Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective) Page 3

  What she seemed to say was, “‘Stubborn old bitch.”

  Mrs. Nichols asked me, “Do you have any more questions or observations?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, then? Will you accept the job?”

  I thought it over. It was screwball, all right. Judging from what she had told me about Martin Talbot, he needed the services of a psychiatrist a lot more than those of a private detective. But if the surveillance did last at least two weeks, the kind of money involved would pay my groceries, the rent on my flat, and the just-raised rent on my office for the next few months. You can turn down a prospective client when there’s a question of ethics; but when you’re dealing with sensitivities, and when you have to worry about making ends meet, it’s no damned contest at all.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll accept the job.”

  FOUR

  Martin Talbot’s house was located on the corner of Twenty-first Avenue and Wawona, directly across from the north-side entrance to Stern Grove—a fourteen-block-long park and recreation area on the west side of the city, a mile or so from San Francisco State College and Lake Merced. It was a modest stucco affair, boxy-looking, painted white with a red tile roof, that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with its immediate neighbors. In front were a tiny patch of trimmed lawn, a brick staircase, a built-in garage under what would probably be the living room windows. Behind the house was a tiny fenced yard; you would be able to see the side gate and at least part of the rear porch from within the park.

  It was after two o’clock when I got there. I parked my car on Wawona, facing east, and entered the park through the gate in its cyclone border fence. The rain had not started up again, but it was in the air and in the bite of the wind. Nobody else was out and around that I could see; the rolling lawns, the kid-sized soccer field, the short driving range for golfers to practice their chip shots, the sunken putting green, all looked deserted.

  There were no benches to sit on, but in this weather it would not have mattered if there had been; it was too damned cold to sit out in the open. I wandered around for a time on the wet grass, to refamiliarize myself with the landscape and to see how far I could go east and west and still have a clear view of Talbot’s house. Cars drifted by now and then and there was a steady whisper-and-rumble of traffic over on Nineteenth Avenue; otherwise it was a pretty quiet area. You could even hear water dripping off the eucalyptus and other trees that lined the north rim of Stern Grove’s deep, wide central grotto.

  When my nose and ears began to burn I went back out to sit in the car. What I wanted more than anything right then was some hot coffee. I wished I had thought to buy a thermos and fill it from the pot in my office; I had driven there after leaving Sea Cliff, to make some calls and check my answering machine, and there were stores in the vicinity where I could have got a thermos. I made a mental note to do that tomorrow, before I came back out here.

  I started the engine, put the heater on full blast until I was warm again. Then I opened up a 1943 issue of Black Mask. But trying to read on a surveillance is not much of an idea; you can’t concentrate because you have to keep glancing up after every paragraph or two in order to stay alert. At the end of fifteen minutes I gave it up—and just sat there.

  Nothing happened over at the Talbot house. Nothing happened anywhere, except that a woman with a poodle on a leash came walking down Wawona behind me, crossed the street in front of my car, and entered the park. She gave me a curious glance as she passed, the kind that meant she was wondering what I was doing there.

  I sighed a little. Curious neighbors, like as not, were going to present a problem eventually; you could run a two-week, round-the-clock stakeout in a residential area without arousing suspicion, but the odds were against it. Both Bert Thomas and Milo Petrie—a pair of retired cops who worked part-time as guards and field operatives—had mentioned the fact to me when I called them from my office. They had been willing to take the other two eight-hour shifts, but neither of them figured the job to last the full two weeks. Which made three of us. Sooner or later one of the neighbors was liable to get suspicious enough and worried enough to make a police complaint, and that would be the end of it. Not because the police would hassle us, although they might if there was pressure applied; there was nothing illegal in a surveillance conducted by licensed private investigators. But because word would get around the neighborhood, and if we tried to keep on watching the Talbot house, the whole thing would turn into a circus full of rumor-mongering and gawking citizens. And that wouldn’t do anybody any good, least of all Martin Talbot.

  A crazy damned job. But I was committed to it now, for as long as it lasted. I shook my head and wondered why I never got the kind of cases the pulp private eyes did. No slinky blondes with bedroom eyes and horny dispositions. No stolen jewels or missing heiresses. No danger and intrigue among the decadent rich. Well, maybe I ought to consider myself fortunate. If I never got laid by my lady clients, I also never got hit on the head or had shoot-outs with hired gunmen in dark alleys. Better a nice safe dull stakeout like this than a knife wound in the belly. Or being trapped in a mine cave-in in the Mother Lode, which was another thing that had happened to me on a past case.

  Over in the park, next to where her poodle was squatting and soiling the grass, the woman stood peering in my direction again. So I got out of the car and hoisted the hood and pretended to fiddle around with the engine. That made her lose interest in me; when she came out a couple of minutes later she passed by without a glance. And she did not look back as she followed the poodle along the far sidewalk.

