Deadfall (Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  “You mean he threatened you?”

  “Not exactly. No.”

  “Thank God for that. He was never violent when I knew him.” Pause. “He’s living in San Jose, you said?”

  “Apparently. You didn’t know that, huh?”

  “No. How would I know?”

  “He hasn’t been in touch with you?”

  “Not in months. You don’t think—?”

  “I don’t think anything. I’m just asking.”

  Another pause. “This new church—what kind is it?”

  “Good question. It has something to do with the Moral Crusade. Him too.”

  “I never heard of the Moral Crusade. Like the Moral Majority?”

  “Probably. Eberhardt’s checking on it.”

  She said nervously, “What are you going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “About Ray.”

  “I don’t know yet. You got any suggestions?”

  “No. Just don’t do anything until we talk this out.”

  “What are you afraid I might do? Drown him in holy water?”

  “Don’t grouch at me. It’s not my fault, is it?”

  “Well, you married him.”

  “He wasn’t a lunatic when I married him, for God’s sake. He was normal.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Normal.”

  “Well, he was.” There was some mumbling in the background. Pretty soon she said, “Listen, I have to go now. I was in an important meeting with a client…. I’ve got to get back. We’ll talk about this tonight, okay?”

  She sounded flustered and edgy, and all at once I was sorry that I’d shaken her up like this. It wasn’t her fault she had an ex-husband who claimed a personal relationship with God, or that he’d decided to walk into my office this morning. Why take it out on her?

  I said, “Okay. Babe, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that he got me all worked up …”

  “No, I’m glad you called. For all we know he might be on his way over here. ’ ”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I said, “You’d better alert the receptionist.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. See you tonight.”

  I put the receiver down, and sighed, and looked at Eberhardt. He was still on the phone. I sighed again and looked at my watch. 10:40. Most of the morning shot already. Tom Washburn was paying me good money, and all I was doing was hanging around here, stewing about Ray Dunston and feeling sorry for myself.

  Eberhardt cradled his handset and said, “That was a guy I know on the San Jose cops. Ed Berg. He never heard of the Church of the Holy Mission or the Moral Crusade.”

  “Terrific.”

  “But it won’t take him long to find out. I told him if nobody’s here when he calls back, leave a message on the answering machine and one of us’ll call him back.”

  “Right. You got anything pressing today, Eb?”

  “Nothing that won’t wait. Why?”

  “Take over that insurance investigation for Barney Rivera, will you? I want to get moving on the Purcell thing.”

  He shrugged. “I figured,” he said. “It’s personal with you, right? Because you were there when it happened. You’re glad Washburn showed up this morning and hired you.”

  “Maybe. A little.”

  “Just don’t let it get too personal, paisan. You make waves somewhere, there’ll be trouble. There always is.”

  “It’s not that personal,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. I’ve heard that one before.”

  I got my hat and moved to the door.

  Eberhardt said musingly, “What do you suppose God thinks about guys like Dunston? You know, religious nuts that claim they got a pipeline Upstairs. You think He finds ’em comical?”

  “No,” I said. “And neither do I.”

  He frowned. “What if they do have a pipeline, some of ’em? Guys like Falwell. What if they’re delivering the right message?”

  I didn’t answer that; I didn’t even want to think about it. I went out quietly and shut the door.

  There are some things you just have to take on faith.

  Chapter Five

  The first place I went was to the Hall of Justice. Ben Klein was in and willing to talk over an early lunch; I spent twenty-five minutes with him and a tuna salad sandwich in the ground-floor cafeteria. He had no objection to my investigating Tom Washburn’s theory, but he made it plain that he thought it was a waste of my time and Washburn’s money.

  “A tie-in between Purcell’s murder and his brother’s death was one of the first things we checked out,” he said. “I told you that before. There’s just no evidence that Kenneth Purcell’s death was anything but an accident.”

  “From what I understand, more than one person had a strong motive for knocking him off.”

  “Sure. His wife and his daughter, among others; nobody seemed to like him much. But the world is full of assholes, and how many of them get wasted by people who don’t like them?”

  “Not many, maybe,” I admitted. “But some do.”

  “Not Kenneth Purcell. Everybody at the party was with everybody else: all nicely alibied for the time of his death.”

  “Somebody else, then. Somebody who wasn’t invited to the party.”

  “Theoretically possible. But again, no evidence to even suggest it.”

  “That real estate business of Purcell’s—what put it on the shady side?”

  “He was brokering for foreign interests,” Klein said. “The kind with dubious ethics and political orientations. You know, buying property under his own name without telling anybody he was using foreign capital; helping unscrupulous investors from countries like Lebanon, South Africa, the Philippines get into positions of financial power in this country that they wouldn’t be able to if property owners and legitimate brokers knew who they were. He peddled influence, too—arranged for high-powered legal representation for his clients.”

  “Could his brother have been mixed up in that?”

  “No. Not powerful enough. We’re talking big money here. VIPs.”

  “Sounds like the kind of business where you could make a lot of enemies,” I said.

