Not until evening was Kintyre free to cross the bridge into San Francisco. He had spent hours on Bruce's uncorrected papers, and talked with Yamamura, who said he would sniff around, and he had called Margery on the phone to see if she was all right.
"Come over and take potluck, Bob," she said. He sensed loneliness. But—hell's boiling pots, she made him feel cluttered!
"I'm afraid I can't," he evaded. "Commitments. But take it easy, huh? Go visit someone, go have a cup of espresso, don't sit home and nest on your troubles. I'll see you soon."
He poured himself a small drink after hanging up and tossed it off. Then he changed into his darkest suit and got the car rolling. Personally, he would not have placarded a loss on his clothes, but Bruce's parents were from the Old World.
As he hummed along the freeway and over the great double span of the bridge (Bruce must have been carried dead in the opposite direction, wedged in a corner so the tollgate guard would think him merely asleep; doubtless the police were checking the memories of all night shift men) Kintyre rehearsed the career of the Lombardis. Bruce was the only one he had really known, though he had been over there for dinner a few times. The parents had been very respectful, innocently happy that their son should be friends with a Doctor of Philosophy. His mother made good pasta....
There wasn't much to remember. Angelo Lombardi was a Genoese sailor. Chronic hard times were not improved when his son Guido came along. Nor did he see much of his young wife. (Did Maria's years of being mostly alone in a dingy tenement, with nobody to love but one little boy, account for what Guido had become?) In 1930 the family arrived as immigrants at San Francisco. Here Angelo worked in the commercial fishing fleet; here Bruce and the daughter were born; here he saved enough money to buy his own boat; here he lost it again in a collision—by God, yes, it had been a collision with Peter Michaelis' single craft. Feeling the years upon him, Angelo used the insurance money to start a restaurant. It had neither failed nor greatly prospered: it gave him a living and little more.
Yet Angelo Lombardi had remained a man with hope.
Kintyre turned off at the first ramp, twisted through the downtown area, and got onto Columbus Avenue and so to North Beach. Hm, let's see—a minor street near the Chinatown fringe—uh-huh.
The sky was just turning purple when he stopped in front of the place: Genoa Café set in a two-story frame building perpetrated, with bays and turrets, right after the 1906 fire. It was flanked by a Chinese grocery store, full of leathery fragrances, and a Portuguese Baptist mission. A sign on the door said closed. Well, the old people would be in no mood for discussing the various types of pizza tonight.
Yellow light spilled from the upper windows. Kintyre found the door to the upstairs apartment and rang the bell.
A street lamp blinked to life, a car went by, a grimy urchin watched him impassively from a doorway across the road. He felt much alone.
He heard feet coming down the stairs, a woman's light quick tread. Expecting Maria Lombardi, he took off his hat and bowed in Continental style when the door opened. He stopped halfway through the gesture and remained staring.
Morna, he thought, and he stood on the schooner's deck as it heeled to the wind, and she was grasping the mainmast shrouds with one hand, crouched on the rail and shading her eyes across an ocean that glittered. Her yellow hair blew back into his face, it smelled of summer.
"Yes?"
Kintyre shook himself, like a dog come out of a deep hurried river. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I'm sorry. You startled me, looked like someone I used to—" He pulled the chilly twilight air into his lungs, until he could almost feel them stretch. One by one, his muscles relaxed.
"Miss Lombardi, isn't it?" he tried again. "I haven't seen you for a couple of years, and you wore your hair differently then. I'm Robert Kintyre."
"Oh, yes. I remember you well," she said. Her mouth turned a little upward, its tautness gentling. "Bruce's professor. He spoke of you so often. It's very kind of you to come."
She stood aside to let him precede her. His hand brushed hers accidentally in the narrow entrance. Halfway up the stairs, he realized he was holding the fist clenched.
What is this farce?he asked himself angrily. Nothing more than straight blonde hair, worn in bangs across the forehead and falling to the shoulders. Now in the full electric light he could see that it wasn't even the same hue, a good deal darker than Morna's weather-bleached mane. And Corinna Lombardi was a mature woman—young, he recalled Bruce's going over to the City last month for her twenty-second birthday party—but grown. Morna would always be thirteen.
Corinna had been nineteen when he saw her last, still living here and working in the café. That was at a little farewell dinner the Lombardis had given him, before he departed for his latest year in Italy. They had wanted him to look up Angelo's brother Luigi, the one who had made a success in the old country as a secret service man. Kintyre had visited Luigi a few times, finding him a pleasant sort with scholarly inclinations, most interested in his brilliant nephew Bruce, with whom he corresponded.
At any rate, Kintyre had had too much else to think about to pay much attention to a quiet girl. By the time he returned, as Bruce told him, she had left home after a spectacular quarrel with her parents. That was soon repaired—it had only been a declaration of independence—but she had kept her own job and her own apartment since then.
The rambling of his mind soothed him. At the time he did not realize that, down underneath, his mind was telling itself about Corinna Lombardi. It decided that she had few elements of conventional prettiness. She was tall, and her figure was good except that the shoulders were too wide and the bust too small for this decade's canons. Her face was broad, with high cheek-bones and square jaw and straight strong nose; it had seen a good deal of sun. Her eyes were greenish-gray under heavy dark brows, her mouth was wide and full, her voice was low. She wore a black dress, as expected, and a defiant bronze pin in the shape of a weasel.
Then Kintyre had emerged on the landing, and Angelo Lombardi—thickset, heavy-faced, balding—engulfed his hand in an enormous sailor's paw. "Come in, sir, please to come in and have a small glass with us."
Maria Lombardi rose for the Doctor of Philosophy. Her light-brown hair and clear profile told whence her children had their looks; he suspected that much of the brains had come from her too. "How do you do, Professor Keen-teer. We thank you for coming."
He sat down, awkwardly. Overstuffed and ghastly, the living room belonged to a million immigrants of the last generation, who had built from empty pockets up to the middle class. But families like this would eat beans oftener than necessary for twenty years, so they could save enough to put one child through college. Bruce had been the one.
"I just came to express my sympathy," said Kintyre. He felt himself under the cool green appraisal of Corinna's eyes, but could not think of words less banal. "Can I do anything to help? Anything at all?"
"You are very kind," said old Lombardi. He poured from what was evidently his best bottle of wine. "Everyone has been so kind."
"Do you know what his room was like, the past half of a year, Professor?" asked Maria. "He never invited us there."
I rather imagine not, thought Kintyre wryly. "Nothing unusual," he said. "I'll bring you his personal effects as soon as I can."
