Bad Samaritan (2 page)

He hadn’t succeeded in the pros, and had gone up to San Valdesto after two bad years in the pay-for-play leagues. There, he bought a small filling station in the Mexican district and earned just about enough for beans and franks.

Three years ago he had become involved in trouble with the law, and loyal Brock Callahan had gone up there (at no charge) to clear him—and make myself no longer welcome, at least to the police, in that perpetual vacationland ninety miles from here.

Now he had fulfilled his classmates’ prophecy; he had succeeded the easy way. Now, maybe, I would get partial payment for a full week of investigative work I had squandered on him. Pine Valley Country Club in Montevista was one sweet golf course.

I could use some clean air and a weekend among the idle rich. Jan is a decorator and all her clients are rich. That is probably the main reason we had never got married.

So, on Saturday I packed my swimming trunks and my golf clubs in the old Ford and drove up to San Valdesto, a town with a minimum of smog and a maximum of rich people, a retreat from reality.

The opponents Skip lined up for two days of best-ball competition were rich enough to make their bets scary to me, but not to them. Or, I suppose, to Skip now.

I’ve forgotten the name of one of them; he was a friend of June Christopher’s, a visitor from Carmel who had sharpened his skills at Pebble Beach.

The other player wasn’t easy to forget; he was a real tiger, who carried his partner on both days. His name was Silas Marner. He had explained to me on the first tee on the first day that he had been named after his mother’s favorite story.

I think that was the last word he said to me until we were drinking in the clubhouse later. Between the first tee and the eighteenth green, Silas Marner insulated himself from all the amenities and concentrated on winning.

After the showers and over the booze, he became a human being again. After the second drink, he invited us all over for dinner the next night.

T
HE MARNER HOME WAS
probably expensive, designed by a famous Swedish architect, a strangely angled tall and wide structure, featuring California redwood inside and out. It was in Slope Ranch, a suburb on the other end of town from Montevista.

To my middle-class, pedestrian taste, it looked a little outré. But the food was great, the company genial, the liquor free. The man, I decided, who threw those kinds of parties could be forgiven both for this house and for his “winning is everything” conduct on the links.

It was a buffet dinner, and we weren’t the only guests; there must have been at least twenty. The dialogue decibels rose as the alcohol went down.

I was seeking a quiet corner when Si’s mother beckoned to me from the doorway to the den. When I went over, she said, “It’s quieter in here, and I’d like to talk with you.”

Either Silas Marner was a great reader or a compulsive book buyer; three of the four walls in the room were lined with books.

Mrs. Marner was a woman of about sixty-five, thin and short. Her gray hair was pulled straight back, her simple yellow linen dress could have been expensive, but I didn’t think so. Her bright blue eyes in that thin, tanned face seemed to sparkle in the room’s dim light.

“Si told me you’re a private investigator,” she said.

I nodded.

“Have you done any missing persons work down there in Los Angeles?”

“Some,” I said. “Let’s sit down. That noise was getting to me out there.”

“And me,” she said. “Yakety-yakety-yak. And nobody says anything. I can’t understand how Si can stand it. He’s not nearly as dumb as he looks.” We sat together on a leather couch.

“Judging by his library,” I said, “he can’t be very dumb.”

“Oh, not that way. But when he isn’t playing golf or reading, he’s throwing parties. Is that a constructive life?”

“I guess not, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m not
that
old. My name is Maude.”

“Okay, Maude. Who is this missing person, a lover?”

“Watch your tongue, Callahan. It’s a girl. I’m not sure she’s down in Los Angeles, but that’s the last place her friends up here know about. She stopped writing to them some time ago.”

“Do her parents live up here?”

“Yes. Her mother is a waitress and her father is a slob. It’s the mother I worry about. She’s a good friend of mine.”

“Has she made any effort to find her daughter?”

“None.”

“Then why—”

“Never mind the why. I want to find her. You could send the information to me and the bill to Si. I don’t live with him here. I live down where the people live.”

“I knew we were soul mates,” I said. “There won’t be any bill. You give me your address and her name and I’ll prowl around when I’m not working on a case. Okay?”

