Three hours later, I was forty-seven dollars ahead, Wendell fifty. As it was a two-bit-limit game, with a dollar on the last card, that was a revealing indication of the company we had been in. If I had grown up in Skeleton Gulch, it was possible I never would have needed a rich uncle.
After the midnight gourmet repast of greasy salami sandwiches on chain-store white bread, washed down with acid coffee, most of the players headed for home. Only five dedicated devotees of kill-the-cat were still in action when Wendell and I left.
“That bit about the wallet,” Wendell said, as we climbed into the Scout, “was that important? It sure shook up Alvin.”
“It might be,” I said, “but the world is full of alligator wallets. If it’s important, Alvin has probably burned it by now.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he only uses it for formal occasions. And he did say he would see you tomorrow, so he could figure you didn’t get the connection, whatever it is.”
“Tonight he said he’d see me,” I pointed out. “But what about tomorrow, when he’s hung over and owly?”
“Don’t go too early,” Wendell advised me. “And it might help to throw in some nasty words about Carl, if you get to talk with him. All the Chittys resent Carl.”
“You,” I said admiringly, “are almost as tricky as I am.”
He agreed with a nod. “I’ve been in the horse business for fifty years and I’m still eating. I’ve had to be a little tricky.”
FIFTEEN
ALL THE THREADS WERE coming together, all the lines were beginning to connect. I had a partial picture. But even if the picture became whole, would we have a case we could take into court? Circumstantial evidence can afford a reasonable inference of the occurrence of the fact in issue both Webster and the prosecutor would agree.
Try to feed that line to a jury. Juries are made up of ordinary citizens, not Solomons. The twelve chosen citizens who sit in judgment are warned by the judge, if he is a just judge, about the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt admonition of guilt or innocence. Doubt is what successful defense attorneys sell.
I phoned Vogel after breakfast and asked him what was new at his end. A forest ranger, he told me, who had also seen the yellow pickup speed out of the fire area, had a cast of the tire imprint the truck had left in the marshy area below the road.
“We’ve checked half the yellow pickups in town,” he said, “and got nowhere. But I think we finally have Kelly nailed on a conspiracy and kidnapping rap. Even the DA agrees. And what have you learned down there?”
I gave him the zinger first. “Alvin Chitty is now driving a yellow Ford pickup truck he bought in San Valdesto.”
“Damn it! That’s why he left town in a hurry. Why didn’t I think of that? Is there a chance you can check the truck’s tires?”
“There is. I’m seeing him today.” I gave him an account of the other things I had learned and my talk with Alvin last night.
“If he’s sour on Kelly,” he said, “Mrs. Lacrosse must be, too. She might testify for us. Those tires are not standard equipment. They’re knobby, off-road tires. They are called Chippewa trailblazers. No tire dealer in town sells them, and our check so far at the car agencies hasn’t turned up any dealer who put them on a new or used truck.”
Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. He was still Bernie’s primary target. Mine wasn’t even in my sights. I told him I would phone him at the station or at home, depending on the time I learned anything new.
I used Lydia’s portable to type up a statement for Alvin to sign. I threw in some phony legalese to make the document sound important and official enough for me to have traveled this far from home. I took it and a bottle of Wild Turkey with me.
The pickup was parked on the side of the house today. Alvin was not in sight. I was bending over to check the tires when he came around from the back of the house.
“What you doing?” he asked me.
I stood up and smiled at him. “I noticed your tires. I’ve been trying to get a set of them for my Jeep. But there’s no Chippewa dealer in San Valdesto.”
“I bought the truck in Ventura,” he told me. “The tires were on it.” He looked at the bottle in my hand. “You a morning drinker?”
I shook my head. “This is a token of my thanks to you. I brought a statement for you to sign.”
“Come in,” he said. “I got some coffee on. We can jazz it up with a shot of that stuff.”
