Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  I looked at him a long time before I answered. “I don’t have to be paid to draw a breath, Andy. Some days I breathe just for the fun of it. Or because I feel better afterward.”

  Andy looked sheepish and turned toward his client.

  “Well,” Nelson said, “I’m not convinced Claire is in danger, but it’s probably best to assume she might be. How safe is she in Carmel?”

  “Fairly safe, but not completely. No one knows where she is other than the people in this room. Al Rodman knows she’s in Carmel, but not where she’s staying.”

  Nelson nodded. “I need some time to think this over. I suppose I owe you my thanks, Tanner. If so, you have them.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “People who do me favors usually want something in return,” Nelson went on. “Are you in that category?”

  “I’m not in a lot of categories,” I said. “That’s only one of them.”

  “Perhaps you’re an exception. It will be a pleasant surprise if that is the case.”

  “Mr. Tanner?” Mrs. Nelson said. “Do you intend to go on with this investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you keep us out of it? The notoriety wouldn’t be good for any of us, particularly Roland and the Institute.”

  “I doubt if I can stop it now,” I said. “I’m going to tell the sheriff what I know. I can’t guarantee what he’ll do with the information.”

  “I’m afraid I know,” Nelson said darkly.

  “You may be surprised,” I replied. “Marks isn’t an ordinary cop.”

  “Would it make any difference if I gave you another retainer?” Mrs. Nelson asked.

  “No. It’s too late for that.”

  “Then let me at least pay you for your past services. What do we owe you?”

  I gave her a figure and she went to the other room and came back a few seconds later with a check and handed it to me. I glanced at it and put it in my pocket. It wasn’t going to buy anything that wasn’t history.

  “Will you keep us posted then, Tanner?” Nelson asked.

  “Yes,” Andy Potter added. “Call me any time, Marsh. I can usually reach Roland and I can pass on whatever you think he should know.”

  I said that was nice. Then I went out into the night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I don’t think he followed me from the Nelsons, but if he did, he was good. I’m good at spotting tails—by now I look for them out of habit—and I didn’t notice anything other than the ghosts that always follow me after midnight in the city. More likely he camped across the street from my apartment and figured I’d show up sooner or later. But it didn’t make much difference where he picked me up. What made a difference was that he missed. A plain bad shot, six inches off the mark. The bullet hit the light pole beside me at a point even with the bridge of my nose, then caromed off into the night. I didn’t stick around to see where it ended up.

  When I heard the shot I dropped to the sidewalk and did the first thing that came to mind, which was to roll back down the hill as fast as I could, trying to get out of the light and trying to get some parked cars between me and the gun. After what seemed like a day and a half I came to rest against the rear wheel of a Volvo that had been pulled into a driveway and left standing so it blocked the sidewalk. My head clanged against the hubcap, then I scampered around to the other side of the car.

  And waited.

  I didn’t know who he was, but he wasn’t a total amateur, notwithstanding the miss. There were no wild shots, no fleeing footsteps, no bumps in the night. Just a hard and chilly silence. I had no idea where he was, or even if he was still there. For all I knew he could have slipped away while I was playing Jack and Jill down Telegraph Hill. But I couldn’t be sure. So I waited some more.

  A few blocks over a cable car rumbled its way down toward the Wharf. Far in the distance, out toward the Bayview, a siren screamed. You can always hear screams at night in the city. Always. From sirens or from other things. It didn’t have anything to do with me though; no one was having anything to do with me. No lights went on, no heads peeked out of windows, no one asked if I was all right. It was just me and him.

  I didn’t have any intention of hunting him down. Not right then. I was tired and I ached and I was scared and I could still remember what that shotgun had done to Mrs. Peel and her kitchen. I didn’t want my neighbors to go out for the morning paper and find me spattered all over the sidewalk. All I wanted to do was make it up to my apartment.

  Most of the houses in San Francisco are built flush against the houses on either side of them. You have to own a bundle to afford a home you can circumambulate. Among other things, this makes it virtually impossible to get into anyone’s backyard except by going through the house. If I couldn’t get around back, the only way up to my apartment was through the front door. That didn’t seem like a good idea.

  But I had a break. The Volvo I was hiding behind was owned by a man named Gilderstein. I knew him well enough to wave to, and once he’d asked me over to help him move a refrigerator. That’s when I noticed it. Gilderstein’s place looks like all the other houses on the block, but it isn’t. There’s a narrow door at the north edge of the facade, and behind that door is a covered pathway that leads to the backyard. I suppose garbage men and meter readers were the only ones who used it. Until now.

  If I could get through that door and into Gilderstein’s backyard, all I had to do was climb a couple of fences in order to reach the back stairway up to my apartment on the third floor. There was a key to my back door in the geranium pot the landlady hung on the landing. And there was a revolver in the nightstand beside my bed.

