Day of the Ram

by William Campbell Gault

  He shook his head and was silent, trying to look enigmatic. That’s what can happen to you from watching George Raft on TV.

  I said, “You came as a prospective client?” He shook his head again and permitted me a glimpse of a slight and knowing smile.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Guess it doesn’t matter. I live right close to where that Miss Held lives, used to live, that is.”

  “Oh? And you know something I should know?”

  He had a chance for a pregnant line now and he gave it the full dramatic treatment. “Guess it would be better to say I know something you do know.”

  I said patiently, “Well, say it then, Mr. — ?”

  “I saw you there yesterday. I saw the girl you talked to for so long, the girl in the Lincoln convert.”

  I was getting his pitch now. I said easily, “Pretty girl, wasn’t she?”

  He nodded, watching me warily. “Read the paper this morning. Nothing in the paper about that girl.”

  “Her press agent isn’t as good as he should be. What are you trying to tell me, Mr. — ?”

  “Call me Jones, if you hanker after a name,” he said. “Things are rough these days, with taxes and all.”

  I leaned back in my chair and frowned at him. “Are you trying to blackmail me, Mr. Jones?”

  A silence, while he reddened.

  “Why didn’t you take this information to the police, Mr. Jones?”

  “I’m not looking to give anybody trouble,” he said. “I’m looking to help where I can.”

  “I see. Do you watch all the neighbors?”

  His redness grew. “I’m no snooper. I just happened to be looking out the window and I saw what I saw, is all.”

  “And you brought it to me,” I said quietly. “Anything else you could tell me about Miss Held, Mr. Jones?”

  “That sports car used to be parked there plenty often. That one young Quirk drove. And there was an Imperial there plenty, too.”

  “Any others?”

  “Not regular. None I noticed more than once.”

  “But some you noticed once. What kind of cars were they?”

  “I don’t recollect.”

  Silence, while he fought to get back to dominance and I fought to keep my temper. He was too small to hit and too poor to insult.

  After a moment I asked, “Are you in a hurry, Mr. Jones?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t get you.”

  “I’ll talk to the girl who owns the Lincoln. If she wants to pay to avoid unpleasant publicity, I’ll let you know. Could I have your right name?”

  He shook his head and stood up to smile down at me. “I’ll keep in touch with you, Mr. Callahan. I’ll just be Jones, when I call.”

  I watched him walk out and thought, You’ll always just be Jones. People get the damnedest ideas, watching television.

  I went to the window and waited for him to come out from the building below. He came out, looked both ways along the sidewalk, but didn’t look up toward me. He climbed into a prewar Plymouth parked a few spaces up, not too far for me to make out the license number. I wrote the number down to incorporate into my report later.

  It was eleven when I finished typing, too early for lunch and too late to go any place before lunch. I sat and tried to think.

  I examined the death of Jackie Held from every available angle. She had been a friend of Martin’s, of the Heffners’ and of Johnny Quirk. Had she also been a confidante, and how much of one?

  Johnny, I had learned, revealed different parts of his complex personality to oddly various people. Had he told her something he hadn’t told the others? Or had she learned something since his death that made her existence dangerous to the killer?

  It was logical to assume their deaths were connected; the coincidence would be too big to swallow, otherwise.

  I ran the list of characters over in my mind; going back over the cycle seemed futile and pointless. I would have to find a new list of suspects, or go after the old ones from a new angle.

  I picked up the phone and called Moira Quirk.

  fifteen

  MR. BROCKTON’S desk was near a window and he sat with his back to it. On the wall at one side of the window was a portrait of George Washington. On the wall at the other side was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

  Mr. Brockton’s face was lower than these and directly between them and he undoubtedly suffered from the proximity. His face was too soft, too white and too undistinguished. He looked like what he was, a high school principal.

