Bernhardt's Edge (10 page)

He straightened, struck his head on the doorframe, ducked, saw the headlights pass—saw the two dogs, standing side by side on the opposite sidewalk, watching him.

In his whole life, he'd never had a dog. Even with all the money, he'd never had a dog.

Y
AWNING, BERNHARDT STRETCHED HIS
hands high over his head, bent smartly at the waist, touched his toes, yawned again, scratched himself, considered repeating the exercise fifty times, decided he could skip the regimen today, since he was, after all, on an out-of-town assignment, a break in his normal routine. Instead, still reflectively scratching, he switched on the TV at random and opened the floor-to-ceiling drapes, taking care to stand clear of the window, since he wore only shorts.

Across the courtyard, a black-and-white police patrol car was parked in the space reserved for room number twelve, where the Toyota had been parked last night. A second police car, unmarked, was drawn up behind the first. Inside number twelve, indistinctly, Bernhardt saw a man dressed in plainclothes standing with arms folded, staring at something—or someone—inside. Even though the man's features weren't readable, his air of quiet authority marked him as a detective.

On the TV, anchorwoman Jane Farley, with her striking face and exciting mane of dark brown hair, was beginning an interview with Akira Kurosawa. Quietly, tastefully, she projected the deference due the maestro in his seventy-fifth year. Bernhardt turned up the volume, listening to the interview as he slipped into fresh underwear, clean socks, and corduroy slacks. Still listening attentively through the open bathroom door, he washed his face, shaved, combed his hair. Back in front of the TV, he took a sports shirt from the back of a chair, slipped into it, buttoned it, sat on the edge of the bed, and tugged on running shoes as he watched the pretty young American television personality and the elderly Japanese director. Plainly, the woman was struggling to bring the interview alive for the American housewife. Just as plainly, Kurosawa had come to talk about the art of the cinema.

With the interview mercifully ended, Bernhardt switched off the set, put his wallet, keys, and change in his pockets, then stepped out into the sunny warmth of the bright September morning. Across the courtyard, the door to number twelve was swinging open. A uniformed officer emerged, followed by the plainclothesman. At the same time another plainclothesman emerged from the motel office, equidistant from number twelve and Bernhardt's room. Sauntering, Bernhardt walked toward the motel coffee shop as the second detective joined the other two men, all three of them standing between their two cars as they talked quietly, seemingly abstracted, each man staring off in a different direction. Three newspaper vending boxes lined the narrow sidewalk beside the door to the coffee shop: a box each for the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Los Angeles Times,
and the
Santa Rosa Record.
About to drop a quarter in the
Record
box, Bernhardt checked the dateline, realized that the box contained yesterday's newspapers. He bought a
Chronicle
instead, pushed open the coffee shop's door and chose a seat at the counter. Three of the coffee shop's dozen-odd tables were occupied, but only one man sat at the counter. Wearing a Caterpillar cap and a tight-fitting yellow T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to display aggressively bulging biceps, the man sipped coffee as he stared out across the courtyard at the three officers, still closely conversing. Also staring at the policemen, ignoring Bernhardt, an overweight waitress stood with one hip wedged against the counter, her freckled arms folded beneath large breasts. The easy familiarity of customer and waitress suggested that the man with the bulging biceps was a “regular,” not a guest of the motel.

“A little action, eh?” the man was saying. “Someone get robbed?”

As Bernhardt reached for a menu, the waitress raised beefy shoulders, ponderously shrugging. “Who knows?”

“Those're detectives. See the badges, pinned to their shirts?”

“
I know they're detectives, Charlie. More coffee?”

“Fine.” Charlie drained his cup. As he waited for his refill, he glanced briefly at Bernhardt, then glanced indifferently away.
I'd Rather Be Truckin'
was stenciled across the front of Charlie's yellow T-shirt. With the coffeepot in her hand, the waitress turned away from the window to face Bernhardt.

“Coffee?”

“I'm going to have a Denver omelette,” Bernhardt said. “And coffee with the omelette, please.”

