“That’s Judith Flesher, you mean?”
Hector nodded sullenly. They were really grooving, he told them, till she showed up last night. Like bad vibes, man. The doc made her split, but it was a bummer from then on.
“Did you actually see her leave the house?” Casey asked.
No, Hector said, but he’d heard the door slam. He couldn’t answer definitely as to time, either. Maybe half an hour before the meeting broke up.
“We have Judith Flesher down here as having elected to drop out.” Casey indicated the list in Krug’s hand. “Sounds like maybe Myrick dropped her.”
“How about it, Hector?” Krug pushed him, but the boy either could not or would not answer—an intriguing beginning, they both agreed later, for a whole new line of thought.
Even more intriguing was their discovery fifteen minutes later that the Flesher girl had not showed up for work at the hot-dog stand. Not for two days. Not since Sunday the twenty-seventh.
“Pull her sheet from Juvenile,” Timms instructed when they reported back. “See who she runs with, everything you can find out.” He pulled his lower lip. “A fat girl he gave the boot to. Yeah, I think you might just have something there.”
“Might be worthwhile trying Miss Crewes, too,” Casey suggested. “She could probably give us some dope about her.”
“Yeah, her usual load of bullshit,” Krug said irritably. “Me, I’ll take what the record says.”
Judith Flesher was the sort of delinquent that was becoming classic, her record showed—not a petty offender in the old sense of thieving, truancy or bad morals, but a user and suspected pusher of addictives, a sixteen-year-old school dropout who had already spent over a year of her life in corrective institutions. The case reports of the juvenile specialists who had worked with her at the Sybil Brand Facility were unanimous in the opinion that the girl’s personality bordered on the psychotic, deeply hostile and violently antisocial.
“Sounds like one of those creeps that hung around Charlie Manson,” Krug commented when they had scanned the report. “From dropout to butcher in six easy lessons. You see anything there about parents?”
Casey searched the file until he found the information. “Father disappeared, mother a cocktail waitress. Last known address is a different one, Al.”
“For Chrissake, you suppose the kid’s living there by herself?”
“Too bad we didn’t find out.”
“We will, sport, we will. On overtime.” Krug grinned. “Tough titty if you got a hot date.”
“No such luck. But I’d better call home.”
“Yeah, me too.” Krug looked at his watch. “Never liked meat loaf, anyhow.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” his mother said. “You’re going to be late.” Behind her voice Casey could hear the dogs barking. “Honestly, Case, why can’t you keep decent hours like other young men—”
“Oh, they’re decent enough.” He sighed. “That’s the problem.”
“Well, you would be a policeman.”
“There are those who consider it a fairly honorable profession.”
“Name me one,” she came back like a shot.
Deafened by her laughter, he said hastily, “Got to go, Ma. See you when I see you,” and hung up.
Krug was watching him—their desks sat back to back, so that they faced each other. “All set,” he asked with heavy sarcasm, “for a couple, three more hours of that honorable profession?”
“It’s a family joke, Al.”
“Yeah, I know. Nobody wants a dirty old cop in the family, right? You ‘new breed’ boys with your college degrees got a lot of problems.” Grunting, he heaved himself out of his swivel chair. “Okay, let’s check out Flesher’s landlord first. Save us a lot of hassle if he’ll take a quick look, see if her stuff’s still in her apartment.”
Judith Flesher’s landlord lived out of town, they discovered. However, in the front apartment of the six-unit building, they found a pensioner who claimed to be the manager.
“Got keys and I collect rents every month,” she declared stoutly when Krug looked disbelieving. “If that ain’t a manager, I don’t know what is!” Gnomic, irascible, her face clenched tight as a fist under a mop of wild white hair, she peered at Casey. “You don’t look old enough to me to be carrying a gun. Never did hold with it, anyhow. A man’s only a man, badge or no, and the best of ’em hasn’t got the sense God give a dickey bird. Lord, I ought to know! Had four husbands before I was through. Four, can y’imagine? I look back now, can’t for the life of me figure what I was thinking of. All that grief and foolishness. And for what, I ask you? Four fools that up and died on me, every one. Six children I never see hide nor hair of. And not a penny to my name. Wasn’t for the social security—”
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind,” Krug interrupted, “we’re short on time. All we want to know is if the Flesher girl still lives here.”
