Five doors now. Four. In his rear-vision mirror, he spied the seaward flare of headlights as the squad car swung around. Three doors. Or was it two, now? Then ahead he saw the lighted phone booth. Tires grating on the sandy pavement, he pulled up, leaving the door open, headlights blazing, as he jumped out of the Mustang.
“Hold it,” a hard metallic voice issued from the squad car bearing down on him.
Casey reached for the pocket holding the leather case with his badge and identification, then changed his mind. Eager Rookie Shoots Detective by Mistake. Better a minute wasted, he decided as the black-and-white car pulled up.
“Ah, for chrissake, Hughie,” said a disgusted half-familiar voice in the dark. The opposite car door slammed hard.
As the uniformed patrolman crossed the headlights, Casey recognized the black face under the billed cap: Jerry Blandford, an Academy classmate. “You guys always drop on your visiting firemen?”
“Man, that Hughie’s a tiger, ain’t he? Two weeks out of the Academy, now he’s arresting plainclothesmen. What we got here, Casey?”
“The Berry girl’s brother, I hope.”
“The one they fished out of the bay?” Blandford shook his head. “You better hope, man, ’cause your other bird just flew away in that yellow Jag we got a bulletin on.”
“Farr.” Casey nodded. “Where’d you see him?”
“I didn’t. He ran a roadblock they’re setting up on Neilson. By the time somebody took after him, he was long gone.”
“All right, let’s get this kid. He’s bombed on something, shouldn’t be any problem.”
Blandford hooted. “Don’t jive me, man—in Venice every kid over five’s a problem!”
Leading the way, Casey took the rickety stairs two at a time. From a next-door window on the second floor, he glimpsed a ghostly face peering out at them from behind the dark pane. Puffing slightly, they paused at the top, listening. From within came no sound. Through the door, which stood slightly ajar, they could see that the room was dark.
Casey knocked twice. The door hinges creaked. Then weirdly slow, a door in a spook show, the flimsy panel swung wide open.
“Cover me,” Blandford whispered.
The broad bright beam of his flashlight cut into the blackness, sweeping the room. A second later Casey fumbled and found the light switch. And in the sudden bleak blinding glare, they saw the boy lying limply, half on, half off the daybed.
Blandford sighed. “Looks to me like you done lost this bird, too.”
No mistaking that blind lifeless stare. But feverishly Casey sought for life signs, knowing it was hopeless. Under his clothing his skin felt sandpapered. Murder. Can’t be. But he did not believe himself.
“Better go down and report in,” Blandford was saying.
“What rotten luck.” Squatting on his heels beside the bed, Casey blinked up at him. “What rotten lousy luck!” Then aware of Blandford’s puzzled scrutiny, he pushed himself upright. “I mean Farr. For running. He’s either the biggest fool or the biggest nut case—”
Blandford was smiling slightly. “You guess wrong on this one, maybe?”
“Maybe. I’ll have a look around, okay?”
“Help yourself.”
As Blandford pounded down the stairs, Casey surveyed the room, vaguely taking in the television magazine lying on the floor. A bed, two chairs—he noted automatically—card table, chest of drawers. But no television set. Then why a magazine devoted to the weekly program schedules?
Retrieving the creased dog-eared periodical from the floor, Casey turned to the front cover. Not even this week’s issue. The date on the cover was for the week starting Sunday, September 11. He flipped rapidly through the pages, noticing that one had been torn out—late evening programs for Thursday the fifteenth, and on the back of the page, morning schedules for Friday the sixteenth—
“Jesus!” It was Krug at the door. “Looks like you hit the jackpot, sport.”
Casey tossed the magazine on the daybed. “Right now it seems more like the booby prize.” He watched as his partner bent over the body.
Krug grunted as he picked up a limp arm, pushing up the blue workshirt sleeve. “Look at that.” He pointed to the needle scars. “A real shooter, wasn’t he? Here’s a fresh one.” As he yanked down the sleeve again, paper in the left shirt pocket rustled. Krug dipped in two fingers, delicately extracting a narrow oblong of stiff paper and a flimsy copy, folded into fourths. “Oil company charge,” he muttered. “Customer’s name is Hubbard Payley. Lives on Malibu Road. Eleven gallons of gas charged on the second.”
