by Paul Hina
#1 looks at #2. #2 punches Clay in the ribs, just above the stomach. He falls against Goon #1. #1 moves off his stool, and Clay hits #1's empty stool, knocking it over and falling with it onto the floor. He squirms for a minute on the floor, trying to get his breath back. It's clear that #2 knows where to hit a guy to maximize pain.
After a minute of nothing but that slow, sullen Jazz swimming in his ears, Clay finally gets his wind back, gets up, and climbs back onto the stool as stoically as he can.
"You guys drive a hard bargain," Clay says, sitting back on his stool.
"We'll be watching you," Goon #1 says, picking up his bar stool and putting it back in its place. "If you go anywhere near Mr. Ramsey's interests, we'll find you, and we'll put an end to this once and for all."
"Sounds serious."
"You have no idea," #1 says.
"I think I've got it."
"And in case you need any more persuading, here's something to tide you over until your next case," #1 says, throwing an envelope onto the bar in front of Clay. Then he leans into Clay, whispers in his ear, "You better pray you never see my face again."
Then the goons walk back through the door at the rear of the bar.
Clay grabs the ice pack and rests it against his face. He tries to takes a deep breath, but he still feels short of air. He takes the ice pack off and notices a little blood on the towel. His lip is bleeding. He checks his teeth, one by one, on the right side of his mouth. Everything still seems to be in place.
He takes a long drink of scotch, tries to ignore the sting of the alcohol on his bloody lip.
"Hey, Joe. Another scotch, if you don't mind."
The bartender walks over to him. "Listen, pal, do yourself a favor and just get outta here."
Clay opens the envelope that #1 threw on the bar, counts the bills inside. "There's five hundred bucks in it for you if you pour me another scotch."
Seven
When Clay got back to his car in San Francisco there was a Look magazine on the passenger seat. Jack was clearly passing along another message. Clay rifled through the magazine, looking for Jack's new note. It was on the bottom of one of the pages lightly written in pencil.
Milpitas girl, goes by Crystal Lake. Pseudonym. I can buy you time today. Two days tops. My guys will follow you close, but my reports to R will be loose.
Clay knew Jack was throwing him a life jacket. If Clay were to get near anyone too closely connected to Ramsey like, say, Kevin, his tail would report it back to Jack. Jack, though, would conveniently forget to report it to Ramsey, at least for today, and maybe tomorrow. Still, Clay wasn't crazy about putting Jack in the position of having to falsify his reports to Ramsey. Clearly, Jack had become frightened of Ramsey, and from the knocks Clay just took from Ramsey's goons, he probably should be as frightened of the guy as Jack seems to be.
But, for now, he's just mad.
From the moment Clay put his car back on the road to leave San Francisco, a big, blue Ford has been following close behind him. He's not been able to get a good look at the driver, but he's pretty sure it's the same guy who was following him on the street earlier. Once he gets back to San Jose, he's going to have to figure out a way to lose the guy so he can go have a word with Kevin. He knows that Jack will lie for him in his reports to Ramsey, but Clay would rather lose his tail than risk putting Jack in a compromising position. But, if he can't lose the tail, he'll have to put Jack's word to the test.
As Clay moves further away from San Francisco, he ignores the blue Ford behind him, and tries to focus on the case. Time is running out for him to figure this thing out. Normally, he would feel pretty good about how much information he's collected after a day on the job, but with the new schedule he's on, he has no time to pat himself on the back.
Really, there are only a few pieces left to put together. First, he has to find out more about Crystal Lake. If Jack says it's a pseudonym, and Clay's assuming that Brett met her at the Fremont card games, then she was probably one of Ramsey's girls. But Clay's not going to find this out by asking anybody from Ramsey's crew. And since Clay doesn't know a soul in either Fremont or Milpitas, he's hoping Kevin will have an answer for him.
Kevin is really the key to putting all these disparate pieces together. He's probably Clay's only viable connection to Ramsey and the card games. He's hoping that, in addition to getting some answers about Crystal Lake, Kevin will let him know why it is that Ramsey is so interested in getting him off the case. After this morning's run-in with the goons, and after their insistence that he stop his investigation, Clay's sure that Ramsey is mixed up in this mess, even if only tangentially.