“ ’Course she does. Didn’t I just now say—”
“Yes, ma’am, you said. But she could’ve cleared out without letting you know. So maybe you’ll take your key and have a look?”
“Indeed I will not!” She glared up at him. “The very idea, asking me to snoop for you. Why, it’s getting so a person ain’t safe in his own home, all the snooping—”
“All right, all right. If you don’t want to cooperate, that’s your business. I just hope,” Krug added, “you won’t be sorry when the rent’s due.”
“That’s my worry.”
“We’d appreciate it if you could answer a few questions,” Casey said. “Only take a minute.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, for one—if you’ve seen Judy at all in the past couple of days.”
“Maybe, maybe not, I can’t recollect.”
“How about her mother?” Krug asked. “She been around?”
“If she has, I never saw her. Some young ones run in and out, but nobody looks to me like a mother.”
“All right, ma’am.” Krug was heavily polite now. “If we could have the owner’s name and phone number, we won’t bother you anymore.”
“Well, that’ll be a relief, I must say!” Fumbling only a little, she spelled out the name and gave them a Riverside phone number. “Now, that’s all I’m going to tell you,” she warned while Casey took down the information. “I got my TV programs coming on directly, so I got no more time for talking. You want to see that girl, you’ll just have to wait like anybody else till she comes home.”
As they were leaving they handed her a card and asked her to give it to the girl if she showed up again. “Old bat,” Krug growled when they were out of earshot. “Lay you ten to one the kid’s skipped.”
“If she has, it’ll take a warrant now to prove it.”
Both silent, they got into the Mustang. And both smoking—Krug one of his small smelly cigars, Casey a Carlton—they sat there unspeaking for a time. “I’m getting a funny feeling about this case,” Krug said finally. He blew a smoke ring and they watched it float out the open window to dissipate in the mild, humid early-evening air. “What I feel like right now is somebody or something’s phonying this thing. Know what I mean? Take this Flesher girl,” he went on without waiting for Casey’s comments. “One kid very carefully don’t mention she was there, but she’s a weirdo, he tells us. Then the other one says she was on the scene. See what I mean? The good old finger. So what we want to know next is why, right? Why should those creeps need a scapegoat?”
THIRTEEN
The clock on the stove read ten after twelve. Casey leaned against the sink, yawning hugely, sipping warmed-over coffee. On the back porch one of the dogs was scratching. Time for a flea-powder raid, he decided. But tomorrow was soon enough.
The chili con carne dinner he had eaten on top of their pizza lunch rumbled alarmingly, and he reminded himself that the only exercise he’d had today was getting in and out of the Mustang. He had missed a workout at the gym yesterday, too. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up as beefy as Krug. Fat
fuzz. Well, you would be a policeman.
Yawning repeatedly, Casey went softly through the dark rooms of the wide-eaved, rambling shingle bungalow he had grown up in, unconsciously avoiding the places in the floors which had always creaked. The dining room smelled of cooking, and the centerpiece of homegrown roses. In the hall the scent became tart, artificial—his father’s aftershave. They must have gone out tonight, probably to play bridge at the neighbors’.
Undressing slowly in his own front bedroom, Casey stared out at the quiet street, savoring the one small bit of real luck he and Krug had had today. A nugget maybe. Only time would tell. Detecting was like panning gold, he had found, mucky, monotonous drudgery for the most part—but sometimes, like tonight, the spadework seemed worth it…
Mrs. Allman was in a state of shock, they had discovered when they called to check after leaving the Flesher girl’s apartment building. According to Merriweather’s mellifluous report, the lady had taken to her bed and would not be available for questioning until tomorrow.
“So the hell with the Beautiful People,” Krug growled. “Let’s keep hitting the kids. Sooner we nail ’em all, the better.”
He called in to the bureau next, and through the glass wall of the public phone booth, Casey could see that the news was not good. He braced for a storm when Krug returned to the car.
