“Sure.” Then, remembering Paula Brett’s instructions, she said, “We’ll go to the movies in my car, and then all three come back here. If you guys go to Dale’s afterward, you can go in his car from here. Okay?”
Carley and Dale looked at each other and nodded. “Fine.”
S
ITTING ON THE PASSENGER’S
side of the rental car, Kane shifted on the seat, moved his legs to a more comfortable position, switched on the radio, found a light-rock station. It had been two hours since Diane had returned to the apartment after a trip to the corner grocery store. In that time, four others had entered the building. One of them, a dark-haired, attractive woman in her thirties, had arrived about an hour ago, and had left a half hour later. Her clothing and her manner had suggested that she’d come on business. Of the three others, one had been a young blonde woman, one had been a dark-haired, casually dressed young man in his twenties. The fourth visitor had been a refrigerator repair man, just departed. Minutes after entering the building, the dark-haired young man had briefly appeared in the window of the second-floor front apartment. Then the blonde had appeared in the same window, standing close to the man. Meaning that, certainly, the blonde was Carley Hanks. Meaning that the dark-haired man must be visiting Diane and Carley. Meaning that—
Across the street, the door to the apartment building was opening. The three of them—Diane, Carley, and the dark-haired man—were coming out. Carley and the man were touching each other, laughing into each other’s eyes. Diane, unsmiling, was looking straight ahead.
As Kane slid to his left, under the steering wheel, the two women and the man turned left, walking toward Clipper Street. Kane started the Buick’s engine, backed up, moved forward. Once more back, once more forward, until the car cleared the bumper of a pickup truck ahead. At the corner of Noe and Clipper, the trio turned left, disappeared behind a small apartment building.
It was around that corner, Kane knew, that Diane’s BMW was parked, faced east on Clipper. Slowly, cautiously, he was driving north on Noe, toward the four-way stop at the intersection. Glancing in the mirror, he saw two cars behind him. He was too close to the intersection to double-park, gesture for them to go around. But if he stopped too long at the intersection, waiting for Diane to start the BMW, the drivers behind him would surely begin sounding their horns. Meaning, certainly, that Diane would look toward the sound, see him, recognize him.
Two choices, then: turn right, on Clipper, or drive straight ahead. Fifty-fifty.
Inching the car forward as, yes, a horn blared behind him, he saw the three getting into the BMW, closing the door. Behind the wheel, Diane was settling herself, ready to drive off. Through the intersection now, out of her sight, he pulled to the right, stopped, gestured for the irate drivers behind to go around.
As, in the mirror, he saw the green BMW turning left, coming toward him. Giving him time enough to turn his head away, put his hand up beside his face. The BMW passed him with only a few feet of clearance. He waited for the BMW to get a half block ahead, then put the Buick in gear and drove slowly forward.
“I
’VE GOT TO ADMIT,”
Paula said, “that you were right. The life of a private detective is pretty dull. So far, at least.” She spoke into a cellular phone mounted between the front seats of Bernhardt’s aging Honda Accord. Across the street, lights went on in the apartment beneath Carley Hank’s big bay window. Accounting, therefore, for the downstairs front tenants, a man and a woman who’d just entered the building.
On the telephone, Bernhardt chuckled. “How about if I come over there? We could schmooze.”
“No, thanks. I want to be treated just like any other employee. No perks.”
“Hmmm.”
“I could come over later, though. Make my report.”
Lasciviously: “Hmmm.”
“How long should I give it, after she comes home?”
“I guess that’ll depend on what happens. If Carley’s boyfriend stays all night, I’d leave as soon as they’re all inside, locked in. If Diane’s alone—if they drop her off—I’d intercept her on the sidewalk. I’d go inside with her, make sure the rear entrance to her building is secure. Then I’d go into her apartment with her, check that out, mostly to reassure her, get her settled. I’d make sure she has our phone numbers. Then, after I’d checked the lock on the front door of the apartment house, which I’m sure is in good shape, I’d go back to the car. I’d wait for her lights to go out, then I’d give it another hour. And then—” His voice changed to a playfully erotic note. “Then I’d come back here. I’d say hello to Crusher, maybe give him a dog biscuit. Then I’d get into bed, and make my report.”
