“She should of done what I told her,” the boy murmured indifferently as he sprawled on the daybed, staring sleepily at the ceiling. “If she’d done like I said, we’d be all right now. We’d be flying, that’s a fact, man. See, all we got to do is hit him once—that’s what I told her. Once, that’s all, then we split, see. And we get us a car, some really great wheels. Then some cool threads, nothing but the best. And then guess what? You gonna guess, sister? We head straight back home, how’s that for a groove?” and he laughed softly. “Man, they gonna flip when they see the two of us driving into town. They’re gonna blow their gourds! ‘Hey,’ they’re gonna say, ‘ain’t that them Berry kids in that California car?’ ‘You crazy, man, couldn’t be them.’ ‘The hell it couldn’t, that’s them for sure—driving down Main in that brand new Porsche’—” smiling at the ceiling, blinking sleepily, unconscious of the tears sliding down his cheeks as he spun the empty prayer wheel of his dead dream. Of homecoming. The deadest dream of all…
Farr passed by the last old yellow-brick apartment house, saw the same cat staring out the window with shining basilisk eyes. Then he spied the pale outlines of his car waiting in the empty lot. Fishing for his keys, distracted by the sirens which seemed alarmingly close now, he tripped over a length of wire cable which had once marked the parking boundary. As he staggered to keep his footing, he sensed rather than heard movement behind him, and turning, glimpsed a formless billowing shape rushing at him.
Ducking, Farr tried to feint, but he was badly off balance. And the hand that hit him fell like an ax. He went down trying to shout, lurching toward his car door. But he missed and fell hard, his throat closing with the shock of pain, consciousness reeling as he struggled not to go under. No, he kept thinking. Oh, you fool. Like God, he only has to reach out his hand…Then the ax fell again, and his mind exploded into darkness.
TWENTY-SIX
Seething as he crept in low gear down the wide Venice promenade which was closed to all but official vehicles, Casey peered through the arcs cut by his wipers in the heavy mist clinging to his windshield. Last night he could have found the place in ten minutes flat, he knew—no fog problems, no worries about pedestrians. As it was, the few people he passed seemed to spring into the fuzzy radiance of his headlights like spirits emanating out of swirling smoke. Faces like masks. Insubstantial forms, each a plaintiff, he knew, with one touch of his bumper.
Neon glowed ahead. The something-something bar? Glimpsing black-painted windows, the door Farr had described, he didn’t bother trying to fill in the gaps like missing teeth in the sputtering sign. Seven doors south, now. A phone booth nearby. As headlights bore down on him from the opposite direction, Casey swore savagely. All he needed now was some rookie ready to drop on him for driving out of bounds.
Sure enough, the rooftop blinker flashed on. Groaning as the squad car drew abreast of him and halted, Casey leaned out the window, shouting, “Kellog—Santa Monica,” and went on by without stopping.
Five doors now. Four. In his rear-vision mirror, he spied the seaward flare of headlights as the squad car swung around. Three doors. Or was it two, now? Then ahead he saw the lighted phone booth. Tires grating on the sandy pavement, he pulled up, leaving the door open, headlights blazing, as he jumped out of the Mustang.
“Hold it,” a hard metallic voice issued from the squad car bearing down on him.
Casey reached for the pocket holding the leather case with his badge and identification, then changed his mind. Eager Rookie Shoots Detective by Mistake. Better a minute wasted, he decided as the black-and-white car pulled up.
“Ah, for chrissake, Hughie,” said a disgusted half-familiar voice in the dark. The opposite car door slammed hard.
As the uniformed patrolman crossed the headlights, Casey recognized the black face under the billed cap: Jerry Blandford, an Academy classmate. “You guys always drop on your visiting firemen?”
“Man, that Hughie’s a tiger, ain’t he? Two weeks out of the Academy, now he’s arresting plainclothesmen. What we got here, Casey?”
“The Berry girl’s brother, I hope.”
“The one they fished out of the bay?” Blandford shook his head. “You better hope, man, ’cause your other bird just flew away in that yellow Jag we got a bulletin on.”