“Guess what? All the creeps have been covered. All got a story, but nobody’s been in to sign a statement.” The Mustang lurched as Krug climbed in, seething. “What a load of bullshit. Kid gloves we got to use, he says. For Chrissake, we should’ve hauled ’em all in, first thing! Why wait till they got their stories matched up?”
Casey drove off silently. And glimpsing the headlines at a corner newsstand, he smiled to himself. More fuel for the fire. “Take a look, Al.”
A big black banner on the Evening Outlook read DRUG CURE HYPNOTIST SLAIN. They paused long enough to buy a copy, and Casey drove on while Krug read aloud: “ ‘Police Say Leads Assure Quick Solution of Heinous Crime.’ What lead, for Chrissake?” He rattled the newsprint furiously. “Goddammit, we should’ve scooped ’em all up while we had the chance! I’ll lay you ten to one they’re all together right now, cooking up the rest of the story. Listen to this shit.” He glared down at the newspaper lying open on his knees. “ ‘Using a power as ancient as the pyramids, Dr. Stephen Myrick was able to effect miraculous results with seemingly hopeless drug cases.’ Newspaper reporters! Christ, we’ll have every nut in town calling on this one. And you know what that means. Overtime till it’s coming out of our ears.”
Turning left on Lincoln, Casey headed south through Santa Monica. To the east it was night, but westward over the sea the sky was still brilliant with the sun’s afterglow—a deep, clear summer-blue unmarred by fog or smog. But by the time they had passed the city limit and swung west toward the huge marina area, dusk had fallen. Lights like low stars burned here and there among the forest of masts. Cabin windows of motor launches glowed. They followed Admiralty Way by new apartment complexes, quaint and fancy restaurants, finally locating the docking area Merriweather had mentioned that morning.
The Allman houseboat turned out to be a big one—a white, painted aluminum structure floating on a double hull—moored at the end of a long series of small boat slips. On the dark, still surface of the waterway, the ungainly craft’s reflection was transformed, a dreamboat swimming dim and illusory as a medium’s vision. Music drifted across to them from the wide awning-covered afterdeck. In the darkness under the fringed canvas a shadow stirred; a cigarette glowed, shooting sparks as it was tossed overboard.
“You two look out of place here.” A husky, glamorous voice floated to them. “Cops and boats don’t go together any better, it looks like, than bookkeepers and horses. You want to come aboard?”
Clumping across the short gangway first, Krug looked teetery and unsteady on his feet. Cops and boats, Casey thought. Bookkeepers and horses. He could sense the amusement of the shadowy figure lounging in the deck chair, watching them.
“Santa Monica Police Department,” Krug was saying. “I’m Detective Sergeant Krug, this is Detective Kellog. You want to step over here, ma’am”—hesitating near an open cabin doorway where the light streamed out—“we’ll show you our identification.”
Long legs in white bell-bottoms shifted, then she was still again. Still sounding amused, she said, “Uh-uh, I’m too lazy.” A beautiful woman, Casey thought, mysterious and desirable. Intrigued, he peered through the shadows at the pale, indistinct oval of her face, finally deciding that she wore large mod glasses which seemed tinted, but lightly, for he thought he could see her eyes glistening. “If you want to sit down,” she was saying, “there’re some chairs over there.” A ghostly pale arm pointed the way.
Bumping each other and then the wood-framed canvas chairs, they both sat down. “We’d like to talk to Mr. Allman, too,” Krug said. “Is he ho—I mean, on board?”
“No, he’s baby-sitting tonight.” Something flashed. Her glasses, Casey thought. Groovy shades. Then ice clinked; she was drinking something. “I’d offer you some of this,” she said, “but it’s only iced tea. When the cat’s away, the mouse doesn’t play.”
Recognizing the forties style, Casey suppressed a sigh. Late Late Show dialogue. Bogart and Bacall. Disappointed, he retouched his idea of her, bringing it closer to middle age. “You must be”—mentally he fished for the name he remembered scribbling in his notebook—“Mrs. Doris Cesana?”
“Chay,” she said. “It’s Italian. Chay-sahna.”
