The Bookwoman's Last Fling (17 page)

We drove across the state and picked up my car. It seemed untouched from when I'd hidden it in the trees outside the farm, and I felt reasonably coherent, well enough to drive cautiously on to Richmond. Erin followed me and we took a room there, not far from the racetrack. I slept through the night and awoke well before dawn with a headache. A few painkillers brought me to life again, and we sat in an all-night cafeteria over breakfast and talked about how to proceed. She was in it now; I knew her well and there was no turning her back unless I went home with her. I was itching to get out to the racetrack—for herself she suggested taking my list and trying a few of the San Francisco bookstores that I had not reached with my phone checks. That part of the hunt had begun to look bleak, like shooting at the moon with a BB gun, but I had learned never to underestimate her energy, ingenuity, or stamina, and I sure welcomed her viewpoint. Maybe she would ride up to Blakely and visit Carroll Shaw at the library there. “He sounds like a fellow who can educate me if nothing else. I'll see how the day goes.” We would meet that evening at five o'clock in the same café on San Pablo Avenue.

It was still on the early side of six when I arrived at the stable gate. I showed Alvin my license, he nodded me through, and I walked along a ridge above the mud and turned into the stable area. Already the clatter of feed tubs was a familiar sound as I crossed between the barns, and I blended right in. I passed a few words with Obie; then I started Pompeii Ruler around the barn. Dawn was breaking when I finished his walk: a brilliant sunrise that lit up the world.

Sandy arrived late. I told him I was fine and he left me alone for the moment. The tow ring was still a river of slop, but the rain had gone and I took that as a good sign. Again the ginneys and I walked the whole stable under the shedrow. As always I seemed to gain strength in work: I walked five miles; then I sat in the chair outside my tack room and let the boys finish up. Everyone was sympathetic: they had heard I had had an accident and were happy to take up my slack. Sandy pulled up a chair and asked me for an account of my trip east, as he put it, and I told it to him straight. Cameron hadn't shown his ugly face again but his pal Rudy was still working in the opposite barn. No one had approached him; no one as far as Sandy knew had asked him about Cameron. I doubted this. If the cops had not at least sent someone to talk to him, this investigation would set new records for shabby ineptitude. I asked Sandy how his conversation with Sharon had gone, but he said they had been playing telephone tag all week and he had not yet had that pleasure. I was annoyed at this news and we had a short, terse exchange over it. I said, “You know if she asks me what I'm finding out about her mom, I'm gonna have to tell her,” and it went downhill from there. He said, “Look, I've got one or two other things on my plate right now. I've got a horse running this afternoon, I'm not sitting by the phone all day, and I'm sure she's not either.” I said, “That may be, but I'd put a priority on this if I were you.” He said, “Dammit, Janeway, I'm not accustomed to taking orders in my own shedrow,” and I said, “Then let it ride and we'll see what happens.” He got up from his chair. “That sounds almost like a threat.” I closed my eyes. “I don't like threats any more than you do, Sandy, but if you don't tell her soon, I will, and I'll bet I can get her on the phone pretty quick. That's not a threat, she just needs to know.”

There was a moment when I didn't know whether he was going to continue with this, break out laughing, or chase me out of there with a buggy whip. I gave him what I hoped was my apologetic look, but I knew he had been dragging his feet and he knew I knew; he had done nothing the whole time I had been in the hospital.

“I'll tell her,” he said defensively. “I said I'd tell her and I will.”

“Please,” I said as he walked away.

He had left me irritated and headachy. I sat watching the barn across the way. I could see that the trainer had hired another young stud like Rudy to rub Cameron's horses. Rudy was assuming authority over the new hand and acting bossy. But I still figured Rudy was all strut, no waltz, and I made up my mind to pay him that visit. I was not quite my old self yet, but right now what I felt like doing was goading him into taking a swing at me.

At eleven-thirty another man arrived across the way. Obie saw me watching and said, “Cameron's brother, Baxter.” He was a smart guy, Obie, I decided again: he knew when something was up. “Bax has a stable over in Barn 14,” he said without being asked. I could see the Geiger resemblance in Bax even from there. I wondered if the brothers socialized much: I had heard they were not on friendly terms. “Cameron will always take any opportunity to be a pain in the ass,” Obie said, “but you already knew that. I think Bax has got his craw full of it in recent years, but he's no plaster saint either. And they are still brothers after all.”

I could only hear part of what Baxter was saying. His voice carried across the tow ring in snatches and he seemed to be asking everyone in the shedrow if they had heard from Cameron. No one had, and after a while he left. I didn't move from my place in the sun for much of what morning was left; it felt too good just to laze around and take pleasure in being alive. At ten-thirty I walked up to the kitchen and found a copy of today's
Daily Racing Form
where someone had left it on a table. I glanced through the races and learned that Sandy had Erica's Eyes in the fifth. It was a five-furlong dash for maiden fillies, which I knew meant a cavalry charge for fillies that had never won a race. In fact, Sandy's horse had never raced anywhere, but somebody must have known something because she was an even-money favorite in the morning line. This had come about as always by some mysterious ripple process. Since she had no form, the railbirds were going by her workouts and maybe the reputation of her trainer. I toyed with the crazy idea of putting my whole load on her nose, everything I had won on Pompeii Ruler last week. A sucker's bet, but it was all found money, never mind the vow I had made to bet no more. For a moment I was tempted to ask Sandy how she looked but things between us were suddenly chilly and now the cop in me didn't want to owe him anything.