Also, it's clear that Kevin was, in some way, involved with the accident. It seems obvious that, since Emma changed the will to benefit him if both she and Brett were to die, she would've discussed it with him at some point. And since she amended the will only days before the accident, she would've included Kevin in any plans she might have had concerning the collection and distribution of Brett's money. And if Emma's plans were murderous, then she would've had to figure out a way to leverage Kevin into getting involved. Unless, of course, Kevin had his own reasons for wanting Brett dead. But Clay doesn't think that's it. His hunch is that, since Kevin was having money trouble with Ramsey, Emma leveraged those debts—and the dangers they might bring—to get Kevin to do what she wanted.
And if it was Crystal, and not Emma, in the car that night, where'd Emma go? What motivation would she have had to flee unless she was behind the accident somehow? It's possible that word got back to her about the accident, that she got spooked, and left town in the middle of the night. But why? And how would she have heard about the accident? Clay's guess is that they—Emma and Kevin—both knew it was going to happen. They had an agreement in place. Kevin would do the dirty work in exchange for a portion of the money from the will to pay off his debts, and Emma would get what was left so that she could start a new life.
Still, though, they must have been counting on the police misidentifying Crystal as Emma. This is where Clay gets stuck. He's not sure how they were confident they could pull it off.
It's not the only place he's stuck. Now that he believes Ramsey is somehow involved, he has to figure out why. For now, all he has are theories, and none of them include all the pieces in the right order.
And he's running out of time.
Still, the only question Wayne hired Clay to answer is the Emma question. All Wayne wants to know is where she went that night, and where she is now. But Clay's got a busted lip, a swollen jaw, sore ribs, and his leg is throbbing more than it has in months. He feels like he's got skin in the game now. If he's going to solve this case, he's going all the way. He's got until the end of the day tomorrow before Jack stops giving him cover, and if he comes up empty, then that's it. He'll have to settle up with what he's got. But, until then, he's going to do all he can to put all those disparate pieces in the right order.
First things first, though, he needs to get back to town, and figure out a way to lose the blue Ford that's tailing him.
Clay pulls into the Braves' stadium parking lot. The ballplayers' cars decorate the spots that line the front, near the entrance gate and box office. He didn't expect them to be here. Today's their day off, and they're starting a road trip tomorrow. Whatever the reason, Clay's glad they're here. The extra people and cars will give him a bit more cover as he tries to shake the guy in the blue Ford.
He grabs a baseball from the floor, the Look magazine from the passenger seat, and gets out of the car. He presses his hand on his ribs as he stands. Even pushing the door shut sends a jolt of agony over his torso. That goon sure did a number on him. He's going to be feeling those two punches for the next couple days for sure.
He can see Maggie sitting at her desk through the window of the box office. He taps on the glass. She looks up, sees his face, and he can immediately see that she's concerned.
She moves toward the door by the office, opens it, but doesn't say a
nything to him at first. She places her hand on his busted jaw, caresses it softly. He wants to lean into her touch, but the fear of the pain makes him hesitate.
"What happened?" she says.
"Ran into some goon's fist," he says, and walks by her into the office.
"Is this still about Brett?"
"What else?"
"You know the guys who hit you?"
"Yeah, it's alright. They're just trying to scare me off their path, that's all."
"Well, they're scaring me."
"Listen," he says, looking out the box office window. "I'm being followed."
"By who? By the guys who beat you up?"
"You don't have to say it like that, do you? A guy only has so much pride, and I'm running low as it is. Besides, there were two of them, and one of them, the one that used me as a punching bag, had a tree trunk for a body. What could I do?"
"And they're the ones following you?"
"No, it's not the same guys. But this guy was hired by their boss," Clay says, backing away from the window and sitting on the edge of Maggie's desk.
"Which car is it?" she asks as she walks up to the edge of the window and peeks out.
"Be careful. I don't want him to see us looking."
"Relax. I'm barely peeking."
"It's the blue Ford behind the rest of the cars in the lot." He walks up behind her, presses his body up against her, and buries his head in her mound of
