The Coast Highway south had curved through a short tunnel, becoming the Santa Monica Freeway, a river of traffic enclosed by slanting banks covered with a viny growth. Green-and-white signs had flashed by overhead, informing of exits just beyond to the San Diego Freeway north to Bakersfield and south to Long Beach. Without consideration, Rees had moved into the Long Beach lane, screeching into the exit at high speed, zooming into the stream of southbound traffic which, if he continued, would carry him to the Mexican border.
He passed LA International, a sea of light, a magnet drawing down circling jetliners one by one like dying stars. Beyond lay aerospace complexes, and mile after mile of tract houses, and auto graveyards, and billboards, and neon signs carrying fiery messages of hope, promise, creature comfort if only you ate this, drank that, bought here, saved there—all one and the same to admen, it seemed, for there was something to be sold to everyone, ant and grasshopper alike.
Outlined by thousands of burning electric bulbs, the gigantic refineries of Long Beach looked like light sculptures. Toward the sea, a tall bridge humped black against the harbor glow, an antediluvian skeleton. Then the land began to flatten. Dimly aware of a slight shimmying in his front wheels, Rees let up on the gas, but the tremor in the steering wheel continued, and he speeded up again. The only necessity now was to keep moving.
From three blocks away on Main in Ocean Park, they spotted the rooftop flashers of the squad cars which had answered the squeal—two in front, Casey saw as they drew closer, two in the back alley, a fifth angled to block traffic before the inevitable stream of joy-riding rubbernecks arrived to join the street people to whom the district now belonged.
A run-down section of one- and two-story frames and stuccos, the area had been dead until a few years ago, full of faltering little shops, off -beat churches in storefronts, mission houses devoted to saving the souls of a large population of homeless winos. Then the new people had moved in, taking advantage of cheap rents and the built-in custom of their own kind. Every other building was freshly painted now in freaky colors, signs advertising handcrafts, health foods, occult books, psychedelia—all the hip, heavy, in endeavors of the dying-planet generation. Peace symbols of every size decorated windows and doors. Through plate glass, collections of exotica from both Near and Far East could be seen. Tantra Press was one of a block of three single-story stucco storefronts painted mud-brown with lavender trim. Next door was a real estate office, and next to that, a cabinetmaker.
Krug was out of the Mustang before Casey set the brake. He nailed the first patrolman he could lay hands on. “Anybody inside there?”
“Not a sign, Sergeant. Looks like you’ll need a warrant to get in.”
“We got one coming.”
Another patrolman ran around the side of the building. “Back door looks like the easiest way in, sir,” he reported to Krug.
“Okay, bust it open. But watch yourself,” Krug yelled after him as the cop sprinted away again, nearly running down a man wearing a yellow jump suit who had followed him around the building. “Nobody goes in there till I give the word!”
“What’s going on here?” demanded the man in the jump suit. “This is my building—”
“Who’re you?”
Blinking at Krug’s peremptory tone, he meekly confessed that he was the real estate broker. “Harold Hopper. Maybe you’ve seen my signs. Same location here for twenty-five years, Officer. Never any trouble—”
“You got some now. Want to open that door for us?”
“Be glad to cooperate, of course. But shouldn’t I be told—?” He was still talking as Krug took his arm and hustled him over to the lavender-painted door, which had already begun to peel around the Tantra Press sign. “Godwin’s not going to like this, me letting you people in without knowing why.”
“Keep your teddy-bear suit on, mister, you’ll find out soon enough.”
The street people standing as silent as store dummies in their funky finery began chanting something as Krug and Casey entered the printshop, followed by two teams of patrolmen. Their voices grew louder and louder, hooting derisively—not mantras, as Casey had first guessed, but a single word, “Bust—bust—bust!” over and over again.
But there was no one inside to be busted. The office in front and the printshop in back had been ransacked with a careless, desperate haste.
“Panic time,” Krug muttered. “Okay, leave this mess for Harry. Let’s nail that real estate hustler before he starts thinking up stories.”
But he was due home immediately, Hopper kept protesting when they took him next door to his own office. He ought to call his wife. He’d only dropped by his office to pick up some escrow instructions which had to be delivered early tomorrow morning.
