The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (53 page)

Slabbe looked up.

Carlin said: “He kept on drinking after he left Lewisburg and Sunday night a Statie flagged him down up the line, shooed him into a tourist place to sleep it off. Lorenz left the tourist place Monday morning about eleven, which would put him down in town just about three.”

“Uuh,” Slabbe said in congratulation.

“So he went straight to Jake George’s office and Jake took him to Nola. Then Jake left and went over to Fudge Burke’s to buy himself a drink on the deal. I’d say that Lorenz came together with Nola and then got Ike Veech to take care of Jake. Don’t ask why yet. Jake was a mouth that might have shot off, maybe. Anyway, Ike Veech took Jake up to Lilac Lake and waited further orders. Chances are that he had Lorenz’s Chevvy to work with, right? So that night Lorenz shows up in Nola’s Caddy. They scrag Jake and put him in the Chevvy and take him to Bleeker’s Canyon, douse the jalop with gas and roll it over. Pick a hole in it.”

“Nola,” Slabbe said. “Upstanding citizen, pillar of the community and so on. He wouldn’t be in it.”

“Nuts. He wouldn’t
have
to be in on the killing, I’ll give you, because he was burned up in that plane when it took off at four o’clock Monday afternoon, while Jake wasn’t killed till that night. Maybe
because
Nola died, Jake died. Maybe with Nola out of the way by a pure accident, Lorenz had whatever it is all to himself and wanted to close mouths. Yeah, why not? The first order to Veech was only to hustle Jake up to the lake. It wasn’t until Lorenz showed up at night that Jake got killed. See, with Nola alive Lorenz was only going to keep Jake shut up for a while. With Nola dead, he decides to shut Jake permanent.”

“Chew that canary good before you swallow it,” Slabbe advised. “Did you check the speedometer readings on the Chevvy? Was it burned too bad?”

Carlin leered. “I only got two hands and a dozen guys on the squad. It’s being done. I already telegraphed the used-car guy to see what the reading was when Lorenz took over the car, or if the speedometer was turned back. That’s a waste of money – I never saw a used-car guy yet that didn’t turn ’em back.”

Slabbe sandpapered his jaw line. “While you didn’t have anything else to do this aft’ I guess you checked on Nola some, huh?”

“Dry up, you comic,” Carlin spat. “I want to enjoy this steak . . . Yeah, like you said, he was okay from A to izzard. He lived here all his life and was the kind of guy who doesn’t even go through stop signs. How he tied in with Max Lorenz maybe a tea-leaf reader could tell us.”

“We could see if he had made his plane reservation in advance or if he grabbed it at the last minute,” Slabbe said. “If he jumped on a plane without warning, it could mean he learned something from Lorenz that made him travel. Where was the plane heading, Pat?”

“Just New York City. Everybody was checked into their seats, too, the plane took off on time, four o’clock and all the corpses were accounted for. What I don’t get is—”

“Don’t try thinking yet,” Slabbe cut in. “We haven’t got enough, we’ll just get ballixed up. Why don’t you come along with me and meet the people?”

Carlin made a weighing sound through his long bony nose. “You’re damned polite – when you know I’m going to stick closer to you than your hat anyhow!”

Way out in Treverton Heights was money: wide boulevards, wider lawns, tall trees, taller houses, brighter stars, cleaner air, soundless – and a beat cop who said, “Yes, sir. Good evening, sir,” when Carlin cut his black departmental sedan into the curb and called: “Hey, you.”

Slabbe said: “Can I chew gum in this neighborhood, Officer?”

“Of course, sir.”

Carlin grimaced. “Take off your disguise, Flaherty.”

“Oh! Good evening – I mean, Hi, Lieutenant. What’s up?”

“Chisel any meals in the Nola kitchen?”

“Uh—”

“Relax. I had a tour up here myself, once.”

“Well, yessir.”

“OK. Gossip with us.”

“About the Nolas, Lieutenant? Well, they just had a death in the family.”

“We know. Who all lives there?”

“Just Miss Yates, Mr Prentice, Miss Ione and Bill Teel now – and the servants.”

Slabbe clucked at the sprawling white colonial-style mansion, silvery in the moonlight. “You could make a dozen apartments in that left wing alone.”

“Who’s Bill Teel?” Carlin asked.

“War buddy of Prentice’s,” Flaherty said. “Nice-looking guy about twenty-six, only the war made him look older. He’s going to marry Ione, and that makes ’em both lucky. Her first boyfriend got it in Germany and she walked around here without eyes for months, the old battle-axe just as bad – uh, I mean Miss Yates. Then Prentice brought Bill Teel home and the girl fell for him and everything’s okey-doke. I guess him being a returned soldier and her other boyfriend being a soldier that wasn’t coming back, it was easy for her to what’chacallit.”

