The Doomsters (12 page)

“Who had to force the window?”

“The family. His two sons, I believe. The body was in the bathtub most of the night.”

I examined the door. It was thick and made of oak. The lock was the old-fashioned kind that has to be turned with a key. The key was in the keyhole.

I turned it back and forth several times, then pulled it out and looked at it. The heavy, tarnished key told me nothing in particular. Either Lawson was misinformed, or the Senator had died alone. Or I had a locked-room mystery to go with the other mysteries in the house.

I tried a skeleton key on the door, and after a little jiggling around, it worked. I turned to Lawson. “Was the key in the lock when they found him?”

“I couldn’t say, really. I wasn’t here. Maybe Ostervelt could tell you.”

      W
E
ran into Ostervelt in the front hallway, ran into him almost literally as he came out of the living-room. He pushed between us, his belly projecting like a football concealed in his clothes. His jowls became convulsive:

“What goes on?”

“Mr. Archer wanted to see the Senator’s bathroom,” Lawson said. “You remember the morning they found him, Chief. Was the key in the lock?”

“What lock, for Christ sake?”

“The lock on the bathroom door.”

“I don’t know.” Ostervelt’s head jerked as he hammered out the words: “I’ll tell you what I do know, Lawson. You don’t talk official business to strangers. How many times do we have to go into that?”

Lawson removed his glasses and wiped them with the inside of his tie. Without them, his face looked unformed and vulnerable. But he had guts and some professional poise:

“Mr. Archer isn’t a stranger, exactly. He’s employed by the Hallman family.”

“To do what? Pick your brains, if you have any?”

“You can’t talk to me like that.”

“What do you think you’re going to do about it? Resign?”

Lawson turned on his heel, stiffly, and walked out. Ostervelt called after him:

“Go ahead and resign. I accept your resignation.”

Feeling some compunction, since I had been picking Lawson’s brains, I said to Ostervelt:

“Lay off him. What’s the beef?”

“The beef is you. Mrs. Hallman said you asked her for money, made a pass at her.”

“Did she rip her dress open at the neck? They usually rip their dresses open at the neck.”

“It’s no joke. I could put you in jail.”

“What are you waiting for? The suit for false arrest will make my fortune.”

“Don’t get flip with me.” Under his anger, Ostervelt seemed to be badly shaken. His little eyes were dirty with dismay. He took out his gun to make himself feel better.

“Put it away,” I said. “It takes more than a Colt revolver to change a Keystone cop into an officer.”

Ostervelt raised the Colt and laid it raking and burning across the side of my head. The ceiling slanted, then rose away from me as I went down. As I got up, a thin young man in a brown corduroy jacket appeared in the doorway. Ostervelt started to raise the gun for another blow. The thin young man took hold of his arm and almost ascended with it.

Ostervelt said: “I’ll cut him to pieces. Get away from me, Slovekin.”

Slovekin held onto his arm. I held onto my impulse to hit an old man. Slovekin said:

“Wait a minute, Sheriff. Who is this man, anyway?”

“A crooked private dick from Hollywood.”

“Are you arresting him?”

“You’re damn right I’m arresting him.”

“What for? Is he connected with this case?”

Ostervelt shook him off. “That’s between him and I. You stay out of it, Slovekin.”

“How can I, when I’m assigned to it? I’m just doing my
job, the same as you are, Sheriff.” The black eyes in Slovekin’s sharp young face glittered with irony. “I can’t do my job if you give me no information. I have to fall back on reporting what I see. I see a public official beating a man with a gun, naturally I’m interested.”

“Don’t try to blackmail me, you little twerp.”

Slovekin stayed cool and smiling. “You want me to deliver that message to Mr. Spaulding? Mr. Spaulding’s always looking for a good local topic for an editorial. This could be just what he needs.”

“Screw Spaulding. You know what you can do with that rag you work for, too.”

“That’s pretty language from the top law-enforcement official in the county. An elected official, at that. I suppose you don’t mind if I quote you.” Slovekin produced a notebook from a side pocket.

Ostervelt’s face tried various colors and settled for a kind of mottled purple. He put his gun away. “Okay, Slovekin. What else do you want to know?” His voice was a rough whisper.

