The Galton Case

by Ross Macdonald

  “And now he’s stopped breathing.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You could have hired a gun to knock him off. He was threatening to make trouble for you. You have a lot to lose.” I didn’t believe it, but I wanted to see what she would make of it.

  Her two hands went to her breasts and grasped them cruelly. “Me? You think I’d do that?”

  “To keep your husband and son, you would. Did you?”

  “No. For God’s sake, no.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Why do you say that?” Her eyes were dull with the sickness of the past.

  “Because I want you to keep what you have.”

  “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “I’m going to, though. I’m going to keep you out of the Culligan case. As for the information you’ve given me, I’m going to use it for private reference only. It would be easier for me if I didn’t—”

  “So you want to be paid for your trouble, is that it?”

  “Yes, but not in money. I want your confidence, and any other information you can give me.”

  “But there isn’t any more. That’s all there is.”

  “What happened to Shoulders?”

  “I don’t know. He must of got away. I never heard of him again.”

  “Culligan never mentioned him?”

  “No. Honest.”

  “And you never brought the subject up?”

  “No. I was too much of a coward.”

  A car entered the driveway. She started, and went to the window. The light outside was turning dusky gray. In the yard across the street, red roses burned like coals. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, as if she wanted to wipe out all her past experiences, live innocent in an innocent world.

  The little boy burst through the door. Matheson came at his heels, balancing a cake box in his hands.

  “Well, I got the darn thing.” He thrust it into my hands. “That takes care of the church supper.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said brusquely, and turned to his wife: “Is supper ready? I’m starved.”

  She stood on the far side of the room, cut off from him by the ugliness. “I didn’t make supper.”

  “You didn’t make it? What is this? You said you’d have it ready when I got home.”

  Hidden forces dragged at her face, widening her mouth, drawing deep lines between her eyes. Suddenly her eyes were blind with tears. The tears ran in the furrows of her face. Sobbing, she sat on the edge of the hearth like an urchin on a curb.

  “Marian? What’s the mater? What’s the trouble, kiddie?”

  “I’m not a good wife to you.”

  Matheson went across the room to her. He sat on the hearth beside her and took her in his arms. She buried her face in his neck.

  The boy started toward them, and then turned back to me. “Why is Mother crying?”

  “People cry.”

  “I don’t cry,” he said.

  chapter 14

  I DROVE back across the ridge toward the last fading light in the sky. On the road that wound down to Luna Bay I passed an old man with a burlap bag on his back. He was one of the old-time hoboes who follow the sun like migratory birds. But the birds fly, and the men walk. The birds mate and nest; the old men have no nests. They pace out their lives along the roadsides.

  I stopped and backed up and gave him the cake.

  “Thank you very kindly.” His mouth was a rent in shaggy fur. He put the cake in his bag. It was a cheap gift, so I gave him a dollar to go with it. “Do you want a ride into town?”

  “No, thank you very kindly. I’d smell up your car.”

  He walked away from me with a long, slow, swinging purposeless stride, lost in a dream of timeless space. When I passed him, he didn’t raise his bearded head. He was like a moving piece of countryside on the edge of my headlight beam.

  I had fish and chips at a greasy spoon and went to the sheriff’s substation. It was eight by the clock on the wall above Mungan’s desk. He looked up from his paperwork:

  “Where you been? The Brown kid’s been looking for you.”

  “I want to see him. Do you know where he went?”

  “Over to Doc Dineen’s house. They’re pretty good friends. He told me that the doc is teaching him how to play chess. That game was always a little over my head. Give me a hand of poker any time.”

  I went around the end of the counter and complied with his request, in a way:

  “I’ve been doing some asking around. A couple of things came up that ought to interest you. You say you knew some of the hoods in these parts, back in the early thirties. Does the name Culligan mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah. Happy Culligan, they called him. He was in the Red Horse mob.”

  “Who were his friends?”

  “Let’s see.” Mungan stroked his massive chin. “There was Rossi, Shoulders Nelson, Lefty Dearborn—all of them Lempi’s guns. Culligan was more the operator type, but he liked to hang around with the guns.”

  “What about Shoulders Nelson?”

  “He was about the hardest limb in the bunch. Even his buddies were afraid of him.” A trace of his boyhood admiration showed in Mungan’s eyes. “I saw him beat Culligan to a pulp one night. They both wanted the same girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “One of the girls upstairs at the Red Horse. I didn’t know her name. Nelson shacked up with her for a while, I heard.”

  “What did Nelson look like?”

  “He was a big man, almost as big as me. The women went for him, he must have been good-looking to them. I never thought so, though. He was a mean-looking bastard, with a long sad face and mean eyes. Him and Rossi and Dearborn got sent up the same time as Lempi.”

  “To Alcatraz?”

  “Lempi went there, when the Government took it over. But the others took the fall on a larceny charge. Highjacking. The three of them went to San Quentin.”

