“Maybe it was. You’ll never get a jury to believe it, though. Innocent people don’t dump their shooting victims in the drink.”
“But I didn’t. The tide was coming in. I didn’t even touch him after he died. He just lay there, and the water took him.”
“While you stood and watched?”
“I couldn’t get away. I was so weak I couldn’t move for a long time. Then when I finally could, it was too late. He was gone, and he had the keys to the car.”
“He drove you out to La Jolla, did he?”
“Yes.”
“And held a gun on you at the same time. That’s quite a trick.”
“He did, though,” she said. “That is the way it happened.”
“I hear you telling me, Mrs. Dewar.”
She winced behind her mask at the sound of her name. “I’m not Mrs. Dewar,” she said. “I’ve taken back my maiden name. I’m Ethel Larrabee.”
“We won’t argue about the name. You’ll be trading it in for a number, anyway.”
“I don’t think I will. The shooting was self-defense, and once he was dead the money belonged to me. There’s no way of proving he stole it, now that Fidelis is gone. I guess I owe you a little thanks for that.”
“Put down your gun, then.”
“I’m not that grateful,” she said.
Clare moved across the room towards her. “Let me look at the gun, Ethel. It’s Father’s revolver, isn’t it?”
“Be quiet, you little fool.”
“I won’t be quiet. These things have to be said. You’re way off by yourself, Ethel, I’m not with you. I want no part of this, or the money. You don’t understand how strange and dreadful—” Her voice broke. She stood a few feet from her sister, held back by the gun’s menace, yet strangely drawn towards it. “That’s Father’s revolver, isn’t it? The one he shot himself with?”
“What if it is?”
“I’ll tell you, Ethel Larrabee,” I said. “Dewar didn’t pull a gun on you. You were the one that had the gun. You forced him to drive you out to the beach and shot him in cold blood. But he didn’t die right away. He lived long enough to leave his marks on you. Isn’t that how it happened?”
The bandaged face was silent. I looked into the terrible eyes for assent. They were lost and wild, like an animal’s. “Is that true, Ethel? Did you murder him?” Clare looked down at her sister with pity and terror.
“I did it for you,” the masked face said. “I always tried to do what was best for you. Don’t you believe me? Don’t you know I love you? Ever since Father killed himself I’ve tried—”
Clare turned and walked to the wall and stood with her forehead against it. Ethel put the muzzle of the gun in her mouth. Her broken teeth clenched on it the way a smoker bites on a pipestem. The bones and flesh of her head muffled its roar.
I laid her body out on the bed and pulled a sheet up over it.
GUILT-EDGED BLONDE
A man was waiting for me at the gate at the edge of the runway. He didn’t look like the man I expected to meet. He wore a stained tan windbreaker, baggy slacks, a hat as squashed and dubious as his face. He must have been forty years old, to judge by the gray in his hair and the lines around his eyes. His eyes were dark and evasive, moving here and there as if to avoid getting hurt. He had been hurt often and badly, I guessed.
“You Archer?”
I said I was. I offered him my hand. He didn’t know what to do with it. He regarded it suspiciously, as if I was planning to try a Judo hold on him. He kept his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.
“I’m Harry Nemo.” His voice was a grudging whine. It cost him an effort to give his name away. “My brother told me to come and pick you up. You ready to go?”
“As soon as I get my luggage.”
I collected my overnight bag at the counter in the empty waiting room. The bag was very heavy for its size. It contained, besides a toothbrush and spare linen, two guns and the ammunition for them. A .38 special for sudden work, and a .32 automatic as a spare.
Harry Nemo took me outside to his car. It was a new seven-passenger custom job, as long and black as death. The windshield and side windows were very thick, and they had the yellowish tinge of bulletproof glass.
“Are you expecting to be shot at?”
“Not me.” His smile was dismal. “This is Nick’s car.”
“Why didn’t Nick come himself?”
He looked around the deserted field. The plane I had arrived on was a flashing speck in the sky above the red sun. The only human being in sight was the operator in the control tower. But Nemo leaned towards me in the seat, and spoke in a whisper:
“Nick’s a scared pigeon. He’s scared to leave the house. Ever since this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Didn’t he tell you? You talked to him on the phone.”
“He didn’t say very much. He told me he wanted to hire a bodyguard for six days, until his boat sails. He didn’t tell me why.”
“They’re gunning for him, that’s why. He went to the beach this morning. He has a private beach along the back of his ranch, and he went down there by himself for his morning dip. Somebody took a shot at him from the top of the bluff. Five or six shots. He was in the water, see, with no gun handy. He told me the slugs were splashing around him like hailstones. He ducked and swam under water out to sea. Lucky for him he’s a good swimmer, or he wouldn’t of got away. It’s no wonder he’s scared. It means they caught up with him, see.”
“Who are ‘they,’ or is that a family secret?”
Nemo turned from the wheel to peer into my face. His breath was sour, his look incredulous. “Christ, don’t you know who Nick is? Didn’t he tell you?”
“He’s a lemon-grower, isn’t he?”
