Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories (26 page)

"A couple of things to report," I said, "neither of them good." I told him about the call to Lynn this morning, the threat against her life. And I told him what I'd found out about Larry
Travers. The only thing I didn't tell him was the reason why Travers had pretended to want to marry Lynn; I just said he'd been seeing other women all along and was backing out of the marriage by running off to San Diego. Lynn Canale's sex life was her own business, not her father's.

Canale let me tell it straight through without interrupting. When I was finished he said in a thin, angry voice, "Have you talked to Travers yet?"

"Not yet. I haven't been able to find him. I will, though. I'm calling from a place where he hangs out; he's liable to show up here sooner or later."

"Did you tell Lynn what you found out?"

"No. I didn't think it was my place."

"You're right, it isn't. It's mine. I'll drive over and talk to her right away."

"Whatever you think best, Mr. Canale."

He gave me his home phone number and asked me to call him again as soon as I talked to Travers. Then he rang off, and I
went back to the bar and found a place to sit where I could
watch the entrance. The place was full now and getting fuller—a more or less even mix of male and female kids in their twenties. I felt out of place among them; I felt old and anachronistic, a product of a different world that they could never really understand, any more than I could really under
stand theirs. Several of them gave me curious glances, and the look on one girl's face said that she was wondering if I might be
a pervert. It might have been funny in other circumstances. As it was, with Lynn Canale and Larry Travers on my mind, it wasn't funny at all. It was only sad.

Five-thirty came and went. So did a second pint of Bass ale. But Travers didn't come.

He still hadn't shown at six. I gave him another twenty minutes, until the crowd began to thin out for dinner and other activities, and when the bartender came over and shrugged and
said, "I guess Larry's not coming in tonight," I decided it was time to call it quits. I paid my tab and went out into the early-evening darkness.

The wasted time had made me irritable, and the ale and the noise and smoky atmosphere of Elrod's had given me a headache. I didn't want food; I didn't want to go home yet. I was still fixated on Travers.

I took my car back to Missouri Street. And there was a light on in the Victorian's upper flat, Travers' flat, and parked in the driveway was a battered old Triumph TR-3. Well, well, I thought. The prodigal returns. But I couldn't find a goddamn parking space anywhere on the block, and I did not want to risk putting the car into somebody else's driveway. It took me a couple of minutes to locate a space a block and a half away.

When I came huffing and puffing up the hill, the upstairs light in Travers' flat had been put out. The sports car was still in the driveway, though, and I could see a guy loading something into its trunk. There was enough light from a nearby street lamp to tell me that he was big, blond and young. He heard me coming, glanced around and then straightened as I approached him.

"Larry Travers?"

"That's right. You're the detective, right?"

I nodded. "Your friend Downs tell you about me?"

"Yes." There was no hostility in his voice, as there had been in Downs's; he was playing it neutral. "I'm sorry you feel the way you do about me, I really am. But you just don't understand how things are."

"I understand how things are, all right," I said. "I also understand that somebody threatened Lynn Canale's life this afternoon. Or don't you care about that?"

"Sure, I care about it."

"How about her? Do you care about her?"

"Why do you think I don't? Because I'm moving to San Diego and I haven't told Lynn yet? That doesn't make me a bad guy; and it doesn't mean I'm trying to run out on her, or that we won't see each other again."

He sounded very earnest, and in the pale light from the street
lamp his expression was guileless. He was a handsome kid: athletic build, boyish features, long blond hair and a neat blond mustache. But it was all on the surface. Inside, where it counted, he wasn't handsome at all.

I said, "Where were you at one o'clock this afternoon?"

"Why? Is that when Lynn got the threatening call?"

"Where were you?"

"I didn't make that call, if that's what you think," Travers said. "Lynn is special to me; the last thing in the world I want is to see her hurt. Why don't you go find out who did do it, instead of bothering me?"

I took a step toward him. "Answer my question, Travers. Where were you at one o'clock this afternoon?"

He didn't answer the question. Instead, he slammed the trunk lid, moved away from me to the driver's door and hauled it open. I went after him, but he was quick and agile; by the time I got around there, he was inside and he had the door shut again. He shoved the lock button down as I caught hold of the handle.

"Travers!"

But he wasn't listening. The starter whirred and the engine came to life; he ground gear teeth getting the transmission into reverse. I stepped back out of the way just before he released the clutch and took the Triumph, tires squealing, out into the street. A couple of seconds later, he was rocketing off down the hill. And a couple of seconds after that, he was gone.

There was no point in trying to follow him; my car was too far away. I swallowed my anger and made myself walk slowly down the steep sidewalk. Round one to Travers. But there would be a round two, and that one, by God, would be mine.

When I got to where I had left my car, I debated driving over to China Basin. But that might not be where Travers was headed; and, in any event, you couldn't get into a boatyard at night without a key or somebody letting you in. So I pointed the car in the opposite direction and went home to my flat in Pacific Heights. I had done enough for one day. As long as Lynn was in a safe place, Travers could wait until tomorrow.

I opened myself a beer, took it into the bedroom and dialed Jud Canale's home number. He wasn't in yet; there was a whirring click and I got his recorded voice on his answering machine. I left a brief message outlining my abortive talk with Travers and said I would get in touch again in the morning.

Dinner was leftover pizza and another beer. After which I took a 1935 issue of
Black Mask
off one of the shelves where I keep my collection of mystery and detective pulp magazines, and crawled into bed with it. I got halfway through an Erle Stanley Gardner story about Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, but my head wasn't into it. I kept thinking about Lynn Canale, and about Travers, and about those calls.

