County Kill

by Peter Rabe

  And then, in that lost second, the swinging door from the kitchen swung in violently our way and Juanita came through it like the hero in a Western movie.

  There was no puny automatic in her capable hands. It took both her hands to carry the double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun that was now pointed at the belly of her soft-voiced, guitar-playing husband.

  “Put it away, Jose,” she said steadily. “Drop your little pistol on the floor.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You would not shoot me. And if I get rid of him, you will not tell the police. Our friends would suffer if you turned me over to the police.”

  “Drop it, Jose,” she repeated sharply. “I will shoot. You killed Johnny and I will shoot if you don’t drop that gun.”

  He turned to stare at her, surprise on his face. She shouldn’t have mentioned Johnny. Adultery he could understand, but not her preferring Johnny.

  I picked a table I thought I could make. He turned from her to me again, just as I was ready to dive, and his face was harder now and there was hate in his dreamy eyes.

  “Drop it, damn you!” she said.

  This time the shake of his head was final and my eyes dropped to his hand. The trigger finger was starting to tighten.

  I dived.

  I heard the whine of the slug past my ear and then the smashing blast of that.45 was engulfed in a tidal wave of sound, the near-atomic boom of both twelve-gauge barrels going off at the same time in a closed room.

  My ears would ring every time I thought of that afternoon.

  • • •

  “Sweep him up?” the officer said to Dahl. “We had to mop him up, Captain. He caught both barrels in the belly, full choke. Even the intern got sick.”

  We were in Dahl’s small office. A uniformed man came in and said, “That.30-.30 checks out. Her gun, but she swears she hasn’t used it in a year.”

  I looked at Vogel. Vogel looked out the window. Dahl looked at the uniformed man and said, “Jose probably used it. How about that fingerprint?”

  “Terris is checking it. He should know by now.”

  The man named Terris came in before the sentence was completed. He said, “Thumbprint checks out. Thank God he had a thumb left. And he handled that.30-.30, too. At least he cleaned it. His prints are on it in oil.”

  Terris went out and the uniformed man went out.

  Vogel and Dahl and I were now alone. I asked innocently, “Where’s Chief Harris? Shouldn’t he be here?”

  Vogel muttered something. Dahl’s smile was cynical. “Don’t get cute, Callahan; you’re not holding that good a hand.”

  “I haven’t made any bets,” I said. “What happens now?”

  “What do you want to happen?” he asked me frankly. “If I cover for Lund, I have to cover for Mrs. Rico, too. She killed a man, Callahan.”

  “Saving my life,” I said. “He shot first.”

  Sergeant Bernard Vogel said unctuously, “Is it Department policy, Captain, to make deals with private investigators?”

  Dahl looked at the sergeant bleakly and ominously. “You favor holding Lund on some other charge, is that it, Sergeant? You’re willing to ride that out?”

  Vogel hesitated. He had a deuce in the hole and I didn’t blame him.

  Dahl looked at me. “You going to bat for your girl friend, too — is that it?”

  “My girl friend?”

  “You know who I mean. Juanita Rico.”

  “She’s not my girl friend, Captain, and I think she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I just want to take Skip Lund home to his family. I will then get the hell out of your rough town.”

  I thought there was relief in Dahl’s sigh. He looked at Vogel. Vogel shrugged, carefully not looking at me.

  Dahl said, “You brought us in a killer. I guess we owe you something for that. We might never have found him.”

  Vogel went over to look out the window.

  I said, “I was paid to bring in a killer by my client. He’s a different man now. He’ll undoubtedly sell that boat and get back into the filling-station business. He’ll go back to his wife, I know. That won’t make your ex-mayor happy, but we can’t have everything, can we?”

  Vogel turned from the window to stare at me. I glanced at him and said to Dahl, “All I want to do is get out of here. This is the first Department in a long time where I was treated as a criminal. The taste of it is still in my mouth.”

  Dahl smiled. “I love it when you sulk. How often do we see a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tiger sulking?”

