Jackpot (Nameless Dectective) Page 8

  A myth that the ocean symbolizes loneliness. For me it symbolizes freedom.

  Much of the tension was gone by the time I returned to the car; the hovering fear-shapes were gone too. My mind was coming to ease. I sat and watched the sea and the gulls and the people.

  It was one o’clock, nearly six hours after my day began, before I felt well enough to start living again.

  WHEN I CHECKED IN with Eberhardt at the office, he said that Joe DeFalco had called. “But you don’t need to call him back. He said to tell you he talked to his sources and the local gamblers never heard of David Burnett.”

  Another theory shot down. Which meant that Burnett had lost the money and run up a debt with the Vegas and Reno sports books.

  Or did it?

  THE WAREHOUSE DOORS at the rear of Basic Carpet Cleaners were open and the same delivery van I had seen on Saturday—or its twin—was parked in the opening. When I came up I saw Jerry Polhemus’s co-worker struggling to load a long, heavy roll of carpet into the rear of the van. He was doing it alone; there was nobody else around.

  I moved in past him and said, “Let me help you with that.” He gave me a look but didn’t object. So I hoisted up one end and together we muscled the carpet inside the van.

  He said, “Thanks,” a little warily, and shut the doors. He was a tall, wiry redhead around Polhemus’s age. He wore a disgruntled look along with his white uniform overalls, as if his day so far hadn’t been much better than mine. The name Kevin was stitched above one pocket of the overalls.

  I said, “Remember me? I was here on Saturday.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Jerry’s not here.”

  “So I see. Didn’t come in today?”

  “Didn’t come in, didn’t call, nothing. I got to do his work and mine too.”

  “Well, he didn’t decide to stay home,” I said. “I just stopped by his place. Any idea where he might have gone?”

  “No. How would I know?”

  “I thought the two of you might be friends.”

  “We get along. Why? Who’re you, anyway?”

  “Didn’t Jerry tell you Saturday?”

  “No. He didn’t say nothing.”

  “I’m a friend of Dave Burnett’s sister. You happen to know him? Jerry’s pal Dave?”

  “Dude who offed himself? Yeah, I knew him. Not too well. Went to a couple of ball games with him and Jerry.”

  “Jerry talk much about the suicide?”

  “Not to me. I don’t want to hear about it. Stuff like that ... man. You know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “He tell you about being up in Reno with Dave when Dave hit his big jackpot?”

  “Sure. Said Dave lost it all betting sports and that’s why he took them pills. I never figured him for such a crazy dude.”

  “That all Jerry said?”

  “I don’t remember nothing else.”

  “Suppose Jerry wanted to get away for a few days, take a little vacation for himself. Where might he go?” Kevin started to shake his head and I said, “No, just think about it a minute.”

  He thought about it for ten seconds, with his face squeezed up as if thinking caused him physical pain. “Someplace out of the city, you mean?”

  “Yes,” I said patiently, “someplace out of the city.”

  “I dunno,” he said. But then he pulled a face and said, “Well ... maybe up to his folks’ cabin?” as if he were asking me a question.

  “Where would that be?”

  “Some lake up near Tahoe.”

  “But not Lake Tahoe itself?”

  “No, some other lake. A little one.”

  “Try to remember the name.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m not good with names.”

  “What is it, a summer place? Or do his folks live there year-round?”

  “His folks live in Sacramento. His old man’s a foot doctor.”

  “They spend their summers at the lake?”

  “Nah, they’re old now, they go on cruises, stuff like that. Jerry’s got the place to himself just about anytime he wants it.” Kevin grinned. “He takes chicks there, you know? For the weekend sometimes. He—”

  “Kevin! I thought I told you to deliver that Sarouk!”

  We both looked in the direction of the new voice. The fat sourpuss I’d spoken to on Saturday was waddling toward us from the front of the building, scowling and muttering to himself in a way that made me think of the rhyme about the Jabberwock, how it came whifliing through the tulgey wood and burbled as it came. When he got close enough for a good look at me he scowled even harder and came to a flat-footed stop.

