Man on a Leash (6 page)

“And what was the item at the bottom of the first page that he didn’t sell?”

“Some warrants. Fifteen hundred dollars altogether, around that.”

“In other words, he completely ignored everything on the other two pages. And when you tried to bring up some stocks that were listed on these pages is when he cut you off?”

“Hmmmm, yes. That’s about it.”

“How did he sound to you? Was there anything unusual about his voice or mode of expression?”

“No. Not at all. Your father, let’s face it, could be quite brusque and impatient when he wanted action instead of conversation.”

“No,” Romstead said. “I don’t think that’s the reason he cut you off.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he was being forced to liquidate those stocks, and the people who were leaning on him didn’t know—for some reason—that there were two more pages. Otherwise, they’d have got it all.”

“Good God! Do you think a thing like that is possible?”

“What other explanation can you think of?”

“But how could they hope to get the money? It would be in the bank. And bankers, before they cash checks for a quarter million dollars, are apt to ask for a little identification.”

“No. They expected to get it in cash—which is exactly the way they did get it. Before they killed him.”

The double glass doors of the Northern California First National Bank were at street level, and with the wide windows on each side it was possible for anyone to see the whole interior. It was high-ceilinged with ornate chandeliers and a waxed terrazzo floor. On the left, in front and extending more than halfway back, was a carpeted area behind a velvet rope which held the officers’ desks. On the right in front was more of the terrazzo lobby extending to wide carpeted stairs leading downward, no doubt to the safe-deposit vaults. Beyond these areas there were tellers’ windows on both sides, and then at the back a railing, several girls at bookkeeping machines, and the iron-grille doorway into the open vault. Down the center there were three chest-high writing stands with glass tops.

One uniformed guard was on duty at the desk at the head of the stairs to the safe-deposit vaults, and he could see another tidying up the forms at the rearmost of the writing stands. Three of the tellers’ windows were open, and there were six or seven customers. This is where they did it, Romstead thought, in front of everybody. They had to be good. He went in.

Owen Richter’s desk was just inside the entrance to the carpeted area. Richter himself was a slender graying man with an air of conservatism and unflappable competence, and Romstead was forced to concede it didn’t seem likely the eyes behind those rimless glasses ever missed much that went on in the bank or were often fooled by what they saw. He introduced himself and explained why he was here. Richter shook his head.

“There’s not a chance, Mr. Romstead. It’s exactly as I told the police, and the executor—Bolling, isn’t it? Your father, when he came in and picked up that money, was sober, entirely rational, and alone.”

“He couldn’t have been,” Romstead said. “It was completely out of character, something he simply wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, as for that, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve known Captain Romstead for close to ten years. He was very sound and conservative and highly competent in managing money. And because I did know him and knew this was totally unlike him, I was suspicious myself when he first telephoned me, that Monday before the withdrawal, and said he was going to want that amount of money in cash. It’s irregular. And also foolish and highly dangerous. I tried to talk him out of it, but got nowhere. He simply said to expedite the clearance, that he wanted the money by Wednesday, and hung up.

“As you’re probably aware, there are certain types of swindlers who prey on older people, and while I was sure the con man who’d pick your father for a victim would be making the mistake of his life, I made a note to be on the lookout when he came in, just to be sure there was no third party lurking in the background. I also alerted Mr. Wilkins, the security officer on duty in the main lobby here. He knew the captain by sight, of course.”

“You don’t know where he called from, that Monday?”

“No, he didn’t say. And of course there’s no way to tell; it came through the switchboard, and nowadays with long-distance dialing they wouldn’t know either.”

“He said he’d call back Wednesday to see if the deposit had cleared. Did you by any chance offer to call him?”

“Yes, I did. But he said not to bother; he’d call.”

“And what time did he?”

“Around ten thirty Wednesday morning. I told him clearance had just come through, so he said he would be in in about ten minutes.”

“Did he specify any denominations for the money?” Romstead asked.

“Yes. In fifties and hundreds. I gave instructions to have it counted out and ready for him in the vault. As you’ll see, from my desk here I can see the whole lobby, from the vault on out to the front doors, and even the sidewalk outside, through the windows. I told Mr. Wilkins he would be here in a few minutes, so he was on the lookout, too. I think it was just ten forty exactly when your father came in.”