  He said worriedly, “I can’t see that anything worthwhile can result from investigating a sordid incident in our school’s past, Mr. Callahan. It certainly will add no luster to the reputation of the deceased. He was a fine boy, Mr. Callahan, in many ways. He was forthright and energetic and sensitive.”

  “I know, Mr. Brockton,” I said humbly. “Knowing that is what keeps me working on the case.”

  His gray eyes searched me. “Are you sure? Or are you simply seeking more sensationalism for this already over-publicized tragedy?”

  “I’m an investigator, not a reporter, Mr. Brockton.”

  Silence in the room. Washington looked down at me austerely and Lincoln sadly. Mr. Brockton looked beyond me, perhaps reliving this “sordid incident in our school’s past.”

  Finally he sighed. “Her name was Miss Elinore Arness. I’ve no idea where she is now, or whether she’s teaching or not.”

  “She left here immediately after the incident, of course.” His eyes widened. “Of course.”

  “Would you still have the address she lived at while she was employed here?”

  “We might. If you’ll excuse me a moment?” He rose and went into the outer office.

  I thought Lincoln smiled at me, but Washington’s expression didn’t change. I heard the clack of a typewriter through the open door and then the sound stopped. There was a murmur of low voices.

  The whole building seemed unnaturally quiet, though the fall term had commenced. It must be a well-disciplined school and I could guess at the shock Miss Arness’ indiscretion must have caused.

  Mr. Brockton came in with a file card and handed it to me.

  I thanked him and went down the quiet corridor, dis-tubed only by the soft voices of the explaining teachers. The address was a West Los Angeles address; most teachers can’t afford to live in Beverly Hills.

  It was a six-unit structure of stucco on three sides and redwood on the front side. The owner-manager lived in Apartment One.

  He was a fat man in dungarees and a faded Hawaiian sport shirt. “Miss Elinore Arness?” he said, and his smile was obscene. “She left town right after that mess she got into. Moved to Phoenix. That’s in Arizona, you know.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said modestly. “Do you have a forwarding address for her?”

  “The missus might. You a collector or something?”

  “A producer,” I told him. “I think she’d make an interesting movie.”

  He looked at me knowingly. “For stags, you mean?”

  I winked at him. “See if the missus has the address, huh?”

  He went inside and I heard him ask, “You got that Arness woman’s Phoenix address?”

  “So what if I have? Who wants it?”

  Silence and then his voice was gruffer. “C’mon, don’t get smart. You been writing to her, ain’t you?”

  “There’s a law against it? Who wants her address?”

  Silence again, and then, “I’ll give you ten seconds.”

  Silence, the shuffle of feet, and he said, “Some day, Alice — pow!” He chuckled.

  He came to the door and handed me an address torn off an envelope. He said, “The missus has been writing her.”

  Through the open doorway I could see the missus dimly. She couldn’t have been much under two hundred pounds. I thanked him and went down to the car.

  In Westwood I had the oil drained and had them put in a new cleaner cartridge with
the refill. I had the gas tank filled and the radiator flushed and refilled, and it was three o’clock.

  That was all right. I wouldn’t get to the desert until the heat of the day was waning. Driving through the desert is done best at night, in September, but it wouldn’t be too bad by the time I got there.

  I got onto the freeway in Hollywood, and headed for Highway 60-70.

  I thought back to Sunday night, and Jackie asleep on the davenport, full of Scotch. It didn’t figure that she would top that off with beer. Unless, of course, she’d run out of Scotch and wakened with a thirst. Or unless she had eaten after I had left and the beer had seemed to fit the meal. Like with enchiladas. Or her visitor might have taken her out for dinner, or brought some food over. And who knew when the conine had gone into the beer? I shivered, remembering that I’d had two bottles of it.

  When I’d first met Jackie, she hadn’t wanted to admit she knew any gamblers. Was that to protect Rick Martin? Or the Heffners?

  I ran the flivver up to sixty miles an hour when I got into the open country. Cars went by me like I was parked. Big cars, little cars, old cars and new ones, killers licensed by the state. I kept as far to the right as possible and went up to seventy.

