Down in the Valley (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  The dope signed it. I put the paper away in an inside pocket.

  'How do you work this thing, anyway?' I asked him, indicating the car phone. He turned it on and got the operator. I told him the lieutenant's call sign and he passed that along. After a minute, thanks to yet another miracle of modern technology, I was through.

  'Conyers,' he said.

  'Any time, Shorty,' I said, then hung up. 'Amazing invention, eh? By the way, don't look behind you whatever you do.' Of course he looked behind him immediately and saw the midget heading our way. While his attention was thus diverted I slipped the two envelopes from my right-hand pocket on to the floor under the seat and when Art started clambering out of the car, added the gun and a clip of ammunition. Then I hastily got out my side.

  'Mr Wetmore?' Lieutenant Conyers said when he was close enough. 'A pleasure. I have here a warrant that may interest you.'

  'You lying bugger,' Art said to me.

  'No one's perfect,' I said to him. 'Anyway, there you go, jumping to wrong conclusions again. What's the warrant for, Officer? His brand-new redwood condo?'

  'Why, no,' said Conyers. 'His almost brand-new car. I have reason to believe, in evidence received, that you are illegally transporting drugs, counterfeit money and an unlicensed firearm, with ammunition. All three of these are capital charges in the state of California. I hope for your sake your fingerprints aren't on any of them.' No, they were on all of them.

  I was keeping a close eye on Art, knowing his history, so I dodged the first roundhouse right he threw at me but he caught me in the ribs with a good left hook and then battle was joined, as some mother-in-law said once. Art was big, heavy and slow; so was I but I was bigger and heavier. He hurt me some but I hurt him more and finally I measured him properly and decked him with a solid, almost straight right thrown from the hip. The lieutenant, of course, merely backed up a few steps and watched. Once he said, 'Hit him in the bread basket,' but I'll never be sure who he said it to.

  When Art was finally down, I kicked him once, as hard as I could, in the groin. He screamed; tears ran down his fat face.

  'Timmy,' I said. 'The moron. His name was Timmy.'

  Then the midget cuffed him, took out a small, printed card and read him his rights, and, when he could walk again, led him back up the hill. Art stopped once to spit out some blood and parts of his bridge-work.

  'Messy,' I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A peach of a day, I mused, as I cruised down Balmoral toward the freeway. A peach of a Southern California day. I fiddled with the car radio and finally got Barbara Mandrell wondering why she always picked the wrong man. Because you ain't looked in my direction recently, I told Barbara.

  Back at my place, I got out of that foolish safari jacket and into a superb early Hawaiian number, almost a collector's item, transferred Art's confession to my wallet, picked up the roll of film I'd shot at the school the night before and tootled over to my friend Wade's. A peach of a day, I mused, as I tootled.

  Wade was out lying in his hammock, as usual, puffing on a garish waterpipe, the kind you buy at the last moment at North African airports for someone else. The gigantic mutt dozing in the shade under the hammock looked as stoned as his master; it opened one eye briefly, then closed it again.

  'If it's like, work, like, man, forget it,' Wade said. 'I've retired. I've gone to a far, far better place than planet Earth.'

  'Where have you gone to?' I asked him reverently.

  'It has no name,' he said dreamily. 'It is known only by a number.'

  'May I know the number?'

  'No, you may not,' he said, inhaling a long, gurgling hit of what smelled like Nepalese. 'No one over six feet high is ever allowed to know the number.'

  'Excuse me for asking, master,' I said humbly. 'And excuse me for bringing up a subject as crass as dinero, but do they use money where you are?'

  'They do,' he said. 'Their money is butterflies.'

  'That must be good stuff,' I said. I tossed the roll of film on to his weedy chest. 'Two contact sheets and right away, please, and I will pay you in butterflies of any denomination you wish, as in two twenties and one ten. Do they have time where you are?'

  'They do,' Wade said. 'They measure it in sighs.'

  'See you in thirty sighs,' I said, and got out of there. His cat was sunning itself on my car roof and didn't get off until I was turning out of the driveway.

