Sheriff McClune phoned back before lunch to give me the information he had picked up at Fulton. Glen Turbo was dead. He had been killed by his fellow prisoners.
“Even the hard-core cons can’t stomach child molesters,” he said. “Though he was raped a number of times before they knifed him.”
“When was he killed?”
“Two months ago. If he had lived another week, he would have had a parole hearing. This Charles Turbo looks like our man, doesn’t he?”
“He does to me.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked now, Brock. Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“I’ll alert Vogel.”
“Thank you.”
Don’t go off half-cocked…Where had he learned what he now knew? He had learned it all from me. As for the city police, Corey would now be scheduled for trial if Chief Harris and District Attorney Mallory had prevailed. Don’t go off half-cocked…
My record on the Glen Turbo case showed that he had had two children, Glen Junior, aged fourteen, and a daughter named Dianne, aged six. She was the girl he had molested. His wife, Eileen, was the woman he had battered. Dianne would now be nine, young Glen seventeen. They had lived in Santa Monica.
I phoned the Santa Monica station and Aram was there. I told him what I had learned since leaving his town.
“I remember the case,” he told me. “His wife and kids moved out of town after the trial. I don’t blame them, the shame they must have felt. I’m not sure, but I think they moved to Ventura. Should I call the chief there?”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Okay. But remember that we want him here, too, on that Meredith murder. You keep me informed.”
“Of course, Aram. Haven’t I always?”
“No. But this time—”
“I’ll keep you informed,” I promised.
I didn’t phone the Ventura police. I phoned the Toyota agency and asked for Gus Henshaw.
He was, the lady who answered informed me, out on a service call. But he should be back within the hour.
“Please have him phone me as soon as he gets back. I live in San Valdesto. My name is Callahan and he knows my phone number. Tell him to phone me collect.”
“I will, sir. But if it’s some trouble you’re having with your Toyota, I could connect you with our service manager.”
I assured her that I had never had trouble with any of my Toyotas; this was a personal matter. I didn’t tell her I drove only Fords.
Gus phoned twenty minutes later. He said, “I haven’t had time to check the records, Brock, but—”
“Look for the name Glen Turbo,” I interrupted.
“I don’t have to look for it. I know it. The pickup is registered in his mother’s name but he’s the one who drives it.”
“Eileen Turbo?”
“That’s right. They moved up here about three years ago from Santa Monica. The truck is blue. What’s this all about?”
“He’s the nephew of the man Harley and I are trying to find.”
“Oh, boy! Should I alert one of my cop friends?”
“No. I don’t want him heckled by the law. Give me his address.”
“That would be better,” he agreed. “He’s a real nice kid. Just a second.”
He gave me the address a few minutes later and the section of the town it was in.
I told Mrs. Casey I wouldn’t be home for lunch and told Corey where I was going and why.
“Are you taking your gun?” he asked.
“Of course not! What’s the danger?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel nervous without it even when I’m in the shower.”
“Don’t tell me you’re running scared.”
He smiled. “I’m scared. But I’m not running, Brock. Good luck, boss.”
Traffic was sparse on the freeway once I left the stop-and-go lights of San Valdesto behind. It probably would have been wiser to phone before going to Ventura; but a phone call might have spooked the lad. There was a possibility he wouldn’t want to talk with the man who had put his father away.
The address Gus had given me was on the other side of the street from the direction I was traveling. It was a small stucco house in a neighborhood of small stucco houses. A thin youth in cutoff jeans and rubber thongs was washing a blue Toyota truck on the driveway.
He turned to face me as I walked the street. He frowned. “Mr. Callahan. Is that you?”
I nodded.
“I knew it. I think about you a lot,” he said. “It was because of you that Mom and I have finally found some peace. Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to find your uncle.”
“Uncle Charles?”
“That’s the man. He doesn’t share your opinion of me. I live in San Valdesto now.”
He stared. “So that’s why the bastard had me take him there! He’s kooky, Mr. Callahan.”
“He’s worse than that. He’s a suspect in two murders. The way it’s shaping up, I’m next on his list. I was wondering if you had an address on him in San Valdesto.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know he had our address until about a week ago. I took him up there. I was glad to see him go.” He took a deep breath. “But murder—?”
“He must have been very close to your father.”
“Oh, yes! Those two deserved each other.” He turned off the hose. “Mom is at work but I could make you a cup of instant coffee.”
“There’s a Big Boy restaurant only a few minutes from here. Let me treat you.”
“I’d better put on a shirt,” he said.
Over our cheeseburgers he told me that his sister was finally free of her nightmares after two years of psychiatric treatment. His mother was doing well as the manager of a local savings-and-loan institution. And his Uncle Charles had never, to his knowledge, owned a car. He had either borrowed one or bummed a ride.
“He stole Jane Meredith’s,” I pointed out. “If you ever learn his address, phone me.”
