Cana Diversion

by William Campbell Gault

  I’d had a phone call from San Valdesto, the clerk told me. He took a slip from my box. “A lieutenant Vogel. He wants you to call him back before three.” He handed me the slip.

  It was only one-thirty. I phoned him from my room. “What the hell are you doing down there?” he asked me.

  “Playing in a member-guest at Riviera Country Club. Why?”

  “I’m going to ask you once before I tell the Santa Monica police to pick you up. A Dr. Darius phoned me. I covered for you, as you knew I would. What’s your business with him?”

  “Ask Delamater. He’ll know. I thought they were supposed to be working with us.”

  “They’re all through working. And I’m sure they don’t want any peepers messing around in their business. What has Darius got to do with them?”

  “You ask Delamater. What do you mean they’re through working?”

  “Calvin is conscious. They brought those Patulski brothers to his room and he identified both of them. He lied to us. He saw them kill Puma. That old coot was probably trying to blackmail them, but he’ll never admit it.”

  “And why did they kill Joe?”

  “How would I know? That’s federal business. Hush-hush stuff. When it’s Mafia, I don’t want to know. Who is this Darius?”

  “He’s my partner in the member-guest. We’re due to tee off in half an hour. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Just a minute—” he said.

  I hung up. I called the clerk and told him to get my bill ready; I was checking out.

  I was packing when the phone rang. I let it ring. At the desk the clerk said, “Lieutenant Vogel phoned again. I guess you weren’t in the room. He wants you to call him back.”

  “I’ve decided to go up there and see him,” I said. “If he calls again, tell him I’m on the way.”

  Maybe he’d believe me and maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, I was (almost) sure he wouldn’t have me picked up. Not my Bernie buddy. But what if he told Delamater I was seeing Darius? He wouldn’t. The case was closed. Bernie wouldn’t get me into trouble.

  Still there was no reason for me to hang around Santa Monica until six-thirty. I had no friends in town. I drove over to Venice to the office of Tracy Perlman Investigations.

  He was in his office, typing out bills on a portable typewriter.

  “Did you talk with Mary Bettis?” he asked. “Yep. Took her to lunch. Have you heard the news from San Valdesto?”

  He shook his head.

  “The Feds have wrapped it up. A couple of guns out of Detroit killed Joe. Romolo’s men, I guess.”

  “So you wasted a trip?”

  “No. I came down to find out why, not who. I almost knew who before I came down.”

  “You can’t take almosts into court.”

  “Right. Want to go out for a couple of beers? I’ve got some time to kill.”

  “Sure! How many big spenders do I know? Why did Romolo want to put Joe away?”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go to Al’s Alley. We can bowl a couple of games and drink a couple of Einlichers and then I’ll buy you a steak at Heinie’s.”

  “You’re not going home?” He smiled. “You don’t think the Feds guessed right?”

  “I never second-guess God. Let’s go.”

  We rolled three games and drank some Einlicher and had a nice, greasy pan-fried steak at Heinie’s. I wished him luck and went over to Ocean Avenue early. If her place was staked out, if the law was waiting for me, I’d go home without seeing the doctor.

  There was no stakeout that I noticed. When the DeVille turned into the alley a few minutes before six-thirty, I waited to see if any car had been following it.

  None had. I left my car parked on the entry street and walked up the alley and up the outside steps to her second-floor apartment.

  The door to her apartment opened directly into the living room. Mary Bettis said, “Come in.”

  I came in. For the second time that day, nobody asked me to sit down. “This is Dr. Darius,” she said.

  He was of medium height, but wide. He had a broad olive-skinned face and short black hair studded with gray. He could have been forty or sixty.

  “I checked you out,” he said.

  “That was wise. You should have done the same with Puma.”

  “I couldn’t. He didn’t pretend to be honest. What do you want from me?”

  “I came here to find out if you remodeled the face of a man named Lester Hardin.”

  He said nothing, staring at me.