"Professor," said Lombardi. He leaned his bulk forward very slowly. The glass shivered in his fingers. "You knew my son so well. What do you think happen to him?"
"I only know what the police told me," said Kintyre.
Maria crossed herself. She closed her eyes, and he did not watch her moving lips; that conversation didn't concern him.
"My son he was murdered," said Lombardi in an uncomprehending voice. "Why did they murder him?"
"I don't know," insisted Kintyre. "The police will find out."
Corinna left her chair and came around to stand before the men. It was a long stride, made longer by wrath. She put her hands on her hips and said coldly:
"Dr. Kintyre, you're not naïve. You must know murder is one of the safest crimes there is to commit. What's the actual probability that they'll ever learn who did it, when they claim they haven't even a motive to guide them?"
Kintyre couldn't help bristling a trifle. She was tired and filled with grief, but he had done nothing to rate such a tone. He clipped off his words: "If you think you have a clue, Miss Lombardi, you should take it to the authorities, not to me."
"I did," she said harshly. "They were polite to the hysterical female. They'll look into it, sure. And when they see he has an alibi—as he will!—they won't look any further."
Maria stood up. "Corinna!" she exclaimed. "Basta, figliolaccia!"
The girl wrenched free of her mother's hand. "Oh, yes," she said, "that's how it was with the policeman too. With everybody. Don't pick on the poor cripple. Haven't you been enough of a jinx to him? Don't you see, that's exactly what he thinks! That's why he killed Bruce!"
An inner door opened, and a man entered the room. He was thirty years old, with a strong burly frame turning a little fat. He was good-looking in a dark heavy-lipped way, his hair black and curly, his eyes a restless rusty brown, nose snubbed and jaw underslung. He wore tight black trousers with a silver stripe, a cummerbund, a white silk shirt open halfway down his chest; he carried a cased guitar under one arm.
"Oh," he said. "I thought somebody'd come. Hello, Doc."
"Hello, Guido," said Kintyre, not getting up. He had nothing personally against Bruce's older brother, who had been quite a charming devil the few casual times they met. However—"He who does not choose the path of good, chooses to take the path of evil," said Machiavelli'sDiscourses: and Guido had been an anchor around more necks than one.
"Don't get in a bind, kitten," he said to his sister. "I could hear you making with the grand opera a mile upwind."
She whirled about on him, shaking, and said: "You could let him get cold before you went back to that club to sing your dirty little songs."
"My girl, you speak the purest B.S., as Bruce would have been the first to tell you." Guido smiled, took out a cigarette one-handed and stuck it in his mouth. "I was out of town the whole weekend, just when the cats go real crazy. If I don't make with it tonight, the man will ignite me, and what good would that do Bruce?" He flipped out a book of matches, opened it and struck one, all with the same expert hand.
Corinna's gaze went from face to face, and a beaten look crept into it. "Nobody cares," she whispered. "Just nobody cares."
She sat down. Lombardi twisted his fingers, looking wretched; Maria folded herself stiffly into a chair; Guido leaned on the doorjamb and blew smoke.
Kintyre felt, obscurely, that it depended on him to ease the girl. He said: "Please, Miss Lombardi. We don't mean that. But what can we do? We'd only get in the way of the police."
"I know, I know." She got it out between her teeth, while she looked at the floor. "Let George do it. Isn't that the motto of this whole civilization? Someday George isn't going to be around to do it, and we'll have gotten too flabby to help ourselves."
It paralleled some of his own thinking so closely that he was startled. But he said, "Well, you can't declare a vendetta, can you?"
"Oh, be quiet!" She looked up at him with a smoldering under her brows. "Of course I don't mean that. But I know who must have done it, and I know he'll have some kind of story, and no one will look past that story, because he seems like such a pathetic case. And he isn't! I know Gene and Peter Michaelis. They got what was coming to them!"
"Too much!" roared Lombardi. "Now you be still!" She ignored him. Her eyes would not release Kintyre's.
"Well?" she said after a moment.
He wondered if it was only her misery which clawed at him, or if she was always such a harpy. He said with great care: "Well, in theory any of us could be guilty. I might have done it because Bruce was—going around with a girl I used to know. Or Guido here—jealousy? A quarrel? I assume we have merely his word he was out of town on Saturday and Sunday. Shall we also ask the police to check every minute of his weekend?"
The man in the doorway flushed. "Dig that," he said slowly. "So you're going to—"
"Nothing of the sort," rapped Kintyre. "I was trying to show how a private suspicion is no grounds for—"
Guido took a long drag on his cigarette, snuffed it in a horrible souvenir ashtray, and left without a word. They heard his footfalls go down the stairs.
"I amsosorry, Mister Professor," faltered Lombardi.
"Niente affatto, signor." Kintyre stood up. "All of you are worn out." He essayed a smile at Corinna. "You were echoing some of my own principles. We pessimists ought to stick together."
She did not even turn her face toward him. But her profile was one he could imagine on Nike of Samothrace, the Victory which strides in the wind.
"I've always thought principles should be acted on," she told him sullenly.
"Corinna!" said Maria. Her daughter paid no attention.
Kintyre took his leave in a confusion of apologies. When he stood alone on the dusky street, he whistled. That had been no fun.
But now it was over with. He could let things cool down for a week or so, then deliver Bruce's possessions, and say farewell with an insincere promise to "look you up soon, when I get the chance." And there would be an end of that.
But he had thought for a heartbeat she was Morna come home to him.
His fingers were wooden, hunting for a cigarette; he dropped the pack on the sidewalk before getting one out. He could feel the first onset of the horror, moving up along the channels of his brain.
Sometimes, he thought with a remnant of coolness, sometimes distraction could head off the trouble. If he could get involved in something outside himself, and yet important to himself, so that his whole attention was engaged, the horror might retreat.
He yanked smoke into his lungs, blew it forth, tossed the cigarette to the paving and stamped on it. Then he went into the grocery. There was a public phone on the wall, he leafed through the directory until he found the name.
Michaelis Peter C.
He didn't call ahead, but drove on down. When he parked and got out, he saw Coit Tower whitely lit above him, on the steep art-colony heights of Telegraph Hill. Not many blocks away was Fisherman's Wharf, a lot of tourist pits and a few authentic restaurants. But here he stood in a pocket of slum, before a rotting rattrap tenement. A single street lamp a block away cast a purulent light at its own foot. Elsewhere the night flowed. He heard the nearby rattle of a switch engine, pushing freight cars over iron; a battered cat slunk past him; otherwise he was alone.
