Cat and Mouse (18 page)

I parked near the entrance to the lot and walked in the shadows on the other side to get a closer look. There seemed to be nobody in the cab. Then, from the opposite entrance to the lot, a car drove in and its headlights illuminated the shadows on the far side. Adonis Rey was briefly revealed, leaning against the wall of the hospital, smoking a cigarette. He had finally found a bail bondsman.

I went back to my car and sat. About twenty minutes later, Al Gertz came out, revealed in the overhead light of the hospital doorway overhang, and walked down toward Rey. I started the engine.

The truck pulled out. I followed it down Laguna Street to the freeway entrance and down that to the freeway. I let a couple of cars get between mine and the truck. It went through town without having to stop for the lights. So did I.

About a quarter of a mile before the Montevista offramp, the truck moved over to the left lane. The Montevista turn-off, unlike most, led off the left lane. Was it possible they were heading for our house?

It was possible. The truck turned off onto our road. But it went past the house and continued its winding climb. The memory of that night when Corey had been lured and framed came back. Was this another of Turbo’s ploys?

That seemed unlikely. How could he have known I was going to visit the hospital tonight?

That Gertz! Taylor’s sweet roommate had been right about him. He wasn’t Fred’s friend; he and Adonis were still allies. Gertz had conned both Corey and me.

It was a clear, bright night; I stayed at least one curve behind the truck. There was no traffic coming the other way when I headed into the final curve. I switched off the headlights and slowed the car.

The truck was parked in a hollow below the road. They left the truck and walked toward the shack where Jasper Belton had died. I drove past the crest and parked off the road in the shadows of a line of eucalyptus trees.

There was a possibility that Turbo was there or coming there. There was no light visible in the shack. That made sense; the county patrol boys would certainly investigate a light in a deserted shack.

If Turbo was there or coming there, I was naked. I hadn’t brought my gun. Adonis I could handle, but not the three of them. I should have listened to that pushy salesman who had tried to sell me a car phone. This was a time to call the law.

I moved quietly down toward the shack, crouching in the high, dry grass and the thick chaparral. I could hear voices through the glassless window as I drew closer.

One I could recognize, the voice of Alvin Gertz. He said, “I talked with Taylor at the hospital. He told me he can’t identify you. We brought that ammo you wanted. It’s in the truck. We’d better get out of here.”

And then a voice I didn’t recognize. “Wait’ll I finish this beer. We sure as hell don’t want to get picked up for drinking in a moving car.”

Damn it, if only I had brought my gun…I moved as quietly and quickly as I could back to the car. I burned rubber going back to the house.

Jan was in the den. I used the kitchen phone to call the sheriff’s department. I told the night man where they were and what I had overheard.

“I’ll send out the call,” he said. “I’ll phone you if we pick them up. We’ll need you for a witness.”

When I went into the den, Jan asked, “How was your friend?”

“I never got to see him.” I told her what had happened. “I wish to hell I’d had my gun with me.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said. “In the mood you’re in? And remember, he could be armed, too. Let’s just sit and hope.” She turned off the TV. “Maybe some cocoa?”

We had the cocoa and waited. Nothing. At eleven o’clock I phoned the station. The commander told me neither Gertz nor Rey had been at home. Nor had the truck or the man I thought was Turbo been apprehended. “I’ll phone you the minute we learn anything.”

Jan went to bed. I stretched out on the sofa in the living room. I have no idea when I finally fell asleep. Jan had gone to work when Mrs. Casey came into the living room at ten o’clock to tell me Sheriff McClune was on the phone.

They had nothing. They were nowhere. The entire county had been alerted to watch for the Chev truck. Something had to break.

“I know,” I said. “My sanity. I gave your warning message to Rubio yesterday. I wish I hadn’t, now.”

“Brock—!”

“I’m not in a mood for argument,” I told him. “Let me know if you stumble onto anything interesting.” I hung up.

Shortly before noon the guard came in to tell me he was coming down with the flu. Would I call the office for a substitute?