  “You again,” he said.

  “Me again.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “More information for my report.” I jabbed Kevin’s arm by way of thanking him and turned past the van without another glance at the sourpuss.

  Behind me he said with rising inflection, “What report? Dammit, you come back here—”

  I quit listening to him. I was listening instead to an echo inside my head: Inspector Harry Craddock’s voice, telling me Jerry Polhemus had been “up at Lake Tahoe” the night David Burnett died.

  CRADDOCK walked into the General Works squad room at two minutes to four. When he saw me waiting he said the same thing the fat sourpuss had: “You again.”

  “I won’t take up more than a couple minutes of your time, Inspector. I just need the answer to one question.”

  He kept on walking across to his desk, which was next to a window that offered a scenic view of the freeway approach to the Bay Bridge. I went along with him. He gave me a look, sat down, and began to unwrap a cigarillo. I sat down, too, without being invited, in the metal visitor’s chair I had occupied on Saturday.

  “All right,” he said. “What’s your question?”

  “You told me the other day that Jerry Polhemus was at Lake Tahoe when David Burnett killed himself. Did you mean that literally, or did you mean in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe?”

  “The vicinity. Why?”

  “At his folks’ summer place, was he? Did he happen to give you the address?”

  “That makes three questions,” Craddock said.

  “One question, three parts. It’s triple-jointed.”

  That got a small chuckle out of him. He lit his cigarillo before he said, “Yes, Polhemus was at his folks’ place. On Fallen Leaf Lake. He went up there for the weekend.”

  “By himself?”

  “So he said.”

  “What about the address?”

  “Seem to remember asking him for it. I’d have to look it up.”

  “Would you? I’d appreciate it.”

  “Mind telling me why you want it?”

  I explained, briefly, about my skirmish with Polhemus yesterday. “He’s running scared,” I said. “I want to know why.”

  “And you think he went up to Fallen Leaf Lake.”

  “Sometimes people run to familiar places. If they’re not running too hard.”

  “Uh-huh,” Craddock said. “You plan to drive that far on a maybe?”

  “I don’t have anything better to do.”

  He ruminated for ten seconds or so, studying the end of his cigarillo. Then he said, “Tell you what. I’ll give you the address if you don’t forget where it came from. I want to know right away if you find out anything that I ought to know.”

  “Sure thing. I’m not one to play games.”

  “Everybody plays games,” he said. “The ones I get along with are the ones who play by the rules.”

  There was a computer terminal at one side of his desk, but this kind of information wasn’t important enough to have been logged in; it would be in Craddock’s notes and those would be in a paper file. He got to his feet, said, “I’ll be right back,” and went away.

  I looked at the computer. Everybody uses them these days— except me and those like me. Throwbacks, the hopelessly old-fashioned. Eberhardt wanted to buy a small one for the agency, and so far I had resisted on th
e old-dogs-and-new-tricks principle. But maybe someday I would weaken for his sake, if he promised to do all the work on the thing himself. A computer, to me, was like a Zippo to a Cro-Magnon.

  I shifted my gaze to the window and watched the early rush-hour traffic pile up on the bridge approach. It was a little clearer out now, with a cold pale sun shining through tears in the cloud cover. That was about the way it was inside me now too: a little clearer, with a cold pale light shining through the clouds.

  Craddock came back. “Eight thousand and six Fallen Leaf Lake Road,” he said.

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  “Just remember,” he said as I stood. “Winning and losing don’t matter. It’s how you play the game.”

  KERRY SAID, “Lake Tahoe? Are you sure it’s such a good idea to drive up there alone?”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “You know why.”

  “Kerry,” I said, “I’ll be okay.”

  “What if you have an anxiety attack?”

  “I haven’t had one in over a week,” I lied.