He was wearing the same clothes he had worn last night. They looked as if they had been slept in, and probably had. The front door opened directly into the living room. It was damp in here, compared with the dry air outside, and faintly fetid. The furniture was discount-house, medium-range modern.
“Sit down,” he said, and went through an archway to the kitchen.
I sat on a box-square black-and-white-striped couch upholstered in some synthetic fabric that had not resisted wear. The black enameled coffee table in front of me was stacked with copies of the National Enquirer.
Alvin came back with two big mugs of spiked coffee. He set one in front of me on the coffee table and sat in a black imitation-leather armchair at the end of the table. I handed him the typed statement.
Coldwell had been wrong. Alvin’s lips did not move. He finished reading and looked up. “You a lawyer?”
I shook my head. “I had a year of pre-law, but it was too complicated for me. Football was about all I was good at in college.”
He sipped some coffee. I sipped some coffee. “Got a pen?” he asked.
I handed him a ballpoint pen. I said, “Another guy, I’d like to meet up with is Carl Lacrosse. Do you know where he is now?”
“Naw. What’s your beef with him?”
“I think he should pay to send Joel to college. From what I’ve learned so far, the man is loaded.”
“You know Joel?”
“Not personally. A young friend who is working with me is up at that cult. He gave me the word on Joel.”
He leaned forward to sign the statement. “I don’t know. The way I see it, there’s more Lacrosse in him than Chitty.”
“Maybe. But Joel sure hates his father.”
“Most of the people around here do. He’s a snotty bastard. His old man couldn’t afford to be. He was in business here. I still can’t figure what good it will do you to put Kelly away.”
I swallowed another jolt of coffee. “Just between us? You’ll keep it to yourself?”
“Hell, yes.”
“That Vogel,” I said, “that cop who was with me when we talked with you, remember him?”
He nodded.
“Well, he’s got something on me that could—” I paused. “Put it this way, better Kelly should go to the can than me.”
“This Vogel’s got something heavy on you?”
I took a deep breath. “About twenty years in the slammer heavy.”
“Oh, boy! But this Vogel hates Kelly worse than you?”
“Vogel doesn’t hate me. He only uses me.”
“He’s a yid, right?”
I nodded. “And a vindictive cop. Kelly was a crooked cop who got bounced from the department—and tried to implicate Vogel. Vogel has made a crusade out of nailing him. If I help him with Kelly, he told me, he’d never call on me again.”
“It’s starting to make sense,” he said. “Another jolt?”
He brought it. I sipped it. He suggested we play a little kill-the-cat. It was a simple game, he assured me; he could teach it to me.
It was more than simple; it was dumb. I played it dumber and drank slower than he did. The booze didn’t get to my head, but the coffee started rumbles in my stomach. I played on, losing steadily.
The final time he went to get himself a refill, he was wavering on his feet, almost staggering when he returned.
About two minutes later, he said, “I didn’t hit the sack last night until three o’clock this morning. I’m going to catch a snooze. You owe me seventeen dollars.”
I laid a ten, a five, and two singles on the coffee table.
“You sober enough to drive?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “I’ll go out and get some air. Maybe when you wake up, we can play some more. I think I’m getting the hang of this game.”
“Suit yourself, sucker. Give me a couple of hours. There’s booze left in the kitchen if you want a comeback jolt later. And we can eat, too. I brought home some of that chow from the clubhouse.”
I waited until he started to snore before going through the drawers in the kitchen. Nothing. And nothing in the one drawer in the coffee table.
All that was left was the bedroom where he was still snoring. The rumble in my stomach would be drowned out by that—I hoped. The small discount-house chest of drawers in there held three drawers.
The nausea in me began to rise as I opened the top drawer of the chest. There were three pairs of sweat socks in there, one white shirt, one blue work shirt, one pair of corduroy pants.
The middle drawer held some dingy, badly washed shorts and two pair of what he probably thought of as dress socks, and one sweat-stained baseball cap.