“Is this man a suspect? I thought Carl Hallman was the only one.”

“He is, and we’ll have him in twenty-four hours. Dead or alive. You can quote me on that.”

I said to Slovekin: “You’re a newspaperman, are you?”

“I try to be.” He looked at me quizzically, as if he wondered what I was trying to be.

“I’d like to talk to you about this murder. The sheriff’s got Hallman convicted already, but there are certain discrepancies—”

“The hell there are!” Ostervelt said.

Slovekin whipped out a pencil and opened his notebook. “Clue me in.”

“Not now. I need more time to pin them down.”

“He’s bluffing,” Ostervelt said. “He’s just trying to make
me look bad. He’s one of these jokers, tries to make a hero out of himself.”

Disregarding him, I said to Slovekin: “Where can I get in touch with you, tomorrow, say?”

“You’re not going to be here tomorrow,” Ostervelt put in. “I want you out of this county in one hour, or else.”

Slovekin said mildly: “I thought you were arresting him.”

Ostervelt was getting frantic. He began to yammer: “Don’t get too cocky, Mr. Slovekin. Bigger men than you thought they could cross me, and lost their jobs.”

“Oh, come off it, Sheriff. Do you go to movies much?” Slovekin unwrapped a piece of gum, put it in his mouth, and began to chew it. He said to me: “You can reach me through the paper any time—Purissima
Record.”

“You think so, eh?” Ostervelt said. “After today you won’t be working there.”

“Phone 6328,” Slovekin said. “If I’m not there, talk to Spaulding. He’s the editor.”

“I can go higher than Spaulding, if I have to.”

“Take it to the Supreme Court, Sheriff.” Slovekin’s chewing face had an expression of pained superiority which made him look like an intellectual camel. “I’d certainly like to get what you have now. Spaulding’s holding the city edition for this story.”

“I’d like to give it to you, but it hasn’t jelled.”

“You see?” Ostervelt said. “He’s got nothing to back it up. He’s only trying to make trouble. You’re crazy if you take his word against mine. Christ, he may even be in cahoots with the psycho. He let Hallman use his car, remember.”

“It’s getting pretty noisy in here,” I said to Slovekin, and moved toward the door.

He followed me outside to my car. “What you said about the evidence—you weren’t kidding?”

“No. I think there’s a good chance that Hallman’s getting the dirty end of the stick.”

“I hope you’re right. I rather like the guy, or used to before he got sick.”

“You know Carl, do you?”

“Ever since high school. I’ve known Ostervelt for quite a long time, too. But this is no time to go into Ostervelt.” He leaned on the car window, smelling of Dentyne chewing gum. “Do you have another suspect in mind?”

“Several.”

“Like that, eh?”

“Like that. Thanks for the assist.”

“Don’t mention it.” His black gaze shifted to the side of my head. “Did you know you’ve got a torn ear? You should see a doctor.”

“I intend to.”

      I
DROVE
into Purissima and checked in at a waterfront motel named the Hacienda. Not being on expense account and having forty-odd dollars in my wallet to tide me over until I qualified for the old-age pension, I picked the cheapest one I could find with telephones in the rooms. The room I paid eight dollars for in advance contained a bed and a chair and a limed-oak veneer chest of drawers, as well as a telephone. The window overlooked a parking lot.

The room surprised me into a sharp feeling of pain and loss. The pain wasn’t for Carl Hallman, though his fugitive
image continually crossed my mind. Perhaps the pain was for myself; the loss was of a self I had once imagined.

Peering out through the slats of the dusty blind, I felt like a criminal hiding out from the law. I didn’t like the feeling, so I clowned it away. All I needed was a suitcase full of hot money and an ash-blonde moll whining for mink and diamonds. The closest thing to an ash-blonde moll I knew was Zinnie, and Zinnie appeared to be somebody’s else’s moll.

I was kind of glad that Zinnie wasn’t my moll. It was a small room, and the printed notice under the glass top of the chest of drawers said that the room rented for fourteen dollars double. Checkout time was twelve noon. Lighting an ash-blond cigarette, I calculated that I had about twenty-four hours to wrap up the case. I wasn’t going to pay for another day out of my own pocket. That would be criminal.

