Doctor, Lawyer . . . (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  Meyer rose to his feet to face me. He moved with the ritual teen-ager’s slow, loose-limbed indifference, an incongruous contrast to the restless intensity of his gaze and the tension in his long, graceless arms and legs.

  “Hey”—he nodded to me—“hey, you’re the one I keep reading about. Like, you’re the TV-type character—the football hero that turned detective and does all the shoot-outs, and everything. Right?”

  I kept the forced smile in place. “If you say so.”

  “You’re on this Masked Man thing. Right?”

  “Right again.”

  “Listen”—the unformed mouth up-curved in a facsimile of an ingratiating smile—“I’d like to talk to you. I really would. See, I got this idea. I heard—I know—that in Hollywood, they buy plot ideas, for all those crime series, on TV. They pay five hundred dollars apiece, for a two-page idea. That’s all—just two pages. I know. I checked. They don’t want more than two pages. So I thought, Jesus, here I am, surrounded by all these ideas for plots around here, like cherries on a tree, or something.”

  Now I felt the smile involuntarily widening. “You should talk to Lieutenant Friedman, not me.” As I said it, I opened the hallway door. “He’s the one with the imagination.”

  Behind me, Friedman said sotto voce to Meyer: “But he’s got the shoulders—not to mention the waistline. Right?”

  In the hallway, we walked side by side to the elevators.

  “What’s Irving’s story?” I asked.

  “The usual—poor little rich kid with too much time, too much money and a neurotic mummy who can’t stay married. Her family, so the story goes, owns about four acres in downtown Sacramento.”

  “How’d Dwyer get involved in something like that?” At the elevator, I pushed the Down button.

  “Like what? Like the four acres?”

  “Like Irving.”

  “Very simply. Dwyer is ambitious. He’s also handsome. And he’s vain.”

  “What’s vanity got to do with it?”

  “He probably thought his sheer animal magnetism would change his wife’s life—and Irving’s too, by extension. Incidentally, did you get Ann’s birthday present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is her birthday today?”

  “Yes. We’re having a dinner party tonight.” Entering the elevator, I pushed the button for the third floor. “Us, and her two kids.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s all right.”

  Six

  IN THE CANDLELIGHT, ANN was smiling at me. We sat at the head and foot of her dining-room table. Her two sons, Billy and Dan, sat on either side of us. Billy was a willful, exuberant, impetuous eleven-year-old; Dan was five years older, quieter, more complex. I’d known Ann for less than a year; I’d met her on the job, investigating the possibility that her older son might have given false testimony in a murder case. Ann was a grammar-school teacher, thirty-six years old—the divorced wife of Victor Haywood, a psychiatrist who specialized in the adjustment problems of the very rich. In officialese, Ann’s description would read: Age 36, weight 115. Eyes hazel, hair ash-blond. Height 5’2”. Distinguishing marks, one clover-shaped mole—beneath one of her beautifully proportioned breasts.

  She was a quiet, thoughtful woman; together we could comfortably share long silences and quick smiles. Her manner was typically serious, but her sense of humor was pixy-quick. Defending a point in argument, she could be determined—even stubborn. Yet she was vulnerable, too, surrendering sometimes to the despair that constantly stalks a newly divorced woman and mother. Although she never said so, I’d often suspected that, during the fifteen years of their marriage, her husband had systematically attempted to undermine her sense of self-esteem, using the subtle tricks of his trade. Victor Haywood was a man whose ego sustained itself on the weaknesses he could expose in others. I’d met him only twice. Both times he’d obliquely insulted me.

  “Get another bottle of wine from the refrigerator, will you, Dan?” she asked. “And bring a glass for yourself, why don’t you?”

