Sam said, “You see what I mean about leaving out the most important parts.”
“Well, I was just giving you the facts. I didn't think it was—well, I had to jump off the boat. I had to sock Goss, and, hell, those guys would have killed me right there in the bilges or somewhere if I hadn't—”
“You socked him? You mean, you hit him?” Sam was leaning forward, teeth clamped so grimly on the cigar that I thought he was going to bite it in two.
“Yeah, he started to spit on me, so I lowered the boom—”
“Wait a minute!” Sam's expression was pained. “He started to spit on you? What kind of reason is that?”
“Okay, it sounds funny now. But he got all worked up when I wouldn't take his dough, and began getting nasty about it. He popped, and I had to let him have one.”
Sam put a hand to his forehead and slowly rubbed it back and forth. He was quiet for several seconds, then said, “Shell, I don't think I even want to talk about it any more. You're lucky the man was big enough about it not to bring charges. He could have you locked up, put away for—”
“Big enough? Get it through your head he doesn't want me locked up. He wants me out on the street where he can have his boys pick me off. As they damn near did.”
Sam sighed heavily. “Somebody tried to put a couple in you, that's sure. But there's no reason yet to say it was Goss. Half the time you make me mad enough to tell you I'm going to knock you off, but that's just the sweet way you have of making people love you.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “Let's forget it.”
Some snickering noises behind me, and a look at Sven's grinning red face, told me it would be quite a while before the monster-without-pants was forgotten. I drank hot coffee from a paper cup and changed the subject. “When you get the report from SID, Sam, that should wrap up part of this.”
“The way you tell it, we don't need the report.”
“Yeah. I'd still like to be sure.”
The dead man I'd found in Brandt's office was now in the morgue. Death had been caused by a .38 caliber bullet which had driven through the pectoral muscles on the right side of his chest, broken a rib and lodged in his right lung. Earlier, when discussing the shooting in front of the Spartan, I'd told Samson I thought the slug in Kupp, the dead man, was from my .38 Colt. A test shot had then been fired from my gun into the nine-foot water tank in the Crime Lab. The lethal bullet from Kupp's lung, and the test slug from my gun, were under the comparison microscope in Firearms now.
In a little while the phone rang and Sam answered it, spoke briefly, then hung up. He looked at me. “You tagged it. The bullet was from your .38, Shell.”
“It figured. Well, I'll bet Kupp lived long enough to wish he hadn't tried to blast me. I'd give a lot to know who the other guy was, the driver of the car. And for sure who hired those torpedoes.” Something wiggled in my brain. Sam started to say something, but I stopped him. “Wait a second. I just remembered something—I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“After Brandt whacked me, I came to and he was using the phone.” Everything that had happened then, in those dizzy, sliding and melting moments when I'd been regaining consciousness, was still foggy, unclear. But I concentrated, trying to remember, and said to Sam, “Brandt was talking to somebody. Apparently filling him in on me, on what had happened.”
“Maybe the one who sent those two guys after you?”
“Maybe.”
“Any idea who it was?”
I shook my head. “Only what I've told you—it almost had to be Goss.” Before he could interrupt, I went on. “But ... Brandt said something about Kupp, that I'd killed him. Then he said, ‘Lime went back.’ I think that was it. I remember he said Lime. He might have meant Kupp's partner.”
“Went back where?”
“You've got me. If I knew, I'd be on my way. There's also a chance Brandt was referring to that doctor I saw, or whatever he was. The guy with the black bag. But the main thing is the name Lime. Mean anything to you?”
“Not right off. We'll check it out.”
Sam spoke to Jurgensen, asked him to check R and I, the Police Records and Identification Division, and see if there was a package on anybody named Lime. Jurgensen went out.
