They reached the main street, travelled along past the immaculate rows of sailing craft and the far from immaculate hodge-podge of boathouses, until eventually the driver pulled off into a side-street, parked and stopped the engine. He and the man beside him got out and divested themselves of their coats, revealing themselves as clad in the uniforms of California State Patrolmen. The driver, a sergeant by the name of Giscard, was at least six feet three in height, burly, red-faced, tight-mouthed and, even to the cold, insolent eyes, was the conceptualized epitome of the dyed-in-the-wool tough cop. Policemen, admittedly, were part and parcel of Giscard’s life but his frequent acquaintanceships with them he had kept to as limited a nature as possible on the numerous occasions when, hitherto without success, they had attempted to put him behind bars. The other, Parker, was tall, lean and of a nasty appearance and the best that could be said for him was that he might have passed for a cop if one were myopic or he were viewed at a considerable distance: his habitually wary bitter expression was probably attributable to the fact that he had experienced considerably less success than the sergeant in evading the long arm of the law.
They turned a corner and entered a local police precinct station. Two policemen were behind the counter, one very young, the other old enough to be his father. They looked rather tired and unenthusiastic as was natural for two men who were looking forward to some sleep, but they were polite, courteous.
‘Good morning, good morning.’ Giscard could be very brisk indeed as only befitted a man who had shown a clean pair of heels to half the police forces on the Coast. ‘Sergeant Giscard. Patrolman Parker.’ He pulled from his pocket a paper with a long list of names. ‘You must be Mahoney and Nimitz?’
‘Indeed we are.’ Mahoney, a guileless youth, would have found some difficulty in concealing his Hibernian ancestry. ‘And how do you know?’
‘Because I can read.’ The niceties of salon conversation were not for Giscard. ‘From this I take it that your station boss didn’t advise you we were coming. Well, it’s this damned motorcade this morning – and from what I’ve found out this morning maybe I’m not wasting all that much of my time in making this final check-up. You’d be surprised at the number of policemen in this state who are either illiterate or stone deaf.’
Nimitz was polite. ‘If we were to know what we have done wrong, Sergeant -’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’ He consulted his sheet. ‘Just four things. When do the day shift come on? How many? Where are the patrol cars? And the cells.’
‘That’s all?’
‘All. Two minutes. And hurry. I’ve got to check every place from here across the bridge to Richmond.’
‘Eight o’clock. Eight men – twice the usual. The cars -’
‘Let me see them.’
Nimitz lifted a key from a board and led the two men round the corner of the block. He opened double doors. The two police cars, as was only proper on this auspicious occasion when a President, a King and a Prince were travelling through their precinct, had the impossible glitter of showroom models.
‘Ignition keys?’
‘In the ignition.’
Back in the station, Giscard nodded to the entrance door. ‘Keys?’ ‘I beg your pardon.’
Giscard was heavily patient. ‘I know it’s normally never locked. But you might all have to leave in a tearing hurry this morning. You want to leave the shop unattended?’
‘I see.’ Nimitz indicated the keys on the board.
‘The cells.’
Nimitz led the way, taking keys with him. They were only a few feet away but round a corner out of sight of the more sensitive citizens who had reluctant occasion to enter the front office. Nimitz entered and Giscard unholstered his pistol and stuck it against his back. ‘A dead policeman,’ Giscard observed, ‘is no good to anyone.’ Parker joined them in ten seconds pushing a furious and flabbergasted Mahoney in front of him.
Both captives were gagged and left sitting on the floor, backs to the bars, arms thrust uncomfortably through them and wrists handcuffed. From the baleful expressions on their faces it was as well that they were so securely gagged. Giscard put the keys in his pocket, picked up two other sets from the board, ushered Parker out before him, locked the entrance door, pocketed that key too then went round and opened up the garage. He and Parker backed the cars out and while Giscard locked the doors – and, inevitably, pocketed the keys – Parker went to fetch the other four men from the station-wagon. When they appeared they were not, surprisingly, any longer overalled working men but gleaming advertisements for the California State Patrol.
They drove north on the US 101, took the cutoff west to State I, passed by Muir Woods and its pre-Christian stands of two-hundred-and-fifty-feet-high redwoods and finally stopped in the Mount Tamalpais State Park. Giscard brought out the walkie-talkie that went so well with his uniform and said: ‘PI?’
Branson was still patiently waiting in the bus in the abandoned garage. ‘Yes?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Good. Stay.’
The forecourt and street outside the luxurious caravanserai atop Nob Hill were, understandably at that hour of the morning, practically deserted. There were, in fact, only seven people in sight. Six of those stood on the steps of the hotel which was that night housing more dollars on the hoof than it ever had remotely had in its long and illustrious career. The seventh of those, a tall, handsome man, aquiline-faced, youthful-looking despite his grey hair and clad in immaculate hound’s-tooth, was pacing slowly up and down on the roadway. From the looks exchanged among the six men – two doorkeepers, two policemen and two men in plain clothes whose coats fitted awkwardly under their left armpits – his presence appeared to be giving rise to an increasing degree of vexation. Finally, after a low-murmured conversation among them, one of the uniformed men came down the steps and approached him.
He said: ‘Morning, sir. No offence, sir, but do you mind moving on. We have a job to do.’
‘How do you know I have not?’
‘Sir. Please. You must understand we have some very important people in there.’
‘Don’t I know it. Don’t I just know it.’ The man sighed, reached inside his coat, produced and opened a wallet. The policeman looked at it, stiffened, unmistakably swallowed and deepened his complexion by two shades.
‘I’m very sorry, sir. Mr Jensen, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, too. Sorry for all of us. They can keep their damned oil as far as I’m concerned. Dear lord, what a circus.’ He talked until the officer relaxed, then carried on his to-and-fro strolling. The policeman returned to the steps.
One of the plain-clothes men looked at him without a great deal of enthusiasm. He said: ‘A great crowd mover-on you are.’
‘Like to try?’
‘If I must give you a demonstration,’ he said wearily. He walked down three steps, paused, looked back up. ‘He flashed a card at you, didn’t he?’
‘Sort of.’ The policeman was enjoying himself.
‘Who?’
‘Don’t you recognize your own deputy director when you see him?’