A siren growled into silence outside. Casey heard a car door slam. The clan was gathering. Peering over Krug’s shoulder, he deciphered the blurry imprint of the gas station. “That’s where he worked, Al. The Synanon place.”
“I don’t get it.” Krug squinted at the voucher. “Why’d he take this? It wasn’t worth anything—”
“Top of the stairs, Sergeant,” Casey heard Blandford calling.
Heavy feet hit the treads, then halted. “Get those people back out of the way,” the unseen sergeant roared. “Next thing you know, we’ll have an ambulance full of spectators.”
“That’s Laslo,” Krug muttered. “Watch yourself, he’s touchy as the devil…”
Once begun, the ritual of procedure progressed steadily, undeterred by fog or the crowd of onlookers. An ambulance arrived, photographers, fingerprint specialists, the coroner’s representative. A participant, but only marginally in this crowd of technicians, Casey hovered near the body while the coroner’s man made a quick examination. “An overdose, you think?” he asked hopefully.
“Not a chance. See that?” pointing to a discoloration below the boy’s left ear. “Carotid artery. Ruptured maybe. Offhand I’d say it was something like karate.”
“Same pattern,” Krug commented behind Casey. “Looks like you bet on the wrong horse, sport.” But his tone was mild.
The owner of the old house was scooped up for questioning, and two tenants with previous drug records. In the next-door house, an unemployed bartender and a frightened pensioner who occupied second-floor rooms with windows facing the stairway were also questioned. Such minor and peripheral persons as the Synanon gas station manager and the customer named Hubbard Payley would have to wait until the next day or the next for questioning, depending on how much time was taken up with possible witnesses.
Seeing that Krug was deep in conversation with Laslo and two Venice Division detectives, Casey drifted out and down the stairs, sampling the comments of the onlookers as he pushed through them and headed up the promenade. In the glaring headlights of the squad cars, the fog seemed thinned, but beyond the cluster of people and vehicles, it closed around him, cold and opaque as steam off evaporating dry ice.
A homemade sign propped near the door of the bar had fallen face down. Casey righted it. Live Music, he read, The Piccolo Incense. Not tonight, he thought as he pushed open the door. The bar was silent and nearly empty—two customers on stools brooding over beers, two more at a pool table.
“Beer?” the bartender asked. “We got tap—”
“No, thanks.” Casey flashed his badge. “Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t do me any good if I did, would it?” But his tough dock-walloper’s face creased pleasantly—a lopsided grin, droll and rueful. “I hear some kid checked out down the street. Whatever it was, it sure blew my business for the night.”
“You had a man in here earlier. About my age. Tall, dark longish hair, kind of lanky. He was probably wearing a blue jacket, denims and sneakers—” The bartender was nodding. “How long was he here?”
“He had a couple beers, so half an hour maybe. Why?”
“Did he meet someone here? Talk to anyone before he left?”
“Lessee”—sucking his teeth—“he bought a round for the Incense. They play here a couple times a week—gratis, natch. But they split early tonight.” He grinned again. “Guess all the fuzz around
made ’em nervous maybe.”
“Did he talk to them at all?”
“This guy you’re asking about? Nah, he—Wait a minute, though. He bounced for the brews, then seems to me I seen him headed for the can. Next thing I know, he’s walking out with Goldy.” He pointed to a group photo tacked to the back bar. “That’s him in the middle. Goldman. He’s the drummer.”
Casey asked to see the photo, and while the bartender pried the tacks loose one by one, he continued his questioning. “Did this Goldman come back?”
“Sure he did.” He swore softly. “Will you look at that? Broke my fingernail.” The photo came loose and he blew dust off it. “They played another set. Maybe two. Then all hell broke loose out there and—bam—I’m cleared out. Here you are.”
The photo was a standard publicity still, Casey saw. But the bar was too dimly lighted to see it well. Casey had an impression of four scarecrow figures, beards, hair. At the bottom of the glossy was printing he couldn’t read. “You know where this Goldman lives?”
“Not me—” winking. “He’s not my type.”
“How about these others? Know where any of them live?”
The bartender shook his head.
