Eureka (21 page)

“Hope you don't mind a dirty glass,” he said. “My wife's temperance. Be chancy taking them up to the kitchen to wash them.”

“I'm sure old Jack'll kill anything that might be lurking in those two glasses.”

He worked the top off the bottle, splashed a generous slug in both glasses, and slid one across the desk to me.

“Here's to Bucky,” he said, offering his glass. I clinked it and took a sip, trying to avoid a dead fly that floated to the top. Howland took a long whiff of the whiskey, then drained half his glass and let it linger in his mouth for a few seconds and pursed his lips before swallowing it, then leaned his head back, stared at the ceiling, closed his eyes, said, “godamighty damn,” and sighed passionately. He sat back up, stared at the half-full glass, nodded slowly, and said with awe, “The hell with you, Seagram's Seven.”

He put the top back on the bottle and slid it to me.

“It's yours,” I said.

His smile was all the thanks I needed. He opened the bottom drawer and slid the bottle under a telephone book.

“What was that lady's name again?” he asked.

“Her married name was Verna Wilensky. You might have known her as Verna Hicks. Would have been in her mid twenties in 1920. Brown hair, little on the plump side, five-two or five-three. Probably good with numbers; she was in the tax assessor's office down in L.A.”

I took out the two pictures and showed them to him. The blown-up shot from the newspaper was too grainy and unfocused to be of much use, and the shot from Bones's lab was grotesque at best. He took a look and then stared at me. “I couldn't recognize my mother from these,” he said. “That's a long time ago, son.”

He took the phone book out, flicked through the pages to the
h
's, and ran his finger down the page. “No Hicks listed. And the name doesn't ring a bell.”

“It narrows the field to none.”

His laugh turned into a cough. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “So you wanna know about that night at Grand View, huh? Well, Bucky was sheriff and Brodie was his chief deputy. Bucky and Culhane were good friends. Brodie was a hero in the big war. I think he was born about 1882 or '83, thereabouts, so he was in his thirties. Bucky was probably sixty although nobody but Buck knew how old he really was. Older'n God.

“Like I said before, the town was wide open back then. Through the years, all the action had attracted the bad element. Arnie Riker ran the criminal side of things. His sidekick was Tony Fontonio. Both of them nasty to the core. Culhane was for facing-off with them, running them out of town; but Bucky was more the live-and-let-live kind. He figured you keep your finger on them, slap 'em in the cooler if they got out of hand, things'd be alright. See, a lot of people were making money off the trade, and Bucky, he had worked the law in places like Tombstone and Silver City. Hell, he was used to dealing with gunslingers, rustlers, back shooters; Riker was a pansy in his book.”

He rambled on, about how Bucky and Culhane controlled the bootlegging to make sure the town got decent hooch during Prohibition; how Culhane hated Riker and Fontonio with a passion; how Riker walked a thin line to keep on the good side of Buck Tallman.

“The trouble came when Riker decided to take a cut of the Grand View House action. You been up there?”

I shook my head.

“Delilah O'Dell owns it. It was in her family. Delilah went to Europe, to the best schools, had it in gold. Then Shamus and Kate O'Dell went down on the
Lusitania
. Delilah was always a heller. Favored her father in that respect. She came back and opened up a fancy house. I guess you knew that.”

“I heard.”

He took a sip of whiskey, savored it for a minute, and went on.

“A
very
fancy house. Movie stars came up there, still do. Tom Mix and Buck Jones were regulars. I hear Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, David Niven, all that bunch still come up for a breather between pictures. There's a little gambling parlor on the first floor in the back. Poker pots can run as high as a thousand bucks. Delilah runs it like it's the Ritz. Beautiful women, great food, the best of everything. Some of our leading citizens occasionally slipped through the side door. And still do.”

He stopped and laughed. “Delilah could own this town if she ever threatened to write a book,” he said around a chuckle. “But she's a classy lady. Would never happen.”

