Everything about that blaze tonight smacked of bug work too. The explosion . . . some kind of ignition device using volatile chemicals or fulminants, with a timer to allow Black-well to get well clear of the area. The speed in which the fire had spread indicated the use of boosters, "trailers," or both: kerosene or gasoline or solvent as an accelerant; a fast-burning substance such as wood shavings, excelsior, or cotton waste soaked in more fluid accelerant to run the fire in different directions. Amateurs don't set fires like that one tonight. It takes knowledge and skill.
Torches usually work for arson rings—tightly organized outfits that service well-insured business people who can't make a go of things and are open to a fast, lucrative, and unscrupulous way out. The rings operate almost solely on word of mouth advertising—one satisfied customer telling another. Some of the satisfied customers even work on a commission basis with a particular ring. The prospective new customer is put in contact with an intermediary, who works out the timing and other details and negotiates a price on behalf of the outfit's honchos. For the most part the torch's job is strictly to set fires, in such a way that they look like spontaneous combustion, accident, anything but what they really are. They seldom have any personal contact with the customer. The evident fact that in this case Blackwell had served as both intermediary and torch was uncommon but not unheard of. Could be something had happened to his ring's regular contact man—been arrested, fallen ill, died suddenly. Whatever the reason, Blackwell had been pressed into double duty.
I should have tumbled to the arson angle sooner, much sooner. All the signs of fire-for-hire were there: The small businessman with an old firetrap of a warehouse filled with an inflammable product that wasn't selling; bill collectors and his landlord hounding him, an ex-wife still putting on the squeeze, a tough-minded girlfriend who was tired of living on promises and figured to be making threats of her own. Prime fodder for the arson boys, that was Savarese. And then there were the meetings with Blackwell, and the things I'd found out about Blackwell, and Blackwell's monomaniacal hunt for Grady.
She was the reason for my shortsightedness. I'd been too focused on her, her actions, her emotional state, the danger she was in. She'd functioned—ironically enough—as a smoke-screen, obscuring the larger scheme in which she was nothing more than a by-product.
The general progression of events wasn't difficult to sort out now. April Fools' Day: Grady goes to Savarese Importing to investigate the damage claim Savarese had filed as a smokescreen of his own. ("Hey, would I put in a claim for damaged goods if I was going to burn down my warehouse?") And she runs into Blackwell, either at the warehouse, where he's gone on some pretext to look the place over, or else somewhere in the vicinity. A spark of mutual attraction is struck, they start seeing each other, she falls in love with him—deeply, hopelessly in love. And then something happens to burst the bubble. Maybe she sees or hears him talking to Savarese or some member of the arson ring about the torch job . . . something, in any case, that reveals her lover, her ideal man, to be a monster in disguise. It shatters her fragile interior. Either she confronts him and he shows her more of his true nature, or she simply packs up and flees the horror of her discovery. And one way or another he finds out that she's found out. And because that makes her a threat to both the Savarese job and his future, he sets out to find and silence her.
Had Savarese known about their affair, what had happened to turn her from Blackwell's lover into his quarry? Possible. But more likely, he hadn't known. More likely, he'd begun to get cold feet when I showed up asking questions; begun to fear getting caught, going to prison, and so tried to back out of the deal. Weak link, the kind that would break under police pressure. A third threat to Blackwell—to be eliminated along with number two—was me. So Blackwell had used Savarese to set me up tonight, then put him down and out and left both of us to die in the fire.
Brutal, deadly—that was Blackwell the torch, the bug, the executioner. If he got his claws on Grady, he would kill her with the same swiftness and lack of compunction. Her and anybody else who happened to get in his way.
* * * * *
Fisherman's Wharf. First time I'd been here in over a year, even though my flat is less than three miles away.