  “I don’t know if it’s hit the news yet,” I said, “but the government men have already arrested the hoodlums who killed Puma. I’m sure they don’t know you’re the man who told Puma what you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr. Callahan?”

  “Read it any way you want. I guarantee you the Feds will never learn you told me, if you cooperate.”

  “And if I don’t cooperate?”

  “Then we might never know who killed Puma. I think the government men are wrong. If they are, that could be a real threat to you.”

  He looked at Mary, and back at me. “I performed facial surgery on a man named Lester Hardin.”

  “Thank you. Do you have a picture of the way he looks now? Isn’t that a customary practice, the before-and-after pictures?”

  “Rarely, in my practice. I am not a quack, Mr. Callahan. I have no picture of him, before or after, and no knowledge of where he is now or what name he’s using. And that is all you will learn from me.”

  “I think it’s enough. Sorry for the intrusion.” I nodded, and turned toward the door.

  “Wait!” he said. “What’s your stake in this?”

  “A man has been killed,” I said, “and his killer was breathing free air. For Christ’s sake, do I have to explain that to a doctor?”

  I left them on that noble note. He wasn’t a quack, he had said. Doctors have their private insular code of ethics. In a suffering, sick world he used his fine skills to rebuild the noses of movie stars. And he wasn’t a quack? They have their own lexicon.

  I filled the car with gas at a self-serve station and headed for home. The government operatives would be packing up and leaving town. The Justice Department attorneys would take over.

  A couple of hoodlums would spend three or four years in courts, supported by taxpayers, defended by expensive lawyers who must not be called shysters. Lawyers, too, have their own lexicon.

  Screw ʼem all but six and save them for pallbearers. What was it to me? Vindictive retribution, that’s what it was to me.

  It started to rain again as I was leaving Ventura. One of those frustrating misty drippers that won’t turn into honest rain or go away. Screw you, too, Mother Nature.

  Jan must have seen my headlights. She was waiting in the open doorway when I got there. “What happened? Bernie told me you were on the way home six hours ago.”

  “Screw Bernie,” I said.

  “Oh, boy! We’re in a mood again. What happened?”

  “Nothing I want to talk about now. Did you nail Madame Vulgar Taste?”

  “Signed, sealed and about to be delivered. Come in out of the rain. I’ll make you a drink.”

  “Why don’t you make us some cocoa? Some hot rich cocoa? Make it with cream.”

  “That’s too rich. I’ll make it with Half-and-Half. Go sit down and try to relax.”

  Home is the hunter, home from the hills. I sat in the den and tried to relax. With all their sophisticated equipment, their manpower, their official clout, the Feds had come up with Rodney and Arvid Patulski from Detroit. Maybe they had a case.

  Al Capone had probably killed more people than Genghis Khan. They had finally nailed Al—for income tax evasion. Whether they had the wrong man or the wrong reasons, the Feds could build a case.

  When Jan brought my cocoa she said, “You shouldn’t be angry with Bernie. He was worried about you, Brock.”

  “Really? He threatened to have the Santa Monica police pick me up.”


  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated and private. He was just playing cop. That’s what he is, remember, a cop.”

  “And your good friend.”

  “Yes. This is great cocoa. Nobody makes cocoa better than you do. I’m glad you’re mine. Are you glad I’m yours?”

  “Most of the time. ‘Barney Miller’ will be on in a few minutes. Should I turn on the tube?”

  We were halfway through it when the phone rang. I felt as if I were in a time warp. This case had started when I had interrupted Vogel in the middle of “Barney Miller.”

  “How come you’re not watching ‘Barney Miller’?” I asked him.

  “Our cable is out. What did you learn down south?”

  “Let’s see—Well, that seventeenth hole at Riviera is a real bitch. And the fairways were so soggy I didn’t get any roll, and—”

  “Cut the cheap crap!” he said. “I’m asking you an official question.”