He walked across to the house with forced briskness, struck a match and hunted through several grimy scrawls on mailboxes before Michaelis' name came to him. Number 8.
The main entrance was unlocked. The hall, dusty in threadbare carpeting, held dim electric bulbs. He heard noises through some of the doors, and smelled stale cooking. A glance told him Number 8 must be upstairs. He climbed, only now starting to wonder just how he planned to do his errand.
Or what his errand was, if it came to that.
Bruce had never spoken much to him of Gene Michaelis. They had been children together on the waterfront. Bruce was a year younger, doubtless a quiet bookish sort, teacher's pet, even then—but apparently unaffected by it, so that he was not disliked. Still, he must have been lonely. And Gene was a rough-and-tumble fisherman's son. Nevertheless, one of those odd fierce boy-friendships had existed between them. Bruce had probably dominated it, without either of them realizing the fact.
In time they drifted apart. Gene had left high school at sixteen, Bruce had said, after some whoopdedo involving a girl; he had tramped since then, dock walloper, fry cook, bouncer, salesman—he found it easy to lie about his age. Now and then he revisited the Bay Area. His return from Navy service had been last summer, when Kintyre was still in Europe; Kintyre had never actually met him. Gene had looked up Bruce in Berkeley, and through Bruce renewed an acquaintance with Corinna, and after that Gene had moved over to San Francisco.
Number 8. Kintyre heard television bray through the thin panels. He looked at his watch. Past ten o'clock.Oh, hell, let's play by ear.He knocked.
Feet shuffled inside. The door opened. Kintyre looked slightly upward, into a lined heavy face with a thick hook nose and small black eyes and a gray bristle of hair. The man had shoulders like a Mack truck, and there wasn't much of a belly on him yet. He wore faded work clothes. The smell of cheap wine was thick around him.
"What do you want?" he said.
"Mr. Michaelis? My name's Kintyre. I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes."
"We're not buying any, and if you're from the finance company you can—" Michaelis completed the suggestion.
"Neither," said Kintyre mildly. "Call me a sort of ambassador."
Puzzled, Michaelis stood aside. Kintyre walked into a one-room apartment with a curtained-off cooking area. A wall bed was opened out, unmade. There were a few chairs, a table with a half-empty gallon of red ink on it, a television set, a tobacco haze, much dust and many old newspapers on the floor.
Gene Michaelis occupied a decaying armchair. He was a young, black-haired version of his father, and would have been rather handsome if he smiled. He wore flannel pajamas which had not been washed for some time. His legs stuck rigidly out before him, ending in shoes whose heels rested on the floor. Two canes leaned within reach. He was smoking, drinking wine, and watching the screen; he did not stop when Kintyre entered.
"I'm sorry the place is such a mess," said Peter Michaelis. He spoke fast, with an alcoholic slur. "It's kind of hard. My wife's dead, and my son has to live with me and he can't do nothing. When I get home from looking for work, all day looking for a job, I'm too tired to clean up." He made vague dusting motions over a chair. "Siddown. Drink?"
"No, thanks." Kintyre lowered himself. "I came—"
"I was already down in the world when this happened last year," said Michaelis. "I owned my own boat once. Yes, I did. TheRuthie M. But then she got sunk, and there wasn't enough insurance to get another, and well, I ended up as a deckhand again. Me, who'd owned my own boat." He sat and blinked muzzily at his guest.
"I'm sorry to hear that. But—"
"Then my wife died. Then my son come back from the Navy, and got himself hurt real bad. Both legs gone, above the knees. It took all the money I had to pay the doctors. I quit work to take care of my son. He was in a bad way. When he got so he could look after himself a little, I went looking for my job back, only I didn't get it. And since then I haven't found nothing."
"Well," said Kintyre, "there's the welfare, and rehabilitation—"
Gene turned around and said a short obscenity.
"That's what they'll do for you," he added. "They found me a job basket weaving.Basket weaving!Kee-rist, I was a gunner's mate in the Navy. Basket weaving!"
"I'm a Navy man myself," ventured Kintyre. "Or was, after Pearl Harbor. Destroyers."
"What rank were you? A brown-nosing officer, I'll bet."
"Well—"
"A brass hat. Kee-rist." Gene Michaelis turned back to his television.
"I'm sorry," muttered his father. "It's not so easy for him, you know. He was as strong and lively a young fellow as you could hope to see. God, six months ago! Now what's he got to do all day?"
"I'm not offended," said Kintyre.I would, in fact, be inclined to take offense only at a system of so-called education which has so little discipline left in it that its victims are unable to do more than watch this monkey show when the evil days have come. But that is not of immediate relevance.
"What did you come for?" Peter Michaelis lifted his bull head and his voice crested: "You know of a job?" He sagged back again. "No. No, you wouldn't."
"I'm afraid not," said Kintyre. "I came as—I came to help you in another way."Maledetto! How much like Norman Vincent Peale is one man allowed to sound? But I can't think of anything else.
"Yes?" Michaelis sat erect; even Gene twisted half around.
"You know the Lombardi family, of course."
"Do we know them?" spat Michaelis. "I wish to hell we didn't!"
"Have you heard that the son, Bruce, is dead?"
"Uh-huh," said Gene. He turned down the sound of his program and added with a certain pleasure: "Looks like there's some justice in the world after all."
"Now, wait," began Kintyre.
Gene turned more fully to face the visitor. His eyes narrowed. "What have you got to do with them?" he asked.
"I knew Bruce. I thought—"
"Sure. You thought he was God's little bare-bottomed baby angel. I know. Everybody does. It took a long time to get down past all those layers of holy grease on him. I did."
"You know what the old man done to me?" shouted Peter Michaelis. "He rammed me. Sent my boat to the bottom in 1945. He murdered two of my crew. They drowned. I could of been drowned myself!"
Kintyre remembered Bruce's account. A freakish, sudden fog had been blown down a strong wind. Such impossibilities do happen now and then. The boats blundered together and sank. The Coast Guard inquiry found it an act of God; Michaelis tried to sue, but the case was thrown out of court. Then, for the sake of their sons, Peter and Angelo made a grudging peace.
What had happened lately must have brought all the old bitterness back, with a dozen years' interest added.
"Shut up," said Gene. He was drunk too, Kintyre saw, but cold drunk, in control of everything except his emotions. "Shut up, Pete. It was an accident. Why should he ruin his own business?"
