Now, in the clear and cold winter night, he wished with all his heart that he had taken the boy in his arms and kissed him as warmly and naturally as some old-time Jewish or Italian father would have. But it was too late now. This night no headlights shone through the trees or came stabbing over the crest of the hill. In fact, besides the moon and stars, the only lights he saw anywhere were on the wingtips of a jet already descending to land at St. Louis forty miles away. And suddenly he knew that tomorrow, not the day after, he would be returning to California.

4

Because of a rainstorm moving down the coast, Hook’s flight was late leaving Los Angeles. And coming in over Santa Barbara all he could see were the peaks of the Santa Ynez rising above the clouds, a condition he found ironically appropriate. For as the jet began its glide path down into all that murk he knew that was what he was doing himself—proceeding blindly in the hope that something was actually down there.

For the jet, there was. After a thumping landing, Hook rented a new Ford hardtop at the airport and drove on into town, straight to the Sand and Sea, the motel where he had stayed the week before. Only this time he specified a single-bedroom at their lowest rate, for he did not know how long he would be staying and he wanted to hold his expenses to a minimum.

The clerk gave him a room on the second floor, looking down on the boomerang-shaped swimming pool and the wet bar and umbrella tables, all abandoned now to the rain and darkness. The time was six-thirty, too late to see Sergeant Rider and show him Chris’s letter. Hook would have to wait for morning to do that. And he knew the sergeant would not be overjoyed at seeing him, any more than he would be surprised, for Hook had told him that he would be coming back. That next morning, on his way to pick up Chris’s body, he had stopped in at the courthouse both to retrieve his suitcase and to fill the sergeant in on his conversation with the two women and Ferguson the night before. And Rider had not liked it that Hook had gone ahead on his own. But then the sergeant’s displeasure was something he was prepared to live with. That was the least of his worries.

Now, in his room, the first thing he did was call home. Aunt Marian answered and he told her where he was staying and gave her the telephone number. She got a few words out of him about the weather and the flight, and then he said he was tired and hungry and would call them again in a day or two. After he had hung up, he looked in the telephone directory for Isaac Huston’s number and address, but he was not able to find it at first, not until he looked in the Yellow Pages, under photographers. Icarus, it read. 240½ Mission Plaza Rd 962-4342. Hook unpacked and washed up. He planned to lie down and relax for a while—it had been a long day’s journey—but he was too keyed up, too eager to get going. So he put his shirt and tie back on, then his suitcoat and damp raincoat and went out again, stopping first at a brightly lit restaurant up the street for a quick cheeseburger and salad, which he rightly thought would be both cheap and bad. He disliked eating alone in the garish, cheery openness of the place, in fact disliked eating alone anywhere at any time, but he reflected with gratitude that it was something he had had to do very seldom in his life. He bolted his food, thinking ahead to “Icarus.” He could have called the youth, but he wanted to talk to him in the flesh, see him, judge him, learn all he could. If it developed that the young photographer was not at home, then Hook would wait for him. He had nothing else to do, nothing more important.