At seven o'clock in the morning I said to Wesley Simpson, "You know, the sunlight is starting to hurt my eyes."
He smiled. "It does that after a while, doesn't it?"
We were sitting in his office, drinking coffee. I had dictated and signed my statement and was now free to go. "Well, I guess I'll go home," I said.
"I'm not going home." Wes looked at his watch. "In just a little bit, I'll be on duty." He smiled horribly. "On duty. This that I'm doing now, last night, the night before, that's just my — my hobby."
"Yeah, it helps when you enjoy your work," I said. I stood up and stretched, grunting when I forgot the bandaged flesh wound. "Man, I feel like I could sleep a couple of days." I sighed. "But there'll be no sack time for me now. Not this late in the morning."
Wes peered at me from half-closed, slightly swollen, ghastly red eyes, and grinned. He didn't say a word, just grinned. When I went out, he was still grinning.
Back in my apartment I fixed some breakfast, which was mostly coffee plus a few spoonfuls of lousy mush. You'd think after all this time I could cook edible oatmeal, but almost invariably it comes out a thin gruel or a lump of gunk you could drive a nail with. Not that it makes much difference. With my morning appetite, I don't even like the slop when it's good.
During the morning the police identified the man I'd killed last night, through a teletype kickback from the F.B.I. He was an out-of-state hood with a long record, including arrests for ADW, manslaughter, and first-degree murder. He'd served one prison term in Illinois for a murder a dozen years ago. He was not a California hood, and had never been known to be in California prior to this time.
I talked to Feeney in Narcotics and asked if there was anything new on the alleged shipment of Da Da Baby Food from Brea Island to San Pedro. Police had determined there was a shipment due this afternoon, from Handi-Foods, destined for the M.W. Wilson warehouse. It wouldn't arrive at the dock until about four p.m., however, and I told Feeney I'd call him again after that time.
About ten a.m. Wesley Simpson called me. "Just got this from Central, Shell. I think they've got the body of this Michael Grauschtunger downtown. Somebody scraped out a shallow grave, rolled him in it and covered him up. Must've been in a hurry, because part of one foot stuck out a little and a couple kids playing Gunsmoke spotted it. Told their parents and they called in. Anyway, some dead guy's in the morgue."
"You're not sure it's Mickey?"
"Well, pretty sure. We figure it is because we got records on him showing he'd had an appendectomy, knife scar on his side, and a mole in the middle of his back, and these all match the corpse. But — try this, Shell — the dead guy's face was bashed in something awful, besides which somebody used a knife to slash most of the flesh off his fingers, especially the tips."
"Whoever dumped him would take out insurance against hangnails. Even if Mickey happened to be found they didn't want anybody identifying the mugg, and maybe tracing him back to whoever put him up to the job."
He told me I got a cigar, and I said, "But, hell, Wes, I put some slugs into the little man. You've got the .32 down there. Dig the pills out and compare — "
"That's the cutey, Shell. They've been dug. He's cut up pretty good, and the bullets are no longer in Mickey M."
I didn't speak for a few seconds. Finally, I said, "Cutey is the word. This guy is so cute he'd wear a belt and suspenders and still hang onto his pants."
"Well, get down to the morgue and identify him. If you can. But maybe you better not eat first."
Fortunately, I have a strong stomach. Corpses are never pleasant, but the way this one had been hacked up, even I was glad I hadn't forced down a whole bowl of mush this morning. It was difficult for me to make positive identification, but I declared that the deceased was Michael M. Grauschtunger, then left the morgue.
My last stop before lunch was to see Ralph Merle. We talked for several minutes and I paid him an exorbitant fee, but the vital item of info was that Drake Patterson had, indeed, entered that $80,000 on his 1955 tax return.
After a rare steak and some vegetables which very definitely tasted unorganic, I went back to the Spartan, arriving in my apartment a little after noon. Earlier I had phoned Jim and told him about the episode in the alley; now I gave him another call and filled him in on the new items I'd gathered.
He whistled. "The little guy had really been carved up, huh?"
"He had. It looked as if an amateur surgeon, and a roaring sadist to boot, had worked on him. Anyway, we already knew who the guy was."
