“You think that restaurant’s a homosexual hangout, Al?”
“Got to be.”
Casey started the Mustang. “Why do you suppose Rees took her to a place like that?”
“Maybe she took him.” Krug sucked in his breath as they gunned into the southbound coastal traffic which was fast-moving now. “Christ, I keep riding with you, for sure I’ll never live to collect my pension! What’s the big rush?”
“Heavy evening, Al. I’ve got to check out in an hour, or I’m in trouble.”
“Better get on the phone, then,” Krug advised callously. “We got a lot of territory to cover yet.”
Casey’s heart sank. Good old Uncle Al, mentor and tormentor. Knowing from experience that argument would be useless, he tried suggestion instead: “After we check Rees again, that’s it, isn’t it, Al? Nothing left to cover that night tour can’t handle.”
But Krug only grunted. His mind was obviously elsewhere. “Before we hit Rees, let’s swing by and pick up his suitcases from the lab. Try it roundabout this time.” Now he was smiling, Casey noticed. Your friendly neighborhood bloodhound. “Even the smartest crook’s got to fumble it sooner or later—right, sport? They all do. So maybe this is the time for Rees, hah?”
TWENTY
In his shallow sleep, he heard the car pulling into the courtyard, and the dream he had dreamed almost continuously in prison started unreeling again: rain falling, and his headlights picking out quicksilver drops; Ellen beside him with the letter in her hand, smiling, pointing across the street at a mailbox. No, don’t bother to turn around, I’ll just run across—
Car doors slammed, echoing the same sound in his dream, and he jerked awake, the cold sweat of apprehension like grease on his skin. I’ll just run across. He could still hear her footsteps. Then he realized these were real ones, scrape-scraping across the asphalt paving. Coming here? Rees looked for the time, saw he had slept away the afternoon. It was almost five.
The knocking on his door was surprisingly quiet. Maybe not Krug after all? But no one else would be coming here—
“Mr. Rees?”
His heart clenched. “Just a minute.” The plastic bag containing pieces of the shoe-box lid was still sitting on the floor of his car.
“About those suitcases,” Krug said by way of greeting. “Seems like your snoop didn’t leave any prints, Mr. Rees. Thought we’d check back, see if you had any ideas.”
Rees looked from one to the other, trying to fathom their purpose. “You’ve impounded my bags?”
“Nah, they’re in the car. You want to get ’em, Casey?”
The younger one nodded. “Only take a second.” He headed for the Mustang, which was parked near Rees’s door.
“You look hot,” Krug commented. “Been exercising, Mr. Rees?”
“No, I was asleep.”
“Bad dreams, hah?”
“Is that an official question, Sergeant?”
Krug’s eyes froze. “Don’t push it—”
“Here we are. Excuse me, Mr. Rees.” Casey set the two bags just inside the door, resting the shaving kit on top of them. Then they both stepped in without invitation, and Krug closed the door—another question-and-answer session, Rees realized. Subject, the money again. Where had it really come from? Why was he carrying so much? According to their report from San Francisco—
“For God’s sake,” he groaned, “I’m not a criminal! Don’t you know that by now? If you don’t, you should.”
“Then you won’t mind telling us where you got it, right?”
“Wrong, Sergeant, it’s none of your business.” Had the young one spotted the plastic bag in his car? Not enough time to inspect it, though. And if he didn’t antagonize them—“All right,” he said, “I won it gambling. In a—a poker game.” He slumped onto the foot of the bed. On one beefy haunch, Krug perched on the corner of a combination desk and dressing table with a mirror hanging over it. Casey took the only chair, which sat in a corner. He had his notebook out. “Fresno, I think it was,” Rees elaborated, realizing as he spoke that he should have waited for them to ask. “I met some salesmen in a bar and we got together later.”
“Like in a motel, maybe?”
