The Egret

by Russell Hill

  CHAPTER 14

  It was Davy at the door and there was his old truck parked at the top of the driveway.

  “Surprised to see me?” he asked.

  “Not particularly.” But I was surprised to see him. There he stood, the tattoo at the side of his neck coming up out of his shirt, wearing jeans worn at the knees, workboots and a grin.

  “You weren’t hard to find,” he said.

  “And why did you want to find me?”

  “Maybe it would be better if we talked inside.”

  “Why? Your truck is parked out front. What have you got to say?”

  “I think that hundred bucks you gave me isn’t enough.”

  “You drove my fucking car ten miles. It took you a couple of hours of your time. Seems pretty good pay to me.”

  “You think I’m some dumb shit-kicker who can be bought for a few bucks. You think I can’t add two and two. Well, you need to wise up. Some guy got picked up out of the surf the same day you had me pick you up. There was a big Mercedes at the far end of the parking lot and it turned out to be his. And there was nobody else on that beach that I could see. So I’m guessing that you had something to do with that poor sucker ending up in the drink. At least I don’t think you want me to go to the sheriff and tell him about picking up your car and driving out to North Beach just about the time that sucker took his bath. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “A ranger comes into the saloon and he tells us about some rich dude who got picked up out of the surf at South Beach, and his car was at North Beach and he was wearing his good clothes, and there you were at North Beach without your car, so I put two and two together. I may not be a whiz at math but I can put two and two together. So I figure that you’d like me to keep this to myself. That was what you said to me. You said you’d like me to forget I ever met you. Forget I drove your car for you, and I figure it’s worth a lot more than a hundred bucks for me to keep my mouth shut”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. And I’m thinking that there ought to be at least another zero on what you gave me. And maybe a three instead of a one at the front of it.”

  “You want me to pay you three thousands bucks for this shit? In case the ranger didn’t tell you, that rich dude told him that he went out for a drive and got caught by a sneaker wave and got swept out. He said it was stupid of him, and he didn’t say anything about anyone else. “

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I’ve got a friend who’s with the sheriff’s office. He read the report.”

  “And why would he tell you?”

  I had slipped up. And this hayseed truck driver was no hayseed.

  “Because I was out there at that Lodge when it happened and I saw the report in the paper and I asked him about it. I’ve been out to North Beach. It’s fucking dangerous, and people have been pulled into that surf and died. I used to go out there with my wife and daughter.”

  “And all that bullshit about me bringing your car out because you needed to get back and you didn’t want somebody to see you with some person. Somebody who wasn’t around when I picked you up?”

  “Look. I asked you to do something for me. I asked you to bring my car out there. I have no idea what happened to some rich bastard who got himself in trouble. And there’s no way that I’m going to pay you three thousand dollars. It’s not worth it to me.”

  He reached down to scratch his knee through his jeans. When he stood again he was still grinning. “I think you’ll think this over,” he said. “And I think you’ll decide that I’m worth it. I think you’ll figure out that I’m worth listening to. A sheriff’s deputy comes in to the saloon when he’s off duty. He knows everybody in there. He knows me. He knows I’m not a bullshitter. I went to the Lodge and I asked BJ, who works at the desk in the afternoons, about the guy in room 19. The guy with the Toyota. And he said he hadn’t seen him all day. But he had the room for another night. And I said, I met you in the saloon and you left your phone on the bar and I had your phone and I wanted to return it to you, and you said you were staying out at the lodge and. I figured you’d give me a reward, and BJ said, that was likely, and he gave me your address. So here I am. And if a simple shit-kicker like me can find you, somebody else can. “

  “Get the fuck out of my sight. You want to tell the sheriff some story about me getting you to drive my car out there, that’s OK with me. If push comes to shove, I can produce the person who drove me out there, and you’ll have shit on your face.”

  He continued to grin. “No, I think you’ll think this over. You have my number. It’s the one you called to set up the car pickup. I’m not greedy. Three thousand bucks means I can get a new truck. Nothing fancy, but something that’s more dependable than what I have. Nobody else knows that I know you. Nobody. I didn’t tell anybody at the bar and our hundred-dollar deal is between you and me. And the three thousand will be between you and me. Nobody else. I can keep my mouth shut. Think about it. But don’t think too long.” He turned and walked back up to his truck.

