The first thin gray was stealing over the hills when Yamamura yawned
his way in. O'Hearn hadn't cried out for some time; he lay breathing
hard. "Solved the case yet?" asked Yamamura. "No? Well, run along and
let a professional handle it."
Kintyre went across the yard. A bird twittered somewhere, drowsily. He
entered the cottage and looked at Guido. Still out. The face was gone
innocent with sleep, years had been lost, a della Robbia angel lay in
his bed. He sighed, kicked off his shoes, and stretched on the living
room couch. Darkness was quickly upon him.
16
Once the phone rang. He rolled over, refusing its summons, and went to
sleep again. It was a little after six when a hand shook him awake. He
struggled up through many gray layers. From far off he heard: "Jimmy's
broken. Busted into pieces all over the place. Hoo, what a devil you
are, my friend!"
Kintyre sat up, feeling sticky. Yamamura gave him a lighted cigarette
and he took a few puffs. "Okay," he said.
The early sunlight and the rushing sound of early traffic whetted him
as he left the cottage, until he went clear-brained to the shivering,
screaming thing on the pool table and said: "I'll take the blindfold
off when you've talked. Not before."
"Let me go, let me go, let me see!" wept O'Hearn.
"Shut up or I'll leave you for another day or two," said Kintyre.
O'Hearn gasped himself toward a kind of silence.
"Did you help kill Bruce Lombardi?" asked Kintyre.
"No." A cracked whine. "I mean, I was there. But the others, Silenio,
Larkin, they done it. I didn't touch him myself. Let me out of here!"
"Shut up, I told you." Kintyre drew deeply on his cigarette. "I suspect
you're lying about your own role," he continued, "but never mind that
now, if you don't lie on the next question. Who hired you?"
"I don't know!"
"So long," said Kintyre.
"I don't know! I don't! They never told me! Silenio knows! I don't! I
just worked for Joe Silenio! Ask him!"
Yamamura, looking a little sick, said: "That's probably true, Bob.
Our kingpin called this Silenio in Chicago, and Silenio rounded up a
couple of assistants. The less they know, the better. Silenio gets the
kingpin's money and pays off the other two himself."
Kintyre groaned. "And we had to catch one of the deadheads! Well, let's
see what else can be learned."
It came out in harsh automatic sentences. O'Hearn's will, never strong,
had altogether failed him. He answered questions without evasions, but
like a robot.
Silenio had contacted him and Larkin the Tuesday of last week. It
was to be a well paid job, ten thousand dollars on completion of the
first assignment and a hundred dollars a day while they waited for
the next. ("No, I didn't know nothing, I don't know who else we'd
go after!") The trio caught a plane to San Francisco that night. At
intervals on Wednesday and Thursday Silenio had conferred with whoever
engaged them, while Larkin and O'Hearn looked for a suitable house.
Their find was rented on Friday, an old house in a run-down district
at the southern end of town; and each of them bought a good used car
elsewhere. Meanwhile, on Thursday night, Larkin and O'Hearn had lined
up Guido. That had been at Silenio's orders, presumably derived from
the boss's. The boss himself had arranged for Bruce to come to the
house on Saturday, calling him on the phone with some plausible story.
They captured Bruce very simply, with a gun, and tied him up. Silenio
questioned him. Bruce had gotten stubborn with outrage--Kintyre knew
how stubborn that could be--and the interrogation took a few hours;
even after he broke they continued the pain a while, to make sure.
Finally they cut his throat over the bathtub, dressed him in old
clothes, and got rid of the body across the Bay on Sunday night.
"The questions, you bastard," snarled Kintyre. "Didn't the questions
Silenio was asking tell you something?"
"It was all in wop," groaned O'Hearn. "I don't know wop."
_Italy again. Though I suppose that our X would have made a special
effort to get an Italian-speaking lieutenant, as another safeguard for
himself._
"One thing so far," murmured Yamamura. "Guido is in the clear."
"Is he?" said Kintyre bitterly. "Wouldn't it be a beautiful turnabout,
to make himself look like the fall guy for his own scheme?"
He turned back to the crooked blind face on the table. "What did you do
afterward?"