  “What happened to them after that?”

  “I didn’t keep any track of them. I wasn’t in law enforcement at the time. Where is all this supposed to be leading?”

  “Shoulders Nelson may be the killer you want,” I said. “Would your Redwood City office have a dossier on him?”

  “I doubt that. He hasn’t been heard of around here in more than twenty-five years. It was a state case, anyway.”

  “Then Sacramento should have it. You could have Redwood City teletype them.”

  Mungan spread his hands on the desk-top and stood up, wagging his big head slowly from side to side. “If all you got is a hunch, you can’t use official channels to test it out for you.”

  “I thought we were co-operating.”

  “I am. You’re not. I’ve been doing the talking, you’ve been doing the listening. And this has been going on for quite some time.”

  “I told you Nelson’s probably our killer. That’s a fairly big mouthful.”

  “By itself, it doesn’t do anything for me.”

  “It could if you let it. Try querying Sacramento.”

  “What’s your source of information?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Like that, eh?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Mungan looked down at me in a disappointed way. Not surprised, just disappointed. We had had the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but I had proved unworthy.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I hope I do. You think about this Nelson angle. It’s worth going into. You could earn yourself some very nice publicity.”

  “I don’t give a damn about publicity.”

  “Good for you.”

  “And you can go to hell.”

  I didn’t blame him for blowing off. It’s tough to live with a case for half a year and then watch it elope with a casual pickup.

  But I couldn’t afford to leave him feeling sore. I didn’t even want to. I went outside the counter and sat down on a wooden bench ag
ainst the wall. Mungan resumed his place at his desk and avoided looking at me. I sat there like a penitent while the minute hand of the clock took little pouncing bites of eternity.

  At eight-thirty-five Mungan got up and made an elaborate show of discovering me:

  “You still here?”

  “I’m waiting for a friend—a lawyer from down south. He said he’d be here by nine o’clock.”

  “What for? To help you to pick my brains?”

  “I don’t know why you’re browned off, Mungan. This is a big case, bigger than you realize. It’s going to take more than one of us to handle it.”

  “What makes it so big?”

  “The people involved, the money, and the names. At this end we have the Red Horse gang, or what’s left of it; at the other end, one of the richest and oldest families in California. It’s their lawyer I’m expecting, a man named Sable.”

  “So what? I get down on my knees? I give everybody an even shake, treat ‘em all alike.”

  “Mr. Sable may be able to identify those bones of yours.”

  Mungan couldn’t repress his interest. “He the one you talked to on the phone?”

  “He’s the one.”

  “You’re working on this case for him?”

  “He hired me. And he may be bringing some medical data that will help us identify the remains.”

  Mungan went back to his paperwork. After a few minutes, he said casually:

  “If you’re working for a lawyer, it lets you off the hook. It gives you the same rights of privacy a lawyer has. You probably wouldn’t know that, but I’ve made quite a study of the law.”

  “It’s news to me,” I lied.

  He said magnanimously: “People in general, even law officers, they don’t know all the fine points of the law.”

  His pride and his integrity were satisfied. He called the county courthouse and asked them to get a rundown on Nelson from Sacramento.

  Gordon Sable walked in at five minutes to nine. He had on a brown topcoat and a brown Homburg, and a pair of yellow pigskin driving gloves. The lids of his gray eyes were slightly inflamed. His mouth was drawn down at the corners, and lines of weariness ran from them to the wings of his nose.

  “You made a quick trip,” I said.

  “Too quick to suit me. I didn’t get away until nearly three o’clock.”

  He looked around the small office as if he doubted that the trip had been worth making. Mungan rose expectantly. “Mr. Sable, Deputy Mungan.”

  The two men shook hands, each of them appraising the other.

  “Glad to meet you,” Mungan said. “Mr. Archer tells me you’ve got some medical information about this—these remains we turned up last spring.”

  “That may be.” Sable glanced sideways at me. “How much more detail did you go into?”

  “Just that, and the fact that the family is important. Were not going to be able to keep them anonymous from here on in.”

  “I realize that,” he snapped. “But let’s get the identification established first, if we can. Before I left, I talked to the doctor who set the broken arm. He did have X-ray pictures taken, but unfortunately they don’t survive. He has his written record, however, and he gave me the—ah—specifications of the fracture.” Sable produced a folded piece of paper from an inner pocket. “It was a clean break in the right humerus, two inches above the joint. The boy sustained it falling off a horse.”

  Mungan said: “It figures.”

  Sable turned to him. “May we see the exhibit in question?”

  Mungan went into the back room.

  “Where’s the boy?” Sable said in an undertone.

  “At a friend’s house, playing chess. I’ll take you to him when we finish here.”

  “Tony was a chess-player. Do you really think he’s Tony’s son?”

  “I don’t know. I’m waiting to have my mind made up for me.”

  “By the evidence of the bones?”

