I went outside to the Buick. It was a fairly new car, but driven to pieces. California plates. No registration card. Several brown cigarette butts squashed on the rubber floor-mat. I sniffed them. Marijuana. A road map of the Southwestern states was jammed behind the front-seat cushion. I took it along and drove back to the highway.
The blacktop crossed it and plunged into the foothills in the distance. I sat at the intersection, my motor idling, and looked at the black mountainous horizon. It was a jagged graph of high hopes, repeated disasters.
There was a black and white sign on the far side of the highway: LAS CRUCES PASS. I tried to put myself in Bozey’s place. If he had turned right and south, he’d be sure to hit a roadblock on the borders of the county. Northward, the highway would lead him back into town. The pass road seemed most likely, and I took it.
Four or five miles from the intersection, where the road twisted high and narrow among the foothills, I came around a hairpin curve and saw a pulsating red light. A black car was parked diagonally across the road. I braked to a stop in time. It was the sheriff’s Mercury.
He came forward, carrying a red flashlight in his left hand, a carbine in the crook of his other arm.
“Pull off the road and get out. Keep your hands in sight.” Then the flashlight beam found my face. “So it’s you again.”
I sat perfectly still under the eye of the carbine, the flashlight’s red stare. “It’s also you again. Have you seen the truck?”
“What truck?”
“Meyer’s semi-trailer.”
“Would I be sitting up here if I had seen it?” His voice was impatient, but the anger that had shaken him earlier had passed through him and left no other trace.
“How long have you been here, sheriff?”
“Over an hour.”
“What time is it now?”
“One o’clock, a few minutes after. Is there anything else you’d like to know? What I had for supper, for intance?”
“That sounds interesting.”
“I didn’t get to eat any supper.” He leaned in at the window to look at me. The reflection of the flashlight lent his face an unnatural rosiness. “Who’s been clobbering your?”
“You’re very solicitous all of a sudden. It moves me deeply.”
“Cut the vaudeville. And answer my question.”
“Since you put it so charmingly. I took a fall.” I told him where and how. “This redhead had the truck stashed in an empty hangar at the airbase. He blanked out Meyer’s signs with aluminum paint and waited for the heat to die down. Less than an hour ago, Kerrigan met him at the Steakburger drive-in and gave him the go-ahead.”
“You know this?”
“I saw them together. The redhead—his name is Bozey— handed Kerrigan a paper package of something, probably something long and green. Kerrigan’s payoff.”
“Payoff for what?”
“For setting up the truck, and arranging the getaway.”
“How would Kerrigan do that?”
I didn’t answer. We looked at each other in silence. The mountains rose behind him in the distance like a surf of stone beating soundlessly on an iron sky. Shadowed by his hatbrim, his face was as inscrutable as the sky.
“Aren’t you a little hipped on this Kerrigan business?” he said. “I don’t like the bastard, either. But that doesn’t mean he’s involved with a gang of highjackers.”
“The facts all point in his direction. I’ve given you some of them. There are others. He ordered a load of whisky that he had no use for.”
“How do you know that?”
“He sold the Slipper this morning. He’s leaving his wife for another woman, and he needs ready cash, a lot of it.”
“Who’s the other woman?”
“Not your sister-in-law, if that’s what’s worrying you. She seems to be out of it. The girl’s name is Jo Summer, and she had a singing engagement at the Slipper. The last couple of weeks she’s been playing up to Aquista, apparently getting set to finger him. You’ve got enough evidence there to book them—”
“Evidence? I’ve got your story.”
“Check it. Go over the ground yourself. Round up the suspects before they leave the county.”
“You seem to be instructing me in my duties.”
“It seems to be necessary.”
“Don’t let that paranoid streak run away with you. I can sympathize with your feelings, after the beating you took. But there are worse things than a beating. So I wouldn’t press too hard, Archer.”
“That could be a threat.”
