“I put on a lot of front,” I said. “What do you have for me?”
She took a sealed envelope out of a big, patent leather purse. “This. George didn’t pass out right away. He gave me this.”
I held out my hand for it, and she shook her head. “First, you got to promise you won’t give it to the police unless George dies. That’s what he told me you had to promise.”
“I’m not sure I can promise that.”
“Then you can’t have it.”
“I could take it away from you. The police would back me up if I took it away from you.”
“You wouldn’t,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t. I promise.”
She handed me the envelope. It was perfectly plain, unmarked by any writing. It was thick. She turned to go.
I asked, “Do you think, if George takes a turn for the worse, we should send a priest to the hospital?”
She looked at me worriedly. “Maybe, huh? George wasn’t a bad guy, you know. I mean, I seen plenty worse in my time. He was a big spender, plenty big.” She looked past me. “He gave me a hundred, just to deliver that letter to you.”
“For part of it,” I said, “you could have a Mass said for George, in case he doesn’t make it. Somebody should mourn him.”
“I’m not Catholic,” she said. “I don’t know about that stuff. I’m Unity.”
“Okay,” I said. “Good night. Thanks for bringing the envelope.”
“Remember, you promised now.”
I nodded and she went out. I sat behind my desk, staring into the shadows of the room.
There were some people I should phone, including Sergeant Pascal, but I had put in a full day. There was always tomorrow. I went home to soak in a hot tub.
I caught the last two rounds of the Friday night fight on TV, and then read for a while until it was time for the Channel Thirteen First-Run Movie. There were some fender-thumpers on that show, but they didn’t measure up to the late Loony Leo. I changed to Channel Four and watched Steve Allen, a very witty man.
I was in bed by eleven-thirty.
Saturday dawned bright and fairly cold. I ate cereal with half and half, drank two glasses of vegetable juice, and admired my picture in the Times.
I certainly couldn’t complain about the press coverage I was getting this week. There was even a picture of my mutilated flivver and a few paragraphs devoted to my stellar career at Stanford and with the Rams.
Tomsic and Deutscher, according to the paper, were still both breathing, but the condition of both of them was “seriously critical.” Neither was available for either police or press interrogation.
I phoned Pascal and asked him if they’d gone over Leo’s checks. They had, and found one for two hundred dollars made out to Hans Deutscher.
“We’re waiting until Deutscher is well enough to be questioned about it,” he said.
“He’ll never be well enough to give the police any information voluntarily,” I answered.
“You’re being unfair,” he said. “He gave us Tomsic, didn’t he? And without Tomsic, where would any of us be today?”
“Without that lead, I’d be whole and hearty,” I said. “How about Samuels? Has he had a change of heart?”
“We don’t need Samuels any more,” he said scornfully. “We’ve got Tomsic now, right where we want him, in the hospital. Wait just a second, Brock.”
I waited for perhaps thirty seconds, and then Pascal’s voice came back. It was lower, quieter. “I guess we haven’t got Tomsic. I just got the word — he died ten minutes ago.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Well, I’ve got to call Ryerson.”
Ryerson wasn’t down yet; I caught him at the home number they gave me. I said, “Somebody just delivered an envelope to me. I think it’s the stuff you need to nail Wilding. I don’t want to buck that morning traffic. Why don’t you drop in my office on your way to work and pick it up?”
“All right,” he said. “As a personal favor to you. Did you get a car?”
“I borrowed one. I’ll be at the office in twenty minutes.”
“So will I,” he said. “I could make Captain on this if there’s really enough to nail Wilding. You know, I’ll bet it was Tomsic who killed Dunbar.”
“He couldn’t have. He was at the garage when Dunbar died.”
“So, that’s Homicide’s headache anyway. Or yours. I got enough problems of my own.”
“Sure you have. I’ll be at the office.”
And then, as I hung up, the obvious hit me. The coincidence of time and Ryerson’s remark that Leo’s death was Homicide’s business, and not a job for the Auto Theft Division, gave me a lead. That was what I should have realized all along.
FOURTEEN
AT MY OFFICE, as I handed him the envelope, Ryerson asked, “Who gave you this?”
“An innocent. It’s not a name I’m going to give you to help you make Captain.”
“Arrogant again, eh?”
“Confident. It’s been nice working with you, Lieutenant. Now I’ve got to get Sergeant Pascal his promotion. I’ve got work for him.”
“What’s wrong with working with the downtown boys?”
“I’m chauvinistic, like you Valley residents. I love this western end of town.”
He slapped the envelope in his hand. “Thanks for this. And good luck.” He went out smiling.
I phoned a man I knew at the Motor Vehicle Department and got the information I wanted on a couple cars. And then I climbed into my borrowed Pontiac and drove out the Coast Highway to Malibu.
The way I figured it, the residents out here would be more interested in the goings and comings of their neighbors than urban residents. This hadn’t been a permanent home for Leo Dunbar, but he had probably used it frequently enough to qualify as a resident.
And certainly the day Leo died would still be fresh in the memory of his neighbors.
The first man I visited set the pattern for the rest of them. He looked out suspiciously at the six-year-old Pontiac and then up contemptuously at the Dunbar home perched on the bluff overlooking the Bay.
