When you first meet someone of your own sex that you like right away, no matter how hetero you are, you tend to go through something resembling courtship. When the other guy is equally outgoing, ordinary things sink into a temporary limbo: time, previous appointments, even mealtimes.
That's how it had been with me and Quent, and it happened again with Norm. The reason he and his staff assistant had still been at the office was that the Goldman suite and Sonmiani's office were over-and-under, in one of the smaller of those old Alameda buildings respiffed in the style they call Elerath Post-Industrial. I guessed that Sonmiani did a healthy business because the whole two-story structure was theirs.
It was a few minutes after five, but Goldman had said he'd leave the front door unlocked. Following the signs, I moved down a hallway formed by partitioning off a strip from the offices, which I could see through the glassed partition. One man was still in there, wearing a headset and facing a big flat screen. He looked up and waved, and I waved back, and he motioned for me to continue.
The place must have once doubled as a warehouse to judge from the vintage—now trendy again and clean as a cat's fang—freight elevator. I obeyed its sign, tugging up on a barrier which met its descending twin at breastbone height. It whirred to life on its own, a bit shaky after all those years of service, and a moment later I saw a pair of soft Bally sandals come into view under nicely creased allosuede slacks. A pale yellow dress shirt with open collar followed, and finally I saw a tanned, well-chiseled face looking at mine. Hands on hips, he grinned. I couldn't blame him; I'd forgotten how I was dressed.
We introduced ourselves before he jerked a thumb toward the glass door of what might have been an office, but turned out to be his digs. "Sorry about the time," I said, as he ushered me into a big airy room with an eclectic furniture mix: futon, modern couch, inflatable chairs, and a wet bar. And some guy-type pictures, one of which had nothing to do with ships. I thought it would stand a closer look if I got the time. "I tend to forget other people keep regular hours," I added.
"Couldn't resist your opening," he said, with a wave of his hand that suggested I could sit anyplace, and I chose the couch. "Anyone looking for the same crew member I'm looking for, is someone I want to meet. Besides, I've never met a real live—ah, is 'pee-eye' an acceptable buzz phrase?" He had heavy expressive brows that showed honest concern at the question, and big dark eyes that danced with lively interest. "And if it's not, would some sour mash repair the damage?" His accent was Northeast, I guessed New York, and in Big Apple tempo.
"Maybe later," I said. "But P.I. is a term always in vogue."
"As long as I'm on Goldman time, I'll have a beer," he said, and bounced up like a man who played a lot of tennis. He uncapped a Pilsener Urquell from a cooler behind the bar, dipped its neck toward me, then took a swig of the brew before sitting down again. "We've about given up on Park, by the way. Do you suppose the dumb slope has gotten himself in some kind of trouble?"
I admitted I didn't know. "That's what the client wants us to find out. At this point, we're hoping his personal effects aboard ship might point us in some direction. With your authorization, of course, Mr. Goldman. That's what we had in mind."
He nodded abstractedly. "Don't know why not. And hey, my father is Mr. Goldman, God forbid you should mix us up." His grin was quick and infectious. "It's Norm; okay?"
I'd intended to keep this on a semiformal level but with Norm it was simply not possible. I insisted on "Harve," and asked him if he ever felt ill at ease dealing with Moslem skippers. He got a kick from that; a ship's captain might be Allah on the high seas, said Norm, but they knew who signed their checks. "No, it's the poor ragheads who aren't all that easy about me." He laughed. "But Sonmiani's directors include some pretty canny guys. As long as I keep cargoes coming and going better than the last rep, what's to kvetch about?
"Actually the skipper probably will anyway. Gent with a beard, named something-Nadwi. A surly lot, Harve, especially when they're behind schedule." He stopped himself suddenly, shot a quick glance at me. "I don't suppose it's my bosses who put you onto our man's trail. Nobody's told me, but they don't always tell the left hand what its thumb is doing. In a way I hope it is them."
"Against my charter to identify a client, but let's just say it's someone worried about a young guy who's a long way from home," I said. A hint that broad was, as Quent had said, bending the rules a bit but that wasn't why I felt a wisp of guilt. I felt it because I knew our real client wasn't a deceased Korean.
