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

by Collin Wilcox

  “Did Williams give you all these names and places?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have scared the crap out of him.”

  “What I did,” Friedman answered, “was to lay it all out for him—the whole Masked Man thing.”

  “Did you tell him that Dwyer is probably the fourth man on the list?” I asked doubtfully.

  “I did. Why not? By tomorrow, it’ll be coast-to-coast news, probably. Why should I deprive myself of leverage? And, besides, it worked. He began to sweat. Literally. By the bucket.”

  “What about the gun? After all, the gun’s the connection.”

  “Well, Williams ditched it, he says, in a garbage can in that alley—the standard procedure. And then he went through the Greek’s restaurant and got away. He laid low for a week, and then opened for business as usual. At which point he asked the Greek—whose name is Papadopolous, naturally—what about the Browning? And Papadopolous says that the pursuing officers saw Williams ditch it, and they recovered it from the garbage can—immediately.”

  “Immediately?”

  Friedman nodded slowly. “Immediately.”

  For a moment we stared at each other. Finally I said, “This will be on the record.”

  Again Friedman nodded.

  “And the gun should be in our own property room. Unless it was returned to its rightful owner, assuming it was stolen.”

  This time, Friedman shook his head. “No way. At least, not so soon. Even if the rightful owner were found quickly, it still takes a minimum of six months for him to get the gun back.”

  Another moment of silence passed. “What you’re saying,” I said slowly, “is that, officially, the .380 should still be in the property room, awaiting disposition.”

  “Correct. And I’m also saying that, very possibly, the FBI was right about the .45 all along. Maybe it was recovered.”

  “By us.”

  He nodded. “By us.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Exactly.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost midnight. Should we call Dwyer?”

  “Why don’t we wait until we know for sure—until the property room opens tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m willing.” I slid off the table. “Right now, I’d do anything in the world for a shower and eight hours’ sleep.”

  “Likewise. I hope you sleep well—but you probably won’t.”

  “Wrong. The last time I got shot at, I got a prescription for sleeping pills.”

  We went down in the elevator together, and said goodnight in the lobby. Friedman’s car was in the garage beneath the building; mine was at the curb. As I pushed open the glass doors and stepped outside, I saw a familiar figure seated on one of the huge cultured stone rectangles that were the modern equivalent of carved marble benches. It was Irving Meyer. He was dressed in a heavy shearling coat, blue jeans and the thick-soled boots he affected. Except for the expensive coat, his clothing and his long, untidy hair could have classified him as a member of a motorcycle gang. It was, I realized, one of Irving’s problems. He couldn’t quite classify himself.

  Recognizing me, he rose to his feet to face me. “My goddam bike won’t start,” he snapped. “Some son of a bitch has been screwing around with it, I think.” As he spoke, he turned to stare balefully at a chopper parked in the white zone in front of the Hall. Inwardly groaning, I asked him whether he’d like a ride home.

  “Sure,” he answered gracelessly. “But what about the goddam bike? There’s almost six thousand dollars in that mother.”

  “I’ll have it put in the garage. Is it in neutral?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Wait here.” I walked to the reception desk and gave the necessary orders. The time, I noticed, was exactly midnight. Back outside, I saw Meyer leaning against my car.

  “How’d you know this was my car?” I asked, unlocking the door for him.

  “I saw you drive up.”

  “That was a long time ago. Four or five hours.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was.” He slid into the car and sat hunched in the seat, staring straight ahead. His expression was truculent, his eyes hard and bright. As I closed the door, I caught the strong odor of alcohol.

  I started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Where to?”

  “Seacliff,” he answered abruptly. “You can go out California to Thirty-second Avenue.”

  “You’re out late,” I offered.

  “Midnight?” He snorted. “That’s not late.”

