by Day Keene
“No, sir.”
Flagle sorted through the papers in the manila envelope. They were mainly statements of record, a deed to the court, fire and wind and liability insurance policies, and receipted bills. “No will, eh?”
“I couldn’t find one,” Sheriff Cooper said.
Captain Marks said, “I doubt Nelson was thinking that far ahead. As I see it, the money is secondary. Nelson had a good thing. He knew it. He wanted to hang onto it. And when the girl told him she was through, he lost his head.”
Finished with the papers in the envelope, Flagle dumped the contents of Corliss’ white purse on the dresser and pushed the various items around on the glass. Pleased, he straightened out and held up a crumpled rectangle of white paper. “This is it.”
Captain Marks got up to look at it. It was a safe-deposit bank form. The kind you have to fill out when you want to get in your box. Corliss had dated it wrong, scratched out the date, then, evidently, crumpled it into her purse and filled out another form.
Flagle asked Wally if Corliss had a safe-deposit box in San Diego.
“Yeah. I think she did,” Wally said. “In fact, I know she did. Because once when we had a chance to get a good buy in whisky if we took fifty cases and paid cash, she said she didn’t have that much in her checking account at the moment, but if the salesman would wait she would drive into Dago and get the money from her box. And she did.”
Meek whined from the doorway, “So she got some more this afternoon. And you took it off her, huh, Nelson?”
Wally was fair. “No. I’m not standing up for Nelson, see? But right is right. And I don’t think he took no money off Corliss.”
“Why not?” Flagle asked him.
Wally said, “Because the first night he showed up I take his dough away from him for safekeeping. And he’s loaded. He has fourteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars on him.”
“I seem,” Flagle said sourly, “to have chosen the wrong profession.”
My coat was as wet with sweat as it had been the night I killed Wolkowysk. I tried to make them understand. “Look, gentlemen. Something is very wrong here. I don’t think Corliss is dead. If she is, I didn’t kill her. I know.”
“How do you know?” Flagle asked.
“Because I couldn’t do such a thing. No matter how drunk I was. I couldn’t kill a woman.”
“You don’t know what you could or couldn’t do,” Flagle said. “Your type of man doesn’t know the meaning of normalcy, Nelson. You live for thrills, one emotional aphrodisiac piled on top of another. By your own admission you’ve had master’s papers for years, but you prefer to sail as first mate to avoid responsibility. You’ve been a deepsea diver. You’ve hunted diamonds in Africa while other men had to keep their noses to a desk or a workbench. All your life you’ve done just as you pleased. You’ve poked your nose into all the odd corners of the world. You’ve been a soldier of fortune. You’ve risked your life time after time — for a thrill. And this time you went too far.”
Flagle paced the floor of the cottage, then stopped in front of me again.
“Look at it as a jury will see it. Your ship berthed four days ago. You say you bought a bus ticket for Hibbing, Minnesota. You say you intended to buy a farm and get married and settle down. We know you went on a drunk. We know you got in a crap game at the Beachcomber. We know you hit a man named Corado so hard you almost killed him. We know Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Mason then, took pity on you and brought you here to her own court for safekeeping. You’re big, good-looking, virile. Corliss Mason, a young widow, with all a young woman’s normal passion and desire, became infatuated with you. You wanted a woman, by then a particular woman. But there was only one way you could have the particular woman you wanted. Somehow you persuaded Corliss Mason to marry you. But did you behave as a normal bridegroom might be expected to behave? No. After you got what you wanted, you went right on with your drunk, submitting her to God knows what indignities. You stayed sodden drunk for three days. Then when she realized what a heel you were and told you to get out, you stripped her and abused her. Then you killed her and hid her body.”
“That’s a lie.”
I brought up my manacled hands. The chain caught Flagle under the chin, snapping his head back.
Then Harris took a quick step forward and hit me. Back of my left ear. With a blackjack. Panting, “You bastard. You lousy Swede bastard.”
The blow knocked me to my knees, then flat on the deck. My cap rolled under the bed. The metal object I’d noticed before was less than an inch from my eyes.