“So what happened that night?”

“It was never proved, but the story went that Riker decided to make a major play. He brings in four tough gunmen headed by a real dangerous hooligan named McGurk, and they go up to Grand View to tell Delilah she has to kick a percentage back to Riker.”

“Riker?” I said. “He's the one got gas for a murder?”

“Yeah, a year or so later. So anyway, Bucky is upstairs in Delilah's apartment having a coffee, which he usually does during the evening. His deputy, Andy Sloan, is downstairs, keeping an eye on things, when they come in. Delilah comes to the head of the stairs and wants to know what's going on, and McGurk tells her to come down and talk. At that point, Bucky enters the picture. He goes down the stairs and gets nose-to-nose with one of McGurk's boys. I think his name was Red something-or-other, and Buck tells him where to go and how to get there. There's some back-and-forth, then just like that, Red pulls his pistol and shoots Bucky in the stomach, and all hell breaks loose. There were forty-two bullet holes in the walls, furniture, and the men in the room. Poor old Andy gets his head blown off and he goes down. Only McGurk gets out of the place. He runs into the street with two bullets in him, and here comes Brodie Culhane in his Ford and drops him with a single shot in the eye. Brodie was a Marine marksman in the war, won a bunch of medals. He's not a flashy shot like Buck, he's a deadeye. Then Brodie goes into the house, and one of Riker's guys is still standing. He and Bucky are twenty feet apart on opposite sides of the room, both full of lead. Bam, bam, bam. Brodie and Buck both finish off the last of Riker's gunmen, but he gets one last shot off and it finishes Buck. According to both Delilah and Culhane, his last words were, ‘Just my luck, killed in a whorehouse.' And he falls dead. Delilah was the only witness to the gunfight, and Culhane and Delilah are the only ones left when it's over.”

He lifted his glass, drained the last drop of Black Jack, and licked what was left off his lips.

“And that's what happened that night at Grand View. Everybody knew Riker was behind it, but no way to prove it.”

I slid his glass over and poured the rest of my drink in his glass.

“I'm driving back to L.A. tonight,” I said. “You finish this.”

“I can't hit it too hard, myself. I get a little giddy, she'll catch wise,” he said, taking the bottle out of the drawer. “How about pouring it back in the bottle for me. I got a touch of the palsy.” He opened a jar of Black Crows and offered me one.

“No thanks,” I said, “I never had a taste for licorice.”

“Kills the smell,” he said. “Gladys has a nose like a foxhound.”

I took one, rolled it into my cheek, and let it sit there while I poured half a glass of Jack Daniel's back in the bottle. He chewed his up and took another.

I took out the makings and offered to roll him a cigarette, but he shook his head. “Had to quit, gave me the cough. But go ahead, I still love the smell.”

“So that was all in the papers,” I said, rolling a butt. “What wasn't?”

“After it was all over, some rumors started. Riker probably started them but there were enough gossips around to spread the stories. The men on the Hill formed the county council, named Culhane sheriff, and he ran for the office about six months later. His promise was to clean up San Pietro. A lot of people didn't want to see the town dry up and go legal. The story goin' 'round was that Bucky was still alive when they both shot that last goon. Then Culhane turned his gun on Buck and finished him off. Anyway, that was all bull, just a story made up by the black hats who knew their days were numbered. The rich boys on the Hill wanted the town cleaned up and Culhane was lined up with them.”

“How about Delilah?”

“Delilah laughs it off. Anyway, with Buck out of the way, Culhane was the man to dance with.”

“Is there any truth to this?”

“I don't believe a word of it,” he said. “Besides, only two people know for sure what happened that night, Culhane and Delilah. You got to accept their word. And Culhane did what he promised. He and Brett Merrill, the D.A., sent Riker up to the gas chamber for killing Wilma Thompson. Riker claimed he was framed and some people believed him.”

“Do you?”