Norm was understanding. He said he'd seen Park Soon exactly once, and that, while he was making his own inquiries, a couple of the crew who had their papers had claimed they saw the engineer in a bar. "They may have been mistaken. Or—hell, I don't know. You couldn't pick a more suspicious mix than we have on the Ras Ormara. Schmucks will lie just for practice. You can't entirely blame them, you know. Some skippers skim company food allowances intended for the crews, though I don't believe Nadwi does. I won't have it, by God, and our skippers know it. There's a backhander or two that I can't avoid in half the foreign ports. A lot of their manning agencies are corrupt—"
"Backhander?"
"Kickback, bribe. It's just part of doing business in some ports, and the poor ragheads know it, but they never get a dime of the action. Same-old, same-old," he chanted, shook his head, and took another slug of Urquell.
His shirt pocket warbled, and he tapped it without looking. "Goldman," he said, not bothering to keep the conversation private from me. I was struck by the openness of everything, the offices, Norm's apartment, his dealings with people.
"I'm about squared away here, guv," said a voice with a faint Brit flavor. "Thought I'd nip out for a bite."
"Why not? You've been on Kaplan time for," Norm consulted a very nice Omega on his wrist, "a half hour. Oh! Mike, would you mind running up here a minute first? Gentleman in an unusual business here I want you to meet."
The voice agreed, sounding slightly put-upon, and after he rang off I realized it must be the man I'd seen in the office. It was obvious that Norm Goldman had the same view of formalities that I did, but something about his decisive manner said he might crack a whip if need be. I decided he was older than I'd first thought; maybe forty, but a very hip forty.
Then I took a closer look at that framed picture on his wall, a colorful numbered print showing one formula car overtaking another as a third slid helplessly toward a tire barrier. It was the Grand Prix of Israel, Norm said, adding that he was a hopeless fan. I said I shared his failing; worse, that I had half the bits and pieces of an off-road single-seater in my workshop awaiting the chassis I'd build. He crossed his arms and sighed and, beaming at me, said he might have known.
A quick two-beat knock, and Mike Kaplan entered without waiting. He was swarthy and slim, with very close-cropped dark hair and a nose old-time cartoonists used to draw as a sort of Jewish I.D. His forearms said he'd done a lot of hard work in his time. I got up. Norm didn't, waving a hand from one of us to the other as we shook hands. "Mike Kaplan, Harve Rackham. Mike's my second, and when we're both out of the office, our young tomcat Ira Meltzer holds down the fort. Ira's not in his rooms—where the hell is Ira—as if it were any of my effing business," Norm added with a smile.
Mike said how would he know, and Norm shrugged it off. "Let me guess," Mike said to me. "Wrestler on the telly?"
"That's me," I said, and pulled up my pants. "Harve, the Terrible Tourist."
"Come on," Mike said, because Norm was chuckling.
"I didn't know they existed anymore, Mike, but you are looking at a private eye. In disguise, I hope," said his boss, enjoying the moment. When Mike didn't react, he said, "As in, private investigator. You know: Sam Spade."
Mike Kaplan's face lit up then, and his second glance at me was more appraising and held a lot more friendly interest. "Personally, I'd be inclined to tell him whatever he wants to know," he said to Norm. I must have outweighed him by fifty kilos.
"If you knew, you might. But that would more likely be the job of the Ras Ormara's skipper," Norm replied. "You're better at those names than I am."
Mike shook his head in mock censure. "If you worked at it as I do, you'd get along better with them," he said. "Captain Hassan al-Nadwi, you mean." As Norm nodded, Mike Kaplan went on, "And what do we need from that worthy?"
I told him, and admitted we needed to look at the engineer's effects as soon as possible—meaning the next day.
Mike allowed as how al-Nadwi would put up a pro forma bitch, but it shouldn't really be a problem if I didn't mind a lot of silent stares, and people on board who suddenly seemed to know no English at all. He said he'd call the skipper, stroke him a little, lean on him a little. Al-Nadwi knew who held the face cards. Piece of cake, he said.
Norm said he gathered I wasn't working alone, and I told him about Quentin Kim, apologizing for the oversight. "If Park Soon left any notes in Hangul," I said, "it'd be Quent who could read them. He speaks Korean, of course; that's probably why he got the case. I'd be just as useful chasing down other leads."
