It was very quiet. The only sound was Sheffield’s pencil moving across the rough paper of the note pad. I felt a little sorry for Lorraine Hanlon, for all the Lorraine Hanlons of the world. They were early-blossoming flesh — nature’s compensation for insipid intelligence ofttimes- and sensuality in lieu of rationality was their way. They measured happiness in material possessions and hedonistic accomplishments, and they invariably believed their bodies before they listened to their minds. They were ripe prey, standard fodder, for the appetites and manipulations of men like Paul Lockridge. Lorraine Hanlon was a pawn, the same way her little librarian sister was a pawn-on different sides of the board, perhaps, but still a pawn, always a pawn, and life sacrifices its pawns for the same reasons a chess player sacrifices his: to protect and maintain the stronger and more powerful ones, the rooks and the knights, the king and the queen.
Eberhardt broke the protracted stillness, finally, by asking quietly, “Lockridge was suppose to come for you the night of the ransom delivery, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lorraine answered dolorously. “He said it would be late, after eleven. Then we would take the boy down the Peninsula and let him off somewhere and just keep on driving. We would go to Las Vegas first …” Her eyes were dry, but there was pain in them that was evident even from where I was; it was the pain of shattered hopes and a future filled with grayness. “But he didn’t come. I waited up until three o’clock, and then I went to bed but I didn’t sleep at all.”
“What did you think had happened?”
“I thought … I thought he’d just gone off without me. That he’d gotten the money and left me to handle the boy.”
“But you weren’t sure, and you did nothing.”
“That’s right. I waited all through the next day, yesterday, and finally I couldn’t take any more of this house and I went out to buy a newspaper. And I saw … saw Paul’s photo and that he was dead …”
Eberhardt said, “Why didn’t you let the boy go last night, after you came back?”
“I was afraid,” she said. “I thought you-the police-might think I had something to do with Paul’s murder. I was confused and … and sick over his death. I told you, I loved him.”
“What decided you today?”
“I had to have somebody to talk to, some company; I couldn’t stay in this house another minute. I went to where I’ve been living with my sister. She could tell something was wrong, and she had recognized Paul’s picture from the one time he had come there to pick me up on a date; she went to talk to a detective”-her eyes flicked over to me, quickly, and then fastened again on the handkerchief she was still knotting between her fingers-“and when she came back and told me what she’d done and tried to get me to turn myself in, I just … I panicked. The only thing I could think to do was get back here and take the boy someplace and release him, and that way I would be safe.”
“What were you going to do then?”
“Run away, I guess, I don’t know where. Just run away. I … oh God, oh God!” She put her face in her hands and the tears came then, swift and silent, and her body oscillated heavily, as if she were caught between two powerful and unresisting magnets.
Eberhardt stood and looked at me and shook his head in a kind of sadly cynical way. Then he turned and went over to Sheffield and said softly, “Take her down to the Hall, Sheff, you and Dan. It’s time the boy’s parents were notified that he’s all right; after that, we’ll be taking him home.”
Eberhardt and I went into the cluttered, ancient-applianced kitchen. Just as we did, Ray Gilette came in through the back door. He said, “I went over everything, inside and out, Lieutenant. No weapons and no suitcase filled with money. A flat zero.”
Eberhardt nodded. He looked over at a wall phone above a plastic-topped dinette littered with coffee cups and empty glasses and an ashtray overflowing with coral-tipped cigarette butts. “You want to make the call?” he asked me. “You’re the fair-haired boy.”
“I’d like that, Eb,” I said.
“Go ahead, then.”
I went over to the phone and dialed Martinetti’s number from memory. He answered personally on the first ring. I told him in clear, fast words that his son had been found, that Gary was fine and safe, that he would be brought home in just a little while. I listened to a giant explosion of breath, to humbly murmured words, “Thank God, thank God.” I told him the rest of it then, touching high points for him, and I had just finished when I heard Karyn Martinetti’s voice demanding shrilly, plaintively, in the background, “What is it, Lou, what is it?”-and Martinetti’s answer, “Gary’s been found, he’s safe, he’s coming home,” and her low cry of relief, joy, and then the sound of weeping.
There were some confused moments then, and I heard other voices in the background-Proxmire’s, what seemed like Donleavy’s. I could picture the scene in Martinetti’s study or wherever he was talking from: the deep sighs of total relief, the wan and tired smiles, the weakness of limbs that comes with the sudden and complete collapse of tension. I could almost feel the elation, the relief, emanating over the wire; the two emotions were strong inside me as well as I sat there holding the phone and listening.
Finally Martinetti said, “Are you still there? We’ve got a little bit of a carnival atmosphere here right now.”
“It’s nice to hear,” I said.
He laughed softly, a little numbly. “I just don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything, Mr. Martinetti,” I told him. “I think I understand how you feel.”
“Will you be bringing Gary home yourself?”
“I’ll be coming along, yes.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“We should be there within the hour.”
“This girl, this accomplice of Lockridge’s,” he said. “Has she told you anything about his death, or about the money?”
“A few things, but nothing vital. We’ll tell you about it when we get down there.”
“All right.” He paused to listen to a voice near him, and then said, “Mr. Donleavy wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
Donleavy’s voice came on the line. “Nice work,” he said, and he sounded genuinely complimentary, genuinely pleased. “I was listening over Mr. Martinetti’s shoulder.”
“Thanks, Donleavy.”
“Listen, who’s in charge up there?”
“Lieutenant Eberhardt.”
“Yeah, I know him a little,” Donleavy said. “He’s a good man. Can you put him on?”
“Sure.”
Eberhardt was leaning on the drainboard, tamping tobacco from a cracked leather pouch into his pipe. I motioned to him and he came over and took the phone and talked to Donleavy for a while. Eb gave him a fast rundown of what we had learned in talking to the boy and to Lorraine Hanlon; from his end of the remainder of the conversation I gathered that Donleavy was sending Reese up to San Francisco to talk to Lorraine at the Hall, and that he was staying at Martinetti’s to wait for our arrival.
Eberhardt rang off eventually and got out a butane pipe lighter and put flame to the black briar bowl. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction, he said, “Come on, hot shot. Let’s go give a little boy back to his family.”
* * * *
16
It was almost five-thirty when I turned Erika’s Valiant onto Tamarack Drive in Hillsborough. There were a couple of cars pulled up outside number 416-a dark brown Ford and a black Plymouth-and I supposed they belonged to Donleavy and maybe some other one of the District Attorney’s people. I parked behind the Plymouth on the cool, quiet street; a thin early-evening breeze sent oak and eucalyptus leaves skipping among the deepening shadows cast by the surrounding trees.
Gary had the rear door open almost before I had brought the Valiant to a complete stop. He ran up to the wooden footbridge and across it and swung open the gate. Eberhardt and I got out and watched him running up the gravel path with his legs and arms pumping like a well-coached sprinter. The front door opened before he got fifty feet, and Karyn Martinetti-slender and very young-looking in a pale yellow cotton dress-came flying out with her arms stretched wide, shouting, “Gary, Gary, Gary!” and enclosed him in her grasp and swung him around and clung to him with a possessiveness that was almost feral in its intensity. Her face was sheened with tears, free of cosmetics, and she looked radiant now that her son was safe again in her arms.