Twospot

by Bill Pronzini

  So there was nothing to say to her except good night; I said that and then turned and made my way back between the rows of vines. She had one last thing to say, though, and she said it to my back. “Big man,” she said, but with different meaning and different inflection than any of the times before.

  In my room at the house I picked up the extension phone, punched an “Open Line” button, and dialed the number of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. I did not expect Hastings to be there at this hour on a Sunday night, and he wasn’t. The guy I spoke to on the Homicide Squad said he wasn’t at liberty to give out home telephone numbers or information on where officers could be reached to anyone under any circumstances. I got the switchboard back and asked for my friend Eberhardt, but he was not at the Hall either.

  Telephones, I thought. I was getting pretty damned sick of them.

  I rang up Eberhardt’s house, found him in, and got him to part with Hastings’s home number. When I tried that number, a woman’s voice answered and wanted to know who was calling and then went away with my name; half a minute after that I heard Hastings’s voice.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Maybe something useful. Do you remember the last thing you said to me this morning—about not having any more nighttime wrestling matches in the vineyards?”

  “Vaguely. Why?’

  I explained it to him.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “But even if you’re right, it’s hardly conclusive evidence.”

  “No, but it’s something worth pursuing. Can you recall who told you about it, Frank?”

  “Not offhand. I’ve talked to dozens of people in the past few days. Give me a minute to think.”

  I waited. It seemed even danker in the room than before; I could feel my chest tightening up again. I carried the phone over to the window and raised the sash several inches to let in some fresh air.

  Hastings said at length, “I think I’ve got it. But when I give you the name, what’re you planning to do?”

  “That’s up to you. It’s your baby.”

  “Not exactly. The man we’re talking about is probably up there at the winery with you, and the particular attack in question is the jurisdiction of the Napa County Sheriff’s people.”

  “We could call them in and let them handle it.”

  “We could, but it’s a pretty tenuous thread for any cop to make headway with. At least at this stage.”

  “Well, I could talk to the guy myself. He cracked my head too that night, and I’m the one who chased him; I might be able to spook him a little, get him to admit something incriminating. And then I could go to the local police with a little more substantive information.”

  He thought that over. “You wouldn’t push it hard enough to get yourself in trouble?”

  “No. I know my limits and my obligations”

  “All right then, go ahead. But keep me posted.”

  “I will. Who is he, Frank?”

  “The winemaker up there,” Hastings said. “Paul Rosten.”

  17

  From the top of the hill where the dirt-and-gravel secondary road crested through the line of eucalyptus trees, I had my first look at what was in the shallow valley beyond. Six small cottagetype buildings, set well apart from each other in random arrangement, all but two of them showing light. More rolling acres of vineyards silhouetted against the cloudy black sky. A continuation of the road I was on, winding past the cottages and out of sight across the brow of another hill.

  There was nobody on the road as I took my car down it toward the cottages. There had not been anybody in the vineyards on the other side either, or out around the winery buildings. I wondered if Shelly had gone back to her guest quarters here. Even though Paul Rosten was uppermost in my mind, I had not quite forgotten about her and what had happened a little while ago. The incident had left me with a vague undercurrent of depression, but I did not know if that was because of the discovery we lived in two separate worlds with no common ground, or simply because I had not gotten laid. Genuine regret or wounded male ego?

  The hell with it. I concentrated on Rosten.

  He could have been the man I had chased on Thursday, all right. He had come to the cellar later, with the Cappellanis and Brand and Dockstetter, but he could have doubled back to the house through the eucalyptus and through the vineyards; there had been enough time for him to do that and to catch his breath while I was struggling with Shelly. But what motive could he have for bashing Alex over the head? The two of them seemed to get along well enough, and I had not heard anything about bad blood between them. There evidently had been bad blood between Rosten and Jason Booker, if what I had overheard Brand say in The Boar’s Head was factual, which made it possible that Rosten had been the one to hire Mal Howard to dispose of Booker. But then if Rosten had bludgeoned Alex, why hadn’t he taken care of Booker himself? Another thing: Rosten did not strike me as the type of man to go around hiring hardcases like Howard; he was a follower, it seemed to me, not a leader. So was somebody else behind it all—somebody who gave orders to both Howard and Rosten and who, for whatever melodramatic reason, was known as “Twospot”?

  I gave it up; I just did not know enough facts to begin fitting things together into a coherent pattern.

  When I got down to the nearest of the cottages my headlights picked up the figure of a heavy-set man sitting on the porch steps, smoking a cigarette. I recognized him as the assistant winemaker, a guy named Boylan; Alex had introduced me to him earlier, during our tour of the winery. I had no idea which of the cottages belonged to Rosten, so I parked near Boylan’s place and went over to him to find out.

  He was listening to pop music on a portable radio, and he shut down the volume long enough to answer my question. Rosten’s cottage, he said, was the last one on the east, the one with the oak growing in the front yard. I thanked him and moved along in that direction—and I could feel myself starting to tense up as I went.

