Two choices, then: turn right, on Clipper, or drive straight ahead. Fifty-fifty.
Inching the car forward as, yes, a horn blared behind him, he saw the three getting into the BMW, closing the door. Behind the wheel, Diane was settling herself, ready to drive off. Through the intersection now, out of her sight, he pulled to the right, stopped, gestured for the irate drivers behind to go around.
As, in the mirror, he saw the green BMW turning left, coming toward him. Giving him time enough to turn his head away, put his hand up beside his face. The BMW passed him with only a few feet of clearance. He waited for the BMW to get a half block ahead, then put the Buick in gear and drove slowly forward.
10 P.M., PDT
“I’VE GOT TO ADMIT,” Paula said, “that you were right. The life of a private detective is pretty dull. So far, at least.” She spoke into a cellular phone mounted between the front seats of Bernhardt’s aging Honda Accord. Across the street, lights went on in the apartment beneath Carley Hank’s big bay window. Accounting, therefore, for the downstairs front tenants, a man and a woman who’d just entered the building.
On the telephone, Bernhardt chuckled. “How about if I come over there? We could schmooze.”
“No, thanks. I want to be treated just like any other employee. No perks.”
“Hmmm.”
“I could come over later, though. Make my report.”
Lasciviously: “Hmmm.”
“How long should I give it, after she comes home?”
“I guess that’ll depend on what happens. If Carley’s boyfriend stays all night, I’d leave as soon as they’re all inside, locked in. If Diane’s alone—if they drop her off—I’d intercept her on the sidewalk. I’d go inside with her, make sure the rear entrance to her building is secure. Then I’d go into her apartment with her, check that out, mostly to reassure her, get her settled. I’d make sure she has our phone numbers. Then, after I’d checked the lock on the front door of the apartment house, which I’m sure is in good shape, I’d go back to the car. I’d wait for her lights to go out, then I’d give it another hour. And then—” His voice changed to a playfully erotic note. “Then I’d come back here. I’d say hello to Crusher, maybe give him a dog biscuit. Then I’d get into bed, and make my report.”
“Hmmm.”
11:10 P.M., PDT
PARKED THREE CARS BEHIND the BMW, Kane saw two uniformed policemen coming toward him, walking their beat. One of the policemen was eyeing two women walking on the same side of the street. One of the women, a garishly bleached blonde, wore skintight black leathers studded with bright steel. Defiantly, the blonde was returning the cop’s stare. The blonde’s companion, miniskirted, her spiked hair dyed a bright orange, leaned close to her friend. They said something to each other, looked at the policemen, then laughed. As the policemen and the women passed shoulder to shoulder, one of the policemen tapped the blonde’s buttocks with his nightstick. The reaction was a professional-looking shimmy, then loud, good-natured laughter.
On Friday night, on Polk Street, the natives were looking for action.
Kane yawned, blinked, tried to find a comfortable position behind the steering wheel. Moving from one parking place to another for more than two hours, he’d been watching the BMW—while the cops had begun to eye him as they passed. Soon, he knew, one of them would say something to him. While one of them was questioning him, the other cop might run his license plate through the police computers, playing the percentages. Paying cash, he’d flown from Atlanta using a fake name. He’d used the same name at the cheap, no-questions-asked hotel, also paying cash. But when he’d rented the Buick, he’d had to show his driver’s license and credit card.
Did professional hit men use fake ID? Did the professional establish a complete identity, a trail that led nowhere?
Fifty thousand dollars Daniels would give him, when the job was done …
Once it would have seemed like a fortune. Now it seemed no more than a down payment on a life of power, a life of privilege. One skull accidentally crushed on Cape Cod, and he’d joined the firm, Daniels and Kane. Another skull crushed in San Francisco, a street killing, and he became a full partner. First hit her with the pipe, to put her down. Hit her again, for insurance—and again. Five, ten seconds, no more. Take her purse, get back in the car, get away. One more mugging that went wrong. In New York, it happened every night, hundreds of times a night. In San Francisco—
Diane and Carley Hanks and the man were coming toward him, part of a crowd leaving the theater, just around the corner. They went to the BMW and Diane opened the passenger door. Kane started the Buick’s engine, put the car in gear, backed up beside a fireplug, ready to follow. As he waited, Kane reached beneath his seat to touch the iron pipe. Then he opened the glove compartment, found the surgical gloves, slipped them on.