  I stood up. “Take a good look; you’ll never see me again. Well …?”

  Dahl said to Vogel, “Go tell them to release Lund and bring him here.”

  Vogel went out. Dahl said, “So we didn’t trust you. Any time you want a recommendation from this Department, have the inquiry addressed to me.” He held out a hand.

  I shook it. I said, “We’re friends only because I had an ace in the hole, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “That’s the best kind, isn’t it?” He turned serious. “And keep your lip off Vogel on the way out. He’s still one hell of a fine officer.”

  “Of course, Captain,” I said humbly. “Of course.”

  • • •

  The sun was slanting through the eucalypti. In my flivver, Skip Lund opened the window on his side and took a deep breath of the hot, dry air.

  “God, that smells good,” he said. He lighted a cigarette. “Man, the clink is not for me.”

  “Remember it. And watch your temper. Maybe grow up a little, huh?”

  “Yes, Uncle Brock,” he said. “What’s this I hear about you and Glenys?”

  “We’re old friends. Anything else you heard is nonsense.” I turned in between the stucco pillars.

  “Look at that yard!” he said. “When did they start working on that?”

  “Today,” I said.

  And then, from the garage, I saw my former client on his bike and he saw us, and he dropped the bike and started to streak across the lawn.

  “Stop,” Skip said, and I slowed to stop, but he had the door open before we were motionless and he was running across to pick up his kid.

  I left the car there, and stood for a second, but neither of them was thinking of me. I walked up toward the house, resentful and jealous.

  Then Glenys came out onto the porch and she, too, stood for a moment, watching the damp reunion.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She came down to where I stood. “Won’t you stay for dinner? Bud will want you to, I’m sure, as soon as he comes to his senses.”

  June came down from the porch and ran past us, toward her family.

  Glenys put a hand on my arm. And I thought, Right now, she’s as lonely as I am.

  “You will stay, won’t you?” she asked softly.

  The hand on my arm tightened.

  I said carefully, “Thank you, but I have to get back to town. I’ve already picked up my clothes and checked out of the motel.”

  Her grip loosened slightly.

  “But,” I added, “I’d appreciate it if you’d phone Jan and tell her I’m on the way home. Tell her to wait and we’ll have a late dinner at Cini’s.”

  Her hand went away. She nodded agreement.

  I climbed into the flivver and started the engine. The trio on the lawn were all looking my way now, and Skip called something, but I didn’t stop.

  I waved my goodbye and went out the driveway to the road. The flivver seemed to steer herself, sighing happily, heading for home.

  If you liked County Kill check out:

  Don’t Cry for Me

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS A WARM DAY, I remember, and John sat in that big leather chair of his, looking out the glass doors of his study. There wasn’t anything to see out there excepting the deserted patio. But John very rarely looks at me when he’s giving me hell.

  In his quiet and restrained way he was giving me hell again this warm afternoon. A very solid citizen,
John, a great defender of the status quo. Incorruptible, I thought, looking at him. Stuffy, but incorruptible. Handsome, too, in his dignified way, and I’ll bet he wouldn’t think of looking at another woman. He might as well be homely.

  John’s my brother.

  “I wonder,” he was saying, “if Dad hadn’t passed on, just what he’d think of you, Pete.”

  In John’s world people don’t die. They “pass on.” “I don’t know,” I said. “He never thought much of me, except at S.C. when I threw the pass that beat the Irish. Dad wasn’t my kind of people.”

  Now John looked at me. You’d think I’d voted the straight Democratic ticket the way he looked at me. “What a nice thing to say. About your own father.”

  “I was always a poor liar,” I said evenly. “What did you want me to say?” I took a breath. “He wasn’t my kind of people, and neither are you, John. Mother, I don’t remember, but from what I’ve heard, I guess she was more in my line.”

  John ridged his jaw muscles, like Spencer Tracy. “Mother was a lady, from what I remember.”

