Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective) (5 page)

“Understood.”

“Fine. Good-night, then.”

“Good night, Mrs. Nichols.”

I made the kind of gesture Italians always use to convey disgust and banged down the receiver. Some lady, Laura Nichols. Some nice sister. No mental illness in
her
family, by God. No brother of
hers
could have come unhinged enough to take his own life. Poor Martin was just a little eccentric, that was all. He’d snap out of it eventually; it was only a matter of time.

Poor Martin, all right.

Poor bastard.

On Thursday morning I spent a couple of hours in my office, going through the mail and catching up on some paperwork. There were no messages on my answering machine and I had no calls while I was there. No one had rung me up at home either, so I assumed that nothing much had happened at Talbot’s during the night. Nothing, at least, that Bert or Milo knew about.

I called the Hall of Justice at ten o’clock to check in again with Eberhardt. But he was out on a field investigation, the cop I talked to said, and was not expected back until early afternoon. The cop was not at liberty to say if there were any new developments on the Christine Webster homicide. At eleven-thirty I tried again, just in case; Eb still had not returned. I would just have to wait until tonight, when my shift on Talbot was finished, and then call him at home for an update.

I locked the office, picked up my car, and headed over Twin Peaks to Stern Grove. The weather was better today: still cold and windy, but the overcast had lifted and patches of blue sky were visible between shifting cloud masses. It would make surveillance a little easier because I could spend more time moving around in the park and less time sitting like a lump in the car.

Milo Petrie was waiting for me, standing just inside the park gate, when I came down Wawona off Nineteenth. I made a U-turn alongside the Talbot house, parked where I had yesterday, facing east, and went over to join him.

“How’d it go, Milo?”

“Quiet,” he said. He was a lean, hawk-nosed guy in his sixties, bundled up in a heavy car coat, a longshoreman’s cap, and a pair of gloves. Like Bert Thomas, he was a retired patrolman out of the Ingleside station. “And goddamn cold, too. I haven’t been on an early-morning stakeout in twenty years; almost froze my balls off.”

“Anything happen on Bert’s shift?”

“He said no. Subject stayed inside and didn’t have any visitors. Lights were on all night, like maybe he didn’t go to bed.”

“Talbot come out this mourning?

“Yep. A little after eight. He walked all the way down Nineteenth to the Stonestown shopping center. Gave me a chance for some exercise, anyway.”

“What did he do in Stonestown?”

“Nothing much,” Milo said. “Wandered around, sat in the mall for awhile. No contact with anybody. He led me straight back here about thirty minutes ago.”

I nodded. “Okay. No need for you to hang around; you look like you could use some coffee and hot food.”

“And a stiff shot of brandy.” He hesitated, glancing over at the house. “This Talbot’s in a pretty bad way, you know? Funny look in his eyes—like he’s half-dead inside.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’ve seen that look before,” Milo said. “Jumper on the Golden Gate Bridge had it back in ’68; I tried to talk him out of going over but he jumped anyway. You ask me, Talbot’s a potential Dutch.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. But his sister doesn’t believe it, and she’s the only one who could have him committed for observation.”

“If I was her, I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about him knocking himself off than anyone else trying to do it for him.”

“Me too,” I said. “But the way things are, I don’t see anything we can do except play it her way. And hope for the best.”

Milo shook his head. “People,” he said.

When he was gone I went through the gate into the park. There were a few more people around today: a couple of kids throwing a football back and forth, a man walking an Irish setter on a leash, an elderly couple carrying a small silver-flocked Christmas tree that they had probably bought at the lot over on Nineteenth and Sloat. I stood on the park road and watched the kids. The one nearest me missed a catch and the ball rolled to a stop about twenty feet away; when he picked it up I called out for him to peg it to me—just being friendly, trying to pass the time. He threw it back to the other kid instead, grinned at me, and gave me the finger.

Christmas trees before Thanksgiving. Citizens letting their dogs crap all over a public recreation area. Young kids giving the finger to adults old enough to be their grandfather. And a twenty-year-old girl lying in the morgue with two bullets in her body. And an honest man, a moral man, tearing himself apart with guilt. And a stubborn, narrow-minded woman who would rather believe in an unlikely threat than in the real danger of mental illness.

People, Milo had said.

Yeah. People.

I walked over to the driving range. Came back to the gate. Walked up the park road again. Watched the kids again, staring at the one who had given me the finger until it made him nervous enough to stop playing catch and head down into the grotto with his friend. The cold was beginning to bother me, as it had yesterday, and I was also a little hungry; I had eaten nothing for breakfast except some cereal. Before leaving my flat, though, I had made some sandwiches, and I had bought a thermos near my office and filled it with coffee. Time for lunch, I thought. I turned back for the gate—

Just in time to see the taxi come gliding along Twenty-first Avenue and pull up in front of the Talbot house.

The driver blew his horn a couple of times. Immediately the front door opened and Martin Talbot appeared, wearing the same tweed overcoat of yesterday. There seemed to be purpose in his stride as he came down the stairs and crossed to enter the cab.

I was running by then, out through the gate and around the front of my car. The taxi pulled away, left on Wawona, as I fumbled the door open and slid inside. If the driver had caught the light at Nineteenth, I might have lost them; midday traffic was pretty heavy along there, clogging all three southbound lanes. But the signal was red, and it stayed red long enough for me to swing out and close to within half a block.

Talbot’s sudden departure by cab was surprising. From what Laura Nichols had told me, he had not gone anywhere since the accident except for those periodic walks around the neighborhood. So why this trip? And why the seeming purpose in his stride?

The taxi swerved over into the left-turn lane at Nineteenth and Sloat; I managed to do the same. And to make the light with them. They cut over onto Junipero Serra, turned left again at Ocean Avenue, and followed Ocean to the City College. Over the hill to Geneva, then, and straight out past the San Mateo County line and the Cow Palace.