“Hmmm.”
P
ARKED THREE CARS BEHIND
the BMW, Kane saw two uniformed policemen coming toward him, walking their beat. One of the policemen was eyeing two women walking on the same side of the street. One of the women, a garishly bleached blonde, wore skintight black leathers studded with bright steel. Defiantly, the blonde was returning the cop’s stare. The blonde’s companion, miniskirted, her spiked hair dyed a bright orange, leaned close to her friend. They said something to each other, looked at the policemen, then laughed. As the policemen and the women passed shoulder to shoulder, one of the policemen tapped the blonde’s buttocks with his nightstick. The reaction was a professional-looking shimmy, then loud, good-natured laughter.
On Friday night, on Polk Street, the natives were looking for action.
Kane yawned, blinked, tried to find a comfortable position behind the steering wheel. Moving from one parking place to another for more than two hours, he’d been watching the BMW—while the cops had begun to eye him as they passed. Soon, he knew, one of them would say something to him. While one of them was questioning him, the other cop might run his license plate through the police computers, playing the percentages. Paying cash, he’d flown from Atlanta using a fake name. He’d used the same name at the cheap, no-questions-asked hotel, also paying cash. But when he’d rented the Buick, he’d had to show his driver’s license and credit card.
Did professional hit men use fake ID? Did the professional establish a complete identity, a trail that led nowhere?
Fifty thousand dollars Daniels would give him, when the job was done …
Once it would have seemed like a fortune. Now it seemed no more than a down payment on a life of power, a life of privilege. One skull accidentally crushed on Cape Cod, and he’d joined the firm, Daniels and Kane. Another skull crushed in San Francisco, a street killing, and he became a full partner. First hit her with the pipe, to put her down. Hit her again, for insurance—and again. Five, ten seconds, no more. Take her purse, get back in the car, get away. One more mugging that went wrong. In New York, it happened every night, hundreds of times a night. In San Francisco—
Diane and Carley Hanks and the man were coming toward him, part of a crowd leaving the theater, just around the corner. They went to the BMW and Diane opened the passenger door. Kane started the Buick’s engine, put the car in gear, backed up beside a fireplug, ready to follow. As he waited, Kane reached beneath his seat to touch the iron pipe. Then he opened the glove compartment, found the surgical gloves, slipped them on.
“W
E’RE GOING TO DALE’S,”
Carley said from the back seat. “You can have the apartment to yourself.”
“For the whole weekend,” Dale added.
“Almost the whole weekend,” Carley corrected. “I’ll be back late Sunday. We’re going up to the Sea Ranch tomorrow.”
“Whatever.” Diane downshifted, stopped the car for a traffic light at Castro and Twenty-fourth Street. A few blocks more and they’d be at Noe near Clipper, home.
Carley’s home. Not her home.
“Would you let me drive this car someday?” Dale asked.
“Sure. We can go over to Marin County sometime.”
“Great. We can go up the coast to Bolinas. This car’d be great on that road.”
“We can have a picnic,” Carley said. “How about next Sunday?”
As they all agreed, Dale pointed ahead. “My car’s parked in the next block, to the right. You want my parking place, Diane?”
Considering, she braked, downshifted again, turned the corner, slowed the BMW to a crawl. Yes, Dale’s red Mustang was parked on the right side of the street.
“You’d better take it, Diane,” Carley advised. “You won’t get any closer to the apartment, believe me. Not on Friday night.”
They were on Clipper Street, almost two blocks from the apartment, around the corner. Should she ask them to wait for her, give her a ride to the apartment after she’d parked her car? She could imagine their conversation, after they dropped her off. Poor Diane. Spooked. So easily spooked.
She braked to a stop just behind the Mustang, and waited for them to get out of the car. Politely, they both were saying good night. But, plainly, they were thinking about each other—about their Friday night of love.
