Bleeders, page 19
part #27 of Nameless Detective Series
“Evening,” he said. Torpid voice, too. “Help you?”
“Are you Adam Manganaris?”
“I am.” His accent was discernible but faint, blurred by his years on U.S. soil; if I hadn’t known he was Australian, I might not have been able to identify it.
I told him who I was. Nothing changed in his face or eyes, yet I had the sense that he recognized my name. I tried to give him one of my business cards; he wouldn’t take it. So I laid it on the counter, face up, and pushed it toward him. He pretended it wasn’t there.
“I’m looking for your son, Mr. Manganaris.”
No response. His gaze held steady on mine.
“Is he here?”
No response.
“Been here recently?”
No response.
“How long since you’ve seen or heard from him?”
He said slowly, “I have no son.”
“Harold. Also known as Dingo.”
No response.
“He’s in trouble. The worst kind of trouble.”
Face like a chunk of eroded limestone, eyes like cloudy imbedded agates. “I have no son,” he said again.
Enough pussyfooting around. I did not want to hurt the old man, but I’d been hurt too much myself to pull any punches. If the brutal approach was the only way to rouse answers out of him, then that was the one I’d use and the hell with it.
“Do you read the San Francisco papers, Mr. Manganaris?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. You also watch TV, I’ll bet. You know there’s an ongoing police investigation involving two murders and the theft of seventy-five thousand dollars in cash entrusted to my care. You also know that I came close to being a third murder victim myself.”
Silence.
“The man who pulled the trigger on me and on Carolyn Dain and Jay Cohalan is your son. Like it or not, that’s God’s honest truth.”
Not a flicker of reaction.
“Harold and a woman named Annette Byers planned the whole thing. They had the cash for a while, but neither of them has it any more. She’s already in custody. It’s only a matter of time until he’s caught, but I want to see it happen before anyone else dies or gets hurt.”
Silence.
“I think there’s a good chance he came here,” I said. “You’re his father and the only person who can give him what he needs—money, shelter, a place to hide out.”
Adam Manganaris pushed off his stool in slow, arthritic movements, picked up the scrapbook and laid it on a shelf behind him. Several regular hardback books lined the rest of the shelf, all of them old and well read.
“Aiding and abetting a fugitive is a felony,” I said to his back. “What’s the sense in getting yourself in trouble with the law, too? Tell me where he is. It’s the best thing for you, the best thing for your son.”
Without turning: “How many times do I have to tell you, mate? I have no son.”
“In one of the cabins out back, maybe? A fugitive could hole up there for a while if he was careful.”
“None of the cabins is occupied.”
“How about I go out there and have a look?”
“I can’t stop you, can I.”
“No, you can’t.”
I left him and went outside. A big rig pounded past on the highway; otherwise I had the night to myself. I crossed to the closed-up service garage, tried the doors. Secure. There were two windows in the nearside wall, both dusty and speckled with ground-in dirt. I held my pencil flash up to the glass of one, but the light reflected off as much as penetrated the opaque surface. Same thing at the other window. I could make out the shapes of two vehicles inside, but that was all. It was impossible to determine makes or models.
The stand of cottonwoods grew beyond the garage and an unpaved road that led back to the cabins. I moved over into the trees, made my way behind the two cabins on the south side. Both had blank rear walls and uncurtained side and front windows; I took my time approaching each, the .38 held down tight against my right leg. The cabins’ window glass was cleaner, and quick flicks of the flash beam showed me sparse furnishings, no indication of occupancy.
The direct route to the other two cabins was across open ground. I didn’t care for the idea of that, so I went the long way—back through the trees, across the front of the garage, around on the far side of the store. Unnecessary precaution. The farthest of the north-side cabins was identical to the opposite pair, inside and out. The nearest cabin was dark and silent as well, but with a difference: the curtains were tightly drawn across both windows. I eased around to the door and tried the latch. Locked as tightly as the garage.
As I started back to the store, a car pulled in off the highway. I halted in the shadows as it rolled over to the gas pumps, but it was nothing for me to be concerned with—a battered DeSoto, the finned variety, driven by a lean young guy in a cowboy shirt and straw hat. His attention was on the pump when I came around the corner and went inside.
Adam Manganaris was back on his stool, eating a candy bar in little nibbling bites. He had loose false teeth, and on each bite they clicked like beads on a string. He didn’t stop eating as I approached him, said through a mouth full of chocolate, “Didn’t find anything, did you.”
“You told me all the cabins were empty. Why are the curtains closed in one of them?”
“That’s where I live.”
“Is that right? Alone?”
“Wife died eight years ago.”
“No relatives staying with you?”
“Don’t have any relatives. All dead.”
“You have a son.”
“No one, here or Down Under.”
“What part of Australia are you from?”
“Town near Brisbane. Why?”
“How long have you lived in this country?”
“Thirty-some years. Thirty-five, about.”
“So Harold was born in Australia.”
Instead of answering that, he took another bite of the candy bar. The sound his dentures made seemed subtly different to me now: the clicks were more like those of a revolver’s hammer cocking, then falling.