“Farr.” Casey nodded. “Where’d you see him?”
“I didn’t. He ran a roadblock they’re setting up on Neilson. By the time somebody took after him, he was long gone.”
“All right, let’s get this kid. He’s bombed on something, shouldn’t be any problem.”
Blandford hooted. “Don’t jive me, man—in Venice every kid over five’s a problem!”
Leading the way, Casey took the rickety stairs two at a time. From a next-door window on the second floor, he glimpsed a ghostly face peering out at them from behind the dark pane. Puffing slightly, they paused at the top, listening. From within came no sound. Through the door, which stood slightly ajar, they could see that the room was dark.
Casey knocked twice. The door hinges creaked. Then weirdly slow, a door in a spook show, the flimsy panel swung wide open.
“Cover me,” Blandford whispered.
The broad bright beam of his flashlight cut into the blackness, sweeping the room. A second later Casey fumbled and found the light switch. And in the sudden bleak blinding glare, they saw the boy lying limply, half on, half off the daybed.
Blandford sighed. “Looks to me like you done lost this bird, too.”
No mistaking that blind lifeless stare. But feverishly Casey sought for life signs, knowing it was hopeless. Under his clothing his skin felt sandpapered. Murder. Can’t be. But he did not believe himself.
“Better go down and report in,” Blandford was saying.
“What rotten luck.” Squatting on his heels beside the bed, Casey blinked up at him. “What rotten lousy luck!” Then aware of Blandford’s puzzled scrutiny, he pushed himself upright. “I mean Farr. For running. He’s either the biggest fool or the biggest nut case—”
Blandford was smiling slightly. “You guess wrong on this one, maybe?”
“Maybe. I’ll have a look around, okay?”
“Help yourself.”
As Blandford pounded down the stairs, Casey surveyed the room, vaguely taking in the television magazine lying on the floor. A bed, two chairs—he noted automatically—card table, chest of drawers. But no television set. Then why a magazine devoted to the weekly program schedules?
Retrieving the creased dog-eared periodical from the floor, Casey turned to the front cover. Not even this week’s issue. The date on the cover was for the week starting Sunday, September 11. He flipped rapidly through the pages, noticing that one had been torn out—late evening programs for Thursday the fifteenth, and on the back of the page, morning schedules for Friday the sixteenth—
“Jesus!” It was Krug at the door. “Looks like you hit the jackpot, sport.”
Casey tossed the magazine on the daybed. “Right now it seems more like the booby prize.” He watched as his partner bent over the body.
Krug grunted as he picked up a limp arm, pushing up the blue workshirt sleeve. “Look at that.” He pointed to the needle scars. “A real shooter, wasn’t he? Here’s a fresh one.” As he yanked down the sleeve again, paper in the left shirt pocket rustled. Krug dipped in two fingers, delicately extracting a narrow oblong of stiff paper and a flimsy copy, folded into fourths. “Oil company charge,” he muttered. “Customer’s name is Hubbard Payley. Lives on Malibu Road. Eleven gallons of gas charged on the second.”
A siren growled into silence outside. Casey heard a car door slam. The clan was gathering. Peering over Krug’s shoulder, he deciphered the blurry imprint of the gas station. “That’s where he worked, Al. The Synanon place.”
“I don’t get it.” Krug squinted at the voucher. “Why’d he take this? It wasn’t worth anything—”
/> “Top of the stairs, Sergeant,” Casey heard Blandford calling.
Heavy feet hit the treads, then halted. “Get those people back out of the way,” the unseen sergeant roared. “Next thing you know, we’ll have an ambulance full of spectators.”
“That’s Laslo,” Krug muttered. “Watch yourself, he’s touchy as the devil…”
Once begun, the ritual of procedure progressed steadily, undeterred by fog or the crowd of onlookers. An ambulance arrived, photographers, fingerprint specialists, the coroner’s representative. A participant, but only marginally in this crowd of technicians, Casey hovered near the body while the coroner’s man made a quick examination. “An overdose, you think?” he asked hopefully.
