The whole damned thing was a merry-go-round; you could ride it for a long, long time and never even come close to the brass ring. It was no longer any of my concern anyway; I was out of it, legally and morally. This was a business for cops like Donleavy and Reese. They were good men, even Reese; all he needed was a few years in which to learn the subtleties of his profession. And Donleavy was as good as they make them. Whatever there was to be done, to be learned, they would do it and they would learn it.
But I could not seem to get what had happened out of my head. I was too personally involved in it, too close to the core of it; I would carry a scar on my belly and some nightmare memories because of it. There was inside me this kind of frustrated ambivalence of wanting nothing more to do with the affair-and of wanting to see it through personally to its conclusion.
I poured myself a small cup of water from the carafe on the bedside table. I drank a little of it and put the cup down again, and a soft knocking sounded on the door.
A moment later Louis Martinetti came into the room.
I could tell by looking at him that there had been no further word. He appeared skeletal, ghastly, as if all the supporting bones in his body had begun to calcify, so that the features of his face gave the impression of collapsing in on themselves. His eyes were sunken in great purple-shadowed pits, and there were deep excavations beneath his cheekbones. The skin on his lips seemed cracked, perhaps from too much wetting, perhaps from none at all. The iron-gray hair, which had seemed so vital that first time I met him, now looked only brittle and lifeless. He no longer reminded me of the dynamic pulp hero Doc Savage; he reminded me of a man dying as my uncle had died, with something alien and horrible sucking at his flesh from within.
He wore a black suit, black tie knotted loosely over a soiled white shirt. His shoulders drooped, and he walked with a kind of shuffling step, as if his legs were too heavy to lift off the floor. I wondered how long it had been since he had slept-and how long it would be until he slept again.
He sank into one of the chairs beside my bed and rubbed at his face with gray-fingered hands. “They told me it would be all right if I just came in,” he said. His voice was that of a hollow man. “They said you weren’t hurt as badly as we first thought and that you’d probably be going home tonight.”
“Yes.”
He made a vague, self-deprecating gesture with his right hand. “I wanted to come earlier, but I thought that I should stay by the phone …”
“I understand, Mr. Martinetti.”
“My wife and one of the District Attorney’s people are waiting now, in case there should be a call.” He did not sound as if he believed there would be. “They’ll notify me here if they have any news.”
There was nothing for me to say.
Martinetti said, “I wanted to talk to you before you went home. I wanted to tell you that I know what happened last night wasn’t your fault. You did everything you were humanly able to do, and I appreciate that. More than I can tell you.”
His words instilled in me a vague sense of uneasiness. I felt big and awkward and helpless, lying there.
“I know this is a hell of a thing to ask, after what happened to you,” he said, “and if you say no, I won’t blame you in the least. I spoke to the doctor just before I came in here, and he seems to feel that you’ll be able to get around reasonably well after you leave here. That being the case, I’d like you to continue working for me.”
I frowned a little at that; I had not anticipated it. “In what capacity, Mr. Martinetti?”
“As an investigator. To help locate my son, and the person who killed this Lockridge.”
I released a breath soundlessly through my nostrils. “You already have the facilities of an entire county working toward that same end,” I said.
“I realize that,” Martinetti said. “But I want every available and competent man possible.”
“There isn’t anything I can do that the District Attorney’s Office isn’t already doing.”
“You were in on this thing almost from the beginning,” Martinetti said. “You have a personal stake in it, after what happened to you.”
Those were the same thoughts I had been thinking just before he came in. I said slowly, “Where would I start investigating, Mr. Martinetti? I would only be following in the footsteps of men like Donleavy and Reese by the time I could get on it. And I don’t think they’d like that.”
“You’re allowed to investigate as long as you don’t interfere with police actions, aren’t you? As long as you report any findings immediately and directly to them?”
“Technically, yes.”
“Will you do it, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He sighed. “Are you aware of the theory the District Attorney’s people are pursuing at the moment?”
“Not exactly.”
“They seem to think two men were in on the kidnapping of my son, and that one of them killed the other for the money.”
“That’s a workable theory.”
“Yes, but there’s another one too. One that they know about, of course, but don’t seem to be following at all. One that sickens me, but which nonetheless exists.”
“And that is?”
“That someone in my household is responsible for what happened last night,” he said.
“Directly, or by collusion?”
“By collusion, of course. They were all present there after you left to deliver the money. But all of them knew, I’m certain, about the location of the money exchange, and any of them could have gotten word to someone on the outside.”
“Do you believe that’s the case, Mr. Martinetti?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“Then I’d like you to investigate the theory.”
I thought: What am I going to tell him? No, I can’t do it-and watch his face crumble even more than it already has, or perhaps pale with frustrated anger? After what happened, did I have the right to turn him down? On the other hand, did I have the right to take his money under what almost amounted to false pretenses-value received for no real value given-and at the same time run the risk of alienation from the local authorities? I did not know what to say; and yet, I had to say something …
Martinetti seemed to sense my irresolution. He got slowly to his feet and looked down at me. “Don’t give me your answer now. If … there’s no word on Gary by tonight, I’ll call you in San Francisco and you can tell me your decision then. Will that be all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and I felt a certain sense of relief. But it was guilt-tinged, because I had taken the easy way out for the moment.
He said, “You’ll think about it?”
“I won’t be thinking about much else.”
“Thank you,” he said, and it was a shadow, a pathetic burlesque, of the galvanic Louis Martinetti that I watched shuffle across the room and silently disappear into the corridor outside.
* * * *
10
Shortly before five a prim little nurse with eyes like two watermelon seeds imbedded in cotton came in and said that there was a telephone call for me, did I feel well enough to walk down the corridor and take it?
I said I felt well enough. She helped me on with a hospital robe, and we walked down to the floor reception desk. There were a lot of patients abroad-old women and old men with death in their eyes, leaning on canes or sitting in wheelchairs or on window benches like fragile and antediluvian artifacts; a tearful young girl immense with child walking on swollen ankles; a portly guy with his face swathed in bandages, making pitiable whimpering sounds as he walked. The scent of fear was strong in that corridor. It was not the consuming fear which had permeated the air inside the war-zone hospitals, but it was potent enough to initiate nausea swirling through my stomach and a kind of weakness at the back of my knees. I had to hold on to the edge of the reception desk for a moment, breathing through my mouth and exerting a conscious effort of will to keep from being violently sick.