I had some lunch and over the noon hour I felt a little better. I wasn't all there yet but I could almost feel the strength oozing back into my muscles and bones. I checked in at the barn. Erica's Eyes was Bob's horse. He was sitting in the straw, wrapping her legs. I leaned over the webbing and watched him work. I asked him how she was feeling and he smiled and gave me a wink. He had been her ginney for more than six months, and right then, on nothing more than that, I decided to play her all the way.

We were now into the early afternoon. This was the quiet hour, when ginneys with nothing going could catch up on a little sleep. Again I thought of having that little talk with Rudy across the way. I had a hunch that was growing stronger by the minute. If Cameron had turned up nowhere by now, my cop's instinct was to follow him through Rudy, the last man known to have seen him, so at one o'clock I hauled myself out of the chair and started across the tow ring. A few horses watched with keen interest as I walked into Rudy's shedrow and gave him a bold look through his screened door.

He was sitting on his bed looking through a
Playboy
magazine. Slowly his eyes came up over the pages. “You looking for something?” He got to his feet and came toward the door, said, “What's goin' on, dude?” and now there was a hesitance in his face. He had come just two steps and stopped. “I'm looking for your pal Cameron,” I said.

“He's no pal of mine.” In a bellicose voice, he added, “I'm not his goddam secretary, either. What makes you think I know where he went?”

Until that moment I had no idea what I was going to do but suddenly I did what I'd always wanted to do as a cop: I opened the screened door and took a full step inside. This would have been just enough to put a cop's case in jeopardy if I had been a cop building one, but at the moment the game was between Rudy and me. It was enough to surprise him and he backed around the edge of his bunk. “Wait a minute, goddammit, I didn't say you could come in here,” he said, but his voice quaked and gave him away.

“A guy across the way said you're looking for somebody to play rummy with.”

“What are you, some kinda nut?”

“Go find Cameron, then we'll have us a third. Maybe you know somebody else, then we'd have enough for a game of bridge.”

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't even play cards.”

“Cameron's brother Bax could be our fourth.”

The anger that skittered across his face was again tempered by doubt.

“Man, this is
my
room. What right have you got barging in here?”

He was still trying hard to be tough but I could see he was a frightened liar. His face said he was stonewalling and his voice said he was afraid.

I could almost smell the fear on him. I took another step and suddenly the rules changed from rummy to Grab-ass, the new Parker Brothers board game. I said, “Okay, maybe we won't play cards. Instead I might just kick you around a bit and worry about my rights later.”

“What the
hell
are you talking about? Jesus, I don't even know you.”

“Then I guess you're gonna find out about me now.”

His mouth opened like a gaffed fish. I cocked my head and tried to look bored. “You don't get it, do you, Rudy? I throw you my best lines and they're lost on you. So listen to me. Sit down and shut your mouth and listen.” I pushed him and he slammed hard against the wall.

“Jesus Christ! Who do you think you are?”

“I'm the guy who got worked over looking for your pal Cameron. Somebody whacked the hell out of me with a poker and tried to roast me for dinner. But I guess you wouldn't know anything about that.”

“I don't know anything about anything.”

“Generally speaking, let's say I think you're a liar and a pretty bad one. I think you see yourself as a tough guy, but I've met guys like you dozens of times before. When the chips go down you're just another scared rat.”

“Man, I don't have to take that shit.”

I smiled, venomously I hoped, and he made one last attempt to gain the high ground. “You know if I report this you'll get deep-sixed out of here fast.”

“Then I'll have to convince you not to do that.”

Sudden alarm spread across his face. “What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

He tried to crawl away but I grabbed his shirt and tightened it into a knot over his Adam's apple. Slowly I drew him forward, struggling on the bed, until I could smell his smoker's breath. “Rudy, you are really starting to piss me off. You know why that is? Because you're turning me into a bully. I hate bullies worse than anything. I even hate myself when I've got to resort to tactics like this, you know what I'm saying?”

He sat mute and softly I added, “But that won't stop me from kicking your ass.”

He looked away as a mouse scurried around the corner.

“Are you gonna talk to me, Rudy?”

“I don't…”

“Wrong answer.” I raised my hands suddenly, like a Halloween spook yelling
boo,
and he cringed back into his bedding with a sharp cry. “
Wait
a minute!”

I waited, somewhat less than a minute. “Rudy?”

“Hey, Cameron's no skin off my nose. What do you want to know?”

“Good man.” I smoothed his shirt, brushed him off. “Mainly I want to know where he is and why he went away and what he wants and when he's coming back. If you tell me these things, we can be buddies again. But if you say you don't know, that would be a mistake. Now, answer a few questions and I'll get out of your face. Where's Cameron gone?”

“Down to the old man's farm. What's that got to do with you?”

“That's one of the things we're trying to find out. Why'd he go down there?”

“Said he had to see somebody.”

“And who would that be?”

“He didn't say, I didn't ask. If you don't believe me, ask him yourself.”

“Maybe I'll do that if he ever shows up again. What's he after?”

“I don't know.”

“Rudy…”

“I don't
know,
man! So we travel together, that don't mean I know everything he does.”

“When's he coming back?”

“I figured he'd be back three days ago. That's what he said, but now he's missing and even the cops don't know where to look.”

“Cops are looking for him?”

“Well, yeah, as much as they look after anybody that drops off the earth.”

“But you don't know who he went down to the farm to see?”

“He went to see some dude who's gonna give him a bunch of dough.”

“How big a bunch?”

“Big enough to stake him till he gets on his feet again.”

“But he didn't tell you why this fellow is giving him all that money?”