Hotline to Murder (32 page)

“Chevy Cavalier,” Tony said, crossing to the wrong
side of the street to pass the car ahead of him that was slowing to
pull into a parking space.

“Chevy Cavalier.” She said to Tony, “He’s going to
keep us on the line, in case we spot the car again.”

When Tony arrived at PCH, the light was red against
him, and he had to wait ten seconds before it was safe to make a
right turn. More time lost. He despaired of ever seeing the silver
car again. He headed north, changing lanes to pass cars, trying to
make up time, and wondering whether Nathan—he pictured the
kidnapper as being Nathan—would stay on this main street, where it
might be easier for the police to spot him, or transfer to a side
street.

Actually, his most likely route involved getting on
the 405 freeway at some point, perhaps at the Artesia or Rosecrans
entrance. If he did that, it would be practically impossible to
find him. He might get away with this. Tony’s heart sank.

“Did you see how he got Tina into the car?” he asked
Shahla as he accelerated past an eighteen-wheeler.

“She was already in the backseat by the time I got
outside. He was getting in the front. I ran to the car and tried to
open the back door. He squirted something out the window at me and
took off.”

“It must have been mace or pepper spray. You took an
awful chance. He might have tried to put you in the car too.”

“I figured if he did you would be there in time to
save me.”

Would he? “Don’t rub your eyes. It’ll make it worse.
It’s a good thing he didn’t do that to you yesterday.”

“He’s getting desperate. Oh, Tony, this is my fault.
He took Tina because he couldn’t get me.”

Her fault? Now wasn’t the time for her to feel
guilty. And now wasn’t the time for him to use listening techniques
on her, such as, “Why do you think it’s your fault?” He said,
roughly, “This is not your fault. And if we’re going to help Tina,
we’ve got to stay focused.”

Shahla remained quiet until she received a query
over the phone. She gave their position and said they hadn’t
spotted the kidnapper. As Tony approached Artesia Boulevard, he
wondered whether he should turn right toward the 405. If he were
the kidnapper and he wanted to get to a place north of the airport,
that’s what he would do.

A police car came racing up behind him with its red
lights blinking but no siren. Tony pulled into the right lane to
let it pass. The black and white crossed Artesia Boulevard and
stayed on PCH, which mysteriously changes its name to Sepulveda
Boulevard at that point. Tony turned right on Artesia and headed
toward the freeway. Let the cop take Sepulveda.

“What are you doing?” Shahla asked.

“Getting on the freeway.” But just then he crossed
Aviation Boulevard and realized that if Nathan had been planning
all along to take the freeway, he would have probably turned right
on Aviation a few blocks back, where it started at PCH, which would
have been like taking the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Tony had
taken the sides of the triangle. More time lost.

Not only that, he had to wait a significant amount
of time for a red light at Hawthorne Boulevard. He felt that the
chase was hopeless when he finally accelerated up the onramp onto
the 405 and merged with the traffic. The continuous, heavy traffic,
which made spotting a single silver car as difficult as spotting a
specific silver fish among the thousands in the schools he had seen
on his last snorkeling trip.

“We’re never going to find the car here,” Shahla
said, echoing Tony’s feelings. She made one more report to the
police and then disconnected, promising to call back if they
spotted the car.

“We’ve lost it. I’m going to get off.” Tony exited
at La Cienega Boulevard, which continued straight north while the
405 headed in a more westerly direction. He drove on that street
until curbside parking was available and then pulled into an open
space.

“What are we going to do now?” Shahla asked. She
looked despondent.

Tony opened the glove compartment and pulled out the
Thomas Guide
he kept there, a book with detailed maps of the
Los Angeles area. It was invaluable to him when he made his
marketing calls. Then he stuck his hand into his front pants pocket
and pulled out the sheet of paper on which he had written Nathan’s
address and phone numbers. Fortunately, he had done that before
they had gone into panic mode.

“We aren’t far from where Nathan lives,” Tony said.
“Let’s go to his place.”

“Do you think that he might take Tina there? That
is, if he’s the kidnapper?”

