Death Bed

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “I don’t know. It was just something I noticed one night. It’s a pretty stable neighborhood up there, you know. A dog barks and they call in the SWAT team. I only saw him once.”

  “What else can you remember?”

  “Nothing. I don’t have time to remember anything else. You’d better leave.”

  “May I use your phone first?”

  She nodded and I called my answering service. No word from Belinda about the kidnappers. I went outside and got in my car and drove over to Steiner Street and parked again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The bottlebrush tree still sprouted out of the sidewalk in front and the lettering on the door still read “Parkway F Arms,” but this time I wasn’t planning to go inside. This time I was just going to wait and watch, employing the most prosaic and the most desperate weapon in the detective’s arsenal: the stakeout.

  The tactic was even less promising than usual, since it was clear that if Mark Covington was using his hideaway at all these days he was using it sparingly and with caution. The odds that he would show up while I was waiting for him were poor. Which made them as poor as the odds on any other lead I had to go on.

  I parked down the street and around the corner from the entrance to Covington’s building. I could just see the front door from where I sat, but I couldn’t see the window of the apartment itself, so after waiting a few minutes to make sure nothing unusual was afoot I got out of the car and walked to where I could look up at the window. No lights, no opening, no shadows, no nothing.

  I stared at the glass a minute, seeing warped reflections of sky and buildings, then walked around the block to see if anything else of interest was going on. Nothing, unless you counted the woman in the mink coat who was curbing her poodle. I called in and then got back in my car before Eddie Winkles could come out and catch the census man snooping around the neighborhood again.

  And I waited. It’s what you do more than anything else in this business except swear. I’m pretty good at it, but I’m not great at it, because someone who lives alone tends to use up all the good waiting thoughts in his day-today life.

  A year ago a friend of a friend’s friend wanted to teach me self-hypnosis. He claimed that through the technique of age regression I could spend the time on a stakeout taking myself back to pleasurable, or at least interesting, points in my personal history—ball games played, women loved, entertainments witnessed. Almost everything in your past is accessible through hypnosis, or so they say. It’s all there, every bit of it, waiting like a cage of frisky puppies for someone to come along with a key. I didn’t take the lessons, though, I guess for the same reason I didn’t take LSD when everyone else was and for the same reason I’ve never consulted a shrink. I have a hunch I’m better off leaving all that right where it is. In the cage.

  You can pursue a bit of age regression without the aid of hypnosis, of course, and I was somewhere back around 1950, in a room in the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver with a girl named Sparkle, when someone pulled the door of my car open and got in beside me. It was dark enough by then so I couldn’t tell right away who it was, and I was reaching semi-seriously for my gun when my new passenger laughed. “Hold it, big boy. It’s only me. Pamela Brown. Girl Reporter.”

  My hand slipped back to my side the way a smile slips off the face of a stewardess when you make a crack about hijacking. “Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

  “Ditto.”

  She eyed me closely. In the dim light of a far-off street lamp she appeared intense, calculating, physically threatening. I pressed against the door beside me, putting as much distance as possible between us. Pamela saw me change position and smiled confidently. “Let’s not beat around the bush,” she said.

  “Let’s not.”

  “Okay. How did you find this place?”

  “What place?”

  “Fuck you, Tanner. Covington’s place. Over there in the Parkway Arms.”

  “How did you find it?” I countered.

  “You first.”

  “No. Me second. If at all. I have a client. You don’t have anything more tangible than curiosity. Or do you?”

  She paused a minute and chewed on a thumbnail while she thought it over. “No,” she muttered finally. “That’s all it is. Curiosity.” She shrugged. “Once I thought it was something more, but it’s not. I guess it never was.”

  “So how did you find the place?” I repeated.

  “How? Mark brought me here one night and fucked my eyes out, that’s how.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Years.”

  “How many people do you think know about this apartment?”

  “He said I was the only one who’d been there.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “I did then. I don’t now.”

  “How long since you’ve seen Covington?”

  “Here?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Weeks. Lots of people saw him after I did.”

  A man was walking up the street and I watched him. He walked with a limp. And a cane. And a smile. He passed the Parkway Arms and went into the next building. I looked back at Miss Brown. “What are you up to? Why are you here?”

  “The same reason you are. I’m trying to find Mark.” She was defensive, the way losing coaches are defensive. I asked her why she wanted Covington.

  “Like you said. Curiosity. Plus the possibility of a good news story. Plus the chance to make Covington look like the horse’s ass he is. Pick any two.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Help. Or, if you beat me to him, an exclusive. I want to be the first one you tell.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Also help. An extra set of eyes and ears and legs. Someone who’s been asking questions of people who didn’t want to answer them for the last five years. Someone who’s smart as hell. Cute, too.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well?”

  “I’ll think about it. Besides, I thought you had something else on the fire.”