He shook his head as he leaned over and took a deep whiff of my smoke.

“The evidence was overwhelming. Riker had a thing for the girl. He had no alibi. Her blood was in his car, in his boat, and all over him. And there were two eyewitnesses. A girl named Lila Parrish and her date, a soldier. Later, Riker appealed the case and his sentence was commuted to life without parole. Last I heard, he was still up in Folsom dancing to the piper.”

I tapped an ash off my cigarette and shook my head. “Any other scandals?” I asked.

“There was the thing with Eddie Woods.”

“Who's Eddie Woods?”

“Ex-cop, one of Brodie's best. Flashy dresser and a kind of ladies' man. After Riker was sent up, Fontonio took over the mob. He was the last straw. Culhane was determined to get rid of him and shut down the town. Woods shot Tony Fontonio. Eddie went to his apartment to deliver a subpoena. He says Fontonio went for a gun and he plugged him. But Fontonio's bodyguards, his wife, and some legit people in town all said Fontonio never carried a gun. The attorney general called for an investigation, but Eddie resigned and Brett nol-prossed the case and that was the end of that.”

I went back over to the front pages. One of them featured a 36-point banner headline, boxed in black:

president harding dead at 57

The story ran down the left-hand side of the page. On the right, under it, in slightly smaller type:

riker murder trial

goes to jury

There was a fuzzy picture of Wilma Thompson, a slender blonde in a nondescript dress, wearing a coy smile, with the ocean forming a vista behind her. The picture of Lila Parrish didn't help much. She was rushing away from the courthouse and hidden behind the soldier. Short, dark-haired, nice figure.

The picture of Eddie Woods surprised me. I had expected a beefy, tough-looking cop; what I saw was a kid, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, with a cocky grin and a pencil-thin mustache, which was the rage in those days. He was a flashy dresser, wearing a checked suit and a dark tie, and was standing in front of the municipal building.

And in the lower right corner, this:

ex-mobster rodney guilfoyle

elected mayor of mendosa

With a picture of a burly, hard-looking galoot in a light-colored, three-piece suit, a cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth, and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his vest.

“Who's this guy Guilfoyle?” I asked.

“That's a real irony, that page. After Fontonio was killed, the third man in line was Guilfoyle. He left and took what remained of Riker's gang down the road to Mendosa. It's about twenty-five miles south of here, in Pacifica County. Then all the joints moved down there with him. You probably heard of it, people call it ‘Hole-in-the-Wall' after that outlaw gang because there's so many crooks down there.”

“Can't say as I have,” I said. “Is he still alive?”

“Oh yeah, and it's still a wide-open town. Guilfoyle was mayor for two or three terms and then he ran for sheriff. Still is.”

“What's Culhane think of that?”

“They hate each other. Have for years. Guilfoyle's a killer—or has people who do it for him. But they each stay on their own side of the county line.”

“Mr. Howland, thanks for the history lesson,” I said. “You're one helluva storyteller, but I've got to be going.”

“Sorry I couldn't help you about the Hinks girl.”

“It's
Hicks
,” I said.

“Right, Hicks. Come back again. I enjoyed the visit.” He patted the drawer and smiled. “And Jack thanks you.”

“Anytime,” I said.

CHAPTER 15

It was five o'clock when I left Howland's house. The black Pontiac wasn't waiting for me. The maroon Packard was.

The heavyset chauffeur was leaning on the front fender, rolling a cigarette as usual. When he saw me come out, he wiggled a finger at me and opened the rear door. I walked over to the car and looked in at Culhane.

“Hello again,” he said in a gravelly but pleasant voice. “Hop in.”

I looked around. The streets were empty.

“Don't worry, I won't shoot you.” He laughed.

“What about my car?”

“Couldn't be safer,” he said. “Nobody's gonna heist it, not in this town.”

