“Police business,” I said. “Who’s in charge?”
His smile slid off. “Lombardo. He’s inside.”
Lombardo was a stocky man, younger than most of his salesmen, with a wide, white meaningless smile. He had been sitting in the office, chatting with two of his salesmen. He knew my name.
“Honest to God, Lieutenant, I was just saying to these boys, it puts a guy in a funny spot, this McAran coming up with cash like he did, and so do I tell him I can’t take his money on account he served time? Do I ask him where he gets cash? Maybe I get a hit in the mouth, hey? When I send Charlie for the plates I have him hit the bank first and check out the cash. So it’s good, so what else? The way the law reads, I sell something in good faith, then—”
“I’m sure you know how the law reads, Lombardo. I’m sure you have a lot of reason to look things up. Rest easy. It was his money.”
He relaxed. “It’s a good car, but I don’t want it back. The way things are going, Lieutenant, it was the only clean deal in two months. You know what I got to do, the way things are going? I got to wholesale some good clean iron to pay the rent. Right now, believe me, I could make you one hell of a deal on your car, if that’s yours you came in.”
“It’s mine. I use my own car on personal business.”
“What can we do for you, friend?”
“I want to talk to the salesman.”
“What for?”
“Because I can turn personal business into police business, Lombardo, faster than you can turn a speedometer backward. Your knowing he’s my brother-in-law gives you no handle. By tomorrow I can have state inspectors in here freezing the title on everything on the lot which doesn’t pass a complete safety inspection. That front canopy out there is in violation of county zoning on setbacks. The state might want to run a special audit on your sales tax records.”
The white smile finally disappeared. “The salesman was Jack. Jack Abel, out there, talking to those kids about the truck. Maybe—you could wait just a minute. I mean I could call him, but there’s the chance maybe he’s nailing it down and—”
“I’ll wait.”
“Thanks! Thanks a lot! You know, I got the idea, somehow, you—were sort of an easygoing guy, Lieutenant. I don’t want any trouble. Believe me, I don’t want any kind of trouble more than I got already.”
“Everybody within fifty miles seems to know McAran, and knows he’s my brother-in-law.”
His smile had returned. “Anybody new here maybe doesn’t. But anybody here five years ago isn’t about to forget it.”
I looked out the window and saw the couple start to leave the lot. The salesman turned and began to walk spiritlessly back toward the sales office. I went out and intercepted him twenty feet from the building.
“Abel? Lieutenant Hillyer. City police. Lombardo says you can tell me about selling the Pontiac station wagon to McAran.”
He had a pink moon face, a soft paunch and a green tweed jacket. “Sure. He got a good deal on it. A real good deal. A nice clean wagon. Dark blue. No dings. Heavy duty shocks and springs, load levelers, radio and heater, power steering. Wagons always go pretty good. We wouldn’t have had it around even ten days, but things are slow. We had it priced twenty-five ninety-five, but account of no trade and not too much left in the rubber, it worked around to twenty-three even, tags thrown in. He got a good deal. What else you want to know. I figure you come from the office, you already know he put the cash money right down.”
“Did he get what he was looking for?”
“I guess he did. He walked right in wanting a wagon, a good sized one, heavy, with a lot of muscle under the hood. That one’s got the biggest engine they made that year. See that green and white Buick over there? He didn’t like that one on account of the bright colors. Up there in the front, that dark green Chrysler, he didn’t like that on account it has air conditioning, power windows, power brakes, power seats, all that stuff that pulls your horsepower way down. We took the Pontiac down the road. He worked it over pretty good. He left some rubber on the road starting up and stopping it too, and he took that corner onto Andrews like I was glad no cop saw it.”
“Any other thing he was looking for in the car?”
“Not a thing I can think of. He isn’t a man to talk. Lord God, he’s a big hunk of man. And I stopped trying to make friends real fast. I just talked about the car. He wanted a car. He didn’t want a friend.”
“Did he hang around while you were waiting for the plates?”
“He walked over to that diner, and when he came back we were putting the plates on it.”
I thanked him and went to my car and got in. I started the motor, then thought of something else, a semi-hunch, and went back inside and asked Lombardo about the money. “Twenty-three one-hundred-dollar bills,” he said. “New, but not real brand new. Not off a roll or out of a wallet. By the time he came in here, and I’d okayed the price, he had the exact right amount in his hand. He didn’t count it out. He just dropped it right there on the desk. I counted it. Twice.”
As soon as I got back to my desk, I phoned Meg. She said he wasn’t home yet. I told her he had bought a car.
“Does he know you know that?”
“No, honey. I checked it out. Be surprised when he drives in with it. I don’t want him to know I’m checking on him.”
“I wish I hadn’t told you about the letter coming.”
“Why not?”
“He shouldn’t be hounded, Fenn. He’s got a right to buy a car, hasn’t he?”
“Of course.”
“Is there anything wrong about buying a car?”
“No.”
“Can’t you just leave him alone?”
“Honey, we can talk about this later. When you drew his money out, how did you give it to him?”
“I just handed it to him, with the cancelled book showing the interest and so on.”
