I looked at Shelly for a moment. I did not condemn her for her sexual preferences; I had no right to judge her morality. But she was judging me, all right — hating me a little with her eyes as she had that other time in the vineyards. We had come full circle: we had no more relationship now than we’d had before I mistook her for Alex’s assailant.
So there was nothing to say to her except good night; I said that and then turned and made my way back between the rows of vines. She had one last thing to say, though, and she said it to my back. “Big man,” she said, but with different meaning and different inflection than any of the times before.
In my room at the house I picked up the extension phone, punched an “Open Line” button, and dialed the number of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. I did not expect Hastings to be there at this hour on a Sunday night, and he wasn’t. The guy I spoke to on the Homicide Squad said he wasn’t at liberty to give out home telephone numbers or information on where officers could be reached to anyone under any circumstances. I got the switchboard back and asked for my friend Eberhardt, but he was not at the Hall either.
Telephones, I thought. I was getting pretty damned sick of them.
I rang up Eberhardt’s house, found him in, and got him to part with Hastings’s home number. When I tried that number, a woman’s voice answered and wanted to know who was calling and then went away with my name; half a minute after that I heard Hastings’s voice.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Maybe something useful. Do you remember the last thing you said to me this morning — about not having any more nighttime wrestling matches in the vineyards?”
“Vaguely. Why?”
I explained it to him.
“I see what you mean,” he said. “But even if you’re right, it’s hardly conclusive evidence.”
“No, but it’s something worth pursuing. Can you recall who told you about it, Frank?”
“Not offhand. I’ve talked to dozens of people in the past few days. Give me a minute to think.”
I waited. It seemed even danker in the room than before; I could feel my chest tightening up again. I carried the phone over to the window and raised the sash several inches to let in some fresh air.
Hastings said at length, “I think I’ve got it. But when I give you the name, what’re you planning to do?”
“That’s up to you. It’s your baby.”
“Not exactly. The man we’re talking about is probably up there at the winery with you, and the particular attack in question is the jurisdiction of the Napa County Sheriff’s people.”
“We could call them in and let them handle it.”
“We could, but it’s a pretty tenuous thread for any cop to make headway with. At least at this stage.”
“Well, I could talk to the guy myself. He cracked my head too that night, and I’m the one who chased him; I might be able to spook him a little, get him to admit something incriminating. And then I could go to the local police with a little more substantive information.”
He thought that over. “You wouldn’t push it hard enough to get yourself in trouble?”
“No. I know my limits and my obligations.”
“All right then, go ahead. But keep me posted.”
“I will. Who is he, Frank?”
“The winemaker up there,” Hastings said. “Paul Rosten.”
17
From the top of the hill where the dirt-and-gravel secondary road crested through the line of eucalyptus trees, I had my first look at what was in the shallow valley beyond. Six small cottage-type buildings, set well apart from each other in random arrangement, all but two of them showing light. More rolling acres of vineyards silhouetted against the cloudy black sky. A continuation of the road I was on, winding past the cottages and out of sight across the brow of another hill.
There was nobody on the road as I took my car down it toward the cottages. There had not been anybody in the vineyards on the other side either, or out around the winery buildings. I wondered if Shelly had gone back to her guest quarters here. Even though Paul Rosten was uppermost in my mind, I had not quite forgotten about her and what had happened a little while ago. The incident had left me with a vague undercurrent of depression, but I did not know if that was because of the discovery we lived in two separate worlds with no common ground, or simply because I had not gotten laid. Genuine regret or wounded male ego?
The hell with it. I concentrated on Rosten.
He could have been the man I had chased on Thursday, all right. He had come to the cellar later, with the Cappellanis and Brand and Dockstetter, but he could have doubled back to the house through the eucalyptus and through the vineyards; there had been enough time for him to do that and to catch his breath while I was struggling with Shelly. But what motive could he have for bashing Alex over the head? The two of them seemed to get along well enough, and I had not heard anything about bad blood between them. There evidently had been bad blood between Rosten and Jason Booker, if what I had overheard Brand say in The Boar’s Head was factual, which made it possible that Rosten had been the one to hire Mal Howard to dispose of Booker. But then if Rosten had bludgeoned Alex, why hadn’t he taken care of Booker himself? Another thing: Rosten did not strike me as the type of man to go around hiring hardcases like Howard; he was a follower, it seemed to me, not a leader. So was somebody else behind it all — somebody who gave orders to both Howard and Rosten and who, for whatever melodramatic reason, was known as “Twospot”?
I gave it up; I just did not know enough facts to begin fitting things together into a coherent pattern.
When I got down to the nearest of the cottages my headlights picked up the figure of a heavy-set man sitting on the porch steps, smoking a cigarette. I recognized him as the assistant winemaker, a guy named Boylan; Alex had introduced me to him earlier, during our tour of the winery. I had no idea which of the cottages belonged to Rosten, so I parked near Boylan’s place and went over to him to find out.
He was listening to pop music on a portable radio, and he shut down the volume long enough to answer my question. Rosten’s cottage, he said, was the last one on the east, the one with the oak growing in the front yard. I thanked him and moved along in that direction — and I could feel myself starting to tense up as I went.
Maybe bearding Rosten this way was a good idea, and maybe it wasn’t. It might have been better if I stayed where I could keep a close eye on Alex tonight and then had my confrontation with Rosten in the morning. But if Rosten was a threat, I wanted to know it as soon as possible. And I had checked Alex again before I left the house: he’d still been asleep. If anything else was going to happen to him, I could not believe it would happen while he was in his own bed.
So all right, I thought. I’m here, let’s see what goes down.
Rosten’s place was somewhat larger and set farther back than the rest; it was porchless, built of framewood anchored on a two-foot stone foundation. A dented, dark-colored Ford pick-up sat off to one side, and on the other side was what looked to be a small vegetable garden dominated by tomato vines. The oak tree was big and leafy and threw heavy shadows over the packed-dirt walk that led up in front. Light glowed behind a shaded window to the left of the door; the window was open a foot or so.
I came up to the door without making any noise: because I had learned to walk softly while I was on the cops and because of the packed ground, rather than with any conscious intent at silence. The night was quiet too, hushed except for the faint droning of insects and the distant rise and fall of music from Boylan’s radio. Both of those things — my silent approach, the night’s stillness — kept Rosten from hearing me and at the same time let me hear him when his voice said suddenly from inside, muted but distinct, “This is Paul. I’ve been trying to get you for the past five minutes.”