Vein of Violence

by William Campbell Gault

  Not that Rivali was standard. But he was the most obviously evil of the people I had interrogated and the most obviously capable of any crime that would further his career or protect his interests.

  The two aspirin hadn’t killed my headache. I rubbed the bump above my ear and it seemed to be smaller this morning, but the headache it had fostered had diminished only a little.

  I hoped Parkas would be at the house and would give me some excuse for slugging him.

  The old flivver pulled into Rivali’s block just as the Department car stopped in front of his house. I parked behind it and Gnup waited for me, the other detective staying in the car. We went up through the cacti together to the front door.

  The Packard was in the garage but there was no sound in the house. Until Sergeant Gnup rang the door chimes. And silence followed that.

  “His car is there,” I said.

  Gnup nodded and rang the chime again.

  From inside we could hear the shuffle of hesitant footsteps, and then the door opened and the puffed, red-eyed face of George Parkas looked out at us mournfully.

  “We want to see Rivali,” Gnup said.

  Parkas’ voice was slightly above a whisper. “He’s not here. He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Parkas shrugged.

  “His car is here,” Gnup said. “We’re coming in, Parkas. We’ll see if he’s gone.”

  “You’re not coming in,” Parkas said. “He’s gone. You’re not coming.” He looked at me. “He can’t come in without a warrant, can he?”

  I didn’t answer that. I asked, “Are you sick? What’s the matter with you? Your face is all puffed up.”

  He looked back at Gnup without answering me. He said, “You’re not coming in, not without a warrant. Try it, and see.”

  Gnup said, “All right. I’ll get a warrant. And you’ll come with me, now, while I get one. Come on.”

  Parkas shook his head dully. “No.”

  “Move!” Gnup said, and his hand went in under his jacket.

  The door slammed in our faces as Gnup pulled the gun. It was a heavy door. I tried the knob. It was a locked, heavy door.

  Gnup stared at me doubtfully.

  “You’re out of your jurisdiction,” I said. “This is Los Angeles. If you want to go in here, you’d better drop in at the West Side Station first.”

  He nodded. “There’s something fishy here. He looked — punchy.”

  “He always has, to me. Maybe he’s got a cold.”

  Gnup put his gun back in its holster. “Would you stay here? Would you watch the house while I go over to the West Side Station?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you armed?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t need to be. I’ll be careful.”

  “All right. Stay right here, in the yard.”

  He hurried back to his car and I stood where I was for about a minute. When he was gone, when the car had turned out of sight, I left the front porch and went around the side of the house.

  There was a window open a few inches here, and through it I could hear the low, mournful voice of George Parkas. “Gone,” he was saying. “Gone where? Gone. You bastards — Oh, you dirty bastards! He’s gone away. He’s left me. Gone, gone, gone — ”

  The window was too high for me to see into; I went quietly along to the back of the house. A small service porch jutted out from the kitchen door, but the door to it was locked. I pulled a redwood bench over to a spot below the high kitchen window and climbed up on that.

  I could see through the kitchen, but all I could see of George Parkas was one shoulder. If my memory of the house was accurate, he was sitting in the dining room.

  Sitting — ? On what? His shoulder was too low for him to be sitting on a chair. Was he sitting on the floor? And now I could see one foot and it was clear to me he wasn’t sitting. He was kneeling, kneeling on the floor.

  I went back to the partly open window at the side of the house, taking the redwood bench along. I had set it down and was about to climb up onto it, when a voice behind me said, “What’s going on, young man?”

  I turned to face a thin and vinegar-faced woman of about sixty who was standing on the other side of the hedge that divided this property from the house next door.

  “I’m not sure, ma’am,” I said, “but I hope to find out. “

  “Well, I’m calling the police, in case you’re interested,” she said.

  “A good idea, ma’am,” I assured her. “The Beverly Hills Police have authorized me to investigate here. But you’d better phone, anyway.”

