I was washing my face in the bathroom when I heard a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” I called out from the other side.
“Just me, pardner.”
I let Jake in. He showed concern as soon as he saw me.
“Everything all right?” he said. "You look a little shaken up.”
“It’s been a pretty crummy night.”
Jake pulled a mickey of Crown Royal out of his brown trench coat pocket. “Maybe you could use a slug.”
He came in and sat down in the living room.
I don’t like whisky, and I’d finished off the second bottle of wine, so I didn’t need any more to drink; but to be polite, I brought two glasses with ice into the room and poured myself a last one.
“I’ve got a Harp in the fridge. We could split it for a chaser, if you want.”
“Naw, this is good,” Jake said, taking a small taste.
I sat back and did the same.
“Rain’s stopped,” Jake said. “Clearing up nice out there.”
“That’s good news. You’re sure up late. It’s almost four thirty.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I was trying to catch updates on the Lars Lovedahl shooting, but they didn’t have much.”
I told him what I knew.
“Bad business,” he said. “So how is the research going?”
“Fair. I’ve picked up a little bit more. But I think I might just drop the whole thing.”
“Really?”
“Jan is tired of it. She’s getting past the denial stage, I guess. Time to move on.”
“That’s too bad. I was hoping you’d dig up some interesting Coast history. Never did find out what Sloan was working on, eh?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
He got up with his glass and went into the kitchen. I could hear the tap running. “You bullshitter,” he said, and laughed.
He came back to the living room without the glass and sat hunched forward on the sofa with his legs spread wide apart, his big tradesman hands dangling limp in between. The leer on his face was simian. “You were with the Jap for almost two hours today. His daughter was over here tonight playing tiddlywinks with you. After leaving the Jap’s, you went straight over to the doper’s house next to Dink Wood’s barn. You were there for over an hour talking to him. I see he came back tonight, too. What have you got?”
His upper lip folded belligerently. “What have you got?”
I studied the man. Jungle face Jake.
He laughed and looked away. “Good stuff.” He screwed the cap on his micky and slipped it into the pocket of his coat, which he’d folded over the sofa arm. His hand came out with what looked like a snub-nosed .38-calibre pistol. He was pointing it at me when he asked me the third time. “What have you got?”
I told him. He got me to slow down at a couple of places in the story. He wanted to know Shimizu’s reaction to the Ezra Paul hoax. I lied, telling him that Harry was just very sad to think that Joseph Hara had taken his life that way. He nodded glumly, as if sharing the sadness. I told him that Big Bill knew very little of the history and wanted to be kept in the dark because he thought the whole thing was bad karma. Jake found that funny.
“They’re both afraid of Barlow, but Harry doesn’t seem to suspect Albert’s death was anything but suicide,” I told him.
“But you think different.”
“I didn’t until a few minutes ago. It didn’t seem right; it would never have seemed right, but I wasn’t prepared to take that leap.”
“Your old boss didn’t see it either. That’s why he was easy prey. Same as you, chum.”
He got up, stretching his whole body, save for his rigid right arm, extended by the length of the gun barrel. Yawning, he stomped his left foot, once.
“Let’s take a walk, pardner.”