"It gets queerer and queerer."
"Yeah. Want me to pick you up, Jim?"
"No, I'll meet you at Beiglen's. About twelve-thirty."
"Right."
"See you there, then." I heard something in the background, partly drowned out by the sound of his voice. Then I said so long, and the receiver clicked. I stood there a moment trying to figure out what the sound had been. Then I got it. Probably it had been that bing-bong-clong of his door chimes. Somebody calling? If so, it must have been somebody Jim expected; anyway, he hadn't mentioned it.
I got a jar of finely-cut fresh shrimp out of the refrigerator and sprinkled some on top of the water in both aquariums. One is a small aquarium filled with frisky guppies, and the other a twenty-gallon community tank. The fish gobbled the flakes of shrimp, darting through clumps of feathery Myriophyllum and waving strands of light-green Cabomba. Very pretty.
I said, "Hello, fish." Sometimes I talk to them like that. O.K., so I like fish. But it also remains true that there is a strangely peaceful world in a twenty-gallon tank of water populated by little striped Zebras and translucent Glassfish and radiantly glowing Neons. I watch them, I enjoy them, I forget — and I relax. It's as simple as that.
I would have liked to watch them longer, but today was not the day. I said so long to the fish, and went out once more, into the world populated by people.
It was quite a wrench.
Chapter Sixteen
Someone was already playing the organ. The dolorous, quavering tones floated from the open doors of Beiglen's Mortuary, squirmed through sunlight and over the grass, oozed against my ears as I parked my Cad at the curb.
It was twelve-thirty, half an hour before the services were to begin.
The organ music bugged me. I also loathe organ music and the sad, sorrowful songs organs seem always to play. Give me the gay songs — even at funerals. But the organ music went on, writhing in the air like worms.
I went up the steps and inside. It was cool. The air smelled dusty. I looked around but didn't see Jim, so I stepped to the door of the chapel, where services would be held. Several people were seated; the casket rested in stiff rigidity at the front of the room, masses of flowers banked around it; but Jim wasn't in sight.
A thought crawled into my mind, wriggling like the tones of the organ. I remembered hearing, in the moment before Jim had hung up the phone, that merry bing-bong-clong of his living-room chimes. Somebody at the door then. Probably a delivery of some kind, could be a lot of things. There wasn't anything to worry about. But that cold thought moved, grew a little.
I found a phone in the hallway near the front doors, dialed. Jim's phone rang, rang again, unanswered. People were coming through the doors, walking slowly, silently. The services would start soon. Maybe Jim was on his way, driving here right now. Maybe. But I wasn't going to wait any longer. I went outside, sprinted to my car. I drove too fast up Sunset, barely made two lights before they turned red. At Jim's I jumped out, leaving the Cad's door open, and went up the wooden steps three at a time, jumped up the curving ramp.
The front door wasn't quite closed. There was about a quarter of an inch between door and frame. Now that I was here, for some reason I moved slowly, raising my hand and pressing it against the door.
The door swung inward a few inches and stopped.
Right then I knew.
I hadn't seen him yet. But I knew.
I pushed the door gently, easing it open en
ough so I could slip through. Then I shut it behind me. Jim lay on his back, the long rangy length of him slanting down the three steps, head lower than his body, feet near the door. His eyes were closed. There was a red stain on his white shirt, and a thin wet line of red ran from the corner of his mouth up past one eye and into his black hair.
I knelt by him, put a hand on the side of his face. "Jim," I said. "Jim."
His skin was warm. I felt something move beneath my palm. Then his lips twitched, his eyelids fluttered.
"Jim!" I said, my voice loud in the empty room.
His eyes opened, and he looked at me. The lids blinked once, then he looked at me again, kept his eyes open. "Hang on, pal," I said. "We'll make it." I got up, jumped to the phone and dialed the operator.
"Emergency," I said, trying to keep my voice down, trying to speak slowly. "Emergency. A man has been shot. Send an ambulance and the police." I gave the address, waited until the operator repeated it in calm tones, and hung up.