  I chuckled. “You wouldn’t want me to be a lady, would you, John? What are we quibbling about? I came here to tell you I can’t get by on the hundred a week. And you’ve told me I’m not going to get any more.” I stood up. “There’s no reason we have to camp in each other’s hair. Take care of yourself, kid.”

  He frowned. “Pete — I — Oh, bell, kid, we’re — ” He shook his head in irritation.

  “Brothers?” I finished for him. “Sure. Always. You give me active nausea, at times, laddie, but I have nothing but the highest regard for you. I almost wish I could be like you. Things would be so much simpler if I were.”

  He sighed and looked at the rug. “Simpler? Hardly.”

  “Simpler,” I repeated. “The good and the bad, the black and the white, the fair and the foul. It’s all straight in your mind, and you can walk the narrow road and feel properly noble. Nothing’s straight in my mind. Nothing’s that clear.”

  He stood up now. “When it is, when you know what you intend to do, what you hope to make of yourself, we’ll see eye to eye, Pete. Everything will work out.”

  I shrugged. He came along with me to the front door. There he put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger, Pete. You never come here unless it’s to ask for something. And you know both Martha and I enjoy you thoroughly.”

  “I’ll be seeing you,” I said. “Give my love to Martha. Sorry I missed her.”

  “She’ll be sorry she missed you, too. Pete — be careful, won’t you? Keep — our name out of the papers, Pete. It’s a good name in this town.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Stay sober, sport.”

  I went down to the Merc and climbed in. The top was down and the seat was hot. Pete Worden, perpetual soph, convertible type kid. The Merc had Creager heads and pots, and she was a girl who could walk. I was only three payments behind.

  John still stood in the doorway of his big, proud home. I waved at him and he waved back, and there wasn’t any reason in the world why I should suddenly feel sorry for him. Because he had everything. A nice home, a grand wife, charge of the estate, the respect of everyone who knew him. And all the answers. Why should I feel sorry for John?

  I swung the Merc in a U-turn because it was illegal to make a U-turn here, and it would heckle him. I waved again and headed back Sunset, back toward Hollywood.

  John lived in Beverly Hills. Of course.

  John belonged to the right clubs and knew the right people. He paid his debts and loved his wife and sent his kids to the right school. And never even noticed his world was dying.

  L.A. is not Miami, despite what the chamber of commerce says. But sometimes in the winter, we get a golden day like this, a smog-free, fog-free, visibility-unlimited day, and you’re glad you’re alive.

  I had seven dollars in my wallet and some change in my pocket and the immediate necessity of seeing That Man about the delinquent payments on the Merc. But I was humming, and the Merc was humming, and to hell with all of them today.

  I took the wind of Sunset all the way to Hollywood and cut off that on Doheny, heading down the hill. I stopped in front of the paint store and put the top up before cutting the motor.

  That’s where Ellen lives, above a paint store. Three rooms and bath, and a stone’s throw, as she was wont to say, from the Strip, and the rent’s cheap enough to make her forget the smell of paint.

  She was waiting for me when I got to the top of the stairs. She’s got fine, straight legs and a flat tummy and a sort of urchin insolence. She’s a little top-heavy, but a girl without sag or simper. We get along very well.

  She had her black hair high on her head this hot afternoon, and her dark-blue eyes probed mine. “So — “

  “So — no. Emphatically and with gestures. A young man who can’t get along on a hundred a week is decadent and degraded and demented. A young man of twenty-nine who won’t work and has never worked should consider himself very lucky to — ” I shook my head. “He said no.”

  “Now we’ll never get married,” she said. I said nothing, but put one hand on the doorjamb for support.

  Her chuckle had an overtone of brimstone. “I was only kidding. I just like to see you flinch.”

  “My heart — ” I said. “You must be careful. Baby, do you think I’m a bum?”

  “At times. Why?”

  She went over to sit on the big davenport near the fireplace, and I stretched out, my head in her lap. It was cool here and quiet, and there was no smell of paint.

  “Why?” she repeated. “Has that brother of yours finally got through to you?”

