“I’ve got my whole force on alert,” Culhane said. “So far the Coast Guard hasn’t picked them up. They have Mendosa’s port bottled up. With any luck, they’ll nail Riker before we do.”
“Right now, I’m more interested in Dahlmus,” I answered. “If he’s on the boat with Riker, he’s dead already.”
“And if he was in Mendosa, Guilfoyle’s taken him fishing by now,” Culhane answered.
“So what’s the plan?”
“We have to get past Guilfoyle’s bunch and shake down Shuler’s place. If Riker’s there, we’ll bring him in and let the state court deal with him.”
“Can we do that?”
Merrill made a temple with his fingers and said sagely, “I hope Dahlmus is still alive and we get him, then we make a deal with him to turn up Riker. Otherwise he’s looking at the gas chamber.”
“And if Dahlmus is dead?”
“Then my hope is Riker will put up a fight,” Culhane said with ice in his tone. “We have to sucker Guilfoyle out of Mendosa. Get him out in the open, then end-run him, and exercise our search warrant.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
A phone call answered that question.
There was a knock on the door and the security man stuck his head in the room.
“Excuse me, Captain, you have an urgent phone call. They’re patching it in here.”
A moment later the phone rang. Culhane pointed to an extension. I kept my hand over the mouthpiece when we picked up.
“Captain, it’s Charlie Lefton.” His quiet voice was laced with fear. “I got a boat docking in here and I think…” Then there was a sound like a chair falling over and the line went dead.
Culhane slammed down the phone. He turned to Merrill. “Brett, keep everybody here happy.” And then to me, “Let’s go, Cowboy.”
There were four cars waiting in front of the county building by the time we arrived. Big Redd, Max, Lefty, and Rusty were there, with four other deputies who were strangers to me. Culhane made fast introductions: Bobby Aaron, a man in his early fifties about my size, with the crafty look of a fox; Hank Foster, a well-built youngster with brown hair and a cockeyed smile on his face; a hard case named Joe Brady, who could have been anything from forty to fifty, with the face of a leather-tanned wrangler, and who just nodded at me; and another younger man named Randy Oldfield, who looked like an ex-football lineman.
Culhane had spread a county map on the hood of the Packard. The road south to Mendosa followed the shoreline, bowed out and curved around Lefton’s, then back to the shoreline again. It was thickly forested for a half mile or so on either side of the fishing camp.
“Okay, here’s the play,” Culhane began. “We think Riker has landed by boat at Lefton’s place. It’s foggy down there so move carefully. Bobby, you and Brady take one of the cars down past Lefton’s and see if you see anybody down there. Then pull off the road and park here, on the dirt road past the fishing camp.”
Bobby Aaron, I would learn later, was an Apache Indian who had once been on the reservation police and had tailed a maverick Indian all the way from Arizona, catching him in a bar in Eureka, before it became San Pietro. Culhane was so impressed he hired him on the spot. Joe Brady was what he looked like, an ex-cowpoke.
“Big Redd, take one of the walkie-talkies and go down through the woods on the ocean side. Check the place out…”
“I’ll go with him,” I said. “I’m in on this, too.”
Big Redd looked at Culhane and shook his head slightly. Culhane thought for a moment, then said, “Okay. Stay behind Redd and do what he tells you. Use hand signals so we don’t tip off anybody who might be down there. Take the walkie-talkie and keep in touch when you can.”
He turned to the rest of his crew.
“The rest of us lay back here,” he pointed to a spot on the map about a mile from the camp. “We wait until Redd and Bannon reconnoiter the place. If it’s clear, we move down across the county line and I’ll try to lure Guilfoyle down there. If he bites, Bobby will pull behind his cars and box him in. I have a warrant for his arrest for harboring a felon. I’ll serve it on him, then we’ll play it by ear from there. Any questions?”
There weren’t any.
“Okay, let’s get on with it.”
Aaron got in a Pontiac sedan and cranked it up.
Big Redd earned his nickname. He was at least six-four and built like a tank. Dark skin, dark hair, wary eyes. He was wearing a. 38 in a shoulder holster and in his belt a cased bowie knife big enough to slaughter a bull.
We drove down the road in my car until we hit fog, then pulled off into the trees and started our trek through the forest.
CHAPTER 38
Redd moved soundlessly through the woods. I literally tried to follow in his footsteps to keep from making a sound. He would stop occasionally, kneel down, and just listen. Then we’d be off again. It took about fiften minutes to get to the clearing. The lodge was deadly quiet. There was one light on in the office. As we crouched in the undergrowth, Redd saw something. He crawled to the right, toward the sea, and stopped again. He lay there motionless and beckoned me on. I crawled up beside him.
Down below us, in the small inlet that washed up to the edge of the lodge, Charlie Lefton was floating facedown, his back blown apart by a shotgun blast.
My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.
The office door opened and a man came out. He stood in the shadows outside the periphery of light from the office door and lit a cigarette. Then a second man came out and stood beside the first. They spoke back and forth for a minute or two, but we couldn’t hear them clearly.
The first one was dressed in a gray suit. The other one looked like a clown. The guy in the suit was short, slender, and ferret-faced, and was wearing a fedora. The other one was wearing slacks and a loud sports shirt, and had curly red hair. The lean one was calm as a lake. The clown was jumpy, wired. The lean one pointed toward the office and they went back inside.
Neither one of them was Henry Dahlmus.
I pointed to myself and then to the grid of supports under the lodge, and indicated I wanted to go under there, come up on the other side of the office, and kick in the door. Redd would wait at the bottom of the steps leading to the walkway around the lodge and charge the door when he heard me kick it open.
Redd shook his head. Those weren’t his instructions.
I pointed down at Lefton and then toward the two men in the office. He got my meaning. I offered a compromise. As soon as I hit the door, Redd could call Culhane and tell him to come in like the cavalry.
I didn’t give Redd a chance to argue. I rolled through the weeds and made a run for the underbelly of the lodge. When I got there, I crawled through the crisscross of four-by-fours. A rat ran soundlessly away from me along one of the supports. I brushed spiderwebs away from my face. To my right, out in the bay somewhere, a fish jumped. I hesitated, waiting for a reaction from the pair above me. I heard the wired one say, “Just a fuckin’ fish.” And a moment later, “I don’t think anybody’s comin’ down here.”
No answer. I waited a little longer, then climbed carefully up the supports to the deck of the lodge and looked over. The door on my side of the office was closed. I climbed over the railing and fell against the outside wall of the office, drew my Luger, and wondered where Redd was. Then I counted to three and jumped into Lefton’s office.
The two thugs were startled as I burst into the room. The lean, rat-faced little man with receding black hair had the smallest eyes I’ve ever seen on a human being. The wired clown in the noisy shirt and baggy pants was as nervous as a jumping bean.
He had a. 38 in his hand.
It was a Mexican standoff. Rat Face just stood like a spectator.
Nobody did anything.
