The Galton Case (13 page)

“Murder is the crime we’re talking about. Who killed him, Marian? Was it Culligan?”

“Who says anybody killed him? He pulled up stakes and went away. The whole family did.”

“Brown didn’t go very far, just a foot or two underground. They dug him up last spring, all but his head. His head was missing. Who cut it off, Marian?”

The ugliness rose like smoke in the room, spreading to its far corners, fouling the light at the window. The ugliness entered the woman and stained her eyes. Her lips moved, trying to find the words that would exorcise it. I said:

“I’ll make a bargain with you, and keep it if I can. I don’t
want to hurt your boy. I’ve got nothing against you or your husband. I suspect you’re material witness to a murder. Maybe the law would call it accessory—”

“No.” She shook her head jerkily. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe not. I’m not interested in pinning anything on you. If you’ll tell me the whole truth as you know it, I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. But it has to be the whole truth, and I have to have it now. A lot depends on it.”

“How could a lot depend, after all these years?”

“Why did Culligan die, after all these years? I think that the two deaths are connected. I also think that you can tell me how.”

Her deeper, cruder personality rose to the surface. “What do you think I am, a crystal ball?”

“Stop fooling around,” I said sharply. “We only have a few minutes. If you won’t talk to me alone, you can talk in front of your husband.”

“What if I refuse to talk at all?”

“You’ll be having another visit from the cops. It’ll start here and end up at the courthouse. And everybody west of the Rockies will have a chance to read all about it in the papers. Now talk.”

“I need a minute to think.”

“You’ve had it. Who murdered Brown?”

“I didn’t know he was murdered, not for sure. Culligan wouldn’t let me go back to the house after that night. He said the Browns moved on, bag and baggage. He even tried to give me money he said they left for me.”

“Where did he get it?”

After a silence, she blurted: “He stole it from them.”

“Did he murder Brown?”

“Not Culligan. He wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“Who did?”

“There was another man. It must have been him.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

“I hardly remember. I only saw him the once, and it was at night.”

Her story was turning vague, and it made me suspicious. “Are you sure the other man existed?”

“Of course he did.”

“Prove it.”

“He was a jailbird,” she said. “He escaped from San Quentin. He used to belong to the same gang Culligan did.”

“What gang is that?”

“I wouldn’t know. It broke up long before I married Culligan. He never talked about his gang days. I wasn’t interested.”

“Let’s get back to this man who broke out of ‘Q.’ He must have had a name. Culligan must have called him something.”

“I don’t remember what.”

“Try harder.”

She looked toward the window. Her face was drawn in the tarnished light.

“Shoulders. I think it was Shoulders.”

“No last name?”

“Not that I remember. I don’t think Culligan ever told me his last name.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big man, dark-haired. I never really saw him, not in the light.”

“What makes you think he murdered Brown?”

She answered in a low voice, to keep her house from hearing: “I heard them arguing that night, in the middle of the night. They were sitting out in my car arguing about money. The other man—Shoulders—said that he’d knock off Pete, too, if he didn’t get his way. I heard him say it.
The walls of the shack we lived in were paper thin. This Shoulders had a kind of shrill voice, and it cut through the walls like a knife. He wanted all the money for himself, and most of the jewels.

“Pete said it wasn’t fair, that he was the finger man and should have an equal split. He needed money, too, and God knows that he did. He always needed money. He said that a couple of hot rubies were no good to him. That was how I guessed what happened. Little Mrs. Brown had these big red jewels, I always thought they were glass. But they were rubies.”

“What happened to the rubies?”

“The other man took them, he must of. Culligan settled for part of the money, I guess. At least he was flush for a while.”

“Did you ever ask him why?”

“No. I was afraid.”

“Afraid of Culligan?”

“Not him so much.” She tried to go on, but the words stuck in her throat. She plucked at the skin of her throat as if to dislodge them. “I was afraid of the truth, afraid he’d tell me. I didn’t want to believe what happened, I guess. That argument I heard outside our house—I tried to pretend to myself it was all a dream. I was in love with Culligan in those days. I couldn’t face my own part in it.”