11:40 P.M., PDT
“WE’RE GOING TO DALE’S,” Carley said from the back seat. “You can have the apartment to yourself.”
“For the whole weekend,” Dale added.
“Almost the whole weekend,” Carley corrected. “I’ll be back late Sunday. We’re going up to the Sea Ranch tomorrow.”
“Whatever.” Diane downshifted, stopped the car for a traffic light at Castro and Twenty-fourth Street. A few blocks more and they’d be at Noe near Clipper, home.
Carley’s home. Not her home.
“Would you let me drive this car someday?” Dale asked.
“Sure. We can go over to Marin County sometime.”
“Great. We can go up the coast to Bolinas. This car’d be great on that road.”
“We can have a picnic,” Carley said. “How about next Sunday?”
As they all agreed, Dale pointed ahead. “My car’s parked in the next block, to the right. You want my parking place, Diane?”
Considering, she braked, downshifted again, turned the corner, slowed the BMW to a crawl. Yes, Dale’s red Mustang was parked on the right side of the street.
“You’d better take it, Diane,” Carley advised. “You won’t get any closer to the apartment, believe me. Not on Friday night.”
They were on Clipper Street, almost two blocks from the apartment, around the corner. Should she ask them to wait for her, give her a ride to the apartment after she’d parked her car? She could imagine their conversation, after they dropped her off. Poor Diane. Spooked. So easily spooked.
She braked to a stop just behind the Mustang, and waited for them to get out of the car. Politely, they both were saying good night. But, plainly, they were thinking about each other—about their Friday night of love.
11:46 P.M., PDT
AHEAD, THE BMW WAS stopping. With a half-block separating them, Kane braked the Buick to a stop. Now the BMW’s passenger door was swinging open. The man was getting out, holding the door for the woman, Carley Hanks. The couple was smiling and waving at Diane Cutler, still inside the BMW. Now, as the man turned to a vintage red Mustang parked nearby and opened the passenger door, the BMW was backing up and then stopping, its front bumper aligned with the rear bumper of the Mustang. When the Mustang pulled out, Diane would take the parking place, a block and a half from the apartment.
Kane put the Buick in gear, checked the mirrors, then drove forward, past the BMW and the Mustang. At the corner, he turned right onto Noe. Her apartment building was midway in the block. He passed the building, made a U-turn at the next intersection, came back on the opposite side of the street. He pulled into a double driveway, to face her as she came walking toward him. He switched off the Buick’s headlights, set the handbrake. Already, he calculated, she would be parked, would be walking toward the corner.
In minutes, it would be settled. Finished. Daniels’s empire, secured.
And for him a fortune. Daniels with his checkbook open, he with his hand at Daniels’s throat.
Should he restart the engine?
Yes, start the engine, let it idle. Play the percentages.
Twisting the key, his fingers were trembling. His fin
gers, his legs, the pit of his stomach, everything. On Cape Cod, there had been no trembling. On Cape Cod, he’d—
Ahead, a figure was turning the corner, coming toward him. A woman. Diane. Surely Diane. Looking to his left, he verified that, yes, the window of her apartment was dark. No one was expecting her, watching for her.
Was the engine running? Yes, slowly ticking over. Soon the engine would be his single salvation. The engine that propelled the car, the arm that swung the pipe: there was nothing else. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Seconds, now, as she came steadily closer.
With his left hand, carefully, he tripped the door latch, began pushing the door open. On the other side of the street, she was coming closer—closer. The pipe was in his right hand, grasped so tightly that it was part of himself.
