Blowback(23)

Eight




Sonora was an aged and crumbling gold country town beneath a modern facade, like an old lady proudly displaying herself after a face-lift. You got a little of the flavor of the nineteenth-century Mother Lode, but mostly the restored and newly false-fronted buildings gave you the impression of a whimsical, Disneyland kind of village, a replica rather than an authentic landmark. Washington Street was teeming with cars and with tourists dressed in garish clothing and weighted down by camera equipment. I had an idea that the founding miners would have been appalled if they could have seen it this way-but maybe that was just my mood.

The courthouse was another of the carefully modernized structures, not far from the Tuolumne County Historical Society Museum; it was just past one o'clock when Harry parked his jeep in front and we entered the annex that housed the Sheriffs Department. The annex was air-conditioned, but they had it up so high that thirty seconds after we came in the sweat on my body dried cold and clammy, bonding clothes to skin. We gave our names to the deputy on the desk, and waited five minutes before Cloudman came out, greeted us gravely, and then ushered us into a private office.

“Appreciate your coming in,” he said. In the bright artificial light of the office he looked older and thinner than he had last night. His eyes were a light gray, steady and watchful but with that hint of humor you always find in the gaze of a basically happy man.

We sat down in chairs facing the desk, and he gave us typed statements and watched while we read them over and then signed them. When I passed mine over to him I said, “Any new developments on the case?”

“Couple of things, maybe.”

“Confidential?”

Cloudman shrugged. Then he leaned back in his chair and dug a fingernail into his hair and raked it around the way he had at the lake, grimacing. “Scalp infection,” he said. “Itches like hell sometimes.”

Neither Harry nor I had anything to say to that.

Cloudman fished a sheet of paper out of a basket on his desk and studied it for a time. At length he said to me, “Ever do any work for lawyers in San Francisco?”

“Once in a while.”

“Know one named Charles Kayabalian?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“He's heard of you,” Cloudman said. “You got your name in the Frisco papers a few times, I gather.”

“A few times.”

“Well, he seemed kind of interested in you when he showed up here this morning.”

I frowned. “In what way?”

“He didn't say. Just seemed interested, is all.”

“Is he connected with Terzian?”

“Indirectly. He handles the legal affairs of a lot of Armenians in the Bay Area-couple of other rug dealers and a few rug collectors among them. Seems he's been trying to work up a criminal action against Terzian on behalf of these people.”

“What sort of criminal action?”

“Contention is that Terzian was acting as a fence for a ring of Oriental rug and carpet thieves,” Cloudman said. “Kayabalian had ears and eyes on Terzian's operation in San Jose, and as soon as he got word of the murder he drove up.”

“Why would he do that-drive up?”

“He thinks maybe the reason Terzian came to Tuolumne was to deliver a carpet stolen four days ago near Frisco. Something called a Daghestan, worth a lot of money.”

“Does he have any idea who Terzian might have been delivering it to?”

“Not a one, he says.”

“Then why does he figure that's what brought him here?”

“He had somebody watching Terzian's place, like I said. Terzian gave Kayabalian's man the slip Saturday night and disappeared. It adds up, more or less.”

Harry said, “Why would this buyer kill Terzian?”

“We don't know that he did. There's still the hijacking angle, among others.” Cloudman scratched at his scalp again, sighed elaborately, and leaned forward to splay his hands on the desk top. “Well, I won't keep you fellas any longer. You'll hold everything I've told you in confidence, now?”

Harry and I said we would.

“Probably shouldn't have opened up in the first place,” he said in a musing way. “Trouble with me, though, is that I like to talk, like to get other people's ideas on things. Not always a good trait in a police officer, I've been told, but that's how I am.”

Uh-huh, I thought, sure it is.

“Either of you come across anything more, anything at all, you let me know right away,” he said, but he was looking only at me. “I can count on that, can't I?”

He was a wily old fox, all right. He had known exactly what he was doing in opening up to us-to me, really. He wanted to know more about this Kayabalian, and he wanted to know what the lawyer's apparent interest in me was; instead of making demands, the way some cops would have done, he was using friendliness and a certain amount of candor to ensure my cooperation in the event Kayabalian got in touch with me. I admired him for that. It takes a kind of faith in human decency to operate the way he did.