Bernhardt's Edge (23 page)

Had it been a fool's errand, this trip that would cost several hundred dollars, this impulse that had begun with nothing more profound than yet another argument with Dancer? What would he have done, if someone had tried to kill her? He fired the gun once a year at the police range in Daly City, to qualify for the permit that allowed him to carry it. But he'd never drawn the gun in anger, much less fired it.

Yet when he did carry the gun, it comforted him—just as it had comforted him last night. The gun was a stainless steel .38 revolver with a four-inch barrel, one of the best revolvers in the world. Dancer had given it to him at the end of his first year with the firm, a symbolic gold watch for faithful service. But, as always, Dancer had attached a condition. If Bernhardt couldn't qualify at the police firing range with the pistol, he must agree to give it back. And—yes—he'd had to buy his own holster, ten dollars at a Mission Street pawnshop. It was a spring holster, the kind detectives used, the pawnshop clerk had told him.

After he'd bought the holster, exactly as if he'd been a kid with a new toy, he'd practiced his quick draws—and his combat crouch, and his snap firing. And, yes, he'd been aware of the pleasure it gave him, simply to hold the gun, to handle it—to fondle it, some would say. It was a deep, elemental pleasure—that much he'd discovered, to his own surprise. But what were the origins, the true origins, of that secret pleasure? He'd often thought about it, applied all the liberal-left theories he'd been brought up to believe: that a gun was the extension of his penis, a symbol of male dominance. But he'd never been very good at analyzing the symbols of his own libido. So he'd concluded that the gun represented power, more than sexual potency. If the male's sex drive was primary, which he believed, then the urge to protect the family inside the cave was certainly secondary. If the male instinctively fornicated, then he also instinctively fought. He fought with predators, for self-protection. And he fought with other males, for sexual dominance. So if the caveman's instinct was to pick up the fallen limb of a tree, his first club, then that same deep instinct accounted for the way the steel of a gun felt to the hand of the male—and the steel of a knife, too, another deep, elemental pleasure. And, without doubt, whatever they made the buttons from, that launched the missiles from their silos—that would feel the same, too.

At the far end of the pool, Betty Giles was getting out of the water. Bernhardt glanced at his watch. The time was six o'clock. If she did as she'd done yesterday, she would lie beside the pool for a half hour, drying out and reading. Then she'd go to her cabin, to change her clothes. At seven o'clock, give or take, she'd get in her car and drive to a restaurant, one of the two that were open in town. It would probably be dark, when she returned from dinner, almost completely dark. Understandably, she would be reluctant to let him into her cabin, after dark.

So it must be before she left for dinner, that he'd do what he'd come to do. Showered and scented, he would change into fresh clothes, with his gun concealed beneath his loose-fitting sports shirt. Then he would walk the fifty feet to the door of her cabin. He'd knock, and he'd smile—and he'd do what he came to do.

A
LMOST BEFORE HE FINISHED
knocking, he saw the curtains stir at the window beside the door. Good, she was being cautious. He stepped back from the door, took one of his newly printed business cards from his pocket, and smiled as the door came open on the chain. He'd rehearsed his opening lines, knew exactly what he wanted to say, and how he wanted to say it:

“I'm Alan Bernhardt, Miss Giles. I'm sorry to bother you, but we've got to talk. Here—” He extended the card. “This is my card. If you'd like to call your mother, to check me out, I'd happily pay for the call, put it on my credit card.”

“My mother?” Her hand came through the space between the door and the frame; she took the card between thumb and forefinger. “You know my mother?”

“Yes, I do. We spent a long time together, talking about you.”

“A private investigator—” Distrust was clear in her voice, plain in her small oval face behind the chain.

“Listen—” He stepped down off the small cement door stoop, standing on the desert sand. “Listen, why don't we go and sit beside the pool? It won't take long, what I've got to say. But I feel dumb, standing here like this, talking through the door. I feel like a door-to-door salesman.”

“Did my mother send you?”

“No, she didn't. But she'll be glad to learn that I'm here, I can guarantee that.”