An uneasiness had begun to grow in me, and it kept on growing when the driver swung right on Bayshore Boulevard and headed up the long sweeping hill beyond. I was pretty sure I knew where Talbot was going, now. And I was right: on the other side of the hill the cab made another right-hand turn and entered Brisbane on Old Country Road.

My hands were tight around the wheel as I turned in after them. Brisbane was a small town of maybe four thousand people, nestled in the curves and cuts along the eastern slopes of the San Bruno Mountains overlooking the Bay. It had some similarities in appearance and population mix to Sausalito, although it was more of a bedroom community than an artistic one. A place where all sorts of different types lived, from painters and sculptors to business executives to blue collar workers.

It was also the place, Mrs. Nichols had told me, where Victor Carding lived.

Why would Talbot be on his way to see Carding? Three possible answers, as far as I could tell. One—he wanted to talk it out with the man, ask forgiveness, seek some sort of relief for his guilt. Two—he was after punishment instead of relief, either verbal or physical. Three—the initiative was Carding’s, not Talbot’s, and Talbot was responding to a telephone summons.

The first or the second seemed the most probable. The only reason Carding could have for requesting a meeting was that he intended to carry out his threat; but if you’re going to kill a man you don’t invite him to your house to do it. The first answer was the best of the lot, though it could still mean trouble; the second was volatile as hell. Dicey situation any way you looked at it.

But the big question was, what was I going to do about it?

I followed the cab up San Bruno Avenue, hanging back a full two blocks. At Glen Parkway it turned right, hooked through the center of town, and then began to climb upward on the network of narrow twisting roads that crisscrossed the slope. Most of the houses up there either clung to the steep hillside below the roads, with carports and entrances at road level, or sat on little knolls or inside man-made cutouts. They ran the spectrum of architectural types and building materials: country cabin, plain frame, box, old Spanish, false Southern Colonial, ultramodern hexagonal and octagonal; brick, redwood, pine, stucco, old gray stone, whitewashed block. The only things they all had in common were balconies and wide picture windows, to take advantage of a panoramic view of the Bay, parts of San Francisco, the East and South Bay cities.

I lost sight of the taxi half a dozen times as we climbed the rutted, switchbacked roads, almost lost it completely once at a three-way intersection. But I was still behind them when they turned onto Queen’s Lane, near the highest perimeter of the village. The road looped around and through an undeveloped section—vertical hillside on the left, slope on the right wooded with scrub oak and bay and horse chestnut trees—and the taxi disappeared again for eight or ten seconds. When I neared the center of the loop, where a dirt-faced turnaround had been cut out of the bluff wall, I had them back in sight. And they were just pulling up beyond a gravel driveway seventy-five yards downrange.

I braked, veered over onto the turnaround. Half a minute later Talbot got out of the cab and stood next to a rural-type mailbox, looking up the driveway; from where I was, I could not see the house there. At length he headed up the drive, walking stiff-backed but with that same sense of purpose, and disappeared from sight. The cab stayed where it was, parked on the verge; Talbot had evidently told the driver to wait.

Okay, I thought, here we go. Play it one step at a time. I set the emergency brake, got out, and went down the road at a fast trot. The wind slapped at my face; it was strong up here, pungent with the spicy scent of bay leaves. Overhead the sun seemed to be trying to break through the clouds, creating a bright metallic glare that made me squint.

The house came into view when I was thirty yards from the driveway. It was set on a piece of level ground above the road, its backside close to a notch machine-carved out of the hill—a pretty attractive place for someone Mrs. Nichols had referred to as a “common laborer.” Smallish, square-shaped, made out of brick and brick-colored wood. Wide, roofed porch across the front, decorated with planterboxes full of ferns. Half-hidden on the far side was what looked to be a two-car garage; the driveway bent around in that direction.

Talbot was up on the porch, just standing there before the door, waiting.

I slowed to a walk, watching him. Just as I reached the mailbox, he pivoted abruptly and came down off the steps. Nobody home, I thought—but the sense of relief I felt was premature. Talbot stopped after a couple of paces, turned, and stared over toward the garage. A few seconds later he started toward it. And vanished again around the side of the house.

Maybe Carding was at work or had gone somewhere else; but maybe, too, he was out in the garage and had not heard or had chosen to ignore the doorbell. Give Talbot half a minute, I told myself. If he doesn’t show by then, better get up there.

Behind me I heard a car door slam. Then a voice yelled, “Hey! You there!”

I turned. It was the cabbie, a youngish guy, heavy-set, wearing a poplin windbreaker and a pugnacious expression. “You talking to me?”

“That’s right, buddy. You been following me?”

Ah Christ, I thought, this is all I need.

“Thought I spotted a tail when we started up here,” the cabbie said. “What the hell you been following me for?”

“Nobody’s following you,” I said. I looked up at the house again. Still no sign of Talbot.

“I figure different,” the cabbie said belligerently. He came away from the taxi, stopped twenty feet from me, and put his hands on his hips. “I don’t stand for shit like that.”

The thirty seconds were up. I could feel my chest beginning to tighten; sweat formed cold and sticky under my arms. Something going on in that garage. Talbot would have come out by now if there wasn’t.

“You hear what I said, fatso?”

Fatso. I gave him a go-to-hell look and started up the drive, hurrying. The cabbie came after me; I could hear his shoes crunching on the gravel. Wind currents swayed the scrub oak and the brownish grass on the hillside above, made faint whispering murmurs in the afternoon stillness. But nothing moved and nothing made a sound anywhere around the house or the garage.

“Turn around, goddamn it!” the cabbie yelled behind me. “Come on, you son of a bitch!”