Bernhardt's Edge (12 page)

“Happy September fourteenth, Alan.”

“Thanks, Marge.” He slipped the unopened envelope in an inside pocket and gestured toward Dancer's office. “Is anyone with him?”

“No. But he doesn't want underlings disturbing him. Listen, Alan, I've got a date next week with a very intellectual guy. He went to Harvard, in fact. Any chance of a deal on tickets?”

“Probably. I'll see what I can do. Right now, though, I want to see him—” He gestured again. “It's important.”

“Now, Alan, you know how it goes. What seems important to mere mortals doesn't even register on Dancer's—”

“How about murder, Marge? How about homicide detectives, knocking on his door? Think he'd like to have a little advance notice?”

“I get your point.” As she reached for the phone she raised a forefinger. “Don't forget those tickets.”

“No problem.”

Dancer's desk, usually uncluttered, was covered with stacks of miscellaneous papers.

“The IRS,” Dancer said, gesturing to the mis-matched stacks of receipts and charge slips. “I'm being audited, and my goddam accountant is in the hospital.”

“Can't you get an extension?”

“I've already had two extensions. What is it, Alan? What's so important?”

“It's the Betty Giles thing—Betty Giles and Nick Ames. He was murdered last night, in Santa Rosa. He was murdered, and Betty Giles is running.”

Eyes narrowed, mouth pursed, Dancer pulled at an earlobe. “Any particulars?” As he spoke, he gestured Bernhardt to a chair. Ignoring the invitation, Bernhardt leaned forward, placing the fingertips of both hands on Dancer's desk. Making long, hard eye contact, he spoke softly:

“Yes, Herbert, there are particulars. Several particulars. Would you like to hear them?”

Resigned, Dancer rolled his chair back from the desk and turned to face the view window. The message: Bernhardt's audience with his superior had begun—and the clock was ticking.

“I found them on Wednesday,” Bernhardt said, “about four o'clock in the afternoon. About twenty-four hours later, you called me off the case. And that night—last night—Nick Ames was killed. It looks like he could've been killed by a hired gun—a hit man.”

Frowning, Dancer swiveled in his chair to face Bernhardt. Uncharacteristically, Dancer wasn't wearing a jacket, and his tie was loosened. His improbably cherubic face was thoughtful. As always, his eyes were cold, revealing nothing.

“Why do you say it was a hit man?”

“Because the murder weapon fired .22 high-speed hollow points. And it probably had a silencer. That's a hit man's weapon.”

“Have you ever seen the ads in some of these
Soldier of Fortune
magazines? Silencers—machine pistol conversions—anyone can get anything.”

Ignoring the response, Bernhardt said, “There's only one way the facts add up, Herbert. Whoever hired you wanted Nick Ames dead. He knew Ames and Betty Giles were together, so he said he wanted us to find the woman, as a cover. As soon as I found them, you called the client—and he got on an airplane. When he arrived in Santa Rosa, you relieved me. He took over the stakeout—and killed Ames. Which means that we're accessories to murder.”

Elaborately long suffering, Dancer sighed. His manner was condescending as he said, “Alan, you're dramatizing. Do you realize that you're dramatizing?”

Grimly choosing not to reply, Bernhardt asked, “Is the client a black man?”

“No, he's not a black man. And he's not a hit man, either. That, I can guarantee.”

“Who is he?”

Once more Dancer sighed, pointedly consulting his wristwatch. “Alan, we've had this conversation before. I'm not going to tell you who he is. And you know it.”

“I talked to Betty Giles' mother. She says Betty is running. She's scared, and she's running. I think she's in danger.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I think she knows why Nick Ames was killed—and I think she knows who killed him. She told her mother she was going to make them pay, whoever did it. And if she goes after them, she could get killed.”

“She's upset. It's understandable. She'll cool down.”

“Of course she's upset. She's also breaking the law, leaving Santa Rosa. She was told to stay for the inquest.”

“That's her problem, Alan. It's not your problem.”

“Listen, Herbert, I'm going to find Betty Giles. I'm going to try and square this.”