“Transfer her affections,” Slabbe said. “You say Miss Yates was busted up too?”

“On account of Ione, yeah. You’d think she was the kid’s real mother, and, well—” Flaherty dropped his voice confidentially – “this is just kitchen talk now, but there are some that say Miss Yates
could
be Ione’s right old lady, at that.”

Carlin said: “Pour Mrs Flaherty another cup of tea, and let’s get cozy.”

“Aw, Lieutenant, you asked for gossip, didn’t you? They say that years ago it was a toss-up as to whether John Nola would marry Miss Yates or her sister, Agnes, the one he did marry. Then when Ione was on the way,
both
the sisters went to France and came back after the baby was born and then right soon Mrs Nola died and Miss Yates stayed on at the house ever since, taking care of everything. And John Nola never got hitched again, so what do you think?”

Carlin said sourly: “I think that’s just fine, a lot to go up against them with.”

Slabbe asked: “Ever see Jake George around the Nola stadium here, Flaherty?”

The beat cop said no, he was on duty nights mostly.

“Monday night then,” Slabbe said, “you might’ve seen the Nola Caddy breeze in and out, huh?”

“Heck, there were lots of bigshot cars in and out here Monday night, friends coming to sympathize about Mr Nola and all.”

Carlin said: “All the folks at home then?”

“Yessir.”

“Except,” Carlin sniffed, “that with cars in and out, any of them could have been in and out in them.”

Flaherty shuffled. “I guess, sir.”

Slabbe held up two criss-crossed fingers thicker than the knot in an old-fashioned giant pretzel, and asked hopefully: “A light-complected guy, Flaherty, five-eight, limp in the left leg; make him around here anytime?”

“A grifter?” Flaherty asked.

Slabbe leaned forward. “You got it.”

Flaherty shook his head ponderously. “Nope, nobody like that.”

Carlin groaned. “Go for a walk, Flaherty.”

He jack-knifed bony legs out of the sedan, complaining to Slabbe: “These kind of people are very tough or dumb. I don’t know just what to fish for, except to find out if one of them knows why Nola wanted Max Lorenz.”

Slabbe followed him up a flagged walk that was almost a double-lane driveway. He observed the lawns, trees, shrubbery and outlying buildings. “Good place to play cowboys and Indians.”

A dark, bulking shadow drifted in behind them, said: “Yeah. Which one of you is Tonto and which is the Lone Ranger?”

Neither Slabbe or Carlin looked around. They kept walking. Slabbe said conversationally: “Without looking, I’d say this is the chauffeur.”

Carlin said: “A college man?”

“Dartmouth or Dannemora,” Slabbe agreed.

The voice behind them said sneeringly: “You read that in
Murder, My Sweet
.”

Slabbe said: “The book was called
Farewell, My Lovely
. You’re thinking of the picture. You saw me at Fudge Burke’s place. This is Carlin, Homicide.”

“He doesn’t need a sheriff’s star on his chest. What are you heckling these people for? Prentice is a lush. Ione’s in love with love. Bill Teel’s weak with a touch of malaria, and Miss Yates will tell you to go to hell.”

“Let her tell us herself,” Carlin snapped.

“John Nola didn’t take any of them into his confidence,” the chauffeur said, shoulder to shoulder with them now, but considerably taller.

“He did you, though, I guess,” Carlin sneered.

“Yeah, he did me, though, you guess.”

“Just a second, Pat.” Slabbe stopped, faced the chauffeur. In the dark their silhouettes could have doubled for part of the scenery: Slabbe for one of the fuller evergreens, the chauffeur for a medium-sized oak.

Slabbe said genially: “I always like to hear small talk in the evening. What’s your name, bo?”

“Mister Alan Hurst to you, big boy.”

“You heard Prentice call me that. Ernie Hurst any relative of yours? Ernie and I had adjoining suites in the tank once.”

“My brother.”

Slabbe studied the man’s heavy face, thick neck, powerful shoulders. “You don’t look much like Ernie. He’s about as wide as a hatchet blade.”

“Yeah,” Hurst said. “My old man took one look at me and bought an electric ice box.”

“You got a record?” Slabbe asked.

“A record of clean living, thank you.”

“Turn it on, then.”

