by Jack Lynch
I shrugged and opened the door. “Whatever works for you. I still think you’d be smart to call up a girlfriend and have her come over for a while.”
“No, I don’t want that. I’ll just have another martini and a couple of sleeping pills and go to bed. Things will look better in the morning. That’s what Harry always said.”
“Yeah. Well, take care of yourself.”
I went back out into the rain. A rolling drum of thunder accompanied my hike down the walk to my car. I got in and started the engine and turned on the wiper blades. For a minute I thought I was seeing things. But I wasn’t. Erica apparently had a quick turn of heart. She was back out in the kitchen. I could just make her out through a rear window. She hadn’t turned the kitchen light back on, but she was silhouetted by the living room light beyond. She was dialing the telephone. She’d decided there was somebody she wanted to talk to after all. In a moment she hung up, and stood pensively, then lifted the receiver and dialed again. I didn’t wait to see if she got her connection this time, but started the drive back over the hill.
FIVE
I drove home to Sausalito through the fog and rain, convinced this day would have been better spent sprawled out on the sofa reading, or on the phone trying to doctor up my social life. I’d had a busy day but I doubted if I’d be paid for it, since I’m seldom able to bring myself to collect from newly made widows and orphans. So far as I knew I didn’t even have a client any longer, which was just as well, because I’d never met such a secretive group of people, and I’m not much for fishing in the dark. Instead of the steak I’d been promised, I had a couple of wieners on a bun and then poured an after-dinner bourbon and water and went back to the living room and turned on the television in hopes of finding something light and airy.
So much for early evening television. I turned that off and put on the radio. I tuned it to the local jazz station then spread some newspapers on the kitchen table and got out the gear to clean the pistol. I was in the middle of that when I got a call from my lieutenant friend in homicide, John Foley.
“Had a call from Craig, down in Redwood City, Pete. They asked me to pass along some information they just got from New York.”
“Why didn’t Craig call me himself? He has my number.”
“He also wanted to ask for our cooperation. He’d like you to come over to the hall tomorrow morning to see if you and the department artist can come up with a rendition of the two airport gunmen.”
“I guess I could try, but not with both of them. One man turned in my direction when I started shooting. The other’s only a vague impression.”
“It’s better than nothing. Ten o’clock all right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good. The other thing is they asked me to lean on you some about who your client is. The information they got from New York makes them more curious than ever.”
“The client was supposed to call them at six.”
“They never heard from him.”
“Why don’t you tell me about the information they got from New York. Then I’ll tell you who the client was.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, I’m out of a job.”
“Tough luck. It seems the guy shot down at the airport was deeply into bookmaking and numbers. And he didn’t get into it just the day before yesterday. He had a long arrest sheet, but only minor convictions.”
“What’s so heavy about that? I understand it’s a way of life back there. A long way out to the track and all.”
“Turns out it’s not so much his infractions against the law but against the people he was tied up with. He acted generally as a bag man for the past year or so. The word going around is that a few weeks ago he started skimming, but they didn’t catch up with him until a few days ago. He smelled it coming, took a last heavy dip and left town. His marriage busted up a few months back and the theory is he decided to gather a bundle and start over somewhere else.”
“And the guys who shot him?”
“NYPD figures they were hired hands to nail him and get back the money. Since you’re now connected to this Polaski, Redwood City thought maybe you should keep one eye over your shoulder for a few days. I take it they didn’t get their money back.”
“Not so far as I know. The story makes sense, from what little I know about it. The guy who was behind my being hired was this Polaski himself. Not that he wanted me in particular, just anybody who could be added protection. He had a friend in San Francisco who happened to know me and asked me to walk around with Polaski for a while when he got in at the airport.”
“Who was the connection, Pete?”
“Harry Shank, a pretty high mucky-muck at the Chronicle.”
“What was his connection with Polaski?”
“Harry wouldn’t tell me. And with Polaski’s background, I can understand why.”
“Maybe you’d better call Redwood City yourself, and tell them how they can get in touch with Shank.”
“They can’t. Harry lives at Stinson Beach. On his way home this evening his car went off the cliff road. He’s dead.”
Foley was silent for a minute. “You know, Pete, it isn’t even my piece of work, and I don’t like it.”
“I know how it sounds, but cars do go off that road, even in broad daylight when the sun is shining. I talked to a highway patrolman. He said it looked like an accident.”
Foley grunted. “Still and all, those people back east have no sense of humor. They like to come down on anybody remotely connected with stealing from them. If they didn’t, people would try robbing them all the time. I think if I were you I’d spend the night somewhere else.”
“My relationship was pretty tenuous.”
“You shot at them. They won’t think that was so tenuous. You prevented their grabbing the money, or at least they think so.”
“If they’re from out of town how would they know where I live?”
“Get off it. You’ve lived in that dumpy little apartment enough years so they could find out.”
“Hey, you’re talking about my home, Foley. There’s nothing dumpy about it.”
“That’s what you think. I’d leave, Pete. Seriously.”
