I took the receiver away from my ear and frowned at it and put it back and said, “Yes, that’s right. Who’s calling, please?”
“I … I’d rather not give my name. You wouldn’t know me anyway.”
“Well, what was it then?”
“I called you because I … I think I might know something about that … that man.”
“Lockridge? The dead kidnapper?”
“Yes, him.”
“The people you want are the police, lady-”
“No!” She said it very fast, raising her voice above the whisper, and then quickly dropped it down again: “No, I … I don’t want the police. I … won’t talk to them. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I have my reasons.”
“But you’ll talk to me.”
“I … yes.”
“If you’ll give me your address …”
“Oh no,” she said, “no, I won’t do that. You’ll have to meet me. Alone.”
Christ, I thought. You could suffocate under all this heavy melodrama. “All right. Where?”
“Do you know the section of Golden Gate Park where they have the Portals of the Past?”
“I know it, yes.”
“I’ll meet you at the first portal near the drive, at twelve. I … I won’t come near you if you’re not alone.”
“I’ll be alone.”
“I hope you are,” she said, and that was all.
I sat staring at the dead phone, and then put it back in its cradle very carefully. I looked up at the clock on the wall, and it was past eleven now. There was not enough time to contact the District Attorney’s Office of San Mateo County and have Donleavy or one of their other men get up here. I could call Eberhardt, but there did not seem to be much sense in it; the woman could be, and probably was, a crank after all. If not, however, if she did know something important and she thought I wasn’t completely alone, I would be running the risk of losing her altogether.
It was mine to follow through, something or nothing.
* * * *
12
It was very cold in Golden Gate Park.
I parked Erika’s Valiant on John F. Kennedy Drive, directly opposite the shallow expanse of Lloyd Lake around which the Portals of the Past were located, and got out into an icy wind blowing harsh over the all but deserted lawns and trees and paths of the park. I pulled the collar on the overcoat up around my neck and bunched my shoulders inside the heavy garment and walked across the empty roadway to where a narrow dirt path skirted the lake’s left bank.
Overhead, the coldly pale sun was visible through an approaching haze of fog. Reflections of light danced on the surface of the lake, interspersing patches of translucent blue on the leaden patina of the calm water. On the far bank, to the right of where the lake turned into the mouth of a tiny green valley, a narrow waterfall bubbled whitely over a rock stairway.
Ducks, like playful toys, floated on the surface of the lake, making no sound. A lushly grown slope capped with fanning, stilted cypress trees paralleled the path on my left; great bushes of chrysanthemum grew there, and ringed the lake at intervals-explosions in white, tipped in pink.
I followed the lane until I reached the first portal, a tall marble-and-stone affair with a stone bench set into the arch. The bronze plaque at the base said that it was the Portal of Residence of A. N. Towne, Vice-President and General Manager of Southern Pacific Railroad, a relic of the conflagration of April 18, 1906.
I sat down on the bench, carefully, with my legs splayed out in front of me like a pregnant woman’s in deference to the healing wound in my belly. My watch said that it was a couple of minutes before twelve. I pressed my hands deep into the pockets of the overcoat and sat there with the wind blowing cold across my face, watching the ducks floating woodenly on the lake’s glasslike surface. It was all very peaceful, almost pastoral, in its serenity.
I thought with philosophical cynicism: My own private Walden Pond-except that it isn’t mine and it isn’t private, it’s nothing more than nature compressed by man-made structures on all sides, nature reduced to a small and inexorably diminishing sanctuary that will, someday, be swallowed and digested in the name of that sterile, soulless, meaningless term Progress.
And then I stopped thinking thoughts like that, because they never got you anything in the long run except manic-depressive, and turned my head toward the road to watch for the woman’s approach; if she was coming at all, she would probably come from the east or west along there.
A couple of cars went by, and a young couple in matching green trenchcoats and heavy mufflers, trailing a black Scotch terrier on a chain leash. A few seagulls flew overhead, adding raucous cries to the humming lament of the wind. Twelve o’clock came and went, and it got colder sitting there on the bench; my fanny felt as if it were planted in a block of ice.
12:10.
I’ll give her another five minutes, I thought, and that’s all. I did not think it was a good idea for me to be out in the cold like this, with that wound the way it was; I had heard somewhere that you were especially susceptible to pneumonia when you had been injured, and that would be all I needed just now.
I shifted my chilled feet and touched my tongue to my wind-chafed lips, and then I saw her come into view from beyond the slope at my back, walking hesitantly along Kennedy Drive. She looked over at me, and paused, and walked on a little way and stopped and looked over at me again. She was making up her mind. I sat there without moving, letting her reach a decision, and finally she came over to where the path began and started toward me with these little hesitant steps, head bobbing up and down as she moved like a bird approaching an unfamiliar feeder.
She wore a heavy blue shag coat with huge dark-wood buttons, and a lighter blue scarf over her hair and knotted under her chin. A pair of gray tweed slacks peeked out at the bottom of the coat. As she came closer, I could see that she was maybe twenty-six or — seven, very thin, very pale. Wispy bangs were visible beneath the scarf: a lusterless brown.
She stopped when she was about twenty feet away and stood there as if she expected me to jump up and make a rush at her. When I didn’t move, it seemed to reassure her; she came forward finally, with a kind of resolution, and stood in front of me.
She said, “You’re the detective?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
She looked around with a furtiveness that was almost a theatrical burlesque. Her eyes were wide and wet and colorless, slightly protuberant under all but nonexistent lashes, and her mouth was a pale oval in the marmoreal cast of her face. She looked like the stereotyped conception of a small-town maiden librarian.
Her gaze came back to me again and she said, “Is it all right if I sit down there with you?” a little breathlessly.
“Of course.” I moved over, and she seated herself with her knees together and flattened the skirts of her shag coat over her knees with the palms of thin, very white hands.
“I … I guess you think I’m a little crazy, asking you to meet me like this,” she said.
“I imagine you have your reasons.”
“I just don’t want to … to make any rash decisions, that’s all. I mean, I don’t want the police to have anything to do with this until I make up my mind what’s right.”
“You said you knew something about the man who kidnapped the Martinetti boy,” I said. “Paul Lockridge.”
“Yes, well, I think so,” the librarian said. “I mean, I’m not sure. Not really sure.”
“What is it you’re not sure of, Miss-?”
She did not fall for that. She said, “You must understand, I’m just not sure.If I was … well, that poor little boy, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to a little boy.”
“I’m certain you wouldn’t.”