Bad Samaritan (16 page)

“I thought she might tell you something she wouldn’t tell me.”

“No. You were always her favorite. Some of the men I knew down there are now in jail. The few I talked with today could have resented my tailoring. Tomorrow, I’ll dress in the old image.”

I said nothing.

“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you? Inside.”

“I am not. You know those people better than I do. When did you decide to play Hawkshaw?”

“After your Sunday-morning sermon. I don’t plan it as a trade. But I knew people down there who could still be there, people who won’t talk to any cop, public or private.”

“Which means you won’t be traveling with me.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we each went our own route?”

“Probably. My credentials are shaky enough. You don’t have any.”

“I’m a citizen,” he said. “There’s no law I know of against a citizen asking questions.”

“Not yet. Maybe soon. Another jolt?”

He nodded. “Then I can go home and hear about serves and lobs and volleys. It’s not easy to listen to, sober.”

Jan was still practicing when he left. She shanked some and topped others, but in her second hour of golf she had already surpassed me in chipping.

“You could buy me a set of clubs for our anniversary,” she suggested. “I think this old set of yours is too heavy for me.”

“Our anniversary is March fourteenth.”

“Our five months’ anniversary,” she explained. “Tomorrow.”

I changed the subject. “What’s for dinner?”

“Meat loaf, cruel master. I won’t be home tonight. We have to make out the invitation list for the dance.”

Plebeian food, meat loaf, geared to my palate. I wolfed it down, along with the scalloped potatoes and the broccoli.

And then Jan went to the Lunds’ to help work out the pattern of selective snobbery and I was left with nobody but the neighbors’ dogs, sniffing around our front lawn, hunting for a plant they might have left unkilled.

I was about to turn on Walter Cronkite when the phone rang.

It was Moses Jones. “I just now figured out where that Locum must have disappeared to, last night.”

“So have I. The Arden Massage Parlor. I was in there today, asking questions. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t go upstairs.”

“Did you notice something kooky when you were in there?”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, there was only a narrow office downstairs, and a narrow hall. There was no door leading off the hall or the office. The upstairs must be wider than the downstairs, isn’t it?”

“Nope. How could it be? The outside to the rest of the downstairs is off the alley in back. There’s a parking lot there, too. A friend of mine told me about it today. Three poker tables and a crap table.”

“Locum’s?”

“Sure is.”

“Maybe I’ll drop in for a little poker tonight.”

“Nothin’ personal, but you might not be welcome.”

“Moses,” I informed him sadly, “nobody in the world is more welcome at a poker table than I am.”

“Okay. You need a tough backup man, I could close the store.”

“That wouldn’t be fair,” I said. “We don’t want to overwhelm them. But thanks for the offer. Keep in touch.”

“Right on!”

They wouldn’t be starting this early. Walter Cronkite explained how the world was moving, how it had been this day of our lives. “The Gong Show” followed. In prime time!

I went out to spray the shrubs with dog repellent. I should have sprayed the picture tube.

The sun sank lower. I put on one of the preinheritance suits I had saved for sentimental reasons, a snappy number from Discount Danny’s. I had about a hundred in my wallet and Jan had stashed fifty dollars in her handkerchief box. Even with my inconsiderable skills, that should last through a two-dollar game—if I played them tight.

It was dark now. I took the freeway to the Padilla turnoff, through heavy traffic. The alley didn’t open off Padilla, but I finally found it.

The parking lot was on the other side of the building, at the rear of a furniture store. Among the parked cars were a gray Maserati and a red Porsche. Skip drove a red Porsche. So did a score of other local citizens.

A dim light shone over a weathered door. On the door was a sign: Arden Community Club—Members Only.

The door was locked. There was a bell button next to it, which I pushed. From somewhere in the dark above the light, a public address speaker asked, “Number, please?”

“I don’t have a number,” I said. “My name is Callahan, and I brought cash.”

“All our members have numbers.”

“I’m not a member. I have some credit cards, if you want to check me out.”

A pause, a silence, and the door opened partway. A short but very muscular black man stood there, wearing a gaudy sport shirt and gaudier slacks. “You come to see Mr. Locum?”

