I hurried back to the rental car and drove off, passing the wreck and the man with the shotgun lying face up beside it. He was, I saw, the nameless man who'd been standing guard in the room with McConnell up in Warfel's apartment, one of those I'd asked Mac to check on. Well, it still wouldn't hurt to identify him, as well as the one behind the wheel. You hate to get so casual you go around shooting people without bothering to learn their names.
I made it out of sight before the police arrived, and kept going until I was well away from the area. Then I ditched the car and walked half a dozen blocks until I found a phone booth near a filling station that was closed for the night-well, booth is too strong a word for it. The phone company no longer provides its clientele with shelter and privacy. You stand out in the smog and fog and tell your business to anybody hanging around. There's a little plastic box to protect the instrument; the customers can damn well protect themselves.
As you will gather, the weather had closed in once more. The heavy, damp air had a nasty, chemical, ozony tang to it that made my nose run and my eyes water. I called the number Charlie Devlin had given me and asked to be put in touch with her, if possible. This led to all kinds of security-oriented complications, but finally I got a guy who seemed to know something. At least he seemed to know who I was and who Miss Devlin was. He was even willing to stick his neck way out and admit it.
I said, "I just lost my subject, permanently. Two men in a hopped-up Camaro. Twelve-gauge auto-loading shotgun stuffed full of buck, very effective."
"What color car? Did you get the license number? Can you describe either of the men?"
I said, "Cut it out. I'm slow but not that slow. Check with the cops. They were heading that way as I pulled out. I'm sure they'll let you look at the wreck and view the remains in the morgue and make up your own descriptions. One of the men was taking orders from Frank Warfel when I saw him previously, if it matters. I set it up more or less to look as if the black man avenged himself before he keeled over. If you've got any local influence, you might pass a hint to the authorities to let it stand that way, officially, and save us all a lot of trouble. And I made the guy a kind of promise, so would you please put a guard on his family, or take them into protective custody, or something, until the smoke clears. Mrs. Lorraine McConnell…"
"I'm afraid we're not authorized… Oh, to hell with it. Have you got the address?"
I gave it to him. "But first you'd better get in touch with Charlie Devlin, if you can, and tell her what's happened. I don't see what Warfel's so worried about, sending his boys rushing out to silence them, but if he was after McConnell he's almost bound to be after Blame. At least we'd better operate on that assumption. Charlie'd better keep her eyes open wider than I did, if she wants to keep our phony redhead alive a little longer." The man at the other end of the line didn't respond immediately. I asked, "What's the matter? Don't tell me they've already taken care of Blaine."
"No," he said slowly, "not as far as we know, but we just got a call from Charlie. She's at an all-night garage south of town. A guy in a jeep ran her off the freeway about half an hour ago, while she was tailing Miss Blaine. It must have been just about the time you were having your troubles. I would say their timing was pretty good, wouldn't you, Mr. Helm?"
IX
"No, I didn't hit my nose!" she said irritably. "It's just this damn smog; I've got some kind of an allergy..
And don't stand there looking so damn superior, damn you! You haven't done so well, either, from what I hear over the phone. At least my subject wasn't shot down in the street right in front of me."
She started to rest her hand on a nearby workbench, but changed her mind when she saw how greasy it was. The garage was a shabby, unpainted, badly lighted cinder-block building on the small service road that ran parallel to the freeway. From outside came the steady roar of fast night traffic heading from Los Angeles to San Diego and vice versa. At the other side of the garage, an elderly mechanic in greasy coveralls was investigating the beat-up front suspension of the big, dark blue, Ford station wagon on the hoist, with the reproving attitude of a surgeon examining a compound fracture: people really shouldn't do such things to themselves, or their cars.
"You've got a point," I said to the girl beside me, "but I wouldn't lean on it too hard if I were you. Not until we find the ersatz redhead. Alive."
Charlie sighed. "I know. I didn't really mean…
"What happened?"
"Oh, I just goofed, that's all," she said wryly. "The visibility was terrible-well, you just came down the freeway yourself, you know how it is up there. I guess I was so busy trying to keep track of the girl's car in the mist, in all that traffic, without tipping her off that she was being followed, that I didn't check my mirrors the way I should have. All of a sudden, there he was with his damn jeep, cutting right in on me. I was out in the mud and rocks of the construction zone before I knew it. I thought I'd torn the whole car to pieces, the way it handled when I finally got it backed out of there, but the old man says it looks as if I just bent up the front end a bit." She hesitated, and glanced at me. "Did McConnell tell you anything useful before he died?"
I shook my head. "He said he didn't know anything."
"Then why would Warfel have him killed?"
"That," I said, "is a damn good question. Of course, he may have known more than he knew he knew, if you know what I mean, but he's not going to remember it for us now, whatever it was. Which makes the girl fairly important. She had even more opportunities for observation than the hired help. She admitted she'd seen and heard a few things as Warfel's girlfriend, if that part of her story was straight…"
"It was. He's been paying the rent on her apartment for a couple of years."
"Then she's even more likely than McConnell to have been exposed to some significant piece of information, whether she knows what it is or not… Hell, somewhere there's got to be a connection between that two-bit hoodlum and somebody really dangerous!" I went on, making the question very casual, like an afterthought: "How did you know Warfel had been paying the Blaine girl's rent?"
She glanced at me, and said smoothly, "After all, this is our territory, Mr. Helm. We try to keep track of the people in it, particularly those with whom we may someday be professionally concerned…"
I said, "Cut it out, Charlie-girl."
"What's the matter?" She tried to make her tone very innocent, but she didn't succeed very well.
"Not someday," I said. "You're professionally concerned with Warfel and company right now."
"Well," she said, "well, of course, since we're working with you on this business…"
I shook my head. "You were working on Warfel before I ever came on the scene, sweetheart. It's the only answer that makes sense. His girl did a double take when she saw you; she knew who you were. And we were very careful to shake our shadow when we went out to that pistol range of yours, but we were picked up again immediately when we got back to your office…
"What makes you think so?" She was stubbornly ignoring the obvious because she didn't want to confess to the truth.
I said patiently, "Because, doll, there was a driver and shotgunner waiting for me outside, and a jeep jockey waiting for you. Remember? Now, how did all those people of Warfel's know where to find us again after we'd given them the slip? They knew-they had to know-because they knew you, Miss Devlin; and they figured you'd bring us all back to your home base, as you did. And they knew where it was. And why did they know all that? Because people like Frank Warfel make a point of knowing who's trying to get something on them. They can't keep track of every agent employed by the U.S. government, but they can sure spot the ones who are currently snooping around, like you've apparently been doing. Haven't you?" She didn't answer, but she didn't have to. I said, "That's why you were chosen to 'help' me when my boss asked your outfit to give me a hand; and why you weren't very happy about it. Wasn't it? I was poaching on your Warfel territory and you were afraid I might louse things up for you. Am I right?"