Eureka

by William Diehl

  I had seen the place from the other side of the basin and knew it had a broad lawn in the rear that ended at the edge of cliff that dropped straight into the Pacific.

  I was guessing there were at least fifteen bedrooms above the first floor. The main floor probably had a library, billiard room, dining room, living room, and whatever other cubbyholes were necessary to let rich people know the owner was richer. Behind the mansion, far out over the Pacific, the sky was black with storm clouds forming on the horizon. About halfway down the drive a gray rabbit stuck its head out of the hedge, looked around, and started to hop to the other side. It stopped suddenly, turned, its feet kicking up stones, and bolted back to safety moments ahead of a speckled hawk that swept across the road, its claws distended, and then pulled up sharply over the hedgerow.

  No other name but Grand View would have fit.

  It made the Gorman place look like a dollhouse.

  “Now that’s a sight,” I said.

  But in my mind I imagined gunshots in the night; Culhane charging through these gates in his 1920 Ford; a thug named McGurk staggering out of the house and blowing out the windshield before Culhane dropped him into the hedgerow with a single shot in the eye. I imagined Culhane rushing the living room. Three more shots. A woman’s scream.

  And I wondered who shot whom when those last three gunshots rang out in the night.

  I sat back in the car seat.

  “I’ll bet the inside of that joint would give John Jacob Astor a start,” I said.

  “Cost you five bills to find out.”

  “Not likely.”

  He handed me one of Rusty’s freshly rolled cigarettes and we lit up. Rusty dropped the Packard into gear and pulled away. The window slid quietly up as if someone in the house had prompted it.

  About twenty yards ahead of us, a road curved off to our right and then dipped sharply down and curved around the cliff and out of sight. The ocean was in front of and below it. Another spectacular view. A bright red sawhorse with lanterns on both ends of it blocked the road.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s Cliffside Road. We closed it several years ago; too dangerous.” He tapped Rusty on the shoulder. “Let’s take Cliffside down,” he said. If that made the driver nervous he didn’t show it. He stopped, got out, swung the sawhorse out of the way, got back in the car, drove a dozen feet beyond it, then got out and moved the sawhorse back in place. We started down a narrow, steep, curvy, precipitous road in first gear. There was no guardrail. Four feet from the road, the cliff made a dead drop two hundred feet straight down to the rocks and the ocean. Three feet on the other side, it went straight up. The Packard hugged the safe side of the road, rocks and pebbles spitting under the wheels. About a hundred feet along, we rounded a sharp curve and came on a wide shoulder in the road, big enough to handle six or seven cars. There was a waist-high stone wall around its entire perimeter and an old, crumbling stone bench on one side.

  Without being told, Rusty pulled off on the shoulder and parked. He pulled on the hand brake and turned off the ignition with the car in gear.

  “Better leave your hat in the car,” Culhane said, tossing his black fedora on the seat. I did the same and followed him out on the shoulder, trying to conceal my terror. A hard wind rose swiftly up the side of the mountain from the ocean, whipping Culhane’s hair around his ears. I don’t like heights. I don’t like narrow roads and steep cliffs. I also don’t like drop-off shoulders on those narrow roads.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” he said, walking to the edge and standing with one foot on the stone wall.

  “You’re giving me the creeps,” I managed to tell him.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “This is the safest spot on the road. Don’t look down, you’ll be fine.”

  I walked slowly to the stone wall. When I got to it, I reached down and grabbed it with both hands. I looked straight out at the Pacific. Black storm clouds broiled far out to sea and I could see the rain line sweeping across the ocean. A white pontoon plane with a blue stripe down the side banked into the mouth of the bay a mile away and circled toward us, flying parallel to the cliff. It circled all the way around the basin and swept in over the sailboats, then settled down slowly. The two pontoons smacked into the bay and churned twin wakes behind them. It turned and taxied slowly toward the pier.

