by Wade Miller
“Then everyone is gone but me. It seems inexorable, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t go by appearances,” the smaller man warned. “If everybody’s gone, there are no witnesses. The police know very little about you, Esteban Luz knows your name but he is not likely to talk. He will be expecting help from you after he is taken in — help that will never come. By the time he decides he’s been double-crossed you will be gone and the Mexican police will decide it’s too difficult to reopen the case.”
“Sit down, Mr. James,” said Gilbert. He switched the radio on and drummed his fingers on the desk. After a while he said, “What is the possibility?”
“Very good to excellent.”
A paunchy couple stopped on the sidewalk outside and peered indecisively.
“House hunters,” said Gilbert. “We’d better make an appointment to meet somewhere later this afternoon. I don’t suppose I can lose any ground through discussion.”
20. Wednesday, September 27, 5:30 P.M.
“I’VE ONLY BEEN HERE once before in my whole life,” Kevin said, impressed. “What made you think of bringing me here?”
She moved her face from side to side, trying to absorb the entire scope of Sunset House at one wide glance — the sweeping beamed ceiling, the ornate crystal chandeliers, the scores of lamplit white-clothed tables, the high-arched windows that allowed the dining room to stretch to the horizon and its half-circle sun that was set there like a ruby. She sucked in her breath ecstatically. “I guess I can’t get it all in at once. What made you think of bringing me here?”
“Something somebody said, I guess.” Walter James smiled at her over a liquor glass. “Is there anywhere you’d rather be?”
“No!” she said. “There’s no nicer place in San Diego. It’s been here for ages — since 1870 or around in there. I didn’t realize people had such wonderful taste then.”
“They certainly went in for size,” he admitted. “Full?”
Kevin laughed into her drink. “As always. Aren’t you proud of me — that I don’t get fat?” She stretched luxuriously. “Let’s go out on the balcony. Fresh air and then a drink, then more fresh air, then another drink — ”
He laughed. “Ad infinitum. Or what’s Latin for ‘until the bar closes'?”
They walked along the plate-glass wall to the nearest arch and stepped out into the assembling dusk. Kevin skipped over to the stone balustrade.
“Look Walter! The sun’s nearly gone.” He came up beside her and slipped his hand between her arm and her body. “Sunsets are sort of sad,” she mused.
“They always come back.”
“But it seems too final. It’s only a very little sun and the Pacific’s such a big ocean.”
“Everytime the sun sets in the ocean I expect to see steam come up.”
She squeezed his hand with her arm. They leaned on the stone rail in silent reverence. To the left was the etched suddenness of the Point Loma hills; everywhere else was sheet metal ocean. Far below, the surf boiled among rock clusters and chewed at the cliffs with thundering rage.
“Sunset Cliffs,” she murmured. “They’ve looked at sunsets so long they’ve turned red themselves.” She looked down, fascinated by the white festoons of surf. “It’s a long way down.”
“Cigarette?”
“Yes, thanks.” She concentrated on his lighting it. “Oh. I nearly forgot. Give me the package and look the other way a minute.”
He obeyed and she kept talking. “We must come out here in the afternoon sometime. Between us and the ocean there’s lots of curlicue paths with little caves and things like that. They lead clear down to the rocks. You’d like it. We’d be alone the whole time because the paths turn and twist every yard or so. It’s safe because it’s wide, but you can never see anybody near you. It’s like being all alone in the world. You’d have your chance to push me over if I talked too much. There — you can turn around now.”
Walter James turned back and she held out her hand. In it was an ebony black case with a single band of silver running around the middle. She pressed the side and it snapped open to reveal toothy rows of cigarettes. “Have one, sir,” she softly invited.
“Not yet.” He tilted up her chin and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Thank you very much, redhead,” he said.
“It isn’t much. It isn’t nearly enough,” her voice rushed out. “But you needed one and I got tired of smoking crushed cigarettes and I wanted you to have something I’d given you. Wasn’t that silly?”
Her piquant face was close in the soft blue gloom. “No. It’s beautiful. It’s as beautiful as you are. I’ll always carry it — like it was your glove in my helmet.”
She nestled close to him, happily. “I just wanted you to have something I’d given you.”
“Now I have you and a cigarette case,” he told her. “It’s becoming a very full life.”
“You’ll always have me,” she murmured. “I’ll never get lost. Oh, Walter, I didn’t want to go out to that silly college today. I just wanted to stay near you. It was awful out there. Then I came home tonight and Dad wasn’t home. Not that he’s so much company, but the house seemed so empty. I live in the emptiest house in town. But when you drove up tonight, everything was all right again.” She shivered and rubbed her hand across his back. “Tell me that you love me.”
“I love you.”
“See!” she smiled. “Everything’s all right.”
“I just drove around most of the day myself. I didn’t go near the apartment, except tonight to change clothes, for fear Clapp would get in touch with me. I was afraid he’d found those two bodies in that car and would want to talk to me. And after last night I didn’t want to think about anything but you.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “I’d completely forgotten about those two men. It’s funny how many different lives there are, going so many different ways. Yesterday there were those two men. They had lunch and talked about a lot of different things — and today they don’t exist. And probably back in San Diego somewhere your Boone is thinking about what a nice dinner he had and not even thinking about you.”
