Locked Rooms Part 31

The lad paused in his story to look at Holmes with wrinkled brow. "I shoulda asked-do you got any two-bits with you?"

"Yes, I have some quarter-dollars. Why?"

"It's just that I told my guys that, if them two make too many turns, we're gonna run out of boys, and they should ask someone who looks like they can use two bits to stand on the corner and let us know which way they've gone. So you might have to hand quarters out to a few b.u.ms."

We all three looked at him with respect, and he blushed for a moment before throwing back his head with a c.o.c.ky expression. "Only makes sense," he a.s.serted.

"How very true," Holmes said. "And when we're through with this, you might talk to Mr Hammett here about local employment opportunities for promising lads."

The taxi drove through the Market Street traffic for nearly a mile before the lad came upright on his seat. "There's Mick! Stop, up there," he told the driver. The man cast a look at Holmes, who nodded. The motor pulled over and arms dragged another boy inside. This one was quite small and so excited he could not get his words to come out in any kind of order until Ricky grabbed his arm and shook him hard. The child gulped in grat.i.tude and loosed a great torrent of words: "They went down Market and they got on a street-car and Rudy said we couldn't get on too they'd see us but then Kurt he said he could hang on the back he did it all the time but I don't think he did I think it was his brother who's bigger than him but anyway he ran over to the street-car and grabbed on and Rudy went with him and then Vince tried but you know Vince he's too fat so he fell off and I couldn't reach the thing it was too tall so Vince and Markie and me got left behind and Rudy shouted that we should wait until you came along and tell you where we'd gone but Vince and Markie said they could run as fast as the street-car and that I should wait until you came along and so even though I can run faster than Vince I did what they said I waited."

The full stop at the end of that sentence came so abruptly, we all took a moment to recover, then everyone in the motor drew a simultaneous breath.

"Good lad," Holmes said, and handed him a bright quarter-dollar. That shut the child up for good-I never heard another syllable from him.

We picked up the boy named Vince a short distance down Market, his plump face red as he stumped along with more determination than speed. He piled into the motor as well (which suddenly began to seem rather warm and crowded) and pantingly informed Ricky that Markie had run ahead but he'd thought he should go more slowly to lead us all when we came. Ricky gave a snort but the rest of us made soothing noises of understanding and appreciation, and Holmes handed Vince a silver quarter with great ceremony.

Just then some oddity in the city landscape caught the corner of my eye, and when I glanced out of the back window, I noticed a thin and ragged boy clinging to the back of a street-car that was headed in the opposite direction. "Is this a generally accepted means of travel for young males?" I asked with curiosity. Several of the others in the motor followed my gaze, and young Rick Garcia gave a great shout.

"Rudy! That's Rudy," he repeated, but Holmes was already in action, exhorting the taxi driver to turn about and follow the trolley. The man grumbled, declared that if he got caught by a cop that it wasn't him that was going to pay the fine, and pulled over to the middle of the wide street to wait for a gap between the on-coming cars. Then just as he began to pull forward, all five of our younger companions began to shout furiously. "There's Kurt!" and "Wait, don't leave Kurt" contradicted by "No, go on, he'll be okay" and "Wait, here comes Markie too, c'mon, Markie, run faster!"

At that, Holmes told the driver to pull over to the side and stop for a moment. He dug two more silver coins from his apparently endless supply and whipped a five-dollar note out of his bill-fold, handing both coins and bill to the leader. "Mr Garcia, I shall have to ask you to leave us here for the time being. I should appreciate it if you would present yourself to the St Francis desk at nine o'clock tomorrow morning for a final accounting."

The boy, naturally enough, protested, but Holmes was already propelling small and angry bodies out of the motor, a.s.sisted willingly by Hammett, and he overrode the protests. "Mr Garcia, if you wish to hear the details of what has taken place-all the details, even those in which you were not involved-you will appear at the hotel in the morning. If you continue protesting now, I shall give you nothing but your money and send you on your way." the details, even those in which you were not involved-you will appear at the hotel in the morning. If you continue protesting now, I shall give you nothing but your money and send you on your way."

It has always amazed me, how Holmes the bachelor understood so thoroughly the workings of the childhood mind. Here yet again he hit on exactly the thing that got the boys out of the motor without another word of protest. The leader's eyes merely narrowed with consideration for a moment, then he climbed out of the motor. As we drove away from the five standing lads and two more approaching at a run, we heard Ricky's voice call, "If you don't give over, you'll be really sorry."

Holmes brushed himself off and gave me a grin. "I shall, too."