  I watched him, waited until he fired up the engine, backed out into the street. He was something else that was loose. Something I hadn’t counted on. I thought of the Glock. I could kill him, put a bullet into him and it would be another West Marin mystery, a senseless killing that couldn’t be connected to a retired carpenter in Fairfax. Nobody else knows, he had said. Nobody to connect him with me. I can keep my mouth shut, he had said. Which meant that nobody knew he had come to me, nobody knew he had parked his truck in my driveway and tried to suck more money out of me. Nobody else knew. I could just wait for him until he took his truck of hay into Petaluma, and wait for him to come to a stop sign and pop him. Plenty of empty space in West Marin. The three thousand he wanted would turn into another three thousand and five thousand and ten thousand. He wouldn’t stop. I could see him sitting next to me at the bar, the tattoo rising from his shirt collar, green and red lines in an intricate design, part of what looked like a dragon. I remembered him banging the cup on the bar, calling out “six fives,” and his partner turning over his cup and saying “shit!” and a dollar bill sliding between them. Playing liars dice for a buck. No, he wouldn’t be satisfied with three thousand. He was a loose cannon and he would slide across the deck and slam into the railing. I needed to pitch this loose cannon overboard. I had pressed that gun into Winslow’s crotch and now I wished I had pulled the trigger. Davy’s grinning face stayed with me, and I knew that it would be easy to stop his grinning face, put him out of the way, make it possible for me to finish my business with Winslow. I would turn my attention to Winslow. The young truck driver hadn’t counted on my new identity: I was the egret, waiting to strike, and he was a minnow, finning in the shallows at my feet.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next day I drove out to Point Reyes Station, arriving just as the Bovine Bakery opened at six thirty. I parked on the back street near the public toilets where I could get a good look at the lumber yard and the parked trucks at To-by’s Barn. I watched as Davy came out of the Bovine Bakery with a bag of goodies and a paper cup of coffee. He crossed to the yard, went to a truck tractor and opened the door., and I knew what he would do. He would drive it out, hook up to the load of hay somewhere not far from the yard and drive the load into Petaluma or Santa Rosa, or even farther north, Healdsburg or Cloverdale. The diesel engine fired up, a black cloud belching from the pipes, and then the motor settled into a low rumble. I waited until he pulled out of the yard onto Highway One, the main street that ran through the town. He turned left, which meant that he was headed for Stinson Beach and the ranches that were between Olema and Stinson. I drove to the end of the street and looked down towards the highway, saw the cab of the big truck appear and then turn and I followed. I stayed well behind him. There was no difficulty following him since the road ran in only one direction, a turnoff at Olema that he didn’t take and then the
long stretch to Stinson.

  Near Five Brooks he turned into a field where the trailer was waiting, loaded with hay bales. I stopped the car, watched while he backed into the loaded trailer, the trailer sliding onto the hitch at the back of the tractor cab. He locked things into place, hooked up the air hoses and climbed back into the cab. He eased forward toward the gate and I drove into the slot, blocking his progress. I waved my hand out the window. His hand came out and he waved back. Obviously he thought I had come with the money. Here I was, and it was payday for him. I got out of the car, walked over to the idling truck. I stepped up onto the running board, leaned in the open window on the passenger side.

  “How’d you know I was here?” he said. Those were his last words. I pulled the Glock out of my jacket pocket, aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger. His head slammed against the window on his side and the window shattered.