"He got him a restaurant out of it," mumbled Michaelis. "What have we got?"
"Look here," said Kintyre, not very truthfully. "I'm a neutral party. I didn't have to come around here, and there's nothing in it for me. But will you listen?"
"If you'll listen too," said Gene. He poured himself another glass. "Huh. I know what the Lombardis been telling you about me. Let me tell you about them."
Somewhere in the back of Kintyre's mind, a thin little warning whistle blew. He grabbed the arms of his chair and hung on tight. There was no time now to add up reasons why; he knew only that if he let Gene talk freely about Corinna, there was going to be trouble.
"Never mind," he said coldly. "I'm not interested in that aspect. I came here because I don't think you murdered Bruce Lombardi and the police may think you did."
That stopped them. Peter Michaelis looked up, his face turning a drained color. Gene puckered his lips, snapped them together, and went blank of expression. His dark gaze did not waver from Kintyre's, and he said quite steadily: "What are you getting at?"
"Bruce was called over to the City by someone last Saturday evening," said Kintyre. "His body was found Monday morning. You know very well that if you'd called him, offering to patch up the quarrel, he'd have come like a shot. Where were you two this weekend?"
"Why—" Peter Michaelis' voice wobbled. "I was home all day Saturday—housework. Went out for a drink at night—church Sunday morning, yeah, then came back for a nap. Hey, I played pinochle down in front of the warehouse that evening with—" His words trailed off.
"Nobody glanced in, then?" asked Kintyre. "No one who could verify that Bruce wasn't lying bound and gagged?"
"Why—I—"
"Hey!" Gene Michaelis surged to his feet. It was a single swinging leap, propelled upward by his arms. His aluminum legs spraddled, seeking clumsily for a foothold. Somehow he got one of his canes and leaned on it.
"What business is it of yours, anyway?" he snarled.
Can I tell you that I don't know?thought Kintyre.Can I tell you I'm here because a girl I'd scarcely seen before now wanted me to come?
Hardly.
He leaned back with strained casualness and said: "I want to make peace between your two families. Call it a gesture toward Bruce. I admit I liked him. And he never stopped liking you, Gene.
"If you keep on spewing hatred at the Lombardis as you have been, the police are going to get very interested in your weekend. Where were you?"
Gene hunched his shoulders. "None of your God damn business."
"I take it you weren't home, then."
"No, I was not. If you want to ask any more, let's see your Junior G-man badge."
Kintyre sighed. "All right." He stood up. "I'll go. The cops won't be so obliging, if you don't cooperate with them."
He looked past Gene, to the window. It was a hole into total blackness. He wondered if that had been the last sight Bruce saw—of all this earth of majesty, a single smeared window opening on the dark.
"I didn't do it," said Gene. "We didn't." He showed his teeth. "But I say three cheers for whoever did. I'd like to get the lot of 'em here, that sister now—"
"Hold on!" The violence of his tone shivered Kintyre's skull. Afterward it was a wonder to him, how rage had leaped up.
Gene swayed for a moment. An unpleasant twisting went along his lips. Beside Kintyre, the father also rose, massive and watchful.
"So you'd like some of that too, would you?" said Gene. "You won't get it. She's only a whore inside. Outside, she's like a goddam nun. You know what we call that kind where I come from? Pri—"
"I'm going," said Kintyre harshly. "I prefer to be among men."
Unthinkingly, he had chosen the crudest cut. He saw that at once. A physical creature like Gene Michaelis, whose sexual exploits must have been his one wall against every hidden inadequacy, must now be feeling nearly unmanned.
Gene roared. His cane lifted and whistled down.
It could have been a head-smashing blow. Kintyre stepped from it and it jarred against the floor. The cane broke across. Gene rocked forward on his artificial legs, his hands reaching out for Kintyre's throat.
Kintyre planted himself passively, waiting. He didn't want to hit a cripple. Nor would fists be much use against all that bone and meat.
As Gene lunged, Kintyre slipped a few inches to one side, so the clutching arm went above his shoulder. He took it in his hands, his knee helped the great body along, and Gene Michaelis crashed into the wall.
As the cloud of plaster exploded, Kintyre saw the old man attack. Peter Michaelis was still as strong as a wild ox, and as wrathful.
Kintyre could have killed him with no trouble.
Kintyre had no wish to. Anyone could be driven berserk, given enough low-grade alcohol on top of enough wretchedness. He waited again, until the fisherman's fist came about in a round-house swing. There was time enough for a judo man to get out of the way, catch that arm, spin the opponent halfway around, and send him on his way. It would have been more scientific to throttle him unconscious, but that would have taken a few seconds and Gene was crawling back to his feet.
"Let's call it a day," said Kintyre. "I'm not after a fight."
"You—filthy—bastard." Gene tottered erect. Blood ran down one side of his mouth; the breath sobbed in and out of him; but he came.
On the way he picked up the other cane.
He tried to jab with it. Kintyre took it away from him. As simple as that—let the stick's own motion carry it out of the opponent's hand. Gene bellowed and fell. Kintyre rapped him lightly on the head, to discourage him.
Someone was pounding on the door. "What's going on in there? Hey, what's going on?"
"I recommend you cooperate with the police," said Kintyre. "Wherever you were this weekend, Gene, tell them. They'll find out eventually."
He opened the window, went through, and hung for a moment by his hands. Father and son were sitting up, not much damaged. Kintyre straightened his elbows and let go. It wasn't too long a drop to the street, if you knew how to land.
He went to his car and got in. There was no especial sense of victory within him: a growing dark feeling of his own momentum, perhaps. He had to keep moving, the horror was not yet asleep.
All right, Corinna, he thought as the motor whirred to life. It was a bit childish, but he was not in any normal state.I did your job. Now I'll do one for myself.
When Bruce last mentioned Guido to Kintyre, not so long ago, the name of the Alley Cat occurred. Presumably Guido was still singing there. Kintyre looked up the address in a drugstore phone book. It was back in North Beach, of course, in a subdistrict which proved to be quiet, shabby, and tough.
There was no neon sign to guide him, only a flight of stairs downward to a door with the name painted on it. Once past a solid-looking bouncer, he found a dark low-ceilinged room, decorated with abstract murals and a few mobiles. The bar was opposite him. Otherwise the walls were lined with booths, advantageously deep, and the floor was packed with tables. Most of the light came from candles on these, in old wax-crusted Chianti bottles. Patronage was thin this evening, perhaps a dozen couples and as many stags. They ran to type: either barely of drinking age or else quite gray, the men with their long hair and half-open blouses more ornate than most of the women, a few obvious faggots, a crop-headed girl in a man's shirt and trousers holding hands with a more female-looking one.
