Troublemaker

by Joseph Hansen

  “That can’t be true.” She folded the card back on itself. Her knuckles were white. “Those men thought the world of Ben. They’d have done anything to catch his killer.”

  “They didn’t even try,” Dave said gently. “They settled for the obvious.”

  “Cliff Kerlee. Well, why not? His bag—what do you call them?—that big dirty pouch thing with the leather fringes—it was lying there, right by Ben’s body.”

  “Kerlee claims he wasn’t here—not then, not ever.”

  “What would you expect him to say?” Her laugh was scornful. “He’d shouted at the top of his voice that he wanted to kill Ben. On television. Everybody heard him.”

  “It’s a common expression, Mrs. Orton. Ugly, but not often literal. I doubt that it was the first time anyone said it about your husband. He was a controversial man. He had enemies.”

  “Radicals, dope addicts, degenerates.” She thrust out a soft little chin. “He didn’t care what they said. He stood for what made this country great.”

  The sun was heating up. It made Dave sleepy. He told her, “In the police report, Hector Rodriguez, who works for Kerlee and lives with him, says the man didn’t leave his place on Sunday.”

  “What else would he say? You know what they are.”

  “I know what he is,” Dave said dryly. “A witness. Which is something the police don’t have. Nobody can say Kerlee was here. Not even you.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well. I lay down upstairs. I fell asleep. I didn’t even know Ben had come home.”

  “Home?” Dave winced up at the sun. “Where had he been?”

  “Why, I—” She jerked the card in two. She looked down at it, surprised. She looked at him, afraid. “At—at his office. Yes. The department was his life. He often—”

  Dave shook his head. “He hadn’t been in. Not since the demonstration, Saturday morning, when Kerlee made his pretty speech. Your husband’s absence was unusual enough for his staff to notice. And talk about to a stranger.”

  “I don’t know where he was.” She was watching her fingers make fragments of the card. “Can’t you”—she looked up with tears in her eyes—“can’t you leave it alone? What difference does it make? He’s dead. Dead.”

  “Kerlee isn’t,” Dave said. “Look, Mrs. Orton—he can’t lock his pickup truck. The side windows are broken out. He left the bag lying on the seat. Anyone could have brought it here. Including your husband.”

  “What?” She scoffed. “Why? It had that petition in it. He’d already refused to take it. That’s why Kerlee came. To try to force it on him.” Her laugh was grim. “As if Ben could be forced. By a creature like that. There’s another one, you know—Richard T. Nowell. A thorn in Ben’s side for years. But at least he belongs here. An old La Caleta family. But this maniac Kerlee! Do you know he attacked them when they tried to arrest him? Would an innocent man do that? Oh, it was him, all right. He brought that bag. He brought the flowerpot.”

  “What became of the pieces?” Dave wondered.

  She said, “He kept a crate of them at his place.”

  “To mix with the soil for drainage,” Dave said. “The police went over those. No traces of blood or hair.”

  “I thought you said they weren’t thorough.”

  “Only about Kerlee,” Dave said.

  “He owns a nursery. And there were”—the words came shaken, with fury at Dave, with grief for herself—“bits of broken flowerpot embedded in Ben’s brain.”

  “But none in the room. Why not?”

  “Why, he cleaned them up, of course. He wouldn’t dare leave them. They’d show he’d been here.”

  “A man so rattled he forgot his tote bag?”

  “It had to be him,” she said. “It had to.”

  “That’s what the police decided. Mrs. Orton, they didn’t even take fingerprints. The only photos in that file were taken to show Kerlee’s bag beside the body. He’d threatened to kill your husband. And they went straight after him, no questions asked.”

  “And who should they have gone after?” She tried for a sneer but missed. There was too much panic in her. Her fingers told about that. They dropped the scraps of card like sad confetti.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m going to find out. And I’d be grateful if you’d help me. May I look at Chief Orton’s den, please?”

  “No, you may not!” She stood rigid, chin lifted, the blossom eyes narrowed. “You don’t fool me. You don’t give a damn about Cliff Kerlee. It’s me you’re after. And Jerry. We’re who your company will have to pay. Unless you can prove one of us killed him.”

  “Come on, now, Mrs. Orton. You’re overexcited.”

