“Get it through your head, Randy, I don’t want you. I want your information.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“What do you want?”
He answered quickly and ardently, like a man who has been defrauded of his rights: “I want a fair shake for once in my life. And enough money to live on. How can a man help breaking the law if he don’t have money to live on?”
It was a good question.
“If I had my rights,” he went on, “I’d be a rich man. I wouldn’t be living on tortillas and chili.”
“Are we talking about Eldon Swain’s money?”
“It ain’t Swain’s money. It belongs to anybody who finds it. The statute of limitations ran out years ago,” he said in the legalese of a cell-block lawyer, “and the money’s up for grabs.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace in this very area.” He made a sweeping gesture which took in the dry riverbed and the empty fields beyond. “I been making a study of this place for twenty years, I know it like the back of my hand.” He sounded like a prospector who had worn out his wits in the desert looking for gold. “All I need is to get real lucky and find me the coordinates. I’m Eldon Swain’s legal heir.”
“How so?”
“We made a deal. He was interested in a relative of mine.” He probably meant his daughter. “And so we made a deal.”
The thought of it lifted his spirits. He got into my car without argument, hoisting his bedroll into the back seat.
“Where do we go from here?” he said.
“We might as well stay where we are for the present.”
“And then?”
“We go our separate ways.”
He glanced quickly at my face, as if to catch me in a false expression. “You’re conning me.”
“Wait and see. Let’s get one thing out of the way first. Why did you go to Jean Trask’s house today?”
“Take her some tomatoes.”
“Why did you pick the lock?”
“I thought maybe she was sleeping. Sometimes she sleeps real heavy, when she’s been drinking. I didn’t know she was dead, man. I wanted to talk to her.”
“About Sidney Harrow?”
“That was part of it. I knew the cops would be asking her questions about him. The fact is, I was the one introduce her to Sidney, and I wanted Miss Jean not to mention my name to the cops.”
“Because you were a suspect in Swain’s death?”
“That was part of it. I knew they’d be opening up that old case. If my name came up and they traced my connection with Swain, I’d be right back on the hooks. Hell, my connection with Swain went back thirty years.”
“Which is why you didn’t identify his body.”
“That’s right.”
“And you let Jean go on thinking her father was alive, and go on looking for him.”
“It made her feel better,” he said. “She never found out how he died.”
“Who shot him?”
“I don’t know. Honest to God. I only know I didn’t.”
“You mentioned a snatch.”
“That’s right. It’s where him and I parted company. I admit I been a thief in my time, but strong-arm stuff was never for me. When he started to plan this snatch, I backed out on him.” Shepherd added meditatively: “When Swain came back from Mexico in 1954, he wasn’t the man he used to was. I think he went a little crazy down there.”
“Did Swain kidnap Nick Chalmers?”
“That’s the one he was talking about. I never saw the boy myself. I was long gone when it happened. And it never came out in the papers. I guess the parents hushed it up.”
“Why would a man with half a million dollars attempt a kidnapping?”
“Ask me another. Swain kept changing his story. Sometimes he claimed he had the half million, sometimes he said he didn’t. Sometimes he claimed he had it and lost it. He said once he was highjacked by a border guard. His wildest story was the one about Mr. Rawlinson. Mr. Rawlinson was the president of the bank that Eldon Swain worked for, and he claimed Mr. Rawlinson took the money and framed him for it.”
“Could that have happened?”
“I don’t see how. Mr. Rawlinson wouldn’t ruin his own bank. And he’s been on his uppers ever since. I know that for certain because I got a relative works for him.”
“Your ex-wife.”
“You get around,” he said in some surprise. “Did you talk to her?”
“A little.”
He leaned toward me, keenly interested. “What did she say about me?”
“We didn’t discuss you.”
Shepherd seemed disappointed, as if he had been robbed of a dimension. “I see her from time to time. I bear no grudges, even if she did divorce me when I was in the pen. I was kind of glad to make the break,” he said dolefully. “She’s got mixed blood, you probably noticed that. It kind of hurt my pride to be married to her.”
“We were talking about the money,” I reminded him. “You’re pretty certain that Swain took it and kept it.”
“I know he did. He had it with him at Conchita’s place. This was right after he lifted it.”
“You saw it?”
“I know somebody who did.”
“Your daughter?”
“No.” He added with a touch of belligerence: “Leave my daughter out of this. She’s going straight.”
“Where?”
“Mexico. She went to Mexico with him and never came back from there.” His answer sounded a little glib, and I wondered if it was true.
“Why did Swain come back?”
“He always planned to, that’s my theory. He left the money buried on this side of the border, he told me so himself more than once. He offered me a share of it if I would go partners with him and drive him around and grubstake him. Like I said, he wasn’t in very good shape when he came back. Fact is, he needed a keeper.”
“And you were his keeper?”
