Leave a Message for Willie

by Marcia Muller

  I decided I had better find out how many of them I was up against, so I waited for a moment and then began to scale the incline on all fours. At the top, near the road, I lay on my stomach and peered through the underbrush.

  The building I had escaped from, presumably the main building of the old winery, was a massive brick-and-stone structure set on a knoll. It had a peaked slate roof and ornamental towers at the corners; in each tower was mounted a floodlight and together they made the scene below as bright as day.

  A semicircular driveway bisected the lawn in front of the building, and near the massive front doors stood four men in fatigues. Two of them carried rifles, but the others didn’t appear to be armed. I didn’t see Adair or Marchetti; probably they were somewhere inside. That made a minimum of nine men – two outside looking for me, the guard, four on the lawn, Marchetti and Adair inside. How many of them were armed? No matter how short their weapons supply, I was sure I could count on at least nine armed men.

  And me, here in the dark, with no real sense of my bearings.

  I moved quietly down the slope to the wall and started off along it in the opposite direction. Maybe it didn’t go all the way around the property. Maybe there was a break.

  After about fifty yards, the wall stopped, but instead of the break I’d been hoping for, I found a chain-link fence. It was as high as the wall and topped by three strands of barbed wire. It wouldn’t have been difficult to climb, but I was certain it was wired with an alarm. I debated taking a chance, but decided against it. There had to be another way out besides the main gate; a military encampment would always have a secondary escape route. I kept going until the cover of trees became narrower and finally gave out.

  Looking around, I pinpointed my location by the main building. I was behind it now, near the outbuildings I’d spotted from the hilltop the day before. The ruins of Levin’s cabin would be to my left, beyond the fence and up a steep hill. Ahead I saw an open shed. It was lit; inside stood a jeep. Logically, their alternate escape route, if they had one, would be near where they had parked the jeeps.

  I stood under cover of a pine tree, listening. It was quiet back here, although I could hear men shouting up toward the front gate. They must still be searching for me up there. I took a chance and sprinted across the graveled road toward the shed.

  Slipping along the wall, I looked inside, saw it was empty, and darted towards the jeep. There was a wrench sitting on a work-bench; I picked it up and hurled it at the overhead bulb. In one lucky toss, the bulb shattered and all went black.

  I moved along the driver’s side of the jeep, hoping the keys were in the ignition. If they were, and if I found the escape route, I could steal the jeep and crash through the gate.

  I stood up and reached for the ignition. A hand grabbed mine. I gasped with sudden terror.

  “Relax, I already tried it,” a familiar voice said softly. “No soap.”

  Willie.

  I let out my breath in a relieved gust. My legs were trembling so hard I had to sit down in the driver’s seat. Willie was hunched on the floor on the passenger side. All I could see was the glint of his eyes.

  “Good Lord,” I whispered when I could speak. “You almost scared the life out of me.”

  “You did a pretty good job on me too.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “How did you know they’d grabbed me – plus where they’d brought me?”

  “Tell you later – there’s no time now.”

  “You’re right. We’ve got to get out of here. How’d you get in?”

  “The back way, from Levin’s cabin. The directions to it were all I had.”

  “The back way?” I turned to face him. “Then we can get out!”

  “Nope. They must have forgot to close the gate; it was open when I got here. I scouted around, looking for you, then decided to go into Boulder Creek and get the law. When I went back, the gate was closed. There’s an alarm.”

  “What kind of alarm?”

  “Works on a weight principle. Obviously you can’t have one that any field mouse or whatever they’ve got here could trip. But as soon as a person tries to climb that fence, all hell breaks loose.”

  “Bells?”

  “Probably. Maybe lights too.”

  “Dammit.”

  I sat silently, listening for the sounds of the search party. With what appeared to be limited personnel, they were probably still concentrating on the area where I’d gone out the window.

  Willie reached out, plucked at the arm of the fatigues I’d put on, and said, “Nice threads. I could move a lot of these at the flea market. That’s probably where the assholes picked them up.”

  “Yes.” But what he’d just said had given me an idea. “How big a weight would it take to set off that alarm?”

  “Couple of pounds. Why?”

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “I’ve seen them before. There’s a wire. You get enough pressure to move it, it forces a connection, and bingo.”

  “Then I think I know what we can do.” I reached down and unrolled one leg of the fatigues, making sure the pieces of thread were long ones.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hold these.” When I had torn enough threads loose, I rolled the leg back up and got out of the jeep. “Come on, I assume you know how to trip this alarm.”

  “Sure, but that’s the last thing we want.”

  “No, it’s not.” I led him out of the shed, slipped down its side, and started for the fence. “Show me where the best place to go over is.”

  “You mean to get to the road to Levin’s cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  He took the lead and we went around the long buildings, which he said were barracks, to a place where the fence was sheltered by eucalyptus. We could go over here, and up the hill behind. It’s a tough climb, but—”

  Suddenly voices came from behind us. Willie grabbed me and we flattened in the tall weeds. The voices came on, and a light swept over where we were hidden. Footsteps crunched on gravel, and then became fainter.

