Hawks’ eyebrows drew together and then relaxed.
Connington grinned crookedly without taking his eyes completely off the road. “Begin to sound like I knew what I was doin’?”
Before Hawks could answer, Connington stopped the car. They were at the break in the cleft wall. A second, shallower notch turned into the cliff here, forming a dogleg that was invisible from the road over the bridge below. The driveway angled around it so acutely that Connington’s car could not make the turn. The point of the angle had been blasted out to make the driveway perhaps eighty inches wide at the bend of the dogleg, but there were no guard rails; the road dropped off directly into the cleft, and either leg was a chute pointing to the water a hundred feet below.
“You’re gonna have to help me here,” Connington said. “Get out and tell me when my wheels look like they’re gonna go over.”
Hawks looked at him, pursed his lips, and got out of the car. He squeezed out between it and the cliff, and walked to the point of the dogleg. Standing with the tips of his black oxfords projecting a little way over the edge, he looked down. The spray veiled the bottom of the gut. Hanging from two of the projections in the rough walls were a small automobile fender and a ragged strip of fabric from a convertible top. The fabric was bleached and raveled. The paint on the aluminum fender was rotten with corrosion. Hawks looked at them with intent curiosity.
Connington let down his window with a quick whirr. “Barker’s,” he said loudly over the sound of the surf in the cleft. “He put it in there last month. Almost went with it.”