He nodded. “If it’s in San Valdesto. If it’s somewhere else, I’ll phone the police in that town. A murderer! Thank God, he didn’t stay in our house overnight. He told me he had a job waiting for him in your town.”
“It wasn’t a job, it was a mission,” I said. “He came there to kill me.”
I stopped in at the hotel on the way back but Harley wasn’t there. He was out in front with Corey when I came home.
“Anything new?” Corey asked.
“Only that we don’t have to go hunting for that Toyota truck any more.” I gave him the gist of my conversation with young Glen Turbo.
Harley said, “Mrs. Casey has invited me for dinner. I’ll be going home from here. My wife phoned this morning and informed me that she will be having an operation the day after tomorrow. I want to be there before she goes to the hospital.”
“Serious?” I asked.
“Serious,” he told me, “but not dangerous. A hysterectomy. We had this forlorn hope that maybe we could have another child, though she’s forty years old. But now—? Shit!”
There was a silence for seconds before he added, “I hope you get that creep, Brock.”
“We’ll get him, one way or another,” I promised.
“I hope it’s your way.”
“One way or another,” I repeated.
CHAPTER 15
ONE ALLY WAS GOING home. We had a new recruit in Ventura. An army of professionals and a band of vigilantes were now trying to find one nitwit crapshooter with no success so far. How long could it last? And if he was finally captured would the police have a strong enough case to take into court? The burden of proof was on the prosecutor, as it should be under our Constitution. They could get him a couple of years for car theft (maybe). And then he would be out again. And this nightmare could start all over again. As a citizen, I should have been hoping the police would make the collar. As a victim, my last best hope was riding with the vigilantes.
I didn’t voic
e these thoughts at dinner. Dialogue flowed around me; I didn’t contribute. I was still wondering if the person who had driven Charles Turbo to Santa Monica was a San Valdestan. There was, of course, a possibility that he had taken the bus. But that would have exposed him too much to public view.
But so had the Valley Intruder been constantly exposed to public view and the hunt had been long and his capture a tactical error; he had wandered into an area of people who had very little reason to trust the courts for gringo justice. They rarely had a jury of their peers.
Mrs. Casey went up to her room after dinner. Harley got ready to leave. I didn’t suggest it would be safer if he had a night’s rest before leaving for home. Nor did I tell him to please drive carefully. He is almost as bullheaded as I am.
Jan and I walked to the car with him. On the way back to the house she said, “He is one handsome gent, isn’t he?”
“I guess. He could use a few more pounds. And he’s kind of slow on his feet. I really clobbered him in a run on the Santa Monica beach.”
“You?”
“Yes, dear.”
“What were you two doing on the Santa Monica beach?”
“I told you. We were running.”
“And maybe looking for some feminine company?”
“Of course not! We had some offers, naturally. But we told the girls we were married.”
“I’ll bet you did!”
I shrugged. “Believe it or not. That’s the way it was.”
Opposing linemen and jealous women, I had learned through the years, stay more tractable if you can keep them guessing.
Chief Chandler Harris phoned me around nine o’clock. He said, “Brock, I think it is time you and I had a little talk.”
“About what?”
“We’ll discuss that when you get here. Could you be in my office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll be there.”
It was Mr. Callahan the last time I had been in his office. I was now Brock again. Cunning Chandler Harris had put on his Dale Carnegie mask. He was about to win friends and influence people. Or try to.
“Who was that on the phone?” Jan asked.
“Just one of those girls from Santa Monica who can’t take no for an answer.”
“Stop talking nonsense! I’m not in the mood for it.”
“It was Chief Harris. He wants me to come to his office tomorrow for a strategy conference.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“Not exactly, perhaps. He told me he wanted to talk with me. As you well know, it won’t be the first time I have worked with the police in this town—and helped them. But it is also possible that he simply wants to lecture me.”
“Why don’t you phone Bernie and find out which it is?”
“I’ll talk to him when he picks you up tomorrow. I’ve had enough talking for today.”
Corey had already gone to bed. Jan read in the living room. I went over my records again, hoping to find some hoodlum I had helped bring to justice in San Valdesto, some local who might have driven Charles Turbo to Santa Monica. I found none who seemed likely.
It was a quiet breakfast, a gloomy breakfast, with an occasional mutter from Mrs. Casey.
I went out with Jan when Vogel came to pick her up. I asked him if he knew why Harris wanted to talk with me.
“I didn’t know he wanted to,” he said. “He didn’t mention it to me. Now, remember he’s my boss and he knows you’re my friend. So try to use some tact for a change.”
“I’ll try, but it’s not easy with him.”
Chief Harris stood up from behind his desk and offered his hand when I entered. I shook it and sat down in the nearest chair.
He sat down and stared past me for a few seconds. “As you probably know, Brock, the Chicano element in our town resents me for some reason I have never understood.”
“I know that,” I agreed. “How many Chicano officers do you have in the department?”
He frowned. “Three. That’s how many qualified.”
“Sheriff McClune has eight.”