Captain Marks’ voice was a great surge of sound beating at me like breakers against a coral reef.
“We’ve had enough trouble with you, Nelson. Start talking. What did you do with your wife’s body?”
I lay looking at the metal object.
Corliss was dead. The assumption was that I’d killed her. The law said we had left the Purple Parrot together, in her car, and neither of us had been seen again until Officers Thomas and Morton had curbed me in San Mateo, roaring drunk, offering to fight every cop in California.
Corliss hadn’t returned to the Purple Parrot. She hadn’t been seen since she had left with me.
Then what was her wedding ring, slightly too large for her finger, doing almost lost in the white loop pile of the new rug we’d bought to replace the one on which Lippy Saltz, alias Jerry Wolkowysk, had died?
Chapter Eighteen
I looked at the ring for a long time. It had been on Corliss’ finger, under the engagement ring, while she’d been eating in the bar. I remembered seeing it, distinctly. From time to time Corliss had twisted it around on her finger as she talked.
“As long as you feel the way you do about me, you can’t really love me. So let’s call it quits. Maybe next time we’ll both do better.”
Her cheeks wet with tears. Between bites of prime ribs au jus. With no mention of Wolkowysk.
My cap had rolled under the bed. I reached for it and picked up the ring at the same time, tucking it under the sweatband of the cap. Showing the ring to Flagle, Marks, or Cooper wouldn’t get me a thing. They knew I’d killed Corliss. So it was her wedding ring. I couldn’t prove she’d been wearing it when we’d left the Purple Parrot. But she had. And sometime after she’d driven away with me Corliss had returned to the cottage.
Captain Marks helped me to my feet. “How about it, Nelson? Are you going to talk or do we have to turn on the heat?”
“O.K.,” I lied. “I killed her. I’ll tell you what.”
“What?” Flagle asked flatly.
I bargained. “I’ll trade you a full confession and the body for permission to take a shower and put on a clean uniform.”
Flagle nodded. “That’s a deal. Now you’re being sensible, Nelson. What did you do with the body?”
I held out my manacled hands. “Uh-uh. Not so fast. First the shower and the change of clothes.”
Marks detailed one of his men to guard me. As I soaped myself I studied the purple and green bruises on my thighs, my abdomen, my arms. I hadn’t taken a beating. I’d been worked over. My body looked as if someone had used a tire iron on it, enjoying what she was doing. A bee. A man. What was the difference? Only wings.
Out in the living bay, still cool and detached, Green joined the conversation. “So you’ve cracked your case, gentlemen.”
“That’s right,” Captain Marks said, pleased. He laughed. “A bath for a confession and a body. Nelson must like to be clean.”
“Yes. He must,” Green said.
Flagle asked him if there was anything new on the Lippy Saltz affair.
“No. Not as yet,” Green said. “But I think there may be some developments before the night is over.”
Here in the night-filled hills rising sheer from the coast highway the only sounds were the crackling of brush and the heavy breathing of the long line of men behind me.
“How much farther?” Captain Marks asked.
“Not far now,” I lied
. “On top of the next hill, then across a flat space. What do you call them?”
“A plateau?”
“Yeah. That’s right. A plateau.”
Flagle asked, “What gave you the idea of hiding the body in a cave, Nelson?”
I said, “I came here once with a girl.” That much was true. “We had a picnic.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Harris said.
I quit the narrow trail through the greasewood and heather and cut across a rock fall to make the going tougher. Captain Marks had unlocked one of the cuffs before we started to climb. It jangled with every step. I experimented by putting the cuff in my coat pocket, but it was almost impossible to climb with only one hand.
Behind me, Flagle said, “The time element checks. It’s been an hour and forty minutes since we left the Purple Parrot. But where are we?”
“I’ll be damned if I know,” Marks said.
Sheriff Cooper knew his coastline. “Back of Malibu, I think. Yes. I’m positive we are. Judging by the stars, we’ve been angling north and west since we left Topanga Canyon. As I recall, the highway is just the other side of this ridge. At the foot of a steep cliff.”
