Getting in was the first hurdle, for there were no stairs in sight. Moving as quietly as possible, Casey went around the south side of the building. In the back, he found an outside stair. The lot behind the building was weedy, untended, a parking area for two vehicles—a panel truck and a Volkswagen bus with a wild paint job. Now he was certain he had found the right place.
At the top of the stair a window stood open, unscreened. Casey peered in, spying a battered stove. There was a strong smell of drains and garbage. Light streamed in from another room. Catching a whiff of pungent smoke over the garbage smell, he thought, Bad luck. They were bound to think this was a bust. “Hi,” he yelled through the open window, “anybody home?”
A long shadow cut the streamer of light. Someone waiting, listening.
“Goldy?”
The shadow moved. A girl in a long granny dress drifted into the kitchen. Without speaking, she smiled out at Casey, moony-pale, a sleepwalker.
“Hey,” he whispered, “what’s the magic word? How do I get in?”
Giggling softly, she pointed to the door.
“Open it,” he urged, wondering how far this sort of persuasion stretched the knock regulations. “Come on, baby. Do it.”
Silent as a wraith, barefooted, she drifted toward the door. Casey held his breath. Come on, baby. Then the knob turned, he heard the latch click open. As he stepped in, someone called from the other room sleepily.
“Playing possum, Mr. Farr?”
A mellow voice. Farr sensed movement behind him and braced himself. Something nudged his head gently. An animal? Then he realized it must be a bare foot. Toes kept prodding the bruised burning muscles of his neck.
“Wake up, Mr. Farr.”
Turning his head was agony, and half-blinded, Farr caught only an impression: a blurry figure towering over him, half-ebony, half-bronze. Legs like columns—in black tights, he realized. As he stared upward into the huge smiling face made grotesque by this antlike perspective, the man lifted his foot teasingly. A bare brown foot which only suggested savagery as it came down, squashing Farr’s nose and mouth.
Wrenching his head aside, Farr yelled hoarsely, flailing his bound legs.
The man laughed. “That’s better,” he said amiably.
Farr lay still. “Who—who are you? What do you want with me?”
“Oh, very good! First things first. Who and what. But, Mr. Farr, shouldn’t you be asking why?” Squatting with his elbows resting lightly on his knees, huge hands dangling, he waited, amber eyes fixed on Farr’s with a curious uncommunicative blankness. He was completely hairless, leathery—no eyelashes, no eyebrows, totally bald. His thick dry lips kept twitching. In his forehead a vein pulsed dangerously, making a lie of his bland, empty expression. “Why,” he murmured, moody, abstracted. Then he laughed again, and stroking the hard muscles of his chest self-lovingly, said, “You were there, Mr. Farr. That’s why. Does there have to be any other reason? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. You were there to use and I used you.”
Staring into the stony, vaguely melancholic face hanging over him, Farr tried to focus, but his concentration was tissue-thin, eaten out patchily by the blaze of his pain. This is Holly’s murderer. Madman, he thought and panic shook him. This was the cunning shadow stalking him all these days. Insane. Has to be. Or was he playing the lunatic?
In the silence, Farr heard the fire hissing, breath coming and going from the man’s mouth like air from a bellows. He was afraid to look away. He was afraid to speak, and sensed that he must to delay some purpose he felt working like poison behind that massive and uncommunicating face. “You used—” but he was croaking. He swallowed hard. “You used me to find—” her? them? Despairing, he realized the boy must be dead. “Whatever it was, you’re protected now, aren’t you?” Hesitating, watching for response, but there was none. “So why do this? You’re—surely you’re only complicating what’s already finished—”
“No, not finished.” A strange crooning tone. “Surely you know it’s not finished yet”
“But I had nothing to do with his stupid scheme, don’t you understand that?”
“I understand” He smiled—a grimace like a pain rictus. “Better than you, Mr. Farr.”
“Then why?” Farr shouted. “Why? For Christ sake, what do you want with me?”
There was an answer. He could sense it palpable as a presence between them.