“Right.” She put the coffeepot on the counter, flipped open her pad, wrote out the order, clipped the slip to a revolving drum, and spun the drum to face the fry cook. Now she moved sluggishly to the cash register, meeting a man who laid a check and a ten-dollar bill on the counter beside the register. Looking past them, Bernhardt saw the uniformed officer opening the patrol car's passenger door for Betty Giles, who had just come out or her motel room. Eyes straight ahead, head rigid, plainly numbed, the woman moved as if she were sentenced to death, and was approaching the gas chamber. Solicitously, the patrolman closed the door, tested it, then moved briskly around the front of the car, getting in on the driver's side. In their unmarked car, the two detectives backed up, let the black-and-white patrol car precede them out of the motel's courtyard.

“When does today's paper come?” Bernhardt asked.

“Should be here by now,” the waitress answered shortly. “If you're in a hurry, you can probably get one downtown. We're at the end of the line, out here.”

“Thank you.”

“There they go,” said the man in the Caterpillar cap, moving his jaw toward the window. “Whatever it was, it couldn't've been very important.”

“A
Record,
please,” Bernhardt said, putting a quarter on the drugstore counter and displaying the newspaper's logo, for the proprietor of the newsstand to see.

“Right.” The proprietor didn't look up.

Bernhardt's Ford was parked at the curb, with his suitcase on the rear seat. He got in the car on the right side, opened the paper, and scanned the front page.

MYSTERY SLAYING

ON SOUTH STREET

It was a brief one-column story at the bottom of the page:

Responding last night to reports of shots being fired in the two thousand block of South Street, police discovered the body of a man tentatively identified as Nicholas Ames, 36, a resident of Los Angeles. No additional details of the slaying are immediately available from official sources, but witnesses at the scene believe that Ames had spent some of the evening at a nearby tavern, and had just returned to his car when an unknown assailant approached the car and fired several shots through the window of the driver's side. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and was taken to the county morgue for positive identification. Detective Sergeant Clifford Benson promised to reveal more details of the slaying as they become available.

Bernhardt reread the story, refolded the newspaper, then sat silently for a moment, staring at nothing.

They'd been together, Betty Giles and Nick Ames. It had always been a given, that they'd be together.

Someone had hired Dancer to find Betty Giles. Dancer had assessed the client, decided there was enough money in the job to show a profit, and made the deal. Playing the potentate, his favorite role, Dancer had deigned to pass the job on to Bernhardt. As always, keeping his edge, Dancer had supplied only the details needed to get the job done, nothing more.

Thirty-six hours later, defying the odds, Bernhardt had located the woman. Of course, she'd been with Nick Ames; she couldn't help herself. Find Betty, find Nick, a star-crossed package deal.

Case closed.

For Nick Ames, permanently, the case was closed. And for Dancer, too, the case was closed: bills rendered, check received, reports filed and forgotten.

Grimly, Bernhardt dropped the newspaper on the floor of the rear seat, clambered impatiently over the Ford's control console, started the engine.

Driving a steady sixty, he could be in San Francisco by eleven o'clock. He'd go to his apartment first, to get his messages, make at least one phone call.

Then he'd see Dancer.

S
OMEHOW SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER
the two detectives' names. The patrolman's name was Henderson. His name, she could remember. Henderson had been the first to knock on her door. He'd been surprised to learn that he was the first one—surprised and distressed, that no one had told her Nick had been killed last night. “Are you Mrs. Ames?” he'd asked, holding his uniform cap awkwardly in his big-knuckled hands. “Mrs. Nicholas Ames?” When she'd said she wasn't Mrs. Ames, he'd been plainly relieved. A wife's grief would have pained him, added to his policeman's problems. But a girlfriend—possibly a pickup for the night, shacked up in a motel room—this was something Henderson could handle.

