The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (20 page)

It was a good pop. Stoval slid down alongside the car almost elegantly, and leaned sideways. He blinked a time or two and tried to clear his head. His dark glasses dangled from one ear and his hat had landed on the ground beside him. I went over to get my binoculars and put them back into the trunk with
my other gear. When I walked back around the car Stoval was starting to come around. He took off his glasses and gingerly touched his face. He was bleeding inside his mouth some. He spat and coughed. I leaned against the side of the car parked next to my own.

"Jesus," Stoval said finally. He squinted up at me and put his dark glasses back on. "What did you have to do that for?"

"To teach you not to go through my car, Emil. What were you looking for?"

"Nothing particular." He started to get up.

"No, Emil, you just sit right there while we talk."

He quit trying.

"Now tell me what it was you were looking for that wasn't anything particular."

"I don't know. I'm playing catch-up on an old case, and not doing so hot. I thought maybe I could get some idea of where you've been."

"You could ask."

The insurance man looked up at me. "Okay, I'm asking."

"Screw you, Emil, do your own leg work. Still, asking is smarter than sneaking. So you decided it was worth looking into what you figured Jerry was looking into, the Rey Platte money that turned up."

"You know about that?"

"I know about a lot of things, now. I also know you called on Jerry's wife the other evening and tried to get a little romance started."

He gave a weak wave. "I'd been drinking."

"I don't care if you'd been shooting smack. That sort of thing only complicates my own work, Emil. Don't do it again."

"What's the matter? You want the little twist to yourself?"

He was getting his spunk back. I kicked his forehead and bounced his head off the door of my car. His sunglasses clattered to the ground.

"Jesus!"

"Emil, do you know Mr. Alexander Forrest, a Coast West vice president in Los Angeles?"

"Of course I know him. How come you do?"

"I did a job for him and your company a while back. If you have anything more to do with Mrs. Lind other than strictly business by mail or telephone, I'm going to snitch on you, Emil. I'm going to tell my very grateful ex-client Mr. Alexander Forrest about this restless stud they have up in San Francisco who sends the guys in the office with the best-looking wives on a lot of out-of-town jobs so he can make a play for the lady of the family."

"You can't prove that."

"Emil, you dumbbell, it's common gossip. I'm surprised somebody hasn't called you on it before now. And if you're figuring your staff would be too chicken to tell on you, I'll just track down Harry Sund and see what he has to say."

I watched the blood drain out of his face.

"You seem to be in charge here."

"That is correct."

"What am I supposed to do, just sit here the rest of the night?"

"No, just until you tell me anything else you might know about Jerry Lind, or anything he could have been involved with."

"I don't understand."

"You held out on me about the Rey Platte money. I wasted a lot of time not knowing about that. Jerry has been up here asking about it."

"How do you know?"

"I'm good at my job. I've even been down to Rey Platte, talking to the police there, Emil."

"So you're thorough."

"And a cop from down there came up here trying to get a lead on the money. That's what led me to what Jerry was doing."

"What cop?"

"A man named Robert Dempsey. You might have met him during the investigation down south. At the same time that funny things were going on in Santa Barbara. I understand that was common gossip too, at least around the locker room of the Santa Barbara cops at the time."

Stoval took a deep breath and stared glumly at the asphalt, as if I'd just stolen his last secret.

"I can't tell you anything more about Lind. I didn't tell you he was working on the money because I didn't know for sure myself if that's what he was doing when he left town. And I have a personal interest in the case. You already seem to know that I was in on it from the start. Naturally, the company would like to recover as much of the money as it can. We took a substantial loss."

"Make me weep, Emil. Loss rates are adjusted; premiums are boosted; life goes on."

"Sure, but I'd still like to recover the money."

"Why didn't you follow up on it yourself, instead of putting Lind on it?"

"I called the bank in Santa Rosa. I figured it for a fluke is all. But I told Lind he could come up and nose around some if he wanted to."

"Then why have you come up here now? I can't believe you're looking for Jerry."

"No, I'm not looking for Jerry. The kid can look out for himself, so far as I'm concerned. Maybe he was looking for the source of the money, sure, but Lind did other things that could get him into trouble."

"What other things?"

"He ran around a lot. With other women."

"How do you know that?"

He looked at me, trying to decide something. "Because my wife told me so," he said quietly. "She models in the city. Uses the name Faye Ashton. She never told Jerry she was my wife. And my wife, in one of her usual destructive moods, wouldn't tell me if it
was her or one of the other girls in the agency Jerry was seeing. But he was seeing somebody there."

"Okay, so you don't have any great love for Jerry Lind. You still haven't told me why you're up here."

"Another of the bills turned up. In New Mexico. I just heard about it Saturday. The bill was just two serial numbers removed from the one that the doctor in Willits had."

"Why didn't you go to New Mexico?"

"It's not in my territory. The only angle I had to work on was up here. So up here I came. But I haven't had much luck so far."

"Neither has the cop, Dempsey. Did you know him?"

"Sure. What do you mean?"

"I just found his body inside a burned-out car up in the hills. Somebody made a hole between his eyes."

Stoval looked as if he were going to be ill.

"Personally, Emil, I think you're getting a little clumsy for this sort of work. A man could get killed. Now get up and show me where your car is."

"Huh?"

"Don't grunt, just show me your car."

Stoval struggled to his feet. He led me across the lot to a tan, late model Cadillac and unlocked the door.