We quickly caught the trolley up, and Holmes had the driver pull just close enough for him to give a sharp whistle, then drop away again. The dangling boy looked around, spotted Holmes, and instantly let go his precarious hold to stand in the midst of the traffic waiting for us to catch him up. Hammett kicked the door open and the boy scrambled in, without the taxi actually coming to a halt. We continued after the trolley while Holmes interrogated his final Irregular.

"You're Rudy, yes? We just dropped your friends down the street. May I take it that the two people you've been following are in this street-car?"

We'd have been well and truly wrecked if the lad said he'd just decided to ride the street-car on a whim, I reflected, but he was nodding. "They got off down near Sixteenth, went into a hotel and walked right out again about two minutes later with a coupla bags, and got onto another trolley going the other way. I left Kurt there to tell Ricky."

"He found us," Holmes rea.s.sured him, handing over the shiniest coin yet, this one an entire silver dollar. "We'll let you out here, lad. And you tell your friends that they should bring their appet.i.tes with them in the morning. I'll buy you all the biggest breakfast the St Francis serves."

The boy's expression indicated that he did not often dine in establishments such as the St Francis, and we left him on the pavement, staring in wonder at our retreating vehicle.

We had the driver dawdle far enough back from the trolley so that our coinciding stops and starts might not attract the attention of the pa.s.sengers, yet near enough that, if the two spotted us and attempted to fade into the downtown crowds without their bags, we might see them. But no one resembling the man and woman in the photograph Flo had given me descended from the trolley, and it continued up the die-straight path of Market in the direction of the Ferry Building.

The street-car reached the wide boulevard of the Embarcadero, onto which all the piers opened, and entered the turn-around in front of the Ferry Building. The afternoon traffic made for a positive ant-hill of taxis, private cars, bicycles, hand-trucks, and pedestrians. We waited, holding our collective breath, until we saw a man and a woman step down to the street, each carrying a valise; the man's hat was pulled down to hide his face. Holmes slapped some money into the driver's hand and the three of us got out as quickly and as smoothly as we could, trying not to look as if we were interested in anything much, closing casually but rapidly on the terminus.

But the woman spotted us. We were not exactly un.o.btrusive in a crowd, as even slumped into their coats, Holmes and Hammett towered above everyone else, and I am not far behind. She looked back and she spotted us and grabbed her companion's shoulder; he whirled around, looked straight in our direction, then seized her by the arm and ran, abandoning the two valises on the street. We ran, too, dodging through the traffic to the music of furious horns and the whistles of two outraged policemen, and gained the pavement in time to see the man pull a revolver from his pocket and aim it in our direction.

Knowing intellectually the theoretical inaccuracy of a pistol over a distance of several hundred yards is not the same as knowing one is safe: We all three dove behind the nearest large object until the shot had ceased echoing down the street and the screams and rushing about had started. Three heads slowly emerged, in time to see our quarry climb into a maroon-coloured Chrysler whose terrified driver, hands high in the air, stood in the street and watched his vehicle race off up the Embarcadero without him.

Holmes and I looked at each other, grimaced, and pulled out our own revolvers to commandeer a jazzy green open motor that, although nowhere near as powerful as the Chrysler, was low enough to corner well. Rather to my surprise Hammett, although he appeared eager to stay with us, made no move to shoulder me aside, but threw himself in the backseat so that I might leap behind the wheel. With Holmes shouting thanks and apologies at the man we left behind, I slammed my foot onto the accelerator.

North of Market, the Embarcadero is wide, flat, and straight; they saw us coming before we had gone half a mile. Greenfield accelerated and I did the same, and it looked as if we would keep on at this speed until we flew off the first curve into the Bay or crashed into the walls surrounding Fort Mason. Then abruptly he swerved left and shot into the maze around Telegraph Hill.

"Hah!" came a voice from the back; Hammett leant forward over my shoulder and said, "If they don't know the area, we may have them."

Telegraph Hill loomed ahead of us, too steep for roads on this side, but the motor ahead of us dodged and scurried around its base, avoiding the dead-ends by skill or luck. I kept us on the road and in sight of them, using my horn freely, grateful that this was not an area with heavy traffic. Although we hadn't their engine power, we were better on the corners, and as I grew accustomed to the steering I managed to gain on them a little. We screamed around corners within a hair's-breadth of parked cars and lamp-posts, using the brakes almost not at all; slowly, the maroon motor's number-plate grew ever closer.

I had no idea where I was, and no time to ask. Instead I shouted over my shoulder, "If you have any knowledge of the streets you wish to impart, please feel free."