"Waited in the house. Played cards. Silenio got the money for this job
in the afternoon. Cash. He went out for it. Larkin went to pay off
the Lombardi sucker Tuesday evening. That was because he didn't show
Monday, account of his brother. Larkin got into a fight. We didn't know
what it meant. Silenio called the boss and they talked on the phone in
wop. Silenio told me to go pick up Guido Lombardi tonight. I figured we
was going to find out how much he knew and then maybe dump him too, but
I don't know for sure."
"Did anything else go on, this night?"
"Silenio and Larkin had another job."
"Where?"
"I don't know." The voice had become a worn rattling.
"Were you supposed to meet them at the house?"
"I was supposed to wait there with Lombardi till they got back. Silenio
wasn't telling either of us more'n he had to."
"Will they be back there now?"
"I dunno."
"Suppose they came back and didn't find you? What would they do?"
"Try and find out what happened, I guess. Wouldn't stay in the house if
it looked like something had gone wrong."
"Where would they go?"
"I don't know. Some hotel, I guess."
"And what would you do, if you couldn't find them?"
"Go back to Chi, I guess."
"No spare rendezvous," said Yamamura. "Lousy doctrine."
"Not if you're using expendables," said Kintyre. "And this bum is
expendable. I imagine Larkin is too, though enough more valuable to go
with Silenio--where?"
"Over here," said Yamamura.
"Very likely to kill someone else." Kintyre looked dully at the stub of
his cigarette on the floor. He didn't remember dropping it. "We'll read
in the papers who it was."
"If we aren't the target ourselves," said Yamamura. "Right now anything
seems possible." He sighed. "Well, I'd better call the police."
"Wait a bit," said Kintyre.
"But that house--God knows what's going on there, right now!"
"Nothing, I'm sure. If only because Silenio and Larkin will be worried
by O'Hearn's absence. Let's have breakfast, at least, before calling.
You devise a story that won't make us quite such lawbreakers. I'm
going to try and sort out my thoughts. I have an idea. It's driving me
crackers, Trig. I feel I know what this is all about and still there's
some kind of wall between me and the knowledge. A wall I've built
myself!"
"Hm," said Yamamura. He gave the other man a meditative stare. "Yes, it
might be worth while waiting till after we eat."
Kintyre went out, beating a fist softly into his palm. Yamamura paused
to release O'Hearn's eyes. O'Hearn lay and wept.
While the detective made breakfast in the cottage, Kintyre took a
shower. Then a shave, clean clothes, tee shirt, khaki pants, tennis
shoes, brought him physically closer to humanness.
Inside, he was afraid, and he did not know why.
Guido appeared in the kitchen as Kintyre re-entered. He looked at the
others with deer shyness. "Good morning," he ventured.
"Hello," said Yamamura. "Pull up an egg and sit down."
Guido perched on a chair's edge. No one spoke until coffee and food
were within them. Somehow, the blue and green planet beyond the windows
had become alien; they sat in a private darkness.
"I--" began Guido. He stopped.
"Go ahead," said Yamamura. Kintyre listened with a fractional ear.
Mostly he was inside his own skull, shouting for something which did
not answer.
"I'd like to say thanks, is all," offered Guido.
"It's okay," said Yamamura.
"Look, are you sitting and worrying about me?"
"In a way. The trouble is, you see, if we take your story at face
value, we have no plausible suspects left. But two more killers and
their chief are loose, probably arranging another murder. If it hasn't
already been done."
"Whose?" whispered Guido.
"If we knew that," said Yamamura gloomily, "we could get a police
guard for him. But until we've identified the chief, there's no way of
figuring who the next victim might be."
"No," said Kintyre.
He sat up straight, feeling how cold his hands were. It came to him,
through a great hollowness--each instant he seemed more remote from
himself--that he could have found his enemy before now. He had enough
facts to reason on. He was still feeling his way a step at a time, but
he felt there would be an end to his journey.
And he felt, without yet knowing why, that the horror waited for him
there.
He said, sensing a resonance within his head, as if his voice formed
echoes:
"It has to be someone who knew Bruce at least fairly well. He went
to that house because of a telephone call. He didn't own a car and
wouldn't borrow Margery's. That's a long awkward trip, by street
train and bus. He wouldn't make it casually. He'd want to know why he
was being asked to come to this address he'd never heard of before,
_without telling anyone_. The person who called (and could have been
right in Berkeley, of course) had to be somebody who could give Bruce a
strong, convincing reason. What it was, I don't know. It doesn't matter
now, it was surely a lie. But a lie he would accept! From a person he
trusted."