  “I did, but I decided this was more interesting. I think Covington may have bit off more than he can chew on this one. He needs the cavalry, I’m sure of it. I want to be there when it comes over the hill. And you look like an old cavalry man to me.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive. Old cavalry men are sexy as hell. All the girls say so.”

  “How exciting.”

  Her face twisted with exasperation. “Look, Tanner. Legwork and luck is what most of these disappearances come down to. You know that as well as I do. With me you get twice as many legs and twice as much luck.”

  “Legs I can use. Luck, I’m not sure.”

  “Luck? Are you kidding? Hell, Tanner, I’m the luckiest girl you ever met. I believed in the rhythm method till I was twenty-five.”

  Her laugh filled the car with puffs of confidence and youth. I thought for a moment they might smother me, but then they disappeared.

  We sat there for a while, Pamela Brown and I, measuring each other in silence, trying one yardstick and then another, applying the calculus of self-interest, which is the only calculus there is. Miss Brown lit a cigarette and rolled down the window a crack. I straightened my legs as far as I could.

  She blew a lungful of smoke out the window and looked at me. I could barely see her, except in the light from passing cars. “Did you check on the Biloxi Corporation?” she asked.

  I should have run a bluff but she caught me before I had a chance to try. “Forgot, huh?” she said. “Hard to believe you make a living at this, Tanner. Maybe you got family money.”

  “Yeah. It’s all tied up in sowbelly futures, though. Tough to make ends meet.”

  “Well, I hear you get some real nice things with food stamps these days.”

  “Lighten up, Miss Brown. I’ll call the Secretary of State tomorrow and see what they have on Biloxi in their files.”

  “I already did that.” The w
ords were round with smugness.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Just a bunch of names. The only one I could trace was a guy named Quale. Harrison Quale. He’s a lawyer.”

  “I know.”

  “The address of the corporation is the same as the address of his law office. Did you know that?”

  “No. But that’s the way they do it, especially when they want to keep things secret. The lawyer who draws up the Articles of Incorporation lists himself and a few of his secretaries as the incorporators and the initial directors. Then the real parties in interest take over after all the filings have been made. Keeps nosy people like you from running them down.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

  Actually I did know. Harrison Quale was like most lawyers, he liked to talk, about himself and about his clients. Mostly he liked to talk to other lawyers. I’d been a lawyer once, and I’d served on a committee with Quale a while back, so I might be on his list of confidantes. If I played it right he might tell me something about Biloxi Corporation.

  Something caused me to look up just then. It was a dark figure, moving slowly in the distance, coming toward us cautiously, mysteriously, looking for other bodies, other eyes. When it reached the entrance to the Parkway Arms it hesitated, then fumbled with a mailbox until a little door swung open and the figure took something out of the box and closed it back up. There was more fumbling, and the figure opened the main door and disappeared inside the building.

  From where we sat there hadn’t been much to see—dark slacks, ski jacket, stocking cap, hiking boots—but something about the figure seemed familiar. “Wait here,” I ordered, then hopped out of the car and went to where I could see Covington’s windows.

  The apartment lights went on just as I got into position. A shadow moved through the room behind the blinds, stopping here and there, a dark cloud across a yellow sky. I took two steps toward the front door. The lights suddenly went out.

  I hurried to a point across from the entrance and crouched down behind a parked car and watched the door. In another minute it opened and the same dark figure emerged, carrying what looked like file folders and some other papers. I couldn’t be certain from where I was, but I thought it was a woman.

  She looked up and down the street once, then twice, then began walking east, away from me and away from my car. As soon as I thought I could do it without being heard I scampered back across the street and ran to my car and got in.

  “Do you have a car here?” I asked Miss Brown.

  She nodded.

  I looked at my watch. “Still want to be partners?”

  She nodded again.

  “Okay. I couldn’t get close enough to see for certain, but I think that was someone Covington sent here to pick up his mail and some other things from his office. I think it’s a girl. She’s down at the end of the block. Go after her. Get your car if you have to. Be smart about it. When she gets to where she’s going, call me at this number.” I handed her a card. “I’ll tell you what to do from there.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” she asked skeptically.

  “Talking to a woman about a kidnapping,” I said. “Now get going or you’ll lose her.”

  Pamela Brown wanted to stay behind and ask some questions but the scent of Mark Covington was too strong. With one final glance at me she was gone. I started the car and drove home.

  TWENTY-SIX

  My apartment absorbed me like a damp sponge. I checked with my answering service but there was nothing from Mrs. Kottle. There was nothing from anyone, except the lingering message from a dead man. I puttered around, pouring a drink, heating some soup, reading the mail, shedding my tie and my coat and my profession.

  The soup was hot. I poured it into a cup and put the cup beside my highball and myself beside them both and settled down with a diversion, Le Carré’s new George Smiley saga. The blunt and linear progression of my own life soon became diffused by English indirection and within an hour I had my psyche back in a reasonable state of repair.

  I fixed another drink and checked with the answering service again. Still nothing.

