Dead Seed

by William Campbell Gault

  “Did the police check to see if Alvin used any of the credit cards?”

  “I told you—there were none.”

  “Now,” he said. “But a man that rich must have carried some. And there’s Alvin, heading back for Arizona, not staying in any town where he’d be recognized. I’ll bet he charged a few things before he dumped the cards. They wouldn’t do him any good at home.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” I admitted. “You’re getting smarter every day. I’ll tell Vogel.”

  “I started smart and studied under a great teacher. I don’t know what kind of car Sarkissian drives. But I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Could Penelope find out if he recently made a large cash withdrawal from his bank?”

  “She could try.” He took a sip of beer. “You know, I’ve been thinking, maybe she ought to get paid, too. She’s been a help, hasn’t she?”

  “You’ve got a point. I’ll talk it over with her.”

  “Nah. Forget it. She’s kind of—of—”

  “Honest?”

  He smiled. “Right! She’d make a lousy private eye, wouldn’t she?”

  He left. The soothing music continued next door. Drift on, you dreamers. Reality will catch up to you yet. Bulldog Corey Raleigh is on your trail.

  Kelly hadn’t followed me to Gus’s rooming house. He had probably gone there to make sure Gus stayed bought. In Kelly’s world, the honorable man is the crook who stays bought.

  Jan came home to tell me her current client was now sold. “But today I landed another one of those impossible creatures to educate. This one is a man.”

  “You could flutter your eyelashes at him,” I suggested.

  “He’s sixty-eight years old! He’s planning to marry a twenty-three year old woman, and he wants to surprise her with a completely furnished dream home. Have you had your drink?”

  “No. I’ll make them. Martinis?”

  She nodded.

  We sat and sipped and listened to the music from our neighbor’s house. “Do you still love Lydia?” she asked.

  “I always will. But not physically, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Huh! Physical is what you mainly are.”

  A miffed silence from me.

  “I apologize,” she said. “Would you accept primitive?”

  “I’ll accept basic. Let’s not bicker. I’ve had a tiring day.”

  “So have I,” she said. “But I come home and take it out on you. Why do you stick with me?”

  “Because of your luscious body,” I told her, but my mind was elsewhere.

  Crime was on the rise. There weren’t enough jails to house all the convicted. Too many cases drag on and on at taxpayer expense. So prosecutors had to accept deals in order to keep the court calendar from getting hopelessly behind. And, of course, to make a respectable conviction record for the prosecutor. They have to run for office after their terms expire.

  All athletes learn to accept what the opposition will allow them. But Bernie was contemptuous of compromise. It didn’t make him popular with either prosecutors or civil libertarians. In Bernie’s rigid code, all crooks belonged in jail, and any smart cop soon learned who the crooks were.

  If all the crooks who belonged in jail landed in jail, it would be a safer world. But with that many new jails, would there be any building sites left for citizen housing?

  “What about you thinking about?” Jan asked.

  “About Bernie. He’s so stubborn! On Kelly, he is being so vindictive he could cost us a conviction.”

  “I will make no comment,” she said.

  “Okay. I know. I’m vindictive, too. But I have had to compromise time and again when I was working for a living.”

  “So have I,” she admitted. “That was because we worked in the free-enterprise world. Bernie gets paid whether he compromises or doesn’t.”

  True enough. And, unlike politicians, Bernie didn’t have to run for office every four years. Bureaucrats can afford to be more rigidly honest than politicians. Maybe that was the reason why Bernie had never made captain.

  EIGHTEEN

  I PHONED VOGEL IN the morning and gave him the Corey Raleigh credit-card theory.

  “We thought of that,” he told me. “We’re working on it. Does Corey know if Sarkissian drives a lavender Cadillac?”

  “Not yet. He’ll find out today.”

  “And even if it is Sarkissian’s car,” he pointed out, “what will it prove? Somebody ought to talk with that security man and maybe get a description of the driver.”

  “Somebody with the last name of Callahan?”

  “Why not? You know the boss.”

