Bad Samaritan (5 page)

Vogel said evenly and coldly, “Just answer the questions, we’ll handle the investigation. What time did you get home?”

“I told two cops already. About one o’clock. I stopped at Ordano’s for some groceries. They’re open all night.”

“Her car wasn’t there at one o’clock?”

“Like I told the others—no. Anything else?”

Vogel sighed, shook his head and looked at me. “Brock?”

“No, no questions.”

“Don’t forget what the cops say on the late-late show,” Vogel said. “Don’t leave town, Mr. Pilot.”

He sneered—and clanged the metal door shut.

Vogel expelled a long breath.

“This case is looking less like suicide every minute isn’t it?” I said.

“Why? You figure somebody drove her around town in her car with that hose sticking out the window and back to the tail pipe? I suppose he was wearing a gas mask? Nobody would notice anything that strange driving around town?”

I said nothing.

“Motive, means and opportunity,” he reminded me.

“I know. Otherwise, it’s manslaughter—or suicide?”

“You’re half-right. Suicide needs the same three. Let’s go and talk to the manager.”

She was a thin, fairly young woman with a washed out look and bleached coarse hair. The darkest thing on her was the discoloration around one eye.

“My loving hubby,” she explained before we asked. “He drinks. Next question?”

“We’re trying to establish what time Mrs. Marner left here yesterday.”

“All I know is what I told the last cop who asked. Her car was there around five o’clock, when my old man came home. When we went out for a couple of beers, around seven, it wasn’t there. Didn’t nobody down there see her leave?”

“They were probably eating at that time,” Bernie said. “Between five and seven, there aren’t many people outside, are there?”

“There’s always enough,” she said, “night and day. I guess, outside of Mr. Pilot, they just don’t notice what’s going on around ʼem.”

“And he was at work?”

She nodded. “He drives past here five afternoons a week at exactly three-forty-five. You can set your watch by that man. And you don’t have to wait for his rent money, either.”

“You and your husband own this court?”

She stared. She snorted. “Us? You gotta be kidding. A dump like this? Immigrants and outsiders, they own the dumps like this in San Valdesto. We’re native Americans, mister.”

Bernie nodded wearily. I said, “Let’s go, Lieutenant. I want to look at that empty lot next door.”

We went over to the lot through a heavy silence. I said, “She should have warned us. She should have put Old Glory on her roof.”

“Right. And taken the time to learn some history—and grammar.”

We stood knee-high in grass and weeds littered with discarded beer cans, looking over at the backs of all the trailers on Maude’s side of the court.

He said, “You were thinking the engine could run here for a while? You were thinking that ten minutes of carbon monoxide from a Volkswagen tail pipe isn’t a long enough time?”

“I’m not sure what I was thinking. It was dumb, I realize now. But that street over there—” I pointed toward the slanting street that fronted this triangle lot “—a man could park there. He could gimmick Maude’s car to make it look like suicide, and then walk back across this lot to his own car, and—”

“You’re going too fast for me,” he said.

“Carbon monoxide is carbon monoxide,” I said. “She didn’t have to be gassed in her own car. If it was suicide, why the safety belt? Does that make sense to you?”

“Nothing in this case makes sense to me. Who would want to kill a saint?”

I looked at him doubtfully.

“Dumb,” he admitted. “They have a very high mortality rate, don’t they?”

“The highest. Pilot heard her car running. Maybe it was there but not running when he came home. Did anybody ask him that? We didn’t.”

“Let’s check the record at the station,” he said. “I don’t want to look at that son of a bitch twice in one day.”

We drove through the authentic small-town ghetto of Rivera Street and turned right on Main Street, into the fraudulent neo-Spanish of small-town commercial America. White plaster and red tile, with a touch of imitation adobe here and there.

New shopping centers had sprouted on the edge of town, so the downtown merchants had narrowed Main Street to afford more sidewalk room for the strolling window-shoppers, and multiplied the parking lots.

“My father had a kosher delicatessen here twenty years ago,” Vogel said. “He wanted me to take it over. I was too snooty for that. A college man running a delicatessen?”

I said nothing.

He said, “We get smart when it’s too late, don’t we?”

