by Jack Lynch
“What are you doing out here?”
“What do you think, Peter? New York is absolutely baying for a follow on yesterday’s shooting story. Surely there must be something more that’s happened you can tell me about.”
“There’s an ongoing investigation.”
“Now Peter, that’s what the sheriff said.”
The elevator arrived and we got on.
“By the way,” said Bryan, “wasn’t that Erica Shank I saw come out a few moments ago? Does she play some role in all this?”
I thought about it some and decided I could let him have a small bit of it. It wouldn’t be much, really, but it would give him the story his New York bureau was hounding him for. I didn’t owe any favors to any other newsman in town at the moment and Bryan at least had the patience to camp outside my office. I’d done enough of that sort of thing myself when I did his sort of work. News gathering wasn’t all finger snapping and high excitement. An awful lot of it was just plain dreary.
“Of course that was Erica. You have too good an eye for the women to pretend you don’t remember what she looks like, Bryan. What I can give you is a false lead. There’s nothing much to it, really, but it’ll impress your people back in New York. Did you hear what happened to Harry Shank last night?”
“No, I haven’t been by the office yet this morning. What did happen?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute.” We got off the elevator and saw that it was pouring outside again. Along with that a stiff breeze had come up and was blowing the rain in horizontal sheets. We buttoned up, stepped outside and ran down to a stairway that led to the Powell Street BART and Metro station that stretched beneath Market Street for a block and a half.
Out of the rain again, Bryan took out his note pad. “You were saying?”
“Polaski and Harry Shank had some deal cooking,” I told him. “I still don’t know what that was all about. Polaski was into some minor rackets back in New York. Or maybe they were major, even. He had access to a lot of mob money and in recent weeks had started to steal some of it. He left town just as they were catching up with him. He asked Harry Shank to hire some protection to meet him at the airport. Harry asked me to do it because he knew me. But I don’t know if I was supposed to be guarding this Polaski from the mob or protecting the money he’d stolen, or keeping an eye on something else. The gunmen made a grab for his luggage at the airport, but by then I was shooting into the ceiling and they ran off without it. As it turned out he wasn’t carrying anything in his luggage, like I told you yesterday. No big wad of money, no diary he could use to blackmail somebody, no silver certificates. You getting all this?”
“Of course, I am. Do go on.”
“That’s about all the background I know. But here’s the kicker. Harry Shank drove off the coast highway in the fog and rain last night and got himself killed.”
Bryan was pacing beside me, head down, jotting on his pad, but right then he came to a complete stop. “Bloody awful,” he said, blinking at me. “That’s the truth?”
“It is. Make what you want of it, but so far as I know there isn’t any connection to what happened earlier at the airport. That’s the part you don’t have to tell New York. I talked to a CHP officer who was at the scene of the wreck. He said it looked like an accident. They aren’t that uncommon on that stretch of road.”
“My God, Erica must be absolutely shattered.”
“Not all that much. Come on, I have a plane to catch.”
He shook his head and began writing again.
“Then,” I continued, “did you hear about a little shooting down in Redwood City this morning?”
“No.”
“They had some, in the property room of the sheriff’s office, but they won’t want to tell you anything about it. Apparently the same two men who shot up the airport yesterday showed up impersonating San Francisco police and asked to see the luggage Polaski was carrying when he flew in. The deputy there showed it to them but refused to let them take it with them. So they grabbed it and began shooting. The deputy was nicked but dropped behind the counter before he was killed. The two made their way out of the building, and from the sound of it they had the same car and driver from yesterday waiting for them outside. They got away.”
“New York will absolutely swoon,” gloated Bryan as we left the BART station and went through the Emporium basement store. “What time was this latest shooting?”
“I heard about it a little before eleven. It couldn’t have been long before that. Now do me a favor and try to leave my name out of it, will you? Don’t mention your source. Try to get Craig or Bromley in Redwood City to confirm it. Or there’s a homicide lieutenant here at the Hall of Justice named Foley who’s keeping abreast of things. You can try him.”
He put away his pad and buttoned up again as we left the rear of the department store and started down the rainswept alley to Fifth Street.
“My eternal gratitude, Peter, this is super.”
“Yeah, well like I said, try to keep me out of it. I was just the guy in the middle at the shooting yesterday. Leave it at that.”
“But where are you really?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where are you flying off to?”
“Seattle, for starters.” As we came out of the alley onto Fifth I looked around to see if I recognized anybody on the street, but everyone was rushing head down or under umbrellas. We crossed Mission and I ducked into the garage. Bryan followed.
“If Harry hired you yesterday and Erica came in to see you this morning, then you still must be working on something.”
“I’m working on something, but it doesn’t have to be that.”
“Of course not, dear chap. But it is, isn’t it?”
“Try reaching Erica and ask her. Maybe you’ll learn something more I could use.”
“Call me when you get back from Seattle, would you, Peter? Please?”
“Why do that?”
“Because I just know there must be more to this, and maybe you can tell me about it then. Promise?”
“All right. If I think of it.”