“I’ll think about it. See you in the morning.”
I finished the cleaning job and I did think about it. The odds were remote that the gunmen would come looking for me, and I particularly resented the fact that I no longer had a client to charge out-of-pocket expenses to. On the other hand I hadn’t come this far in the business by acting like a dummy. I threw some clothes into a suitcase, along with a .38 revolver and, after thinking about it some, my .45 Colt automatic as well, along with some extra shells and the bottle of bourbon, and turned out the lights and went and spent the night in a motel.
An interesting thing happened the next morning at the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street while I was working with the police artist trying to get an accurate portrait of the Polaski killer who had turned in my direction. John Foley came down from homicide with a particularly sober expression, which on Foley looks funny. He’s not a tall man, and he has a baby face with all sorts of freckles and a skin highly susceptible to the sun. The first time I met him he’d recently bought a sailboat to spend weekends on the bay. He had what on anybody else would have been a mild case of sunburn. But when I saw it on Foley I thought he had some terrible skin disease, until we got to know each other better.
Foley stood at my elbow, staring at the drawing as the artist, an officer named Welby, put on some finishing shading. “Is that one of them?”
“As near as I can recall.”
“They are very single-minded how they go about things, those two,” said Foley. “They just knocked over the sheriff’s property room in Redwood City.”
I turned. Welby almost dropped his pencil.
“You don’t mean it.”
“Just talked with Craig again. He meant it. They came in impersonating a couple of our people from upstairs. Plain clothes. Phoney SFPD identific
ation. Said they wanted to look at the luggage belonging to the dead man at the airport. Their ID was good enough so the deputy at the counter dutifully brought it over. Then the two said they meant they wanted to bring it up here for our own lab to go over it. About then the deputy began to smell something wrong and tried to stall them, saying he had to check with higher authority. As you might guess the two men wanted none of that. They pulled pistols and took the two pieces of luggage. The deputy sensed they weren’t going to take the time to tie and gag him. He dropped behind the counter just as the pair started shooting. The deputy was nicked, but it’s nothing serious. While the suspects were making their way back through the building the deputy phoned an alarm but the two were out the front door and on their way to the parking lot before anybody was mobilized enough to stop them. The two had a dark sedan and a driver waiting. There were some shots fired at them on their way out of the lot, but nobody claimed any damage. Patrol cars in the area were alerted, but it looks as if they’re gone.”
Welby returned to his pad with a shake of his head. In the interest of departmental cooperation Foley asked him to take his drawing down to Redwood City when he was finished with it to see if it could be improved on by the fresh memory of the San Mateo County deputy who had been in the property room.
I drove back to the parking garage across from the Chronicle building and walked up to Market Street then down to the office building where I share a suite of rooms with a couple of attorneys. We were getting a break in the downpour of rain. I had phoned Carol Jean Mackey, our receptionist and secretary, that morning from the motel to let her know I’d be stopping by. She greeted me with a broad smile. She’s a tall, long-boned thing with a face too angular to be called pretty, but she’s smart, efficient and has a trenchant insight into her fellow man. The smile meant something was up.
“Decided to come back to work, Mr. B?”
“Not really. I was in the area and decided to go through the mail.”
“I think you should think about coming back to work.”
“Why? I’m solvent.”
“Yes, but there’s a lady I let into your office to wait who wants to hire you.”
“Something interesting?”
“I don’t know about the job, but she is. If I were a man and she wanted to hire me I’d skip rope for her.”
I went on into the office. The lady was Erica Shank.
“Peter, thank heavens. I was afraid you might not come in.”
“Hello, Erica. How are you feeling this morning?”
She started to speak, but then just lifted one shoulder. She was wearing a tan trenchcoat belted tightly, black boots and a navy blue beret.
“Are you cold?” I asked, settling behind the desk.
“Not really. Just feeling as if I want to be snug in a security blanket this morning.” She loosened the belt.
“Ceejay has some coffee on. Would you like a cup?”
“No, thank you, Peter. I’m here to ask a favor. Well not a favor, really. I want you to do something for me. I’d pay whatever your regular fee is.”
“You mean you want to hire me, as a detective? If it’s about Harry’s accident…”
“It’s not about Harry’s accident. I mean, not really. If there hadn’t been an accident, then of course this wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s not too much I can tell. I want you to fly up to the state of Washington and try to find a man named Catlin. He’s somebody Harry knew. He’s supposed to live just outside a little town called Forks, out on the Olympic Peninsula.”
“I know where it is. What am I supposed to do when I find him?”
“Just tell him everything that’s happened. Tell him I want to see him.”
“It sounds all of a sudden as if you know a great deal more about what’s going on than you let on last night.”
“Oh, Peter, I don’t, that’s just the thing. Mr. Bowman won’t tell me anything, but he said Catlin could still make everything work, if I could get in touch with him. He said Catlin was a major figure in whatever all this is about.”
“Wait a minute. When did you talk to Bowman?”
