Authors: Wade Miller
T
HE TELEPHONE
kept ringing.
Walter James flipped on the bed lamp, worried his wristwatch out from under the pillow and looked at the time. It was fifteen minutes past three.
The strident bell notes sliced through the early morning stillness with mechanical regularity. Kevin shifted uneasily in her sleep. He stretched his bare feet down to the cool rug and padded into the other room, feeling his way to the invisible instrument.
“Hello?”
“James? This is Clapp. You got the Gilbert girl there?”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your damn business!”
The receiver voice rasped irritably. “Listen, James, this is no time to play. I sent out to her house and she wasn’t there. Some kid named Newcomb was mooning around the front porch and said she hadn’t come home tonight and that she was probably with you. If you got her or know where she is, get her down here right away.”
“What’s up?”
“She’s got a body to identify. The papers on it says it’s old man Gilbert.”
“Dead? How?”
“We’ll talk it over down here. Don’t break it to the girl until we’re sure. For God’s sake, James, if she’s there, bring her down right away!”
“Twenty minutes,” said the slender man and hung up. He stood indecisively for a moment before he went back into the bedroom. Kevin was a spray of copper hair, a bare shoulder and mounded blankets. He shook her by the shoulder gently.
“Kevin.”
“Mmmm?” She rolled over on her back without opening her eyes. He shook her again and she blinked awake.
“What is it, Walter?”
“Get up and get dressed. We have to go down to the police station. Are you awake?”
She sat up squinting. “It’s still dark, isn’t it?”
“Get dressed. We have to go right away. Are you wide-awake now?”
“Yes, I’m awake, Walter.”
“Listen. We’re not sure yet, but Clapp wants you to take a look at a body. It may be your father.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Clapp wants you to identify a body if you can. Your father may be dead.”
Her face began to be nothing but white skin and shadows. She put out both hands and held onto his arms. “He can’t be, Walter. He just can’t be!” Her voice was neither frightened nor sad, only puzzled.
“You’re right,” he said. “Clapp may have made a mistake. It may not be your father. But we have to go downtown and see. There’s no easy way to tell you. We have to go see.”
“But it can’t be!”
Walter James unfastened her hands gently. “Get dressed, redhead.”
They drove through deserted streets to the foot of Market Street. Only occasional black and white prowl cars or gleaming taxis cruised across their path. As they walked across the police headquarters’ parking lot, the whistle of the last Coronado ferry moaned through the night.
Clapp rose clumsily when they entered his office. At the corners of his eyes were patterned tracings of blood.
“I’m sorry about this, Miss Gilbert. But we have to be sure.”
“I understand. Walter explained to me.”
“Do you feel all right?”
“Yes. I’m all right. I’d like to get it over with.”
“This way.” The big man led them down the hall past the medical examiner’s office to an unmarked door. Walter James stood close to her as they entered.
Stein nodded as they came into the peaceful room. The corners were lost to the shadows, but, in the center, one low-hung light beamed unmercifully. Beneath it was an unmoving sheet-covered form on a wheeled table. Under the table were small puddles of water.
“Okay, Stein,” said Clapp.
The medic folded the sheet back.
“Is this your father, Miss Gilbert?”
The old man’s eyes were closed to the punishing light. His forehead was bruised and damp hair clung there protectively. But the lines in his face were not so deep now.
The men could barely hear Kevin’s voice. “Yes. That’s my father.”
Stein replaced the sheet and looked at the big man questionably. Clapp cleared his throat.
“We’d like to perform an autopsy, Miss Gilbert. Is that all right with you?”
“I guess so,” she said. “I don’t know.” She shook her head back and forth. “How did it happen?”
Walter James gripped her arm. “Let’s go back to the office.”
Clapp nodded to Stein as they went out. In his office, he cleared his throat again.
“You know how sorry I am, Miss Gilbert. I don’t want to question you at this time. Just take it easy.”
“It’s all right,” she said. She pushed her fingers hard against her forehead. “I don’t feel anything. I can’t understand anything. How did it happen?”
“You know where your father was this afternoon?”
“No. He just wasn’t there when I got home from school. How did he — die?”