“Yes. But I can’t remember the name.” He swallowed cottony dryness, despising himself for his lies, his fear of them, the unmanning sense of being their victim. The motel was a newish place on the highway, he told them. No, he didn’t remember any names of the men he had played with, or mention of companies they had worked for—
“Well, maybe you’ll think of them later,” Casey said soothingly. “Incidentally, we’ve run across a little discrepancy, Mr. Rees. Just a detail about how you said Miss Roche was dressed. Haven’t been able to locate that black hat—”
“I don’t know anything,” Rees began violently, then stopped himself. “She picked it up at the party, that’s all I know. If you’ll check with the Godwins—”
“Who?” Krug said.
Casey consulted his notebook. “This morning you said the name was Jervis.”
“It’s on their postbox. E and J Godwin. J for Jervis. I suppose,” he added lamely.
There was a short silence then, terrifying to Rees because it was obvious they weren’t through with him yet. Casey finally asked how long he had stayed in Fresno, and he thought, God, back to that again. Just the one night, he answered, then it was Krug’s turn again. How many hours would Rees guess it had taken him to drive the distance from Frisco to Fresno? Recognizing a trick question, he realized they must know when he had left San Francisco, so he answered simply—the truth this time—he had not driven straight through. No, he couldn’t name exactly where he had stopped. Near Monterey one night. An inland town near the mountain another night—
“You got a short memory,” Krug cut him off. “But maybe it’ll get better about the last couple of days?” Holding one knee, he rocked himself backward, banging the mirror slightly, and their images in it shimmered, distorting like water reflections. “This date you had last night, for instance. What’d you talk about, Mr. Rees? All those hours you must’ve rapped about something besides the weather. Like her career, maybe?” His tone made it a joke. “Or the story of your life? Or something like your impressions of the slammer? Or maybe what a lousy place this is compared to sophisticated San Francisco?”
Rees gritted his teeth. Bastard. Bullyboy. “I’m afraid I don’t recall anything specific, Sergeant. As you said, it was a long evening.”
“Yeah, but you had something in common. Stands to reason—”
“If you mean the hit-and-run, Miss Roche didn’t want to discuss it.”
“Yeah, I bet Miss Roche didn’t.” His smile was mean. “Too nasty to bring up while you’re having yourselves such a nice time, hah? She happened to mention how long she’d known Barrett?”
Rees stared at him, speechless.
“The guy on the motorcycle, remember? Gerald Hower Barrett. Turns out he was her boyfriend.”
“You’re crazy—she no more knew him than I did!”
“Well, that’s another question, isn’t it?” Krug was still smiling. “The sixty-four-dollar one, right, Mr. Rees? And you can bet your bottom dollar, we’ll have the answer—and soon.”
TWENTY-ONE
They kept asking questions, which he answered without calculation, sheathed now in shock, numbness, incomprehension. And when they walked out finally, leaving him slumped on the foot of the bed, Rees could not recall what else had been said. He listened to the Mustang start up and pull slowly out of the asphalt-paved motel courtyard. Petty worries kept surfacing in his consciousness: he must settle his room rent for the night; it was long past the posted checkout time. Sometime this evening he should investigate the complicated downtown Los Angeles freeway system because he had no idea how to reach the Parole Authority. His appointment was for nine sharp tomorrow morning.
Krug’s grin seemed printed on the stale joyless dusk in his room. She tell you how long she’d known Barrett? He groaned al
oud. Turns out he was her boyfriend. Nausea coiling like a serpent in him, he saw her clearly: Susannah laughing. Play it for giggles. Susannah giggling. Ooo-wow-you-scare-me. Susannah clamped to him like a fiery limpet. What you can’t see can only kill you.
But the fact of her death was far away now.
He showered quickly, shaved and dressed in fresh clothing. The evening air outside was cool, he found, smelling of the sea and sprinkled lawns in the park across the way. By the door of the motel office, three newspaper-vending machines were chained to the wall, and headlines inside one caught his eye: actress plunges to death. The newspaper was local—the Evening Outlook—and as he inserted a dime in the slot, opening the lid of the vendor, Rees saw a subheading in smaller caps which stated that the deceased had figured as a witness in another death.
Her boyfriend’s.
