I shook my head and glanced up at the sunburst clock; it was seven-forty. "It's still too early to reach the book dealer in San Francisco," I said. "The two I told you about don't open until ten A.M., and I don't know the last names of the owners."
"I'll call the Monterey police, about the bookshop over there; they ought to know the owner, and they can get him out of bed and down to look through his stock. I've got a feeling it won't do much good, but we've got to try it."
He made the call, slapped the receiver down, and looked across at me. "How about some coffee?"
"I don't think so-but you go ahead."
"I guess I don't want any either."
"You know, I can't help thinking now that we could figure out why that damned book is important without it and without Dancer-that we know enough facts to be able to take a reasonably accurate guess. But the pieces are so well scattered, and relatively unimportant by themselves, that I can't pick them out and fit them together."
He nodded thoughtfully. "The trouble is, we've been up all night, and we're so close to this whole thing that we maybe can't see the forest for the trees. But we might try going over it again anyway.. "
We went over it again, and failed to come up with a viable guess, and finally lapsed into a frustrated silence. And more time passed. And nothing happened.
And so you keep on sitting there, willing the phone to ring, the door to open-and the phone remains silent and the door remains closed. You listen to the rhythm of the clock, very loud in the stillness. The chair is uncomfortable, and there is dull pain in your temples and a murkiness to your vision, as if a coat of transparent lacquer had been sprayed over the surface of your eyes. Your throat is dry and gritty, your tongue thick and wrapped in sourness. Your joints feel stiff and atrophied, and your legs ache, and your thoughts are heavy and oddly detached.
You're in fine shape, all right, sitting and waiting and fighting off sleep and not knowing why you're doing it to yourself, why you're there, because you're not getting paid for any of this and the reason you got into it in the first place is sitting home alone in the fine old bitch city San Francisco, where nobody should ever be alone. You should be home, too, you should be out of it, you should be doing something for Judith Paige and for yourself. So why are you here, you wonder, why are you still involved? Because you're a cop and you've always been a cop and you can't let go of the scent once you've got onto it? The old argument-but there's more to it than that, really, you know there is. How about this, then: because it's there-the case, the human folly, the human misery-and you feel you have to surmount it; it's like one in a long string of Everests, only where you're concerned, it isn't mountains but evil. That might be it, that just might be it, because down underneath it all you're a dreamer, a romantic, an optimist masquerading as a bitter realist-you poor tired old bastard you.
I felt as if I were petrifying in the chair and pulled myself up and began to walk around the office. Quartermain was sitting tensely, hands flat on his thighs, his eyes dull and hard. Grayish beard stubble patterned his long cheeks, and his throat, visible where he had long since pulled away his tie, was a V of loose skin hollowed above his collarbone. I thought, looking at him, that he was almost certainly a mirror image of myself-and the thought was somehow a little frightening.
Without thinking about it, I got out a cigarette and put it between my lips and fired it. I had the first drag and then remembered the tender condition of my lungs, but it was not too bad; the smoke burned harshly at first and I coughed a couple of times, and after that it was all right. The taste of it was gray ash, but I smoked it down anyway.
The clock on the wall said it was five past eight.
Quartermain slapped the desk top with the palm of his hand, so abruptly and so sharply that I jumped and wheeled around to look at him again. He stood up. "The hell with this," he said. "This goddamn sitting around is driving me nuts. Let's get out of here, let's go for a ride, let's get something done."
"I'm for that," I said. "Where do we go?"
"Out to Cypress Point."
"The Lomaxes?"
"The Lomaxes," he said. "And they'd damned well better be home when we get there."
They were home.
The entrance gate on Inspiration Way was closed but not locked, and when we got down far enough into the small valley the forest-green Mercedes appeared in front of the terrace wall. Quartermain parked behind it. The front door of the house opened just as we got to it, and Jason Lomax came out and shut the door behind him. He wore an olive-green business suit and a silk tie and alligator-skin shoes, and with his razor-cut hair and barbered mustache, the attire gave him the look of a successful if stuffy advertising or corporation executive. A professional, intelligent smile would have completed the image; but Lomax's mouth was a thin, hard incision, with ridged muscle at the corners, and his eyes held the glitter of synthetic diamonds.
"Morning, Jason," Quartermain said. His tone was deceptively mild, edged with authority, and I knew that even though the Lomaxes were important people in the community of Cypress Bay, too much had happened in the past thirty-six hours for him to use the soft approach; he was not about to stand for any bullshit, no matter what the source or cause.
Lomax said coolly, ignoring me, "Good morning, Chief. Is there something I can do for you?"
"There is. Is your wife here at the moment?"
"Yes, she's here. But I don't think-"
"Shall we go inside? Or do you want to call Robin out here? What we have to talk about concerns her, too."
Lomax stared at him for a long moment, read his haggard face correctly, and asked, "All right, then. But I know why you're here, and you're making a very large mistake. I told this man yesterday"-gesturing at me the way you would gesture at a tree stump-"everything my wife and I know about Walter Paige and his death, which amounts to almost nothing at all."
"I hope so, Jason. I hope that's what it amounts to."
Lomax started to say something else, changed his mind, and turned grimly to the door. He opened it and we went inside and into a long, deep living room furnished in eighteenth-century Early American, paneled in maple, floored in gros point, and decorated with old-bronze lamps and knick-knacks. Blue drapes were open at a picture window that took up most of the side wall, and beyond you could see the flagstone terrace and, around toward the back, part of a green-tile swimming pool.
Robin Lomax entered by way of a door at the rear of the room. She wore a plain short-sleeved white dress-she was the kind of woman who would wear white whenever possible, because it complemented her tanned skin and because it made her look young and fresh and innocent-and her face was carefully composed, her lips turned in a small, polite smile. But there was faint disapproval and more than a little fear in her eyes as she looked at Quartermain and me, as if in our rumpled, unshaven condition we were derelict intruders come for some dark purpose. The amenities were brief and strained-the polite good mornings, her invitation to sit down, her automatic offer of coffee, which we automatically refused. Then we took a long sofa and the two of them sat in facing chairs and we got to the point of it.