  It grew hotter as I approached Riverside, and the traffic was at its worst right now. But I still wasn’t hungry; I drove on, into the desert.

  A single lane on each side of the white line now, and the cars coming toward me were driving directly into that blinding sun. I tried not to think of them. In the distance the mountains were purple and serene, the shimmer of heat waves danced lazily across the limitless, cactus-studded plain.

  This had probably been a sea before man appeared. I wondered if it would ever be a sea again when man had finally managed to exterminate himself. Every few miles there was a culvert over a sun-baked arroyo, and at every culvert there were a few trees. Perhaps in the rainy season those arroyos were flooded, but where did the trees get their moisture now?

  Only a few miles beyond Indio I saw what I thought must be a mirage. A whiskered, lath-thin prospector was plodding along not twenty feet off the road, heading toward Indio, his burro plodding patiently behind him.

  Neither the burro nor the man seemed to notice the high speed traffic of the highway; both of them seemed lost in thoughts of a quieter, better time.

  At Blythe, I ate. Blythe could have been put up by the California Chamber of Commerce — a green oasis on the California side of the Colorado River. A traveler from the East is startled when he leaves the gray of the Arizona desert as he crosses the bridge into Blythe. After Blythe, on the west, the desert starts again. But that first glimpse of green after countless miles of desert driving is like land to a shipwrecked mariner.

  The sun was only a red ball on the western horizon now, but the temperature was still well over a hundred in Blythe. The cafe was air-conditioned and seemed chilly and dim after the glare of the road.

  I ordered a chicken in a basket and a bottle of beer and went into the washroom to bathe my dry and drawn face. The lip was going down, and so was the bump; my hand no longer ached.

  The beer was cold, the chicken falling off the bone. The waitress told me today hadn’t been so bad, but yesterday had run up to a hundred and fourteen. It was an unseasonable September.

  By the time I got to Quartzite it was completely dark. At Wickenburg the road turned south, toward Phoenix. I gassed up there.

  I was down to forty miles an hour now. I was going to get into town too late to go calling, anyway, and there is always an empty motel room in Phoenix in September.

  Los Angeles is not the West in the true sense. A man has to get out of town to see the West, the desert and the mountains and the quiet sea. Phoenix, too, is not the West. Phoenix is a collection of automobile agencies and motels and memories, a drab and dusty town in the middle of a dull and dusty plain.

  The summer rates were still in effect; I got a motel room with a small kitchenette for five dollars. There was air conditioning and a forty-foot pool.

  I showered and changed my shirt and drove out to the north end of town to the address the fat man had given me. It was an old frame house on a half-acre of ground, a worn house but rich with foliage and flowers. There was no light showing, and I drove back to the motel.

  Water ran through the irrigation ditches along the road; the banked lawns were being flooded. In Phoenix, water for growing things is rationed and tap water is too expensive for irrigation.

  In my motel room the heat of the day still held. I turned on the cooler and sat up for a while before going to bed.

  Elinore Arness had taught English at that high school. According to Mr. Brockton, she was a very attractive woman and had been on the sunny side of thirty when involved with Johnny. I went to sleep framing words for Miss Arness in my mind.

  In the morning I had breakfast at a dining room two motels up the road. The sun was well up and the pool beckoned, but I dutifully climbed into the hot flivver and drove to the Arness domain.

  A sun-bleached station wagon with one crumpled fender was parked on the gravel driveway. The wagon bore New Mexico plates. The garage door was open and a thin and swarthy young man was in there mixing paint. He wore jeans and high-heeled cowboy boots and no shirt.

  He looked up as I parked, and came over, wiping his hands on a rag, as I stepped from the flivver.

  He was handsome in a weak and oily way and I could guess he would appear attractive to women. I said, “I’m looking for Miss Elinore Arness.”

