And just because of that, and the fact that Spring disappeared on the fourteenth, you guessed he was buried here? In a grave with another dead man?
Not quite. And not for quite a while. All I knew was that Danny had disappeared by the fourteenth, and nobody I talked to saw him on or after that date. Later, for other reasons, I became convinced he was dead. The fifteenth would have been the first chance to bury him here. And Judson was the only person buried here on the fifteenth. Same reasoning for Frank, last seen on the fifteenth — by little Ruthie, down at the morgue now.
You think Frank’s here, too.
I’m certain of it, now. I walked to the grave over which the headstone read: alice mons, july 12, 1890 — may 16, 1961. I looked at Samson. Frank should be in this one. Alice Mons died on the sixteenth of this month, was buried here on the eighteenth. As far as I could find out, nobody’s seen Frank alive since the fifteenth; this was the first burial at Rand Brothers after that date. Truepenny told me himself they performed only one or two burials a week. I don’t know when Frank was killed, but I figure it was before the eighteenth — if so, this is where we should find him.
Samson was still frowning. You must have had more to go on than that. You couldn’t just pull it out of the air.
I did have more. For one thing, I thought for a while that I was going to be buried at Rand Brothers. Here — but hardly with a headstone of my own. That probably started the chain of thought. But I didn’t really get it until late yesterday afternoon, and I didn’t understand it until this morning. Joe Cherry, take it from me, is a very hard man to ruffle. He’s controlled, cold, a hard boy who doesn’t jump when you stick him.
So?
I stuck him gently, and he damn near jumped out of his skin. I remembered that this morning in my cell, wondered what had hit him so hard. I’d threatened him — but the more I thought about it, the less I believed my popping off would have unstrung him so. And, Phil, he was unstrung. Seldom, if ever, have I seen a man so unstrung. I thought he was going to kill me — only, of course, he didn’t want to kill me. Not with this neat frame all set up.
If it wasn’t my threat that made him flip, it must have been something else I said to him. I thought about it for a while, in my cozy cell, and it hit me. I had just told Cherry that if I got a chance, I’d kill him. But that wasn’t when it happened. It happened when I said I’d also kill Jake and Pot — and dump them in the same grave with Cherry.
Sam grunted. He reacted, huh?
Like nuclear piles approaching critical mass. Naturally enough; he had just finished dumping his dead men in the same graves with other people.
Samson was silent for half a minute. Then he nodded slowly, almost wearily. I can see how that would eventually bring you here. You, I mean. Not necessarily anybody else.
There was more, Phil. Rand Brothers was mixed up in this like the sauce in spaghetti. When I made my first visit, Truepenny recognized me, June Corey was here. Add the fact that both Dan and Frank were on junk, popping Heroin.
Popping Heroin? What’s that got to do with the graves?
Everything. That’s why they’re in them.
Shell —
You and Feeney have wanted to clobber Joe Cherry for years now, right?
Seven years.
Well, now you’ve got him.
Not quite. Maybe we know what he did; but there’s no case, no proof.
There will be. As soon as we check one more grave.
He raised an eyebrow. Another one?
Yeah. The grave of Mr. Graves, I said.
Truepenny — under arrest now, and consequently looking more than ever like one of his customers — stood quietly outside the Graves Memorial Tomb. He was ready to co-operate. Among other things, Danny’s body had been embalmed, and we knew Truepenny had embalmed it.
A memorial tomb usually looks like a little house or building, inside of which one or several persons may be buried in crypts, or in which their ashes may be placed in niches. This one was made of smooth cement, about seven feet high and eight feet wide and long. The lower four feet all around the vault were faced with dark squares of tile.
Truepenny touched one of the tile squares and it moved inward, exposing a small switch. He said, The inside of this vault is laced with infra-red beams, invisible to the eye, but which actuate photo-electric cells, should anyone enter the vault without first turning off the switch.
So? Samson said, scowling in a way that could strike terror to the gall bladder of much braver men than Truepenny. What happens if you don’t push the switch?