“Was there anybody behind him?” Romstead asked.

“No. Not immediately behind him. By the time he’d walked over to my desk there was another man came in, but I knew him. He owns a restaurant down the street and has been a bank customer for years. The captain came on over to the desk here. He was carrying a small bag—”

“Do you remember what kind it was?” Romstead interrupted. “And what color?”

“Gray. It was just the common type of airplane luggage you can buy anywhere, even in drugstores. I asked him to sit down, but he refused; he seemed to be impatient to get on with the transaction. I tried again to tell him how dangerous it was, carrying that much money around the streets, but he waved me off rather abruptly. So I told him if he’d write out the check, I’d go back to the vault and get the money for him, but he said he’d go with me. Mr. Wilkins came over, and the three of us walked back. The captain took out his checkbook and stopped at one of the stands out there to write the check and sign it. We went on to the railing there outside the vault, and I asked to have the money brought out. It was banded, of course, and the captain accepted our count as we put it in the bag. He thanked me, and Mr. Wilkins and I walked to the front door with him.”

“And nobody followed him out?”

“No. We were particularly on the lookout for that, but it was a minute or two before anybody else went out, and again it was a customer I knew. I still didn’t like the transaction, so I stepped out on the sidewalk myself just to be sure there was nobody waiting for him outside. He went up to the corner, waited for the light, and crossed Montgomery. He was still alone, nobody following him.”

Romstead glumly shook his head. “Well, that seems to be it.”

“Yes, there’s not a chance in the world he was being threatened or coerced in any way. All the time he was here at my desk he could have told me without being overheard. And back there by the vault Mr. Wilkins and I were both alone with him. Also, when he crossed Montgomery, he passed right in front of a police car, stopped for the light.”

But, damn it, Romstead thought, it had to be. There was no other answer. “How many people were in the lobby altogether?”

“Several came in and went out during the whole period, but I don’t think there were ever more than eight at one time.”

“Was there anybody who was strange to you? Who wasn’t a customer and you couldn’t remember seeing before?”

“Yes. There were two.” The answer was unhesitating and precise. “One was a young woman with blond hair, wearing dark glasses. I think she was buying travelers’ checks. The other was a hippie type with a big bushy beard, a headband, and hair down to his shoulders. He was wearing one of those poncho things and had a guitar slung over his shoulder.”

“What was he doing? He doesn’t sound much like a regular bank customer.”

“He was counting his change. I guess he’d been panhandling.” Distaste was evident in Richter’s tone. “He came in just a few minutes before the captain and was at that middle stand there with a double handful of nickels, dimes, and quarters spread out on it, counting them.”

“He didn’t have one hand under the poncho, any TV routine like that?”

“Oh, no. Anyway, he was still here after the captain went out. He was at one of the tellers’ windows. Getting currency for all that silver, I suppose.”

“I just don’t get it,” Romstead said. “There’s only one thing that strikes me as a little odd. You asked him to sit down here and write the check, but he refused. Then he stopped at one of the stands and wrote it. Didn’t he have a pen?”

“Oh, I offered him one.”

“Did it strike you as strange?”

“No-o. Not really. It was my impression, I think, that he didn’t want me to go after the money—that is, it’d be quicker if he went too.”

“Well, when he stopped to write it on the way back to the vault, was it the stand where the hippie was?”

“No. It was the one at the rear.”

“Then the hippie couldn’t have seen the amount?”

“No, not unless he had exceptional eyesight—” Richter stopped, his eyes thoughtful. “Yes, he might have. As I recall now, he finished his counting and had gathered up his silver while your father was writing out the check, and he went past on the other side of the stand, going to one of the tellers’ windows. But I don’t think that’s significant; he could just as easily have seen, or guessed, what the three of us were doing back there by the vault with the bag, if he had robbery in mind. Anyway, as I said, he was still in the bank after your father left.”

Romstead walked back to the apartment, feeling baffled and frustrated. How could he be right and wrong at the same time?

