He shrugged and came over to where I was. I flexed my right arm to get the last of the tingling numbness out of it; my knuckles had begun to throb, and I saw that two of them were scraped and bloody. I bent down and took Knox by the shoulders, and the bartender got his legs, and one of the guys from the booth went over and opened the rear door for us. We carried Knox down a short corridor and out through another door, into daylight that was blinding after the semidarkness of the bar.
The alley was narrow and unpaved and there was not much in it except weeds and a stack of crates and boxes and half a dozen garbage cans. A lizard sat sunning itself on one of the posts in the fence opposite the door; beyond the fence was a pasture with two horses and a mule grazing in it. We laid Knox down in the dust next to the hotel wall.
I said, “There'll be a man named Kayabalian in asking for me pretty soon-one of your guests. Will you tell him I'll be back as soon as I can?”
“No more trouble?”
“No more trouble.”
“Okay, then.” He went back inside and closed the door.
I knelt beside Knox, fished through his pockets until I came up with a leather key case. When I straightened again, there was a sudden fiery pain in my chest and then an attack of coughing so intense for a few seconds, tears squeezed past the corners of my eyes. I leaned against the wall until it quit.
I'm fifty years old, I thought, I've got a lesion on one lung, what the hell am I doing mixing it up in bars?
I scrubbed my face dry with my handkerchief, went slowly down the alley to one side street and looked around and did not find the Rambler wagon. But when I came back to the other side street, I saw it parked under a locust tree thirty yards down. So I got it and drove it into the alley and managed to drag Knox through one of the rear doors-it was like dragging a side of beef-and lay him across the seat. Then I backed the Rambler out of the alley, parked it where I'd found it under the locust tree. He could sleep it off here as well as anywhere else. But I kept the keys; I did not want him driving when he finally did come around.
For a moment I stood looking in at him. I had not had much time to consider what he'd imparted to me in the bar, but the implications were pretty obvious. It looked as though I had at last gotten my handle on Angela Jerrold, and that made it all the more imperative to get her and Jerrold the hell away from Eden Lake. I had suspected all along it would turn out this way; not many women with that kind of appeal to men are strong enough to resist using their power. The only thing I wondered about now was whether Talesco and Knox were the only ones. For all I knew, she had been playing the siren's song for everybody at the camp and half of The Pines.
Only it was Jerrold, poor bastard, who had listened to it once too often.
Ten
Charles Kayabalian turned out to be a tall thin relaxed-looking guy somewhere in his early forties. He had pronounced Semitic features, jet-black hair worn in a modern shag cut, a small neat mustache, and smooth skin the color of an aged walnut. Round expressive eyes gave him an ingenuous look that was probably an asset when he went up in front of a jury. You got the impression that he wore any kind of clothes as if they had been tailored for him, but that he preferred casual outfits to the more conventional suit and tie; he was dressed now in a patterned silk shirt, beige flare slacks, and suede loafers.
I found him sitting at the bar when I came back into the Gold Rush Room, and after I had introduced myself and we had shaken hands and sized each other up the way you do, he suggested that we take one of the booths; the two guys who had witnessed my brief skirmish with Knox were gone.
When we were settled in the booth he said, “The bartender told me about the fight you had. I trust everything's all right?”
“More or less. It was just one of those things.”
“People should learn to control liquor.” He got a package of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. “Cigarette?”
Christ yes, I thought. But I said, “No thanks. I gave them up a while ago.”
“I wish I could. You don't mind?”
Politeness made me say, “No, go ahead.”
He lit one with, a gold lighter and blew smoke at the ceiling, and I began to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn't be able to smell it.
“Well,” he said, “you're wondering, of course, about my connection with Vahram Terzian, if perhaps I might have been his attorney-”
I said, “I saw Sheriff Cloudman earlier this afternoon. He told me about you and the people you represent, why you're here.”
“Oh, I see. Then he also explained about the stolen Daghestan carpet.”
“He mentioned it, yes.”
“I'll get right to the point, then. You have a certain involvement in this matter already, by virtue of having discovered Terzian's body, and you also have a rather good reputation as an investigator; I've seen your name in the San Francisco papers on occasion. I'd like to retain you in a professional capacity.”
“Retain me to do what?”
“Help recover the Daghestan.”
I had thought that might be why he'd wanted to see me. I said, “I don't think I can do it, Mr. Kayabalian.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, the Sheriff's Department has a lot of manpower, and a lot better methods at their disposal than I have; if this missing carpet is connected with Terzian's murder they'll likely turn it up. For another, the police don't much like the idea of private cops poking their noses in a homicide investigation, and the last thing I can afford to do is antagonize public officials.”
“There are parallel lines of inquiry,” Kayabalian said, “which a civilian investigator can pursue without overstepping the boundaries of his license. The county sheriff, after all, is only concerned with the murder itself, with what happened here in Tuolumne County. They can't be expected to follow potential leads to the Daghestan in places like San Jose and San Francisco.”
“I understood you already had people investigating Terzian's operation in San Jose.”
“I do, but I'm not particularly satisfied with their efforts. Look, I'm also a servant of the law; I certainly wouldn't expect you to do anything that isn't legal and ethical. Now that Terzian has been dealt a certain grim justice, my primary interest-and my client's primary interest-is the safe recovery of the Daghestan.”
“Who is this client of yours, Mr. Kayabalian?”
“I'm not at liberty to give you his name. But I can tell you he's an influential citizen of Hillsborough, with an unimpeachable reputation. You have my word on that.”
I nodded, brooding a little.
Kayabalian said, “There's something else you ought to know about him. He has authorized me to offer a reward of twenty-five hundred dollars to the person who recovers or provides direct information leading to the recovery of the Daghestan.”
“That's a pretty substantial reward.”
“It is, indeed.”
“Just how valuable is this carpet?”
“To a collector such as my client, depending on how wealthy he is and how much he might want this particular piece, it could bring anywhere from fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“That much?”
“Yes. I take it you know relatively little about Orientals.”
“Almost nothing, I'm afraid.”
“Suppose I give you a little background. I'm something of a collector myself, in a minor way, and I've studied Orientals as a hobby for several years.”
“All right.”
He paused to light another cigarette. He smoked them in short, quick drags, so that his face seemed continually wreathed in curls and wisps of smoke. It was difficult for me to keep my eyes fixed on him; the cigarette and the smoke had a kind of hypnotic effect on me. Like a reforming heroin addict looking at somebody with a nickel bag, I thought. You don't want the damned thing, only you want it so bad you can taste it.
Kayabalian said, “Several hundred years ago Daghestan was a province, under both Armenian and Persian rule, in the area sandwiched between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea-what we refer to today as the Caucasus, currently a part of Russia. Daghestan's Armenian weavers, like those in such provinces as Shirvan in the Caucasus and Isfahan in Persia, were consummate craftsmen; their work is historically among the very finest. But not many Daghestan carpets and Namazlyks-prayer rugs-dating from earlier than 1750 have survived in the Western world, for two reasons: production was small and purely functional and carpets were not made specifically for court use, as they were in Persia. They were instead handed down from generation to generation and treasured as family heirlooms; consequently most have remained in the Caucasus. The Russians, of course, guard them jealously.