“I mean what demoninations was it in? It was over twenty-eight hundred dollars, wasn’t it?”
“Twenty-eight hundred and sixty-six forty-one. What do you care what denominations it was in anyway?”
“Please, honey.”
“Well—he didn’t say how he wanted it. So I wanted it in a sort of handy size without being too bulky. So I had them give me ten hundred-dollar bills, and thirty fifty-dollar bills. There were six tens, and a five and a one so that makes three hundred in twenties. Why do you want to know?”
Hooper came in and I motioned to him to sit down. “He paid cash for the car. Twenty-three one-hundred-dollar bills.”
There was a silence. I could hear her breathing. “Maybe he stopped at a bank and changed the fifties to hundreds.”
“The taxi took him directly out to West Boulevard where the used car lots are.”
“Maybe he went into town some other day, when I was shopping. I can’t be certain he hasn’t left the house, dear. I couldn’t prove he never went to the bank. Cathie Perkins was here again, you know, yesterday, after she got out of work. Maybe she brought him some money.”
“Meg, honey, why are you fighting the very simple and obvious answer that the money came through the mail?”
“So all right! So it did come in the mail. Maybe he borrowed it, or somebody owed it to him. Is it any of our business, really?”
“Then he burned the envelope.”
“I shouldn’t have even told you about it, Fenn,” she said in a weary monotone and hung up on me.
When I hung up, Johnny Hooper was looking at me inquisitively. I hesitated, then realized this was no time to hide anything which might become a police matter. I gave it to him fast, cold and complete.
He whistled softly. “The man has friends. And orders maybe? Like stay put until you hear from me? Like burn this letter and buy a fast car. And he makes new friends, doesn’t he? Why are such nice girls attracted to such dangerous animals? Because they are nice girls? I’ll have somebody check out her bank book, just in case. Okay? And how about Pittsburgh covering the return recei
pt?”
“Not enough to go on. No evidence of any crime committed or being planned. Besides, it’s a trick that’s been used before. The man who sent the money doesn’t want the actual signed receipt. He wants to know it was delivered. So he’ll phone the General Delivery clerk and say he’s Thomas Roberts, and is there anything for him, and they’ll say yes, so he’ll say he’ll come down and pick it up. But he doesn’t have to. It was the only time he used the name. So he’ll know McAran got it.”
“Tap the line and ask them to stall?”
“Nobody can stall long enough for a dial call to be traced. You know better than that, Johnny. It only works on television. Soon as he hangs up the connection is broken and can’t be traced. And it’s a half-day job to trace an open connection. The only chance is that routine of leave your number and we’ll call back, and I somehow have the feeling that wouldn’t work at all.”
“He was looking for a station wagon? What does that mean?”
“Damned if I know. More room. When you’re after bulky stuff, furs, clothing, liquor, a panel delivery makes more sense.”
He looked at me with an odd expression. “Do you have the same funny feeling I have, Fenn? Do you have the feeling we’re going to be outsmarted?”
“We better not be.”
“And we both know where he must have made his Pittsburgh friend.”
“I was thinking of how we could check that over. I can’t see trying to do it over the phone. I think you’re going on a little trip to Harpersburg. I’ll clear it with the Chief.”
Larry Brint listened quietly as I gave him the whole story.
“Under normal conditions,” he said, “I wouldn’t let loose of any man on something this hazy. He’d have to do it on his own time, and even then I might not want to clear it with Hudson. But the pressure is on me to roust him on his way. I’ve bucked it and I’ll keep bucking it, but I just don’t like to think of the mess there’d be if something gets pulled here, and he’s in on it, and somebody gets hurt. Hooper can go up there tomorrow. I’ll talk to Boo Hudson on the phone. Tell him to look hard at recent releases, going back not more than three or four months, as a guess. And I have the hunch he should look for a loner, not anybody out of organized crime, because everybody knows this is a hands-off town.”
I set it up with Johnny, and I arrived home a little after six. The dark blue station wagon was parked on the grass beside my garage, doing the grass no good. I got out of my car and looked at it. The tread marks on the soft grass were sharply defined. I squatted and looked at the tires. He had new tires all around, heavy duty nylons with one of those all weather treads which are slightly noisy on smooth roads, but are good in mud and snow.
I looked in at the mileage. Fourteen thousand. I opened the door and checked the pedal wear, and guessed they’d turned it back about ten thousand.
“Like it?” McAran said, startling me. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.
“Yours?”
“Bought it today.”
“Nice-looking car, Dwight.”
There had been a sudden change in him. He looked amused, slightly wary, completely alert.
“Needs tuning. Runs a little rough.”
“New tires.”
“All around. Had them put on today.”
“Doesn’t leave you much money, does it?”
“Enough for a little while. I broke a law today, Fenn. After I bought the tires I was riding along and I suddenly realized my license ran out a long, long time ago. And that’s the first time I gave it a thought. So I went over and took a test and got a nice new one, all in order. We law-abiding citizens have to do just what the law calls for. We don’t like to take chances.”
“I’m glad you remembered it. How about insurance?”
“Do I need any?”
“Next year it will be compulsory.”
