“Go to the police? Tell them about Nedra and me?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why not? A lot of people know the truth now — your wife, your son, me, Cahill, Nedra’s ex-husband, her shrink, a couple of others. What difference does it make if the police know too?”
Silence.
“If you don’t give a damn about yourself, fine. But think about your family for a change.”
“I won’t let anything happen to my family.”
“No? How are you going to prevent it?”
“I won’t let anything happen.”
“There’s Nedra too,” I said. “He’ll be a threat to her when she comes home, if you don’t put him back in prison where he belongs.”
“Nedra,” Runyon said. As if he were invoking the name of a deity.
“So? What’s it going to be?”
“I have to think.”
“Don’t take too long.”
“I won’t.” He moved painfully in the chair. “Go away now, will you? Leave me alone.”
“One question first,” I said, and asked him about the empty spare-key hook in Nedra’s desk drawer, the one marked ‘Thorn.’ “Mean anything to you — the abbreviation?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? There’s no place she used to go that starts with ‘Thorn.,’ no person she knows with that kind of name?”
“No,” he said again, and again he shifted position, wincing. “Please go away. Talking makes my face hurt.”
Mine, too — talking to him. I went away and left him alone.
Kerry hadn’t called back. The only message on my office machine was from James Keverne, Nedra Merchant’s attorney.
I sat down at my desk. After six-thirty now; the building was silent as a tomb. Too late to call Keverne back — but he would be in his office tomorrow morning, he’d said. Too late to do much of anything else work-related tonight. The evening stretched out ahead, so long and far that I couldn’t see the end of it. Friday evening. For most people it was T.G.I.F., the beginning of a weekend of freedom. Dinners out, shows, nightclubs, ball games... lovemaking too. But not for me. Not for Kerry, either, by her own testimony.
Why hadn’t she called back? She couldn’t be that busy, for Christ’s sake.
I caught up the phone, punched out her private number at Bates and Carpenter. No answer. Not tonight. I just can’t. I’ve got to get some more work done on the Blessing account. I stayed on the line, and pretty soon the call was switched automatically to B and C’s in-house switchboard. I asked the operator if Kerry was still on the premises; she said Ms. Wade was unavailable. What the hell did that mean, unavailable? It sounded evasive. I asked when Ms. Wade would be available and the operator said she didn’t know, did I want to leave a message? No, I said, no message.
I went and got some water and put it on the hot plate to boil. Then I watched it boil. Then I made a cup of instant coffee. Things to do with my hands and my eyes; little time killers.
Getting darker in here now. even though there were still a couple of hours of daylight left: clouds crawling over the sky, fat gray bloated things that shut out the sun. The night sounds were already starting — groans and mutters in the walls, like an old man complaining aloud to himself. Why don’t buildings make noises in the daytime? Or if they do, why don’t we hear them even when it’s quiet? Why do old joints creak and phantoms walk only at night?
I took my coffee to the desk. And in my mind’s eye I could see myself sitting there in the darkening room, hunched and alone with the cup steaming in one hand. Pathetic image, like one of those black-and-white studies you see in arty photographic books, above titles like “Estranged” and “Study in Twilight.”
To hell with that; no man wants to view himself as a cliché. I got up again, carried the coffee down the hall to the toilet, and emptied it out. Then I locked up and let the spooks have the office and the building to themselves.
Chapter 13
The heavy friday night exodus from the city had eased somewhat, so traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge was no longer a stop-and-go snarl. I drove across and then down into Sausalito. Parking along the main drag, Bridgeway, was out of the question, but I lucked into a space on one of the hillside streets not too far away. Standing-room-only at the No-Name Bar, where I went sometimes when I wanted a gaggle of people around me and where I had once met Sterling Hayden, the actor and writer. I had two beers and didn’t talk to anyone on this visit except a waitress, who looked right through me. I was there fifteen minutes; it was as if I weren’t there at all. A lot of imaginative types think it would be amusing to have the power of invisibility, even for just a day, like the character in the H. G. Wells story. I know it wouldn’t be.
Bayfront and other downtown restaurants were all packed, with waiting lists of an hour or more. I drove out to the north part of town, where there are some little eating places in shopping centers, and found one where I had to wait only ten minutes for a table. I splurged on a crab Louie and another beer. Didn’t talk to anybody there either; the waiter paid no more attention to me as an individual than the No-Name waitress.
Afterward I went for a walk along the bay. The way the dark water moved, the way the lights shimmered on the surface, as though they were trapped beneath it rather than reflected off it, had an oddly hypnotic effect on me. I could feel the pull of all that quiet, rippling dark, the allure of it... and after a while it made me uneasy. This was no place for me tonight, feeling as I did, with the loneliness and the uncertainty about Kerry weighing heavy on my mind. No damn place for a loner to be alone.
Back to the car, back to the city. I knew where I was going without having to think about it.
The building in which Bates and Carpenter had its offices was a high-rise on Kearney, on the fringe of the Financial District. The doors were locked at six o’clock on weeknights, so you had to go through the security desk to get in or out afterhours. For nonemployees of one of the firms, that meant you couldn’t get past the lobby without authorization and proper ID. And employees and nonemployees alike had to sign in and out.
I rang the lobby bell and the guard on the desk came over to see what I wanted. His name was Ben Spicer; I knew him because he was a retired cop, like a lot of night security people, and because I’d been here after six to meet Kerry on several occasions. He opened up as soon as he recognized me.
“Kerry Wade still working late at B and C, Ben?”
“No, you missed her. She left a couple of hours ago.”
“...That long? You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Alone?”
“Somebody with her, I think. At least they signed out at the same time.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“Tall, slender, good-looking, silver at the temples?”
“That’s him.”
Metallic taste in my mouth now. “You know who he is?”
“Well, he doesn’t work for B and C or anyplace else in the building, I can tell you that. But I’ve seen him before.”
“With Kerry, recently?”
“Time or two, now that I think about it,” Spicer said. “Why? You got a problem?”
I made myself smile; it felt like a rictus. “No, no problem. What’s his name, Ben?”
“I’m lousy with names of people I don’t know. I can check the register.”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
He crossed to the security desk, consulted the register, came back. “Paul Blessing. Odd name. Count your blessings, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. I’ve got to do some more work on the Blessing account. Or on Paul Blessing himself. Count your blessings. “Kerry didn’t happen to say where she was going, did she?”