The palms of my hands were hot and slick with sweat, and I gripped the edge of the booth table with unconscious pressure, my nose inches from the glass like a kid looking through the window of a candy store. I seemed to be hearing the tick of a clock, even though there was no clock in the room that I could see, and the ticks were painfully slow. A man and a woman strolled by the newsstand, arm in arm, and two cars passed and a kid came by on his bicycle; the shadows cast by the buildings had begun to lengthen, encroaching on the golden wash of sunlight. The shades in the bank stayed down and the door stayed closed, but there did not seem to be anything unpredictable or volatile happening down there.
Another minute passed, and two and three-and then the bank door opened inward. I stopped breathing; but it was all right. They came out, the balding guy and the electrician, the latter an average-looking type with red hair; they came out walking, not running, closing the door behind them and then starting up the street at an even pace. The balding guy was wearing his sunglasses and carrying the valise. They watched the street ahead of them and occasionally behind them as they walked and did not see anything that bothered them and kept on coming.
When they reached the alley they turned in without hesitation because there was no one abreast of it or approaching it in either direction, on either side of the street. The balding man had his sunglasses off and his hat off before they had taken three steps into the deserted passage. I saw him shoving those items, and something from his coat pocket that would be a gun, into the valise; the other guy tugged at his scalp and the red hair came off and went into the bag, revealing him to be dark-haired, and he shoved what was probably a second gun in there as well. All of that took maybe fifteen seconds, and now they were at the alley door to the newsstand. The balding guy reached out, caught the knob, looked back, saw that the alley was still deserted and that there was no one visible on the street, opened the door, tossed the valise inside, closed the door, and with the other guy took half a dozen steps toward Pine Street.
And the trap sprung.
It happened very quickly, and I found out later that Quartermain had had a man upstairs in the attic of the Old Bavarian Inn, equipped with a walkie-talkie and giving forth with a running commentary that let the others know exactly when the valise had been dumped and the two men were unarmed in the empty alley. Two plainclothesmen came out of the malt shop next to the newsstand and another one came out of the curio store that bordered the other side of the alley and Quartermain and Favor appeared from somewhere on my side of the street, running across; the five of them converged on the alley mouth, guns drawn, and I could see another team of officers sealing off the Pine Street mouth. The balding guy and the other one had no chance to fight and no place to run; they had gun muzzles in their bellies and handcuffs on their wrists within seconds. Quartermain and Favor had taken the newsstand, jerking open the alley door, rushing inside; they came out with the valise and with the tall guy, hands shackled behind his back, just as one of the local black-and-white cruisers was pulling into the passageway from Pine Street.
I let go of the table edge and sat back limply and said "Oh Christ!" aloud with soft reverence.
It had been just that kind of happening.
Twenty
I went to City Hall again. By previous agreement the prisoners had been taken immediately to the larger jail and police facilities in neighboring Monterey, and a trip over there would have been pointless for me; there was no way I would be allowed to sit in on the interrogation of the holdup men-and I was in no physical condition or frame of mind to deal with reporters. I also did not trust myself to make the drive, as short as it was; the few blocks to City Hall were tortuous enough.
Donovan had long since gone off duty and there was a sergeant named Cole, whom I had met earlier, behind the front desk when I came in. I asked him if he had any identification on the three bank robbers, and he said yes, word had just come in: they were Androvitch and Collins and Sarkelian. That was all the information he had at the moment; he did not know which was the balding man. I thanked him and asked him if I could go into the Chief's office to await Quartermain's return, and he passed me through immediately.
When I got down there and opened the door into the anteroom, I saw that someone else was waiting for Quartermain. Robin Lomax sat primly in one of three upholstered chairs across from the secretary's desk-hands folded in her lap, knees together, back rigid-still wearing the white sleeveless dress of the morning, still looking fresh and innocent and tawny-gold healthy. But her eyes were different now; the fear was gone, leaving them old and defeated like ancient, intelligent entities forever trapped in the body of a mannequin.
The eyes moved up and over me as I entered, touching me with dull hatred, and her unpainted mouth betrayed her distaste at my appearance. Dirty old man. Gaunt-eyed and stubble-cheeked, wearing soiled clothes, smelling sour. Dirty old private detective. Subhuman species. Trash. Something odorous, something unclean: a four-letter word. The quirk of her mouth told me all that, and the old and defeated eyes confirmed it, and I felt a sudden and unreasoning anger take hold of me. What gives you the right to disparage me, lady? I thought. What gives you the right to hate me without knowing me or what I am or what I stand for? I'm no threat to you or to your shallow little existence; I'm no threat to anybody, I'm just a tired, half-assed do-gooder living in a world I never made…
And then I thought: The hell with it, the hell with it, she wouldn't understand and you can't take it out on her, she's hurting in her own way too. The anger faded into mild irritation and then into nothing at all. I closed the door and walked over toward her and said, "Hello, Mrs. Lomax."
"Hello," cold and remote.
"Have you been waiting long?"
"A few minutes."
"The Chief might not be back for some time."
"So I've been told."
"Is there something I can do?"
"You've done quite enough, thank you."
Yeah, I thought. I said, "All right, Mrs. Lomax," and turned and went over to the secretary's desk. He had been sitting there watching and waiting patiently. We exchanged nods, and I asked, "Is it okay if I go into the Chief's office to wait?"
He knew me well enough by now, but he was still hesitant. "Well, I don't know…"
"All I'm after is that couch in there. I've been up for going on thirty-six hours and if I don't get a place to lie down pretty soon I'm going to fall flat on my face. I'm not kidding you."
He saw the truth of that in my eyes, and it made up his mind for him. "I guess it's all right, then," he said.
"Thanks."
I looked at Robin Lomax again, but as far as she was concerned I was no longer there. I went into Quartermain's office and shut the door and moved directly to the old leather couch and stretched out supine with my head on one of the rounded arms. The leather was soft and cool beneath my enervated body, and I closed my eyes and put one arm across them to shut out additional light.
Thoughts-questions-began to tumble fretfully across the surface of my mind. How was Quartermain making out in the interrogation of Androvitch and Collins and Sarkelian? Had one of them killed Paige and Winestock? The balding man? Would he confess to it if he had? And Robin Lomax-why was she here? What had made her come down to sit and wait for what might be hours? Why did she want to talk to Quartermain? Why was the fear gone from her eyes, to be replaced by tired resignation? Where was her husband? And on and on and on.