The door closes automatically after the person or persons who have entered, and it cannot be opened from the inside. At the same moment, an alarm sounds — ah, somewhere. I, ah — do not know where.
He knew, all right; but we didn’t push it. Samson looked at me. A burial vault — that can’t be unlocked from inside. Now there’s a dandy.
Yeah, which explains how it happened that Spring got caught, but Frank got away. I looked at the mortician. Right, Truepenny?
He was sure he didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Samson, looking a little puzzled, said, I’m pretty sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, either.
Well, assume Frank Eiverson and Dan Spring came a-creeping through the graveyard here, in the dead of night, and one of them skulked into this —
Without poetics, huh? Sam growled.
One of them entered the tomb, while the other stood watch outside. Plain breaking and entering, O.K.? The guy — Dan Spring, of course, since he was the first guy caught, whereas Frank temporarily got away — walked inside and stirred up the infra-red beams, actuating the switch. The door closed, and he was stuck inside. Under the circumstances, Frank can be forgiven if he took off like a bird, probably to call for help.
Samson still looked puzzled. Breaking and entering? Here? What in hell for?
Let’s take a look. I turned to the mortician. Lead on, Mr. Truepenny.
He looked pretty sick, but he led us inside the tomb. Its walls were marble-faced, and in the wall before us were three crypts, each covered, its marble slab screwed into place before it. The one we wanted was at the bottom. In a few minutes we’d unscrewed the heavy marble covering and, with Samson at one end and me at the other, placed it on the tomb’s floor. Then we slid the casket out of the exposed crypt.
I tugged at one end of the lid while Sam lifted the other. It creaked slightly as it was opened. In the coffin was the corpse which, so far, had been referred to obliquely — for concealment in writing and speech, in the manner of a hoodlum’s alias; but also, I thought, appropriately — as Mr. Graves. It consisted of several small sacks made of transparent plastic, the plastic top folded over two or three times and stapled. And in each sack were several ounces of a white powder.
Ye gods, Samson said. He counted them. Great balls of fire. Thirty-six. There’s probably — six kilos here. He opened one of the sacks, felt the fine powder, smelled it, jaw muscles bulging. Looks like Heroin, he said. Six kilos of H.
He pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket, ripped it open and tore off a wide strip of die tinfoil, dropped a pinch of the powder on it and held a match under the foil for a few seconds. The powder ignited almost immediately, flaring up and leaving a little residue that looked like solid black-strap molasses — or cooked Opium.
Samson went on, his voice very soft, Yeah, Heroin. And damned pure stuff. Must be seventy, eighty per cent pure H.
He crumpled the foil in his big fist and looked at Truepenny. I saw Samson’s face harden, jaw muscles bulging, fist squeezing tighter. But after two or three long seconds, he shook his head slightly, relaxed, pulled his eyes away from Truepenny’s face. Wait’ll Feeney sees this, he said quietly.
He stepped to the door of the tomb, called Rawlins over and briefly spoke to him, then came back inside. He looked
at the sacks of Heroin again. That’s a lot of H, he said. Could bring in a million bucks or more on the street. And a couple hundred jobs for me. Murders, assaults, D.O.A’s —
He’d mentioned a few of the twenty-three major crimes, all under the jurisdiction of Homicide, and all of which, at one time or another, are caused directly by the need for narcotics. He could have mentioned several others. Assault and battery. Abortion. Treason.
Alice Mons’ grave was open now. She was in her last resting place, and so was Frank Eiverson. He had a bullet hole, like Danny’s, in his head; and another one in his back.
Digging was nearly complete on the third grave, above which the headstone read: benjamin pearson, january 11, 1871 — may 19, 1961.
Samson said, It won’t surprise me this time if McCune’s in there. Nothing would surprise me this time. But why the Pearson grave?
