Dead Pigeon

by William Campbell Gault

  No booze tonight. I planned to go hunting in the forlorn hope that Clauss was a night crawler and still in town. I comforted myself with the knowledge that a moving target is the most difficult target to hit.

  Down the mean streets of the town Raymond Chandler had labeled Bay City, concentrating on the saloons. From there to Venice and back to Santa Monica.

  I was luckier on my second trip past The Dungeon. Through the wide front window I could see the blue shirt of the man I knew only as Ernie.

  I parked in front and went in. There were three customers in the place, all standing at the bar, all male. Ernie turned toward the doorway as I came in.

  “More trouble?” he asked.

  “Not for you. I’m not a cop. My name is Brock Callahan.”

  He nodded. “I thought I recognized you this afternoon. You must have put on weight since you were with the Rams.”

  “A little, I guess.”

  “That Hovde!” he said. “He brings out the worst in me.”

  “Me, too, quite often. But everything he told you was true. His son told me that Clauss beat up his wife so badly she was taken to a hospital and was put into intensive care. His son won’t have anything to do with him.”

  “Jesus! What’s his beef with you?”

  “I think he killed a friend of mine. And it’s possible I’m next on his list.”

  He took a sip of his beer. “I asked around a little today. All I learned so far from a fink who’s been wrong before is that Clauss is steamed about some private eye who’s out to nail him.”

  “You’re standing next to him, Ernie. That’s what I was, after I left the Rams.”

  “Then what in the hell are you doing down here? This is Clauss country, man.”

  “That’s what I’m doing down here, looking for him. Only this time I’m armed, Thanks for what you told me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Don’t lead with your chin.”

  It had not been a fruitless trip. I now knew that Clauss had been alerted by Gillete. There was the possibility that Gillete had ordered him to cool it. He had to realize that Clauss’s erratic behavior was dangerous folly. Mavericks are not the kind of soldiers that well-run hoodlum organizations recruit. Nor do they tolerate personal vendettas.

  But Clauss, in his present state of mind, was not likely to take rational advice. That was all right with me. I didn’t have the ammo to take on an army. One on one against Clauss would be my preference.

  I drove past the fortress of Rudolph Grosskopf before heading for the hotel. The narrow windows showed no light from within. All seemed serene under a full moon. Maybe the old curmudgeon would find a female partner mature and tolerant enough to appreciate him. I hoped so. He was my kind of man.

  I had given my address to too many people. Even Clauss could know it by now. I phoned the Crest Motel in Santa Monica and got a reservation. I phoned Mrs. Casey and told her where I would be and asked her to notify Jan if she called.

  I put a chair under the knob of my door again, and laid my Galanti on the bedside table.

  Tomorrow I would set up camp in Clauss country.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “HEADING FOR HOME?” THE clerk asked in the morning. “That’s a beautiful town you live in, Mr. Callahan.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, I have to go to Cleveland first and spend several weeks there.”

  I unloaded my luggage in my room at the Crest Motel before phoning Lars to give him the address.

  He said, “I phoned you this morning and the clerk told me you were on your way to Cleveland.”

  “I lied to him. I didn’t want Clauss to come busting in there. Anything new?”

  “Nothing worth repeating. I’m still buried in paperwork.”

  “Well, you now know where I am if you need me.

  After breakfast, I phoned my broker friend at Hutton. I told him my new address and asked if he had learned anything about Winthrop Loeb.

  He said, “You’ve already told me more about him than I knew. I’m working on something else, what you might call a line of inquiry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing I care to discuss right now. If I confirm what I suspect, I’ll pass it on. It requires some finesse and might defame an innocent man. By the way, I called San Valdesto this morning and gave them your name as a prospective client.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Brock, one favor deserves another.”

  The alimony I had saved him! One favor deserves another? Brokers are strange people …

  I looked up Rudolph Grosskopf in the phone book and called him. I identified myself and asked him, “How are you feeling today?”

  “Better. I sure as hell blew it yesterday, didn’t I?”

  “You paid for it. And you definitely helped us yesterday by identifying the man who assaulted you. I talked with him at The Dungeon last night and he gave me some information that might help.”

  “What’s that little bastard’s name?”

  “Mr. Grosskopf, it wouldn’t be a smart move for you to get involved with him. He’s a former boxer. I also don’t think you should involve yourself in a murder case. You could get hurt asking questions about Clauss in your neighborhood.”

  He sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I learned that the hard way yesterday. Well, I’ve got some lines out to some people who might know where Clauss is now. They can report to me here. I guess that would be safer, huh?”

  “It would.” I told him my new address and phone number and suggested he report to me if he learned anything from his sources.

  “I will,” he said. “I trust you. But not cops.”

  “All cops aren’t like Clauss, Mr. Grosskopf.”

  “I know,” he said wearily. “I suppose I’ve turned sour since he went bananas. I don’t have any close friends anymore.”

  “Maybe you need a female friend. They’re more dependable. This area is loaded with widows.”

  “I’ve noticed that, reading the obituary page. As soon as Emil is put away and I can get out and around again, I’ll try to find me one. Good luck on your hunt.”