She didn't respond, but only looked at him appraisingly. How often had he suffered through this same suspicion-charged silence, standing on the wrong side of a stranger's door, trying to look harmless, and sincere, and reassuring—all while he labored to keep a fake smile in place.

“There's no one at the pool. Can we sit there for a few minutes, and talk?” He widened the smile. “I'll even buy you a Diet Coke. Or a Seven-Up. Your choice.”

“All right. Just a minute. I've got to comb my hair.”

“Fine.” With his hands in his pockets, he moved away from her cabin to stand beside one of the head-high ocotillo cacti that defined this part of the low desert, and were protected by local statute. The motel owners had taken pains to protect the desert vegetation, outlining pathways with rocks, and the meandering driveway with fallen logs. A split rail fence, Abe Lincoln style, surrounded the entire tract. Rustic signs reminded tenants that the narrow driveway was one-way only, ending where it began, at the broad, graveled drive that opened on the county road. As nearly as Bernhardt could calculate, only a few of the twenty-odd cabins were occupied. Yesterday evening, he'd walked around the outside perimeter of the motel grounds, following the split rail fence as he familiarized himself with the sparsely populated neighborhood. Most of the nearby houses were upscale winter retreats built on acre-plus lots. Most of the lots were unfenced and undefined, merging into the desert. Except for the full, lush trees planted close to the homes, where water was pumped up from the Borrego aquifer, the desert landscape was undisturbed: silent, vast, primeval.

He heard the night chain on her door rattle, saw the door swing open. She was dressed in designer khaki bush pants and a colorful Madras blouse. Both the pants and the blouse were cut close enough to hint at the fullness of a figure that her bathing suit had already revealed. Her dark hair, cut medium short, was casually combed. She carried a Mexican-style tooled leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her sandals, too, were tooled leather. As they turned together into the rock-bordered footpath that led to the pool, he said, “Except for that couple with the little girl, and a man that came last night, I don't think there're any other people here but us. At least, there're just four cars.”

She made no reply, gave no indication that she'd heard. She simply walked beside him, eyes front. The set of her face, the way she walked, the way she carried herself, all conveyed a kind of measured detachment, a calculated aloofness. Or was it a shyness, an uncertainty of the spirit, her grim, silent secret?

Or was she, simply, afraid—and trying not to show it?

At poolside, he gestured to the redwood lanai, and the shade it offered. “How about here?”

She nodded. “Fine.”

“I meant it about that soft drink—” He smiled, gestured across the driveway to the office, and the vending machines beside it. “My treat.”

“No, thanks. But you go ahead.” She sat in a straight-backed chair: a black metal frame covered with crisscrossed strips of white plastic.

“Not now. Later, maybe.” He moved a companion chair to face her, and for a moment they sat silently, looking at each other. In close-up, her features, like her body, were pleasingly formed, but slightly coarsened, denying her the kind of head-turning masculine attention that some women parlayed into a free trip through life.

“I guess,” he said, “that I might as well start at the beginning, tell you why I'm here, the reason I've come.”

Watching him carefully, she nodded—once. “Good.”

“I came to Borrego Springs because, originally, I was hired to find you when you were staying in Santa Rosa—at the Starlight Motel.”

Her reaction was instantaneous: a sharp, sudden shudder. Instinctively, she moved forward in her chair and shifted her feet, unconsciously poised for sudden flight.

“You—” She licked at her lips. “You were there? At the Starlight?”

He nodded. “I stayed right across from you and Nick. You were in room twelve.”

“Nick—?” It was a half-choked whisper. Eyes wide, she glanced quickly to the right and left. It was another instinctive body movement, signifying her sudden shrinking from a terror remembered. “You knew Nick?”

“I didn't know him, any more than I knew you. As I said, I was hired to find you. And I did.”