“That’s right. I owed him something. He was a pretty good man at one time, Eldon Swain was. When I hit the pavement the first time, on parole, he took me on as a gardener at his place in San Marino. It was a real showplace. I used to grow him roses as big as dahlias. It’s a terrible thing when a man like that ends up dead of lead poisoning in a railroad yard.”
“Did you drive Swain to Pacific Point in 1954?”
“I admit that much. But that was before he started to talk about snatching the boy. I wouldn’t drive him on that caper. I got out of town in a hurry. I wanted no part—”
“You didn’t shoot him before you left, by any chance?”
He gave me a shocked look. “No sir. You don’t know much about me, mister. I’m not a man of violence. I specialize in staying out of trouble, out of jail. And I’m still working at it.”
“What were you sent up for?”
“Car theft. Break and enter. But I never carried a gun.”
“Maybe somebody else shot Swain and you burned off his fingerprints.”
“That’s crazy. Why would I do that?”
“So that you wouldn’t be traced through him. Let’s say you took the ransom money from Swain.”
“What ransom money? I never saw any ransom money. I was back here on the border by the time he took the boy.”
“Was Eldon Swain a child molester?”
Shepherd squinted at the sky. “Could be. He always liked ’em young, and the older he got the younger he liked ’em. Sex was always his downfall.”
I didn’t believe Shepherd. I didn’t disbelieve him. The mind that looked at me through his eyes was like muddy water continually stirred by fears and fantasies and greeds. He was growing old in the desperate hope of money, and by now he was willing to become whatever the hope suggested.
“Where are you going now, Randy? To Mexico?”
He was quiet for a moment, peering out across the flatland toward the sun, which was halfway down the west. A Navy jet flew over like a swallow towing the noises of a freight train. Shepherd watche
d it out of sight, as if it represented his last disappearing luck.
“I better not tell you where I’m going, mister. If we need to get in touch again I’ll get in touch with you. Just don’t try to pull a fast one on me. So you saw me at Miss Jean’s house. That puts you on the same spot.”
“Not quite. But I won’t turn you in unless I find some reason.”
“You won’t. I’m as clean as soap. And you’re a white man,” he added, sharing with me his one dubious distinction. “How about a little traveling money?”
I gave him fifty dollars and my name, and he seemed satisfied. He got out of the car with his bedroll and stood waiting by the roadside until I lost sight of him in my rear-view mirror.
I drove back to the cabins and found Mrs. Williams still working in the one that Shepherd had vacated. When I appeared in the doorway, she looked up from her sweeping with pleased surprise.
“I never thought you’d come back,” she said. “I guess you didn’t find him, eh?”
“I found him. We had a talk.”
“Randy’s a great talker.”
She was stalling, unwilling to ask me outright for the second installment of her money. I gave her the other fifty. She held it daintily in her fingers, as if she had captured some rare specimen of moth or butterfly, then tucked it away in her bosom.
“I thank you kindly. I can use this money. I guess you know how it is.”
“I guess I do. Are you willing to help me with more information, Mrs. Williams?”
She smiled. “I’ll tell you anything but my age.”
She sat down on the stripped mattress of the bed, which creaked and sank under her weight. I took the only chair in the room. A shaft of sunlight fell through the window, swarming with brilliant dust. It laid down a swatch of brightness between us on the worn linoleum floor.
“What do you want to know?”
“How long has Shepherd been staying here?”
“Off and on since the war. He comes and he goes. When he got really hungry he used to travel with the fruit pickers sometimes. Or he’d pick up a dollar or two weeding somebody’s garden. He was a gardener at one time.”
“He told me that. He worked for a Mr. Swain in San Marino. Did he ever mention Eldon Swain to you?”
The question made her unhappy. She looked down at her knee and began pleating her skirt. “You want me to tell it like it is, like the kids say?”
“Please do.”
“It don’t make me look good. The trouble is in this business you get so you’ll do things for money that you wouldn’t start out doing when you’re young and fresh. There’s nothing people won’t do for money.”
“I know that. What are you leading up to, Florence?”
She said in a hurried monotone, as if to reduce the size and duration of her guilt: “Eldon Swain stayed here with his girl friend. She was Randy Shepherd’s daughter. That’s what brought Randy here in the first place.”
“When was this?”
“Let’s see. It was just before the trouble with the money, when Mr. Swain took off for Mexico. I don’t have a good head for dates, but it was sometime along toward the end of the war.” She added after a thinking pause: “I remember the Battle of Okinawa was going on. Williams and I used to follow the battles, so many of our roomers were sailor boys, you know.”
I brought her back to the subject: “What happened when Shepherd came here?”
“Nothing much. A lot of loud talk mainly. I couldn’t helo but overhear some of it. Randy wanted to be paid for the loan of his daughter. That was the way his mind worked.”
“What kind of a girl was the daughter?”
“She was a beautiful child.” Mrs. Williams’s eyes grew misty with the quasi-maternal feelings of a procuress. “Dark and tender-looking. It’s hard to understand a girl like that, going with a man more than twice her age.” She readjusted her position on the bed, and its springs squeaked in tired rhythms. “I don’t doubt she was after her share of the money.”
