Death in Donegal Bay

by William Campbell Gault

  “My high-school memories aren’t that pleasant,” he said, “but looking at Jan again would make the trip worthwhile. You treat her right, Callahan, or you’ll answer to me.”

  “I will. And you keep an eye on Mike. If Cyrus Reed Allingham is out to get him, Mike could be in more trouble than he can handle.”

  “Mike has always been in more trouble than he can handle. At least outside of the ring. If you learn anything—”

  “I’ll phone you. Give my love to Marilyn.”

  He laughed. “We finally got an offer on that house, two hundred and thirty-two thousand. That’s what three-bedroom, two-bath fixer-uppers are going for in Donegal Valley. She asked me half a dozen times when you were coming back to make an offer. I told her you were waiting for an offer on your Brentwood home before you made a decision on hers.”

  Realtors—they’re almost as tricky as private eyes. …

  Up the steep and winding road the Mustang moved, past the houses on the bluff and down into the valley. Felicia’s lie was still a lie; she knew what Mike was doing now, even if she didn’t see him. Why would she lie about it?

  Possibly because her husband had been in the room when I asked her. He must have known her history, traveling in the circles he did. And she must know he knew. So why the secrecy, so long as she was innocent (to use the word loosely)?

  There was a slight breeze from the ocean, and the sun’s glare was softened by stationary cumulus clouds. It was a day for golf, but here I was, back on the prowl. When would I join the leisure class Uncle Homer had made possible for me? Not until I ran out of more interesting things to do.

  I had shaken the hand of Cyrus Reed Allingham. I had pretended to share his views. I had avoided the final ignominy; I had not asked for his autograph.

  Faith was what Cyrus was selling, faith in the time-honored American values and traditions. Time had not exactly honored many of our traditions. Among them are slavery, killing Indians, civil war, denying women the right to vote, child labor, depletion of our natural resources, and a still-virulent bigotry.

  Faith may be wonderful, as some cynical sage has pointed out, but it is doubt that will get you an education. I would have to stay committed to the immoral minority. To camouflage that, I was forced to remain devious.

  When I came home, Mrs. Casey informed me that Lieutenant Vogel had phoned and asked that I call him back. I got him at the station.

  “When you were working down in L.A.,” he asked me, “did you ever run into a private investigator named Max Kronen?”

  “Occasionally. As a matter of fact, I talked with him only a couple of hours ago. Why do you ask?”

  “You mean he came up here to see you?”

  “Answer my question first.”

  “I was hoping that you might give me a line on his reputation. He could be working for Joe Farini.”

  “Are you still watching Joe?”

  ‘“Yes. Your turn.”

  “I was leaving Cyrus Allingham’s wigwam up in Veronica Village this morning when Max drove in. My hunch is that he’s working for Allingham.”

  “What reason did you have to visit Cyrus Allingham?”

  “I was obeying the instructions you gave me in your office yesterday afternoon.”

  “I never gave you any such instructions!”

  “Your memory is weak. You told me to keep you informed. You wished me good hunting.”

  “All right, all right! What did you learn up there?”

  “I learned that a French engineer named Vauban was the acknowledged master of fortification and siegecraft. I’ve forgotten his first names. He had a lot of ’em.”

  “Damn you! Talk sense.”

  “Bernie,” I said soothingly, “it is almost the cocktail hour. Why don’t you stop in here before you go home, and we’ll have a quiet talk and a strong drink?”

  “All right,” he said for the third time, this time less heatedly.

  On a piece of graph paper I put down the names of all the people I had talked with since Baker had phoned me. I drew lines between the obvious connections and tried to find a pattern in them. The only pattern I could find was what Allingham called it—fighting fire with fire. It shaped up as a blackmail standoff.

  But what could Allingham know about the Bakers that was not common knowledge? She had been a hooker, he a conman; Allingham could have learned that from the public press. He obviously had needed more than that. So he had hired Max Kronen to get it for him. Max must have come up with something, or at least convinced Cyrus that he had.

