Day of Wrath

by Jonathan Valin

  I wanted to ask him about what Annie had told me—about the drug connection. He’d made it seem as if the business he’d been involved in was perfectly ordinary and that the men had come after him because they hadn’t liked his looks. Perhaps that was the way he’d rationalized it—as one more foray from the straight world, aimed at destroying his unconventional empire. After twenty years of hippiedom, it would be fairly easy to see the world in black and white. But rationalizations aside, he was hedging. Drug dealers weren’t ordinary businessmen, and they weren’t straight arrows, either. What he wasn’t saying made the rest of it sound like a lie.

  “What about Robbie?” I asked him, “What happened to her?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. She left with Bob on Wednesday afternoon, as I told you. And I haven’t seen her since then.”

  I studied his face and said, “I don’t think I believe you, Mr. Clinger.”

  “I didn’t expect you to,” he said. “Your job is to be suspicious. Nevertheless, I’m telling you the truth. She was with us for a time, and then she left.”

  “As simple as that,” I said.

  “Robbie was a free agent, just as we all are.”

  “She was also fourteen.”

  “And what of it,” he said a bit angrily. “What does her age have to do with her capacity to enjoy life in her own way. Or do you believe that happiness has a date on it? Do you think she should have kept on leading a life that was a living hell because the law said that she was too young to know her own mind?”

  It was a reasonable question and there was only one way of answering it. “How happy is she now?”

  “That’s beside the point,” he said bitterly. “She chose to leave with a boy who loved her. And I am not responsible for that or for the accidents of fate.”

  “Then exactly what are you responsible for?” I asked him.

  “For myself,” he said. “And only myself.”

  But it wasn’t that simple, and Clinger was smart enough to know it. I could tell from the defensive tone of voice and the angry look on his face that he wasn’t comfortable or satisfied with his own explanation.

  “Our talk is finished,” he said and got up off the piano bench. “Your car is parked outside. Get in it and drive away from here.”

  “Just like that?” I said with a laugh. “It won’t be that easy, Theo. I know about the drug deals. I know about the kind of men you’ve been doing business with. And I’m going to go to the police with what I know.”

  “You do what you have to do,” he said. “I have nothing to fear from the police.”

  He sounded so confident that it bothered me.

  “I wouldn’t count on Irene Croft’s help, Theo,” I said to him. “She’s pulling out on you. Her family is making her pull out.”

  “Irene is a loyal friend,” he said. “But she is a free agent, too. I have no need of her help. I’m not guilty of any crime.”

  I could have told him what he was guilty of, but I didn’t think he would have understood me.

  I got up off the couch and my leg almost collapsed beneath me. The ankle was stiff from the fall and I had to nurse it along, hobbling down a hallway to the front door and out onto the porch.

  It was early morning—the sun just rising over the hedge of lilacs. The farm yard was deserted, except for the Pinto, parked beneath the apple tree. I glanced back through the door, into the dark house. Upstairs a girl laughed easily and a man sighed. Clinger’s family, I thought. His sleepy children, for whom he bore no responsibility. The doctrinaire son-of-a-bitch.

  I looked back at the yard and knew that out there in the morning twilight, in a weed field or a backwater, Robbie Segal might be sleeping, too. The victim of...I didn’t know what to call it. Of the red, lubricious thread of selfishness that ran from that porch across the river to the high towers of Mt. Adams and then over the green hills to Eastlawn Drive. The victim of the violence that sprang up like a spark whenever love turned doctrinaire and self-regarding. And yet she had been truly loved. Bobby Caldwell had loved her. And it hadn’t been enough.

  I worked my way down the steps into the yard. Clinger came out on the porch and watched me hobble over to the car. My ankle was killing me, and my head was spinning, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him know it.

  “I’ll be back, Theo,” I called out as I got into the Pinto. “You can count on it.”

  “No, you won’t, Mr. Stoner,” he called back. “You’re not welcome here any more. If you value your life, you’ll stay away.”

  ******

  I managed to drive myself to Clifton, although I had to stop a few times to let my head clear. It was a bad concussion—the kind that could leave me with ringing ears and nervous tics and double vision. But the only treatment was bed rest, and I simply didn’t have the time to spare.