“I didn’t even know he was here. I came to play poker.”

He opened the door wider. “Okay. Come in.”

The lights in the room were hanging lights, one over each poker table, one over the dice table. A dice game was going on and two poker games. Most of the men at the crap table were black, the men at the poker tables were either black or Chicano. There was only one other Anglo face in the room, Skip Lund’s. He was playing poker.

He didn’t see me. Otis Locum stood next to the small bar in the nearest corner. “The honky peeper,” he said. “You come here for trouble or for action?”

From all around the room, faces swiveled our way. Locum’s gaze measured them. He must have realized they couldn’t all be friendly. Their fear of him was probably the only reason many of them were subservient. I had to bank on that.

I kept my voice calm. “Let’s make a deal. If you don’t call me a honky peeper, I won’t call you a penny-ante pimp.”

The volcano erupted. Locum came at me with a roar.

If he had come at me, a man his size, fists clenched in the honorable American macho tradition, fist against fist, pound for pound, I would have been forced to honor the tradition. But he brought a bottle from the bar with him.

What he didn’t know, of course, was that I had been the punter with the Rams during my first two seasons. He had the bottle raised—when I put my size-twelve brogan squarely into the middle of his jewel box.

He doubled, groaning, and I brought my knee up into the middle of his face. I could feel his front teeth crack, along with the cartilage in his nose, before he crashed to the floor.

Some scrawny, long-haired man clawed at me from one side, while the bouncer in the gaudy shirt circled behind. I threw the scrawny man into the bouncer and backed up to the crap table, eliminating any sneak attacks from the rear.

Skip was next to me now, the two of us the only Anglos in the room. What I had hoped for, what I had banked on, was that this would not evolve into an ethnic war.

There had to be, in that room, some men who resented the dominance of Otis Locum. There had to be some who recognized that this was the good guys against the bad guys and they were good guys. And then, there had to be some of my spiritual brothers.

I mean the two-dollar horseplayers. The poker players, like yours truly, who draw to inside straights and raise before the draw on four hearts. Maybe this would shape up as the losers against the winners. There were warriors already lined up with Skip and me against the crap table.

But it couldn’t have been the winners against the losers, because we all know there are more losers than winners in this world, and we were sadly outnumbered.

We never would have won it. But we lasted long enough to remain vertical until the men in blue arrived to end the hostilities.

C
APTAIN DAHL WAS IN
charge of the night watch. I knew him; Skip knew him better. All the others had gone home on bail. Locum was in the hospital. Skip and I sat with Captain Dahl in the interrogation room. Skip had a fat lip and a bruised eye; all my damage had been to my stomach. Breathing was painful.

“Disturbing the peace or inciting to riot,” Dahl said. “I don’t know how to book you.”

Skip grinned. “Why not call it a citizen’s arrest? You boys won’t raid the joint. Somebody has to.”

“Very funny, Lund. What do you two call yourselves, the Montevista Vigilantes?”

Skip shook his head. “Concerned citizens. You and Linda still making music, Captain?”

Dahl’s voice was ice. “Be very careful, Warren Temple Lund. Your wife’s money doesn’t buy you anything here.”

Skip started to come out of his chair, but I pushed him back. I said, “Captain, it was all my fault. And let’s put this into perspective. Who was hurt?”

“Otis Locum. Four teeth gone, a broken nose, possible internal injuries. That’s the latest word from the hospital.”

“He came at me with a bottle. If he hadn’t he might have stayed out of the hospital. Has he filed a complaint?”

Dahl didn’t answer.

“He refused to,” I guessed.

“So far,” Dahl admitted. “What difference does it make? For a week now, Callahan, you’ve been working under department sanction. How does this make us look?”

“Who’s looking? There isn’t a reporter around, and there hasn’t been one.”

Dahl’s gaze swiveled between us, back and forth.

Skip said quietly, “I apologize for my remark, Captain.”

Dahl studied him for a few seconds. Then, “All right. I apologize, too. I’ll let the chief decide this one tomorrow. Get out of here, both of you.”

In the hallway, Skip said, “I wonder who called the law?”