  “I’ll give you a taxpayer’s answer. I didn’t learn a damned thing the Feds didn’t know—but neglected to tell us.”

  “What?”

  “Ask them. I don’t reveal government secrets. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll clear it with them first.”

  “You do that. Delamater’s still in town. You tell him that you learned what he knows. You can share a cell with the Patulski brothers if you tell him where you were.”

  “Give me his phone number. We’ll see.”

  “Oh, God—”

  I laughed. “I’m calling you, Bernie. Turn over your hole card and show me your deuce.”

  “You bastard,” he said.

  “Right. Your bastard buddy. Tomorrow we’ll talk. Okay? I’ve had a lousy day.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow we’ll talk. Ten o’clock in my office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Back in the den Jan said, “The way you two treat each other!”

  “It’s our macho way of hiding our affection,” I explained. “What’s bugging Barney?”

  “He’s getting a divorce. He’s moved to a hotel. But Mrs. Miller keeps dropping in at the station with a lot of phony excuses. I think she realizes now what a wonderful man she has. Or had.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” I said. “I’m going to soak in a hot tub.”

  Soaking and thinking, sorting out my priorities. It would be comforting to see Rodney and Arvid behind bars. It would be more comforting to watch them roasting over a slow fire but both Sloan and I realized that was a hyperbolical fantasy.

  If the Feds ever learned that Darius had been responsible for blowing their witness’s cover, he would be in deep trouble. That was okay with me. But Mary Bettis, too? That was not okay with me.

  Calvin was my vindictive retribution blood brother. That ornery little bastard had forced himself to live so that he could get even. He hadn’t lied to Bernie and me. He had saved that for the Feds. Bernie should realize that. He wasn’t dumb. Maybe Bernie also believed in vindictive retribution—if it was legal.

  Justice or the law? You have to stay with the law. There are too many disparate views of justice. The law was black and white, in print, founded on precedent, hammered out through the experience of troubled and thoughtful men over the centuries.

  But subject to interpretation, full of loopholes, judged by black-robed men with deep personal prejudices and often inadequate schooling or mental lacks. How could these men expect a citizen to respect the law when they rarely—if ever—sent rich murderers to the execution chambers? More than half of the creeps involved in Watergate had been lawyers, including the attorney general. These men were supposed to be officers of the court. Some court!

  From the other side of the bathroom door, Jan asked, “Did you drown? What are you doing in there?”

  “Soaking and thinking. I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

  “Okay. There’s a lot of cocoa left and an old Bogart movie starting pretty soon on Channel Five.”

  Cocoa and an old Bogart movie, far from smogtown, sitting with my own true love in our snug den out of the rain. Don’t sulk, you dumb Irishman, ninety-nine percent of the people in the world would trade places with you.

  21

  THE WIND HAD SHIFTED during the night; a hot santana was blowing in from the desert. Steam vapors drifted up from the waterlogged shake, roofs of the houses in the neighborhood. The residents who no longer worked for a living were hauling away the sandbags they had so laboriously piled in front of their homes.

  I didn’t drive the Mustang down to the station. Romolo was still in town and there were other guns for hire.

  Chief Harris was coming out of Bernie’s office when I got there. He nodded curtly at me and went down the hall toward his office. He hadn’t needed me on this one. I had brought a killer cop to justice last time I had worked with Bernie. Harris would probably never forgive me for that.

  Vogel was standing by his small window, staring out—and smoking, of course.

  “No paperwork?” I asked him.

  “Lay off!” he said. “You overlook a lot of opportunities to keep your mouth shut.”

  I sat down in the old-fashioned captain’s chair next to his desk. He came over to sit in his office chair. He stubbed out his cigarette in an overloaded ashtray and coughed.

  “Damn those stinking things!” he said. “I am sure one weak-willed son of a bitch.”

  I didn’t overlook the opportunity to keep my mouth shut.

  He looked at me. “Well?”