Hipsters, professionally futile; students, many of whom would never leave the warm walls of academe; a Communist or two, or a disillusioned ex-Communist who had not found a fresh illusion, perpetually refighting the Spanish Civil War; self-appointed intellectuals who had long ago stopped learning or forgetting; dabblers in art or religion or the dance; petty racketeers, some with a college degree but no will to make use of it—Kintyre stopped enumerating. He knew these people. One of his strictures on Margery was her weakness for such a crowd. They bored him.
Guido sat on a dais near the bar, draped around a high stool with a glass of beer handy. His fingers tickled the guitar strings, they responded with life, he bore his brother's musical gifts. His voice was better than Bruce's:
"—Who lived long years ago.He ruled the land with an iron handBut his mind was weak and low—"
"—Who lived long years ago.He ruled the land with an iron handBut his mind was weak and low—"
"—Who lived long years ago.
He ruled the land with an iron hand
But his mind was weak and low—"
Despite himself, Kintyre was amused to find such an old acquaintance here. He wondered if Guido knew the author.
He threaded between the tables till he reached one close by the platform. Guido's glance touched him, and the curly head made a half-nod of recognition.
Since he would be overcharged anyway, Kintyre ordered an import beer and settled back to nurse it. The ballad went on to its indelicate conclusion. Guido ended with a crashing chord and finished his brew at a gulp. There was light applause and buzzing conversation.
Guido leaned back against the wall. His eyelids drooped and he drew wholly different sounds from the strings. Talk died away. Not many here would know this song. Kintyre himself didn't recognize it before the singer had embarked on the haunting refrain. Then Guido looked his way, smiling a little, and he knew it was a gift to him.
"Quant' è bella giovinezzaChe si fugge tuttavia!Di doman' non c' è certezza:Chi vuol esse lieto, sia!"
"Quant' è bella giovinezzaChe si fugge tuttavia!Di doman' non c' è certezza:Chi vuol esse lieto, sia!"
"Quant' è bella giovinezza
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Di doman' non c' è certezza:
Chi vuol esse lieto, sia!"
Lorenzo the Magnificent had written it, long ago in the days of pride.
When he finished, Guido said, "Entr'acte," laid down his guitar, and came over to Kintyre's table. He stood with his left hand on his hip, fetching out a cigarette and lighting it with the right.
"Thanks," said Kintyre.
Guido continued the business with the cigarette, taking his time. Kintyre returned to his beer.
"Well," said Guido finally. He grinned. "You're a cool one. I mean in every sense of the word. Let's find a booth."
They sat down on opposite sides of the recessed table. A handsome young waitress lit the candle for them. "On me," said Guido.
"Same, then," said Kintyre, emptying his glass.
Guido squirmed. "How d'you like the place?" he asked.
Kintyre shrugged. "It's a place."
"This Parisian bistro deal is only on slack nights. Weekends, we got a combo in here."
"I think I prefer the bistro."
"I guess you would."
They fell back into silence. Guido smoked raggedly. Kintyre felt no need for tobacco; the implacable sense of going somewhere overrode his self.
After the girl had brought their round, Guido said in a harsh tone, looking away from him: "Well, what is it? I got to go on again soon."
"I just came from the Michaelis'," said Kintyre.
"What?" Guido jerked. "What'd you go there for?"
"Let's say I was curious. Gene Michaelis was out of sight last weekend. He won't say where."
"You don't—" Guido looked up. Something congealed in him. "I thought Corinna was just flipping," he said, very softly.
"I don't accuse anyone," said Kintyre. "I'm only a civilian. However, the police are going to give him a rough time if he won't alibi himself."
Guido lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last.
"Where were you, Saturday afternoon through Monday morning?" Kintyre tossed the question off as lightly as he was able.
"Out of town," said Guido. "With some friends."
"You'd better get in touch with them, then, so they can give statements to that effect."
"They—Christ almighty!" In the guttering flamelight, Kintyre saw how sweat began to film the faun countenance.
"My personal opinion," he said, watching Guido's lips fight to stiffen themselves, "is that you are not involved. The fact remains, though, you'd better account for your weekend."
"To you?" It was a wan little truculence.
"I can't force you. But without trying to play detective, I am sticking my nose a ways into this affair. Knowing the people concerned, I might possibly turn up something the police can use.
"So where did you spend your weekend, Guido?"
The full mouth pouted. "Rotate, cat, rotate. Why should anybody care? Where's my motive?"
"Where is anyone's motive? You have a lot of shady friends. I daresay your mother had to shield you often enough from your father—or even from the authorities, once or twice." It was a guess on Kintyre's part, but he saw that he had struck a target. "Maybe of late you've gotten mixed up with something worse. Maybe Bruce found out."
"Beat feet," said Guido. "Blow before I call the bouncer."
"I'm merely trying to reason as a policeman might. I'm not accusing you, I'm warning you."
"Well," said Guido, raising his eyes again, "there wasn't anything like that going on. Certainly nothing Bruce would know about. I mean, man, he was all professor!"
"Jealousy," murmured Kintyre. "There's another motive. Bruce was the favorite. All his life he was the favorite. Oh, he deserved it—the well-behaved kid, the bright and promising kid. But it must have been hard for you to take, with your Italian background, where the oldest son normally has precedence. You were college material too. It just so happened Bruce was better, and there was only money for one. Of course, later you had your G.I., and didn't use it. You'd lost interest. Which doesn't change the fact: money was spent on Bruce that might otherwise have been spent on you."
Guido finished his whisky and signaled out the booth. "Crazy," he fleered. "But go on."
"Well, let's see. I imagine you're always at loggerheads with your father. That won't recommend you to a suspicious detective either. Here you are, thirty years old, and except for your military hitch you've always lived at home. You've sponged, between short-lived half-hearted jobs; you've drifted from one night club engagement to another, but all small time and steadily getting smaller. I hardly think you belong to the Church any more, do you?"
"I was kicked out," admitted Guido with a certain cockiness. "I got married a few years back. It didn't take. So I got divorced and the Church kicked me out. Not that I'd believed that guff for a long time before. But there was quite a row."
The waitress looked into the booth. Guido slid a hand down her hip. "Let's have a bottle in here," he said. "Raus!" He slapped her heartily on the rump. His gaze followed her toward the bar.