“If the first supposition is right, then the second one has to be too,” he told Mayo. “Richter missed it, and now I’ve missed it; but it still has to be there.”

“Not necessarily,” she replied. She was wearing the housecoat and a pair of mules, but she’d combed her hair and put on lipstick. She was perched crosswise in a big armchair in the living room, sipping coffee. “You’re projecting your hypothesis from an opinion, not a known fact, when you say it couldn’t have been kidnap. It could have been a girlfriend.”

“A quarter million dollars?”

“Men as tough and as promiscuous as your father have turned out to be vulnerable, the same as anybody else, thousands of times. In which case he’d have come in alone to get the money. It wouldn’t have been voluntary, by any stretch of the imagination, but they wouldn’t have to be there.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re missing the key to the whole thing. They wouldn’t have had to be there to force him to sell the stock either. You ever hear of kidnappers coming in to discuss the thing in person? The threat comes by note or telephone. We couldn’t care less how you raise the money, Jack; just raise it.”

“But you don’t know they were there. Opinion again.”

“Yes, they were there. He wasn’t alone when he was talking to Winegaard; that’s implicit in the whole conversation. There are two phones in that house, one in the master bedroom and a wall-mounted extension in the kitchen, and one of the bastards was listening in while the others applied the pressure.

“Look—in kidnap
or
blackmail, a specific sum is demanded, and you raise it to suit yourself within the time limit. That being the case, he would have sold selectively, or at least he’d have let Winegaard express an opinion. But he wasn’t trying to raise a specific sum; he was selling a list of stocks with a gun against his head, knowing Winegaard was going to protest in a minute and he had to shut him up before he could mention some stocks that weren’t on the list.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“Sure. And utterly pointless, so far. After they’d done all that, there was no way in Christ’s world they could get the money. Except that they did.”

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

He considered. At the moment he could see two possible leads, both very tenuous and both calling for a hell of a lot of legwork. One was Jeri Bonner, and the other the Mercedes. He couldn’t explore both avenues at once, so the best thing would be to get some help doing the bloodhounding and backtracking here while he went back to Nevada. He had an idea about the car, something Brubaker had overlooked or dismissed as unimportant, and he had a hunch he could find the place. It would just take a lot of driving. He’d had enough of that highway up through Sacramento and across the Sierra, so he’d fly up and rent a car in Reno. He told her.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“Tomorrow night, probably.”

“Can I go too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That desert’s hotter than the floor plates of hell. And you’d just be bored, and choked with dust—”

“Spare me the bullshit, Romstead. I can’t go because it might be dangerous, right?”

“Dangerous? Of course not.”

“You’re looking for a place, but you don’t have the faintest idea what the place consists of or who’s going to be there. If it’s the people who killed your father, they’ll invite you in for a drink—”

“I don’t intend to carry a sign.”

“So of course they’ll think you’re the Avon lady. Or you could disguise yourself as a jockey. You and your goddamned CIA ... I might as well get dressed and go home.” She got up and flounced out of the room but reappeared in the doorway a moment later, looking contrite and worried. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

“Sure,” Romstead said. He brought out his address book and looked up Jeff Loring’s number. Loring was a college classmate who’d been with the FBI for a while and now was practicing law in San Francisco. They’d had lunch together a couple of times in the months Romstead had been in town. Loring was in, and if the question surprised him, he concealed it.

“Private investigator? Sure, I know several, personally or by reputation, but they specialize a lot: divorce, skip tracing, background investigation, security—”

“Skip tracing, in that area. General police experience.”

“Murdock sounds like your man. Larry Murdock. He runs a small agency on Post Street. I haven’t got his number handy, but you can get it from the book.”

“Thanks a lot, Jeff. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“No sweat. Give me a call, and we’ll have lunch.”

He looked up the number and dialed. He introduced himself and said he was calling on Loring’s recommendation. “I’d come there, but I’ve got some more phone calls to make.” He gave the address. “Could you send one of your men over?”

“I’ll come myself,” Murdock replied. “Half hour be all right?”

“That’ll be fine.”

Mayo came out dressed for the street while he was looking up the Nevada area code. “You want me to call about flight times?” she asked.