  It was minutes before we raised our heads. “Real assholes,” Willie whispered. “They’re out looking for you but they can’t keep their fucking mouths shut.”

  “I think they’re convinced I got over the wall. They sent two jeeps out. Probably the search party is just for form’s sake.”

  “They’re still assholes.”

  “Right.” I stood up. “And that makes our job easier. Do you still have those threads I gave you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What we’re going to do is trip the alarm by tying it with the threads. Then we hide. They come running, don’t find anybody, and most likely won’t see the threads either. The alarm will keep sounding, and eventually they’ll cut it off. Then we go over the fence.”

  “I like it.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where are we going to hide?”

  “Lord, yes, we better decide that now.”

  “They’ll be all over, beating the bush.”

  “And they’ll know we’re here this time, so they’ll be more thorough.”

  Willie grinned suddenly, his teeth gleaming white in the moonlight. “Then why don’t we hide where they’ll least expect us?”

  “Where?”

  “Inside, in the barracks, under their own beds.”

  “I like that.”

  We slipped back to the barracks and reconnoitered. The one closest to the fence contained eight cots, most of them sloppily made up.

  “What’d I tell you?” Willie whispered. “Assholes. You try that in the Corps, and you’d be busted to buck private.”

  He went over to one cot and pulled the blankets nearly to the floor so they hid the space beneath it. I followed his lead and did the same to the one next to it. Then we tiptoed outside and went back to the fence.

  It took all the threads we
had, tied together in an elaborate spider-web arrangement that was strong but barely visible in the shadows. When it was constructed, Willie attached a final strand, waved me back toward the barracks and pulled it taut. A siren went off in a moaning wail, and lights flashed on top of the fence. We turned and ran.

  At the barracks, I dived under one of the cots, curling myself into a little ball and tugging to make sure the blankets touched the floor. Please, I thought, please don’t let them come in here. And if they do, don’t let them realize anything is different. Please let them be sloppy bed-makers from way back…

  As I always did at such moments, I wondered if I had reverted to praying. And if I had, what that meant –

  There were shouts and running footsteps. It seemed like dozens of men were converging on the fence outside. The wailing siren continued. Somewhere close by a shot was fired. I flinched.

  Minutes passed. Feet pounded past the barracks. Men called orders. Others cursed. But no one came into our hiding place.

  After about five minutes, someone apparently remembered to cut off the alarm. The sounds of men searching continued, but finally they also subsided.

  A few moments after that, Willie let out a sigh. “I think we did it.”

  “Yes. If they reconnect the alarm, it’ll just start howling again. They’ll think there’s something wrong with it, and turn it off for good.”

  “So let’s get going.”

  We crossed to the place we’d chosen to go over the fence. All was still around us. Willie gave me a hand up, and soon I had climbed over the barbed wire and down the other side. He followed.

  “This way,” he said, starting up the rocky hillside.

  I went after him, sometimes on my hands and knees, taking in great breaths of the cool night air. I felt I hadn’t breathed the whole time I’d been inside the compound, and the oxygen hurt my lungs, still tender from the chloroform. We stopped and rested several times on our climb, looking back at the lights of the encampment below.

  When we finally reached the meadow near the ruins of Levin’s cabin, we both collapsed on the grass. I flopped over on my back, staring up at the black sky. The stars shone coldly and steadily, like shaved ice.

  After a few moments, I said to Willie, “Tell me how you knew they’d brought me here.”

  “I called in and got your message at the Oasis. You said you would be late, but that you’d meet me. I knew I hadn’t set anything up. Then I found your car in the parking lot behind the Villa Romana. And this in the alley behind the Oasis.”

  I sat up and looked at what he held. It was one of my earrings. I put my hand to my earlobe. Funny, I hadn’t even noticed the earring was gone.

  Willie handed it to me and I put it back on. I said, “How did you know it was mine?”

  “You had it on Saturday at the flea market.”

  “Most men wouldn’t remember a thing like that.”

  “You forget – Alida was a jewelry designer.” There was an empty note in his voice. I reached out and squeezed his arm.

  “But how did you know to come here?” I asked.

  “By then I’d put enough of it together to know who would want to grab you. I’d suspected Mack and Monty and that Jerry Levin were up to something for a long time. When Levin started watching me, I got real nervous. So I pretended I didn’t know who he was and hired you to find out what was going on.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the whole story?”

  “I suspected they were up to something big, and I didn’t want to mess with them at all if I could help it. Stupid of me, I guess. Anyway, by this afternoon, I knew what they were doing, but not where. Then I talked to that rabbi and the other guy about Levin’s cabin. You’d told me about somebody shooting at you down here. It was enough.”

  “You’re not such a bad detective after all.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Willie,” I said, figuring I stood as good a chance of getting it out of him now as ever, “where were you when Jerry Levin was shot?”

  “That’s kind of private.”

  “Don’t you think I deserve to know?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I guess you do. I was with Sam’s lady, Carolyn Bui.”

  “What!”

  “It’s not what you think. Carolyn’s a friend; so’s Sam. I was trying to help them.”