“You mean the fact that you didn’t take your suspicions to the police?”

“That would have been bad enough, but I did worse. I was the one responsible for the whole thing. I’ve lived with it on my conscience for over twenty years. It was all my fault for not keeping my loud mouth shut.” She gave me an up-from-under look, her eyes burning with pain: “Maybe I ought to be keeping it shut now.”

“How were you responsible?”

She hung her head still lower. Her eyes sank out of sight
under her black brows. “I told Culligan about the money,” she said. “Mr. Brown kept it in a steel box in his room. I saw it when he paid me. There must have been thousands of dollars. And I had to go and mention it to my hus—to Culligan. I would have done better to go and cut my tongue out instead.” She raised her head, slowly, as if she was balancing a weight. “So there you have it.”

“Did Brown ever tell you where
he
got the money?”

“Not really. He made a joke about it—said he stole it. But he wasn’t the type.”

“What type was he?”

“Mr. Brown was a gentleman, at least he started out to be a gentleman. Until he married that wife of his. I don’t know what he saw in her outside of a pretty face. She didn’t know from nothing, if you ask me. But he knew plenty, he could talk your head off.”

She gasped. The enormity of the image struck her. “God! They cut his head off?” She wasn’t asking me. She was asking the dark memories flooding up from the basement of her life.

“Before death or after, we don’t know which. You say you never went back to the house?”

“I never did. We went back to San Francisco.”

“Do you know what happened to the rest of the family, the wife and son?”

She shook her head. “I tried not to think about them. What did happen to them?”

“I’m not sure, but I think they went east. The indications are they got away safe, at any rate.”

“Thank God for that.” She tried to smile, and failed. Her eyes were still intent on the guilty memory. She looked at the walls of her living-room as if they were transparent. “I guess you wonder what kind of a woman I am, that I could run out on a patient like that. Don’t think it didn’t bother me. I almost went out of my mind for a while that winter. I
used to wake up in the middle of the night and listen to Culligan’s breathing and wish it would stop. But I stuck to him for five more years after that. Then I divorced him.”

“And now he’s stopped breathing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You could have hired a gun to knock him off. He was threatening to make trouble for you. You have a lot to lose.” I didn’t believe it, but I wanted to see what she would make of it.

Her two hands went to her breasts and grasped them cruelly. “Me? You think I’d do that?”

“To keep your husband and son, you would. Did you?”

“No. For God’s sake, no.”

“That’s good.”

“Why do you say that?” Her eyes were dull with the sickness of the past.

“Because I want you to keep what you have.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“I’m going to, though. I’m going to keep you out of the Culligan case. As for the information you’ve given me, I’m going to use it for private reference only. It would be easier for me if I didn’t—”

“So you want to be paid for your trouble, is that it?”

“Yes, but not in money. I want your confidence, and any other information you can give me.”

“But there isn’t any more. That’s all there is.”

“What happened to Shoulders?”

“I don’t know. He must of got away. I never heard of him again.”

“Culligan never mentioned him?”

“No. Honest.”

“And you never brought the subject up?”

“No. I was too much of a coward.”

A car entered the driveway. She started, and went to the window. The light outside was turning dusky gray. In the
yard across the street, red roses burned like coals. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, as if she wanted to wipe out all her past experiences, live innocent in an innocent world.

The little boy burst through the door. Matheson came at his heels, balancing a cake box in his hands.

“Well, I got the darn thing.” He thrust it into my hands. “That takes care of the church supper.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said brusquely, and turned to his wife: “Is supper ready? I’m starved.”

She stood on the far side of the room, cut off from him by the ugliness. “I didn’t make supper.”

“You didn’t make it? What is this? You said you’d have it ready when I got home.”

Hidden forces dragged at her face, widening her mouth, drawing deep lines between her eyes. Suddenly her eyes were blind with tears. The tears ran in the furrows of her face. Sobbing, she sat on the edge of the hearth like an urchin on a curb.

