Case Pending - Dell Shannon

Case Pending

Dell Shannon
1985

ONE

When Gunn came down the hall to his office at
half-past eight, he found Curtis waiting. Curtis was holding up the
wall beside the door; he opened his eyes at Gunn's step. He looked
tired and rather dirty. "And a good, good morning to you too,
chief," he said. Gunn didn't like to be called chief.

"What'd you draw?" Gunn unlocked the door.

"Just what we expected. I won't come in—I'm
going home to bed—I can give it to you in ten words. Williams
showed up about eight, you'll get that on Henry's report. Went in,
about twenty minutes later came out with our Williams, and they went
down to the Redbird bar on Third. Ten-forty, shifted to the Palace.
Henry called me from there and I took over at midnight. They drifted
home about half an hour later and stayed. His car's still outside."

"Well, now," said Gunn, pleased. "Fancy
that."

"And for your further information," said
Curtis, "I damn near froze to death sitting it out in my car.
Next time I'll take along another blanket and a portable radio."

Gunn grinned benignly and told him to go home. He
went on through the stenos' room to the center of three
partitioned-off rooms at the rear, hung up his hat and coat, and sat
at the desk. Henry's report was neatly centered, waiting for him
there; Henry never missed getting in a written report immediately,
however late his duty. Williams in 7.57, it announced laconically,
and the rest of what Curtis had said. Very nice, thought Gunn.

So now they knew that Mr. John Williams hadn't
deserted his wife and four children. The county had been passing over
sixty-three dollars and fifty cents per month to Mrs. John Williams
for four months, on her claim of desertion and failure to provide.
The kids had to be fed, had to be sheltered and clothed-after a
fashion-by somebody. It appeared that once again the county had been
rooked. Williams was a skiffed carpenter, probably making good money
on an out-of-town job.

Gunn made a notation on the report, Morgan to see,
and sighed. Naughty, naughty, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, collusion to
defraud the state-and maybe next time they'd think up something
slicker. He got out his file of current investigations, wrote a brief
summary of the conclusions in the Williams case, and set the file
page aside for refiling among cases completed. He flicked over the
rest. He heard the girl stenos begin to drift into the outer office.

Rossiter. Brankin. Peabody. Prinn. Fraty. Kling. A
new one, Lindstrom. There were follow-up reports to be typed in on
six or seven of them; he took those out to the stenos. "Morning,
girls." Morgan and Stack came in together.

"I want to see you about that Mrs. Gold,"
said Stack.

"What about her?"

Stack followed him back into his office. "I told
you I finally caught up to the guy—the Reno D.A."s office
found him, he's working in some joint there as a waiter. I had it all
set up to crack down on him, see. Reno says he ought to be good for
seventy-five a month, and I went round to give the glad news to the
misses. And then the rabbi puts the kibosh on it."

"What rabbi?"

"Mrs. Gold's rabbi. He was there. He says please
will we just drop the whole thing and leave it to him—I guess he
figures it'll be less of a disgrace or something if he can handle
it—"

"Oh," said Gunn. "Well, he might have
something there. If he can get it without any fuss, so much the
better. Man'd feel better about it if he's persuaded instead of
forced, the money'll come easier-less chance we'd have more trouble.
It works out with ministers sometimes, but we can't let 'em stall
forever. You tell him we'll give him a couple of weeks to try it his
way before we crack down." Gunn went out with Stack and looked
into the room next his own; Morgan was sitting there at one of four
desks, looking at some papers. "Oh, Dick."

Morgan looked up. "Yes, sir?" he responded
dully.

"Little job. Henry and Curtis have tied up the
Williams case. Another collusion, way you figured. Williams is
weekending—they were at a bar until midnight and it's a good chance
you'll catch him still in bed with her if you make it snappy. Here's
the report."

Morgan got up. "All right. Williams—yes."

Gunn looked at him more closely. "You look a bit
off-color."

"I'm all right," said Morgan. He did not
look it. As he took his topcoat from the peg behind the door, Gunn
saw his hand shaking. He was the thin, sandy type that doesn't change
much between boyhood and old age, doesn't look much different sick or
well. But there were lines around his mouth now that Gunn hadn't seen
before, and his eyes looked tired, as if he hadn't slept. He had a
little trouble folding the paper Gunn handed him, putting it away in
his pocket.

"How's Sue?" asked Gunn casually. "And
Jan?"

"Fine," said Morgan, buttoning his coat
carefully. "Just fine, thanks."

"Must get together again soon, Christy was
saying just last night she'd like to kidnap that Janny of yours, kind
of lonesome with our three grown and off."

"Oh—yes, sure. I guess so. We'll do that,
thanks."

Gunn stood in the door of his office, absently
jingling the coins in his pocket, and watched the other man out to
the corridor. What was wrong with Morgan? He felt some responsibility
for Morgan, unreasonably, for it had been his doing that Morgan got
this job. Dick Morgan was the son of an old friend of Gunn's, and
he'd known the boy most of his life.

Boy, well, Dick was thirty-eight, but it depended
where you sat: Kenneth Gunn was sixty-two. And good as held ever been
too, once he'd got out of the hospital after that business last year;
but the doctors wouldn't pass him for active duty again. Nearly forty
years' service, and then a home-made bullet out of a punk's zip-gun
retired him. And Bill Andrews got the promotion to head of Homicide
instead. Way the cards fell, and Bill was a good man; but Gunn hadn't
known what to do with himself that six months. He'd jumped at this
minor post in the D.A."s office; and he could say now, a year
later, he'd given Kelleher something to talk about at the next
election, by God.

