Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective) (12 page)

I went down the alley a little way, and the newsstand had a side door that showed signs of having been forcibly entered at one time—the vandals Tarrant had mentioned—and which now was also padlocked from the outside. I thought that it would open on a storeroom, since the building was considerably longer than it was wide and the interior I had glimpsed through the window was less than three-quarters of the overall length. The rear wall of the structure was set flush with the rear wall of another building facing on Pine Street; just for the hell of it I went through to Pine and looked at the storefront there, and it was a mod boutique that specialized in hand-tooled leather garments for men and women "of discerning taste."

There was nothing in any of this that I could see. Maybe Paige had had the honest intention of opening a small newsstand in Cypress Bay, although that seemed pretty much out of character; or maybe he had had some ulterior motive that I could not even begin to interpret; or maybe Tarrant had been lying about Paige's call for some reason of his own.

More things to wonder about, I thought—too many things. The Lomaxes and the Winestocks and the balding guy and what Russ Dancer had not told me about his relationship with Walter Paige and just what Bianca Tarrant’s relationship had been with Walter Paige and whether or not Keith Tarrant had been completely honest and why Paige had tried to rent a vacant store in downtown Cypress Bay. And Dancer's damned book,
The Dead and the Dying
, and why Paige had had it and just what it meant, if it meant anything at all . . .

I returned to Balboa Street and got into my car and started for the City Hall again. But I had to pass near the Bay Head Inn to get there, and I decided it was about time I looked in again on Judith Paige. I felt vaguely guilty about neglecting to check on her since the morning; it was not healthy for her to sit up in that dark room alone, grieving, perhaps brooding, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right.

I parked in front of the place and went inside and up the curving staircase to the second floor. She opened the door herself this time, in response to my knock, and she looked considerably better than she had earlier. She had put a touch of coral lipstick on her mouth and brushed her hair a little, and the wistfulness and the sorrow were tempered with a certain resolve. I felt myself relax, looking at her. She was going to be okay now; you could tell it by her eyes and by the way she carried herself.

I said, "Hello, Mrs. Paige. I just thought I'd stop by to see how you were feeling."

"Much better, thank you," she said, and gave me a small, brave smile.

"Have you been alone here all day?"

"Well, Chief Quartermain came by twice—once this morning, after you left, and once a little while ago."

"That's good. How about food? Have you eaten?"

"We went for a walk, and he bought me some soup and a sandwich. I didn't think I wanted to go out, or to eat anything, but now I'm glad I did."

So am I, I thought. "Did the Chief have any . . . news?"

"No, I don't think so. He didn't say, if he had."

And I was not going to say either, not at this point. There were too many intangibles, for one thing, and for another she was starting to bear up fine now and the kind of facts I did know for certain could only have upset her. I said, "Did he tell you whether or not we—you—could leave for San Francisco tonight?"

"Yes. He said it was all right."

"Good. I've got to go over to see him now, and there's the chance I'll have to stay on here for another day or so. If so, I'll call you and let you know—and I'm sure the Chief will assign someone to drive you to the airport in Monterey, and make arrangements for someone else to meet you in San Francisco and take you home."

"All right," she said. "But why should you have to stay another day?"

"I'm not certain that I will have to; it just may work out that way." I paused. "If it does, would you mind if I called you in San Francisco when I get back? And maybe dropped out to see you?"

She had another of those small smiles for me. "No, of course I wouldn't mind. I think I'll need someone to talk to, until I can return to my family."

We touched hands, and hers was soft and moist and very tiny in mine—a child's hand. Christ, she made me feel paternal. I resisted an impulse to kiss her cheek, smiled at her, and left her again with some regrets.

I drove on to City Hall, and this time Quartermain was there. The fat sergeant told me he had come in a half-hour earlier, apparently just after he had left Judith for the second time; the sergeant got a phone okay for me to go in, and buzzed open the electronic doors. Less than a minute later I opened the door to Quartermain's private office.