I told him to go home. I would take his place until the evening guard came. I got my gun and went to sit in the shadows in front of the garage door, hoping against hope that Turbo would show on my watch.

Mrs. Casey and I ate our lunch out there on a card table. Then she went up to her room. I sat and sat and sat.

Around three o’clock the sun began to work its way into my concrete paved sanctuary. I moved my station into the living room.

Corey came about fifteen minutes later. He looked embarrassed. The way it was, he explained, he had come up with nothing out in Omega. Would I be offended if he just finished out the day?

“Of course not! Did your girl friend throw you out?”

He shook his head. “I had a message on my answering machine when I checked the office this morning. I phoned the man from there. It’s a—a—I mean, it could be a big-money case.”

“Take it,” I said. “You have my blessing.”

“Thanks. Anything new on your end?”

“Nothing,” I said. “If anything pops out in Omega before you leave there, phone me.”

He nodded. “I think I’ll just cruise the town and maybe talk with some of my former classmates.”

He left.

H
ARLEY HAD GONE HOME.
Corey was spending his last day on the hunt. The Brotherhood’s soldiers were probably scouting all the terrain between Montevista and Omega. And the man who had the most to win or lose was sitting and stewing. McClune’s soldiers had come up with nothing. Something had to break, he had told me. Maybe…But it was probable my Chicano friends had more dedicated warriors in the field looking for Turbo than the sheriff’s department had. His boys were putting in their eight hours. My friends were on a mission.

Vigilante justice or courtroom law? In my present mood, as the victim, I was rooting for the Brotherhood. It is not easy to be objective when you are the victim. If one of us was doomed to die I preferred that it be Turbo.

Vogel came over to talk with me when he brought Jan home. “What’s your boiling point now?” he asked.

“About two degrees short of erupting.”

“Harris has been complaining again about the activities of your Chicano friends.”

“Tell him to hire some Chicano officers and maybe I’ll listen to him.”

“Brock, as you damned well know, I have complained to him about that. Often!”

“I know. I’ll be okay, Bernie. Did Jan tell you what happened last night?”

He nodded. “One against three—and you unarmed. You could have been killed.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I’m glad to see you’re getting some sense.”

“Next time I’ll carry the gun.”

He shook his head. “You’ll never learn, will you? I’m tired of arguing with you!” He stared at me for seconds and then turned abruptly and walked to his car.

Jan came out about five minutes later, bringing a bottle of beer for me and a diet Coke for her. She had become concerned about her weight again lately.

She sat in the deck chair next to mine. “Bernie,” she said, “seems to think you have a death wish.”

“I have. But it’s not
my
death I’m wishing for.”

She said nothing, staring out at the road. A sheriff’s patrol car drove past slowly. The driver waved at us. I waved back.

Jan asked, “How long can they keep up the surveillance?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you should have taken your gun with you last night.”

“And maybe not. They were talking about ammunition. That can include more than bullets or shotgun shells. I might have nailed one of them—and been blasted into eternity by one of the other two.”

“Let’s not talk,” she said wearily. “Let’s just sit.”

We were still sitting when Mrs. Casey came out to tell me I had a phonecall. It was a woman, she said.

It was a girl, Fred Taylor’s live-in girl friend.

“How is he doing?” I asked her.

“Good. He’s out of intensive care. He’s going to make it. Al Gertz came to the hospital to visit him last night.”

“I know.”

“Well, that reminded Fred about a place where he and Al and their buddies used to throw some wild parties. He told me to phone Mr. Raleigh. I did but he wasn’t home. Some woman there gave me your name.”

“I’m Corey’s partner. Where is this place?”

It was a deserted small house, she told me, at the end of a dirt road without a name. It led off Ridge Drive right opposite the pumping station at the Alcehama Reservoir.

“Should I have phoned the police?” she asked.

“Not yet. They might have been there already and it could be a wild-goose chase. I’ll check it out.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes. Hold your thumbs.”

“For you
and
Fred,” she said. “Good luck, Mr. Callahan.”

I told Jan to phone the guard service and tell the night man to come early. I told her to stay in the house and keep the doors locked. I had to see a man.