“Some late, some never. Why the department?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe I wanted to bounce around some of the goyische bully boys who bounced me around when I was a kid. That’s a hell of a reason to be a cop, isn’t it?”

“Better than some I’ve heard. You could have done worse.”

“I could have had a rich uncle, too. Check in with Helms, if he’s back. I’ll see what we have in the records on Pilot.”

T
HE DEPARTMENT’S MAHOGANY-HUED
minority public relations man, Sergeant Joe Helms, was in his small office talking on the phone. The ashtray on his desk was overflowing with cigarette butts, the odor of stale smoke was heavy.

He hung up and said, “A waitress I know, a woman named Mary Serano. She might have something for us.”

“Does she have a daughter named Patty?”

He nodded. “Why?”

“Maude was looking for her a couple of months ago. She must have been doing for it for Patty’s mother.”

“Want to come along and talk with her?”

“I’ll ask Bernie if he needs me first.”

Vogel had some paperwork to do; I went with Helms.

“This Mary Serano,” he briefed me, “is a waitress in a little Italian restaurant Maude liked.” He chuckled. “And she drives a Cadillac.”

“Does she answer calls in her free time?”

“Not Mary. She’s got a big, jealous husband. She books. Small bets at first, half-dollar horseplayers. She must have banked her pennies; she’ll handle anything up to a century note now.”

“You never busted her?”

“Now and then, just to keep her humble. Who gets hurt? Everybody gambles.”

“You don’t think somebody a lot bigger might be banking her?”

He shook his head. “I keep an eye on her. Even Maude would blow a dollar with her once in a while.”

“Maude Marner bet on the ponies?”

“If the odds were right. Her son is probably the third-best poker player in town.” He paused. “After Vogel and Paul Pontius.”

“Who’s Paul Pontius?”

“A guy who lives out your way … a rich guy. He’s retired now.”

“What did he do before he retired? That name seems to ring a bell in my mind.”

“I can’t answer the bell for you. I have my own ideas, which I am keeping to myself.”

“Vogel plays rich man’s poker?”

“About once a year, when Si Marner or Pontius invite him to fill in. Mostly he plays in cheaper games with his friends. Vogel, I think, likes to mix with the upper classes. He can be rough on the peasant types.”

“Most small-town cops are.”

“Not me, mister. I’m as peasant as a man can get.”

The waitress who booked horses, Mary Serano, lived in a pleasant house on a solid middle-class street, undoubtedly the only waitress on the block. She was about fifty, but without sag or wrinkle.

When Helms introduced me to her, at her door, she asked, “Are you the Callahan who is a private investigator in Los Angeles?”

“I was.”

“Mrs. Marner sure thought a lot of you.” She held the door open wider. “Come in.”

In her well-furnished living room, she told us, “Maude was in for dinner a couple night ago. I mentioned to her about this man who threatened me. That happened the night before. I went out to my car, in that lot near the alley, and this man was waiting for me. He told me if I didn’t close down shop, I’d wind up in a wheelchair.”

“How come you didn’t tell me about this when it happened?” Helms asked.

“I didn’t know the police protected bookies from each other. And besides, I have plenty of friends with muscle.”

“But not with guns. You could be way over your head, Mary.”

“I’ll take my chances. Anyway, when I told Mrs. Marner about it, she seemed real disturbed. She said she was going to look into it.”

Helms smiled. “If I had a dime for everything she told me to look into, I’d be retired. Where would she start looking?”

“Who knows? If it’s connected with gambling, her son could know. He sure plays in some big money games.”

“But not with hoodlums.”

“Huh! You mean when they get rich enough they’re no longer hoodlums?”

“Get off that kick, Mary. What did this guy in the parking lot look like?”

“I couldn’t tell in the dark. He was short and he was skinny. I saw what he was driving, though—a yellow El Dorado.”

“He doesn’t shape up as a small-timer,” Helms said. “You were planning to retire, anyway, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t plan to be scared into it.”

“You could cool it for a while, couldn’t you, while I check around?”

She shrugged.

I asked, “Was that the last time you saw Mrs. Marner?”

She nodded.

“How was her mood that night?”

“Cheerful, same as always. But if she had troubles, how would we know? Other people’s troubles bothered her more than her own.”

