by Jack Lynch
“To try and get those other people off the street.”
“I’ll have one of these others get my car and cover whatever you do.”
Michaels didn’t wait to argue about it. He went into the front of the café and eased back out onto the street.
The elderly man in the kitchen said he’d get my car for me. I gave him the keys and told him where to find it. He slipped out the back and stepped briskly up the alley. I went back to the front doorway.
Michaels had gotten farther down the street and crossed over to the other side. He must have shouted something to the truckers when he circled around behind them. They were letting him back past them on the far side. He ducked from doorway to doorway. He was still short of the trapped bystanders when one of the gunmen behind the cars up at the intersection took an interest in him. It was a fellow behind a new Buick with the nose pointed toward my side of the street. Everytime Michaels tried to make those last few steps the guy would raise up and shoot over the hood. The young officer made three attempts, then looked across to where I was. He was so angry he spit out his gum. I got out my .45, braced myself and waved Michaels on. I fired the first time as Michaels started forward. The gunman at the corner rose up just in time for my slug to explode new Buick metal and paint in his face. He even dropped his gun before diving back down behind the car. I fired all seven shots. Michaels made it easily to the trapped people and smashed the glass in the door to the savings and loan office, setting off an outside burglar alarm near the roof of the two-story building. He herded the people inside and followed them. The din of the ringing bell acted as a nervous trigger to the warring factions on the street. Everyone began shooting. I moved back into the café.
The older man came down the alley in my car. He helped me load Morton into the back and gave me directions to the hospital. I urged him and the ladies to remain inside the café kitchen until the police came for them, not knowing when the battle might move into the back alley. I started out for the hospital. A couple of blocks from the main battle site I spotted more opposing teams of guys battling at another intersection just in time to avoid driving into the middle of it. I backed around and got turned away from it just as the ambulance Merle Coffey had summoned came rolling unsuspectingly into the intersection from the opposite direction. All four of its tires were promptly shot up and the driver ducked down out of sight. The wagon banged over the curb onto the sidewalk and came to a stop. I turned at the next corner and started a more roundabout trip to the hospital.
FOURTEEN
Sand Valley Hospital seemed like another world. Calm and clean, it was a two-story building a couple of miles outside of town with shade trees and green lawn to keep the desert at bay. A sweeping drive led up to the emergency entrance. I parked and went in to ask for some help from the nurse on duty at a desk. In about a minute a pair of attendants in white smocks came out to the car with a gurney to collect banker Morton.
I followed them back inside. They wheeled Morton into an emergency receiving area while I gave the nurse some basic information. She was an older woman with graying hair and an efficient manner. The nameplate on her desk said that she was Mrs. Foster, R.N. A tall man of about thirty came out and introduced himself as Doctor Stambaugh, the resident physician in charge. I told him what had happened. He listened to my story with folded arms and a trenched brow.
“That does sound serious,” Stambaugh said. “I was in conference when the message came in from Chief Coffey. We sent an ambulance into town.”
“Do you have another?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better send it, and tell the driver to stay alert. The first one just got the hell shot out of it. How’s Morton?”
“He’s in pretty poor shape right now. He’s lost a lot of blood, and there’s extensive bone damage. Luckily we don’t have too many gunshot cases here.”
“You’re apt to have several before this day is out. When was your last one?”
His trenches deepened. “A year ago last January. Actually it wasn’t really a medical case, as you think of those things. It was a suicide. I’ve specialized in pathology. I did the autopsy.”
“Was it a man named John Caine?”
He studied me closely. “That’s right.”
“And there was no question that the wound was self-inflicted?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Something else. There’s a man in town named Carl Slide. He owns the Sky Lodge. Know him?”
“I know him by sight. Not to say hello to.”
“I hear he had a brother named Burt who died some while back. I was wondering what he died of.”
“That must have been before my time.”
The attendants came out of the emergency area with Morton on a different conveyance, this one with overhead rails from which they’d hung bottles of fluids being tubed into his good arm. Stambaugh joined them at the elevator. I turned back and saw that the nurse was staring at me. She lowered her eyes and became busy in some sort of log. I crossed back over to her.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Foster, but did you overhear me and the doctor talking?”
“I don’t have cotton in my ears, young man.”
I took out one of my business cards and gave it to her. “I have a client in San Francisco. The client, a man who worked for him, and a little girl the client is looking after, have all received death threats. The man who worked for my client is already dead. Murdered. I’m trying to save the lives of the other two.”
She pushed her glasses up on her forehead. “That’s quite a story. What are you doing down here?”
“There’s a connection between here and there. I just haven’t found out yet what it might be. Were you here two or three years ago?”
“Yes and no. I was living a few miles outside of town, but I wasn’t working here at the hospital just then.”
“Can you think of somebody who was? Maybe a native of hereabouts?”
She thought a moment, tapping the card against her teeth, then her face brightened and she consulted a clipboard.
“Do you like girls, Mr. Bragg?”
“You bet your boots, but that isn’t really what I’m here for just now.”
