“Well, maybe.” Plainly, he wasn’t convinced. But, with transparent diplomacy, he decided to change the subject. “What about Jack Winship? What’s with him?”
“That’s exactly what I’m wondering. Which is another reason for checking out The Shed. I want to know when Jack Winship left, and where he went.” I pointed ahead. “Park there, by the hydrant. 540 Bay is just around the corner.”
“Oh. Right.”
King Productions was a large storefront building tastefully converted into better-paying commercial property. An overweight brunette presided over a small reception room dominated by huge photo murals of San Francisco. When I showed her the shield, the brunette immediately heaved a deep, theatrical sigh. Her chin began to quiver—experimentally, I thought.
“I guess you want to see Mr. Mallory,” she said heavily. “He’s the manager. I mean, I guess he’s in charge, now that poor Mr. King is—is—” She gulped, and began blinking tears into her eyes.
“Fine. I’ll talk to Mr. Mallory.”
She spoke briefly into the phone, then pointed to a door. “You go right through there, Lieutenant.” She paused, still blinking. “I think it’s awful,” she offered. “About Mr. King, I mean. Just simply awful.”
I looked at her speculatively, then gestured to Canelli. If she was anxious to talk, Canelli could listen.
Mallory’s office looked as if it was part of a set, hastily partitioned off from the bustle of a sound stage. Mallory was waiting for me, leaning gracefully in the open doorway. He was a slim, elegant man of about thirty-five. He was modishly dressed in flared slacks, a paisley-printed sports shirt and expensive Wellington boots—the same style boots that Thomas King had worn Tuesday night. I watched Mallory fussily clear off the office’s single straight-backed visitor’s chair.
“I’m sorry,” he said testily. “All this—this commotion. This confusion. I can’t think, much less get anything accomplished. It’s just—just—” Fluttering a hand, he let the thought go unfinished as he slumped down behind a piled-high desk. He pushed his pink-tinted aviator’s glasses up on his nose, and ran long, graceful fingers through reddish, ringleted hair. “Did you know that someone else was here, not more than two hours ago?” He frowned. “Markham. Sergeant Markham.”
I smiled at him. “Unfortunately, Mr. Mallory, police work is ninety percent repetition. We go back over the same ground, time after time. Eventually we get lucky.”
The last phrase startled him. He glanced at me, then looked quickly away, momentarily disconcerted. “Good,” he murmured, quickly recovering. Then: “Does that mean you—you’ve discovered who killed him?” As he asked the question, he couldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“We’re still checking.” I allowed a moment of silence to pass. Then: “Is there any way you can help me, Mr. Mallory?”
“Me?” At first he smiled. Then, fleetingly, he frowned, elaborately puzzled—playacting, perhaps. “Me? How can I help?”
“Very simple. Just tell me about Thomas King. How was he to work for? What kind of a film maker was he? Did he pay his bills? Did he keep his word? How were his morals? How was his bank account?” I spread my hands invitingly. “Everything and anything. It might not seem important to you. But it’s possible that we can combine it with something else.”
As he’d listened, his eyes first went blank, then refocused on me with dawning recognition. “You were on TV last night, weren’t you? I thought I recognized you.”
“That’s right, Mr. Mallory.” Deliberately, I said nothing more. He glanced at me with transparent speculation, then cleared his throat, at the same time frowning—ostentatiously puzzled. “Yes. Well—” Again he cleared his throat. “Well, it’s, ah, difficult for me to know exactly how much to say. I mean—” He pushed up the glasses and again caressed the elaborately arranged hair. “I mean, I know there’s such a thing as defamation of character. And I wouldn’t want to—”
“Not when you’re talking to a police officer, Mr. Mallory. In fact, it works in reverse. We want to hear everything. The works. If you hold back information, you’re actually committing a crime.”
“Yes. Certainly. I’m aware of that, naturally. However, I’m sure you want facts. As opposed to opinions, I mean—unsubstantiated hearsay. You don’t want that, do you?” His sidelong glance was almost coy.