  “All right. Is there any word on Stella Jankowski? Did any officer talk with her?”

  “We couldn’t. According to her apartment house manager, she and Ketchum took off for Lake Tahoe Tuesday morning.”

  Gus hadn’t even waited for the money from his bookies. He had taken his bribe money to Lake Tahoe. He would gamble it away and come home broke and jobless.

  I phoned my friend. He told me I could talk with the security man at the front gate at nine-thirty. The man’s name was Fred Hope, and he would alert him. He asked me if I had any word on Gus.

  I told him what the bookies had told me and also about the Tahoe trip with his girlfriend.

  “The damned fool—trying to beat professionals! You tell him, if you catch up to him, that his job is waiting and I’ll book his bets for him. And I’ll give him track odds on long shots. No local bookie will give him that.”

  “That could cost you money, if he’s a winner.”

  “If he was a winner, would he be working as a guard? And I can take his wagers out of his pay.”

  “True, true. I’ll be there at nine-thirty.”

  At nine-thirty, Fred Hope confirmed what I almost knew. He had been close enough to see the driver of the Cadillac. He would recognize him again. The driver, he told me, looked a lot like Tyrone Power.

  Was there a law against talking with a man in a parking lot? Only for prostitutes, probably, who couldn’t afford lawyers.

  Sarkissian was a con man, a slickster, and they rarely play it heavy. That was the thought I had as I drove up San Marcos Pass Road. The threat of his being involved in a murder, however remotely, might be a weapon I could use.

  The guard who had replaced Gus Ketchum was thinner, but just as ugly. I gave him my name at the gate. He phoned, listened, and opened the gate. He started to give me directions, but I told him I knew where the office was.

  Penelope winked at me as I entered the outer office. She said in a secretarial monotone, “Mr. Sarkissian is expecting you, sir. You may go right in.” She pressed the door-release button.

  Vartan didn’t rise to greet me. He said curtly, “Make it brief, Mr. Callahan. I have a crowded schedule today.”

  “Just a few friendly questions,” I said. “First, I was wondering how much you paid Gus to get lost.”

  “Gus? Gus who?”

  “Ketchum. You talked with him in the San Valdesto Electronics parking lot Monday afternoon. The next day he didn’t show up for work. The police are concerned about that.”

  “The police? Are you the police?”

  “You know I’m not. I’ve checked with some of my Armenian friends down in Los Angeles who know you. They told me you were slick, but never heavy. Bribing a witness about your conspiracy with Kelly might be too heavy for a con man. Because the police are still not convinced that Kelly didn’t have some part in the Morgenstern murder.”

  “First, Mr. Callahan, this is not a con. It is a church. Second, all I know about the Morgenstern murder is what I read in the papers.”

  “Your father runs a church,” I said. “You run a con and we both know it. I don’t really give a damn about what you run. My only concerns in this whole complicated mess are the deaths of Sydney Morgenstern and Juan Garcia. I was thinking of a trade-off.”

  “Trade-off—?”

  I nodded. “I know where Gus is. The
police don’t.”

  “You’re lying,” he said. “You’re really cute.”

  “The only other person who ever told me that was my mother. Okay, I’ll go quietly.”

  “Cut out the corn, you smart-ass peeper. Sit down. We’ll talk.”

  I sat on a chair near his desk.

  “I, too, have done some research,” he told me. “On you. The con must have been part of your game, too, in L.A. Am I right—Mr. Tryden?”

  “Partly.”

  “And then you inherited all that money from your uncle and moved up here. And you helped Lieutenant Vogel on a few cases. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  He studied me thoughtfully for a few seconds. “The truth is that I never learned until a few days ago that Dwight Kelly had been a crooked cop. That’s why Vogel hates him, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll admit,” he said, “that Kelly often acted as an agent for the parents of some of the young people who were not happy here, and we worked out agreements involving donations to my church. I’ll admit that I talked with Ketchum in that parking lot and offered him a bonus for returning to work.” He smiled. “Is he going to testify that it was a bribe? And admit he accepted it?”