I crawled in and sank to my hips in an elegant, maroon velvet backseat. The plush floor carpeting belonged in somebody's living room. The car had push-button windows, a radiophone, an Atwater-Kent radio built into the back of the front passenger seat with four loudspeakers in back and two in the front, and a small cubbyhole, which held a bottle of Irish Mist, four highball glasses, and a small, hammered silver ice bucket.

“Very plush,” I said patting the seat. “Where's the bathtub, in the trunk?”

He chuckled.
Okay, pal,
I thought,
just what is your game?
It didn't take long to find out.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I'm sorry; you're just doing your job.”

“What about all that paranoia: I'm snooping for your competition, I'm trying to set up my own grift . . . ?”

“Forget I said it.”

“Okay, it's forgotten.”

“I got an hour to kill,” he said, “I thought I'd give you the twenty-five-cent tour.”

“Where are we going?”

“You've seen the village. We're going up on the Hill.”

“What's the Hill?”

“It's where the money hides,” he said.

He rested his right ankle on his left knee and took out an old-fashioned gold pocket watch. Culhane snapped it open and checked the time, and said to the driver, “We got some time, Rusty, take the scenic route.” And to me, “You don't have an appointment right now, do you?”

“I don't know, my date book's back in the car.”

Culhane laughed. “You got one for every occasion, don't you, Cowboy.”

We drove around the park. Two small kids were on the swings. They were swinging in opposite directions and ducking every time they passed each other. An elderly gent was standing next to the slide, gently trying to coax his granddaughter, who was sitting on the top rung and hanging on for dear life, into sliding down. More Norman Rockwell stuff. Cheery little robots having the time of their lives.

“By the way, are my boys doing any better?” Culhane asked. “I had a talk with them.”

“I got behind them and dogged the Pontiac for a while,” I said. “In case you're interested, I'm not planning to litter the sidewalk or rob a bank. Why the hell am I getting the squeeze?”

“You've had a curious effect on some of our most substantial citizens.”

“You've already told me that. I'm just doing my job.”

“You sticking with that story about burying the widow?”

I sighed. “What would suit you better: I needed a day out of town because the weather's been awful? Incidentally, speaking of banks, I find it interesting that there are four of them in a town this size. I would think one, two at the most, would be sufficient.”

“A lot of very rich people live up here,” he said as we approached the Hill. “They like to own a piece of the institution they bank with.”

“And if there aren't enough pieces they start their own?”

“That's the way it plays.”

We slowed down as we approached a steel gate as imposing as the Great Wall of China. The uniformed gateman stooped over and saluted Culhane as we drove through to enter a natural greenhouse. Trees shouldered the road and formed a wall between the street and the residences, all of them shielded by the foliage.

“I'm sorry I can't help you with that bank thing,” he said. “I called a couple of bank people and they are adamant about not showing those checks without a subpoena.”

“I didn't have any trouble in L.A.”

“You're more sophisticated down there. We're just country folks.”

He said this as we passed mansions and estates, hidden back from the road among pines, live oaks, cypress trees, and eucalyptus. The lawns were manicured and bordered with flowers, all open in all their glory: yellow daffodils, roses, sword lilies, begonias, daisies as big as a spare tire. Occasionally, there was a car parked under a porte cochere or sitting in the driveway. Through the foliage I spotted a four-seat Mercedes convertible, a Rolls, two Lincoln touring cars, and a Stutz. The houses were even more impressive. No two were alike; every kind of architecture imaginable was represented in this discreet but elegant neighborhood.

The road wound its way to the top of the foothill, where it traveled along the ridge with the town spread out below us. A silver Duesenberg roared past. I glimpsed the driver, a dark-haired fellow wearing a navy blue golfer's tam cocked over one eye. A mile later, as the road turned back into the trees, we passed a gate that led to a Tudor-styled, three-story, brick-and-beamed manor. It dominated the ridge and was about two hundred yards back from the road, sitting on about twenty acres of property. The third floor had steepled and stained-glass windows. The gate was open and a black Pierce-Arrow was sitting beside the house, in front of the matching garage, in a turnaround as big as a baseball diamond. The hired man slowly rubbed wax deep into its already sparkling finish. Behind the house, the crest rolled down and away from the house to a paddock and pasture, and half a mile or so beyond it, at the foot of the cliffs, was the Pacific Ocean, looking as serene and placid as a fish pond.