"Good, Emil. A really subtle car. How long has it been since you did field work?"

"What difference does it make? What did you want to see it for?"

"What do you suppose?" I asked, jotting down the license number. "I know it's supposed to be a free country and all that, Emil, but if I see this automobile again in the course of my current job, I'm going to track down the man driving it and physically abuse him. Think about it some."

I bought a bottle of bourbon and checked into a comfortable motel over near the highway. It had a swimming pool, but I didn't feel as if I needed the exercise. I took a long shower,
shaved and dressed, then poured myself a walloping big drink and settled down to watch the six o'clock news show that Janet Lind was on. There were two male newscasters who handled the routine stuff, then they would use Janet Lind for things of a more lighthearted nature. Still, with all her elbow cocking and eyebrow curling she made the things she talked about seem more complicated than they were. I wondered why they let her get away with that stuff and found my mind drifting back to the Jerry Lind thing. It soured me some hearing about Lind and Stoval's wife, or if not her at least one of her co-workers. More and more, any personal concern I felt was shifting from Jerry's circumstances to his young wife. She deserved far better than she was getting. I just hoped she'd be able to handle that okay when she found out about it.

Janet Lind was back on doing one of her field reports. I wondered what sort of person she really was beneath the flutter and makeup. She was interviewing a guy who had walked on the moon. He was in town for something going on at the space facility at Moffett Field. She asked him how he felt about it—the moon walks—these years later. He said he still had dreams about it. I got up and fixed myself another drink. Then I turned off the TV and leaned back and wondered if somebody had meant to kill me and the boy the day before along the Stannis River.

SIXTEEN

A
llison was waiting for me when I drove up. She came down to the car and got in before I could even make the gesture of going around and opening the door for her. She wasn't wearing her brown Levi's and tan jacket over a white T-shirt advertising the Lodi Buckeyes. No, sir. This time she was wearing a taut pair of white hip-hugger pants and a red and white striped jersey top. It fit closely around her neck but had a high waist.

"My God," I murmured.

She leaned across to brush a kiss past my ear. "You like?"

"I like."

"That's why I wore it. I thought you might like. And it doesn't seem we get a chance to spend time together during the day, when these duds would be more appropriate."

"There is that problem," I agreed. "Where can I take you looking like that and not get into a fistfight?"

"I thought of that," she told me. "There's a place down at the cove. A lot of people come in by sea and tie up for dinner. Nautical attire is quite appropriate. I don't suppose you brought along a captain's cap by any chance?"

"No, but I've got some wet hiking boots in the trunk."

"That won't do at all. Anyway, I wanted to show off a bit for you. We can go there and I can do that and nobody will bother us."

"That's nice. You're giving me all the bother I can handle at one time."

Her smile was naughty and she moved over into my arms. We kissed as if we'd just made up our minds about something. Her hand loosened my collar, then moved around to stroke the back of my neck. One of my own hands, the devil, explored her bare midsection. We were kissing deeply. Sometime later on that evening we broke off to catch our breath.

"Wow," said Allison, brushing back a few strands of hair.

"I guess we could always climb into the back seat," I suggested.

"No, we'd better go eat first. I don't want to miss out on that again."

I took a cloth from the glove compartment and wiped the inside of the windshield where it had fogged over. "What will your neighbors think?"

"If any of them are watching, they'll think we're having a grand time."

"I guess they'd be right at that." I started the car and headed for the highway.

"You're quite a celebrity around town."

"How's that?"

"Finding the boy yesterday. Carrying him out all that way."

I grunted. "The town might change its mind when it hears what I found today."

"What's that?"

"No, we'll save that for later, if at all. I'd just like to go off duty for a while."

"You should have told me. I have some nice grass back at the house. We could have smoked a joint."

"I didn't mean that far off duty."

"Do you? Smoke grass I mean?"

"Sure. But it's usually when I take a holiday out at the beach or something. It doesn't happen too often."

She directed me to a road that looped back from the highway and dropped down to the cove. We passed fishing boats and dock facilities and curved around to the far side to a long pier with
several pleasure boats tied up. Across from that was a parking lot, three restaurants and a couple of bars. Allison led me into a place called The Bell. It was a low, spacious building partitioned by screens and planters in a way to give each of the tables and booths a cozy feeling of privacy. It was done in a maritime motif, the walls draped with nets and cork floats and red and green lanterns. We were led to a table in the rear, next to a window looking out over the water and marine yards.

"Cute," I told her.

"I like it. But don't let the decor trick you into having seafood, unless there's something you really crave. They don't do it all that well."

"What do they do well?"

"What do you suppose the fellows with bellies and expensive boats who come up here from San Francisco or Sausalito or Alameda order?"

"Steaks?"

"You've got it. Under all the feel of wind-in-hair and salt spray you have here a first class steak and chop house."

She was right. After a couple of drinks we had a pair of tender filets. It was a leisurely meal, and there was nice conversation to go with it. I asked her about her work and she asked me about when I was growing up. It was a switch. And it made me remember a lot of things I hadn't thought about for a long while. After the meal we sipped coffee and Bisquit and continued to gently poke and explore for the things we wanted to find out about each other. We even held hands across the table at one point, and I hadn't done that with anybody for at least a dozen years. It was heady, dangerous stuff. And I loved it.

"You're incredible," I told her. "I feel as if I've known you for a long time."

"You have a funny tug on me too, mister. I'd like to think we could have talks like this thirty years from now."