  The second drink went down faster than the first. It always does. Through a frightening exercise in rationalization I convinced myself that if I got too drunk to function, then the universe would order itself so that I wouldn’t have to. But something about the way my skin was tingling convinced me that Belinda Kottle would call before daybreak, that the ransom drop would take place somewhere, sometime before I slept again.

  I got up and went in the kitchen and poured the dregs of my Scotch down the drain and picked up the telephone.

  Once when I was practicing law I had a divorce client who called me up at two A.M. to tell me her estranged husband had just been by to visit her and had gone to the bathroom and refused to flush the toilet. She asked me what I was going to do about it. I told her. She got herself another lawyer. Which is one of the reasons why I hesitate to call professional people after hours. But I make exceptions to everything. Clay Oerter didn’t seem to mind.

  I asked Clay how many widows and orphans he’d fleeced that day and he asked me how many keyholes I’d peeped into and there was just enough truth in both of the jibes to make each of us pause for half a second. Then I asked Clay if he’d come up with anything on who was buying Collected Industries in significant quantities. He told me that as far as he could tell no one was. The price had dropped three more points that day, and until a new management team was in place and was proving itself on the bottom line of the income statement there seemed no reason for the price not to fall even further, at least to a price-earnings multiple of five or so. I thanked Clay for his time and asked him to keep an eye on the stock for a few more days and hung up. Three seconds later the phone rang, as though by placing the receiver on the cradle I had caused it pain.

  I was afraid the caller would be Mrs. Kottle, and even more afraid of what she might need me to do. The phone rang on and on, majestically tolling each of my fears. I picked it up before the tones became one long cry for help.

  I was saved. It was Pamela Brown. Girl Reporter.

  “What are you doing, Tanner?” she asked loudly.

  “Nothing. Nada. How’s it going with the tail job?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Not really,” I said, remembering she was the second woman to accuse me of the crime within two days.

  “You’re drunk. Jesus H. Christ. You send me chasing all over hell so you can go home and tie one on. And I thought reporters were bad.”

  “Reporters are bad. Detectives are bad, too. So are the people they try to find, the people who hide from them. It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad world. They made a movie about it.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “I know.”

  For some reason Pamela Brown decided not to pillory me further. “Guess where I am,” she demanded.

  “Where?”

  “Guess.”

  “Come on. Who did you follow from Covington’s place? Do you know?”

  “I don’t know who she is. Some girl.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Sausalito,” Pamela Brown said.

  “Sausalito,” I repeated. Then I repeated it again. “Big house. Side of a cliff. Edwards Avenue. Carport. Blond hair, green eyes, round, tan bottom.” I laughed. I laughed because suddenly I was working on one case, not two. I laughed because you never know.

  Never.

  “How the hell did you know all this?” Pamela Brown sputtered, making me glad there was a bridge between where she was and where I was.

  “Call me Swami,” I said gaily.

  “You’re still not funny, Tanner,” she said. “Were you just getting me out of the way?” There was enough disgust in her words to feed a battalion.

  “Where are you now?” I asked seriously.

  “Still in Sausalito. For some reason I thought I should call and se
e what you thought I should do. Which, given your mental state, was the best idea I’ve had since the day I let Mark Covington buy me a drink after work.”

  “Go home, Miss Brown,” I urged. “Have a drink. Invite a friend in. Make both yourselves happy.”

  “Are you suggesting yourself as the friend?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Too bad for you.”

  “Maybe.” I hung up, but not before she did.

  I made some coffee and tried to call Harrison Quale so I could take a shot at prying something out of him about the Biloxi Corporation, but he wasn’t home and he wasn’t at the office. Then I broke the connection and dialed another number, this time the Central Station, San Francisco Police. I asked for Charley Sleet and he came on the line in a hurry. He sounded as though he’d forgotten how to sleep.

  “Charley,” I said.

  “Marsh.”

  “Howard Renn.”

  “What?”

  “Wake up, Charley. Howard Renn. Poet. Dead. Who done it?”

  Charley grumbled something to someone, then someone muttered something back. “Renn?” he repeated finally. “I don’t know who done it. Shit, the last time I thought I knew who-done-it the jury gave him a pat on the cheek and told him to go home to mommy.”

  “When did Renn leave us?”

  “Sometime Sunday.”

  “Could it have been a woman who sent him off?”

  Charley thought about it. “Sure. Small-caliber weapon. Body moved but not far. Sure. Why? Who you got in mind?”

  “No one. What else? Motive?”

  “None that we know of.”

  I waited for him to say more but he didn’t. There are times Charley talks and times he doesn’t. We’re still friends because I know which is which. “Okay, Charley. Go home and get some sleep.”

  “Sure. On Saturday I’ll sleep. What’s your interest in Renn?”

  “I liked his poetry. Great imagery. Blinding metaphorical insight. Stunning formal experimentation.”