It was a new department, this little corps of
investigators—the husband-chasers, inevitably they were called; and
if Gunn couldn't claim their job was as important as the one he'd
done for forty years in and out of uniform, at least the Scot in him
took pride in reckoning how much they saved the taxpayers. He's set
up the organization himself, and it served as a model for those some
other counties were building, here and in other states. He and his
crew had tracked down over two thousand runaway husbands so far, to
pry minimum child-support funds out of them anyway. Authorities in
other states had cooperated, of course, but it came out even: they'd
picked up deserters for other D.A."s offices from Maine to
Oregon, too. Gunn had the exact figure whenever Kelleher wanted it;
to date it was upward of half a million dollars this office had saved
the county in support of deserted wives and children. There'd been a
time a man could walk out and it was nobody's job to locate him, make
him provide for a deserted family. These days, no. He couldn't go
across the Arizona or Nevada line and thumb his nose at the
California taxpayers.

Gunn himself hadn't had any idea what a staggering
sum casual desertions cost the state, until he saw the figures last
year. And he could have doubled the amount saved by now if he could
have another dozen men, another dozen office clerks. This was the
hell of a big town, and it attracted the hell of a lot of indigents
and transients, as well as the usual shiftless ones any city had.

But he wasn't thinking about that as he looked after
Dick Morgan. He stood there passing a hand over his jaw in a habitual
gesture, a big hefty man with a round, amiable face and thinning
hair, and for a minute he worried about Morgan. Dick had had some
rough breaks: just out of college when the war came along, and he was
married and had a child by the time it was over so he never did go
back to finish his law course, but like so many others went into a
big-company job. Then they lost the child, one of those unnecessary
accidents, a drunk in a car, turning down their street just at
random. That had nearly finished Sue, because she couldn't have
another. . . .Sure, they put the drunk in jail for manslaughter, but
what good did that do a six-year-old girl, or Sue and Dick?

Dick's father had been alive then and living with
them, and Gunn used to drop in there. Hadn't done old Rob Morgan any
good either, losing his only grandchild like that. After a while
they'd put their names down with a couple of adoption agencies, but
those places were so damn finicky; they'd waited almost five years
before they got Janny—but Janny was worth it. And just about then
had come one of those squeeze-plays, a company merger, a few new
hatchet men from the front office, and Dick was out—at
thirty-seven, with nowhere to go, a mortgaged house, and less than a
thousand in the bank.

Gunn wouldn't have blamed him for feeling bitter. At
the same time, being Gunn, he wouldn't have had Dick Morgan on his
staff—old Rob, sympathy, or no—If he hadn't known Dick could
handle the job the right way. It wasn't a job that paid anything like
what Dick had been earning before, but it was a job and Dick had
seemed grateful and certainly competent and reasonably contented with
it.

To anyone who didn't know him, Dick's manner just now
might suggest a touch of indigestion, or a spat with his wife at
breakfast, or an unlucky bet on the ponies. But Gunn knew Morgan for
a man of abnormally equable temper, and that little nervousness and
bad color meant a lot more than it would with another man. Besides,
Dick and Sue never had spats; Sue wasn't that sort. And Dick didn't
better drink, either. Not since eight years ago. Gunn hoped the boy
wasn't in for another piece of rough luck somehow. Janny, maybe-some
unless? Some people walked all their lives with bad luck at their
shoulders.

No good worrying about it now.

His phone rang and he stepped back into his office to
answer it. The voice at the other end was the heavy bass of Captain
Bill Andrews.

"Say, Ken, among your little brood of wives you
wouldn't have one Sylvia Dalton, would you?"

"Don't think so. Why?" Gunn riffled through
the current file before him.

"Well, it was just a thought. Maybe you noticed
by the papers that New York sort of misplaced Ray Dalton the other
day. He was up on a three-to-five and got himself paroled, but he
never did report in to his officer. New York thinks now—the usual
information received—he lit out west, specifically to these parts,
and'll be obliged if we can return the goods undamaged. Thing is, the
party that said he headed west also said it was to see his wife. I
came up with the bright thought that wives of crooks don't usually
like to work very regular, and maybe this one was accepting our
hospitality."

"Not unless she's doing it under another name.
It's a thought, all right."

"Yeah. You might just check for initials. I can
give you a make on her."

"I've got nothing else to do but your work,"
said Gunn. "I don't know every one of our customers personally,
you know. Sure somebody sees 'em all, but I've got eleven men on
duty. Yes, sure, I'll check with them. Send over the make. Don't I
remember Dalton? It rings a bell'

"It ought to. The Carney job, five-six years
back. Cameron and Healey were on it—liquor store knocked over and
two men shot, proprietor and a clerk. We couldn't tie Dalton to it
tight enough, but he was in on it. I guess at that we made him
nervous enough to run back east, and New York put the arm on him for
another job."

"I remember," said Gunn. He leaned back in
his chair and regarded the ceiling. For a minute, with the familiar
shoptalk, he almost had the vision he was back at headquarters in a
real job, not this make-weight piddling business, and under Kelleher
too . . . . but, damn, a job worth doing. "It's worth a try,"
he said. Any kids?"

"One, a boy about twelve-thirteen."

"O.K.," said
Gunn. "I'll have a look, might come up with something."

* * *

Morgan drove slowly down Main Street, not cursing at
the traffic; he handled the car automatically, stopping for
pedestrians, for red lights. Mrs. Williams lived on a run-down street
among those that twisted and came to dreary dead ends the other side
of Main. He would surprise Mr. and Mrs. Williams together and deliver
a little lecture on the dangers of conspiracy to defraud. Maybe it
wasn't so stupid of them to pull the shabby little trick, the
commonest one in the list, with scarcely any attempt at secrecy;
until the formation of this new department, God knew how many people
had got away with it for years.