His voice was raw with sarcasm. “And how are you going to do that!”
“You have the gun that was in Herb’s hand this morning?”
“I can get it.” He pressed a buzzer in his desk.
Two doors opened simultaneously. Through one came a small, dark youth who said, “Yes, Mr. Mosani?” Mosani told him to bring in the .25 calibre pistol from the Baldwin suicide. It wasn’t until the boy was gone, nodding, the door closing on his swarthy face that Mosani turned to the gray haired man who had come in behind him.
He was a man of fifty who looked ten years older, in a sick, tired eyed way. He wore a lightweight suit, but his collar was wilted and opened at his throat.
“The Chief of Police, Mr. Patterson,” Mosani said.
“How do you do, Mr. Patterson.” He turned back to Mosani. “I don’t like to interrupt, but I didn’t have your report — ”
“I’m finishing it up now,” Mosani said with a leer in my direction. “Mr. Patterson is very interested in the case. We are sending now for the gun used in the suicide. Would you like to stay until we are finished?”
“Yes.” The Chief came and sat near me. He looked me over, smiling. “You must not underestimate our Mr. Mosani, Mr. Patterson. He is a stickler for detail. Nothing escapes his attention.”
“He’s almost convinced me,” I said.
“Almost?” Mosani’s thick lips twisted at that. The boy came in then with the small gun, tagged. Mosani took it from him and dismissed him with a movement of his bushy head. “Now, then, Mr. Patterson, what is wrong with this gun?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with it,” I answered.
“There isn’t. It is registered in his name. Although he had no license to carry it.”
“Did he need one?”
“Yes. But that is not of interest any longer. It has been fired once — and I think you’ve seen the results.”
“Could you fire it again?”
He exhaled heavily. “Ah? A ballistics expert.”
“I know something about guns.”
“Yes. We can fire it.” He brought out a thick straw target with a red circle painted on it. “Would you care to fire it, sir?” He said to the Chief. The elderly police officer nodded, eagerly as a boy. God, I thought, I don’t want to get to be so old that the only pleasures left to me are things like this.
The Chief took the gun and sighted along his arm, holding it out, and pressing off the trigger in a most expert manner. The gun gave a silly little pop, and then there was a puff of smoke, a thud, and a tiny hole in the target.
With a look of satisfaction, Mosani strode over and picked the fired bullet out of the target. He brought it back across the room, bouncing it on the palm of his hand. His smile was ironical. “Now, I suppose you want a ballistics comparison, you having removed the bullet from the victim’s head earlier at the morgue.”
I took the lead pellet from his hand between my fingers. “I don’t think it will be necessary,” I said.
I could see Mosani stiffen, see the blood spill out of his dark face, leaving it strained and white.
I laid the .25 calibre on the palm of my hand. Then I took the one I’d removed from Herb’s brain beside it.
“I think you’ll see,” I said hoarsely, “that this bullet came from a .38. Do you agree, Chief? This is the bullet I took from my friend’s head. It couldn’t even have come through the barrel of the gun in your hand, Mosani. Herb wasn’t trying to commit suicide when he fired that .25 — he was trying to protect himself!”
7
IT WAS DUSK. The gathering dark seemed full of gloom and evil as I drove slowly through the streets in the Packard. I was headed home, and yet I was in no hurry to get there. I had starting places now in this murder of Herb Baldwin, plenty of them, plenty of thick, dark threads to follow. But — I was in no hurry to get started on that, either. It mean going toward violence when I’d spent the last four years running from it. It meant people, hard and brutal, sick and whining, selfish, arrogant, all of them with their lives soiled and dirtied because they’d come in contact with Carroltown’s finest. And so, I put it off at least until morning, thinking that by then, I’d trade the whole filthy business for one clear, cold Scotch.
In the rear view mirror, I saw this small car that had been the same distance behind me almost since I’d left the police station down at the waterfront. The street was narrow and crowded at this hour. Any sort of speed was impossible. But I stepped on the accelerator. So did the man in the car behind me.
At the first side street with dark walls close on each side of me and eyes peering down from upstairs windows, I parked.
I got out of the car and walked back along the sidewalk. Cars were moving forward along the parking lines, but the car I was seeking was gone, turned off somewhere.
I shrugged, the hell with it. I got back into the car, backed out and drove on home. It was a hellish night. I could feel rather than hear Carole’s silent sobs in the guest bedroom. Troy took sleeping pills, but rolled and tossed on her bed. I sweated out the night and woke up, swollen eyed and feeling so bad I didn’t even want a drink.
Carole’s ship was sailing that morning for San Francisco. But Troy had said she would go down and sing Aloha Oe to Carole and I didn’t argue. There were people I needed to see, and the thing wouldn’t let me alone. I knew I had to start seeing them, no matter how much I shrank from it, no matter how sick my stomach got at the idea of going out and probing and asking and questioning.
“You’ll find out who did it,” Carole said softly when I told her goodbye. “You looked after him when you were kids — and now you’re doing this last thing for him … and in a way you’ll be doing it for me.”
