The eyes flew open, gleaming. “What—what’re you—?”
“She was tortured. Beaten half to death before she died.”
The answering sound was wordless—a groaning wail. He hugged himself tight, curling again into a fetal position.
“You know who did it, don’t you, Del?”
“No”—a whisper—“no—no—”
“Yes, you do.” Farr leaned back. “And you’re going to tell me, aren’t you? Aren’t you, Del? If you don’t,” he added gently, “I’m going to sit here till you climb the walls.”
“—Then I said to her, ‘Well, if that’s the way you want it, okay, Stella. Have it your way. There’s never been a divorce in either one of our families, but if you want to start a mess, it’s okay with me—’ ”
When does he breathe? Casey wondered, staring beyond Smithers at the fog pressing against the windows. He had heard the story fifty times already. Smithers Faces Divorce. Smithers Beats Divorce. How to Save Your Marriage, by George P. Smithers. All the human drama Smitty had witnessed in his life, still the most memorable hour seemed to remain this banal domestic squabble—
“So she begins to cry, see. Boo-hoo all over the place—” The telephone rang, and annoyed at the interruption, Smithers grabbed up the receiver. “Yeah, Detective Bureau, Smithers speaking.”
Got to go, Casey mouthed, giving him a half-salute.
“You want who?” Smithers was saying. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure they do, but they’re on the day watch.”
From where he stood, ready to leave, Casey could hear the quacking from the other end. Irate citizen, doubtless. Moving swiftly to beat Smithers out of the end of his twice-told marital tale, he covered the typewriter, filed his reports in sequence, and headed for the door.
“I can’t give you home numbers,” Smithers was protesting. “You got something to report about this guy Farr, you’ll have to report it to me.”
Casey dived for a phone on another desk, frantically signaling Smithers. “This is Kellog,” he said into the receiver. “Sergeant Krug and I have been working on the case.”
“You’re the young one,” Farr’s voice said dully. “All right, I’ll talk to you.”
“Hold on, Mr. Farr.” Casey half covered the mouthpiece so Farr could overhear. “Got it, Smitty.”
Taking his cue, Smithers hung up noisily, then on another line, called for a tracer in hopes Farr could be kept talking long enough to pinpoint where he was calling from.
“I’ve been trailing you, Mr. Farr,” Casey was saying. “To Kenji’s and that real estate office.”
“Then you know my keys were stolen.”
“I don’t know anything, Mr. Farr. Not officially,” he added. “Where’re you calling from?”
“A phone booth in Venice. I’ve located Holly’s brother.”
Casey sucked in his breath. But suppressing his excitement, he said calmly, “Mr. Farr, I suggest you watch yourself, you could be in danger there. Someone who’s been posing as the Berry kids’ uncle got hold of a postcard her brother sent the girl. We think it named a place they were to meet there in Venice. A place the boy hung out, evidently.”
“Probably the same dive I went to. Her brother’s holed up not far from there.”
“This phone booth—is it nearby?”
“Don’t waste your time, I won’t be here long.”
“I only meant, be careful.” Casey hesitated. “Do you know what he looks like—the one you think stole your keys?”
“Sure,” Farr said bitterly. “A perfect description. He’s like God or somebody. All he has to do is reach out his hand—” Casey heard a sound like a sigh. “Look, if I give you directions, can you pick up her brother? He’s high on something. Nodding, I think they call it. I gave him some money, and he got it downstairs. Or that’s what he said. It was the only way I could think of to keep him—”
“Where is he?” As he grabbed for a pad and pencil, Casey’s mind whirled feverishly around the temptation to bypass procedure—a Venice Division pickup, drug complications which might delay getting the story out of the brother. Then Krug’s voice stung again: If you’re through playing Sherlock—“Near what?” He kept scribbling. “Oh, that’s the name of the bar.” The something-something. Damn Saretti, they could have been there tonight. “On the beach-front walk,” he repeated. The Venice Promenade, it used to be called. “Okay, and the house is about seven doors south, you say. You’re sure—Well, never mind, we’ll find it all right. An attic—Wait,” he cried as Farr seemed ready to break the connection, “don’t hang up yet. Listen, you’d better duck into that bar till we get there—”
“No, thanks.”