Norm donated a quizzical look. "I didn't realize there were other leads."
New friend or not, there are times when you see you're about to step over the line. That can reach around and bite you or your friend sometimes in ways you can't predict. I said, "There may not be. If there were, I couldn't discuss them. 'Course, if Quent stumbled on one, it wouldn't surprise me if you got wind of it later." I let my expression say, the game's a bastard but rules are rules.
"I respect that. Can't say I understand it, but I respect it," said Norm.
"Good," I said. "So for all I know, Quent may come alone to the ship and send me off in another direction."
Norm's reaction warmed my heart. "But—I was going to go along because you were," he said. "Spring for lunch, pick your brains about racing—uh-unh; you've got to go along, Harve."
"I'll try, but it's Quent's call. He's my boss," I said.
A sly half smile, and one lifted brow, from Norm. "Well," he said softly, reasonably, "just tell him the real call is Norm Goldman's. And Goldman is an unreasonable asshole."
Mike Kaplan laughed out loud and jerked his head toward Norm while looking at me. "I've been saying that for ages," he said.
After Kaplan promised to set up a visit to the ship for me and Quent, he left us. I told Norm that just about cleared my decks for the day, and said I'd take one of those Czech beers if the offer was still open. We jawed about our tastes in racing—I couldn't see his fascination with dragsters; he thought karts were kid stuff. He showed me around his place while we discussed Norm's good luck in falling heir to a floor of rooms that split so nicely into three apartments. Whatever Sonmiani paid their seamen, Norm and his staff obviously were in no fiscal pain. Finally, we bonded a little closer over the fact that both of us placed high value in working with people we liked.
I promised Norm he'd like Quent because they shared a subdued sense of humor, though he might find my old pal oddly conservative considering the career he chose. That was the chief way, I said, that Quent's ethnicity showed.
Norm said believe it or not, I'd find Kaplan had a touch of the prude. He added that it couldn't be the man's Liverpool upbringing, so maybe it was the Sephardic Jew surfacing in him. It was a comfort, he said, to know he could be gone a week and feel confident that the office was secure in the hands of Mike Kaplan. I'd find Ira Meltzer a frank Manhattan skirt-chaser, he said, which could get a bit wearing but Ira was a real mensch for hard work.
I tried to call Quent about the good news, but got his tape. I didn't call Dana Martin because I didn't want to seem secretive, and I sure wasn't going to talk with a Fed in front of Norm.
And when he suggested we go looking for dinner—on him, or rather on Sonmiani, he reminded me—I said it might be better if we called a pizza in because I was tired of people looking at me funny. I was catching on to his dry humor by then, and laughed when he said with a straight face that he couldn't imagine why they might.
"Pizza's a good idea," he said, "but we could order it from anywhere. How about from your workshop?"
He was as serious about it as most race-car freaks, and the idea of a forty-minute drive didn't dismay him. It was long odds against a deliveryman finding my place, I said, but we could pick that pizza up on the way. He'd be driving back alone for the first few miles on dark country roads, I cautioned. He said he had a decent Sony mapper, so he was up for it if I was, but if I had any objection we could do it another time.
Objection? Hell, this would be the first time I could recall that I'd had two guests in one week, and I said as much while we rode the rocking old elevator down.
Eventually, using our phones while he followed me out of town in his enviable, cherried-out classic black Porsche Turbo, I suggested we save time by my cobbling up a couple of reubens on my woodstove. He agreed, and when we hit the country roads I tried Quent again without success.
Now I could call our pet Feeb, who sounded slightly impressed that I was still at work. She liked it even better that Sonmiani's people were receptive to our private search and would help us snoop aboard ship, the next day.
Quent, she said, had taken the LOC-8 with its hidden spectral analyzer after playing with it under lab tutelage. She thought he might be cruising around Richmond trying to find crewman Hong Chee. Reception, especially in some of the popular basement dives, wasn't all that reliable. I told myself Quent could cruise the ethnic bars better as a singleton and besides, I was working in a way, schmoozing with a guy who could hinder or help us. No doubt Quent would call me when he was ready.