The bottom drawer was loaded with girlie magazines, old racing forms, and an enormous leather-bound family Bible.
That’s where the wallet was, under the Bible. There had obviously been initials in one corner of it, but they had been scraped away. But the imprint of the impressed initials remained. The initials were SM.
The nausea was higher now. I carefully replaced the wallet under the Bible again, and walked even more carefully and slowly toward the outside air.
The clean dry air helped some. I started walking up the road toward Wendell’s house. Halfway there I got rid of some of the spiked coffee and also bits of the bacon I’d had for breakfast. That helped a little more.
Wendell was out in his corral. He must have known by the way I was walking that I was in trouble. He met me when I turned into his driveway.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you drunk?”
I nodded carefully.
“Go lie down in the shade behind the house,” he said. “I’ll make you come coffee.”
Coffee, that was the trigger word. My stomach reacted once again. The taste of vomit was sour in my mouth, but my mind was clearer. I told him the story of my Chitty visit. I told him about the wallet and the tires and the significance of both.
“I’ll phone the sheriff,” he said. “You go and lie down on that cot back of the house.”
“And tell your sheriff,” I added, “to phone Lieutenant Vogel of the San Valdesto Police Department. Tell him to tell Vogel what I told you. Vogel will fill him in on the rest of it.”
“Right. Go lie down.”
Five minutes later I was dead to the world.
Three hours after that I was back with my friends and almost whole again, though still queasy. Wendell had told them the story of my adventure while I was asleep.
“Jerry’s right,” Lydia said. “You are crazy.”
“Don’t make noises like a wife. You’re not entitled.”
“Thank God for that. Did you drink that whole liter of whiskey?”
“Nope. I had help. Is there any Alka-Seltzer around?”
When she brought it she told me, “A Lieutenant Vogel phoned. He’s going to call again after dinner. Now go out and sit on the deck and relax. Jerry will be home soon.”
Jerry came home about fifteen minutes later. He brought me five vitamin-C tablets and some B2s in one hand and a glass of water in the other. “They are called the insult combination,” he explained. “They are for dummies who insist on insulting their bodies. Take ’em!
I took ’em.
He went into the house for a glass of carrot juice and came back to take the chair next to mine. He said, “Wendell thinks you are quite a guy.”
“I am. So is he. Both of us will dance on your grave.”
He laughed. “Macho, macho, macho, my buddy Brock. Strength is not health, muscles.”
“And hypochondria is not a disease,” I said.
He laughed again. “We’re right back in college, aren’t we? That is where I left my hypochondria, way back there. A doctor ordered me to come here for my asthma. And this time I got a second opinion.”
“I withdraw the charge. And I officially thank you for getting me off nicotine. And I forgive you for marrying my girl. Tomorrow morning, when I’m whole and hearty again, you and I will run a race up to Wendell’s house and back.”
“Are you crazy? That’s twelve miles, half of it uphill. I told you—strength is not health!”
“I know you did. But you just got another second opinion.”
Lydia came out to join us, bringing her martini along. “I suppose,” she said to me, “you won’t be able to stomach much dinner. Should I make you some chicken soup? Or maybe some onion soup?”
“I’ll have whatever you two are having,” I said. “I am almost back to my healthy, muscular norm.”
We were playing gin rummy after dinner, winner stands up, when Vogel phoned.
“Three birds with one stone,” he said cheerfully. “My thanks to all of them.”
“Translate that into English,” I said.
“We have Alvin for the two murders. And you are the man who nailed Kelly for me. And you are Brock the Rock, which is a stone.”
“How clever! Bernie, we have only suspects. You must know that. We haven’t anything solid. It’s all circumstantial evidence.”
“Maybe on Alvin, but not on Kelly. I got a statement from Mrs. Lacrosse about the five-thousand-dollar fee to add to the rest that we have.”
“You must have gotten it before Alvin was picked up.”