Kneeling by Jim again I said, "It'll be O.K., pal . . . Troops are on the way. It's going to be all right." The same old words. "It's going to be all right." But in my mind I was swearing, cursing everything including myself. I couldn't help saying, "Sorry I wasn't here, Jim."
His lips moved. His mouth opened.
"Just take it easy," I told him. "There'll be an ambulance here in a minute."
He kept trying to speak, forced sounds from his mouth. Sounds and another small trickle of blood. I could see, where the coat had fallen away from his shirt, the spot where the bullet had entered. It was dead center, but low.
Sounds from his mouth again. And I knew Jim would keep trying until he passed out, or died. Trying, undoubtedly, to tell me who had shot him. Because, unless this time again it was a hired gun like the man dead in the alley last night, that could be the answer to everything, could at least lead to the answer.
So I tried to make it easy for him.
"One word," I said, "Just one word, Jim, if you know it. Just tell me the man's name."
I leaned close. His eyes widened a little and he sucked air into his nostrils. His face seemed paler, but he was straining, making a terrible effort to speak. His voice was faint, thin and weak but clear enough.
"It . . . wasn't a man," he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Jim's eyelids fluttered, and with the last of his strength he said, "It — " he choked. "It . . . was Lor — " Then he stopped moving. His mouth went slack. But his lids closed over his eyes. They hadn't stayed open, staring.
I felt for his pulse. It was still there, thready, but there, the heart still beating. I heard sirens.
The shock was delayed, perception slow. My thoughts moved sluggishly at first.
I was thinking of what Jim had said. "It was Lor — " He had almost certainly, I thought, started to say, "It was Lorimer." It stunned me. The vision of that chubby pink face, the remembered sounds of his too-delicate words, rose in my mind. It seemed incredible, but killers come in all kinds of packages, some of them even more incredible than the thought of Horace Lorimer as a murderer.
And it was then, finally, that it hit me.
"It wasn't a man," he had said. But Lorimer was a man. So it couldn't have been Lorimer. But nothing else made sense. If it wasn't a man, then it had to be a woman, and that not only eliminated Lorimer, but Lou Grecian, hired hoodlums, half the population. The only women involved in this mess — so far as I knew, anyway — were Laurie and Eve, and the other four models from Alexandria's. But I'd hardly said a word to the other four, nor had Aaron or Jim — not in my presence, at least. Hell, it could be a woman I'd never seen, never even heard of.
I was still trying to figure it out when the ambulance — and once again the police — arrived.
I rolled the Cad's windows down and drove, letting the wind rush over my face, hoping it would pull me wider awake, clear my brain. My eyes were heavy, my whole shoulder and the side of my neck were sore, and I felt rocky and feverish, hungry for sleep.
The ambulance attendants had been giving Jim plasma when they drove away. By now he would be in the hospital, in the operating room. He might live; he might not. It would be hours before I would know.
I hadn't told the police what Jim had said. Because I didn't really know, or wouldn't believe I knew. I was sure Jim must have started to say "Lorimer." It seemed to me, now, that he had said "Lori" or "Lorim" because with the last of his breath his lips had closed. As if he'd said "Lorim . . . " Then his jaw had sagged and he'd fallen into unconsciousness.
The more I thought about it the less clear it became. It was as if I had a mental block in that one area, thoughts veering away from it, as if I didn't want to think about it. I shoved it all from my mind and drove without conscious direction. I was on Wilshire Boulevard, headed toward L.A. by this time, on the Miracle Mile. I passed swank men's clothing stores on my right, dress shops and automobile agencies on the opposite side of the wide boulevard, tall office buildings. Then, the big department stores. The May Company and Ohrbach's, with the La Brea Tar Pits, between them. The name made me think of Brea Island, and I wondered about that can of mashed bananas, wondered if it was really heroin, or only — mashed bananas.
A block farther was the Standish, where Horace Lorimer lived, where we'd had our talk, where he'd told me of defrauding the U.S. Government of taxes due it under the law. Legally Lorimer was a kind of monster; morally, not really such a monster as all that. If, that is, he was honest in other ways. Of course, maybe he was a monster in all kinds of ways. Could be, I thought, could be.
