Cat and Mouse

by William Campbell Gault

  “But Mallory wouldn’t believe the man who asked about me was involved.”

  “Until now—when they realized the two of them can get some ink out of it. This could be the new Valley Intruder and that cat gimmick should go over big on the idiot box.”

  “Oh, yes,” I sadly agreed.

  There is nothing you can do about it, Jan had said. That canny bastard was relying on that. There had to be something I could do about it.

  I loaded the old Colt before we went to bed that night and put it back on the shelf in the closet.

  “Wouldn’t it be safer to have a guard outside?” Jan asked.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be safe.”

  She studied me. “You want him to come in, don’t you? You and Mrs. Casey want him to come in.”

  “Of course not!” I lied.

  The for-sale sign was no longer on the Crider lawn when Mrs. Casey and I went grocery shopping next morning, but the agent I knew was taking a couple into the house. He had a key.

  “I bet they left,” Mrs. Casey said. “The sissies!”

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “they’re living it up at the Biltmore.”

  She made no comment.

  Mrs. Casey is a dedicated comparison shopper; it was eleven o’clock when we loaded the car.

  She had bought some grapes and Brie cheese to take to Corey. “You know how he loves them both,” she said. “You won’t mind driving me there, will you?”

  “I’ll be glad to drive you there,” I told here, “but I’m not sure what their rules are about feeding a prisoner.”

  “Let me handle that part,” she said.

  McClune was there—and cooperative. Corey was reading a tattered paperback reprint of The Maltese Falcon, quite possibly for the twentieth time.

  He was looking less gloomy today. He told us, “Nowicki was here this morning. He thinks there’s a possibility now that I might get out on bail. But it would take more money than I can raise.”

  “If it happens,” I said, “I’ll pay for the bond. You can work it off by guarding the house again.”

  “He could even stay with us,” Mrs. Casey suggested. “I’m sure he wouldn’t charge as much as those guards you hired. And he’d be getting his meals free.”

  That should run up our grocery bill. Mrs. Casey goes gourmet when Corey is eating with us.

  The mailman came right after lunch and I went out to get it. Our only first-class mail was a postcard, another seven-word message. It read: “You can’t hide forever. I’ll be back.” It was postmarked from Los Angeles.

  “Any interesting mail?” Jan asked.

  “Just the garbage mail,” I told her. “I have to take a short trip this afternoon, but I’ll be home before dinner.”

  “Trip to where?”

  “To Tritown.”

  “What’s in Tritown?”

  “A former cop friend,” I lied. “He could have some information I need.”

  I put the card in an envelope and took it with me to the sheriff’s station. McClune was out for lunch; I gave it to the fingerprint man.

  It had occurred to me this morning while I was waiting for Mrs. Casey that though Jasper Belton’s parents had moved to Arizona, he could still have friends in town. Through the gray parched hills I drove for fifteen miles and then down the long winding road that led into the verdant green of Avocado Valley.

  It is a town of about three thousand inhabitants, many of them retired farm families. There were cars on the high-school parking lot; they obviously had a summer session.

  The principal was in his outer office, a thin gray-haired man in blue slacks and a blue-and-white-striped golf shirt.

  I told him I had come from San Valdesto to get what information he might have on Jasper Belton.

  “Are you a police officer?”

  I shook my head. “I’m retired now. But I work with the police in town occasionally. Sort of a—oh, community service.”

  Jasper, he told me, had been a puzzle to him, a lad who had the capability of being an honor student but maintained a running dispute with all of his teachers.

  “He seemed determined to become our leading anti-establishment student. He reveled in controversy. And the rowdies he hung around with encouraged him. He was the only bright boy in the group.” He shook his head. “What a waste!”

  “Does he have any relatives in town?”

  “A stepsister. But I would suggest you don’t question her. She is furious about the fact that Mr. Belton didn’t phone her from Arizona to tell her about—about what happened, not until two days later.”

  “It’s possible,” I explained, “that the police hadn’t located his parents before then. My mission is to find Jasper’s murderer.”

  “I see.” He frowned. “I don’t know what to advise you to do. If you want, I’ll phone her and explain the situation.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  I didn’t hear the conversation; he phoned from his inner office. When he came out, he was smiling. “You were right. Mr. Belton phoned her this morning and explained the police delay.” He handed me a card. “Here is her name and address.”

  Mrs. James Patino lived at 425 Orchard Lane. He gave me the directions to the house.

  It was a small two-story white frame house with a house-wide screened front porch, right out of the Midwest corn belt.

  A short, slim blonde girl wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt was waiting for me on the porch. She asked, “Are you the officer from San Valdesto?”

  I nodded.

  “I only have an hour before leaving for Arizona,” she said. “My husband is coming home from work to drive me to the Temple airport.”

  “I’ll be brief. I have two reasons to want to find the man who killed Jasper. First of all, he meant to get me. Second, when he decided he couldn’t, he framed a young friend of mine. I have reason to believe the man who killed Jasper pretended to be his friend. He is the same man who threatened me.”

