Double

by Bill Pronzini

  Ferguson said to me, “Who are you working for? Lauterbach? Or my ex-wife?”

  “Neither one. I’m here on my own.”

  His mouth took on a bent, bitter look; he thought he had me pegged now. He said contemptuously, “Blackmail.”

  “Wrong. But it might have worked out that way if Lauterbach hadn’t been murdered.”

  Both of them reacted to that, with surprise that seemed genuine enough. “What happened to him?” Ferguson asked. He sounded puzzled again. “How was he killed?”

  “Somebody shot him Sunday morning. In his office building.”

  Nancy Pollard caught her breath—a second reaction almost as sharp as the first. When I looked at her, she wouldn’t meet my eyes; she turned a little to one side to make avoiding them easier.

  I said, “You know something about Lauterbach’s murder, Miss Pollard?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “When did you and Timmy arrive here?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Nancy,” Ferguson said. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.” Then, to me, “They arrived yesterday morning around ten.”

  “Were you here to meet them?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Were you here all weekend?”

  “Yes. Are you trying to imply that Nancy or I had something to do with Lauterbach’s death?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” I said. “He recognized Timmy somehow, at the Casa del Rey hotel, and put two and two together. One of the things he did was call your ex-wife and tell her he could find the boy for her. She’s put up a five-thousand-dollar reward for Timmy’s return. Or maybe you already know about that.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “Lauterbach could’ve traced you, gotten in touch, and tried to blackmail you for more than the five thousand.”

  “Well, he didn’t. I didn’t even know he’d moved away from Detroit until—” Abruptly he broke off.

  “Until what? Until Miss Pollard told you she saw him at the Casa del Rey?”

  They exchanged glances.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s the one he tried to put the bite on, isn’t she?”

  Ferguson said, “Neither Nancy nor I is a murderer. Believe that or not, but it’s the truth.”

  “Let’s say I believe it. I still want to know what happened between her and Lauterbach.”

  Nancy Pollard glanced at Ferguson again, wet her lips, and said, “All right. Friday night was the first time I saw him. He and some other men from the convention were drunk. Timmy heard them singing and went outside when my back was turned—he’s a very curious little boy.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I ran out and got Timmy, and Lauterbach saw me too. I didn’t know who he was; I’d never seen him before. He went away with the others and I didn’t think anything more about it until Saturday morning. Then he showed up at our bungalow, alone.”

  “Demanding money?”

  “Yes. I was terrified that he’d call the authorities and they’d arrest me and take Timmy back to his mother. I told him I’d call Carl, try to raise some money. He wanted to stay there while I made the call but I wouldn’t let him. It was obvious he didn’t know where Carl was and I wasn’t about to let him find out. He said I’d better not try to run away because he’d be watching the bungalow, and finally he left.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Tried to call Carl, but the telephone service down here isn’t very good and I couldn’t get through. Then Timmy slipped out again and I found him talking to you. I thought you were working for Lauterbach, that he’d hired you to keep tabs on us. I was half frantic by then. I tried calling Carl again, still couldn’t get through. I was still on the phone when the assistant manager, Ibarcena, came and said there’d been an accident, a woman had been killed. We weren’t supposed to leave the hotel until Sunday morning but he wanted us to go immediately.”

  I asked, “Did you see Lauterbach around anywhere when you left?”

  “No.”

  “Where did Ibarcena take you?”

  “To a motel on the edge of the Mexican quarter.”

  “He left you and Timmy alone there?”

  “Yes. That’s where we spent Saturday night.”

  “Did you see or talk to Lauterbach again before you left San Diego?”

  “I ... no.”

  “Try to get in touch with him at all?”

  She hesitated. “Why would I do that?”

  “You might have been afraid he’d think you left the Casa del Rey because of his blackmail demand. Afraid he’d be angry enough to call the authorities. Did you try to contact him, Miss Pollard?”