  It was easy. It was like using a nail gun. Bang bang bang, sixteen penny nails into a stud, driven to their heads, cleaner than a hammer. Pick up the nail gun, aim it, press the trigger, and there was a three inch nail driven all the way to the head, modern technology, no longer holding that nail with your fingers, holding the hammer, striking the nail, sometimes missing, sometimes striking our own thumb, sometimes bending the nail, forcing you to pull it out and start over. Now it was just press the trigger and it was done. And I had pulled the trigger and Davy was done, slumped against the shattered window on his side of the cab, blood everywhere, the diesel engine still running. I backed off, turned, went to my car. Behind me, the truck continued to idle and when I drove away I didn’t feel differently. I didn’t feel any sort of remorse, not what I thought I would feel. All I could think of was that Davy was silenced, and now I could concentrate on Winslow. Davy had been greedy. Davy had tried to step beyond his limits and I had struck, my sharp bill descending through the water with unerring accuracy, spearing his body. Swallowing him. This time Winslow would die and this time I would make sure that he didn’t escape.

  CHAPTER 16

  The news of Davy’s death was a front page article in the Independent Journal. WEST MARIN MAN KILLED AT WORK. The article told of the Sheriff’s deputies being called by a rancher who found Davy’s truck sitting in the field, out of fuel. Inside was Davy’s body and the Sheriff’s deputy told the reporter that there was no evidence of anyone else at the scene, just the truck, loaded and ready to be driven from the field, and the driver shot inside the cab. Investigation was ongoing, the article said. There was the hint that it was a drug deal gone wrong.

  Nothing else. Nobody came to call on me. I cleaned the Glock, locked it in a cupboard in the garage. I spent several days cleaning up my tools and then I called Ken Kowalski, a contractor I had worked for in the past.

  “I’m looking for work,” I said.

  “I thought you retired. At least that was the word at the union hall.”

  “No, I took some time off. Maybe you heard about my daughter’s death. It took the starch out of me, but things have settled down, and if you’re interested, I’m available.”

  “Of course I’m interested. These days it’s hard to find somebody who knows which end of the hammer to hold onto. I’ve got a job in Ross going right now.”

  “Not Ross,” I said. “I’d prefer something a bit farther away from home.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “How about Petaluma? I’ve got a kitchen remodel going and I need somebody to do cabinets.”

  “Just my thing,” I said.

  So I went to the job in Petaluma, spent several days tearing out old cabinets and installing new ones. The work was familiar and Ken was happy with what I did. And while I was tearing the old cabinets off the wall and installing new sheetrock and hanging the new cabinets, I thought about Earl Winslow. I thought about how he had dived into the face of that wave. That should have been a clue for me. I should have shot him right there. But of course that would have led to a police investigation when they recovered a body with a gunshot wound. If they recovered it. Still, there had to be some other way to deal with him. I watched him dive into that wave again and again. Every time I ripped a nail out of the wall or peeled off part of cabinet, I saw him stepping out of his loafers, running toward the water, suddenly head down, arms outstretched, cleaving into that wild water, like somebody who had experience swimming in the sea. He had been lucky. He had swum parallel to the breaker line, knowing that he couldn’t get back in where I was, but looking for a break in the surf and three miles south he got lucky. A ranger, a thousand to one chance looks out, says to himself, hey, there’s a sea lion. Whoops! What’s that? An arm. Let me get my glasses out of the truck. Holy shit, it’s a man out there, and he’s in trouble. What the fuck is he doing out there? The helicopter at Two Rock plucks somebody off a rock or a cliff or out of a drifting boat several times a year He didn’t even lose his fucking cuff links! Only he’s a fucking seashore incident, another person who foolishly waded too close to that dangerous surf. Another statistic.

  Detective Fuller showed up again.

  “You’re off somewhere during the day,” he said.

  “I’m back at work.”

  “Good idea. Idle hands are the devil’s playground.”

  “That’s nice. I should remember that.”

  “Our friend Winslow has changed his habits.”

  “Why should I be interested?”

  “Probably no particular reason. And then, again, it might be something that would pique your interest. He no longer drives his car himself. He has a driver. An ex-cop who’s carrying a weapon.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “Because I stopped by, asked him about his dip in the ocean, said we were following up on his accident. I told him the Sheriff was concerned that nothing untoward would happen to him. He said he was pleased that we were concerned, but he had done something stupid, got punished for it by the ocean, and was lucky to survive. He said he was making a generous donation to the Coast Guard fund for the relatives of officers who had lost their lives in rescue attempts. I asked him about his car, the one we found in the parking lot at North Beach. Was he still driving it? Just routine, I said. And he said, no, he had a driver, gave me his name. So I ran a check on the guy and he came up with a permit to carry. He was a cop in Oakland who retired. Apparently he now lives in the quarters over Winslow’s garage.”

