'You need to talk to me'? What a surprise. You hire me to watch someone, she gets killed, and then you vanish from the face of the earth, leaving me with nothing but a borrowed business card. How'd you know he was eating at Nickodell's anyway?'
'He always eats at Nickodell's. He's in the music business.'
'And you're Dr. Livingstone, I presume.'
'My name doesn't matter.'
'Maybe it doesn't matter to you. To me, it matters. Sally Oldfield matters.'
'Listen, that wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody was more surprised than I was.'
'You were so surprised that you knew about it before I called to tell you. It must have been a terrific shock.'
'I know you're not going to believe me now.'
'Of course I'm going to believe you. You've got a phony name and phone number and you're involved in a murder, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to believe you. What about trust? What about the fellowship of man?'
'Honest to God. I didn't have anything to do with the murder.'
'So who's the guy with the needle nose?'
There was a pause.
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'That question can't come as a complete surprise. What did you think I was going to ask you?'
'I can tell you,' he said, lowering his voice. 'I can tell you everything.'
'You also said something about money.'
'I owe you for two days,' he said. 'That's eight hundred dollars.'
'I'll bet you've got a plan,' I said, 'about how you're going to pay me and explain everything to me and tell me your real name and then we'll both just sit back and have a good laugh over how complicated it all seemed.'
'My name is Fauntleroy,' he said unexpectedly. 'Ellis Fauntleroy.'
'This week.'
'No, that's my real name.'
'Well, why don't you come up here and show me your driver's license? Then we'll call each other by our right names for a while to get into practice and then you can tell me what you've got to say.'
'I can't come there. What if they're watching you? I could get killed just for being in the same room with you.'
'Who's they?'
Silence. Then he said, 'You know.'
'And you're telling me they're after you?'
He swallowed in his usual amplified manner. 'I'm telling you that I'd be dead if they saw us together. You're going to have to come to me.'
A gust of wind slapped the front of the house hard, and the rain rattled down. It was five-fifteen and dark. I didn't want to go anywhere until it was time to meet Hammond at the Red Dog.
'Same objection,' I said. 'If they're watching me, they're going to see us together, aren't they?'
'Not if you're careful. A detective as expensive as you, you should be able to spot a tail.'
'How do I know I'm not walking into something?'
'You don't.' No apologies and no attempt to persuade. That was reassuring in a backhanded kind of way.
'Why did you call me now?'
'Because I know too much. They made a mistake when they made me the one who hired you. I was the last person they should have chosen, and now they're worrying about it.'
'Where do they think you are now?'
'They don't know. They haven't started to wonder yet.'
I looked down at the cassette, its little hubs rotating slowly. 'This is all very enlightening, but I could really use a name or two. Like exactly who hired you.'
He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. 'First we talk,' he said. 'I need something out of you. If I get it, you'll get something out of me.'
'You mean you really didn't call to pay me my money? Human nature is such a disappointment.'
'The money's here. Are you going to come or not? I haven't got all night. I've got to get someplace where they can see me or they're going to start looking for me, and I'll be in even worse trouble.'
I weighed it. There was no question in my mind that he was frightened. Harker, or Fauntleroy, was too unimaginative to be an actor. On the other hand, I could have been making an appointment to get my head blown off. I've grown fond of my head.
'You still there?' he said impatiently.
'How come it's always raining when I talk to you?'
'Ask the weatherman. I'm at the TraveLodge in Santa Monica, room three-eleven. You know where it is?'
Another motel. 'Near Pico and the freeway.'
'I'll be here for forty-five minutes.' The line went dead.
I turned off the recorder in the answering machine and thought about it. A motel room with Ambrose Harker/Ellis Fauntleroy didn't sound like my idea of paradise, or even Florida. If I went, I might come back with part of me missing. If I didn't go, I'd probably never get back on the trail of the guy who'd murdered Sally Oldfield. Mentally I flipped a coin, giving Sally heads. Sally won. That's the trouble with flipping coins mentally.
I'd wasted seven minutes. No point in changing; I'd just get wet again. I grabbed the keys, slalomed down the driveway, and started Alice.
As I hit the bottom of the canyon and turned left onto Old Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the rain eased up enough to let me see that the creek had risen to the danger point. One more night of heavy rain and we'd all be listening to the radio to find out which roads had washed away and what the alternative routes were, if any. For the seventeen millionth time I wondered why I hadn't moved into town years ago.
At the intersection of New Topanga and Old Topanga, flares blossomed in the darkness. I slowed down to a near-stop, inching along behind a long line of other fools who didn't have enough sense to stay in out of the rain. An old white VW van lay on its flattened top at the side of the road. There were people in it. The cop with the flashlight told me to keep moving, as though I were about to leap from the car for a closer look. By the time I made the right onto New Topanga and started skidding down toward the sea, I'd lost more than twenty minutes.
Well, he'd either be there or he wouldn't. Either way, I decided to cancel my appointment with Al Hammond. Things were moving again, and as long as they continued to move I'd work for free. Instead of hurrying, I concentrated on observing the laws of physics that would keep me on the road.
The ocean was a mess, white-capped and choppy, and the rain guttered down again as I headed up the Pacific Coast Highway and made a right onto Ocean Boulevard. At least there'd been no more heavy traffic. The neon of Santa Monica scattered itself into broken reflections on the wet pavement, and the sidewalks were empty. Bad night for restaurants. I realized I was hungry and remembered that I'd left most of my lunch sitting on the table opposite Rhoda Gerwitz.
With three minutes to go I swung into the TraveLodge parking lot and ran for cover. This wasn't just rain; this was the kind of deluge that city idiots say will be good for the crops, and farmers swear at. Using my highly trained powers of deduction, I guessed that room 311 would be on the third floor and got into the world's slowest elevator. By the time the doors slid open again, I'd had plenty of opportunity to review my life in detail and to wrap the fingers of my right hand around the automatic I'd taken from Alice's glove compartment. Using my left, I rapped at the door to 311.
'It's open,' Harker called from inside. 'Come in.'
'Sure,' I said. 'Right after you open it.'
I stepped back, clutching the gun in my windbreaker pocket, and waited. After a moment the door swung open and Harker stood there.
'I was about to leave,' he said.
'Might have been a good idea. Open the door all the way. Slam it against the wall.'
