Matt hadn’t locked the house when he went out. I went in to look for one essential piece of information: the address of the place, and the name of its owner. The torchlight swept over the threadbare covers and elderly furniture, and in one drawer of a large dresser I found what the farmer used for an office. The jumble of bills and letters gave me what I wanted. Wilbur Bellman, Far Valley Farm, Kingman. On the scratch pad beside the telephone, Matt had written a bonus. In heavy black ballpoint were the simple words: ‘Insurance 9 PM.’
Before leaving I gave the big dilapidated living room a final circuit with the torch and the beam flickered over a photograph in a cardboard folder standing on a shelf. Something about the face in it struck me as familiar, and I swung the torch back for a second and closer look.
The patient passive face of Kiddo smiled out, as untroubled as it had been when he told Walt and me about Offen’s mares. Loopy unformed writing straggled over the lower half of the picture. ‘To Ma and Pa, from your loving son.’
If Offen had sent his stud groom to Miami to join his parents, Kiddo’s loyalty to his employer was a certainty. I almost admired Offen’s technique in furnishing himself in one throw with an obscure hideout for the horses and a non-talking employee.
After the house there remained only Walt. Nothing to do but to say goodbye.
I went down on my knees beside him in the dust, but the silent form was already subtly not Walt. Death showed. I took off one glove and touched his hand: still warm in the warm air, but without the firmness of life.
There was no point in saying to him what I felt. If his spirit was still hovering somewhere around, he would know.
I left him lying there in the dark, and went back to Sam.
He took one slow look at my face and said in an appalled voice, ‘You’re not leaving him there?’
I nodded, and climbed up beside him.
‘But you can’t...’
I simply nodded again, and gestured to him to start up and drive away. He did it with a viciousness that must have rocked the stallions on their feet, and we went back to Kingman without speaking. His revulsion at what I had done reached me in almost tangible waves.
I didn’t care. I felt only one grim engulfing ache for the man I’d left behind.
Chapter Eighteen
Lynnie put her brown hand tentatively on mine and said, ‘Gene... what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘You look worse than you did when you came back with Chrysalis. Much worse.’
‘The food doesn’t agree with me.’
She snorted and took her hand away. We were sitting on the sea terrace, waiting for Eunice to come down for dinner, with the sun galloping the last lap to dusk and the daiquiris tinkling with civilized ice.
‘Is Walt back yet?’ Lynnie said.
‘No.’
‘He’s a funny man, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘All moods and glum looks, and then suddenly he smiles, and you realize how nice he is. I like him.’
After a pause I said, ‘So do I.’
‘How was San Francisco?’ she asked.
‘Foggy.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
She sighed and shook her head.
Eunice arrived in a cloud of yellow chiffon and clanked her gold bracelet as she stretched for her drink. She was cheerful and glowing; almost too much to bear.
‘Well, you son of a bitch, when did you crawl in?’
‘This afternoon,’ I said.
‘So what’s new?’
‘I’ve given up trying to find the horses.’
Eunice sat up straight with a jerk. ‘For crying out loud!’
‘I’ll be starting home soon. Tomorrow evening, I expect.’
‘Oh no,’ Lynnie said.
‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. The holidays are over.’
‘They don’t look as if they’ve done you much good,’ Eunice observed. ‘So now how do you deal with it?’
‘With what?’
‘With flopping. With not making out.’
I said wryly, ‘Look it smack in the eye and dare it to bite you.’
‘It probably will,’ said Eunice sardonically. ‘It’ll chew me to bloody bits.’ She drank the second quarter of her drink and looked me thoughtfully over. ‘Come to think of it, it seems to have done that to you already.’
‘Maybe I’ll take up golf.’
She laughed, more internally relaxed than I’d ever seen her. ‘Games’, she said, ‘are a bore.’
When they went in to eat I couldn’t face it, and drove off instead to fetch the tape recorder from the rocks at Orpheus Farm. The short journey seemed tiresomely long. It had been nearly four hundred and fifty miles back to Santa Barbara from Kingman, and neither bath, shave, nor two hours flat on the bed seemed to have had any effect.
Back in my room at The Vacationer I listened to the whole of the tape’s four-hour playing time. The first conversations, two or three business calls, were from the previous morning, after Walt had put in a new reel. Then there was almost an hour and a half of an interview between Offen and a man from the Bloodstock Registry Office. They had already been out to see the horses, and Offen was piling proof on proof that the horses in his barn were veritably Moviemaker and Centigrade. A groom who had cared for Centigrade during his racing days was asked in to sign a statement he’d made that he recognized the horse and would if necessary swear to its identity in any inquiry.
The bloodstock man apologized constantly that anyone should have doubted Offen. Offen enjoyed the scene, the joke rumbling like an undertone. After they’d gone he laughed aloud. I hoped he’d enjoyed it. He wouldn’t be laughing much for a long time to come.
Next on the tape was a piece of Offen giving his houseman instructions for replenishing the drink stocks, then an hour’s television programme. And after that, Matt telephoned.
I couldn’t hear his voice at all, only Offen’s replies, but they were enough.
‘Hello, Matt...
‘Slow down, I’m not taking this in. Where did you say you were?...
‘What are you doing on the road to Las Vegas?...
‘Well, I can see the house must be insured...
‘You found what under the glove shelf?...
‘How do you know it’s a homer?...
‘All these minute transmitters are a mystery to me...
‘Who could have put it there?...
‘I don’t follow you. What was that about yellow paint?...
‘But the police said it was vandals...
‘All right, Matt, don’t shout. I’m doing my best. Now let’s get this clear. You were fumbling for a pack of cigarettes and you dislodged this... thing. Bug, whatever you said. And you’re worried now that Hawkins and Prensela put it in your car, and that they used that and the yellow paint to follow you, so that they know where you’ve been staying, or maybe. Is that right?...
‘Matt, I think you’re blowing this thing up too big...
‘But did you actually see a plane following you?...
‘Well, yes, sure, if you think you should go back, go back. The horses are far more important than the insurance on the house. But I think you’re wrong. Hawkins and Prensela have been concentrating on Moviemaker and Centigrade here, they’ve stirred up the DA’s office from LA and the bloodstock registry, and it’s been a three ringed circus here for the last couple of days. They wouldn’t have been trying to find any horses anywhere else, because they’re sure they’re here in the barn...
‘Well, I don’t know who could have planted the bug...
‘Yeah. All right. Go on back, then...
‘Call me in the morning...
‘Goodnight, Matt.’
The receiver went down, and for a few seconds there were the indistinct noises of Offen going over the conversation again in his mind, punctuating it with ‘umphs’ and small doubtful grunts.