  “I wish I could help,” she said, “but I don’t know any of Jasper’s new friends. I haven’t even heard from him since he ran away from Arcadia House.”

  Arcadia House was a mental institution in the San Fernando Valley. I didn’t ask her the reason for his being there. I asked, “Did he write to you when he was there?”

  “Rarely,” she said. “And he never mentioned any friends.” She took a breath. “I hope you find that so-called friend of his.”

  “So do I, Mrs. Patino. I hope I find him before he finds me. I apologize for intruding at this time.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said.

  Back up the long winding road out of the green valley to the parched hills. Scarface the intimidator, I reasoned, could well have spent some time in a mental hospital. Could that be his connection to Belton? There was a way to find out.

  I told the guard in front of the house that I would need round-the-clock service tomorrow. He assured me it would be supplied.

  In the house, Jan asked, “Did your cop friend have any information that will help?”

  “A doubtful lead,” I told her, “but I have to check it out. I’m going down to Los Angeles tomorrow. I told the man outside we want twenty-four-hour service until I come home.”

  “It’s time for a drink,” she said. “If this keeps up we could turn into drunkards.”

  I kissed her. “Easy, honey. One day at a time.”

  “For how long?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Damn me!” she said. “I’m becoming a shrew!”

  I didn’t argue with her.

  The original note had a San Valdesto postmark, today’s card a Los Angeles postmark. The alert from Heinie had come from Los Angeles; that had to be the man’s stamping ground. He probably had left here when he sensed, or was told, that the noose was tightening. He had left town twenty minutes before the officer searched his hotel room. Did he, I wondered, have another ally in town?

  McClune phoned before dinner to tell me they had not been able
to raise any usable prints on the postcard, not even with the laser.

  “How about Corey?” I asked him. “Nowicki told me this morning that it was possible he might be granted bail.”

  “That could take some time,” he said. “I can imagine that both Mallory and Harris are carefully weighing the public relations advantage on both sides of that decision.”

  I told him what I had learned in Tritown and that I planned to visit Arcadia House tomorrow.

  “Good work, tiger,” he said. “Luck.”

  It was not only my ill-gotten wealth that had done it; it was probable that I would have enjoyed much better police cooperation in my Los Angeles days if I had known some high-ranking police officers who played poker.

  Another troubled night; my stomach rumbled and my bad knee ached. From the freeway came the sound of the diesel trucks, from the sky the distant drone of a plane coming into the San Valdesto airport.

  The local radio informed us in the morning that there had been another juvenile assault on the roadside mailboxes in Slope Ranch. One youth was being held. He was not an invader from lower Main Street; he was a Slope Rancher who had rammed a steel mailbox post with his Porsche.

  Jan got up from the table and turned off the set. “Why?” she asked. “What could they be angry about?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe boredom?”

  “Or maybe drugs?”

  “That’s a better guess,” I agreed. “If their parents won’t give them the money for dope they have to steal it. That’s what is happening up here. So we get the daytime burglars.”

  “Thank God, we don’t have kids!” Jan said.

  I didn’t agree. I kept my mouth shut.

  CHAPTER 7

  TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT ON the freeway until I reached Ventura. It grew heavier and slower all the way to Tarzana. I turned off there; Arcadia House is in Tarzana. The street traffic was less clogged.

  The parking lot was about half full when I got there. The patients’ building was large and two stories tall; the administration building small, only one story, connected by a passageway with the larger building. All of it was white stucco, trimmed in varnished redwood.

  The office of Dial Forest, Administrator, was directly across the lobby from the entrance. In the outer office, a heavyset woman in a blue knit dress was busily typing at her desk near the counter when I entered.

  She looked up and smiled at me.

  I told her my name and said, “I’m working with the police in San Valdesto on the murder of a former patient of yours, a young man named Jasper Belton. I came here for what information you might have on him.”

  “The name isn’t familiar to me,” she said, “but I’ve only been here for three months. One moment, please.”

  She went into the inner office and came out in a few minutes. “Mr. Forest will see you,” she said.

  Dial Forest was a handsome young man in a conservative gray three-piece suit, either a yuppie or a transplanted easterner. He didn’t rise as I entered; he was riffling through a stack of file cards on his desk.

  “Ah, yes,” he said finally, “here it is, Jasper Belton. He was discharged—” He paused. “He left here six months ago.”

  “His stepsister told me he ran away.”

  He shook his head. “He came of his own volition and left the same way. We had no authority to hold him.”

  “What was his problem—drugs?”

  “We don’t release the medical records of our patients, Mr. Callahan.”

  “Why not? They can’t hurt him now. He’s dead. He was murdered.”

  He stared at me. “My secretary didn’t tell me that!” He looked at the card again. “He was suffering from schizophrenia. As I remember, he seemed to be improving when he left.”

  “Do you have the address he gave you when he was admitted?”

  He nodded. “Four-twenty-five Orchard Lane. That’s in Tritown, a small town in Avocado Valley.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  He frowned. “Wait—I remember now! I saw him about a month later. He was working as a bag boy in a Santa Monica supermarket. I never saw him after that and we buy all our groceries there. It’s a Von’s chain store.”