The bell over the door tinkled, and the guy in the cowboy shirt entered. He went to a side-wall cooler, extracted a six-pack of beer, brought it to the counter. “Hey, Adam,” he said. “How you been? Gettin’ much?”
“Only what you’re missin’, mate.”
Cowboy Shirt thought that was pretty funny. When he finished laughing he said, “Fifteen gallons unleaded. And a pack of Marlboros to go with this brew.”
Manganaris served him, rang up the sale.
“Only what I’m missin’,” Cowboy Shirt said, and laughed again, and went away and left us alone.
I said, “How much per night for one of your cabins?”
Surprise animated the cloudy eyes briefly. “Why?”
“I’m tired and I need a place to stay.”
“Here?”
“Why not? Unless you have a reason not to rent me a cabin.”
Manganaris thought about it. “Forty dollars,” he said.
“Fair enough.”
“In advance.”
I laid two twenties on the counter. He made them disappear into the cash register before he produced a key on a chain attached to a four-inch block of oak. The numeral 4 was burnt into the wood.
“Number Four the one next to yours?”
“No. Second in line across the way.”
“Nice and private.”
“Right. Nice and private.”
“There a cafe or truck stop nearby? I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“None open now. Closest is in Hollister.”
“I don’t feel much like driving that far. You have any packaged sandwiches?”
He gestured to the side-wall cooler. Skimpy selection: egg salad, lettuce and tomato, ham and cheese. I took the ham and cheese, added a small bag of potato chips from a rack on my way back to the counter.
“Nothing to drink?” Manganaris asked.
“Hot coffee, if you have it.”
“No hot coffee.”
I went and got a half-pint of milk. He rang up the sale, I paid him, he made change and bagged the items with his good left hand. Deliberately, then, he turned his back on me and picked up and opened one of the hardback books. I caught a glimpse of the title. A Masque of Mercy by Robert Frost. An Australian country storekeeper who read pastoral American poetry. Well, why not? People don’t fit into easy little stereotypes. I knew that as well as, if not better than, anyone.
In the car, I called Kerry and told her where I was and that I was staying the night and didn’t know yet how long I would be away. She’d spoken to Tamara so she knew how some of the day had gone; I filled her in quickly on the rest. I told her not to worry, and she told me to watch myself, and when I hung up I felt very much alone.
I drove down to cabin four, parked in front, and locked the car. Inside there was a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, a twenty-year-old TV on a stand, and a single sturdy-looking chair. I closed the curtains, bolted the door, set the chair under the knob for added security. The Colt Bodyguard I laid on the nightstand. Then I sat on the bed and ate my meager dinner: half the sandwich, a few of the chips, most of the milk.
It was quiet there, the highway far enough away so I couldn’t hear the traffic sounds. I kept listening and hearing nothing but an occasional creak or rattle or wind whisper. After a while I lay down, the meal like a clot under my breastbone, and wondered if I were wasting my time. I didn’t think so. There was something for me at the Outback Oasis—either Dingo himself or a line on his whereabouts. I was convinced of it.
And yet I could not quite get a handle on the old man. Why had he kept saying that he had no son? Knew what Dingo was and was ashamed of him? Maybe. But then why hadn’t he been more straightforward with me? Why force me to play cat and mouse?
I got up and took a quick shower in mostly cold water and turned out the lights and slipped into bed in my underwear, transferring the .38 to a place under the second pillow where I could get at it more easily. And then I lay there, listening and waiting.
Nothing happened.
Eventually I slept, jerked awake at some sound, real or imaginary, slept and woke and slept and woke for most of the night. Toward morning, I slept soundly for a couple of hours. Nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen—and nothing did.
TWENTY-TWO
RESTLESSNESS DROVE ME OUT OF BED AND INTO my clothes at seven o’clock. With the gun in my coat pocket, I went outside for a look around. The morning was clear, chilly, and empty except for a couple of passing cars. But Adam Manganaris was up; his cabin, like the store, was outfitted with a woodstove because smoke drifted from a squat chimney.
I walked along the driveway, taking my time, and cut over along the side wall of the garage. The first of the windows was too dirty to see through even in daylight, but at the second I found a fairly clear spot on a lower pane. One of the vehicles inside was a dented, rusted pickup that no doubt belonged to the old man. The other, what I could make out of it, had the right lines to be an Olds Cutlass. I couldn’t be sure, though, and I couldn’t see the license plate.
I considered breaking in, but if Adam Manganaris caught me, it would give him a means to get rid of me and end the stalemate. Besides, it didn’t really matter if the car was Dingo’s Olds or some other make that belonged to him. There wouldn’t be anything left in it to tell me where he was. The only way I was going to find that out was from the old man.
Brace him again now? No. Let him stew awhile longer, give him something to think about.
Back at cabin four, I left the key inside and then started the car and let it warm up, revving the engine in case he hadn’t already been alerted. The door to his cabin stayed shut. After four or five minutes, I drove out to the highway and turned west toward Hollister.