He was sitting behind the walnut desk with the heels of his hands pressed against his temples, as if he were suffering a savage headache. His sad face had a weary, houndish look. I shut the door quietly, and he said, "I would have been back two hours ago, but I stopped at the Bay Head to see Mrs. Paige."

I sat down in the same armchair I had occupied that morning. "I know," I said. "I just left her myself."

"She seems to be holding her own now."

"I thought so too. It was good of you to take her out for a walk and something to eat."

"Yeah, well, she needed it," he said. He lowered his hands and swiveled around to look at me. "Donovan, out on the desk, said you'd stopped by twice to see me while I was gone. What's on your mind?"

"Quite a few things," I told him. "I've spent the day putting my nose into things, where it probably doesn't belong."

"Paige's death, you mean?"

"Yes."

"In what way?"

"Well, it started with the book."

"The paperback from Paige's bag?"

"Uh-huh. There was a lead in it after all."

"What sort of lead?"

"The author, Russell Dancer. I'd read some of his pulp stories, and they were set in the San Francisco area— the later ones; so was
The Dead and the Dying
. So I followed a hunch and looked him up in the local telephone directory."

"He's listed?"

"R. Dancer, Beach Road, County."

"Christ, I never even thought of that possibility."

"You can't think of everything," I said. "And you can't know everybody who lives in or around your community."

"I suppose not," he admitted. "I take it there was a connection between Dancer and Paige?"

I nodded. "Dancer knew him about six years ago."

"Where?"

"Cypress Bay. Paige lived here for six or seven months, and he was part of a bar-hopping group that included Dancer and several other local residents. He was apparently involved with most of them, in one way or another."

"How do you mean?"

"Like this," I said, and I told him the rest of it, slowly, including each of my impressions. He let me tell it once without interruption; then he had me repeat parts of it, asking questions now and then and making notes on a ruled pad. Finally he sat back and tapped the clip of his pen against his front teeth, but there was no disapproval for me on his long face. I thought it was going to keep on being all right between us.

He said, "I shouldn't have been so quick to discount that goddamned book; it seems to have keyed open a few local closets."

"I think it ties in further, too," I said, "but I can't figure how. I drew nothing but blanks when I asked about it."

"I don't like the way all this is shaping up," Quartermain said. "Last night Paige's death had most of the earmarks of a simple crime of passion, but you've uncovered a hell of a lot of potential complications and involvements. Murder in a town like Cypress Bay is bad enough, but when some of the more respected members of the community begin figuring into it, it's a damn sight worse. I know Keith Tarrant and the Lomaxes, and I'm not going to relish digging into their private lives—especially if it means a large amount of adverse publicity. We're a resort town, primarily, and we can't afford any kind of a major blow-off."

I did not say anything.

Quartermain made an abrupt deprecating gesture. "Hell, that sounds callous and insular, and those are two things I try not to be. I didn't mean that I intend to soft-pedal my investigation; I'm a cop and I've got a job to do and I'm going to do it the best way I know how—publicity or no publicity. I guess I was just thinking out loud, lamenting a little."

"Nobody likes to see a blow-off in his town," I said. "A cop least of all."

"Yeah," he said, and sighed. "Well, maybe those skeletons that seem to be rattling around don't include the bones of murder; that's something to hope for anyway."

"What are you going to do first, if I can ask?"

"Talk to Brad Winestock," he answered. "I want to know who this bald man is and why he keeps turning up."

"I'd like to know that myself."

He looked at me for a time, meditatively. "You want to tag along for the ride?"

I sat up straight in the chair. I had not expected anything like that; at best, I had figured him to ask me to hang around for another day or two. "Hell yes, if you'll have me."

"You've done a considerable amount of spadework, and I think that earns you the right to sit in—and to hell with the rulebook."

"Thanks, Chief."

"Ned—for God's sake." He got up on his feet. "I think it's a good idea if Mrs. Paige got out of here and back home; familiar surroundings are what she needs right now. Since you'll be staying on, I'll make arrangements for her to fly into San Francisco International from Monterey. You want to call her and tell her?"

