Bad Samaritan (13 page)

We sat there quietly for a few seconds. I asked, “Do you know a man named Otis Locum? Did Jesus ever mention him?”

She shook her head. “Never. I’ve never heard the name.”

I stood up. “Thank you for your help. Remember, you’re still young and pretty. There are a lot of good men to choose from.”

“I don’t need men. I have my babies. My mother will watch them during the day and I can go back to work. That welfare makes me ashamed.”

Strange society we lived in. Those who couldn’t learn to steal had to live in shame. I went back to the station with a troubling pattern stirring in my unconscious, some combination of incidents and attitudes that refused to emerge.

Helms and Vogel were still in Helms’s office. “Well?” Vogel asked.

“Nothing important. She wanted to give me my money back. She had a feeling that her husband and Maude were involved in something illegal, but she didn’t come up with a single fact.”

“Who has?” Vogel said. “We got a report from San Jose that Tishkin spent a night in a motel there last week. Under his real name. That doesn’t look like he’s on the lam, does it?”

“Was he alone?”

“He registered as a single. Are you thinking Patty Serano?”

“I’m not thinking anything very well. Thinking isn’t my strong point. I have to rely on hunches.”

Vogel nodded. “I’ve noticed that.” He rubbed his stomach. “Damnit!”

“Frustration?” I asked. “Or the gelfilte fish?”

He looked at me sourly. Helms said, “The chief had his theory and nothing’s come of it. What could we expect? He’s administrative, not investigative.”

He’s administrative, not investigative. … Gilbert and Sullivan could have made a winner out of that title if they had still been above ground. A bluebottle fly buzzed around the hot and smoky office. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance.

“We’ve got two facts,” Helms said. “Maude’s dead and there ain’t nothing that will bring her back.”

Vogel nodded.

I said, “Now if the chief will agree, he can issue his statement and we can drop the case.”

“The only thing more obnoxious than an indignant citizen,” Vogel said, “is a big-mouth indignant citizen. You and Stan Nowicki are blood brothers.”

Helms smiled. “At least he puts in his time, Bernie. The man could be drinking good booze and playing bad golf now. But here he stands, sweating with us.”

“No longer,” I said. “See you later, gentlemen.”

“Where you going?” Vogel asked.

“I’m going home. I’m not on the clock.” I waited. “Unless you two have a better idea?”

“So long,” Vogel said.

I went out into the hot day and into my hotter car. I opened all the windows and sat there in the police parking lot, staring through the windshield. Static contemplation; I must have caught it from Vogel.

The pattern still rumbled around in my mind. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was overlooking the obvious. That had always been one of my strengths, recognizing the obvious.

How much time could they give it? New crimes were committed every day, new investigations started. They were understaffed and claimed to be underpaid and the paper kept piling up at headquarters. Some wino found dead in an alley could be written off quickly enough. Maude’s prominence had commanded more time, work and attention to detail.

But there were always more crimes than cops. No investigation could go on forever. On this one they had the convenient out—apparent suicide.

I drove down Main Street, heading for home. Then, deciding it was still too early to go home, I turned left on Rivera Street and parked near Kelly’s Kourt.

At the far end of the court some black kids were rolling an old tire around in a circle. At this end, country music was coming from the open window of the manager’s mobile home.

I walked over to the angle street. It formed the triangle with Rivera where it dead-ended at Avalon Avenue, the minority Main Street. It didn’t actually dead-end; another street, Chapparal Road, began on the far side of Avalon and wound its way up into the hills.

That was the road I had taken to Villwock’s hermit retreat. It would be a long walk up to his place.

There were only two houses that fronted on the street across from the vacant lot. The occupants had been questioned; nobody had seen a car parked there the night of the murder. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. The residents of both houses had been asleep long before midnight.

I came back to my car just as a gleaming new Chevy Citation two-door came out of Kelly’s Kourt. All-American Al Pilot was on his way to work. Either he was early or my watch was slow. My watch read 3:44.

Jan wasn’t home when I got there. I debated with Satan for about twelve seconds, and Satan won. I poured a big measure of bourbon into a glass and went back to all my papers.