He stopped. Guido said with a certain boy-eagerness: "Who knew him
best? His girl friend!"
Kintyre shook his head, violently, uncertain why the idea should smite
him so.
"Nope," said Yamamura. "Too much lets her out; hell, the simple fact
that she doesn't speak Italian. That she hasn't the money, or the
connections, or anything."
"I haven't the money either," said Guido defensively.
"For all I know, you could have ten million dollars hoarded," said
Yamamura.
The anger in Guido's face reminded Kintyre of Corinna. He snatched for
the memory, it warmed him a minute and was torn away again. He shivered.
"Guido's story has to be accepted, I think," he said. There was
no color in his words, but they came fast. "All the psychological
quirks he's shown. He bopped me with a stool to let Larkin get away,
because he was deathly afraid. But he cried at having hurt me, even
so trivially. Also: could that parcel of marijuana have been in the
drawer by sheer coincidence? And even if he planned some complicated
misdirection that made him his own fall guy, it would not have involved
something as serious as dope. He could have gone to jail for that, or
been deported. And why? What reason? Insane jealousy won't fit such an
elaborate procedure. It would have to be money. And where would he,
drifting between minor night club engagements, sponging off his parents
when he isn't shacked up with some tart, where would he find time for a
million-dollar enterprise?"
Guido reddened. "Hey!" he protested.
"You had that coming," said Yamamura. He turned his back on Guido,
who slumped, pouting. "It doesn't look as if X really believed an
accessory-to-murder rap could be hung on the boy," he remarked. "Not
when you demolish it so fast."
"Perhaps not." Kintyre struggled for clarity within himself. "But Guido
would have wriggled and evaded much more if the police had questioned
him, dug in his heels at every step, for fear of the dope charge. When
he finally realized the situation and confessed, if he did at all, it
would have been too late. He would have served X's purpose of holding
up the police for days.
"And the fact that he fell so neatly into the slot clinches the proof
that X knows the Lombardi family well."
"You've ruled out Michaelis & Son," said Yamamura. "That's confirmed
by the gangsters still operating with them in clink. Who's left, the
writer?"
Kintyre said: "He blew into town less than two weeks ago, having never
met Bruce in his life before. Their time together was a few meetings
devoted to professional arguments. How could he know Guido? And his
only motive would have been to eliminate Bruce. Simple murder would
have sufficed, not calling in three expensive sadists to do a job of
kidnaping and interrogation. Also, I proved to myself, without meaning
to, that he's a physical coward. I doubt if he could have asked someone
like Larkin the time of day. Or run the risk of detection. No, there
was just one way Owens helped the killers, and that was unintentional."
"How?" asked Yamamura.
Kintyre looked at his hands. They were clasped together, as if to
hold the safe nonmurderer, Jabez Owens, tightly to him. But the wind
streamed and the sea ramped beneath it, Owens was whirled from his
fingers and drowned with all the rest, all the rest. He said from the
noise of great waters:
"Owens was after the Book of Witches, yes. First he tried bribery.
Then, the minute he heard Bruce was dead, he went over to the history
building, I suppose trying to get up nerve to go in and see if the
volume was there. He saw me instead, and urged me to take Margery out
that night; he did know, like everyone else, that she'd been living
with Bruce. He burgled the apartment. An amateur job. If he'd used his
brains, he would at least have taken some valuables. But he didn't even
bother to open places where the book couldn't possibly be. That alone
pretty well shows who did it. He tried again yesterday, in my office,
actually pulled it off, but Clayton--well, all it accomplished was to
divert our attention."
He wondered remotely how they could fail to see what was happening to
him; and how long before it broke his shell and they could not escape
seeing.
"Bruce's immediate family?" said Yamamura. "No motive, no money, no
connections, no opportunity. Write 'em off. Can you think of any of his
friends at the University who aren't eliminated by the same reasoning?"
"No."
"But who's left? Clayton? What motive? And in all the months he's been
here, I'd have an inkling if he weren't honest. No hint of underworld
tie-ins. Who's left?"
Kintyre stood before the last wall. It had the form of a ship's tilted
deck.
"If I knew why," he said, holding his voice utterly planar, "I think
the how would follow. Why was Bruce killed? Because of something he
knew. It could only be that. He was tortured to get out of him the
precise extent of his knowledge, and who else might share it. That
other person is the next victim. But what was in Bruce's background?
