The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  Farrel had his light on the smudge marks by the door. “I don’t believe the stuff’s coming this way at all. It’s being taken back to Vermillion, maybe way over in Arizona somewhere.”

  Kernehan didn’t ask why Farrel thought this; he remembered Farrel’s errand of the afternoon and decided it might have something to do with Farrel’s opinion.

  “After it’s thrown out, it has to be picked up.”

  “Oh, sure, they’ve got a truck waiting,” Farrel told him.

  “And a warehouse.”

  “Shelter of some kind,” Farrel agreed.

  “It’s not just a shack in the sagebrush. An old ranch house, or anything like that. There’d be too much activity out in the open, the desert rats would get wind of it, it would get back to town,” Kernehan said. “Another thing, this stuff moves. If it didn’t they’d be in trouble. But somehow, right after they get it, it goes out of sight damned fast. By God, you’d almost think they must be dropping it down a—”

  “A what?”

  “An abandoned mine, maybe?” Kernehan was trying to pin down the flash of insight which had come briefly, then faded.

  “Something big that belongs to the landscape,” Farrel said slowly.

  “I guess that’s what I was thinking of.”

  They waited, drinking coffee in the diner until early daylight, then went back to the car and examined the faint marks again. The freshness of the scars on the catwalk was even more obvious, the smudges next the door plainer than ever. “Well, we got this much out of it,” Kernehan said wearily. The desire for sleep itched behind his eyes. “We know what they’re doing on the cars.”

  “And they can’t see through the roof, so somebody’s tipping them off. Somebody who gets a look at the train consist in the Vermillion office.”

  Kernehan nodded, no longer trying to avoid the obvious.

  They drove back to Los Angeles, Kernehan at the wheel and Farrel dozing. There was no use heading for home in the short time they had; they ate breakfast and then went up early to the office. Ryerson had already come in. He was at his desk in his glassed-in sanctuary, erect and bull-necked in his big chair; he was holding papers in his fists, fumigating them with cigar smoke. He glanced up as Farrel and Kernehan came in.

  Farrel sank into a chair as if he were made of lead. Kernehan noticed how the beard had come out on Farrel overnight, and how much of it was silver. The lines around his eyes were deep-bitten, as if the flesh was wax scored by a tool. But under the tiredness Kernehan sensed the patient and unflagging attention. Anything left out of his report to Ryerson would be spotted at once. There was much more to Farrel than the aging body. He had the spirit of a bloodhound.

  Kernehan told Ryerson all about the stake-out at Sidewinder, the car that they’d found that had been hit, the conclusions drawn by their examination of it in the yards at Colton. Ryerson was thinking this over when Kernehan added, “I can’t find any connection as yet between the killing—the dead man, Jennings—and what’s going on between Sidewinder and the River. But I’d like to spend a little more time on this stiff. He worked for the railroad, and then he dropped from sight. Along with an old pal of his. I’d like to find the missing man, Pethro.”

  “Where do you think he is?”

  “Possibly around Vermillion. I talked to Pethro’s wife in Colton. She took for granted that Jennings had been murdered. Of course she might have heard something before I got there, but I doubt it, and I don’t think Richie would have told her. I think Jennings and Pethro were in on something crooked and she knew it, she expected them to have trouble of some kind.”

  Ryerson said, “Think you can go to Vermillion without being identified?”

  “I think so.”

  “I mentioned it before, your going down there under cover. I think you might as well go tomorrow. Of course everything may be under control, everything they steal may go straight to a fence, some outfit we’d never dreamed of, couldn’t touch. But sometimes one of these jokers needs a little cash. Or gets itchy fingers. Or just naturally believes in free enterprise. You might let it be known you’re buying tires for a discount house, you need them cheap. Hit the junk yards, wholesale dealers—there won’t be many in a town that size—and anybody else you think might pass the word.”

  Kernehan noticed that Farrel was looking at Ryerson with a skeptical, almost disgusted air.