I left him there and went on up and got my car and drove over to Oakland.
SIX
The trip from Seattle to Port Angeles poked up a lot of old memories. Port Angeles is a pretty little town on the Straits of Juan de Fuca, just north of the Olympic Mountains. On a clear day, from the bluffs behind the town, you can see seventeen miles across the straits to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. A sand spit four and one half miles long called Ediz Hook curves out into the straits from just west of the main downtown area, forming a long, natural harbor. There’s a Coast Guard station and air strip on it and at one time Naval Air Reserve squadrons from the air station in Seattle back then would spend rotating tours there flying out to ocean ranges off the coast for gunnery practice. I enlisted in one of those reserve squadrons back in high school, when everybody was still whistling songs from World War II. I met a local girl in Port Angeles and after the training tour was over I used to drive up there to see her. They were formative years, and she had quite an emotional impact on me. She finally dumped me for a guy a few years older and it left me in a state of shock for a few days. At the time I didn’t think I was any sappier than anybody else. Today, when I think about it, which isn’t often, I wince a lot.
At the Clallam County sheriff’s office in Port Angeles I learned that a deputy named Herb Taylor lived in Forks and worked the surrounding territory. I left Port Angeles and drove west nearly fifty miles then hooked south into rain forest country. For several months of the year storm clouds from the Gulf of Alaska come scudding in low off the coast. They drop a lot of their moisture on the western slopes of the Olympics as they rise up over the mountains. The average yearly rainfall in San Francisco is about 22 inches. In Seattle it’s 35. In the Hoh River rain forest about 12 miles south of Forks, it’s an ever-loving 142 inches. People living around there refer to Seattle as the dry country.
It was
late afternoon when I got to Forks and found Deputy Taylor with a lot of other people drying out in a local coffee shop. It hadn’t been raining when I left Port Angeles. In Forks it had been, and still was.
Taylor was a man of medium height and build in his mid-forties with seams on his forehead and banked disgruntlement in his eyes. It’s hard to describe what many, many days of continual hard rain can do to a person’s spirits. Taylor was the embodiment of it and a cheerful demeanor on my part wouldn’t get me anywhere. I knew I’d just be another cross he had to bear for as long as we had to talk. A man got up to leave from the stool next to him. I took his place and ordered coffee and saw Deputy Taylor was quick to spot a strange voice and face. He was studying me in a mirror on the wall in back of the counter.
“Deputy Taylor, I’m Peter Bragg, from San Francisco. They told me in Port Angeles you might be able to help me.”
The man let loose the most violent sneeze I’ve ever heard. It rattled the coffee cup on the saucer in front of him, and he groped in his pocket for a large handkerchief to minister to his nose and face.
“Sorry about that,” he murmured. The rest of the patrons seemed used to it. They went on with their sipping and yucking. The waitress brought my coffee and I slid it over near my elbow on the side away from Deputy Taylor.
“What is it you need help with?”
“I’m trying to find somebody who’s supposed to live around here. A friend wants to get in touch with him. Henry Catlin is the name of the man I’m looking for.”
He folded away his handkerchief with a thoughtful expression. Our heads weren’t more than a couple of feet apart, but he continued to study me in the back counter mirror. By now I couldn’t tell if he was spending all that much time watching me or looking at himself.
“What’s your friend like? The one looking for this Catlin.”
“It’s a woman. Recently widowed. It was her husband really who knew Catlin. She wants to find him to settle some business arrangement they had. I guess he has an unlisted phone number.”
“That’s true enough, he does.”
“Then you know him?”
“Not intimately. Nobody around here does. That’s why I was interested what anybody who’s a friend of his might be like.”
He managed to get it all out just before he gave another roof-raising sneeze. This one brought a little response from his neighbors. The waitress brought over a couple of aspirin for him. Somebody down the counter yelled, “God bless, Sheriff.”
“I’m from Seattle originally,” I told him, not so much to prove my kinship, but more to keep up my end of the conversation with a man trying to come down with pneumonia. “I’ve seen it rain before, but never anything like this. Guess you have to spend quite a bit of time out in it.”
“Only when I’m foolish. I’ve been some of that lately. When do you want to see this Catlin fellow?”
“This afternoon, if it’s possible. I’d like to make it back to Seattle by tonight. Look up some old friends while I’m here.”
He grunted. “Guess I could draw you a map. Ordinarily I’d drive you out there myself, but I think today I’m gonna go on home, drink some bourbon and go to bed.”
“Sounds like it’d be the best place for you. How far out of town does he live?”
“About twenty miles.”
“The road paved?”
“All except for the last couple of miles,” he said, digging a pad and stubby pencil out of his shirt pocket. “But that’s passable so long as you stay on the road. If you get off the road you’ll probably spend the night out there.”
“I’ll stay on the road.”
Deputy Taylor drew me a tidy map. He even covered it with his hand when he sneezed another time or two. It showed Catlin’s place southeast of town, a couple of miles up off a county road that ran between licensed logging areas in the government forest.
“One other thing,” he told me. “I’d better see if I can get him on the phone first, before you go waltzing on out there. He’s a man who likes his privacy.”