I remember the Wharf when it really was a fisherman's enclave. I remember it when most of the faces you saw were old-country Genovese and Sicilians, and most of the buildings housed wholesale fish dealers and boat builders and marine hardware outfits, and the wharves were piled high with rock cod and smelt and striped sea bass and huge quantities of fresh crab and bay shrimp. I remember it when the restaurants were few and the best in the city, and the streets were relatively clean, and there were no tourist facilities or cheap T-shirt and souvenir shops or sidewalk junk vendors or fast-food joints. I remember it when the pace was slow, the noise level tolerable, the air spicy with salt and fish and cooked crabs instead of foul with a mixture of exhaust fumes and frying grease. I remember Fisherman's Wharf when . . . and that's why I seldom go there anymore.
As late as it was—one-fifteen by my watch—the tourists were mostly tucked away in their beds and the streets were the domain of the night owls and the night predators. I had no trouble with snarled traffic or swarms of pedestrians, as I would have had in the daylight hours; and no trouble with parking, either, because the Harborside Inn—a smallish, ten-year-old pile of modernistic composition stone and glass—had its own underground garage.
I left my car with an attendant and went into a lobby done in tasteful greens and blues, with green-and-blue fishing murals on the walls. It was supposed to provide a Fisherman's Wharf ambiance. All it provided for me was an air of phoniness and hype.
The night clerk was a middle-aged woman wearing a blue suit and a green blouse and a blue-and-green scarf. I said to her, "I'm looking for a man named Blackwell. Is he registered here?"
"Blackwell. Just a moment, sir." There was a computer terminal at her fingertips; she poked at the keyboard, read the screen, gave me a spritely smile, and said, "No, sir, no Mr. Blackwell. Perhaps he hasn't checked in yet."
"How about a friend of his—King, Jack King?"
The computer again. And: "No, I'm sorry, no Mr. King."
"Man I'm looking for is about thirty-five, heavyset, short brown hair. Small curved scar under his right eye."
"Oh," she said immediately, "you mean Mr. Queen."
"Queen," I said.
"Thomas Queen."
"I must have got the name mixed up," I said. "What room is Mr. Queen in?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but he's already checked out."
"When?"
"Earlier tonight."
"What time?"
"About ten-thirty, I think it was. He said he . . ."
But I was already moving away from her. Hurrying.
He'd found out about San Bernado, all right. And he was almost there by now, if he'd left the city at ten-thirty. But he couldn't know yet that Grady was staying in San Lucas . . . he couldn't know that, dammit.
There were public telephones near the lobby entrance to the bar. I used one of them to call the Vargas number and then Arlo Haas's number. Still nobody picked up at either place. Good and bad: If no one was home, then Blackwell couldn't get to Grady before I got to San Lucas. But why wasn't anybody home? And what if somebody came back at the wrong time and found the executioner waiting?
Chapter 20
Despite the lateness of the hour, I had some traffic to contend with between the city and San Jose. It forced me to hold my speed down to sixty-five, just to be safe. Chilly night at that end of the bay, too; I drove with the window down, and the cold air rushing against my face helped keep fatigue at bay. So did the radio, turned up loud to a country-and-western station. So did the burn on my arm.
Just south of San Jose, I stopped for gas and again tried calling Arlo Haas and the Vargases. Still no answers.
Once I got clear of the San Jose city limits, there was hardly any traffic at all. It was nearly three by then
. I upped my speed, but only to a little better than seventy-five; the car was twenty years old and the engine had a lot of miles on it and there was a bad shimmy when you pushed the speed up past eighty. My mind had been working steadily, worrying at things, but after a while it began to shut down little by little, until I wasn't thinking much at all. Just driving. Watch the road, feel the bite of the wind and the bum pain, hear the drone of the disc jockey's voice and the loud, twangy beat of the music. Just driving.
Slow down coming into Salinas and passing through. Pick up speed again at the southern outskirts. Empty highway again for the most part; the occasional headlights were like sudden eyes in the night, glaring at you and then gone.
