Back in the study, I drew heavy brocade drapes over the windows and then switched on the desk lamp. An appointments calendar next to the phone bore several notations in a near-illegible hand; but there was nothing under today’s date, and nothing under tomorrow’s, and none of the scrawled names meant anything to me. I pawed through papers in the desk and in a teak file cabinet. Bills, personal and business records, a checking account statement that showed a balance of three thousand dollars. No private correspondence, and nothing to link Emerson to Eberhardt or Polly Soon or Jimmy Quon.
Once I was done in there, I had no reason to stay any longer. I shut off the lamp, climbed back out through the window, and closed it behind me. I left the lawn chair where it was, the hell with it. Camelia Drive was still deserted; I went out through the front gate and back to my car.
I sat in the darkness again, fighting off lassitude, trying to think. Where did he go? It figured he was badly upset, panicked; the hasty packing job proved that, and so did his flight. But I could not see him going on the run. If he’d been inclined to run, he’d have done it when Eberhardt survived the shooting. And with Quon dead, and me apparently stymied, he had to believe he was more or less in the clear now. Then there was the trenchcoat. He’d washed it and left it in the bathroom, instead of getting rid of it; that had to mean he planned on returning home sooner or later.
A short trip, then. Get out of the area for a few days, hole up somewhere until he could pull himself together. It made sense that way. Hiring somebody to kill was one thing, but doing the job yourself was a whole different ball game. It took some getting used to, it kept a person from functioning in normal patterns.
Philip Bexley had told me Emerson made regular gambling trips to Las Vegas. Would he have hopped a plane and gone there? Maybe. But a much more likely possibility was the ranch in Mendocino County that Bexley had also told me about. Familiar surroundings on the one hand; a sense of isolation on the other. A place where he’d feel secure.
Mendocino or Vegas or some other damned place, there was nothing I could do about it tonight, no matter how much I wanted to pursue him. I was like a zombie already; if I did not get some rest pretty soon, I was liable to wind up back in the hospital. I couldn’t do anything about Emerson from a frigging hospital bed.
It was a constant struggle to stay alert on the drive back to San Francisco. When I finally got home I was asleep on my feet. I don’t even remember getting out of my clothes or crawling into bed.
In the morning, rested, still a little achey, I called Mid-Pacific Electronics. The woman who answered — the secretary, Miss Addison, probably — said, “I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Emerson isn’t in,” when I asked to speak to him.
“Will he be in later today?”
“No, he’s gone out of town.”
“For how long?”
“He won’t be back until next Monday.”
“Can you tell me where I can reach him?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“He didn’t happen to go to Las Vegas, did he?”
“Las Vegas? No, he didn’t.”
“Would he be up at his ranch in Mendocino?”
“I really can’t say, sir. May I take a message?”
“No message,” I said, and put the receiver down. And stood up and reached for my coat.
Yeah, I was thinking.
Mendocino.
Nineteen
It was raining in Mendocino County. I took Highway 101 straight up to Cloverdale, then cut over on 128 through the orchards and vineyards of Anderson Valley, through towering redwood forests to the coast; the rain started around Boonville, a thin misty drizzle. The north coast of California gets a lot of rain, even in the summer months — that, and a perpetual shroud of fog. By the time I got to the village of Mendocino, the mixture of fog and rain was so heavy you could barely see the ocean lying beyond the headland.
The drive was a long one, better than five hours and a hundred and fifty miles, and I was pretty tired at the end of it. I had stopped twice, once in Santa Rosa for gas and once in Cloverdale for coffee and a sandwich, but the stops had not done much for me mentally or physically. My muscles were cramped, my back hurt, my shoulder hurt, I had a tension headache. And I was in a wicked frame of mind: wired up tight, with violence roiling just under the surface. I was a little afraid of myself, of what I might do when I finally came face to face with Carl Emerson. I could handle it all right if he didn’t make trouble, but if he provoked me in any way...
I quit thinking about that. If something was going to happen, let it happen. Worrying about losing control could make you do just that when you came up against it.
The village had been built on a rugged, tree-dotted headland overlooking the mouth of the Big River and the sea beyond. It was the kind of place people called quaint, more New England than California in style and attitude — Cape Cod cottages, weathered Gothic buildings and towers, narrow streets lined with art galleries, coffee houses, shops dispensing a variety of local craftwork. A town populated by artists and artisans, most of them young, most of them dropouts from big cities like San Francisco. Mendocino was the heart of California’s art renaissance, a haven for people who wanted a quieter, rural life-style without giving up a sense of culture and sophistication.
But the county wasn’t all a bucolic Utopia. Other kinds of dropouts had discovered it, too, back in the sixties; dope-dealing and marijuana-growing were two of its other thriving industries, and there were reputed to be training grounds for paramilitary and terrorist groups, right- and left-wing, in its more remote areas. Man builds and creates and lives in harmony with nature; man uses, tears down, turns beauty into ugliness, tranquillity into disorder. The age-old story, the biblical struggle between good and evil. A kind of Armageddon in microcosm, conducted in small daily skirmishes.
Armageddon for me, too, I thought. That was what I was here for, wasn’t it? To finish my own personal battle with a force of evil?
I parked near the Masonic Hall, an old frame building with a rooftop sculpture of Father Time braiding a woman’s hair, and dodged puddles and tourists with umbrellas until I found a shop that sold county topographical maps. I didn’t expect to find Seaview Ranch listed on it, but I thought that maybe there was a Seaview Road or Seaview Lane in the vicinity of the village. There wasn’t. So much for that idea.
Outside again, I hunted up a real estate office; if there was anybody who would know where Seaview Ranch was, it was a local realtor, particularly since the place had to have been on the market before Emerson bought it six months ago. The woman I talked to was in her fifties, smiling and cheerful despite the weather. I told her I was looking to buy a home in the area and that I’d heard a place called Seaview Ranch was up for sale. She was familiar with it, all right; without hesitation she said I was too late, that property had already been sold.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Did you handle the transaction?”
“No, we didn’t. It was another agency, in Fort Bragg.”
“But you do know where Seaview Ranch is located?”
“Why, yes. I knew the former owner. I must say I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t register the property with us when he decided to—”
“Would you mind telling me how to get to it?”
“Well... may I ask why you want to know?”
“From what I was told,” I said, “it’s exactly the sort of place I’m looking for. I’d like to take a look at it — talk to the new owner, see if he might be willing to sell if the price is right.” I gave her a conspiratorial smile. “I’m pretty well off financially, so money is no object when I find something I want.”