Casey lit a match, scrutinizing the photo. The printing at the bottom read: The Piccolo Incense…Representation: Pincus Agency, and a Hollywood phone number. While the bartender watched, Casey made a note of the number. Then he returned the photo, and on the off chance the bartender might have seen him, described the man they had believed to be the Berry twin’s uncle. But here he drew a blank. Discouraged, he left a card as usual, knowing it was probably useless. Then he went out into the fog again…
“Where the hell you been?” Krug called from the bottom of the stair.
“Looking for more birds that flew away.” Casey explained what he had found out, vaguely aware, as he talked, of the bulletins issuing from the squawk box of the nearest squad car. Farr would be wanted on suspicion of double homicide now. Wanted also for questioning in the case was a Joe Doe, approximately six feet tall, heavy build, sandy bushy hair and mustache. The doors of the ambulance stood open and ready.
“The Piccolo Incense, for chrissake,” Krug was saying. “What’s that supposed to mean? A lot of words strung together…Okay, so now we know how Farr found the kid. A nice clean case this time, right? Murder One, or I’ll eat my badge.”
“I still say Farr meant us to pick up that boy alive.”
“You’re out of your skull. This guy Farr’s got you hypnotized, you know that? Christ, for all you know, he was laying for you, too—figured you’d come waltzing down here solo maybe.” Krug rapped the stair rail for emphasis. “Look, forget all that shit about stolen keys and frame-ups. Forget the phone call. It’s razzle-dazzle. Window dressing. The funny farm’s full of these tricky killers.”
There was no use arguing, Casey knew, so he listened instead, half-asleep on his feet. The body was brought down and loaded in the ambulance, and once it was gone, the spectators began to drift. One by one the squad cars grouped on the promenade began to peel off, leaving a path clear for Casey’s Mustang. Yawning hugely, he got in behind the wheel.
But Krug didn’t seem ready to call it a day yet. “The hell with the paperwork,” he said companionably, leaning on the open car door. “We’ll do it tomorrow, and screw Timms. How about coffee?”
“No, thanks, Al, I’m ready to quit.”
“Don’t take it so hard, sport.” He punched Casey’s arm. “It’s all in a day’s work. You win a few, you lose a few.”
“Sure, I know. Well—see you tomorrow, Al.”
Krug slammed the door, stepping back a pace as Casey started the Mustang. In the rear-vision mirror, he grinned and waved, ruddy in the glow from the taillights. Then he blurred in the fog and disappeared. All in a day’s work, Casey thought, yawning and yawning as he drove slowly down the promenade to a vacant lot, which he crossed to a parallel alley. From here he turned left, then left again on Neilson, heading back for Santa Monica. Less than fifteen minutes later he was driving up his own quiet tree-lined street.
The garage doors were open, he saw as he swung into the driveway, the gate open also, the dogs in for the night. Parking in the space beside his father’s car, Casey turned off the ignition, leaving the headlights burning as he sat for a minute, stunned by fatigue. All in a day’s work. In the corner of the garage beyond his father’s car, he noticed vaguely, the heap of the family’s biodegradable trash had grown to alarming proportions, particularly the pile of old newspapers and periodicals which loomed in the shadows, leaning like Pisa. Barrels of aluminum cans for reclamation crowded the far wall. Wondering how soon he would be elected by a majority of two to get rid of the stuff, Casey sighed and doused his headlights. He was half out of the car when he remembered the TV magazine with the page torn out.
Switching on his headlights again, he squeezed by the front bumper of his father’s car and confronted the mass of newspapers. The same magazine wouldn’t be here, he knew—they were not subscribers—but in the TV Log which came every week with the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times, he could find the missing programs. Pawing destructively through the dusty layers of newsprint laid down like sediment every week, he yawned and sneezed, thinking, Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it just wore him out. There wasn’t quite enough light to read the dates. The overhead garage light wouldn’t be any better, he knew, so he kept digging until he had collected four TV Logs. One of them had to be the right one, surely.
Yawning helplessly over and over again, Casey slid by his father’s bumper, doused his headlights, and quietly closed the garage door. His footsteps sounded hollow on the cement drive. In a neighboring yard, a dog barked. Hoping it didn’t set off the three inside his own house, he opened the back screen and unlocked the back door. All three dogs flung themselves at him ecstatically as he stepped into the kitchen. “All right,” he sighed, “okay, I’m glad to see you, too,” patting each one in turn. “Now calm down.”