A spasm like laughter choking him, he pushed open the Plexiglas door of the motel office, and eyes watering, smiled stiffly at the woman standing behind the desk counter. “I’m in Number Eleven. Almost forgot to pay you for tonight.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Rees.” Her expression was faintly disapproving. “That trouble you had this morning all straightened out now?”
The irony was unintentional, he knew, but the knowledge did not allay the bitterness seething in him.
“Let’s see, that’s fourteen-fifty. Out of twenty?”
Boyfriend, he kept thinking while she handed him the change. Boyfriend. She said something about his car which he missed in his abstraction, and oblivious to her pleasant comment to have a nice evening, he walked out again, the rolled newspaper like a club in his hand.
After leaving the Pelican Motel, they had dropped down off the palisades by way of a steep street locally called the California Incline. And on the Coast Highway shortly afterward, they had located the mailbox Rees had described: E & J Godwin. Casey parked as near as he was able in the congested area, and they walked back to the house—another waste of time, as they soon discovered, for the Godwins were either not at home or not answering.
“Could be they’re out on the beach,” Krug said. “Let’s try the neighbors, maybe they can spot ’em for us.”
There was no answer at the adjacent house north. But at the weathered shingle-sided bungalow to the south, a boy about ten wearing a Mickey Mouse beanie opened the door. A round ill-defined Jack o’ lantern face. Krug sighed audibly. No mistaking that the boy was retarded. “We’re looking for the people next door,” he said slowly and distinctly. “The Godwins? Thought maybe you might’ve seen ’em on the beach this evening.”
The boy shook his head.
“You know what they look like?” Casey asked, getting a grimace for reply. “Maybe your mother does,” he suggested. “You want to tell her—?”
“Bobby, who is it?” A worn-looking homely woman wearing a terrycloth robe peered out at them. “Oh, police,” she sighed when Casey identified himself, repeating that they’d been trying to reach her neighbors—a routine matter, but they needed to talk to them. “Listen, the only thing I know is they’re a menace. I mean, people their age trying to be swingers, it’s ridiculous! And that house, you should see it inside. Like a regular freak show! And those parties, my God, they never—” She stopped abruptly. “Listen, if it’s about what goes on there, I don’t want to be involved. I mean, we moved here thinking it’d be good for Bobby to run on the beach. Never had any idea we’d be living next to—”
“When was the last time you saw them?” Krug interrupted.
“This morning. After their stupid party finally broke up.”
“What time was this?”
“Well, early.” She ran a nervous hand through her brittle-looking, badly bleached hair. “About seven, maybe. I was getting breakfast, and I could see her over there cleaning up the patio. Probably hadn’t even been to bed yet. Parading around in that orange caftan that makes her look like a pregnant cow. And they were fighting. She kept yelling at him—”
“But you didn’t see them leave?”
“Listen, I’m not that interested! Anyway, we’ve been gone most of the day. Took Bobby to Disneyland—”
They got her name, which was Killigrew. She spelled it carefully, then warned them again that she didn’t intend to be involved in any trouble. Anyway, she knew nothing about the Godwins. One look at that house had been enough to convince her that even ordinary neighborliness would be out of the question.
“Love thy whatchamacallit,” Krug muttered when she had slammed the door. “Looks like Rees’s party story was kosher. So why was he so cute about the name this morning?” He blew out his breath. “Ah, the hell with it, let’s leave a note for the swingers. If that don’t work, we’ll get Smitty to keep calling ’em till he raises somebody.”
Whatever the police knew they were keeping it to themselves. Rees wadded up the newsprint he had read and reread until he had almost memorized it, pitching it across the room. What you can’t see, her voice kept chanting in his mind. Her smile, shimmering like fox-fire, revealed shapeless shadows in the swamp of his memory: fleeting impressions which had a plaguing, frightening mysteriousness now. He had been used last night for some purpose unknown to him.
If only he knew why, Rees thought wildly. Something about the hat? But perhaps checking how she was dressed was only police routine. So is hassling me. An ex-con, after all.