Hammett said only, his voice tight, "You're doing fine."

After several minutes of circling and dodging through the residential streets, suddenly we were back on the Embarcadero, heading south this time, back towards the Ferry Building. Just before he entered the snarl of traffic there, Greenfield flew to the right, taking some paint off a cable-car, dodged north for a couple of streets, then west. He swerved around a horse-drawn wagon, then with a sharp squeal of tyres shot directly across the nose of a taxi and entered a street I knew all too well.

It was afternoon on Grant Avenue: the crowded, bustling, commercial and residential centre of Chinatown.

Chapter Twenty-five.

Chinatown was the worst possible place for a motorcar chase-which, I realised dimly, was why Greenfield had chosen it. He knew that I would have to slow for the vendors, children, afternoon shoppers, and infirm who clotted its streets, although he seemed to have no such compunction. He gained fifty feet in the first two streets by the simple technique of laying hard on both horn and accelerator, hesitating for nothing. I, in the mean-time, received the back-draught of his pa.s.sage-the grandfather who stepped out into the street the better to see the blur that had just sped past him, the laden bicyclist who teetered, nearly fell, and then caught his balance by veering into my path-so that I was forced to slow and dodge.

"Holmes," I shouted, swerving with one hand and gearing down with the other, "shove your hand on the horn!" But instead, he rose in his seat and shouted for me to stop.

"I can catch them, Holmes-" I protested in grim determination, but his hand came down to slap mine from the steering wheel and he repeated his command.

I jammed my foot off one pedal and onto the other; our stolen motor stood on its nose with a violent protest of rubber, and had Holmes not been tucked tight against the windscreen he would have been launched over the bonnet into a fruit cart. Instead, the instant the motor sat back on its haunches he peeled himself from the gla.s.s and leapt out over the door, coming to rest in front of a diminutive white-headed figure. I couldn't see him at first, since Holmes' shoulders hid him from view, but in a split second a small, dignified Oriental gentleman was in mid-air, feet waving, and then standing on the bonnet of the motor, his scholar's hands out to catch his balance. Holmes scrambled up beside him in a flash, and as his right arm came up with his revolver in it, he put his head down and shouted at the snowy white head, "Tell them to stop that motorcar!"

I do not know if any person in the city could have done the thing except Dr Ming. But Dr Ming it was, there at the place and time we needed him, and with neither question nor even protest. Events proceeded as if they had been meticulously ch.o.r.eographed: Holmes' mouth going shut just as the old man was raising his head to shout; the revolver in Holmes' hand going off, pointing at the sky; the crowded street shuddering into attention, every head turned our way. The old man's voice seemed tiny in the wake of the shot, but his words acted like a spark set to a line of gunpowder. His command sputtered through the nearby pedestrians, then caught as each person turned and pa.s.sed the phrase on, and on it ran up the street, fizzing and furious as it burned through the residents, coming even with the honking maroon bonnet, pa.s.sing it, converting itself into motion: A heavy-laden greengrocer's cart began moving, slowly at first but inexorably into the path of Greenfield's stolen motor. The horn cut off as the Chrysler squealed one way then overcompensated to the other before smashing into the cart and a parked poultry lorry at the same moment. Cabbages and caged chickens rained down in all directions as the stunned pair tried to keep moving. Greenfield got so far as to raise his pistol, but the crowd had already closed over them, and the gun went off pointing at the upper window of the telephone exchange, causing a number of trunk calls to come to grief as their connexions were yanked free by startled operators.

We remained where we were while the community brought Dr Ming his two prisoners. The old man had settled down onto the emerald bonnet of our own stolen motor, his hands tucked together into invisible sleeves, and was in placid conversation with Holmes; Hammett gazed at the two of them in frank disbelief; I let myself out of the motor slowly, watching the procession come near.

Greenfield struggled against his bonds of grocer's twine, shouting furiously. His sister had her hands tied as well, and I looked at her carefully, wondering if I had seen her on board the Marguerite. Marguerite. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as I, and although her suspiciously uniform brown hair was slightly mussed by the chase, otherwise she appeared so self-contained, she might have been pausing to answer the queries of a pa.s.ser-by rather than waiting for the police. Studying her closely, I thought I might have seen her on the ship, perhaps on the night of the fancy-dress ball, but I would not have sworn to it. She came quietly in the hands of her captors, her expression more watchful than daunted; I thought the police needed to be warned that she should be carefully searched. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as I, and although her suspiciously uniform brown hair was slightly mussed by the chase, otherwise she appeared so self-contained, she might have been pausing to answer the queries of a pa.s.ser-by rather than waiting for the police. Studying her closely, I thought I might have seen her on the ship, perhaps on the night of the fancy-dress ball, but I would not have sworn to it. She came quietly in the hands of her captors, her expression more watchful than daunted; I thought the police needed to be warned that she should be carefully searched.

