The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  FOUR

  There were people in several of the overhead room corridors, staring over railings down into the lobby. I went back to the Lounge. Connie Wells hadn’t returned yet, but the pale-faced woman who had seen the body fall was still there. I went over to her.

  “Excuse me, but I noticed that you saw the falling body. Did you see which floor it fell from?”

  She still was a little flustered, but she nodded quickly and scanned the upper floors then raised a veined hand and pointed. “Do you see that couple over on the right, toward the top? He’s in a dark suit and she’s wearing white.”

  “I see them.”

  “It was the floor just below there, and to the right a dozen steps or so. That couple was standing at the door to the room behind them, and appeared to be having some sort of argument. That’s what I was watching when it happened. There was a little flurry there where I indicated on the floor beneath them, and then I saw the body come pitching over the railing.”

  “What sort of flurry?”

  “I’m not sure. I was watching the couple above. But I had the impression there was another person there.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “I didn’t notice. Then I was too busy watching the poor man fall. Is he dead?”

  “Yes, he is. Maybe you’d be good enough to do me one more favor.” I tagged a passing waitress and ordered a pair of drinks for the ladies. They beamed. “You might have noticed the tall young lady I was sitting with just over there.”

  The observant one nodded.

  “When she returns would you ask her to wait for me? I have an errand to run.”

  She said that she would and I hustled across the lobby to one of the glass-enclosed elevators that serviced the floors above. The operator was an alert-looking young man with a blue uniform.

  “What’s the fourth floor from the top?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Take me to twelve, please.”

  The doors whooshed shut and we started up.

  “Where are the stairs here?” I asked.

  “At both ends of the corridors.”

  That meant somebody could have stabbed and pushed Moon over the rail then made it to the stairs in half a dozen strides, gone up or down a floor or two then rung for an elevator or just joined the curious onlookers at the rail. At the twelfth floor I confirmed it was the one where the dark-suited man and white-gowned lady were, then asked the elevator man to take me back down one floor. He dropped me off and glided back toward the lobby. This corridor was empty except for a pair of black gentlemen at the far end. I looked around where I figured Moon must have been standing. There was nothing on the burgundy carpeting to show what might have happened. No stains, no scuff marks. The railing was unmarred. I rang at all the doors along there but nobody answered. It was the hour to dine. I went down to the far end, where the two men stared over the railing. They were dressed sharply, one in a powder blue suit, the other in tan. Both wore platform shoes.

  “Hi.”

  They looked at me coolly. One nodded.

  “A witness thinks the body downstairs fell from this floor.”

  It surprised them, which meant I could get in maybe three quick questions before they realized there was no call to tell me anything. A door behind them stood open and women’s voices came from within.

  “Were you in there when it happened?” I asked the one who had acknowledged my presence.

  “Right.”

  “Door closed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See anybody else on this floor since you came out?”

  “Just the white boy who brought up our drinks. He’s the one told us something had happened.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Went back in the elevator there.”

  He indicated the one at this end of the corridor. The quiet one finally spoke.

  “What is it with you, man? You police?”

  “Just a concerned citizen. Thanks very much, gentlemen.”

  I rang for the nearby elevator. Down in the lobby a pair of patrolmen had arrived and were keeping back the crowd. I went to a pay phone near the desk and dialed Armando’s home, but there was no answer. One of the police officers was on a phone at the desk. The other stood near the body. He was one of the new ones. Young, lean and watchful. I crossed to him.

  “Somebody should talk to the pale little woman with the dark coat and nutty hat over there in the Lounge,” I told him. “She says she saw something up on the eleventh floor just before the body came down.”

  “Thanks, we’ll do that,” he told me.

  While he was staring across at the woman I bent low over the body once more for a closer look at the ice pick. The cop’s hand quickly found its way to my elbow.

  “You’ll have to stand back, sir.”

  “Sorry.” The closer look was worth the rebuke. The weapon sticking out of the back of Moon had been a promotional product. The lettering on it advertised a variety emporium in the town of Sand Valley.

  Connie Wells had returned to our table. I went back to the Lounge.

  “They told me what happened,” she said, indicating the two elderly women. “Why did we have to pick this place to meet?”

  “We wanted to capture the robust spirit of San Francisco.”

  I told her I had a few more questions to ask her, and offered to take her to another bar. One that didn’t have high balconies around it. She said no, that the Scotch was affecting her badly. She preferred to go home.

  She’d come in a cab, so I gave her a ride to her apartment off Bay Street, about three blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a newish, three-story building. She said I could come in to ask my questions if I promised to make it fast.

  The place was furnished neatly, but without much imagination. She put her coat in a closet, then sank onto a divan along one wall.

  “What more do you need to know?”

  “I want to hear about some of the things you didn’t want to talk about earlier.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what happened back at the hotel.”

  “That man who committed suicide?”

  “It wasn’t suicide. It was murder. And the victim was Moon.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said quietly. The more she thought about it the worse it became for her. “Oh, my God.”