“Okay.” She handed me a slip of paper. “It’s all right there. Now, go and join your drunken playmates.”

“I’d rather sit here with you,” I said.

“I don’t blame you. So run out and get me a glass of sherry and yourself another tumbler of booze, and we’ll talk about something besides golf and bridge and capital gains.”

I brought her the sherry and myself another jolt, and we sat in that book-lined room and talked about other things. Si was her only child, I learned. His father had died when he was twelve, and that’s when she had begun to work. Si had started as a carpenter’s helper when he finished high school, and wound up as one of the state’s biggest builders, a real Horatio Alger story.

“I can’t understand a man who worked that hard winding up with these—these butterflies!” she said.

“It couldn’t have been all work with him. Nobody who plays six-handicap golf could have spent all his time working.”

“He started caddying when he was ten, during the school vacations,” she explained. “He was always tall and he lied about his age.”

“The habit persisted, he’s no six-handicapper. I’ve played against scratch players with weaker games than his.”

“He is a very competitive man. I suppose golf is the only outlet he has for it now.”

Then, from the doorway, my beloved said, “What are you two party poopers doing in here?”

“Getting away from a poopy party,” said Maude. “When are you going to marry this wonderful man, Jan?”

“When he decides to get into some sensible work. Brock, if you’re going home tonight, we’d better leave. It’s almost midnight.”

“Okay. I’ll be in touch with you, Maude.”

“Thank you. Jan, you’d better grab this man while you can.”

An hour later, Jan stood next to my waiting Mustang and asked, “Why can’t we get married and live up here?”

“What could I do up here?”

“I have about seventy thousand put away. You could buy some kind of business with that. You’re not dumb, Brock.”

“And I’m not Skip Lund. I earn my own way, lady.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Seventy thousand dollars hardly ranks me with the Christophers. Call it a loan.”

“Dump me,” I said. “There must be a dozen solid citizens you could marry in this town. You really don’t need me. I need you, but you don’t need me.”

“No more than my heart,” she said. “Damn you! Get the hell out of here! Go!”

“When will I see you?”

“When I come over the horizon. Good night!”

I kissed her and headed for home, back toward Westwood, back to reality.

Skip was sure living high off the hog, the worst thing that could have happened to him. At university he had been considered a great passing quarterback, but Stanford had turned out other quarterbacks who, though with far less natural talent than Skip, had gone on to fame, fortune and glory in the pros. In the play-for-pay leagues,
everybody
on the squad puts out two hundred percent, or you can forget about the Super Bowl. Skip had been born too good; it had made him less than he should have been.

He had never had to work that hard in college, not learned to work that hard when it paid off. He had his skill and his charm and his looks. It had been easy for him to marry money. He could have done it a half dozen times when he was at Stanford.

I had thought that crummy little gas station he ran in San Valdesto would finally make a man of him. When you are making a living selling an independent brand of cut-rate gasoline in competition with the major oil companies, man, you are putting out. Those big firms take a dim view of free enterprise. Skip had survived. Given time, he might have been successful.

I cut over to the coast road at Oxnard, to get away from the jammed freeway traffic—and spent an extra hour in the going-home traffic from the beaches.

I had no job scheduled for tomorrow; maybe I could prowl Sunset and then the Venice district and ask my contacts there if they had ever run into a girl named Patty Serano.

She could be living the free will, free speech, health food life in Venice or the life of a hooker on Sunset Boulevard. With today’s kids, there was no way of knowing.

Nor, as I settled into my lumpy bed, did I have any way of knowing that I, too, would be starting a new life tomorrow.

T
HE NAME OF THE
law firm was Weede, Robbins, McCulloch and Adler. The woman who phoned me next morning was Grant Robbins’s secretary. Could he see me at two o’clock this afternoon?

Business on Friday and now a new job to start the week. Things were picking up. “I’ll be there,” I promised.

They were a prestige firm and would pay my top rates. It probably wouldn’t be divorce work. If it was, I’d take it. Earlier in my career I wouldn’t accept divorce work. Earlier in my career I didn’t handle bail bonds, either. Hunger and the advancing years can alter adolescent attitudes.