  When I got to the Delores, I washed my head off in the bathroom sink, bandaged my temple with gauze, taped my ankle, took three aspirins, and went to bed. I set the alarm for noon, which gave me five hours to recuperate. As I was drifting off, I thought of what Clinger had said about a friend of mine telling him who I was. I figured that that friend had to be Grace. I didn’t really know anyone else who stayed at the farm—at least, anyone else who qualified as a friend. If it had been Grace, she’d probably saved my life, because, in spite of his cool, candid manner of speaking, Clinger was a desperate man. Only a desperate man would hire dumb, trigger-happy muscle like Logan to protect him.

  Clinger was the last thing I thought of before I fell asleep. But I dreamed of Robbie and Bobby Caldwell—a sad, violent dream that woke me up before the alarm had gone off.

  I tried going back to bed, but my head hurt too badly. And I knew that there was too much left to do. So I got up, took a quick shower and three more aspirins, emptying the rest of the bottle in a coat pocket. As I dressed, I reconsidered Clinger‘s explanation of what had happened to Bobby and the lost girl—that they had been killed by his “enemies.”

  In as far as any tragedy can be adequately explained, it seemed a reasonable story. He’d gotten in over his head on a drug deal and his enemies had taken it out on his family. But the very fact that it had come from Clinger—a man I didn’t trust or like—made me search out inconsistencies. And the closer I looked, the more of them I found. For one thing, the murder had been an amateur job; and while there were plenty of two-bit druggies wandering around, living on their own pills and macho fantasies, they didn’t seem like the kind of men Clinger would have been trading with. He’d needed big money to refloat his empire, and the big money pushers—the ones who wore business suits—didn’t leave bloody fingerprints all over their victims. Moreover the crime had not been done gangland style. It was too messy for that, too hateful, too full of joy in the boy’s pain. Bobby had been killed by someone who’d wanted to watch him die, someone who’d enjoyed it. And that meant someone with a personal grudge. True, the grudge could have been against Clinger, as he himself had claimed. But if that were the case, he’d managed to provoke a hell of a lot of anger in someone who was an obvious psychopath. And that had been a very stupid and unbusinesslike thing for a man as shrewd as Clinger to do.

  I suppose that the biggest inconsistency in Clinger’s explanation of the murder was the behavior of the girl herself. On Sunday night, Robbie had practically thrown herself at any man in The Pentangle Club. On Monday, she’d astonished Annie by sleeping with half the men at the farm. On Tuesday, she’d had a violent argument with Bobby and Theo about whether or not she should leave Clinger’s paradise. In the face of all that contrary evidence, I wondered why on Wednesday she had suddenly changed her mind and gone with Caldwell. It wasn’t simply that the choice didn’t jibe with the facts as I knew them, it didn’t jibe with my intuitive feeling about the girl, either. I’d convinced myself that she’d been using Bobby to get away from Eastlawn Drive—that while she might have loved him, she hadn’t been consumed by him, as he had been by her. Robbie had wanted something more than
Bobby Caldwell—she’d wanted that delirious, unfettered sense of freedom that Clinger apostled and the farm represented. I now thought that that had been the true meaning of the drunken look of pleasure on her face in the second photograph. It hadn’t been drugs or sex that had made her look so high, although they’d been part of it. It had been the pure thrill of escape. And her behavior at the bar and at the farm confirmed it. More than Bobby Caldwell, more than the security of a lover, she’d wanted out—away from her mother and her house and anything else that smacked of Eastlawn Drive.

  Of course, I could have been wrong about the girl. She might have had her fling and decided to return home. But the decision seemed too precipitous—too out of character. And my doubts about her change of heart cast doubt on everything else Clinger had told me.

  I walked into the living room and sat down at the rolltop desk. I had two calls to make—one to George DeVries at that D.A.’s office and one to Art Bannock. George was an expert on the narcotics traffic in the city—just the man to ask about big-time drug dealers and their clientele. And as for Bannock, I wanted to find out how much he knew about Bobby’s death and about Clinger‘s “enemies.”

  24

  I GOT through to George DeVries immediately and made an appointment to see him at one-thirty. I was about to call Bannock when someone knocked on the door. I put the receiver back in its cradle, walked over to the peephole, and took a look outside. Jerry Lavelle was standing in the hallway. I couldn’t see much of him through the fish-eye lens—just the tanned head, the creased blue eyes, and the jewelry smiling on his chest. He was wearing another leisure suit—carmine red—and a brown, open-collared shirt.

  I figured it was no coincidence that he’d come calling the morning after I’d been to Clinger’s farm. Just to be on the safe side, I stepped back to the desk and took a revolver out of the drawer. I slipped it in my coat pocket before unlatching the lock.

  “Hello, Harry,” Lavelle said in his genial, Vegas greeter’s voice. “Mind if I come in?”

  He glanced at the bruises on my temple and made a sympathetic face. “Terrible. Just terrible.”

  “What is it you want, Lavelle?” I said.

  “You going to make me stand out in the hall?”

  I backed away from the door and he stepped in.

  “I’m just here to talk business, Harry,” he said, opening the flaps of his coat to show me he wasn’t armed.

  “What kind of business?”

  He sat down on one arm of the sofa and took a stick of gum out of his pocket. He peeled off the foil and folded the gum into his mouth. “Things have changed since I talked to you last,” he said, chewing noisily on the gum. “What a tsimmes! That Irene...she doesn’t stay put. She doesn’t do the smart thing. The family is very worried.” He shook his bald head mournfully.

  “You a family man, Harry?” he said suddenly.

  Lavelle didn’t wait for an answer. He dug furiously into his coat and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open like a cigarette holder and handed it to me. “My wife and children,” he said proudly.

  I glanced at the snapshot. A bland-looking woman in a housecoat was standing on a porch. Two teenage kids were standing beside her.

  “The family means everything to me,” Lavelle said with great feeling. “Without them, I’d be dead today. Swear to God. I don’t make a move without we talk it over first. A man’s nothing without his family, Harry. He’s like an orphan at a picnic. He hasn’t got a thing to call his own.”

  If the situation hadn’t been so ridiculously inappropriate, I might have found his pride touching. It reminded me of Fred Rostow’s dream of family life. But then Jerry Lavelle probably lived on a nice suburban street in a modest, well-kept home. In the light of his own sentimental hopes, you could almost mistake him for an ordinary, middle-class businessman, with a wife and two kids and a thirty-year mortgage. Only I wasn’t in a sentimental mood.

  “What do you want, Lavelle?” I said and handed him the photograph.

  “I want you to be reasonable,” he said, tucking the wallet back in his coat. “I want you to keep an open mind and hear me out.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Let me be honest with you,” he began. “A few years ago, the Croft family hired a private detective—a man like you. A professional. They wanted him to keep an eye on Irene—to steer her away from trouble. So everything’s fine up until a couple of months ago when the detective finds out Irene’s gotten herself mixed up with this Clinger. A very bad business. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you.” He nodded at my bandages and cracked his gum.

  “Drugs,” he said. “They’re an abomination, Harry. Personally I never go near them—not even prescription. And let me tell you...if I ever found one of my children smoking pot, they’d live to regret it. If somebody’d taken the time to give Irene the right kind of instruction, the family wouldn’t be in this mess. But what’s the use of talking? The fact is she got herself involved with this bum, with this Clinger. And with the drugs and the sex. A young boy gets killed. A girl is missing. It’s a very bad business. And now she’s gone back over there—to that farm.”

  “She’s back with Clinger?” I said.

  Lavelle nodded. “This morning,” he said, with a look of disgust. He slapped his hands on his knees. “What to do? The Crofts are all upset. And who could blame them? They’re in the insurance business. Very big. If I took you down there and showed you their operation...I mean this is a hell of an organization, Harry. I’m talking millions. Nationwide. Been in business for better than a hundred years. Got a reputation like Lloyd’s of London. They got life, auto, home, theft—all the lines. But you know what Mr. Croft himself said to me? He said, ‘Jerry, nobody buys from us because they think they’re going to save a dollar. They buy our name.’” He smiled as if it were a clever parable. “That’s what they’re selling, Harry. Their name. They’re selling trust. ‘Trust us. We know what’s right for you. We got the experience.’ You follow me?”

  “I follow,” I said. “The Crofts want me off the case.”

  Lavelle got a pained look on his pleasant face. “That’s one way to put it,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I just told you why. They got a wacko woman on their hands they can’t control. And they don’t want her slinging crap on the rest of the family.”

