He climbed the steps to the front door of the old Victorian mansion, let himself in, and then climbed another flight to his own small share of the ornate old house. He let himself in, switched on a lamp, and stared about. Compared to Pete Falcone’s pad at the Cranston it wasn’t much, but on the other hand he was alive to enjoy it, which was more than could be said for Pete. He shucked his jacket and raincoat, dropping them haphazardly onto a chair, unclipped his belt holster and laid it together with his revolver on an end table. He loosened his necktie, slipped it over his neck, and then wandered into the kitchen, unbuttoning his shirt. The refrigerator offered little; he opted for a glass of buttermilk, poured it and drank it slowly, savoring the sharp flavor. He put aside the empty glass and sat down in a kitchen chair, bending down to unlace his shoes and kick them off. For some reason he didn’t feel any great urgency to climb into his lonely bed; he considered turning on the small radio and trying to catch the one o’clock news, but rejected the notion. He knew all the news he needed to know at the moment. He wiped a hand wearily across his face and came to his feet; he really couldn’t put off going to sleep forever, especially not as tired as he was, and particularly when tomorrow promised to be as busy as today, if not more so. He clicked off the kitchen light and shed the rest of his clothes in the living room, dropping them in small piles; he thought of brushing his teeth and decided to let it go. He switched off the light, padded in the darkness to the bedroom in his shorts, and opened the door.
It was his instinct rather than any specific sound or movement that instantly warned him the room was occupied. He dropped to the floor without conscious thought, rolling over as soundlessly as he could, hitting his elbow painfully on the edge of the dresser and forcing himself to stifle the grunt that automatically came to his lips; and then he was outside the room, still rolling, reaching up in the darkness and scrabbling for the holster on the small end table. The revolver slid free, comforting to his hand. He came to his feet slowly, cautiously, now completely wide awake, and edged back through the darkness to the now open door. There was that old, familiar feeling, that small thrill that always came to him when something was breaking in a case; obviously, whether he thought he had made progress or not, somebody had the idea he was making waves and didn’t like it. With one swift movement his hand snaked in and switched on the overhead light; one cautious eye came around the doorjamb, preceded by a steadily held police revolver. A sleepy Jan stared at him a bit resentfully from beneath the covers of the large double bed.
“You aren’t the quietest person in the world,” she said, and then seemed to notice the revolver for the first time. She raised one hand above the covers. “Don’t shoot. I’ll come quietly.”
Reardon shook his head slowly in a combination of wonder and disgust with himself. He walked back into the living room, refitted the gun into the holster, and returned to the bedroom, rubbing his sore elbow. Jan was wrinkling her nose at him.
“You sounded like a bowling alley,” she said. “If that’s your idea of sneaking up on someone, I’d suggest some more practice. What would you have done if there really had been somebody in here who had it in for you?”
“Shot him,” Reardon said succinctly. “And any more comments on my police work and I’ll go back and get the gun and demonstrate. Or, better yet, maybe I would have spanked him. I think—”
“Don’t dream it, Lieutenant!” Jan tightened the covers about herself. “And how about turning off the light? I was in the middle of a beautiful dream. You had left the police department and were an interior decorator, and doing very well, too—”
Reardon laughed and reached over, stretching to switch off the light. He sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling her body move with the sinking of the mattress, feeling it press against his thigh through the quilt. Suddenly he felt relaxed, happy. Like coming home, he thought — like really coming home, and smiled at her invisible face in the darkness.
“What happened to your date with what’s-her-name? Gabriella?”
“Oh, we sat around for a while and talked. She rinsed out some stockings and I sat on the bathtub and watched her. She’s a nice girl. You know, Jim, we should have introduced her to Don at the restaurant tonight—”
“We?”
“I mean I should have. Maybe we can all double-date sometime.”
Reardon stared at her, even though he couldn’t see her.
“If I live to be a million — that’s assuming I’m not shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in the meantime,” he said in amazement, “I shall never understand the mental gyrations of women. Will you kindly explain to me why, if your matchmaking urges are apparently getting out of hand in typical feminine fashion, why you don’t let them work on you?”
“But Gabriella’s different,” Jan explained, as if everybody knew that. “And I know she’d like you and Don.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
“I mean, she’d like Don.”
“Actually,” Reardon said, “I’m sure she’d love the two of us, one at a time or all together, but what makes her so different?”
“Her father’s a policeman,” Jan said. “He drives a patrol car. His name is Bennett. Maybe you know him.”
Reardon shook his head in disgust with himself. “Gabriella will adore me, I guarantee. I think I just got her old man busted tonight. He’d been drinking,” he added as if in justification.
“Oh, Jim!”
“Sorry, darling. You should have told me at dinner.” He reached down and rubbed his hand through her short hair. “How late did you stay there?”
“Oh, just a short time. She had a date and had to get ready. And that handsome brute of a pilot brother of hers—”
“You leave that handsome brute alone.”
“That handsome brute left me alone. He was sleepy and went to bed. And her other brother is in graduate school and had to study for exams—”
“So having run through the entire list, you were forced to come here.”
“Right.” Jan bobbed her head. “So I came here and when you weren’t here I called all the strip joints on Broadway—”
“Which one did you find me in?”
Jan disregarded him. “And when that didn’t work, I called the Hall of Justice and they told me you had gone in and gotten yourself involved in your usual fashion and that you’d probably be working late—”
“So?”
She yawned convincingly. “So I came here to wait for you, and then I got tired, so I looked around, and the floor was too hard and the sofa was too soft, but the bed was just right, so—”
“So now that the bear is home, Goldilocks, aren’t you supposed to jump out the window?”
“That’s the old version,” Jan said scornfully, and put her hand up to catch his and squeeze it. Reardon pulled loose and came to his feet. Jan sat up in bed in alarm. “What’s the matter? Are you still angry about tonight? Don’t you want me here?”
“It’s not that, honey,” Reardon grinned and moved toward the bathroom. “It’s only that now I’ve got to brush my teeth.”
“Well, I should hope so,” Jan said indignantly, and snuggled down in the bed again, content.
Thursday — 2:55 a.m.
The fog here, on the lower level of the Bay Bridge halfway between Yerba Buena Island and Emeryville on the Oakland side of the bay, was lessening a bit, although it was still sufficiently thick to advertise the rare passage of traffic as much by the sucking sound of tires against the wet pavement as by the hazy glow of headlights struggling to provide illumination in the murky night.