“For God’s sake, don’t be a fool, man! You need protection.”
“From whom?” Farr asked remotely. “For instance, if I should wait, can you assure me I won’t be booked and detained till you sort this all out?”
Feeling like a tightrope walker teetering over disaster, Casey hesitated. “I promise to protect you as much as I can. That’s the best I can do till I know the answers. But if it helps any,” he added, “I believe you’re innocent.”
“Thanks,” Farr said quietly, “but I can’t take the chance,” and, abruptly, he hung up.
“Shit,” Smithers muttered, “missed him.”
Ripping the pageful of directions off his desk pad, Casey flipped it at him. “Get hold of Al right away. Tell him to meet me there. On the double, Smitty! One of you other guys get Venice rolling. If they move fast enough, maybe we can bottle up everybody—Farr included.”
“Hey, wait,” Smithers protested.
But by then Casey was pounding down the stairs.
TWENTY-FIVE
While he was still talking inside the lighted phone booth, Farr had spied a faint glow between the old houses—not light exactly, but a quick impression that in the narrow space between the overhanging roofs of the two buildings, refraction from an opened window or door had shone briefly. Could he be assured, he was saying into the receiver, he would not be booked and held? And while he listened to the younger detective weaseling at the other end—some meaningless nonsense about protection—he thought he glimpsed a shadowy movement on the long stairway. The musician, he thought. If that hairy kid spotted him phoning—
But in the next instant Farr saw that the shadow materializing at the bottom of the stair was a man wearing a coat which billowed open as he crossed the narrow sandy lot, hurrying down the pavement in the direction of the booth. Muttering “I can’t take the chance,” Farr hung up as the man drew abreast of him, stopped for an instant, staring in at him blankly. Beads of moisture on his face gleamed in the luminous aureole surrounding the phone booth. Under the heavy tweed cap he wore, his face looked pasty. A big nose. A big mustache from which stray hairs fluttered as he breathed rapidly. Then he was gone while Farr tugged at the folding door of the booth.
His mind whirling as he plunged out of the light, Farr raced down the walk. The fog seemed thicker, more stifling than ever. His own breathing, the sandpapery grating of his soles on the pavement were deafening. Where in hell could the man have gone so quickly?
To his left loomed a row of old houses, blurry lighted windows, black blank passages in between. To the right lay the wide beach, he knew, a wasteland in the fog. Two steps off the pavement, you could lose yourself, travel soundless in the sand, invisible behind the shrouding mist. Pursuit was useless.
Hunching like a turtle inside his windbreaker, Farr hesitated. He could be wrong, he realized, deluded by his own fears. For all he knew, the man might be the pusher, that handy source Del had briefly visited “down below.” Even so, should he call again, report what he had seen? But by now the police would be on their way. No time to check on the boy, either. Get moving, he told himself. By morning they’ll have the whole mess pried out of that poor stupid drugged kid. All you have to do now is wait.
Turning back, Farr retraced his steps, passing the phone booth which stood empty, a lonely beacon. Del�
�s house looked darker than it had before, the stair on the side climbing into gray-black nothingness. Shuddering as a nervous yawn caught him unawares, Farr passed by quickly, suffering an instant’s letdown, a feeling of utter weakness. Quit yawning, man, or the fuzz’ll come along and bust you for nodding. He knew now what Holly had meant. And where she had seen the symptom. Her brother yawning and yawning like a caged animal. Blinking sleepily. Slowly sagging as the drug sheathed his famished nerves, healed the pains of his chemical hunger.
God, he thought, twenty years old. Two country kids come to make it in the city. The city’s where it’s at, man. The fine beautiful free life. The switched-on scene. As the fragments he had heard and pieced together once more created their unbearable picture, chill rippled like sickness through Farr. Blackmail. How could the boy have been so stupid? A rabbit playing fox. Midget made gigantic by the fun-house mirror of his corrupt, ignorant adolescent dream of ease. A dream he, too, was helping to make into a nightmare…
“Man, I ain’t telling you what it was,” the boy had kept saying. “That’s the big one, what I seen. The big score, man,” his grin a grimace as his teeth chattered and he shivered so hard the daybed creaked. “See, this old dude come in the station. Kind of late, it was. Says ‘Fill ’er up.’ So I fill ’er up—”
“Del, you told me that,” Farr prodded him. “He paid for the gas, then you said something about a tire.”