"Yes."

"Use my phone. I'll go out and have Donovan set it up, here and in San Francisco."

I rang up Judith at the Bay Head Inn and told her that I was going to have to remain in Cypress Bay another day, after all, and that Quartermain was making preparations for her return by plane. She said that was fine, although she would have preferred driving back with me. There was a warm thing for me in those words, and I held onto it, down inside. I promised to call her as soon as I got home to San Francisco, or if anything came up that she ought to know. I also told her to keep away from television and radio broadcasts, and the newspapers, because they could only upset her—and not to talk to any reporters if they came around; she was better, but not quite ready to find out about her husband's infidelity or background or prison record, and the less she knew for a while, the stronger she would be when she finally had to face the whole truth. She agreed to do as I requested, and asked me to thank the Chief for his kindness, and we said a soft parting.

Quartermain came back, and it was all arranged. So we left his office then, without any more words, and went out to the police parking area and picked up his unmarked car—a couple of old firehorses who maybe thought too much about the problems of others and not enough about their own; who cared too much and expected too much, and perhaps could not have existed any other way. I had the idea that he sensed that bond, too, and that that was another part of the reason he had invited me to come along.

Cypress Bay: the town with a little something for everyone . . .

Twelve

The shadows on the porch beneath the second-floor gallery were deeper and cooler now, with the coming of night, and the faint fragrance of the red bougainvillea was like the wistful memory of a sweetheart and a perfume of long ago. You could see the Pacific from up there—a burning sheet of glass under a fiery sun that was just touching the juncture of sea and sky to the west—and the full sweep of the heavens, where blue had modulated to gold-veined gray. Sunset, laying a golden veil over the land before giving way to the black curtain of night.

Beverly Winestock answered the melancholy chimes, as she had earlier in the day. She looked even more ephemeral now, silhouetted against the shadowed hall behind her, and her dark hair was the same dusky, flowing tapestry; she was still sensual, still desirable, but there was a tenseness in her now, a strain that seemed to rob her of some of her beauty. Her eyes touched my face and moved away, leaving nothing; she looked at Quartermain, waiting, silent.

He introduced himself and showed her his identification and asked her, "Is your brother home at the moment, Miss Winestock?"

She looked past him, down along the slab-stone steps and beyond the front gate to where the faded-blue Studebaker was parked on Bonificacio Drive—to Quartermain's car parked behind it. Then she looked at me again, tight- lipped, and said to Quartermain, "Yes, he's here."

"We'd like to see him, please."

"What about?"

"We'll discuss that with him, if you don't mind."

She hesitated a moment longer, and then shrugged and put her back to us and walked away along the hall. Quartermain and I went inside, and I shut the door. Beverly stopped at the entrance to the tile-floored parlor and half turned back to us.

A man's voice called from within, "Who is it, Bev?"

She did not answer. When Quartermain and I approached, she turned again and disappeared through the arch at the far end of the hall. I watched her for a moment before I followed Quartermain into the parlor, thinking: She's got a wall up now, a protective barrier—cool and aloof and a million miles away. It was down earlier, when I was here, but she's put it back up, and with that tenseness in her it can only mean there's a threat of some kind, to her or to her brother . . .

Brad Winestock was sitting on the tapestried-cloth sofa, his arms resting forward on his knees; he still wore the brown slacks of the afternoon, and his dark hair was still wind-tangled, but he had shed the blue windbreaker to reveal a ribbed short-sleeved pullover cord-laced from mid-chest to throat in one of the current casual fashions. There was a quart of Jim Beam on the brass-ornamented table in front of him, down about six inches, and an empty glass beside it. I thought that it was probably the bottle he had bought at the Stillwater, and that he had been working on it ever since he had gotten home.

He said, "Yeah? What is it?"

His voice was thick, and his eyes—a flat brown with too much white showing—were hazy and restless. There was a thin film of sweat on his forehead. Quartermain glanced at me, and I nodded slightly to confirm that this was the man who had been with the balding guy, the man I followed here from Grove Avenue.