“You can call the missus later,” Krug told him. “Right now we want to hear everything you saw or heard going on there today.”
“But—Oh, hell, all right.” The real estate man turned on lights and started wandering around, seeming fascinated by the photographs of properties hanging on his walls—like hunters’ trophies, Casey thought, This Fine Specimen Bagged. “Far as I know,” Hopper was saying, “he got here the usual time this morning. Godwin, I mean. I didn’t see him, y’understand. But I heard that old Renault of his pull up in back.”
“Anybody with him?” Krug asked.
“His wife, I guess. Anyway, whoever it was dropped him off and drove away again.” He smiled slightly. “Missus probably had a hangover. Or maybe they had a fight. Been a lot of that the past few months. Something about another woman, I think.”
“How about locks changed?” Casey said. “Anything like that the past few months?”
Hopper nodded. “Last December, I think it was. Had a hell of a time getting duplicate keys out of him, too. Said he was working on some special job. Something valuable, I guess. Anyway, he practically made me swear on a stack of Bibles I wouldn’t let anybody—” He stopped abruptly. “Hey, for God’s sake, it isn’t dirty stuff, is it? Pornographic stuff he’s been printing?”
Krug eyed him coldly. “You saying you never got a look at what he was working on?”
“How could I with everything locked up in those—” Again he stopped. “Listen, I don’t bother my tenants unless they’re late on their rent.”
“How about employees or partners?” Casey asked. “Can you give us any names, Mr. Hopper?”
“Well, he used to have this kid come in sometimes for rush orders. But he canned him, I guess. Got a new fella in regular since the first of the year.” He scratched a bald spot, disarranging the strands of hair which carefully covered it. “Come to think of it, though, I haven’t seen him around since Sunday.”
“Godwin’s open Sundays?”
“Not usually. That’s why I got to wondering when this Jerry showed up. Jerry Something, can’t remember if I ever heard his last name. Young fella with a beard. One of those motorcycle maniacs. Didn’t strike me as the kind of help you could trust.”
Jervis Godwin had been his tenant for ten years, he told them. A reliable, hard-working sort of a guy with what looked like a nice little business. Mostly local printing, handbills and stationery for the neighborhood merchants. Nothing anybody could get rich on, but a good enough living. His wife kept the books and he ran the press. A real Mom and Pop deal. The last people in the world you’d expect anything—
“But come to think of it,” he interrupted himself, “something hit him a couple, three years ago. The youth bug, I guess you’d call it. Anyhow, Godwin started hanging around the kid places, and it rubbed off, I guess. Grew himself a beard. Stopped having his hair cut. Pretty soon I see him showing up for work in jeans and sandals like some hippie or something.”
“What happened Sunday?” Krug prodded him. “With this Jerry you were talking about.”
“Well, I’m open weekends. Got to be when you’re in the real estate game. It’s like I tell my wife, you’re a preacher or a broker, Sunday’s for sure no day of rest!” He seemed to expect laug
hter, and not getting it, went on less willingly: “Like I say, Godwin’s closed Sunday. So when I saw this Jerry out back fooling with the door—”
“Trying to get in, you mean?”
“That’s what it looked like to me. Anyhow, I figured I better phone Godwin, just to make sure.”
“What kind of a reaction did you get?”
“Thanks for nothing.” Hopper grinned. “But I noticed he showed up plenty fast, so for sure something fishy was going on…”
Fifteen minutes later when they returned next door, they found Harry Berger busily rooting through a pile of trash heaped in one corner of the printshop. “This dreck case,” he snarled over his shoulder. “I miss the last inning of the Dodgers’ replay—and for what?” He tossed scraps of paper in the air. “This garbage.”
Catching one of the paper cuttings floating around like confetti, Casey fingered its crackling texture. “Looks like evidence to me, Harry. Isn’t this—?”
“Treasury paper, or the nearest thing to it. Yes, indeedy, Mr. Sherlock, sir.” Berger pushed himself up from his squatting position. “All the equipment’s here. But where the fuck has all the goods gone, will you tell me that?” He gestured toward the line of steel lock-type cabinets lining one wall. “Every one of those is a Mother Hubbard’s cupboard!”