  Another glance at Ferguson, who nodded slightly. She said, “You might as well know it all. I tried to call him several times at his home and at his office, both on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Carl told me to keep trying; I’d finally got through to him late Saturday. We both felt I had to talk to Lauterbach before Timmy and I left for Mexico.”

  “And?”

  “He answered his office phone about ten-thirty Sunday morning. He was angry, abusive; he wanted to know where Timmy and I were. I wouldn’t tell him. He said that unless I came to his office inside an hour he’d call the police.”

  “Did you go?”

  “I had no choice. But he wasn’t there. That’s the truth—I swear it. His office was unlocked and Timmy and I sat there for over an hour waiting, but he didn’t come. I didn’t know what to think. It never occurred to me that he might be somewhere in the building, dead. But I couldn’t wait any longer. Ibarcena was picking us up at one o’clock. I had to take the chance that neither Lauterbach nor the authorities would be able to stop us from leaving the country, and that they wouldn’t be able to find us down here.”

  “What time was it that you got to Lauterbach’s office?” I asked her.

  “After eleven sometime.”

  “Did you see anyone on his floor when you arrived?”

  “No, no one.”

  “Anyone in the building?”

  “Well ... a man bumped into me in the lobby, coming out of the elevator just after we got there. I was standing in front of the doors when they opened and there he was.”

  “What did he look like, this man?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t pay much attention to him. He was just a man carrying a machine under one arm.”

  “What kind of machine?”

  “It looked like a tape recorder, one of those small ones. I noticed that because a corner of it dug into my arm when he bumped me.”

  “Can you remember anything about him? The color of his hair, his size, what kind of clothes he was wearing?”

  “No. It was just one of those things that happen in two or three seconds. We ran into each other, he said, ‘Excuse me, dear,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ something like that, and then he was gone and Timmy and I were in the elevator.”

  “You don’t have any impression of him at all?”

  “No. I was too nervous and worried.”

  “Any chance you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The man had to be Lauterbach’s killer, I thought. The time element was right, the tape recorder under his arm was right. He must have taken the recorder from Lauterbach’s office after the shooting; I remembered that I hadn’t seen any electronic equipment in there on Monday morning, and how odd that had seemed considering Lauterbach’s past record and the stuff I’d noticed in his car on Friday night. Whatever had been taped on that machine figured to be the motive, or part of the motive, for his murder.

  Not much of a lead without some clue to the man’s identity, but a small lead was better than none. I would pass it on to the cop in charge of the case, Gunderson, as soon as I got back to San Diego.

  I said to Ferguson, “Let’s back up a little. How did Lauterbach know Timmy by sight?”

  “I once made the mistake of hiring him
, earlier this year in Detroit.”

  “To do what?”

  “Confirm what a friend from Bloomfield Hills told me—that my ex-wife was abusing Timmy.”

  “And did he confirm it?”

  “To my satisfaction, yes. But he tried to gouge me for more money and I fired him and brought another detective into it.”

  “Who also confirmed the abuse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the authorities? Why kidnap the boy?”

  “It was the only choice I had. The proof my detective found is inconclusive in the eyes of the law. Timmy wouldn’t have been taken away from my ex-wife immediately, not without an official investigation. And the boy is terrified of her—she threatened to beat him bloody if he ever told anyone how she treated him. She’d have done it, too. She might have done it anyway, even if he hadn’t told the truth. She hates Timmy because he’s my son, a part of me. When she hits him she’s really hitting me. Can you understand that?”

  “I can,” I said, “if it’s true.”

  “You saw Timmy’s back,” Nancy Pollard said. “Isn’t that enough proof for you?”

  “Not necessarily. It doesn’t prove his mother was the one who put those marks on him.”

  “Ask him. Just ask him.”

  “I guess I’ll have to do that.”

