Convertible Hearse

by William Campbell Gault

  And Vanyo was aiming at me.

  There was some drop-off ahead, at the edge of the parking area, and I didn’t know how steep it was. But Vanyo was aiming at me.

  I went over the edge feet first, like a runner sliding into second.

  TEN

  IT WASN’T A cliff on this side of the house, but it was one hell of a steep hill. I went sliding and turning in the dry and dusty grass. My right elbow glanced off a rock and pain streaked up to my shoulder and my nerveless hand dropped the shower head.

  I heard it rattle on some rocks and then I went over the edge of a small abutment into a tangle of chaparral.

  My stomach churned, my vision wavered. On the rim above, I could see Vanyo looking down, the gun still in his hand. There was the bitterness of bile in my mouth and the dust of the gray grass in my nostrils. I crawled for cover through the tangled chaparral.

  Above, through the branches, I saw another man join Vanyo at the rim. I rubbed my throbbing elbow and tried to squeeze behind the shelter of a rock.

  There was a rough path coming down through here, possibly used by hunters. To me, these looked like hills of the Santa Monica Range near Sepulveda Boulevard, but I couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter much which way I traveled, so long as I put distance between me and the men above.

  It was an undeveloped area; that much was certain. There wasn’t another house in sight. That didn’t mean I was out of the reach of civilization. Beyond any of those nearby hills, there could be a major traffic artery. Los Angeles is probably the only town in the world where you can hunt cougar within the city limits.

  I couldn’t stay here. I edged around the side of the rock and looked up through the overhanging foliage to the rim.

  Vanyo was starting down the path.

  I crawled lower, like a hunted rat looking for a hole. I was getting some cover, but there was a possibility the dust I was raising would mark my trail.

  I heard some pebbles rattling down from above and peered through an aperture to see that he was getting closer. Avoiding the path seemed like the best bet, but was it really? He had a gun; distance would keep him safe from me, but not me safe from him.

  I was sick, and sore, shying from violence. All I wanted to do was run, run, run…. That was the natural impulse, but not the intelligent course. A bullet in the back is exactly as deadly as a bullet in the front.

  Below me now I could see the path took an abrupt left turn around an outcropping of rock above it. There was waist-high grass on both sides of the rock, though no shrubbery.

  And here, close to my outstretched hand, was a rock the size of a grapefruit, a heavy rock, with flinty, sharp edges. I took the rock with me as I crawled for the cover of the high grass. I breathed deeply, waiting for a sound from him.

  I could hear him now to my right, coming carefully down the steep path above the outcropping. Below, through the parted grass, I could see the path.

  If my dust hadn’t been visible, he would go by on the right, and then down to the spot I was looking at. If my dust hadn’t been visible …

  The sound of his progress stopped, and he called, “Okay, Callahan, you’re behind the rock. But I’ve got a gun. Come out now, and we might even let you live.”

  Silence from me and from the hills all around.

  “Be smart,” he called. “Be smart and live.”

  Silence. He thought I was on the path, around the turn, waiting for him behind the protection of the rock to my right. I heard him take another step, a careful, tentative step. I wondered if anyone was covering him from the rim, but was afraid to look up and rustle the dry grass.

  “I’m coming around the corner, Callahan,” he called. “I’m coming around shooting. It’s your last chance.”

  Come on, big mouth, I said to myself. Hurry, hurry, hurry …

  He hadn’t lied. He came around the corner, shooting, though it was only one shot. And then he saw there was no one there and for a second he paused, scanning the grass below.

  And just before he looked up my way, I dropped the rock on him. It caught him flush on the forehead and he went down like a sledged steer.

  I dropped on him, and picked up the rock and lifted it high. And stopped.

  He was out cold, his eyes closed in his peaceful face, his body limp. What had I meant to do, batter that unprotected face? Kill him? Me? I picked up his gun from where it had fallen on the stony path, and glanced up toward the rim.

