Grist 01 - The Four Last Things by Timothy Hallinan Read Free Book Online Page A

ten and then two—even he doesn’t have twelve fingers—and I think that means he’ll see you at noon. Do you know where we are?”
    “Everyone in the world knows where that building is. See you at noon.”
    We both hung up, the one form of climax that people frequently attain simultaneously. I pulled on some running clothes and headed for the beach.
    I ran five miles in the softest sand I could find and then headed uphill toward Santa Monica. By the time I got back down to Alice, I knew what I wanted to say to Ambrose Harker. I had a lot of general questions about the surveillance, and a lot of specific questions about Sally Oldfield. It was pretty clear that most of what I’d been told was goop, pure and simple, and I thought the police would be interested in it. Enjoying the prospect of ruining Harker’s day, I jumped into a cold wave and washed the sweat off before driving to UCLA for a long sauna.
    All of what Eleanor calls the toxins had been sweated out of my system by the time I gave my name to the guard at Monument Records. He checked the list and directed me to Harker’s office on the eighth floor, higher than the hoi polloi but well below the upper-executive stratosphere.
    The secretary with the lovely voice weighed two hundred chocolate-ridden pounds. The terrible thing was that her face was so beautiful and that her smile could have illuminated Century City. A wedding ring cut deeply into her finger. Maybe it was the man’s fault. For lack of anything better to do, I sat on the couch and picked up a copy of Record World .
    A buzzer on her desk did its thing. “He’ll be right out,” she said, with her incandescent smile.
    Ambrose Harker strode out of his office door looking grim and businesslike. He didn’t extend his hand.
    “Okay,” he said. “What’s all this crap about the cops?”
    I knew I was supposed to say something, but I couldn’t, because my mouth was hanging wide open. I’d never seen Ambrose Harker in my life.

Chapter 5
    B ig Sur is a long way from anywhere, and that’s where it should be. If it were any closer it would look like the rest of the world.
    As it is, it looks like Big Sur: cliffs overhanging the grayest Pacific on earth, Monterey cypresses perched on fragile spits of land, defying gravity to dangle their gray-green needles over the eternal churn of the sea. It’s so perfect that a Hollywood boy like me expects a credit roll scrolling above the horizon. Scenic designer: God. Special effects: the Apostles, and so forth.
    Only two kinds of people lived there, rich straights and poor crazies. As I steered a rented car out of Carmel airport at five p.m., I had no idea which kind I was going to see.
    I’d made an embarrassed exit from Ambrose Harker’s office, thinking about calling the cops, but to give them what? They already had Needle-nose’s description from the motel, they already had the license number of his stolen car, they already had the number of times he and Sally had been there. What I had was a client who didn’t exist and a burning sense of having been suckered.
    They didn’t have Sally’s name, but they’d get that quickly enough. And if they didn’t, I might be able to use it as a bargaining chip for a fact or two.
    I also had the fact that Skippy Miller had recommended me for the job. And that was all I had. A poor thing, but mine own.
    Cypress Grove was a conference center located in the center square of God’s country. On a map of paradise, it would have been C-3. I hiked down the hill from the parking lot through a stiff November sea breeze, to Reception. WELCOME, the banner read, THE CHURCH OF THE ETERNAL MOMENT IS HERE AND NOW. Beneath the banner was a long Formica table at which were seated two identically gray-costumed individuals wearing Chinese cadre jackets that Mao wouldn’t have sneered at. The nameplates in front of them read LISTENER DOOLEY and LISTENER SIMPSON. Listener Dooley was a red-faced Irishman with the kind of highly