“Don’t know much about ‘em,” he said. “They didn’t really mix with the rest of us around here. Had enough parties up there, though; kept us up late plenty of times.”
“It wasn’t only the Dunbars I was thinking about,” I explained. “I simply wondered if you saw any strange cars go up the hill that day.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
“Oh, as strange as a dark green Porsche?”
He shook his head. “I think I’ve seen it, but not Monday. I remember that day very well.”
They all remembered Monday, but not the Porsche. Nor the Packard, either. That didn’t mean a Porsche or a Packard hadn’t gone up the hill that day, or come down. Because none of them remembered the Lincoln convertible going up either. One person remembered a Plymouth.
An hour later, I came down the hill to the highway knowing no more than I had before I’d started my questions. In my own mind, I was sure one of the two cars I’d mentioned had been here that day. But my own beliefs weren’t enough to get a conviction in court.
Maybe, if Deutscher thought he was going to die … He was a stubborn man, but if he thought he was going to die? No. That thick-necked, bull-headed, ornery hunk of a man would carry his stubbornness right to the grave. He could be bought, maybe, but not if he was going to die, or going someplace else where he couldn’t spend the money.
The Plymouth that had been seen could be Deutscher’s car, though there are a hell of a lot of Plymouths out here. Could I threaten him with that, that he’d been seen out here? I could threaten him, but I was sure I couldn’t scare him.
None of them had remembered the Porsche that day, but three of them had seen it before. Porsches aren’t extremely uncommon out here, but dark green Porsches are uncommon anywhere.
It had simply been an unfortunate day for neighborly observation. The fact that they had also
overlooked the Lincoln proved that to me. I had a theory without substantiation, a killer who couldn’t be convicted.
If I were trickier, now … Or if I had Deutscher’s reputation … Being as ethical as the Department men was a handicap when I lacked their authority.
Where does ethics end? Is tricking a killer unethical?
At the West Side Station, Caroline told me Sergeant Pascal was out and couldn’t be reached for at least an hour. I asked him if Lieutenant Trask was in.
He was, and he had a big frown for me in his office. “How come you didn’t give us this evidence on Wilding? Why give it to Ryerson? We can use the prestige at Headquarters, you know.”
I said wearily, “You told me not to mention Wilding to you. You didn’t want any part of him. You said you were too old to be changing jobs. Don’t you remember any of that, Dave?”
He colored slightly.
I said, “I’m not concerned with Wilding. I’m concerned with the killer of Leo Dunbar.”
“I favor Tomsic for that one. Tomsic was at the garage when we picked him up, but Leo was dead for an hour before we picked Tomsic up. And Tomsic had just come in from a service call that day before we picked him up. A service call in Topanga.”
“Do you favor Tomsic because he’s dead, Dave?”
His face was rigid. “Exactly what did you mean by that?”
“If he’s dead, and you can rationalize that he killed Dunbar, the case is closed, isn’t it?”
“Take that back.”
“All right. Tell me why you favor Tomsic.”
“First of all, he could have found out Dunbar was having him investigated, right? That would scare him, because it would put him in a bad position with the ring. So when Dunbar is killed, where does Deutscher turn? To the man who killed him, doesn’t he, the wealthy man who killed him? Isn’t that a logical Deutscher switch?”
“It’s almost inevitable.”
“So then Deutscher gets the dope on Tomsic and …”
“And gives it to me?” I smiled at him. “There’s where your theory goes to hell. Deutscher never worked for Tomsic. He worked for Leo, but never for Tomsic. What was the caliber of the gun that killed Leo?”
“A .32.”
“Have you checked the registrations to see if any of the suspects have .32’s legally?”
He nodded. “Two of them had registered .32 caliber revolvers. And neither of them can remember what happened to the gun they registered.”
“Who are the two people?”
“Dorothy Hartland Dunbar and George Tomsic.”
“Why would Mrs. Dunbar have a .32?”
“Because she used to stay up there at the Malibu place alone when she and her husband were separated for those two months before her divorce. She said she felt safer with a gun up there.”
“And she doesn’t know what happened to it?”
“Not for sure. She feels rather strongly that Leo might have found it at the house after the divorce, when she had moved to Beverly Hills. He came out there to live for a while, and when she dropped in to pick up some things she had left behind, she claims the gun was no longer there.”
“And you’ve checked her for the time Leo was shot?”
“Right. And she checks out real clean. Which leaves us with Tomsic, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Leo did find the gun and keep it.”
“And commit suicide with it?”
“No. I suppose you boys wouldn’t stoop to bugging a house, even the house of a killer?”
He smiled. “Are you bringing me another name?”
“If I did, you’d tell me to take it somewhere else again, like you did with Wilding. You know, Ryerson tipped me. He said Dunbar was Homicide’s headache, not his. Because Leo was killed the same time Tomsic was uncovered, we overlooked the obvious. Leo was an almost honest man; he had nothing to do with the ring, with Wilding, or with Tomsic’s night work.”
“He went to parties at Tomsic’s place. He must have met some of the gang there.”
