“Do you really think this is it, Dan?” he asked tightly.
“If it isn’t, we’ve wasted the day.”
Kearny drew on his cigarette, stubbed it in the ashtray. Ballard found his lips were dry. Howard Odum, murderer. He couldn’t leave it alone.
“Ah... how do you plan to play it if he is there, Dan?”
“By ear,” said Kearny.
A car on the other side of the highway divider poured a long stream of horn-noise against their windshield as it whipped by. Probably teen-agers, juiced up on the warmth of the night and the fact of their youth.
“Do we... ah, try to take him ourselves?”
Kearny’s square face was without expression; the glare of another passing car momentarily touched his massive jaw. “We aren’t cops, Larry; and we don’t have enough evidence to give the cops. We don’t have any evidence. Not about Griffin, not about Odum, not even about Bart being attacked.”
“Then what—”
“We’re private investigators on a routine repossession assignment, remember? Running down a 1972 Thunderbird two-door hardtop for our clients, California Citizens Bank. When we find the car we will take possession of it on their behalf.” He paused to light another cigarette, and shook one from the pack for Ballard. “But I’m betting that Odum will have to do something about us when we take the car away from him. Whatever he was willing to kill for last February, or last Tuesday, sure as hell hasn’t gone away.”
Meaning they were deliberately trying to provoke some sort of action by Odum. Action, for instance, like the attack on Bart. Well, Ballard thought, fair enough. There were two of them. Then another, oddly disturbing thought struck him. “What if he doesn’t try to stop us, Dan?”
“Then we wait. We wait for Bart to wake up and point the finger at him. And while we’re waiting, he won’t unzip his pants in a men’s room without somebody putting it in a DKA report. Twenty-four hours around-the-clock overt surveillance if necessary.”
His voice was surprisingly rough, full of a suppressed fury that Ballard found totally unexpected. Dan Kearny involved in a case? Kearny? For the very first time Ballard realized that he had been given a deadline so he would think only about investigating instead of about why he was investigating.
“Not that I think it’s going to be necessary,” Kearny went on thoughtfully. “Odum will have to make his move tonight. And then we’ll have him.”
“If he doesn’t have us first.”
“I met a man today who would use Odum for a toothpick.”
But it wasn’t really needed. Ballard had just been talking; he wasn’t really nervous any more, or scared, or whatever the hell it had been.
Bart Heslip came out of it, suddenly, all at once, at 9:40 P.M. One minute he was lying there corpselike on the bed, as he had been lying for three days; in the next, his eyes were open, with intelligence struggling for comprehension behind them.
“Hi, Corry,” he said vaguely to Corinne Jones. “Jesus, I’m thirsty.” And then, to Whitaker’s delight, he added so terribly tritely — all the cornball TV doctors had it right — “Where am I? What happened?”
“It’s Friday,” said Corinne. “Friday night. Oh, Bart—”
“And your name, sir?” asked Whitaker.
“Barton Heslip,” he said. “I’m thirsty.” His voice sharpened. “What cathouse they let you out of, man?”
Whitaker, in his colorful ensemble that Kearny had noted that morning, looked pained. His hands fluttered. “I am Dr. Arnold Whitaker. This is Trinity Hospital in San Francisco. There is no need to be alarmed. There has been an accident—”
“I’m not alarmed,” snapped Heslip in an alarmed voice. “What kind of accident?” Then in awed tones he added, belatedly, “Did you say Friday?”
“Oh, Bart!” Corinne exclaimed again instead of answering. She was clasping one of his hands between her full breasts. More love than she had thought possible possessed her when she looked into his eyes. “Oh, Bart...”
The hand tightened within hers. “I’ve been here since... Tuesday?” he asked cautiously.
Giselle, in the background, looked at Whitaker, who nodded. She stepped forward with a wide grin on her face. She’d caught a taxi from the DKA offices as soon as Corinne had called her. “Hi, hotshot,” she said.
“Giselle!” Heslip said weakly. “What the hell happened to me?”
“We hoped you could tell us.”
He looked at her blankly. “I remember repo’ing the Willets Merc out there on Seventh Avenue... telling Larry about it...” He looked almost pleadingly at the red-headed nurse. “I’m thirsty...”
They parked in a closed gas station a block away from 1902 Gavallo Road in Antioch. It was a small, unenthusiastic delta town, shut up tight here in the residential area although it was not even ten o’clock. Ballard had driven the Ford once past the apartment house, the top story of which was visible over the roofs of the intervening houses.
“We’ll walk in,” said Kearny. “If the T-Bird’s there, we grab it. If not, we check all of the apartments, starting with single women or two girls living together, until somebody pops. Any questions?”
“I need my repo tools?”
“Bring them, but I’ve got an ignition key dupe. Made it up this morning from the dealer’s code numbers.”
Although most cars could be hot-wired, keys helped where quick action was necessary. And keys got you around the sticky problem of locking steering wheels activated only by the ignition.
Between the gas station and 1902 Gavallo Road, they met only one other person, a handsome brunette in tight slacks walking a Great Dane that came level with her armpits. Ballard realized he had started to tense up again when Kearny turned to look appreciatively at the girl’s taut rump under the clinging trousers: Ballard hadn’t even thought of it.
“What happens if he hears us starting the car and starts shooting?”
“Giselle will pay for the flowers out of petty cash.”
The bastard, loving it, loving every second of it. No wonder he was so testy around the office. He belonged out here, on the street.
The three-story apartment building was set at right angles to Gavallo Road, a box with six apartments on each of the upper floors, with laundry rooms, storage lockers, and a dozen numbered parking stalls on the first. These could be reached only from a blacktop driveway which entered the property through the redwood fence and ran the length of the building and around it to the rear. To get to the street from the parking stalls, you had to drive all the way back out around the building.
Which meant there was a chance of being trapped back there if things got hairy.
“Right around in back,” said Kearny as they turned in at the gate through the fence, their shoes scuffing the blacktop.
Looking as if you belonged there was the single most important factor in chattel recoveries. Ballard had seen cars repossessed with the registered owner standing in the crowd of gawkers without objecting, merely because of the confidence of the repo men. Kearny went the length of the building as if he were the owner on a tour of inspection. When they had turned down the end of the box, and turned again so they could look down the line of twelve parking stalls, he stopped.
“A car in every one of them.”
“And none of them the T-Bird,” said Ballard.
A tremendous frustrated anger flushed through him. Goddammit, wouldn’t it ever end? Wouldn’t they ever catch up with Odum, ever find out where Griffin was, even pin down Bart’s attacker?