  No one was in sight. With two shot men up there, and a couple of stolen cars, they probably had enough to keep them busy.

  Below me now was a gravel-filled arroyo that must be a drainage channel, leading toward the sea. I headed down that way.

  I had a gun and a lot of acreage to run in; this was the closest I’d been to freedom since entering Hans’ apartment building. My odds were getting better.

  I walked along the shale and the gravel in the bright sunlight, occasionally protected from the view above by the overhanging shrubbery. The channel led steadily down; it would have to come out into civilization eventually.

  Reaction had set in. My hands shook and my legs were weak, and I was chilled, despite the sun. I wondered if the road that led to the house came down this way. They might be driving along it, looking for me.

  The house was out of my sight now and there was no other house within view. I followed the curve of the arroyo around a clay cliff and suddenly there was a vista below me of a twisting, traffic-heavy artery threading through the hills.

  It was Sepulveda Boulevard. Sedans and hard-tops and station wagons and gaudy convertible hearses went singing around its long curves; the symbol of my town, the murderous traffic. I had never been so happy to see it.

  I began to run that way.

  Ryerson came into the dim room to ask, “Feeling any better?”

  “Lots. What was in those pills?”

  “I don’t know; they’re a tranquilizer. Man, you were almost over the edge. You were hysterical. What’s this bit about ‘the lovely, lovely traffic’?”

  “I’m a machine-age poet,” I told him. I sat up on the couch. “I’ve got to get some of those pills. Come in handy these days, Lieutenant.”

  “I use ’em,” he said. “Now, you don’t know if that car that carried you turned off Sepulveda or Mulholland Drive, I suppose.”

  “It had to be Sepulveda; the car turned up. Everything is down from Mulholland Drive. It should be within view of that phone on top of Sepulveda, near the tunnel. I mean the house should.”

  He frowned. “Would you know it from the top? I was thinking we could use that helicopter that’s used for Rose Bowl traffic.”

  “I don’t think I’d know the house from the top. There was a den at the rear of it, cantilevered out over the cliff and there was a six-car garage. There can’t be many houses with six-car garages up there.”

  “No, but if it was an attached garage, it will look like part of the house from the top. You said it was an attached garage.”

  “Not exactly. There was a breezeway connecting it to the house. I mean, it was probably originally a breezeway, but it had walls which must have been added later.”

  “A corridor, then?”

  I nodded.

  “You couldn’t guess at the general shape of the house?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I had other things on my mind.”

  He smiled dimly. “I guess you did. You’ll swear that Tony Vanyo shot Deutscher? We can bank on that in court?”

  “I’ll swear it. And he kidnapped me, remember. That can get him the limit in this state.”

  He nodded. “What color had they painted this Olds?”

  “Blue and gray. And that Imperial had white wall tires.”

  He looked at the papers in his hand. “All right. We’ve got every road leading off Sepulveda blocked and other cars prowling the whole area. I guess we don’t need you any more until we drag somebody in.”

  I stood up. “My car’s at the Hollywood Station. Can I get
a ride out to there?”

  He grinned. “You didn’t think we’d let you walk out there, did you? You, our Beverly Hills ace?”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” I said. “There may come a time when I’ll remind you you said that.”

  “I’m sure there will,” he said dryly. “Come on, I’ll get you a ride.”

  I didn’t ride in a prowl car. There was a sergeant who lived on the west side and was on his way home. He said it would be an honor to take me to the Hollywood Station.

  He was a Ram fan; all he wanted to talk about was the Wade, Bukich, Van Brocklin controversy. Three quarterbacks we had this year, and each of them had his adherents. My companion favored Bukich, who had gone to S.C. The sergeant was also an S.C. fan.

  “That’s the guy that beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, remember. And that’s the only time we beat the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl.”

  I nodded and pretended to be listening. I was thinking of Hans Deutscher and wondering if the shot that dropped him had been fatal. And if it hadn’t, had another later shot? Hans looked better to me now than he ever had. He’d made me go ahead of him, but that was simple self-protection. It was his guts I admired, not his ethics.