“I did. But it’s in writing, and she signed it in front of witnesses. Can she deny that she signed it?”
“I guess not. Can you get extradition on Alvin?”
“We already have. The sheriff thanked me for getting Alvin out of the county and told me to try for the rest of the Chittys.”
“But pinning Morgenstern on Alvin? Are you dreaming? Because he has a wallet with initials that match Morgenstern’s? He could have found it. And can we find anyone who can prove that it’s Morgenstern’s wallet?”
“All right, all right! You’ve got a point. It needs more work. But now at least we know where to look, don’t we? And Kelly is in the bag. That’s something, isn’t it?”
I had been enough of a killjoy. “That’s something,” I agreed. “Hang in there, buddy. I’ll see you soon.”
It was something—and possibly all we had. The weapon, which was the means, could not be tied to anyone. Alvin had his alibi for the opportunity, the fuss at the gate. And the motive was still unsolved.
Maybe, now that we had dug this far, the lovers would reveal the motive? That was a long-shot hope with those two. I couldn’t believe any prosecutor would take what we had into court.
“You look gloomy,” Lydia said, when I came back to the game. “Bad news from San Valdesto?”
“Not according to my friend. He thinks it’s our day of triumph.”
“And you don’t?”
I shook my head. “We haven’t any clear motive. It’s not only the who and the what. We have to know the why of it. I want to know why!”
She tapped her forehead. “‘I want to know why.’ That was the title of a short story, right? Whose?”
“Sherwood Anderson’s,” I told her. “That is one I don’t have to look up.”
SIXTEEN
HOT DAYS, COLD NIGHTS, and too much quiet; this must be the wrong time of the year to visit Prescott. Sleep was late in coming, and when it came I dreamed of a horde of Chittys chasing me through a long, narrow, dead-end canyon.
I had told the Hollands that I would be leaving for home in the morning. If Carl’s father was still alive in Phoenix, I would stop over there before going home.
I asked Jerry at breakfast if he knew the name of the rest home.
He shook his head. “But Wendell probably has it.”
I phoned him after breakfast. “H
e’s still alive,” he told me. “At least he was when I visited him last week. His mind is sound enough, but he has been getting weaker ever since his wife died.” He gave me the name of the place and the address.
I thanked him, and said, “You’re the man who phoned the sheriff. I hope the Chittys don’t take out their revenge on you.”
“They won’t,” he said, “unless they have a death wish. Good hunting, Brock.”
“Thank you again. Thank you for everything. If you ever come to California, be sure to look us up.”
“Not me. That place is all Chittys.”
Horses for courses. Even Philadelphia has its loyalists.
The Hollands took me to the airport and promised to come and visit us this summer. They had promised us that last summer.
Up, up, and away, defying the fundamental law of gravity. Daniel Bernoulli, I had read somewhere, had discovered his famous principle by watching the water in a stream as it flowed around a rock, and observing the vacuum it created on one side of the rock.
This was not water we were traveling through; this was thin desert air. Daniel, I would bet, had never been in Arizona.
The flight was serene, the landing bumpy but not scary. I took a taxi to the address Wendell had given me.
It was lunchtime at the rest home. The elder Carl Lacrosse, the lady at the desk in the lobby told me, was eating in his room. It was room 116.
He was sitting in a wheelchair when I came in through the open doorway. He was thin and bald. He had snow-white eyebrows over his sunken brown eyes, and a thin hooked nose. He looked up as I entered.
“Mr. Callahan?”
I nodded.
“Wendell phoned me that you were coming. Take a look out this window.”
I went over to look at nothing but sand and rock.
“Name it,” he said.
“Bleaksville?” I guessed.
“No, no! The picture—what picture does it remind you of? Edward Hopper is the artist.”
“My wife has mentioned his name,” I said, “but I don’t know his work.”
“Western Motel is the picture. I never should have left Prescott. You came here to ask about Syd? Sit down, Mr. Callahan.”
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