“Not a chance. See that?” pointing to a discoloration below the boy’s left ear. “Carotid artery. Ruptured maybe. Offhand I’d say it was something like karate.”
“Same pattern,” Krug commented behind Casey. “Looks like you bet on the wrong horse, sport.” But his tone was mild.
The owner of the old house was scooped up for questioning, and two tenants with previous drug records. In the next-door house, an unemployed bartender and a frightened pensioner who occupied second-floor rooms with windows facing the stairway were also questioned. Such minor and peripheral persons as the Synanon gas station manager and the customer named Hubbard Payley would have to wait until the next day or the next for questioning, depending on how much time was taken up with possible witnesses.
Seeing that Krug was deep in conversation with Laslo and two Venice Division detectives, Casey drifted out and down the stairs, sampling the comments of the onlookers as he pushed through them and headed up the promenade. In the glaring headlights of the squad cars, the fog seemed thinned, but beyond the cluster of people and vehicles, it closed around him, cold and opaque as steam off evaporating dry ice.
A homemade sign propped near the door of the bar had fallen face down. Casey righted it. Live Music, he read, The Piccolo Incense. Not tonight, he thought as he pushed open the door. The bar was silent and nearly empty—two customers on stools brooding over beers, two more at a pool table.
“Beer?” the bartender asked. “We got tap—”
“No, thanks.” Casey flashed his badge. “Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t do me any good if I did, would it?” But his tough dock-walloper’s face creased pleasantly—a lopsided grin, droll and rueful. “I hear some kid checked out down the street. Whatever it was, it sure blew my business for the night.”
“You had a man in here earlier. About my age. Tall, dark longish hair, kind of lanky. He was probably wearing a blue jacket, denims and sneakers—” The bartender was nodding. “How long was he here?”
“He had a couple beers, so half an hour maybe. Why?”
“Did he meet someone here? Talk to anyone before he left?”
“Lessee”—sucking his teeth—“he bought a round for the Incense. They play here a couple times a week—gratis, natch. But they split early tonight.” He grinned again. “Guess all the fuzz around made ’em nervous maybe.”
“Did he talk to them at all?”
“This guy you’re asking about? Nah, he—Wait a minute, though. He bounced for the brews, then seems to me I seen him headed for the can. Next thing I know, he’s walking out with Goldy.” He pointed to a group photo tacked to the back bar. “That’s him in the middle. Goldman. He’s the drummer.”
Casey asked to see the photo, and while the bartender pried the tacks loose one by one, he continued his questioning. “Did this Goldman come back?”
“Sure he did.” He swore softly. “Will you look at that? Broke my fingernail.” The photo came loose and he blew dust off it. “They played another set. Maybe two. Then all hell broke loose out there and—bam—I’m cleared out. Here you are.”
The photo was a standard publicity still, Casey saw. But the bar was too dimly lighted to see it well. Casey had an impression of four scarecrow figures, beards, hair. At the bottom of the glossy was printing he couldn’t read. “You know where this Goldman lives?”
“Not me—” winking. “He’s not my type.”
“How about these others? Know where any of them live?”
The bartender shook his head.
Casey lit a match, scrutinizing the photo. The printing at the bottom read: The Piccolo Incense…Representation: Pincus Agency, and a Hollywood phone number. While the bartender watched, Casey made a note of the number. Then he returned the photo, and on the off chance the bartender might have seen him, described the man they had believed to be the Berry twin’s uncle. But here he drew a blank. Discouraged, he left a card as usual, knowing it was probably useless. Then he went out into the fog again…
“Where the hell you been?” Krug called from the bottom of the stair.
“Looking for more birds that flew away.” Casey explained what he had found out, vaguely aware, as he talked, of the bulletins issuing from the squawk box of the nearest squad car. Farr would be wanted on suspicion of double homicide now. Wanted also for questioning in the case was a Joe Doe, approximately six feet tall, heavy build, sandy bushy hair and mustache. The doors of the ambulance stood open and ready.
“The Piccolo Incense, for chrissake,” Krug was saying. “What’s that supposed to mean? A lot of words strung together…Okay, so now we know how Farr found the kid. A nice clean case this time, right? Murder One, or I’ll eat my badge.”
