The water in the kettle started to boil. I hunted up ajar of instant coffee and a couple of mugs, made the coffee, and put one of the mugs down in front of him. “Drink that,” I said.
He stared at it. “No. Don’t want it.”
“You’re going to sober up one way or another. You want me to take you upstairs and throw you in the shower?”
“No.”
“Then drink the goddamn coffee.”
He drank it. He tried to pick up the mug at first, but his hands were too shaky; he had to lean forward and sip from it where it sat. I finished what was in my own mug, and that warmed me a little, got rid of the shivering. Then I made second cups for both of us.
Tedescu said, “Jesus!” in an anguished voice, and when I turned around he was staring at the tabletop with the anguish all over his face. Some of the liquor haze had cleared out of his head and he was remembering again what had happened between him and Emerson. “Carl …”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Dead …” He squinted at me. “How you know?”
“I saw him out there on the rocks.”
“Accident,” he said thickly. “Swear it was. Swear it!”
I pushed the fresh mug under his nose. “Keep drinking the coffee. You’re not sober enough to talk yet.”
“No more. Need another drink …”
“Forget that. Do what I told you.”
He didn’t give me any more argument; he seemed to be the kind of man who was used to obeying orders. As soon as he finished the second cup, I fed him a third. He gagged a couple of times, but he got all of it down and kept it down. He had the habitual drinker’s strong stomach, and the habitual drinker’s ability to sober up in a fairly short time. The third cup of coffee did it; his eyes lost some of their confusion, if none of their anguish, and he said in a steadier, less slurred voice, “Christ, why didn’t you leave me alone. Why didn’t you let me stay drunk?”
“I want to know what happened here today. You’re the only one who can tell me.”
He grimaced. “Don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe not, but you’re going to.”
I sat down across from him. He squinted at me again, over the top of his mug. “You’re James,” he said. “Andrew James?”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t understand. Why’re you here, way up here?”
“I came to talk to Emerson.”
“Why?”
“Personal reasons. Now suppose you tell me why you’re here?”
“Business. Contracts had to be signed.”
“What contracts?”
“Important contracts. Told him that when he called.”
“He called you? When?”
“Last night, late. Said he was going to Mendocino for few days, didn’t want to be bothered for any reason; said Phil Bexley and I should handle things at the office. Tried to tell him about contracts, but he wouldn’t listen. Sounded strung out.”
“So you went in to Mid-Pacific this morning and got the contracts and drove up here with them. Is that it?”
“Yes. No choice. Somebody had to do it.”
“What happened when you got here?”
Another grimace. “He’d been drinking. Looked half-wild … Christ, never saw him like that before.”
“How did he act?”
“Crazy … like a crazy man. Yelled at me, called me names. Wouldn’t sign contracts. Told me to go away, leave him alone.”
“Then what?”
“Tried to reason with him, make him understand how important contracts were. But he shoved me, knocked me down. No warning …just shoved me, knocked me down.”
“What did you do?”
“Got up and hit him,” Tedescu said. A look of awe crossed his bleary features, as if he could not believe he had done anything like that. “Never liked Carl, never got along with him … always wanted to hit him. This time I did it. Knocked him down, by God.”
“Did he retaliate?”
“No. Screamed at me, told me get the hell off his property. Then he ran out.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. I think”—the awed look again—“think he was afraid he might kill me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He had a gun. Big gun … Jesus, a cannon.”
One of Jimmy Quon’s puppies, I thought, the one Emerson had taken off Quon’s body after he killed him. I said, “You mean he pulled the gun on you before he ran out?”
“No. Later, on the cliff.”
“Is that where he ran off to?”
“Yes.”
“And you went after him. Why?”
“Not sure. I was confused. Thought I could calm him down, apologize for hitting him, smooth it over. If I hadn’t chased him …” Tedescu shook his head. Sweat glistened on his face, made the ruptured blood vessels look like fresh wounds.
“What happened on the cliff?”
“He was just standing there, looking down at ocean,” Tedescu said. “But when he heard me coming … he went berserk. Pulled gun out of his jacket, kept yelling he was going to shoot me. Never been scared like I was then— never.”
“So you jumped him,” I said.
“What else could I do? Didn’t even think, just . . ran at him. Hit him with my shoulder and he lost his footing … went over … I knew he was dead soon as I saw him down there….”
“What about the gun? Did that go over too?”
“Yes. Caromed off rock into the sea.” Tedescu’s eyes were imploring now. “An accident, you see? Self-defense. I didn’t mean for him to die, swear I didn’t… .”
“All right,” I said.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe you.”
I got up and went over to stand by the sink, looking out at the gray rain. I still was not feeling much. Just tired— scooped out inside.
Behind me, Tedescu said miserably, “What makes man like Carl start carrying a gun? What makes him go berserk all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I did know. Guilt, depression, a feeling of persecution. Polly Soon’s death had been an accident, or at least unpremeditated, and he’d been able to deal with that, rationalize it; he’d been able to deal with having Eberhardt shot, too, because he wasn’t pulling the trigger himself. But Jimmy Quon’s murder, the one he’d done with his own hands, had broken him down. That was why he’d come up here last night, and all the lonely hours before Tedescu’s arrival had intensified the breakdown. So had the drinking, probably. He was on the ragged edge when Tedescu showed up, and the scuffle in here had pushed him over, just as the scuffle on the headland had pushed him over that other edge to his death.
