Now what? I thought, stopping and looking around. I could see nothing but dark vegetation and hear nothing but the distant animal sounds and the overhead drone of a plane heading for Lindbergh Field. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the zoo as I remembered it from dozens of past visits. But that didn’t help much; I’d always come in through the visitors’ gate.
Where were the guards? How often did they patrol? The one I’d seen had probably checked the courtyard; if he’d noticed the open gate and locked it, I was in real trouble. Or had he seen the light in the office and gone in to see who was working late? There was no way of telling until I got back there. If I got back there.
I went back up the path, took another fork, but found it wasn’t the right one either. At this rate, I could wander all night. The zoo covers a hundred acres of canyons and mesas in the northwestern reaches of Balboa Park. The animals live in relative freedom in natural habitats, which are separated from visitors by low walls and moats rather than barred cages. I supposed if I came to something I recognized, the bear den or monkey island, I could find my way to the main gate. And that was just down from the administration center—
Off to my right something screamed.
I almost screamed back at it. Then I leaped off the path, heading for the cover of the shrubbery. Whatever it was yelled again, and then a great ruckus started, with all sorts of shrieks and flapping.
Birds. I must be near where they kept the big birds — ostriches and emus and God knows what else.
Had I caused this uproar? Or did it happen frequently? Would the guards come to investigate, or just ignore it as a matter of course? I crouched in the shrubbery, waiting.
Birds. That didn’t help me one damn bit. The things were everywhere, all over the zoo. I’d have to figure out some other way to get my bearings.
But how? It was dark, and I didn’t dare use my flashlight...
Dummy, I thought. The moon. The moon is out tonight. You can fix your position by it, like a good little Girl Scout.
The birds were quieting down now, and I didn’t hear any footsteps coming to investigate the commotion. I stepped out from the cover of the bushes and looked up at the sky. The moon was there all right. I took a mental reading, figured out which way was which, and soon was on the right path, heading for the little bridge and the gate beyond.
At the bridge, I paused, looking around and listening. The light was still on in the office, but all was quiet. Probably the guard had checked to see who was there, and now Woodall really was working late, to back up whatever story he’d given security. I slipped across the bridge and grasped the iron bars of the gate. It was still open.
I went through it fast, breathing hard, and hurried down the walk and across Zoo Drive to where Woodall’s car was still parked. From here I’d be able to hear him close the gate if he left, so I decided to take the opportunity to examine the car. It would be easy to do, since the convertible top was down.
I slipped into the driver’s seat. The car smelled of leather and more faintly of cigarette smoke. I opened the glove compartment and found it empty except for the registration and a San Diego map. The ashtray was full of butts, and a side pocket on the door was stuffed with odd bits of paper. I pulled them out and went through them.
There were credit card slips from gasoline stations, mostly Union Oil; a crumpled bill from an auto repair shop; an empty matchbook from an Italian restaurant; ticket stubs for the symphony; several business cards. I looked carefully at each card. One was from a New York Life Insurance salesman; another from the alterations department of a downtown men’s store; still another from a lawyer, Newell Dunlap.
And one from Arthur Darrow.
I looked closer at Darrow’s card. It was ragged, seemed old. Probably it had been in the side pocket a long time. It gave Darrow’s occupation as an investment counselor, and showed both business and office addresses and phone numbers in Borrego Springs.
Turning it over, I found a notation in a thin, spidery hand: 9 p.m., Les Club.
Les Club. French for “The Club,” I supposed — but if that was so, it was bad French. It should have been Le Club, instead of the plural Les. In any case, a utilitarian label with a Continental flare.
But for what? It sounded as if it could be a restaurant. Or a bar. A fancy nightspot, perhaps. Or even a health club, as I’d first supposed.
Well, whatever it was, I’d now found a link connecting Woodall with Arthur Darrow. Darrow, who was connected to Elaine by Jim Lauterbach’s file. Lauterbach, who had been hired by Henry Nyland. Nyland, who suspected Elaine had been involved with another man — another man who had to be Woodall. Woodall, whom Karyn Sugarman had classified as an Inadequate Personality. Sugarman, who...
Everybody seemed connected. Loosely connected, to be sure, but all linked by something called Les Club.
30: “Wolf”
My Western Airlines flight on Tuesday morning went north out of San Diego, to L.A. to pick up a bunch of noisy tourists, and then turned around and proceeded on down to Mazatlan. I took that as an omen of things to come. And I wasn’t far wrong.
In Mazatlan it was hot and so humid the air had a wet drippy consistency that made it difficult to breathe. There was no air conditioning in the waiting area for the feeder flight to Los Mochis; I sat there for an hour with my jacket off and my shirt unbuttoned halfway down my belly, simmering in my own sweat. The plane, when I finally boarded it, was small and cramped and even hotter than the waiting area; and the pilot handled it on takeoff, in the air, and on landing with a kind of wild nonchalance that scared the hell out of me. None of the other five passengers, all of whom were Mexican, seemed bothered in the slightest.
Los Mochis was a modern little city in the middle of El Fuerte Valley, surrounded by rice fields and canebrakes and sugar mills. It took me fifteen minutes to recover from the flight, which was all right because it took the airline people fifteen minutes to find my missing bag. The first three taximen I talked to either didn’t speak English or had no interest in driving me all the way to Topolobampo Bay; the fourth guy, whose name was Hernando and who said proudly that he was a Tarahumara Indian, agreed to do the honors. Which was too bad for me, because he drove with the same kind of wild nonchalance exhibited by the feeder pilot — only worse, like somebody who had just escaped from an asylum. I didn’t get to see half the countryside we passed through, on account of I had my eyes shut most of the time.
Near the Bahia Ohuira we entered a stretch of heavy jungle, vivid green and spotted with bright-colored flowers. It was even hotter and more humid in there, which made the interior of the taxi — a twenty-year-old Dodge sans air conditioning — feel like the interior of a stewpot. We couldn’t even open the windows for a breath of air because, Hernando said, the jungle was the home of “oh so many millions of mosquitoes who will gladly suck out every drop of our blood.” The land around the village of Topolobampo, not far ahead, had remained uninhabited until recent years because of the mosquitoes, he said. Malaria, he said. But the disease had been wiped out, he said, except in rare cases, and then only tourists were afflicted.
Topolobampo was an old village with a cluster of new-looking hotels spread out along the narrows where Bahia Ohuira became Bahia Topolobampo and where there was a confusion of mangrove islands and dark estuaries. We went through the town, southwest toward the Sea of Cortez. And a little while later, in midafternoon and in the middle of a hot windstorm, we finally rolled into the town on the water with monkeys in it.