“Yeah, if you would, honey. I’ll be tied up here for the next couple of hours.”

She leaned down to kiss him and went out. Her apartment was in another building of the same complex.

He called directory assistance in area code 702 for Mrs. Carmody’s number and dialed, praying she’d be in. The information he could give Murdock would be sketchy until he could get hold of her. Carmelita answered. Mrs. Carmody was out by the pool. One moment, please.

“Eric? Where in the world are you? I thought you went back to San Francisco.”

“That’s where I’m calling from. How are you?”

“Fine. But still a little shook about Jeri.”

“I know. But she’s why I called. Do you by any chance know what her address was here? Or where she worked?”

“No-o. I don’t think I ever did. The only person who would know would be Lew, but for God’s sake, don’t tackle him. I know what you’re trying to do—”

“Right. It’s almost a cinch there was something between her and the old man. And Bonner suspected it. Remember, he was bitter as hell even before he knew she was dead, there in the house.”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “that’s right. But it wasn’t entirely over Jeri.”

“I understand.” He’d suspected that already; Bonner had a thing for Paulette Carmody himself and was jealous. Sister and girlfriend both, he thought; it was no wonder he hated the name Romstead. “It seems to me he’d have been one of Brubaker’s prime suspects.”

“Oh, he might have been except he was in his store until two o’clock that morning and then in a poker game with five or six other men until after daylight. No, it wasn’t Lew. He’s violent and pugnacious as hell, but straightforward about it. If he’d done it, it would have been on the steps of city hall in front of two hundred witnesses. Which is why I said don’t even think of calling him about Jeri. He’s out on bail now for beating a man almost to death in a bar last night. Some ranch hand he overheard say something about Jeri and Captain Romstead.”

“Don’t worry,” Romstead said. “I intend to give him all the room he needs ... Well, could you give me a description of her?”

“She was about five feet five, around a hundred and ten pounds. Blue eyes, dark-red hair, nose just a little on the baby side, but cute. Leggy for a girl who wasn’t very tall.”

“Good. You don’t know what type of work she did?”

“Clerical. She’d had some business courses—typing and so on—at San Diego State. Wait—I just remembered something. Last winter she bought Lew a tape deck at employee discount; she was working for some electronics supply outfit.”

“You can’t recall the name?”

“No, I’m sorry. But it seems to me he said it was on Mission Street.”

“Fine. That’s enough for a start. Thanks a million.”

After he’d hung up, he remembered something else he’d intended to ask her. It was about the crewman the old man had turned over to the narcs for having heroin aboard his ship. Until you had a solid lead to follow, you had to consider everything a possibility. Well, he’d call her tomorrow from up there.

He brought out a bag and began to pack. The phone rang. It was Mayo. There was a flight at three o’clock, with space available. He asked her to make the reservation for him.

“Okay. I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“You’re an angel.”

“With an angel’s sex life. I might as well be having an affair with a whaler.”

Just as he hung up, the doorbell chimed.

Larry Murdock was a lean-faced man in his middle forties with coolly watchful gray eyes and an air of quietness about him. He introduced himself and produced a wallet-sized photostat of his license. Romstead closed the door and they sat down.

“You’ve had police experience, no doubt?” he asked.

“Yes. Fifteen years, here in San Francisco. What is it you want done, Mr. Romstead?”

“Just more of the same. Ringing doorbells and asking questions. I’m trying to backtrack two people to see if they knew each other, and how well, and what other people they knew. It’ll probably go faster with two men on it, if you’ve got somebody available. Okay?”

“Yes. I think we can handle it.” Murdock took a notebook from a pocket of his jacket and undipped a pen.

“Fine. There’s a lot of background you’ll need.” Romstead told him the whole thing, from the discovery of his father’s body to and including his interviews with Winegaard and Richter. He wound up with descriptions of his father and Jeri Bonner and the address of his father’s apartment on Stockton Street. Murdock listened without interruption, now and then taking notes.

“I don’t think he was ever in the apartment in that period from the sixth to the fourteenth, but I haven’t seen the building and don’t know what the setup is in regard to privacy of access,” he concluded. “But you can see what I’m after.”

