So I dropped Netta off at a hotel, and after that I drove up the hill to the Colonel’s place, through so much water pouring off Soledad that it was like steering a rowboat up Niagara Falls. Up there on the top was right in the middle of crazy, black, boiling chubasco clouds.
chubascoThe Colonel, flashlight in hand, opened up for me. We went back into his study, which was a big gloomy paneled room lighted only by a pair of wax tapers on the big glossy desktop. The Colonel sat down behind the desk and I studied his face framed between the candlesticks, and the flames were repeated in his eyes.
“Perry’s death makes a difference,” he said. “I was fond of old Felix, and I’m not going to sit with my hands folded while the police putter around with theories of it’s being a traffic accident.”
I