  “That big house on top of the hill is the O’Dell estate,” Culhane said. “He and Eli Gorman started all this. They were partners in the railroad. One was a gruff old Irishman who mostly gambled for a living, the other was an orthodox Jew and all business. They were always at each other’s throats. O’Dell wanted to sell the bottomland by the ocean for a paper mill. Gorman said he wasn’t going to live with a stinking paper mill in his backyard. They put the deeds for all this property on the table, each of them put up ten grand, they played poker for the whole thing. Winner take all. O’Dell lost, and left and never came back. He and his wife died when the Lusitania was sunk. A caretaker kept the house up until Delilah, their daughter, inherited the house and his bankroll.”

  “Pretty fancy for a whorehouse,” I said.

  “That’s a misnomer,” he said. “It’s a private club, and way too rich for your blood—or mine. Five hundred to join on a one-night basis, plus the cost of the entertainment. A lifetime membership is ten thousand.”

  I whistled through my teeth.

  “You’d be surprised if I told you the names of some of the full-timers.”

  “Why did Delilah O’Dell do that?”

  “People here despised her because she was an O’Dell, rich as Croesus and a smart businesswoman to boot. They snubbed her, so she got even, and turned Grand View into the classiest whorehouse on the West Coast, probably in the whole country.”

  “Prostitution is against the law,” I reminded him.

  “Not in this county. Neither is gambling. And neither was drinking during Prohibition.”

  “How do you justify that?”

  “I don’t have to. Buck Tallman said it best. ‘You can’t stop folks from drinkin’, gamblin’, and whorin’ around. The best you can do is make it safe and pleasant for them. They pay the bills.’ Does that offend your sensibilities?”

  “Not a bit,” I said. “I happen to work under a different set of laws.”

  “Hell, you know you can find a game or get laid in L.A. any time of the day or night. As long as the right palms are greased, everybody looks the other way.”

  I couldn’t argue with that so I changed the subject. “You know, maybe I prefer old man O’Dell’s vision for this place. He was out in the open about it. Put it right on the table. Soak ’em for the land, let them build a mill. Let ’em stink up the air, poison the ground, ruin the water, cut down all the trees, and sit back and count their money. Gorman made a playpen for people with big bank accounts, charged them three or four times what they’d pay anyplace else, and made loans to all the peons who work for a living. Now he probably acts like a humanitarian.”

  Culhane looked surprised. “Jesus, who stepped on your jewels?” he said.

  “If I have to make a choice, maybe I prefer greed over hypocrisy. I’m giving it some thought.”

  I could see him staring at me from the corner of his eye, a somewhat bemused expression on his face. He was trying to figure out if I was for real or just being contrary. He looked back at the bay.

  “That’s Rudy Shaeffer,” Culhane said, pointing at the pontoon plane. “He works three days a week and then flies up on Wednesday and spends four days at the Grand View.”

  “How does he make his money?”

  “I never asked.”

  When my stomach calmed down, I cautiously looked over the side, and immediately got that queasy feeling again. Below us, halfway down the precipice, was a small shelf covered with half a dozen pine trees. Something glittered in the rubble that surrounded the trees. I looked closer and made out what looked like a large, rusted bedframe. Near it, a semicircle of steel seemed to grow out of a pil
e of dead branches.

  “There’s something down there,” I said.

  “It’s a 1920 Chevrolet coupe,” he said, without looking down. “It gets so foggy up here at night you can’t see your feet. Some nervy kid was going downtown. He lost control of the car, didn’t make the curve, went straight over the side, and caught fire. We didn’t find him until the next morning. The road was twice as wide in those days and it had a guardrail. It’s eroded away through the years.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I knew everybody in town then, and I still do.”

  “You didn’t know Verna Hicks.”

  “Then she never lived here.”

  I reached into my inside pocket and took out the five-by-seven shot of Verna from the newspaper. I pointed to Verna Wilensky. The wind rattled the photograph and he held it with two hands. He stared at it and looked at me with one eyebrow cocked.

  “And which one would she be?”

  I pointed to the blowup and he laughed.

  “I’m supposed to recognize this lady? All I can see is the top of her head and her nose. And the picture looks like it was shot at the bottom of a canal.”