“No more ifs. As far as we’re concerned, Nathan is
the kidnapper. If we think any other way, we lose all hope. And
hope is the only thing we’ve got right now.”

CHAPTER 36

Nathan lived on a quiet street lined with
apartment houses that resembled in some respects the one where
Fred, the Chameleon, lived, only it was more upscale. Now that Tony
had his own house, all apartment houses designed for single people
looked pretty much alike to him. The apartments were too small, too
seedy, even when well cared for. He was glad that he no longer
lived in one. But he became depressed when he thought that if he
couldn’t keep up the payments on his townhouse, because of the loss
of income from Josh, he might have to return to that life.

Tony parked the Porsche on the street,
several buildings short of the one where Nathan lived. He turned to
Shahla, but before he could say anything, she started talking,
rapid-fire.

“I’m going with you. We know that Nathan
doesn’t have a gun. You’re still not at full speed, and I can run
faster than you can, in case it becomes necessary to go for help.
And it will be easier for two of us to overpower him. Besides, it’s
not safe for me to stay in the car alone.”

Tony had opened his mouth to speak when she
started her speech, and then closed it. Finally, he opened it again
and said, “That’s just what I was going to say.”

Shahla said, “Let’s go get him, partner,”
and gave him a high five.

The entrance to the apartment building was
through a gate made of vertical iron bars, which Tony discovered
was locked. He wondered how they could get through the gate. A
young man approached it from the inside and opened it. Shahla
smiled at him as he walked past her and grabbed the handle before
the gate closed behind him. The man kept walking.

“After you,” she said to Tony, sweeping her
hand toward the opening in invitation.

They walked through a passage into an
interior courtyard, with the apartments forming a rectangle around
it, on two levels. The doors to the apartments opened off the open
courtyard and the balcony above it. The main feature of the
courtyard was, of course, a swimming pool. Maximum sun, maximum
fun. The quintessential California experience. Except that nobody
was using the pool.

They quickly ascertained that Nathan’s
apartment was on the ground floor. Tony’s first thought was that
Nathan was certainly not going to bring Tina here. There would be
no way to sneak her into his apartment with all this openness. His
second thought was that maybe he had taken her somewhere else to
kill her. No, no, no. Don’t think like that.

The drapes were drawn over the windows of
Nathan’s apartment. Tony hesitated. Another effect of the sunny
courtyard was to wipe out his feelings that this might be in any
way dangerous. He knocked on the door. There were no sounds from
within. He knocked again, too soon, like in the movies where they
assumed that five seconds was enough time for someone to
answer.

“The window’s open,” Shahla said.

As Tony waited for nobody to answer, Shahla
was removing the screen from in front of the window. He looked
apprehensively around to see if anybody was watching. He couldn’t
see into the other apartments, of course, but the shadow cast by
the balcony directly above them did partially mask her efforts.

“Cover me,” Shahla said.

She had removed the screen and opened the window
wider. She meant for Tony to literally cover her—place his body in
between her and the courtyard.

“Let
me
go,” he said. Nathan might
still be inside.

“You have to watch your knee.”

Shahla put her leg up on the windowsill.
Tony got directly behind her and gave her a boost as she went
through the open window and landed on the floor inside. He quickly
replaced the screen, hoping that nobody had seen anything and
called the police. Shahla opened the door and let him in.

“The place is deserted,” she said.

Tony went into the apartment and looked
around. All the furniture was gone. The carpet was dirty and there
was some trash on the floor. Nathan hadn’t attempted to clean the
place. This was apparently the living room. A divider doubling as a
counter was at the other end of the room, with a small kitchen
behind it. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Tony’s nose detected the
stench of rotten food. The odor came from a metal garbage
container, which hadn’t been emptied.

A short hallway led in one direction to the
bathroom and in the other direction to a bedroom. They went into
the bedroom. There was no bed, but there was a built-in closet.
Tony opened the wooden folding doors. Some clothes were hanging up
in the closet. Pants and shirts. Old clothes. On one side of the
closet were built-in drawers. Tony opened each of the drawers and
quickly went through the contents: a sweater, a sweatshirt, some
underwear, and socks.

