'Since the government project.'
'From Los Angeles?'
'Guess so.'
Across the street a black Buick sedan swung into the parking lot of the Neville Realty Trust. It had the right license tags. Two men got out of the front, and the one on the passenger's side held open the rear door for a third man. All I could see of him was that he wore a seersucker suit and would be a perfect mate for the fat woman in the office. He had trouble getting out of the car, and when he did finally manage it, he paused to wipe his face with a big white handkerchief before he waddled into the office.
'Who's the fat guy?' I said.
'Don't know,' the pharmacist said. 'You want some more lime rickey?'
I said no, and he swooped the glass away and washed it in the little sink back there, and put it upside down on the shelf behind him. He and I sat in silence for a while.
Nothing moved across the street. Finally I got up and paid for my lime rickey.
'I'm going where I can get a little peace and quiet,' I said. And went out and walked back to the River Run Inn.
CHAPTER 20
It cooled off after midnight and I got to sleep. Showered, shaved and breakfasted, I was in my car heading back to L. A. by nine A. M. Except for the green strip along the Neville River, the land was brown and still under heat that made the landscape shimmer.
***
Back in my office I called Ohls and gave him the license numbers for the pickup, and the gray Mercury I had seen parked in the Neville Valley Realty Trust parking lot. Then I went downstairs to the coffee shop and had a ham sandwich and some coffee and came back upstairs and sat and dangled my feet until Ohls called back. The truck was registered to Neville Valley Realty Trust. The gray Mercury belonged to the Rancho Springs Development Corporation in Rancho Springs, California.
'You need anything else, Hawkshaw?' Ohls said.
'You show me how this all ties into Carmen Sternwood,' I said.
'Be good for you,' Ohls said, 'to work it out yourself.'
I went straight downtown to the hall of records and spent maybe an hour and a half looking up the incorporation papers that the California secretary of state's office requires of all new companies. Neville Valley Trust was in there, and the Rancho Springs Development Corp. Everything was written in the conventional language of lawyers, which is why it took me an hour and a half. But when I was through I knew that the Neville Valley Realty Trust and Rancho Springs Development Corporation were legal corporations in the State of California. And I knew that a member of the incorporating board of Rancho Springs was Claude Bonsentir.
Then I went to the library and spent another couple of hours in the periodical room reading up on the Neville Valley Land Reclamation Project. It was almost as boring as the documents of incorporation, but basically I learned that it was a part of a federal effort to reclaim barren land in the West and Southwest. The plan in Neville Valley was to use the spill from the Neville River to irrigate land all over the valley and turn it into rich farming country. There was no mention of the Neville Valley Trust in anything I read.
Driving back to Hollywood, I thought about all of this. Was Neville Valley Realty buying up water rights as representatives of the government? Were they buying the rights so they could resell them to the government at extortion-level prices? What was kindly old doctor Heal-all doing on the board of the Rancho Springs Development Corp.? And why did some employees of the Neville Valley Realty Trust come to Hollywood and pour it on me?
***
Back in my office I put in a call to the Bureau of Land Management's Los Angeles office. It took about a half an hour, and most of that on hold, to get anyone who even knew about the Neville Valley project, and he didn't know anything about the Neville Realty Trust. Which didn't prove that they weren't working for the government. It only proved what I already knew about the government.
I sat at my desk with the window open, smelling the fumes from the coffee shop downstairs and pushing the things I knew around in my head, hoping they'd form a pattern I could recognize. It was late afternoon. I looked out my window at the boulevard below me. Nobody was frying eggs on the sidewalk. Off on another street somewhere a police siren wailed. They'd be busy in this heat. People got a little crazy in heat like this. Husbands began to ball their fists and frown at their wives. Meek, mousy-haired wives began to look at the breadknife and eye their husbands taking a nap in their undershirts and snoring, their throats exposed. In the barrio the prowl car boys would keep their hands a little closer to their guns. And in the hills where the stars lived, people would sit on patios looking at the lights twinkle in the steamy evening below them in the basin, and the sweat that beaded on the sides of cocktail shakers would trickle off and make a wet spot in their linen slacks. The heat played no favorites.
It got slowly dark while I sat there looking out at the baking city and thinking and not getting anywhere. The end of another perfect day. Nobody called. Nobody came in. Nobody cared if I died or bought a house in Encino.
CHAPTER 21
The Rancho Springs Development Corp. was on the second floor over a gas station in a pale beige stucco building with the rounded shape of the Spanish Southwest that everyone south of Oregon thought was authentic native Californian. The building was on the main street in Rancho Springs next to a place that sold tacos and across the street from a general store where three desert rats in bib overalls sat out front in the thick heat and rocked and spat occasionally out onto the street. A big yellow tomcat with a torn ear sprawled on the bottom stair leading up to the Rancho Springs Development oflBce and I had to step over him when I went up.
Inside at the only desk in the place was a young woman with a bad sunburn. It was bad enough so that she moved a little stiffly as she turned toward me when I came in. The desk at which she sat and the chair on which she was sitting was all there was in the office for furniture. On the floor beside the desk was a cardboard carton and in the carton were a number of manila file folders. On the desk was a phone. That was it, there was nothing on the walls, no curtains on the windows. The room was as charming as a heap of coffee grounds.
I took off my sunglasses and smiled at the young woman. Her nose was peeling, and her pale hair was dry and bleached looking. She wore a flimsy white blouse with short sleeves and her thin arms were bright red.
'Dr. Bonsentir around?' I said.