While waiting for Sven to come back, I thought a little more about Belden. As far as the law was concerned so far, if Belden had been involved in anything criminal, evidence to prove it seemed to have died with him. He'd been involved in one promotion after another, as Elaine had told me, but nothing illegal. For the last three years he'd been a highly successful real estate agent, a good citizen to all appearances. His office papers had been examined by the police, but seemed all in good order. Maybe too good—he owned or had made large down payments on well over a million dollars’ worth of land in L.A. County and outlying areas. It was land which, in a few years, might be subdivided, used for housing projects or other developments and thus rise greatly in value. But that was just good business, speculative planning—a gamble that might or might not pan out. There didn't seem to be anything illegal about it.
But I wondered where Belden had put his hands on a million clams in the last couple of years. It seemed probable that the money had come from somebody else. Maybe Captain Robert Goss? But—still—not illegal.
Jurgensen came back in, with a folder in his hand. He said to Sam, “Think we made him. Leonard Lime. Calls himself Stash and about twenty other aliases. Looks like the man—he's been picked up with Kupp a couple times. We got a want on him now for ADW.”
ADW is assault with a deadly weapon, and that was sure what the man had done to me. That, and his previous association with Kupp, made it almost a certainty that Leonard Lime was the second of the two men who'd tried to knock me over, the driver of the getaway car. Samson looked through Lime's package, showed part of it to me.
The suspect had a record that covered nearly one and a half closely typed pages. Everything from arrests for vagrancy to suspicion of homicide, plus two convictions. Things were looking up. In a few minutes a teletype message would go out to police divisions and sheriff's departments in the local area, and an All Points Bulletin would alert more distant agencies. The police had tagged my boy—and with a little luck, before long they'd have him.
When the happy developments regarding Lime were out of the way I said to Sam, “There's something else on my mind. Is Crandall around?”
“He's off duty. You want a picture?”
“Yeah.” Crandall was the police artist. Sometimes when witnesses couldn't clearly describe a suspect they'd seen, or find his picture in the mug books, they would do the best they could while Crandall made a sketch, changing it when told, “No, his nostrils were cuter,” and so on until often a good likeness of the suspect was developed.
“Winston's available now,” Sam said. “He's good, almost as good as Crandall. Who you got in mind?”
“The man I saw on the yacht with Navarro, Goss, and Belden.”
“Uh-huh. When we talked to Goss, he said you were drunk, you know. Neither Belden or this other guy you mentioned was with him at any time that night. Belden was aboard, but nobody that looked like the other one.” He paused. “We can't get tough with a man like Goss unless he's actually pulled something. Of course,” he added sarcastically, “you can.”
“Think you can get Winston up here?”
Sam nodded. In a few more minutes I was describing the white-haired, smooth-looking egg as Winston sketched rapidly and expertly on a drawing pad. When we finished, the likeness, while not perfect, was close enough.
I grinned. There he was. Finally. Things were on the way up, all right. Looking back at me from the pad was my mystery man from the Srinagar.
Chapter Thirteen
That's great, Winston,” I said. “Who is he?”
He cocked an eye at his drawing. “Looks quite a bit like—” He paused, and I leaned forward a little. “—like an uncle of mine in Minnesota. But he died last year.”
“Thanks.” A couple of the other men looked at the drawing and shook their heads. Samson had been eying the thing, and he picked it up, glanced at me.
“Funny. Looks a little like Silverman, of all people. Couldn't be him, though.”
“Why couldn't it?”
“Well, it just couldn't. He wouldn't be mixed up in anything that wasn't on the up and up.”
“Of course not. Now, who's Silverman?”
Sam looked at me. “Just one of the most important and respected men in the state. Clean as they come. It doesn't look much like him anyhow, I only—”
“Okay, Sam, we'll elect him governor, but just for fun tell me who the hell he is.”
“Bob Silverman. Mr. Robert C. Silverman to us folks. Way back he was a member of the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners—before you even thought about starting an agency. Right now he's not governor, but he's a very good friend of the governor. Member of the State Highway Commission, on the board of half a dozen corporations, philanthropist, first-nighter at the opera and suchlike cultural activities. Besides which, he's got half as much money as the mint.”
