“Sleeves rolled up,” Krug muttered. “A ratty old raincoat with a plaid lining?”
Casey nodded. “Could be the same one she was wearing, Al. Which means Rees can probably identify it.”
Krug pushed himself upright, his knee joints cracking. “Let’s get the pictures and tagging done pronto. If we can get a make on this coat, for sure it pegs Godwin as Barrett’s killer.”
“Unless the killer dropped it here accidentally, or on purpose.” Timms sucked his teeth. “Before you do anything else, hit the kid next door again. See if you can get anything more about how the guy he saw was dressed. Or if he was carrying a coat. And this time, Al,” he called after them, “try to pin him down…”
“For heaven’s sake, Sergeant, he’s only a child! Can’t be expected to keep some timetable, after all. I mean, it was just playtime for him, that’s all. After-dinner playtime. Anyway, he’s in bed now. And he needs his rest. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not going to have him exposed to all this. Police all over the beach, and those people standing around gawking. Isn’t our fault, after all. I mean, the way they lived…”
“Mothers,” Krug kept muttering as they trudged back. “Mothers—mothers—mothers!”
“All right, Al, I’ll talk to her later,” Timms said patiently. “Maybe after it quiets down here she’ll loosen up a bit.”
“How about Rees, sir?” Casey inquired.
“I called that motel, but he isn’t there. Nobody’s seen him since about seven.”
“Yeah,” Krug grunted, “and I’ll lay you even money—”
“Hey, Lieutenant,” the night-tour man named Smithers hollered from the front door. “Got a car full of suitcases in the garage out here. Looks to me like they were about to take off.”
They all took a look at the luggage, and a bonus item unseen by Smithers until stronger lights illuminated the back of the Renault: a black straw hat trimmed with sequins which lay wadded into a shapeless bundle on the floor of the car.
“Gets more and more interesting, doesn’t it?” Timms commented dryly. “Somebody really wanted us to find the goods, maybe?”
Instead of waiting for the technicians to fingerprint, Timms decided that a search of the house should begin immediately. Krug covered the bedrooms, Casey the rest, including the kitchen which he by-passed until he had finished with the other rooms.
The soapstone drainboard was covered with dirty glasses. Bags of trash sat under the cast-iron sink—emptyings from ashtrays mostly, and many, many dead bottles, both whiskey and wine. Fishing one of the hand-rolled butts out of the trash, Casey sniffed it, confirming that it was cannabis. He slipped the butt into a plastic evidence bag, labeled it and shoved it into his pocket. Then leaning wearily against the sink, he stared around the room, marveling at its self-conscious quaintness. Taken with the rest of the kookily decorated house, it seemed to advertise the sort of life style which, except for a little pot-smoking, would have no connection with crime. An artist’s life. Or an artistic craftsman’s. Middle-aged swingers tempted by one big ripoff that would set them up for life?
Pushing out through the swinging door, Casey caught a fleeting glimpse of a calendar hanging on the wall. The door had swung closed behind him before his tired perceptions registered that the calendar was last year’s.
The hinges squawked as he reversed the door to take another look. Whoever had kept track of the dates here had stopped at May of last year. The picture above the tear-off pages for each month Casey recognized as a bad reproduction of the Gutenberg Bible. Pater noster qui es. Pseudo-Gothic printing below the real thing read Gutenberg to Tantra.
Printing, Casey’s mind skipped. Printer. Printing press… Tantra Press?
The fatigue of fifteen hours on duty forgotten, he plunged through the swinging door again.
TWENTY-FIVE
He drove rapidly, automatically, all mechanical decisions made in some portion of his brain in which judgment and its consequences did not exist. To be moving was enough—a comet trailing horrors. In the congealed darkness of his panic lived only a single idea: to run and run until the nightmare was over.
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 laughter, 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.”
Susannah Screaming (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 2) Page 13