“I know. But interesting men help relieve the tedium in a little town like this. I’m just doing a friend a favor. She isn’t due in until late this afternoon. I’ll see if she’s home.”
Mrs. Foster dialed a number and a moment later was talking to somebody she called Cathy. She described me as an exciting character from San Francisco who needed some information that Cathy might be able to give me. And she, Mrs. Foster, felt that Cathy should try to help me because I’d probably saved banker Morton’s life.
“Besides,” she continued, staring me straight in the eye, “he looks to be a cut or two above the run-of-the-mill male we’re apt to find in Sand Valley or the surrounding boonies.
“What dear? Just a minute, I’ll ask.” She held the receiver aside. “Are you married, Mr. Bragg?”
“No.”
“He says no,” she told the telephone. “I know they all say that, but it wouldn’t hurt to speak to him, dear. Right.”
She hung up.
“I’m glad you don’t live in my own town, Mrs. Foster.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m afraid you’d upend my personal life. What is it with this girl, ugly as a bag of mud and looking for a husband?”
“Not at all. It’s just a little joke she and I have. What with her being single and all. Besides, she can probably give you the information you want. Now just go on out this road for about a half mile until you come to Hollings Street. Turn up the hill there and in about a mile you’ll reach a yellow and white mailbox alongside the road with the name Carson on it. That’s her.”
“I’m much obliged.”
“Just act like a gentleman. And see that no harm comes to that little girl in San Francisco.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Ten minutes later I was at the
mailbox and turned up a gravel driveway. It terminated at a carport formed by an overhead deck fronting the house. I parked beside a red Ford and climbed concrete stairs leading up and around the house to a lawn in back. Through an open window I heard somebody playing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” on a piano. I hadn’t heard that tune since the last time there was formal fighting in Europe. I rang a doorbell. Either nurse Cathy Carson was older than Mrs. Foster had led me to believe or she had the radio on a station that played old time melodies.
The girl who opened the door wasn’t all that old. She was a curious mixture. Somewhat on the small side, with a slender build. She had a face built for mischief and hair trimmed short, black as new tar. But it was the cast of her eyes that would keep you guessing about things. They were dark and knowledgeable, as if they’d lived other lives. She wore a pair of shorts cut out of old blue jeans. Her legs were brown as berries. She had on a man’s blue shirt that she wore untucked. There were enough things about her to make a man stumble.
“You’re staring,” she told me. “Mr. Bragg, is it?”
“That’s right. Mr. Bragg, and I am staring. I guess I owe Mrs. Foster an apology.”
She glanced once over her shoulder then came outside and quietly pulled the door shut behind her as a male voice began singing.
“The stars at night, are big and bright…”
I couldn’t hear whether he clapped his hands. The girl led me across to some canvas lawn chairs. “We can talk over here. Unfortunately, I have company. Why do you owe Mrs. Foster an apology?”
“I half expected you to be the town’s old maid, with stringy hair and a figure like a drainpipe. Instead, you turn out to be the sort of girl a guy would like to tuck into his duffle bag and take home with him. What are you doing in a burg like this?”
“Working. The same as I would anywhere else. When I feel like playing I can always go to a bigger town or city. Which I do fairly regularly. But I like to come back here. It’s more restful.”
“It sure seems to agree with you. How about the next time you feel like playing you come up to San Francisco?”
She had a nice smile and she showed it to me. “You’re the third or fourth man I’ve met from San Francisco, Mr. Bragg, and you’ve all been terrible flirts. What makes you that way? All that drinking you do up there?”
“I’m not flirting, I’m serious. I think you’d stand the town on its ear, and I’d like to watch.”
“Mrs. Foster said you were an exciting character. What’s exciting about you?”
“She probably meant the work I do,” I told her, getting out another one of my cards and handing it to her. “She probably figures it’s a glamorous profession.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s mostly a lot of hard work.”
“That never hurt anybody. Besides, you need that to keep you out of trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Girls, what else? You’ve got crinkly good looks, Mr. Bragg. I know girls who would roll over like puppy dogs so you could scratch their tum-tums if you came their way.”
“Now who’s flirting?”
“I am. Want to make something of it?”
I glanced toward the house where the guy was singing his heart out and playing the piano. “I’d love to if the circumstances were right.”
She tucked her brown legs beneath her with a grin. “Why Mr. Bragg, I don’t believe I’ve ever had anybody get jealous so quickly in my life. It’s a nice compliment. Going to be in town for long?”
“Probably not. And I’ll probably never come by this way again, so you’ll just have to come up to San Francisco some time so we can flirt in earnest.”
“I might, some day. I’d like to stay at the Pimsler Hotel. I saw a picture of its lobby in Sunset Magazine. It looks charming.”
“It’s not always that charming. I’ve got a comfortable apartment across the Golden Gate Bridge, in Sausalito. You could stay there and save all that hotel money.”
“Then you really are single.”
“I really am.”
“That means a bachelor’s apartment with all the dust and crud that accumulates in those places.”
