down the drive toward the front of the court and the cocktail lounge. Renner hoped they were on their way to buy a last drink to Angel.
He hoped the paisanos bought a lot of drinks to Angel. In the spot he was in every dollar counted. Right now best friend was a cash register.
Kelcey lingered behind the others. “Do you think she is going to be all right?”
Renner lived in Unit One. He unlocked the door. “Just why should you be concerned?”
“Because I could go for that babe.”
“That’s right,” Renner said. “I remember. You told me back on the cliff. You’d like to get your hands on her. I knew how you meant.”
Kelcey turned sullen. “So what’s wrong with that? The kid looks like she could use a few dollars. And what with her skirt up around her neck like it was and him with his zipper open, I’ll bet she and that old guy in the car were doing plenty when they went off the road.”
“At ninety miles an hour?”
“Well anyway, getting ready.”
Renner leaned against the jamb of the door he’d just unlocked. He’d skinned the knuckles of both of his hands. One knee was showing through a ragged tear in his right pants’ leg. In crawling past the broken steering post to get at Tamara, he’d not only ripped off one patch pocket of his best gray flannel suit, he’d also wiped the bloody leather clean. Every bone in his body ached. His muscles felt as if they had been systematically beaten with a hammer.
Not that any of that really mattered. Thanks to chance or fete or whatever one wanted to call it, the accident on the cliff had called Tamara to Kelcey’s attention far better than the little scene he had intended to stage. Kelcey was hooked but good. But now that he had what he wanted, now that he had the stage set, the thought of allowing Kelcey to force himself on Tamara, even for the one moment of intimacy necessary to file a rape charge against him, sickened Renner. Even if Tamara was willing to go all out to help him, and he still had that to discuss with her, he didn’t know if he wanted to go through with this thing, if he could go through with it and keep any semblance of self-respect.
There was a name for men who allowed other men to use their women’s bodies.
Maybe it was better to let the court go.
Right now all he wanted was a hot shower and a change of clothes. And, even more important, to be left alone.
“Look. Be a good fellow,” he told Kelcey. “Take some of your god-damn money and go up and lay it on my bar. Your sobriety is showing.”
He slammed the door behind him but before he could even take off his ruined coat someone knocked on the door he’d just slammed.
It was old man Manners.
“What now?” Renner asked him.
The old man was apologetic. “Some fellow in the bar wants to cash a personal check. And Tony says will you please come okay it?”
“Why not?” Renner shrugged. “Why should I be able to take a shower? I only own the joint.”
He walked up the drive with Manners. The old man was concerned. “That was a brave thing you done, Kurt. But what are we going to do without a tow truck?”
Renner told him. “Without After all, it was the first time we’d used it.”
“It was insured?”
“Everything I have is insured.”
The old man persisted. “But even if the truck is insured, what about personal liability? Does your policy cover Angel? What if his widow sues you? So he was only a Mex. Them having six kids and him being their only source of support, there is no telling how big a judgment a jury might bring in against you.”
It was an angle Renner hadn’t considered. If his policy didn’t cover Angel and Angel’s widow should sue him, she could take him for every dime he had. And even if he managed to save the court she could take that, too. He stopped feeling sorry for Tamara and was angry with her. If she had followed his instructions and made connections with the local bus none of this would have happened. Still, Tamara couldn’t help it if Angel had left early. Angel had left early to go a long way. And all Tamara had been trying to do was reach the court on schedule.
Always something.
There were four cars parked in front of the pumps and five times that many in the parking strip in front of the cocktail lounge. Renner was wryly amused. Death and sex and taxes. The court hadn’t done so much business since the day he’d opened and the good people of Mission Bay had driven out to buy a beer and use the toilets while they inspected the luxury tourist court that old Max Renner’s boy had built.
The check looked good to him. He okayed it and walked on into the office of the court to see if the insurance policy on the truck was in the files. It wasn’t. It was probably with the rest of his legal papers in his safety deposit box. He turned, startled, as a flash bulb popped to see Tom Sourira, the local I.N.S. correspondent, pointing a camera at him.
“What’s the idea?” Renner asked him.
Sourira grinned. “You’re news. Big news. Don’t tell me you don’t know who the old guy in the car was?”
“No. I don’t.”
“The John A. Baron,” Sourira said. “The guy who sails yachts to Hawaii. The multi-millionaire playboy.”
“Oh,” Renner said. “That Baron.”
He considered the information. It could be an added complication. It probably would be.
“You watch,” Sourira said. “Right now all the big-town newspapers are rushing reporters and photographers here. By morning this place will be jumping.”
The reporter glanced through the window and saw Sheriff Prichard and Doctor Flanders coming down the drive and hurried out to amplify what information he had.
Renner took a deep breath and followed him. The matter was out of his hands now. What happened from here on would depend on whether or not Tamara had kept her head, how much she’d told Flanders and Prichard.
Doctor Flanders answered the reporter’s questions by saying yes or no when he could. No, the girl wasn’t badly injured. Yes, she’d had a bad shock. No, his examination had revealed no evidence that she had been molested sexually. No, Sourira couldn’t take a picture of her. She was still in a mild state of shock and he had given her a sedative and she would probably sleep until morning.
Sourira turned his questions on Prichard and learned more from him than he had from the doctor.
Yes, the girl spoke English, with a faint but decided accent. Yes, he had talked with her. If the information she had given him was correct her name was Tamara Daranyi. She was a Hungarian refugee who had entered the United States in 1956 on a student’s visa. She was nineteen years old and said she had studied voice and piano at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles for a year. Recently however, having run out of money she had been earning her living as a part-time model and entertainer.
Jubilant, Sourira left to phone in his story.