  That would be a dead end by now. I asked, “Do you remember any of your patients he was close to when he was here?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure there were none. He was extremely reclusive.”

  “I’m thinking particularly of a heavy bald man with a long scar on his right cheek.”

  He shook his head again. “I would have remembered a man like that.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that Dial Forest went a long way through heavy traffic to buy his groceries. I mentioned this.

  He sighed. “I live with my mother and she refuses to leave Santa Monica. I, sir, am a fourth-generation Santa Monican.”

  I thanked him and left and headed for his home town.

  Denny’s Tavern is in Venice, about half a block from the Santa Monica border. It is an old brick building of three floors, the two above the tavern inhabited by Denny and his wife. The last time I was here there had also been three teenagers in the family group, but they must have flown the coop by now.

  Denny had been a jockey at one time, but he rarely finished in the money. Two stout construction workers in hard hats were at the bar when I entered, quaffing beer. A thin, middle-aged woman in khaki shorts and halter was studying The Racing Form at a corner table and working a pocket calculator.

  Denny had put on weight. He studied me, frowning. “I know you,” he said. “But from where?”

  I started to answer, but he held up a hand. “Callahan! The Rock! Where the hell have you been?”

  “I live in San Valdesto now. I’m more or less retired.”

  “You must have retired rich. Ain’t that the town that won’t let in Democrats?”

  “We have a couple of them.”

  “You drink Beck’s dark, right?”

  “When I can’t get Einlicher.”

  He set a bottle and a glass in front of me and said, “On the house. What brings you down to God’s country?”

  “I’m looking for a man, a big man. He’s bald and he has a long scar on his right cheek.”

  “I had a guy like that come here for his cigarettes, but I never learned his name. He hardly ever bought a drink.”

  “Corinth cigarettes?”

  He nodded. “This was the only place in town he could buy ’em. I got on to them when the missus and I went to Greece. They’re made there. I still smoke ’em but I don’t have many buyers. I guess your friend must have found some other store that sells them. He hasn’t been here for a month.”

  “He’s not a friend of mine. Do you know a young man named Jasper Belton?”

  “Hell, yes! He worked for me for a couple of months. He mopped the place out—you know—the peon labor. What about him?”

  “He was murdered in San Valdesto. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “Only the sports pages. My stomach is too weak for the rest of it. What’s going on, Brock? You said you were retired.”

  “This one is personal. Scarface threatened me and then framed a young friend of mine for Belton’s murder.”

  “He threatened you? Has he got a death wish, or what?”

  “He threatened me by mail. Was Belton working here when he was coming in for cigarettes?”

  “He was. Hey, wait—you think this big slob killed Jasper?”

  I nodded.

  “Jesus! I’d better keep my forty-five handy. What’s his beef with you?”

  “I can only guess. My best guess is that he must have been some hoodlum I had put away when I was working here.”

  The woman in shorts and halter came from the table, put a slip and some money on the bar and said, “Remember now, Denny, I’ve got a copy of those.”

  “I know, Grace! You’ve told me that a hundred times!”

  She smiled and left, taking her calculator along.

  “Horse players,” D
enny said. “They’re bad enough. But women!”

  I didn’t comment. I wrote my phone number on a paper napkin and handed it to him. “If Scarface shows up, call me in San Valdesto. If I’m not there, give my wife the message. I’ll be phoning her.” I put a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “That should pay for the call.”

  He pushed the bill back. “Make it my contribution to the hunt. This slob shapes up as a public menace.”

  I thought of that silly game called treasure hunt we had played in high school, leaving clues at every hidden stop. Was that what the man was playing with me?

  He had lured Corey to the shack by sending Jasper up the hill in the Plymouth. He had left clues there that had sent me to Arcadia House and Denny’s Tavern. Why? To get me out of town, to make me an unprotected target? Or was somebody else slated to be his second victim?

  I drove to Heinie’s.

  He was behind the bar, arguing with a customer, as usual. “You!” he said. “It’s about time! What brings you into my humble establishment?”

  “Your gourmet cuisine,” I said. “I’ll have a steak sandwich and beaker of Einlicher.”

  “Yes, sir. Coming right up, sir.”

  He went to the kitchen; I went to a corner booth. When he came out of the kitchen, he poured a beaker of Einlicher and brought it to the booth. José, his lackey of all trades, took over behind the bar.

  Heinie slid into the booth across from me. “I’ve been reading about what’s happening in your town. Trouble, buddy?”

  I nodded. “Trouble.”

  “Who’s this Corey Raleigh I’ve been reading about?”

  “A young man I trained, a private investigator. The way it’s shaping up, that man who asked about me in here could have framed him.”

  “How’d he find you? He didn’t get your address from me.”

  “I don’t know. When I find him, I’ll know.”

  “If you find him. Do you know his name?”

  I shook my head.

  “God damn it, I should have asked him!” Heinie said.

  “Don’t feel guilty. He would have lied.”