“A man named Moses Jones. He told me he had, after the wagon came. I gave him my keys. His son is watching your car. Who is that Linda you were bugging Dahl about?”

“A girl I knew. A girl a lot of men knew. The captain’s been living with her for four years. I hear they plan to get married soon.”

“That was a real cheap shot, Skip.”

“I know. I don’t like cops. Who should know the reason why better than you?”

“Someday, when you’re thinking straight, try to imagine what the world would be without them.”

“So, all right, already, I did wrong. Where the hell’s that Detroit junker of yours?”

“Waiting on the lot with my chauffeur.”

Moses came out of the darkness into the reflected light from a station window. “Where’s Locum? I didn’t see him come out.”

“He’s in the hospital,” I said. “Guess who put him there.”

“You. Didn’t I tell you you could take that slob?”

I introduced him to Skip and he held the car door open for both of us. He evidently planned to act as our chauffeur.

“I’ll drive,” I told him. “This is a high-performance machine.”

“I sure didn’t notice that.” He climbed into the backseat.

His son was waiting on the lot behind the Arden Community Club. He was sitting in Skip’s Porsche, six feet and nine inches of young man with a future. Even if he hadn’t been tall, I was sure any son of Moses Jones would have a future worth having.

Back to the Padilla ramp, back to the freeway. There had been a savage joy in me when I smashed Locum’s face. There was a rising of nausea in me now, the same nausea I had felt when I broke Josh Leddy’s leg on that cold afternoon in Green Bay when we creamed the Packers.

There had been no joy in the Leddy collision. Josh Leddy was white. Did that make me a racist? I thought of all those young runaway girls Otis Locum had sold into bondage. I reminded myself that black Moses Jones hated him as much as I did. But the nausea kept rising.

It was two o’clock, but Jan was still up, waiting for me. Skip had phoned June before Jan left their house, so she knew about what had happened.

“You finally had your fight with Otis Locum,” she said. “Is that why you went down there?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t even know he’d be there. Is there any Alka Seltzer in the house?”

“You’ve been drinking!”

I didn’t stop to argue. I barely had time to make the nearest growler. It all came up, meat loaf, broccoli, scalloped potatoes and bile. A great sense of marital injustice replaced it in my gut. You’ve been drinking. …

She was waiting outside the bathroom door. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be. I haven’t had a drink since before dinner. But I took a lot of shots to the belly and I’m not proud of what I did to Locum. Would you make some tea?”

Tea, a return to suburban quiet, a domestic report of the night’s adventure, starting with Moses’ phone call.

“I had it wrong,” Jan said. “I thought you and Skip had gone down there together, looking for trouble.”

“You had it wrong,” I agreed. “Be sure all the doors are locked. Locum didn’t file a complaint with the police. He has his own law.”

In the warm, dim, cozy breakfast room, she stared at me. “You don’t think—he wouldn’t—”

“I don’t know what he will do. I am hoping to put him away before he decides to take any action. I’m not sure the department will cooperate, not after tonight.”

“They’d better! I’ll have Glenys make some phone calls.”

Sure. Write to the bureaucrats, phone them, get back a form letter. No wonder the kids had resorted to rioting. What other route was there?

The morning was overcast and cool. The
Times
was unchewed; the repellent seemed to have worked, though I hadn’t bothered to take a count last night.

Pork sausages, eggs, toast and coffee restored my sanity.

“How’s your stomach?” Jan asked. She looked at my empty plate. “I withdraw the question. You really are tough, aren’t you?”

I shrugged modestly. “I have to think of something to tell the chief. He has a tendency to make impulsive decisions.”

“You could kick him in the groin,” she suggested.

She was trying to be the white, female Moses Jones. A noble effort, earning her a kiss, which I gave her.

“By the way,” I said, “I kissed Juanita yesterday. Only because she asked me to. There were others present.”

“Let her keep her kisses,” my bride said, “and come up with some facts. She failed you, Brock.”

Hell hath no fury like a noncombatant. “Give her time,” I said. “Faith, kid. She has to live down there.”

Vogel was in the chief’s office when I got to the station. So was Skip. Vogel was grinning. “It had to happen. It was overdue.”