I came to a standstill two feet from the door. My first thought was that he had company, but then I realized he must have just called someone on the telephone — the bloody telephone again. Unlike the pulp detectives, I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping; but this was a special case. I stayed where I was and listened.
“Do you still want me to go ahead?” Rosten’s voice said.
Pause.
“I just don’t like it, that’s all. What if something else goes wrong?”
Pause.
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
Pause.
“When?”
Pause.
“What about that private detective?”
Pause.
“All right. Yes — I understand.”
There was another moment of silence and then a banging, ringing noise, the kind a phone handset makes when it’s slammed down into its cradle. As soon as I heard that I made a half-turn and eased backward and at an angle through the deeper shadows of the oak, putting its thick trunk between me and the cottage.
The muscles in my chest and stomach were knotted up: apprehension, urgency. There was little enough doubt in my mind now that Rosten was Thursday night’s attacker. What I had just listened to did not have to mean anything ominous, but that was the way I had read it; instinct told me Rosten and whoever had been on the other end of the line were talking about another attempt on Alex’s life — and soon, maybe tonight. So there was nothing to be gained in my confronting him now; he would only deny guilt — or maybe even make a try for me, too, when my back was turned. There was no way of telling how dangerous he was, how desperate the motives were behind all of this. My obligation was to Alex; I had to alert him, convince him to leave here as quickly as possible, stash him somewhere safe, and then take my suspicions to the police and let them worry about breaking the truth out of Rosten.
I stepped out of the yard, still in shadow, and broke into a run toward the road, onto it. The front door to Rosten’s cottage remained closed. I ran up to where I had left my car, started the engine, swung into a U-turn, and headed back up the hill. There was still nothing to see behind me when I cleared the crest and started through the trees.
When I drove past the deserted cellar buildings to where the house lane intersected the road, a car was just coming out: Leo’s Lincoln Continental, with Leo alone at the wheel. He raised a hand to me as he made the turn, heading toward the Silverado Trail. I let him go; with his supercilious attitude, there was nothing I could expect him to do except get in the way.
I left the car half on the parking area and half on the road and hurried inside the house. Cold silence greeted me; you could have heard insects crawling in there. I went up the stairs two at a time, bypassed my room, caught the knob on Alex’s door, and pushed inside.
And came to an abrupt stop because the bed was empty, the room was empty.
Alex was gone.
The first thing I did was to run down the upstairs hall, knocking on doors and throwing them open. But the rooms were all dark, unoccupied. Then I came pounding downstairs again and looked into the family room, the dining room, a parlor. Empty, all of them. I was on my way to the office when the Chicano maid came out of another doorway and peered at me with wide eyes.
I said, “Where’s Alex? Have you seen him?”
She shook her head.
“Mrs. Cappellani?”
One hand came up and pointed at the office door. I ran to there, shoved it open, and went inside by a couple of steps. Rosa was sitting behind the desk with a big ledger book in front of her and a pencil upraised in one hand like a sceptre. And she was alone.
Her expression fluctuated between annoyance at my sudden entrance and concern at what she must have seen in my face. The concern won out when I said sharply, “Have you seen Alex?”
“Isn’t he in his room?”
“He’s not in the house at all.”
“You’re upset. What is it, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t have time to explain now.”
I wheeled around, nearly collided with the maid beyond the doorway, brushed past her, and hustled up to the foyer again. Where the hell was he? And why had he left his room, left the house? A walk to clear his head, maybe — or, Jesus, maybe Rosten had called him and arranged a meeting somewhere on some sort of pretext; I had not even considered that possibility.
There was a cold sweat on my body when I lumbered outside again; I could feet it trickling down from my armpits. My responsibility, goddamn it. If anything happened to Alex tonight, it was my fault, I was supposed to be his goddamn bodyguard…
I ran past my car without even realizing it was there. Where? I was thinking. Down at the cellar? At one of the other buildings? Out in the vineyards? Where? Then I thought about the car, taking the car, but I was already out through the gate and onto the road. I hesitated, took a step back toward the lane — and saw the pick-up truck down in the yard before the nightlit cellar.
The same Ford pick-up I had seen parked alongside Rosten’s cottage.
A sensation like the touch of a cold hand settled on my neck and between my shoulders. The pick-up was backed up near the cellar’s entrance, and its headlights were on, laying an elongation of light across the gravel and across the road beyond; I could just hear the steady rumble of its engine. Nothing moved down there — there was just the truck and the frozen beams of light.
I started to run again.
But I had not gone more than ten yards, into heavy shadow from the bordering oaks, when the shapes of two men appeared through the big brassbound doors, crowded close together, one pushing the other toward the pick-up. I pulled up again, on reflex In the pale shine of the nightlights I could identify both of them, all right — not clearly but clearly enough. I could not identify the object Rosten was holding in one hand, but I knew what that was too. The sensation of coldness deepened and spread; I tasted bile mixed with the brassiness of fear.
I did not know what to do. Neither Rosten nor Alex was looking in my direction, could not have seen me in the shadows if they had been; they were at the passenger door of the pick-up, and Rosten had it open and was pushing Alex inside to the wheel. I couldn’t get to where they were before they were ready to drive off — and if I tried it anyway, or if I yelled to let them know I saw them, Rosten might panic and start shooting. Do something, for Christ’s sake! I backed up, got off the road and into a thicker pocket of blackness. Rosten was inside the pick-up too, now; I heard the engine sound magnify, saw the truck jerk forward and the lights swing around in a left-hand quadrant. They were not coming this way. They were heading back to the east, onto the secondary road that led through the vineyards to the cottages.
I was already moving by then. I raced back to the lane, and just as I got to it Mrs. Cappellani appeared in front of me: she must have followed me down from the house. For the first time she seemed to have lost some of her imperious composure; her face was a white frightened oval in the darkness.
“Call the police,” I yelled at her, “tell them Alex has been kidnapped — tell them it’s Paul Rosten.”
She gaped at me. “Kidnapped? Paul?”
“Do what I told you, call the police!”
I shoved past her and made it to where my car was. My breath had a clogged feel in my chest; sweat fused my shirt to my skin, made the palms of my hands slick. I dragged the door open, slid inside. And kicked the engine to life, jammed the transmission lever into reverse, threw my right arm over the seat back, and laid into the accelerator.