On the way back to the station, I asked, “How come you let Mary operate? Is that standard department procedure?”

He smiled. “We go a little easier on the locals we trust. In the no-victim vices only, you understand. Rough stuff gets rougher treatment.”

“She’s an informer?”

“No way! Just a local free enterprise bookie.”

“And how come you do detective work in uniform?”

“I explained that to you yesterday. Image, man! The cop with heart, the minority citizen’s fuzz, the long-hair’s friendly pig, all in one visible package, wrapped in department blue.”

I spent the afternoon at the station, up to my navel in papers—interrogations, dossiers, rumors, reports and records, the dismal history of society’s losers, the men without rich uncles. Vogel had called it right; Maude’s death was getting the full treatment.

A thought nagged at me as I gathered up my notes, a picture that couldn’t come into focus. It went away as quickly as it had come. There was nothing in these papers that revealed even one of the deadly triplicate the courts demand: motive, means and opportunity.

Was it possible that Maude had committed suicide? Means and opportunity she had. But no motive had come to light in an afternoon of reading.

I went home at four o’clock to an empty house. I hadn’t had a drink all day. What better time than now, free from the disapproving eye of my spouse? I poured four ounces of distilled corn into a tumbler, added ice, and took it with my notes into the den.

The whiskey was consumed, the tumbler washed and put away, a bottle of Einlicher half-gone, when Jan’s little Mercedes chattered into our driveway.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“Two astounding revelations. Kelly’s Kourt is no longer owned by a man Kelly and Si Marner could be the third-best poker player in town.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “A liquid lunch again?”

“Two Big Macs with fries and cole slaw.” I counterattacked. “Where have
you
been?”

“With Julie Marner, all afternoon. She’s coming around. But Si is still in a daze. They’re dropping in after dinner.”

I said nothing.

“I’m going to have a drink,” she said. “Should I bring you one?”

“I’ll stick with the Einlicher. Bring me another bottle.”

When she came back, she said, “Si was touched when I told him about your interest. But honey, if it’s going to depress you—”

I thought of what Raymond Chandler had written: “Down these mean streets a man must go. …”

I said, “Being depressed by the poor isn’t much worse than being bored by the rich.”

She started to say something, evidently changed her mind, and sat down next to me on the couch. “Where did you hear that about Si?”

“From a cop. Did we ever meet a man named Paul Pontius?”

“You should remember him. You got into a very loud argument with him at the Marners’ house one night.”

“Was he a fat man, with gray hair, a big man? A 49er fan, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. “And you were drunk. I guess he was, too. I’m glad to see you’re back to beer. You handle that better, Brock.”

I tried to remember the evening, but it was hazy. I said, “Do you think you could find out where the Marners met Pontius?”

“I am an interior decorator,” she said, “not a detective. I don’t spy on
my
friends.”

I didn’t rise to the bait. I said with quiet dignity, “Okay, then I’ll do the dirty work that has to be done. I’ll ask him tonight.”

She went to the kitchen to prepare our dinner, as a noninvolved citizen should. I sat there nursing my beer, as the name of Paul Pontius rolled around and around in my weary brain. I had seen that name in print; I hadn’t remembered it from the party. But where?

Si’s wife, Julie, was sweet enough when sober. She was a shade on the chunky side, but a sexually attractive woman. She was a cheerful birdbrain before her third drink, a lachrymose one thereafter.

“You’re a wonderful person, Brock!” she greeted me. “You are a true friend!”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Anything new?” Si asked. “Have those Keystone Kops downtown come up with anything?”

“Nothing yet. Neither have I. Where do we start?”

“I have no idea. Is Vogel working on it? He’s one of the few bright ones down there.”

“I’ve been working with him and Sergeant Helms.”

“That could be the cream.” He slumped into one of our matching barrel chairs. Julie took the other.

Jan and I sat on the couch. There was nothing to say and nobody said it for a few seconds. Then Jan asked, “Drink?”

Julie nodded. “I think we should. Bourbon and ice, please, Brock?” Si wanted Scotch, Jan a weak bourbon and water.

I made the drinks and poured myself a cup of leftover dinner coffee. I handed them around and sat down next to Jan again. There was still nothing I could think of to say.