“It could be, but it isn’t. It wouldn’t be good for me if you got hurt in my territory—badly hurt. And it wouldn’t be good for you. You can’t see much and you can’t do much on the bottom of an irrigation ditch with a bullet in your head.”
I had my hand on the revolver in my pocket. “Is a carbine bullet what you had in mind?”
Church fingered the stock of his carbine. His face was impassive, almost dreamy. A light wind from the mountains probed my clothes and chilled me. The moral chill went deeper. He said:
“You didn’t catch my meaning, I’m afraid. I don’t want anything to happen to you. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll check in at the hospital and get yourself patched up and treat yourself to a rest. That ought to be clear enough.”
“Crystal clear. I lay off Kerrigan and his gentle friends.”
“You lay off, period. I can’t assume responsibility for you if you keep on throwing your weight around. Good night.”
He stepped back to let me turn. The last I saw of him, he was standing in the road beside his car, a lonely silhouette.
CHAPTER 13: I drove back down the pass road and turned toward the city. The glow of its lights was paler, as if the fires that consumed it were burning out. A few late trucks went by toward the south, their headlights long white fingers reaching for morning. None of them was a rig I had seen before. Bozey would be out of the county by this time, headed east or south. Kerrigan would be on his way to Mexico.
I was wrong about Kerrigan. His red convertible was standing on the gravel apron in front of his motor court. The engine was idling, and its blue-gray exhaust puffed and plumed on the air.
I parked on the shoulder of the highway and walked back to the convertible. It was empty. Switching off the ignition, I dropped the keys in my pocket and took my gun out. All but one of the cottages in the court were dark, but there was light in the main building. It leaked through a side window and glazed the green surface of the small oval swimming-pool. I walked around the pool to the rear of the building. The water looked deep and cold.
The light was in the office. Its back door was partly open, and I looked in. The room was newly furnished with a couple of chromium chairs, a metal desk with a black composition top, fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling. Kerrigan was prone between the desk and a small safe, which was open. The back of Kerrigan’s head was open too. In the blank efficient light, I could see the color of his brains.
The cork floor around his head was soaked with blood. I lifted his head by the short hair and saw where the bullet had entered, between the eyes. It looked like a medium-caliber hole, probably .38. The gray triangular eyes were fixed in eternal surprise. I turned them back to the floor and went through his pockets, quickly. A siren in the distance was whirling a thin loop of sound over the rooftops.
Kerrigan had no wallet, no money in any form. There was no trace of the package Bozey had handed him, either in his clothes or in the safe. I pulled out the contents of the safe: bills and canceled checks, the current ledger for the motor court. It had been losing money.
Somewhere on the other side of the court an engine turned over, coughed, and died. The starter whined again, insistently. I left the dead man and followed the broken thread of sound outside. It came from one of the doorless carports fronting on the alley behind the cottages.
The whining motor caught and turned over, roaring. I started to run toward the mouth of the alley, my
leather soles clattering and sliding on the tiles around the pool. A small sports car with the top down backed out of the carport behind the lighted cottage, paused with a squeak of rubber, and shot toward the highway. Jo Summer’s face was darkly intent behind the windshield.
I raised my gun. “Stop. I’ll fire.”
Then something heavy and hard and grunting struck my legs from behind. I went down at the side of the alley. The little car swerved around me, flicking gravel into my face. A pair of knees hit the small of my back like piledrivers. An arm circled my neck in a stranglehold, and another arm reached for my gun.
I held onto the gun, and used it to hammer the elbow bent around my throat. The man on my back growled with pain. His grip relaxed. Using his arm as a lever, I got my shoulder under his weight. He must have weighed two hundred. My muscles creaked as I rose to my knees. I flipped him forward over my head and pinned him on his back, one arm under his neck, the other between his writhing legs.
The man’s legs were encased in black leather, and I didn’t like the color of his breeches. They seemed to be olive-drab in the chancy light. They looked like part of the uniform of the sheriff’s department. A choked voice said something about arrest into my armpit.