I had to have a base of operation, a place to start from, a place where I could collect and sift and study the things I was going to find. So I drove in to town and walked upstairs over the haberdashery store and opened my office. I looked with distaste at the hand-lettering on the door, James Patterson, Confidential Investigations.
The place had a musty, old smell. I closed the door behind me, glancing about at the scarred old desk, the filing cabinet, and the apple crates where I stacked the overflow notes in the corner.
I’d just started across to open the windows when the telephone rang. It was the last thing I expected, and it startled me so I jumped. First, I just stood there. Probably a mistake. I’d sat in this office hours at a time and that thing never rang. When it shrilled again, I decided it was the telephone company making a call to be sure the thing still worked at my end. I picked it up and a honeyed, sleep-warm voice cooed, “Darling.”
“I am,” I said. “But I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong darling, darling.”
“I don’t think so, Jimmy.”
“Who is this?”
“Why, it’s Ona, darling. It’s been clear since yesterday since I saw you. And you’re so wonderful.”
“Look,” I said. “This nonsense has got to stop. That was yesterday.”
“I’ve got to see you again,” she said.
“Look. Honey. You’re a sweet kid. And I love you. But you’re a sweet kid. Let’s leave it like that.”
“I know,” she pouted, “you must have dozens like me — ”
“Sure. Dozens.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling myself. And I try to tell myself I’m a big girl now, and I ought to get up and go to work. I tell myself there have been others — ”
“You’re still young, honey. There’ll be more.”
“But that’s it, Jimmy. I don’t want anybody else. A girl knows when a man is — is right for her. The way you are. For me. Please, Jimmy. Just let me see you one more time.”
“I’d like to, Ona. Really. But right now, I’m busy. On the run. I don’t know where I’ll be.”
Her voice cracked through the sleepiness. “You’ve got to!” she stormed. “I can tell you right now, if you don’t you’ll be sorry!”
There was a lou
d pop in my ear, and Ona was for the moment gone. But I had no illusions. You pay for everything you get. And standing there in my musty office, I was afraid I knew the price of that night with Ona on the beach across the island …
I shoved her out of my mind. I went on over to put up the windows. The Venetian blinds were drawn tight so the room was dismally gray. I opened the blinds first to pull them up, and below, parked across the street was the car that had followed me last night.
I caught my breath. Bitterly angry. “That God damn Mosani,” I said aloud. Tailing me. How he must hate me for what I had done to him!
I pulled the blinds halfway up, opened the windows, feeling the slight stirring of a wan breeze. I saw him then. He was standing across the street about three doors down. He was smoking. But about every full minute, he’d glance up at my windows, and then down at the entrance of this shabby building.
I went out of the office, locked it behind me and went down in the street. At the entrance, I stood for a moment in the sun looking both ways to be sure he spotted me. Then I went, walking swiftly away from him.
The first corner I reached, I stepped around it, and waited. He was coming, full tilt on the sidewalk across the street. I let him get close enough so there were no doors for him to duck into, then I walked out, crossed against a traffic signal and went up to him.
He smiled politely, apologized and tried to step around me. I barred his way. Our eyes met evenly. “All right,” I said. “What do you want with me?”
“Me? I don’t want you, mister.”
“You started tailing me last night,” I said. “You started it again this morning. Why?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am a police officer though. Interfering with my duty, might make you trouble.”
His swollen sense of authority, his petty arrogance, the way he looked at me, daring me to make something of it, the implied threat in his voice, made my hands sweat, and I could feel them tremble. I clenched them into hard knots.
“Tell Mosani he could use you better to solve crimes.”
“Maybe you better speak to Mr. Mosani if you are displeased.”
I looked at him. “All right. I will.” I brushed past him, letting him have my shoulder, hard. He gave under it, stepping backward fast to regain his balance. Seeing him give like that was all I needed to kill some of the anger in me, and I felt better. Let ’em tail me, I thought. The little men are going to have a busy day.
There was a cafe and I went inside. I ordered a cup of coffee and asked the waitress for a city directory. She brought the java, and after conferring with her boss, brought a directory. I was looking for Hattie Contona, my finger moving along the yellowed page when I sensed someone standing at my table. With my finger still on the column of names, I looked up.
“You wanted to see me?” Mosani inquired.
“God forbid. I think your boy got mad because I bumped him a little. That’s why he called you.”
He sat down, rigid and straight in the chair across the table. His face was something cut out of cold stone. But his voice was hot and angry and miserable.
“I want you to get out of this thing,” he said evenly. His hands brought an old cigar box up on the white table cloth and the way his fingers massaged it, I was sure he’d crush it. The waitress came toward him questioningly, but he waved her away abruptly. “You have convinced me it is murder. You have done your duty as a citizen. You have also convinced the Chief of Police that I was derelict in my duty. Me. I have no other life. I never in my life stopped working at my job — and you should have been there to laugh. The way he chewed me out like a rookie cop. Sixteen years — and what does it mean? Some uncaring smart guy walks in — and it’s all smashed to hell! Get out, Patterson. Get out, I warn you, or I’ll get you if it takes my job!”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mosani. But I’m not quitting. I’m looking for a woman named Hattie Contona. Do you know her?”
