Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories (33 page)

We covered every inch of that building, from top to bottom. There was no way the map could have been gotten out, and yet there was no place an item of its size and fragility could have been hidden inside the shop that we had overlooked.

So what had happened to it?

Where the hell was the missing map?

It was ten of seven when Rothman and I finally called it quits, left the shop and went our separate ways. I was almost as frustrated as he was by then. On the drive home to my flat, I kept gnawing at the question, the seeming impossibility of the theft, like a dog gnaws at a bone. And the more I gnawed, the more I felt as if I were close to the marrow of the thing.

The answer was something clever and audacious, yes, but I also sensed that it was something simple. And that I had heard enough and seen enough the past three days to put it all together—a lot of little things that just needed to be shifted around into
the right order. Damn it, I could almost taste the marrow.

I gave Kerry a brief call, to tell her I would be late, and then showered the bookstore dust off me and put on my suit. Dusk was settling by the time I got up to Diamond Heights. The weather had cleared and the view from up there was spectacular; you could see both bridges, the wide sweep of the bay, the Oakland hills and the Pacific Ocean in the opposite direction. It was too nice an evening, I told myself, to let my frustration spoil things with Kerry, and as I parked the car in front of her building I decided I wouldn't let that happen.

I went into the vestibule and rang her bell, and she buzzed me in right away. When I got upstairs she was waiting for me in a shimmery green dress with plenty of cleavage—a dress designed to knock your optic out, as the pulp private eyes used to say.

"Sorry I'm so late," I said, admiring her. "It was some afternoon."

"That's okay. Did you catch the thief'?"

"No. He swiped another rare map and managed to get it out of the store again, past the alarm system. I ought to be able to figure out which one of them it is and how he did it, but I can't seem to do it."

"Uh-oh. Does that mean you're going to be moody tonight?"

"No. I am not going to be moody tonight."

"You're already moody." she said.

"Bah. Let's go eat."

We went down and out to the car. Kerry said, "I'm starved. You must be, too."

"Yeah. They do a fine chorizo-and-peppers dish at the Oaxaca, very hot and spicy."

"So of course you have to drink a lot of beer with it."

"Sure. What's Mexican food without cold Mexican beer?"

"You put away more beer than any man I've ever known," she said. "I swear, sometimes I think you've got a hollow leg."

I leaned forward to switch on the ignition. Then I stopped with my hand on the key and stared over at her. "What did you say?"

"I said sometimes I think you've got a hollow leg. What's the matter?"

"That's it," I said.

"What's it?"

"The answer."

"I don't know what you're talking about . . .

I waved her quiet, started the car, switched on the headlights—it was full dark now—and pulled away from the curb; I tended to think more clearly while I was driving. By the time we approached Diamond Heights Boulevard, I had most of it put together. And when we were headed down the steep, curving boulevard, nearing Glen Canyon, I had the rest of it. All I needed was confirmation of one thing, and Kerry herself could give me that.

But before I could ask her about it, there was a roar of noise outside and the interior of the car was bathed in the bright glare of headlights. Another car had come boiling up behind us, so close that its lights were like huge staring eyes framed in the rear window. Damn tailgater, I thought, and took my foot off the accelerator and tapped the brake pedal gently, just enough to let the other driver see the flash of the brake lights.

Only he didn't slow down; he just kept coming. And his front bumper smacked into my rear bumper, hard enough to jolt the car and almost wrench the wheel loose from my hands.

Kerry twisted around on the seat. "My God! What's the matter with him? What's he doing?"

"Hang on!"

The other car jarred into us again, harder than before, shattering one or both of the taillights. Even though I was ready for it, I had to fight the wheel and feather the brakes to keep my car from fishtailing into a skid. The tires made screaming noises on the pavement; I could smell the burning rubber and the sudden sour odor of my own sweat.

The road had steepened and hooked over toward the long, narrow, tree-choked expanse of Glen Canyon; for a stretch of maybe five hundred yards, Diamond Heights Boulevard paralleled the canyon's eastern rim. In the reach of my headlights I could see that there was no guardrail, just a sidewalk and some knee-high brown grass on a strip of bank and then the drop-off, sheer, almost straight down. If we went off there, there wasn't much chance that we'd survive.

And that was just what the driver of the other car wanted, all right. It wasn't a drunk back there, or kids playing dangerous games; it was somebody bent on mayhem.

Downhill to the left, on the other side of the curve, a residential Street cut away uphill. I yelled at Kerry again to hang on and got set to drop the transmission lever into low gear so I could make a fast, sharp left-hand turn into the other street. There was nothing else I could do with the trailing car hanging on my bumper the way it was.

But the driver saw the street, too, and before I got close enough to make the turn, his headlights flicked out to the left, into the uphill lane. In my side mirror I could see the bulky shape of the car outlined behind the glare; then he accelerated and pulled up abreast. I glanced over at him, but all I could make out was one person, his face a white smear in the darkness. Then I put my eyes back on the road and kept them there, muscles tensed, hands tightened on the wheel, because I sensed what he was going to try to do next.

It was only a couple of seconds before he did it, just as I started into the wide left-hand curve along the rim of the canyon: he pulled slightly ahead and then whipped over into me, hard along the front fender. There was a crunching sound, and Kerry cried out, and the car shimmied and the right front tire scraped against the curb on that side. But I was able to maintain control, even though we were still crowded together and he was trying to use his momentum to shove us up and over the bank.