Walter James laughed curtly. “He must think about me every waking moment or he wouldn’t have stayed out of my reach so long.”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
“Do you want to go in and have another drink?”
She shook her head. “No. Let’s go home and just be together. That would make me happiest.”
“Do you have that feeling, too? That life’s moving too fast?”
“I guess that’s the way I feel. I’m afraid something’s going to slip away from me. Let’s go home, Walter.”
His hand was on her arm as they walked out to the parking lot. She started slightly at a momentary pressure and looked around. He was staring at the back of a gleaming Pontiac, just disappearing down the curving road toward Ocean Beach.
“What is it, Walter?”
His eyes were gleaming oddly. “Nothing. It just seemed to me that maybe that was Dr. Boniface driving that car.”
“Oh!” She peered after the car excitedly. “That’s the man on the card, isn’t it, Walter?”
He said softly, “Dr. Everett Boniface — Dr. Elliott Boone. It probably doesn’t mean a thing.” He smiled at her worried expression. “After all, redhead, he has as much right here as we have. And maybe I was wrong.”
They drove from Point Loma slowly, Kevin pressing her head against his shoulder. After the car was garaged for the night, they walked hand in hand up the flight of stairs to the second-floor apartments. Kevin still had one foot on the last step when his hand stopped her.
“Just a minute,” he said quickly.
“What’s wrong?”
She hadn’t seen his hand move but all of a sudden there was a gun in it. Walter James glanced around the hall. Three apartment doors, a linen closet door, a window overlooking Fifth Avenue through a fire escape, a window that looked out the back of the building into nothingness.
“What’s wrong, Walter?”
“I didn’t leave my light burning when I left.”
“Is there somebody in your room?” She found she was whispering.
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m supposed to think there’s somebody waiting for me or that I forgot to turn off the light. But that window shade at the back end of the hall has never been up that high before.” His free hand moved across the switch and the hall light went off.
“I saw this happen once in Atlanta,” he said. “A man was silhouetted against the light from his room as he opened the door. A man in the house across the street shot him. He was a beautiful target.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Here’s my key.” He pressed it into her moist palm. “When I get to the window, go to my door, lie down on the floor and unlock it. Open it wide in a hurry. Whoever’s waiting down there has probably been straining to see that square of light so long that they’ll fire at anything. But for God’s sake, keep down!”
“Yes, Walter.”
He slipped silently down the darkened hall to crouch by the window. A second later, Kevin crossed to his door and punched the key into the lock. Then she lay down on the hall carpet and reached her hand up to the knob. A rectangle of light leaped into the hall as the door swung open.
There was a hyphenated explosion. The back window was a shower of glass on Walter James. A chip of plaster and a sifting of dust fell on Kevin’s face where she lay on the hall floor.
“Walter!” she whispered.
“Roll inside and switch off the light,” he commanded. He joined her in the dark and shut the door behind them. She reached out for the reassuring solidness of his body but he was over by the window, looking out.
“They’re gone,” he said in a moment. “Show’s over.” The normal tones of his voice seemed to echo in the confines of the shadowy room.
She ran over to him and looked out the window. “Who was it?”
“Somebody about there,” he indicated with the gun. Across the alley was a board fence enclosing a herd of used cars. It was a dim jumble of faintly gleaming bubbles: automobile tops and fenders. “I fired right after they did but I don’t think I hit much besides that fence in this light.”
She coiled her arms around him tightly. “I’m glad you never get killed,” she murmured.
He laughed. “That’s a sweet thought. At least it pretty well settles who’s getting shot at around here — you or me. They’d hardly lay an ambush for you at my apartment.”
She giggled nervously. “Maybe they understand me better than you do,” she whispered.
He sat down on the floor and pulled her down beside him. “Let’s be relaxing when the reaction sets in.”
“Aren’t you going to turn on your lights, Mr. James?”
He kissed her over one eyebrow. “If the landlady knows I’m home, we’ll have a couple of squad cars driving around in here. If we lay low, the cops will probably decide it’s some wild kid with a .22 and eventually go away.”
“Who do you think it was, Walter?”
There was a silence of consideration. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe Dr. Boone. Maybe a friend of his. We’ll have Clapp’s men check tomorrow and see who’s prowling around these apartments.”
“It’s getting too close,” she whispered. “I’m worried.”
“Don’t be,” he said. He stroked the length of her body. “Don’t think about that now.”
After a short while, she spoke. “I won’t, darling. When we’re like this, I can’t think of anything but you.” She trembled closer to him. “This — this feeling between us — it’s like the ocean tonight. It beats and surges and never seems to stop, Walter, darling.”
Dark miles away, at the foot of Sunset Cliffs, the surf beat and roared and frothed over a flaccid body that lodged between two jealous rocks.
21. Thursday, September 28, 3:15 A.M.
THE TELEPHONE kept ringing.
Walter James flipped on the bed lamp, worried his wristwatch out from under the pillow and looked at the time. It was fifteen minutes past three.