  “Absolutely. But it’s also the kind of business where the lid is screwed down tight. The feds might be able to unscrew it, given enough time and provocation; the authorities in San Mateo County couldn’t, and neither can we.”

  “What about the missing snuff box? Any chance of an angle in that?”

  Klein shook his head. “Purcell apparently had it on him when he went off the cliff. The body got beat up pretty bad on the rocks before it was recovered; San Mateo figures the box got ripped loose and lost.”

  “Washburn told me the dingus was valuable. How valuable?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars in the collectors’ market.”

  “That much? Lot of money for a snuff box.”

  “You’re telling me. One of a kind item, though, made out of gold and dating back to Napoleon’s time. So Eldon Summerhayes says.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Owns the Summerhayes Gallery, up on Post Street. He deals in rare snuff containers, among other items. He and his wife were at the party.”

  “Other dealers and collectors there too?”

  “Two other collectors. Purcell got them all together so he could gloat, evidently; he’d just bought the box.”

  “From?”

  “Nobody seems to know. He kept his source a secret.”

  “Illegal deal, maybe?”

  “Maybe. But there doesn’t seem to be any way it could tie in to his death, or to his brother’s. And those other collectors he invited are blue-chip citizens.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So you figure the guy Washburn talked to on the phone was just a crank.”

  “Probably. Or somebody with a bright idea on how to make a fast buck.”

  “Either way, Ben, why would he wait six months? Why not make the call within a few days of Kenneth’s death?”

  “Your guess
is as good as mine,” Klein said. “But don’t forget the same thing applies if the caller really did have knowledge that it was a homicide. Why wait six months?”

  Good question either way. And one of several weak points in Washburn’s theory. I said, “Nothing in Leonard’s effects to indicate he ever talked to the guy?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Or what might have happened to the missing two thousand?”

  “No.”

  I asked him about Kenneth Purcell’s wife and daughter. He smiled wryly. “A couple of sweethearts, those two,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “You’ll see when you meet them. I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun by tipping you off ahead of time.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. Can I get a list of the people at the party? Names and addresses?”

  “I don’t see why not. Come upstairs with me after we finish.”

  So I went back upstairs with him, and he gave me a computer printout of the list. He also gave me the address and telephone number of the Moss Beach house where Alicia Purcell now lived alone, the name of the attorney who had handled Kenneth’s legal affairs, and the name of the guy that Melanie Purcell was living with on Mission Creek.

  I thought about asking him to let me look over the complete file on the Leonard Purcell homicide, but I didn’t do it. Cops don’t mind helping out private detectives now and then, if you maintain a good professional rapport with them, but they get testy if you hang around and ask too many favors. They have to slog along assembling facts on their own; they figure you ought to be doing the same thing. In the detective business, there is no such thing as a free ride. Or, for that matter, a free lunch: I had paid for Klein’s, and gladly.

  Kenneth Purcell’s attorney, Lawrence Rossiter, had a suite of offices on the twentieth floor of a newish high-rise in Embarcadero Center. Both the offices and the address were impressive, and so was Rossiter himself: sixtyish, graying, with a beautifully groomed walrus mustache and the kind of courtly manner you seldom find these days in any lawyer under the age of fifty. He kept me waiting less than fifteen minutes before he had his secretary usher me into his rosewood-paneled inner sanctum, which was another point in his favor.

  He was helpful, too, although he made it clear from the start that he was willing to discuss the terms of Kenneth’s will only because it was in probate and therefore a matter of public record. It was due to clear probate, he said, in less than two weeks.

  “How much is the estate worth?” I asked him.

  “Upwards of two million. Of course, the bulk of that is in property and other non-liquid assets.”

  “How much cash?”

  “Something better than five hundred thousand.”

  “The three primary beneficiaries are his widow, his daughter, and his brother Leonard, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Divided how?”

  “The cash into equal thirds,” Rossiter said. “Most of the property and other assets go to his widow.”

  “Including the Moss Beach house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his collection of antique tobacco items?”

  “That too, yes.”

  “How much is the collection worth?”

  “It was appraised at three hundred thousand. The house is valued at half a million at the current market price.”

  That kind of estate was a hell of a good motive for murder, I thought. Especially so for Alicia Purcell, but also for the daughter, Melanie; people had been given a nudge into the hereafter for a lot less than a couple of hundred grand. Still, as Klein had pointed out, a strong motive didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t prove a homicide had taken place.

  I asked Rossiter, “Did Kenneth make any other bequests?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing to his first wife? Or is she no longer living?”

  “Katherine is alive as far as I know. Living in Seattle, I believe. But Kenneth chose not to include her.”

  “It wasn’t an amicable divorce, then?”

  “It was not.”

  “When did they split up?”

  “They separated in ’seventy-three; the divorce was final the following year.”

  “When did he marry Alicia?”

  “Immediately after the final decree.”

  “Was she the reason for the first marriage breaking up?”

  Rossiter gave me a look of mild reproach. “I hardly think that’s germane to the subject of Kenneth’s will,” he said.