Closer—closer—
When she was directly across the street, he would—
The light.
The car’s interior light, exposing him.
Should he draw the door shut again, switch off the light, making himself once more invisible in the darkness? Or should he get out of the car, commit himself?
The minutes were gone; only seconds remained.
11:46:20 P.M., PDT
WATCHING THE DARK-COLORED SEDAN approaching on the opposite side of the street, Paula saw it pass the apartment building, saw it continue to the next intersection, where it made a U-turn. Still traveling at hardly more than a crawl, the car was returning on her side of the street. Inside the car there was only the driver: a man, his shadowed face turned straight ahead as he passed. His manner, the speed of his car, everything suggested that he was searching for a parking place, a ritual she’d seen repeated many times during the hours she’d been parked across the street from Carley’s apartment building.
The man was driving a new American car, a Buick, she thought, or an Oldsmobile. Three cars ahead of her, he was pulling into a double driveway, switching off his headlights. With the three cars between them, it was impossible for her to see the driver. But he was parked beneath the sodium-bright cone of a streetlight; if he left the car, she would see him clearly. Could it be John Williams, the mysterious voice on the phone? Could it be Bruce Kane, Preston Daniels’s pilot? Kane, she knew, was a man of medium build, muscular, with short cropped hair and a barroom bouncer’s face. He—
At the corner of Noe and Clipper, a solitary figure appeared, turned right, passed beneath another streetlight.
Diane. Almost certainly, Diane. Alone.
Had her friends simply dumped her out of the car, instead of bringing her to her door? Hadn’t Diane told them of her fears?
The answer, she knew, was no. It was part of Diane’s self-imposed teenage isolation that she wouldn’t tell her friends she was afraid. Neither would she—could she—tell her parents, the antagonists who, together and apart, had burdened Diane Cutler so cruelly.
As her solitary figure came steadily closer, Paula saw a plume of exhaust gas rising from the car parked in the double driveway ahead.
But the car wasn’t moving.
As, ahead and across the street, Diane had covered almost half the distance from the corner to Carley Hanks’s apartment building. The building was in the middle of the block, almost directly across the street from Paula’s position. Diane was—
In the car ahead, the interior light came on.
11:48 P.M., PDT
SHE LOOKED OVER HER shoulder, back the way she’d come. The sidewalk was deserted. Where was Paula Brett—in which car, on which side of the street?
Paula Brett, lady private eye. A soft-talking socialite, a dabbler.
Alan Bernhardt, the actor turned detective. Jokes, both of them. Carley’s little joke. Could protection be bought for a few hundred dollars? Security at bargain-basement prices, amateur night?
If she’d known the restaurant would be so crowded, and the movie so dull, she would have let Carley and Dale go alone. Politely, they’d asked her to go along. Carley, the do-gooder, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Shirley Temple, with her hair in ringlets. Dale, the fraternity man, Mr. Clean. Show him a line of coke, and he would be out the door, gone.
And Carley, too—gone.
Jokes.
A few more buildings and she would be home. When she was in the apartment, Paula had said, she must—
On the other side of the street, in a car parked across two driveways, an interior light came on. The driver’s door was swinging open; a man was getting out of the car: a familiar figure, under the streetlight.
Kane.
11:49 P.M., PDT
WITHOUT REALIZING THAT SHE’D done it, Paula had opened the driver’s door, stepped out into the street.
Just as, ahead, the door of the stranger’s car was swinging open. The driver was stepping out of the car, carefully closing his door. He was a man of medium build. Dark hair, close-cropped. Muscular build, muscular stance, muscular movements.
Kane’s description.
Kane, moving across the street toward Diane.
Paula was moving toward the invisible line that connected Diane and the man, the three of them a triangle.
Kane. Surely it was Kane.
Kane, walking unnaturally. Concealing something along his right side.
A gun?
Paula felt herself faltering. The whistle. She’d left the whistle in the car, on the key ring.