  I hadn’t done any walking or exercising since I came down here, except for the walk on the beach with Crystal. I had told all the people I trusted where I was staying.

  I put on my walking shoes and went out into a sunny day moderated by a cooling breeze from the ocean. Last night I had traveled the mean streets. But not today. Clauss could have bought a toupee to cover his baldness and dyed his white eyebrows. The likelihood of his mingling with the solid citizens was remote. But he was a kinky man and I had no other leads to pursue.

  Grocers first; the man had to eat. Motel lobbies and sporting goods stores, two pool halls and a bowling alley. No Clauss. The last stop was only a few blocks from Crystal’s house. I walked there and rang her doorbell. There was no answer.

  From there to the beach, to the place where Mike’s body had been found. What had that poor bastard been doing there at two o’clock in the morning?

  I thought of what Nolan had told me that day he came to my room. He had tried to steer me on to Turhan Bay as a suspect. Mike, he had suggested might have learned about Bay’s relationship with Crystal. He had labeled her a former hooker. Wouldn’t that, he had suggested, lose Bay his followers?

  His lies had been so transparent they had to be the impulse of the moment. In his talk with Chief Denzler at the Santa Monica Department, he had learned that Mike’s murder would get a minimum of investigation. That could have been comforting to him, but he knew, when he saw me at the mortuary, that I would take a more emotional interest in Mike’s death.

  He had explained that lack of Department interest to me, which was the truth. The lie that followed, on the mortuary parking lot, about his hope that I would investigate the murder was false. It had taken him the rest of the afternoon to concoct that story about the wealth of Turhan Bay and the lie that Bay was one of his major accounts.

  That farce in his
office about knowing something about Bay that he could use to get his wife’s account could have been another impulse of the moment, another lie. I, with my big mouth, might have told him what he hadn’t known about Bay.

  I walked back to the motel for my car. I had lunch at Heinie’s and walked from there the two blocks to Nolan’s office. He was alone in his cubicle today. I went in.

  He looked up and smiled at me. “You win, Brock. Blackmail is not my game. I was just about to phone you and tell you that. Were you really going to report me to the SEC?”

  “Not unless I had to. Tell me, when did you learn about Bay’s sexual preference?”

  He smiled again. “When you told me.” He took a deep breath. “The sad fact is that one of my young partners has got himself involved in some financial shenanigans the SEC might decide to be illegal. Neither I nor my attorney believe they have a case. But if you brought the SEC into it, this young man’s promising career could go down the drain.”

  Bullshit, I thought. I said, “That would be unfortunate.”

  “Very unfortunate. Do you know if the Santa Monica police have any information on Mike’s case?”

  I shook my head. “I guess I’ll have to go it alone. You were right about their lack of interest.”

  Another phony smile. “I don’t always lie, Brock.”

  “I can guess why. You’re not very good at it.”

  “I haven’t had much practice at it,” he lied.

  Back at the motel, the kids were splashing in the pool, adults were stretched out on deck chairs. When would I return to that? Not yet, I knew. Emil Clauss had become an obsession.

  The clerk told me I’d had no calls. Lars was probably still swamped in his paperwork. As I had told Nolan, I would probably have to go it alone.

  I thought back to my dialogue with him. His story about the problems his junior partner was having might have seemed credible to some. But not to anyone who had heard him lie as often as I had.

  He had asked if the Santa Monica police had any suspect on Mike’s murder. To the innocent that would be a routine question about a friend. My feeling was that his concern was whether the Department had learned anything that would connect him with the killer, however loosely.

  He could be the final connection in this chain, from Loeb to Gillete to Claus—and now Nolan. Gillete and Winthrop Loeb were definitely connected. Was Loeb the attorney Nolan had said was his when I talked with him today. Peter Scarlatti had told me that Loeb had deserted his criminal practice and gone into financial manipulations and was currently being investigated by the SEC.

  It was possible that the SEC’s case was as weak as Nolan and his attorney had claimed. My revealing Nolan’s blackmail threat might add enough substance to make the SEC case stronger.

  But I had no proof that Nolan had mentioned blackmail to me. Any defense attorney would make that clear to a judge or jury. I knew and Nolan knew that he had suggested blackmail. That was a fact we both knew, but he certainly would not admit. His word would be as good as mine in court.

  Too much time had been spent in the frustrating and fruitless hunt for Clauss. It was time to concentrate on the Nolan connection. At least I knew where he was and I doubted that he was armed.

  The major chicaneries of the time were being revealed almost every day in the newspapers and the tube. Several of them had included murder and this could add to the list.

  Connecting financial shenanigans to the death of Mike Gregory would not be an easy chore for me. As my Hutton friend had told me, I was not a financial wizard.

  It wasn’t easy for me to believe that Mike had been guilty of blackmail. But that was the way this case was shaping up.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  KIDS PLAYED IN THE pool outside, their parents basked in the sun. From the street came the wail of a police siren. I sat in the room and tried to devise a strategy of attack. All I had were theories; I would need further information from allies.

  One thing had troubled me; so far as I knew, the Valley police had not been suspicious of Gillete’s association with Clauss. I walked to the Santa Monica station and Lars was there. I told him what had been bothering me.