He nodded coldly. But I could see interest stir in those depthless black eyes. “Yes. A woman of vile reputation. She would be a friend of your Mr. Baldwin. And so you think it will help to talk to her?”
I shrugged. “It might. Will you tell me where she lives?”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you there. I was about to call on her on another matter. I don’t care if you go along. There’s just this, Patterson. One more thing I want to tell you.”
I stood up. “What is it?”
“Stay away from Ona Kalani. Do you understand? Stay away!” He was on his feet now, his tortured eyes boring into mine.
I looked at him, at first stunned, and then fighting down a choking impulse to laugh out loud. “Albert,” I whispered. “Oh my God. You’re Albert!”
His hands were clenched at his sides. For a moment, we stood there looking at each other. To keep from laughing, I turned and started out. I saw him pick up the cigar box and follow. When I looked back at him, his shoulders sagged and the corners of his thick mouth pulled down.
8
ALBERT MOSANI drove the black police car out Kam Highway at slightly under seventy. Neither of us spoke. I was thinking that I was already in this too deeply. I knew about Mosani. I knew too much about him, things I didn’t want to know, but couldn’t unlearn. Hurting, personal things that nobody has got any right to know about anyone else. Least of all me. I didn’t care. I had the woe Julie had left me heir to. I wished for a way out of this, and knew there was none.
The big car screamed around a corner and we followed a narrow winding road through a cane field that had been burned off and harvested. The air was still thick and sickly sweet.
We went downhill then into a damp glen, where the grass grew ankle high and rich green, but the earth was spongy wet. Mosani let the car creep up to a delapidated picket gate and we got out. There were three small black cows grazing in the front yard, and near the front door there was an old Navy jeep that evidently Hattie Contona had bought as war surplus.
• • •
The paint was scraped off, and the top had a long gaping hole in it.
We walked up the steps, Mosani still carrying his cigar box. Mosani knocked. After a long time, the door opened. The short fat woman who answered it was wearing a man’s felt hat straight on her head. Her eyes were set in rolls of fat, and her nose was a glob of dark fat set on a glob. She looked at Mosani and spat past him across the porch.
“You.” Was all she said. There was a world of contempt in that one word.
“Why don’t you ask us in?” Mosani said.
“Why? You’ll come in anyway. When the police want to come in your house, you don’t have a house.” She looked at me, and spoke to Mosani, jerking her head, “Who’s he? A new one?”
“Mr. Patterson isn’t a cop at all, Hattie,” Mosani said. “He’s a friend of Herbert Roy Baldwin. Do you know the name?”
Hattie’s face tightened. You could hardly see her eyes in the tight rolls of fat.
“I don’t know him,” she said.
“The landlady where he lived said you used to come to visit him,” I told her, watching her face.
Mosani was looking at me. I could see this was a detail he had missed.
“The landlady where he lived lied,” Hattie said with a shrug of her round shoulders.
Mosani looked at me with his inscrutable smile. “Are you through now, Patterson? Is that all you want to ask her?”
“I’m happy to see you stopped,” he said over his shoulder as he brushed past Hattie into her house. The way he did it made me mad. She had no rights. She looked at him in helpless scorn. But it was in her face. She knew she had no rights, either.
“What else is there?” I asked. “If she doesn’t know him?”
Inside the shabby appearing cottage was the wrongness. Electric lights were all right, even out here in the cane country. But the expensive floor lamps were something else. I felt the prickling from the backs of legs upward as I followed Mosani on a silent tour of the thre
e rooms. In the kitchen, a fourteen-foot electric ice box, two deep freezes with sturdy locks. An electric range so new it still gleamed with its showroom polish. There were no curtains at the bedroom windows, but the bed was an expensive one, with deep mattress and box springs. There was a round mirror large enough for Hattie Contona to see her entire reflection. From the outside this was a shanty, a hovel. But inside, where Hattie lived were the signs of money being spent because there was such quantity it had to be spent …
When we were back in the ornately furnished parlor, Hattie just looked at Mosani defiantly and did not ask us to sit down.
“All right now, Hattie,” Mosani said. “We of the police know what you are doing. As well as you do. If you will confess, the sentence will be light.”
“Phoo!” She sneered at him with her round face. “I am a milk woman. I deliver milk. I have customers. I am up every morning before daylight. If I work hard and save my money so that fools are jealous of me — I cannot help it.”
“You never made the kind of money you’ve got delivering milk, Hattie,” Mosani said coldly. “Now I warn you. This is your last chance. Sooner or later, we will have the evidence on you. It will then be too late. There will be no mercy shown you.”
“Am I a fool to expect mercy of swollen pigs?” Hattie inquired. “I wish you would go. It is time to milk my cows.”
“All right, Hattie,” Mosani said. “But this is the last time I warn you.”
“You are more kind today than ever,” Hattie Contona said bitterly, “and still I wouldn’t spit on you.”
The Brass Monkey Page 5