Slowly, meaningfully, Dancer shook his head. “No you're not. You're going to forget about it, Alan. You're going to let it die. We're clean now. That's the way I want to keep it. We were hired to do a job, and we did it. Maybe the client lied to me, maybe he didn't. Maybe the whole thing is a coincidence. But, whichever way it comes down, we're clean. Which means that we aren't going to ask questions.”

“You might feel clean, Herbert. But I don't feel clean. I feel dirty. And it's your fault.”

Abruptly, Dancer hitched his chair closer to the desk, dropped his eyes to the small, scattered piles of papers that littered his desk. The audience was ended. Bernhardt remained motionless for a moment, standing rigidly before the desk. When he spoke, measuring each word, he was conscious of his actor's craft: “I'm going to find her, Herbert. And that's a promise.”

Reluctantly, Dancer raised his cold, colorless eyes. For a moment he held Bernhardt's gaze. Then, as if he pitied the other man, he shook his head. “If you do that, Alan—go looking for her, poking around—you're through here. You understand that.”

In reply, Bernhardt unclipped his pager from his belt, laid it on Dancer's beautifully burnished walnut desk. Next he withdrew his wallet, took out his plastic-coated private investigator's license, laid the license beside the pager.

“I'll keep the gun permit,” he said. “That's in my name.”

“Alan, for God's sake. You're—”

“This could turn out to be one of the best moves I ever made,” Bernhardt said. “Already, that's what it feels like.”

“You'll go broke.”

“I've always been broke. I survived. Good-bye, Herbert. Watch the newspapers.”

“T
HAT FLIGHT LEAVES IN
two hours and ten minutes, Miss Giles.” The ticket clerk handed her the ticket folder. “Gate six.” He pointed to his left.

She stood for a moment with the folder in her hand, watching her suitcase moving on the conveyor belt, one suitcase among many. Most of the suitcases contained enough clothing for a weekend, or a week.

Her suitcase could contain everything, all that was left of her life.

Aware of an impatient cough from the traveler behind her in line, she moved aside, slipped the ticket folder in her purse, made sure the purse was fastened. At five o'clock in the evening, the Burbank terminal was crowded. Conservatively dressed businessmen hurried from their shuttle flights to waiting cars, or cabs. Young people laughed together, their voices clear and clamorous. Just ahead, an attendant pushed a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. The man's head lolled nervelessly against the chair back; his hands were crossed in his lap, inert. His eyes were empty.

As empty as Nick's eyes: dead eyes in a cold, dead body.

Riding in the police car from the morgue to the Starlight Motel, the detective had tried to talk to her, tried to comfort her—and tried to pump her, too. Why had she come to Santa Rosa, she and Nick? Where had they planned to go next? She'd tried to be polite, tried to answer him. But, as if they were tethered, her thoughts had returned again and again to Nick's face. They'd tucked the green sheet close beneath his chin, and arranged another sheet like a nun's habit, concealing the hair, revealing only the face—the face so incredibly pale in the piteous white light, the eyes so utterly empty.

Finally, because she couldn't think of anything else, she'd asked the detective—Ochoa—why they hadn't closed Nick's eyes. It was only civilized, she'd always thought, to close a dead man's eyes. Embarrassed, Ochoa could only apologize. It was necessary, he'd said, that they take pictures, for identification. Several pictures. And for the pictures, he'd said, the eyes must be open.

And then he'd gone back to his questions, patiently probing. Like her tethered thoughts, returning again and again to Nick's dead eyes, Ochoa's questions constantly came back to the gun. Why had Nick been carrying the gun? The gun had been on the floor beneath the Toyota's seat. Did she know that it was illegal to carry a gun out of sight—even if the gun was duly registered, which it was.

She realized that she was standing near the entrance of one of the airport's restaurants. Was she hungry? Had she eaten today?

The uniformed policeman—Henderson—had knocked on her door at eight-thirty that morning. He'd told her that Nick had died. Just that, nothing more. Then, later, Ochoa had arrived. He'd stayed inside with her, waited until she'd finally mastered herself, quit crying. Ochoa had asked her to dress, while he waited outside. There's been a bag of fruit on the closet shelf, beside the bottle of bourbon that Nick had always taken when they traveled. She'd eaten a banana, she remembered. And later, back at the motel after the trip to the morgue, stuffing clothing at random into her suitcase, she'd eaten an apple. Curiously, though, she hadn't been conscious of the taste. She'd chewed, and swallowed, and felt the food swell in her throat. But there'd been no taste, no sensation of pleasure.