“I have a cleaning lady who comes once a month to stack and buff things.”
“I think I’d rather stay at the Pimsler.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Now you’d better tell me what you’re doing here. I should be getting back to my company.”
There was a rattle of gunfire from down in town.
“Whatever is that?” she asked.
“Gunshots. You probably would have heard it sooner if it weren’t for all that piano music and hollering inside.”
“Who’s doing the shooting?”
“Couple of gangs of outsiders. One bunch is working for Carl Slide. Know him?”
“I know of him.”
“He wants to close down Ma Leary’s Truck Stop. Some of the hoods working out at that end of town don’t like the idea. Do you know the sort of operations Slide and Ma Leary run?”
“Not too much. Crap games and painted ladies, isn’t it?”
“There’s more to it than that. There’s a big stolen goods exchange and a dope importing ring operating out of the Truck Stop, and God knows what all going on at Slide’s place. You have a town cop who doesn’t believe in looking too closely at either operation, and a general town population that doesn’t seem to give a damn. I can’t figure it out, myself.”
“I wouldn’t know about those things. I’m not a patron of either the Truck Stop or the Sky Lodge. I deal in neither dope nor stolen goods nor anything else. Like most of the people who live here I just happen to like the way the sun sets behind the mountains in the distance and the way the desert looks in the middle of winter and a lot of other hometown things. But I don’t suppose that’s what you came to ask.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m interested in Carl Slide’s younger brother, Burt. I understand he died a couple of years ago. Would you know what he died of?”
“Yes, he was shot. It was downtown, outside of St. Agatha’s Catholic Church.” She concentrated for a moment. “I think it was some sort of argument over a girl.”
Across the front lawn the door to her house opened and a familiar looking, round little fellow wearing glasses and losing his hair stepped outside. “Telephone, Cathy.”
The girl excused herself and went inside. The round guy squinted in my direction for a moment and went in after her. A scrub jay in the oak tree near where we sat shook out its feathers and chatted for a moment. He didn’t have anything to tell me I didn’t already know. Harvey Pastor had grown balder since they took the picture that appeared on the stand card atop the piano at Rancho Sanchez. I guess it needn’t have surprised me too much that he was there. Cathy said she didn’t patronize the Truck Stop or Sky Lodge, so she probably relaxed over a drink from time to time out at the Rancho. Harvey was a chaser, and the girl didn’t appear to be dumbstruck in the presence of men, so it probably figured they would become acquainted. It was a perfectly logical coincidence. I just wish it hadn’t happened.
She came back outside but didn’t sit down again. “I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Peter Bragg from San Francisco, but this will have to wait. The hospital phoned again. A lot of hurt people are being brought in. They want me there in a hurry.”
“My luck,” I said rising. “Do you know who shot Burt?”
“Some man. I can’t think of his name.”
“You said it was over a girl. Was her name Theresa Moore?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “That’s right, it was.”
“Does she have any family living around here?”
“No, she wasn’t a local girl. I mean she wasn’t raised here. But she lived here for a number of years, then went away.”
“Why did she go away?”
“I’m not absolutely sure. There was talk of a husband in Vietnam.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Actuall
y, I’m not. This is still a fairly straitlaced town Mr. Bragg, despite the boldness some of us might display for crinkly looking strangers passing through. Anyway, Theresa Moore came back to town with a baby girl. And this talk of a husband in the Army nobody ever saw—it’s the sort of story a girl might tell when she went away to have a baby. There was speculation it might have been Burt’s child.”
I sat down again. “Burt Slide was thought to be the father of Theresa Moore’s little girl?”
“By some, at least. There was gossip about it at the time Burt was killed.”
“What happened to the man who shot him?”
“I don’t really know. He wasn’t arrested. Witnesses said Burt shot first.”
“Were you working at the hospital back then?”
“Yes. I was on duty when they brought him in.”
“Did you ever get a chance to talk with him? Or overhear conversation he might have had with anybody else?”
“He didn’t have any. He was unconscious when they brought him in. He died an hour later.”
“Did an ambulance bring him in? Or his brother, maybe?”
“No, it was a police officer. A former policeman, actually.” She raised a hand to the side of her head and thought about it. “John Caine was his name. I was more shocked at his appearance than I was at Burt Slide’s.”
“Why was that?”
“He was—he’d been drinking. It wasn’t even ten-thirty on a Sunday morning, and he was—well, drunk. I hadn’t seen him in almost a year, and his whole appearance was different. I didn’t even recognize him at first. His face was puffy and half dead looking. I don’t know if you’ve ever known any really heavy drinkers.”
“I have. How come Caine is the one who brought Burt Slide to the hospital?”
“He was at the church when the shooting occurred. He just thought faster than anybody else, I guess, despite his condition. Packed Burt into his car and drove him out.” She shook her head briefly, as if to clear it of the memory. “But I’ve really got to get going now. I’ll be either here or at the hospital if you want to talk later.”
“I’d like that. Not just to talk about old bodies and things, either. Is the piano player going to be hanging around much longer?”