Dana wasn't so happy with my suggestion that the Feds canvass airline reservation lists scheduled for the next few days, just to see if they got any hits on the Ras Ormara's crewlist. Did she think it was pointless? Maybe not entirely, she admitted, before she hung up. I still think Dana was simply pissed because she hadn't already gotten around to it.
No need to worry about Norm Goldman's ability to keep my pickup in sight. He stayed glued to my back bumper, perhaps to prove that he had a racer's soul. But Jesus! A Pooch Turbo tailing an old Toyota trash hauler? My sister Shar could've done it. Even so, he must've bottomed his pan following me up the lane to my place. A moment later my phone chirped.
I hoped it was Quent, but, "Harve? Is this a gag? How much farther is it," asked a slightly subdued Norm.
I asked if he could spot the old white clapboard farmhouse past the orchard ahead, and he said yes. "That's it. We're on my acreage now," I said. With hindsight, I think he had started to wonder whether his new friend had something unfriendly in mind for him.
My workshop was still more than half smithy then, a short walk from the house, and we parked beside it. I toggled a key-ring button that unlocked the side door, and its sensor lit the shop up for us as I approached.
Norm stepped inside with the diffidence of an acolyte in a cathedral, ready to be awed by a genuine racing-car shop. It may have been a disappointment. The most significant stuff I had on hand was the specialized running gear, protectively bagged in inert argon gas, but he spent more time studying my half-sized chassis drawings and the swoopy lines I had lofted to show the body shells I hadn't molded yet. When I saw him rubbing his upper arms I realized it was chilly for him. "You might enjoy looking at some recent off-road race videos," I said, "while I get the kitchen stove warmed. Or you could sit on top of the stove," I cracked. "Takes about ten minutes to get that cast-iron woodhog of mine up to correct temperature."
So we closed up the shop and I used my century-old key to get us past the kitchen door. I explained my conceit, keeping the upstairs part of the house turn-of-another-century except for a few sensible improvements: media center, smoke and particulate detectors, a deionizer built into a squat wooden 1920s icebox. I couldn't recall whether I'd left any notes on my desk or screen downstairs, so I didn't mention my setup there.
I showed Norm to the media center in my parlor, swore to him that the couch wouldn't collapse, and left him with a holocube of the recent Sears Point Grand Prix. I'd be lying if I said I was worried about Quent, but while rustling up the corned beef, cheese, and other munchables necessary to a reuben I kept expecting him to call. I thought he might wind up his day by driving out, and we could all schmooze together. I thought wrong.
Just for the hell of it, I opened a bottle of Oregon early muscat for our sandwiches. A bit on the sweet side, but, to make a point, I reminded Norm that Catalonians serve it to special guests and I admired their style.
After supper we skimmed more holocubes and played some old CDs, and I was yarning about the time I had to evade a biker bunch when I heard my phone. It had to be Quent, I thought; and in a way it was. I said, "Sorry, you never know," to Norm, went into the back bedroom, and answered.
It was Dana, terse and angry. "You won't like this any better than I do," she warned me, and asked where I was.
I told her, and added, "I sure don't like it when I don't know what's up, boss lady. Tell me."
She did, and a flush of prickly heat spread from the back of my neck down my arms. I only half heard the essentials, but every word would replay itself in my mind during my drive back to Richmond.
"Give me a half hour," I said. "The Sonmiani rep is here with me. He might be some help tracing some of the crew's movements if there's a connection."
"Say nothing tonight; Sonmiani might be one of those firms that demand advocacy no matter what."
"Firms like yours," I said grimly, and regretted it in the same moment. "Forgive me, I'm—I need to go out and slug a tree. See you in thirty."
Norm must have been sensitive to body language because he stood up as I stumped through the parlor door. I told him I had to drive back into town as soon as I changed clothes. To his question I said it wasn't anything he could help with; just a case that had taken a new turn. He asked whether my Korean boss let me go along on the Ras Ormara thing. I replied that there wasn't much doubt I'd make it, and promised to give him an early-morning call. Then I hurried into my bedroom for a quick change, my hands shaking.