  “A sharp defense attorney,” I admitted, “might be able to sell that to a jury.”

  “Or,” he added pointedly, “convince the prosecutor that he has a very weak case, possibly none?”

  “That, too, could happen,” I agreed.

  “And if he does, I go untouched—and so does Kelly. But murder? As you said, that’s too heavy for me. Why isn’t Lieutenant Vogel concerned with Kelly’s involvement in that?”

  “He was. Until Kelly came up with an unshakeable alibi.”

  “For the murder, yes. But for the involvement?”

  “I’m not following you,” I said.

  “That’s as far as I’m going,” he told me. “That’s the end of the road. You go back and tell your friend Lieutenant Vogel to do his homework.”

  Penelope wasn’t at her desk when I went out. Vogel was at his when I came into his office. The air in the room was clear.

  “How many hours now without the weed?” I asked him.

  “I stopped counting. Is that a good sign?”

  “It has to be.” I sat down and related my morning’s adventures.

  “That slick son of a bitch,” he said. “His attorney gave the DA the same pitch half an hour ago, and the DA bought it. Lawyers! They’re brothers, you know that? They work together.”

  “They’re like us,” I explained. “If they don’t win, they don’t eat.”

  He shook his head. “They’re not like us. They always eat, and real high on the hog, too. What did that bastard mean about me doing my homework?”

  “I suppose he meant you—or we—took the wrong road on Kelly.”

  “I’ll bet. And he wants to steer us down another road, so we can go over the cliff at the end of it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, we got a case on Chitty. He did use Morgenstern’s credit cards on the way home. It totals up to enough to make it grand larceny. He’ll plead guilty to that and the DA will probably accept it.”

  “That’s something.”

  “It’s always ‘that’s something’ isn’t it? That’s the easy road that lawyers take. What about justice?”

  “I am a simple man, Bernie, and can’t answer complicated questions. Anything new on Gus?”

  “He left the hotel at Tahoe early this morning with his girlfriend. What good is he to us now?”

  “Who knows? I think I’ll go over to his girlfriend’s place and wait for them.”

  “Just because he left the hotel, you can’t be sure he’s coming home. Maybe they headed for Reno or Vegas.”

  I shook my head. “No gambler changes games when he’s winning. He has to be broke by now or he’d still be in Tahoe.”

  My friend at San Valdesto Electronics had a soft spot in his heart for horseplayers, being one himself. And so, did I. As Penelope had said, Gus was a dreamer. He was also a loser. Most dreamers are. Losers and dreamers were my kind of people.

  The easy road lawyers take. A twelve-year-old boy was dead, but all the law had on Alvin Chitty was larceny. On the man who had triggered it all, Fortney Grange, they had nothing. Justice, too, is often a loser.

  At two-twelve that afternoon, in front of the redbrick apartment house, a dusty Dodge two-door sedan stopped—and I was waiting for them.

  On the sidewalk, Gus stared at me doubtfully.

  “You dope!” I said. “How much did you blow at Tahoe?”

  “Enough. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m waiting for you. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  For an ugly man, Gus had been luckier than he had a right to expect. Stella Jankowski was a trim, attractive, and perky middle-aged woman.

  “Dope is the word for Gus,” she agreed as we were introduced. “But I have this hang up for losers. Are you the man who got him his new job?”

  “I am. And his boss will take him back, and the law no longer wants him, and maybe, between us, we can pound some sense into his thick skull.”

  “We can try,” she agreed. “A stimulant might help. Do you drink stimulants?”

  “Only when they’re offered or otherwise available,” I said. “Let me help you with your luggage.”

  Her apartment would not have been approved by Kay Décor, but it was comfortably furnished and spotlessly clean. Over our bourbon, I told Gus what had happened today.

  “I’m clear?” he asked.

  “For now. Until you make another dumb move. How much did Sarkissian pay you in the parking lot?”

  He scowled at me. “What parking lot?”

  I looked at Stella.

  “A thousand dollars,” she informed me. “He has about thirty dollars of it left.”

