“Willick,” Captain Finch said.
I laughed. “Willick?” I said. “You’re threatening me with Willick?” Willick stood up, looking hapless. “Choose somebody else,” I said. “I never hit a man wearing a notebook.”
“Please, Mr. Grist,” Annabelle Winston said. I paused, looking down at her. She was wearing less lipstick, and her mouth wasn’t the problem it had been on Saturday.
“He’s opened the channel,” Dr. Schultz said impatiently.
“What channel?”
“The channel of communication,” Schultz said. “He’s been alone with his secret, with his secret pride, for more than a year now. Now he’s chosen someone, and the person he’s chosen is perfect. Educated, sympathetic-he hopes-even conversant with ancient religions. My guess is that this man knows all there is to know about fire, from a physical, chemical, mythological, and religious standpoint. And now he’s found a kindred soul. At least, from his perspective, someone he can play with. Please understand, Mr. Grist. You’re one end of a thread. The Incinerator is at the other end.”
“The Minotaur was at the other end of Theseus’ thread,” I said. “No, thanks.”
“He wants to talk, Mr. Grist,” Schultz plowed on. “Specifically, he wants to talk to you.”
“You’re grasping at straws,” I said. “He’ll find someone else to talk to.”
“He will not,” Dr. Schultz said. “He’s chosen you. He’s fixated on you, for God’s sake. He’s searched the world, and he’s found a friend. Read the letter, would you?”
“I’ve read it, thanks. He more or less suggests that he might throw his next match at me.”
“He won’t, if he thinks you’re on his side,” Dr. Schultz said. “He won’t talk to anybody else. Please. Ten people have died.”
“One of them was my father,” Annabelle Winston said. “He killed Santa Claus.”
Even her lawyer blinked.
“Why won’t he?” I demanded. “Why not get some newspaper columnist to write something, an open letter or something?”
Dr. Schultz shook his head. “Newspaper columns have been written. He didn’t respond. He hasn’t responded to anything so far, and that’s unusual, too. The rocket went up when your name appeared in print.”
“Why? All it was was a name and the fact that I was a detective. I don’t recall anything about a degree in comparative religion.”
“Unless I’m wrong, Mr. Grist,” Dr. Schultz said, playing his trump, “I think he knows you.”
The room didn’t exactly whirl, but I put a hand on the back of the chair I’d just vacated. “Do that one again,” I said.
“You may not know him,” Schultz said, “or you may have forgotten him, but I believe that he knows you. I believe that he read your name and recognized it and wrote that first letter. I think you’re going to get more letters in the future. So, you see, you’re not just one end of the thread. You’re a clue.”
I needed a moment to think, and they gave it to me. At the end of the moment, I’d made up my mind, and my decision scared me silly. Since I’d decided, though, I decided to lend Hammond a few points. I knew he ‘d been slipping since Hazel left.
“What do you think, Al?” I asked him. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
Finch cleared his throat. Hammond took his time, fighting down a grin. “I think you should stay on it, Simeon,” he said at last.
“Can we hear the deal?” I asked, sitting. “Miss Winston’s game plan?”
“The deal,” Finch said, “is that you appear to remain in Miss Winston’s employ.”
“Forget it,” Annabelle Winston said. “He does not ‘appear’ to remain in my employ. He does remain in my employ.”
“A thousand a day,” I said, trying to smooth my goose bumps. The son of a bitch knew me?
“Done,” Annabelle Winston said, without so much as a glance in my direction.
“Wait a minute,” Finch said. He didn’t make a thousand a week, or anywhere near it.
“Would you prefer the press conference?” the lawyer asked.
“People magazine,” Bobby Grant chimed in. “Big print.”
Finch tugged angrily at his pug nose as though he were trying to make it longer.
“Since I seem to be the key,” I said, driving another nail into Finch’s coffin, “I positively decline to participate in an investigation I’m not part of. I’ll need the benefit of everything you’ve got, beginning with the strange cars on my street yesterday. Al?”
Hammond looked at Captain Finch. After what seemed like a century, Captain Finch dropped his chin half an inch. I’ve seen football teams gain fifty yards with less effort than it took Finch to nod that half an inch. Hammond opened his notebook. “It wasn’t easy,” he said for the benefit of his superiors. “The Sunday edition of the Times hit the streets at six-thirty. Figure the guy doesn’t live in Topanga-no one does-and figure it takes an hour to drive there from downtown, where the fires have been. Simeon got the letter at about eleven, so that meant we had to find someone who’d been awake and more or less focused on the street between seven-thirty and ten-fifty.”
“Spare us the difficulties,” Finch said sharply. “Just get to it.”
“We found a kid,” Hammond said. “William Pinnace, aged fifteen.”
It was my turn to grin. Billy Pinnace was the biggest grower in Topanga. He had at least a dozen marijuana patches tucked away in the chaparral. Of all the people on the street, he had the best reason to be looking for unfamiliar cars.
“The Pinnace kid was very cooperative,” Hammond said, ignoring me. “There were four cars. A Cadillac, an old pickup-he didn’t know the make-a Mazda RX-7, and a Nissan Sentra or something like that.”
“Did he get license plates?” Finch asked.
Hammond gave him a street-weary gaze. “Oh, come on,” he said.
“It was the Mazda,” I said. I had the room’s attention. “Why was it the Mazda, Dr. Schultz?”
Schultz winked at me. It took me by surprise. “Zoroastrianism,” he said. “The fire religion. Ahriman was the bad god. Ahura Mazda was the good one.”
“You pass,” I said. “What color was the Mazda?” I asked Hammond.
“Gunmetal gray,” Hammond said.
“The driver?”
“Male, blond hair, thirties, the kid said.”
“I’ll want a full briefing later,” I said to Finch, just to rub it in. “For now, let’s divide up chores: what I do, what the police do. Let’s make it good enough to persuade Miss Winston to call off her press conference. And then let’s go talk to Hermione.”
7
“He was tall,” Hermione Something said in the voice of one who’s been asked the same question many times. “Tall and thin and black. He looked like a big black cigarette.”
“He was black?” I asked, remembering the blond driver of the Mazda.
“Stupid,” Hermione Something said to herself. “Cops are stupid.”
“I’m not a cop,” I said. Behind me, Hammond muttered something that might or might not have been a blanket defense of cops.
“He is,” Hermione said, scratching a grimy leg. “You’re with him, aren’t you? What does that make you, a Girl Guide?”
I tried to reconcile Hermione with the vision I’d had of her when I first heard her name. At the time I’d thought of an aged lady, a distinguishedly aged lady whose contemporaries might have been called Ora or Blossom or Mayme. With a Y. Hermione was a name that conjured up screened porches and soft evenings and silk fans fluttering like cabbage moths over white wicker furniture, something from the summertimes of long ago, when the hills didn’t catch fire and the eucalyptus trees imported from Australia hadn’t taken hold to spike the California