“Nice little place,” I said.

“That's the Gorman estate,” he answered.

“He's the one who wasn't at the bank when I went calling, then walked out after I left, and drove off in that Pierce-Arrow.”

“He plays golf every afternoon,” Culhane said, and not apologetically. “That was him in the Duesenberg on his way to the club.”

“He's got lousy manners.”

“Nobody invited you to go in his bank,” Culhane said, snuffing out his cigarette.

“He doesn't strike me as the sort who would worry too much about the confidentiality of a bunch of checks that were addressed to a woman who is now dead.”

“You have to get to know this community,” Culhane said. “Then maybe you'll understand.”

“You mean they're all so goddamned rich they're innately rude?”

He threw me a sideways glance but made no response to that.

“What are we doing up here, Captain?”

“I just told you; I'm introducing you to San Pietro. The part the tourists never see.”

“You invited me to leave town two hours ago.”

“It was a dumb thing to do. I
was
a little paranoid. Osterfelt and Bellini are both bottom-feeders. They've got their hands in most of the pockets in Sacramento. I wouldn't put anything past them.”

“Is that why you're running for governor?”

“I'm running for governor so I can get out of here. Except for my years in the Marines, I've been in San Pietro all my life. If I don't move on now, I never will. I'm almost sixty.”

“I can understand that. It's a cute little spot but I can see how it could get very boring after an hour or two.”

“I can beat those two bums,” he said with a touch of bitterness. “Sometimes you need leadership that hasn't been tainted by longevity.”

“You think you can change anything up there?”

“Probably not,” he said, and grinned, “but I can sure drive the bastards crazy.”

I laughed along with him. “Hell, that makes it worthwhile, then. What makes you think you can whip a couple of ward heelers like those two?”

“Numbers,” he said. “Right now, no one's calling the game; it's close to fifty-fifty, with Bellini getting the edge. But those voting for Osterfelt are doing so because they think Bellini is a bigger crook. And vice versa for the Bellini voters. All I need to do is get forty percent of the voters who want an honest man, no matter who he is.”

“That's pretty cynical.”

“That's politics: cynicism and hypocrisy. It doesn't require anything but a quick tongue and a big grin. It certainly doesn't require intelligence or honesty.”

As we came around a bend in the road, the trees thinned out and I saw a house two hundred feet back on the right. It was a three-story, classic Victorian, at the end of a pebbled drive lined on both sides with sandford hedges. There were a scattering of avocado trees interspersed with tall, slender Roman pines behind the hedgerow. I couldn't tell what was to the right of the drive behind the hedgerow, but there was a lot of land back there.

The gate was ornate and impressive, ten feet of black iron, with curlicues and spirals to make it seem less imposing. They didn't work. The gate said “keep out” in no uncertain terms, but just in case the message didn't come across, the fence adjoining it was an eight-footer with spikes at the top of the stanchions. A guardhouse at one corner of the fence completed the picture. The gates were open.

“Can we slow down a minute?” I asked.

Rusty stopped the car and I lowered the window on my side.

The house was white with pale blue trim and had five towering gables across the front. There was a twelve-foot, arched porte cochere, with beveled supports, over the entrance. The door was leaded glass. Even at two hundred feet, its facade shimmered with prismed light. The drive separated about seventy-five feet from the entrance and circled into it, forming a grass island, in the center of which was a small nude statue of a Greek goddess holding a tilted jar. Water poured from it into the small pond at her feet. There was an adjunct to the road that led straight from the covered entrance into what I assumed was a parking lot south of the mansion.