As I slapped the closures on my sneakers I heard the Porsche start up, and Norm was long gone when my tires hit country-road macadam. Not so long gone that I didn't almost catch him nearing Concord. I hung back enough to let him find the freeway before me. After all, there wasn't any need for breaking records now; hard driving was simply the only way I could use up all that adrenaline before I met the Feds off the freeway in East Richmond, near the foothills. I kept thinking that from downtown Richmond to some very steep ravines was only five minutes or so. And wondering whether my buddy Quent had still been alive during the trip.
Linked to Dana by phone, I found the location a block off the main drag, a long neon strip of used-car lots and commercial garages. Evidently Dana's people had shooed the locals away, though a pair of uniformed cops still hung around waiting to control the nonexistent crowd, and I seemed to be it. The guys doing the real work wore identical, reversible dark jackets. I knew that "f b i" would be printed on the inner surfaces of those jacket backs and, when Dana waved me forward, a strobe flash made me blink.
I saw the chalk outline before I spotted the partially blanketed figure on a foldable gurney in the extrawide unmarked van. The chalk lines revealed that Quent had been found with his legs in the street, torso in the gutter, head and one arm up on the curb. The stain at the head oval looked black, but it wouldn't in daylight.
We said nothing until I followed Dana into the van, sitting on jump seats barely out of the way of a forensics woman who was monitoring instruments while she murmured into her headset. The gadget she occasionally used looked like my StudyFrail but probably cost ten times as much. I leaned forward, saw the misshapen contours of a face I had known well. I knew better than to touch him. I think I moaned, "Awww, Quent."
"He was deceased before he struck the curb, if it's any consolation," said Dana. "Long enough before, that he lost very little blood on impact. Presumption is that someone dropped him from a moving vehicle."
I couldn't help wondering what I'd been doing at the time. Nodding toward the forensics tech, I managed to mutter, "Got a time of death?"
Dana said, "Ninety minutes, give or take." I would've been licking my fingers right about then. "We thought it might have been accidental at first."
"For about ten seconds," said the tech dryly. She wasn't missing anything. Her gloved hand lifted Quentin Kim's lifeless wrist. It was abraded and bruised. She pointed delicately with her pinkie at the bluish fingertips. The nails of the smallest two fingers were missing. The cuticles around the other nails were swollen and rimmed with faint bloodstains, and the ends of the nails had been roughened as if chewed by some tiny animal. "He still had a heartbeat when this was done," she added.
"Pliers," I said, and she grunted assent. "Somebody wanted something out of him. But how could pulling out fingernails be lethal," I asked, shuddering by reflex as I tried to imagine the agony of my close friend, a friend who had originally hired me for physical backup. Fat lot of good I had done him. . . .
The tech didn't answer until she glanced at Dana, who nodded without a word. "Barring a coronary, it couldn't. But repeated zaps of a hundred thousand volts will give you that coronary. Zappers that powerful are illegal, but I believe Indonesian riot control used them for a while. The fingernails told me to look for something else. Nipples, privates, lips, other sites densely packed with nerve endings."
"I'll take your word for it," I said. She was implying torture by people who were good at it, and I lacked the objectivity to view the evidence.
"But that's not where I found the trauma," said the tech. "It showed up as electrical burn marks in a half dozen places where a pair of contact points had been pressed at the base of the skull, under the hair. Not too hard to locate if you know what you're looking for. The brain stem handles your most basic life support; breathing, that sort of thing. Electrocute it hard, several times, and it's all over."
"It's not over," I growled.
"It is for him," the woman said, then looked into my eyes and blinked at whatever she saw. "Got it," she mumbled, going back to her work.
"Under the circumstances," Dana said, not unkindly, "you may want to break this one off without prejudice. Even though there may be no connection between this and the particular case you're working. Quentin had other active cases, and we know he's not above working two at once, don't we?"
"I resent that word 'above.' We also know how we'd bet, if we were betting," I said.
"You are betting, Rackham. And stakes don't go much higher than this."
Neither of us could have dreamed how wrong she was, but I could dream about avenging my pal. I said, "I'm feeling lucky. Where's that LOC-8 with the analyzer? I'll learn to use it by tomorrow. Maybe Norm Goldman can divert some people's attention. He'll be with me."