“This was before the money, you said.”
“Sure, but Swain was already planning to take it.”
“How do you know that, Mrs. Williams?”
“The officers said so. This place was swarming with officers the week after he took off. They said that he’d been planning it for at least a year. He picked this place for his final jumping-off place to Mexico.”
“How did he cross the border?”
“They never did find out. He may have gone over the border fence, or crossed in the regular way under another name. Some of the officers thought he left the money behind. That’s probably where Randy got the idea.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Not even her father?”
“That’s right. Randy Shepherd isn’t the kind of father a girl would keep in touch with if she had a choice. Randy’s wife felt the same way about him. She divorced him while he was in the pen the last time, and when he got out he came back here. He’s been here off and on ever since.”
We sat in silence for a little while. The rectangle of sunlight on the linoleum was lengthening perceptibly, measuring out the afternoon and the movement of the earth. Finally she asked me:
“Will Randy be coming back here, do you think?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Williams.”
“I sort of hope he does. He’s got a lot against him. But over the years a woman gets used to seeing a man around. It doesn’t even matter what kind of man he is.”
“Besides,” I said, “he was your second-to-last roomer.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me.”
“So I did. I’d sell this place if I could find a buyer.” I got up and moved toward the door. “Who’s your last roomer?”
“Nobody you would know.”
“Try me.”
“A young fellow named Sidney Harrow. And I haven’t seen him for a week. He’s off on one of Randy Shepherd’s wild-goose chases.”
I produced the copy of Nick’s graduation picture. “Did Shepherd give this to Harrow, Mrs. Williams?”
“He may have. I remember Randy showed me that picture. He wanted to know if it reminded me of anybody.”
“Did it?”
“Nope. I’m not much good at faces.”
chapter 20
I went back to San Diego and drove out Bayview Avenue to George Trask’s house. The sun had just set and everything was reddish, as if the blood in the kitchen of the house had formed a weak solution with the light.
A car I had seen before but couldn’t remember where—a black Volkswagen with a crumpled fender—stood in the driveway of the Trask house. A San Diego police car was at the curb. I drove on by, and made my way back to the hospital.
Nick was in Room 211 on the second floor, the woman at the information desk told me. “But he’s not allowed to have visitors unless you’re immediate family.”
I went up anyway. In the visitors’ lounge across from the elevator Mrs. Smitheram, the psychiatrist’s wife, was reading a magazine. A coat folded with the lining turned out was draped across the back of her chair. For some reason I was very glad to see her. I crossed to the lounge and sat down near her.
She wasn’t reading after all, just holding the magazine. She was looking right at me, but she didn’t see me. Her blue eyes were turned inward on her thoughts, which lent her face a grave beauty. I watched the changes in her eyes as she gradually became aware of me, and finally recognized me.
“Mr. Archer!”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you, either.”
“I just came along for the ride,” she said. “I lived in San Diego County for several years during the war. I haven’t been back here since.”
“That’s a long time.”
She inclined her head. “I was just thinking about that long time and how it grew. But you’re not interested in my autobiography.”
“I am, though. Were you married when you lived here
before?”
“In a sense. My husband was overseas most of the time. He was a flight surgeon on an escort carrier.” Her voice had a rueful pride which seemed to belong entirely to the past.
“You’re older than you look.”
“I married young. Too young.”
I liked the woman, and it was a pleasure to talk for once about something that had no bearing on my case. But she brought the conversation back to it:
“The latest on Nick is that he’s coming out of it. The only question is in what condition.”
“What does your husband think?”
“It’s too early for Ralph to commit himself. Right now he’s in consultation with a neurologist and a brain surgeon.”
“They don’t do brain surgery for barbiturate poisoning, do they?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing the matter with Nick. He has a concussion. He must have fallen and hit the back of his head.”
“Or been hit?”
“That’s possible, too. How did he get to San Diego, any-way?”
“I don’t know.”
“My husband said you brought him here to the hospital.”
“That’s true. But I didn’t bring him to San Diego.”
“Where did you find him?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Don’t you want to tell me?”
“That’s right.” I changed the subject, not very smoothly. “Are Nick’s parents here?”
“His mother’s sitting with him. His father is on his way. There’s nothing either you or I can do.”
I stood up. “We could have dinner.”
“Where?”
“The hospital cafeteria if you like. The food is fair.” She made a face. “I’ve eaten too many hospital-cafeteria dinners.”
“I thought you mightn’t want to go too far.” The phrase had a double meaning that we both heard.
She said: “Why not? Ralph will be tied up for hours. Why don’t we go out to La Jolla?”
“Is that where you used to live during the war?”
“You’re a good guesser.”
I helped her on with her coat. It was silver-blue mink complementing the slash of gray in her hair. In the elevator, she said:
“This is on one condition. You mustn’t ask me questions about Nick and his family constellation. I can’t answer certain questions, just as you can’t, so why spoil things.”
The Goodbye Look Page 11