The pattern in my unconscious had partially emerged, a pattern that traced back to what Pontius had told me. These papers wouldn’t help me much with that, but I had nothing else to do. The twice-a-week gardener took care of the lawn and shrubs.

I was on Einlicher when Jan came home. “Nothing?” she asked.

“Nothing. Have a good day?”

“Not quite. Three golden hours at Phyllis Pontius’s pool. Gad, that woman is dumb!”

“Her looks will carry her. Who else was there?”

“June and Julie and some woman named Norah Sullivan, a widow. She mentioned a Danning Villwock whom you’re supposed to know. Do you?”

“I’ve met him. He’s a retired police officer. Does the widow have plans for Villwock?”

“That’s the impression I got.”

“Tell her to stay with the service he’s probably giving her now. She’ll never hook him. The man’s a dedicated hermit.”

Jan looked suspiciously at the Einlicher and back at me. “You’ve had something besides that beer. Beer never makes you malicious.”

“I had a little bourbon. It’s been a bad day, Jan. Don’t heckle me. Please?”

She sat down next to me on the couch. She took a sip of my beer and said quietly. “Maude Marner was old and she had cancer. Her death wasn’t that—that untimely, Brock.”

I said nothing.

She took another sip of my beer.

“I thought the Lunds were going to Hawaii this week,” I said.

“Skip canceled it. He’s talking about going back to work.”

“It’s about time. He’s only thirty-seven.”

She patted my knee. “Glenys and I agree on you. You’re our favorite middle-class person. I think I’ll have a drink.”

Her drink looked dark when she came back to the couch, almost as dark as mine had been. I said, “How about some Italian food tonight?”

“At some restaurant run by another of your girl friends?”

“Not exactly. There’s a waitress there who was threatened by a Vegas hoodlum. And her daughter lived with a man for three years who might be involved in Maude’s death. I can see her tomorrow if you’d rather eat at home.”

She shook her head. “Whither thou goest, I will go. Your people shall be my people.” She finished her drink. “But we’d better leave now. I have to go to an Auxiliary meeting at Glenys’s house at eight-thirty.”

The sign on the door of the Neapolitan Cafe informed us they were closed on Mondays.

“Where now?” I asked.

“The Biltmore,” she said. “We haven’t been there for ages.”

Old and grand, massive and solid, the Biltmore Hotel fronted on the sea. The dining room was about half-filled. Very few of the diners were under sixty; none of them seemed to have any cosmetic urge to look younger.

At a table with a view of the beach, Paul and Phyllis Pontius were being served drinks. Paul saw us and beckoned.

“Damn it,” Jan muttered. “I’ve already had three hours of that woman’s dumb remarks! I wanted to be alone.” To them, ten seconds later, she chirped, “Well, this is a pleasant surprise!”

There was room for four at the table and there were soon four. A martini for Jan, bourbon and water for me. Chitchat and persiflage. The only bright spot in the room was Phyllis, sitting across from me.

She was the subject of a few disapproving glances from time to time. These diners liked dull and quiet rooms, conditioning themselves for the grave.

We discussed the awesome accomplishment of June’s county championship, the most recent gasoline shortage, and moved on to world travel, which they had experienced and we had not.

I was about halfway through my lamb stew when Phyllis said, “Skip is certainly restless lately. Have you noticed, Brock?”

“He’s a young and energetic man,” I explained. “It’s not easy for a man like him to learn how to loaf gracefully.”

“And of course,” my sweet bride added, “my incurably middle-class husband has probably been needling him about his sloth.”

Nothing from me except a tolerant smile.

Paul asked, “How is the investigation going, Brock?”

“Badly. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dropped soon. The file will still be open, as they call it, but the active investigation will be dropped.”

“Isn’t there a possibility that it actually was suicide?”

“Always. And the murderer could have banked on that.”

His voice was thoughtful and quiet, maybe even troubled. “Would that indicate a professional did it?”

Was he having second thoughts about his professional friend from Vegas? I said, “Not necessarily. It could occur to any tricky amateur. There is no way of knowing how many murders are solved, because there is no way of being sure how many are committed. The percentage could be a lot worse than we might guess.”