I let him go, but I picked up my gun and held it on him as he got to his feet. It was Deputy Braga, Tony Aquista’s cousin. His teeth were a bright gash in his Indian face, and his breath hissed out between them like escaping steam.
“Give me that gun.”
“I think it’s safer with me, Braga.”
His quick obsidian eyes went from the gun to my face and back again. “Hand it over. I saw you pull it on the girl.”
“I was trying to stop her. She’s one of the highjacking mob. That was a brilliant tactic of yours, letting her get away.”
“Listen, you smart-cracking L.A. bastard—”
He took a step toward me. I moved the gun, and it inhibited him.
“Listen to me. She’s Kerrigan’s girl, and Kerrigan is on the floor of his office with his brains blown out.”
“Is that the shot that was heard? Are you the one that reported it?”
“No.”
His brown face was wooden with thought. “There’s too damn many coincidences here. You make a habit of finding murder victims in pairs?”
“I was tailing Kerrigan. If you want to know why, ask the sheriff. I laid it out for him a few minutes ago.”
“The hell you did. He’s way up in the pass, manning a roadblock.”
“That’s where I talked to him. Speaking of coincidences, does Church make a habit of doing his own detail work?”
“I’ll ask the questions.” He took another step toward my gun, leaning on its menace like a man walking into a strong wind. “I’m telling you for the last time. Drop the gun.”
“Sorry, Braga. I need it. I’m going after the girl.”
“You’re staying here.”
He crouched and went for his hip. I had the choice of shooting him or letting him shoot me. Or swinging on him with everything I had left, on the chance of finding the point of his outthrust chin. I found it. He lay down on his side, very still, in fetal position.
I heard a click behind me. The door of the lighted cottage opened. A wispy-haired youth in red pajamas came toward me, walking like a sleepwalker. I stepped in front of Braga and went to meet him.
“Who are you?”
“Allister Gunnison. Junior.” He sounded like a butler announcing his own arrival at a funeral. “Are you the officer I called? I’m sure I heard a shot.”
“What time?”
“I believe it was about a quarter after one. I happened to look at my traveling clock when the noise awakened me. Then I heard running footsteps.”
“Coming in this direction, toward the alley?”
“No, I believe they went toward the highway, over on the other side of the court.”
“Man’s or woman’s?”
“I really couldn’t say. There was no one in sight by the time I got outside. After I called you on the public telephone, I came back to my cottage and took a luminol. I’m afraid I must have gone into shock or something—I just came out of it now. You see, I’m terribly high-strung, my nerves can’t endure excitement.”
“You’re not the only one. Does the sports car belong to you?”
“The MG? Yes, it does.”
“You shouldn’t leave the keys in it. It’s been stolen.”
“Oh, my,” he said, “how dreadful. Mother will be fearfully upset. And I have to face her in Pasadena tomorrow. You simply must get it back for me, officer.”
His myopic eyes focused on me for the first time, took in my face, the wreckage of my clothes. “You’re not—are you a policeman?” His hand went to his mouth.
“A special agent from Washington,” I said. “We’ve had our eye on you for wearing red pajamas. Watch it, Gunnison.”
I left him munching his knuckles in wild surmise. Braga was twitching when I passed him. I ran the rest of the way to my car. At least I went through the motions of running, and didn’t fall on my face.
Before I reached the city limits, I realized the hopelessness of the chase. Jo had a long head start, and she wouldn’t be going back to any of the places she’d been.
I went to see Mrs. Kerrigan instead.
CHAPTER 14: There was music in the house behind the monkey-puzzle tree: a nervous dialogue of piano and strings. Pity me, the piano said. We pity you, said the strings. The music was switched off when I knocked on the door. Mrs. Kerrigan opened it on a chain.
“Who is it?”
“Archer.”
Her voice and her look were vague. “Oh yes, I remember—at the motor court.”
“I just came from there. Your husband has had an accident.”