  I stood up on the bench and the odor of incense came through the few inches of open window. I stood on tiptoe, but all I could see was the upper two thirds of the far wall of this room. I would need to get higher still. From inside, George’s voice sounded shaky and sick. He was talking some foreign tongue, undoubtedly Greek, and it sounded like praying to me.

  I clambered down again and decided not to pry any more. It seemed clear to me that George wasn’t going anywhere.

  In a few more minutes, Gnup came with an officer from the West Side Station. I told them what I had heard and smelled.

  “Jesus — !” Gnup said. He looked at the Packard and at me. “What do you think?”

  “What’s there left to think, Sergeant?”

  Gnup looked at the L.A. officer. “It’s a heavy door.”

  “So? The latch would still be the same size, probably. A foot should do it. Especially in a house as old as this.”

  “In the interest of jurisdiction,” Gnup said, “will it be your foot?”

  “Let’s go,” the man said.

  We all went up on the porch. He stood back from the door as Gnup and his partner took their guns out. He lifted his foot and crashed it forward at a spot a few inches to the left of the knob.

  It was an old house. The door swung open.

  Gnup went in first; I, last.

  George Parkas was still on his knees in the dining room and the air was sickening-sweet with incense. There were flowers at both ends of the heavy dining-room table, flowers in great vases above the head and below the feet of the body of Enrico Rivali.

  Parkas had stopped praying. He was now crying.

  THIRTEEN

  I HADN’T HAD lunch and my stomach was growling. In the smoke-filled room, my head pulsated in a nagging, stomach-unsettling throb. Reporters were there and Remington; Gnup, along with some men from this station, was still interrogating George Parkas in another room.

  A photographer from the Times put his lens a few feet from my nose and his flash-bulb flare was torture. I tried not to look annoyed. In this town, the Times can do no wrong.

  Remington was saying to Captain Devine, “It all ties in with the Milgrim murder, Captain. We’d like to have Parkas as soon as you’re finished with him here.”

  “All right, all right!” Devine said irritably. “Will you boys with the cameras please get the hell out now?”

  A reporter from the Mirror-News asked me, “What did you think of, Callahan, when you saw Rivali on the table like that?”

  “I thought he was dead,” I said.

  “Naturally. I mean, kind of weird, wasn’t it? This Parkas is a homo, right? Rivali, too?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” I said. “I guess they’re just close, like the Times and the Chicago Tribune.”

  A uniformed man came in and handed Captain Devine a sheet of paper. I stood up and my headache almost floored me. I stood for a second in blind agony and then walked slowly over to where the Captain was handing the paper to Lieutenant Remington.

  Remington finished reading it and said to me, “Coniine. Damn it, where does that put us? He sure as hell wasn’t a suicide, was he? Same damned killer, the way it looks.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Captain, may I leave now? I’m sick, and food might help it. I’ve got to eat.”

  Devine took a deep breath. “Okay, okay. But listen, Callahan, this isn’t Beverly Hills. We d
on’t want private peepers messing around murder cases in this town. So keep your nose clean.”

  I stood there glaring at him.

  “Watch it,” he said. “Now watch your tongue.”

  “You’re new,” I said softly, “new to the West Side and to your captaincy. Why don’t you phone downtown and ask about me?”

  His eyes were blank. “Is that so? Who should I call, downtown?”

  “Anyone,” I answered. “You could start with the Chief of Police, if you wanted to. I’ll wait. I can wait that long. “

  Remington said soothingly, “Captain, Mr. Callahan is a little special. He’s worked hard for his reputation.”

  One of the reporters said, “Hell, yes, Captain. He’s a big-shot ex-Ram. Take it easy with him.”

  The Captain flushed. I looked at the reporter and he sneered. My head throbbed and a surge of irrationality moved through me and I took a step toward the reporter.

  Remington stepped swiftly between us. His back was to me as he told the reporter, “Why don’t you leave? Why don’t you leave while you’re alive and whole?”