Clapp hesitated. “We found your father in the ocean at the foot of Sunset Cliff’s out past Ocean Beach. He was between two rocks below the Sunset House.”
Kevin’s shoulder stiffened under Walter James’s hand.
“He may have fallen from the balcony,” Clapp continued, “or he may have slipped off one of the paths along the cliff.”
“Walter!” she moaned. “We were there tonight. We were at Sunset House.”
The big man wrinkled his forehead and looked at Walter James.
“We went there for dinner tonight.” Walter James gave a frowning nod at the top of Kevin’s head.
Clapp lifted the phone and said, “Send up a matron.” He regarded the girl gently. “There’s no indication of anything wrong, Miss Gilbert. Apparently your father just went out there for some reason and accidentally fell. It was sometime this afternoon or tonight.”
“I should feel something,” Kevin whimpered. “We were never very close but Dad’s always been — been
there.
I don’t understand!” She began to cry against her hand. “He can’t be gone!”
A soft knock at the door let in a broad police woman in a dark dress. “This is Miss Gilbert, Mrs. Marsh. She’s had quite a shock. If you’ll give her a sedative and let her lie down in Stein’s office — no, make it the couch in the next office.”
The matron took the girl’s hand. She stood up unsteadily. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said. “Maybe it would be better if I lie down a little. Will you come sit with me, Walter?”
He patted her hand. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just take it easy for a while. I’ll be right in.”
The two women went out, the matron quietly closing the door. Walter James and Clapp sat in the early morning stillness. Finally the big man stamped his feet and went to the small icebox. “Beer?” he asked.
“For Christ sakes, no!” Walter James snapped.
“I know it sounds pretty horrible,” Clapp sighed. He pulled out a can and plunged the opener into it. “But this has been the God damnedest day I’ve ever had! And I’ve had some pretty bad ones.” He took a long gulp. “I got to have something.”
Walter James stared at the black and silver cigarette case. “She’ll never be able to forget that she gave me this the night her father got killed.”
Clapp frowned at him through the match flame. “Why do you say ‘got killed’?”
The match clicked in the bottom of the waste basket. “You know what you’re looking for, Clapp. Did you find it?”
“No. Stein tells me the body was pretty well beat up. From the rocks probably. There’s nothing to show that Gilbert was pushed over the cliff. It wouldn’t take more than a gentle shove — I suppose it’s happened before.”
“When did you find him?”
“About ten o’clock. Some couple that went down to the bottom of the path to fool around thought they saw something and reported it.”
“Nobody saw him fall then?”
“Naturally not. Oh, Stein says there is one bruise across his throat that might have been caused before death. If somebody had hit him in the throat, he couldn’t have yelled on the way down.” He shrugged wearily. “Then again the noise of the ocean could cover up a scream. Or he may have jumped on purpose. It’s whatever you want to make it.” After another swallow of beer, he said, “What do you want to make it?”
Walter James sucked on the cigarette. “Murder, I guess. I talked to Gilbert this morning — a little. He was despondent. But he was willing to talk the situation over with me as long as it wasn’t in his office. That was about eleven-thirty. I didn’t see him again.”
“Where was he supposed to meet you?”
“That’s the crazy part. Sunset House at three o’clock. I got there at three but he wasn’t around. I waited till four and went back to his house. He wasn’t there, so I took Kevin out to dinner. The Sunset House had looked like a nice place so I took her there. God, what a thing to do!”
“That’s the way things happen, James,” Clapp said. “Coincidence in there screwing up the works. You take your girl out to dinner and a couple of hundred feet below her father’s washing around in the surf with a broken neck. But your story checks.”
Walter James sat erect. “What do you mean — checks?”
“Oh, don’t go off half-cocked at this time of morning. Maslar put a man on Gilbert today just to be on the safe side. Gilbert went out to the Sunset House at
two
o’clock. The tail lost him there and sat around waiting for him to show again. At three o’clock he saw you come in and start looking around for the old man. That’s all.”
“That’s all? What was Gilbert doing at Sunset House an hour before he was supposed to meet me there?”
Clapp spread his hands. “How in the hell am I to know? The man’s dead now.”
“Sure,” said the slender detective bitterly. “He was pushed over the cliff between two and three o’clock. He was keeping an appointment with somebody besides me. You know the question.”