  If you live in the city you don’t have to worry about things like birds or locusts or crickets making sounds in the night. If you hear a loud noise after midnight most likely it’s because someone’s committing a crime. I listened as carefully as I could, but I couldn’t hear anything menacing. Even my watch had stopped, smashed during my trip down the hill. I tried to convince myself I was all alone, but I couldn’t quite do it. It probably evolved when we oozed up out of the slime and onto the land—I don’t think they have a name for it, and maybe they can’t prove it—but we all have a sense that picks up rays or waves or impulses given off by other people and lets us know when we’re alone and when we’re not. I was not.

  The shortest distance to Gilderstein’s door was a straight line. That was also the most exposed route. I should have gone on down the block, then come back up under cover of some shrubbery, but I’d spent enough time crawling around for one day. My knees hurt. So did my head. So did my pride.

  I peeked over the fender. I didn’t see anything, and no one took a shot at me, so I ran for it. Gilderstein’s door was unlocked. There were no noises. I made it.

  It was pitch black in my apartment, and I left it that way. Feeling along with my hands and feet, I sidled into the bedroom and slid my thirty-eight out of the drawer and into my pocket. The gun was loaded and oiled and clean. I’d kept it that way since the first time someone tried to kill me. Every time I clean it I tell myself I won’t ever have to use it again. I haven’t been right yet.

  I went back to the living room and peeled back the curtain so I could see the street. Nothing moved. The street light glowed like the tip of a fresh cigar and a fog horn moaned like a hungry steer. It was eerie, knowing someone down there wanted me dead.

  Suddenly a shadow moved on the other side of the street, down by a Scotch pine growing up through a tiny patch of earth in the middle of the block. A crouched form darted from the tree to a car and then to another, shielding itself as best it could. I tried to get a look at the face, but the light was wrong. A dark hulk, that’s all it was. That’s all it ever is.

  My pursuer ran around the corner and was gone, taking his gun with him and leaving me perched like a sniper up in my window. There were a lot of things I could do—go after the gunman, call the cops, go to bed—but I didn’t do any of them. I just sat there, listening to my
heart perform its Sisyphean toil inside my chest. I sat that way for a long time, until it was time to go see Ruthie bury her husband.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They buried Harry in the fog. It was a nice cool fog, damp and clinging, and I don’t think Harry minded. And I don’t think he minded the recently widowed assistant D.A. who hovered like a drone around Ruthie during and after the service and who, when I left Ruthie’s apartment, was telling her for the fifth time that she shouldn’t hesitate to call him if she needed anything, anything at all. As I was going out the door Ruthie winked and blew me a kiss. Then she went back to make sure the mourners were having a good time.

  I tried to call Sara and Claire just before the funeral and again just before I set out for Oxtail, but I couldn’t reach them either time. The desk clerk told me they were still registered and the key was out. I left a message saying I would call again. Then I hit the road.

  It was a few minutes before two when I pushed open the door to the Oxtail police station and wound my way into the sheriff’s office. He waved me to a seat, glanced at his watch, and lit his pipe. “How was the funeral?” he mumbled through a cloud of smoke.

  “It didn’t make me any more anxious to die.”

  “I don’t suppose. How’s Mrs. Spring?”

  “Busy explaining to everyone why they shouldn’t feel bad that Harry’s gone.”

  “Yes. When this is over I’d like to see Mrs. Spring again. She’s a very unusual woman.”

  “You mean attractive.”

  “I suppose that is what I mean. Close, anyway.”

  I smiled. The sheriff grinned and relit his pipe.

  “You mentioned on the phone that some things have been happening,” I began.

  “Just a few. Like the murder of Elena Peel, for example.”

  Marks was looking for a reaction so I gave him one I’d used before in similar circumstances. “You mean the wife of the man who was killed by the Whitson boy?” I couldn’t tell whether the sheriff was buying my version of innocent surprise or not. I hoped it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “That’s her,” he said simply.

  “When was she killed?”

  “Found her two days ago. Thanks to an anonymous call. I don’t suppose you have any idea who might have tipped us off, do you, Tanner?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because we found some kids who were racing around out by the Peel place, and one of them claimed he saw a seventy-one Buick parked up by the house not long before we got the call. Dark blue, he said it was. Those kids don’t know much but they do know their cars. You drive a Buick, don’t you, Tanner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seventy-one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dark blue?”

  “You get the Kewpie doll, Sheriff. They’ll be real proud of you up at Berkeley.”

  “Failure to report a crime is an offense, Tanner. What if I were to tell you we lifted some tire prints out of Mrs. Peel’s driveway?”

  “If you were to tell me that, I’d wonder why you didn’t already have my car impounded, Sheriff. Since you don’t, I’d say you tried to lift some tracks but couldn’t.”

  Marks coughed and shook his head. I didn’t think he was angry, but I could have been wrong.

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “The ground’s dry out here. Hard to lift tracks under those conditions. Even the city boys can’t do it. Tell me about Mrs. Peel. When was she killed?”

  “Doc Hansen says about three days ago.”

  “How was it done?”

  “Shotgun. From about four feet.”

  “Messy.”

  “They aren’t going to put the kitchen on the cover of Good Housekeeping.”

  “Any evidence?”