  “I want to know more about you, Miss Wells. Where you’re from. What you did before coming to San Francisco.”

  She got up to get a cigarette from a little teakwood box on a sideboard. She lit it and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “God, what a joke. It’s as if somebody pulled a plug, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” She turned and leaned back against the sideboard, watching me. “I haven’t told people up here about my past. Why should I? A number of people would think it quite silly. You see, Mr. Bragg, I used to play the flute. I am twenty-seven years old, and for almost twenty of those years I played flute. In Los Angeles. I played in grade school and high school and junior college. I played in school bands and in trios and in ensembles and for television commercials and once in a Hollywood studio orchestra. But I never was quite good enough to play for the Los Angeles Symphony orchestra, and would you believe, Mr. Bragg, that all I ever really wanted to do was to play flute for the Los Angeles Symphony?”

  She went back to the divan and took another long drag off the cigarette. “Then two years ago my father died. My mother had died some years earlier, but I wasn’t as close to her as I was to my father. And after he died I learned his custom furniture business wasn’t quite the success I’d been led to believe. In fact, it was almost bankrupt, so there was not even a modest estate left for me, the only child. At about that same time I entered a wretched six-month marriage. I suppose I was particularly vulnerable, after Father died. Anyway, my husband’s name was Harvey Pastor. He has a small combo that plays clubs. In Southern California, mostly, but he does a fa
ir amount of traveling. Among clubs and bedrooms as well, I belatedly discovered. He wasn’t even decent enough to restrict it to when he was out on the road. He had three girlfriends that even I knew about during that six months.”

  “Were you civilized when you parted?”

  “We didn’t throw things at each other, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So you keep in touch?”

  “There’s no reason to.”

  Her face had colored some. The subject was painful to her still.

  “And so, one day, I just decided to say good-bye to all that. I moved up here and began reading the want ads, because I didn’t want to get burned with men again, and it was pretty apparent I would somehow have to take care of myself, and there was no way I’d do it by sitting around on street corners playing my damn flute.

  “About ten days later Armando ran his ad for a cashier with some bookkeeping experience. I had taken bookkeeping courses in high school, because as part of the course you would get a little packet with a ledger and journal and make-believe invoices and balance sheets. It was fun. Like playing business. I remembered enough of it to handle what Armando needed at the beginning. The rest of the job was just being civil to people and looking attractive. Then, as I told you earlier, I took over more and more chores. Now he gives me a share of the profits in the form of part interest in the restaurant. It gives me a little feeling of security. Or rather it did.”

  She sat back down on the divan. The hand holding the cigarette was a little unsteady. “And now that’s going to end also.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t. But I’m not going to be a part of anything in which people are being murdered.”

  “I’m hired to stop it. And I charge enough so that if I can’t stop it soon, Armando will fire me and hire somebody else. Mind if I use your phone?”

  She gestured to a low stand in the corner. I dialed Armando’s number again. Still no answer. Connie Wells meanwhile had gone out to the kitchen and returned with a small snifter of brandy. She sat warming it between her hands.

  “How did you know it was murder?” she asked.

  “Moon? He had an ice pick sticking out the back of him.”

  She looked as if she might be sick, and raised the brandy to her lips. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “The forest holds many creatures. Just for the record, did you go anyplace else back at the hotel besides the ladies’ room?”

  “No. And I didn’t run into anybody I know, either. But I most certainly did not stab anyone with an ice pick.” She gave a fairly convincing shudder.

  “What has Armando told you about himself?”

  “Not much, really. I assumed he’d been in the restaurant business before. Maybe I should ask you. What sort of man is he?”

  “He seems okay now, but he hasn’t lived here for too long. About his earlier life, I can’t say.”

  “Could I be in danger?”

  “I doubt it. Unless you know a lot more than you’re telling me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Ever heard of a place called Sand Valley?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  I nodded and got to my feet. “I guess that’ll do it for now then. Thanks for your help.”

  She rose. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even offer you a drink.”

  “That’s okay. I try not to get fried while I’m working.”

  At the door she put one hand on my arm. “Do you have to go right now?”

  “Why, Miss Wells. What’s this, a pass?”

  She smiled lamely. “Perhaps. I didn’t mean to give the impression I’m off men entirely. I just don’t want to have to depend on them. And let’s face it. I’ve been badly frightened. If I hear any funny sounds I’m not apt to get any sleep.”

  She was standing closer to me than she had all evening. Despite the worry pinching the corners of her eyes, she was one tremendous looking woman.

  “I have some Scotch,” she told me. “We could talk some more. About other things.”

  “It’s a temptation,” I told her.

  She closed the distance between us a bit more, until our bodies were touching in a couple of places. “I may as well come right out with it,” she said. “I’m quite vulnerable when I’ve been frightened. What more can I say?”

  “I think we both should say goodnight, Miss Wells.”

  “Connie, please. Why should we say that?”