  Of course, on guts alone, what about Tony Vanyo? With the police combing the town for him, he had calmly ransacked Hans Deutscher’s apartment. Was guts alone enough to merit admiration?

  “He’s got the poise, too, the guts,” my companion said.

  “I looked up blankly. “Who?”

  “Bukich. I followed him since his first college game.”

  “They’ve all got guts,” I said, “or they wouldn’t be out there, taking their lumps. From high school, through pro, it’s no game for the gutless.”

  “I’ll buy that,” he agreed, “and nobody ever had any more guts than you had, Rock.”

  “And I’ve got more now than ever,” I said. “A forty-one-inch waist.”

  He laughed. “Well, we’re getting old.”

  We were on the Hollywood freeway and the reassuring fumes of carbon monoxide filled the air. I wasn’t getting old. I was getting careful and a shade penurious but these were marks of a growing sanity, not age.

  At Hollywood, Lieutenant Burke told me the house had been found, and was being surrounded now. “Hang around, if you want,” he said, “and get the play by play.”

  “I’ll check back,” I told him. “I want to get to my office and see what they’ve stolen there.”

  “Of course,” he said, and smiled. “You played that one right, Callahan. If that old man had been a little more observant, we might even have been able to follow your trail.”

  “He wouldn’t know about the Imperial,” I said. “It was parked in the alley, behind the apartment.”

  He nodded. “Well, you’re respected around here, and you can remember that if you ever need us. The trouble we’ve had with Deutscher has kind of soured us on private men at this station. I wonder if they killed him.”

  “We’ll soon see. And thanks for the kind words, Lieutenant.”

  I thought about Deutscher as I drove to my office. I had seen he had courage and heard he had ability. What had driven him to the fringes of the law? Money? If his living quarters were an indication, he hadn’t done so well in that department. Of course, he might be salting the money away.

  The boys who’d searched my office had been neat about it. The lock on the door was broken and one filing drawer had been left open, the drawer that had held my file on the Dunbar case. That file was gone, of course.

  In the washroom, I rinsed my face with warm water and tried not to look at my lips in the mirror. They had taken too much in the last couple of days; their pristine beauty was grotesquely distorted.

  An idiot’s trade … I was the man for it.

  I was glad I had sent copies of my daily reports to Pascal. That way, I still had a record of them. I typed the report of my kidnapping, trying to remember the dialogue as accurately as possible. A trained man can occasionally find revealing information in apparently innocent dialogue. This would be read by trained men over at the station.

  I wondered if I’d live long enough to become a trained man.

  My phone rang and I hoped it would be Jan with words of solace. It was the first Mrs. Dunbar.

  She said, “I had a visitor this morning, Mr. Callahan.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Horace Wilding?”

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  “It figures. What did he say?”

  “He said he had just heard about Leo’s death and he’d been shocked by it. He wondered why you had come to visit him.” A pause. “I tried to reach you earlier. Where were you?”

  “I was kidnapped,” I said. “The men who kidnapped me also wanted to know, in their subtle way, why I had visited Horace Wilding.”

  A silence.

  “Are you still there?” I asked.

  Her voice was quieter. “I’m here. Mr. Wilding is — an artful and ingratiating man, isn’t he?”

  “He ran for mayor,” I pointed out. “Politics makes men artful and ingratiating. Did you phone to tell me to cease the investigation, Mrs. Dunbar?”

  A pause. “I — believe I did. He certainly can be charming. I — what happened to you?”

  “I was kidnapped and held in an isolated house by some hoodlums. I was slapped around a little. I’m all right now, though, thank you. However, if you feel I’m not as competent as you’d hoped or I’m disturbing old social alliances, I’ll be glad to drop out of the case.”

  “You can be sarcastic, can’t you?”