  “Nope. Somebody searched the place pretty good. Hard to tell what they were looking for. Didn’t leave any prints. The lab boys are still out there. They may come up with something by the end of the day.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So do I,” the sheriff said. “They won’t come up with anything even if there’s something out there to come up with.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. How about you?”

  “Nothing I’d want etched in stone.”

  After that we both just sat there for a while. A fly landed on my shoe and danced a jig on the edge of the sole. The sheriff filled the air with smoke as pungent and aromatic as his personality. It made my eyes water.

  “What was Harry Spring doing in Oxtail?” Marks broke the silence with a voice that had the bland reasonableness of an IRS agent asking the purpose of that trip to Hawaii you deducted back in 1973.

  I’d already decided to give him everything, or almost everything, so I didn’t pussyfoot around. “Do you know who Roland Nelson is?” I began.

  “I read the papers,” he answered. “Nelson only shows up on the front page twice a week.”

  “Okay. About ten years ago Nelson and his wife Jacqueline adopted a little girl. Her name was Claire.”

  “Was?”

  “And is.”

  “How nice.”

  “Be patient, Sheriff,” I said. “Claire Nelson hired Harry Spring about a week before he died. I’m virtually certain he was working on her case when he got killed.”

  Marks put his pipe in an ashtray and clasped his hands behind his head. “You said ‘virtually.’”

  “Strike the ‘virtually.’ I’m certain.”

  “What was Spring doing for the Nelson girl?”

  “Trying to find her natural parents.”

  Marks let that sink in for a while. “There must have been more to it than that,” he said finally.

  “There wasn’t,” I said. “Not at first. A simple case of an adopted kid wanting to know where she came from.”

  “And she came from here, I take it.”

  “Right.”

  The sheriff grunted and picked up his pipe and puffed. It had gone out. He put it back in the ashtray and leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “How old’s this Claire?” he asked.

  “About twenty.”

  “I was afraid of that. She’s the kid Angie Peel had after the wreck, right? The Whitson kid was the father.”

  “Right again, Sheriff.”

  “Shit. That’s why you were asking all those questions about old man Peel.”

  I nodded.

  “Did Spring know all this when he started out?”

  “No. Claire didn’t know who they were or where they were. Somehow Harry learned the names, and probably about the murder and the wreck and the rest of it. He may have learned more than that. I think that’s why he was killed.”

  “Did he find Angie?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t find Michael Whitson either, as far as I know, unless Whitson put him in that ditch.”

  “Whitson’s dead.”

  “Maybe. His father doesn’t think so.”

  “Old man Whitson?”

  “He wanted to hire me to find his son.”

  Marks chuckled dryly, “Good luck.”

  “I didn’t take the case, but think about it a minute, Sheriff. If Whitson did survive that wreck and made a new life for himself, he’s the most logical person to want to maintain the status quo, to keep the lid on the Peel case.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Have you got a better way?”

  Marks shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me all this last week? We might have made an arrest by now.”

  “Claire Nelson didn’t want Roland to know why she’d hired Harry. I thought maybe I could wrap it up fast and Claire could keep her secret. She’s a nice girl, Sheriff. When you meet her you’ll see why I wanted to do her a favor if I could.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Down in Carmel with a friend. I got her out of the city. I thought she might be in danger.”

  “What made you think that?”

  I couldn’t tell him it was Mrs. Peel’s murder, si
nce I was supposed to have just learned about that this afternoon, so I just shrugged and said I had a hunch the killer wouldn’t stop with Harry.

  “Does Roland Nelson know about all this?”

  “I told him last night.”

  “What does he think?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not very popular over at his place right now.”

  “Okay, Tanner. What else do you know? Have you learned anything Spring didn’t know?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I traced Angie Peel to a town called Rutledge, down by Riverside.”

  “I know the place. Makes Oxtail look like the Riviera.”

  “She showed up there not long after she left here. Used the name Angie Parsons. But she moved on about ten years ago.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing, except that someone tried to kill me last night.”

  “You don’t say. Where?”

  “In the city. As I was going into my apartment.”

  “See who did it?”

  “No.”

  “Close?”

  “Enough.”

  “I guess that explains that bulge under your jacket.”

  I just smiled.

  “You report the attempt to the cops?” Marks asked.

  I shook my head. “When we find the man who killed Harry we’ll have the man who tried to kill me.”

  I got up and stretched my legs. Fatigue weighed down on me like a parka.

  “So where does that leave us?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m not sure. You ever hear of a lawyer named Andy Potter?”

  Marks shook his head.

  “How about a man named Bill Freedman?”

  “Nope. Who are they?”

  “Just a couple of straws I’m grasping at.”

  “You have any leads at all?”

  “Just one. When Angie Peel left Rutledge she went with Al Rodman. I’ve been trying to locate him but I can’t. Neither can his boss.”

  “Which boss?”

  “Duckie Bollo.”

  “Now that’s very interesting,” Marks said softly.

  “How interesting?”

  “Someone told me yesterday they’d seen Rodman around town. In fact, they said they saw him talking with Harley Cates in the alley in back of the pool hall yesterday morning.”