Kerry’s voice echoed in my mind. You can’t keep on doing the things you did twenty or thirty years ago... The hunter, always the hunter... Can’t you understand I need you, Emily needs you — alive safe?
And Ben Duryea’s. Christ, some days. I’m getting too old for this job... My problem is, I never learned how to relax. Maybe guys like us can learn, though.
And mine to Duryea: Maybe we can. And mine to Kerry: Maybe you’re right.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
Ten o’clock. Cars rolled into the lot, faces appeared and then disappeared inside the Alamo. A parade of unknowns. A wasteland of strangers.
Ten-thirty.
Ten-forty.
And another car entered the lot, this one moving a little too fast so that its tires squealed on the turn and when the driver braked on the blacktop. I watched its lights swing away from where I was, loop around to the side, and then come back again. Looking for a parking space, finally finding one in the row behind me. The driver hopped out, passed alone between two cars twenty yards to my left — into the garish light from the neon and one of the floodlights.
Charlie Bright.
Tall, thin, red-haired, wearing a Western-style shirt and Levi’s and sharp-toed cowboy boots. Unmistakably Charlie Bright.
He was in a hurry, almost running. Man with a purpose, heading straight for the club entrance. Briefly I thought about going in after him, but it would have been a mistake; too many people in there, too much chance of him either making trouble or disappearing on me. Wiser to wait out here, brace him when he returned to his car... no matter how long it took.
Didn’t take long at all, as it turned out. Less than ten minutes. And there he was coming through the club entrance, still in a hurry, moving on a line toward where his car was parked. But I didn’t get out and brace him as I’d planned because he was no longer alone.
The guy with him had a fireplug build, wore a black hat and a fringed suede jacket. He moved at an almost leisurely pace, forcing Bright to lag back to keep from outdistancing him. When they passed parallel to me, I heard Bright say in an agitated Texas drawl, “Come on, man, let’s don’t take all night,” and the fireplug answer, “Stay loose, will you,” and Bright again, fading, “... told you, I got to have...”
I adjusted the rearview mirror, couldn’t see them, and put the window down and fiddled with the side mirror until I picked them up in the shadows alongside Bright’s wheels. Two blobs doing something that I couldn’t make out, but it did not take much imagination to figure what it was. Drug deal, money and methamphetamines or some other controlled substance changing hands. From the snatch of dialogue I’d overheard, it seemed Bright was the buyer.
I started the engine, put on the lights, crawled out of the space and around toward the street exit. From the edge of the row where Bright was parked I could see that the two of them had finished their transaction; the fireplug was backtracking to the club and Bright was getting into his car. I stayed put, idling, a wait of no more than five seconds. He fast-backed out of the space, came flying past me and aimed for El Camino when he cleared the lot.
The red light there slowed him up, gave me time to roll close behind and get a good look at what he was driving. Ford Taurus, light-colored, newish. The license plate was dirt-smeared, and in the uncertain light I couldn’t tell if one of the numerals was a three or an eight. The light changed; he was off again, not quite jumping it, into a left on El Camino.
I repeated the Ford’s plate number aloud half a dozen times, committing it to memory with both a three and an eight in sequence. Half a mile north, another red light caught Bright, but an SUV slid in behind him before I could get there. I drew up alongside him, going slow. The angle was wrong for a clear reading of the Ford’s plate.
He led me straight up El Camino through San Carlos. Still driving fast, but not recklessly — not with drugs in the car. Red light again at the San Mateo line; I couldn’t maneuver in behind him there, either. I hung back in his lane this time: changing lanes and speeds is an effective way to keep a subject from spotting a tail.
A few streets beyond the Hillsdale Shopping Center, Bright made a sudden sharp left turn without either slowing or signaling. The move caught me fifty yards back; and I had to wait for a couple of sets of oncoming headlights to clear before I could swing after him. He was two blocks away by then. As I accelerated, the Ford’s taillights flashed and he went sliding around another corner, pointing north once more.
When I got there and started my turn I saw him again — making an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street. My first thought was that he’d spotted me after all, was going to try some crazy stunt to elude me or force a confrontation. But that wasn’t it. A parking place was what he was after, in front of a four-story apartment complex that took up the entire east side of the block.
Along the west side was a solid line of parked cars; there was nothing I could do but keep on going, past where Bright was now jockeying the Ford into the space — the only damn space on the entire block. I had to go all the way to the next corner before I could pull off, and at that I had to park illegally in front of a fire hydrant.
On foot I cut across the street, not quite running. When I came onto the sidewalk I could see Bright leave the Ford, head up the front walk to the apartment building’s main entrance. Seconds later he was gone inside. By the time I got there, there was no sign of him in the lighted lobby.
The banks of aluminum mailboxes lining both vestibule walls totaled twenty-four on each — forty-eight apartments. All but two of the name slots were filled, and none of the names was Bright. Living in one of the unmarked apartments, or living here under another name, or visiting one of the tenants, or holed up with one of the tenants. And I had no good way of immediately finding out which. You can’t start ringing door buzzers at eleven o’clock at night and expect to get cooperative responses.
I went back down to the curb and found the Ford Taurus. The street was empty; I tried both doors. Locked. Naturally. Even screwed-up parole violators locked their cars nowadays. At the rear I squatted to check the license plate. The one numeral in question was an eight.
Bright’s car? Or somebody else’s that he’d borrowed? Unless I wanted to hang around for another, almost certainly futile stakeout, I’d have to wait until tomorrow for the answer. And to find out what, if anything, Charlie Bright knew about the bald man.
Tomorrow was soon enough, I decided. I’d waited this long; I could wait a few hours longer.
A Department of Motor Vehicles check used to be a simple proposition. The names and addresses of California’s registered vehicle owners were a matter of public record and could be accessed by anyone. That all changed some years ago when a TV actress was murdered by a stalker who’d gotten her address through the DMV. The new antistalking laws, which included the sealing of DMV records to the general public, are necessary and laudable, and I wouldn’t have them any other way, but they do make my job more difficult. Even with Tamara and her computer skills and a cultivated DMV contact, it takes a while for a detective agency to get a plate number run and the particulars on its owner.
I sat in the office, fidgeting, waiting for Tamara to lay the necessary groundwork. It was one of those cold, gray, bleak mornings that give vent to indecision and self-doubt. The fact that I was tired and headachey after a dream-plagued night didn’t help matters any. I kept wondering if I’d have been better off going straight to San Mateo and staking out the apartment complex and the Ford Taurus; calling Tamara for the DMV check instead of coming here to the office. What if Bright was gone when I finally did get there? What if the name of the Ford’s owner didn’t match any of the building’s tenants? What if, what if.