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Chiarelli, just gasp and groan. "Sorry, man, but it has to look real." Chiarelli did not have to worry about that, Garreth reflected bitterly. "See you around, man." Chiarelli slipped out the door. Garreth continued to lean against the wall for several more minutes, then made his way slowly back to the site of the bust. Seeing him coming, Harry exclaimed, "Garreth!" and rushed to catch his arm. "What happened? Are you all right?" Garreth leaned against a handy car, holding his stomach. "Bastard ambushed me. I thought I was never going to make it up off that damned floor." "So you let him get away, hot dog?" Woodhue said. Several prisoners snickered. Garreth glared at them. "Next time I won't bother chasing him. I'll hobble the son of a bitch with a piece of lead . . . permanently." Harry helped him to a car. "Nice acting," he whispered. Garreth climbed into the car, remembering Chiarelli's smirk. "Who the hell is acting?" He sat silent all the way back downtown. Not until they had left the Narco officers and returned to Homicide did he give the notebook to Harry. "We'd better run these names through R and I, then find out who owns or lives in these houses." Harry regarded him with concern. "Are you sure you're all right? Maybe you ought to go home and take it easy the rest of the day." "I'm fine. We have work to do." He started to take off his coat and winced as the motion stretched bruised muscles. Harry hustled him toward the door. "Go home. I'll tell Serruto what happened." "I don't want to go home. I'll be fine," Garreth protested. "No one who refuses time off can possibly be fine. I'm a sergeant, but you're just an inspector, so I'm pulling rank and ordering you out, hear? Or do I have to have someone take you in handcuffs?" Garreth sighed. "I'll go quietly, papa-san." He left Chiarelli's pages of his notebook with Harry and headed for his car. He slipped the key into the ignition but did not start the engine immediately. As much as he hurt, he hated the thought of going home. He ought to give up the apartment with all of its sweet and painful memories and find another. Perhaps one of those places around Telegraph Hill that Mrs. Armour had mentioned. The thought of them told him what he really wanted to do. He wanted to see Lane Barber again, to talk to her by daylight and find answers for the increasing number of questions she raised about herself. Then he started the engine. 8 She did not come to the door until Garreth had rung the bell five times. He realized that she must be sleeping and would find his visit inconsiderate and inconvenient, but he remained where he stood, leaning on the bell. She finally opened the door, wrapped in a robe, squinting against the light, and he discovered that even by daylight, she looked nothing like a woman in her thirties. If anything, she seemed younger than ever, a sleepy child with the print of a sheet wrinkle across one pale, scrubbed cheek. She scowled down at him. "You're that mick detective. What-" Then, as though her mind woke belatedly, her face smoothed. He watched her annoyance disappear behind a facade of politeness. "How may I help you, Inspector?" Why did she bother to swallow justifiable irritation? Did police make her that nervous? Perhaps it was to observe this very reaction, to see what she might tolerate to avoid hassles, that he had persisted on the bell. "I'm sorry to wake you," he lied. "I have a couple of important questions to ask." She squinted at him from under the sunshade of her hand, then stepped back. "Come in." Moving with the heavy slowness of someone fighting a body reluctant to wake up, she led the way to the living room. Heavy drapes shut out the afternoon light, leaving the room in artificial night. She switched on one lamp and waved him into its pool of light. She herself, however, sat in shadow in a suspended basket chair across from the chair by the lamp. A deliberate maneuver on her part? "This couldn't wait until I got to the club?" Weariness leaked through the careful modulation of her voice. "I'll be off duty by that time. I try not to work nights if I can help it; the police budget can't stand too much overtime." "I see. Well, then, ask away, Inspector." With her face only a pale blur beyond the reach of the light, Garreth found himself listening closely to her voice, to read her through it, and discovered with surprise that she did not sound like he felt she should. Inexplicably, the voice discorded with the rest of her. "Can you remember what you and Mossman talked about Tuesday night?" She paused before answering. "Not really. We flirted and made small talk. I'm afraid I paid little attention to most of it even while we were talking. Surely it isn't important." "We're hoping that something he said can give us a clue to where he went after leaving the Barbary Now. Did he happen to mention any friends in the city?" "He was far too busy arguing why we should become friends." Suddenly Garreth realized why her voice seemed at odds with the rest of her. She did not talk like someone in her twenties. Where was the slang everyone else used? Just listening to her, she sounded more like his mother. What was that she had called him at the door? A mick. Who called Irishmen micks these days? Garreth looked around, trying to learn more about her from the apartment, but could see little beyond the circle of lamplight. The illumination reached [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |