Cana Diversion

by William Campbell Gault

  As for the nuclear power industry’s widely advertised claims that the nation urgently needed nuclear energy, these were the facts: nuclear energy accounted for only thirteen percent of the country’s electrical production. The ads never mentioned the fact that the United States now had an excess in generating capacity of thirty-three percent. The excess was the reason for our exorbitant electric bills.

  “They have to be stopped!” Jan said. “But they won’t be, will they?”

  “I don’t know. I heard that Vince Scarlatti bought a big block of stock in South Coast Electric. If that’s the new trend in mob investments, the Concerned Scientists had better look for a place to hide.”

  Something in my unconscious stirred when I said “hide.” What? My instinct was trying to tell me something. Was it about Calvin? He was hiding. Had Calvin told me all he knew?

  “The bastards!” Jan said. “The greedy bastards!”

  If the greedy bastards teamed up with the Mafia guns. …

  One of my Long Beach homilies came to mind. Change what you can, my father had advised me, and learn to live with what you can’t change.

  It wasn’t a maxim it would be wise to voice to Jan at the moment. I waited until she had gone out to check the storm’s erosion in her flower beds before turning on the last two quarters of the Lakers’ game.

  My Lakers really whomped those overrated Celtics. We had rules of play in my world. There were still some minor satisfactions in my world. The good guys quite often came out on top.

  I had used Jan’s car to take Mrs. Casey to church. I used it again to pick her up. On the way back I stopped at Thrifty Rental and picked out a blue Chev that duplicated the one Delamater had rented.

  I would keep the Mustang out of sight for a few days. I gave them a deposit and told them to deliver the Chev to my house tomorrow. There were a lot of Mustangs in town but not another one with the Spelke logo emblazoned in bright red on the hood.

  Dark clouds started to move in again from the Pacific early in the afternoon. I went out with the neighbors to widen our drainage trenches, to pile more sandbags along the banks of the main channel.

  The media people loved to dwell on the figures, how many million dollars of property was destroyed in a fire or a flood, how many lives were lost. This was more than mere property; these were our homes.

  Ridge Road, high above us, had suffered the most damage. But at the other end of it, where Sloan Hartford lived, the ground was rockier and last winter’s fire had not destroyed the ground cover. If he had grown up in that house, it must have gone through dozens of storms.

  The rain was light at two o’clock, but growing heavier. The radio informed us that the lowland that bordered Arroyo Road was now flooded. The waterfront homes at the far end of it were on higher ground with a concrete flood-control channel that should keep them safe.

  Arroyo Road, however, was the only access to those homes. The residents were advised to stock up on groceries and the other necessities they might need for a few days. Another tropical storm was forty miles off the coast and heading our way.

  There was no further digging we could do until the storm came and the flow of water revealed our problem areas. We filled some more bags, stacked them, and went into our homes to wait.

  At four o’clock I was in the shower, turning my body red in hot water. The word hide kept bugging me. And intimidation? What had Delamater meant by that?

  Damn it! I had never been Phi Beta Kappa but my instincts had been more reliable before I retired. Merlin Olsen, our most distinguished Ram, had made Phi Beta Kappa at Utah. Maybe I should phone him.

  Phone, phone—another stirring in the unconscious. Key words to be linked, or mental gas?

  Calvin’s house was in that lowland. He probably didn’t own it and it was doubtful that he had anything of value stored there except for his jugs of liquid lightning. Stay where you are, Calvin. Drink some good whiskey for a change and learn to handle an elephant gun.

  Twelve years in Vegas and he hadn’t learned to fear the mob until now. In a public bar he had mouthed off about a car with Nevada plates he had seen at the site of a murder.

  I was in the bedroom dressing when Jan came to the doorway. “You’re doing a lot of muttering lately.”

  “I know.”

  “Cheer up! The rain has stopped. Maybe the weatherman was wrong again.”

  He had been. The sun came out before it went down. The radio informed me that the tropical storm we had feared had been diverted to the east and south of us and was now flooding Los Angeles. The Topanga Canyon road had been washed out. Two homes in the hills above Malibu had already torn loose from their foundations and been completely demolished.

  The storm had set an all-time rainfall record for May in Los Angeles. Ninety-five percent of it had fallen in the last three days and it was still coming down.

  The eleven o’clock news from there was mostly devoted to disaster scenes and the weather report. Sports had two minutes, world news less.

  “Remember my little home in Beverly Glen?” Jan asked.

  “I’ll never forget it. That’s where I lost my virginity.”

  “Not while I lived there. I’ll bet it’s leaning now.”

  “If it’s still standing.”

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

  “And pretend we’re back in your little house in Beverly Glen?”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  16

  I WAS FINISHING A strength-restoring breakfast with a cup of coffee when Sloan Hartford phoned to tell me Calvin had taken off.

  “When?”

  “Sometime during the night. I didn’t hear his car start and I’m a light sleeper. He must have coasted out of the garage and started the engine later. It was a surprise to me. He seemed content.”

  “Maybe he only went to his house to pick up something or check the rain damage.”

  “Maybe. That’s a crazy dangerous thing to do.”

  “It’s not his first offense. I’ll go look for him.”

  My rented Chev was delivered before I was dressed. I hadn’t heard any late reports on the condition of Arroyo Road. It hadn’t been closed yesterday when I last heard; it should be closed now.

  It was open, but slick with mud from the ploughed fields that bordered it. I drove at a nervous fifteen miles an hour toward Calvin’s house.

  The front door was open. There was a battered old Dodge pickup truck parked in the driveway. The gray cat was on the roof of that cab. It jumped off and scooted for the backyard as I drove in.

  I was up on the porch when a lanky, bearded old man in chinos and T-shirt appeared in the open doorway with a full gallon jug in each hand.

  “Where’s Calvin?” I asked him.

  He looked at me warily. “Calvin who?”

  “Relax. I’m his friend. I’m trying to keep him out of trouble. I’m the man who helped him hide.”

  “Yeah? What’s your name?”

  “Callahan, Brock Callahan.”

  “Let’s see your driver’s license.”

  I showed it to him.

  “He’s at my house,” he said. “He was going to phone you later.”

  “If he lived that long. Where’s your house?”

  “Follow me,” he said.

  I followed him to the freeway, down that to the Padero turnoff to lower Main Street. On lower Main, he turned into an alley between a Mexican restaurant and a secondhand-appliance store.

  That was what he had called his house, one room and an alcove in the back of the appliance store. The alcove held his bed and a small night-stand.

  The room had a gas plate on a shelf, a kitchen table, two kitchen chairs and a faded, sagging velour-covered couch. Calvin was sitting on the couch, reading a girlie magazine. He looked up at me sheepishly when I entered.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “I couldn’t stand being cooped up in the boondocks. Besides, he was starting to win.”

  “And now you’re going
to leave town?”

  “Nah. Who’d find me here?”

  “If they want you badly enough they can find you in a comfort station in Tuscaloosa. And now your friend could be in trouble, too.”

  The bearded man shook his head. “I’m going up north for a while to visit my sister. I won’t be around when they waste him.”

  Calvin snorted. “You guys make me sick!”

  “What happened? You were scared silly when you came to my house.”

  “I told you. I couldn’t stand being cooped up. You want your sixty back?”

  “Shove it!” I said. “If you were smart, which you aren’t, you’d spend it on a bulletproof vest. Calvin, damn it!”

  “What you gettin’ so steamed about? I’ll be here. Anytime you want me, I’ll be here. But don’t tell Vogel. I don’t trust him.”

  There was no point in arguing with him. It was his neck to do with as he wished. Twelve years in Vegas hadn’t taught him a damned thing.

  The boys in the Cordoba, the way I saw it, didn’t need to protect their own necks. They had their little alibi stooges in El Cajon. They must have suspected that Calvin had seen the earlier action, before they arrived at the lot—the killing of Joe Puma. That’s why they were looking for him.

  And maybe he had seen it. Who could be sure—with Calvin? He had hustled his way through a long life, picking up a dollar any way he could. I always wanted to make the majors, he had told Vogel. Maybe he thought he could hit against the big boys and pick up some heavy bread for a change.

  He had aroused my anger but not my scorn; he was my kind of hero, a stubborn, gutty loser.

  Hide, phone, intimidation. There was a pattern in those words somewhere. Currents, crosscurrents and undercurrents—in the swirl of incidents and coincidences there was a pattern trying to emerge.

  Banter, threats, chitchat and interrogations—in all that talk there had to be a few lies. But whose and when and why? Some of them obviously had led me down the wrong roads.

  I stopped at the police station. Vogel wasn’t there. He must have cleaned up his paperwork. I went home. Jan wasn’t there. She was starting her first day of labor at Kay Decor Inc.

  I phoned Sloan Hartford and told him I’d found Calvin. “He won’t be coming back to your house.”

  “Damn him! Just when I was getting the pattern of his play. I’ll miss that little con man. I hope he’s in a safe place.”

  “There are none. Your house weather the storm okay?”

  “This place has steel-reinforced concrete pilings thirty feet deep. A typhoon couldn’t budge it. If you run into those two who are after Calvin, drag ’em up here and we’ll roast ’em over a slow fire.”

  “That would take some doing. But maybe I can get Vogel up there some night. Thanks for your help.”

  Almost everybody gambles. Fifty-cent Nassaus or fifty-grand horse bets, Boy Scout lotteries and church bingo games. Everybody gambles but the mob. They don’t gamble. They host gamblers, book gamblers, arrange the odds and balance the action so gambling is no game to them. All they do is determine the percentage—and win.

  I told Mrs. Casey I wouldn’t be home for lunch and went over to the club and hit a bucket of balls on the practice range. When my uncle died and made me a gentleman of leisure, I had planned to play more golf.

  Two weeks of daily golf convince me that was an overindulgence, an opiate for people so limited they couldn’t think of anything better to do.

  The people I played with now didn’t even walk the course. They rode in electric carts. Sloan Hartford could be excused for that—but people with usable legs?

  I sweated for half-an-hour in the steam room but didn’t stay for lunch. I didn’t want to be cornered by some wheelchair athlete who would give me a stroke-by-stroke odyssey of his thrilling eighty-nine.

  Joe was dead. Even if the killer was caught and punished, Joe would be just as dead. But men who kill can kill again. Stay with that thought, I told myself.

  I had far less equipment than the official hunters on the same trail. What I had going for me was the fact that people on the shadowed side of the law held an ingrained suspicion of the men who enforced it. Even their stoolies often double-crossed them.

  In a country that extols private enterprise, private eyes should get more respect than they do. Dirty jobs are bound to soil the men who work at them. But corrupt them? It was hard for me to believe that about Joe.

  At Hanna’s Hamburger Heaven I had her cheeseburger, bacon and avocado delight and a pineapple milk shake and considered my next move. I had none.

  I had Joe’s hieroglyphics and some mental gas that refused to coalesce. I was nowhere. A place I had been before.

  It was a nice day for a drive; I drove out to Point Mirage. Three young people and the woman rancher in tennis shoes were the only pickets working this afternoon.

  I picked out a sign that read One Hiroshima Is Enough and joined the circling walkers. Each time I passed the bored guard I gave him my most malevolent look. He yawned back at me.

  All that had happened had revolved around CANA. Except for Calvin; he was the only person outside the periphery. Even Joey had been involved in CANA. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have met Joe at the county jail. His wife wouldn’t have phoned me. I wouldn’t have had my name in his file, probably not gone to visit his widow. That had put the Feds on my trail.

  Around and around we plodded, concerned citizens protesting corporation arrogance. The big corporations had poisoned our land, stripped our forests and polluted our rivers and lakes. We had about as much chance of winning as Woody Allen would have fighting Ali.