  She didn’t hear. She thrust a flushed face up at him. “Well, you never will. Never.” Her voice trembled. “I lived my life for Ben Orton. He was everything to me. Ask whoever you like—even people who hated us. Reporters. Daisy Flynn. Ask them. And Jerry? He worshiped his father.”

  Dave squinted up at the sun again. “What about Anita?” He heard her gasp but he didn’t look at her. He looked at the bay. “Her father had her listed too. Twenty-five thousand dollars for each of you. That was how the policy read originally. Then, two years ago, he cut her out of it. Why?” He turned. She wasn’t standing there anymore. She’d put the door between them. He heard a bolt crash. While they’d talked, he’d glimpsed behind her a curve of stairway—wrought-iron railings, treads of glazed tile in bright floral patterns. Her heels rattled fast on those tiles now, climbing. Above, someplace, a door slammed.

  He trudged back down the drive. Heat came out of the car when he opened the door. He shed the jacket, got in, laid the jacket over the back of the passenger seat, and slammed the door. He wanted it to make a loud noise in the morning stillness. He raced the engine for the same reason. With a jet of icy air hitting him in the chest from a round vent in the dash, he kicked the parking brake and let the car roll down the road. Around the bend above the cannery he left the car again. This time he shut the door with no more than a click. He climbed among drying weeds and bleached rocks to the top of the rise. A hundred yards off, the housed showed white through a shaggy hedge of eucalyptus trees, old red gums. Chaparral covered the distance. He crouched and started through it.

  2

  THE RED GUMS GREW beside a whitewashed adobe wall six feet high. They’d been planted away from it but a long time ago. Their thick pink trunks pushed it now. It would fall soon. But not today. Up to his ankles in tattered brown bark, Dave leaned against the wall to get back his breath. He dragged down the knot of his tie, unbuttoned his shirt collar. Then he jumped, hauled himself up, legged over the wall, and dropped into a patio where it was abruptly cool and moist. The ragged old trees shut out the sun. Banana trees raised split fans above pulpy tropical plants. There were outsize ferns. A fountain helped the dampness. It was low and square. The masonry between its shiny tiles was green with moss.

  He was facing the end of a one-story wing of the house. Moss crept up the stucco. Windows with Spanish iron grilles broke the wall. So did French doors set in a shallow arch. He walked around the fountain where goldfish glinted among murky weeds and he tried the latch of the doors. They didn’t open. From his wallet he took a slip of metal. It turned the simple lock. He pushed the loose door gingerly and stepped onto deep carpet. In the far wall was a carved door. He went to it and inched it open. The curved tile stairway went up into shafts of sunlight from slot windows. He shut the door quietly. A key stuck out of the lock. He turned it.

  He looked at the room. It was chalk white, long and wide. Its ceiling peaked at about fifteen feet. Black rafters crossed it. From one hung a hoop chandelier of hammered black iron. Flags stood in corners—a stars and stripes, a California bear. Over an arched fireplace where the fittings were black hammered iron hung a rack of rifles and shotguns. A glass case held plaques and trophies. Service clubs had saluted Ben Orton. He had been honorary chairman of a fund drive for crippled children. The blind had given him a gold-plated sta
tuette of a seeing-eye dog.

  Framed documents hand-lettered on mottled paper took up space on one wall. There were commendations from the National Rifle Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Citizens for Decent Literature. There were also photographs. On the inscribed one of J. Edgar Hoover the ink was fading. In a news picture, Ben Orton stood beside a president among sun-glaring limousines; he was saying something to the president; the president was smiling at a little girl holding flowers. Below this hung a framed letter from a defunct attorney general.

  In the center of the room a couch of shiny buttoned cowhide faced a bare coffee table. So did two matching chairs. They looked as if they didn’t get sat in much. A chair that looked as if it did stood in back of a broad, glossy desk that held two telephones and a gilt-framed color blowup of Orton and family when the children were around ten and twelve. The desk chair was cowhide too—high back, padded arms. Dave sat in it and swiveled to inspect modular shelves behind the desk. Law books, penal-code books, big glossy books on guns, hunting, game birds. Gifts, probably. They didn’t look much handled. Nor the one on ancient Mexican art, either.

