28: “Wolf”
I stared at the television screen, at the woman named Ruth Ferguson. She was talking about her son again, her son Timmy. An unidentified woman in her mid-thirties with short dark hair had enticed him away from his school in Bloomfield Hills — probably someone hired by her ex-husband, she said. The ex-husband was named Carlton Ferguson and he was a design and structural engineer who had divorced her two years ago and then vanished after a bitter custody fight that had left Timmy in her charge. She thought he might have gone to South America, where he’d once spent a year “building bridges or something,” but investigators she herself had hired in the Detroit area after Timmy’s kidnapping had thus far been unable to trace him. She was offering a five-thousand-dollar reward, she said, for information leading to the whereabouts and safe return of her son — money she had been prepared to pay to Jim Lauterbach.
Then she was gone, and the newscaster said that anyone with any information on either the death of Lauterbach or the whereabouts of Timmy Ferguson should contact the San Diego police or the channel’s newsroom. Then he went on to something else, and I reached over and shut him off.
I sat there. Five thousand dollars. If I was right about where Timmy was, all I had to do was call the cops or the TV station and the money would be mine — half mine, because McCone was entitled to fifty percent of it. All the investigating we’d done wouldn’t be for free after all. And I’d have done my good deed for the year.
But I didn’t move. I kept seeing Ruth Ferguson’s beautiful, cold face, kept hearing that voice of hers, emotionless except for the bitter edge, as if, instead of her son, she’d been talking about a piece of rather valuable property that had been stolen from her. She hadn’t seemed to care much about whether or not Timmy was all right; she hadn’t seemed to care at all that Lauterbach was dead, only that he’d died before he could tell her what he knew. And all I could think of was what Timmy had said to me about his mother — not the woman I knew as Nancy Clark, but his natural mother, Ruth Ferguson.
I don’t like my mother. She makes me afraid
Why? I thought. Why does she make him afraid?
I got up and paced the room for a time. But I needed more space than that, more activity. I took the elevator down to the lobby, went outside, and walked along the edge of the beach.
Maybe I ought to go talk to Ruth Ferguson, I thought, see what kind of impression she makes in person. But I had no idea where she was staying and I couldn’t get to her through the police or through the TV station without telling them why I wanted to see her. I could try canvassing the hotels in the area by phone, but that was a tall order; and even if I did find her that way, and I saw her and didn’t like her any better face to face than I had on television, she’d know right away that I knew something about Timmy’s disappearance.
All right, what about the boy’s father? He must have arranged the snatch, just as Ruth Ferguson thought, since she hadn’t mentioned any sort of ransom demand. What kind of father kidnaps his own son? A worried one, maybe, who cares more about the boy than his ex-wife does. Or one just as bitter and cold as she — a bastard who wants only to get back at a woman he hates. For all I knew, Carlton Ferguson could have killed Lauterbach: he might have come to San Diego too, and Lauterbach got in touch with him somehow and tried blackmail, and Ferguson had paid him off with four bullets instead of cash.
I left the beach and walked up into the gardens, across in front of Bungalow 6. All this speculation... what the hell good was it? There was no way I could judge what kind of man Ferguson was, because I didn’t know anything about him. And I couldn’t talk to him any more than I could talk to the boy’s mother...
Why couldn’t I?
I stopped walking. Fly down to Mexico, confront Ferguson, see what was what, and then make a decision what to do about Timmy. In Ferguson’s case I wouldn’t have to worry about letting on what I knew; I’d want him to know I was onto the truth, so I could gauge his reaction. Another thing: I might be able to get the full story of the operation Beddoes and Ibarcena were running here. Ferguson would know some of the details, at least.
But hell, it was an off-the-wall idea. I wasn’t certain that Los Monos was where Carlton Ferguson lived, or that that was where Timmy was now; it could easily turn out to be a wild-goose chase — an expensive one. It would cost plenty to get to a semi-isolated place like Topolobampo Bay.
Stupid idea. Forget it. Call the cops instead, turn it over to them, let them get Timmy back to his mother where he belongs.
She makes me afraid...
Damn it, he’s just a kid. Kids make up things about their parents, kids exaggerate. She’s probably a terrific mother, gives him cake and ice cream and crap like that whenever he wants it.
But what if she isn’t? What if she really does make him afraid? What if she abuses him in some way?
The thoughts kept running around inside my head, scrimmaging with each other like a bunch of nervous football players. All the way to Mexico, for Christ’s sake, on a piece of guesswork and an impression of a woman based on a kid’s remark and a one-minute TV interview. I must be losing my grip on sanity even to be considering it. That was probably what McCone would say if I told her about it. You’re nuts, Wolf, she’d say. Five thousand bucks, twenty-five hundred apiece, and you want to maybe throw it away by hopping down to Mexico on a hunch and a prayer. Yeah, you’re nuts, all right.
I went back through the gardens and into the Cantina Sin Nombre and drank two bottles of Miller Lite. I was still nuts when I was done. So I went upstairs and called McCone’s parents’ house and asked the man who answered — Sharon’s brother, he said — to have her call me as soon as she checked in. Then I rang Room Service and asked them to send me up a sandwich. Then I called two different airlines and found out that it would cost me close to four hundred bucks for a round trip, via Mazatlan, to the closest city with an airport to Topolobampo Bay, a place called Los Mochis; transportation to and from Los Monos and incidental expenses would no doubt bring the final tab to over five hundred.
But I was still nuts even when I was done talking to the airlines. And I stayed nuts, so that when McCone called a while later, as I was eating my sandwich, I came right out and told her what I was thinking of doing.
“I think you ought to go, Wolf,” she said. “The kid’s welfare is more important than the reward. And besides, if the father turns out to be a bastard we’ll end up with the five thousand anyway.”
She was nuts too. We were both nuts.
Tomorrow morning, on the first available flight, I was going to Mexico — to the town on the water with monkeys in it.
29: McCone
I hung up the receiver of the kitchen wall phone and perched on the edge of the counter to think about what Wolf had found out. Interesting as it was, I couldn’t quite tie it to Elaine’s death. Well, better to let Wolf take care of the Casa del Rey angle while I continued to concentrate on the personal aspects of Elaine’s life.
And I could rest assured he would take care of it, in his own way. The distraught mother of Timmy dark — no, Timmy Ferguson — was here in town, offering five thousand dollars just for information leading to her son. Wolf had that information, and what was he doing with it? Going to Mexico because he didn’t like the looks of the mother. Because of some chance remark the kid had made about being afraid. And who had approved the plan, told him he should go? Me.
Five thousand dollars. Wolf had said he would split it with me if he ended up claiming the reward. That would mean we’d be compensated for all this investigative work after all. Five thousand dollars. Twenty-five hundred apiece.