“Yes.”
“It must be a fine thing to have artistic talents.”
“It’s a lot of hard work.”
“Where do you live in New York? Greenwich Village?”
“I don’t live in New York any more.”
“Well, where do you live? Out here? This state, I mean?”
“Oh God,” she said, “what difference does it make? We’re going to die on this desert, you know that, don’t you?”
“We’re not going to die,” Lennox said.
“How are we going to get away?”
“I don’t know. We’ll get away.”
“No,” she said, “no, we won’t.”
He had a sudden thought, and hope touched him faintly, clinging. “Are you living here? Or are you just staying in the area — with friends, maybe?”
“In a hotel,” Jana answered. “Why?”
“In Cuenca Seco?”
“Yes.”
“Does anyone know you came out here today?”
She frowned. “The desk clerk. He showed me how to get here on a map.”
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did the clerk seem interested in you?”
“His eyes were all over me, if that’s what you mean. What are you getting at?”
“I was thinking that when you didn’t come back tonight, he might have gone to the police and reported you missing. And that they might send out some men to look for you.”
“Why should he go to the police if I don’t come back right away? He’d be a fool to do that.”
“It’s a chance, that’s all.”
“Is it the only chance we have?”
“No. No, not the only one.”
“What will we do when we leave here? Keep running the way we did today?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to think what to do.”
The wind whistled in a gentle monotone between the rocks and stroked Jana with chill intimacy; she hugged herself again, shivering. “God, it’s cold. I had no idea it got this cold on the desert at night.”
Lennox watched her rocking slightly and he felt very sorry for her. He crawled stiffly across to her, raised himself up on his knees. “We’d better huddle together for warmth,” he said softly, and put a tentative arm about her shoulders. “If we don‘t—”
She pulled away from him viciously, pushing him off balance, so that he fell on his right elbow. Her eyes, in the moonshine, were wide, flickering pools. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “Damn you, don’t you touch me!”
He stared at her. “I was only thinking—”
“I don’t care what you were thinking.”
“For God’s sake,” Lennox said, “I only wanted to make it a little easier for you, for both of us.”
“Leave me alone, just leave me alone.”
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Just keep your hands off me, that’s all. I don’t like to be touched. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“All right.”
“All right.”
She lay down in the sand, facing toward him but not looking at him, her body pulled into a fetal position, her arms folded tautly over her breasts. He stared at her for a long time, but she did not move and her eyes did not close; finally he rolled onto his back and covered his own eyes with his arm, shielding out the moonlight, embracing the darkness.
What’s the matter with her? he thought. I only wanted to make her warm.
And then he thought: I wonder if I can sleep?
And slept.
The Third Day...
One
It had been this way for Brackeen in San Francisco:
A patrolman with an impressive record in his four years on the force, one soft step from a promotion to plain clothes and an inspectorship, he had been teamed with another good, young officer, Bob Coretti. Their cruise beat was the Potrero District, and the industrial and waterfront area extending from China Basin to Hunters Point; it was not the safest or the cleanest patrol in the city, but they knew it well and they functioned well in its jungle of streets and alleys and dark old buildings. They were known, even respected, as tough but decent heat — and as a result they had even built up a small but dependable stable of informants who would put them on to minor rumbles for a few dollars’ cash.
It was one of these tipsters, a pool hustler named Scully, who gave them the line on Feldman.
They were cruising on South Van Ness, a few minutes before ten of a bleak Thursday in early February. It had been a quiet night, like you can get in early winter, the sky filled with a biting wind and a thin rain; the heater in their patrol car was not working, and Coretti, who was driving, had been complaining about the fact for the past hour. He was telling Brackeen that he was tempted to fix the damned thing himself and send the city a bill for repair costs, when Scully came out of one of the bars along the strip and gave them the high sign.
They met him ten minutes later, in a deserted parking lot, and he told them what the grapevine had. According to the rap, he said, this Feldman was a parlor collector for a string of books in Southern California, who had lost the battle with the obvious temptation. Scully didn’t know exactly how much he’d gotten away with, but since the betting had been unusually heavy at Caliente on Saturday, his guess was five figures. The tip was that Feldman had come into San Francisco, and was grounding in a tenement hotel — room 306 — a couple of blocks off Third, near Hunters Point.
Brackeen gave Scully ten bucks, and then he and Coretti went to check it out. They didn’t say much on the ride over, nor did they radio in to Dispatch their destination and mission, as they should have done. They were tense and excited; both of them knew that taking this Feldman might be the lever they needed to get out of a patrol car and into the General Works Detail at the Hall of Justice. They did not want to share this one — not until they had Feldman in custody. Neither of them even considered the possibility that they might not be able to handle it.
The hotel Scully had named stood between a storage warehouse for one of the interstate truck lines and an iron foundry, midway on the block; it was a three-story wooden affair, well over half a century old, cancerous and dying and yet clinging to its last few years with a kind of bitter tenacity. A narrow alley separated it from the iron foundry on the right. Inside, the sparse lobby contained the strong musty smell of age — the smell of death wrapped in mothballs — and little else; there was no one behind the short desk paralleling the wall on the right.
Brackeen said, “No use making announcements. We’ll do this nice and slow and quiet.”
Coretti nodded, and they went across to a set of bare wood stairs and climbed carefully and soundlessly to the third floor. They stopped in front of 306, and without speaking, moved one on either side of the door, drawing their service revolvers. When they were set, Brackeen reached out with the barrel of his gun and rapped sharply on the door panel.
Momentary silence. And then a faint creaking of bedsprings. The only sound in the hallway was their quiet breathing. Brackeen knocked on the door again, and again there was silence. They looked at one another, and Coretti shrugged and Brackeen moved away from the wall, stepped back to get leverage, and then slammed his foot against the thin wood just above the knob. The lock held. He drove his foot forward a second time, viciously, and the lock pulled from the jamb with a protesting screech of rusted metal and the door kicked inward heavily. Feldman was at the far window, one leg over the sill, and he had a tan pasteboard suitcase in his left hand and a big Colt automatic clenched in his right. He froze momentarily as the door gave; then his arm lifted and the gun jumped once, twice, three times, billowing flame.