  “Why would I give a shit about this?”

  “No particular reason.”

  “So this is just a social call?”

  “You could call it that. You mind telling me where you were last Wednesday morning?”

  “Probably right here. I didn’t go back to work until Friday. Why?”

  “Nothing much. I’m working another case, kid who got bushwhacked out at Five Brooks. A nine millimeter. Isn’t that what you bought?”

  “You think I shot some kid out in West Marin?”

  “No. I didn’t say that. You still got that gun you bought?”

  “I did what you told me to do. I locked it up where I can’t easily get to it.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And I have no interest in Earl Winslow. That’s water under the bridge.” And I suddenly had an image of water and my daughter hanging upside down in it.

  “I appreciate your efforts, but unless you can come to me and say, I’ve got the goods on that sonovabitch and we’re going to trial and we’re going to put him away for the rest of his life, then I’m no longer interested in anything about him. I hope that’s clear.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  We talked a bit about the shut-down of the Johnson Oyster Farm at Drake’s Bay. He said he thought it was bullshit, that the National Park was riding roughshod over the owner’s rights. I agreed with him. Actually, I didn’t care one way or another, was only vaguely aware of the controversy. And then he left.

  Why had he asked me about my Glock? Had he talked to somebody who had talked to Davy? Had he come across my stay at the Tomales B
ay Lodge? Had he talked to the clerk who had given Davy my address? Had the bartender at the Old Western remembered me talking to Davy? But he had left with the comment, “I’m glad to hear you say that.” Apparently Fuller was leaving me alone, had come to warn me that Winslow now had an armed driver protecting him. I would have to be more careful.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was an old article from the weekly West Marin newspaper, The Point Reyes Light. I had gone on-line to see if there was more about the death of David Lansdale, a truck driver from Point Reyes Station. And then, while browsing back issues, I came across the article about the old Synanon headquarters on Tomales Bay. There had been bad blood between the Synanon residents, a hippie group that practiced a drug rehab program without doctors and was apparently involved in practices that involved holding children against their will. And the adjoining rancher had accused them of encroaching on his land, and of violating their use permit. So they put a rattlesnake into his mail box at the edge of the road with its rattle cut off. But the plot failed. The Point Reyes Light ferreted out the details, and there were letters and notes that helped to incriminate the Synanon head. The Point Reyes Light got the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Synanon story, beating out major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. A little weekly newspaper had won journalism’s most sought-after prize. But that wasn’t what interested me. What interested me was the fact that the houses on the streets of Ross all had street-side mailboxes. Some were old-fashioned metal boxes, others were fancy designer boxes, but they all collected their mail from the side of the street. And the rattlesnake in the mailbox lit up for me. And it was now May and rattlesnakes were no longer dormant. Somebody at Winslow’s house would go out to his mailbox to get the mail. Because the houses were all separated from the streets by gates and hedges, there were mailboxes on posts. The mailmen drove up in little trucks with right-hand drive, leaned out and stuck the mail into the box. So after the mailman left, a rattlesnake inserted into the box would be waiting for whoever came for that day’s mail. It was possible, of course, that a house worker would be dispatched for the mail. Or it could be the wife. Or Winslow when he came home. The car might pause, Winslow would get out and get the mail. Or, he might ask the driver to do it. It would require more observation sessions. Find out when the mailman delivered. Find out who picked up the mail from the mailbox and when. Finding a rattlesnake wouldn’t be difficult. There were lots of them up around Lake Lagunitas and Bon Tempe Lake above Fairfax. Or up on the ridge above my house, near Tamarancho, the Boy Scout Camp. They could be found among rocks, in piles of old wood, and now that the days were getting warmer, they would be out in the early morning, using the warmth of paths or meadows to warm their bodies.