Bad Samaritan (4 page)

His smile was thin, but it was a smile. He held out his hand. “Okay. Now that you’re rich.”

I shook his hand and asked, “What did you send back to the station?”

“Some letters and stuff. Every minority organization in town and the American Civil Liberties Union have been on our necks since seven o’clock this morning. You can tell your friend Marner that this case is going to get the full treatment.”

“I’m sure he knows that. But I don’t report to him and I’m not working for him. Could I go inside?”

“If you don’t touch anything. It has been gone over very thoroughly by experts.”

“I know. I just wanted to see how she lived. I’ve never been to her house, though we’ve been friends since before I moved up here. I just want to take a look. Like all establishment figures, I’m sentimental.”

A touch of her fragrance still lingered—yellow laundry soap. She used it to wash her hair, she had informed me, to give it sheen. The place was immaculate and standard, everything built-in, everything designed for twentieth-century compact living.

Some of her many awards were framed on the wood-grained metal walls; even the most humble servant in the service of the Lord is not above displaying his (or her) symbols of achievement.

Vogel had come in with me. “I’ll probably wind up in one of these. Not you, huh?”

“With taxes what they are, who knows? What were those papers you gave the uniformed officer? Was she writing a book?”

“Nothing like that. Mostly letters.”

“And who is Helms? Your lab man?”

He gave me the cool-cop look once more. “Being a concerned citizen doesn’t entitle you to a badge. Why don’t you join the other concerned citizens who are meeting with Chief Harris at two o’clock?”

“Thanks for the invitation. Lieutenant, I read the local paper. I read how you boys are always moaning about being understaffed and underpaid. Here I am, trained, muscular, perceptive—and free! Why all the friction?”

“I remember your tongue,” he said. “And I’ve got a sour bias on private eyes. I’ve seen enough of their shoddy work.”

“Not of mine. Though I admit I could have gone that route. I was about one step away from it when my uncle died. And I swear to you I have no angle in this case.”

He shrugged. “I’m not the boss. Talk it over with Chief Harris. I’ll go in with you. You can meet Helms there, too. He’s not our lab man. He’s Maude Marner’s favorite cop. Seen enough here?”

“For now. Sterile, isn’t it? Not my kind of living.”

He laughed. “It sure as hell ain’t Montevista!”

I talked with Sergeant Joe Helms in his small office while Vogel went in to inform his boss of my presence.

Sergeant Helms was a mahogany-hued man, wide, thick and uniformed. He was Mexican, Puerto Rican and probably some black, he explained to me.

“And some Anglo, the Helms,” I guessed.

He nodded. “My paternal grandfather. Twenty years ago I would have come in here as a janitor. But today, with all the racial tension—” he shrugged “—call me the minority public relations man.”

“You worked with Maude?”

“At times. And with the Urban League and the A.C.L.U. and half a dozen other outfits in town. The new police image, you know—”

“You sound cynical, Sergeant.”

“Frustration can make a man cynical. This is a real stingy town when it comes to anything that smells like welfare.”

“I know. I’ve listened to some of our leading citizens orate on the subject. You don’t think Maude committed suicide, do you?”

“Who can know? According to her doctor she had some kind of cancer. Nobody here released that story. I don’t know where the media got it. I would guess, if Maude Marner decided to take the big step, she would have found a more ladylike way, maybe sleeping pills.”

“Autopsy finished?”

He nodded.

“Anything? Pills?”

“Nothing but carbon monoxide.”

“What about those papers Lieutenant Vogel sent in? Have you looked them over?”

His smile was slight and scornful. “Letters. I have no idea why he sent them in. Don’t quote me, but Bernie Vogel. …” He shrugged. “Well, if I don’t say anything you can’t quote me. If you’re going to be working on this, you can look at ʼem.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to. Chief Harris and I didn’t exactly make music the last time we met.”

“I heard about that. You were an L.A. peeper then. Now you live in Montevista. To Chief Harris and Lieutenant Vogel, that could make a big difference. That is another nonquote, you understand?”

I nodded.

“If you work on it,” he continued, “you’ll probably be working with me. I am their minority star on this one.”

“We’re both big enough,” I said. “I hope we’re bright enough.”

Vogel came in a few seconds later to tell me that the chief would see me now.