  Ryerson may have noticed it, for he added, “Dyart’s been around, of course, but everyone in the town knows who he is.”

  “I’ll ask for Pethro while I’m at it,” Kernehan said.

  The skeptical look was now turned on him.

  “If I don’t get a bite on the tires, of course.”

  Ryerson said to Farrel, “I’m putting you on the office end of this thing. I want you to get the records from Personnel and learn whatever you can about the men in the Vermillion office. Then go down there and talk to Dyart. Start prying, see who’s spending money.”

  “If he’s fool enough to throw money around in Vermillion, they wouldn’t have picked him.” Farrel stood up. He was stooped inside the wrinkled suit, which looked exactly as if he’d slept in it—in bed. “This cookie’s salting it away. But he’d need a reason, and maybe I can spot that.”

  Ryerson’s mouth twitched, and he shuffled the papers and chewed the cigar.

  Farrel was looking into the air well, now bright with dust motes and sun. “I wonder who’s making book over there?”

  Ryerson was a notorious horse-player. His glance up at Farrel was flat with sarcasm.

  “It’s the one way I can think of to get rid of money without showing a damned thing in return,” Farrel said thoughtfully, a faint smile twisting his lips. “It’s just possible he’s playing the nags.”

  Chapter 11

  Kernehan sat down in his living room to take off his shoes. He looked at the phone on its table, thinking of Lora. He could call her on the job, make a date to see her on her afternoon break, perhaps repair the coldness between them. But the tiredness left by the night without sleep seemed to have increased a bitter perspective. He and Lora were so far apart in all things, not just an attitude toward her brother. She had no idea of what his job was like, for one thing. She thought of any kind of law-enforcement work as an opportunity for the reclamation of unfortunates. She had no conception of the kind of viciousness to be expected from clever and daring men who weren’t afraid to hang from a car catwalk on a rope ladder to rob railroad shipments.

  Kernehan went into the bathroom and shed the rest of his clothes and showered, then put on a robe and lay down on the bed. He felt gritty and strung-up more than sleepy, though when his head hit the pillow he felt as if the heavy skull might press through all the way to the springs. When he shut his eyes he seemed to glimpse the panorama of the job to be done, the incredible distances between Sidewinder and the River, the hours of nothing to be spent on stake-outs and the walking-on-eggs performance required in Vermillion.

  He thought of Farrel. Farrel would be home now, too, and having some stiff jolts of unwatered bourbon before dropping off to sleep. Farrel wouldn’t be nonplussed by the job ahead. He was like an old mule who bows to the yoke and sees only the routine landscape—and still, Farrel knew something he hadn’t told them. He thought Ryerson was wasting time with the junk-yard routine in Vermillion. Probably Farrel had some inside tip or other, knew that no stray tires or cigarettes were floating around for sale.

  One thing was sure, Farrel had touched a tender spot, gibing at Ryerson about the horses.

  Kernehan found a great wave of sleep welling up, drowning the sharpness of his thoughts. He had a sudden poignant vision of Lora, the way he had seen her several weeks before, waiting for him on a corner downtown. Brown suit, white blouse, a typical office girl until she had turned to look at him with leaf-green eyes, when there had seemed a sudden light in her face and all resemblance to other people or to anyone in the passing crowd had dropped away.

  That’s what love did, the crazy trick
it played—it made the one you loved seem so unique and irreplaceable. You treasured her, and then the sense of loss was like a heavy thud under the heart.

  Kernehan found himself sitting up on the side of the bed, rubbing the red hair back off his forehead and swearing to himself.

  He lay down again after a few moments, forced the memory of Lora away by thinking of other things.

  Some tag ends flickered in his mind. He remembered the shape of the enormous hopper at the gravel pit, the baked dust covering everything, the smell of it hovering in the air … even in the dead Jennings’s clothes, he recalled, and then something in his subconscious objected. The fine silty sand which he had noticed on his hands after handling the dead man’s clothes had not been gravel dust. Something else. Something lighter, finer, almost silky. He’d place it someday.