His office was spacious and paneled, with a couple of Degas pastels on one wall and a Matisse print on another. He was a tall man, well tailored and quiet voiced.

He shook my hand and said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I smiled, admitting nothing.

“You nailed me for an eighteen-yard loss,” he prompted, “when you were at Stanford.”

I remembered him now, a sub quarterback for Cal. “I remember,” I said. “You almost beat us before the afternoon was over.”

“My best day,” he admitted. “We never had a winning day against Stanford when you and Lund were there. But who did? Sit down, Brock, and prepare for the news. Unless you’ve already heard it?”

I shook my head and sat down. This didn’t sound like divorce work.

“We represent the estate of Homer Gallup,” he started—and my mind went blank.

Maybe I suspected. I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything for almost a minute.

Then his voice broke through. “Are you all right? You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing serious. Start over from where you told me to sit down. I missed most of the rest of it.”

In nonlegal terms, Homer’s cousin in Houston and Brock Callahan of Westwood-Beverly Hills were the only heirs to the estate of Homer Gallup. Our shares would be equal.

It was a vulgar thing to ask, but I’m vulgar. “How much?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’s almost impossible to estimate, with estate taxes what they are these days. It should be substantial.”

“More than twelve dollars?”

He smiled comfortingly. “At the most conservative estimate, you can be assured, once we’re through probate, that you’ll be able to live very well without diminishing the principal.”

I didn’t go back to the office. I went directly to Heinie’s for a shot of bourbon and a beaker of Einlicher. Then I phoned San Valdesto from Heinie’s wall phone.

Jan was there. I told her. “You always wanted me to amount to something and I finally have.”

“You landed that insurance company retainer,” she guessed.

“I don’t need it. I have inherited half of Homer’s money.”

A silence on the line.

“Jan?”

The silence continued.

“Jan, are you there?”

“Have you been drinking?” she asked quietly.

“I had an ounce and a half of whiskey and one tall beaker of beer—
after
I got the news.”

“You got the news from a man in a bar?”

“I got the news from a partner in the most distinguished law firm in town, Grant Robbins of Weede, Robbins, McCulloch and Adler. They’re handling the estate. We can be married now, Jan. When?”

“Tomorrow, if it’s true. You stay in the office this afternoon and you stay home tonight!”

“I’m picking up my golf clubs and coming up there,” I told her. “To hell with the office!”

“Brock, are you
sure
?”

“Once we’re through probate, I’ll be solvent. Until then, we’ll skimp along on your little seventy grand. Tell Glenys to lay an extra plate for dinner.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

I still had another duty to perform before I left town. I drove over to Wilshire and down to the impressive offices of the Calvin National Investigative Service.

They had offices in every major city in the country, and they handled all the kinds of investigative work anyone would never need. Lately they had been doing a lot of missing persons searches. The daughters of the rich had turned into wanderers and the fathers of these girls wouldn’t be likely to hire any cheap peeper for that delicate a mission.

I’ve forgotten the name of the local manager, a gray man. Gray hair, gray complexion, dark gray suit.

“Brock Callahan?” he said, and I thought he sniffed. “Aren’t you a—a private investigator?”

“Yes. But I have to go out of town for a while, and I’ve a case I was supposed to start on today. I thought, perhaps, as a professional courtesy, you boys could work on it.”

“Professional courtesy? Our rates, Mr. Callahan, are based on our rather expensive overhead. Is your client prepared to pay our rates?”

“I doubt it. But I am. This is more than just business, the woman who hired me is a good friend.”

“I see. You realize we require a retainer.”

“I do. Unfortunately, at the moment I am rather low on funds. I could give you a couple hundred. And if you wanted to check my credit, you could phone Grant Robbins, of Weede, Robbins—”

He held up a hand. “I know the firm. You’ve done work for them?”

“At the moment,” I said, in my most refined voice, “they are working for me. They’re handling an estate in which I am a major beneficiary.”