by Basil Copper
He nodded and went off down the slope. I saw him tap Clark on the shoulder and then they went into a huddle. The Sheriff joined me a short while after.
‘This lot must have gone over ’bout the time we was conferring last night,’ he said drily. ‘Seems to put you in the clear.’
‘You telling me something or just thinking out loud?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘No offence, Mr Faraday, but the town pays me to suspect everybody. Now you’re off the hook. This makes it official.’
He looked moodily back down the slope. The rear of the Bugatti had broken water; I could read the red-numbered licence plate.
‘The blood groups match,’ said Clark. ‘That ties in the ice-pick. We checked hotels and bars for a good distance around; nothing’s been missed. It’s a brand made clear across the nation. Could have been purchased anywhere. Doc says the operator got to work on Holgren from the rear seat. From the angle of the first wound looks like he was talking to someone in the passenger seat when he got it.’
‘That makes two men at least,’ I said.
The Sheriff got out his old briar and put a match to the bowl. He screwed up his eyes as he drew in the smoke. He flipped his match down the slope.
‘Or a woman,’ he said.
The Examiner man came back with his cameras. He made me and Clark lean against the patrol car for pictures, then he took shots of the two of us separately. He went away pretty happy. I figured he had made around three thousand dollars in about seven minutes flat.
The car was up out of the stream now; water poured in white rivulets from the doors and windows. The noise of the winch ceased. Flash bulbs started popping down near the water’s edge; there were police photographers as well as the agency boys.
‘Seen enough or do you want to hang on here?’ said Clark, looking at me.
‘Not my case,’ I said.
He went down the slope and conferred with a small group of officers in black slickers. Then he re-joined me and we made our way up to the plank fence. The crowd was still clustered thickly along it and we had to elbow our way through. Clark did a bit of feet-stamping, judging by the row that accompanied his progress. We got into another police car. Clark drove two hundred yards down the road, turned around on a place where the verge was wider and went back the way he had come.
He had to use the siren when he got to where the crowd blocked the road; they didn’t edge away until the wings of the car were almost touching the nearest moochers. Guess they didn’t normally get so much excitement until the State Fair came around every five years. The Agano threaded its way, brown and oily through the trees. Clark switched off the siren and we rolled slowly down the steep road back to town. I could still see the Bugatti and the frozen groups around it, until a rising fold in the ground hid the scene from view. Then we hit tarmac and Clark started letting her out.
Clark dropped me back in the square when we got to town again. He leaned against the wheel and fished for his pipe.
‘I’d like a proper statement from you, Mr Faraday, just as soon as we can get around to it.’
‘Sure,’ I said. I got back in my own car. I looked at my watch. It was after two and Redbarn Autos closed at four today according to the big guy who had been so lavish with the courtesy. I drove down a few blocks, found a place to park near the garage and looked for a lunch counter where I could make a quick exit without attracting too much attention.
The waitress in the pink gingham outfit with the white Dutch collar and cuffs was inclined to be chatty but the service was good and the food not entirely expendable. I settled myself into a corner booth facing the street and finished up with two helpings of apple pie and cream. I was on my second cup of coffee and the place was thinning out around three-thirty before I saw something which interested me.
A red Simca drove up to the front of the Redbarn Auto Showrooms. A young man with dark hair, dressed in a grey suit, got out, went into the main showroom and emerged again a couple of minutes later. He drove round to the pumps at the side of the building and gassed up the car. He didn’t pay for the gas but signed a chit the attendant brought out; they chatted and joked together for a bit.
I settled up my check, left the lunch counter and got into my own car. I sat and smoked and kept an eye on Redbarn Autos. It was around a quarter past four before anything else happened. The same man in the grey suit came out from the main showroom and slammed the door behind him. He pushed it to make sure it was locked. I got ready to start the Buick but he didn’t go back to his car. He crossed the boulevard obliquely in front of me. I got out quickly, slammed my door and followed.