“I never heard of him. But, then, I mingle with the little people.”
“You never even heard of opera. But there's not much about him in the news any more. He got fed up with reporters and publicity a long time ago—when you were in knee pants, Shell.”
“I was never in knee pants.”
“Once in a while he's mentioned in connection with the drive for opera funds or a charity thing, but that's about all now.”
“Sketch looks like him, huh?”
“Oh, come off it, Shell.” Sam's voice was a growl. “I just tossed that in. Sure, it looks a little like him. And a little like a thousand other people.”
I didn't say anything. I'd remembered something else. When Brandt had been speaking on the phone in his office, I was pretty sure he'd addressed whoever was on the other end of the line as “Bob.” It might have been Rob, or Cobb, or even slob—I wasn't positive. But I had the feeling it had been Bob. I hadn't thought about it until now.
I said as much to Sam and his tone was openly sarcastic when he replied, “Well, that proves it! Sheldon Scott, I've got to hand it to you. Your powers of deduction fill me with awe—”
“Oh, shut up.” I grinned at him. It had also occurred to me that Goss’ name—Captain of the Srinagar Robert M. Goss—was Bob, too. And there were at least a couple other Bobs in Los Angeles.
But I said, “Sam, put up with my foolishness for just another minute. You said this Silverman was one of the State Highway Commissioners, among eighteen other things, didn't you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“A thought has occurred to me. We both know the biggest building program planned in the entire state is this multi-billion-dollar bunch of freeways the state's going to build soon now—or, rather, keep on building.”
“Now, hold it, Shell. Don't go off on one of your—”
“Okay, so I'm reaching a bit. But Belden, the guy just knocked off, is a real estate agent—and you say yourself his office papers show plenty of land—”
“That's enough, Shell. The next thing, you'll be telling me it was Silverman running from the Belden house last night, wearing a white dress and a black wig.”
I jumped a little. “Black wig? Where'd you get the rest of that description? All I heard was that some woman in a white dress ran from the place.”
“Witness that saw her remembered a little more. Said the woman had a lot of dark hair. Black, or maybe brown, he thought. He's not sure, but it might help.”
It might help too much. I didn't want to dwell on that woman's description, so I went ahead with what I'd been saying. “On this freeway angle, Sam. There's going to be a lot of money spent on the things. Billions. Not little millions, but juicy billions.” I lit another cigarette. “The last figures I saw were on proposals for over twelve thousand miles of freeways in the state—over fourteen billion dollars’ worth. That's a lot of juice.”
“So?”
“So when that much money's spent anywhere, building roads or buying jelly beans, a pile of it's going to be loot. Unless a very squinty eye is kept on the boys spending the dough.” I paused. “And, Sam, what commission in California is primarily responsible for planning and building our freeways?”
He bit deeply into his cigar, reached into his pants for one of the wooden matches he carries, and struck it. That was the next thing to a dismissal. He knew I almost invariably retreated from the choking fumes of his foul cigars, when he managed to light one, which wasn't often.
Holding the burning match he said, not without some sarcasm, “Well, we got a State Division of Highways, a State Department of Public Works, and a few highway engineers who—”
“Yeah, and we've also got a State Fish and Game Commission—maybe they ought to be interested, at that. Fourteen billion clams makes a fishy chowder.” I leaned forward. When I'd first brought this up, it had just been an idea to toss off, but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. “Look, Sam, the answer I was so subtly hinting for is the State Highway Commission. Granted, our commissioners are honorable, decent, very valuable members of society—not like those two turnpike commissioners in Pennsylvania. Even the jury found those boys guilty of conspiracy. How about the road-building frauds in Indiana? And that's not all, not by a long shot.”
He lit the cigar, dragged deeply on it.
“And Belden,” I went on, “was a guy who could buy real estate right and left without anybody wondering about it twice. Of course, maybe once is enough. Remember, I saw Belden with—well, a guy who maybe looks like this one.” I tapped the drawing.