“I still say Farr meant us to pick up that boy alive.”
“You’re out of your skull. This guy Farr’s got you hypnotized, you know that? Christ, for all you know, he was laying for you, too—figured you’d come waltzing down here solo maybe.” Krug rapped the stair rail for emphasis. “Look, forget all that shit about stolen keys and frame-ups. Forget the phone call. It’s razzle-dazzle. Window dressing. The funny farm’s full of these tricky killers.”
There was no use arguing, Casey knew, so he listened instead, half-asleep on his feet. The body was brought down and loaded in the ambulance, and once it was gone, the spectators began to drift. One by one the squad cars grouped on the promenade began to peel off, leaving a path clear for Casey’s Mustang. Yawning hugely, he got in behind the wheel.
But Krug didn’t seem ready to call it a day yet. “The hell with the paperwork,” he said companionably, leaning on the open car door. “We’ll do it tomorrow, and screw Timms. How about coffee?”
“No, thanks, Al, I’m ready to quit.”
“Don’t take it so hard, sport.” He punched Casey’s arm. “It’s all in a day’s work. You win a few, you lose a few.”
“Sure, I know. Well—see you tomorrow, Al.”
Krug slammed the door, stepping back a pace as Casey started the Mustang. In the rear-vision mirror, he grinned and waved, ruddy in the glow from the taillights. Then he blurred in the fog and disappeared. All in a day’s work, Casey thought, yawning and yawning as he drove slowly down the promenade to a vacant lot, which he crossed to a parallel alley. From here he turned left, then left again on Neilson, heading back for Santa Monica. Less than fifteen minutes later he was driving up his own quiet tree-lined street.
The garage doors were open, he saw as he swung into the driveway, the gate open also, the dogs in for the night. Parking in the space beside his father’s car, Casey turned off the ignition, leaving the headlights burning as he sat for a minute, stunned by fatigue. All in a day’s work. In the corner of the garage beyond his father’s car, he noticed vaguely, the heap of the family’s biodegradable trash had grown to alarming proportions, particularly the pile of old newspapers and periodicals which loomed in the shadows, leaning like Pisa. Barrels of aluminum cans for reclamation crowded the far wall. Wondering how soon he would be elected by a majority of two to get rid of the stuff, Casey sighed and doused his headlights. He was half out of the car when he remembered the TV magazine with the page
torn out.
Switching on his headlights again, he squeezed by the front bumper of his father’s car and confronted the mass of newspapers. The same magazine wouldn’t be here, he knew—they were not subscribers—but in the TV Log which came every week with the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times, he could find the missing programs. Pawing destructively through the dusty layers of newsprint laid down like sediment every week, he yawned and sneezed, thinking, Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it just wore him out. There wasn’t quite enough light to read the dates. The overhead garage light wouldn’t be any better, he knew, so he kept digging until he had collected four TV Logs. One of them had to be the right one, surely.
Yawning helplessly over and over again, Casey slid by his father’s bumper, doused his headlights, and quietly closed the garage door. His footsteps sounded hollow on the cement drive. In a neighboring yard, a dog barked. Hoping it didn’t set off the three inside his own house, he opened the back screen and unlocked the back door. All three dogs flung themselves at him ecstatically as he stepped into the kitchen. “All right,” he sighed, “okay, I’m glad to see you, too,” patting each one in turn. “Now calm down.”
A night light burned over the stove. On the kitchen drainboard his mother had left a plate of something covered with pliofilm. Fried chicken, Casey discovered when he switched on the light. As he selected a succulent-looking leg first, the dogs watched anxiously, but Casey ignored them. Spreading the TV Logs on the sink, he found the one for the week of September 11 through 17, and opened the Art Nouveau cover. Greasy-fingered, he leafed through until he found programs for the fifteenth, slowly scanning the evening hours through midnight. He was almost at the end—a three-thirty insomniacs’ movie on Channel 11—when he spied it. Dropping the chicken leg, Casey grabbed for the yellow kitchen phone.
Poor Poor Ophelia Page 15