He lumbered over to a pay phone on the wall and took out an address book to dial Catlin’s number. I finished my coffee, paid up and went over to put on the raincoat I’d hung on a stand just inside the door.
“Hey, Bragg,” the deputy called, the receiver in his hand. “He wants to know the name of the man who died. The one who’s supposed to be a friend of his.”
I went over to join him at the phone. “Harry Shank.”
Taylor repeated the name, listened a few moments more, grunted and hung up.
“He says he’ll be waiting for you. There’s a wide garage attached to the house. He said you’re to drive into the turnaround area in front and honk your horn five times. Then you’re to wait ten seconds, douse your headlights and honk twice more. Then you can turn your lights back on and park in the garage. He’ll have it open and meet you up at the front door.”
“I’d better write all that down,” I told him, getting out my own note pad. “A little paranoid is he, this Catlin?”
The deputy shrugged. “Who the hell knows? There’s several birds like him living around here, off by themselves. Hermits, almost. They all go a little nuts after a while if you ask me. The only person around here Catlin ever sees on a social basis is old man Guftesson. They play chess together from time to time.”
“I’m beginning to get the picture. Chess players aren’t notoriously talky while they’re playing, either.”
“You got it. I think Catlin would use sign language in the supermarket if he could get away with it.”
“You say he has a garage. Then I take it he doesn’t live in just some woodsy cabin.”
“That’s right. He’s got a pretty fancy house as houses go, back in those hills. I’ve often wondered where the man gets his money.”
The deputy was staring me in the eye. I cleared my throat. “Don’t ask me. I’m just an errand boy.”
Using the deputy’s map, the Catlin house wasn’t all that difficult to find, but it took a while. It was getting dark and the rain still pounded down, cutting visibility. The paved county road was bad enough. The two-mile drive up from it over dirt and gravel and potholes was like doing penance. When I got to Catlin’s place I stopped and honked and blinked and genuflected and finally parked my car and went up to the house. I was met at the front door by a tall, rangy man with suspicious eyes and thick, black eyebrows, giving him a permanent expression of anger.
But he greeted me cordially enough. His handshake was firm and after closing and bolting the heavy front door he led me into the next room where he had a roaring fire in the fireplace.
“Toss your wet things over there on the chair where they can dry out,” he told me. “You’d probably like a drink.”
“I probably would. Some bourbon over ice would help calm things down, if you have it.”
“I have it. Sure you wouldn’t like some sort of toddy?”
“Don’t go to the bother.”
He had a small bar on one side of the room just beneath an open counter area between the living room and kitchen beyond. It was similar to the room divider in my own apartment, except his was a lot bigger and far more expensive. Catlin wasn’t dressed like any woodsy hermit. He wore dark brown slacks, a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows and a yellow, open-collared shirt. He carried himself with the comfortable confidence of a country gentleman, and his home well-suited him. Dark oak beams measured the white ceiling. Some attractive hunting prints graced the walls and the room was tastefully dotted with dark, leather upholstered furniture resting on thickly piled carpeting.
He carried my bourbon over, gave it to me and motioned me to one of two overstuffed chairs flanking the fireplace. He settled in the other.
“The deputy said Harry Shank was dead. What happened?”
“His car went off a cliff while he was driving home in the rain last night. Looked like an accident. It’s sort of a treacherous stretch out to the beach where he lived.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Oh? Anyway, his wife, Erica, wanted me to find you and tell you about it. She couldn’t find your phone number in Harry’s things.”
“Harry has his own way of keeping things. And that’s all you came up to tell me?”
“That, and that Mrs. Shank wants you to get in touch with her. And I’d better tell you a couple more things. I’m pretty much in the dark about what’s going on, but then I’m being paid just to pass along what information I do have.” I took out the photostat of my license and showed it to him.
“I used to work for the San Francisco Chronicle. Went into this work a few years back. So when Harry needed something along my new line he thought of me. He hired me originally to meet a man named Buddy Polaski at the San Francisco airport yesterday afternoon. I did, and we had a drink together, but when we went to pick up his luggage, a couple of gunmen unloaded their guns into him until there wasn’t much left to do but hold services.”
Catlin was sitting erect. “They killed him?”
“They did, and it seems to have upset a lot of people. I learned later he had racket ties in New York and had been stealing from them recently. I guess that’s the reason he could have been shot.”
I paused, long enough to give Catlin a chance to join the conversation. He didn’t. “And apparently they wanted something Polaski was supposed to be carrying. They tried to lift his luggage after they shot him, but I’d woken up by then and had my own gun out. They got away but they didn’t get Polaski’s luggage. Crimes committed at the airport are in the jurisdiction of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department. This morning, two guys with the same descriptions as the airport killers tried to con a deputy in the sheriff’s property room in Redwood City into giving them Polaski’s bags. When that didn’t work they began shooting and just took them. But then that doesn’t mean much because the bags had been searched after the killing. The only thing out of the ordinary Polaski had been carrying was a handgun.”