“Wh—who hired you?” As she spoke, she lowered her voice, moved forward in her chair. Responding, he moved his chair closer to hers, also confidentially lowering his voice:

“I worked for a large company at the time—Herbert Dancer, Limited. So all I know is what my boss told me to do—find you, and report to him, when I'd found you. He reported to his client. The next day, in the afternoon, I was taken off the case. I had an option. I could go back to San Francisco, or I could stay in Santa Rosa, since the room was already paid for. I decided to stay. And the next morning, I heard about Nick.”

“It was DuBois,” she said. “He hired you.” She spoke softly, numbly, without inflection. Her eyes were blank. Her body was inert now, no longer poised for flight. Whatever she feared, she'd lost the will to resist, lost the strength to flee, even in her thoughts.

“Not me. Maybe he hired Dancer, I don't know. That's what I'm telling you. I was just the flunky.” He paused, watched her face, watched her think about it—saw the rigidity of fear and shock slowly fade as her mind began functioning again, working with the pieces of the puzzle he represented.

He let the silence lengthen, watched her slowly sink back in her chair, watched her eyes sharpen and her mouth tighten as, plainly, she began to believe that he hadn't come to harm her.

“Who's DuBois?” he asked finally.

“He's a financier,” she said. “And an art collector.”

“Did you work for him?”

Clear-eyed now, pointedly refusing to answer the question, she said, “You still haven't told me why you're here.”

“I think it's possible that Nick was killed by a professional killer. I'm not sure, but that's what I think—what the evidence suggests. And if that's true, then I was hired to set Nick up. I don't want that on my conscience.”

“So you're trying to find the man who killed Nick.” She spoke ironically, disbelievingly.

“No. That's for the police. I just want to find out what really happened in Santa Rosa. If the murder was a street killing, then I'm off the hook. But if it was planned, then I very well could've been involved. And if that's true, I want to know about it.” He let a beat pass, watching her eyes narrow as she thought about it. Then he said, “That's why I wanted to find you.”

“I don't understand your reasoning.” She spoke coldly.

“There's nothing complicated about it. You could have the answers I need. Or, between us, we could have the answers. Your mother called me after you called her. She told me what you said, that you'd make them pay, for killing Nick. And you've just told me that you know who retained Dancer. So it's obvious that if you want to, you can tell me why Nick was killed. You could have the answer I'm looking for.”

“What if you
are
involved? You could go to jail, couldn't you?”

“I won't know that until I know what happened—who hired who, and why.”

“And you think I can tell you that.”

“I think you can fill in some of the blanks.”

“How do I know that you aren't doing what you did in Santa Rosa? How do I know there isn't someone on his way here to kill me?” She spoke evenly, calmly challenging him. Once she'd recovered from the shock of being discovered, she was thinking faster, gaining strength, beginning to ask the tough questions.

“Would we be talking like this, if I was setting you up? Being seen with you is the last thing I'd want. I'd make a phone call, and I'd split.”

“Like you did in Santa Rosa.” She spoke bitterly. Watching her, he approved. Slowly, surely, anger was displacing fear. Betty Giles was stronger than she thought—stronger than he'd thought, only minutes before.

Deliberately, he looked at his watch. “It's seven o'clock. What're you planning for dinner?”

“I'm not hungry. Not now.” She hesitated, then ventured, “What about you?”

“Mostly,” he answered, “I want to talk. I've got to get this settled. But I'm hungry, too. And—” He smiled at her, as warmly as he could, his big-brother impersonation. “And I always think better on a full stomach.”

She remained motionless for a moment, measuring him with dark, solemn eyes. Then, plainly having made some significant decision, she rose to her feet. “I've got a kitchenette in my cabin—and some eggs. Would you like some? Then we can talk.”

He rose to his feet and gestured for her to precede him down the path to her cabin. “Definitely, I'd like some eggs.”

R
ACING THE DARKNESS, HE'D
been driving the Camaro steadily for two hours, windows rolled up, air-conditioning on, stopping only to make additions to the penciled map he'd drawn of the town, the first thing he'd done. Army officers, tac squad commanders, they all used maps, too. Because planning, that was the secret. You imagined everything that could happen, everything that could go wrong, accidentally or on purpose. Then you figured out an answer, a solution to the problem.