“If he did, he probably didn’t recognize them as hoodlums. Leo was kind of a square, you know.”
“All right, all right. To get back to your question, we can’t bug a house. The papers would be on us and the D.A.’s office and the Chief. But maybe we can listen somewhere without using microphones. Let’s wait for Pascal and see what he thinks.”
“That’s what you told me about Wilding. And then bawled me out because I gave him to Ryerson.”
“I forgot you were so sensitive,” he said acidly. “I look at your two hundred and fifty pounds and it’s easy to forget how sensitive you are.”
“Two hundred and twenty,” I corrected him. “I think I’ll run out for a hamburger while we wait for Pascal.”
I had him worried. I had suggested something the police don’t often do, coöperate in the trickery of a private man. But because I had offered him Wilding and he had laughed it off, he was leery about rejecting me again.
The hamburger stand was full of plain people and it was a pleasure to look at something besides policemen, hoodlums and millionaires for a change. In my trade, I don’t see many plain people. The middle classes don’t have the money or the need for a private investigator.
Maybe I should have gone into the insurance dodge.
An accident of timing had sent all of us charging into the shadow world of the lawless, overlooking the obvious and neglecting the real world of love and lust and lunacy.
I was dawdling over my coffee when Pascal came in. He sat down next to me and ordered two cheeseburgers.
“Trask talk to you?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I just phoned the house. Nobody home. Won’t be home until seven.”
“You’re anticipating me, eh? But you haven’t got any proof.”
“No. I’ve just been out to Malibu, checking. You were, too, weren’t you? What put you on it, all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. And yet, do you remember how you wondered who had tipped off Leo? You thought I had.”
“At first. And then I thought Samuels had. I thought maybe Samuels had been in with Tomsic and Leo and that’s why he wouldn’t identify Tomsic.”
“That was reaching, Sergeant. That was a result of your occupational cynicism.”
“I suppose. The Lieutenant is still leery. He’s hungry for the credit, but leery of the possibility of failure. I think he wants me to go it alone, again.”
“So he sends you here, where even our conversation won’t be sanctioned by the authority of the station house.”
Pascal’s cheeseburgers came and he bit into one hungrily. He looked tired. “Six days, and what did we accomplish?”
“We got Wilding. We probably broke up the ring. The papers will love us. I am momentarily famous and will drop your name to every reporter who hounds me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow you could be a bum. And the papers like those stories even better. You know, I was a pretty handy guy mechanically, when I was a kid? I could have been an engineer.”
“I could have been a high school coach,” I said. “I had three offers.”
His long, bloodhound’s face was sad. “Timing, chance, needing the money. Something always throws a guy, doesn’t it? We’re not stubborn enough. We should decide what we want to be and go after it.”
“Sergeant,” I said, “you and I have had some harsh words between us. But I could never picture you as anything but a cop — and a good one. And this world sure as hell needs good cops.”
“That’s what Trask tells me. And plays politics himself.”
“He has to, at his level. What about tonight? Will you ride with me, a tricky private eye, and strain your aching ethics enough perhaps to trick a killer?”
“It’s crooked,” he said. “It’s believing the ends justify the means, and they don’t. Damn it, they don’t!”
“It’s trickery,” I said, “but it’s not crooked. And Leo Dunbar is dead and his murderer still free. That’s important, to y
ou and to me and all the people on our side.”
He finished his first cheeseburger and attacked his second. He shook his head doubtfully. “Callahan, to be frank with you, you’re gutty and you’re honest. But you’re not really smooth, are you? It would take a smoothie to bring this off.”
“I’m smoother than you give me credit for being. I belonged to one of the best fraternities at Stanford. I can be smooth.”
He laughed. “You kill me. Honest to Christ, you kill me. Why don’t you join the Department? At least we’d have some laughs.”
“Ride with me tonight, Sergeant, and you might get more than that. You might even get a promotion. You’re not tied to the West Side Station, remember?”
“Okay, okay. And what do you get out of it?”
“My day rate, expenses, a thousand-dollar bonus and invaluable publicity. So you can see why I’m not joining the Department.”
“I sure can,” he said, “and it makes me cynical again. I was beginning to believe in you.”
I patted his shoulder. “We’re all bastards, Sergeant, one way or another.” And realized that had almost been Tomsic’s philosophy.
The mail at my office was all ads. My phone-answering service informed me Jan Bonnet had called. I phoned her at the shop.
She said calmly, “I think we ought to have a talk. I have my faults and you have yours, but maybe we can talk sensibly together and iron out our differences.”
“You miss me, huh?”
A silence, undoubtedly a hurt silence.
I said quickly, “Boy, I sure miss you, Jan. You know I do, don’t you?”
“I hope you do. But sane and reasonable dialogue is beyond you, isn’t it?”
“When I know where it’s leading, I try to avoid it. The sane course is always your course, Jan. Selling insurance or high school coaching or like that.”
“Not high school coaching.”
“All right, all right. This then — I am what I am and I’m fairly well satisfied with it. This is what I was when I met you, and you’ve no right to expect a change.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I phoned Scooter Calvin. That was kind of sneaky of me, wasn’t it? I apologize for thinking what I did.”
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