I turned from the window. Tedescu was trying to light one of his cigars with shaking fingers; it took two matches before he got it going. “What do we do now?” he said. “Call the authorities?”
“Do you want to talk to them?”
“God, no. I couldn’t call them after it happened; tried but I couldn’t. Booze … that’s all I could do.”
“I don’t want to talk to them, either,” I said. Because it would mean explaining why I was here, bringing the whole thing with Eberhardt and Jimmy Quon and Polly Soon out into the open. And I was not ready to do that yet. Maybe I would never be ready to do it. “Emerson’s death was an accident. There’s no point in either of us going through a police interrogation.”
He looked relieved. But it didn’t chase away the anguish in his eyes; that, and the memory of what had happened here today, would stay with him a long time. “But what about Carl’s body? We can’t just leave it out there. v
“No. How many people know you came up here today?”
“Only our secretary, Miss Addison. Contracts delivered to her this morning; she had them on her desk when I got to office.”
“Okay. I’ll take the phone off the hook before we leave. When you get back to the city, tell Miss Addison that Emerson wasn’t home when you g
ot here. You waited around but he didn’t show up. Have her try to call him; she’ll keep getting a busy signal. Tell her you’re worried about Emerson and get her to call the county sheriffs office. They’ll find the body when they come out to check. Can you handle it that way?”
“Think so. Yes.”
“You’re in no condition to drive back tonight,” I said. “Neither am I, for that matter. We’ll go put up at a motel; then I’ll bring you back here in the morning to pick up your car.”
He gave me a long, bewildered look. “Why you want to help me like this? Don’t understand that. Who are you?”
“Andrew James,” I said.
“Yes, but … did you know Carl?”
“No, I never met him. And I’m glad I didn’t; it wouldn’t have been a good thing for me.”
“But you came here to see him. You said personal reasons …”
“It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead; my business with him is finished. Yours, too. Maybe things will be better for Mid-Pacific with him gone.”
“Maybe will,” Tedescu said. “He was a bastard. Not sorry he’s dead, you know? Only sorry I had to …” He shuddered, wiped a hand across his face as if wiping away guilt. “You’re right,” he said, “over and done with. Carl’s dead. You and me, we have to go on living.”
I nodded. But as I started to clean up the kitchen, I thought that it wasn’t over and done with, not quite, not as far as I was concerned. There were still two important matters to be resolved.
There was still Eberhardt.
And there was still the bribe.
Twenty-one
I got back to San Francisco late Thursday afternoon. Tedescu didn’t follow me down. The last I saw of him was in Albion; he trailed me there, after I took him back to Seaview Ranch to pick up his compact, and then pulled off in front of a grocery store. After liquor or beer, probably, something to take the edge off his hangover. He was pretty shaky, subdued; he’d had a bad night. But he’d get through all right, if he didn’t start drinking heavily again and kill himself on the highway. The booze was his crutch —he’d been leaning on it for years and he would not stop leaning on it now. The irony was, Emerson had screwed up Tedescu’s life when he was alive, and even in death he was still screwing it up. Tedescu might never get over what Emerson had done to him, what Emerson had caused him to do. And maybe I would never get over what Emerson had done to me, either.
I’d had a better night than Tedescu, but not by much. Dreams, fever sweats, nagging pain that kept bringing me up to the edge of consciousness. And all the running around in the rain had given me a head cold on top of everything else; it started after I had checked us into the motel—one room, twin beds, so I could keep an eye on Tedescu—and when I woke up I was snuffling and I had a scratchy throat. All of me ached; Doctor Abrams’ warning about pneumonia was in the back of my mind. I managed the long drive all right, but I was exhausted again when I finally got home.
I took some cold capsules and Vitamin C and went straight to bed. And slept sixteen hours, most of them dreamless. When I awoke on Friday morning I was still stiff and sore, and I still had the cold, but I felt somewhat better. I got up long enough to eat, went back to bed, and called Abrams at S.F. General to check on Eberhardt. No change. Then I dialed the Hall of Justice and got through to Ben Klein. I had to know how things stood with the police investigation, what the official position was on the death of Mau Yee.
But I had no worries there. “Still nothing definite to report,” Klein said. “Trying to get answers in Chinatown is like trying to pry open an oyster shell with your fingers. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’*
“No new leads?”
“One possibility, maybe, but I don’t think it’s going to get us anywhere. Chinese thug named Jimmy Quon got himself killed on Wednesday night. One of the body-washers we checked out after the shooting—a real hard case. But he had an alibi we couldn’t shake.”
“You think his death might be connected?”
“If it is, we can’t find the connection. Found in an alley off Waverly Place, skull bashed in. No witnesses, no leads. It could be a gang killing; that kind of shit goes down all the time in Chinatown.”