I didn’t have far to go. He walked easily, perhaps two blocks and stopped in front of a double-window beauty shop, all chrome and guilt. He went through a small side door. I followed and stopped almost opposite. I studied my paper while my eyes gave the door the once-over. There was a box sign set inside the top of the door which said Pool Parlour.
I dropped the paper into a lamp-post trash can, pushed open the door and went up the green-carpeted staircase. The air was close and stale in here; smelling of days-old cigarette smoke and canned beer. I followed the well-trodden, stained carpet up two flights, past flaking brown-painted doors until I came out on a landing ending in a frosted glass screen. It had Pool Parlour across it in black, semi-Gothic lettering.
I pushed open the swing-door. A man with a greasy face, wearing a green and black striped shirt sat at a table with a bottle of whisky at his elbow. My man was at the far end of the parlour; there were about five tables, full-size with green-shaded lamps hanging over them. It was fairly dark in here, but the lights were on at the table farthest from me. A few men sat along benches at the side of the room and talked or read papers; as an entertainment it wasn’t much. The man at the door talked out the corner of his mouth.
‘You want a game, mister?’
‘Just visiting,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘That’s what I figured.’
I went on down the room to the far table. My man was lining up his cue ball with the spot, making an elaborate fist of it. As I got near to him I saw that Mrs Benson hadn’t exaggerated. If it was Cheney, that is. He was a good-looking young man, but his face was weak. His heavy black hair was immaculately parted; he wore soft leather chukka boots under his narrow trousers. His hands, I saw as he cued the first shot, were well-kept but soft; he wore a thin, red silk tie, neatly knotted in under the collar of his black and white stripe shirt. That was silk too. I came up behind him and waited until he had finished the shot. He chipped the spot but his own ball failed to make the corner pocket. With that technique he would have missed the L.A. freeway tunnel.
‘Mr Cheney?’
He nodded, like he knew me. ‘Like a game?’ he said.
‘Just ten minutes of your time,’ I said.
I flashed him my licence in the plastic holder. It may have been my imagination but I thought his face changed colour. On the other hand it may have been the light in here. I put the photostat wallet back in my pocket. We went and sat down on one of the benches at the side of the long room. It was quiet up this end; the big steam pipes which ran along behind the benches gave an occasional creak, loud in the silence.
‘I believe you’re a friend of Carmen Benson,’ I said.
He selected a cigarette out of a metal case he took from his inside pocket. He didn’t offer me one. He finished lighting the cigarette before he answered.
‘I knew her,’ he said cautiously. He didn’t meet my eyes.
‘I heard it a little differently to that,’ I said.
‘You must have been talking to Sheriff Clark,’ he said with some heat. ‘I told him all I know. I don’t have to answer your questions.’
‘You don’t,’ I said, ‘but you might find it more convenient.’
‘Meaning what?’ he said.
‘Meaning that I can take short cuts where the police can’t. For instance, like finding a witness who saw you and the Benson girl together that S
aturday afternoon.’
This was a pure fabrication on my part, thrown up just for the hell of it, but it had a fantastic effect on Cheney. The cigarette fell from his suddenly trembling lips and hit a chain of fiery sparks on the dirty linoleum floor. He turned towards me with a face that looked as muddy as the Agano that morning. I bent down and picked up the cigarette and placed it on one edge of the pool table, where it wouldn’t burn the wood.
‘How the hell could you?’ he blurted out. ‘There was no-one …’ He stopped the stumbling flow of words and his face turned pink. There was a heavy silence. The old guy way up at the door looked towards us, his features a white blur in the gloom.
‘So you did see her that afternoon,’ I said.
‘Aw, go to hell, Faraday,’ he said thickly. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘I can’t prove it at the moment,’ I said. I got to my feet and looked down at his angry, twitching face. ‘Talk to me or the Sheriff.’
