Deadly Weapon (12 page)

S
HE DIDN’T WANT
to go out to the college at all, but he insisted. At eleven o’clock she was standing on the curb in front of the college book store, waving good-by to the Buick as it drove off.

Fifteen minutes later, Walter James walked into the office at 45th Street and El Cajon. Gilbert had watched him drive up. As the screen door banged, the old man winced and turned the desk radio lower.

“I don’t know what you have to tell me, Mr. James,” he said wearily. “I know my daughter didn’t come home last night. That’s all.”

The lines in his face were deeper in the daytime. Walter James decided they had nothing to do with character; they were simply the result of being worried for years.

“Your daughter is in no danger, Mr. Gilbert,” he said. “I can guarantee that for a while.”

Gilbert shuffled some forms on his desk with brown corrugated hands. “Danger? There’s no way to escape it. There’s no point in trying. It’s dangerous to cross the street or to eat things out of tin cans.”

“The odds are with Kevin. I’m on her side.” The slender man fitted himself into the leather chair for clients.

“Kevin.” Gilbert let out a quick breath. “That was her mother’s idea. No, I never had any particular plans for Laura — I just wanted her to be happy. I wanted to be a real father to her, but she wasn’t my idea of a daughter. Her moodiness, her romanticism — I don’t know where she gets them. I’ve never had any longing for adventure the way she sees it. Things are unstable enough as they are. All I’ve ever wanted was security.”

“Kevin doesn’t want security,” said Walter James.

“No, she never has,” said the old man. “She’s not old enough to realize how valuable it is. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“Affection.”

Gilbert twisted his old mouth and gleamed his eyes at Walter James. “It’s hard to really like what you don’t understand. I’ve given her everything I could. I’ve done my best for what seems like a long time. What can you offer her, Mr. James?”

The slight man lit a cigarette. After the match died, he flung it straight down with all his might into the wastebasket by the desk. “Nothing,” he said. “The same thing you’ve given her.”

“I see you’re getting old, too. Anybody with any sense gets bitter as they grow old. The whole thing’s so insecure, so planless. I’ve rented houses to people through two wars now — that’s a long time. There’s been couples who rented them clandestinely — thought they’d be happy that way. And there’s been couples starting marriages together who couldn’t afford what they wanted and couldn’t be happy in a thirty dollar a month duplex. None of them have been happy. Where’s the plan?”

Walter James clasped his hands together tightly. “I didn’t drive down here to discuss philosophy. I haven’t the time to search out a pattern for living.”

Gilbert smiled weakly. “I see you’re not old enough. You’ll find time later on. Later on.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Kevin is a free agent. If she wants to walk in my direction, nothing is going to stop her. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Don’t expect an outraged father, Mr. James. I’m not perturbed at whatever arises between you and Laura. Perhaps I was at first because I didn’t expect her to be courted by an older man. But events have changed that. It doesn’t matter now.”

Walter James contemplated the tips of his fingers. “You keep missing the point. Maybe the God you’re worrying about doesn’t have a plan, but I have. Nothing is going to interfere with Kevin and whatever she wants. Particularly the arrest of her father.”

“Do you come from the police?”

“My connection with the police is as strong as the help they can give me. In Atlanta I’m a private detective. I’m after a man who killed a friend of mine. I’m not interested in upholding the law.”

“My daughter told me about your partner. I can’t give you any help there.”

“You know of Dr. Elliott Boone?”

“I’ve never heard the name. Is he the man you’re after?”

The radio began a rhumba undertone. A slender hand turned the knob and plunged the office into silence.

“He’s the man I’m after. I wasn’t expecting help from you. I don’t think you would know Dr. Boone. You did know the Filipino. You know Shasta Lynn.”

The old man shrugged tired shoulders. “I’ve been waiting for the police for some time.”

Walter James sprang to his feet. “Damn it! I don’t want you to wait for the police. You — I don’t care if you dry up in jail and blow out through the bars. But Kevin deserves something better.”

Gilbert shook his head slowly. “There’s no use to fight, Mr. James. I made my bid for security and I failed. I knew I had failed after the Filipino talked to Miss Lynn.”

“That tramp will keep her mouth shut or have it shut for her. The Filipino’s dead. Melvin Emig has been dead for some time. Little Steve and Darmer — well, they ran into a little trouble last night. Esteban Luz will be taken in by the Mexican police this afternoon.”

“Then everyone is gone but me. It seems inexorable, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t go by appearances,” the smaller man warned. “If everybody’s gone, there are no witnesses. The police know very little about you, Esteban Luz knows your name but he is not likely to talk. He will be expecting help from you after he is taken in — help that will never come. By the time he decides he’s been double-crossed you will be gone and the Mexican police will decide it’s too difficult to reopen the case.”