  Arrogance was plain on his sensitive face. “Why?”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and sixty or so, but he was a full inch taller than I am and my weight didn’t seem to register on him at all.

  “Beat it,” he said.

  “Easy, now. It’s Miss Arness I came to see, not you. Let her decide whether she wants to talk to me or not.”

  His narrow face showed no emotion. “You’re trespassing. I could run in and get a gun, or I could carve you up.” His hand went into his jeans pocket and came out with a knife. A click, and the long narrow blade flashed in the bright Arizona sun.

  “I could go into town and get a police officer,” I said, “or I could make you eat that knife. Don’t mess with me, punk; I’m here to see Miss Elinore Arness.”

  “You’re trespassing,” he said again.

  “On your property?”

  “I watch it during the day, when Miss Arness is gone. And she particularly doesn’t like people from California.”

  There was no quaver in his voice and no quiver I could see in his body. I think he wanted me to make a move toward him. The knife was held low, ready to slash up, and he probably knew how to use it.

  I asked quietly, “Where or how can I reach Miss Arness?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no way. Haven’t you bastards bothered her enough?”

  “What bastards?”

  He looked at me calmly. “You’re trespassing. That’s the last warning.”

  “I’ll be back,” I told him. “Don’t go away.” He smiled. “I’ll be here.”

  Across the road and about a hundred feet down it, a woman with pruning shears had stood watching us from the front yard of her new ranch house. I drove over there.

  She was a tanned woman on the hopeful side of forty, and she gave her attention to a grapefruit tree as I parked in front. When the door of my car slammed, she looked up.

  I gave her one of the business cards that mentioned the credit side of my many-faceted agency and told her, “I’m trying to locate a Miss Elinore Arness. I ran into a little difficulty across the street.”

  Her light blue eyes searched my face as she nodded. “I thought I saw a knife in his hand. Was I right?”

  I nodded. “One of the perils of the trade. Could you tell me where I could find Miss Arness now?”

  She continued to study me. “I like Elinore. I like her a lot. Her taste in men puzzles me, but I guess no
ne of us are perfect, are we?”

  “None I’ve met,” I said. “Don’t you want to tell me where she works?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “Would you like a glass of grapefruit punch? It’s a hot day.”

  I smiled. “I’m not one to belittle the mañana attitude, but I’m here on business.”

  She smiled in return. “I know. I saw the plates on your car. If you’re not in too much of a hurry, we could sit on the porch and have some punch and I could decide what I want to tell you.”

  I looked up the road to the next house doubtfully.

  The woman said, “They don’t know anything about Elinore. They only recently moved there. Well, I guess I’m taking up your time.” She started for the house.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m thirsty for grapefruit punch.”

  It was a narrow porch, running the whole length of the house. I sat in a rattan rocker and waited. I thought I heard a voice from inside the house and wondered if the woman was on the phone. I hadn’t heard it ring.

  Across the street the slim young man was painting the garage a pastel yellow. High in the sky beyond the house a buzzard circled and dipped. On the dry Bermuda grass of the front lawn the clippings were already wilting and curling in that hot sun. Footsteps, and my hostess came out the front door carrying a dewy pitcher and a pair of tumblers stenciled in a cowboy motif.

  The stuff was pink, for some reason. But tart and tasty. We sipped, and watched the thin man paint the garage.

  “Cigarette?” my hostess asked, and offered a white box of English cigarettes.

  “No, thank you. Miss Arness never married?”

  “No. What store in Los Angeles wants a credit report on her?”

  “None that I know of. Credit investigations are only part of my work.”

  The delicate odor of mild tobacco came to me and I looked over to see my hostess staring fixedly at the man painting.

  I said, “Do you know Elinore Arness very well?”

  She continued to look at the painter. “I guess I’m her best friend in Phoenix.”

  “Perhaps you can guess why I’m here.”

  “Perhaps. Juan was in Los Angeles at the time — that Quirk boy died.”