  I had been a wheelchair golfer too long. My feet gave out after an hour and a half.

  “Mine, too,” the woman rancher told me. “How would you like to buy me another double boilermaker?”

  “It will be my pleasure. Did Lois introduce us that day?”

  She shook her head. “My name is Stella Robin. And you’re Brock the Rock, aren’t you?”

  “The same,” I said modestly. “Your car or mine?”

  “We’ll take both cars,” she said. “The bar’s out near my ranch and I can go home from there.”

  I followed her dusty Jeep to the Happy Hour Cafe, a stained and ancient stucco building near the lemon growers’ cooperative warehouse.

  In a booth there, I ordered a double boilermaker for her and a glass of draught beer for me.

  “I’ve been hearing rumors around town,” she told me. “That detective who was killed, was he investigating the Trinity Investment Company?”

  “He was. Barlow told me Puma was working for him to discredit the rumors of Mafia involvement.”

  “I’ll bet! Barlow is the Trinity Investment Company, isn’t he?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Then why haven’t the cops picked him up? He proved he was capable of murder years ago.”

  “Judson Barlow murdered somebody?”

  “Not quite. And he was only eighteen at the time. But he really worked another young man over with a tire iron. It was touch and go for that young man for more than a month. Judson’s dad got nicked for a quarter-million-dollar settlement.”

  “I’ll remind Lieutenant Vogel,” I said. “I’ve been working with him.”

  “You do that.” She gulped her double shot and washed it down with the small glass of beer. “You probably think I’m pushy, but I needed the boost and I forgot to bring my purse.”

  “Another?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I have to drink and run. You check out that Barlow. I’d love to see him wind up in the gas chamber.”

  I used the wall phone to call the station. Vogel was there. I relayed the information she had given me.

  “He was checked yesterday,” Bernie said. “If we can believe his wife, his alibi is sound.”

  Calvin had asked me not to tell Vogel where he was. But somebody had to keep an eye on him. I related the morning’s adventure from Hartford’s phone call to the lower Main
Street finals.

  “I think,” he said, “it’s time to put that bum into protective custody. I’ll have him picked up.”

  His voice was weary and dispirited. He had a depressing job. The only solid citizens he met in his daily grind were either dead or defrauded. That had to make a man cynical.

  Sociologists can philosophize about the causes of crime, poverty, ignorance, an abused childhood. Vogel had to deal with the results. His was the real world, not the academic.

  His duty was to maintain a world orderly enough to afford the academics the freedom to philosophize.

  Jan was home when I got there, all charged up about her first day back in harness. “Audrey offered me a salary,” she explained, “but I think straight commission would be fairer for her, wouldn’t it?”

  “I agree. Let the customer carry the load.”

  “You’re sour, aren’t you?”

  “Nope. Audrey Kay’s customers are not poor. They must be accustomed to big markups by now. And they can well afford it.”

  “You’re sour. Bad day?”

  “Frustrating. I’m sure whatever you decide, you won’t cheat Audrey and she won’t cheat you.”

  A Casey dinner brought me partway back to a reasonable frame of mind. An hour after dinner, a phone call from Ellen Puma brought me the rest of the way. She had landed the job with the young lawyer.

  Joe was dead but his widow had a job and his son would be going to law school.

  And then, as lagniappe to an improving day, PBS offered us Hamlet that night with a cast almost worthy of it. My favorite play, about the all-time noblest, flakiest, loser in the literary world.

  17

  STRETCHING AND TURNING, TRYING to sleep. It wouldn’t come. Lower Main Street would be buzzing now with small-time hookers and gamblers and thieves on the prowl. For a ten spot or a fix, the boys in the Cordoba could buy some poor wretch who could find Calvin for them. Damn him!

  At two o’clock I got up and drank a glass of warm milk. At three o’clock I was back in bed. At eight-thirty Jan wakened me to tell me Vogel was on the phone.

  I knew what he was going to tell me. I picked up the phone and said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”