“Is that right?”
“Meaning it hasn’t been?”
“Well, I’ve seen lights inside,” Powers said. “And a man there a couple of times recently, coming and going.”
“Caucasian about forty, heavyset, mustache, longish brown hair?”
“Sounds like him, except for the mustache. Clean-shaven.”
“Stranger to you?”
“First time I saw him he was. Unfriendly cuss-I said hello to him once and he looked right through me.”
“What name is he using?”
“Never heard it. Keeps to himself, doesn’t talk to anybody in the neighborhood. What’re you after him for?”
“Nonpayment of child support in Oregon.”
“Uh-huh,” Powers said. “One of those.”
“You see any sign of him last night?”
“Nope.”
“Night before last?”
“Nope. Not in three or four days.”
“What kind of car does he have?”
“Blue Plymouth Fury, last year’s model. I don’t know the license plate number, but you won’t need it.”
“… I won’t?”
“Your timing’s perfect,” Powers said. “That’s him and the Fury just pulling into the driveway over there.”
I turned in time to see the car roll to a stop, the headlights frozen on the garage door as it started to swing up. I made a parting gesture to Powers, headed over there at a half trot. The driver-suit and tie, carrying a briefcase-was just coming out of the garage when I reached the driveway. He pulled up sharp when he saw me. The interior of the garage was lit from a bulb on the automatic opener; he had the remote in his hand and he pressed it and the door began to whir shut. But not before I had a clear look past him at the Fury’s license plate.
As I neared him, he brought the briefcase up tight against his chest, holding it with both hands. Defensive stance: tense, wary, poised against attack. That told me something about him. Man on the edge, ruled by base emotions-the kind of survivalist capable of just about anything, if he were cornered, to save himself and preserve his freedom.
“Who are you?” Fear put a thin crack in his voice. “What do you want?”
I stopped a couple of paces away, manufactured a smile, and stood relaxed so as not to provoke him. I couldn’t see his face clearly, now that the garage door was all the way down, but there wasn’t much doubt that he was George DeBrissac. “Just want to ask a couple of questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I assume you live here?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“I’m trying to find a missing woman, a young black woman who was in this neighborhood last night.”
No reaction to that.
“She’s about twenty-five,” I said, “driving a red Toyota Camry. I wonder if you might’ve seen her.”
“I wasn’t home last night.”
“Well, she might’ve been here pretty late-”
“I haven’t been home at all the past three days,” he said. “Out of town on business. Can’t help you. Now if you don’t mind…”
I stayed where I was, still smiling. “I’m really worried about her,” I said. “She’s a very responsible young woman-”
“I told you I can’t help you. I’m sorry, good night.”
He sidled away from me, his body half turned and the briefcase still up like a shield between us. Didn’t take his eyes off me as he crossed the yard, climbed the front steps, fumbled his key into the door lock. The defensive tension seemed not to loosen even after he got the door open; he took it inside with him.
I retreated to the sidewalk without looking back. He’d be at a window now, with a corner of the curtain pulled aside, watching me; I could almost feel his eyes. Some DeBrissac. Some little deadbeat coward.
But was that all he was? If Tamara had braced him and he’d realized somehow who she was and felt threatened enough by her, I could see him reacting with the sudden mindless viciousness of a trapped animal. And then frantically covering up to save his ass.
Only I didn’t believe something like that had happened-didn’t want to believe it. Too many things argued against that kind of scenario. DeBrissac’s lack of reaction when I mentioned Tamara. His disinterest in who she was, who I was, and why I was looking for her. His claim that he’d been out of town the past three days-easy enough to check up on. And the fact that Tamara was seasoned enough not to have either alerted or provoked him; if she’d talked to him at all, she’d’ve done it with a ready excuse and only long enough to make certain of his ID.
George DeBrissac wasn’t the cause of her disappearance. Somebody else, some other scenario. If I could just pin down the where…
At my car I sat inside long enough to write down the Fury’s license plate number. My memory isn’t what it used to be; I’d repeated the number to myself a dozen times during and after the conversation with DeBrissac, to keep it fresh in my mind, but it wouldn’t stay fresh for long. Write it down or lose it: axiom for your sixties. DeBrissac had no good reason to run again if he’d had nothing to do with Tamara’s disappearance; my sudden arrival and the questions I’d asked shouldn’t be enough to spook him out of what must seem to be a pretty safe harbor. But if he did run, the Fury’s license plate number would make it easy enough to track him down again.
I canvassed the rest of the block, starting at the far end. Three houses were dark, nobody home. Stranger-wary residents of one of the lighted houses wouldn’t answer the bell, and two others who did answer refused to talk to me. The halfdozen people who listened to my questions about Tamara had none of the answers I wanted to hear.
Dead end, at least for now.
After eight by then. How much longer before I heard from Mick Savage?
Might be another hour or two. Dead end, dead time. I could either kill it hanging around the neighborhood, keeping an eye on DeBrissac’s hideout and waiting for the occupants of the dark houses to come home, or I could drive around again hunting for Tamara’s red Toyota. Both seemed like exercises in futility, but driving was better than sitting. At least when you were on the move you had the illusion of time passing more rapidly.
I’d covered a four-block radius earlier in the day, so I doubled that to eight blocks. Trying to locate one dark-colored, common-model parked car at night is about as difficult a job as you can undertake. License plates, even the personalized ones, are hard to read by headlights. Makes and models resemble each other, red colors aren’t easy to differentiate. It was a little easier on brightly lighted thoroughfares like San Pablo Avenue, but there you couldn’t go as slowly or look as carefully because of the traffic. It was an exercise in frustration as well as futility, and it had my nerves frayed raw by the time I swung into a Safeway parking lot on San Pablo, some seven blocks from Willard Street.
And that was where I found the Toyota.
It happens like that sometimes. You give up on a thing, you make a more or less unrelated move, and you get a surprise. Chance, divine guidance-call it what you want. I turned into the lot because the traffic was bunched up and I was ready to head back in the opposite direction and there was a stoplight at the entrance and I could make an easy U-turn in the lot. And while I was making the turn down one of the short aisles of parked cars, my lights picked out one by itself and a pole light nearby gave it added definition.
Red Toyota Camry, Horace’s MR CELLO license plate.
I hit the brakes so hard they almost locked and the tires squealed on the pavement. Inside of ten seconds I was parked and out and pawing at the Toyota’s driver-side door. It wasn’t locked. I sucked in a breath, dragged the door open, bent inside.
The keys were in it. Not in the ignition-tossed on the passenger seat. Another piece of blind luck. If the wrong person had spotted them at any time last night or today, the car wouldn’t be sitting here now.
I pocketed the keys, checked the seats, floorboards, shadowed rear deck for signs of violence. None, thank God. The contents of a trash bag hanging from a radio knob told me nothing. Neither did the usual items in the glove compartment or the armrest box where she kept her CDs. But I did find one other thing when I leaned down and swept a hand underneath the seats-Tamara’s purse, stuffed under the driver’s bucket.