"Nice piece, that," he said. "Maybe I can fix you up with her, if you want."
"No, thanks," said Kintyre.
Guido was winning back his confidence. He grinned and said: "Sure. I'm the bad boy. Bruce worked part time all his undergraduate years, and made his own way since. Corinna still helps out with a slice of her paycheck, which is none too big. But me, man, I got horns, hoof, and tail. I eat babies for breakfast.
"Only lemme tell you something about Bruce. All the time he was so holy-holy, attending Mass every Sunday he was over on this side—but avoiding Communion, come to think of it—he didn't give a damn either. He just didn't have the nerve to make a clean break with those black crows, like me."
Kintyre, who had listened to many midnight hours of troubled young confidences, said quietly: "At the time he died, Bruce hadn't yet decided what he believed. He wouldn't hurt his parents for what might turn out to be a moment's intellectual whim."
"All right, all right. Only did you know he was shacking up?"
Kintyre raised his brows. "I'm surprised he told you. He introduced the girl around as his fiancée. In the apartment house he said she was his wife. He was more concerned about her reputation than she was."
"Come off it," snorted Guido. "Who did he fool?"
"Nnn ... nobody who met her, I suppose. He tried, but—"
"But this was the first woman he ever had, and it was such a big event he couldn't hide it. He was a lousy liar. Just for kicks, I badgered him till he broke down and admitted it to me."
"It was her idea," said Kintyre. "He wanted to marry her."
"Be this as it may," said Guido, "our little tin Jesus turns out to've been less than frank with everybody. So what else did he have cooking? Don't ask what I'm mixed up in. Look into his doings."
"I might," said Kintyre, "except that you have explained to me how poor a liar he was."
The girl came back with a pint of bourbon and a chit for Guido to sign. She leaned far over to set down a bottle of soda and two glasses of ice, so Kintyre could have a good look down her dress.
"Man," said Guido when she had oscillated off again, "Laura's got ants tonight. If you don't help yourself to that, I will."
"Why offer me the chance in the first place?" asked Kintyre. He ignored the proffered glass, sticking to his beer.
"I was going out on the town when I finished here. Know some places, they cost but they're worth it." Guido slugged his own glass full, added a dash of mix, and drank heartily. "They'll keep till tomorrow, though."
"I wonder where a chronically broke small-time entertainer gets money to splurge, all at once," said Kintyre.
Guido set his drink down again. Behind the loose, open blouse, his breast muscles grew taut.
"Never you mind," he said, in the bleakest voice Kintyre had yet heard him use. "Forget I mentioned it. Run along home and play with your books."
"As you wish. But when you're being officially grilled—and you will be, sonny—I wouldn't talk about Bruce in exactly the terms you used tonight. It sounds more and more as if you hated him."
Kintyre had no intention of leaving. Guido was disquietingly hard to understand. He might even, actually, be a party to the murder. Kintyre didn't want to believe that. He hoped all the tough and scornful words had been no more than a concealment, from Guido's own inward self, of bewildered pain. But he couldn't be sure.
He would have to learn more.
He sat back, easing his body, his mind, trying not to expect anything whatsoever. Then nothing could catch him off balance.
But the third party jarred him nonetheless.
A man came over toward the booth. He had evidently just made an inquiry of the waitress. He wore a good suit, painstakingly fashionable, and very tight black shoes. His face looked young.
Guido saw him coming and tightened fingers around his glass. A pulse in the singer's throat began to flutter.
"Get out," he said.
"What's wrong now?" Kintyre didn't move.
"Get out!" The eyes that turned to him were dark circles rimmed all around with white. The tones cracked across. "I'll see you later. There could be trouble if you stay. Blow!"
Kintyre made no doubt of it. Ordinarily he would have left, he was not one to search for a conflict. But he did not think any man could be worse to meet than the horror, and he could feel the horror still waiting to take him, as soon as he stopped having other matters to focus on.
He poured out the rest of his beer. Then the man was standing at the booth.
He was young indeed, Kintyre saw, perhaps so young he needed false identification to drink. His face was almost girlish, in a broad-nosed sleepy-eyed way, and very white. The rest of him was middling tall and well muscled; he moved with a sureness which told Kintyre he was quick on his feet.
"Uh," said Guido.
The young man jerked his head backward.
"He was just—just going," chattered Guido. "Right away."
"When I finish my beer, of course," said Kintyre mildly.
"Drink up," said the young man. He had no color in his voice. Its accent wasn't local, but Kintyre couldn't place the exact region. More or less Midwestern. Chicago?
It was a good excuse to get his back up. "I don't see where you have any authority in the matter," said Kintyre.
"Mother of God," whispered Guido frantically across the table. "Scram!"
The young man stood droop-lidded for a moment, considering. Then he said to Guido: "Okay. Another booth."
"Won't you join us here?" asked Kintyre. "You can say your say when I've gone."
The young man thought it over for a second or two. He shrugged faintly and sat down beside Kintyre, a couple of feet away. Shakily, Guido poured a drink into the unused glass of ice.
"Th-th-this is—Larkin," he said. "Terry Larkin. This is Professor Kintyre. He was a friend of my brother, is all."
"Are you from out of town, Mr. Larkin?" said Kintyre.
The young man took out a pack of cigarettes. It was the container for a standard brand, but the homemade cylinders inside were another matter. He lit one and sat back, unheeding of the whisky.
Kintyre would not have thought an ordinary drug addict anything to reckon with: the effects are too ruinous. But in spite of all the lurid stories, marijuana is a mild sort of dope, which leaves more control than alcohol and probably does less physiological damage than tobacco. If it came to trouble, Larkin was not going to be inconvenienced by a reefer or two.
"Friend of mine," said Guido. He was still tense, his smile a meaningless rictus. But a hope was becoming clear to see on him, that the episode would pass over quietly.
Kintyre did not mean for it to. There was more than coincidence here. If Larkin simply had private business to discuss, even illegal business, Guido would have had no reason to fear trouble. Larkin could merely wait until the professor took his bumbling presence home.
The trouble is, thought Kintyre,I've been asking so many questions. I might irritate Happy here.
Wherefore he dropped his bomb with some care: "Perhaps you can help me, Mr. Larkin. I suppose you know Guido's brother was murdered. Guido won't tell me where he was during that time, Saturday and Sunday, and I'm afraid he might get in trouble with the law."
Guido regarded Larkin like a beggar.
Larkin sat still. So still. It must have been half a minute before he moved. Then he looked through a woman's lashes at Kintyre and said:
"He was with me. We went out and picked daisies all weekend."