  I thought about it. “Maybe.”

  “How old is he?”

  “John? Let’s see. John’s — thirty-four.”

  “And what does he do for a living?”

  “Why he — well, I mean, he — John sort of — I don’t know what to say.”

  “Sure. He watches the money. The money your dad earned. That’s easy, to watch it. That’s even less work than spending it.”

  “Less fun, too,” I said. “But I mean he’s got a couple fine kids, and this solid wife, who works for all these charities, and John’s always in the papers, heading this committee and that for this good cause and that. That’s what he does, he heads committees.”

  She put one finger to the tip of my nose, and pushed it about a quarter of an inch to the right. “Who bent your nose?”

  “A guy from UCLA, a tackle. And John’s got to watch the investments, too. That’s work, these days, watching — “

  “You’d be almost good-looking if your nose was straight,” she said. “I wouldn’t have to be apologizing to all my friends about you. I wouldn’t have to eat in booths when we went out. Couldn’t you get it straightened?”

  “Sure could. And you would then be out of my life. You don’t think I’d hang around with an old hag like you if I had a straight nose, do you?”

  “Huh,” she said. “I’ve seen you with worse.”

  “And better.”

  She frowned. “One, maybe. At the most, two. Not counting that forty-seven-year-old starlet from MGM. What was her name?”

  “Look,” I said patiently, “I asked you if you thought I was a bum. I want to be serious.”

  “I guess you’re a bum,” she said. “I guess I am, too. I guess we’re a couple of round-heels, and who cares?”

  “I do, and you should. Didn’t you ever — wasn’t there a time when you — oh, dreamed the big dream?”

  “No time I remember.”

  “Level, baby,” I said quietly.

  No lightness to my lady now, no casualness to her tone. “Oh, Pete, for heaven’s sake — what brought this on? I’ll make us a drink.”

  I lifted my head, and she slid out and stood up. For just a second she stood there, looking down at me. Her face was blank.

  Then she went over to the liquor cabinet, built into the wall next to the fireplace.

  I s
aid, “If I were a gentleman, I’d make the drink. It’s a great comfort, being a mug.”

  She said nothing. I heard the ice cubes clink in a glass.

  Cool, here, and the thought of John fading, and even the remembrance of the three overdue payments growing dim. Above a paint store in the magic village, and my love mixing a drink.

  At ease, and I waited lazily for the sound of the ice on glass again, but none came, nor any other sound. And I got a feeling for some reason, and raised up to look at Ellen.

  She was crying. Standing in front of her built-in liquor cabinet with the etched plywood front, quietly crying. No sob or tremor, no hiccup or histrionics, no pretense.

  Just the tears rolling down her clear cheeks, the dark-blue eyes swimming, her hands steady on the Formica drain of the cabinet.

  I got up quietly and went over to put my arms around her, and a title of Saroyan’s came to me, some words of my old idol. I said, “Hello, baby, this is the world,” which was probably corny, but my arms were tight around her, and it was a time she needed that.

  Around seven she said, “I’ve got almost fourteen dollars. We could go some place and get drunk, some cheap place.”

  “No,” I said. The only light in the room came from a street lamp, and the glow of our cigarettes. “Not right away,” I went on. “Tell me about the tears now. Tell me about Ellen Gallegher, late of Eau Claire, the girl who cries standing up.”

  “Forget it, Pete,” she said.

  “Never,” I said, “if I live to be eight hundred and seven years old. Come on. Catharsis, you know.”

  “A mood,” she said. “For heaven’s sakes, a mood. Don’t you ever have them? A combination of sound and place and memory trick, or something.”

  “And some nasty words of Pete Worden?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What did you say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “A girl can’t be chirping all the time, like a damned sparrow, you know.”

  “I know. Did you — were you ever very religious, Ellen?”

  Her voice was light. “Now, didn’t you put that tactfully? My folks are, my good folks back in Eau Claire. And maybe I was, too, before I read Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. Does that answer your tactful question tactfully, Mr. Worden?”