  “No thanks.” The teen-ager left the room, moving with the graceful economy and unconscious confidence of a natural athlete. Watching him, I waywardly recalled my own high-school years, here in San Francisco. I’d played varsity football for three years—the best three years of my life, remembered. I’d talked to college scouts in my junior year and signed with Stanford midway through my senior season. At seventeen, everything seemed within my grasp. Was it the same for Dan Haywood? Somehow I doubted it. Dan’s eyes reflected a deep, bewildered pain—the special, secret pain that divorce can afflict. The same pain shadowed my own son’s eyes. Darrell lived with his mother in an affluent midwest ghetto, confused and unhappy. Inevitably, Dan reminded me of Darrell. Their suffering was the same.

  My suffering, too, had been the same. My father had taken a quick profit on the biggest real-estate deal of his small-time career and left town with his secretary. My mother had …

  “May I be excused, Mom?” Billy asked.

  I stared at him, momentarily amazed by his manners. And then I saw his eyes resting solemnly on the birthday cake, only half-eaten.

  “Yes, Billy, you may be excused.”

  He bobbed his head to her, then to me. In the doorway he hesitated, scuffed his foot for a moment, then finally blurted, “Happy birthday.”

  Gratefully she turned to smile at him, but he’d already fled down the hallway. “Thank you, darling,” she called. And to me: “It was a wonderful party, Frank. You—”

  The phone rang.

  As I glanced at my watch, I silently swore. The time was just after ten o’clock—too late for most phone calls.

  “I’ve got it,” came Dan’s voice from the kitchen. Then, a moment later, the expected: “It’s for you, Frank.”

  I walked into the kitchen and, resigned, picked up the phone from the countertop. I knew who was calling; only Friedman knew where to find me.

  “Well,” Friedman said, “it’s hit the fan.”

  As I waited for the rest of it, I reached for a sliver of the rare roast beef we’d had for dinner.

  “The victim’s name is Jonathan Bates. And, sure enough, he’s a lawyer. And yes, a note was tucked neatly under the body. Do you want me to pick you up? You’re right on my way.”

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Machondray Lane. On Russian Hill. About an hour ago. I’ll be leaving here in five minutes.”

  “All right. Pick me up.”

  I slipped into the black-and-white car, sitting beside Friedman, in back. He wore khaki trousers, run-over loafers, a green nylon windbreaker and a Tyrolean hat.

  “Where’d you get the hat?”

  “It’s a Father’s Day present. Like it?”

  “Well—” I glanced dubiously at the hat.

  “I very seldom get a chance to wear it.”

  I allowed a moment of silence to pass, then asked, “Do you know any of the details on Bates?”

  “No. But I just had a thought, coming over here.”

  “What thought?”

  “Well, the doctor’s name was Ainsley. ‘A,’ get it? And the lawyer’s name was ‘B’ for Bates.”

  “So?”

  “So let’s suppose the Masked Man has a C-somebody picked out for his merchant. That leaves a D-someone for the chief.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I turned to stare at him, then glanced meaningfully at the uniformed driver. Following my look, Friedman nodded. We rode the last few blocks in silence.

  As the body flopped over on its back, Friedman used thumb and forefinger to pluck the quarter-folded piece of paper from the cobblestones beneath the body. This time, the inexpensive paper was spattered with a few drops of blood.

  Moving away from the others, we stepped through the low iron gate that led to the front door of the victim’s house. As Friedman carefully unfolded the note, I snapped on my flashlight.

  “Looks like the same paper,” Friedman said. “Same kind of typewriter, same s
pacing. Very consistent. Very businesslike.” Together we read:

  Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief …

  The price is now $200,000.00. If you want to pay, call Patrick’s Attick with the same message. Same time. Can you guess who the Chief is, pigs?

  THE MASKED MAN

  “The bastard’s after Dwyer.” As if to protect the secret, I snapped off the flashlight.

  Friedman slipped the letter, carefully refolded, into a clear plastic evidence folder. “There’s no need to whisper,” he said.

  “We’d better call Dwyer.”

  “And wake him up? Why? There’s still one more victim to go.”