“Look,” he said quietly, seeking a persuasive rhythm, “you know I’m a lawyer. I know the law. What’s written in it, and what’s unwritten, too. I’m not talking about loopholes, I’m talking about understanding. The unwritten acceptance that any man has a right to protect himself—and not just his life—”
So swiftly it was only a blur to Farr, one huge hand leaped out and sealed his mouth. His breath whistled as it expelled in shock from his nostrils. He watched the vein pulsing wildly, writhing like a worm between the man’s thick frontal bones and mottled sun-spotted brown skin. The amber eyes gleamed. Like a cat’s, Farr thought as he watched the pupils contract. He’s enjoying this. He’s enjoying—
His scream burst like a bubble against the hard smothering palm, and he began to struggle, lashing out with his legs, trying to gain purchase on the floor with his bound hands. For he realized now that he was going to die. And before he did, he would suffer as Holly had.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Drunk with fatigue, nauseated, Casey fell into his car, leaning on the steering wheel as his head spun. The sticky pungency of marijuana smoke clung in his nostrils. His eyes burned. At the back of his throat the smoke he’d inhaled seemed solidified into a dry sickening cottony substance which neither spitting nor swallowing could dislodge. Goldman’s blurry image kept grinning in his mind. Man, what you got is a contact high. You get it from breathing my smoke, see? Cackle-cackle. Oh, it was very funny, a real gas, seeing the fuzz get bombed.
Gulping cold air streaming through the open window, Casey fumbled for his keys and started the Mustang. He ached for sleep, longed for coffee, but there was no time to stop now. It was after four, and as far as he could determine, he had only begun to unravel the snarl which entangled David Farr. And somewhere along the way—soon, he realized—he had to call Krug. Casey knew he was in for a bad time.
The fog had lifted slightly, thinned so that it hung like gauze before his headlights, diffusing the darkness and emptiness of the street. Feeling like the last man alive in this dead forsaken hour, Casey switched on his car radio. Anything, he thought groggily, to keep awake. Rock blared out at him, stunning his ears. Then came the creamy voice of the disc jockey peddling personality and somebody’s discount record emporium. Following this, Casey caught a bulletin about the traffic pile-up Krug had mentioned. South of Trancas on Pacific Coast Highway, he heard, twenty cars and two trucks wrecked, six people injured, one believed dead, a real slaughter. Dense fog had hampered rescue operations, and traffic both ways had been held up until after one. But according to the California Highway Patrol, all lanes were now—Casey switched it off, having had his fill of disasters.
Running the red light at Pico, he picked up a tail in his rear-vision mirror—a squad car which dropped him again as he swung into the Civic Center complex, pulling up sloppily behind the City Hall which housed the Police Department. Inside, lights blazed, phones rang, the smell of coffee hung in the corridors. Casey pounded up the stairs, jogged by Juvenile, and slid around the counter which divided the squad room from the area which served as an anteroom to the Captain’s office. “Smitty,” he yelled, “what’s the word?” But Smithers only stood there shaking his head. Casey groaned. “Nothing?” He couldn’t believe he could be so unlucky.
“The guy’s clean as a whistle. No record at all. DVM shows he drives a ’68 Dodge sedan,” and Smithers read off the license number. “You look like something the cat dragged in,” he added as Casey scribbled it in his notebook. “What you got going that’s so big—?”
But by this time Casey was already on the p
hone, counting rings at the other end.
Trust Krug to answer fast. “Yeah,” he said metalically, not a trace of sleepiness in his voice. “Who is it?”
“I’ve got a bomb for you, Al. At least I hope I have. I’ll be over in about ten minutes—”
“The hell you will!”
“Want to bet?” Casey said, and hung up.
“You young guys really live dangerously, don’t you?” Smithers called as he rushed out again. “Lots of luck—you’ll need it, ’cause if Al doesn’t get you, his old lady will!”
Krug’s house was somehow un-Krug-like, a pleasant Spanish-style stucco built on a double lot, surrounded by garden. Two vehicles sat in the driveway—the camper truck and the family Chevy. Casey remembered that Krug had said he used his garage for a workshop. The street was narrow but uncluttered by automobiles, a nice middle-income neighborhood with mowed lawns and trimmed shrubbery.