  “I’ve been thinking about those five defense witnesses the Patulski brothers have stashed down in El Cajon. How about them?”

  “The word I get from our government friends is that they have been questioned and have suddenly suffered a memory lapse. I wasn’t told much more than that, but I had a feeling the Romolo family is no longer welcome in the national brotherhood.”

  “Could be. Peter Scarlatti thinks Tony is crazy. I guess he meant out of tune with modern mob strategy.”

  “How do you know what Peter Scarlatti thinks?”

  “He was in our foursome at Riviera.”

  He stared at me. “Are you serious?”

  “No. Bernie, the way it shaped up, you went your way and the Feds went theirs and I went mine. We weren’t really working together, were we?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “How about the thirty-two?” I asked him. “Did they find that?”

  He shook his head. “If they do, they’ll really have a case. The bullet went through Joe’s eye socket and embedded in his brain. It must have been old powder. Ballistics has an almost-perfect slug. But professionals don’t use the same gun twice. Who is this Dr. Darius?”

  “Between us? Just you and me, sitting here alone?”

  He reached for another cigarette and put it back. He took a deep breath. He said, “Yes.”

  I gave him the whole story with one omission; I didn’t mention Tracy Perlman. I told one lie: Peter had given me the name of Dr. Darius.

  “Well,” he said, “that should mean the Feds guessed right. Tony is out of the brotherhood.”

  “Today, maybe. Tomorrow, maybe not.”

  “Yeah. With them. And this Lester Hardin is here in town?”

  “I guess. Should we go and look for him?”

  He shook his head.” The chief told me ten minutes ago that it was strictly federal business from here in.”

  “Murder is not a federal crime, so far as I know.”

  “Run in and explain that to Harris. You had a lot of guts to go down and question Scarlatti.”

  “I had a letter of introduction and a solid character reference from Mrs. Puma.”

  “Puma was going to finger this Hardin for Tony?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t want to know. He’s one of yours.”

  “Get off that red-neck cop kick, will you? That’s not the real you, for Christ’s sake!”

  Nothing from him.

  “How’s Calvin doing?” I asked.

&nb
sp; “He’s alive, and as ornery as ever. But I don’t think he’s going to make it. He’s still bleeding inside. The damned fool!”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Aagh!” he said.

  “Do the Feds have a guard on him?”

  “We have. That’s our job.”

  “I wonder if I could talk with him?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like him, too. Could you maybe arrange it?”

  “Ask the chief.”

  “Bernie!”

  “Okay. The man at the door right now is the one you talked with in front of Puma’s house. I guess he knows you.”

  “Not the lard ass?”

  “No. The other one. I’ll phone the hospital.”

  Loreli General was only five or six blocks from the station. I walked. The Feds had their case and Bernie was no longer involved in it. Why was I?

  The uniformed man at the door had a big smile for me. “Did you solve this one for Bernie, too?”

  “Most of it. Calvin holding up?”

  “That little bastard? He’s too mean to die.”

  They were giving Calvin both plasma and glucose through needles in his arms.

  “Buddy,” he said. “Did you bring me a snort?”

  He looked awful, his face discolored, his lips puffed and distorted.

  “You con man,” I said. “You lied to the Feds, didn’t you? You were trying to blackmail Romolo.”

  “Talk nice. I’m sick, man!”

  “And you lied about Puma. You didn’t see it happen.”

  His puffed lips twisted in a grotesque attempt at a smile. “My daddy told me something once I never forgot. He told me it would be a wonderful world if milk would stay sweet as long as revenge.”

  “They have memories, Calvin. The Feds can’t hide you from them forever. They’ll get to you.”

  “They’d better hurry. I ain’t got long.”

  “Stop it! The doctors think you’re improving.”

  “What do they know? They’re almost as dumb as cops.”

  “You’re not going to level with me, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “You get better,” I said. “When you’re strong enough, I’ll sneak a couple snorts in for you. Dwell on that. Anything you want now?”