Found in an alley, I thought. Lee Chuck must have sent some Hui Sip people over to the temple to remove the body, probably because he didn’t want cops, Caucasian cops, doing any more desecrating of a house of worship. How somebody like Chuck could have religious feelings was beyond me. But then, there seemed to be a lot of things that were beyond me these days.
I slept another three hours, doctored myself with more pills, ate again, and then screwed up my courage and called Kerry at the Bates and Carpenter agency. Her secretary took the call, said she’d see if Ms. Wade was still in, and left me hanging for two minutes. Or Kerry did. Then the line clicked and Kerry’s voice said, “Well—so you’re still alive.” She sounded cool and distant, but I thought I could detect relief, too. “I was beginning to think you’d disappeared for good. Or that you’d turn up dead in an alley somewhere.”
“Have you been trying to call me?”
“Twice. Don’t ask me why.”
“I know why. At least, I hope I do.”
No response.
“Listen,” I said, “it’s been a crazy time. I was a little crazy myself for a while. But that’s over now. No more running around, no more guns.”
Pause. “Is that the truth?”
“It’s the truth.”
“What happened? Did you find out who did the shooting? Did you finish your vendetta?”
“I finished it, but it wasn’t a vendetta. I didn’t kill anybody, if that’s what you think. No violence.”
“I suppose you still don’t want to talk about it.”
“Someday, maybe. Not yet.”
Another pause. “So where are you now?”
“Home in bed, taking care of myself. It’s where I’ll be all weekend. Come over tomorrow or Sunday and see for yourself. I’d ask you to come tonight, but I’m still catching up on my sleep.”
“I don’t know if I want to see you.”
“I’m not a stranger anymore, Kerry. Maybe not the person I used to be, but not a stranger. Come on over tomorrow and we’ll talk; you’ll see.”
“I might be busy,” she said. “I just don’t know yet.”
She came at one o’clock on Saturday afternoon. I thought she would, but I was relieved when the doorbell rang and I heard her voice over the intercom from downstairs. More sleep and the antibiotics had got rid of my cold; my shoulder was better too. Only the stiffness in my arm seemed as bad as it had been before.
There was still some distance between us, but it was tolerable. We talked, and she fixed me some lunch and changed the sheets on the bed, and when she left at four she kissed me. I said, “I’ll call you pretty soon,” and she said, “Or I’ll call you.” All in all, it was a promising time.
She had brought me the morning paper, and after she was gone I took it back to bed and read through it. On an inside page there was a short article that said Carl Emerson, a prominent local businessman, had been found dead at his Mendocino ranch by sheriffs deputies investigating a call from business associates who had been unable to reach him. The cause of death, according to the Mendocino County coroner, was an accidental fall.
On Sunday, Jeanne Emerson called. She’d also seen the article in the paper, and the first thing she said to me was, “Did Carl really die in an accident?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“It wouldn’t matter if it was something else. I was just wondering. Was he involved in the shooting, as you thought?”
“I guess he was. But it’s finished now, as far as I’m concerned; how about if we just leave it that way?”
“Whatever you say,” she said. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, though.”
“Neither am I.”
“About that photojournalism piece on you I suggested— I’d still like to do it, if you’re willing.”
&
nbsp; “One of these days, maybe. Not right now.”
“I’ll call you in a few weeks, then. All right?”
“All right,” I said.
On Monday, I went in to see Doctor Abrams. The wound in my shoulder was healing satisfactorily now, he said, and I seemed to be in reasonably good health. The continuing stiffness in my arm and hand was another matter. He said that therapy might correct the problem and that I ought to consult a specialist. If therapy didn’t do it, I might have to have an operation.
I did not have to ask him what would happen if an operation didn’t do it either.
And on Wednesday, after seventeen days in a coma, Eberhardt finally regained consciousness.
I knew he would sooner or later—there had never been any question in my mind—but it was a relief when Ben Klein called late that afternoon to tell me the news. I said, “How is he? Coherent?”
“Yeah, thank God.”
“No memory damage?”
“None. He remembers everything that happened.”
“Then you’ve talked to him?”
“Just for a couple of minutes, about an hour ago.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. Asked if we found who did the shooting, if we had any idea why. I hated to have to tell him no.”
“Is that all he said?”
“Well, he asked about you. Wants to see you whenever the doctors’ll allow it. Tomorrow sometime, probably.”
I rang up S.F. General early Thursday morning and got through to Abrams. He said I could come in at eleven. I was there at ten-thirty, pacing up and down in the visitor’s waiting area, trying not to think about what was coming. I just wanted to get it over with.
They let me go in right at eleven. It was a private room and Eberhardt was lying cranked up in the bed with his head swathed in bandages. A tube led down out of a suspended bottle into another bandage on his arm; they were still feeding him intravenously. He looked shrunken and gray and old—old.
I pulled one of the metal chairs over next to the bed and sat down. He said in somebody else’s voice, wan and thin, “Don’t ask me how I feel. I feel lousy.”
Dragonfire Page 17