  A two-way radio took up shelf space. Black plastic, brushed aluminum knobs. Meters. Microphone with coiled cord. The department was his life. Dave clicked the power knob and gently eased the gain. Faint crackling, a whisper of far voices. He put an ear to the speaker grille. The messages came frayed. “Out here over the rockpile … already got me three big ones … fighting the wind …” Police calls? In Portuguese accents? “Fog up the coast … come in, Cape Hedge … rounding the point …” Dave blinked at the selector knob. Marine band. Fishing boats. Frowning, he switched off the set.

  Turning, his foot nudged a wastebasket. Empty. But a white corner stuck out from under the desk. He bent for it. An envelope. Return address “Los Angeles County Museum of Art.” He pushed it into a pocket, rose and went to the arrangement of couch, chairs, table. It didn’t match the photos in the report folder. He shifted one of the chairs. Where it had stood the rug was discolored. There was no way to scrub up blood. He kneed aside the other chair, the couch. No more stains. There may have been some on the furniture but the leather was sleek and would wash easily. He knelt and ran a hand over the rug. Clean. He dug fingers into it. No grit. It might be in a vacuum-cleaner bag. Unless the bag was paper or plastic and gone with the trash. He got to his feet.

  Doors flanked the shelves behind the desk. He opened one. Toilet, basin, shower. Blinding white. He shut the door and tried the other. Sand-color police uniforms on hangers. Also civilian suits, a brown tweed, a blue pinstripe. Rack of ties on the door. Badge-mounted caps on the shelf. On the floor, shoes, two pair brown, one black. He groped in corners. No vacuum cleaner. He crouched. What was that behind the shoes? Clothing. Not bundled, not even loosely—just thrown. He dragged out worn Levi’s, a ragged Army shirt, a greasy leather hat with floppy brim. Something rattled when he picked these up. He groped back again. A pair of warped sandals with something tangled in their clumsy buckles. A gray wig, curled like wood shavings.

  He laid the stuff on the coffee table and sat on the couch. In the left front pocket of the Levi’s was a fold of money—a hundred dollars in tens, fives, ones. In the right rear pocket was a pouch of clear plastic. He didn’t touch it but he didn’t think what was in it was tobacco. He tucked the money back and picked up the shirt. A pair of mirror-finish Polaroid goggles was in one pocket. He kept his fingers off them. In the other pocket something crackled. A letter? He pinched an edge with his nails, drew it out, and unfolded it. Words clipped from magazines were pasted on it. He put on glasses, WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER, IF YOU WANT HER BACK SAFE THE PRICE IS $25,000. WE WILL PHONE YOU. He tucked the paper back carefully, put his glasses back into his pocket, gathered up everything and returned it to the closet. He used a handkerchief to wipe knobs, wood, leather where he’d touched them, and to draw shut the French doors.

  He went over the wall again and, stooping, ran back through the chaparral. Getting down the slope to his car was clumsy. Dirt leaked into his shoes. But he had emptied them and climbed into the car and started it moving when a brown and white fourdoor with a buggywhip antenna waving at its back and the gold La Caleta police badge painted on its doors came around the foot of the bluff. It climbed straight at him. He slowed. It stopped with its bumper against his. A stocky, blond young man got out of it. He wore a uniform like those in the closet of Ben Orton’s den. He came to the window and looked at Dave.

  “You the insurance investigator?”

  “Brandstetter,” Dave said. “Medallion Life.” He reached a hand out the window. “And you’d be Jerry Orton.”

  Orton didn’t take the hand. “My mother telephoned me. She says you’re asking a lot of questions.”

  Dave drew the hand back. “I hardly got started.”

  “You upset her very much. How could you do that? Don’t you know what she’s been through in the past few days? Haven’t you got any imagination?”

  “I don’t like to use it,” Dave said.

  Orton squinted. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I need facts, Sergeant. That’s why I ask questions.”

  “The facts are in,” Orton said. “Clifford Thomas Kerlee killed my father.” He frowned at a steel-cased watch on a thick wrist where gold hairs glinted. “She phoned me fifteen minutes ago. Why are you still here?”

  “I was watching the otters,” Dave said. “I live in L.A. I don’t get up this way often.”