“Sit down, Mr. James,” said Gilbert. He switched the radio on and drummed his fingers on the desk. After a while he said, “What is the possibility?”

“Very good to excellent.”

A paunchy couple stopped on the sidewalk outside and peered indecisively.

“House hunters,” said Gilbert. “We’d better make an appointment to meet somewhere later this afternoon. I don’t suppose I can lose any ground through discussion.”

“I’
VE ONLY BEEN HERE
once before in my whole life,” Kevin said, impressed. “What made you think of bringing me here?”

She moved her face from side to side, trying to absorb the entire scope of Sunset House at one wide glance — the sweeping beamed ceiling, the ornate crystal chandeliers, the scores of lamplit white-clothed tables, the high-arched windows that allowed the dining room to stretch to the horizon and its half-circle sun that was set there like a ruby. She sucked in her breath ecstatically. “I guess I can’t get it all in at once. What made you think of bringing me here?”

“Something somebody said, I guess.” Walter James smiled at her over a liquor glass. “Is there anywhere you’d rather be?”

“No!” she said. “There’s no nicer place in San Diego. It’s been here for ages — since 1870 or around in there. I didn’t realize people had such wonderful taste then.”

“They certainly went in for size,” he admitted. “Full?”

Kevin laughed into her drink. “As always. Aren’t you proud of me — that I don’t get fat?” She stretched luxuriously. “Let’s go out on the balcony. Fresh air and then a drink, then more fresh air, then another drink — ”

He laughed. “Ad infinitum. Or what’s Latin for ‘until the bar closes'?”

They walked along the plate-glass wall to the nearest arch and stepped out into the assembling dusk. Kevin skipped over to the stone balustrade.

“Look Walter! The sun’s nearly gone.” He came up beside her and slipped his hand between her arm and her body. “Sunsets are sort of sad,” she mused.

“They always come back.”

“But it seems too final. It’s only a very little sun and the Pacific’s such a big ocean.”

“Everytime the sun sets in the ocean I expect to see steam come up.”

She squeezed his hand with her arm. They leaned on the stone rail in silent reverence. To the left was the etched suddenness of the Point Loma hills; everywhere else was sheet metal ocean. Far below, the surf boiled among rock clusters and chewed at the cliffs with thundering rage.

“Sunset Cliffs,” she murmured. “They’ve looked at sunsets so long they’ve turned red themselves.” She looked down, fascinated by the white festoons of surf. “It’s a long way down.”

“Cigarette?”

“Yes, thanks.” She concentrated on his lighting it. “Oh. I nearly forgot. Give me the package and look the other way a minute.”

He obeyed and she kept talking. “We must come out here in the afternoon sometime. Between us and the ocean there’s lots of curlicue paths with little caves and things like that. They lead clear down to the rocks. You’d like it. We’d be alone the whole time because the paths turn and twist every yard or so. It’s safe because it’s wide, but you can never see anybody near you. It’s like being all alone in the world. You’d have your chance to push me over if I talked too much. There — you can turn around now.”

Walter James turned back and she held out her hand. In it was an ebony black case with a single band of silver running around the middle. She pressed the side and it snapped open to reveal toothy rows of cigarettes. “Have one, sir,” she softly invited.

“Not yet.” He tilted up her chin and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Thank you very much, redhead,” he said.

“It isn’t much. It isn’t nearly enough,” her voice rushed out. “But you needed one and I got tired of smoking crushed cigarettes and I wanted you to have something I’d given you. Wasn’t that silly?”

Her piquant face was close in the soft blue gloom. “No. It’s beautiful. It’s as beautiful as you are. I’ll always carry it — like it was your glove in my helmet.”

She nestled close to him, happily. “I just wanted you to have something I’d given you.”

“Now I have you and a cigarette case,” he told her. “It’s becoming a very full life.”

“You’ll always have me,” she murmured. “I’ll never get lost. Oh, Walter, I didn’t want to go out to that silly college today. I just wanted to stay near you. It was awful out there. Then I came home tonight and Dad wasn’t home. Not that he’s so much company, but the house seemed so empty. I live in the emptiest house in town. But when you drove up tonight, everything was all right again.” She shivered and rubbed her hand across his back. “Tell me that you love me.”

“I love you.”

“See!” she smiled. “Everything’s all right.”

“I just drove around most of the day myself. I didn’t go near the apartment, except tonight to change clothes, for fear Clapp would get in touch with me. I was afraid he’d found those two bodies in that car and would want to talk to me. And after last night I didn’t want to think about anything but you.”

“You’re sweet,” she said. “I’d completely forgotten about those two men. It’s funny how many different lives there are, going so many different ways. Yesterday there were those two men. They had lunch and talked about a lot of different things — and today they don’t exist. And probably back in San Diego somewhere your Boone is thinking about what a nice dinner he had and not even thinking about you.”

