The Golden Gate Read Free Page A

The niceties of salon conversation were not for Giscard. 'From this T 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?'

'AIL 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 die 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 cut-off 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
'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 (tie 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 hounds-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, sk, but do you mind moving