  I showed him the original and he just shook his head. Then I gave him a look at the morgue shot.

  “Jesus!” he snapped. “I hope to hell you don’t show that to anybody. They’ll puke on your shoes.” He shoved the shot back at me.

  “Why did you come down this way?” I asked. “Just to give me the willies?”

  “I didn’t know you had a problem with high places. My life changed forever one night, on that stone bench right over there.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t answer, just looked off at the horizon and tilted his head up at the sky. “Storm’ll be here soon,” he said.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. As we neared the Howlands’ house, the first big drops of rain splattered against the windshield. Rusty pulled up behind my car and stopped. He leaned back with a sigh, his hands locked behind his head.

  Culhane said, “You’re a smart cop, Bannon. I appreciate that. But I say again, there’s nothing here for you to learn. You ought to head back before the rain gets serious.”

  “Why did you take me on that little cruise?” I asked. “To let me know that there are a lot of rich people on the Hill with connections all the way to the governor’s mansion and probably to the White House?”

  “I don’t want you to have the wrong impression about San Pietro.”

  I understood the veiled warning in his remark.

  “I don’t,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I’ve put up with politics and money in my time.”

  I started to get out of the car. “I think I’ll grab a bite before I head back to L.A. Where’s the best steak in town—that I can afford?”

  “The diner. A buck and a quarter. I’ll give them a call; it’s on the county.”

  “No thanks. I have ten bucks expense money. If I don’t spend it Moriarity will cut me back to five the next time out.”

  “I’ve been a cop almost all my life,” Culhane said. “I know about cops. I’ve known good ones, bad ones, crooked ones, stupid ones, and some so rotten it would make you sick to your stomach you ever put on a badge. You’re a bloodhound. You stick your nose up in the air and get a whiff of something and then you bite it and don’t let go. Just be careful, Cowboy. Don’t get your nose stuck up the wrong dog’s ass.”

  And they drove away.

  CHAPTER 16

  The rain that had started as a quiet mist developed into a full-fledged storm by the time I drove the length of the town to the diner. The wind had picked up, bringing with it dark clouds creased with lightning and heavy with a steady downpour.

  My sessions with Howland and Culhane had yielded little. Howland’s take on the massacre at Grand View House and the trial of Arnie Riker for the murder of Wilma Thompson was passable but shaky reportage at best, laced with sour mash and the kind of myths old-time newsmen like to spin over dinner or drinks at the bar. Culhane had completely avoided talking about the Grand View massacre and the Riker murder case and Eddie Woods.

  The diner’s red, flashing neon sign promised comfort from the storm. It was a classic—chrome-trimmed, with leather booths, and a long counter half circling the kitchen. The odor of cooked meat and onions and strong coffee stirred my appetite. I took a booth in the corner; ordered a rare T-bone, soft scrambled eggs, sliced potatoes and onions, hot rolls, lemon meringue pie, and a Muhlenbach beer; commandeered a crumpled but readable afternoon edition of the Times from the seat of an abandoned booth; rolled a cigarette; and smoked while I scanned the headlines and waited for dinner.

  The story I was looking for was buried back in the second section in the obituaries, three paragraphs under the headline: woman drowns in bathtub accident. It told me less than I knew already and ended with two lines: “The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. No funeral arrangements were available at press time.” Jimmy Pennington was smart enough to open the door in the event there was more to the accident than I had indicated. That’s why he was the best reporter in town.

  I put the paper aside when my dinner arrived, and dug in. Culhane was right: the steak was an inch thick and cooked to perfection, the rolls crumbled in my hand when I buttered them, and the beer was served in an iced mug. I was too busy devouring my meal to notice the black Pontiac pull into the parking lot and the two guys in the front seat who did not get out.