“If you identify it as opinion, Mr. Mallory, there’s no problem. And there’s never any possibility of libel when you’re talking with an officer. There’s no problem about anonymity either. I’m sure you understand that. We protect our sources. That’s our first rule.”
“Yes. Well, of course I see the movies and everything. But that’s not always quite the same thing as—” He broke off, frowning down at the desk. Then: “What if there’s a trial, though? Would I have to testify?”
“That’s up to the D.A. However, the D.A. takes our recommendations. Naturally, we work together.”
“Yes. Naturally. I mean, I’m sure you do. Still—” He doubtfully shook his head.
I decided to edge my voice with the chill of authority. “Why don’t you just start talking, Mallory? Let’s see what kind of information—or opinions—you’ve got, before we start worrying about what you’re going to say on the witness stand. That’s a long, long way in the future, believe me.”
“Yes. Well, of course, I can see that. And of course I want to do my duty.” He coughed delicately, at the same time covertly measuring me with another coy look. “Yes,” he repeated, nodding. As he nodded, the glasses slipped down on his nose. “You’re right. No doubt about it. None at all.” He pushed at the glasses with a languid forefinger.
“So just start talking,” I said shortly. “The sooner we start, the sooner we can finish, and you can get back to work.”
The remark sent his soft brown eyes to the cluttered desk. His mouth pursed into a fretful pout as he murmured something about the rigors of paperwork. Finally, with a last limp gesture of resignation, he began talking. “You asked me how Mr. King was to work for,” he said. “Well”—he sighed deeply, shaking his head with bogus reluctance—“well, to be completely candid, Lieutenant, he was awful—simply awful. I mean, in the first place, I don’t think he could make a one-minute TV spot if his life depended on it. He could get the business, all right. I’ll say that for him. He was a salesman. He could sell anything, no doubt about it. But technically, he was impossible. Simply impossible. I mean, he used to come up with these utterly outlandish ideas that he’d already sold to his client. And then he’d tell me to execute them. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was ludicrous. Simply ludicrous.”
“How long have you worked for him, Mr. Mallory?”
“Nine years. Nine long, hard years. Before I came here, I was with Disney. And why I left, I’ll never know.”
“Was Mr. King successful in business, would you say?”
“You mean monetarily successful? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“Well, then, the answer is yes. He made lots of money. However, he made it at the expense of others.”
“You, for instance.”
“Yes,” he answered, aggrieved. “Since you said it, I won’t deny it. Yes.” The brown eyes were harder now. The rosebud mouth was malicious. “I won’t deny it,” he repeated. “He fed me on promises. And I fell for them. All of them. Time after time. Year after year. First I was going to have a piece of the business. Then I was going to be manager. Finally I was going to be a partner.”
“But you are the manager. And he relied on your talent. You said so yourself.”
As he smothered an obscenity, he jerked his hand up from the desk to circle the four walls. “Look at this—this hovel,” he hissed. “Look at it. Have you seen his office?”
“No.”
“Well—” He flounced back hard in his chair. “Well, if you had, you’d know what I’m talking about.”
I tried to register a sympathetic interest, shaking my head sad
ly. Then I said, “As far as you know, then, Mr. King’s affairs were in order. He apparently made plenty of money, and he wasn’t in trouble financially.”
“Oh, he was in good financial shape, all right. I won’t take that away from him. He was shrewd.” Mallory nodded decisively. “He was one hell of a shrewd operator. No question.”
“And he wasn’t being pressed by creditors that you know of.”
“No. Never. As I say, he had his faults. Plenty of them. But bad money management wasn’t one of them. At least not in business. What he did with his personal finances, of course, I don’t know.”
“Do you know Diane Farley, Mr. Mallory?”
“Diane who?”
“Farley. Diane Farley. It was in her apartment that Mr. King was murdered.”
The eyes were suddenly avid. “He was murdered in a girl’s apartment?”