  He dropped off to sleep.

  When he awoke and rolled over and looked at the clock, it was after three. He got up off the bed and went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, fried two eggs, heated some leftover biscuits in the oven. He sat down in the breakfast nook.

  He was still tired, there was still the grainy feeling when he blinked his eyes; but he had no more desire to sleep.

  He looked around the kitchen and was aware, as he was every once in a while, of its size and vacant air. The place was too big for a bachelor alone. Too empty and echoing. He should either make efforts to find a couple of new roommates or look for a smaller place. He buttered a biscuit and bit into it, his eyes growing thoughtful—he was thinking now of Howery, all alone in a flat as big as this one and seemingly as snug as a cricket, left solitary there by the death of his mother.

  A little guy with something haywire, a little man who followed women.

  He remembered the foggy nighttime scene, the girl waiting under the street light, obviously expecting to meet someone, and Howery flitting around in the shadows, trying to get up nerve enough to approach her.

  Something really funny about that, Howery’s striking timidity and the girl’s patience.

  It would make everything very interesting if the girl were the one Howery had followed into the freight yards.

  Kernehan drank a third cup of coffee, thinking it over. Then he dressed, went down to the garage and got the car out again, drove to the neighborhood where Howery lived and finally located the house where the girl had entered.

  The man who came in answer to the bell was a long bean pole with a leathery face, scant sandy hair, an oversized Adam’s apple, and he walked with a cane. There was something faded about him, as if he had to live on the memory of long years of sun and wind here in this tacky old house. “Yessir,” he said, “what can I do for you?” and Kernehan broke out the I.D. and explained that he was a cop with a few questions to ask.

  The parlor was full of old-fashioned furniture. There was a white paper fan in the fireplace. The lamp had a garnet-colored glass shade. Under the south windows the wallpaper was stained by rain which had leaked in around the molding. Two brown cats lay near the hearth, flattened in sleep; they twitched their tails when Kernehan got close and sat down.

  The man who had let him in introduced himself; his name was Howard Roff. Kernehan had been sizing up the place and something about the used, impersonal air of the parlor led him to say, “You take in roomers?”

  “Yessir. We run a boardinghouse. Got an ad in the paper right now. That’s who I thought you was—somebody coming to ask about a room.”

  “You have a tenant here, a young woman …” Kernehan went on to describe what he could of the girl under the street lamp, regretting that he hadn’t seen the color of her hair.

  But the other man began to nod, even at this brief description. “That’s Margie, the one who just moved out. Left two nights ago. No warning or notice, just came in and said she was heading out.”

  Kernehan realized that the girl had gone on the same night he’d seen her, waiting perhaps for Howery. “Did she say why she was leaving?”

  “Nope, and I didn’t ask.” The man sitting opposite with the cane between his knees had begun to show a touch of apprehension. “Where I come from, we don’t pry into other folks’ business. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Just a routine inquiry. Do you know where she went?”

  There was a definite hesitation, a considering. The Adam’s apple worked up and down. Kernehan got the impression that some question was being weighed, or that some instruction left by the girl was being reviewed. “Nope, I guess I don’t.”

  “What’s her full name? Margie …”

  “DeWitt.”

  “Had she been here long?”

  “About a year.”

  “What about relatives, friends, and so forth?” He saw the stubborn resistance growing in the pale eyes. This wasn’t a man you could push. “Any visitors?”

  “I don’t know a danged thing about her family or friends. Or whether she had any. I guess she had a boy friend somewhere—she had somebody she was worried about lately. And that’s the plumb total information I’ve got.”

  “Where did she work?”

  “Worked in a downtown café. Bonnie Brae, I think it was.”

  Kernehan sat thinking, looking around at the crowded and old-fashioned parlor. Some cattails dyed blue and sprinkled with gilt paint stood up in a big vase in the corner by the hearth. Kernehan hadn’t seen anything like them for years. Under his surface attention to the room, other ideas floated; he had a hunch that there was much more to the girl’s sudden move than the landlord had let on.