Walter James laughed curtly. “He must think about me every waking moment or he wouldn’t have stayed out of my reach so long.”

“I’m sorry, darling.”

“Do you want to go in and have another drink?”

She shook her head. “No. Let’s go home and just be together. That would make me happiest.”

“Do you have that feeling, too? That life’s moving too fast?”

“I guess that’s the way I feel. I’m afraid something’s going to slip away from me. Let’s go home, Walter.”

His hand was on her arm as they walked out to the parking lot. She started slightly at a momentary pressure and looked around. He was staring at the back of a gleaming Pontiac, just disappearing down the curving road toward Ocean Beach.

“What is it, Walter?”

His eyes were gleaming oddly. “Nothing. It just seemed to me that maybe that was Dr. Boniface driving that car.”

“Oh!” She peered after the car excitedly. “That’s the man on the card, isn’t it, Walter?”

He said softly, “Dr. Everett Boniface — Dr. Elliott Boone. It probably doesn’t mean a thing.” He smiled at her worried expression. “After all, redhead, he has as much right here as we have. And maybe I was wrong.”

They drove from Point Loma slowly, Kevin pressing her head against his shoulder. After the car was garaged for the night, they walked hand in hand up the flight of stairs to the second-floor apartments. Kevin still had one foot on the last step when his hand stopped her.

“Just a minute,” he said quickly.

“What’s wrong?”

She hadn’t seen his hand move but all of a sudden there was a gun in it. Walter James glanced around the hall. Three apartment doors, a linen closet door, a window overlooking Fifth Avenue through a fire escape, a window that looked out the back of the building into nothingness.

“What’s wrong, Walter?”

“I didn’t leave my light burning when I left.”

“Is there somebody in your room?” She found she was whispering.

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m supposed to think there’s somebody waiting for me or that I forgot to turn off the light. But that window shade at the back end of the hall has never been up that high before.” His free hand moved across the switch and the hall light went off.

“I saw this happen once in Atlanta,” he said. “A man was silhouetted against the light from his room as he opened the door. A man in the house across the street shot him. He was a beautiful target.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Here’s my key.” He pressed it into her moist palm. “When I get to the window, go to my door, lie down on the floor and unlock it. Open it wide in a hurry. Whoever’s waiting down there has probably been straining to see that square of light so long that they’ll fire at anything. But for God’s sake, keep down!”

“Yes, Walter.”

He slipped silently down the darkened hall to crouch by the window. A second later, Kevin crossed to his door and punched the key into the lock. Then she lay down on the hall carpet and reached her hand up to the knob. A rectangle of light leaped into the hall as the door swung open.

There was a hyphenated explosion. The back window was a shower of glass on Walter James. A chip of plaster and a sifting of dust fell on Kevin’s face where she lay on the hall floor.

“Walter!” she whispered.

“Roll inside and switch off the light,” he commanded. He joined her in the dark and shut the door behind them. She reached out for the reassuring solidness of his body but he was over by the window, looking out.

“They’re gone,” he said in a moment. “Show’s over.” The normal tones of his voice seemed to echo in the confines of the shadowy room.

She ran over to him and looked out the window. “Who was it?”

“Somebody about there,” he indicated with the gun. Across the alley was a board fence enclosing a herd of used cars. It was a dim jumble of faintly gleaming bubbles: automobile tops and fenders. “I fired right after they did but I don’t think I hit much besides that fence in this light.”

She coiled her arms around him tightly. “I’m glad you never get killed,” she murmured.

He laughed. “That’s a sweet thought. At least it pretty well settles who’s getting shot at around here — you or me. They’d hardly lay an ambush for you at my apartment.”

She giggled nervously. “Maybe they understand me better than you do,” she whispered.

He sat down on the floor and pulled her down beside him. “Let’s be relaxing when the reaction sets in.”

“Aren’t you going to turn on your lights, Mr. James?”

He kissed her over one eyebrow. “If the landlady knows I’m home, we’ll have a couple of squad cars driving around in here. If we lay low, the cops will probably decide it’s some wild kid with a .22 and eventually go away.”

“Who do you think it was, Walter?”

There was a silence of consideration. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe Dr. Boone. Maybe a friend of his. We’ll have Clapp’s men check tomorrow and see who’s prowling around these apartments.”

“It’s getting too close,” she whispered. “I’m worried.”

“Don’t be,” he said. He stroked the length of her body. “Don’t think about that now.”

After a short while, she spoke. “I won’t, darling. When we’re like this, I can’t think of anything but you.” She trembled closer to him. “This — this feeling between us — it’s like the ocean tonight. It beats and surges and never seems to stop, Walter, darling.”

Dark miles away, at the foot of Sunset Cliffs, the surf beat and roared and frothed over a flaccid body that lodged between two jealous rocks.