“Didn’t Sergeant Markham tell you?”
“No”—he blinked—“no, he didn’t.”
“Miss Farley is a model. That’s why I thought you might know her.”
He frowned. “What kind of a model?”
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “Fashion, I think.”
“Well, I don’t know her. But I can tell you that King saw lots of girls. All kinds of girls. At all hours of the day—and night.”
I flattened my voice, saying matter-of-factly, “He played around. Is that what you mean?”
His smile was sly. “Under oath, I might deny it, Lieutenant. But, yes, that’s what I’m saying. King was constantly trailing off after women. Or, more accurately, girls. He was forty-three, you know, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off girls, much less his hands. Mostly young girls, and the more—curves, the better.” Involuntarily, his voice revealed a scornful distaste for women and their curves.
“So it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Thomas King slept with Diane Farley once a week.”
He snorted. “It would surprise me if he hadn’t. Not with Diane Farley, especially. I didn’t even know her, as I said. But he could’ve slept with anyone—and everyone.”
“What about his wife? Mrs. King. Do you know her?”
“Well, naturally I know her.” The contempt was back in his voice—and in his eyes.
“Did you know anything about their life—their private life?”
“I know that she played around as much as he did,” he said promptly. “They were meant for each other. Two of a kind.”
“You’re sure that she played around?”
“Well, of course”—he bridled—“I don’t know whether she actually slept with other men. I mean, there’s no way I could know that, not for sure. But I’ve seen her with other men. According to the stories, she played some pretty strange games. She looks very proper, you know—very straight. But those are the ones, you know, who can really fool you. Just last month, for instance, I saw her having drinks with a man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Maybe he was twenty, for all I know. Not only that, but he was really far-out—really bizarre. Appearance-wise, anyhow. Naturally, I didn’t talk to them.”
“Do you know this man’s name, Mr. Mallory?”
“No.”
“Do you remember the bar?”
“Yes. It was the Pelican, on Clement Street.”
“Did you ever see her with anyone—a man—that you could identify?”
“Well, no. Not really. Not by name, anyhow.”
I nodded, thought about it, and then decided to ask, “What about Tuesday, Mr. Mallory? Was there any change in Thomas King’s normal schedule on Tuesday?”
He thoughtfully touched the tip of a small pink tongue to his upper lip, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he answered. “He came in about nine thirty in the morning, shuffled a few papers and made a few phone calls. Then he went out to see a client. That was about ten, I suppose. He came back about three, I guess it was. And he left about five. It was his typical working day,” Mallory said contemptuously.
“He didn’t come back to the office that evening?”
“No.”
“Would you have known it, if he’d come back?”
“Probably. For one thing, I was here myself until almost eight. I was working on a presentation that he needed by yesterday. Wednesday. That’s the way it went, you see. That’s what I’m telling you: He went home at five. I stayed till eight. It’s typical. Utterly typical.”
“What did you do after you left here Tuesday evening, Mr. Mallory?”
“I had something to eat, and a couple of drinks. Then I went home.” He hesitated, then said, “Is that what you’re asking? Are you—” He licked at his cupid’s lips, suddenly frowning. “Are you asking me what I was doing Tuesday night?”
I held his eye as I slowly, silently nodded. Immediately, his acid-tongued arrogance began to fail him. “Well—” He defensively spread his hands. “I just—as I said—I just had an omelette, actually, and a split of wine. And then I—I went home. I got home about eleven. Or may—maybe a little before. I—I’m not sure. I mean, I—” As he broke off, he turned both palms upward, then dropped his hands to the desk top.
“Do you live alone, Mr. Mallory?”
“Well”—he coughed—“well, no. I mean, I have a roommate. But Tuesday he was out of town. So I can’t—”
His telephone rang. With obvious relief, he answered. Then, surprised, he handed the phone to me.
“It’s Pete, Frank,” Friedman said. “Can you talk?”