“As one citizen to another, you could go dip your head in shellac,” Hurst said. “To give the people inside a break, OK, I’ll tell you! I took eight or nine hundred lickings from my old man, then gave him a daisy and took off. Ernie stayed, and maybe that’s why he’s such a runt. I bummed around, then Miss Yates caught me snitching pears off one of those trees in the back. She gave me a break. I was sixteen. I’ve been the chauffeur around here for fifteen years. I got a bad heart, believe it or scratch, so I wasn’t in the Army. A chauffeur gets close to his boss, so I know why Mr Nola wanted Max Lorenz, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the tribe.”

Slabbe nudged Carlin. “I could go a bottle of beer while we hear this.”

“Huh?” Carlin said. “Oh, sure. But there ain’t a saloon in this neighborhood.”

“Come on, I’ll buy,” the chauffeur said. He started across the lawn toward the garage. Slabbe winked at Carlin. They fell in: two longs and a short.

Alan Hurst said: “You Dick Tracys want Max Lorenz, right?”

Slabbe and Carlin exchanged glances over their beer bottles. Carlin said to Hurst: “Go ahead.”

“You want to know why John Nola wanted Lorenz, too, right?” Hurst asked. “Go ahead, you both grunt together now.”

Carlin scowled. “We could do this downtown, too, if you’re so big for your pants.”

“I’m pale,” Hurst said. He lounged back in a well-worn, leather-upholstered rocker, his yellow-flecked hazel eyes amused at Slabbe and Carlin, across the room. They were in his spacious quarters on the second floor of the Nola garage – bedroom, bath and roomy sitting room.

Hurst stretched long black-putteed legs in front of him, yawned absently and undid the top couple buttons of his gray tunic. “You won’t find Lorenz in a hurry, if at all,” he said reflectively. He removed his visored cap and ruffled thick dark brown hair with a paddle-sized hand.

Slabbe chewed gum solemnly, suggested to Carlin: “Let’s go halfway with him, Pat.”

“Nuts,” Hurst said. “You don’t have to do me favors. I’m doing you one. I’ll be handing you stuff that it would take you months to get on your own – if you
ever
got it.”

Carlin’s bony nose came forward. “Get to the point, son, get to the point.”

“Gladly, sir, he said,” Hurst mocked. “I know how you johns work, so I want a concession.”

Carlin snapped: “What does that crack mean?”

Hurst shrugged. “Just that you’re interested in getting your own chores done, not some other cops’ in some other town or county or state.”

“Yeah?” Carlin challenged.

“Oh, relax,” Hurst said. “I’d hate to be hanging since the last time you were to Sunday School.”

“I knew it,” Carlin said thickly. “Wasting our time.” He started to get up.

“Wait,” Hurst frowned. “I’m saying what I’m saying—”

“Trouble is you’re not saying
nothing!
” Carlin spat.

“I will,” Hurst returned. “But only because the old girl up at the house there gave me a fair shake when anyone else would have seen me in reform school and now I can do her a favor back for it.”

“Miss Yates, huh?” Slabbe said. “Then she’s in it?”

“She is like hell. Ione’s in it. I mean Bill Teel’s in it, not Miss Yates.”

“Clear as hell, ain’t it?” Carlin sneered.

Hurst’s wide dark face tightened. “Give me a chance, I’m getting there. Miss Yates is nuts about Ione, so anything that hurts the kid hurts her, that’s all.”

Slabbe nodded. “And anything that hurts Teel hurts Ione and that hurts Miss Yates, that it?”

Hurst nodded in return. Carlin said: “Well, we got together for a second.”

“Grow up, will you?” Hurst drawled. “OK, I’ll pull out the stops. Here it is – Ione’s boyfriend got it in the war and she’s always been a romantic drip and she almost blew her top. She was in a fog for months —”

Slabbe murmured: “Is Ione really Miss Yates’ daughter?”

“I don’t know. I guess. What’s the odds?” Hurst shrugged. “She loves her like her own, which is the thing. Anyway, then Prentice came home with Bill Teel and Ione fell for him. So it was OK for a while. Teel seemed like a swell guy. He knew something about the silk business and pitched right in and really did a job. He did what the old man hoped Prentice would do, I’d say. You know, take the business to heart and so on.”

“Nola liked Teel?” Slabbe asked.

“Yeah, at first. I’m coming to that. Nola thought Teel was OK. The guy was a returned soldier and all that, and he was making good. The hitch came when the date was set for Teel and Ione to marry. The old man must have figured it was time to know a little more about Teel.”

Carlin smacked his lips. “So Nola hired Jake George to look Teel up.”

Hurst nodded easily, though his yellow-flecked eyes were veiled. “That was a couple weeks back. Jake George poked around – how do you go about tracing a guy? Look up his record in the service if you can, see where he enlisted, talk to draft board, huh? Me, I’d just go through the guy’s stuff and look for letters and addresses and so on.”