  I found a post office not far away that had a copy machine and made a couple of dupes, then had a late lunch at the same greasy spoon near Wade's I'd breakfasted at a few days earlier. Their pot roast was awful, so was their apple pie. I knew I should have had the banana cream, it's always awful so you're never disappointed.

  All right. Back to Wade's, where the scene was unchanged except my contact sheets were in an envelope in one of his seemingly lifeless hands. I withdrew them gently and told him his butterflies were in the mail.

  'Where I am, we are not allowed emotions,' Wade said without opening his eyes. 'Except, occasionally, deep pity.' He stroked his skimpy goatee complacently.

  Home again. A weak brandy and ginger ale to wash away the taste of the over-cooked pot roast. I stowed away in my security box the original and one copy of Art's statement and one of the contact sheets. Then I puttered around a while making sure the place was more or less tidy for Mom. I'm not saying I cleaned the oven and the bathroom mirror and waxed the kitchen linoleum, but tidy it was. Then I collected the bits and pieces –I was going to say, of my life, but I'll go into that another time – the bits and pieces I was going to need shortly, and drove over to St Stephen's to look for Dev. I did not muse on the way.

  Tracking him down took some doing as the school was officially closed, it being a Saturday, but luckily there were lots of kids around practicing various sports and one of the coaches finally let me in one of the side doors. Dev was in the otherwise empty gym sitting in a corner on a fold-up chair. He was wearing an old warm-up jacket and a pair of shorts. His artificial leg started just below the knee; he was unbuckling it as I walked over to him. On the floor beside him were two small barbells of the kind used for strengthening forearms and a heavy bar on which he was resting his good leg. His prosthesis was finished in a smooth, skin-colored plastic instead of the metallic skin I might have expected.

  'Hi, Dev,' I said. 'Want to shoot a few baskets?'

  He finished unbuckling his leg, held it up, then began wiping it down with a clean towel he had thrown over one shoulder. The fold of skin over the butt of the amputation looked red and sore.

  'Dirt gets in,' he said, 'no matter how careful you are.' He kept his eyes on the job, away from mine. 'I've got four of these things, you use them for different purposes, you know?'

  I bent down and tried to lift the heavy bar and managed to raise one end of it a couple of inches.

  'Oof,' I said. 'They've taken Art away to a far, far better place where he will not have a name anymore. He will have a number, however.'

  'It wasn't my idea,' Dev said, still engrossed in his polishing. 'I would like you to know that.'

  'OK,'I said.

  'I tumbled you right away, though,' he said. 'I did that, and I did tell him you were poking around, but that's all.'

  'OK,' I said. I took a look around. 'They sure got a lot of stuff here they never had in my day. All we had was two hoops, a couple of ropes and some wooden bars.'

  'And some dirty mats,' he said. 'Don't forget those.' He began doing a series of exercises with his bad leg, lifting it as far in the air as he could, holding it, and then relaxing. The effort made the veins in his neck stand out like cables. 'I do that fifty times twice a day.'

  'To each his own,' I said.

  'Have you got my smack?' he asked me. 'I need it. I'm going to need it more tonight.'

  'I got it.'

  'Did you blow up Art's too? You must have. How did you do it?'

  'Chicken soup,' I said.

  'Was that you with Bobby too? Must have been.
What was that all about?'

  'I felt like dressing up,' I said. I picked up one of the small barbells and pumped it a few times. 'Do you think I could ever have muscles? If I did this regularly?'

  He shrugged. 'Miracles have happened.'

  'Actually, what I was on about was this.' I handed him one of the duplicates of Art's signed statement. 'I figured he'd turn on you if I gave him half a chance, so I did.' Then I gave him a copy of the contact sheet of the roll of film I'd shot in his apartment and the boys' locker room. He looked at them almost without interest, then started to pass them back to me. I said, 'Keep 'em, I got plenty of copies.'

  'I had a desk job with the military police in Can Tho,' Dev said. 'I did a pal a favor and got caught and was transferred to a combat division of the Fourth. The best man I had was Corporal William Lynch, I don't know how many times I hauled his black ass out of the shit but it was nothing to the number of times he saved mine. Two weeks or so before Tet we were patrolling a valley that was so beautiful it was like some kind of Shangri-La, it made you cry. Were you ever in the army?'

