I had to give her some time, some assurance that she was not being followed; she would be stopping every twenty or thirty yards to look over her shoulder. I let her have another minute, and that was all the waiting I could take. I got up and walked as quickly as I was able near the end of the path and stepped off it and went to where I could look beyond the slope at the gentle curve of the drive. She was nowhere in sight.
The urgency grew stronger. Christ, I thought, maybe I waited too long at that. I moved in a half-running, half-shuffling gait across the roadway and got into the Valiant and started it and took it forward. As I drove, my eyes roamed both sides of the drive for some sign of that distinctive blue coat and scarf. If she had cut south across the rolling verdant lawns toward Metson Lake or Elk Glen Lake or the Golden Gate Park Stadium, I should have been able to see her; but the wind-swept, leaf-strewn greensward was void of humanity.
Ahead on the right, the narrow Marx Meadow Drive angled back behind Lloyd Lake and the Portals of the Past, to join eventually with the cross-over from 25th Avenue that emptied into the main north-south boulevard, Park Presidio. I looked along there as I passed it, but it appeared to be empty. Damn! She could have gone onto any one of the numerous paths winding through the trees and thick undergrowth on the right, honeycombing the area and leading on a dozen street exits. And yet, the librarian had not seemed like the type to go wandering through the cold, dark wood, even in the middle of the day; she would want to stay on the main, traveled areaways as much as possible …
I saw her then.
I came around a shallow curve, and she was walking in a diagonal trajectory across the expanse of lawn to the north, to where 30th Avenue came timidly into the park and blended into Kennedy Drive. She walked with surprising quickness in that odd way of hers, head bobbing forward into the wind, not looking back now. She had apparently satisfied herself that I was not going to follow her.
I drove up to where I could see the length of 30th and pulled off on the side of the drive and sat there slouched down with the motor running. If she looked back again, she would not see much of anything out of the ordinary; she would have expected any trailing of her to be done on foot.
I watched the blue shag coat exit the park on Fulton Street. She paused there and looked back quickly, and then crossed the street and continued along 30th Avenue, north. I took the Valiant out of neutral and swung it around and drove up to Fulton and waited between the stone cairns there until the light flashed green. I drove across and pulled over to the curb and watched her span Cabrillo, heading in the direction of George Washington High School.
I stayed at the curb until she was midway in the second block before pulling out and passing over Cabrillo to the curb again on the other side. She turned left on Balboa, and I went up and made the turn and block-hopped behind her for three blocks. Just after she had crossed 3 3rd Avenue, she stopped in front of one of the stucco-fronted, pastel-colored apartment houses there, and looked both ways up and down the street; I was at the curb then, and she did not appear to notice me. She went into the foyer of the building.
I drove up to the corner and parked in front of somebody’s driveway on the eastern side of 33rd. I waited two minutes, timing it by my watch, but she did not come back out. I left the car and crossed the street and walked slowly up to the building she had entered.
It was three stories, a dull green color, with a narrow circumscribed foyer and a thick glass-and-wood door barring admittance. A row of six mailboxes, above which were tiny white card strips enclosed in cellophane-covered brass plates, were on the right-hand wall. Each had a round ivory button just above it. I glanced at the names on each of the card strips, and the one for Apartment 4 read Elaine and Lorraine Hanlon in a neat, precise, feminine printing. I stepped out of the foyer and looked at the number in the rectangular lighted frame set into the stucco wall. Then I walked back to the car and got inside and tried to decide if I should wait around for a while, just in case, or get to the nearest phone as quickly as possible.
I was reaching for the ignition key, having settled on the phone, when the blonde came out of the entrance-way and ran across the street.
I sat up a little straighter on the seat. She was a big girl, with long legs flashing bare and smooth under a short cotton coat and heavy breasts stretching the buttoned front of it. Her hair was the artificial color of champagne, worn long, streaming behind her in the wind like the mane of a thoroughbred at full gallop. She jerked open the door on a green Corvair Monza, but before she could get inside, the librarian came running into view with her arms extended outward and upward like a bird about to take flight. She had the shag coat and scarf off now, and I could see that her hair was cut short and close over her ears and that she was wearing a bulky white knit sweater over the gray tweed slacks. She looked almost pathetically thin-no hips, no breasts, a little girl who had never grown up and never would.
I had the window down now and I could hear her yelling something, but I could not understand the words. She ran over to the champagne blonde and caught her arm, but the blonde shrugged violently and the librarian stumbled backward a couple of steps, into the middle of the street. If there had been a car coming, it would have gotten her. The blonde slid inside the Corvair and slammed the door, and a moment later I could hear the starter grind viciously.
The librarian went back to the car and clawed at the window, but it was a futile and terrified scratching. Her face was turned toward me for a moment, and I could see that it was twisted with emotion; she might have been crying or she might have been mutely screaming.
The champagne blonde-almost assuredly Lorraine Hanlon-got the Corvair in gear and came away from the curb with the rear tires howling on the pavement, leaving the little girl standing there on the asphalt, small and desperate and alone. I had the Valiant started and moving along the street by then, and I pulled around Elaine Hanlon and went after her sister.
It was the same thing, perhaps, that a lot of men had been doing all of the librarian’s life; and like them, I did not once look back.
* * * *
13
Lorraine Hanlon drove with a kind of determined recklessness, leaning on the horn at cross streets and corners and to maneuver her way through traffic. She knew how to use the Corvair’s standard transmission; I could hear the whine of the four-cylinder engine each time she geared down, and then again when she used a heavy foot before shifting up.
She went up to Geary Boulevard and turned east, heading downtown, and I stayed a block behind her, driving too fast so I could keep her in sight. I hoped a traffic cop did not tag her, because I had the feeling that she would try to outrun a red light or a siren-anything that denoted police authority. She was driving scared, running scared. It was not too difficult to figure why.
The librarian had been wrong, pathetically wrong. Her sister had not listened to her at all. When Elaine had told her, as she must have, that she had just been to see the detective involved in the Martinetti kidnapping, Lorraine had panicked. She was either too frightened or too deeply involved, or both, to want to give herself up to the police- and so she had run. I had no idea where she was running to, but it figured to be either to Lockridge’s accomplice-if he had had one other than, perhaps, the blonde-or to where the boy was being held. Or a combination of both. The way she was driving, the way she had come flying out of that apartment building, said it had to be that way.
I drove grimly, both hands taut on the wheel, hunched forward a little. The Valiant had power steering, and it was loose and the car handled poorly; the model had never been built for maneuverability in the first place. It took all the concentration I was capable of to stay in a position where I could keep the green Corvair in sight, and that was just as well; it kept my mind off the gnawing ache in my stomach, the chilled numbness of my feet and hands which the car’s heater did nothing to dispel.