  “Partly. I’ve got hold of another piece of evidence that fits in. Brown has been identified from one of Tony Galton’s pictures.”

  “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I didn’t know it before.”

  “Who’s your witness?”

  “A woman named Matheson in Redwood City. She’s Culligan’s ex-wife and Galton’s ex-nurse. I’ve made a commitment to keep her name out of the police case.”

  “Is that wise?” Sable’s voice was sharp and unpleasant.

  “Wise or not, it’s the way it is.”

  We were close to quarreling. Mungan came back into the room and cut it short. The bones rattled in his evidence box. He hoisted it onto the counter and raised the lid. Sable looked down at John Brown’s leavings. His face was grave.

  Mungan picked out the arm bone and laid it on the counter. He went to his desk and came back with a steel foot-rule. The break was exactly two inches from the end.

  Sable was breathing quickly. He spoke in repressed excitement: “It looks very much as if we’ve found Tony Galton. Why is the skull missing? What was done to him?”

  Mungan told him what he knew. On the way to the Dineen house I told Sable the rest of it.

  “I have to congratulate you, Archer. You certainly get results.”

  “They fell into my lap. It’s one of the things that made me suspicious. Too many coincidences came together—the Culligan murder, the Brown-Galton murder, the Brown-Galton boy turning up, if that’s who he is. I can’t help feeling that the whole business may have been planned to come out this way. There are mobsters involved, remember. Those boys look a long way ahead sometimes, and they’re willing to wait for their payoff.”

  “Payoff?”

  “The Galton money. I think the Culligan killing was a gang killing. I think it was no accident that Culligan came to work for you three months ago. Your house was a perfect hide-out for him, and a place where he could watch developments in the Galton family.”

  “For what possible purpose?”

  “My thinking hasn’t got that far,” I said. “But I’m reasonably certain that Culligan didn’t go there on his own.”

  “Who sent him?”

  “That’s the question.” After a pause, I said: “How is Mrs. Sable, by the way?”

  “Not good. I had to put her in a nursing home. I couldn’t leave her by herself at home.”

  “I suppose it’s the Culligan killing that got her down?”

  “The doctors seem to think it’s what triggered her breakdown. But she’s had emotional trouble before.”

  “What sort of emotional trouble?”

  “I’d just as soon not go into it,” he said bleakly.

  chapter 15

  DR. DINEEN came to the door in an ancient smoking-jacket made of red velvet which reminded me of the plush in old railway coaches. His wrinkled face was set in a frown of concentration. He looked at me impatiently:

  “What is it?”

  “I think we’ve identified your skeleton.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Through the mended break in the arm bone. Dr. Dineen, this is Mr. Sable. Mr. Sable’s an attorney representing the dead man’s family.”

  “Who were his family?”

  Sable answered: “His true name was Anthony Galton. His mother is Mrs. Henry Galton of Santa Teresa.”

  “You don’t say. I used to see her name on the society pages. She cut quite a swathe at one time.”

  “I suppose she did,” Sable said. “She’s an old woman now.”

  “We all grow older, don’t we? But come in, gentlemen.”

  He stood back to let us enter. I turned to him in the hallway:

  “Is John Brown with you?”

  “He is, yes. I believe he was trying to locate you earlier in the evening. At the moment he’s in my office studying the chessboard. Much good may it do him. I propose to beat him in six more moves.”

  “Can you give us a minute, Doctor, by ourselves?”

  “If it’s important, and I gather it is.
”

  He steered us into a dining-room furnished in beautiful old mahogany. Light from a yellowing crystal chandelier fell on the dark wood and on the sterling tea set which stood in geometrical order on the tall buffet. The room recalled the feeling I’d had that morning, that the doctor’s house was an enclave of the solid past.

  He sat at the head of the table and placed us on either side of him. Sable leaned forward across the corner of the table. The events of the day and the one before it had honed his profile sharp:

  “Will you give me your opinion of the young man’s moral character?”

  “I entertain him in my house. That ought to answer your question.”

  “You consider him a friend?”

  “I do, yes. I don’t make a practice of entertaining casual strangers. At my age you can’t afford to waste your time on second-rate people.”

  “Does that imply that he’s a first-rate person?”

  “It would seem to.” The doctor’s smile was slow, and almost indistinguishable from his frown. “At least he has the makings. You don’t ask much more from a boy of twenty-two.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “All his life, if you count our initial introduction. Mr. Archer may have told you that I brought him into the world.”

  “Are you certain this is the same boy that you brought into the world?”

  “I have no reason to doubt it.”

  “Would you swear to it, Doctor?”

  “If necessary.”

  “It may be necessary. The question of his identity is a highly important one. A very great deal of money is involved.”

  The old man smiled, or frowned. “Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed. Money is only money, after all. I don’t believe John is particularly hungry for money. As a matter of fact, this development will be quite a blow to him. He came here in the hope of finding his father, alive.”