“This morning. He’d heard about Harry’s death on the news. He said it was essential we get in touch with Catlin. I looked through Harry’s study at home. He has an address book, but Catlin’s name wasn’t in it. But then Harry was always mysterious about things like that. He memorized lots of things. And he’d devise little codes for others.”
“What sort of others?”
“That’s just it, he kept so much of his life a secret. He would scribble little messages that don’t make sense to anyone else, but he’d put them away in folders, so they must have meant something to him.”
“Maybe he had Catlin’s name in a directory at the office.”
“No. He told me once he didn’t keep personal things at work. I phoned the paper this morning anyway, just to ask if he had Catlin’s name in his personal phone directory. They couldn’t find it. Nothing under Forks, either.”
“Maybe directory assistance could find him.”
“I tried that too, this morning. Either this Catlin doesn’t have a telephone or it’s unlisted. Mr. Bowman’s all in favor of your going to find him as well.”
“I suppose he is. Look, Erica, if I take this on you’re just another client. I cost money. With expenses, even if I could walk into Forks and tap this Catlin on the shoulder ten minutes later, it would cost you several hundred dollars. I’d have to fly to Seattle then rent a car and take the ferry out of Edmonds and spend several more hours driving.”
“I don’t care, Peter. It’s important.”
“How do you know it is?”
She hesitated long enough to form a thought. “Because Mr. Bowman said it is. And Harry. He was obsessed by it the past few weeks.”
“That’s not good enough, Erica,” I told her, getting out of the chair and pacing to the window. “All you’ve got is the word of an eccentric old clay bank of a man and your dead husband, who you admitted was secretive about things. What do you know about Catlin? He might be dead, even. On top of that, in the background you have this guy Polaski who was tied up in it somehow and got killed for his trouble by a couple of toughies perfectly willing to destroy anything in sight to get what they came after. They shot up the sheriff’s office in Redwood City just a little while ago.” I shook my head at their nerve.
“It’s too dangerous,” I told her, turning back. “Not without knowing more about this thing than you, or Bowman, your husband, or Polaski all rolled together have told me.”
Right then I saw a new side to Erica, or at least the hint of one. Usually she was a sensitive, warm, flirtatious woman. But a breath of crisp winter air now entered her manner and tone of voice.
“Peter, I’ve made up my mind. Maybe you think it isn’t enough to go on. I’m willing to take that gamble. I’ve lived with the tension in Harry for weeks. I know how important it was to him. If he could fit all the pieces together, he told me once, he’d be in a position to quit the paper. Forever. He said we could travel. Even live abroad, if we wished. That appeals to me now even more than it did then, Peter. I think I could be quite a successful widow.”
She wasn’t kidding. She meant to have this thing run its course and she’d flatten anything that got in her way. I slumped back down behind the desk and watched her fish into her bag. She brought out a sealed envelope and laid it on the desk in front of her.
“I’ve been to the bank this morning, Peter. This is two thousand dollars. That should pay for your efforts on Harry’s behalf yesterday and still serve as a retainer to do this for me, no matter how long it might take you. I mean to have Catlin found. If you won’t do it I’ll go through the phone book until I find somebody who will. I’d much prefer you, of course. I’ve always been fond of you. And I trust you.”
I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. Erica watched me closely as my mind sorted and weighed
and measured. I think probably what decided it for me was that photograph on the Shank living room wall—those men in combat gear, standing in a jungle clearing, Polaski among them. What could those men have been up to those many years before that led to whatever it was Erica wanted me to take a hand in now? One thing, I’d never learn what it was if Erica had to go out looking for another investigator. I sighed and brought my eyes back from the ceiling.
“You know, if it’s raining down here, I hate to think what it’ll be doing up in Forks about now.”
She brightened. The chill went away. “You mean you’ll do it?”
“I guess so, but please don’t tell anybody. They’d think I’d grown fond of martinis for breakfast.”
“Oh, Peter!” She came out of her chair and around the desk before I had a chance to brace myself for whatever she had in mind, which turned out to be a very direct kiss on the mouth while she held my face between her hands. This was no friendly buss, but a lingering kiss with her lips parted in a provocative manner, which at least I wasn’t sucker enough to explore just then. It did occur to me how swell it was for her to have bounced back so quickly from the grievous death of old Harry the night before.
She finally stepped back. “That’s a little bonus for being such a comfort at a time like this, Peter. There will be another waiting for you when you return with word of Catlin.”
I cleared my throat and moved around in my chair some, while Erica recinched her belt and prepared to leave. “I’m glad you mentioned that. I almost forgot what you wanted me to do.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, Peter. I’ll always be around to remind you of what I want done. How soon can you leave?”
“As soon as I find out which airport has the next plane to Seattle that I can get on.”
When she left I phoned around and booked a seat on a United flight out of Oakland International across the Bay. It suited me fine. Parking was better there than at San Francisco. I asked Ceejay to bank the money, and I put on my coat and left. Waiting for me outside my office doorstep like a faithful hound or a good reporter was Bryan Gilkerson.