  “They had no proof that Gillete had any connection with Clauss,” he pointed out. “Gillete told them he had fired Tucker because his attorney had told him about some doubtful connections in Tucker’s past history. We know the Clauss-Gillete connection, or think we do. They don’t.”

  “That attorney could be Winthrop Loeb, now under investigation by the Feds.”

  He shrugged. “We cops wouldn’t know about that. None of those investigative agencies out of Washington ever confides in us, not even when we’re working with ’em. They are real secretive bastards. And what’s new by you?”

  “Nothing solid. And you?”

  “Pissed off. What in hell am I doing here? I’m a cop, not a damned clerk!”

  “Have you explained that to your boss?”

  “Often. And got nowhere. I’ve got the feeling that he thinks I’m another Rambo on the street.”

  I smiled.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You may leave now.”

  “I’m on the way. Lars, if more cops were like you, the streets would be a hell of a lot safer.”

  “We both know that,” he agreed. “And we could be the only ones who do. Be careful out there, buddy.”

  I nodded, winked at him, and left. To paraphrase an old song, Lars may have been a headache but he had never been a bore.

  The Valley police had never uncovered the Clauss-Gillete connection; they had accepted Gillete’s story that Tucker had been his only employee. In my phone call to Gillete, he had not denied knowing Clauss. He had confirmed it, I thought, by saying Clauss was not a relative. Gillete was lucky that it wasn’t Clauss who had questioned him.

  I had no further line of inquiry. I went to the motel for my car. On the way, I had the random thought that Peter Scarlatti also lived in the Pacific Palisades. Was that another line of inquiry? Ronald Reagan had lived in the Pacific Palisades before he moved to Washington, I reminded myself.

  I would stick with Clauss. He was still the who. Nolan, I felt sure, was a key to the why. Prying the truth out of a man as evasive as Joe Nolan would be almost impossible. I needed more ammunition. No prosecuting attorney could get a murder-one conviction without the deadly triplicate: motive, means, and opportunity. The motive was the why, means and opportunity the who.

  Joe Nolan had led me down the garden path and wound up in a jungle he hadn’t foreseen. If the connection I suspected proved to be true, it included an attorney under Federal investigation, a known hoodlum, and a crooked ex-cop on the prowl.

  The criminal jungle is far more dangerous to one’s health than the financial jungle. Bankers and brokers and bookies rarely need to carry lethal weapons.

  Nolan was the wimp in that threesome and the one most likely to fold under pressure. He would be my first target. Clauss might outshoot me; I felt confident that I could outlie Joe Nolan. It was time to play the blackmail game.

  But first I would need some facts not yet in evidence to become evidential enough, to be a threat strong enough, to frighten the truth out of him.

  It was getting close to dinnertime and the kids were no longer in the pool. I hadn’t brought my swimming trunks with me, but the desk clerk told me they had sanitized swimming trunks for the guests, at no cost.

  I was on my twelfth leisurely lap when Lars appeared at the side of the pool. “Anything new?” he asked.

  I nodded and climbed out. I took a huge bath towel from the rack and we sat down on deck chairs.

  I told him the strategy I had planned this afternoon and the hope that my broker friend would come up with enough to put the heat on Nolan.

  “It sounds good to me,” he said. He paused. “But you’ll be going it alone, Brock. Slade read me the riot act just before I left. We will keep an open file on Mike. But there will be no more investigation unless some new evidence c
omes in.”

  “He’s a real pompous ass, that Slade, isn’t he?”

  He nodded. “But, unfortunately, my boss. I’ll be available nights—if I’m home. I’m in the book. Call me if you need me.”

  “I will.”

  He got up from his chair and left. If I’m home … How often, I wondered, did he spend his nights at home?

  I went to the room after dinner and the phone was ringing. It was my broker friend. He had confirmed what I suspected; the connection was complete and Nolan was a part of it. Mike, he told me, had probably been guilty of blackmail. He had learned that it was Gillete who had financed Nolan’s office. The rumor was that Nolan was now laundering Gillete’s dirty dollars.

  “But don’t quote me,” he said. “My source is no friend of Gillete’s. Neither one of us wants to get on his hit list. My source is not squeaky clean himself. He’s the man who gave Mike the story on Gillete financing Nolan’s office.”

  I thanked him and hung up before he could start a sales pitch on all the advantages I would get if I moved to Hutton.

  I considered phoning Nolan at home, but that would only give him time to concoct another silly scenario. Tomorrow was soon enough. The ammunition would keep until then.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NOLAN WAS ALONE IN his office when I got there. He didn’t seem happy to see me. “What brings you here this time?” he asked.

  “A few questions. First—is Winthrop Loeb your attorney?”

  He studied me for seconds before he nodded. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because he is being investigated by the Feds.”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. He has been cleared. As I told you last time you were here, they had no case. Next question?”

  “Why did you tell me that you didn’t know who Arnold Gillete was?”

  He took a little longer to answer that one. Finally: “Brock, that is none of your business. I don’t know what you are trying to prove about me. But if you have any information about any illegal activities of mine, I suggest that you take them to the proper authorities. And now I must get back to work.”