The strident bell notes sliced through the early morning stillness with mechanical regularity. Kevin shifted uneasily in her sleep. He stretched his bare feet down to the cool rug and padded into the other room, feeling his way to the invisible instrument.
“Hello?”
“James? This is Clapp. You got the Gilbert girl there?”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your damn business!”
The receiver voice rasped irritably. “Listen, James, this is no time to play. I sent out to her house and she wasn’t there. Some kid named Newcomb was mooning around the front porch and said she hadn’t come home tonight and that she was probably with you. If you got her or know where she is, get her down here right away.”
“What’s up?”
“She’s got a body to identify. The papers on it says it’s old man Gilbert.”
“Dead? How?”
“We’ll talk it over down here. Don’t break it to the girl until we’re sure. For God’s sake, James, if she’s there, bring her down right away!”
“Twenty minutes,” said the slender man and hung up. He stood indecisively for a moment before he went back into the bedroom. Kevin was a spray of copper hair, a bare shoulder and mounded blankets. He shook her by the shoulder gently.
“Kevin.”
“Mmmm?” She rolled over on her back without opening her eyes. He shook her again and she blinked awake.
“What is it, Walter?”
“Get up and get dressed. We have to go down to the police station. Are you awake?”
She sat up squinting. “It’s still dark, isn’t it?”
“Get dressed. We have to go right away. Are you wide-awake now?”
“Yes, I’m awake, Walter.”
“Listen. We’re not sure yet, but Clapp wants you to take a look at a body. It may be your father.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Clapp wants you to identify a body if you can. Your father may be dead.”
Her face began to be nothing but white skin and shadows. She put out both hands and held onto his arms. “He can’t be, Walter. He just can’t be!” Her voice was neither frightened nor sad, only puzzled.
“You’re right,” he said. “Clapp may have made a mistake. It may not be your father. But we have to go downtown and see. There’s no easy way to tell you. We have to go see.”
“But it can’t be!”
Walter James unfastened her hands gently. “Get dressed, redhead.”
They drove through deserted streets to the foot of Market Street. Only occasional black and white prowl cars or gleaming taxis cruised across their path. As they walked across the police headquarters’ parking lot, the whistle of the last Coronado ferry moaned through the night.
Clapp rose clumsily when they entered his office. At the corners of his eyes were patterned tracings of blood.
“I’m sorry about this, Miss Gilbert. But we have to be sure.”
“I understand. Walter explained to me.”
“Do you feel all right?”
“Yes. I’m all right. I’d like to get it over with.”
“This way.” The big man led them down the hall past the medical examiner’s office to an unmarked door. Walter James stood close to her as they entered.
Stein nodded as they came into the peaceful room. The corners were lost to the shadows, but, in the center, one low-hung light beamed unmercifully. Beneath it was an unmoving sheet-covered form on a wheeled table. Under the table were small puddles of water.
“Okay, Stein,” said Clapp.
The medic folded the sheet back.
“Is this your father, Miss Gilbert?”
The old man’s eyes were closed to the punishing light. His forehead was bruised and damp hair clung there protectively. But the lines in his face were not so deep now.
The men could barely hear Kevin’s voice. “Yes. T
hat’s my father.”
Stein replaced the sheet and looked at the big man questionably. Clapp cleared his throat.
“We’d like to perform an autopsy, Miss Gilbert. Is that all right with you?”
“I guess so,” she said. “I don’t know.” She shook her head back and forth. “How did it happen?”
Walter James gripped her arm. “Let’s go back to the office.”
Clapp nodded to Stein as they went out. In his office, he cleared his throat again.
“You know how sorry I am, Miss Gilbert. I don’t want to question you at this time. Just take it easy.”
“It’s all right,” she said. She pushed her fingers hard against her forehead. “I don’t feel anything. I can’t understand anything. How did it happen?”
“You know where your father was this afternoon?”
“No. He just wasn’t there when I got home from school. How did he — die?”
Clapp hesitated. “We found your father in the ocean at the foot of Sunset Cliff’s out past Ocean Beach. He was between two rocks below the Sunset House.”
Kevin’s shoulder stiffened under Walter James’s hand.
“He may have fallen from the balcony,” Clapp continued, “or he may have slipped off one of the paths along the cliff.”
“Walter!” she moaned. “We were there tonight. We were at Sunset House.”
The big man wrinkled his forehead and looked at Walter James.
“We went there for dinner tonight.” Walter James gave a frowning nod at the top of Kevin’s head.
Clapp lifted the phone and said, “Send up a matron.” He regarded the girl gently. “There’s no indication of anything wrong, Miss Gilbert. Apparently your father just went out there for some reason and accidentally fell. It was sometime this afternoon or tonight.”
“I should feel something,” Kevin whimpered. “We were never very close but Dad’s always been — been there. I don’t understand!” She began to cry against her hand. “He can’t be gone!”
A soft knock at the door let in a broad police woman in a dark dress. “This is Miss Gilbert, Mrs. Marsh. She’s had quite a shock. If you’ll give her a sedative and let her lie down in Stein’s office — no, make it the couch in the next office.”