“We’re eating in half an hour,” she said. “What man?”

“A friend of Corey’s. I should be back before dinner. If I’m not, eat without me.”

“Brock—!”

“Damn it, Jan, I don’t have time to argue. This could be important!”

“And dangerous?”

“No,” I lied.

She stared at me as Vogel had. She took a deep breath and said, “I’ll phone the guard.”

A lie to be followed by a foolish move…But the adrenalin was pumping in me. I had reached the eruption point.

The Alcehama Reservoir wasn’t far from here, supplying the water for Montevista. Ridge Drive forked off our road two blocks below our house. Ten minutes later I turned into the rutted dirt road across from the pumping station and started the uphill climb.

This could be another of Turbo’s ploys. It was possible that Al Gertz had intentionally reminded Taylor of the house at the hospital last night. He and Turbo and Adonis Rey must know by now that Fred Taylor was no longer an ally. The three of them could be waiting for me to show.

That was the reasonable thought. I’d had too many days of anger and frustration behind me to leave room for reasonable thoughts.

The house was a small weathered frame house set in a grove of eucalyptus trees. Two dead orange trees were in the front clearing. There was no Chev pickup truck nor any other vehicle in sight.

I pulled into the grove well short of the house and walked in its cover to the crest of the hill. On the far side, a quarter of a mile below, a small yellow sedan was parked on Solono Road. I couldn’t tell from here if it was occupied.

There were two doors visible now, one on the side of the house, the other the front door. There was a pair of leaning laundry posts in the clearing at the side of the house. There might also be a rear door but the cover was too sparse to risk a look.

A house this small with
three
outside doors? And then the laundry posts reminded me that the side door could be the laundry room door, just as it had been in the small house I had grown up in in Long Beach.

That could be the safest point of entry. I took out my gun, stayed low, and headed for it.

The door was ajar. I pushed it open. It was a laundry room; I could see the galvanized iron tub. A stack of yellowed newspapers was in one corner, a three-year-old calendar on the far wall.

I waited, my heart pounding, my gun hand trembling, waiting for a sound, almost hoping the house was empty. But only almost. Up the one step and I was in the house.

The door in front of me now must open to a hall or a kitchen. A kitchen in the middle of the house? It had to be a hall. I turned the knob and started to open it.

The hinge creaked. I waited for a sound. None. I opened the door far enough to get a view of the other side. It was a hall. If the creep was in here he could be watching from either end.

A quick low glance revealed that he wasn’t. The kitchen was at one end, a small dining room across the hall, the front door at the other end. The bedrooms must be on this side. The living room archway was visible from here, opening off the hall.

There was the drone of a plane overhead but not a sound in the house. Only a portion of the kitchen was visible but I could now see there was a back door. That gave me three exits—if the need should arise.

I turned toward the kitchen—and a voice from the other end of the hall said, “I’m here, Callahan!”

I crouched and turned and aimed, and almost pulled the trigger. But he was unarmed.

He stood there, grinning at me, big and bald and ugly. He said, “A tough footballer like you? This time you brought your gun, I see.”

“I didn’t come to kill you,” I told him.

“No kidding? Why not?”

“I plan to take you to the law.”

“How? You going to keep the gun on me with one hand and drive with the other?”

“There’s room for you in my deck. Move it, creep!”

“You gutless bastard!” he said. “I figured you’d want it like I want it, man to man.”

“Move it!” I repeated.

He shook his head—and stepped through the archway to the living room. Damn it! Why hadn’t I pulled the trigger? He probably had an arsenal in there.

“Come on, gutless,” he called. “I don’t have no gun. Come and get me.”

I thought of the dead Jasper and Jane Meredith being nibbled by rats and Fred Taylor now out of intensive care. It must have made me as loony as he was. I moved slowly to the living room archway.

He was standing at the far end of the room, still grinning, what looked like a grenade in his hand.

“Come in, sucker,” he said. “I haven’t pulled the pin. Not yet.”

“Pull it and throw it,” I told him, “and I promise you you’ll die where you stand.”