“He is now.”
“What did he used to be?”
The bitter beaten face closed on itself. “I oughtn’t to be flapping at the mouth. He can tell you himself if he wants to.”
Two hundred horses yanked us away from the curb. I rode with my heavy leather bag on my knees. Nemo drove as if driving was the one thing in life he enjoyed, rapt in silent communion with the engine. It whisked us along the highway, then down a gradual incline between geometrically planted lemon groves. The sunset sea glimmered red at the foot of the slope.
Before we reached it, we turned off the blacktop into a private lane which ran like a straight hair-parting between the dark green trees. Straight for half a mile or more to a low house in a clearing.
The house was flat-roofed, made of concrete and fieldstone, with an attached garage. All of its windows were blinded with heavy draperies. It was surrounded with well-kept shrubbery and lawn, the lawn with a ten-foot wire fence surmounted by barbed wire.
Nemo stopped in front of the closed and padlocked gate, and honked the horn. There was no response. He honked the horn again.
About halfway between the house and the gate, a crawling thing came out of the shrubbery. It was a man, moving very slowly on hands and knees. His head hung down almost to the ground. One side of his head was bright red, as if he had fallen in paint. He left a jagged red trail in the gravel of the driveway.
Harry Nemo said, “Nick!” He scrambled out of the car. “What happened, Nick?”
The crawling man lifted his heavy head and looked at us. Cumbrously, he rose to his feet. He came forward with his legs spraddled and loose, like a huge infant learning to walk. He breathed loudly and horribly, looking at us with a dreadful hopefulness. Then he died on his feet, still walking. I saw the change in his face before it struck the gravel.
Harry Nemo went over the fence like a weary monkey, snagging his slacks on the barbed wire. He knelt beside his brother and turned him over and palmed his chest. He stood up shaking his head.
I had my bag unzipped and my hand on the revolver. I went to the gate. “Open up, Harry.”
Harry was saying, “They got him,” over and over. He crossed himself several times. “
The dirty bastards.”
“Open up,” I said.
He found a key ring in the dead man’s pocket and opened the padlocked gate. Our dragging footsteps crunched the gravel. I looked down at the specks of gravel in Nicky Nemo’s eyes, the bullet hole in the temple.
“Who got him, Harry?”
“I dunno. Fats Jordan, or Artie Castola, or Faronese. It must have been one of them.”
“The Purple Gang.”
“You called it. Nicky was their treasurer back in the thirties. He was the one that didn’t get into the papers. He handled the payoff, see. When the heat went on and the gang got busted up, he had some money in a safe deposit box. He was the only one that got away.”
“How much money?”
“Nicky never told me. All I know, he come out here before the war and bought a thousand acres of lemon land. It took them fifteen years to catch up with him. He always knew they were gonna, though. He knew it.”
“Artie Castola got off the Rock last spring.”
“You’re telling me. That’s when Nicky bought himself the bulletproof car and put up the fence.”
“Are they gunning for you?”
He looked around at the darkening groves and the sky. The sky was streaked with running red, as if the sun had died a violent death.
“I dunno,” he answered nervously. “They got no reason to. I’m as clean as soap. I never been in the rackets. Not since I was young, anyway. The wife made me go straight, see?”
I said: “We better get into the house and call the police.”
The front door was standing a few inches ajar. I could see at the edge that it was sheathed with quarter-inch steel plate. Harry put my thoughts into words.
“Why in hell would he go outside? He was safe as houses as long as he stayed inside.”
“Did he live alone?”
“More or less alone.”
“What does that mean?”
He pretended not to hear me, but I got some kind of an answer. Looking through the doorless arch into the living room, I saw a leopardskin coat folded across the back of the chesterfield. There were red-tipped cigarette butts mingled with cigar butts in the ash trays.
“Nicky was married?”
“Not exactly.”
“You know the woman?”
“Naw.” But he was lying.
Somewhere behind the thick walls of the house, there was a creak of springs, a crashing bump, the broken roar of a cold engine, grinding of tires in gravel. I got to the door in time to see a cerise convertible hurtling down the driveway. The top was down, and a yellow-haired girl was small and intent at the wheel. She swerved around Nick’s body and got through the gate somehow, with her tires screaming. I aimed at the right rear tire, and missed. Harry came up behind me. He pushed my gun-arm down before I could fire again. The convertible disappeared in the direction of the highway.
“Let her go,” he said.
“Who is she?”
He thought about it, his slow brain clicking almost audibly. “I dunno. Some pig that Nicky picked up some place. Her name is Flossie or Florrie or something. She didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You know her pretty well, do you?”
“The hell I do. I don’t mess with Nicky’s dames.” He tried to work up a rage to go with the strong words, but he didn’t have the makings. The best he could produce was petulance: “Listen, mister, why should you hang around? The guy that hired you is dead.”
“I haven’t been paid, for one thing.”
“I’ll fix that.”
He trotted across the lawn to the body and came back with an alligator billfold. It was thick with money.
“How much?”
