by Ron Goulart
The other young sheriff’s department man, his tag said he was Moore, rubbed at the little California bear in the center of his six-pointed, blue and gold star. “We’ll get on this right away, sir.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, sir,” added Lopino. He put his visored cap back on, took the rough maps from Easy.
“We’ll be talking to you again, sir,” said Moore, shaking hands.
“Nice meeting you, sir,” said Lopino. They smiled at him, touched their caps to Perry Burley and left the hospital waiting room.
A fat, bullish nurse walked by the doorless room, trailing a scent of medicine and rubbing alcohol.
Perry Burley lit a cigarette and turned away from watching the new day commence on the other side of the Venetian blinds. “You haven’t told anyone why Bud and I were out on the island yet,” she said to Easy.
Easy said, “You’ll have to think up a reason.”
“You mean you aren’t going to turn us in?”
“The sheriff’s department may want to charge you with trespassing,” he said. “Or illegal treasure hunting.”
Perry sucked in smoke, frowning across at him. “What about what we did to McCleary?”
“We’ll see what he says.”
“Don’t you want to see us put into jail for breaking into Jackie’s cottage?”
“It doesn’t make much difference to me.”
Perry left the plastic and metal tube chair she’d been sitting in. “You’re not doing this because you like us,” she said, approaching him. “I don’t get the feeling you’re too fond of us.”
Easy didn’t reply.
The blonde, her face white and puffy from sleeplessness, reached out and touched his arm. “You’ve got us put down as losers, isn’t that it? You think we’ll come off on the short end of things no matter what happens.”
The yellow light over the waiting room wall phone flashed and Easy picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
“Is Mrs. Burley there?”
Easy gave her the phone.
After listening for a moment, she smiled briefly and hung up. “I can go in and see Bud now.” She hesitated, watching Easy. “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe we’ll strike it rich on our own someday soon and things’ll improve.”
“Maybe.” After the blonde left the small, off-white room, he sat in one of the narrow, uncomfortable chairs and closed his eyes. His chin rested on his locked fists.
“I understand you’re giving away free maps,” said a burred voice.
Opening his eyes, Easy saw a fifty-year-old man in a ten-year-old sharkskin suit. “Lt. Frimac?”
“Am I too early for our talk?”
Easy gestured at the chair next to him. “Join me.”
“Come on across the street and I’ll buy you coffee,” said the rumpled, San Amaro policeman.
Easy followed the lieutenant out of the hospital. “The sheriff’s department has been in touch with you?”
“Yes, we have a close and warm relationship.”
The small, San Amaro hospital fronted on the ocean and Lt. Frimac led Easy across into a long shack-like coffee shop, which hung out over the quiet beach a hundred feet below. The Pacific was a thin blue, and a shaggy black cocker spaniel was romping along at the edge of the surf.
“Hello, lieutenant,” said the black woman behind the counter.
“Velma,” said the policeman. “Two coffees. And a maple donut. Want a donut, Easy?”
“No.”
They took a booth facing the ocean. “Now,” said Lt. Frimac, “tell me all about the cute stuff which has been going on around here.”
“Ned Segal killed Mitch Stammsky.”
Lt. Frimac stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “I read an article the other day suggesting cane sugar is a major cause of violent crime. My wife is always tearing things like that out of magazines and saving them for me,” he said. “The .32 caliber revolver Segal had with him is going to turn out to be the one used on Stammsky?”
“Yeah” said Easy, trying his coffee.
“Okay. What was his cute reason for killing that beatnik?”
“You still call them beatniks around here?”
“Stammsky was from that era. Why’d Segal kill him?”
“To keep him quiet. I think Segal’s going to talk about this, going to confess. So you’ll get the exact details from him.”
“How the hell do you know he’s going to confess? You get an occult flash?”
“He was crying on the trip back from San Obito.”
“A lot of them cry when you catch them. Later on they get tough again.”
Easy said, “Mitch Stammsky knew something. Knew Segal had been out on the island when Booth Graither and Jackie McCleary were killed.”
“Segal killed them so he could get hold of the alleged $100,000?”
“He probably decided it was one of the few chances he’d ever get for that kind of money.”
Lt. Frimac took a bite out of the sticky maple donut and swallowed it. “I don’t know if maple sugar causes violent crime or only cane,” he said. “Now just exactly why was Jackie McCleary on San Obito at all and not dead by her own hand and floating around in the ocean?”
“They faked a suicide for her. So she could get away from her father for good.”
“Shit,” said the policeman, after swallowing another two bites of donut. “A cute plan, a cute plan with frills on it and the bastards got away with it.”
“Until now.”
“We ought to rack their asses, all of them,” said Lt. Frimac. “Who are they, the ones who helped set this cute plan up?”
“You can look that up.”
Frimac took a gulp of coffee. “Don’t you think these cute bastards ought to get their cute asses racked?”