“Naw, see? You got it all wrong.” Steeling himself, Farr watched him as he shook and sweated and moaned in his misery. “Oh, man, I’m hurting. Hurting so bad. Listen, you got to give me some bread, man. Just enough for a deck. Only take a minute, see. I can get it down below…”
Haunted by the ravaged pleading face, Farr listened to the faint wail of a siren in the distance. Here they come. Better hurry. But his feet felt like hundredweights. Like trying to walk underwater, he thought. Forcing himself to move faster, he passed the bar, heard music inside. Gimme some bread. Just one deck. Like a foreign language. Like talking to a lunatic…
“What am I wrong about?” he kept asking insistently, trying to focus the boy’s attention. “You keep saying I’m wrong—”
“About paying, man. He didn’t pay—that’s how I hooked him, see? ’Cause he put it on his credit card. Then I seen his tire was soft—” and hustled him to change it so he could keep whatever cash he could scrounge out of the man for switching tires. Slipped the keys out of the ignition and opened the trunk. And that was when he saw whatever it was. Behind the spare. A thing. Something. But it was only later he realized the significance.
Farr groaned. “Unless you tell me what it was, this is useless, Del.”
“Shit on that, man, I told you I ain’t telling.” Still foxy, even in the agony of his need. Still figuring the angles—his heroes and models taken, Farr imagined, from a thousand summer-night prairie drive-in thrillers about hard guys, smart guys, hip guys who always made it big.
Restraining an urge to grab the boy, he said, “All right, what made you realize that whatever you’d seen was something he might pay you not to talk about?”
“Couple days later. Maybe a week.” As he stopped again, Farr watched the slow, confused workings of his mind—caution like that of a witless but hunted creature, incapable of subtlety. He was shaking his head. “Not gonna tell you that, either, man. But it was something I heard, see.”
“You mean from someone who knew this man.” Farr waited, but the boy only grinned. “Never mind. You heard some reference to whatever you’d seen—then what?”
“I split, man.”
“Why? Because he’d be looking for you?”
“Like for keeps, dude.” He giggled again, shivering violently. “Me, I grabbed that old voucher with his name on it. The charge slip. It was still in the cash drawer.” Then, mockingly: “Yeah, you want to see it, hunh, dude? Well, forget it, ’cause there ain’t nobody going to get their hands on that voucher. It’s my money in the bank—” giggling again, opening his eyes wide. “Hey, you want a clue, though? I’ll give you a clue—” scrabbling at the rumpled coverlet at the bottom of the daybed. “Here, dude,” tossing a quarto-sized magazine at Farr. “You look real hard, maybe you find his name. But maybe you won’t, either. Maybe it ain’t the same name at all.”
It was a weekly television periodical—Farr saw as the magazine fluttered to the floor between them—containing features about actors and program schedules. Maybe his name was there, and maybe it wasn’t. “Money in the bank,” he said savagely, ignoring the magazine. “You damn fool, doesn’t it worry you yet what happened to Holly? Doesn’t it occur to you the same thing could happen to you?” But he saw he had lost the boy again. “So then what? Come on, Del. You told Holly about your scheme—then what happened?”
“Listen at the dude.” Holding himself, he grinned idiotically. “Told Holly. You crazy, man? That’s my sister you talking about, I don’t tell her nothing. Old Holly, she’s scared of her own shadow. Why, she’d of ruined the whole thing!”
Speechless, Farr stared at him, robbed of the last shred of comfort. She was innocent, too. And scared of her own shadow. At the center of his mind, she blazed up—a hopeless waif, with eyes closed, lips whispering no and don’t as he reared over her—“But you must have told her,” he whispered. “You lying little rat, she knew all about it!”