Actually, I’m not at all sure about McCune, Phil, despite the fact that we’ve found Spring and Eiverson. But if McCune’s here at all, it figures this is the spot. Pearson died on the nineteenth, was buried here on the twenty-second, Monday. I traced McCune to a beach motel, and he was there, alive, on Sunday the twenty-first. But I don’t think he stayed alive till Monday. If not, Monday was the first chance to bury McCune.
I stretched, pulling some of the tension out of my back muscles, then went on, In both other cases, Cherry had the dead men buried as soon as there was a new casket to be planted here. No reason to change their operating procedure for McCune — if they killed him.
They hadn’t changed the procedure. And McCune hadn’t stayed alive till Monday. He lay in awkward rest in the casket with Mr. Pearson. He did not look as if he were sleeping — not with half his skull blown away.
Truepenny, appearing quite spooky by now, explained the modus operandi. The bodies had been brought, one by one, to the mortuary by Jake and Pot, who had told him each was to be buried in the same casket with the next person for whom services were held. After services in the Silver Chapel, the casket was removed to the hearse out back — but with a stop on the way, at the Rand Brothers morgue, where the extra body was waiting. Also waiting was a similar casket, what might be called the large economy size, to hold two people.
In the morgue, a quick switch was made, transferring the deceased to the larger casket, and placing the extra corpse on top. Then, the slightly arched lid was closed, the casket carried to the hearse and driven into the cemetery. There, at the open grave, and in full view of assembled mourners, the larger casket — which naturally nobody assumed to be different from the one they’d seen earlier — was lowered into the ground.
From where Samson and I stood, we could see the three gaping holes in the earth. Three dead men, three brown scars in the smooth green grass. It seemed like a lot, but it was just a drop in the bucket, really. Three of the many, many graves of Mr. Graves.
Well, Samson said, that about does it here. Let’s go wrap it up.
He referred, of course, to Jake and Pot. And Joe Cherry.
I grinned at Samson. Let’s.
Chapter Sixteen
Samson cleverly waited until we were almost at Joe Cherry’s big rock and redwood home before radioing the local police department and getting the chiefs O.K. to proceed to the scene.
Then Samson opened the glove compartment of the radio car, took out a short-barreled revolver and handed the gun to me. It was my Colt Special.
I really didn’t think you were going to come up smelling like roses this time, he said. But I brought this along, just in case. He paused. What put you onto Cherry in the first place, Shell?
Cherry himself, when you come right down to it. It was obvious Jake and Pot were working for somebody else; I didn’t know who — until Cherry had them haul me in for that chat I told you about, when he got so unstrung. Actually, I had quite a lot of information by then, Phil. I just didn’t know what it meant, where it pointed — but Cherry did.
I stuck the Colt into my clamshell holster, which I was still wearing, went on, I knew both Danny and Frank were in on some deal with a guy called Jim, sometimes called Mac — a guy who turned out to be McCune. It was a big deal, too, a lot of loot for Danny and Frank. Ruthie gave me the key to it when she said Frank told her, in a burst of drunkenness, that his big money, their travel money, was coming from the grave of Mr. Graves. Like a nonsense rhyme — only we’ve met Mr. Graves now, so we know it wasn’t nonsense. And we already knew the kind of work Cherry does — even if we couldn’t prove it before.
Samson grunted and said sourly, Even if we can’t prove it, yet.
I knew what he meant, and why he spoke with such sourness. We had plenty on Cherry, but still didn’t have courtroom proof. Truepenny’s story implicated only Jake and Pot, and himself, but not Joe Cherry. And Truepenny, though undoubtedly lying through his teeth, had claimed to know nothing about any narcotics.
Most important, California courts — thanks in large measure to Supreme Court decisions — are peculiarly lenient, not only on the hooked, the users, but also on the narcotics dealers and pushers themselves. It’s cuckoo, but that’s the temper of our courts these days. Enormous effort is expended to preserve the so-called constitutional rights and civil liberties of criminals, inevitably at the expense of the vast majority of non-criminals. Which is like sparing the wolves to protect the sheep.