  'Briefly,' I said. I went over to the window and looked out. A pick-up game had started on the soccer field. On one of the tennis courts, two boys were playing against four girls.

  'Briefly, yeah,' he said. 'Well, briefly, we killed some villagers who probably had no more to do with the war than Little Orphan Annie, and Willie lost it and fragged me – or maybe he didn't lose it, who knows? Then he carried me four klicks back to camp on his back. When I started getting better, except for the pain, they took me off morphine, so he used to get smack for me. You explain it.'

  I couldn't so I went on looking out the window instead. One of the boys playing tennis set himself for an overhead smash, missed the ball by a mile, then collapsed dramatically. His partner bent over him with exaggerated concern.

  'Willie was the first guy I ever saw giving an officer a black power salute instead of the regulation one,' Dev said after a moment. 'Later, they were all doing it.'

  'I heard,' I said.

  'You ever been to Ireland?'

  'No. I used to sit outside an Irish bar Friday nights and wait for my pop.'

  'I was going, like John Wayne in The Quiet Man. I've still got some family there. In Cork. That's in the south, on the sea.'

  I strolled back over to him. 'Well, don't book your ticket yet,' I said, 'you got things to do first.'

  'Only too true,' he said. He pushed himself off the chair with one hand, then seemed to lose his balance, so I put out a hand to steady him. He showed his gratitude by swinging the tin leg in a vicious arc, catching me right on the temple. It didn't seem to hurt that much but I started going down. He gave me another one for luck right in the same place. I hit the floor like the dumb, overweight slob I was. He was just lining up a third shot when I passed out.

  I don't think I was unconscious longer than a moment or two. When I started focusing again I could see Dev had his leg strapped back on and was bending over the heavy bar. Funny time to pump a little iron, I remember thinking foggily. With a grunt of effort he snatched the bar up to the chest position, then took a couple of deep breaths, then, wobbling a bit, got it up over his head. I was beginning to get the idea but I couldn't seem to get any words out. I did think about moving rapidly somewhere out of the way but I couldn't get that together either.

  If you think three years in a closed prison is a long time, try thirty seconds on a wood floor watching two hundred pounds of cast iron wobble over your head with some mad-eyed Paddy staring at you all the while. Finally he let the bar slam down; dust exploded from between the floorboards; it missed my tender cranium by a good six inches.

  'My poor old mother, she always said I was too softhearted for my own good,' Dev said, sitting heavily down in the chair again. 'So I'll go no more a-roving after all.'

  'Only too true,' I said after a few minutes when my mouth began doing what my brain told it to. 'Just another sentimental Mick, that's you.' I sat up part way; after a few more minutes the room stopped going round and round. Blinking didn't help much but it was the traditional thing to do so I blinked for a while.

  'Now what, I wonder,' Dev said.

  'Now you start cleaning up the mess you and your friends have made of this school.'

  'I don't know if I can,' he said. 'I don't know if I want to.'

  'Oh, you want to.' I sat up a little more. 'Otherwise you won't get to see the Old Sod til you're more like Barry Fitzgerald's age than Big John Wayne's. For Christ's sake, talk about throwing away the key. I've got you by the balls, Irish. "School Security Cop His Students' Connection". "What Really Went On During Recess". Jesus.'

  'All right, all right, I get the message.'

  'You're getting off easy is what you're getting, Irish.' I dug out his smack and tossed it to him. 'Here. Have a good time. I use Demerols myself.'

  'So do I til it gets bad,' he said, 'which is about half an hour after I wake up.'

  'Excuses, excuses,' I said. He almost smiled. 'Look at it like a problem in tactics, then what would you do?'

  'About cleaning up this place? First of all I'd get myself an army.'

  'You got an army,' I said, 'in fact you've got two of them. One's the rifle club, the other's your gung-ho all-American cadet corps, how many troops does that make?'

  'About thirty and sixty which is ninety,' he said.

  'I bet there's more, too,' I said, 'if that's not enough for you. I bet there's America First clubs and karate clubs and Four Fs and girls' wrestling clubs and God knows what all. Hell, you'll probably wind up outnumbering the civilians. So have yourself a hit and a good, long think, Paddy me boy, about ways and means. I'll get on to the vice-principal so he can start working from his end on any possible legal problems and hassles with parents and all the rest, then you can get together with him so you'll be all ready to go for assembly Monday morn.'

