Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective) (15 page)

 I sat on the front seat of the car, with the door open and my feet on the ground. My chest was band-tight, but I could breathe all right now if I took the air in short, shallow inhalations. Pain rushed through my temples and behind my eyes, dull and heavy, and I felt vaguely nauseated.

Quartermain came over finally, and I stood up. He said, "You look rough. How do you feel?"

"I'll make it."

"I can radio for a doctor."

"I don't need one."

"All right."

We watched the firemen working with their hoses. The smoke drifting to the south and commingling with the incoming mist formed a curtain of black-flecked gray- ness over the stars. With the noise created by the men and the pump engines, and local residents attracted by the arrival of the fire units, I could no longer hear the sound of the surf. It would have been no comfort anyway.

The transceiver set began to make crackling noises. Quartermain slid in under the wheel, motioning me around to the other side, and closed the door. When I got in on the passenger side, and shut that door, I could hear Favor's voice saying, ". . . here at the Beachwood now, Ned. Orchard gave me a key to the cabin, but once I got inside I could see that something was wrong. The rear glass door was open, and when I checked I found jimmy marks on the lock."

Oh, I thought. Oh, oh, oh.

Quartermain hit the
Send
switch. "What about the book?"

"It's gone," Favor said.

Fourteen

We left the bluff face and Beach Road immediately, and drove to the Beachwood in Cypress Bay. The book was the only thing missing, nothing else had been touched, and it seemed obvious the balding man—it had to have been him, all right—had used the cover of darkness to come over the hedge or gate into the cottage's private rear garden. Favor had dusted the sliding door and the nightstand with his kit, but there were no prints; the guy had wiped everything clean. Quartermain told him to get in touch with a local artist named Vance, who did portrait work for them from time to time, and to have him waiting at the station to work up a drawing; then we drove over to Bonificacio Drive to talk to Beverly Winestock.

Neither of us expected any help from her—she was too fiercely loyal to her brother for one thing; and I had my doubts he would have told her where he was going tonight—but Quartermain had to talk to her anyway. At the moment, there was no one else he
could
talk to.

Beverly answered the door fully dressed—and still cool, still distant. But her eyes contained a touch of fear, and there were strain lines etched at the corners of her mouth. She was worried, apprehensive, and trying desperately not to show it. She noticed the condition of my face and clothing immediately, and what little color existed in her cheeks drained away. Had something happened, was Brad—?

Quartermain told her, succinctly, about the fire-gutting of Dancer's cabin, and the reason for it, and the theft of Paige's copy of
The Dead and the Dying
from my motel cottage. None of it seemed to have much effect on her; it was, I thought, as if she knew her brother was involved in all of this, but not the
why
or the
how
of his involvement. Quartermain began to question her, but she gave him nothing in response. No, she didn't know where her brother had gone tonight; no, she knew of no connection between Brad and a man answering the description of the balding guy; no, she had no idea why Dancer's book was so important, she had never read it and she knew nothing about it. She wanted to know what it was we suspected Brad of, and Quartermain told her only that he seemed to have information which would assist the investigation into the death of Walter Paige and the location of the balding man. Well, she said, she didn't know anything about Paige's death and she was certain Brad didn't either, we were misguided if we thought he did. There was sincerity in her voice, but you could tell she was holding an intangible something back and would keep on holding it back as long as necessary to protect her brother.

Quartermain gave it up, finally; we left her looking far more worried than she had already been, and drove to City Hall. The only thing cheering or positive waiting for us there was the news that Judith Paige had met her flight out of Monterey on time, had arrived safely at San Francisco International, and had been transported home to Glen Park by someone on the Airport Detail. Donovan had obtained the license number of Russell Dancer's car from Sacramento, and broadcast that as well as the description of Dancer that I had supplied, but there was no word as yet on man or vehicle. Winestock, too, was still among the missing. Quartermain had changed the surveillance request on him to another pick-up order, and had also posted a man at the Winestock house to bring him in if he happened to show up there undetected.