  Maybe bearding Rosten this way was a good idea, and maybe it wasn’t. It might have been better if I stayed where I could keep a close eye on Alex tonight and then had my confrontation with Rosten in the morning. But if Rosten was a threat, I wanted to know it as soon as possible. And I had checked Alex again before I left the house: he’d still been asleep. If anything else was going to happen to him, I could not believe it would happen while he was in his own bed.

  So all right, I thought. I’m here, let’s see what goes down.

  Rosten’s place was somewhat larger and set farther back than the rest; it was porchless, built of framewood anchored on a two-foot stone foundation. A dented, dark-colored Ford pick-up sat off to one side, and on the other side was what looked to be a small vegetable garden dominated by tomato vines. The oak tree was big and leafy and threw heavy shadows over the packed-dirt walk that led up in front. Light glowed behind a shaded window to the left of the door; the window was open a foot or so.

  I came up to the door without making any noise: because I had learned to walk softly while I was on the cops and because of the packed ground, rather than with any conscious intent at silence. The night was quiet too, hushed except for the faint droning of insects and the distant rise and fall of music from Boylan’s radio. Both of those things—my silent approach, the night’s stillness—kept Rosten from hearing me and at the same time let me hear him when his voice said suddenly from inside, muted but distinct, “This is Paul. I’ve been trying to get you for the past five minutes.”

  I came to a standstill two feet from the door. My first thought was that he had company, but then I realized he must have just called someone on the telephone—the bloody telephone again. Unlike the pulp detectives, I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping; but this was a special case. I stayed where I was and listened.

  “Do you still want me to go ahead?” Rosten’s voice said.

  Pause.

  “I just don’t like it, that’s all. What if something else goes wrong?”
>
  Pause.

  “I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

  Pause.

  “When?”

  Pause.

  “What about that private detective?”

  Pause.

  “All right. Yes—I understand.”

  There was another moment of silence and then a banging, ringing noise, the kind a phone handset makes when it’s slammed down into its cradle. As soon as I heard that I made a half-turn and eased backward and at an angle through the deeper shadows of the oak, putting its thick trunk between me and the cottage.

  The muscles in my chest and stomach were knotted up: apprehension, urgency. There was little enough doubt in my mind now that Rosten was Thursday night’s attacker. What I had just listened to did not have to mean anything ominous, but that was the way I had read it; instinct told me Rosten and whoever had been on the other end of the line were talking about another attempt on Alex’s life—and soon, maybe tonight. So there was nothing to be gained in my confronting him now; he would only deny guilt—or maybe even make a try for me, too, when my back was turned. There was no way of telling how dangerous he was, how desperate the motives were behind all of this. My obligation was to Alex; I had to alert him, convince him to leave here as quickly as possible, stash him somewhere safe, and then take my suspicions to the police and let them worry about breaking the truth out of Rosten.

  I stepped out of the yard, still in shadow, and broke into a run toward the road, onto it. The front door to Rosten’s cottage remained closed. I ran up to where I had left my car, started the engine, swung into a U-turn, and headed back up the hill. There was still nothing to see behind me when I cleared the crest and started through the trees.

  When I drove past the deserted cellar buildings to where the house lane intersected the road, a car was just coming out: Leo’s Lincoln Continental, with Leo alone at the wheel. He raised a hand to me as he made the turn, heading toward the Silverado Trail. I let him go; with his supercilious attitude, there was nothing I could expect him to do except get in the way.

  I left the car half on the parking area and half on the road and hurried inside the house. Cold silence greeted me; you could have heard insects crawling in there. I went up the stairs two at a time, bypassed my room, caught the knob on Alex’s door, and pushed inside.

  And came to an abrupt stop because the bed was empty, the room was empty.

  Alex was gone.

  The first thing I did was to run down the upstairs hall, knocking on doors and throwing them open. But the rooms were all dark, unoccupied. Then I came pounding downstairs again and looked into the family room, the dining room, a parlor. Empty, all of them. I was on my way to the office when the Chicano maid came out of another doorway and peered at me with wide eyes.

  I said, “Where’s Alex? Have you seen him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Mrs. Cappellani?”

  One hand came up and pointed at the office door. I ran to there, shoved it open, and went inside by a couple of steps. Rosa was sitting behind the desk with a big ledger book in front of her and a pencil upraised in one hand like a sceptre. And she was alone.

  Her expression fluctuated between annoyance at my sudden entrance and concern at what she must have seen in my face. The concern won out when I said sharply, “Have you seen Alex?”

  “Isn’t he in his room?”

  “He’s not in the house at all.”

  “You’re upset. What is it, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t have time to explain now.”

  I wheeled around, nearly collided with the maid beyond the doorway, brushed past her, and hustled up to the foyer again. Where the hell was he? And why had he left his room, left the house? A walk to clear his head, maybe—or, Jesus, maybe Rosten had called him and arranged a meeting somewhere on some sort of pretext; I had not even considered that possibility.

  There was a cold sweat on my body when I lumbered outside again; I could feet it trickling down from my armpits. My responsibility, goddamn it. If anything happened to Alex tonight, it was my fault, I was supposed to be his goddamn bodyguard. . .