“Who?”
“Did Maslar’s bright boy see anybody out there who answered to Dr. Boone’s description?”
“A big, healthy man?” asked Clapp sarcastically. “They were there in droves, including a state senator. That isn’t much to go on. I’m big and used to be healthy myself.”
“It’s all we’ve got to go on,” snapped Walter James. “Unless you can make the Mexicans wring something more out of Luz. I suppose he got hauled in today? Or did Maslar’s men lose him, too?”
“Calm down, son. Maslar’s doing a good job. The Mexicans and a couple of F.B.I. men surrounded the Devil’s Bar this afternoon and closed in like clockwork. But the human element kicked the whole thing in the seat of the pants. When Esteban Luz saw he was trapped, he blew his brains out. Nice neat suicide with witnesses.”
The smaller man strode over to the window. “Damn!” he finally said.
“Yeah,” agreed Clapp. “I’ve never seen a case before where so many leads end up with so many corpses. This case has a curse on it. Relax.”
Walter James sat down on the window sill and laughed silently, helplessly. “And just think — Dr. Boone’s home getting a good night’s sleep. He hasn’t ended up as a corpse.”
“Cheer up, James. Neither have we.”
“It’s getting closer. Tomorrow you can check up on who left the light on in my apartment. And who started shooting from across the alley about seven o’clock when I was about to walk in.”
Clapp slammed his hand flat on the desk blotter. “Not again!”
Walter James gave him a sardonic grin. “From behind a fence in the used car lot in back of the Serra Apartments. The shot came through the rear window and was supposed to nail me when I opened my door and stood in the light. Luckily, I caught on. I never leave my lights burning.”
Clapp said, “I’ll send Jim out first thing in the morning.”
“Just don’t wake me up. The landlady’s pretty nosy. There’s an off chance she may have seen something. You can at least dig the slug out of the woodwork if your prowl men haven’t done it already. I’m ready to guarantee that it’s a .25 caliber from the other gun of the set I gave to Hal.”
The big man pulled a report from his desk drawer and studied it. “James, maybe you shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to finish off John Darmer and young Esteban Luz.”
Walter James’s face was impassive. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Clapp hunched his shoulders impatiently. “I’m not after you. You could probably prove self-defense, anyway. But you’re not fooling me any. The job had your name written all over it.”
“Maybe.”
“I wish you’d thought twice about it. They might have been able to tell us something.”
“They might have been able.”
“At least with Big Steve gone, we would have had something.”
Walter James smiled. “I hate to get shot to little bits just so you’d have somebody to grill, Clapp.”
Clapp replaced the paper and slammed the drawer. “It’s written off as an accident. Let’s hope nobody gets too nosy. It would have been easier on me if you had at least reported it.”
“Maybe I didn’t feel like it.”
“Hell,” said Clapp and stood up. “There’s a lot of things a guy doesn’t feel like doing. I didn’t feel like suspending Felix from the force this morning and getting together an indictment.”
“Felix? What’s the story?”
Walter James began to notice how tired the big man really was. The clear-cut planes of his face seemed blurred and his head sagged on his shoulders.
“The usual one,” said Clapp slowly. “Good cop goes bad for a lousy fifty dollars a month extra. I put a check on the switchboard for all Tijuana calls and we caught Felix trying to tip off Luz about the raid.” Infuriated, he spat out, “He didn’t even have sense enough to use an outside phone!”
Walter James hit Clapp’s arm gently with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, Clapp. It’s nothing you could help.”
“No,” the big man sighed. “I guess if there’s a twist in a man, it grows to the surface eventually. But it still never makes sense. Crime actually doesn’t pay — I mean, in dollars and cents. It’s low profit and high risk. It doesn’t make sense.”
Walter James snapped his fingers. “On this Gilbert killing, you might nose into Dr. Boniface’s movements this afternoon.”
Clapp raised his heavy eyebrows. “Something stirring?”
“I’m pretty sure he was hanging around Sunset House. And I’m not forgetting that he’s a big, healthy man, either.”
Clapp made a note on his desk pad. “Okay.”
Walter James roused himself. “I think I’ll see if Kevin’s in any shape to go home.”