“More or less.”
“Well, I wanted to tell you about a couple of things.”
“Yes.” I took out my notebook.
“First, they’ve located Winship’s van. The call just came in. Just this minute. It’s down in Pacifica. It’s parked right near the beach—right off Route One.”
“Empty?”
“It’s empty, all right. It’s parked in among some scrub trees, apparently. However, the door was found open, as if someone had left in a hurry. Also, there’s some blood on the ground. So the tension builds, as they say.”
“I’ll go down for a look.”
“Yeah. Fine. However, hurry back. Because I’ve just heard from Sacramento on those fingerprints on the murder weapon. And guess what?”
“What?”
“They belong to Arnold Clark.” He paused, then asked, “Are you acquainted with Arnold Clark?”
“No.”
“I guess he took his best shots before you joined the team. Anyhow, I can tell you that we may have our work cut out for us.”
“Listen,” I said, glancing at Mallory. “I can’t—”
“Okay. Sorry. Why don’t you run down to Pacifica for a quick look at the van, and then get back here to the Hall as soon as you can? I’ll get Markham down here, too. Just take a quick look at the terrain, and try to make it here in, say, an hour. Okay?”
“Yes. Fine. Will you dispatch the technicians?”
“There, we got a break—money-wise, anyhow. The van was found just over the county line. So San Mateo’s going to supply the crews.”
“All right. I’ll try to see you in an hour.”
Fourteen
CANELLI PULLED IN BEHIND a San Mateo County Sheriff’s car. I cleared our own car with San Francisco Communications, and we stepped out onto a narrow dirt road. No more than two tire ruts, the road led into a seaside grove of twisted, wind-stunted juniper. I could understand why it had taken twenty-four hours to locate Winship’s van. The area where we now stood was bleak and deserted, an underbrush-tangled slope dropping steeply down to the rocky shoreline, far below. Only during the warmest months of the year would hikers venture into this rough terrain. At the thought, I turned up my collar against the raw winter’s wind.
A deputy sheriff checked our credentials, then led us to the van. It tallied perfectly with Judy Blake’s description: color, body condition, rust spots and the unmistakable smokestack, cocked at a crazy angle. I wondered whether it had purposely been bent into that Toonerville shape.
The v
an’s interior was dirty and cluttered. A tattered sleeping bag was spread out on a plywood panel that had been covered with a foam-rubber pad, badly stained. A cardboard box of canned food lay on the floor beside another box filled with tools, cans of oil and miscellaneous Volkswagen parts. The car’s upholstery was worn and ripped. The odometer registered 4,000 miles, translating to 104,000.
Querying the deputy, I learned that the van had been found less than two hours ago. It had only been in the past hour, when the blood was found, that San Mateo had organized a search for Winship. At about that time, someone had remembered our A.P.B., and advised San Francisco Communications. The technical crews hadn’t arrived, but the deputy assured me they were on their way.
“How many men have you got in the area?” I asked the deputy.
“Searching for the driver, you mean?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’d say about—” He calculated, frowning heavily. “I’d say about eight. Maybe nine. I mean, our department don’t exactly have unlimited resources, you know, Lieutenant. I mean, we’ve got to—”
“Can you show me where the blood was found? I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“Oh. Right. Sure thing. It’s right here, Lieutenant. Right over here.” He pointed down the narrow road.
I told Canelli to stay with our radio and followed the squat, bandy-legged deputy down the sharp slope of the road. About twenty-five feet from the car, we came to a break in the thick-growing scrub. A precarious footpath led down to the rocky beach, a hundred feet below. The deputy took the path, needlessly warning me to watch my footing. At the first bend, he stooped and pointed out an unmistakable smear of blood on a cluster of ice plant.
“So far,” he said, “that’s all we’ve found. But like I say, it’s only been an hour since—”
Holstered at his belt, his walkie-talkie beeped.
“Blakely,” he barked officiously. “Come in.”
Long Way Down (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 10