  I waited until she turned out of sight on Twenty-third Avenue; then I closed the hood and got back into the front seat. And sat there again, trying not to look at my watch every minute or two. It was only a little past three-thirty: four and a half hours to go on my abbreviated shift. We had settled on a regular timetable beginning at eight tonight—Bert Thomas would be on from then until four A.M., Milo Petrie from four until noon, and me from noon until eight P.M. Which gave me the best of the three shifts, but they didn’t mind and the prerogatives were mine.

  My mind fidgeted from one thought to another, the way minds do when you’re just sitting somewhere and not doing anything with your hands. One of the things it kept coming back to was the murder of Christine Webster. I had called Eberhardt while I was in the office, but he had no further information to give me. The city coroner had not finished his post-mortem examination at that time, and the Homicide inspectors assigned to the case—Klein and Logan—had only just begun interviewing the dead girl’s friends and relatives.

  Why did Christine have my business card when they found her? That and other questions kept on nagging at me. What kind of trouble had she been in that would make her consider seeing a private detective? Did the trouble have anything to do with her murder? If she’d had the card for any length of time, why hadn’t she called me or come to talk to me?

  Twenty years old. Dead. Murdered.

  Why? Who and why?

  I had a vivid mental image of her lying among the reeds and bushes, all bloody and twisted, and the anger cut at me again and made me feel restless. But there was nothing I could do about her—a dead girl I had never known. Nothing I could do about anything at the moment. Just sit and wait, sit and wait—

  Martin Talbot appeared on the small front porch of his house.

  I sat up straighter, watching him as he started down the brick staircase. I knew for sure it was Talbot because Laura Nichols had given me his description earlier, along with one of Victor Carding that she had pried out of her brother. Large, fair-skinned man with fanshell ears and close-cropped, wheat-colored hair. Wearing a tweed overcoat today, no hat or muffler. He turned toward me at the sidewalk and crossed the street ten yards ahead of my car, moving with a mechanical stride, head held stiff and motionless, like an automaton activated by remote control. Even at that distance, I could see that his expression was almost masklike, without animation.

/>   He went through the gate into the park. I waited another ten seconds and then left the car to follow after him. He was a compulsive walker, Mrs. Nichols had said; so he was probably not going anywhere in particular. But the restlessness was still inside me and I was glad to be out and moving around with at least some sense of purpose, to help pass the time.

  Talbot led me across the grass to the rim of the grotto, onto a path through the trees, down the steep wooded slope on a series of switchbacked trails. When he reached the grotto he turned to the west, went past and through shaded picnic areas, a wide green with a stage on the south side where concerts were held on summer Sundays, the deserted parking lot that fronted a rustic club building, another green, and finally to the lagoon at the far end.

  He stopped on a strip of graveled beach, stood looking out at a handful of ducks floating on the gray water. Rushes and tule grass grew along the near shore; they made me think again of the place at Lake Merced where Christine Webster had been found. The absence of people and the dark sky gave the area a kind of depressingly secluded atmosphere, even though the backsides of several houses on Wawona and Crestlake Drive lined the north and south embankments above. The wind made wet whispery sounds in the pine and eucalyptus branches, built little waves that lapped over the gravel at Talbot’s feet.

  There were more picnic benches near the lagoon, beneath a shelter-roof attached to a set of restrooms; I started over there just to keep from waiting at a standstill. As I neared the restrooms Talbot turned from the lagoon and plodded up in the same direction, at an angle to the nearest of the benches. But he did not look at me, or even seem to know I was there. He sat on the bench, stiff-postured, as motionless as a block of wood, and stared out at the lagoon again.

  I hesitated, debating with myself. There was something about him, a vague impression I could not quite define, that made me want to take a closer look at him. The last thing you want to do on a surveillance is to approach the subject, make him aware of you—but this was not an ordinary surveillance and Talbot was not an ordinary subject. He seemed to have little awareness of externals: a man lost deep inside himself, suffering in his own private hell. If I spoke to him, chances were he would not remember me five seconds afterward.

  All right, then. I moved away from the restrooms and circled around to approach him from the front, moving at a casual pace, He did not seem to see me even when I blocked off his view of the lake. I stopped two feet from where he was sitting. His face was narrow and bonily irregular, I saw then, with deep creases like erosion marks in the cheeks and forehead. The whites of his eyes gave the impression of bleeding: his sister had been right about him not sleeping much since the accident. But there was something else in those eyes, in the fixed vacant stare of the pupils—something that made the hair on my neck bristle.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Would you have the time?”

  It took him three or four seconds to respond; then he blinked slightly and focused on me. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” Polite voice, but as empty as the bloodshot eyes.

  “I was just wondering what time it was.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. I’m not wearing a watch.”

  “Thanks anyway.” I paused. “Cold out here, isn’t it.”

  “Yes. Cold.”

  I wanted to talk to him some more but there was nothing else to say. I just nodded and pivoted away, and immediately his gaze fixated on the lagoon again; he had not moved any part of his body except his head during the brief exchange between us.

  Back beside the restrooms, I leaned against the wall with my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my coat. The wind seemed colder now. Whether or not Talbot was in danger from Victor Carding, I thought, that look in his eyes said he was in greater danger from himself. Much greater danger.

  It was the look of a man who wants to die.