I wanted to talk to her, wanted in fact to grab her hard and demand what had set her on our heels so resolutely, but then I saw her glance at him, and in that one glance, it all became clear.

Even after all these years, and despite the self-control that was keeping her spine straight and her face untroubled, her weakness was the man beside her. For a brief instant, she looked afraid-not for herself, but for him.

She was not his sister. She might have been his willing slave.

My eyes went to him, as if mere appearance could explain such a lifetime of devotion: Robert Greenfield, my father's comrade-in-youth, who had inspired mistrust in my mother and open animosity in his ex-wife. An ordinary enough figure, other than the scarring on his face, and even that was hardly fearsome.

Standing at the front of the motor, Greenfield's curses only increased in volume, until one of the men nearby drew a length of filthy rag from about his person and held it up enquiringly in front of Dr Ming. Dr Ming deferred to Holmes, who turned to look at me, asking with his eyebrows if I cared to speak with the man before the police arrived.

Greenfield followed the sequence of glances until it ended up with me, at which point his curses strangled in his throat. "Jesus-Charlie?" he choked out, then looked at me more comprehensively. If anything, his face went whiter, and the internal murmur of something, there was something behind the- something, there was something behind the-grew loud and louder in my ears.

"You . . . You must be the daughter. Mary. Christ, that hair, those gla.s.ses . . . I thought-" He caught himself up short, and tried hard to summon a crooked grin. "Did anyone ever tell you how much you look like your old man?"

"Before you killed him, you mean?"

The grin slipped for an instant before he retrieved it to buoy his protests, but I was not listening to his words. Instead, I was taken up with his face and the voice itself.

The burn that affected about half his facial skin had erased one eyebrow and part of the other, but had not gone deep enough to reach the muscles and tendons. Below the shiny scar tissue the movement was normal enough, albeit somewhat stiff on the left side.

And the voice-I knew that voice, slightly hoa.r.s.e and with the flat Boston accent that my father had possessed in a much softer degree. The voice reached in and pulled out the hidden something, something, the room in my memory house that I had known was there, the key I had obediently set aside so thoroughly that I did not even see it. the room in my memory house that I had known was there, the key I had obediently set aside so thoroughly that I did not even see it.

"You said, 'Don't be afraid, little girl,'" I told him. I had not meant to speak aloud, but the man blinked, so clearly I had.

"What?" he said.

"In the tent. When you came looking for my father and woke me up, you had no face, it was whiter than your face is now and even shinier, and I was frightened. You told me not to be afraid. But I should have been, shouldn't I?"

Greenfield looked at the men holding his arms and again tried to grin. "I was out doing rescue work and got burned, so I went to find your father and see how he was. He'd been a good friend of mine, before he married, and-"

"You were not doing rescue work; you were out robbing abandoned houses and stripping dead bodies."

That silenced him.

"But that wasn't the only time," I continued, speaking as much to myself, or to Holmes, as to Greenfield. "You were there when Father stopped for the tyre-change, weren't you? In Serra Beach. That's the thing I've been trying to remember the last few days, that I caught a glimpse of you behind the garage, slipping behind that big gum tree at the side. You'd been talking with my father, and when I finished lunch and went to find him and tell him we were ready to go, I saw the two of you, arguing. When my father turned and saw me, his face was red and his fists were clenched-I'd never seen him look like that. You ran off. And I asked him then who you were and he told me you were n.o.body, that it would upset Mother if I told her I'd seen you, that I should try to forget all about you.

"And so I did. G.o.d, did I ever. But you were were there that day, and you cut the brake rod and you killed them all. Just like you killed Leah Ginzberg and Mah and Micah Long, four months later." there that day, and you cut the brake rod and you killed them all. Just like you killed Leah Ginzberg and Mah and Micah Long, four months later."

At this last pair of names a murmur sprang up, as several of the older residents recognised the Anglicised versions of the murdered couple's names. I walked around the motor until I was standing directly in front of Greenfield, and I wanted to murder him. Then and there, I wanted to gut him and leave him bleeding his life out on the street, for what he had done to six good and loving people. I might even have done so-I was on the very brink of s.n.a.t.c.hing the gun from my pocket or bending for the knife in my boot-top-when something touched my arm. It was the gentlest touch imaginable, the mere brush of a bird's wings in weight, but the faint weight of it settled onto the taut muscles of my forearm and stopped them from moving. I looked down at the delicate old fingers, then into the face of Dr Ming.