“Oh, yes,” Flagle grunted. “Of course. Where the highway department had all that trouble with rock falls.”
“That’s the place,” Cooper said.
I climbed on, smelling the sea again. I’d been here once before. With a girl. The spot for which I was headed was a rock ridge in the coastal range slightly higher than its fellows. It was a half mile in through the brush from a small road winding north by northeast from a point halfway through Topanga Canyon. The sheer cliff that Cooper had mentioned rose from the west shoulder of U.S. 101 on the right-hand side of the road as you headed north toward Frisco. By car U.S. 101 was a good seven miles away. Straight down the cliff it was only a little better than two thousand feet.
From the top of the cliff you could see for miles in all directions. While we had eaten our lunch, the girl and I had discussed the possibility of an agile man descending the cliff. She’d said it couldn’t be done. I’d thought that I could do it. I’d know in a few minutes.
We’d been on level ground for some time now. Flagle quickened his steps in suspicion. His fingers bit into my shoulder. “Just a minute, Nelson. There are no caves up here. What are you trying to pull?”
I turned and faced him. The next nearest man, a San Mateo County trooper, was fifteen feet back of Flagle. The other men were strung out behind the trooper, their flashlights and lanterns giant fireflies hobbling up the rock.
I drove my fist into Flagle’s stomach.
He staggered back into the trooper. I raced for the lip of the cliff. On the edge of it, I looked back. In the light of Flagle’s electric lantern I could see that the trooper had drawn his gun. Flagle was standing with both hands pressed to his stomach. As I watched him, he gasped:
“Don’t just stand there. Shoot him.”
A bullet smacked into the trunk of the gnarled live-oak tree beside which I was standing. I went on over the cliff, too fast, my legs churning, trying to dig in with my heels, starting a series of miniature rock slides as I skidded into space.
I caught at an outcropping of sage. It pulled out by the roots. I caught at some greasewood. It held, twisting me in air, slamming me down on my belly at the edge of a twenty-foot drop.
A dozen flashlights stabbed down the cliff. Sheriff Cooper swore.
“The fool can’t possibly make it. He’ll break his neck. But just in case — you, Harris. Johnson. Highball it back to the cars and get down below there as fast as you can.”
A bullet ricocheted off the rock, too close. I eased my body over the drop, hung on with my fingers, and let go. I landed in a crouch and rolled to break my fall, but I rolled too far, the momentum of my body propelling me down another steep series of slopes to wind up wedged between the cliff and the trunk of a live oak growing out into space.
I lay for a long time, breathless, trying to force myself to move, afraid. Then I realized that while the men on top of the cliff could hear me, they couldn’t see me because of the outcropping. They were shouting at sounds. I could afford to be cautious now.
I lay a moment longer looking down at the speeding cars on U.S. 101. They looked like toys, with Christmastree bulbs for headlights. Beyond them was a necklace of lights formed by the beach houses of Malibu.
I unwedged myself and felt for toe- and handholds. Occasionally I found a chimney or a split where I could use my back. The last three hundred feet were the hardest. I inched down them, clinging to the rock like a fly. I thought twice the wind was going to blow me off. My fingers grew numb with strain. The muscles in my legs began to jerk. Then I was at the foot of the cliff, leaning against the rock, not knowing how much time had passed, not caring much, sick with simultaneous fear and relief.
When I could, I staggered across the highway in a lull between cars to the dubious shelter of a narrow beach. I found a shallow pool in the sand left by the outgoing tide and washed the sweat and blood from my hands and face and hair. The clean uniform I’d put on was powdered with rock dust. Both knees of my pants were torn.
I made myself as decent as I could. Then I limped south down the beach toward the neon sign of a bar. When I reached the bar I cut back to the highway, standing in just enough light to be seen, giving every car headed south the thumb.
The seventh car stopped. An omen? “Where to, mate?” the driver asked.
I said, “How far you going?”
“Dago,” he said.
I said, “Swell,” and got in, keeping my manacled hand in my right coat pocket.