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there’s no way to hang up.

Before I made a long-distance call of my own, I went into the bathroom and examined my head in the mirror over the sink. It looked worse than it felt. One ear was cut, and half full of drying blood. There were abrasions on temple and cheek. One eye was slightly blackened, and made me appear more dissipated than I was. When I smiled at a thought that struck me, the effect was pretty grim.

The thought that struck me sent me back to the bedroom. I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up Zinnie’s doctor friend in the local directory. Grantland maintained an office on upper Main Street and a residence on Seaview Road. I made a note of the addresses and telephone
numbers, and called his office number. The girl who answered gave me, after some persuasion, an emergency appointment for five-thirty, the end of office hours.

If I hurried, and if Glenn Scott was at home, I should have time to see him and get back for my appointment with Grantland. Glenn had retired to an avocado ranch in the Malibu hinterland. I’d driven up two or three times in the last two years to play chess with him. He always beat me at chess, but his whisky was good. Also, I happened to like him. He was one of the few survivors of the Hollywood rat race who knew how to enjoy a little money without hitting other people over the head with it.

I thought as I put through the call to his house that money happened to Glenn the way poverty happened to a lot of others. He’d worked hard all his life, of course, but he’d never knocked himself out for money. He used to say that he’d never tried to sell himself for fear that somebody might be tempted to buy him.

The maid who’d been with the Scotts for twenty years answered the telephone. Mr. Scott was outside watering his trees. Far as she knew, he’d be there all afternoon, and he’d be glad to see me, far as she knew.

I found him about a half-hour later, wielding a hose on the side of a sunburnt hill. The rocky barrenness of the hillside was accentuated by the rows of scrawny young avocado trees. Glenn’s jeep was at the side of the road. Turning and parking behind it, I could look down on the gravel roof of his cantilevered redwood house, and further down on the long white curve of the beach rimming the sea. I felt a twinge of envy as I crossed the field toward him. It seemed to me that Glenn had everything worth having: a place in the sun, wife and family, enough money to live on.

Glenn gave me a smile that made me ashamed of my thoughts. His keen gray eyes were almost lost in his sun-wrinkles.
His wide-brimmed straw hat and stained khaki coveralls completed his resemblance to a veteran farmhand. I said:

“Hi, farmer.”

“You like my protective coloration, eh?” He turned off the water and began to coil the hose. “How you been, Lew? Still brawling, I see.”

“I ran into a door. You’re looking well.”

“Yeah, the life suits me. When I get bored, Belle and I go in to the Strip for dinner and take a quick look around and beat it the hell back home.”

“How is Belle?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Right now she’s in Santa Monica with the kids. Belle had her first grandson last week, with a little help from the daughter-in-law. Seven and a half pounds, built like a middleweight, they’re going to call him Glenn. But you didn’t make a special trip to ask me about my family.”

“Somebody else’s family. You had a case in Purissima about three years ago. Elderly woman committed suicide by drowning. Husband suspected murder, called you in to check.”

“Uh-huh. I wouldn’t call Mrs. Hallman elderly. She was probably in her early fifties. Hell, I’m older than that myself, and I’m not elderly.”

“Okay, grandpa,” I said with subtle flattery. “Are you willing to answer a couple of questions about the Hallman case?”

“Why?”

“It seems to be kind of reopening itself.”

“You mean it was homicide?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Not yet. But the woman’s son was murdered this afternoon.”

“Which son? She had two.”

“The older one. His younger brother escaped from a
mental ward last night, and he’s prime suspect. He was at the ranch shortly before the shooting—”

“Jesus,” Glenn breathed. “The old man was right.”

I waited, with no result, and finally said: “Right about what?”

“Let’s skip that, Lew. I know he’s dead now, but it’s still a confidential case.”

“I get no answers, eh?”

“You can ask the questions, I’ll use my judgment about answering ’em. First, though, who are you representing in Purissima?”

“The younger son. Carl.”

“The psycho?”

“Should I give my clients a Rorschach before I take them on?”

“I didn’t mean that. He hire you to clear him?”

“No, it’s my own idea.”

“Hey, you’re not off on one of your crusades.”