"You do not wish to do this," he said.

I did want to do it, I could almost taste the glory of revenge. And then suddenly I did not. The murderous impulse left me, the hand fell away, and as if by a stage cue, the police arrived, bluff and uncomprehending and requiring a great deal of attention, from all of us, for a very long time.

Epilogue.

Late, late that night Holmes and I crept back to our rooms at the St Francis. We had persuaded Officialdom to let Long go home, and even Hammett, but at the cost of remaining and explaining, again and again, what it all meant: why Rosa Greenfield's finger-prints had been found on the toilet-pull of my house; why a bullet from Greenfield's gun would match one to be found in a fence in Pacific Heights; why Greenfield's finger-prints were going to be found on coins in the tin boxes in our hotel's safe.

Had it not been for Holmes' name, the bewildered police would have thrown us all out and let us sort it out on the street.

But in the end, Robert and Rosa Greenfield were charged, and we were free to go.

As we walked towards the lift, shortly before midnight, the night man came out from behind his desk and gave Holmes a packet. His hand reached out automatically for it, and as we rode the lift upwards, my eyes idled across the address on the label as if its letters contained some arcane message. It was, I realised only when we were in the room and he ripped open the paper, the urgent reproductions of Flo's photograph that he had left to be copied-only that morning yet many, many hours before.

I went through the motions of hanging up my coat and divesting myself of shoes and the like, then plodded into the bath-room to wash my face.

When I came out, Holmes was sitting with a photograph in his hand-not that of the Greenfields; he held it out in my direction.

"What is that?" I asked wearily.

"Another photograph I left the other day for copying. I'd all but forgotten it."

I sat down to save myself from falling and took the picture from his hand.

A tent city. A woman, a blonde child with a book, a man trudging up the hill, looking as exhausted as I felt.

My family.

I took off my gla.s.ses to study my father's face. Too tired for the nightmares to reach me, Too tired for the nightmares to reach me, he had written in the doc.u.ment; I wondered if all his dreams had been of the fire. he had written in the doc.u.ment; I wondered if all his dreams had been of the fire.

"Do I look like him?" I asked.

"You do somewhat, without a hat and your hair as it is. To a guilty mind, the resemblance would be startling."

I picked up a copy of the other picture as well, showing the Greenfields at the Lodge, unscarred and not yet embarked on murder. They were standing by the lake, looking over the shoulder of the photographer at the log house that the young and carefree Greenfield had helped his friend Charles build.

"The sun was red," I murmured.

"Sorry?"

"During the fire. Everything was a peculiar colour from the smoke and ashes, and it was terrifying, with the sun a red glow in the sky and the earth shaking and the sound of explosions. But my father came back then and he explained it to me, told me that the booms were just the firemen removing houses so there wouldn't be anything for the fire to burn and it would go out. I understood what he was saying, and when he told me it would be all right, I believed him."

"Your parents were good people," he said. And then he added the most perfect thing anyone has ever said to me. "They would be proud of you."

Not that I believed him, of course. Instead I gave voice to the remnants of my guilt. "If I'd told my mother about seeing Greenfield that day, if I'd said something, I might have saved them."

"I think not. Greenfield was already set on his course. Had you told your mother that you had seen him, it might have caused an argument between your parents, and at most a resolution to confront Greenfield when they returned to the city, but it would not have interrupted the family's progress to the lake. Only Greenfield himself could have done that."

And I could picture it, clearly: Mother's indignation that Father was meeting the man; a family's final minutes tainted by recrimination and regret; the motorcar setting off down the road . . .

"You would not have changed a thing," Holmes said firmly. This time, I believed him.

I changed out of my day-clothes and settled into a soft bed that seemed to tremble and sway with my tiredness, but my eyes would not close. I looked at the mezuzah, lying still on the bed-stand, and found myself saying, "Holmes, would you mind awfully if we didn't leave right away? I'd like to see my family's graves, and explore the area a little."

"No, I do not mind spending more days here. We've been in California for a week and a half, and I don't believe I've set eyes on a redwood tree."

"And it would also allow you to finish your Paganini research."

"My-ah, yes, my Paganini research."

"There is no research project, is there, Holmes?"

"Not as such, no," he admitted. The bed's sway was magnified briefly as he settled in beside me. I turned to him, closing my eyes with the pleasure of simple human touch.