  Alan had been privy to more knowledge of the Allingham family than the press was likely to learn—or to print. Cyrus had friends in high places. He had zealous, vindictive supporters in high, medium, and low places. Anyone who dared to defame him would need to be armed with more than hearsay evidence.

  When Jan came home, I told her Bernie would be stopping in for a drink.

  “And a yack fest about skulduggery,” she added. “I’ll take my shower while you two get that over with, and join you later for more civilized conversation.”

  “For your sadly thin information, madame,” I informed her, “Bernie and I are the citizen types who help to keep the world civilized.”

  “Orderly, maybe,” she said. “I will not accept civilized.” She patted my cheek. Each to his own, Lochinvar. Charge!”

  “Smartass,” I said, and kissed her.

  Bernie’s car pulled into our driveway about five minutes later. I knew what he wanted—Scotch over rocks. I had it waiting for him when he reached our front door.

  He studied me suspiciously.

  “I am trying to play the gracious host,” I explained. “Don’t just stand there. We have important matters to discuss.”

  We went out in back, and I gave him the account of my day, from the Allingham fortress to Donegal Bay.

  “That’s all out of my jurisdiction,” he said.

  “I know. That’s what I’ve been wondering about.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The Bakers don’t live in the city, either. They’re out of your jurisdiction, too. The only one involved in this mess who isn’t outside is Joe Farini. What is this, a police vendetta?”

  “Easy, now,” he said quietly.

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “some of the boys down there want to pay Luther back by nailing Farini.”

  He shook his head. “Your mouth is ahead of your brain, as usual. I’ll admit we want to get something on Farini. We don’t like crooked lawyers. And the state Bar Association hasn’t done a damned thing about him. Tell me, self-ordained knight in tarnished armor, do you like crooked lawyers?”

  I stared at him admiringly. “That’s great—self-ordained knight in tarnished armor. Is it a quote?”

  “Oh, shut up!” he said.

  “It has earned you another drink,” I told him, and took his glass.

  Jan was there when I brought his drink. I went to get her a gin and tonic, and fortified my own glass.

  “Now,” Bernie said, “tell me what you know about Max Kronen.”

  I said, “I know that he almost lost his license about three years ago for beating up a stoolie who had double-crossed him. I lever followed his career. The other boys in the trade consider him more brawn than brain.”

  “Which is not unusual in your trade.”

  “Thank you!”

  “I meant, of course,” he explained, “the other boys in your trade. Does he have a specialty? Divorce, industrial spying—what?”

  “I doubt it. He has four investigators working for him, three men and one woman. They might specialize. My peers have told me he has a real fancy office down there in the San Fernando Valley. And he has worked for some high-priced lawyers. I got the impression they have him on a retainer basis.”

  “Criminal lawyers?”

  “Not all of them. The only one I can think of is Norman Geler.”

  “Norman Geller,” Vogel said, “is married to Farini’s sister. They sha
red an office up here for a couple of years.”

  “There is your connection,” I said. “Now Jan would like to have some civilized conversation.”

  They stayed with the literary B’s that day—Barthelme, Borges, and Bellow. I had to wait until they got to Bellow to worm my way into the conversation.

  Bernie left, we had dinner, the sun went down. There was nothing but garbage, as usual, on the commercial tube. PBS was offering us a string quartet playing one of the musical B’s, Brahms. Jan listened to that. I phoned the Raleigh house, and Corey was home.

  “What’s new?” I asked him.

  “Nothing exciting. Do you know a man named Max Kronen?”

  “I do. Why?”

  “He came to my house this afternoon and tried to question my dad about me. My dad told him to get lost.”

  “You watch out for him, Corey. He could be a rough customer.”

  “Not as rough as my dad. What is he, a private eye?”

  “He is. And it’s possible he’s working for Joe Farini. Lieutenant Vogel was here before dinner, asking about him.”