  We rode for a time in silence. Passing headlights revealed glimpses of his sulking profile. He sat with chin sunk in the sheepskin collar of his coat, still staring straight ahead. His mobile, curiously childlike mouth was twisting, as if he were mouthing a string of silent obscenities. Two days ago, in the anteroom of Dwyer’s office, he’d been communicative, almost ingratiating. Now he could have been a silent, sullen delinquent on his way to the station house.

  Was it his stalled motorcycle that troubled him?

  Or something else?

  I decided to probe. “How long have you lived in Seacliff?”

  He allowed a long, deliberate moment to pass before he said, “About nine years. Maybe ten. I forget.”

  “Then—” I hesitated, searching for the best way to phrase it: “Then you lived there before your mother and Chief Dwyer were married.”

  Again he snorted. “I was living there before my mother and my last stepfather got married.”

  For that rejoinder, I had no reply. For the bitterness in his voice and the naked rage that suddenly smoldered in his eyes, I had nothing to offer. So, for another few blocks, we rode in a strained silence.

  Finally he shifted in his seat, glancing at me. “I hear you won yourself another medal tonight.” There was a rough, jeering note latent in his voice.

  “How’d you hear that?”

  “In Communications.”

  “When? What time?”

  “About ten-thirty, I guess.”

  “Were you there with your stepfather?”

  “No. He’s home with my mother. She doesn’t like to be left alone—ever.”

  “Is she ill?”

  “She’s neurotic,” he answered flatly. It was an almost cheerfully malicious response. “Whenever things don’t go right for her, she threatens suicide. Once in a while she even tries it.”

  “You don’t sound very concerned about it.” As I turned into California Street, I looked at him. His eyes were still hard; his mouth was still twisted.

  “You can get used to anything, Lieutenant. You should know that.”

  “Except that I’m paid to get used to anything. It goes with the job.”

  “Yeah—well, I get paid, too. How do you think I got that chopper, anyhow?”

  Ruefully, I smiled. “It’s the American way, I’m beginning to think. Whenever the parents feel they’re not doing right by their children, they go out and buy a present.” As I said it, I felt myself wincing as I thought of my own children—Darrell, fourteen, and Claudia, sixteen. An heiress, my ex-wife bought the children whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. Once, in a quiet rage, I’d accused Carolyn of easing her own sense of guilt with whatever money could buy. But, when Darrell and Claudia came to visit me, I did the same. All four of us were trapped by the pointless politics of divorce.

  “The bigger the mess, the bigger the payoff,” Irving was saying.

  “What?” Distracted by my own musings, I asked the question vaguely.

  “The more they screw up, the more expensive the present. Like you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty soon, though,” he continued, “it gets so there isn’t enough money to square it. That’s the American way, too—the more you get, the more you want. Right?”

  Silently—regretfully—I nodded.

  “So pretty soon the kid wants more than money can buy,” he muttered. “That’s how it ends.” Now his voice was soft—dangerously soft, I thought. “That’s when
it all comes together. Everything.”

  “What’d you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said, “that pretty soon it all hits the fan. There’s no other way for it to end. It’s like a—a goddam merry-go-round that’s out of control. It keeps spinning faster and faster. Until pretty soon things start to fly off.”

  “And people, too,” I said. “People fly off, sometimes.”

  “I know,” he answered. “I know.” His eyes were strangely avid—as if he were seeing a vision somewhere ahead in the darkness.

  I decided to bring the conversation back to matters more factual. “How’d you get into Communications tonight?”

  For a moment he didn’t answer, still sunk in his strange, trancelike reverie. Then, rousing himself, he said, “I waited until one of the General Works inspectors was going in, and I tagged along.”

  I nodded. Anyone who could get by the Hall’s downstairs metal detector could get upstairs. For the chief’s son, the rest was easy.

  “Are you really going to submit ideas for TV scripts?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “How old are you, Irving?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Did you ever try college?”

  “Sure. Twice. Once for a semester, once for a little longer. The first time, I was kicked out for dope. The second time, it was for stealing a tape recorder.” A quick smile mocked me. “Haven’t you heard, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” I answered slowly, “I hadn’t heard.”