“No, man, he just scared her, see? All she knew was like you do—I had something on him.” The idiotic grin began to fade. “I never figured he’d do that. Go after Holly that way. Never figured—” his face twisting. “That weird old mother, how’d he find her? For chrissake—like God or somebody. Just puts out his hand and—and grabs who he wants—”
Farr heard the stumbling voice going on and on, but the words were meaningless as he stared inward, paralyzed by the idea of what might have been. Could have protected her, he thought. So easily. And himself, too—that was the joke. That was the blackest joke of all. By helping Holly, he could have saved himself—
“Listen, man,” Del was saying wildly, “you think I don’t dig you got to take chances to get what you want in this world? You got to swing, man. You got to rip off—” his crooked movie-hustler’s grin a parody. “You think ’cause I’m strung out I don’t dig how it is? Come on, gimme the bread. I mean now, man. Gimme, gimme—”
His mind adrift, Farr handed him a bill. Like money in the bank, he kept thinking as the boy shuffled out, barefoot. No, she said. Don’t. Will you be my lawyer when I need one? Fog drifted in through the open door, dissipating in the harsh glaring light. A creeping inertia—like grief, like hopelessness—weighed on his heart. Nothing to be done now. No matter what he accomplished from now on, nothing could alter what had happened. Slumped in the canvas chair, Farr stared into space, unaware how long he waited, until Del returned, a sleepwalker who had found forgetfulness.
“She should of done what I told her,” the boy murmured indifferently as he sprawled on the daybed, staring sleepily at the ceiling. “If she’d done like I said, we’d be all right now. We’d be flying, that’s a fact, man. See, all we got to do is hit him once—that’s what I told her. Once, that’s all, then we split, see. And we get us a car, some really great wheels. Then some cool threads, nothing but the best. And then guess what? You gonna guess, sister? We head straight back home, how’s that for a groove?” and he laughed softly. “Man, they gonna flip when they see the two of us driving into town. They’re gonna blow their gourds! ‘Hey,’ they’re gonna say, ‘ain’t that them Berry kids in that California car?’ ‘You crazy, man, couldn’t be them.’ ‘The hell it couldn’t, that’s them for sure—driving down Main in that brand new Porsche’—” smiling at the ceiling, blinking sleepily, unconscious of the tears sliding down his cheeks as he spun the empty prayer wheel of his dead dream. Of homecoming. The deadest dream of all…
Farr passed by the last old yellow-brick apartment house, saw the same cat staring out the window with shining basilisk eyes. Then he spied the pale outlines of his car w
aiting in the empty lot. Fishing for his keys, distracted by the sirens which seemed alarmingly close now, he tripped over a length of wire cable which had once marked the parking boundary. As he staggered to keep his footing, he sensed rather than heard movement behind him, and turning, glimpsed a formless billowing shape rushing at him.
Ducking, Farr tried to feint, but he was badly off balance. And the hand that hit him fell like an ax. He went down trying to shout, lurching toward his car door. But he missed and fell hard, his throat closing with the shock of pain, consciousness reeling as he struggled not to go under. No, he kept thinking. Oh, you fool. Like God, he only has to reach out his hand…Then the ax fell again, and his mind exploded into darkness.
TWENTY-SIX
Seething as he crept in low gear down the wide Venice promenade which was closed to all but official vehicles, Casey peered through the arcs cut by his wipers in the heavy mist clinging to his windshield. Last night he could have found the place in ten minutes flat, he knew—no fog problems, no worries about pedestrians. As it was, the few people he passed seemed to spring into the fuzzy radiance of his headlights like spirits emanating out of swirling smoke. Faces like masks. Insubstantial forms, each a plaintiff, he knew, with one touch of his bumper.
Neon glowed ahead. The something-something bar? Glimpsing black-painted windows, the door Farr had described, he didn’t bother trying to fill in the gaps like missing teeth in the sputtering sign. Seven doors south, now. A phone booth nearby. As headlights bore down on him from the opposite direction, Casey swore savagely. All he needed now was some rookie ready to drop on him for driving out of bounds.
Sure enough, the rooftop blinker flashed on. Groaning as the squad car drew abreast of him and halted, Casey leaned out the window, shouting, “Kellog—Santa Monica,” and went on by without stopping.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 14