She said she'd be glad to, if she knew where it was. "It might be in Quentin's Volvo; the Richmond force is on it, too. It could turn up at any time," she said.
She led me out of the van again and into its nightshadow. "There's not much point in going aboard that ship until we find you an analyzer. Preferably the one Quent had. Don't contact Goldman's people again until we do."
"He might call me. We hit it off pretty well, and he could be an asset," I said.
"He may be, at that," she said as if to herself, then sighed and shifted her mental gears with an almost audible clash. "You may as well go home, there's nothing you can do here. I called you in only because I knew you two were close." A pause. "You'd have told me if Quentin had called you tonight. Wouldn't you?"
"About what?"
"About anything. Answer my question," she demanded.
Before that tart riposte was fully out of her mouth I said, "Of course I'd tell you! What is this, anyway?" When she only shook her head, I went on, "I kept my phone on me at all times because I kept hoping he'd call. I was getting uncomfortable because, normally, he'd have called just for routine's sake. I called him a couple of times, that's easy enough for you to check. I'd like to know where you're going with this."
"So you don't feel just a touch of, well, like you'd let him down, left him waiting? A little guilty?"
Her tone was gentle. In another woman I might've called it wheedling. And that told me a lot. "Goddamned right I feel guilty! I did let him down, but not because I put him off when he called. He never called, Martin. Why don't you just say 'dereliction of duty' and be done with it? And be glad you're half my size when you say it."
I turned and stalked off before she could make me any madder, wondering how I was going to get any sleep, wishing Quent had called in so I'd know where he'd gone. Wishing I had that LOC-8 so I'd have a reason to go aboard the Ras Ormara. And suddenly I realized how important it was that I find the gadget for its everyday use. Hadn't Dana said she'd be glad to lend me the damn thing if she knew where it was?
I was pretty sure where it would be: in the breakaway panel of the driver's side door in the Volvo. Quent had padded the pocket so he could keep a sidearm or special evidence of a case literally at hand.
But the Volvo was missing. If it were downtown, it should already have been spotted. If it was a Fed priority, the Highway Patrol would have picked it up five minutes after it hit a freeway. Very likely someone had hidden it, maybe after using it to dump poor Quent along Used Car Row. Maybe it was in the bay. Maybe parked in a quiet neighborhood, where it might not be noticed for a day or so. Maybe in a chop shop someplace, already being dismantled for parts for other used cars. . . .
Used Car Row! What better place to dump an upscale used car? I fired up my Toyota and drove slowly past the nearest lot, noting that a steel cable stretched at thigh height from light pole to light pole, with cars parked so that no one could cruise through the lot or hot-wire a heap and cruise out with it. Or dump a stolen car there.
Several long blocks later I lucked out, not in a car lot but at the end of a row of cars outside a body-and-fender shop. I hadn't remembered the license; it was that inside rearview of Quent's that stretched halfway across the windshield just like mine did, one of those after-market gimmicks every P.I. needs during a stakeout or traffic surveillance.
Pulling on gloves, I parked the pickup out of sight and flicked my pocket flash against the Volvo's steering column. The keys were in the ignition. Knowing Quent as I did, I avoided touching the door plate. In fact, though the racket should have brought every cop in town, I didn't touch the car until, on my fourth try, the old bent wheel rim I'd scrounged managed to cave in the driver's side window, scattering little cubes of glass everywhere.
By that time the alarm's threep, threep, whooeeeet, wheeeoot parodied a mockingbird from hell and for about thirty seconds I expected to see gentlemen of the public safety persuasion descending on the scene. Only after I got the keys out and unlocked the driver's side door did the alarm run out of birdseed and blessed silence overtook the place once more.
Fed forensics are better than most folks think, so while I intended to tell Dana what I'd done, I wanted it to be at a time of my choosing. That's why I didn't climb inside the car. I just opened the driver's door and checked the spring-loaded door panel.
And good old Quent, following his procedures as always, had squirreled away the Feds' tricky little LOC-8 right where it would be handy, and whoever had left the Volvo there hadn't suspected the breakaway panel. I pocketed the gadget, left the keys in the ignition again, and drove like a sober citizen back to the freeway and home. I could hardly wait to check out the LOC-8's memory. Every centimeter of its movements through the whole evening would have been recorded—unless Quent or someone else had erased it.