  “And what about Bobby Caldwell?” I said.

  Lavelle looked confused. “Who’s that?”

  “The boy who was murdered.”

  “Terrible,” he said heavily. “A young boy like that. But let me ask you this...is slopping mud on the Crofts going to bring him back to life? As I understand it, the boy was killed by some doped-up drug peddlers. By scum. And I say they deserve everything they get. Let the police find them. It’s their job. Let the police find out where the blame lies, and let justice be done.”

  I began to get a sick feeling in my gut. “The Crofts don’t care if the cops investigate the boy’s murder?”

  “Why should they care?” Lavelle said with a shrug.

  I sighed. “You bought the police off, too, didn’t you, Jerry?”

  Lavelle looked deeply offended. “We don’t buy off anybody. This is America. We’re businessmen. The Crofts don’t expect to get something for nothing. Now with this boy, this Bobby Caldwell, some arrangements can be made. A suitable annuity can be paid to his family. We aren’t heartless animals. We got a quid pro quo for you, too.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Lavelle grinned like a horse trader. “We got the girl, Harry.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “You mean Robbie?” I said with astonishment.

  “Who else?”

  “Then she’s alive?” I said.

  Lavelle smiled broadly. “Absolutely. She’s at the farm right now.”

  “That’s not what Clinger told me.”

  “He was nervous,” Lavelle explained. “He was worried about her. She had a rough time at home. He didn’t want
to send her back.”

  “And what makes you think you can get him to hand her over to me?”

  “Hey, Clinger’s a businessman, too,” Lavelle said, and I knew he was right. “He’ll see the light. It may take a couple of days. We need to straighten a few things out for him. Get a little heat off his back. But it’ll all work out. In two, three days she’ll be back with her family.”

  For a moment, I really didn’t know what to say. I’d begun to think she was dead—murdered by accident or for some reason I hadn’t yet discovered—and suddenly she was being handed back to me, out of the grave, by this genial hoodlum with the businesslike manners.

  “Why can’t I get her right away? Why the delay?”

  “These things take time, Harry,” he said. “Use your head. Clinger’s still afraid he’s going to get gunned down on his front porch.”

  It did make sense. All I could think to say was, “I’ll have to discuss it with her mother.”

  Lavelle held up a hand. “Take your time. Spend the day. I’ll be back in touch tomorrow.”

  He got off the couch and walked back to the door. “What a world,” he said sadly. “A boy is killed. A family is almost ruined.” He shook his head and left, closing the door gently behind him.

  ******

  It took me a couple of minutes to get my bearings after Lavelle had gone. I’d been hit on the head once that morning; and the news that Robbie was alive hit me like a second blow. I sat down, stunned, in the desk chair and stared blankly at the phone. I knew that I should probably call Mildred right away. I knew that she was sitting by the phone at that very moment, waiting for the call. Finding out that Robbie was all right would probably send her straight into shock. She’d break down and cry it all out—all the anguish and the guilts. Then she’d sleep around the clock. When she awoke, she could begin to take accounts again—to make provisions in her patient and proper way for the return of her daughter.

  I stared at the phone and knew that I should make the call. And yet I held back. It wasn’t that I hadn’t believed Lavelle. What he’d proposed seemed straightforward. I’d swap Irene Croft for the girl, allowing the Crofts a couple of days to buy off Theo and his enemies. Old man Caldwell would get his annuity. Irene and Theo would come away unscathed. And Mildred would get Robbie back. It was as neat and efficient as an insurance policy, an actuary’s idea of a fairytale ending. I think I was a little awed at the ease with which the Crofts—those folks who knew best, who set the standards around this town—had signed everyone up. Me, Theo, Robbie, Pastor Caldwell. Bannock, too, if I’d read Lavelle correctly. There was even a possibility that the terms of their insurance policy actually reflected the truth. Clinger had claimed the Caldwell boy had been killed by his enemies. Of course, he’d lied about Robbie, but there was little reason to believe that Bobby’s death hadn’t been a revenge killing. And if the killers turned out to be smalltime druggies, my reservations about the circumstances of the murder could be removed. It was a nifty deal, all right. And the only thing holding me back—keeping me from picking up the phone and calling Mildred—was the sure knowledge that neither Lavelle nor the Crofts nor Clinger had been telling me the whole truth.