed, sprouted around the scab on his chin.
He came up to my car. “What in hell do you want?”
“I’m naturally worried about your wife-”
“It’s my affair. I’m handling it.”
I got out. “It’s my affair, too, whether I like it or not. You can’t expect me simply to sit by.”
“It’s what I have to do.”
“You haven’t had any further messages?”
“No. I’ll tell you this, though it’s none of your business. I’ve been in touch with the manager of the bank. They’ll have the money ready for me.”
“Since you’ve gone that far, don’t you think you should take the further step of going to the authorities?”
He bristled. “And get Holly killed?”
“You can go to them on the quiet, without any fanfare.”
“What good will that do, if her abductors have a pipeline to the police?”
“I don’t believe they have. They’re trying to scare you, paralyze you so you won’t act. I know the local police, as I told you last night. They’re a decent bunch.”
Padilla looked uneasy. I shared his feeling, to some extent, but suppressed it. Ferguson was listening to me, his long jaw calipered between thumb and fingers. I noticed that the nail of his thumb was bitten down to the raw.
“I’m taking no chances,” he said.
“You may be taking the worst possible chance.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Your wife may be dead now.”
I’d meant to shock him, but he was appalled by the thought. His jaw gaped, showing his lower teeth. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. “She’s dead, is she? They found her dead?”
“No. But it could happen, that they should find her dead.”
“Why? I intend to pay them the money. All they want is the money. Why should they harm her? The money means nothing to me-”
I cut him short. “There’s a good chance that you’ll pay your money and still not see her again. Do you understand that, Ferguson? Once they’ve got the money, there’s no advantage to them in returning her to you. No advantage, and a great deal of risk.”
“They wouldn’t take the money and kill her anyway.”
“They’re killers, some of them at least. She’s in danger every hour she’s with them.”
“You don’t have to tell him, he knows it.” Padilla shook his dark head. “Lay off, eh?”
Ferguson spoke gruffly. “I’m perfectly all right. Don’t concern yourself about me.”
“I’m more concerned about your wife. She may be killed while we stand here talking, and you’ll end up financing the killer’s getaway.”
“I know she’s in danger. I’ve been sitting with it staring me in the face all night. You don’t have to grind it