The balding guy's description had also been broadcast to all local and state units, but the type of car he was driving was still unknown and there was not much chance of his being picked up until a picture of him could be circulated. Favor was waiting with the artist, Vance—a short, fat man with bright eyes—to take care of that.

The four of us went to Quartermain's office, and I left them there to use his private bathroom and its stock of first-aid supplies. I stripped down to my underwear and washed off in cool water and put salve on a still-reddened area across my left cheekbone. There was not much I could do about the charred odor which permeated my clothing, but I brushed coat and trousers as best I could and washed a streak of dirt out of the front of my shirt. Then I dressed again and ate half a dozen aspirin for my headache and combed my hair and went in to join the others.

We spent the next forty minutes working with Vance on a drawing of the balding guy. Quartermain had only glimpsed him briefly at Dancer's, but I had seen him fairly close up in the park the day before and I was able to supply enough details—and Vance was skillful enough— so that we came up with what I thought was a pretty good likeness. Once I was satisfied Vance could not improve his sketch, Quartermain told the artist to make printed copies for local distribution and to get the likeness on the wire to Sacramento for possible criminal identification. Vance nodded and left immediately.

I sank wearily into the free armchair next to Favor, and Quartermain said, "You look pretty well frayed at the edges. Maybe you'd better go back to the Beachwood and try to get some sleep."

I felt wrung out, but still uneasily keyed up and wide awake; the last thing I seemed to want was bed and rest. I said, "If it's all the same, I'll sit it out with you."

"No objections," he said. "But it may be a long night."

"It's been a long one already. I can stand it, I think."

He called out for coffee and sandwiches, and the stuff arrived in a couple of minutes; they apparently had some kind of kitchen facility in the building. I tried one of the sandwiches without much interest, and then found I was hungrier than expected. I put away three of them and two cups of coffee.

There had not been much talking done about things since Beach Road, although Quartermain had apparently briefed Favor while I was in the bathroom, and we were ripe for it now. Quartermain said to us, "Well, all right, what have we got altogether? We've got a dead man named Walter Paige; an unidentified woman who slept with Paige just before he was killed; a bald man who also saw Paige shortly before he was killed, who was seen with Brad Winestock, who set fire to Russell Dancer's home, who broke into the Beachwood, and who damned well wants to keep anyone from reading a twenty-year-old paperback mystery novel. We've got the book itself—or rather, we don't have it and we don't know why it's important; we don't have Winestock, either,
or
Dancer. And then there's Paige trying to rent a vacant store in Cypress Bay for some unknown reason; and two local families acting peculiar, if nothing else, about their relationship with the dead man; and a missing writer who had some kind of trouble with the dead man six years ago; and Winestock's sister covering up in some way for her brother. Add it all together and what does it make? Nothing but a goddamn pot of confusion. So how do we make sense out of it? What's the common denominator? The book?"

"That's the way it looks for now," I said. "It's at least a major part of the key, although it might not necessarily explain Paige's woman's part, or Paige's death for that matter."

"You don't think the bald guy killed Paige?"

"It's not a certainty, especially now that he's gone to so much trouble to suppress copies of Dancer's book. If he killed Paige, why didn't he take the book out of Paige's bag on Saturday? It was sitting there in plain sight."

"He might have been too intent on murder to notice it," Favor said. "Or, if his motive had nothing directly to do with the book itself, he might not have thought about it until later on."

"The woman could even be his motive," Quartermain said, "assuming the possibility that she was his property and Paige was cutting him out. Sure, the two of them were buddy-buddy in the park, but the bald man could have gone to the Beachwood later for some reason, caught Paige and the woman together, lost his head, and killed Paige in a jealous fury."

"Another possibility could be that the woman is entirely innocent of anything except sleeping with Paige. His death could have been the result of a falling out with the bald man, something that happened between them after the woman left Paige's cottage—and, as you say, Ned, despite their apparent friendliness in the park. Something connected with the book, maybe."