  She was silent for a time. Finally she said, “Will you call me when you get up there?”

  “Every night I’m away, if you want.”

  “I want.” She moved closer to me—we were on the couch in my flat—and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. Her eyes were shiny. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost you again.”

  I thought of Karen Salter on the floor in her apartment, slashing at the tabletop, the anger and grief naked on her face. And shook the thought away and put my arms around Kerry, held her tight.

  “You won’t,” I said.

  Chapter 10

  THE DRIVE FROM SAN FRANCISCO to Lake Tahoe takes about three and a half hours. When I left the city at nine on Tuesday morning, the fog was so thick you could have spread it on toast. When I got over by Vallejo, there was no more fog and the sky was a scrubbed blue. By the time I reached Sacramento the temperature had climbed to an unseasonable eighty; a hot wind sweated me until I was up into the Sierras beyond Placerville. Then the air cooled and stayed cool until I crossed Echo Summit, where old snow lay in patches and pockets and it was almost chilly, and began to drop down the east slopes toward Tahoe. Then it got warm again at the lower elevations, though there was a mountain breeze to remind you that it was still spring—and when I pulled into the town of South Lake Tahoe at a quarter to one, the temperature was in the mid-seventies. Screwy, localized weather. But that was California for you, at just about any time of the year.

  Despite what I’d said to Kerry, I had been a little leery of the drive starting out. It was the first long drive I had undertaken since my return from Deer Run. And the Sierras were where I had been held captive, though close to fifty miles south of Highway 50; the Sacramento area where I had done the bulk of my hunting for the man who had kidnapped me. I felt fine that morning, but how would I feel when I came back into the same general area of my ordeal?

  Well, I still felt fine. I had not even had a bad twinge anywhere along the way. The human mind is as much an enigma to its individual owners as it is to the medical profession; it simply refuses to behave in a predictable fashion. Show me a person who says he knows his own mind and means it, and I’ll show you a case of self-delusion.

  At the wye junction where Highway 50 meets Highway 89, I turned into a service station for gas and the use of a public telephone; my car phone has limited range. I called Kerry at Bates and Carpenter and relieved her mind.

  The third road into the wye junction is Lake Tahoe Boulevard, the town’s main drag; I went east along there from the service station. Even though it was a weekday, there was plenty of traffic—though not nearly as much as there would be in July and August. Every third vehicle seemed to be a gamblers-special bus bringing day-trippers and overnighters to the Stateline casinos from all over the Bay Area and as far away as Oregon and Idaho.

  The lake stretched out placidly on my left: twenty-two miles long and ten miles wide, set in a huge mountain-rimmed bowl six thousand feet above sea level. Scattered pleasure boats and paddle-wheel excursion boats moved over its surface like waterbugs on a pond. Pretty setting, Tahoe, but it used to be a lot prettier. Tourism and gambling and overdevelopment and now something called eutrophication had marred and cheapened its beauty.

  Kerry and I had watched a PBS special on the area a few weeks back. Depressing program. The Tahoe Basin, which had once catered to small numbers of residents and vacationers, now had a year-round population of 50,000 and a yearly summer influx of 12 million tourists and part-time residents. On still late-summer days when the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, the smog gets so bad it’s almost urban. And where the lake had once been uniformly clean and blue, shallow fringes now turn a sickly green in spring and algae slimes the shoreline, a result of this thing called eutrophication—nutrient pollution. So many trees and shrubs were cleared off during a century of human development that natural nutrients from decomposing plants and animals, normally caught by the roots of vegetation, have washed into the lake. Sewage, too, and leaching and runoff from tons of nitrogen fertilizers used on golf courses and lawns, all of which feeds the algae. The prediction is that in another forty years Tahoe will be more green than blue. And meanwhile, a long-term battle between developers and environmentalists continues to rage in both California and Nevada—the lake is split by the states’ boundary —with some recent compromise agreements but no satisfactory long-term resolution in sight.