The normal functions of the LOC-8's little screen hadn't been compromised, so I was able to scroll through its travels beginning with Quent's departure from the Sunnyvale lab early in the evening. I brewed strong Java and sipped as I made longhand notes with pen on paper at my kitchen table. Say what you will about old-fashioned methods, nothing helps me assemble thoughts like notes on paper.
Quent had driven back via the Bay Bridge to Richmond at his ordinary sedate pace, and the Volvo had stopped for two minutes or so halfway down a block in the neighborhood where he had spoken earlier in the day with the so-called machinist. If he hadn't found a parking slot, I guessed he had double-parked.
Next he had driven half a mile, and here the LOC-8 had stayed for over an hour. At max magnification it showed he must have used a parking lot because the Volvo had been well off the street. I noted the location so I could interview the parking attendant, if any. From the locale, I figured Quent had been cruising the ethnic bars and game palaces, maybe looking for our missing engineer or, still more likely, the machinist's roomie. Then the car had left its spot, found the freeway, and headed south through Oakland to the Alameda, not in any special hurry.
But when the Volvo's trail traversed a long block for the second time, I checked the intersections. There was no mistake: Quent had circled the Sonmiani offices a couple of times, then parked in an adjacent alleyway, the same one Norm used for his Porsche as access to the garage entrance of the first-floor offices. As well as I could recall, I hadn't been gone from there long when Quent arrived to do his usual careful survey of the whole layout before committing himself. That would fit if he'd intended to meet someone like Mike Kaplan or the other guy I hadn't met—Meltzer. Someone whose phone number he didn't have. Maybe he had been confident I was still there.
But if he had been trying to contact me, why hadn't he just grabbed his phone? Obviously he hadn't thought it was necessary. That meant he wasn't worried about his safety, because Quent had told me up front that he'd rented me, as it were, by the pound of gristle. And, like most P.I.s, Quent worked on the premise that discretion was the better part, et cetera. The P.I. species is often bred from insurance investigators, a few lawyers, ex-military types, and ex-cops. Guess which ones are most willing to throw discretion in the dumper. . . .
Despite the lateness of the hour, my first impulse was to call Norm and ask him a few questions about what, or whom, Quent might have met there. But what would he know? He'd been tailgating me out past Mt. Diablo at that time. Another thing: Nearing my place I had called Quent to no avail. Had he gone inside by then? Or he could have met someone in another car. Illegal entry wasn't Quent's style. I decided that if he had been looking for me, he'd have called before parking there. The car had stayed there for about five minutes and then its location cursor virtually disappeared, but not quite. With its signal greatly diminished, it said the Volvo had been driven into Norm's garage. There it had stayed for about an hour.
Then when the cursor suddenly appeared with a strong satellite signal, the Volvo went squirting through the Alameda as if someone were chasing it. It would've been dark by then as the cursor traced its way up the Nimitz Freeway to the Eastshore route, taking a turnoff near Richmond. I was feeling prickly heat as I keyed the screen back and forth between real time and fast-forward, because in real time Quent never drove with that kind of vigor.
I concluded he hadn't been driving by then. The Volvo had gone some distance up Wildcat Canyon near Richmond's outskirts, now driving more slowly, at times too slowly, then picking up the pace as it turned back toward the commercial district. There was no doubt in my mind where this jaunt would end, and for once I nailed it. The Volvo sizzled past the spot where a chalk outline now climbed a boulevard curb, turned off the main drag, and doubled back and forth on a service road before it stopped. The site was approximately where I had found the Volvo.
The screen said more than two hours passed before the cursor headed toward my place, duly recording the moment when I stole the gadget—recovered it, I mean; Dana had clearly said she wished she could lend it to me. Had she been lying? Probably, but it didn't matter. I had the gimmicked LOC-8 and I had time to fiddle with its hidden functions, having watched while Dana showed another one off while sitting on a park bench between me and Quent.
And I had something else: a cold hard knot of certainty that someone working for my new friend Norm Goldman was no friend of Quent's. Or of mine.