“A hundred will do it.”
He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Now how about you amscray, bud, before the law gets here?”
“I need transportation.”
“Take Nicky’s car. He won’t be using it. You can park it at the airport and leave the key with the agent.”
“I can, eh?”
“Sure. I’m telling you you can.”
“Aren’t you getting a little free with your brother’s property?”
“It’s my property now, bud.” A bright thought struck him, disorganizing his face. “Incidentally, how would you like to get off my land?”
“I’m staying, Harry. I like this place. I always say it’s people that make a place.”
The gun was still in my hand. He looked down at it.
“Get on the telephone, Harry. Call the police.”
“Who do you think you are, ordering me around? I took my last order from anybody, see?” He glanced over his shoulder at the dark and shapeless object on the gravel, and spat venomously.
“I’m a citizen, working for Nicky. Not for you.”
He changed his tune very suddenly. “How much to go to work for me?”
“Depends on the line of work.”
He manipulated the alligator wallet. “Here’s another hundred. If you got to hang around, keep the lip buttoned down about the dame, eh? Is it a deal?”
I didn’t answer, but I took the money. I put it in a separate pocket by itself. Harry telephoned the county sheriff.
He emptied the ashtrays before the sheriff’s men arrived, and stuffed the leopardskin coat into the woodbox. I sat and watched him.
—
We spent the next two hours with loud-mouthed deputies. They were angry with the dead man for having the kind of past that attracted bullets. They were angry with Harry for being his brother. They were secretly angry with themselves for being inexperienced and incompetent. They didn’t even uncover the leopardskin coat.
Harry Nemo left for the courthouse first. I waited for him to leave, and followed him home, on foot.
Where a leaning palm tree reared its ragged head above the pavements, there was a court lined with jerry-built frame cottages. Harry turned up the walk between them and entered the first cottage. Light flashed on his face from inside. I heard a woman’s voice say something to him. Then light and sound were cut off by the closing door.
An old gabled house with boarded-up windows stood opposite the court. I crossed the street and settled down in the shadows of its veranda to watch Harry Nemo’s cottage. Three cigarettes later, a tall woman in a dark hat and a light coat came out of the cottage and walked briskly to the corner and out of sight. Two cigarettes after that, she reappeared at the corner on my side of the street, still walking briskly. I noticed that she had a large straw handbag under her arm. Her face was long and stony under the streetlight.
Leaving the street, she marched up the broken sidewalk to the veranda where I was leaning against the shadowed wall. The stairs groaned under her decisive footsteps. I put my hand on the gun in my pocket, and waited. With the rigid assurance of a WAC corporal marching at the head of her platoon, she crossed the veranda to me, a thin high-shouldered silhouette against the light from the corner. Her hand was in her straw bag, and the end of the bag was pointed at my stomach. Her shadowed face was a gleam of eyes, a glint of teeth.
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” she said. “I have a gun here, and the safety is off, and I know how to shoot it, mister.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m not joking.” Her deep contralto rose a notch. “Rapid fire used to be my specialty. So you better take your hands out of your pockets.”
I showed her my hands, empty. Moving very quickly, she relieved my pocket of the weight of my gun, and frisked me for other weapons.
“Who are you, mister?” she said as she stepped back. “You can’t be Arturo Castola, you’re not old enough.”
“Are you a policewoman?”
“I’ll ask the questions. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for a friend.”
“You’re a liar. You’ve been watching my house for an hour and a half. I tabbed you through the window.”
“So you went and bought yourself a gun?”
“I did. You followed Harry home. I’m Mrs. Nemo, and I want to know why.”
“Harry’s the friend I’m waiting for.”
“You’re a double liar. Harry’s afraid of you. You’re no friend of his.”
“That depends on Harry. I’m a detective.”
She snorted. “Very likely. Where’s your buzzer?”
“I’m a private detective,” I said. “I have identification in my wallet.”
“Show me. And don’t try any tricks.”
I produced my photostat. She held it up to the light from the street, and handed it back to me. “So you’re a detective. You better do something about your tailing technique. It’s obvious.”
“I didn’t know I was dealing with a cop.”
“I was a cop,” she said. “Not any more.”
“Then give me back my .38. It cost me seventy dollars.”
“First tell me, what’s your interest in my husband? Who hired you?”
“Nick, your brother-in-law. He called me in Los Angeles today, said he needed a bodyguard for a week. Didn’t Harry tell you?”
She didn’t answer.
“By the time I got to Nick, he didn’t need a bodyguard, or anything. But I thought I’d stick around and see what I could find out about his death. He was a client, after all.”
“You should pick your clients more carefully.”
“What about picking brothers-in-law?”
She shook her head stiffly. The hair that escaped from under her hat was almost white. “I’m not responsible for Nick or anything about him. Harry is my responsibility. I met him in line of duty and I straightened him out, understand? I tore him loose from Detroit and the rackets, and I brought him out here. I couldn’t cut him off from his brother entirely. But he hasn’t been in trouble since I married him. Not once.”
The Archer Files Page 31