A
HEAD, THE BMW WAS
stopping. With a half-block separating them, Kane braked the Buick to a stop. Now the BMW’s passenger door was swinging open. The man was getting out, holding the door for the woman, Carley Hanks. The couple was smiling and waving at Diane Cutler, still inside the BMW. Now, as the man turned to a vintage red Mustang parked nearby and opened the passenger door, the BMW was backing up and then stopping, its front bumper aligned with the rear bumper of the Mustang. When the Mustang pulled out, Diane would take the parking place, a block and a half from the apartment.
Kane put the Buick in gear, checked the mirrors, then drove forward, past the BMW and the Mustang. At the corner, he turned right onto Noe. Her apartment building was midway in the block. He passed the building, made a U-turn at the next intersection, came back on the opposite side of the street. He pulled into a double driveway, to face her as she came walking toward him. He switched off the Buick’s headlights, set the handbrake. Already, he calculated, she would be parked, would be walking toward the corner.
In minutes, it would be settled. Finished. Daniels’s empire, secured.
And for him a fortune. Daniels with his checkbook open, he with his hand at Daniels’s throat.
Should he restart the engine?
Yes, start the engine, let it idle. Play the percentages.
Twisting the key, his fingers were trembling. His fingers, his legs, the pit of his stomach, everything. On Cape Cod, there had been no trembling. On Cape Cod, he’d—
Ahead, a figure was turning the corner, coming toward him. A woman. Diane. Surely Diane. Looking to his left, he verified that, yes, the window of her apartment was dark. No one was expecting her, watching for her.
Was the engine running? Yes, slowly ticking over. Soon the engine would be his single salvation. The engine that propelled the car, the arm that swung the pipe: there was nothing else. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Seconds, now, as she came steadily closer.
With his left hand, carefully, he tripped the door latch, began pushing the door open. On the other side of the street, she was coming closer—closer. The pipe was in his right hand, grasped so tightly that it was part of himself.
Closer—closer—
When she was directly across the street, he would—
The light.
The car’s interior light, exposing him.
Should he draw the door shut again, switch off the light, making himself once more invisible in the darkness? Or should he get out of the car, commit himself?
The minutes were gone; only seconds remained.
W
ATCHING THE DARK-COLORED SEDAN
approaching on the opposite side of the street, Paula saw it pass the apartment building, saw it continue to the next intersection, where it made a U-turn. Still traveling at hardly more than a crawl, the car was returning on her side of the street. Inside the car there was only the driver: a man, his shadowed face turned straight ahead as he passed. His manner, the speed of his car, everything suggested that he was searching for a parking place, a ritual she’d seen repeated many times during the hours she’d been parked across the street from Carley’s apartment building.
The man was driving a new American car, a Buick, she thought, or an Oldsmobile. Three cars ahead of her, he was pulling into a double driveway, switching off his headlights. With the three cars between them, it was impossible for her to see the driver. But he was parked beneath the sodium-bright cone of a streetlight; if he left the car, she would see him clearly. Could it be John Williams, the mysterious voice on the phone? Could it be Bruce Kane, Preston Daniels’s pilot? Kane, she knew, was a man of medium build, muscular, with short cropped hair and a barroom bouncer’s face. He—
At the corner of Noe and Clipper, a solitary figure appeared, turned right, passed beneath another streetlight.
Diane. Almost certainly, Diane. Alone.
Had her friends simply dumped her out of the car, instead of bringing her to her door? Hadn’t Diane told them of her fears?
The answer, she knew, was no. It was part of Diane’s self-imposed teenage isolation that she wouldn’t tell her friends she was afraid. Neither would she—could she—tell her parents, the antagonists who, together and apart, had burdened Diane Cutler so cruelly.
As her solitary figure came steadily closer, Paula saw a plume of exhaust gas rising from the car parked in the double driveway ahead.
But the car wasn’t moving.
As, ahead and across the street, Diane had covered almost half the distance from the corner to Carley Hanks’s apartment building. The building was in the middle of the block, almost directly across the street from Paula’s position. Diane was—
In the car ahead, the interior light came on.
S
HE LOOKED OVER HER
shoulder, back the way she’d come. The sidewalk was deserted. Where was Paula Brett—in which car, on which side of the street?