Easy looked out at the brightening ocean. “I’ve talked to most of them,” he said finally. “None of them got any good out of what they did.”
“That’s not exactly a strict legal definition of crime and punishment.”
XIX
EASY CAME AWAKE, SAT up on his office couch and said, “Doorknobs.” He yawned once and went out the rear door of his office.
The small parking lot was hot in the late afternoon sun. Easy treaded his way among the highly polished sports cars and found his dusty, black Volkswagen. He opened the door and tilted the driver’s seat forward, reaching into the back of the car. The bushel basket of old doorknobs Marina had entrusted to him was gone.
Easy closed the door, laughed to himself, rested against his car. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and folded his arms.
A bicycle fell over nearby.
“Hagopian?” Easy trotted over to the entrance drive.
The dark Hagopian was rising off the gray asphalt, disentangling himself from a crimson, 3-speed English bike, “I’ve discovered a terrific new way to get around, John.”
“What is it?”
“Well, by bicycle.” Hagopian smiled and pleased wrinkles formed around his eyes. “I made it all the way here from TV Look with only three slight mishaps.” He had a reddish abrasion on his high forehead, and the knees of his tan slacks were smudged and frayed. “Why are you prowling your parking lot, by the way?”
“I remembered Marina’s doorknobs,” said Easy. “The ones she gave me to protect against the impending holocaust. I’ve been carrying them around in my car for safe keeping.”
“What happened to them?”
Easy laughed again. “Somebody must have swiped them.”
Nodding, Hagopian said, “That’s the kind of town this is, John. Nothing is safe. I was telling Kim what a wacky town this is only an hour ago.”
“You’re back with Kim?”
“This is a different Kim.” Hagopian set the crimson bike against the back side of Easy’s office. “I met her last night. A lovely girl, wholesome. She jogs ten miles a day. That’s how I met her; she jogged across my lawn and happened to trip over the foot of one of the birdbaths. I went out and helped her up and
we got to talking. A very wholesome girl.”
Easy headed back for his office. “Is that her bicycle?”
“Yes, exactly,” said the wide-eyed writer. “She’s a real outdoor person, John. Eats nothing but health food, runs ten or fifteen miles, cycles around the Glen. She’s terrifically wholesome. Her only real flaw is she’s got small tits. I would have thought all the exercise would have had more of an effect on her front. This girl isn’t in show business or modeling either.”
“What’s she do?”
“Works for All-American Comix.”
“Some underground publication?”
“Yes, she’s a cartoonist. Very gifted. She showed me proofs of some of her work. She has a very individual style. Everybody has a nose like a prick.”
“Ah, you artists,” said Easy. He sat behind his desk. “What’s going to become of Pam?”
“If she ever returns from Disneyland with my Jaguar and the tree man, I’ll explain to her we’re through.” Hagopian stretched out on the couch Easy’d been using. “I was reading the news teletype up at TV Look. Ned Segal made a confession, huh?”
“Yes,” said Easy. “He still had nearly $50,000 of Booth Graither’s money, hidden around his place out in the valley. Plus all the diamonds.”
“He never tried to sell them?”
“Afraid to,” said Easy.
“So he really did murder Jackie McCleary and Graither.”
“Segal had wanted to start his own agency,” said Easy. “That had been Segal’s idea since he came out here in 1962. Three years of hanging around the beach at San Amaro hadn’t put him any closer to it. Then along came Booth Graither and his suitcase full of cash.”
“It’s not only the movie and television people who are goofy out here,” said Hagopian. “The advertising people are, too. In fact, I think I’m crazier since I moved here.” He put his palms behind his head. “Back in Fresno I never had any girls borrowing my car.”
“You left Fresno when you were three.”
“Even so. There’s something in the air around LA, besides the smog and all. The longer you stay here the greater your chances of going completely blooey,” said Hagopian. “So Segal shot the two of them and left them on the island.”
“He shot Booth first, and apparently Jackie tried to get away,” said Easy. “Segal ran her down a quarter mile from where he’d killed Booth. He buried her where she fell. He said the idea of carrying her body around upset him. Booth, he dragged into the cave and buried.”
“The fires then,” said Hagopian. “Really, if we hadn’t had these fires Booth Graither and Jackie might have gone undiscovered.”
“I don’t know,” said Easy. “Too many people were involved in the original attempt to fake Jackie McCleary’s suicide. Eventually somebody would have talked, Judy Teller or Lee Ott. Some of the holes in Segal’s version of things would have showed up.”
“This way was simpler,” said Hagopian. “Have you seen old McCleary yet?”
“I phoned him about what’s happened,” answered Easy. “I’ll be visiting him tomorrow.”
“How is he?”
“The same.”
“Meaning?”
Easy said, “He still thinks Jackie is alive.”
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1971 by Ron Goulart
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
978-1-4532-5721-0
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