  “I guess not. Were there any unusual stipulations or clauses in the will?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. A proviso that Leonard’s bequest not be paid to him until two full years after the closing of probate. And that it not be paid at all if Leonard died in the interim.”

  “What was the reason for that?”

  Rossiter hesitated. Then he shrugged and said, “I see no reason not to tell you. Kenneth disliked his brother’s lifestyle and disapproved of the man Leonard was living with.”

  “Uh-huh, I get it. He couldn’t stop Leonard from leaving his own money to Tom Washburn, but he didn’t want Washburn to get a piece of his money—at least not right away.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Nice guy, Kenneth.”

  Rossiter didn’t have any comment.

  I said, “Who gets Leonard’s third of the estate now?”

  “Alicia and Melanie. Evenly divided between them.”

  Motive for both, I thought, to have shot Leonard as well as to have murdered Kenneth. More so for Melanie, though; when you were getting more than a million, as Alicia was, you’d have to be damned greedy to commit murder for another few hundred thousand.

  Rossiter had nothing more to tell me. I thanked him for his time and left him to his work. Downstairs in the lobby, I closed myself inside a public telephone booth and called the Moss Beach number I had got from Ben Klein. A woman I took to be a maid or housekeeper answered. She said Mrs. Purcell was not at home and wasn’t expected back until after five. Did I wish to leave a message? I said no, I would call back, and rang off. I would have tried calling Melanie Purcell, too, but she didn’t have a phone. Not too many people living on Mission Creek did have one.

  Where to next? I asked myself when I came out of the booth. Some of the guests at Kenneth’s farewell party had San Francisco addresses; I could start canvassing them, beginning with the gallery owner, Eldon Summerhayes. But I wanted a better handle on the surviving members of the Purcell family first, particularly after Klein’s “sweethearts” comment, and now that I knew the details of Kenneth’s will. Alicia Purcell wasn’t home; maybe Melanie was.

  I picked up my car and went to find out.

  Chapter Six

  Mission Creek is a narrow body of water that leads inland from China Basin, a dead-end canal spanned by the Third and Fourth Street drawbridges—all that is left of old Mission Bay, landfill having claimed the rest. The creek is flanked on one side by warehouses, freight consolidators, and industrial outfits that line parallel Channel Street; on another side by part of the Southern Pacific freight yards; on another by empty storage lots. And over it all loom the curving ramps and overpasses of Highway 280’s city terminus. Standing down there along the canal, you can hear the steady thrum of traffic, the air horns on the commuter trains that move in and out of the SP Depot at Third and Townsend, the throb and roar of trucks and heavy machinery. And yet there is something about Mission Creek itself, a kind of timeless solitude, that seems to keep it aloof from its hectic surroundings.

  Up until about ten years ago, the canal had harbored a rotting pier and pilings, a lot of sea birds, schools of anchovies and perch, and several squatters who lived on and fished from ragamuffin barges, hay scows, converted Navy landing craft, cabin cruisers, and houseboats. When the Port Authority threatened to evict the boat people in the mid-seventies, with the idea of turning the channel into a modern landscaped marina, the waterfolk had got their act together, formed the Mission Creek Har
bor Association, and hired a lawyer to intercede on their behalf with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. The result was that they had not only been allowed to stay, but had received a kind of official sanction—the only stipulation being that they clean up the area and maintain it in an acceptable fashion.

  The boat people had been scrupulous about keeping their part of the bargain: Mission Creek was a pretty decent place these days, a haven for boat lovers, artists, artisans, and average citizens who disliked conventional city living. There were more than fifty authorized slips, all of them occupied, extending in a nice orderly row up the middle of the creek, with several security-gated ramps giving access to them from the Channel Street embankment. Most of the craft in there now were houseboats of one type or another, sailboats, and cabin cruisers; and most of them were well cared for, if a little on the funky side.

  I parked in one of the slots down toward Fourth Street, walked past a gaggle of geese and one of the Port-O-Johns that were strategically placed along the embankment—most of the berthed craft would have chemical toilets, but that kind of waste disposal can be a problem—and went to the nearest access ramp. The security gate there was standing open; it was probably kept locked only at night. I descended onto a narrow board float set almost flush with the murky water of the creek, bordered on one side by the slips and on the other by horizontally arranged logs along which were strung electrical cables and water hookups. The first person I saw was a bearded guy in his thirties, doing some work on the deck of a green cabin cruiser; the smell of creosote coming off him and the boat was strong in the thin cold air. I asked him where I could find the boat belonging to Melanie Purcell, and he pointed back toward Fourth Street and said, “Eight slips that way. Houseboat with the decals.”

  I moved along in that direction. Gulls and something I took to be a heron wheeled overhead; the water made little slapping sounds against the float and the moored boats. The sounds of the freeway traffic and the SP trains seemed remote, as if they were coming from some dimension or continuum once removed. The houseboat in the eighth slip down had decals all over the front of it—big flower things made out of wood and painted different pastel colors. It also had a peaked roof, some odd angles, varnished wood siding, a pair of bubble skylights, and a round stained-glass window high up under the eaves of its roof.