It took me a while to find a cafe. Coffee, orange juice, some toast. Two refills on the coffee. And then a leisurely return trip to the Outback Oasis. The whole process took the better part of two hours. It was just nine o’clock when I parked near the store.
Manganaris had already opened for business; the Open sign was prominent in the window. Inside I found him on his stool, reading. Nothing changed in his expression when he looked up and saw me. He seemed just as listless and stoic today.
“So you’re back,” he said.
“You think I’d gone away for good?”
“Didn’t think much about it at all.”
Sure you didn’t. “You’re open early,” I said.
“Nine to nine, every day except Monday.”
“Long hours, unless you have an employee.”
“Just me. At my age, what else am I going to do with my time except read and eat? And I can do those here as well as anywhere.”
I said, “I took a look inside your garage this morning.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Through one of the windows. The car in there belongs to your son.
“Think so, do you?”
“Where is he, Mr. Manganaris?”
No response.
“I’m not going away, you know. Not today or any day until you tell me where he is.”
No response.
“He murdered my client in cold blood, a woman who never did him or anyone else any harm. Forced her to lie facedown on her bed and pressed a gun to the back of her head and executed her. He did the same thing to Jay Cohalan. Would have done the same to me except that the gun jammed. That’s why I won’t go away.”
Emotion, like a ghost image, flickered in his eyes and for an instant changed the shape of his expression. He said, “The bloody gun jammed on you?”
“That’s right. By the grace of God. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here right now. You believe in God?”
He nodded.
“How about justice?”
Another nod.
“Then tell me where Harold is. Put an end to this before it’s too late and he kills somebody else.”
“He won’t kill anyone else,” Manganaris said.
“He might. He’s psychotic, whether you want to believe it or not.”
“I believe it.”
“Well then?”
For almost a minute he looked at me, or through me, without blinking. Then he said in blunted tones, “You win, mister. No point in lying to you anymore. It’s the same as lying to myself.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him.”
“Just tell me where I can find him.”
“No. I’ll take you. My way or not at all.”
I weighed it on both sides. If I pushed him, he might change his mind and close off again. And with the old man along, there would seem to be less chance of a violent confrontation. Unless this was some kind of trap. To look at him, frail and dispassionate, with that crippled wrist, you wouldn’t take him for a dangerous or deceitful man. But Dingo was still his flesh and blood. Some men would do anything, anything at all, to protect a loved one.
I said, “You know that I’m armed.”
“Figured you were.”
“I won’t hesitate to use my weapon if I have to.”
“You won’t have to.”
“No?”
“He don’t have his gun anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“I’ve got it. In my cabin.”
“How’d you get it away from him?”
No reply.
“Is he hurt in some way? Sick?”
“You’ll see when we get where we’re going.”
I would not pry anything more out of him there, that was plain. And I intended to make the trip no matter what the situation; this q. and a. was only prolonging things. I said, “All right,” and Manganaris hoisted himself off the stool and came out from behind the counter.
While he reversed the sign in the window, I took a good look at his clothing: rumpled pair of slacks, white shirt, old, patched pullover sweater. The sweater was tight enough around his thin torso so that a concealed weapon was unlikely. He could have had a hideout gun strapped to his ankle under a pants leg, but that was paranoid thinking. In his arthritic condition, with that bad wrist, how could he hope to get at it and then use it?
Outside, I asked him as he locked up, “How far do we have to go?”
“Not far.”
“I’ll drive, you tell me where.”
We got into my car. He directed me east on the highway, and we rode in silence for a few miles. Manganaris sat bent-backed, eyes straight ahead, hands gripping his knees. In the bright daylight, the knobbed bone on his wrist looked as big as a plum.
Abruptly he said, more to himself than to me, “’Home is the place where.’ ”
“How’s that again?”
“ ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ ”
“Sounds like a quotation.”
‘“Tis. From a poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Death of the Hired Man.‘ You read Frost?”
“Not since I was a kid.”
“I like him. Makes sense to me, more than a lot of them.”
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The words ran around inside my head like song lyrics. No, like a chant or an invocation—all subtle rhythm and gathering power. The nature and meaning of the quote were plain enough. Now I knew something more about Adam Manganaris, and something more about his relationship with his son.
We turned off on a county road, traveled another couple of silent miles through sun-struck farmland. Alfalfa and wine grapes, mostly. A private farm road came up on the right; Manganaris told me to turn there. It had once been a good road, unpaved but well graded, but that had been a long time ago. Now there were deep grooves in it and weeds and thistles and tall grass between the ruts. Not used much these days. It led along the shoulder of a bare hill, then up to the crest. From there I could see where it terminated.
The Outback Oasis was a dying place, with not much time left. The farm below was already dead—years dead. The buildings were grouped alongside a shallow creek where willows and cottonwoods grew, in the tuck where two hillocks came together: farmhouse, barn, two chicken coops, a shedlike outbuilding. Skeletons now, all of them, broken and half-hidden by high grass and shrubs and tangles of wild berry vines. Climbing primroses covered part of the house from foundation to roof, bright pink in the sunlight even at this time of year, like a gaudy fungus.