He nodded, his eyes holding mine. “I can imagine that desert around Las Vegas is studded with the graves of murdered men.”

“Unsolved and unreported,” I agreed. “Most of them were no loss to society. Maude was.”

He nodded. “I hope they find the man, whoever he is.”

We were finishing our meal when Phyllis said, “If you have anything to do tonight, Brock, Paul could drop Jan and me off at the Auxiliary meeting.”

“Thank you,” I said. I asked Jan, “Should I pick you up around eleven?”

She nodded. “And we can take Phyllis home.”

“That would be nice,” Phyllis said.

“A pleasure,” I said. It would be.

I hadn’t planned on doing anything. A married man’s night choices were limited. I could prowl the jungle and learn nothing, as I had all day. I could go home and read, or go to a movie.

I drove along the shoreline, as close to Maude’s ashes as I had been at Locum’s house, depending on the ocean currents. Up Ridge Road and over the hill to town, to Padilla Street. It was possible that Moses Jones’s competitive markups forced him to work nights.

He was checking the IDs of a pair of white youths who wanted a six-pack of beer when I entered his store. It was no token investigation, leading to an excuse to sell them. He questioned them sharply before he was satisfied. I had pegged him right; this man was a citizen.

They left, and he smiled at me. “What can I sell you?”

“Nothing tonight. Don’t you remember me?”

“Of course. A man your size sticks in the memory. More questions?”

“Nothing specific. My wife let me out of the house tonight and I was at loose ends. Did you know Maude Marner?”

“Did I know her! She got my daughter an after-school job and she got my son a basketball scholarship at Long Beach State. He ain’t built like me, that boy of mine. He got fed right. Maude bought all her wine from me.”

“Is that what she drank, wine?”

“Mostly. You know what I liked about her? She was moral without being stuffy.”

“My impression exactly, Mr. Jones. I have a feeling she and Jesus Gonzales might have been investigating some shenanigans down in this end of town. But you gave me a different picture of Gonzales when Vogel and I were here this morning.”

“I was starting to get a better one myself, until he walked out on his wife. If they were investigating something, they didn’t let me in on it.”

“Do you know a girl named Patty Serano?”

He shook his head. “Am I supposed to?”

“She lived with Lenny Tishkin for about three years.”

“No way I’d meet her. Lenny and I traveled in different circles.”

There was still some light outside, enough for me to see the gray Maserati pulling into a parking space across the street.

“Locum,” I said. “Maybe I’d better hang around awhile.”

“Huh!” he said scornfully. “That big tub of lard messes with me, I’ll kick his privates right through the top of his pointed head!”

“Moses,” I said gently, “for a small man you’re talking awful big. I think I’d better hang around.”

His smile was slightly malicious. “Inside, you mean, here in the light? Should I lock the door? If I was your size, I’d go out and belt that big pimp, just for kicks.”

I smiled back at him. “Dare me.”

“I dare you. I’ll hold your coat.”

“No need for that. I can hit pretty good with the coat on.”

I went out, a Rams body directed by a junior-high-school brain, out into trouble I didn’t need, stirred by an adolescent emotionalism that should have shamed me. Amateur macho, red-neck theatrics—and I was supposed to be a pro. …

I was saved the trouble and the lumps. The car was empty and Otis Locum was nowhere in sight.

Moses stood on the sidewalk in front of his store. “The gutless bastard is hiding! He must have seen you heading his way.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But thanks for the thought. Would you keep an ear open for me? If the police quit on this I’m going to carry on alone.”

“Both ears,” he promised.

I
SAT IN MY CAR
and wondered where the big man had gone. There were no houses and no stores on the other side of the street; a lumber yard and a junk yard took up the entire block. Most of the small businesses on this side of the street were closed. Only three lights were visible from where I sat. One of them was Trinity Liquors. I got out of the car to check the other two.

I could see into the first place through the display window. It was a Greek-Italian delicatessen and the only customer in the place was white and female. I couldn’t see into the second place. There were dim lights on the second floor. An even dimmer light showed through the translucent glass in the upper half of the first-floor door.