Bill Pronzini - Boobytrap

“Yes?” he said, and listened, and the adrenaline rush left him all at once, putting his body into a sag. He leaned a shoulder against the wall before he said, “Why do you—? What? He told you to call here?… All right, yes. Yes.”

He took the receiver from his ear, held it away from him as if it were something he was in a hurry to be rid of. “Your assistant,” he said, talking to me. “Urgent, she says.”

I was at his side by then. He said “Make it quick” as I took the receiver, but the words were nothing I needed to have told to me so I didn’t acknowledge them.

“Got your connection,” Tamara said. “K. M. Dusay. Latimer’s wife’s maiden name be Kathryn Marie Dusay.”

“Good work. Anything more from Felicia?”

“No.”

“You mind standing by a while longer?”

“Long as you need me.”

I rang off, returned to where Dixon and Marian were supporting each other near the fireplace. “You can’t carry the burden alone,” she was saying to him. “Shutting me out like that… what were you thinking?” He shook his head and she said, “I couldn’t stand to lose both of you.”

“You won’t lose either of us.”

“She will if you don’t listen to reason,” I said.

“Reason. What reason?”

“What Marian just said. What I’ve been saying.”

“Talk, talk, it doesn’t change anything.” He disengaged himself, stalked to where a loaded bar cart was pushed up against one of the walls. “Christ, I need a drink.”

“No, you don’t. You need to keep a clear head.”

“Yeah. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Here’s something you don’t know. I’ve got an idea where Latimer’s holding Chuck.”

He came around fast and jerky, movements that were almost feral. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Where? Jesus… where?”

“Half Moon Bay. Latimer’s been living out there. That’s what the call from my assistant was about.”

“How did you—?”

“Never mind. Not important now.”

He came over to me. “You have an address?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to give it to you yet.”

That brought him right up in my face. His breath and his sweat were both sour — the smells of desperation and fear. “You have no right to keep that from me. No right, you hear? Where in Half Moon Bay?”

“Calm down—”

“Screw that. Where? ”

He started to put his hands on me; I pushed him off. “Listen to me. I won’t tell you because I don’t want you doing something crazy, like rushing out there. I don’t know it’s where Latimer is or Chuck is. Call it a strong hunch based on—”

“Hunch? Christ!”

“That’s right, but given what we know about Latimer, it has a solid basis. He must’ve risked driving all the way back to the Bay Area or he wouldn’t have said what he did to you. Why run that risk instead of holing up somewhere in the mountains or the foothills, making you drive a hundred, two hundred miles to get to him? Much safer for him if he’d done it that way.”

Dixon had nothing to say. But he was listening, struggling with the ragged edges of his control.

“Whatever his plan is,” I said, “chances are he wants to work it on familiar territory. Chances are, too, the place he rented in Half Moon Bay has some degree of privacy. He’d feel safe there. As far as he knows, nobody is on to the fact that he was living on the coast, much less has the address. He used a different name when he rented it.”

I was getting through to Dixon, finally; I could see it in his eyes. Marian helped by taking his arm and saying, “It makes sense, Pat. Can’t you see this may be our best hope of getting Chuck back safely?” He looked at her, sucked in a raspy breath, and then did that hair thing again, using his knuckles this time. Thumping his head with them as if he realized how close to coming apart he’d been and was trying to knock some sense back into himself.

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

“You’re not in this alone,” I said, “and you can’t tackle Latimer alone. Has that gotten through to you?”

Jerky head bob. “But what can you or anybody else do? If Latimer is in Half Moon Bay, if that’s where he wants me to come, you can’t go along. I told you what he said—”

“There’s another way.”

“What way?”

“I go out there ahead of you. Leave right away.”

It didn’t compute. His head wagged this time.

“To check out the address,” I said. “If Latimer’s there, I should be able to tell it.”

“Then what? You’re not thinking of—”

“Going in after him myself? No, of course not. Set up a surveillance. Look for a way to get at him, some sort of weak spot we can exploit.”

“Suppose there isn’t one?”

“We’ll still have one thing working for us. The element of surprise. Two of us coming at him, when he expects only you.”

“How do we use the advantage?”

“We’ll figure that out later. Depends on what I find when I get out there. Circumstances.”

“If he sees you, becomes even a little suspicious—”

“He won’t. I’ve got better than thirty years’ experience at this kind of thing.”

Dixon indulged in more scalp-rubbing. “And while you’re checking the address, what do I do?”

“Just what you’ve been doing. Wait for his call.”

“It might be hours. I can’t stand much more waiting, not knowing. Look at me… I’m half crazy already.”

“You’ll know what I know as soon as I find it out. Where I am, what I’m doing.”

“You mean we confer by phone.”

“Right. I’ve got a mobile unit in my car, and if you have a second line here—”

“We do. Fax line in my office.”

“I’ll call you on that line when I get there and we’ll keep it open. You let me know as soon as you hear from Latimer. Cell phone in your car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. When you leave here we’ll stay in touch on that line, no matter where he tells you to go.”

“Suppose it’s not to Half Moon Bay?”

“No profit in worrying about that now. One step at a time.”

Abruptly he moved away, took a couple of restless turns around the room. Thinking it over, weighing it. Pretty soon he stopped and asked Marian, “What do you think?” which surprised me a little. If she had the same reaction she didn’t show it.

“It’s better than the other way,” she said. “It’s something. ”

“All right,” he said to me, “we’ll do it your way. But I’ll tell you one thing right now — I’m not going to Half Moon Bay or anywhere else without a gun.”

Marian said, “Pat…”

“No. There’s no argument on that issue.”

“Your choice,” I said. “As long as you use restraint.”

“I’m no cowboy with a handgun, don’t worry about that. What about you? You carrying?”

“I will be. Colt .38 in my car. And I’m not a cowboy, either.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

We exchanged phone numbers. Two minutes after that, I was back in the car and rolling.

The fastest route to Half Moon Bay from the Dixon house was south out of the city on Highway 280, then across Crystal

Springs Reservoir and up through the coast range on 92. The drive took about forty-five minutes, and when it was done I was gritty-eyed and hungry again and badly in need of some kind of stimulant. Long, hard, bad day. And the way things were shaping up, the night could turn out to be worse. Much worse.

Latimer worried me the most, but Pat Dixon was a close second. He’d seemed better when I left, in full control again. But the strain had taken its toll, and the longer he had to wait for Latimer’s call, the more strung out he was likely to become. Stress affects different people in different ways, and in some it makes them unpredictable in their actions and reactions. Dixon struck me that way. I did not like the idea of him bringing a weapon, but if I’d protested, it would have only made him more determined and he’d have snuck it along anyway. In any event, it wasn’t my place to dictate to him. The thing for me to do was to keep him as calm as possible, thinking clearly — when we talked on the phone and when we were together again. If we got into a confrontational situation where the guns came out, I’d take over if necessary and let the weight of the consequences fall on my shoulders.