Cat and Mouse

by William Campbell Gault

  “But,” he pointed out, “I’m the one who’s sitting here. And I’m the one who could wind up in prison—or maybe executed.”

  I had no immediate answer to that. I asked, “And Belton? Why do you think he was shot?”

  “Probably because he decided he was in over his head and figured he could make a deal with the law if he informed on his pal.”

  “That’s the way I see it. Corey, you are not going to wind up in the slammer and you are not going to be executed.”

  He stared at me. “I’m already in the slammer!”

  I had no answer to that one, immediate or otherwise. What could I say? “Keep the faith,” I said.

  “I’ll try. Brock, get that bastard!”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I stopped on the way out to ask McClune if he knew the name of the private investigator who had made Mallory’s ex-wife rich.

  He nodded. “Barry Fielding. He’s a real mean tiger. He works almost as deviously as you do. He calls his office Fielding Investigations. It’s on the second floor of the Hollister Building.”

  The Hollister Building was one of the town’s oldest office buildings, but well kept up. Barry’s office was at the end of the hall.

  The lettering on the opaque glass of his door read Walk In. So Ī walked in.

  McClune’s description of him as a tiger had led me to imagine he would be one of those old-time pulp-style mugs, big and mean and wearing a cheap suit.

  A short, slim man in a Brooks Brothers type of suit and button-down collar on his oxford shirt was standing near the window, checking his file cabinet. He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a quiet tie.

  “Mr. Fielding?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “My name is Brock Callahan,” I said, “and—”

  “The Brock Callahan?” he asked.

  “The only one I know. Have you heard of me?”

  “Have I ever! Those guys in L.A. are still talking about you. They made you sound like Superman. I just moved up here a year ago. How can I serve you?”

  “Well,” I said, “it might be a violation of your client relationship. It’s about Tom Mallory.”

  “That son of a bitch? He tried to get the state to take away my license. Why do you want to know about him?”

  I told him about Corey being incarcerated and why and my belief that he was being jobbed and that I felt Mallory was scalp-hunting.

  “I know Corey,” he said. “Good kid. What do you want from me?”

  “Something I can use to help him, at least get him some extra time on a continuance. I suppose that’s unethical.”

  “How else would we survive?” he asked. “Could I take you to lunch?”

  “Nope. Lunch is on me. Your choice of restaurants.”

  “Plotkin’s Pantry?”

  “Perfect.”

  Over corned-beef sandwiches on dark rye bread with kosher pickles and draft Einlicher at Plotkin’s he told me about his leverage in the Mallory divorce trial.

  “I suppose you know,” he said, “what a Moral Majority addict the D.A. is.”

  “Well, licentious Tom would be in deep trouble if his boss ever learned his history. That was my leverage in the case. Tom has some really kinky sexual appetites. The only place in town that caters to those customers is the Arden Massage Parlor on lower Main Street. I interviewed several of the girls, including one of them who was quitting and agreed to testify if we needed her. We didn’t need her. I gave the names of the girls to Mrs. Mallory and let her tell Tom what she had learned. It was a breeze after that.”

  “That’s kind of doubtful investigative ethics, Barry.”

  He smiled. “The pot is talking about the kettle. I got the word on you in L.A.”

  “Those bums lie a lot,” I explained. “Do you have any names I could use?”

  “So you could blackmail Tom? That’s doubtful investigative ethics, Brock.”

  “Except,” I said coolly, “I am trying to keep a nice kid out of jail and you were trying to make your client rich.”

  “True.” He smiled again. “I thought I was the master of moral rationalization. I should have studied under you.”

  “The names—please?”

  “I’ll give you only their first names, Lois, Yvette, and Joan.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Any time, Brock. And if Corey gets sentenced and you need a partner—?”

  “You’ll be my first choice,” I lied.

  CHAPTER 5

  TOM MALLORY IS A big, bluff Irishman who probably belongs to every service club in town. He was talking into a dictating machine when I entered his office.