Kintyre smiled. "Well, if that's all—" His bomb had missed. He dropped another. "To avoid trouble, though, you'd better both go to the police with a statement."
"You're no cop," said Larkin.
"No. It was only a suggestion." Having bracketed the target, Kintyre dropped his third missile. "If they happen to ask me first what I know about it, I can refer them to you. Where are you staying?"
"Gèsu Cristo," groaned Guido out of a lost childhood.
Larkin's face remained dead. But he laid down his cigarette and said slowly and clearly: "I told you to run along home. This time I mean it, daddy-o."
Kintyre bunched his muscles—only for an instant, then he remembered that he must be at ease, at ease.
"I'm beginning to wonder what you really were doing last weekend, Terry," he said.
There was hardly a visible movement. He heard the click, and the switchblade poised on the bench, aimed at his throat.
"End of the line," Larkin told him without rancor. "On your way. If you know what's good for you, you won't come back."
"Do you know," murmured Kintyre, "I think this really is a case for the police. Ever hear of citizen's arrest?"
Guido's wind rattled in his gullet.
Larkin's blade spurted upward. It was an expert, underhand sticking motion; Kintyre could have died with hardly a noise, in that booth designed not to be looked into from outside.
From the moment the steel emerged, he had realized he was going to get cut. That was half the technique of facing a knife. His last remark had been absolutely sincere: the law needed Larkin a prisoner, now. His left arm moved simultaneously with Larkin's right. The blade struck his forearm and furrowed keenly through the sleeve. It opened the skin beneath, but little more, for Kintyre was already lifting the arm, violently, as the follow-through slid Larkin's wrist across. He smacked the knife hand back against the booth wall.
His own right hand slipped under Larkin's knee. Then he half stood up; his left came down to assist; and he threw Larkin out of the booth.
He followed, out where there was room to deal properly with the boy. Larkin had hit a table (Western movie style, grinned part of Kintyre) and the whole business crashed and skated over the floor.
The bouncer ran ponderously to break up the fight. Kintyre had nothing against him, except that any delay would give Larkin too much time. He ran to meet the bouncer, therefore, stopped a fractional second before collision, and took the body's impact on his hip. It was elementary art from there on in. The bouncer bounced.
Larkin was back on his feet, spitting fury and blood. He'd lost his knife—should be easy to wrap up—Hold it!
The second switchblade gleamed among candles. Kintyre had almost impaled himself. He fell, in the judo manner, cushioned by an arm. Whetted metal buzzed where he had been. Rolling over on his back, Kintyre waited for Larkin to jump at him. Larkin was not that naïve. He picked a Chianti bottle off a table and threw it.
Kintyre saved his eyes with an arm hastily raised. The blow was numbing. He whipped to his feet again. The bartender circled on the fringes, gibbering and waving a bungstarter: the typical barroom fight is ridiculous, these two meant what they were doing. The bouncer dragged himself to his hands and knees.
"Call the police," snapped Kintyre. "And for God's sake, some of these tablecloths will start burning any minute!"
The customers were milling away. One of the fairies screamed; the butch stood on a chair and watched with dry avid eyes. Larkin backed off along the wall. Kintyre followed. Larkin wasn't foolish enough to rush; Kintyre would have to.
He waited till there was a small space clear of tables before him. Then he crouched low and ran in. His left arm was up, for a shield. He'd take that toadstabber in the biceps if he must.
Larkin, back against the bar, drew into himself.Almost on one knee, thought Kintyre as he plunged in,like a Roman gladiator trying for the belly.A tactical change was called for.
He shifted course and met the bar six feet from Larkin. His palms came down on it, he used his own speed to leap frogwise up to its surface, pivoting to face Larkin. He made one jump along the bar. His second was into the air. He landed with both feet on Larkin's back, before the other had more than half straightened.
Larkin went down, the knife flying from his hand. Kintyre fell off and went in a heap. This wasn't judo, it wasn't anything; Trig would laugh himself sick if he could watch. But—
Kintyre rolled back. Larkin was climbing unsteadily to his feet. Kintyre pulled him down and got a choking hold from behind. He lay on Larkin's back, his legs and sheer weight controlling the body, one arm around the throat, hands gripping wrists.
"Okay," he panted. "Squirm away. You'll just strangle yourself, you know."
Larkin hissed an obscenity. He was lighter, but Kintyre could feel a hard vitality in him. No matter, he was held now.
"Bartender," wheezed Kintyre. "Call the police—"
Something landed on his head.
It was like an explosion. For a moment he spiraled down toward night. He felt Larkin wriggle free, he groped mindlessly but his hands were empty and the world was blackness and great millstones.
Then he was aware once more. Guido crouched beside him, shaken and sobbing, and pawed at his bleeding scalp with a handkerchief. "Oh, God, Doc, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you hurt?"
Kintyre looked around. "Where'd Junior go?" he croaked.
"Out the back door. Christ, Doc, I had to, you don't know what—Mary, Mother of God, forgive me, but—"
Kintyre stood up, leaning on Guido. A small riot was developing among the clientele and the help. He ignored it, brushing someone aside without even looking. The singer's stool lay at his feet. Guido must have clobbered him with that.
"Suppose you tell me why," he said.
"I—Get out. Get out before the cops come. I'll cover for you—tell them I don't know who you are, you were a stranger and—Get out!" Guido pushed at him, still weeping.
"I don't have anything to fear from them," said Kintyre. "It strikes me that maybe you do."
"Maybe," whispered Guido.
"Bruce died in a nasty way."
"This isn't—nothing to do with—I swear it, Doc, so help me God I do. Think I'd ever—It's something else, for Christ's sake!" Guido spoke in a slurred muted scream. "It's not only the cops I'm scared of, Doc, it's the others. They'd kill me!"
Kintyre studied him for a long second.
After all, he thought, this was Bruce's brother. And Corinna's.
"Okay," he said. "I promise you nothing. I, at least, will insist on knowing what this is all about. When I do, perhaps I'll decide the police ought to be told, and perhaps not. But for now, good night, Guido."
He turned to go out the rear exit. Faintly through the main door, he heard approaching sirens, but there was time enough to get into a back alley and thence to his car.
He realized, suddenly, with an unsurprised drowsy delight like the aftermath of love, that the horror had left him. When he continued his search for Larkin and for that more terrible thing which Larkin must represent, it would be from honor, because he was taking it on himself not to tell the police at once that there was a mansticker loose in their city. He would not be merely running from his private ghosts.
