I turned from the window. Tedescu was trying to light one of his cigars with shaking fingers; it took two matches before he got it going. “What do we do now?” he said. “Call the authorities?”
“Do you want to talk to them?”
“God, no. I couldn’t call them after it happened; tried but I couldn’t. Booze... that’s all I could do.”
“I don’t want to talk to them, either,” I said. Because it would mean explaining why I was here, bringing the whole thing with Eberhardt and Jimmy Quon and Polly Soon out into the open. And I was not ready to do that yet. Maybe I would never be ready to do it. “Emerson’s death was an accident. There’s no point in either of us going through a police interrogation.”
He looked relieved. But it didn’t chase away the anguish in his eyes; that, and the memory of what had happened here today, would stay with him a long time. “But what about Carl’s body? We can’t just leave it out there.”
“No. How many people know you came up here today?”
“Only our secretary, Miss Addison. Contracts delivered to her this morning; she had them on her desk when I got to office.”
“Okay. I’ll take the phone off the hook before we leave. When you get back to the city, tell Miss Addison that Emerson wasn’t home when you got here. You waited around but he didn’t show up. Have her try to call him; she’ll keep getting a busy signal. Tell her you’re worried about Emerson and get her to call the county sheriffs office. They’ll find the body when they come out to check. Can you handle it that way?”
“Think so. Yes.”
“You’re in no condition to drive back tonight,” I said. “Neither am I, for that matter. We’ll go put up at a motel; then I’ll bring you back here in the morning to pick up your car.”
He gave me a long, bewildered look. “Why you want to help me like this? Don’t understand that. Who are you?”
“Andrew James,” I said.
“Yes, but... did you know Carl?”
“No, I never met him. And I’m glad I didn’t; it wouldn’t have been a good thing for me.”
“But you came here to see him. You said personal reasons...”
“It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead; my business with him is finished. Yours, too. Maybe things will be better for Mid-Pacific with him gone.”
“Maybe will,” Tedescu said. “He was a bastard. Not sorry he’s dead, you know? Only sorry I had to...” He shuddered, wiped a hand across his face as if wiping away guilt. “You’re right,” he said, “over and done with. Carl’s dead. You and me, we have to go on living.”
I nodded. But as I started to clean up the kitchen, I thought that it wasn’t over and done with, not quite, not as far as I was concerned. There were still two important matters to be resolved.
There was still Eberhardt.
And there was still the bribe.
Twenty-one
I got back to San Francisco late Thursday afternoon. Tedescu didn’t follow me down. The last I saw of him was in Albion; he trailed me there, after I took him back to Seaview Ranch to pick up his compact, and then pulled off in front of a grocery store. After liquor or beer, probably, something to take the edge off his hangover. He was pretty shaky, subdued; he’d had a bad night. But he’d get through all right, if he didn’t start drinking heavily again and kill himself on the highway. The booze was his crutch — he’d been leaning on it for years and he would not stop leaning on it now. The irony was, Emerson had screwed up Tedescu’s life when he was alive, and even in death he was still screwing it up. Tedescu might never get over what Emerson had done to him, what Emerson had caused him to do. And maybe I would never get over what Emerson had done to me, either.
I’d had a better night than Tedescu, but not by much. Dreams, fever sweats, nagging pain that kept bringing me up to the edge of consciousness. And all the running around in the rain had given me a head cold on top of everything else; it started after I had checked us into the motel — one room, twin beds, so I could keep an eye on Tedescu — and when I woke up I was snuffling and I had a scratchy throat. All of me ached; Doctor Abrams’ warning about pneumonia was in the back of my mind. I managed the long drive all right, but I was exhausted again when I finally got home.
I took some cold capsules and Vitamin C and went straight to bed. And slept sixteen hours, most of them dreamless. When I awoke on Friday morning I was still stiff and sore, and I still had the cold, but I felt somewhat better. I got up long enough to eat, went back to bed, and called Abrams at S.F. General to check on Eberhardt. No change. Then I dialed the Hall of Justice and got through to Ben Klein. I had to know how things stood with the police investigation, what the official position was on the death of Mau Yee.
But I had no worries there. “Still nothing definite to report,” Klein said. “Trying to get answers in Chinatown is like trying to pry open an oyster shell with your fingers. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”
“No new leads?”
“One possibility, maybe, but I don’t think it’s going to get us anywhere. Chinese thug named Jimmy Quon got himself killed on Wednesday night. One of the body-washers we checked out after the shooting — a real hard case. But he had an alibi we couldn’t shake.”
“You think his death might be connected?”
“If it is, we can’t find the connection. Found in an alley off Waverly Place, skull bashed in. No witnesses, no leads. It could be a gang killing; that kind of shit goes down all the time in Chinatown.”
Found in an alley, I thought. Lee Chuck must have sent some Hui Sip people over to the temple to remove the body, probably because he didn’t want cops, Caucasian cops, doing any more desecrating of a house of worship. How somebody like Chuck could have religious feelings was beyond me. But then, there seemed to be a lot of things that were beyond me these days.
I slept another three hours, doctored myself with more pills, ate again, and then screwed up my courage and called Kerry at the Bates and Carpenter agency. Her secretary took the call, said she’d see if Ms. Wade was still in, and left me hanging for two minutes. Or Kerry did. Then the line clicked and Kerry’s voice said, “Well — so you’re still alive.” She sounded cool and distant, but I thought I could detect relief, too. “I was beginning to think you’d disappeared for good. Or that you’d turn up dead in an alley somewhere.”
“Have you been trying to call me?”
“Twice. Don’t ask me why.”
“I know why. At least, I hope I do.”
No response.
“Listen,” I said, “it’s been a crazy time. I was a little crazy myself for a while. But that’s over now. No more running around, no more guns.”
Pause. “Is that the truth?”
“It’s the truth.”
“What happened? Did you find out who did the shooting? Did you finish your vendetta?”
“I finished it, but it wasn’t a vendetta. I didn’t kill anybody, if that’s what you think. No violence.”
“I suppose you still don’t want to talk about it.”
“Someday, maybe. Not yet.”
Another pause. “So where are you now?”