The Pressler-Hemovich shack-up was apparently still too tender for the permanence of house purchase contracts; 507 was a stucco bungalow that looked like a rental property. If old man Pressler didn’t blow Kenny-baby’s head off, Virginia probably would get sick of mindless all-night humping and adolescent pimples, and eventually go home to papa and the kids.
The garage was locked but empty. Ballard checked the mailbox, saw a window envelope from the San Francisco Department of Social Services addressed to Hemovich. His lip curled unconsciously. Nineteen years old, on welfare. At least Virginia had gotten him off his dead butt and back to work. A woman, like a dope habit, was expensive to support. Even a working woman.
Ballard opened the trunk of his car, found a piece of thin copper wire, looked about and saw no window shades or drapes or curtains flapping. He clipped a short piece of wire and stuck it in the lock of the garage door. He drove off grinning. Poetic justice, that — although he didn’t believe that Hemovich had clouted Bart over the head. Not after seeing the kid in person. The attack on Bart had required a deadly decisiveness that Hemovich just didn’t have.
Of course, maybe Virginia Pressler did. She was smart, obviously strong-minded. Could she also be murderous?
To hell with them. Nothing to be done about them until tonight anyway. Which left Griffin, and the East Bay. But down on the freeway the cars were already clotting up even though it wasn’t yet four o’clock.
Why not wait until after six, use the time to drive out to Trinity and see Bart? He hadn’t been there since his first visit yesterday morning. Yesterday? God, it seemed like a week since he’d stared down at that dark, still face on the pillow, with Corinne sobbing in the background.
He pulled the car over and stopped beside a sidewalk pay phone near a small neighborhood shopping area. He sat in the car for a few moments. The hell of it was that he didn’t want to visit the hospital, either. Didn’t want to see Bart just lying there.
He had to pull out of it. But according to Whitaker, every hour that he stayed in the coma meant...
Had to get the mother that did it. Had to. If he hadn’t connected by the end of the seventy-two hours, and Kearny cut him off, he’d have to quit his job and keep looking. There was no other way to go.
He got out of the car, got the phone number from the telephone book, asked to have Whitaker paged. The girl on the switchboard said he had already left the hospital. She switched Ballard to the third floor, this time to a nice-sounding nurse who had heard of Florence Nightingale.
“No, gee, I’m terribly sorry to have to say he’s still in coma, no change at all in his condition.”
“His, ah... Miss Jones wouldn’t be around, would she?”
“I’m sure she’s in his room. That poor girl has barely been out of this place since... just a sec. I’ll send an aide to get her.”
When Corinne’s voice came on the phone it was flat and exhausted, limp as a home permanent in the rain. Trying to compensate, Ballard put as much spurious warmth as he could into his own. “Hi, kid! This is Larry—”
“I know who it is. Why haven’t you been around to see Bart?”
A lump of black meat lying on the bed... How do you give that as a reason to the girl who loves him? “Well, ah, Corinne, I’ve, ah... they said at the office that there’d been no change...”
“Don’t you even care enough to come see him?”
“It isn’t that, kid. You see, I—”
“Or do you feel that he’s all done anyway, so what the hell’s the difference?”
“You know that isn’t it, kid. It’s just... well, I’ve only got about one more day to find out who did it—”
“Who cares?” she asked in a bone-weary tone.
“I care, I... Look, Corinne, you need sleep, food — the nurse tells me you’ve barely been out of the hospital since he was brought in. When was the last time you ate a meal?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. This morning sometime. Last night. I don’t know, what difference does it make?” She suddenly burst out, “Oh, Larry, he just lies there! Why can’t they do something?”
“I guess Bart has to do it himself, from what Whitaker said. He will do it, Corinne. He’s never backed down from a fight yet.”
“Please come over here, Larry.” Her voice held an almost wistful note through the fatigue. “I need you. Bart needs you.”
Ballard looked at his watch. “All right, kid, I’ll try to make it. I’m way out in the Mission right now, I can’t guarantee anything, but—”
“Thanks a lot, sport,” she said flatly.
He cursed, once, hung up the already dead phone. Back in the Ford, he dug out his maps for Southern Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Shit, he just couldn’t hack it there at the hospital. And he couldn’t really take the time, anyway. Only about thirty-four hours left to his deadline.
Then he thought, guiltily: How many hours does Bart have left?
Eleven
The Mysterious East Bay, as Herb Caen always called it in his daily Chronicle column. Ha. About as mysterious as a bag of dirty laundry. A big hot sprawl of nothing, like L.A., with all those cute names the subdividers loved. Glorietta. Saranap. Gregory Gardens. Housewives driving around in shorts and hair curlers, men drinking beer at the drags on Sunday.
Christ, he was tired. Used up.
And the clock pushing him, pushing all the time, so he couldn’t afford any mistakes, couldn’t miss any nuances. He didn’t have time for backtracking. He had to get everything there was to get out of a single interview; rechecking leads burned up precious minutes, hours.
One nice thing about Castro Valley, however: he was far enough south to be out of radio reach of Oakland Control. Half a mile away Interstate 580 whined and yelped like caged lab animals awaiting dissection; but this part of Castro Valley Boulevard was big old frame houses that must have been here before World War II. Overlaid with hot-dog stands and drive-ins and laundromats and gas stations now, but with the old residential neighborhood still showing through like silver through the tarnish.
The rambling white house at 3877 had a lawn. It even had a garage instead of a carport. He walked across the grass just to feel it under his shoes; the back yard was full of roses. In the garage was an old Mercury whose license he didn’t even bother to jot down.
He had stopped to eat, bringing twilight close enough for lights to burn in the front room. The door was finally opened by a woman with iron-gray hair, of about the same vintage as the house. “Sorry I took so long; I was on the phone.”
“I wonder if I might speak with Charles, ma’am.”
“Chuck? My goodness, he hasn’t lived here for — oh, seven, eight months anyway.” She was vaguely horse-faced, with glasses, and surprisingly vigorous physical movements — which probably explained (and were explained by) that yardful of fantastic roses.
“Do you know where I might get in touch with him?”
“My goodness, no, I don’t.” She emphasized don’t; it was a Midwest trick of speech, Illinois, Iowa, somewhere like that.