“According to the landlord next door, Godwin started loading what he said was a big rush order this morning,” Krug told him. “Later on—he couldn’t say what time exactly—another guy showed up to help him. Big guy, he claims. A bruiser. Couldn’t give us a description, just some muscles, that’s all.”
“Between the two of them,” Casey added, “they evidently packed the whole score in cardboard cartons and loaded them in a U-Haul truck.”
“So we check all the U-Haul rental joints for fifty miles around?” Berger sighed. “Well, it’s some kind of a cockamamie lead, I guess.”
In a coffee can lid which had been used as an ashtray, they found six filter-tip butts and the chewed stub of the same sort of small cigar which Krug smoked. “Be interesting to see if the saliva tests match,” Casey commented as he slipped it into an evidence envelope. “One here, three at the Roche apartment—”
“Don’t rush it, partner. We got all we can handle right now without the dreamboat stuff.”
Timms arrived shortly after this, his square somber face gray with fatigue. He had persuaded the Godwins’ neighbor, Mrs. Killigrew, to make an identification of the body, he told them while he walked around inspecting the printshop. As they had surmised, the decedent was indeed Jervis Godwin. The hospital would not permit any visitors in the surgical intensive care ward, but Mrs. Killigrew’s description of Godwin’s wife—her name was Emrie—gave them an almost certain make on the wounded woman. “Still alive, but only barely,” he reported gloomily. “While they were wheeling her into the operating room, she came to for a couple seconds. Nurse I talked to said she was trying to say something. Sounded like gobbledegook to her. All she could make out was something about somebody or something being ready.”
Krug grimaced. “That’s a big help.”
“Doctors say if she survives we’ll be damn lucky to get a statement of any kind before next week sometime. So that’s that.” Timms turned his attention to Berger. “Looks like your pigeons flew, Harry.”
“Like eagles, Lieutenant. All we’ve got here is some tail feathers.” He had already reported to the feds downtown, Berger added—meaning downtown Los Angeles. Agents would be rousing U-Haul rental proprietors all over the west district for the rest of the night. The two Treasury men they had met with before were on their way here right now. The night promised to be a long one.
Briefly, Krug covered what they had found out from the real estate man then. Next move, he said, they would take Hopper to the station for a look at mug shots. A dim hope—but all they had so far—that Godwin’s musclebound helper might be on file.
“Better split up,” Timms advised. “You take Hopper, Al. Kellog can cover that cabinetmaker and anybody else around here who might know something.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s lock it up in a couple hours and meet at the station.”
Picturing Krug seated comfortably at his own desk with a cup of coffee in front of him and perhaps even a stale sandwich out of the vending machine downstairs, Casey zigzagged the Mustang through Ocean Park, cursing the long-deceased developers who had laid out these crazy-quilt subdivisions, chopping off streets here, avenues there, making a mouse-in-a-maze of anyone trying to drive through. And of course there weren’t any public phones around. Naturally, he thought bitterly. Even if he did find one he’d probably discover that he didn’t have a dime.
But he did, as it happened. Not one but two ten-cent pieces in his pocket. And at the corner of Lincoln and a narrow side street without a name sign, he spied a neighborhood liquor store with a booth outside.
Her phone rang and rang depressingly. The most bleak and lonely sound he’d ever heard. Then she mumbled “Hello” sleepily.
“Joey, I’m sorry—I tried to reach you hours ago—”
“Did you?” flatly.
“About six, I think it was.”
“That’s a long time between phone booths.”
“I know, but I couldn’t—”
“All right, so what happened? That is if one may ask.”
“Look, I don’t blame you for being angry—”
“Didn’t say I was. Merely asked what happened. And please,” she added, “don’t patronize me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Casey drew a deep breath, aware that he was perspiring now, profusely. “All I meant—Well, anyway, I’m glad you’re not mad at me. You see, this case we’ve been working on started to break a while ago. Couldn’t call you after the first time. Not till now, I mean. It’s this weirdo counterfeit—Well, never mind,” he sighed. “Policeman’s lot, et cetera. All I can say is I’m sorry about this evening.”
“All right.”