Down near Chualar there was a spasming in my chest, a fit of coughing that left my lungs feeling hot and raw. Otherwise, there were no residual effects from the smoke I'd inhaled—not yet, anyway. Gonzales, Soledad, Greenfield . . . little towns, blotches of light in the darkness, come and gone. My eyes were gritty, my head ached from the strain of night driving. Static on the radio; the country station was fading out. Fiddle with the dial, find another station—fifties and sixties rock music this time. Somebody singing "Hang On, Sloopy." Yeah. All you got to do is hang on.
King City. Watch it through here. Big Highway Patrol substation in King City and the area had a reputation as a speed trap. I slowed down, and a good thing I did. One of the patrol cruisers passed me heading north, and in the rearview mirror I saw the driver slacken his speed a little; he didn't turn and come after me, but he might have if I'd been traveling any faster. That was all I'd need now, this close: get stopped, get a ticket, get delayed.
South of King City, then, into the southern end of the valley and the last leg to San Lucas. Empty landscape, faintly silvered under a pale, cloud-edged moon, the foothills shining like great mounds of dough lightly dusted with flour. Bleak at this hour, desolate, remote. Big gusty wind blowing over the valley, raising plumes and swirls of dust, making the trees tremble as if in fear. False illusion: a lunar landscape, a dead place where nothing grew, nothing lived. And where's all your sentiment now, smart guy? All gone, blown away by the dark wind.
Just a few miles to go to San Lucas. But a lot more than that to go before I got any rest, any peace . . .
* * * * *
The porch light was on at the Vargas house. No other lights, but I could see only part of the house as I pulled up next to the sagging fence. Somebody was home, though, if the two other cars parked there meant anything—the old Chrysler Imperial and the rust-infested pickup I'd seen on my last visit.
I got out into the rough wind. Muscles stiff, back hurting, the scraped feeling still in my chest. Old man, I thought. Some match for Blackwell when I find him. And him with a gun. All I had was a full load of righteous anger. Blow him away with that, all right.
I'm a damned fool, I thought.
Through the gate, past the patch of prickly pear—twisted shapes in the darkness, like appendages piled up in a mad surgeon's yard—and onto the porch. I found the doorbell, worked it. A little time passed, and I rang the bell some more and hammered on the panel with my fist, and a little more time passed, and then the door opened, fast, and I was looking down the bore of a rifle. The heavy-bellied man holding it said in a hard, angry voice, "Qué pasa, hombre?"
Before I could answer, Constanza Vargas appeared alongside the man. Like him, she was wearing pajamas and a robe— but neither of them looked as though they had been asleep. She said something to him in rapid Spanish that had my name in it. He answered her in Spanish; then he lowered the rifle, almost but not quite all the way down, and said to me in English, "Eight hours we been waiting. Where you been all that time?" He was still angry.
There was nothing to say to that; I didn't know what he meant. I said, "Grady—is she asleep?"
The two of them exchanged looks. "No," Constanza Vargas said, "she didn't come back."
". . . She's not here? Where did she go?"
"We don't know." She shook her head wearily. "We just got home an hour ago."
"Where were you? Out looking for her?"
For some reason that clouded her husband up even more. "You know where we were, man."
Mrs. Vargas said, "Emilio," in a gentling voice and stepped around him. "Come inside," she said to me, and reached out to pluck at my coat sleeve. "It's cold out there, we can talk better inside."
I went in past Emilio Vargas, who gave ground grudgingly. Too cold outside, too warm inside. The room we went into felt as humid as a bathroom after somebody has finished taking a long, hot shower; they must have had the heat up over seventy. I started to sweat immediately inside my heavy overcoat.
The woman invited me to sit down. I told her I preferred to stand. She nodded and seated herself on an overstuffed chair under an oil painting of one of the missions. Her husband stood stolidly near the doorway; he still held the rifle but now the muzzle was pointed at the floor. In here, in the stronger light, I could see that both of them were as fatigued as I was, Mrs. Vargas solemn-eyed and anxious, her husband nursing a measure of exasperation along with his anger.
I asked, "When did Grady leave here?"