He got up too and faced me. His knuckles showed white on the pool cue. I side-stepped quickly and picked up one of the balls from the table. He lifted the cue above his head and then all the life seemed to go out of him. The breath came from his mouth in a loud puff of disgust and he threw the cue down on the leather bench at his side. He sat down and put his head in his hands. I walked off towards the door. I hadn’t gone two yards when I heard steps and felt his hand on my arm.
‘Wait, Mr Faraday.’ His face was agitated. Close up, he looked near to tears.
‘It isn’t that I don’t want to co-operate.
The truth is that I can’t tell you what you want to know.’
‘The choice is yours,’ I said.
‘Will you hold off for twenty-four hours?’ he said. He couldn’t meet my gaze.
‘Cream puffs like you nauseate me,’ I told him. ‘Have you any idea what the Bensons are going through?’
He bit his lip and the pink was back in his face.
‘I can’t tell you anything and that’s straight,’ he said. ‘And don’t come around the garage any more. I’ve got my living to earn.’
‘Suit yourself,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back. I think you’ll be glad to tell the truth by the time Tom Clark’s finished. They tell me Carmen Benson was a real nice girl.’
I got to the door when I heard his cue smash on the edge of the pool table. The loafers on the benches went in a sudden rush towards Cheney’s end of the room. The man on the door got up and started swearing. I went out and down the stairs. The air felt much cleaner in the street.
It was around half-past eight. The wind was rising in gusts and icy spats of rain tapped at the windows. I lay on my bed at the Pinetop Motel, rattled the ice in the bottom of my whisky glass and stared at the ceiling. The central heating gave out a pleasant warmth and the shaded lamps reinforced the feeling I should be getting soft with too much of this. So I wasn’t really sorry when the phone buzzed around a quarter to nine.
It was Grunwohl. ‘Call from L.A., Mr Faraday. You want it put through?’
‘Sure,’ I said. Why wouldn’t I want it put through?
‘How you making out, Mike?’ It was Stella.
‘So-so,’ I said. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a tough one.’
I asked her to ring up Dame Dora in the morning and report limited progress. She had a right to something for her money. I reached for a cigarette while we talked. I trailed the phone on its extension cord and went over to the window and pulled the heavy drapes.
‘You might check on a girl called Patti Morgan,’ I told Stella. ‘Works with the missing girl but omitted to tell me she also lives in Mudville. She came home with the Benson kid the night before she got lost. Might be nothing in it. Again, you never know.’
Stella took a note while I smoked on and examined one of the sporting prints on the wall. It showed an old guy being brought home on a hurdle, by folks in top hats and riding breeches. It was called ‘Return From the Hunt.’ I knew how he felt. I’ve been that way myself. But not after hunting.
‘What about Holgren?’ I asked Stella.
‘I was coming to that,’ she said patiently. ‘He was a lawyer here in L.A. Very highly respected and all that. Possible link is one of his principal clients, a General Diaz who lives on a big place just outside Mudville. I haven’t had time to check on Diaz.’
‘Good girl,’ I said. Holgren wasn’t my case but the extra information wouldn’t hurt. Diaz might bear looking into.
‘Look after yourself, Mike,’ she said. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Like always.’
I put down the phone and finished my cigarette. I got up and leafed through the Mudville phone book. I was afraid it might be ex-directory but I found Diaz lived at a house named The Palisades at a place called Barrett’s Heights. I decided to pay him a visit. That would be ex-directory too. At the back of the phone book there was a large-scale map of Mudville and the surrounding area. Barrett’s Heights looked to be about four miles on the other side of town.
I checked on the Smith-Wesson. The barrel was only a two-inch, but when I screwed the silencer on it made the whole set-up pretty long. Even so my special holster with the spring clip fitting made for a fast draw. It was always my one fear that the bulk of the silencer would impede the draw but so far it hadn’t happened. And a silencer was highly desirable in my line of business.