I had seen the place from the other side of the basin and knew it had a broad lawn in the rear that ended at the edge of cliff that dropped straight into the Pacific.

I was guessing there were at least fifteen bedrooms above the first floor. The main floor probably had a library, billiard room, dining room, living room, and whatever other cubbyholes were necessary to let rich people know the owner was richer. Behind the mansion, far out over the Pacific, the sky was black with storm clouds forming on the horizon. About halfway down the drive a gray rabbit stuck its head out of the hedge, looked around, and started to hop to the other side. It stopped suddenly, turned, its feet kicking up stones, and bolted back to safety moments ahead of a speckled hawk that swept across the road, its claws distended, and then pulled up sharply over the hedgerow.

No other name but Grand View would have fit.

It made the Gorman place look like a dollhouse.

“Now that's a sight,” I said.

But in my mind I imagined gunshots in the night; Culhane charging through these gates in his 1920 Ford; a thug named McGurk staggering out of the house and blowing out the windshield before Culhane dropped him into the hedgerow with a single shot in the eye. I imagined Culhane rushing the living room. Three more shots. A woman's scream.

And I wondered who shot whom when those last three gunshots rang out in the night.

I sat back in the car seat.

“I'll bet the inside of that joint would give John Jacob Astor a start,” I said.

“Cost you five bills to find out.”

“Not likely.”

He handed me one of Rusty's freshly rolled cigarettes and we lit up. Rusty dropped the Packard into gear and pulled away. The window slid quietly up as if someone in the house had prompted it.

About twenty yards ahead of us, a road curved off to our right and then dipped sharply down and curved around the cliff and out of sight. The ocean was in front of and below it. Another spectacular view. A bright red sawhorse with lanterns on both ends of it blocked the road.

“What's that?” I asked.

“It's Cliffside Road. We closed it several years ago; too dangerous.” He tapped Rusty on the shoulder. “Let's take Cliffside down,” he said. If that made the driver nervous he didn't show it. He stopped, got out, swung the sawhorse out of the way, got back in the car, drove a dozen feet beyond it, then got out and moved the sawhorse back in place. We started down a narrow, steep, curvy, precipitous road in first gear. There was no guardrail. Four feet from the road, the cliff made a dead drop two hundred feet straight down to the rocks and the ocean. Three feet on the other side, it went straight up. The Packard hugged the safe side of the road, rocks and pebbles spitting under the wheels. About a hundred feet along, we rounded a sharp curve and came on a wide shoulder in the road, big enough to handle six or seven cars. There was a waist-high stone wall around its entire perimeter and an old, crumbling stone bench on one side.

Without being told, Rusty pulled off on the shoulder and parked. He pulled on the hand brake and turned off the ignition with the car in gear.

“Better leave your hat in the car,” Culhane said, tossing his black fedora on the seat. I did the same and followed him out on the shoulder, trying to conceal my terror. A hard wind rose swiftly up the side of the mountain from the ocean, whipping Culhane's hair around his ears. I don't like heights. I don't like narrow roads and steep cliffs. I also don't like drop-off shoulders on those narrow roads.

“It's perfectly safe,” he said, walking to the edge and standing with one foot on the stone wall.

“You're giving me the creeps,” I managed to tell him.

“It's okay,” he said. “This is the safest spot on the road. Don't look down, you'll be fine.”

I walked slowly to the stone wall. When I got to it, I reached down and grabbed it with both hands. I looked straight out at the Pacific. Black storm clouds broiled far out to sea and I could see the rain line sweeping across the ocean. A white pontoon plane with a blue stripe down the side banked into the mouth of the bay a mile away and circled toward us, flying parallel to the cliff. It circled all the way around the basin and swept in over the sailboats, then settled down slowly. The two pontoons smacked into the bay and churned twin wakes behind them. It turned and taxied slowly toward the pier.