“Shell, the highway commissioners aren't the only men with the kind of inside info you're talking about. There's plenty of others.”
“Uh-huh. But as far as I know, none of them looks like Winston's drawing.”
He didn't say anything. Instead, a thick almost green cloud of smoke boiled across Sam's desk at me. That did it. I got up.
“Sam, I was only thinking aloud.”
“Yeah, I know. That's the pitiful part of it.” He blew a little extra smoke and added more gently, “Shell, you know I don't mind your peculiar fits of the brain. Not too much. And once in a while you're almost right. But when you start talking to me or anybody in the department about a man of Silverman's character and reputation, have a better reason than your ear itches when you think about him. Would that be asking too much?”
“Not at all, Sam. I'll see if I can dig up something besides an itch. It's just that old ear wound—”
“Dig up—you stay the hell away from Silverman!” I grinned at him, waved at the men and started toward the door.
Sven was leaning against the wall where he could catch me as I went out. He said grinning, “Come on, Shell. Just between you and me. What really happened to your pants?”
I scowled at him, sneered at everybody in the Homicide Squadroom and left with their parting comments still burning my ears.
Before leaving the Police Building I checked a directory and found the address of Robert C. Silverman on Strada Vecchia Road in Bel Air. Bel Air, where the houses are just like houses anywhere, except that they look like hotels and the people build them out of money.
Silverman—in Bel Air. Maybe it would be a wild goose chase, but I would chase a lot of geese to find a man who even remotely resembled Winston's drawing. It was worth a look.
Bel Air, only a mile or so from the city of Beverly Hills, is the kind of place you go through big steel gates to get into. It's profusely planted, overgrown with trees and shrubs, all sorts of green things. All sorts of people live there, too—everybody from movie stars to millionaires. Quiet hangs over the hills, and the birds sing sweetly. The streets are narrow, winding, without sidewalks, and the maximum speed is twenty-five miles an hour. I kept the Cad down to twenty going up Bel Air Road, past the kind of houses we poor people call mansions. Curving drives swept up to many of the h
omes, and often the driveways led to homes out of sight from the road.
I swung onto Strada Vecchia Road and kept going up. Most of the houses were dark at this early-morning hour, but lights burned in a few. One of the few was Silverman's. A black Fleetwood was parked in the wide white-graveled drive leading from Strada Vecchia up alongside the house. In the middle of the close-cropped green lawn, a lighted fountain bubbled prettily.
I parked in the road before the two-story mass of stonework, got out and walked up the drive. Light from inside the house and from the fountain spilled onto the driveway and must have clearly illumined my features as I walked past the Fleetwood.
I'd thought the car was empty, but as I passed it somebody said, “Well, it's you—what's-your-name. Scotty!”
It was a woman's voice. Something about it, and her calling me Scotty, brought back memories I couldn't capture immediately. But somehow I knew they were happy memories, because I turned around grinning widely.
“That's who!” I cried.
I spun around and peered into the Fleetwood. “And who might you—ah.” I caught the flash of yellow hair, and big eyes blinking, and a sort of shadowy voluptuousness below. In a moment I remembered the name, possibly because I had thought when I'd first heard it that it was Elaine.
“It's Arline,” I said. “Hello, hello.”
“Hello, hello. You remember my name.”
“I remember much more than your name, Arline. Shall we dance?”
She laughed. “What an idea. We could hardly dance here. Besides, I don't really get warmed up until I've had a couple of Martinis.”
“That's a shame.”
“But we can talk. It's a lot easier to talk when people aren't dancing.”
“In your case, that is a monumental truth.” I stopped, frowning. Now that the surprise of suddenly hearing Arline's voice and seeing her was diminishing, I started wondering what the devil she was doing here. And right then, for no logical reason that I could pin down, small clammy-footed spiders tiptoed along my spine.
Over Her Dear Body Page 12