  “How come he asked you? Are you getting into this case?

  “Not your end of it. But I have a gut feeling that you’ll be calling on me before long. Did Mrs. Baker leave the house today?”

  “Oh, yes! She went to the beauty parlor to have her hair tinted and then to the Biltmore for lunch and then to I. Magnin for some shopping and then home. Dullsville! Who needs a Sam Spade for that kind of surveillance?”

  “Corey, you are not Sam Spade. You be careful!”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Of course, sir. Keep in touch, teach.”

  He was getting too big for his britches. Kids. I went in and listened to Brahms with Jan.

  It was a troubled night of confused dreams dimly remembered. My father was mixed up in it somehow, and the Hearst Castle and the party at Jan’s house in Beverly Glen, the part where Mike Anthony had brought Felicia Rowan. One of these days I would have to hit the couch to see if a shrink could make any sense out of my dreams.

  “You were muttering again,” Jan said in the morning. “Bad night?”

  “Too many dreams. Who said ‘the stuff that dreams are made of?”

  “Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Shakespeare said it better in The Tempest—‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”

  “I guess Hammett was no Shakespeare, huh?”

  She shrugged. “Hammett edged him in plotting. Would you like waffles for breakfast, master?”

  “Great! And some of those tasty pork sausages you bought in Solvang. How come you didn’t go to college?”

  “I couldn’t play football,” she explained, “and I didn’t want to blunt my education.”

  Orange juice, waffles with pork sausage, coffee with the Las Angeles Times. The morning was overcast; it would clear before noon along the coast, which is where we lived.

  I was reading the stock quotations to find out how much money I had lost yesterday when Mrs. Casey came in to tell me Lieutenant Vogel was on the phone.

  “Don’t come rushing down here,” he warned me, “but I thought I should inform you.”

  “Down where?”

  “To the Travis Hotel. Luther Barnum has been murdered.”

  Chapter Nine

  “WHY SHOULDN’T I COME down? I won’t get in your way.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t. But there are other officers here, and I would prefer to not let them know you have more cooperation from the department than some of their investigator friends.”

  “I get it. Any suspects?”

  “We’ll talk about that in my office. I should be back there by eleven o’clock, at the latest.”

  When I came back to the breakfast room, Jan asked, “What now?”

  “A man has been murdered—Luther Barnum, a police stoolie.” I sat down and picked up the Times.

  “Is he involved in this—this business with Alan Baker?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t act so bored, Sherlock. You are itching to get down there. Admit it.”

  “I’m going down later to talk with Bernie about it in his office. I’m not bored; I’m depressed. A gutsy little old man has just been murdered.”

  “I’m sorry I was flippant. Did you know him?”

  “Briefly. Let’s talk about something else.”

  She went to work half an hour later. I sat. Could it have been Max Kronen? He had beaten up a stoolie. Or Mr. Five-by-five? He had threatened Luther. Had he been stabbed, throttled, shot, bludgeoned? That was the least Bernie could have told me.

  At ten o’clock, I figured the law would have deserted the premises by now. I drove down to the Travis Hotel.

  The same clerk was behind the counter, wearing the same shiny blue serge trousers. He had replaced the clean white shirt with a clean blue work shirt.

  “I was in here a couple of days ago to see Luther Barnum,” I said, “and I just learned about—about what happened.”

  He nodded. “I remember your visit, Mr. Callahan.”

  “You know me?”

  He smiled. “Of course. I watched you play many times when I lived in Los Angeles. Was Luther a friend of yours?”

  “Not really. But I was wondering—is anybody going to pay for the funeral? Does he have relatives?”

  “A cousin,” he told me. “She lives up in Veronica Village. Our manager has already notified her.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Sometime last night. I wasn’t on duty. The night clerk is down at the station being questioned by the police right now.”

  “How was he killed?”

  “Poisoned liquor. Somebody must have brought it to his room. He never left the hotel yesterday.”

  “Oh God!” I said. “I brought him a bottle when I came.”