  The rest of the newspapermen in the room were muttering now. Small men working for big papers and it gave them a false sense of their own importance. Meaningless men with powerful weapons.

  My headache dimmed and sharpened, dimmed and sharpened. Through it, I heard Captain Devine say, “All right now Lieutenant. Let’s not fly off the handle.”

  “I’ll go quietly,” I said. “You calm them. I don’t need the slobs. I never needed them.”

  I went out to a farewell of catcalls and boos. They knew I didn’t need them and therefore wasn’t afraid of them. They hated anybody who wasn’t afraid of them. Because they were such small men in jobs too big for them.

  I stopped at the nearest drugstore and took four aspirin with three glasses of water. Then I drove over to my own favorite drugstore for lunch.

  By the time I got there, my headache had diminished and my fan was back to work, ready with a smile and a good word. This man I needed.

  “You look sick,” he said. “How about some poached eggs?”

  “I had eggs for breakfast,” I told him. “Some soup first.”

  The soup was thick and creamy potato soup and the rumbling in my stomach went away. I ate my steak slowly, thinking of Enrico Rivali.

  In my mind, I saw him again on that massive table with the flowers, laid out in ceremonial display. I wondered if a priest had reached him in time. There probably had been some things Rivali had to confess, though he must have left the church long ago.

  I dawdled over my coffee, killing time.

  By the time I got to Beverly Hills Headquarters, Gnup was back. He sat in a small room with his notes, looking like a mouse in a maze.

  “It was all sewed up,” he said. “All sewed up in my mind, at least. Rivali — who else? And if he’d been shot, still Rivali. But a man isn’t likely to take his own poison, is he?”

  “Maybe. If he’s cornered. What did Parkas tell you?”

  “He found him like that, this morning, in his car in the garage. All right, Rivali left here about two o’clock last night. Seven o’clock this morning Parkas finds him out in the car, poisoned by his own coniine. Where do we start?”

  “All over again at the beginning,” I answered. “Where was Parkas last night, when we were looking for him?”

  “In Venice, with one of his — boy friends. He and Rivali had had a quarrel and Parkas had gone to another — friend, in spite, the way I read it. Though he didn’t admit it that — bluntly. Well, early this morning, Parkas gets an attack of conscience, hurries home to his own true love — and finds him in the car, dead.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe, still hating him, killed him?”

  Gnup shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. There’s still some checking to do in the lab, but from where we sit, no.”

  “How about the Packard? Prints?”

  “They’re still working on it. What was that fuss you had with the vultures of the press?”

  “Nothing. I was sick and unreasonable and they were well and unreasonable.”

  Gnup shook his head. “I don’t understand you. What’s the percentage in getting the newspapers down on you?”

  Newspapers…. Again that flash of near-knowledge and I thought of those pictures and the lead that had almost come to the surface.

  “What are you thinking now?” Gnup asked. “You looked almost intelligent there for a second.”

  “I’m thinking about newspapers, for some reason,” I said. “I wish I knew the reason.”

  He said nothing.

  “Coniine,” I said. “How many people have access to coniine?”

  “If you got enough money,” Gnup said, “you can get anything, even more money.”

  “Not amateurs,” I argued. “They wouldn’t know where to start. Figure this, where did we concentrate? Who was the hub? Who was the focal point of all our investigation?”

  “Rivali.”

  “Right. But who was the real hub?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Mary Mae Milgrim. Everything begins and ends with her; it always comes back to her.”

  “You tell me how to question a corpse,” Gnup said, “and I’ll get right on it.”

  “Newspapers,” I said. “Newspapers, newspapers, newspapers — ”

  “How much?” Gnup said wearily. “I’ll buy one, if it will shut you up.”

  “Newspapers,” I said, “and Mary Mae Milgrim. I think I’ve almost got it.”

  “Confide,” he said. “We’re working together.”

  “It’s not there yet,” I said, “not completely.” I stood up. “You’re still holding Parkas, of course?”