  “I have the detectives’ reports,” Ferguson said. “I’ll show you those too, if I have to. But why should I? I still don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here. Or how you found us.” He turned to Nancy Pollard. “How could he find us with all that maneuvering around they put you through?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Something Timmy said to him when they talked in San Diego ... I don’t know.”

  “What maneuvering?” I asked her. “And who’s ‘they’?”

  She didn’t answer. But Ferguson said tiredly, “The people I made arrangements with to get Nancy and Timmy from Bloomfield Hills down here.”

  “You mean Lloyd Beddoes and Victor Ibarcena?”

  His expression went blank. “Who?”

  Nancy Pollard said, “No, they were only the ones at the last stop. It was somebody else Carl talked to, somebody in Chicago.”

  “I won’t give you his name unless I have to,” Ferguson said.

  “Let me get this straight. This guy in Chicago runs some sort of escape network, is that it?”

  “Runs it, or handles arrangements for it—I don’t know which. I got his name through channels. It took me weeks and everyone was extra cautious.”

  “I’ll bet. How does it work?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. But there are a number of different people involved. Nancy and Timmy were shunted over half the country last week.”

  She said, “They took us by car from one city to another and put us up in a hotel for a day or two. Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and then San Diego.”

  I nodded; I was getting it now. “The idea being to make it impossible for anyone to trace you and Timmy.”

  “That was the idea,” Ferguson said bitterly. “Only you seem to have done it without much trouble.”

  “I got lucky.” I turned back to Nancy Pollard. “Where were you taken from San Diego on Sunday?”

  “A private airfield out in the desert somewhere. I don’t know where. Ibarcena made us put on blindfolds. We waited there for hours before the plane came.”

  “And then you were flown down here?”

  “To another airstrip somewhere in Mexico. Then we were blindfolded again and taken by car to a third airstrip. The plane from there brought us to Los Mochis.”

  So now the whole operation was clear, at least as far as the Casa del Rey was concerned. Beddoes and Ibarcena were little spokes in a big wheel—opportunists recruited to turn their hotel into a way station for fugitives on the move through the network, fugitives like Roland Deveer, the missing financier. Whenever they’d put somebody up in one of the bungalows, they had probably told selected members of the staff that the person was some sort of V.I.P. who desired anonymity, so no registration forms were to be filled out and they were to act as if the bungalow was empty. Elaine Picard was one of the staff members they’d have had to tell, because of her role as chief of security, and she’d doped out the truth—maybe seen Deveer and recognized him. That would account for the newspaper clipping Elaine had sent to her lawyer.

  I considered pushing Ferguson for the name of the man in Chicago, but I didn’t believe it was necessary. Once Beddoes cracked—and he would, sooner or later—the identity of the ringleaders would come out. Yank one of the bricks out of the foundation of an organization like this and the whole shebang would collapse.

  Ferguson said, “All right, now you know everything. Suppose you tell us just what it is you’re investigating? Timmy’s disappearance? Lauterbach’s murder? The hotel men in San Diego?”

  “All of those, in one way or another.”

  “And you don’t have a client? You paid your own way down here?” He seemed incredulous. “What kind of detective are you?”

  “Sometimes I wonder myself.”

  “Why didn’t you just contact my ex-wife, if you knew where to find us? You said she’s offering a five-thousand-dollar reward.”

  “I could have contacted her—she’s in San Diego now, called in by Lauterbach, and I saw her on the TV news last night. But I didn’t much like the way she talked about Timmy, as if he were a piece of property. And I remembered him telling me that he didn’t like her because she made him afraid.”

  Ferguson nodded slowly. He no longer seemed angry; a kind of wary hopefulness had come into his expression. “So you came to Los Monos to see if I might have had just cause to kidnap him. If I might be a more fit parent than his mother.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And? What have you decided, now that you know the whole story?”

  I didn’t say anything. Beyond Ferguson and Nancy Pollard, a door to the rear wing of the villa opened and Timmy came out ahead of a middle-aged Mexican woman carrying a huge tray. Ferguson saw me looking in that direction, glanced over his shoulder, and then put his gaze back on me.