  He turned off the machine and glared at me. “I suppose you’re here to beg for your junior partner.”

  “He’s not my partner,” I said, “and I’m not here to beg. I hoped we could talk sensibly.”

  “Talk,” he said. “I’ll decide if it’s sensible.”

  “I’m not sure if you know about the events leading up to last night’s murder.”

  “I do. Your buddy, McClune, filled me in. Jesus, Callahan, if you were the prosecutor and you had a case as strong as this one, what would you do? The kid’s there with the gun that killed Belton. He has a bump on his head and Belton has a rock in his hand.”

  “I would remember what McClune had told me and I would weigh all the evidence. I wouldn’t go rushing into court with a case this flawed. It reeks of frame-up.”

  “Maybe to you. And what’s this about a mystery man McClune mentioned?”

  “I have a theory that the man who killed Belton was really after me. Belton was only his stooge.”

  He shook his head. He smiled. “Don’t tell me that’s Nowicki’s defense! A theory? The trial shouldn’t last long. Has the man got a name?”

  “Every man has a name. I don’t happen to know it, but I’m determined to get it.”

  “Get it,” he said, “before you come back here.”

  “As you wish,” I said. “Give my best to Lois, Yvette, and Joan.”

  He turned rigid. “You bastard! You’ve been talking to Fielding.”

  “Fielding who? I don’t know anybody named Fielding.”

  “Blackmail,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I’d left the machine on.”

  “Turn it on. I’ll repeat it.”

  “You bastard!” he said again.

  I said quietly, “I’m doing you a favor, Tom. I’m preventing you from making a damned fool of yourself. All I’m asking for is time. I’m not even asking for bail. But when the trial date is set, I wish you’d agree to a continuance.”

  He took a deep breath and stared past me.

  “I might not need it,” I pointed out. “But if I do, I want it.”

  “You’ve got it,” he finally said. “Now get out of here.”

  I went out with the uncomfortable feeling that I had reverted to my Los Angeles days, when I could not afford the finer points of ethics. Only the rich can afford to be completely honest. Why aren’t they?

  I drove past our house on the way up the hill to the scene of the crime. Mrs. Casey was out in front, talking to the guard, probably trying to inveigle him into a quick game of gin rummy.

  Up, up, up, almost to the crest. It was not only a deserted cabin, it was decrepit—the roof half gone, no glass in its single window. The shadow man and his young stooge could not have stayed here; the cruising deputies would have spotted the Plymouth before last night.

  It was not a coincidence that it was on our road. It had been the terminal of a trap; they had watched Corey drive up our road for two nights. They had lured him here and framed him and the shadow man’s partner had been the other victim.

  I parked on the graveled edge and threaded through the open spaces between the clumps of chaparral. There was no path to the shack still in evidence.

  The door was open, hanging on one hinge. It was a shack, no more. No water, no toilet, one room with a packed earth floor, littered with beer cans, bottles, dusty trash,
and yellowed newspapers.

  Two bright spots stood out on the dusty trash, an empty paper book of matches and a crumpled cigarette package.

  Denny’s Tavern was imprinted on the matchbook. I knew the place, a workingmen’s bar on the Venice-Santa Monica border. Corinth was the cigarette brand, a brand unfamiliar to me.

  I heard a “meow” and looked over to see a mangy black cat studying me doubtfully from the doorway. It came in as I went out.

  At the sheriff’s station I gave McClune the matchbook and the cigarette package. “They were the only clean things in the place,” I explained. “They must have been left there recently. I thought you might find some prints on one of them.”

  “What place?”

  “The shack where Corey was framed. Did you phone to Tritown?”

  He nodded. “Both of Belton’s parents have moved to Arizona. And he hasn’t been there for over a year.”

  “I know where Denny’s Tavern is,” I told him. “It’s on the border of Santa Monica. What about those cigarettes? Have you ever heard of them?”

  He shook his head.

  “A clue, maybe?”

  “Maybe. That was sloppy of us. We should have gone over the place more carefully.” He shook his head. “Rookies!”