Lights burned in the front windows. As Casey came up the walk, sniffing the freshness of fog-dampened grass, the front door opened. Looking like an aging pug ready for the ring, Krug waited in the light, apparently wearing only a robe and slippers. A nude sleeper. You learn something new every day, Casey thought. Without a word, Krug beckoned him in and closed the door quietly. The front room smelled like fresh coffee.
“Grab a chair,” Krug whispered, “I’ll be back in a minute.” But too restless to sit down, Casey prowled the room until Krug returned carrying two steaming mugs which he set carefully on a copy of Better Homes and Gardens lying on the coffee table. Then he slumped onto the couch, and with his arms folded, watched as Casey blew steam from his mug. “All right,” he said dryly, “anytime.”
Casey gulped coffee. Here we go. Setting the cup back on the magazine, he reached in his coat pocket, pulling out the folded TV Log he had found in his garage. “Look at this, Al.” He laid it on the coffee table, smoothing the pages open and flat. “A page with these same programs was torn out of a TV magazine in the Berry boy’s room. There wasn’t a set there, though, remember? And the date’s for last week.”
Krug leaned forward, scanning the double pages. “What the hell am I supposed to be looking for?”
Using an index finger as a pointer, Casey led his eyes down the page of evening programs, stopping just before the last one, where the schedule read:
MOVIE—Adventure (1951)
“Rama’s Gold,” Lance Gregory,
Eileen Sanders, Carter
Hale, Hubb Payley.
Threesome seeking lost
African mine find it guarded
by a white man worshipped
as a god by natives.
Krug drew in his breath. “Payley. Wasn’t that—?”
Casey nodded. “Same name as on that oil company charge slip in the boy’s pocket. Wait,” he said hastily before Krug could start in. “Remember the kid Farr met at that bar? The musician? Well, I located him, and he told me Farr had been there the night before, looking for the Berry boy—”
“What’s that prove except he finally found him?”
“Will you listen to me, Al?” Then aware of the still, sleeping house, Casey tempered his tone. “Look, this kid I talked to—the whole band—were friends of the girl’s as well as her brother. Saw her every day. Hung around together, you understand? Like a family. Where one went, all the others went, too.”
“Okay, I get the picture. What’s it leading up to?”
A good question, Casey thought; he had wondered the same thing himself as he had sat there in Goldman’s chairless, mattress-strewn pad, inhaling marijuana smoke, getting a contact high. Then suddenly—a burning arrow printed on the air—his direction had been clearly pointed. But he knew he must conceal it from Krug. “Al, the same night Del Berry left Synanon—the seventh—he showed up at Goldman’s pad. Not high, Goldman claims, but very excited about something he’d heard somewhere. ‘High on natch’ is how Goldman described his condition. But he was scared, too, and he wouldn’t stay. He wanted Goldman to drive him to the station where he worked—which Goldman did—”
“That charge slip we found—you think that’s what he was after?”
“Probably. I found out they keep them in the cash drawer for a week or so, then the manager picks them up to send to the oil company. Anyway,” Casey went on, “the plan was—Goldman’d see Holly the next day and give her the word Del was hiding out—”
“No reason why.”
“Not much, according to Goldman. Except Del was onto what he called a score.”
“Sounds like blackmail.” Krug whistled through his teeth. “ ‘Something he saw in somebody’s—’ ” abruptly stopping, he stared at Casey, his face all of a sudden iron-hard. “Go on,” he said. “What next?”
“The next day they saw the girl, all right. But by then some guy had got hold of her. She was scared stiff, Goldman said, and frantic about Del. This man had evidently threatened her, and the brother, too—but she didn’t know why.” While Casey sipped coffee, Krug sat waiting impassively. “That’s the eighth,” Casey went on. “Okay, on the ninth she had a new lock installed on her door. But something must’ve happened. Anyway, she showed up at Goldman’s pad and spent the day. That evening they played a private party somewhere, and they took her along—”
“Where she met Farr.”