  “Watch them from someplace else,” Orton said. “This is private property.”

  “Why did your father go out of town?”

  “Jesus, you deaf or something?” Orton said. “Cliff Kerlee killed him, stood on the steps of the city hall and waved that stupid fag petition and yelled right into the cameras he was going to kill him and he killed him. Man—what are you trying to do—smear my father?”

  “That wouldn’t accomplish anything,” Dave said.

  Orton’s laugh was sharp and short. “You goddam right it wouldn’t He was one of the outstanding lawmen in this country. He was nominated to head the FBI when Hoover died. Hoover was a friend of his.”

  “Where did he go when he left town?” Dave asked.

  “Get out of that car,” Orton said. “Stand up when you talk to a police officer.”

  Dave got out. The sunlight crashed and shattered on the waves beyond the cannery. Dave winced against the glare. “How far did he go? How long was he gone?”

  “Last time he went anywhere for more than a day was Dallas last fall. American Association of Police Chiefs convention. He was a past president.”

  “He didn’t stop into his office the day he was killed. Your mother doesn’t know where he was.”

  “So?” Orton’s clean square hand rested on a holster at his hip. A big revolver hung there. “He was out. He came home. Kerlee was waiting for him on the patio.”

  “Oh? Why the patio?”

  “No trouble to get in. Dad didn’t worry about security. Figured his reputation would keep prowlers off. There’s a lot of overgrown plants there. He could hide easy. Somebody was there. Water from the fountain was splashed around.”

  “No empty flowerpots?” Dave asked.

  “He wouldn’t need one. He brought a whole truckload. Patio French doors were open. Patio gate. Door to the inside of the house was locked. My father wouldn’t do that. Lock any of us out. He wasn’t like that. No secrets.”

  Dave let his face show small surprise. “He wouldn’t work a case alone?”

  Orton snorted. “What for? He had twenty men.”

  “Not even a big case? Try to crack it by himself? Somebody bringing in marijuana by ship?”

  Orton half turned his head, looked from the corners of his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just wondering where he went that day. Your mother said the department was his life. I thought he might have been on police business. You don’t know where he was?”

  �
�I know where you’re going to be. Locked up. For trespassing.” Orton jerked his chin. “Get away from here. And stay away.”

  Dave shrugged, pulled open the door, sat back of the wheel. “I go where the job takes me.” He shut the door.

  Orton’s voice came dim through the glass. “Your only job around here is to get my mother the insurance check that’s coming to her.” He turned on his heel and started back to the brown and white car.

  Dave touched a switch. The window beside him rolled down. He called, “Your father didn’t leave her anything?”

  Orton stopped, turned. “His pension. No savings.” He lifted a hand toward the town that couldn’t be seen from here. “He didn’t have to hang on in La Caleta and take their nickels and dimes. He had offers, big offers. But he said he didn’t want paperwork, he wanted police work.” Orton lifted blond eyebrows. “Ah, what the hell. La Caleta’s a good town—or was, right up to lately.”

  “And what went wrong with it lately?”

  “Garbage from L.A., from Haight-Ashbury. Hippies, druggies, smutty books, dirty movies, lousy underground newspaper. You know. Pretty little town. What else have they got to do but filthy it up? But”—he blew out a grim sigh—“at least he could control it here. You get up to Frisco or down to L.A. or someplace, a cop doesn’t stand a chance. They’ve got crime up the ass but whose fault is it? The chief of police. Naw—Dad was right. He was always right.”

  “But it didn’t pay,” Dave said.

  “Get lost,” Orton said. His shoes swished in the dry roadside weeds. He got into the police car and slammed the door, and the worn-out engine thrashed in the sun-bright stillness. He backed the car. The transmission was noisy. He jerked the lever to low and crawled past Dave. Dave shouted above the racket of loose valves:

  “Where is your sister, Sergeant?”

  Orton braked. His face twisted. “What? Why?”

  “I just wondered if you knew.”

  “Hell, yes, I know. What’s it to you?”

  “Your mother seems worried about her.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Orton’s car jerked and stalled. He started it again angrily. “She’s at school. College. Sangre de Cristo State.” He roared off. The smoke of his going hung sullen in the motionless air.