A night light burned over the stove. On the kitchen drainboard his mother had left a plate of something covered with pliofilm. Fried chicken, Casey discovered when he switched on the light. As he selected a succulent-looking leg first, the dogs watched anxiously, but Casey ignored them. Spreading the TV Logs on the sink, he found the one for the week of September 11 through 17, and opened the Art Nouveau cover. Greasy-fingered, he leafed through until he found programs for the fifteenth, slowly scanning the evening hours through midnight. He was almost at the end—a three-thirty insomniacs’ movie on Channel 11—when he spied it. Dropping the chicken leg, Casey grabbed for the yellow kitchen phone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
With a searing pinpoint, like a drop of acid, consciousness opened the sweet dark. Must close the spot. Quickly, quickly. But he could not, and the burning spread, shriveling his flesh, eating him alive.
Even so, Farr knew he must lie still. It would go away if he stayed quiet. But the fire twisted and knotted his muscles; he could feel himself beginning to struggle. “No,” he shouted, “don’t,” as it clawed him—a nightmare scream which conscious perception instantly translated into a gargled moan.
Stifling the sound he was making, aware of injury and peril as he summoned his senses, Farr lay quiet, listening before he opened his eyes. His wrists and ankles were tied, he realized, he was helpless. Helpless and hurt. Like Holly, he thought, and the pulse of his terror banged in his ears.
But as he waited, he heard through the beating of his blood a slower and more uneven surge. The sea? This was a boat then? But he could feel no floating movement.
Opening his eyes as little as possible, Farr focused dizzily on the shiny black lacquered surface in front of him. A floor. It seemed dark and shadowy, but reflections of some flickering light gleamed here and there. A fire—he could smell it, hear its subtle hissing. Fire in a fireplace. Table legs with carved claw feet stood nearby, waxed planes catching light from the flames. Beyond these lay a striped pelt—zebra, he thoug
ht—and beyond this, the dim corner of a room. Farr tried to lift his head, see more, but movement brought agony. Panting, paralyzed, he lay still. And behind him someone, a man, laughed softly.
“You again,” Smithers’ voice sounded thin and distant—as if, Casey thought, he were a long way from the phone. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I’m out of the habit. Listen, Smitty, get me a pedigree on this guy as soon as you can, will you?” He spelled the name. “Also a DVM check on what kind of wheels he drives.”
“What’re you after, Casey?”
“I don’t know yet. Call you back, okay?”
Hanging up, he fished out his notebook and dialed the Hollywood number of the Pincus Agency. After four rings, a call service answered. It took all of Casey’s powers of persuasion to convince the girl that even though it was the middle of the night, the Detective Bureau of the Santa Monica Police Department must speak to Mr. Pincus immediately. “Just give me his number,” he suggested. “If you want, I’ll forget where I got it”
Pincus took ten rings to lift the receiver, then dropped it with an earsplitting crash. When he spoke at last—“Yeah, who’s the clown calls this time of night? ”—he seemed unable to believe that the call wasn’t a gag. “Okay, okay, you’re a cop,” he said finally when Casey had given him his badge number as proof, “What’s this with The Piccolos? If they’re busted again…Oh, they aren’t, hunh? Where who lives? Oh, Goldy. In a hole is where he lives. A flophouse, believe me, over some store in Venice. And him with a father’s the biggest wholesale grocer—Well, never mind, that’s how it goes, right? Ghetto to ghetto, like the guy says, in three generations. Look, I don’t know the address, but it’s a furniture store I got to call every time I want to get hold of him. Wait a minute, let me think. If I was at the office—It’s on Main Street in Venice. Some Spanish name. Monza, something like that…”
In the Western Section of the telephone directory, Casey found a Main Street, Venice, listing for Montes Furniture. And ten minutes later when he pulled up in front of it, he had a feeling this could be the place. The building was small—a boxy stucco in need of paint—deserted-looking at street level, but the second-floor windows were lighted. From an open window floated eerie quarter-tone music which Casey recognized as Hindu—Ravi Shankar.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 15