“Here we are—” One of the detectives, the Chicano one with the soft brown eyes, was gesturing to a door marked “Viewing.” Politely, he pushed open the door for her, waited for her to enter first. It was a very small room, dimly lit, with two chairs and a wall phone. The chairs were canary yellow, the wall phone was institutional white. The room was lit by a single panel of fluorescent lights. From waist height to the ceiling, a brown curtain was drawn entirely across one wall. She knew why she was there, knew what waited on the other side of that curtain. Yet, incredibly, she didn't believe it would really happen, didn't believe he was dead, his body pale and cold, laid out in the next room.

All her life, she'd been able to keep some part of herself separate from shock, protected. She could still vividly remember the night her stepfather left, could still remember the sounds of their voices: her mother, screaming, her stepfather shouting. But she'd heard other sounds, too: a cacophony of white sound, a stifled, secret lament: her soul, protesting, protecting her. This barrier of sound was her only defense.

It was the same sound she heard now, her only hope.

And, indistinctly, the other sound: the detective's voice, saying something indistinguishable on the telephone. Now, with the phone still held to his ear, he was nodding, signifying anonymous agreement. He replaced the phone in its white plastic bracket and turned to face her. His expression was both regretful and compassionate. He was a kind man, a conscientious man, probably. A caring man.

“—you're ready?” he was asking, stepping to the curtain. His nut-brown hand was reaching behind the draperies, searching for the cord that would draw the drapery back. He'd done this before, then.

A dirty job, he was probably thinking. But someone had to do it.

She was aware that she was nodding, was moving a half step forward, closer to the curtain.

Why was she nodding? Of what was she approving—or disapproving? Could she comprehend it, what had happened? Could anyone comprehend it? God, perhaps?

Slowly, inexorably, the drapes were moving, revealing a large plate-glass window. Behind the window was a tiny rectangular room, brightly lit, painted a blinding white. A stainless steel gurney had been wheeled into the center of the tiny room. Covered by a green sheet, a body lay on the gurney. Only the face was exposed: Not the hair, not even the ears, only the face. Nick's face, as pale as white marble, a perfect profile of death.

The pale face was changing its relationship to the sill of the plate-glass window, which meant that she was nodding. The detective was speaking, asking his detective's question as the drapes slid back. She could read the question in his soft brown eyes, even though his voice was indistinct, obscured by the secret white sound within, still silently raging. But, small miracle, she could clearly hear her own voice: “Yes, that's him. That's Nick Ames.”

Immediately, the drapes moved, returning their viewing room to its previous dimness. The detective was opening the door for her—one door, followed by a hallway, followed by a second door. Now they were outside, in the sunshine. From the position of the sun, she knew it was not yet noon. The policemen had come a little after eight, to tell her what she'd already known, that something had happened to Nick. All night, lying awake in the queen-size bed, she'd realized that there were only three possibilities: either he was dead, or he'd been arrested, or he'd decided to—

“—take you home,” the detective was saying, unlocking the door of his car. “Back to the motel, I mean.” He waited for her to settle herself, closed her door, got in behind the wheel, started the engine, pulled away from the curb.

“We'll want you to stay in town for a couple of days, at least for the inquest,” he said. “Will that be all right?”

“
I—I guesso. Yes.” She nodded. It would be stupid, she realized, to say anything else. Then, because it was suddenly very important, she turned in the seat to face him. “Excuse me,” she said. “But I—I'm afraid that I've forgotten your name. I'm sorry.”

“It's Ochoa,” he said, adding with a touch of modest pride, “Sergeant Ochoa.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Ochoa. Thank you for being so kind to me.”

B
ERNHARDT DROPPED HIS BAG
on the floor beside the couch, rewound the answering machine's tape, pressed the start button, listened to one short message from Dancer, a longer message from Dave Falk saying that tonight's read-through of
The Buried Child
must be postponed because the rehearsal room had been fumigated yesterday, instead of the day before. The room, Falk said, still smelled. And no other room was available. The third message was from Pamela Brett, saying that she wasn't sure what time the rehearsal started. Bernhardt played Pamela's message twice, once to verify the phone number, once to listen to her voice. It was a quiet voice, self-possessed, with an easy, melodious lilt—an ingenue's voice, pleasing to the ear. Listening, he realized how often he'd thought about her, these last four days.