  “I’m surprised. I thought my reputation had preceded me, as they say.” He’d come out of the reverie. Once more his expression was petulant, his voice abrasive.

  Not replying, I signaled for the turn into Thirty-second Avenue. Bruskly, Irving directed me to a large, two-story Spanish-style house set on an expensive corner lot. Value, at least a hundred fifty thousand dollars—maybe more. As I pulled to the curb and stopped, I said, “How would you like some free advice?”

  His slow, sardonic smile was so cynical that it seemed malicious. “You’re a real crusader, aren’t you? A real do-gooder.”

  I answered his smile as I slowly reached across to open his door. “In that case, Irving, I’ll save my breath. I’m tired, and you’re pissed off. So goodnight.”

  Ten

  MY ALARM BUZZED AT seven-thirty the following morning, but I lay motionless, exhausted, with my eyes closed, allowing successive flashes of memory to piece together the previous day’s episodes: the fearfulness revealed when Dwyer’s mask slipped, the palpable tension that hummed through the Hall, finally the all-out search for Cat Williams—and Williams’ capture.

  Had it all been wasted—the manpower we’d used, the bogus role of hero-leader I’d forced on myself, Friedman’s skillful hard-line interrogation? The answer, I knew, lay in the property room records. At the thought, I opened my eyes and glanced at the bedside clock. The time was ten minutes to eight. The property room opened for business at nine.

  I pushed open the glass door marked “Property Room, Division of Records.” The time was nine o’clock. As I stepped through the door, I experienced an unaccustomed hollowness in the pit of my stomach. I was excited. If Cat Williams’ story was straight, then the .380 Browning must be tagged and indexed and stored in one of the dozen-odd steel bins reserved for confiscated firearms.

  Yet, Wednesday night, Culligan had found the .380 in the bushes beside the stone steps leading up to Machondray Lane.

  In the old Hall of Justice, bordering San Francisco’s vintage Montgomery Street block, the property room had always reminded me of an old-fashioned bank, with the manager and his assistant seated at sturdy wooden desks behind a formidably solid spindle-turned oak railing with a swinging gate at its center. The visitor approached the railing, stated his business and waited for a pass-through.

  In the new glass-and-concrete Hall, the oak railing had been replaced by a plastic-topped counter. The gate was a swinging slab of aluminum and formica, buzzer-controlled. Sergeant Bert Mobley’s squared-off metal desk was on the left side of the anteroom as I faced the counter. Mobley’s assistant, Patrolman Ross Jamison, had his desk on the right side. Behind the two desks was a reinforced metal door of the type used for holding cells.

  Mobley’s desk was empty. Jamison frowned as he looked up, then hastily rose as he recognized me. He got to his feet and came around his desk to meet me at the counter. “Hello, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

  I’d written Williams’ name on a slip of paper, together with a complete description of the Browning automatic. I’d also included Williams’ FBI identification number, under which any firearms impounded from him were filed. “What can you tell me about that gun?” I asked.

  I watched Ross Jamison draw the paper toward him, frowning self-importantly. Jamison was one of the department’s “soft” ones, a bank teller who’d somehow become a policeman. He’d been defeated on the streets; he hadn’t been tough enough or quick enough or shrewd enough to survive—or brave enough, either. Now, a pudgy, fussy thirty-six, Jamison was reduced to clucking over the disposition of the contraband treasure hoarded behind the property room’s thick metal door.

  “Do you want to see the gun?” he asked, pursing his small, precise mouth. “Is that what you want?”

  “First,” I answered, “I’d like to find out everything you have on it—where and how we got it, what we’ll do with it, where it is right now.”

  Jamison nodded, blinked, took my slip of paper and turned to a wall lined with countless filing drawers scaled to 5 x 7 cards. He was, I knew, looking for the drawer that listed Williams’ FBI number. I saw him open a drawer, watched him riffle expertly through the cards, finally extracting one with a small, smug finger-flourish.