"I told you," Constanza Vargas said. "In the afternoon."
"You didn't tell me. What time in the afternoon?"
"Between four and five o'clock. Emilio had not come home yet and I was making dinner. The last I saw of her, she was sitting in the backyard."
"She take anything with her, clothing or anything?"
"No. Only her purse."
"Just went away, no word?"
"Only the note to you."
"To me?"
"It was on the table by her chair, outside."
"What did it say?"
"I will get it for you."
She stood, hurried out of the room. In the hot silence that followed her exit, Emilio Vargas watched me with his dark, wrathful eyes. The twitchiness was in me and I wanted to pace; instead I stayed put, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, sweating.
I said to Vargas, "I've been trying to call Grady's father all night. He doesn't answer his phone. You have any idea why?"
Silence. Then, with a little puzzlement, "What's the matter with you, man? You gone loco?"
"What kind of answer is that?"
"Maybe that's why you didn't come to the hospital, huh?"
"Hospital?"
"All night we waited. Constanza said you'd come. You told her you would."
"I told her . . . ?"
Constanza Vargas was coming back into the room, but that was not why I stopped talking. I was beginning to get it, what this conversation was all about, why Emilio Vargas was so upset, some of what had happened down here last night.
Mrs. Vargas glanced at me, at her husband; reached out and put a piece of paper in my hand. I didn't look at it. I said, "Arlo Haas is in the hospital. Is that it?"
Frowning, she said, "In Paso Robles, yes. But . . ."
"What happened to him?"
"It was as we feared."
"Another stroke?"
"Yes."
"Last night sometime. At his house."
"Yes."
"What time last night?"
"Cristo!" her husband said. "You must be loco. She told you all that on the phone."
"Not me, she didn't."
"But . . . I did," Mrs. Vargas said. "I called you, I spoke to you . . ."
"My home number—that's the one you called?"
"Yes."
"What time?"
"Seven o'clock. Not long after Emilio and I found Mr. Haas and called for the ambulance. Your business card, it was by his telephone. I wanted you to know what had happened. . . ."
Blackwell, I thought. That's how he found out about San Bernado. Phong rang while he was searching my flat and the brazen bastard picked right up and grunted something and Constanza Vargas thought she was talking to me. Why wouldn't she? It was my number and she didn't know my voice very well and she was rattled to begin with.<
br />
I explained that to the Vargases, briefly, without mentioning Kerry. Confusion and color both faded out of the woman's face, leaving it pinched, haggard. "Madre de Dios, " she said. "Then he knows . . . he will come here. . . ."
"If he does," Emilio Vargas said, lifting the rifle, "he will go away without his head."
I asked Mrs. Vargas, "What did you tell him on the phone? Did you give him your name?"
"Yes."
"Your husband's name? Mention San Lucas?"
"No. No."
"Does Mr. Haas have an address book in his house—anything that might contain your address and telephone number?"
"I don't remember seeing one . . . no, I don't think so."
"All right. Then the man who's after Grady doesn't know where to find you, not yet; you can't be the only Vargases in the county directory. He may try to call here, ask for you by name. If he does that, you don't know who Constanza Vargas is. Play dumb, don't tell him anything."
"I will answer the phone if it rings," her husband said darkly. His anger burned even hotter now, with a new target to focus it on. He patted his rifle. "And I will answer the door with this—"
"No," I said, "don't open up for anybody." He started to argue, so I turned away from him, asked his wife, "What else did you tell the man on the phone? Try to remember exactly what you said."
I watched her work her memory. "I told him . . . 'Mr. Haas has had another stroke and the ambulance is on the way.' I said we—my husband and I—we would go with him to the hospital in Paso Robles."
"Paso Robles . . . you named the town?"
"Yes."
"And the man? What did he say?"
"He asked if Grady was there too."
"And you told him no."
Nod. "I said I don't know where she is, she went away between four and five o'clock. I told him about the note."
"What did he say to that?"
"Only that he would come to the hospital as soon as he could."
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