“Sorry. Mrs. Cesana.” She wore a kind of knit cap, he could see now, a sleeveless shirt over the white bell-bottoms, and she was barefoot. Even in the dimness, her rings flashed a message of many carats.
“You live here, Mrs. Cesana?” Krug was asking, coming only vaguely near her pronunciation. “This your home address?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
“You any relation to Mr. Allman?”
“My God,” she said, laughing softly, “how square can you get?”
“Just asking, Mrs. Cesana. We like to know where we stand.”
“Look, let’s not beat around the bush any more than we have to, okay? Bob’s with Mona now, but he lives here. I didn’t dig that one-big-happy-family arrangement.”
“Yeah, I bet you didn’t. How about Myrick, Mrs. Cesana—How did he fit in?”
“Nicely, Sergeant.” She moved languidly. “Why don’t you let your friend ask a couple now?”
“Don’t worry about him, he’ll talk if he wants to.” Krug hesitated. “Mrs. Cesana, when was the last time you saw Stephen Myrick?”
“Yesterday. He and Mona and I had lunch together at Le Bistro.”
“What time did you leave?”
“About three, I think. Close to, anyway. They went on home. To Mona’s, that is.”
“Where did you go, Mrs. Cesana?”
“To have my hair done.” Her voice thickened, as if she were laughing silently. “Blondes may have more fun, Sergeant, but they also spend more time in beauty salons.”
“Is that a fact.” Krug cleared his throat. “What time did you get back here yesterday, Mrs. Cesana?”
“About six, I guess.”
“Was Mr. Allman home when you got here?”
“No, he usually doesn’t arrive till about seven. They work late at the studios, you know.”
“He an actor, Mrs. Cesana?”
“No, a producer. He does documentaries. All that turgid stuff about drug problems and homosex—”
“About last night,” Krug broke in. “Mr. Allman got here about seven, then?”
“That’s right. We had a quick drink while we dressed for dinner. Mona always gets livid if you’re not there on time. And she loathes cocktails, so you’ve got to sit right down. Not that I blame her,” she added, “she’s a magnificent cook.”
“The way we heard it, you didn’t leave there till about two this morning. That’s a long dinner.”
&nb
sp; “Well, we made up in brandy and liqueurs for all the martinis we missed.”
“How about Dr. Myrick? Did he come by at all?”
“No, he had some problem about that stupid group of his.” She groaned suddenly. “God, I can’t believe it. Just can’t believe—He was the most alive person I ever knew. You know what I mean? One of those”—her voice broke, turning guttural—“those strong people. Everybody loved him. Leaned on him. Even when he was doing his graduate work at Berkeley, people were already coming to him—”
“We appreciate how you feel,” Krug interrupted impatiently, “but if you don’t mind, we’ll get to the background stuff later.”
“Wait a minute,” Casey said, “Mrs. Cesana, did you know him then? At Berkeley?”
“Didn’t I just say I did?”
“Then you must have lived around the area. Maybe in San Francisco?”
“That’s a fairly obvious conclusion.”
“Did you work when you lived there, Mrs. Cesana?”
“Gawd,” she drawled. “Sergeant, your friend’s too klutzy for me. Maybe you can tell me what he’s getting at?”
“My pleasure,” Krug said happily. “One more question ought to do it, Mrs. Cesana. Is your husband’s name by any chance Angelo?”
A nugget, for sure.
FOURTEEN
The next morning their day began as usual with the rundown, starting with the captain’s customary review of the cases which might require cooperation from other departments. Then the lieutenant took over, and they discussed the overnights and daily reports on every case open in Santa Monica, including two new ones—a possible suicide which had just come in, and a holdup the night before at a residential hotel on Second. “The kicker on this one,” Timms said, “is that the night clerk is an old guy. Got so scared, I guess, he had a heart attack. Anyway, by the time a squad car got there, the poor bastard was almost dead. All he could tell them was two guys, both black.”
“Could be the same two pulled that gas-station heist last week,” Ralph Zwingler said. “I put the word out, but so far nobody’s popped with anything.”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 43