Quartermain nodded thoughtfully. "That book," he said, and looked at me. "Did you happen to read any of it this morning?"

"The jacket blurb and the first five pages of text," I answered. "That's all."

"Enough so you can tell us what the thing's about?"

"Not really. As far as I know, this guy comes home from the Korean War and gets mixed up with a bunch of hoods and some hard-assed dames; one of the women, I gathered, talks him into some sort of double-cross and the two of them go on the run with two hundred grand."

"There's not much in that, is there?"

"Not much."

"Well, what about the characters? Recognizable as anybody from around here—any of the involved parties? That could be what this is all about; Dancer could have written about some of our local people, thinly disguised, and opened some closets in the bargain . . ."

"I don't think so," I said. "The book is almost twenty years old, remember—and Paige, for example, was in his early thirties and the others are all pretty much in the same general age bracket. And the novel's protagonist and the first of the women seemed standard types—no special characteristics."

Quartermain finger-combed his hair tiredly. "All right, the hell with it for now. Let's look at some other things. For instance, how the guy knew you had a copy of the book at the Beachwood."

"He had to have been tipped off about it," I said. "There's no other way he could have known. I took it from here directly to the motel this morning, and I doubt if I was being watched at the time."

"Who knew you had it?"

"I mentioned it to everyone I talked with, but as far as I can remember, the only one I told that it was in my possession was Beverly Winestock."

"I thought as much. She told her brother, and Winestock told the bald guy—probably by telephone, either just before or just after we paid our first visit to the Winestock house. Once he knew you had the book and that questions were being asked about it, he figured it was only a matter of time before it was read, so he went after Paige's copy and any that Dancer might have had."

"Which means he knew beforehand that Dancer lived in this area," I said. "Winestock might have told him, or Paige, or he could know Dancer personally even though Dancer claims not to know him."

"Where do you think Winestock went tonight? The bald guy was at the Beachwood and down doing the job on Dancer's place."

"Maybe to wait for him to come back," Favor said. "Monterey, since that's where I lost Winestock, or somewhere north or east of here—not Cypress Bay, though."

I shifted in my chair. "There's a pattern to this thing somewhere, a kind of wheel with Paige and that book and the bald man as the hub, and Winestock and Beverly Winestock and the Lomaxes and the Tarrants—some of them, at least—as the spokes. It's nebulous as hell, but it's there. If we only had the book . . ."

"Or Dancer," Quartermain said. "Listen, you collect pulp magazines. How easy would it be to dig up another copy of
The Dead and the Dying
, assuming Dancer can't or won't help us? How fast could it be done?"

"An obscure paperback title like that—it might take considerable time and effort. I know a couple of book dealers in San Francisco that specialize in magazines and used paperbacks. If they don't have it in stock—and chances are they wouldn't—they could put a line out to other dealers or to collectors of crime fiction who might have it or know where it could be gotten. All of which would take time, as I said. And I've got the feeling time is an important factor; the bald guy has got to know we'll dig up a copy of the book eventually, and yet he still went to a hell of a lot of trouble tonight to get rid of immediately available copies."

"I thought of that, too, and it only complicates things that much more. How the hell could a time element enter into it?"

"No ideas," I said, "and no guesses."

"Ditto," Favor said.

Quartermain slumped back in his chair; the purplish bags under his deep-set and slant-lidded eyes made him look like a kind of Oriental hound. "If Dancer doesn't turn up by morning, and with the right answers, you can call those book dealers of yours and get them to work," he said to me. "There's a place in Monterey, I think, that handles used paperback books and we'll try them too. Other than that, there's nothing we can do about the book. No goddamn thing at all."

None of us seemed to feel much like talking after that, and a brooding, waiting silence formed thickly in there. I sat and stared at nothing and wanted a cigarette and kept on resisting the urge. A sunburst clock on one wall ticked away the minutes loudly and monotonously, and I saw that we were now two hours into a new day—into a new month, too, for that matter, since Sunday had been the last day of April. Monday. Blue Monday—or black Monday, take your choice. Some choice.