In the bottom drawer, underneath some
T-shirts, he felt something with a different texture. Smooth and
satiny. He pulled it out.

“Shahla.”

Shahla turned from where she was
investigating some sheets and blankets that had been thrown into a
corner. Tony held up a pair of barely-there panties. She raced over
and grabbed the lingerie.

“Those belong to Joy. I’m sure they do. They
look like something Joy would wear.”

Tears were streaming down her face. Tony
felt something else. He pulled out a bra. Shahla took it and looked
at the label.

“It’s a 34B. I’m sure that’s right for
Joy.”

“We’ve got our man,” Tony said, grimly. “Now
all we have to do is find him. Put them back in the drawer.”

“Put them back?” Shahla looked
perplexed.

“I’m going to tip off the police. But we’ve
got to leave the evidence here, where they can find it. If we take
it to them it may be tainted, somehow.”

Shahla reluctantly put the items back in the
drawer, but on top of the T-shirts so that there would be no
question about the police finding them. Tony returned to the other
room. There was a telephone sitting on the counter between the
living room and the kitchen. He picked up the receiver and
listened. He heard a dial tone.

“It works.” He punched in the number of the
Bonita Beach Police. He gave his name to the desk officer, who
recognized it in connection with the chase. He asked whether the
kidnapper’s car had been spotted. Negative. He said he had more
information on Joy’s murder and Tina’s kidnapping. He gave Nathan’s
full name and address and said he had reason to believe that Nathan
was the kidnapper. He said he thought the police would find
evidence in Nathan’s apartment. He didn’t say that Nathan expected
to ascend into heaven tonight. He figured that would require too
long an explanation.

“We’ll have to get a search warrant,” the
officer said.

“Nathan has moved out so I suspect all you
need is the manager’s permission,” Tony said. He had a thought.
“Give me five minutes, and I’ll get you the manager’s phone
number.”

He hung up and said to Shahla, “The manager
is in the first apartment on the right as we came into the
courtyard.” They went to the front door. “Wait. Let’s see if
anybody is about.” They peeked through the drapes and saw no sign
of life. They went out the door and shut it behind them.

As they walked to the manager’s apartment,
Shahla said, “If the manager is a woman you do the talking. If he’s
a man, let me talk.”

“Who died and left you boss?” Tony asked.
When Shahla looked ready to retort, he raised his arms and said,
“Just kidding. We’ll go with that.”

They knocked on the manager’s door. A small,
elderly woman opened it. She was bent over, which made her look
even shorter than she was. Tony had the nod.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “My name is
Tony and this is my sister, Sally. “We are friends of Nathan
Watson.”

The woman looked at them without speaking
for a moment. Then she said, “Friends of Nathan? Then why did you
break into his apartment?”

“Break in?” Her drapes were open. She had
seen them through the window. “Er…we were trying to find
Nathan.”

“Nathan is gone. He moved out two days ago.
So I’m sure you didn’t get anything. But I’ve called the police,
anyway, in case you caused some damage.”

“
You
called the police?” This was a
reversal. Tony couldn’t think straight. “What police?”

“LAPD, of course. They’ll be here
shortly.”

Shahla was tugging on Tony’s arm. “Let’s
go.”

“Do you know what Nathan is going to do?” he
asked.

The woman stared at him coldly, without
speaking. Considering her small stature, she looked formidable.

Shahla tugged harder. “Let’s go,” she said
again.

Tony went with her. They moved swiftly
through the outside gate and along the street to his car. He looked
back when they reached the car. She wasn’t watching them. He
suspected she had stayed within the safety of her apartment. They
got into the car.

“Drive,” Shahla said. “If we get detained by
the police, we’ll never find Nathan.”

Tony drove. He wound through the largely
residential streets for a mile or so and then, figuring they were
safe, he parked again.

“It’s a good thing they didn’t respond
faster,” he said, “or we would have been trapped like a fox in the
henhouse. I’d better call Bonita Beach and give them an update.” He
got out his cell phone.