The shoulder-holster made a nice feel against my under-arm as I got in the Buick and drove out. It was raining sheets again but it might dry off with the wind. I stopped on the ramp, pulled the chain and let the garage door down. The parking lot was full as I gunned out of the Motel. Ever since I checked in I had promised myself a pleasant evening in the bar lowering highballs and listening to the rain battering the windows but something always conspired to stop me.
I drove quickly into town. There was nothing about on the roads; the rain wasn’t any encouragement to pleasure motoring. I noticed most of the houses I passed had their TV sets on. It was probably Groucho Marx night. By the time I got into the middle of town the rain had stopped. On the other side of town I looked at the map again. The turning was a clearly-marked one and it was a good road, well tarmaced and wide.
Presently I came to another fork with a big black and white sign; it pointed right again and directed me to Barrett’s Heights. Not surprisingly, the Buick had her nose uphill by this time and great clumps of trees, including cypress and pine, were waving in the high wind as my headlamps passed across them. I got down in low gear, switched off the main beam and crawled along the last half-mile. No sense in advertising my presence, though the wind would have covered the sound of the motor.
After a while I came to a high brick wall surrounding some big estate. Then I passed fancy iron gates set between brick pillars. There was a lodge on one side of the gates with light coming out of the windows. I drove on for several hundred yards. I pulled the car on to a grass verge under the shadow of the wall, switched off the side-lights and killed the motor. I went pussy-footing back through the wet grass to the lodge entrance. There were houses opposite but they weren’t lighted.
The gates were padlocked. Over the entrance, suspended from the brick pillars, was a sign in wrought iron which spelled out The Palisades. I looked over at the lodge. The front rooms were on a level with the gates. Bright lights burned and there were no drapes across the windows. Even as I watched the figure of a man passed across the panes. It was too risky that way. I went back to the car; I picked out my pencil flash from the dash cubby-hold and went around the back and unlocked the boot. I had a coil of rope in there for emergency. I hooked it over my arm and took it along just in case.
Then I set out to walking in the opposite direction, in the darkness made by the height of the wall. My trousers and the skirts of my raincoat were soon soaked by the grass. The wall seemed to go on for ever and just as I was thinking of going back to the car it disappeared behind some bushes; I risked a glimpse with the flash and saw there was a path between the bushes and the wall. I followed this along f
or another hundred yards; the wall went at a right-angle and was then replaced by a simple fence made of nailed two by four timbers. I climbed the fence without any difficulty and found myself in a tangle of trees and low bushes.
Another brick wall came up in front; this was broken in one place and a half-hearted attempt had been made to patch the gap with baulks of sawn pine. I left the rope coil and shinned over. I was in thick orchard ground, the trees spaced at four yard intervals; the thick, untended grass and the low-hanging branches of the soaking trees made the going even more heavy than before.
When I left the orchard the thin, diffused light from the moon, straggling behind the dark clouds, glinted briefly on glass. I crept through a row of hothouses, skirted a low box hedge and found myself out on lawn. A long way off the lights of the lodge showed through the trees. I padded on across the lawn to a tarmac area; it formed part of the drive which curved up from the lodge gates towards the house. Either there were no lights in the house itself or the trees were too thick but I couldn’t see a thing of The Palisades.
I walked quietly back from the drive and went in under the trees again. I had just got into the shadow when the lights of a car came up the road outside from the direction of Mudville. It stopped at the lodge gates but the motor kept on running. I heard a car door slam and then voices; someone came out of the lodge. An orange oblong of light leaked from the kitchen of the house and then a man’s figure crossed it. I went back farther under the trees. I knelt down behind an ornamental bush and watched. The faint chink of iron came up to me as the gates were opened; there were more muffled voices and the car door slammed again.
The headlights slashed across the bush and I ducked back. The car drove round a curve in the drive and disappeared. I followed the lights through the trees for a moment or two more and then they died. I stayed put for about a quarter of an hour but nothing else moved. The light in the room of the lodge nearest to me went out. I was getting cramped and the wet grass was soaking my trousers so I eased up.