I was going along like that, just muddling apparently inconsequential nothings in my noodle, when the idea ripped through me like a 220-volt current. I slammed my foot on the brake pedal in an involuntary reflex, my back pressing into the seat behind me.
The Cad skidded. Behind me a horn blared, I heard the squeal of another car's tires blending with the sound of my own sliding on the street. Whoever was behind me couldn't stop quite in time and gently nudged my rear bumper. A man yelled, swearing, calling me names — deserved names undoubtedly.
I pulled over to the curb, found a parking spot. A white-faced guy in a Buick drove slowly past, leaning toward his right-hand window and bellowing at me. I didn't mind. I barely noticed. Little explosions were going off in my head.
Forgotten for the moment were Jim and the funeral. Instead, other things marched through my mind. I knew Lorimer's tax fraud had been workable, slick and carefully planned; Aaron had received $50,000 merely for signing his name — but he'd signed once, refused to sign a second time when Lorimer asked him, urged him to. He'd refused to "resell" the island to Lorimer, or Lorimer's company — the company in which Grecian was involved, Grecian and Mickey M. and men like them, who would kill a guy for sneezing. Aaron wouldn't have refused to resell merely to keep the fifty G's, because he would have kept the fifty G's anyway; that was his payoff.
No, Aaron Paradise must have wanted the island itself, Brea Island, so badly he was willing to risk a great deal, even his life, in order to keep it. And drifting into my thoughts now were a dozen other things I'd seen and heard but hadn't put together, and into the middle of it all had come the one word which shook the pieces into place.
That word was: Brea.
Brea Island, sure. But it is also a most familiar name to a lot of people, especially to nearly everybody in the L.A.-Hollywood area. Because right on busy Wilshire Boulevard is the very well known spot called the La Brea Tar Pits, which I had just driven past. There's even a city near Los Angeles named Brea.
It's a Spanish word. I remembered Ralph Merle casually mentioning that Brea Island had once been owned by the Spanish. Brea Island, the city of Brea. And La Brea Tar Pits — a redundant name when spoken in both Spanish and English, because in the Spanish brea means "tar."
And tar often means: Oil.
It had meant that in Los Angeles. And how it had meant that. The La Brea Pits were, in the 1890's, the scene of one of the wild
est booms in the history of oil exploration. Within a few years thousands of wells were drilled right here on part of what is now the fabulous "Miracle Mile" — into an enormous pool of oil. And it had been found because one man, named Doheny, a mining prospector, saw a wagon loaded with tar rumbling along a Los Angeles street and asked the driver where it came from. The driver told him: the Brea Pits.
So Doheny and his partner went to the Pits and dug a hole in the ground. At 165 feet, oil started to flow. Only seven barrels a day then, but that was merely the first trickle from a pool that would eventually produce more than seventy million barrels of oil.
Aaron Paradise had been a wildcatter, was an experienced oilman, and he would sure as hell have known the Doheny story, known what the word Brea meant — or might mean. Just the name, of course, didn't mean much. Not by itself. But there was all Jim had told me about his brother, his studies in geology and petroleum engineering, the wells he'd drilled; there was the sight of Jim crawling from beneath that bunkhouse — in which were the filthy, grease-stained, oil-blackened sheets and blankets — with oil on his hands and trousers; the peculiar conglomeration of pipes and valves in the sealed-off part of the bunkhouse, not connected to anything, capped in some way; there was that large area around the bunkhouse which had been bulldozed, leveled — or covered over with earth.
I thought of other things, and suddenly wanted very much to have another talk with Horace Lorimer.
But first there was somebody else I wanted to talk to. I didn't know his name yet, but it took me only ten minutes to find him. The second office-building lobby I checked listed on its register the name, "Farwell and Klein — Farlein Drilling and Exploration Co., Inc."
I found the office, went in, and in another minute was talking to Ed Klein. He was a wide-shouldered man of about sixty, a fuzz of gray hair covering his scalp, with brown eyes and the steady, quiet gaze that you sometimes see in sailors who spend long months on the sea. His face had been lined by weather and baked deep brown by the sun, and he wore a white shirt open at the neck, rolled up over bulging forearms corded with still-hard muscle.
Joker in the Deck (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 12