  'Two assemblies,' he said, 'Monday morn. The school's too big for one.'

  'Who cares?' I said. 'So long as it gets done. Then in say a year from now if the school's clean not only will you be able to pop off to County Cork and that horrible black beer they drink and peat fires and that homemade white lightning they brew but I'll help you pack. Maybe I'll even come over and visit you sometime and we can have a hearty laugh over the good old days.'

  'Sure,' he said. 'Sure. I can't wait. I don't suppose I get my money back too.'

  'Don't worry,' I said. 'It'll go to a good cause.' This time he did manage a tired smile.

  I left Irish sitting there in the empty gym, in the Celtic twilight of his days, and took myself out into the California sunshine after rinsing my poor, mistreated face at a water fountain I passed. I sat in the grass beside the soccer field for a while watching tomorrow's leaders at their play. They looked a pretty scruffy lot to me but maybe that was merely an old man's jealousy. Maybe there was no maybe about it. However it was still a peach of a day as I told Mr Lowenstein in so many words when I got through to him about an hour later from my office.

  'A peach of a day, Vice,' I said. I had my feet up and Betsy up and was drinking a root beer from Mrs Morales. Maybe Sara was right after all, maybe Mrs Morales had put on a little around the hips.

  'What's so peachy about it?'

  'Hang on to your mortar board, Grumpy,' I said. 'I've got some good news and some bad news.'

  'What's the good news?'

  'We got 'em all,' I said. 'The outside man, the inside man and the runners. Art we got on at least three capital charges, assault, pushing, and funny money. We also got him on contravention of the firearms act but that's only six months or five hundred bucks in California. The assault was on me. We'll never get him for my office or Timmy, the only witness was an Armenian, and that's not a joke, son. We got Dev tied up so tight that if he doesn't take charge of your clean-up crusade he'll be in serious trouble too. We got evidence on most of the kids involved and if you have a quiet word with one of your students, Robert Santee, you'll probably get a few more
names. Finally, I did my little best to start a war between the two major drug syndicates in town; if it doesn't break out soon I'll have to drop them an anonymous letter or two and make sure it does. OK so far?'

  'Holy Toledo!' he said.

  'Language,' I said. 'The bad news is, there goes the rest of your weekend.'

  'That I can live with,' he said. 'We were going to spend the night with my in-laws in Encino, and believe me it takes a good excuse to get out of that. Do you know what my mother-in-law puts in her chili? Leek tops and raisins.'

  I told him if he obliged with his home address I'd get something to him in writing or at least in typing, in a couple of hours. He obliged, thanked me more than profusely, then hung up happily. I switched on and went to work, one carbon. I laid it all out, the names of the kids, what I found in the locker room and where, what I found in Dev's room and where and why. I didn't bother telling him that Irish had almost brained me, nor did I provide any details about the unfortunate end to Art's brave venture into the fast-food business. I decided that I'd better keep a few other tidbits to myself as well, such as my thrilling career as an FBI agent. Someday, though, the whole truth could be told.

  I added an appendage (a), a neatly itemized list of my expenses, which had been considerable if not astronomic what with truck rentals and Benny and funny money and willing messenger boys and Sara's pathetic contributions and odds and ends of wardrobe. Was a cat trap a legitimate expense? Foolish question. Then I calculated the per diems I had coming and listed them. Then I added an appendage (b), some general suggestions about school morale, handling the press if necessary, patrols and monitors and so on, but figured that Dev could do a better job than me on the details, especially now that he was a willing boy too. A show of force Monday morning at the assemblies, I suggested, with the stage crammed with every uniformed eager-beaver type the school could produce. Public expulsions, I suggested. I even, God help my reactionary soul, suggested some kind of a dress code.

  As soon as a willing girl this time from the messenger service sped off into the murk with the report I put away things, locked up and went home to bathe my bruises and don some gladrags as it was, after all, Saturday night. And I had been mildly sensational all day, if you took my word for it.