  “That’s not very goddam funny.” Sourly, I turned back to the scene of the crime. Machondray Lane, like Pacific Heights, was an exclusive preserve of the very rich. Notched into the steep northern slope of Russian Hill, less than a mile from San Francisco’s financial district, Machondray Lane was a narrow, block-long cobblestone thoroughfare barely eight feet wide, completely arched over with trees. Only eight houses bordered Machondray on the north side. On the south side, Russian Hill rose almost vertically, exposing lichen-crusted rock outcroppings. The lane was a cul-de-sac, for pedestrians only. Limited parking was available on the west end of the lane. At the east end, an arrow flight of cobblestone steps led down to Jones, the next cross street. The lane was bathed in intense white light from floodlights and crowded with police officers and technicians. We’d closed the lane and ordered all residents to remain in their houses until they were questioned. The time was a half-hour after midnight. The police photographers had gone, and the technicians were going. The medical examiner had confirmed what everyone knew: Jonathan Bates, 48 years old, had entered the lane at approximately 9:15 P.M., headed for his own house, four doors down from the lane’s parking area. As he’d stopped to unlatch the small iron gate near which Friedman and I now stood, he’d been shot once in the back. Apparently the force of the bullet had knocked him into the shrubbery, where he’d grabbed for a large laurel bush, ripping some of the foliage away. Bleeding, he’d staggered approximately ten feet toward the entrance to the lane, possibly trying to reach his car. He’d collapsed in the exact center of the lane, lying on his face, spread-eagled. Witnesses saw a figure emerge from the thick undergrowth at the east end of the lane. The figure had briefly bent over the body, then straightened and turned back in the direction from which it had come, disappearing down the long flight of cobblestone steps.

  Canelli had been assigned to piece together eyewitness descriptions of the murderer. Using searchlights, thirty policemen under Culligan’s direction were searching the thick foliage that bordered the stone steps, looking for the weapon. According to the medical examiner, Jonathan Bates had been killed by a single bullet from a large-caliber pistol. The bullet had passed through the body, and probably would never be found.

  Friedman and I watched two men from the coroner’s office load the body on a gurney, cover it with a green plastic sheet and secure it with three broad elastic fasteners. After a final nod from me, the men braced themselves and heaved on the gurney. Bates had weighed at least two hundred pounds.

  “Now what?” Friedman asked.

  “One of us should talk to the reporters.”

  “You want me to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to tell them much. And, for sure, we don’t want anyone else talking to them, especially about this goddam note.” He glanced down at the evidence envelope, still in his hand. “Here—you’d better take it.” As he handed over the note he said ruefully, “I don’t like the way this Masked Man operates. He’s too cool—too good.”

  Morosely, I nodded. “I know.”

  “I think,” Friedman said, “that we should be working witnesses at the bottom of the steps, once we have any kind of a description of the suspect. He must’ve had a car down there.”

  I glanced at Canelli, patiently waiting his turn to talk to me. “I’ll put Canelli on it.”

  “Right. Well, I’d better offer myself to the wolves. I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

  I turned to Canelli. “What’d you find out?”

  “Well,” he said, “we talked to everyone who was at home here when the shot was fired. There were eleven people, altogether. But it turns out that only two actually eyeballed the subject, it all happened so fast. They all agree, though, on what happened.” Canelli took out his notebook, frowning at the pages as he held it up to catch the glare of the floodlights. “First there was this teen-age girl named Carrie Woodward. She lives there, next door.” Canelli pointed. “She was in that front upstairs room, there, which is her bedroom. She was talking to her boy friend on the telephone when the shot was fired.”

  “Was she looking out the window when she heard the shot?”