Neither would there be a sensation of pleasure tonight, alone in a strange bed. Whenever they traveled, every night, they made love. They'd talked about it once, how erotic they felt, in motel rooms. Forbidden games, she'd said, that must be part of it, part of the erotic pleasure. Nick hadn't responded, not in kind. He'd simply smiled his slow, knowing, stud-in-heat smile, moved close to her, put his hands on her where he knew she liked it most.

Without realizing it, she was standing near the cashier's stand, waiting to be seated. And, yes, a hostess was approaching, smiling, gesturing for Betty to follow her. The hostess was Chicano, like Ochoa.

She ordered at random: a turkey sandwich, soup, salad, and, after some thought, a glass of wine.

When he'd left her at the Starlight Motel, Ochoa had told her not to leave town, warned her not to leave Santa Rosa. But as soon as he'd gone, she'd started to pack. In minutes, she'd phoned for a cab, paid the bill with her VISA card, and lugged her suitcase out to the curb, where she'd waited for the cab. It hadn't occurred to her that she was probably breaking the law. Her only thought was that she must get out of the motel room, where Nick's things were still scattered around. She couldn't look at his things, and she couldn't bear to touch them, either, not then. She hadn't given a second thought to her car, which had been impounded, Ochoa had said—adding that, after they'd finished examining the car, they'd “do their best” to clean it. Only then did she ask him how Nick had died, how he'd been killed. Reluctantly, Ochoa had answered that Nick had been shot while he sat behind the wheel. And then, doggedly, Ochoa had come back to the same refrain, transparently rephrased: Who would have wanted to kill Nick? Why? What were they doing, really doing, in Santa Rosa, she and Nick? Why had they come? Were they really on a vacation? And what about the gun? Why had Nick carried a gun?

Within minutes of arriving at the station, she'd been on an express bus to San Francisco, less than two hours away. Only then, with the bus under way, its tires singing on the pavement, did she realize that she shouldn't have left his things behind. Rather than leave them to strangers' hands, she should have packed his bag—packed his shirts and trousers, his underwear, his socks. She should have taken his suitcase with her, taken his things, kept them. She realized that now, realized that she'd made a mistake.

She was intimately familiar with his things; she did his laundry, sometimes. And sometimes he did her laundry. It was part of living together, doing each other's laundry. She knew that now, knew what it meant, really meant, to live with a man. She'd been thirty-two when he'd moved in. Except for weekends, she'd never lived with a man before. Vividly, she could remember the first time she'd done their laundry. He'd stained his shorts: small brown stains, at the crotch. This, she'd thought, was reality. The movies, the magazines, that was one thing. This was something else.

At the Greyhound station in San Francisco she'd been lucky: immediately, she'd connected with a bus to the airport. Only then, it seemed, during the ride to the airport, had she begun to think, begun to plan.

Plan?

No, not plan. Except to call her mother from the airport, tell her mother what happened, she had no plan. She'd known it wouldn't help, to call her mother. She'd known how her mother would react, even known what her mother would say, the phrases she'd use. But there'd never been any question, that she must call her mother.

Because her mother was all she had. The two of them, they were alone. All alone.

As she sampled the soup and nibbled at the sandwich, she realized that she was staring through the restaurant window at a bank of telephones.

It had started with a phone call. Nick had discovered DuBois' number in her phone book, identified only as “D.D.” He'd told her that much, confessed that much. And, yes, he'd been drinking when he'd made the call, doubtless goaded by his persistent, pernicious dreams of glory—and goaded, too, by the suspicion, festering more virulently with every passing year, that his dreams weren't coming true, might never come true.

They were both products of their past, she and Nick. She and Nick, and everyone else. For better or worse—better for her, worse for Nick—they were cast in the mold their parents had fashioned. Her father had left them, left her and her mother, just the two of them, with no house, no money, no hope. Yet, doggedly, blindly, instinctively, her mother had done her best—worked hard, and cried into her pillow.