He found it on the wall beside the refrigerator. Above it, using a red felt-tip pen, someone had written among the penciled phone numbers: Francisco, The Lady Waits. Come See. Sunday At Three. Same Spot On The River.
It was like finding someone there, someone to tell him what happened. And yet reading the words over again, he told himself: It doesn’t mean she’s alive.
Using his handkerchief, he lifted the receiver and dialed Waxman’s number. A dozen rings, then Waxman picked up and hung up in one move. Abatangelo dialed again and pounded his fist against the door frame, counting. This time Waxman bit on the fourth ring, growling, “Who in God’s name…?”
“Shut up, Wax,” Abatangelo shouted. “Shut up and listen. I got home and she was gone, Wax. I went out to her place in east county and there’s three people dead. Get over here, Wax. Get out of bed, get your car and get your fat ass over here.”
He was panting, his head felt cold. After a moment Waxman said uneasily, “There is no need to insult me.”
In the same breath Abatangelo apologized and gave Waxman directions to the house. “Another thing, Wax, call Tony Cohn. Hear me? Tell him, get over here now, not later, now. You getting this?”
Waxman said, “What do you intend to tell the police?”
“I’m not telling them anything, Wax. You are.”
He hung up. With his handkerchief he wiped the phone clean, his mind rabid with defensive impulses. Sooner or later, he thought, somehow, they’ll get around to pinning this on me. It seemed an utterly chickenshit preoccupation, then he told himself he’d be doing Shel no good in custody. He needed to stay free. He couldn’t help her unless he was free.
Taking one last look at the woman and boy on the floor, he felt an urge to kneel down and brush the ants away.
The entire hollow teemed with squad cars, paddy wagons, evidence vans, ambulances. Cruiser lights spun in all directions, bouncing off the walls of the buildings, the hills, each other. The chaos of swirling light created an odd illusion, in which things appeared and disappeared in circus color. It seemed like both the middle of the day and the middle of the night.
Obscured by the same patch of laurels and scrub oaks he’d used for camouflage before, Abatangelo watched from the hilltop above the ranch house as the police went about the time-consuming business of scratching up evidence. Spotlights brightened the dooryard, flaring through the branchwork of the elm trees and acacias surrounding the house. A pair of officers manned each doorway while another patrolled the yard. A phalanx of officers marched shoulder to shoulder along the road, flashlights trained on the ground. Other units had been sent off to search the barn, the outbuildings, the compound at the back from which three scared, hungry dogs barked manically in the night.
A crowd of curiosity seekers were being held back at the county road. Some parked their cars or trucks out there and stood on top of their vehicles, training binoculars or simply craning their necks, trying for a glimpse of the dingy white ranch house with the stone cladding beyond the first hill, all lit up like a carnival. Ranch houses perched atop hills miles away had lights burning, and even from a distance silhouettes could be spotted at the windows.
Abatangelo checked his watch. Well over an hour had passed since he’d left Waxman alone inside the house. The reporter was sitting with the guys from Homicide now. Abatangelo knew the detectives would pound on him. Something was bound to eke out. Waxman was an easy man to play upon, as Abatangelo himself could testify.
He’d pointed out to Waxman the notation above the phone, addressed to “Francisco.” He’d told him, “If there’s anything you do, make sure they see this.” Given what Shel had said about a botched ambush and the war brewing with Felix Randall, the only reasonable candidates for killer were the Mexicans. He’d obsessed on the phrase “The Lady Waits” for the past hour, managing finally to squeeze from it at least a token optimism. Shel had been taken, not killed, he thought. If the point was simply to kill her, they’d have left her with the others. A deal was being struck, a trade arranged. The ones left behind, they were for show.
Shortly a black Lexus turned off the county road, negotiated entrance to the property with the officers manning the roadblock, and made its way toward the house. It parked beside the coroner’s wagon, and Abatangelo recognized Tony Cohn as he belted his overcoat and stepped from the car. Cohn spoke to an officer outside the house and handed the cop his business card. At that same moment, a second officer rapped on the side of the coroner’s wagon and it pulled away, bearing three bodies.
The fact Cohn showed up on Waxman’s behalf would tie Abatangelo to the killings no doubt. He knew that. But Waxman would need a lawyer to lean on, someone to back him up and get him out of there, and no attorney they could trust would’ve responded to the call as mindfully as Cohn under the circumstances. Besides, tying Abatangelo to Shel would take any cop with a pulse five minutes. Fingers were most likely already tapping on computer keys. If it took till dawn to drag Abatangelo into this, they’d be way behind schedule.
He eased back into the shadows then made his way downhill to his car. He drove along the now familiar, winding county road to Oakley, past the sprawling ranches, the recent subdivisions, circling a strip mall twice, making absolutely certain no one trailed behind. Pulling down a narrow side street with parallel fences towering on either side, he eased halfway down then stopped, waiting for the headlights of a trail car to appear behind him. None did. He listened as the streetlight hummed overhead, noticing a cat perched atop a nearby garage, cleaning itself. Putting the Dart in gear again, he drove to the alley’s end, turned right and pulled into the lot of the same all-night grocery he’d come to that first night out, the one named Cheaper.
The place was lit up like an emergency room. Insomniac shoppers, many obese, all of them white, milled in and out. Within fifteen minutes Cohn’s Lexus arrived, pulling up next to the Dart. Abatangelo waited, again to check for anyone following, then stepped from his car into the backseat of Cohn’s.
The car smelled new, with a hint of pipe tobacco thickening the air. Cohn turned sideways behind the wheel, offering a pained look that, combined with the play of shadows across his face, accentuated its angles and made him look almost skeletal. Waxman sat in the passenger seat, gripping his elbows, arms folded across his midriff as though to contain an upsurge of bile. He was wearing the same shabby tweed jacket and Oxford button-down shirt as earlier, the collar frayed and hanging open; apparently he’d lacked the time to knot a proper bow tie. He looked strangely naked without it.
Neither man looked directly at Abatangelo, preferring instead to acknowledge his arrival with sidelong glances and thin smiles. The tension compressed the space inside the car, making it feel as though their faces were pushed together. Abatangelo nodded to Cohn, then turned to Waxman. “Good to see you in one piece,” he offered. “Things go like you thought?”
Waxman hesitated, glancing out the window at the bright storefront. “They gave me a little tour first, walked me through the rooms, showed me the bodies. The mother and child in particular. I watched as some technician inserted a needle in their eyes, withdrawing ocular fluid. The detectives, they asked me how I felt about it- the murders, I mean, not the bit with the needle.”
Abatangelo flashed on what he’d overheard a cop say once about a witness. Shaken well, ready to use. “It’s part of the process, Wax,” he said gently. “Messing with your head.”
“Well, yes,” Waxman said, waving off the show of concern. “They were remarkably well informed, by the way.”