I came down hard on the brake pedal, bracing myself, throwing my right arm out in front of Kerry to keep her from flying into the windshield. The tires shrieked again; we bucked and slid through the curve, losing speed. The other car glanced off, with another tearing-metal noise, yawing at a slight angle in front of me. Then the driver got it straightened out and braked
as I had, swinging back full into the other lane so he could try ramming us again.

He would have done it, too, if it hadn't been for the third car that came sailing around another curve below, headed uphill.

I saw the oncoming headlights sweep through the scattered eucalyptus that grew inside the canyon further down, but the other driver was too intent on me to notice them because he didn't try to swing back into the downhill lane. Frantically I stood on the brake and got ready to yank on the emergency brake, if that was what it took to bring us to a stop; it seemed sure there would be a collision and all I could think was: Kerry might be hurt, I can't let her get hurt.

There was no collision. The driver of the third car saw what was happening, leaned hard on the horn, and managed to swerve up onto the sidewalk and across somebody's front lawn. But the guy who'd tried to kill Kerry and me had run out of luck. He saw the third car in time to swerve himself, back into the downhill lane, only he did it too sharply; he missed the third car, all right, by at least twenty feet—and he missed hitting mine by the same distance when he veered in front of me—but the rear end of his car broke loose and he wasn't able to fight through the skid and pull it out.

His car went out of control, spun all the way around, and then hit the curb and bounced up into the air like something made out of rubber. Its headlights sprayed the trees as it hurtled toward them, sideways. In the next second it was gone, and in the second after that the explosive sound of buckling metal and breaking glass and splintering wood erupted from inside the canyon.

I managed to bring my car to a stop. When I took my hands off the wheel they were as wet as if I'd dunked them in water.

"God," Kerry said in a soft, trembly voice.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. I . . . just give me a minute. . ."

I touched her arm, and then opened the door and got out. People were spilling from houses in the vicinity, running toward the canyon; the driver of the third car, a heavyset woman, was
slumped against her front fender, not moving, looking dazed. I ran up onto the sidewalk and ahead to where the other car had gone over. It was wrapped around one of the eucalyptus about a third of the way down the slope; the upper part of the tree had been sheared off and was canted at a drunken angle. From the mangled appearance of the wreckage, I didn't see how the guy inside could have survived.

But I was wrong about that. When I got there along with a couple of other people, and we dragged him out, he was alive. Unconscious and pretty badly cut up, but unless he had internal injuries, it looked as though he'd make it all right.

It did not surprise me when I saw who he was. Because he was the same person who had committed the thefts in John Rothman's book shop—the same clever, greedy, stupid young man.

Neal Vining.

T
hree hours later, I was sitting in a room at the Hall of Justice with Kerry, John Rothman and an inspector I knew named Jack Logan, who had been the investigating officer when Rothman first reported the thefts. Vining was in the hospital under police guard. He'd already been charged with attempted vehicular homicide, and had been coherent enough and frightened enough to confess to that, and when I got done with my explanations he would also be charged with several counts of grand larceny.

I was saying, "I knew even before Vining tried to run us off the road that he was the thief. And I know how he got the stolen items out of the store, too. It was a combination of things I'd seen and heard; and when Kerry made a comment about me having a hollow leg, because I like to drink beer, it triggered an association that put it all together."

"Hollow leg?" Rothman said. "I don't understand what -"

"You'll see what I mean in
a
minute. The whole thing is really pretty simple; it was Vining himself, in fact, who told me how he pulled off the thefts, either without realizing what he was saying or, more likely, because he was so sure of himself that it
was his way of bragging. He said yesterday, 'For all I know, Mr. Rothman himself could be slipping out with the spoils."

They were all staring at me, Rothman with a look of incredulity. "Are you saying I took the items out of the shop for him? That's preposterous—”

"No, it isn't," I said. "You took them out, all right; that's the beauty of his scheme. He made you an unwitting accomplice."

"How could he possibly have done that?"

"By putting the stolen items inside your cane," I said.

"My cane?"

"Vining gave it to you, didn't he? Some months ago? Harmon Boyette told me Vining was in the habit of giving you presents from his father-in-law's haberdashery."

"Yes, but. . ." Rothman seemed a little nonplussed. He reached for the cane, propped against the side of his chair, and gawped at it as if he'd never seen it before.

Logan said, "You mean the cane's hollow?"

"Yes. That's the significance of Kerry's hollow-leg comment. And that's why Vining stole only etchings, prints and maps,
instead of books that were more valuable, since you installed
your alarm system: they could be rolled up and inserted inside the cane. They still make canes like that over in England; people
keep money and other small valuable items inside them—as a safeguard against theft, ironically enough. It wouldn't have been difficult for Vining to have one imported through his father-in-law's store."

Rothman was running his fingers over the thick barrel of the cane, peering at it. "How does the damn thing work?'

"I don't know. But it shouldn't take us long to find out."

It took us about two minutes. The catch was well concealed, and so was the long hinged opening; you couldn't see either with
the naked eye, you couldn't feel the grooves with your fingers and it wasn't likely that you could open it by accident. Fine British craftsmanship. Logan was the one who finally found the catch, and when the hinges released I saw what I expected to see: the hollow interior contained a rolled-up length of parchment.

Rothman took the parchment out and unrolled it gently.

"My God," he said, "the Mercator map."

"Right where Vining put it this afternoon," I said, "after he stole it from the Antiquarian Room."

"But I keep the cane with me at all times; I need it to get around for any distance. I don't see how —"