  It had been a couple of years since my last visit to Tahoe, when Kerry and I had driven up one weekend to see a show at Harrah’s. Superficially, nothing much had changed in South Lake Tahoe since then. The Chamber of Commerce was still in the same place on the western end of Lake Tahoe Boulevard, along with most of the town’s regular business establishments; the eastern end, approaching Stateline, is nothing but a two-mile string of motels—the nice, the not so nice, and the ugly—that cater to the gambling trade. A C-of-C employee sold me a map of the area for a buck and a half. Nothing comes free anymore, especially in a tourist area. I sat in the car with the map spread open over the wheel, familiarizing myself with Fallen Leaf Lake. I’d never been there before and didn’t know much about it.

  It was off Highway 89, a few miles west of town. Two and a half miles long, about a mile wide, with a mostly undeveloped shoreline. Well, hallelujah. Fallen Leaf Lake Road was the main access in off 89, and at that it didn’t go all the way around the lake. It petered out not far beyond a lodge and campground at the south end, the only such accommodations marked on the map.

  I drove back to the wye, out 89 to Fallen Leaf Lake Road. Narrow bumpy blacktop that wound in through wooded sections broken up here and there by rocky meadowland and by another campground. It was a couple of miles before I caught sight of the lake itself—a beautiful little body of water, ringed by trees and by bare-rock scarps along the west shore. Populated, yes, but unspoiled by motel complexes and fast-food restaurants and all the other products of modern society that defaced much of Lake Tahoe’s shoreline. You had a feeling of wilderness here, despite the cottages that began to appear along the road. You also had a feeling that the people who owned property wanted to keep it that way. The water was the kind of bright clear blue Tahoe’s used to be, unmarred by any apparent nutrient pollution. The cottages—some small and rustic, others elaborate and stone-faced—all seemed to be well maintained. There was money here but, at least visibly, none of the ostentation of wealth. Even the fancier dwellings had been constructed so that they blended into their surroundings rather than clashed with them.

  The road ran close to the lake, dipping up and down, cutting sharp around trees and outcrops. Some of the cottages were set down below it, at the water’s edge; others were above the road, in cleared patches among the trees. There were a few rural mailboxes, but for the most part people’s names and address numbers were burned into or painted on wooden markers nailed to trees. It did not take me long to spot one that said: POLHEMUS - 8006, with an a
rrow pointing lakeward. Or to spot the dark red Cougar drawn up on a platform parking deck opposite.

  Jackpot.

  I pulled off on a slant behind the Cougar. It was the only car on the deck. A set of stairs led down from there to a small old shingled cottage with green shutters that squatted among moss-hung lodgepole and sugar pine at the lake’s edge. I could see part of a deck and a short dock. The trees screened it from its neighbors on both sides, giving it a sense of complete seclusion.

  I went over between the Cougar and the stairs. There was nobody on the deck or dock, at least so far as I could see. Behind me, on the road, a car rattled past; somewhere on the lake, a powerboat made an angry droning buzz, like a fly caught in a jar. Otherwise the area seemed wrapped in a cathedral hush.

  The road was deserted now. I stepped back to the Cougar and tried the passenger door. Locked. I walked around to the driver’s side and that door was locked too. So I couldn’t tell before I braced Polhemus if the Saturday night special was still in the glove compartment or down in the cabin. I would have to be extra careful with him this time, for his sake as well as mine.

  The stairs were mossy, the wood risers half rotted; I picked my way down them carefully, onto a short path that led to the cottage. There was no door on this side. The main entrance was off the deck, half hidden by a wall and the cone-heavy branches of a pine. I couldn’t see it until I came up onto the deck.

  The door was standing wide open.

  All of the deck was visible from where I stood; there was nobody on it. Nobody on the dock, either. I went ahead to the door, not being quiet about it. Shadowy inside; drapes or blinds had been drawn across the windows. I reached in and rapped my knuckles against the door panel.