  “Because, Connie, I once knew a young fellow who was quite a ladies’ man. He was a mail carrier. He told me the secret to his very active social life—active, yet uncomplicated—was that he never messed around with any of the women on his mail route. But every six months or so he’d try to change his route. And when he did, then he would go back to the women he’d struck up friendships with on his old route.”

  She took a step backward. “I don’t know that I’d care to be known as part of somebody’s old route.”

  “It’s just an expression. Maybe when this is over with I’ll drop in to see you at the Chop House some night.”

  “Please do.”

  I gave her one of my cards and told her if something went bump in the night she could call my answering service and I’d call her back. Then I removed her hand as gently as I could and left. That sort of offer comes my way so seldom I felt downright sanctimonious.

  FIVE

  I drove back down to the office and dialed Armando’s number again. This time he answered. He said he’d spent the evening at a movie with Beverly Jean, then on his way home he had stopped in at Marin Joe’s for a steak.

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “Somebody got to Moon. He’s been murdered.”

  He didn’t say a word until nearly a minute went by. “I don’t believe that.”

  “It happened. He fell eleven stories into the lobby of the Pimsler Hotel. There was an ice pick in the nape of his neck. He’s dead twice over.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  “The place is a popular spot. I had met Connie Wells there for drinks and questions.”

  “You saw it happen?”

  “Almost. I wasn’t facing the right direction to see him fall. I went up for a close look afterward.”

  “Christ,” he said quietly. “Old Moon. I never thought anything could hurt that lug.”

  “Did you tell him about the threat, like I suggested?”

  “Yes. And he acted the way I figured he would. Patted my back and laughed.”

  “When you and Moon left Sand Valley, were you running from anybody?”

  “Like who?”

  “Like cops.”

  “Hell, no. Why?”

  “Because when you talk to the police they’ll be asking about Sand Valley. The ice pick came from a store there. Its advertising was on the handle.”

  He tried to hock and swear at the same time. The result was unintelligible.

  “What have you learned so far?” he asked, after getting control of himself.

  “Nothing to show your troubles are from around here.”

  “You still think it’s old business from Sand Valley?”

  “Yes. You’re going to have to tell me about that sometime.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Apparently it’s not supposed to.” There was no use bedeviling him further at this point, but a bad practical joke could hardly explain it any longer. Somebody was after him, but they didn’t want to kill him outright. Maybe they wanted to worry him to death.

  “When do I have to talk to the cops?”

  “It depends. Did Moon carry anything on him that would link him to you or your address? A driver’s license maybe?”

  “Not that I know of. He had his own apartment down on Lombard Street.”

  “Then just play it like a good citizen. They probably won’t trace him to you tonight. But it’ll be in the Chronicle tomorrow morning. They like 1947 crime stories. After you see the paper, phone the police. The st
ory will mention the ice pick probably, but not the connection with Sand Valley, so let that come as a surprise to you.”

  “Do I have to tell them about the cards in the mail?”

  “I would. You might as well take advantage of their manpower. It doesn’t cost you anything. Maybe they’ll turn up something I missed. Another thing, after you’ve looked at the morning paper and before you phone the police, call the Mission Academy and tell them to restrict the girl to their campus for a few days, and be doubly careful of strangers.”

  “I’ll call tonight.”

  “It would be better tomorrow. The police might check. I’d just as soon they didn’t know I was working on this right now, as well.”

  “Okay. How did Connie take all this?”

  “She’s a little shaken, but I didn’t tell her it was Moon until we’d left. Do you have any idea what Moon might have been doing at the Pimsler?”

  “No. I’m surprised they let him in the front door, even.”

  He gave me Moon’s address on Lombard and I told him I’d talk more with him in the morning. Before leaving I called the answering service to tell them I was on my way home. They said Bobbie had called several times. She hadn’t left any message or number. I dug out the number she’d given me the day before and tried phoning her. There was no answer.

  I drove on home, considered stopping by the No Name for a drink, but decided it would be better to do my drinking at home, where I wasn’t apt to run into some old friends who might keep me up half the night.

  I live on the bottom floor of an old two-story house with brown shingle siding on a hill about half the distance between the downtown section of Sausalito and the big indoor model of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay built and run by the Army Corps of Engineers. A dissolute young man named Pinky Shade, who works for an import firm in the city and spends a lot of time skiing during the snow season in the Sierra, lives upstairs. He’s got the view of Angel Island and Belvedere and Richardson Bay. I have a view out of my front window of a neighbor’s fence and rose bush, the roof of a one-time elementary school a block down and over and, on a clear day, the industrial section of Richmond. Out of the smaller, northern window I have a view of the carport, over which the landlady, Mrs. Parker, lives, and beside that a small utility and storeroom. There are windows on both sides of the utility room so that when they’re clean I can see a small patch of Richardson Bay. Once every two or three weeks a fishing boat might be seen chugging through my patch of view. But my rent is several dollars less than Pinky Shade’s, and I don’t spend all that much time there anyhow.