The lad who’d picked me up eased his car into gear. “Passenger or freighter, mate?”
I said, “Freighter.” I was still breathing hard. “How come you stopped for me? You do a hitch in the merchant marine?”
He laughed self-consciously. “You guessed it. In the port captain’s office in Pedro. I had a very dangerous job. I ran an L. C. Smith.”
I wished he would drive faster. I wanted to get back to the Purple Parrot before the law did. I wanted to push him out of the car and take over the wheel. I laughed, politely. “The paper work has to be done.” He said, “Yeah. I guess so.”
He drove a little faster. The tires made a nice sound on the pavement. I let him do the talking.
He said, “Fifty times I bet you I hoofed one-o-one to L.A. I mean during the war. Some folks would pick up sailors or marines. Some would pick up soldiers. But to hell with the merchant marine. Only once I got picked up. Then the guy was a fairy. So the day it all wound up, I said to myself any time I pass a real sailor I hope I should have a flat tire.”
I settled back on the seat. “This is a break, fellow. Thanks. You live in Dago?”
He said, “That’s right. I’m working out at the base. In a civilian capacity.” He grinned sideways at me. “Get in a little rhubarb back there in that joint where I picked you up, mate?”
I grunted, “Yeah,” and let it go at that. To prove what a tough sailor he’d been, he began a long story, with details, about a go-round he’d got into with a grease monkey from Lockheed.
I rode only half listening to him, just enough to grunt in the proper places, thinking about Corliss.
“Please. Don’t make me hate you, Swede,” she’d said. “Don’t spoil something that may be very beautiful for both of us. I have a distinct aversion to being forced. When I go to bed with you, if I do, this time it’s for keeps.”
That was for sure. Then there was the business about the iron. Corliss said she’d washed and ironed my clothes, but it had been Mamie who had the burn. I might have known. I should have known. There’d been warning buoys and shoal markers all over the place. But I hadn’t been able to see them for all that golden hair.
I knew now why Wally and Meek had laughed at me. They had reason to laugh. I might, or I might not, get away with killing Lippy Saltz, alias Jerry Wolkowysk. But body or no body, Corliss was my baby. Corliss
was pinned on me.
I tried to remember the technical term. I couldn’t. But I remembered reading of a similar case where a husband had been convicted of and executed for the murder of his wife without a corpus delicti. The court had accepted what it had called reasonable proof of death.
I drew up the indictment against me.
Corliss and I had quarreled. She’d told me to get out. She’d told me she was through, in front of witnesses. I was known to have a temper. I was out on bail for hitting one man too hard. I had been drunk for four days. We’d left the Purple Parrot together. I’d been arrested five hours later, ninety miles away. With a discharged gun, Corliss’ car, and her bloodstained clothes in my possession. The blood on the clothes and in the back of the car checked with her known blood classification. Corliss had disappeared. If that didn’t add up to reasonable proof of death, there weren’t thirty-two points of the compass.
The lad driving finished his story. “So I hit him. With all I had, see? And brother, I mean I knocked him for a loop.”
He realized he’d done all the talking and coughed, suddenly self-conscious.
“How did you make out in your fight, mate?”
“I lost my cap,” I told him.
Chapter Nineteen
We passed through Balboa, then Corona Del Mar. The lad driving asked if I wanted to stop for a beer. I could have used one. I said, “No.”
He shrugged and crawled into a shell of silence. As we rounded the bend near Laguna Beach, the headlights of his car picked up the barn of the roadhouse where Lippy Saltz had laid low. He wasn’t being missed. There was a new night man back of the bar. The Beachcomber was still doing business. Men were bellied to the wood, wanting whisky, wanting women. Couples were dancing to the music of the juke box. But Lippy Saltz, alias Jerry Wolkowysk, was fish food. Battered chum. Possibly somewhere out in the Pacific in the belly of a shark, or wedged in the kelp with the crabs working on him, the quarter of a million dollars he’d got in the Palmer affair not doing him a bit of good.
It was suddenly hot in the car. I asked my host if I could roll down the window on my side.