“Marian? What’s the mater? What’s the trouble, kiddie?”

“I’m not a good wife to you.”

Matheson went across the room to her. He sat on the hearth beside her and took her in his arms. She buried her face in his neck.

The boy started toward them, and then turned back to me. “Why is Mother crying?”

“People cry.”

“I don’t cry,” he said.

I
DROVE
back across the ridge toward the last fading light in the sky. On the road that wound down to Luna Bay I passed an old man with a burlap bag on his back. He was one of the old-time hoboes who follow the sun like migratory birds. But the birds fly, and the men walk. The birds mate and nest; the old men have no nests. They pace out their lives along the roadsides.

I stopped and backed up and gave him the cake.

“Thank you very kindly.” His mouth was a rent in shaggy fur. He put the cake in his bag. It was a cheap gift, so I gave him a dollar to go with it. “Do you want a ride into town?”

“No, thank you very kindly. I’d smell up your car.”

He walked away from me with a long, slow, swinging purposeless stride, lost in a dream of timeless space. When I passed him, he didn’t raise his bearded head. He was like a moving piece of countryside on the edge of my headlight beam.

I had fish and chips at a greasy spoon and went to the sheriff’s substation. It was eight by the clock on the wall above Mungan’s desk. He looked up from his paperwork:

“Where you been? The Brown kid’s been looking for you.”

“I want to see him. Do you know where he went?”

“Over to Doc Dineen’s house. They’re pretty good friends. He told me that the doc is teaching him how to play chess. That game was always a little over my head. Give me a hand of poker any time.”

I went around the end of the counter and complied with his request, in a way:

“I’ve been doing some asking around. A couple of things came up that ought to interest you. You say you knew some of the hoods in these parts, back in the early thirties. Does the name Culligan mean anything to you?”

“Yeah. Happy Culligan, they called him. He was in the Red Horse mob.”

“Who were his friends?”

“Let’s see.” Mungan stroked his massive chin. “There was Rossi, Shoulders Nelson, Lefty Dearborn—all of them Lempi’s guns. Culligan was more the operator type, but he liked to hang around with the guns.”

“What about Shoulders Nelson?”

“He was about the hardest limb in the bunch. Even his buddies were afraid of him.” A trace of his boyhood admiration showed in Mungan’s eyes. “I saw him beat Culligan to a pulp one night. They both wanted the same girl.”

“What girl?”

“One of the girls upstairs at the Red Horse. I didn’t know her name. Nelson shacked up with her for a while, I heard.”

“What did Nelson look like?”

“He was a big man, almost as big as me. The women went for him, he must have been good-looking to them. I never thought so, though. He was a mean-looking bastard, with a long sad face and mean eyes. Him and Rossi and Dearborn got sent up the same time as Lempi.”

“To Alcatraz?”

“Lempi went there, when the Government took it over. But the others took the fall on a larceny charge. Highjacking. The three of them went to San Quentin.”

“What happened to them after that?”

“I didn’t keep any track of them. I wasn’t in law enforcement at the time. Where is all this supposed to be leading?”

“Shoulders Nelson may be the killer you want,” I said. “Would your Redwood City office have a dossier on him?”

“I doubt that. He hasn’t been heard of around here in
more than twenty-five years. It was a state case, anyway.”

“Then Sacramento should have it. You could have Redwood City teletype them.”

Mungan spread his hands on the desk-top and stood up, wagging his big head slowly from side to side. “If all you got is a hunch, you can’t use official channels to test it out for you.”

“I thought we were co-operating.”

“I am. You’re not. I’ve been doing the talking, you’ve been doing the listening. And this has been going on for quite some time.”

“I told you Nelson’s probably our killer. That’s a fairly big mouthful.”

“By itself, it doesn’t do anything for me.”

“It could if you let it. Try querying Sacramento.”

“What’s your source of information?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Like that, eh?”