  I ran past my car without even realizing it was there. Where? I was thinking. Down at the cellar? At one of the other buildings? Out in the vineyards? Where? Then I thought about the car, taking the car, but I was already out through the gate and onto the road. I hesitated, took a step back toward the lane—and saw the pick-up truck down in the yard before the nightlit cellar.

  The same Ford pick-up I had seen parked alongside Rosten’s cottage.

  A sensation like the touch of a cold hand settled on my neck and between my shoulders. The pick-up was backed up near the cellar’s entrance, and its headlights were on, laying an elongation of light across the gravel and across the road beyond; I could just hear the steady rumble of its engine. Nothing moved down there —there was just the truck and the frozen beams of light.

  I started to run again.

  But I had not gone more than ten yards, into heavy shadow from the bordering oaks, when the shapes of two men appeared through the big brassbound doors, crowded close together, one pushing the other toward the pick-up. I pulled up again, on reflex In the pale shine of the nightlights I could identify both of them, all right—not clearly but clearly enough. I could not identify the object Rosten was holding in one hand, but I knew what that was too. The sensation of coldness deepened and spread; I tasted bile mixed with the brassiness of fear.

  I did not know what to do. Neither Rosten nor Alex was looking in my direction, could not have seen me in the shadows if they had been; they were at the passenger door of the pick-up, and Rosten had it open and was pushing Alex inside to the wheel. I couldn’t get to where they were before they were ready to drive off—and if I tried it anyway, or if I yelled to let them know I saw them, Rosten might panic and start shooting. Do something, for Christ’s sake! I backed up, got off the road and into a thicker pocket of blackness. Rosten was inside the pick-up too, now; I heard the engine sound magnify, saw the truck jerk forward and the lights swing around in a left-hand quadrant. They were not coming this way. They were heading back to the east, onto the secondary road that led through the vineyards to the cottages.

  I was already moving by then. I raced back to the lane, and just as I got to it Mrs. Cappellani appeared in front of me: she must have followed me down from the house. For the first time she seemed to have lost some of her imperious composure; her face was a white frightened oval in the darkness.

  “Call the police,” I yelled at her, “tell them Alex has been kidnapped—tell them it’s Paul Rosten.”

  She gaped at me. “Kidnapped? Paul?”

  “Do what I told you, call the police!”

  I shoved past her and made it to where my car was. My breath had a clogged feel in my chest; sweat fused my shirt to my skin, made the palms of my hands slick. I dragged the door open, slid inside. And kicked the engine to life, jammed the transmission lever into reverse, threw my right arm over the seat back, and laid into the accelerator.

  The car bucked backward, picked up speed and began to yaw; I had a death grip on the wheel with my left hand. Through the rear window I saw Mrs. Cappellani scurry out of the way, waving one arm up and down in a gesture that seemed to have no meaning. Then I was past her and through the gate, onto the road in a sliding right-angle turn.

  I hit the brakes and got the wheel straightened out and the transmission into Drive. The tires spun in place, smoking, before they caught traction and sent me lurching ahead. I left the headlights off; the last thing I wanted was for Rosten to know right away that I was coming.

  When I was abreast of the cellar, still driving too fast and too recklessly, I could see up the secondary road to the line of eucalyptus trees. Empty. No sign of the pick-up.

  Where was he taking Alex? His cottage, possibly—but that made no sense; you don’t for God’s sake bring somebody to your house to kill him. For that matter, why hadn’t Rosten just finished him of
f in the cellar? Questions, questions. And one more, the most important one: what was I going to do to help Alex when I caught up with them?

  Cross that bridge when you come to it, I told myself grimly. Find them first, take it one step at a time.

  I made a skidding turn onto the secondary road, and I had no choice then but to slow down. The car jounced on the rutted dirt-and-gravel surface, its old springs shrieking in protest; there was the danger of a tire blowing, of losing control. And the night’s heavy blackness shrouded the vineyards, moonless and starless because of the running mass of clouds, so that I could not see more than two hundred feet ahead of me with any clarity.

  Working the brakes, I cut my speed to thirty as I climbed to the top of the hill. Once I got into the eucalyptus trees I had to chop it all the way down to ten miles per hour: I could barely make out the roadbed in the dark and almost missed negotiating the curve there as it was. On the far side, where I had a clear look down to the cottages, I gave her more gas and hunched forward to scan the area.

  There was no activity around any of the cottages, no automobile lights anywhere in the valley; the road was empty all the way to the next hill. But beyond there I could see a suggestion of light against the inky sky. I had no idea what lay in that direction, where the road went or how far it went—but that was where they were.

  The slope on the far side of the second hill turned out to be gradual and to blend into a long rumpled terrain full of little hillocks, all of them coated with grape vines. The road curled away to the left and skirted a narrow but longish section ribbed with outcroppings of limestone. I thought I saw the blood-colored flicker of a taillight over there, just as I topped the hill, but then it was gone; the long rocky section hid the path of the road beyond.

  I resisted the impulse for more speed—I was not going to do Alex any good at all if I pushed myself into an accident. The tension had tightened up my chest again, making my breath come in short coughing pants. I sleeved sweat out of my eyes, worked saliva through my dry mouth and into the back of my throat.