I shut the light off finally and waited for my thoughts to wind down and sleep to come. I was still waiting two hours later.

VI.

J
ud Canale got in touch with me in the morning, while I was having toast and coffee a few minutes past eight. He sounded tired and upset, and one of the reasons turned out to be that Lynn had refused to go home with him last night, or any night to come. She hadn't even spent the entire evening in her apartment; she had gone off with Connie Evans to a Drama Club meeting, because she said she couldn't stand staying cooped up. But she was all right so far. There hadn't been any more anonymous calls during the night, or any other disturbances. Canale had insisted that she phone him first thing this morning, to check in; she had done that a few minutes before he
called me.

The second reason he was upset was that Lynn had also refused to accept the truth about Travers. Even if Travers had dropped out of U.C. and given up his apartment, even if he was going to take a boat to San Diego, even if he hadn't told her any of this yet, she was convinced he had his reasons and that he still loved her. She was certain he hadn't been fooling around with other women either. That sort of loyalty and trust was good to see in a young person like Lynn, but in this case it was tragically
misplaced. When she did accept the truth, as she would have to sooner or later, it was going to go twice as hard for her. Love, like dreams and old beliefs, dies hard.

"What are you going to do about Travers?" Canale asked. "Talk to him again today?"

"Yes. I'm driving down to China Basin as soon as I finish my breakfast. Chances are he spent the night on the boat; he should still be there, this early."

"And if you can't get anything out of him? What then?"

"I don't know. I'll just have to play it by ear."

"All right. But tell him something for me, will you? Tell him if he ever tries to see Lynn again, I'll kill him."

"Look, Mr. Canale —"

"Tell him," Canale said, and rang off.

I didn't want any more toast and coffee; the conversation with Canale had taken away my appetite. I got my coat, went out and picked up my car, and headed crosstown to Third Street and the waterfront.

China Basin was on the southeast side of the city, at the foot of the Embarcadero and not all that far from Potrero Hill. Back in the 1860s, the long deep-water channel had been the place where the "China Clippers" of the Pacific Mail Steamship Line berthed; that was how it had got its name. Today, incoming and outgoing freighters tied up at the industrial docks there, and there were boatyards and a military shipyard, and a few small waterfront cafés where you could sit at outside tables and watch what was going on in the basin and on the bay beyond.

The Basin Boatyard was on Channel Street, just down from the Banana Terminal where freighters carrying tropical fruit from South America were once unloaded. There was a good deal of activity in the area; trucks coming and going, strings of freight cars maneuvering on the network of rail tracks. Mornings were always the busiest time along the waterfront. Parking was at a premium, but I managed to find a place to wedge my car—and when I neared the open boatyard gates on foot, I noticed a battered black Triumph TR-3 dwarfed by and half-hidden behind a massive tractor-trailer rig. Travers was
here, all right.

I went in through the open gates. The boatyard was fairly large, cluttered with wooden buildings with corrugated-iron roofs, a rusty-looking crane, a variety of boats in and out of the water, and a couple of employees at their jobs. At the far end was a moorage—a half-dozen slips extending into the basin on either side of a rickety board float. About half of the slips were occupied.

A beefy guy dressed in paint-stained overalls intercepted me as I started toward the moorage. "Something I can do for you, mister?"

"I'm looking for Larry Travers," I said.

"Haven't seen him this morning."

"His car's out front. Maybe he's still sacked in on the Hidalgo."

"You a friend of his?"

"No. I've got business with him."

The guy shrugged. "Been here before?"

"Hidalgo's the sloop-rigged center-boarder in the last slip out."

"Thanks."

I went the rest of the way to the moorage, out onto the board float. The day was another clear one, not too cold in the sun or in sheltered places; but out here, with the wind gusting in off the bay, it was chilly enough to make me shiver inside my light coat. I bunched the fabric at my throat, hunched my shoulders. Overhead, a seagull cut loose with its screaming laugh, as if mocking me.

Until I came in sight of the Hidalgo, I had no idea what a "sloop-rigged center-boarder" was. But it wasn't anything exotic—just a thirty-foot, cruise-type sailboat, the kind with an auxiliary inboard engine that makes it capable of an extended ocean passage. It was made out of fiberglass, with aluminum spars, and it had plenty of deck space and a low, squat cabin that would probably sleep four below deck.

I caught hold of the aluminum side rail and swung onto the
deck aft. The fore cabin window was uncurtained, so I could see that the cockpit was empty. I moved around on the companionway that led below. A lamp burned down there; I could make out part of two quarter-berths and not much else.

"Travers?" I called, and then identified myself. "I want to talk to you."

No answer.

I called his name again; the only answer I got this time was another cry from a passing gull. All right, I thought. I went down the companion ladder, into the living quarters below. There was plenty of space, and all of it seemed to be deserted. On the port side, I saw a good-sized galley complete with sink, icebox, and stove, and ample locker space for food and utensils; to starboard opposite, there was an enclosed toilet and a hanging locker. A galley table set up between the two quarter-berths was littered with the remains of a McDonald's fast-food supper, some empty beer bottles and soft drink cans. And up forward, separated from the rest of the cabin by a bulkhead and curtain, were what figured to be the two remaining berths; I couldn't see in there because the curtain was drawn.

A vague, tingly feeling started up on the back of my neck. It was a sensation I'd had too many times before—a premonitory feeling of wrongness. I stayed where I was for several seconds, but it did not go away.

"Travers?"