Lucky he d dropped back, or he would have overshot when she whipped into the La Cumbre off-ramp. At State she took a right, Ballard three cars behind. The Jag’s left blinker went on for the sprawling Pepper Tree Motel.
Ballard went by, U-ed, came back into the parking area just as she slid out of the Jag in front of the brightly lit office. All very posh, expensive planting, immense roof overhangs, lots of glass and rustic beams of fake redwood.
Chosen at random? Or to an existing registration?
She came out of the glass-walled office, trim and well rounded in her pants suit, drove back around the end of the building and out of sight down a narrow blacktopped drive between the boundary hedge and the two-decked motel block.
Ballard waited, followed, passed the Jag two-thirds of the way along the length of the building. He would have liked her room number, but she was just getting out her suitcase when he went by. Later for that. Now check for Fazzino’s Gran Torino and get the layout fixed in his mind.
At the far end of the property, the drive made a left turn along the blank unwindowed rear of the building. No parking there. Then it turned left again, back toward the street along the other side of the hollow rectangle of rooms. Parking there, but no Gran Torino. The drive made a right and then a left again to get around the office, which was built off the main rectangle. Ballard came out between it and the bar-restaurant to the front parking area.
Beautiful. No other way out. Not so beautiful, no Gran Torino.
Eight-thirty. Yawning, tired as hell and hungry. A few minutes later Wendy Austin showed she was hungry too. Dressed now in a miniskirt to display those fantastic legs. He waited until she had entered the restaurant-called the Tree House — before going over to one of the outdoor pay phones and reversing the charges to DKA.
“I thought it’d be Giselle,” he said when Kearny himself accepted the call.
“She had an appointment.”
Appointment, hell. A date. With Sly-Eyes from the bank? But he was married, a couple of kids. Giselle wouldn’t...
“Huh?”
“I said, this is my dime.”
Ballard reported in crisp sentences.
“And the Gran Torino nowhere around...” Kearny was momentarily silent. “Okay. Get what else you can. It sounds like she’s headed for either L.A. or the Mex border. You have the number of the agency we use down South in case you need extra men?”
Ballard said he did, and hung up. He opened the phone booth to let in some fresh air while he worked out his approach. Once you started winging it, the words had to come instantly or you blew it. Through the glass walls of the office he could see the check-in girl reaching for the phone to answer his ring.
“Pepper Tree Motel, good evening.”
“Yes, my name is Philip Fazzino. Can you tell me if my wife has arrived yet?”
“Just a moment, sir, I’ll check.”
Ballard wiped his hands, one after the other, down his thighs as he waited. He wished he could be like Kathy Onoda, who never seemed to tense up no matter how elaborate the structure of lies she was erecting.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Fazzino, we show no reservation—”
“Then check and see if my secretary has arrived,” he snapped, building anger into his voice that he might need later. “Wendy Austin.”
“Miss Austin checked in about forty-five minutes ago, sir.”
“Ring her room.” She wouldn’t be there, of course, since by turning his head he could see her in the restaurant, but...
“Sorry, sir, she seems to have stepped out. I could have her paged in the restaurant—”
“What’s the room number?”
“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t divulge that information on the—”
“Goddammit!” he bellowed in calculated rage. “That goddam room was reserved by my goddam company and is being paid for by my goddam money, and you have the nerve to tell me—”
“I... Yes, sir. Three twenty-one, sir.”
He depressed the hook with his left hand but kept talking into the dead instrument for another fifteen seconds. If he could see into the office, she could see out to the lighted phone booth.
In the Tree House he had two cheeseburgers and three half-pints of milk and a piece of cherry pie at the counter while waiting for Wendy Austin to return to her room. Then he hit the phone booth again. It was the first time he had heard Wendy speak. She had a soft, sensual voice. He pictured her undressed for her shower, standing there talking to him. Further erotic fantasies flashed through his mind.
“Room-catering, Miss Austin. What time would you like your breakfast served in the morning, ma’am?”
“Oh! How thoughtful! Ah... Eight o’clock, how’s that?”
“As you wish, ma’am. And that will be...”
“Coffee, grapefruit and toast.”
Before returning to his car, Ballard went into the restaurant to order coffee, grapefruit and toast for room 321 at eight o’clock. He didn’t want her to realize in the morning that the call had been a fake. Meanwhile, he knew that she was alone; that Fazzino was not here and not expected; and that she wouldn’t be pulling out before eight-thirty or nine.
Now, if the cops didn’t spot him sleeping in the car, and push him around a little for not being either rich or retired...
They didn’t. But it was still a shitty night’s sleep.
Sixteen
Going down the far sidewalk with deceptively bouncy strides was a spare red-headed man in a tan topcoat. Heslip grinned to himself, reached over to flick up the lock on the far door of the car. It was 4:58 in the morning.
O’Bannon slid in and pulled the door shut, shivering. He turned his lugubrious, freckle-splotched face toward Heslip. “Cold as a witch’s tit.”
“And early.” Heslip yawned. So Kearny had been forced to bring O’B into it after all. “Where’d he catch up with you?”
“Turkish bath.”
Whenever O’B had a fight with Bella about his job or his drinking, he drank. When he drank, he didn’t go home. When he didn’t go home, he ended up steaming out the booze and sleeping on a rubdown table in a Turkish bath. After a day or two Bella would call Kearny and beg him to find O’B and send him home. The pattern was invariable.
“Any word from Ballard?”
“He’s in Santa Barbara,” said O’B. “No sign of Fazzino yet.”
He opened the door and started to get out again. Heslip checked his watch. “I’ll be back at two-thirty, O’B. That all right?”
“Sure. I’m good till then. Nothing’s going to happen here anyway.”
“L.A. County Courthouse? What the hell is he doing there?” demanded Dan Kearny.
“He’s in one of the parking lots outside,” Giselle explained patiently. It was 11:33 A.M. “On a pay phone. She’s in the courthouse, he stayed with the car.”
“Okay, tell him to—”
“What?” Giselle, who had been speaking with the phone still to her ear but with a hand over the mouthpiece, had removed her hand for the monosyllable. “Are you sure? Okay. Call when you can.” She hung up and turned to Kearny. “Larry said that Wendy Austin just came out of the courthouse with Fazzino! Larry took off after them...”
“Fazzino’s car anywhere around?”
“He couldn’t spot it in the lot she parked in.”
“Mmm.” Kearny was looking thoughtful. “Radio O’B to be damned sure that nobody, and I mean nobody, gets up those stairs to Chandra’s house unless he’s three steps behind. Tell Bart the same thing when he comes back on.”