Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker Page B

and talked. And one of them shot him in the back of the head."
    "Why do you think more than one?" Lundquist said.
    "One person would have got in the front seat beside him. There were at least two. One got in front with him. The other one sat in the baekseat."
    Lundquist nodded. "People he knew," Lundquist said. "No cop is going to let two strangers in his car, one in the backseat, while he's sitting on his piece."
    "But people he didn't want to be seen with," I said.
    "Or why would he go up to the top of an empty street on a cold night after dark to sit in the car and talk," Lundquist said.
    "Could be a date?" I said.
    "With two women? One of whom is carrying a forty-one-caliber weapon?"
    "Not impossible," I said. "They make a forty-one-caliber derringer, and it could have been two women who were confronting the man who'd been cheating between them."
    "Possible," Lundquist said. "Not likely."
    "Or he could be crooked," I said, "And he was meeting the bagman and it went haywire."
    "More possible," Lundquist said.
    "You know something about Rogers?" I said.
    "No. But he's the head cop in a town that's noted for cocaine trafficking."
    "And Felipe Esteva runs the cocaine," I said.
    "You think so."
    "Yes."
    "Maybe I think so too," Lundquist said. "But neither of us has proved so yet."
    "Maybe one of us will," I said.
    "Yeah, and maybe we'll find out who killed Valdez."
    "Or maybe we won't," I said. "And maybe it won't be what we think it is if we do."
    "It'd be cleaner if there wasn't this sex thing. The fact that Valdez was castrated."
    "Maybe to confuse us," I said.
    "Maybe. If so it's working. Every cocaine explanation can also be a jealousy explanation," Lundquist said. He took a last swallow of tea and stood up. Half the tea was still in his cup.
    "You got this one?" he said.
    "Sure," I said. "I'm on expenses."
    "Thanks," Lundquist said. He hitched his holster slightly forward on his hip and went back out into the bright cold sunlight. I paid the tab and left Wally half a buck and went back to my motel.
     
     
     

Chapter 17

     
     
    From behind a cluster of evergreens on a hill above Mechanic Street I could see Esteva's warehouse across the river. The road past it wound parallel with the river, then dipped under the Main Street bridge and out of sight. I was sitting in Susan's red thunderjet for the third day in a row looking at the warehouse. When anyone came out or a truck pulled in, I looked at it through binoculars. Which meant simply that I was learning nothing at closer range. Crates of vegetables got unloaded off big trailer trucks and slid down rollers into the warehouse. Smaller crates came out of the warehouse and were loaded onto delivery trucks.
    Susan's car was not ideal for unobtrusive surveillance, being bright red and shaped like a carrot, but if Esteva or anyone else saw me they didn't seem to care. Nobody came up and told me to scram.
    I had a thermos of coffee, with sugar and cream. I was sure that not drinking it black was the first step toward quitting. I also had several sandwiches (tuna on pumpernickel, turkey on whole wheat, lettuce and rnayo) that I'd made up the night before after shopping Mel's Wheaton Market where I'd found the pumpernickel in the imported food section. The sun was bright and the greenhouse effect was ample to warm the car with the motor off. I had gotten Wally to fill my thermos without having to actually lay hands on him. Another tribute to the power of a winning personality. I sipped some coffee, took a bite of a sandwich. The sound of my munching broke the silence. It was the most excitement I'd had since Tuesday. Across the river a figure came out of the warehouse and walked toward one of the trucks parked against the chain link fence in back of the yard. He was carrying an overnight bag. I put my coffee cup down on the plastic top of the transmission hump, balanced the sandwich on the top of the dashboard, and picked the binoculars up off the passenger seat.
    The person