“It’s possible their standards are less strict than ours.”
“It’s possible,” I agreed. McClune’s lack of bigotry could be one of the standards, I thought.
“But you,” he went on, “have been their benefactor, supporting both the Brotherhood and the Tomorrow Club.”
The Tomorrow Club was a youth organization. I nodded.
“I have been informed by one of our undercover officers,” he said, “that they are now getting involved in this search for Charles Turbo. Did you know about that?”
I lied with a shake of the head.
“Last night, before I phoned you, a man was severely beaten in the Diaz Hill area. He is now in St. Mary’s Hospital with a broken arm and serious facial contusions. He refused to tell us anything except that it was Chicanos who attacked him. He is a—a black man.”
I asked, “Are you suggesting that he might confide in me?”
“No, no! What I had hoped was that you might tell your Chicano friends to calm down. We suspect that the attack on this black man might somehow be connected to this case. And I hope you won’t be offended, but I suspect their reason for this vendetta is their regard for you.”
“It’s possible,” I agreed. “I’ll talk to one of them. I’m sure you and I share a dislike for vigilante justice.”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“As we both know,” I said, “there has been trouble ever since the blacks began to move into the Chicano neighborhood. But that is not true at the Tomorrow Club. They get along very well there. If this black man knows about my sponsorship there, perhaps he would tell me some things he would not tell a police officer.”
He gave that a few moments of thought before he said, “Information you will, of course, relay to us?”
“Of course.”
The man’s name, he told me, was Davis Washington. He was in room 314 at St. Mary’s Hospital. That wasn’t far from the station; I walked there.
Davis Washington was in a double room, but the other bed was not occupied. He had a cast on his right arm and bandages swathed the upper part of his face. He was short and thin. He stared at me through the peepholes in the bandages.
“My name is Brock Callahan,” I opened.
“The football player?”
I nodded.
“Didn’t you room with Jugger Johnson?”
I nodded again.
“There weren’t many white guys in those days who had black roomies.”
“I know. But things have changed.”
“Not enough of ’em. What do you want from me?”
“Any information you might have on Charles Turbo. He came to this town to kill me.”
“Charley? You’re crazy, man!”
I shook my head. “He’s the crazy one.”
“Why would he want to bump you?”
“Because I was responsible for putting his brother in jail. And he never got out. A couple weeks before he was up for parole he was stabbed to death by some of the inmates.”
“Glen?”
I nodded.
“That could put Charley over the edge,” he admitted. “Glen was the smart one. He got Charley out of a lot of scrapes. He kept him out of the can a couple of times, I remember, when he was picked up for assault. He never even got charged.” He paused. “But murder?”
I said, “It’s a ninety-nine-to-one bet he killed a kid in town here and a woman in Santa Monica.”
“Jesus!” He took a deep breath. “When those Chicanos cornered me last night they didn’t tell me anything about that. I told ’em to get lost and they went bananas.”
“You told them nothing else?”
“I told ’em. After they went to work on me. And then they warned me if I beefed to the law, I’d get even worse than I had.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told ’em I picked up Charley about a week ago at the Travis Hotel. He offered
me fifty bucks to drive him to Santa Monica. I drove him there. He was living with some woman down there. I never met her. I dropped him off in front of the house and headed for home.” He stared past me. “If Charley has really gone heavy, be careful, footballer! Glen had the smarts, but Charley is the tricky one. He’ll hit you when you least expect it.”
“That woman’s name was Jane Meredith,” I told him. “She is the woman he murdered. The Santa Monica police agree with me on that.”
“Christ! I could be tied into the mess if the Chicanos tell the local law.”
“They won’t and neither will I. Do you know of any other address Turbo had in this town?”
“I don’t know the address. But when I picked him up once before he was at a rooming house near that Chicano bar on Padre Street. It’s an old two-story house with shutters on the windows. He’s probably long gone from there.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You’d better take a gun along,” he said. “He’s a hell of a lot bigger than you are.”
I smiled, shook my head, and left.
The house he had described as a rooming house no longer was. It was apparently deserted. A sign on the parched gray grass of the small front yard informed any passersby that it was for sale or rent.
I took my lug wrench out of the rear deck and walked up the steps to the sagging porch. The door was locked. I went around to the back door. This, too, was locked. But it was a very flimsy door. I kicked it open.
I heard the sound of somebody moving on the floor above, the scrape of a foot. I went through the kitchen and down a narrow hall to the foot of the stairs. It was darker up above; the window in the wall at the top of the stairs was tightly shuttered.
Silence. If it was Turbo, he had two options. He could come down these stairs or jump out of a second-story window.
More silence. And then a voice asked, “Al, is that you?”
“Come down and find out,” I said.
“Callahan?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
The scrape of a foot again and suddenly he showed. Even in the dim light I could see his bald head and the scar.
“Callahan!” he said. “What’s that you’re carrying, peeper?”
Cat and Mouse Page 11
