Джо Горес - Dead skip

“Doctor!” gasped Gimlet-Eyes, just passing on her rounds.

But Whitaker had firmly shut the door in all of their faces.

“He doesn’t understand!” exclaimed Corinne disconsolately. “Bart needs me, he’s going to have a bad night, he—”

“He needs sleep” said Gimlet-Eyes triumphantly. “And from now on, you will have to observe normal visiting hours like everyone else.”

The nurse stopped; she had lost Ballard. He was over at the duty desk, delving behind the counter with a long arm.

“Oh!” She charged him, her several corpulences jouncing to make Corinne break into sudden giggles. “What are you doing? You get away from that counter...”

“Phone book,” said Ballard curtly. When she didn’t respond, he snapped his fingers under her nose impatiently. “Come on, come on. Phone book.”

She got him a phone book, almost meekly. No telling what sort of disturbance he would cause if she didn’t . And no use appealing to Dr. Whitaker, either; he was as eccentric as the rest of them.

If the murderer wasn’t in the phone book, had an unlisted number, say, he’d have to go all the way back downtown to the DKA office, get the city directory and hope that...

No. Here he was, 27 Java Street.

Java Street? Hell. Ballard didn’t know where Java Street was. And if it wasn’t within walking distance of Twin Peaks, say twenty minutes walk at the outside...

He needed a city map. Had one down in the car...

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave—”

“Huh? What? Oh. Yeah.” He flipped the phone book shut on top of the counter, turned away, organizing his face into a belatedly casual expression for Giselle’s sharp eyes. “Sure. Thanks.”

“... don’t really want you to bother with running me home,” Giselle was saying to Corinne.

“It would be really no bother, Giselle.” Corinne looked suddenly exhausted, blasted, as if by release from the tension which had sustained her.

“I’ll have Larry drive me across the Bay.” Giselle had never learned how to drive; none of the field agents had the patience to teach her. Her very blue eyes were narrowed slightly, fixed on Ballard with intense speculation. “He won’t mind, will you, Larry?”

“Mind what?” he said, trying to duck out of it. Dammit, it would kill an hour altogether, going and coming.

“Driving me over to Oakland tonight.”

“I’m, ah... pretty exhausted myself, Giselle.” He started a fake yawn, ended up with a real jaw-creaker that wasn’t faked at all. He was damned tired, but he had to get into that house, the proof that Griffin was dead might be there somewhere. “If you’re short cab fare...”

“I will not ride a cab, Larry Ballard, when you’re here with a perfectly good DKA car burning DKA gas...”

“As long as Corinne offered—”

“I’m riding with you,” she said with finality. “Corinne is going home and going to sleep. She hasn’t slept for days.”

Corinne was looking from one to the other with an unbelieving look on her face.

“I don’t understand you people,” she said weakly. “I really don’t understand anything about you.”

“Lots of times I don’t understand us myself,” said Giselle.

Corinne smiled her brilliant smile. “But I’m sure glad he’s going to drive you home. All of a sudden, I’m just dead.”

What the hell, he’d just have to swallow that extra hour’s delay. He’d dump Giselle, come back. Java Street had to be close enough to Twin Peaks for it to have worked; nothing else, no body else fit. Heslip, after all, had turned around.

He grabbed Giselle’s arm. “Well, c’mon, you’re in such a rush to get home.”

Giselle went with him meekly. Too meekly. He should have known.

They rode down in the elevator silently, each busy with his own thoughts. The outside air was wet, the wind penetrating, so Giselle shivered despite the London Fog waterproof she had on over her wool skirt and short-sleeved sweater. She and Ballard walked Corinne to her car; the stop lights on the corner of Scott half a block away were red and green blobs through the fog.

“ ‘When shall we three meet again?’ ” Giselle asked rhetorically.

Corinne stuck her head out of the place where the Triumph’s window had been until six months before, when some mother-of-a-car-booster had smashed it out for a big score: a pack of Winstons in the glove box. “ ‘In thunder, lightning, or in rain,’ ” she quoted back with a flash of perfect teeth in her dark face.

Ballard watched the taillights recede into the soup, then walked back to his Ford, held the door for Giselle, and started the heater as soon as the motor was running. “Soon as we warm this up we’ll get you over to Oakland.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

The sarcasm of her tone was lost on Ballard. He was thinking of the San Francisco map over Giselle’s visor. Could he get it down, casually, look up Java Street? No, dammit, he’d have to wait until he dumped her off. If she knew where he planned to go, she’d go all DKA official on him or — worse yet — want to go along.

Giselle shivered. She was feeling very Bardish that night. “ ‘Tis now the very witching time of night, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.’ ” She paused, breathed out. “See? It’s cold enough to see your breath.”

“You talk too much,” said Ballard.

“That’s because I’m scared. I don’t get out into the field all that often, and when I do, it usually isn’t after a would-be murderer.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snapped.

But she already had reached up for the map he had been eying wistfully a few moments before. She opened it and looked over at him sweetly. “Which street is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her blue eyes were very direct and challenging even by the fog-dimmed streetlights. “Get off it, hotshot. I’ve been in this business a lot more years than you even if we are the same age. So don’t try to con me. You let Whitaker herd you out of that room as meek as a lamb — which means you thought something Bart said had given it to you. Outside, you made a beeline for a phone book to look up an address. When we got into the car just now your hands were shaking, you wanted to reach for that map so badly. So... what street is it?”

Ballard stared at her, silently raging, then sighed. “Java.”

“Java...” She consulted the index, folded the map open to the appropriate coordinates by the overhead light he had switched on. “It is one block long, runs between... Masonic and Buena Vista Avenue West.”

“Dead-ends in Buena Vista Park?” demanded Ballard, finally able to visualize the street. He had been afraid it would be way to hell out in the Mission District with Brazil and Persia and Russia and France.

“That’s the one. But what difference does the area make if... Of course!” she exclaimed. “It would have to be within walking distance of Twin Peaks, wouldn’t it?”

Ballard nodded. “So he could walk home after putting Bart over the edge in the Jaguar. Couldn’t tow the Jag up there — somebody might remember. Couldn’t call a cab, same reason — or even walk down to where he could catch a cruiser...”

“Dan had me check out every cab company’s trip sheets for Wednesday A.M.,” Giselle said thoughtfully.

Trust Kearny. He didn’t miss many. “And?”

“None at all from anywhere reasonably near Twin Peaks during the right time span.” She paused. “Why are we just sitting here?”

“Oh. Sorry.” He started the car. “I’ll get you home and—”