  “I know. I saw the bottle. That was whiskey. This was cognac. The bottle was still in his room.”

  It was still short of eleven o’clock when I got to the station, but Bernie was in his office. So were Captain Dahl and a uniformed officer. I waited in the hall until they left.

  Bernie looked up from behind his desk as I came in. “We’re waiting for a lab report,” he told me. “The paramedics who answered the call believe he was poisoned, but they’re not doctors.”

  “Any solid suspects?”

  He shook his head. “The night clerk said that if anybody went to Luther’s room, he didn’t stop at the desk first. That figures. It isn’t likely that the killer would announce himself.”

  “I hope he isn’t going to be buried in a pauper’s grave.”

  “He isn’t. The manager of the hotel said Luther’s cousin up there in Veronica Village enrolled Luther in that nonprofit memorial society in town here almost a year ago. There’ll be no funeral, so she won’t be coming down. He’ll be cremated.” He stood up and arched his back and rubbed his neck. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking—that Farini’s fine hand is involved in this?”

  “No. Not in murder. Even the Bar Association wouldn’t stand still for murder. Joe couldn’t take the chance of hiring somebody who might be linked to him later.”

  Bernie said wearily, “You’re probably right. Just the same, we’re going to interrogate Kronen and that Rafferty freak.”

  “Who is the Rafferty freak?”

  “That Farini stooge you decked. He threatened Luther, didn’t he, while you were in the room?”

  “Not quite. All he said to Luther was ‘Who you squeaking to now’? The rest of his remarks were directed at me.”

  “We’ll grill him anyway. And Kronen has beat up a stoolie before. We’ll sweat him, too.”

  The lab report came in a few minutes later. The cognac had been laced with strychnine. Death by poisoning was the verdict. A man with Max’s connections might be able to buy strychnine at some pest-control store that didn’t require certification of its use. But he wouldn’t have added it to cognac. He had the reputation of keeping a
sharp eye on expenses. And he had the experience to know that the Luther Barnum type would prefer fortified wine or blended corn.

  I said, “We still can’t be sure who Max is working for, can we? We assumed he’s working for Farini because he might be on retainer to Farini’s brother-in-law. Up in Veronica Village I had to assume he was working for Allingham, because he had an appointment with him.”

  “We’ll find out when we sweat him.”

  “I doubt it. That is privileged information, and I’m sure Max knows it. But think of this—Max has no loyalty, except to the dollar, and Farini is famous as a double-cross artist.”

  “Do you think Max could be playing double agent?”

  “Farini is clever enough to have an agent in the enemy camp. And Max would sell out to the highest bidder. That makes him a logical choice for a double agent.”

  Bernie yawned. “Tricky, isn’t it? It would take a trickier mind than mine to decipher it.”

  “That is certainly true,” I agreed. “Well, I’ve got a date for golf this afternoon and I haven’t had lunch yet. See you around, Bernie.”

  “Buddy!” he said.

  “Don’t ‘buddy’ me,” I told him. “You never make it official. You and your damned hints, which you can deny making later to protect your own skin. Well, I have skin, too.”

  “I’ve noticed,” he said. “And it’s so thin! How can it keep all that muscle from bursting through it?”

  “Luck,” I said, and walked out, waiting for him to call me back.

  He didn’t. That sly fox knew me. Or thought he did. I could change. I’d show him.

  It was chance that brought me back to my former attitude. I was tooling along the freeway, heading for home, when I happened to notice this gray Volvo in front of me. There are a lot of those. This one bore the insignia of a San Fernando Valley car dealer on the frame around the license plate. There are more than a few of those, too.

  But, two cars ahead, another gray car—an old Plymouth—was also cruising in the righthand lane. It looked like Corey’s car. I passed the Volvo and cut sharply back in front of it. The driver tooted his horn. I slowed down. When he tried to go around me, I moved over to block him. He leaned on his horn. I waved at him. It was Max.