  The pale-eyed man knew something of the girl’s destination, and he was keeping it to himself.

  Exploring, Kernehan said, “I guess she took everything with her. There wouldn’t be anything left in her room. Anything to give a hint where she might have gone.”

  “Room’s as slick as a whistle,” Roff said promptly. The Adam’s apple bobbed, and the gnarled hands moved nervously over the head of the cane.

  Kernehan took it in. “Well, what did she leave?”

  “Left some tires. Said I could sell them, keep the money for the rent that was due.”

  “How many tires?”

  “Five.”

  The air of uncertainty, of hesitation was obvious; Kernehan said quietly, “Would you mind if I saw them?”

  “You might. They’re mine now, I guess.”

  The remark, Kernehan thought, implied that if the tires had still belonged to the girl Roff would have kept still about them. Now that they were his, he could show them to the cop if he wanted to. The old man was being exceptionally careful, perhaps because of some experience with a former tenant. Or because, as he’d said, his early years had been spent where people had minded their own affairs.

  Roff led the way outdoors, off the porch and back along the driveway to the rear. The back yard was big and well tended, neatly cut lawn and several beds of roses just coming into bloom. At the back, next the alley, was a fairly new addition, two stories of white clapboard, a stair going up to a balcony where two doors opened. Below, a long unwindowed wall which must be garages. Roff pointed. “She lived up there on the left. My wife cleaned the place, you wouldn’t find anything in it.” He went to a door at the end of the lower level and opened it, displaying a crowded storeroom.

  Kernehan saw a big automatic washing machine, laundry trays, a power mower, loops of garden hose hung on a rack.

  Roff turned left. “In here.” Kernehan came in, and propped against the wall in a cleared spot were the five tires. Brand-new, but without wrappings. He went over and inspected them closely.

  “She drove a car?”

  “Nossir, didn’t have one.”

  “Where did she get these?”

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. She stored them here a while back. Wanted to sell them, I guess. Didn’t get them sold before she had to go.”

  The tires matched those of a former theft in make and type, Kernehan noted; though many more than five had disappeared at that time. He squatted,
rubbed a thumb along the serial numbers on one tire, made note of it on a page of his dog-eared little book, then did the same with the other four. He stood up. “These tires may have been stolen. Would you object to having them impounded by the police as possible evidence?”

  The old man shifted his weight on the cane, licked his dry mouth with a nervous air. “Nossir, guess that’d be the thing to do.”

  “May I use your phone to call Burglary Detail?”

  “Yessir.”

  Roff led the way back into the parlor, showed Kernehan a wall phone in a hallway. Kernehan called L.A.P.D., got Burglary, located a sergeant there that he knew who agreed to come right out. Then he called Pete at the office and gave him the serial numbers off the tires, just in case they could be traced as part of the missing shipment.

  Roff had been hovering in the hall doorway. “Just one thing I got to explain. If them tires are stolen, Margie didn’t do it. She wasn’t a thief.”

  “You said something about a boy friend. Maybe he gave them to her.”

  Roff nodded. “I kind of figured it that way. She came in one evening late and asked if she could put something in the storeroom. I said, sure. We try to get along with the tenants, do little favors if we can. I was kind of curious, though. I went out in the kitchen, to get a glass of water and sort of look around, and I heard a car in the alley. Sounded kind of loud, I figured it for a truck. Not a big one. A pickup, maybe.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Oh … couple of weeks, more or less.”

  “She didn’t explain about the tires, where they’d come from, anything?”

  “All she said was—this was the next morning—they was tires she was keeping for a friend. It wasn’t till just lately that she said anything about selling them. You know what I think?” Roff scratched a temple where the thinning hair was short and wiry. “I think the guy walked out on her there for a while.”

  “He came back? She left with him? Is that what you think?”