“An automobile accident?”
“A shooting accident.”
“Don? Is he seriously hurt?”
“Very seriously. May I come in?”
She fumbled with the chain, finally got it unhooked, and stood back to let me enter. She had on a blue serge bathrobe, severely cut, with white piping. Below it, her slender legs were sheathed in nylon, and she was wearing shoes.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I believe I had a premonition of something wrong. I’ve been sitting here listening to the Bartók. It’s very much like listening to the sound of my own thoughts—two-o’clock-in-the-morning thoughts.”
She closed the door with a decisive click and made an effort to pull herself together. Her eyes were slightly puffed, by tears or insomnia. They rested on my face.
“You’ve been injured, too, Mr. Archer.”
“I don’t matter at the moment. I’ll survive.”
“How badly is Don hurt?”
“As badly as possible.”
“I should go to him, shouldn’t I?” She went to the foot of the staircase, then turned with her hand on the newel post. “Do you mean that he is dead?”
“He was murdered, Mrs. Kerrigan. I wouldn’t go there now if I were you. They’ll be coming here.”
“They?”
“The police, the sheriff’s men. They’ll have some questions to ask you. So have I.”
She moved uncertainly through the door to the living-room and leaned on the white silk arm of the chesterfield, teetering a little like a slender tree in gusts of wind. She stroked her forehead with her fingertips. I could see the fine blue veins in her wrist.
“Give me a moment, won’t you? That concerto is still running in my head. I shouldn’t have put it on when I was feeling so vulnerable. I feel as if I’ve been widowed twice on the same night.” She raised her head. “How was he killed? Did you say he was shot?”
“In his office at the motor court, no more than an hour ago.”
“And I’m a suspect, is that what I’m to understand?”
“Not with me.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s say I like your face.”
“I don’t,” she said with a
child’s seriousness. “I don’t like my face. You must have a better reason than that.”
“All right. Did you shoot him?”
“No.” She went on in a harsher, stronger voice: “But don’t mistake what I’m feeling for any kind of grief. It’s simply—confusion. I don’t know what to feel. I haven’t much feeling left, actually. And I can’t say I’m sorry that it was done. Don wasn’t a good man. Which was fair enough, I suppose. I’m not a good woman.”
“I wouldn’t talk like that to the police. The police mind likes simple, obvious patterns, and they’re likely to tab you as the primary suspect. You’re going to need an alibi in any case. Do you have one?”
“For when?”
“The last hour or so.”
“I’ve simply been here at home.”
“Nobody with you?”
“No. I’ve been listening to records for an hour or more. Before that, I must have spent an hour picking up my beads. I spilled them on the porch. When I had them all picked up, I took them and threw them away. Wasn’t that an insane thing to do?” Her fingers returned to her temples, which were hollow and smooth and delicate as shell. “Don used to tell me I was insane. Do you suppose he was right?”
“I think you’re a good woman who has gone through a lot of suffering. I’m sorry you have to go through more.”
I touched her blue serge shoulder. It didn’t yield to my pressure. She sat rigid, blinking back tears.
“Don’t be sympathetic, I’m not used to sympathy. I’d almost rather be accused of killing him. I’d probably feel less empty if I had.”
“What if you had? Would you deny it?”
“I don’t believe I would,” she said slowly. “Honesty is one virtue I have left. Probably the only one.”
“Why cut yourself down so small?”
“The cutting down was done for me, by an expert. Don could be quite a sadist when the spirit moved him. The spirit often moved him.” She closed her eyes tightly for a second. “I was cruel, too. It wasn’t all one-sided. The truth is, when he left this house tonight—Don left me tonight, Mr. Archer, and I thought of killing him then. The actual picture crossed my mind. I could see myself very plainly, following him down to the street and shooting him in the back. I might have done it, too, if I’d had a gun. But it would have been perfectly pointless, wouldn’t it?” Her eyes came up like dark blue lights. “Who did kill him, do you know?”
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