  He glared at her. “You got a big mouth!”

  She smiled at him. “Keep it up, Gus, and you’ll soon have a lonely bed. You’re not exactly Robert Redford, you know.”

  “Aagh,” Gus said, and stared glumly at the floor.

  “That’s always been his trouble,” Stella told me. “At least since I’ve known him. He doesn’t know who his true friends are.”

  “Your bookies are holding your money for you,” I said to Gus. “They took out my hundred and ten. You can go back to work Monday, and the boss will handle your action. He’ll even give you track odds on long shots.”

  “No more gambling for me,” he said. “I promised Stella, if she’d marry me, no more gambling.”

  She smiled. “He proposed to me up at Tahoe between games. Gus, if your boss is booking you, I’ll go halves with you on your bets. But no more than twenty dollars a week. That’s our budget.”

  He looked up and smiled for the first time. “That’s some lady, huh?”

  “Far better than you deserve,” I said. “I may call on you for a favor later. I figure you owe me.”

  He nodded.

  Stella nodded, too. “From here on, Gus will pay what he owes. I’ll see to that.”

  I phoned my friend from her apartment. I told him Gus would report for work on Monday. I patted Gus’s head and winked at Stella and left.

  Gus had a realist running his show now, somebody who could keep him at a level for which he was qualified. Standing around with nothing to do but look menacing all day must be boring. Now he would have Stella to come home to.

  Morgenstern was dead. Juan Garcia was dead. But there was still one living victim in this absurd tragedy, Joel Lacrosse.

  When Corey came for his weekly pay and late afternoon beer, I asked him about Joel.

  “He’s adjusting,” Corey said. “He’s into pottery now, and good at it. His incubation period is ended.”

  “Did he come through it sane?”

  “Hell, yes! He’s no wacko. He told me that if he can get a few buc
ks together, he plans to stay in town and get his own kiln.”

  “His mother has more than a few bucks now.”

  “He won’t have anything to do with her. And from what he told me, I don’t blame him.” He paused to sip some beer. “I found out that Sarkissian drives a lavender Cad. But Penelope couldn’t find out about any big withdrawal.”

  “He didn’t need it.” I told him about my conversation with Gus and with Sarkissian. I said, “He probably paid off Gus with his walking-around money.”

  “Man!” he said, “what an operator you are! And nobody’s paying you a dime for it.”

  “Money isn’t everything,” I reminded him once more.

  He grinned. “‘But I forget what’s second.’ Who said that?”

  “Dorothy Parker,” I informed him.

  “Who’s Dorothy Parker?” he asked me.

  Who’s Dorothy Parker? Who’s Tyrone Power? Today’s kids! They have no sense of history, no feel for tradition. Where are we heading?

  NINETEEN

  I HAD MOST OF the pieces in this puzzle in their proper places. Blackmail had been the motive. Morgenstern’s secret had been the reason for his murder. There had to be a reason for blackmail; there had to be a why.

  Sarkissian had called his bribe a bonus, his conspiracy an agreement arrived at to benefit his church. Carol Medford could call her blackmail payment a grant; she was neither obligated nor likely to reveal the why.

  Taking this incomplete puzzle into court would be futile. The defense attorney would stress the lack of a why and obfuscate the obvious. The responsible jurors would remember the judge’s beyond-a-reasonable-doubt admonition. One stubborn doubtful juror can result in a hung jury.

  Sarkissian would probably desert Kelly, just as Mrs. Lacrosse and her husband had. But they could not testify against him without implicating themselves. They had another compelling bond of unity; they were all citizens with no regard for the police or the law.

  The citizens on the sunny side of the law, Carl Lacrosse, Grange, Carol, were putting their self-interest above their duty as citizens. Do you know many alleged citizens who don’t?

  Because Carol and Grange were runners, because Carl Lacrosse was a wanderer, Sydney Morgenstern and Juan Garcia were dead. Sins of commission can be taken into court. Sins of omission are more difficult to define. They can too easily be rationalized by the individual’s basic need—survival. We all have to eat, don’t we?