  I finished a leisurely meal, ordered a second cup of coffee, had a smoke. I knew my quest for facts about Verna Wilensky’s mother lode was wasted time, and the rain was showing signs of letting up. Then there was Rosebud, waiting for his dinner and bone. It was only 7:30, I could be home by 11:00, so I decided to head back to town. The waitress wrapped the bone in cellophane and put it in a paper bag for me. I tipped the waitress a buck, probably the largest tip she had ever received, turned up my collar, pulled my hat low over my eyes against the rain, and quick-stepped around the corner of the diner toward my car.

  As I reached the door a voice behind me said, “What’s yer hurry, bohunk?”

  As I turned, an arm the size of a steam pipe wrapped around my chest, pinning both arms to my sides. The bag with my dog bone fell at my feet. A second man, a mere outline in rain and darkness, stepped in close and threw an arcing jackhammer punch deep into my stomach. It doubled me over. My hat flipped into the mud at my feet. Air whooshed out of my lungs. Sparks dimmed my eyesight for a moment. Pain swelled upward from my stomach and my dinner soured the back of my throat. I swallowed hard as he stepped in closer and landed another rib-bender. My knees buckled and I sagged toward the ground, but the guy holding me dragged me back up and growled, “Go home to your mama and stay there, big shot.” As the muscleman swung his arm back for a third shot at my gut, I kicked him, with everything I had left, in the groin. I felt muscle, bone, and tissue smash under the kick. It lifted him an inch off the ground and sent him backward, doubled over and screaming.

  As he fell to his knees, I swung my head forward, then threw it back as hard as I could. It smashed into the face of the thug holding me from behind. I smacked him with the back of my head a second time. He yowled, and his grasp loosened enough that I could swing around and break loose of his grip. Facing him, I smacked his face with the top of my head. The back of his head shattered the car window. His arm dropped to his side, and I threw a hard, straight jab into his face, ruining what was left of his nose. Then I saw the empty sleeve of his other arm tucked in his coat jacket.

  He had held me with the only arm he had. He made a funny little sound and fell straight down as I turned to the other attacker, who was gasping for breath and trying to scramble to his feet in the mud. I stepped in close and threw a haymaker down to the side of his jaw just below the ear. Both his hands splashed into the mud, and I hit him again with a roundhouse right that knocked him up and over on his back. He lay there, arms flung out at his sides, his m
outh open and gobbling rain.

  I turned back to the first guy, who was on his hand and knees, and finished him off with another right, straight down to his temple. He fell face forward and splashed into a mud puddle without another sound.

  The whole melee took less than two minutes.

  When I rolled my first attacker over, to keep him from drowning in mud, his coat flopped open and I saw the badge pinned to his vest and the .32 under his arm.

  I had been doing battle with my old pals Laurel and Hardy. I took a closer look at One-Arm’s partner and stared at an empty eye socket. I looked around in the rain for a minute but didn’t see his glass eye.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I muttered to myself.

  I was doubled over from the blows to my stomach but not too unsteady to reach down and rip the badge off the big guy’s vest. Then I relieved him of his pistol, picked up my hat and paper sack with the dog bone, got in the car and drove off, leaving them both staring up at the rain.

  I drove around the corner and past the park. Rain and wind had pretty much washed away all evidence of the noontime picnic, and the red words on the sandwich boards advertising fireworks tonight 9 p.m. ran down the length of the boards like streams of blood. I stopped in front of the municipal building, took the bone out of the paper sack, and put the gun and badge in it.

  My ribs were throbbing and I had trouble standing up straight, but I made it up the steps and entered the police department. Rosalind had been replaced by a tall, slender rail of man in a blue uniform. He was smoking a cigar and reading Life magazine. He looked up through bored eyes as I put the bag on the counter.

  “This is a gift for Captain Culhane,” I said. “Please see that he gets it.”

  “Who shall I say it’s from?”

  “He’ll know,” I said, and got out of there. I aimed the car for L.A. and got the hell out of Dodge.

  When I got to 101 I turned on my flasher and pushed the gas pedal close to the floor. Rain bubbled through the shattered car window and sprayed on my neck. My ribs felt like they were broken. Just the touch of my hand when I reached down to check brought tears to my eyes.