“But this is this year. I’ll be careful.”
“You’ve been very careful, ever since they let you out.”
“I’m a changed man. I thought you’d noticed.”
“Changed? I notice everything. Like the act with the Perkins girl. I’m astonished you haven’t hustled her into bed. It would be so easy. She’d have to be convinced it was therapy. Maybe you just don’t want any complications right now. Maybe somebody gave you orders to stay away from silly little broads.”
“Nobody gives me orders, brother-in-law. You’ve got a cop walk and a cop mouth and a long, pointed cop nose.”
“We can identify each other a quarter-mile away, McAran. You know what I am and I know what you are.”
“Right now maybe you want to try your luck,” he said. I watched the small changes in the way he stood, the planting of feet, lift of shoulders, lowering of chin. I should have been alarmed, but he suddenly looked ridiculous. I laughed at him. His face turned a dull red which made the notched scars in his brows look whiter. “We in a school yard?” I asked him. “A hillbilly picnic, maybe? You can whip lots of people, McAran. Mildred, Meg, Davie Morissa, Cathie Perkins. You could probably whip me, but I’ll give you no chance. None. Come at me, boy, and I’ll backpedal fast, and I’ll be lifting out the Special, and I’ll blow your knee into a sack of pebbles and kick your mouth sideways as you go down.”
“Small-time cop,” he said in a soft, sighing, dangerous voice.
“With nothing to prove about myself, one way or the other.” I smiled at him and walked by him into the house. Meg wanted to know why I was grinning like a fool. I told her I’d been comparing muscles with her brother and learned I had some he’d never heard of. I said I had admired the twenty-three-hundred-dollar automobile, and we’d talk about it later on. I went into the living room, inhabited by Lulu, Judy, Bobby and the Three Stooges. After a few minutes of flying pies, Meg called the kids to dinner. It was a new pattern for us, to feed them earlier and separately. It was easier than having the five of us at the table at once. That made too much tension for everyone.
Dwight came in and stretched out on the couch without glancing at me. We watched the evening news and weather. When it was over, an underwater adventure thing came on. He seemed to be watching it, so I didn’t turn it off. I tried reading a weekly news magazine. It didn’t mean very much to me. I don’t think they mean very much to anybody any more. I suppose we should be interested. We’re in these towns and cities, all of us, and an impacted wisdom tooth or an increase in the water rates, or three days of steady rain means more than the Congo. Maybe it was always that way. But now there’s so much communication, so many people trying to tell you about the things that are shaking the earth, and behind it all is the chance of somebody suddenly turning you into nothing at all, by accident or on purpose. If you are in a room where eight or ten people are talking at you, all at once, telling you eight or ten terrible things, you stop listening to all of them and start thinking about when you’ll get the haircut you’ve been needing for a week. It used to bother me, looking at Huntley and Brinkley and just watching their mouths moving and not hearing anything, as if I had the sound off, and then I found out it was that way with a lot of people. Everybody is telling us so much, you just hear the funny stuff.
I was trying to read about aid to education, because I thought I should know about it. But my eye was moving across the words, and I could have been holding the magazine upside down. In the top layer of my mind I was wondering what McAran was planning. I could hear his tone of voice in the car on the way back from Harpersburg. “Brook City took something away from me. I want it back.”
And on the next layer of consciousness was the problem of how best to beef up the midnight shift with three men out with a virus. And what to do about three current files that were bogged down because the legwork wasn’t producing anything new.
Meg called us to dinner. The kids took over the television for their final half-hour before bed. Meg continued her forlorn effort to make mealtime festive. I tried to help her. The unyielding presence of McAran made it like trying to play a banjo in a cryp
t. That was the biggest single change in him, that almost total withdrawal.
Near the end of the meal, as Meg was telling me about one of our neighbors deciding to move to Arizona to try his luck there, McAran dropped his fork onto his plate and said, “The kid can have his room back Thursday. I’ll be pulling out about then. Let me see you cry real tears, Hillyer.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“People on probation, people on parole, they have to say please can I go, sir. I don’t. I went the route. You keep forgetting that.”
“I haven’t forgotten it for a minute. It was a polite question. Brotherly interest. Somebody says they’re leaving. You say where are you going. Everybody does it.”
“Please! Both of you!” Meg said. “Where are you going, dear?”
“No secret. I’m going back into the hill country for a while. The weather’s getting mild enough now. Once I get the wagon running right, I’ll pick up some gear and grub and go get lost back there for a while. It’s been a long time since I’ve been by myself. I want to see what it feels like.”
He smiled at her. Both the smile and the little speech had all the plausibility of Confederate money, but Meg looked delighted. She clapped her hands. “Dwight, I just think that’s a wonderful idea.”
“Better than sitting around your house, honey. I won’t eat as good, or sleep so soft, but it’s something I’ve been thinking of doing.”
“You never cared to be alone, the way I always did.”
“You appreciate it, Sis, when you can’t get any of it. Like anything else I guess. I get too lonesome, I’ll find a Saturday night dance and some little girl that might like camping out for a while.”
One Monday We Killed Them All Page 10