  “I guess. I’ve been accused of it before. I’ve had a rough day and I find it difficult to be artful and ingratiating. I’ll bill you for the work already performed, Mrs. Dunbar.”

  Her voice was sharp. “Don’t be insolent, Mr. Callahan. You continue with this investigation. I — won’t tell Mr. Wilding that you’re continuing.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll keep you fully informed.”

  “Do that. And I’ll add an extra thousand dollars to your bill if you discover who killed Leo.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I can use it for plastic surgery.”

  Outside, it was turning to dusk. Traffic was thick on the street below and more than half the cars were driven by women. The shoppers were going home.

  My phone rang again, and this time it was Jan. She said coolly, “Mary Macarty has been trying to get in touch with you. I’ve no idea why she should phone me, but plenty of ideas why you should know round-heels Mary Macarty. You don’t waste any time, do you?”

  “You do the girl an injustice,” I said. “She’s involved in the death of Leo Dunbar and that’s why I’ve been seeing her. And I didn’t notice any round heels.”

  “Maybe she had her shoes off. Where have you been?”

  “I was kidnapped. You can read about it in the paper. I was almost killed. If I am, you’ll read about that in the paper, too. You can keep in touch with me that way, through the newspapers. You and Les Hartley … Sister, you pick ‘em, don’t you?”

  “We’re working on an account together.”

  “Mary and I are, too. If you think I’m going to crawl every time you shake the leash, you’ve got another think coming. Jan Christine Bonnet. To hell with you and your moods.”

  “And to hell with you and your vulgar tastes — in women and everything else. Good-bye — stud!”

  “Good night, reluctant lover,” I said, but I had said it to a dead line.

  The dusk was now duskier. I turned on the overhead light and phoned Mary Macarty. She said, “I want to talk with you. But not over the phone.”

  “I could get a couple steaks,” I said. “It’s about time I contributed to the meal.”

  “I didn’t mention eating. And by the tone your girl friend took with me when I phoned, I’m not sure I want to eat with you.”

  “I won’t bring her along,” I promised. “They’re fine filets; I’ve bought ‘em before in a s
hop on San Vicente.”

  “All right,” she said, “all right. What’s your friend so nasty about? Does she think we had something going?”

  “Of course not. Shall I pick up some Roquefort, too?”

  “That would be nice. Where were you all day?”

  “I was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  I went home first and took a soothing warm shower and put on some clothes that hadn’t gone skating in the Santa Monica Mountains. I was really a mess.

  She wasn’t wearing the bathing suit when she opened her door to me an hour later. She was wearing a simple dress of some rough yellow fabric, trim at the waist and flaring below. It contrasted beautifully with her dark hair and bronze skin.

  “Your lips look worse,” she said. “What happened?”

  “They were mauled again. You’re beautiful.”

  She put her cool finger-tips on my swollen mouth. “I hope you’re being well paid. Why do you take this sort of thing? Don’t you get any police protection?”

  “As much as I’m entitled to. Are those eyelashes natural?”

  “Down, boy,” she said lightly. “Come in and tell me about your day and then I’ll tell you why I phoned.”

  I sat on a studio couch and she brought me a bottle of beer. Of Einlicher! She said, “I found a place that sold it.” She sat in a chair nearby and folded her hands in her lap.

  I sipped the beer and told her about my day right up to Jan’s phone call. I omitted the nastier parts of that.

  When I’d finished, she asked, “This Deutscher was shot? He’s a private detective, isn’t he?”

  “He was. He’s no longer licensed. Now, what about you?”

  She took a breath and looked at me doubtfully. “George phoned again. He — wants to talk to you.”

  “Did he tell you what he wants to talk about?”

  She frowned. “In a way … He wants you to act as an intermediary between him and the police. He implied that he did change the numbers on that Cadillac Miss Bonnet bought. He wonders if he can go free on that one mistake if he gives the police information about a very important man in this town.”

  “Are the man’s initials H. W.?”