  “They’ll learn. And you’ve always got me. Stick it to Bernie Saturday night.”

  “Huh! I should be so lucky. He told me he’s inviting a guy named Larry Rubin. Do you know him?”

  “Yup. I knew him in Los Angeles. He’s like you—he draws to inside straights and three-card flushes.”

  “Go!” he said.

  I went home.

  I told the guard I would need protection again tomorrow, from nine-thirty in the morning until I came home.

  “I hope the boss assigns me,” he said. “I like the clean air up here and the great chow.”

  “The chow?”

  “Right. That housekeeper of yours made me a great afternoon snack. Is she married?”

  “Widowed,” I said. “Are you single?”

  “No, damn it!”

  Jan was in the den watching the tube when I came in. “They caught the Valley Intruder,” she said.

  The broad face of the Los Angeles sheriff was on the tube, explaining how it had happened; citizens had made the capture.

  Forty Los Angeles detectives had been working on the case for a month, assisted by the county sheriff’s department. Even the San Francisco police had been brought into the hunt when the Intruder had killed a man up there and raped his wife.

  The Intruder had made the mistake of wandering into a Chicano neighborhood. He had tried to drag a woman from her car so he could steal it. Her husband had knocked him loose with a crowbar. A crowd had gathered and were slowly beating him to death when the police arrived. At the end, according to the sheriff, the man had been begging for police protection.

  “Those damned dumb cops!” Jan said. “Couldn’t they have pretended they had a flat tire and got there too late to save him?”

  “Easy, sister.”

  “Easy, hell! Now they’ll have an eighteen-month, two-million-dollar trial and some smart-ass lawyer will get him assigned to a mental institution and when they think he’s sane again they’ll put him back on the street so he can continue his career.”

  “I think it’s time for a drink,” I said.

  “Make them strong,” she said. “Scotch and soda for me.”

  She sipped her Scotch and soda, I my Bourbon over ice. “Learn anything today?” she asked.

  “Not much. I talked Tom Mallory out of rushing into court to convict Corey. I convinced him he could look bad if and when the real killer is found. What have you been doing?”

  “Fretting and fuming, mostly. But then I got to thinking—we’re lucky, aren’t we, Brock?”

  “At the most conservative estimate we are probably luckier than ninety percent of the people on this planet. At the moment, we are a lot luckier than Corey Raleigh.”

  “Yes. We must learn to count our blessings.”

  “That’s old-fashioned. This is the me, me, me generation.”

  “But not tonight,” she said. “Tonight we will be the we generation, you and me.”

  At dinner, Mrs. Casey said, “That’s a real nice man who was guarding the house today. I took a snack out to him around three o’clock.”

  I nodded. “He told me.”

  “I wonder if he’s married,” she said.

  “He is.”

  She looked crestfallen. I said, “But he’s not happy about it. And he told me he wants to come back tomorrow just for the clean air and the fine food.”

  “If he comes back,” she said stiffly, “he can enjoy the clean air.”

  Another romance nipped in the bud. Mrs. Casey would never marry a divorced man.

  We didn’t sit up for the news that night. I locked all the doors and windows and we went to bed for our incursion into the we generation.

  The morning dawned hot and clear. It would be hotter in the lower Main Street area where I intended to investigate the tawdry bars and cheap hotels. It seemed logical for me to assume the shadow man would not be staying at the Biltmore.

  Yesterday’s guard was not back today. They had sent a younger, thinner man, too young to arouse any emotion in Mrs. Casey except the maternal. For that emotion, she has her Corey.

  There was a for-sale sign on the Crider lawn. It would not be there long; in Montevista, homes for sale are not that blatantly advertised. They are handled much more discreetly by the brokers’ multiple-listing requirement.

  Back to the mean streets…I ran the gamut of bars from A to Z, from The Alamo Café to Ziggy’s Hangout. I was welcomed in the places where I was known, suspicioned in the others, informed in none. That used up the morning.