He hadn’t changed much, penguin shaped, snow-white hair, red face. His voice had lost some grate, but it still jangled the nerves. He stood up from behind his desk. “Well, Mr. Callahan, we meet again!” He held out a hand and managed a smile.

“It’s been a while,” I said genially.

“Hasn’t it, though? The Avila business, wasn’t it?”

“Lund,” I corrected him. “Warren Temple Lund, known as Skip.”

“Of course, of course! Sorry. Lieutenant Vogel tells me you would like to act as a sort of citizen observer on the unfortunate affair of last night.”

“I had hoped for a more active role than observer, sir.”

“Yes, of course. That was—badly phrased. Dealing with the public, as I have to, I have developed a tendency toward euphemisms. But that’s neither here nor there. Lieutenant Vogel thought you could work with Sergeant Helms. The lieutenant will work with both of you for a day or two.”

“Then you plan a longer investigation, than a day or two?”

His soft face hardened. “I plan to stay with it until no citizen in this town has any grounds for complaint.”

I nodded.

A trace of softness returned to his face. “There will be a conference in this office at two o’clock this afternoon. Some of the bleeding hearts—I mean, some of the leaders of various citizen groups will be here. I thought we might suggest you as their representative on the investigation. Weren’t you with the Dodgers, or the Lakers?”

“The Rams, sir. That was some time ago.”

“Well, very few of ʼem are young. They’ll probably remember you. At two, then?”

“I’ll be here. Thank you, Chief.”

I went out into the corridor and saw a ghost talking to Vogel. I couldn’t remember for a few seconds where I had seen him before. And then, as I walked over to join them, I remembered the tall, thin man silhouetted against the hall light that gloomy night.

“George Ulver,” I said, “of the Westwood Village Mortuary.”

He nodded, frowning.

“I identified Homer Gallup’s body at your place this spring,” I reminded him.

He nodded again, his face showing no recognition, and turned back to Vogel. “The way it is, with Mrs. Marner, you see, she belonged to the local South Coast Memorial Society and we handle all the funeral arrangements for the society’s members. I was wondering just how soon we—”

I went down to the fountain for a drink of water while Vogel explained to Ulver what forms were required before the department could release the body.

When he had finished, he asked me, “Ready for lunch? Maybe we should talk about that two-o’clock meeting?”

“Let’s go to the club,” I suggested. “I’ll buy.”

“Montevista?”

“Pine Valley.”

“That’s kind of fancy. I’d better wash first.”

“You can wash there,” I said. “We installed running water last week.”

We took my car. He stared at it before he got into it. “How old is this heap?”

“Fifteen years. It’s the first year Ford brought ʼem out. It’s a classic, man.”

“Sure. I guess if you’re rich enough, you can drive anything.”

In the grill at the club, another ghost was at the bar when we entered. At least, it was a ghost for Vogel, or maybe an ogre.

Skip Lund saw me, started over, saw Vogel—and stopped.

“Keep coming, Skip,” I said. “That was a long time ago and we’re all grown up now. Come on over and shake Lieutenant Vogel’s hand.”

“Sorry!” Skip said curtly. He turned back to the bar.

“Maybe I don’t blame him,” Vogel commented quietly. “He’s not the only local citizen who thought I tried to railroad him. How come they let him into a fancy club like this?”

“He’s a fancy guy,” I said, “just like I am. All Stanford grads are fancy guys.”

“That translates into rich.”

“Maybe. When you tried to railroad him, he was a poor guy. You can’t win ʼem all, Bernie.”

“I can’t win any,” he said. “My poor wife has to work as a part-time school librarian.”

J
AN WAS ON THE
phone when I got home that afternoon, complaining to the Beverly Hills furniture store again about another late shipment.

When she hung up, she said, “Glenys wants a new sofa and she insists I order it through them. It’s frustrating!”

Jan and Sergeant Helms, they both had their frustrations, though in separate worlds. I smiled at her.

“Well?” she asked.

“I think I’ll go back to golf and booze. I might even try that gin rummy.

“I spent an hour and a half this afternoon in a room full of social activists. If these are the only people concerned about the people, the people are in trouble. But maybe they deserve to be, if you follow me.”

“I’m trying to. Are you saying you’ve become a misanthrope?”