Krug’s mean man’s grin burned behind his eyes. That’s another question, isn’t it? Feeling the ache of pressure mounting in him, Rees tried to relax, stretching, shuddering as he yawned and yawned like a nervous animal. Susannah and Barrett. What in God’s name was he involved in? Barrett and Susannah. The detectives would head now for the beach house. But people like the Godwins won’t welcome police.
But they’ll talk to me, he thought as he left the motel. They have to now.
Over the sea, a saffron glow suffused the horizon; gulls flying northward looked black as cinders against it. Lights were already burning on the pier, Rees noticed, pale bluish pinpricks in the sunset flame, which was fading fast as he turned his Volkswagen off Ocean onto a sloping street which gave access to the Coast Highway. Aware of the possibility that the detectives might still be there, he drove by the Godwins’ house first, scrutinizing all the cars parked at the curb nearby. But there was no Mustang to be seen. At a public parking lot several doors south, he pulled in and swung around in order to avoid making a U-turn on the highway. Traffic north and south was heavy, and unsure that he would be able to cross it a second time in order to park in front of the house, he decided to leave the Volks there and walk back.
All the houses in this section—Rees counted six as he passed by—were of the same vintage as the Godwins’. All old frames probably built in the early twenties. Weekend cottages on narrow lots which soaring land values had priced into the class of desirable full-time residences. There was something stuck in the Godwins’ door, he saw—a business card printed Santa Monica Police Department, with Krug’s name in small letters at the bottom. On the back someone had scrawled: For informational purposes only, please call as soon as possible.
Without much hope of reply, Rees knocked loudly. But what he was counting on now was a more private entrance—the beachside patio, the French doors which had been open last night. He’d have to walk back to the parking lot, he realized, since there was no public access to the beach until then. Better count houses again to make sure, he told himself as he stuck Krug’s card back into the crack between the front door and its weathered frame. Wouldn’t do at this point to trespass by mistake in the wrong patio.
He was starting back, retracing his steps, when he noticed the narrow garage door at the south side of the house. Unlike their neighbors, the Godwins had not remodeled, adding the garage to their living space. Rees hesitated again. If a car’s in there, chances are they’re home. So look, he told himself. Nobody’s going to arrest you for taking a look in a garage.
The door was cumbersome, cross-braced like a shed door and difficult to
move. But when Rees cracked it open, a slight breeze caught the door, swinging it wide, throwing him off balance. Inside stood an old two-door Renault, once white, but now rusty from the sea air. Through the rear window, he could see what looked like luggage stacked in the back seat.
Without considering the risk or his right to do so, Rees stepped into the garage and opened the car door on the driver’s side. The load in the back seat was luggage, all right—packed full, he discovered when he hefted one bag. In the corner of the back seat nearest him, someone had wadded a poplin trench coat. A man’s raincoat. The sleeve he could see was partly rolled up, exposing the faded yellow-and-black tartan lining.
Rees yanked the coat out of the car. The other sleeve was rolled up also, and this one had a peculiar wedge-shaped tear in the lining. It was the coat Susannah had been wearing the first time he had seen her—in the alley where the motorcyclist had died.
TWENTY-TWO
As soon as they check ed into the squad room again, Casey dialed Tinytown Toys. There was no answer from the switchboard, and with a wild feeling that he had lost her already, he tried Joey’s home number which rang and rang, hollow and shrill in his ear, bell pealing endlessly in a deserted house.
“No answer, hah?” Krug had flopped at his desk and was busily scribbling something. “Better luck next time, sport.”
“She’s probably on her way home, got held up in traffic.”
“Sure—or maybe she’s a mind reader. Five’ll get you ten she’s already fixed up with another guy.”
“Very funny.” Casey peered over his partner’s shoulder. “What’s this?” It was a query, he saw, to be directed north, asking for information about Paul Rees’s friendships and contacts in prison. “Al, what’s the point of this? You’re trying to have it both ways, don’t you see that? Rees can’t be part of the counterfeit setup and a key witness, too.”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 30