Diane, momentarily frozen, helplessly turning to face the man.
Paula, advancing, closing one side of the triangle. A dozen more steps, and it would be a straight line, with her in the middle.
Kane, his eyes fixed on Diane, advancing. As, behind her, Paula heard the sound of a car, turning the corner into Noe. Headlight beams, sweeping the three of them.
Should she—?
Suddenly Diane made a high, desperate sound, then broke to her right, toward Carley’s building—diagonally toward Paula. Running wildly now. Instantly, Kane lunged forward. His right hand came up. It was a weapon—a club.
“Kane,” Paula screamed. “Don’t. Drop it, you bastard.”
As if he’d been struck, Kane broke stride, turned toward her. The car’s horn blared; headlights glared. Diane had almost reached Carley’s building; Paula, shouting abuses, obscenities, was running toward the girl, to protect her. Horn still blaring, the car was past the three of them. A man’s voice, shouting. Another foul-mouthed driver, gone now. Almost to Diane, Paula turned to face Kane. His back was to her. He was running. He reached his car, pulled the door open, slid in behind the steering wheel. Defeated. Miraculously, defeated. Running.
12:10 A.M., PDT
PROPPED ON ONE ELBOW, in bed, Bernhardt blinked, pressed the phone closer to his ear, listened intently. Then: “It was Kane? And he—what—ran away? Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Paula answered.
“On foot? Is that what you mean?”
“He ran to his car, and drove away. Fast. Well, medium fast.”
“Did you get the license number?”
“No, Alan, I didn’t.” She spoke contritely. “I—Diane was so upset—I went to her, to help her. And there was a car coming. It—it all happened so quickly. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry.”
“This car. Do you know what kind of car it was? American? Foreign?”
“American, definitely. An Oldsmobile, or maybe a Buick. Anyhow, General Motors. I think.”
“And Diane’s all right?”
“She’s upset. Scared silly, in fact. Me, too.”
Bernhardt blinked again. “You ran him off, eh?”
“I told you that, Alan. Jesus.” Her voice was ragged.
“My God, you’re tougher than you look.”
“It was mostly reflexes, I’m afraid.” Her voice was still ragged.
“And you’re sure the door to the apartment is secure.”
“It’s bolted, if that’s what you mean.”
“And you’re inside with Diane. You’re calling from her phone. Is that it?”
“Yes
.”
“All right. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Where’re the keys to your car?”
“On the mantel.”
“Okay. Sit tight.” About to put the phone aside, he heard her say, “Your car’s across the street from Carley’s. It isn’t locked, and the keys are in the ignition. The keys, and the whistle, too.”
12:45 A.M., PDT
WITH DIANE SITTING HUNCHED on the sofa, Bernhardt gestured for Paula to join him as he went to the bay window and looked down into the street below.
“He was parked in that double driveway across the street.” Speaking in a low voice, Paula pointed. “Diane’s car is around the corner, on Clipper.” She pointed again. “She was almost directly across from him, when he opened the door and went for her.”
“And you’re sure that’s what was happening. You’re sure he had a weapon.”
“He ran away. Instantly. If he weren’t guilty, he wouldn’t’ve run.”
He smiled, touched her hand. “It’s like I said on the phone, you’re tougher than you look.” In admiration, he incredulously shook his head. “You ran the bastard off.”
“Still, I’m glad you’re here.” She returned the smile and touched the revolver holstered on his belt, concealed by a poplin jacket. “You and your friend.”
He nodded, yawned, glanced over his shoulder at the girl. Still sitting on the couch, she was staring into the half-filled tumbler of whiskey she held in both hands before her, as if it were an offering. Then, gravely, she began drinking.
“That’s her fourth,” Paula whispered. “Double shots. At least.”
Bernhardt nodded, walked across the room to the girl, took a chair facing her. “You’d better go easy on that, Diane. You’re probably in delayed shock.”
Except for the Bones Page 17