“I’m a Pisces, and you know it. I think I’ll have a drink.”

“Would it be your first today?”

“It will be my third. I had two at lunch with an officer by the name of Lieutenant Bernard Vogel.”

“Make me one, too,” she said. “And then we’ll sit here peacefully and you can tell me about your day.”

We sat in the peaceful room and I told her about my day. On the road in front, the cars went by, the Mercedes, the Porsches, the Cads and the Continentals, even a couple of Rolls-Royces. The working rich were going home to their martinis.

All those fancy people rode past our tiny quarter-of-a-million-dollar cottage in the fringe area, while I recounted my day.

When I d finished, she said, “Sergeant Helms sounds nice. Isn’t Lieutenant Vogel the man who tried to jail Skip?”

“The same man. He was a sergeant then.”

“I still don’t understand about the conference in Chief Harris’s office. What was the point of it?”

“The department was getting a lot of static about Maude’s death being called a suicide. To be chief you have to be more than a cop. It’s a political job.”

“It might have been suicide. Maude had cancer, you know. Couldn’t the chief simply issue a statement?”

“Not to social activists. They demand an encounter. They prefer a small room, so their screams can bounce off the walls. Harris handled it with real political savvy. He maneuvered them into screaming at each other—and then turned the meeting over to Vogel.”

“And the letters?”

“Nothing, so far as I can tell. I brought home Xerox copies. I think I’ll have another drink.”

“You don’t need it. You’re having Einlicher with dinner. I made some enchiladas. I want to get you conditioned for Fiesta. That’s next week, you know.”

Fiesta Week in San Valdesto. Nostalgic people trying to recreate a synthetic past. I could hardly wait.

Maude Marner is dead. That’s real enough. Concentrate on that, misanthrope. The sun went down, the night came on. The enchiladas fought with the Einlicher, causing rumbles in my stomach.

I had learned one thing from the letters: Maude had bridged the generation gap. That square old girl, full of corn-pone homilies, had reached the unreachable kids. The letters were from Laguna, Toronto and Monterey, Taos, Sausalito and Amsterdam, all havens for youthful wanderers.

Their parents’ homilies had driven these wanderers away from home; how was Maude different? To define her in her own language, she practiced what she preached.

These kids, to use the phrase of another homily master, Mr. Ernest Hemingway, had their own sensitive, built-in shit-detectors.

I voiced this thought to Vogel as we stood in front of Maude’s mansion next morning.

He nodded. “They trusted her. We trusted her. She turned a few of them in, if they were likely to become dangerous.”

“She get along with all the cops?”

“I can’t name you one who didn’t like her.”

“But there must have been some kids who didn’t, the ones she turned in. Anything there?”

“Not so far. We’ll be working on it.”

“Another thought I had last night, that engine running so long and nobody coming out to investigate. And then I realized, if I lived here, I wouldn’t come out at night to investigate any strange noises.”

“One man did. Let’s go over and talk with him. He works from four o’clock to midnight. He should be home.”

Home was a twenty-two-foot trailer across the street. An enormous American flag flew proudly from a mast on top of it. The occupant was American, too, standard American red-neck in a T-shirt, beefy and belligerent, a man named Al Pilot.

“That motor wasn’t running more than ten minutes,” he told us from his doorway. “That was horse-shit what you read in the papers, as usual. It didn’t wake me. I was watching the late-late show.”

“You were the only neighbor it bothered?” I asked him.

“I was the only one with guts enough to come out. I’m prepared, see? I got me a twelve-gauge pump in here and a .30-.30 and a big Colt .45 semiautomatic.” He paused, to look down the street. “You live around some kinds of people, you better be armed.”

I must have shown some reaction; he smiled knowingly. “You got me figured for a bigot, right, muscles?”

“I expected it,” I said, “when I saw the flag on your roof.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing I could explain to you in the time we have. We’re here for answers, not to give lectures. You were the only one who came out and she was in the seat next to the driver’s seat?”

“That’s right.”

“Safety belt buckled, shoulder harness, the whole bit?”

“Right! If you guys are thinking murder, look for one of them greasy longhairs she was always feeding.” He gestured toward the ancient leaning cabins at the far end of the street, the dark-complected end. “Or one of
them
.”