“It’s all right, Miles,” Detective Dwyer said. “We believe you.” He looked over at Henry Bock again. “Don’t we, Captain?”
Bock shrugged. “Neither of those women is likely to tell us anything different from what Bowman says, anyhow.”
The Captain had spoken quietly. Bowman glanced at the bedroom door again. When he answered, he too held his voice down, but anger blazed in it: “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? You come round here with one load of rubbish, and now you start throwing around more? I ought to—”
“Shut up, Bowman,” Captain Bock said flatly. “What the women say doesn’t matter, not this time. Thursday caught his right outside Kezar Stadium, in Golden Gate Park. If you’d arranged to meet him there, it wouldn’t have been five minutes out of your way. ”
“And if pigs had wings—” Bowman stood up, opened the front door. “Get out,” he growled. “Next time you come here, you bring a warrant, like I said. My lawyer’ll be here with me, too.”
“I’m sorry, Miles,” Dwyer said. “We re doing our job, too, remember. You aren’t making it any easier for us, either.”
“Go do it somewhere else,” Bowman said.
The two policemen got up and walked into the building fog. They got into their car, which they had parked behind Bowman’s. The heavy, wet air muffled the sound of the motor starting. In the fog, the beams the headlamps cast seemed thick and yellow as butter.
Bowman shut the door and locked it. He went back into the bedroom, replaced the pistol in its holster. Eva was sitting up, reading the novel she’d abandoned earlier. “What—did they want?” she asked hesitantly.
“Somebody punched that Evan Thursday’s ticket for him,” Bowman answered.
“And they think it was you?” Eva’s eyes widened. “That’s terrible!”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Bowman said, shrugging. “I didn’t do it, so they can’t pin it on me, right?” He lay down beside her, clicked off the lamp on his side of the bed. He yawned. “You going to look at that thing all night?”
“No, dear.” Eva put down the book and turned off her lamp. Although she stretched out next to Bowman, she wiggled and fidgeted the way she did when she was having trouble going to sleep. Bowman shrugged once more, breathed heavily, then soon began to snore.
The telephone rang, loud in the night as a fire alarm. Bowman thrashed, twisted, sat up, and turned on the bedside lamp. The alarm clock said it was almost three. He shook his head. “I don’t believe this.”
The phone kept ringing. “Answer it,” Eva told him. She pulled the pale blue wool blanket up over her head.
Muttering, he walked into the living room. He snatched the earpiece off the hook, picked up the rest of the instrument, and barked his name into the mouthpiece: “Bowman.” The voice on the other end of the line spoke. “Now?” Bowman asked. “Are you sure?.. . Jesus Christ, it’s three in the morning... all right, if that’s the way it’s got to be.... Room 481, right? See you there... Yeah, fifteen minutes if the fog’s not too thick.”
He slammed the mouthpiece down on his goodbye, stalked back into the bedroom. Eva had turned off the light. He turned it on again. He unbuttoned the shirt to his pajamas and walked naked to the dresser.
“What’s wrong?” Eva asked as he pulled a clean pair of white cotton boxer shorts out of a dresser drawer. “Why are you getting dressed?” She sounded frightened.
“I’m going down to the station.” He got into the same trousers he had worn the day before. “Bock and Dwyer, they have some more questions for me.” He put on socks and shoes, got a fresh shirt from the closet, knotted a tie with a jungle pattern of hot blues and oranges and greens, shrugged a jacket over his wide shoulders. He ran a comb through his hair, then planted a curled-brim fedora on his head.
“Shouldn’t you call your lawyer?” Eva said.
“Nah, it’ll be all right.” He started out. At the bedroom door, he stopped and blew her a kiss.
The fog was there, but not too thick. He had the roads all to himself. Once his Chevrolet and a police car passed each other on opposite sides of the street. He waved to the men inside. One of them recognized him and waved back.
He turned right off Market onto New Montgomery. During business hours, no one could have hoped to find a parking space there. Now the curb was his to command. He walked over to the eight-story Beaux Arts building of tan brick and terra cotta at the corner of Market and New Montgomery. A man in uniform held the door open for him. He strode across the lobby to the bank of elevators.
“Fourth floor,” he told the operator as he got into one.
“Fourth floor, yes, sir,” the man answered. “Welcome to the Palace Hotel.”
Bowman stood with his feet slightly spread, as if at parade rest. He looked straight ahead. The elevator purred upward. When it got to the fourth floor, the operator opened the cage. Bowman stepped out while the fellow was telling him the floor.
A sign on the wall opposite the elevator announced:
← 401-450 451-499 →
Bowman went. The carpet in the hall was so thick that the pile swallowed the welt of his shoe each time his weight came down on it. He paused a moment in front of room 481, then folded his thick hand into a fist and rapped on the door just below the polished brass numbers.
It opened. “Come in,” Gina Tellini said. She looked as fresh as she had the afternoon before, but at some time between then and now had changed into a dark green velvet lounging robe of Oriental cut. The front of a Chinese dragon, embroidered in deep golds and reds, coiled across her breast.
Bowman stepped into the hotel room. Gina Tellini closed the door after him. As she started back past him, he said, “Thursday’s dead.”
She stopped in her tracks. A hand started to fly up to her mouth, but checked itself. “How do you know that?” she asked in a shaken voice.
“Cops—how else?” He barked mirthless laughter. “They want to put that one on my bar tab, too, along with Tom.” His lips thinned, stretching his mouth into a speculative line. “You could have done it. You would have had time, after you left the office.”
“No, not me.” She dismissed the idea in three casual words. “Here, sit down, make yourself comfortable.” She waved Bowman to a chair upholstered in velvet two shades lighter than her gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed facing him. The bed had not been slept in since the maid last prepared it.
“All right, not you,” Bowman said agreeably, crossing his legs. “Who, then?”
“It could have been Nicholas Alexandria,” Gina Tellini said. “He carries a gun. You saw that.”
“Yeah, I saw that. It could have been. But a lot of people carry guns.
I carry one myself. ‘Could have been’ doesn’t cut much ice.”
“I know. ” Gina Tellini nodded. The motion made the robe come open, very slightly, at the neckline. “But somebody besides Alexandria wants the Maltese Elephant.”
“Somebody besides Alexandria and you.” Bowman’s gaze focused on the point, a few inches below her chin, where velvet had retreated. “Thursday’s dead. Who else is there?”
“A man named Gideon Schlechtman,” she answered promptly. “Sometimes he and Alexandria work together, sometimes Alexandria is on his own, or thinks he is. But if he gets the Elephant, Schlechtman will try to take it from him.”
“I bet he will,” Bowman said. “And what about you and Alexandria and what’s-his-name, Schlechtman? I bet the three of you are one big happy family, right?”
“It’s not funny, Miles,” Gina Tellini insisted. “Schlechtman is—dangerous. If Evan Thursday is dead, that’s all the more reason to believe he’s come to San Francisco.”
“Is that so?” Bowman said. “All I have is your word, and your word hasn’t been any too real good, you know what I mean? And if this here Schlechtman is real and is in town, whose side are you on?”