Chilled by his tone, Casey nodded.
“Okay, then what?”
“Then she disappeared.”
“What’re you talking about, she disappeared? We know for a fact—”
“Wait a minute, Al, this is Goldman’s story. Sure, we know she was at Farr’s over the weekend, in the hospital on Monday, the motel on Tuesday. But her friends, the people she trusted, didn’t know where she was. And if she left that motel under her own steam Tuesday, she would have gone to them. But she didn’t, Al. The last time they saw her was at the party. After Friday, the ninth, they never saw her again.”
“You’re pretty cute, aren’t you?” Krug heaved himself upright, glaring down at Casey. “Real cute. A regular little gold-plated Sherlock Holmes.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about! You’ve screwed around and screwed around till you finally got all the pieces to fit Farr’s story—”
“It didn’t take screwing around to make them fit—it took detective work, and you know it, Al.”
“Detective work. Why, you two-bit genius, what the hell do you know about detective work? I been fifteen years running my ass off—”
“And fifteen months running mine.”
Krug’s mouth snapped shut as if he’d bit hard on something. His eyes blazed. His face was flaming.
“You’re a good teacher, Al,” Casey said quietly. “But you’d be a better one if you could bring yourself to give an ‘A’ once in a while.” He looked at his watch. “It’ll be light pretty soon. Nice time of day for a drive up the beach to Malibu.”
With his hands shoved in the pockets of his robe, slippers flapping against his bare heels, Krug walked around the room for a minute. Then, with his back to Casey, he said, “Drink your coffee,” and he started for the door. “By the time you’re finished I’ll be ready to go.”
TWENTY-NINE
“Hubb Payley,” Krug kept muttering as they screeched around the curves north of Wilshire on Bundy. “Hubb. Hubbard.” He made an exasperated sound. “For chrissake, all the movies I’ve sat through, how come I can’t remember this guy?”
“It was a long time ago, Al—1951.”
“Not that long.”
Casey smiled to himself. In 1951 he was in kindergarten.
“But come to think of it,” Krug was saying, “not all these ham actors make the big time, do they? Maybe that Africa thriller was the only movie the guy ever got a part in.” He sucked in his breath as Casey ran the stop at San Vicente, crossed the divider and rocked left, his tires screaming. “Look, how about we get to Malibu in one piece, hunh?”
Casey dropped back to sixty as th
ey headed westward on San Vicente. The air through the open windows smelled damp and fresh, springlike. Over the Mustang’s roar, he caught a meadow lark’s three-note descending trill. Morning, he thought, and shivering, savored a flicker of apprehension. Every man’s day is an enigma at dawn.
“Long as we’re this close,” Krug was saying, “let’s run by Farr’s place. Not that I expect any miracles,” he added dryly.
Casey passed Seventh, which curved down into Santa Monica Canyon, and continued on San Vicente to its end at Ocean Avenue. Turning right on Ocean, he cut his speed to a crawl while they looked for the stake-out. The car was out of sight, parked around the sharp turn which led onto a narrow road plunging down the side of the canyon. Headed downhill, Casey pulled up beside the light-beige unmarked vehicle. “Hi, Paul,” he called quietly out the window. “Any action?”
With a sour grimace, the bored detective behind the wheel answered graphically, thumbs down. “What you guys doing out so early?”
“So late, he means,” Krug muttered. “Come on, let’s go before he starts bumming smokes.” Paul was a notorious tobacco cadger since he had quit smoking, obviously believing his habit beaten because he no longer bought any. “Last week he got me for four cigars,” Krug groused as they went on. “Four, would you believe it? Not to mention all the cigarettes he bums one at a time. Christ, the guy smokes more now than he ever did!”
At treetop height as they descended into the wooded canyon, the fog thinned, Casey noticed, the closer they got to Pacific Coast Highway. Only a light haze hung over the surf. The tide was low, the sea calm, milky under the pearly half-light of the coming dawn.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 16