  I had a bottle of Beck’s dark and a steak sandwich at Joe’s Grille and made the hotel run in the afternoon. From the seediest to the almost respectable I traveled, learning nothing until I came to my last, best hope—the Travis Hotel.

  I had two informants there and a black and friendly day clerk.

  The clerk said, “A big bald man with a long scar on his cheek?” He nodded. “He checked out yesterday.”

  “What was his name?”

  His smile was cynical. “The most common name on our register—John Smith.”

  “Damn it! If he comes back, you’ll alert me, won’t you?”

  “I sure will.”

  I asked him if either of my informants was in his room.

  “Not today,” he said. “They’re both in the drunk tank. I’m sure they didn’t have any contact with the man you’re looking for.”

  I thanked him and put a ten-dollar bill on the counter. I drove to the station and Bernie was there. I told him what I had learned at the hotel.

  He told me, “We had an officer there yesterday, about twenty minutes after Baldy left.” He reached into a drawer and took out an empty cigarette package. “The maid hadn’t cleaned the room yet, but this was all we found. With no prints on it.”

  It was a Corinth package.

  I said, “That’s the same brand I found in that shack where Belton was murdered. That should prove to Mallory that his case isn’t as strong as he thinks it is.”

  He shook his head. “Not to a jury. It proves nothing.”

  “Have you ever heard of that brand before?”

  He sighed. “Brock, I am sure there are a thousand brands of cigarettes I have never heard of.”

  I said nothing.

  “Cheer up,” he said. “At least the heat’s off you. The man has left town.”

  “Maybe. But even if he has, he’ll be back. It wasn’t Corey he was after, not originally.”

  “Your instinct again?”

  I nodded. “What else do I have?”

  “Muscle,” he said. “And now I must get back to work. I’m two days behind in my reports.”

  On the way to the freeway I stopped in at Nowicki’s office. He wasn’t there. The volunteer
secretary in the office told me he was in a conference with Tom Mallory and Chief Chandler Harris at the courthouse. They were spiritual twins, Mallory a head hunter, Harris a headline hunter. It was a county kill; what interest could Harris have in it? Publicity was my guess.

  Jan, Mrs. Casey told me when I came home, had gone out to visit a former client and possible future client in Slope Ranch. “I tried to talk her out of it,” Mrs. Casey added, “but she said she was going stir crazy.”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I want that freak to find me. Anybody who would try to frame sweet Corey is on my enemy list.”

  “Why don’t we have a smidgin of good Irish whiskey while Jan is gone?”

  She nodded. “We’re the sly ones, aren’t we?”

  We sat out in back and discussed the capture of the Valley Intruder. “You notice those Chicanos didn’t run and hide,” she pointed out. “They’re a lot like the Irish, aren’t they?”

  I nodded. “And good Catholics, too.”

  She gave me a baleful look.

  “No comment, please,” I said. “I still have a lot of Catholic in me.”

  “No comment,” she said. “Let’s talk about the Dodgers.”

  CHAPTER 6

  I STARTED TO GET nervous at five o’clock. Slope Ranch is on the other end of town from Montevista, but not so far away that Jan shouldn’t be home by five. Mrs. Casey had told me she had left right after lunch.

  She came home at five-thirty, carrying packages. “As long as I was out of the house,” she explained, “I thought it might be a good time to get in some shopping. And Mrs. Casey will have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take her.”

  “Is that our new regime? Are we going to be perpetual hermits?”

  “Please, Jan—!” I said. “We’re all uptight!”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Nowicki phoned after dinner to tell me that his conference with Harris and Mallory had gone well. “Mallory,” he said, “was almost reasonable, for a change. Do you think he’s got religion?”

  “No! How did Harris worm his way into the act?”

  “Because one of his officers learned that the man Vogel told him about, the man who asked about you in Los Angeles, was in a city hotel. You’ve finally done Harris a favor. He can get some ink out of the murder. Now that the Valley Intruder has been caught this case could be headline news.”