  “He isn’t ours to hold,” Gnup said. “Captain Devine out at the West Lost Angeles Station made that very, very clear. He’s probably free by now.”

  “He can’t be,” I said. “He’s a dangerous man in his present state of mind. He has to be held.”

  “You argue with Captain Devine then. I tried. To hell with the L.A.P.D.”

  “You’re making noises like a Santa Monica officer,” I said. “You’re not positive that Captain Devine released him, are you?”

  “No.” He pointed at a phone. “Why don’t you ask?”

  I phoned the W.L.A. Station and got Devine. I said, “This is Brock Callahan, Captain. I wondered if you were still holding George Parkas.”

  “For a few minutes yet. Why?”

  “Because it would be dangerous to release him. He probably knows who killed his friend and George is not exactly a normal man.”

  “If he knew, he’d tell us, wouldn’t he? You’re not making sense, Callahan. Unless you got some information we should have.”

  “None, Captain. But I urge you to — ”

  “Listen, peeper,” he said, “don’t try to tell me my business. If Parkas knew anything, we’d have it. This isn’t Beverly Hills.”

  “Aren’t you even going to put a man on him?”

  “You stick to your knitting, Callahan.” The line went dead.

  I replaced the phone and stared at Gnup’s smile. “He likes you too,” I said.

  “He’s too young for the job,” Gnup said. “He’ll learn, maybe. If he doesn’t tangle with the wrong man.”

  “He already has,” I said.

  Gnup chuckled. “Phone your friends downtown and see. Come on, I dare you.”

  “I don’t use my influence petulantly,” I said with dignity. “Well, I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Work?” he said. “Where?”

  “I’m going down to see my friends,” I said.

  He frowned. “Headquarters? Downtown?”

  “Downtown,” I admitted. “My good friends at the Times. “

  He laughed. “Oh, boy! Oh, dear God — ”

  Well, it’s a big paper and its right hand can’t be sure about its left, though there is probably nothing to the left on the Los Angeles Times, not even a hand. T
he only place where we agreed.

  Their morgue is complete and well indexed; despite the men who write for it, it is one hell of an efficient newspaper, and their coverage, except for important news, is as good as any in America.

  And there, in those vast files, I ran across a name I hadn’t heard for a decade, a name that had been as big as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were today. Even bigger than Hedda and equal with Parsons — a girl named Dawn Rhodes, though it probably was a pseudonym.

  She knew where the bodies were buried, that girl, and she had the wit and the flare to make her columns something better than the puff sheets they were today. She was a writer, God bless her.

  I went out of the big building on First Street and into the smog, wondering if Dawn Rhodes was still around and available.

  It took some doing, finding her. I had a newspaperman friend, believe it or not, and he referred me to another one who referred me to another one.

  And by the time I started out for Santa Monica, the traffic was solid and the smog only a hairsbreadth from a number one alert. The headache was back. Man, it was back ….

  Nausea moved tenuously in me and I was tempted to breathe deeply to quell it, but that smog would only put me over the edge. I fought to keep my vision clear and my stomach stable and drove on doggedly.

  Past the Veterans Administration grounds, the sea air began to blow into the car and the nausea vanished. Even my headache diminished some as the flivver plowed along, getting closer to the sea.

  She lived in an old mansion on Ocean Front that had been turned into apartments. She lived in a front apartment, with a view of the Santa Monica Bay.

  She opened her door and looked up at me quizzically, a white-haired woman, thin as a hummingbird, with bright blue eyes and a jaunty little chin.

  “Brock Callahan, ma’am,” I said. “Came to pay you a visit.”

  “It isn’t,” she said, and then her face lightened. “By God, it is, the great Callahan.”

  “You know me, ma’am?”

  “Know you — ? Three consecutive years All-League with the Rams and an All-American at Stanford. Is there someone in this silly city who doesn’t know you?” She held the door wide. “Come in, come in.”

  I came into a living room furnished in bright provincial with a big bay window opening onto the ocean.