“Sure. Whether anybody at all saw him around the place, whether he was alone if they did, and if the girl had ever been seen in the area or with him. Since it’s all right with you, I’ll start another man checking out the girl, beginning with the electronics supply places.”

“Good. Personally, I think she was on the lam from something or somebody, or she wouldn’t have gone home. She was a junkie, and her chances of making a connection in that town would be close to zero.”

“Yes. Unless her, sources had dried up here and she remembered that deck stashed in your father’s place.”

“That’s a possibility, of course,” Romstead conceded. “But there’s another thing about that I can’t quite buy.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Murdock said. “If she knew about it at all, why didn’t she know it was uncut? So why the OD?”

“Right,” Romstead replied. “Maybe she didn’t run far enough.” He was beginning to have a solid respect for the other man. He went over to the desk by the window and wrote out a check for three hundred dollars. “I’ll be in Coleville tonight, and I’ll give you a call.”

Murdock thanked him for the retainer and left. Romstead finished packing the bag, put in his binoculars, and called Mayo. She was ready. He carried the bag down to her car. They swung up onto the freeway and headed out Bayshore. The car was a new Mustang, and she handled it with cool competence. He relaxed, which he seldom did when someone else was driving.

“Very flattering,” she said, passing Candlestick Park.

“What?”

“When a man keeps his eyes on your legs instead of traffic. Sort of overall endorsement.”

“Well, you are a good driver,” he agreed. “That’s why they wouldn’t let you in medical school.”

“And the legs?”

“They’re why you didn’t need to get into medical school.”

“Chauvinist pig.”

It was overcast at the airport with a chill wind whipping the bay and fog pushing in over the hills above South City like rolls of cotton batting. She had to double park at the unloading zone. “Call me,” she said.

“Tonight.”

“And tomorrow.” They kissed, and she clung to him tightly for a moment until the inevitable horn sounded behind them. He lifted out the bag and watched her drive off. He went inside, checked in, and paid for his ticket with a credit card. The flight was only a little late in taking off, and they were down in Reno’s heat shortly after 4 P.M. He rented an air-conditioned Chevrolet, asked for a Nevada highway map, and drove into town.

Finding a place to park, he unfolded the map. Coleville was in Steadman County, but only fifteen miles from the boundary of Garnet County, adjoining it on the south. He’d need both to give him a radius of twenty-five miles all the way around. He looked up a sporting goods store and bought the two large-scale county maps of the type put out for hunters and fishermen. “Better give me a gallon water cooler, too,” he told the clerk.

Traffic was heavy now, and it was slow going until he was past the outskirts of town. He took time out for some dinner at a highway truck stop, and it was a little before eight when he pulled into Coleville. He parked under the porte cochere at the Conestoga Motel and went inside.

A rather sour-faced man of middle age was at the desk this time and checked him in without a smile of any kind, commercial or otherwise. He drove back with the key and let himself into room 16. Unfolding the two maps on the bed, side by side in their proper orientation, he pulled up a chair and bent over them with a frown of concentration.

No doubt Brubaker was right in that there were countless miles of tracks and old ruts out through the sagebrush flats and that checking them all out would have been a hopeless task from the start, but the car hadn’t been on any of these. The significant fact wasn’t merely that it was covered with dust, but that the dust was unmarred by streaks along the sides as it inevitably would have been in running through brush. It had been on a graded road, which narrowed the possible routes immensely.

The roads were coded on the maps: paved highways, gravel, and graded dirt roads. Gravel, of course, could be almost as dusty as plain dirt, so he’d have to cover those too. The main highway, which he’d just come in on, ran roughly north and south. This was crossed in town, at Third Street, by an east-west blacktop, the road his father’s place was on. Beyond the old man’s house it continued on westward for another twenty or thirty miles to a small community on a lake, but there were no unpaved roads leading off it. So it had to be north, south, or east of town. From that fifty-four miles unaccounted for on the odometer you had to subtract four for the old man’s return home after having the car serviced. That left fifty miles round trip from the house, or forty-two miles round trip from the center of town.