  Talbot left the lagoon a little past five, made a perimeter loop of the park on Crestlake Drive and Nineteenth Avenue, and went back into his house. It was dark by then; he put all the lights on one by one, as if he could not bear to face the night hours unless he was surrounded by light. Chasing shadows—literally. But there were no lights to chase the shadows and the darkness that seemed to be inside him.

  The minutes between six and eight o’clock dragged away. I stayed in the car the whole time, fidgeting, putting the heater on now and then to keep warm. Once I saw Talbot’s silhouette at a window on the Wawona Street side; but it was gone seconds later. He did not come outside again.

  Bert Thomas showed up at eight sharp to relieve me. I spent a little time talking to him, letting him know my feelings about Talbot. Then I took myself away from there and drove straight home to my flat.

  I had to park three blocks away, which was par for the course; garages are at a premium in Pacific Heights because most of the buildings are older apartment complexes or converted private homes like the one I live in. A ripe smell greeted me when I let myself into the flat: I had forgotten to take out the garbage again. But then, I had never been much of a housekeeper and I was used to ripe smells, dirty dishes, dustballs under the furniture, and soiled laundry and other items scattered around the floors. About the only thing I made an effort to keep neat was my collection of pulps—over six thousand of them now, on standing bookshelves along the living room walls.

  In the kitchen I got a beer from the refrigerator. Drank some of it on my way into the bedroom, where I keep the telephone. The bed, as we used to say when I was a kid, looked like it belonged in a whorehouse after a raid; I pushed aside a wad of blankets, sat down on the bare mattress. And lifted the phone receiver and dialed the Nichols’ number.

  Mrs. Nichols answered. I told her who was calling, and she said immediately, “Is everything all right with Martin? Why aren’t you at his house?”

  “I’ve got a man there,” I said. “And no, I’m afraid everything isn’t all right.”

  “What? Do you mean Victor Carding—?”

  “No, there’s been no sign of Carding. It’s your brother’s mental state I’m worried about, Mrs. Nichols.”

  “His mental state?”

  “I think he might be suicidal,” I said.

  She made a sound that might have indicated surprise, incredulity, or a combination of both. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Martin? Good God, I told you he was fanatically moral; he’d be the last person in this world to commit suicide. Whatever gave you such an idea?”

  “I had a close look at him today. He strikes me as a pretty sick man.”

  “Nonsense. He’ll snap out of it sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “I’m not so sure of that, ma’am.”

  “Well I am.”

  “Have you tried to get him to see a doctor?”

  “I suggested it, yes. For something to help him sleep.”

  “But he refused?”

  “Yes. He has an aversion to drugs.”

  “Couldn’t you talk him into it. Or bring a doctor around to examine him?”

  Pause. “My brother is not mentally ill,” she said in a cold, flat voice. “And I won’t have someone like you telling me he is.”

  Someone like me, I thought. Just another common laborer, and what the hell did common laborers know about anything? I took a swallow of beer to drown the sharp words that were on my tongue; there was nothing to be gained in telling her off.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I’m still here.”

  “You were hired to do a specific job,” she said. “I assume you wish to continue doing it. Is that correct?”

  I had already asked myself the same question. If I backed off the case she would only hire someone else—assuming she could find someone else to take it on, as unorthodox as it was. Maybe there wasn’t much Bert and Milo and I could do to protect Martin Talbot from himself or from somebody else, but at least we could try; at least three people who understood the situation would be keeping a steady watch on him.

  And I needed
the money. I needed that money, damn it.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then I’ll thank you not to bother me again with your opinions. You’re to call only if you have something to report about Victor Carding. And you’re to send me a detailed written report at the beginning of next week. Is that understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Fine. Good-night, then.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Nichols.”

  I made the kind of gesture Italians always use to convey disgust and banged down the receiver. Some lady, Laura Nichols. Some nice sister. No mental illness in her family, by God. No brother of hers could have come unhinged enough to take his own life. Poor Martin was just a little eccentric, that was all. He’d snap out of it eventually; it was only a matter of time.

  Poor Martin, all right.

  Poor bastard.

  FIVE

  On Thursday morning I spent a couple of hours in my office, going through the mail and catching up on some paperwork. There were no messages on my answering machine and I had no calls while I was there. No one had rung me up at home either, so I assumed that nothing much had happened at Talbot’s during the night. Nothing, at least, that Bert or Milo knew about.

  I called the Hall of Justice at ten o’clock to check in again with Eberhardt. But he was out on a field investigation, the cop I talked to said, and was not expected back until early afternoon. The cop was not at liberty to say if there were any new developments on the Christine Webster homicide. At eleven-thirty I tried again, just in case; Eb still had not returned. I would just have to wait until tonight, when my shift on Talbot was finished, and then call him at home for an update.

  I locked the office, picked up my car, and headed over Twin Peaks to Stern Grove. The weather was better today: still cold and windy, but the overcast had lifted and patches of blue sky were visible between shifting cloud masses. It would make surveillance a little easier because I could spend more time moving around in the park and less time sitting like a lump in the car.