  “What are you going to do?” he said.

  I still didn’t say anything. But I didn’t have to this time; it was there in my face. Ferguson read it, and let out a heavy breath, and Nancy Pollard read him, and then all three of us knew what I was going to do. They didn’t speak either. We just stood there, waiting, and the only sound in the hot stillness was Timmy’s voice as he ran toward us shouting, “Dad! Aunt Nancy! Wait’ll you see what María-Elena made for us to eat!”

  33 McCONE

  I took Interstate 8 east as if I were going to Woodall’s house, turned north on Route 67 at El Cajon, and finally east again on Route 78. At the little town of Julian—a Western-style tourist town full of motorcycles, which was far too cute for my taste—I stopped and bought some chilled Calistoga Water as protection against the mounting heat. There were seven miles of sharp curves down Banner Grade from Julian, and then the landscape abruptly changed to desert.

  The road lay before me, covered by shimmering pools of illusionary water that kept receding into the distance. The dry heat grew even more intense, making my skin feel papery, the membranes of my nose and mouth dry. Periodically I drank from the sweat-beaded bottle of water.

  The land around me was sandy and flat, dotted with spiny jumping cholla and desert sagebrush. Smoke trees and lifeless-looking ironwood trees grew down in the washes. I thought of my childhood excursions to the desert, when I’d learned the names of these plants. The trips were supposed to delight, but in reality had only given me my first inkling of man’s insignificance and inherent loneliness.

  And then I ceased to think of anything much at all; the desert has that numbing effect on those who drive across it.

  The only other vehicles on the road seemed to be campers, pickups, and motorcycles. An occasional truck hauled a dune buggy. The sky was starkly blue, and
hawks wheeled across it. I kept going, over San Felipe Creek, where tamarisk trees and desert willows grew in abundance, toward the turnoff for Borrego Springs.

  Named for the bighorn sheep that live high in the surrounding mountains, Borrego Springs is an oasis in the Colorado Desert. The gateway to the Anza-Borrego Desert Region, it sprawls in a valley, a palm-shaded little town with two country clubs and a small shopping area. The thought of getting out of the car and sitting in the shade—maybe getting something to eat—appealed to me, and I was about to turn north on Yaqui Pass Road when I thought to stop and check the map that the man in the recorder’s office had drawn for me.

  The map indicated I should continue on Highway 78 to the village of Ocotillo Wells. So much for a brief interlude under a palm tree. I put the car in gear and went on, past rocky washes and land where the vegetation became more and more sparse.

  As I approached Ocotillo Wells, groups of campers and tents began to appear on the barren land on either side of the road. The village itself consisted of a café, store, and Mobil station. Its one dubious claim to fame is being the “dune buggy capital of the world,” because of its proximity to the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area. I smiled wryly as I drove in, thinking, What if Elaine came out here to roar around in a dune buggy? What if Les Club is nothing more than a bunch of motorized maniacs?

  Somehow I knew that wasn’t it.

  From Ocotillo Wells, the map showed I should take Split Mountain Road south toward the former site of Little Borrego, but I decided to ask directions anyway. Maybe someone here would know of Les Club and simplify matters for me. I pulled into the gas station, where a few scruffy-looking young men stood drinking beer around a dune buggy. I parked to one side, and went into the office. A sun-browned teenage boy came out of the garage area, wiping greasy hands on a rag.

  “Help you, ma’am?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for a place near here called Les Club.”

  He looked blank. “Never heard of it.”

  “I have a map.”

  He took it gingerly, trying not to smear it with grease. “Oh, yeah. I see. What you do is take Split Mountain Road, the one right next to the station here, almost to where it ends at the big gypsum mine. There’s a rutted road that branches off to the south. You follow it about seven miles up to the foothills. Part of it’s pretty badly rutted, so be careful in that little car. The old Matthews place is at the end of it.”