  “How?”

  “Well, as you probably can tell, Sam’s not easy to live with. Carolyn loves him, but lately that love has gotten worn out. She started running around on Sam, with lots of different guys, and one of them turned out to be a decent human being. Carolyn fell in love, and she wants to leave Sam, but she’s afraid what it will do to him.”

  “Where do you come into this?”

  “I’ve been meeting her on Sunday nights while Sam’s packing up at the flea market, just for a couple of hours, so she would have somebody who understands to talk it out with. That’s why I didn’t tell the cops where I was.”

  “Surely Carolyn wouldn’t have minded—”

  “Of course not. But don’t you see – it was their private business, not something to be stuck in a police report.”

  “Did Sam know you were talking with Carolyn?”

  “He suspected, but he had it all wrong. Monty – that little snake – saw us together at the Oasis a couple of times. He said something to Sam. Sam accused Carolyn of having an affair with me, but she managed to talk him out of that idea.”

  So that was how Adair had known Willie wouldn’t be home at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and had had Selena tell Levin that. “You’re a hell of a good friend, Willie, I said.

  “Nah, I just don’t have many friends, is all. I do right by the few I’ve got.” We sat there in silence for a minute, and then Willie said, “Let’s get going.”

  We crossed the meadow, skirted the ruins of the cabin, and went over the little bridge to the road where Sam’s old van stood. Willie reached in his pocket, handed me a set of keys, and said, “Here, you go into Boulder Creek and get the law.”

  “And where will you be?”

  “I’m going back.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a score to settle.” He patted his denim jacket down around the beltline, and I realized he had a gun concealed there. He’d had it all along. “I’m going to take out Marchetti and Adair and as many of the others as I can.”

  He turned and started down the driveway to the bridge.

  “Willie, if that’s the gun you took off Selena, it’s hardly a weapon at all,” I said. “If it were such a terrific gun, you’d have used it while we were in there.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” He kept going.

  “Willie.” I followed him. “Willie, this isn’t you. You don’t believe in killing.”

  “Now I do.” He started up the slope to the cabin.

  I walked faster. “They’ll kill you.”

  “Not before I get some of them.”

  “Listen, this is stupid.”

  “A man does what he has to do.”

  “Now you sound like one of them. You sound like a redneck right-wing asshole!”

  He kept going, into the redwoods by the cabin.

  “Willie, neither Adair nor Marchetti killed Jerry Levin.” I hadn’t known it long, but I believed it now.

  He turned, his face surprised in the dim light. “So who did?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. Alida’s the one I care about, and one of them killed her. I figured out enough to know that. She was coming to see me, and she saw one of them split with those Torahs and recognized him.” He started walking again toward the hillside.

  I wasn’t going to let him do it. Whatever his faults, I cared about Willie. He had a big heart – too big, maybe – and a love of life. I wasn’t going to let that life end.

  I looked around for the biggest, heaviest stick I could find and hefted it. Then I went after him. I came up behind him and raised that stick and whacked him r
ight on the head, as hard as I’d ever hit another human being.

  He said “Unh?” and went down on his knees. And then he pitched forward, flat on his face, out cold.

  I stood looking down at him, feeling more than a twinge of remorse. A pity, I thought, a real pity.

  Why couldn’t it have been Leo McFate instead?

  23.

  I found Sam Thomas at dawn. He was sitting on the hard-packed earth above the beach near his house, drinking beer and staring off at the pier that was part of the sewer project. The sun was coloring the house on the hills behind me, but the sea was still shrouded in fog; the end of the long pier disappeared into it.

  When my footsteps crunched on the gravel of the parking lot, Sam turned his head slightly, then looked back to the sea.

  My fingers closed over the butt of the gun I had in my bag, the gun I picked up at home, tiptoeing so I wouldn’t wake Don and alarm him. I sensed I wouldn’t need to use it, however. Sam’s slumped shoulders were those of a man who had lost, and knew it. Perhaps he’d known it for a long time.

  “What took you so long?” He spoke plaintively, as if I’d broken a promise.

  I came up behind him. “Were you expecting me?”

  “You, the cops, someone.” He drained his beer can and hurled it down toward the beach. It clattered against the dirt slope and fell soundlessly to the sand. There was a paper bag that looked like it contained a sixpack next to him. He pulled out another beer and popped the tab.

  I sat down next to him, my hand still on the gun. I was bone-tired and sad, and I wanted to get this over with. But it wouldn’t come to an end for many hours; I hadn’t yet begun to deal with the police.

  After I’d knocked Willie out, I’d dragged him to Sam’s van – not without considerable difficulty – and headed for Boulder Creek. He came to on the drive and by the time we found a phone booth at a gas station, he’d started to listen to reason. I called Hank and told him what had happened and said that I was bringing Willie and one of the killers in. I told him Marchetti and Adair and the other members of their group were probably still at the encampment. Hank said he would alert both the San Francisco police and the Boulder Creek authorities. He also said I’d damned well better deliver Willie or we’d be in more trouble than he could handle. I promised I would. Then we headed north in the van.