Casey listened to her soft breathing. All right—meaning what? he wondered. That’s that, enough of cops? “Joey, I’d really like to try again. Like sometime soon when I’m sure I can—”
“Do that,” she said distantly, and hung up.
Well, at least I finally got hold of her, Casey thought. But leaning against the glass side of the phone booth, listening to the dial tone, he found small comfort in the idea. Try again. Do that, she’d said. And he hadn’t the remotest hint whether she meant encouragement or a put-down. Wouldn’t know, he realized, until he did try again. Not exactly, he thought sadly, what you’d call a replay of Love Story.
The cabinetmaker, who was also Hopper’s tenant, lived in the end unit of a one-story stucco apartment building staggered like children’s blocks up a steep rise. Lights were still burning, and in the open garage which separated the cabinetmaker’s apartment from his next-door neighbor’s stood a battered-looking Ford panel delivery truck. Neat but unprofessional lettering on the rear loading door advertised S. T. “Swede” Olsen—Cabinetmaker—Your Yob Is My Yob.
No dour Svenska this, Casey decided as he punched the doorbell. Can’t help but make my yob a little easier. But the idea did little for his state of mind. “Yah—” He heard an angry voice yelling inside. “Who’s dere?” And Casey’s spirits hit bottom. The whole world was obviously in conspiracy to down him.
“Have to excuse me,” Olsen kept saying when Casey finally managed to gain entrance into the apartment. “But I didn’t hear no sireen. And you got no uniform on. How’m I gonna know you’re a real policeman, hah?”
“Mr. Olsen, I showed you my badge and ID card—”
“But, dammit, young fella, you don’t look like no cop!”
Try me twenty years from now. Picturing a beefy, balding fortyish self, Casey sighed glumly. But his voice was mild, consciously patient as he said, “Let’s get back to today, Mr. Olsen. You got to your shop about eight to pick up some cabinets. You delivered and installed them, and got back about—what time?”
“Maybe noon.” The homely horse-faced cabinetmaker shrugged indifferently. “Like always, I stop for dinner on the way.”
“Was the U-Haul truck parked in the alley behind Tantra Press when you got back to your shop?”
“Nah, that was later on I seen it. When I went out for a beer.” He grinned slightly, showing yellowish teeth, an exact color match with his thick, lank home-barbered hair. “Used to be it was whiskey, but I only drink the beer now. Baby stuff,” he added contemptuously. “Drink a quart, piss a gallon. Guess you think that’s all an old coot like me is good for, huh?” He waited expectantly, but experienced with this sort of fishing common to the aging sexual braggart, Casey kept silent. But Olsen persisted: “You want to guess how old I am? Come on, take a guess. Let me tell you, young fella, you be surprised, I bet you! All the girls, I tell ’em, they’re surprised.”
“For Chrissake, I figured you eloped with the guy,” Krug snarled when Casey dragged into the squad room almost two hours later. “What’d you run into at Olsen’s, an orgy or something?”
“Uh-hunh.” Casey flopped into his desk chair. “Trouble was, it was all in his head.” He fished out his notebook, flipping pages. “What would you prefer to hear first, Al? I’ve got it all here. ‘Four times with Myrtle on Friday night.’ Incidentally, I have her phone number and vital statistics. ‘Three times with’—”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture—an old fart with a big imagination. What else did you get?”
“He buddied a little with Barrett at the local pub. Stud stuff mostly, I imagine. But Barrett dropped some hints once in awhile. Big-shot line. He’d be in the bread soon, et cetera. Olsen figured him for as big a put-on as he is, I guess. Oh, and I checked out the beer joint too,” he added before Krug could ask. “Seems somebody was making discreet inquiries about Tantra Press yesterday. Could be the feds, maybe.”
“Yeah, Hopper talked to ’em, too. Said he figured they were Internal Revenue snoops.” He chewed on a pencil, staring into space. “One of the plainclothes boys from Narco picked up word from some beardo-freaks who were mousing around that alley this afternoon. They claim a woman delivered the U-Haul. Blonde, they said. Funky-looking, whatever that means. Probably Godwin’s wife.” He tossed the pencil aside. “You got any word about our muscleman?”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 32