"He had to have been tipped off about it," I said. "There's no other way he could have known. I took it from here directly to the motel this morning, and I doubt if I was being watched at the time."
"Who knew you had it?"
"I mentioned it to everyone I talked with, but as far as I can remember, the only one I told that it was in my possession was Beverly Winestock."
"I thought as much. She told her brother, and Winestock told the bald guy-probably by telephone, either just before or just after we paid our first visit to the Winestock house. Once he knew you had the book and that questions were being asked about it, he figured it was only a matter of time before it was read, so he went after Paige's copy and any that Dancer might have had."
"Which means he knew beforehand that Dancer lived in this area," I said. "Winestock might have told him, or Paige, or he could know Dancer personally even though Dancer claims not to know him."
"Where do you think Winestock went tonight? The bald guy was at the Beachwood and down doing the job on Dancer's place."
"Maybe to wait for him to come back," Favor said. "Monterey, since that's where I lost Winestock, or somewhere north or east of here-not Cypress Bay, though."
I shifted in my chair. "There's a pattern to this thing somewhere, a kind of wheel with Paige and that book and the bald man as the hub, and Winestock and Beverly Winestock and the Lomaxes and the Tarrants-some of them, at least-as the spokes. It's nebulous as hell, but it's there. If we only had the book…"
"Or Dancer," Quartermain said. "Listen, you collect pulp magazines. How easy would it be to dig up another copy of The Dead and the Dying, assuming Dancer can't or won't help us? How fast could it be done?"
"An obscure paperback title like that-it might take considerable time and effort. I know a couple of book dealers in San Francisco that specialize in magazines and used paperbacks. If they don't have it in stock-and chances are they wouldn't-they could put a line out to other dealers or to collectors of crime fiction who might have it or know where it could be gotten. All of which would take time, as I said. And I've got the feeling time is an important factor; the bald guy has got to know we'll dig up a copy of the book eventually, and yet he still went to a hell of a lot of trouble tonight to get rid of immediately available copies."
"I thought of that, too, and it only complicates things that much more. How the hell could a time element enter into it?"
"No ideas," I said, "and no guesses."
"Ditto," Favor said.
Quartermain slumped back in his chair; the purplish bags under his deep-set and slant-lidded eyes made him look like a kind of Oriental hound. "If Dancer doesn't turn up by morning, and with the right answers, you can call those book dealers of yours and get them to work," he said to me. "There's a place in Monterey, I think, that handles used paperback books and we'll try them too. Other than that, there's nothing we can do about the book. No goddamn thing at all."
None of us seemed to feel much like talking after that, and a brooding, waiting silence formed thickly in there. I sat and stared at nothing and wanted a cigarette and kept on resisting the urge. A sunburst clock on one wall ticked away the minutes loudly and monotonously, and I saw that we were now two hours into a new day-into a new month, too, for that matter, since Sunday had been the last day of April. Monday. Blue Monday-or black Monday, take your choice. Some choice.
More time passed, and nothing happened. Three A.M. Four A.M. Quartermain sat tipped back in his chair, his eyes closed, and Favor began to snore gently in the armchair beside mine. The warm room and the inactivity and the lack of sleep and the physical enervation began to exact their toll on me as well; you can resist for only so long. I was down in that vague, heavy, slow-motion world between sleep and wakefulness, drifting toward oblivion, when Quartermain's telephone bell went off.
I came up out of my chair convulsively, pawing at my eyes and looking blankly around, my heart plunging in my chest and my head banging malignantly. When the misty remnants of sleep dissolved, I saw Quartermain swiveling around to drag up the phone receiver and Favor sitting forward in his chair, smoothing his mustache in an unconscious gesture that made him look more than ever like a silent-movie comedian. I sat down again and dry-washed my face, listening, but Quartermain said "Yeah" and "Christ!" and "Right away" and that was all.
I looked up at him as he replaced the handset. His mouth was pinched tight at the corners and his nostrils were flared and his eyes were hot, bright chunks of blue, like dry ice smoldering.
Favor said, "What is it, Ned?"
"That was the State Highway Patrol. They've just located Winestock's Studebaker."
"Where?"
"Spanish Bay, just south of Pacific Grove."
"What about Winestock?"
"He's in it," Quartermain said. "Shot twice in the chest and stone-cold dead."
Fifteen
Dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky by the time we got out to Spanish Bay, on the northwestern shore of the Monterey Peninsula. In the cold gray light the panoramic landscape of cypress and windswept, bone-white sand dunes had a hushed and primitive look, like a tiny portion of nature that had long ago been suspended in time. The sea beyond provided the only motion; it was a rippling gray-green, the combers high and capped with garlands of white froth as they crested and rolled downward in long, graceful sweeps to the beach.
Just after we began to skirt the boundary of the Asilomar Beach State Park, the small cluster of cars appeared among all that quiet beauty like a giant's thoughtlessly discarded litter. They were drawn close together near a low fan of cypress, two-thirds of the way along an unpaved lane that led toward the symmetrically spaced dunes and the splendor of the Pacific. Favor cut off the siren we had used to make time from Cypress Bay and took us down the lane. As we approached the cluster, I could distinguish five vehicles: a State Highway Patrol unit, an unmarked sedan, a Pacific Grove Police Department tow truck, a county ambulance, and Brad Winestock's faded-blue Studebaker. Both doors on the driver's side of the Studebaker were standing open, and several men were grouped in a tight knot nearby, talking among themselves and watching our arrival.
Favor pulled up behind the sedan, and the three of us got out into a wind that was chill and yet tinged with the spring warmth that would come with the rising sun. Four of the seven men on the scene were officiaclass="underline" a local patrol investigator named Daviault, two patrol officers in uniform, and an assistant county coroner. The other three were a pair of ambulance attendants and the driver of the wrecker, who would tow Winestock's car into Pacific Grove or Monterey for the crime-lab technicians. Quartermain introduced me briefly to Daviault, and he accepted my presence without question.
He led us to the Studebaker, and we looked inside. Winestock was in the back, sprawled across the seat face up; his eyes were protuberant, with much of the whites showing-as if the impact of the bullets or the intensity of his dying had been enough to half pop them from their sockets. There was coagulated blood on the front of his windbreaker, and some on the seat beneath him-but altogether, very little. That, and the fact that both wounds were visibly centered on the upper part of his chest, said that he had died swiftly.
I turned away, dry-mouthed, and Quartermain asked the two uniformed patrolmen, "Were you the ones who found him?"
"Yes, sir," one of them said. "We were cruising Sunset Drive and we spotted the car down here; at first we thought it might be kids parked for the night, and we came down to chase them off. When we got close enough, we saw that it was the Studebaker on our pickup sheet. We found him inside there, just the way you see him."