A knowledge of history--the Book of Witches--correspondence with--"
His throat seemed to swell, it would not let the words out for a
moment--"with an uncle in Italy, who told him something--"
"Something about the Mafia?" snorted Yamamura. "Come, now!"
"Bruce didn't realize the significance of what he knew," said Kintyre.
Iron bands lay across his chest. "He couldn't have kept a secret like
that. He went to X, I suppose--with--a warning? Or mere gossip, as he
thought? What about? Surely not Cousin Giovanni, or the Albigensians.
What else was there? Some information on crime in the Mediterranean
countries. And--God help us!"
The table went over with a crash as Kintyre stood up. It was not
himself who screamed: "Margery! She's next in line!" Himself stood
among breakers and heard the mainmast split.
Yamamura looked at him, cursed, and reached for the telephone.
"I'm going over there," rattled Kintyre. "I might get there first. I
might, it might not be too late."
"They had all night," said Yamamura. His finger stabbed the dial.
Kintyre blundered into the door. He thought vaguely that he ought to
open it. Someone stood at his elbow. He shoved. "Take it slow," said
Guido. "Let me help you."
Yamamura said in the phone: "Tim? This is Trig. Never mind formalities.
Get a car to the apartment of Margery Towne. She may still be alive....
No, I don't remember the damned address! What's the directory for?"
"You're in no shape to steer a car," said Guido. "Where are your keys?
Come on and guide me."
Kintyre sat shaking all the way over. Guido drove with a Cossack will
to arrive at which a part of Kintyre, drowning among the reefs of
Taputenea, knew dim surprise.
They did not beat the police, though. Officer Moffat met them on the
front steps. Blankness lay in his gaze.
"We came too late," he said. "Her throat's cut."
"I expected that," said Kintyre.
The horror rose up and took him.
17
Jimmy O'Hearn was still snuffling when the police unbound him and led
him off to be booked. Inspector Harries went back into the yard with
Yamamura and Guido. "All right, Trig," he said, "now tell me just what
did happen."
"Dr. Kintyre, Mr. Lombardi's sister, and I went to see Mr. Lombardi
at the night club where he works," answered Yamamura. "He was pretty
worried. O'Hearn and another chap named Larkin had hired him to do a
certain out-of-town job over the very weekend his brother was killed.
He wondered if it was a coincidence."
"O'Hearn babbled something about a package of dope," said Inspector
Harries grimly. Guido became busy lighting a cigarette.
"Sure," said Yamamura. "Why not try to drag down the witnesses against
him? Where is this package?"
"Suppose you tell me yourself what the job was, Mr. Lombardi," said
Harries without warmth.
"Well, they did want me to go to Tijuana and get some pod," said Guido.
Yamamura had briefed him in a moment's stolen privacy. "I admit I went
down--is uncompleted intent a crime? I changed my mind and didn't
actually get the stuff." Impudence danced over his lips. "It'd have
been illegal. And also, thinking it over, I saw that the errand didn't
make sense. There are enough places right here that carry the same
line."
"Hm. Any witnesses?"
Guido shrugged. "No. How could there be? I suppose you can prove I was
in Tijuana and ate a few meals there."
"I would think you'd have more important things to do than asking out
the details of something which is contradicted only by the unsupported
word of a gangster," said Yamamura.
Harries considered him angrily. "You were my friend, Trig," he said.
"Don't add insult to injury."
"I had no choice," said Yamamura, very low.
"The night before last," said Guido, "Larkin showed up and got violent
with Professor Kintyre, who was talking to me. Quite a brawl. Larkin
got away, and Kintyre left too when I begged him. I admit I lied to the
officers afterward, claiming I didn't know either one of them, but by
then I was scared."
"Go on," grunted Harries.
"So we had a conference of friends-and-relations last night," said
Yamamura. "We decided it was best to make a clean breast with the
police. Ahem, that was my advice. But O'Hearn stopped us at gun point
as we came out the back way. He was going to kidnap Mr. Lombardi. We
got the upper hand, though. Yes, we took him over here, instead of
turning him in to the San Francisco authorities as we should have. Why?
First, Larkin might well be hanging around, and why should he be helped
by seeing a lot of uniforms and realizing what had happened to his
buddy? Second, we were afraid for our lives on that side and wanted to
get the hell away from there."