So, the combination of the Cahan and Priestly decisions and judicial loving-kindness, or warped compassion, plus a governor reluctant to act, has made California a lovely place — for dope pushers. The cops arrest them and judges, far too often, turn them loose. Even when hardened narcotics violators are actually convicted, many have their felony convictions reduced to misdemeanors, still others are given probation, and some serve no time in jail at all. Even when you’ve got the sons-of-bitches dead to rights, some Superior Court judge moans, This boy’s sick, and sends him and his fellow son-of-bitches to hospitals. They’re sick, all right — like Al Capone, Khrushchev, and Jack the Ripper.
At the moment, progressing into 1961, I knew that concerned men were trying to get the State Legislature to pass narcotics laws with teeth in them. But right now, they don’t even have gums in them. Consequently, while we knew what Cherry had done, we didn’t have enough on him to get an indictment handed down from a Grand Jury, much less a case that would hold up in Superior Court.
But there was still Jake and Pot to talk to — and maybe squeeze a little. And Cherry himself.
I spotted the macadam road leading off the highway. There’s the turn-off, Phil, I said.
He swung into it, moving fast, but without the siren. When we reached the open area before the big, sprawling house, Samson said, This shack must’ve cost a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Yeah. Profit from a few kilos. We can pull around in back. I pointed.
One car, a black Buick Electra, was parked in front of the place. Sam drove to the rear, past the swimming pool, and stopped near the back door through which I’d been guided by Jake and Pot yesterday. There was no commotion, no sign that we’d been seen or heard.
Samson pulled a snub-nosed revolver from his belt holster and said, Take the back. Shell. I’ll go in the front way.
Watch yourself. These guys —
He snorted, cutting me off, Advice, yet.
What I mean is, they’re — they’re sick.
He grinned, looked at his watch. I’ll come in from the front, one minute from — now.
We got out of the car and Samson disappeared around the side of the house as I walked quietly to the rear door, checking the second hand of my watch. The knob turned easily, the door opened and I slipped through it.
A few feet ahead was the long carpeted hallway down which I’d walked with Jake and Pot. I stepped to it, glanced both ways. Nobody was in sight. I turned left, walked a few feet to an open door. Beyond it was an enormous living room, complete with heavy, rugged furniture an
d a stone fireplace. The room was empty. I could see the front door, outside which Samson was probably standing. A little over half a minute had passed.
I walked rapidly down the hallway toward the room where I’d talked with Cherry yesterday. As I neared the door, I heard voices. I was still ten yards from the room when a great banging came from the front of the house — Samson making a racket.
Next to me, a door stood ajar. I eased it open, looked inside. It was a small bedroom, a guest room, probably — empty. I stepped inside, pushed the door almost shut.
The voices nearby stopped, then started again, more softly. Feet thumped in the hallway. I peered through the crack in the door, gun ready, as Jake Luther hurried past, a frown on his lean, mean face. A .45 automatic was in his right hand, and as he walked by, he snapped back the slide, cocking the gun.
It bothered me, but I shrugged it off; Samson could take care of himself. And I had my own worries.
I watched Jake until he went into the big living room, out of sight. Then I stepped into the hall and walked as silently as I could to the door of Cherry’s office. It was shut. I put my left hand on the doorknob, cocked my .38 and then turned the knob, shoving forward, hard.
As the door flew open, I jumped into the room, crouching, but nobody was in sight. I jerked my head toward that adjacent room — and then it happened. He must have been standing to the right of the door, behind it, as it opened. As I turned my head to the left, the door slammed back against me, cracked into my hip and sent me stumbling forward. I turned my head, barely in time to see Pot jumping toward me. His hands were empty, but I didn’t have a chance to catch my balance, much less turn toward him before he hit me.
He slammed solidly into me, the full, hard weight of him, his fist cracking against my right arm. The gun flipped from my hand, flew through the air and hit the wall. The .38 has an easy one-pound pull, and the impact triggered the cocked gun. The sudden crack blended with the smack of a bullet tearing into the ceiling.
Dig That Crazy Grave (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 12