Tonight he would be able to sleep.
He paused at the door, looking back. "Good night, Guido," he repeated. "And thanks again for the song."
Two brawls in succession had not tired him; he got more exercise than that in an evening at the dojo. But the strain of the time before had had its effect. He woke with a fluttering gasp and saw dust motes dance in a yellow sunbeam. The clock said almost nine.
"Judas priest," he groaned. Suddenly it came to him that he had left Guido unguarded. So much for the amateur detective.
He sprang from bed and twirled the radio controls. Having found a newscast, he went into the bathroom and showered; Trig Yamamura had beaten that much Zen into his thick head. Through the water noise, he heard that more money was necessary so the nation's bought friends would stay bought; that the countries which had simply given their friendship were being imperialistic, i.e., hanging on to their overseas property, and therefore unworthy of help; that subversive elements in the bottle cap industry were to be investigated; and that Mother Bloor's Old Time Chicken Broth was made by a new scientific process which "sealed in" tiny drops of chicken goodness. Nothing was said about another murder.
Kintyre sighed and gave himself time to cook breakfast. If Guido hadn't been killed last night, he must be safely asleep at home by now. There were a few hours to spare.
He got into slacks and a gray sports shirt: he hated neckties and had no reason to wear one today. First, he decided, he must see Trig. After that he could wind up Bruce's University job. And, yes, he would take a closer look at the Book of Witches.
Yamamura's office was unimpressively above a drugstore in downtown Berkeley, a mile or so to walk. Kintyre found him polishing a Japanese sword. "Hi. Isn't this a nice one?" he boasted mildly. "I picked it up last week. It's only Tokugawa period, but get the heft, will you?"
Kintyre drew the blade. It came suddenly alive. He returned it with a faint sense of loss. "I could have used that chopper last night," he said.
"Yeh." Narrow black eyes drifted across him, the plaster high on his forehead and the outsize Band-Aid on his left forearm. "What happened, and is she going to prefer charges?"
"I suspect I met Bruce Lombardi's murderer," said Kintyre. "Or one of them."
Yamamura slid the sword carefully into its plain wooden scabbard. He took out his oldest briar and stuffed the bowl. Kintyre had finished his account by the time the pipe had a full head of steam up.
"—So I came on home."
Yamamura looked irritated. "It's your own stupid fault Larkin got away," he said. "Obviously you were holding your neck muscles tense. The stool wouldn't have hurt you to speak of if you weren't." He waggled his pipestem. "How often must I tell you,relax? Or don't you want to win your black belt?"
"Come off it," said Kintyre. "Look, what I'm afraid of is that Larkin, or someone associated with him, may decide Guido isn't safe to leave alive."
"All right. Let Guido ask the police for protection."
"He can't. I don't know why, but he doesn't dare. He'd rather take his chances with Larkin."
"I'd suggest that if he's that scared of the authorities, he deserves whatever he'll get."
"Don't be such a damned prig. Guido may be an accessory, of course, but I hate to think that. Why write him off before we're sure he wasn't just someone's dupe?"
"Mmmm. What has all this to do with me?"
"I want you to keep an eye on him."
"So? What's wrong with you doing this? Your vacation is coming up. I still have a living to make, and you can't pay me."
"I haven't the skill. And Guido and Larkin both know my face. Also, I do think I can be of some value on this side of the Bay."
"Huh! Sherlock Nero Poirot rides again."
"No. Think, Trig. The probability is that Bruce was killed by one or more professionals. But they didn't do it for fun. Somebody hired them, and that somebody is the real murderer. I've two reasons for wanting to meddle a little bit, rather than simply dumping what I know into the official lap. First, to spare Guido, at least till I'm sure if he's worth sparing or not. But second, this may not be entirely a police problem. They'll concentrate on the actual, physical killers, try to find one or two or three ants in the whole Bay Area antheap. They've no choice about that, it's their duty. Doubtless they'll put a man on the job of finding out who the killers' boss is. But the police don't know anyone concerned very intimately. The boss will have a certain amount of time to cover his tracks. Or to plan another murder.
"I knew Bruce well. I must have met all his friends, however casually.I have met whoever had Bruce killed.It may be sheer megalomania on my part, but I think there's a chance I could get an idea who it was."
Yamamura put his feet on the desk, leaned back, and stared out the window at the street. "Okay," he said at last. "On conditions."
"What?"
"I do have my family to keep. Not to mention my license. I'll undertake a week or so of Guido-guarding as an investment. Because if I could get a clue to the murderers, the boss or his torpedos, if I could give any substantial help to the police, the publicity would be good for my business. But to do anything useful along those lines, I'll have to leave Guido from time to time. I'll tail him when I think he may be in danger, yes, but when I think he's going to be safe for a few hours, I'll go check on something else."
"All right," said Kintyre. "In fact, excellent."
Yamamura looked at him through pipe smoke and said gravely: "If I find reasons why Guido should be arrested, I won't cover for him. I'll turn him in. Furthermore, I could make an error in judgment. I might leave Guido and come back to find Guido plus a knife. Now I sort of like you, Bob, don't ask me why. I'd hate to think you would hold either my informing or my mistake against me."
"Certainly not."
"Are you sure?"
"You know me, Trig."
Yamamura thought it over for a while. "Very well," he said. "Let's get the descriptions, addresses, and whatever else you know."
When they had finished, they were silent a few seconds.
"Oh, what did you find out about Owens?" asked Kintyre.
"Wife and two grown children in New York. Started as a business traveler, years ago; found that his hobby of writing paid more, and quit to write full time; captain's commission during the war, chairborne brigade in Washington—"
"If it takes a criminology degree to enter a bookstore, tell the clerk you're just looking, and read a dust jacket biography, then I'm in the wrong racket."
Yamamura settled himself more comfortably. "Owens has been hanging around Berkeley for several days without obvious motive," he said. "Addressed a writers' club Saturday night, but left early and was presumably on the town. They say at the hotel he slept late on Sunday, but no one remembers when he came in. Played some golf Sunday afternoon, dropped from sight again that night. Since then he's been simply—around. Bored, lonesome, but waiting for something or other."
"In short," said Kintyre, "it's possible he—"
"Did it personally? I don't know. Anything is possible, I guess. He may just have been out on the make, too. The chambermaid at his hotel tells me he's the pawing type. Of course, if the murder was done by proxy, these timetables don't mean anything anyway."
"Of course," said Kintyre.