  “No. But she looked out right after the shot. And she saw the whole thing. The other witness, see, was in the bathroom when he heard the shot. And by the time he—”

  “Wait, Canelli. Finish with the girl.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, Lieutenant. Well, like I said, she was talking on the phone, which has one of those long cords that all the teen-agers go for. So then, when she heard the shot, she took the phone to the window and looked down. At first, she says, she didn’t see anything. That was because of the angle, see. But then she saw Bates stagger out into the center of the lane, there, and fall down, just like he was when we got here. So, Jesus, that kind of spooked her, naturally. So she’s standing there kind of numb, I guess you’d say, when she sees this guy come out of the shrubbery, there, about twenty feet from those stairs.” He turned to point. From the spot Canelli indicated, the range would have been about fifty feet—a long shot for a pistol, at night.

  “What kind of a description did the girl give?” I asked.

  “Medium build, maybe a little less than middle height—for whatever that’s worth, considering that she was looking down at him.”

  “Black or white?”

  “White, she thought. But when I pinned her down, she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t see his face.”

  “How about his hands?”

  Canelli shrugged. “Negative, I’d say.”

  “Did you go up in her room and look down?”

  “Yessir. And it’s a pretty steep angle.”

  “How was the subject dressed?”

  “In dark pants and a short windbreaker jacket, also dark, and a stocking cap. She and the other witness both agree on that.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Well, according to the girl, the guy stepped out of the bushes and just walked over to the body, as cool and calm as anything. He had a piece of paper—this note, I guess—in his left hand. She saw him bend down over the body, and then straighten up. So then he walked right down the center of the lane to those stairs, and disappeared. She says he didn’t act nervous, or scared, or anything, and he didn’t look back. He could’ve been a mailman, she said, delivering the mail.”

  “Did she see the gun?”

  “Well”—Canelli hesitated—“she thinks she saw the gun, but I’m not all that sure she did. And neither is she, really. Maybe he already ditched it.”

  “Is this girl smart? Honest?”

  Canelli nodded. “Both. And she’s a nice kid, too. She’s sixteen and just as pretty as a picture.”

  “What about the other witness?”

  “Well, by the time he got off the can and got to the front of his house to look outside, the subject was straightening up over the body, and already walking away. And that witness—his name is Arthur Ferguson—he lives in the first house closest to the parking area—two houses to the east, in other words. So he couldn’t see much of anything but the guy’s back, walking toward the stairs.”

  “Does his description of the subject agree with the girl’s?”

  “Yessir.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to both of them tomorrow. See if you can get them to come down to the Hall, the earlier the better. Then I want you
to take five or six men and see if you can find anyone who saw the subject down at the bottom of the stairs. He must’ve had a car down there.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And when you do it, Canelli, I want you to really turn the rocks over. Roll the bastards out of bed, and get them talking. Because, by tomorrow, we’re going to be getting plenty of heat. Clear?”

  “Yessir.”

  As Canelli turned away, I saw Culligan approaching from the direction of the stairs. He carried a large plastic evidence bag, heavily weighted. He’d found the gun.

  “Where was it?” I asked, taking the bag and moving closer to one of the floodlights.

  “Close to the bottom of the stairs. It was in the bushes there, about eight feet from the left side of the stairs—the downhill side. Maybe he thought he was going to throw it a mile downhill, and it hit a tree instead.”

  The gun was a large-caliber automatic. By spreading the plastic tight across the slide, I could make out the type and caliber: a Browning .380, one of the world’s best handguns. The grips were walnut, which probably wouldn’t take fingerprints, but the slide was smooth and brightly polished. Unless the murderer had worn gloves, we might get prints. “Did you find anything else?”

  “Well,” Culligan said laconically, “we’ve got five big bags full of everything you can think of, from a pair of pink panties to a Mexican peso. But I don’t think any of it means anything.”

  “All right. Take six men and search the area where he stood.” I pointed across the lane. “There’s a .380 shell casing in there somewhere. If you find it, bring it down to the lab. I’m going to take the gun downtown myself, right now.”

  “Now?” For once, Culligan’s morose, basset-sagged face revealed surprise. “Tonight?”