  “Here we are.” He came toward the counter, reading as he walked. “Browning automatic pistol, caliber .380, serial number L-56983-J. First purchased in 1962 by Victor A. Hunsicker, M.D., of Los Angeles, reported stolen in August of last year by Victor Hunsicker, verified by L.A.P.D. No report until June twelfth of this year, when Patrolman Timothy Byrnes, Northern Station, shield number 8751, recovered the weapon during an unsuccessful foot pursuit of subject identified as George ‘Cat’ Williams.”

  “In other words, the gun is here.”

  “Yessir.” Again he flipped the card. “It’s in section C, drawer 62.”

  “Get it for me, will you?”

  “Yessir.” He slid the card across the black plastic counter top, at the same time smartly withdrawing a ball-point pen from his uniform pocket. He clicked the pen and offered it to me with a small flourish. “If you’ll just sign there, sir,” he said, faintly smiling.

  I looked at the card. “No one has signed it out, I see.”

  “No, sir. I imagine there hasn’t been a trial date set. Or possibly the suspect isn’t in custody.”

  “He is now,” I answered. I signed the card and slid it across to him. He took the card and noted the box number on a small call slip, which he initialed and time-stamped. He returned the card to the drawer, then turned to the heavy metal door. Using two keys to open the double-locked door, he nodded to me, smiled perfunctorily and disappeared. A moment later, Sergeant Bert Mobley entered the small waiting room.

  “Hello, Lieutenant.”

  “Hello, Bert.”

  “What can we do for you?”

  “Jamison’s already doing it, thanks.”

  Mobley was a wiry, quick-moving man of about forty. He spoke like he moved: quickly and decisively. His face was pale and perpetually drawn, as if he were in pain. His piercing blue eyes were never still. Because of a glandular deficiency resulting from injury, Mobley was hairless: totally bald, with no eyebrows. He was constantly in motion, irresistibly driven by a constant charge of nervous energy that was Mobley’s master, not his servant. We’d joined the force at about the same time, twelve years ago. We’d both been overage rookies: Mobley had been twenty-eight, I’d been thirty-two. Within three years, we’d both made inspector, each of us off to
a fast start. But, two years later, a one-in-a-million ricochet had shattered Mobley’s trachea, then plowed down through his body, doing diabolical damage. He’d been in intensive care for three weeks, in the hospital for three months, on sick leave for a year, during which time he’d endured four operations. Except for his hairless head, there were no visible scars—when his collar was buttoned. The invisible scars Bert kept to himself. His request for active duty was denied, and the job of property custodian offered instead. Stoically Bert had taken the job. When his wife left him two years later, Bert began drinking.

  Even though we’d never really been friendly, I’d always been conscious of a special series of coincidences that connected my life with Mobley’s. He’d been a fighter pilot, a squadron commander—but he couldn’t find a job flying in civilian life. I’d been a football player, an all-American candidate at Stanford, then a second-string fullback for the Detroit Lions. For both of us, police work represented a compromise—one last chance. We’d both married desirable women; for a while others had envied us. But then, in his thirties, Bert had stopped a bullet. My problems began more subtly. I’d married an heiress to a Detroit manufacturing fortune. For the first few years of my marriage, we’d been heedlessly happy: a good-looking, sought-after couple. But the cartilage in my left knee had broken down, and the Lions released me. A year later, I was working in public relations for my father-in-law. My job classification was “client relations.” Translation: I met important visitors at the airport, got them settled, entertained them between business meetings and returned them to the airport. If the client wanted to drink, I drank with him. If he wanted a girl, I found one for him. Slowly, my life lost definition, moving in and out of focus as both my working days and my private life began inexorably revolving around an endless series of parties and expensive restaurants—always with a drink in my hand. At about the time I realized that I couldn’t quite get through a day without a drink—and didn’t really care—my wife’s attorney walked into my office and announced that Carolyn wanted a divorce. All she wanted, he said, was the children—just the children. It was a—