Too Many Crooks (9 page)

I felt like busting him one, but I said, "It was straight. A hell of a lot of good it—"

He broke in, speaking to Blake. "Call in," he said briskly. "We better cover it." Then, "Scott, what kind of car? You got the license?"

I squeezed my eyes together, tried to think. My headlights had fallen on the back of the car and on the license. I'd seen the numbers clearly and knew they had registered, but I couldn't remember them now. Maybe I would later. I said, "It was a dark sedan, four-door, maybe a Chevy. A '50 model, I'd say. California plates, but I can't remember the number."

Blake trotted to the prowl car, finally moving fast. I heard him grab the phone and start sending the information in. Then I remembered something else. I'd recognized one man there in Dane's house. It had been the same guy who'd stopped me outside the hospital, the nice-looking, clean-cut man who "never carried a gun." I told Carver about him, described him as best I could. "Said his name was Zimmerman. Not much chance it really is, though. This Zimmerman is the guy who talked several hours with Dane, trying to get Dane to sell all his property to Seaco. And he told me tonight that he works for Jim Norris."

Blake came back and said, "Got it. There's a call out now. Not much to go on."

Carver said to me, "Out of the car, Scott."

I climbed out with the gun still tight in my hand, as if my fingers were frozen around it. Carver reached for the gun, took it from me.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I'd just as soon keep the Colt, Sergeant."

"I'd just as soon you didn't."

I noticed that Blake had a revolver in his right hand. "What the hell is this?" I said.

"Take it easy." Carver slid behind the Cad's wheel, drove over to the curb, and parked. Then he got out, locking the door. He dropped the keys into his pocket with my gun and walked back.

"Come on," he said.

"Just a minute. How come you boys were after me so fast? How come you were so handy?"

There was enough light so I could see Carver squeeze his lips together. He said, "Not that it's any of your goddamn business, chum, but we got a call somebody heard a gunshot on Seacliff Drive. We were heading for Dane's when you took off from there like a greased pig. Any more questions?"

"One. Why Dane's? A lot of other people live on Seacliff."

"In the first place, the guy phoned from the eighteen-hundred block. In the second place, Dane got himself a gun yesterday." He paused. "Amateurs that start lugging guns around sooner or later usually shoot somebody. Or get shot. Now you tell me something, Scott. You damn sure that was another car?"

"Why, you stupid, goddamned—"

He slammed his hand against my chest, bunched my coat. I grunted as the pain knifed through my side, then I started to reach for his arm. But suddenly he let go of me. "Sorry," he said. "Forgot you were banged up. Just don't pop off any more, Scott. Now get in the car."

We all climbed in, Blake in back with me, and Carver behind the wheel. Carver sighed and said, "Well, we might as well go take a look at him."

And not until that moment did it penetrate all the way, really get inside me where it hurt. Emmett was dead. It was like losing an arm. I think I'd rather have lost an arm.

Chapter Nine

His body lay on the carpet, before an overstuffed chair, one arm underneath him and the other outstretched. Carver had me go through all my motions in detail, and I showed him how I'd entered and where I'd fallen, then led the way through the house to the door by which I'd left. When we got back to the bedroom, Blake was just getting up from beside Dane's body.

I stopped and looked down at Emmett, at what was left of him, and there was anger inside me, but it was a kind of faint and impotent anger now, drowned and smothered by the awful sickness that I felt. I knew with a quiet and irrevocable certainty that I wouldn't ever leave till I found the men who had brutally murdered Dane.

Carver touched my arm. He had my gun in his hand, the cylinder swung out. "Only one slug left," he said. "How come?"

"I forgot. When they took off, I fired at them three, four times. Probably hit the car. Don't know about anybody in it."

He pressed the cylinder back in and returned the revolver to his pocket. He glanced at Dane and then looked at Blake. "What kind of gun did that?"

Blake shrugged. "God knows."

I didn't hear any siren, but a car stopped in front of the house and soon other police officers came inside. Two were in plain clothes. Carver said to me, "OK. We'll go downtown, Scott." The photographer's flash bulb flared behind us as we left.

Chief Thurmond was reading his newspaper again when we went in. He was either remarkably well informed on current affairs, or else he knew every move Dick Tracy made. Blake and I sat down while Carver stood by the chief's desk and gave him a quick sketch of what had happened.

The chief looked at me. Under the sparse brows, his eyes were like pools of fog in his milky face. "Well?" he said.

"That's about it. And despite what you said in our last talk, you've got some pro hoods in town now."

"That so?"

"If I ever heard of a pro kill, this was it. One or two guys inside—I think I heard two of them running—getaway car outside with the motor idling, doors open, man behind the wheel ready to take off. Probably a stolen car and stolen plates. If you're lucky, maybe you can catch them."

Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. By now the killers would undoubtedly have ditched the car and taken off, probably in another buggy previously parked in readiness. I shut my eyes again, remembering that moment when my lights had fallen on the back of the dark sedan. The strangeness of its being there had made me notice the license number, but until now there'd been too much action for me to think clearly about it. Finally, I remembered it: 1R61245.

I gave it to Thurmond. He nodded to Blake, who got up and went out of the room. Then Thurmond said to Carver, "That the way it looked?"

Carver shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Checks as far as we know. All we've got so far is Scott's story. We got there, like I said, just as he was taking off."

"After the Chevy," I said pointedly.

Carver stared at me. "Scott," he said levelly, "the only car we saw was yours leaving like a bat out of hell. I'm not saying there wasn't a Chevy, I'm just saying we didn't see anybody else. Most likely your story's straight, chum, but so far there's nothing to back it up."

I started to get hot, but then I relaxed in my seat, thinking about it. It had been difficult enough for me to see the Chevy's taillight in the fog; probably Blake and Carver couldn't have seen it ahead of me, and they'd have been concentrating on my Cad, anyway. Actually, he was right. Except for what I'd told them, they wouldn't have a thing to go on.

I gave Thurmond the whole story: leaving the hospital, talking to Zimmerman outside, then calling Dane and seeing Baron and Lilith Manning. "From her place," I said, "I went straight to Dane's. Saw the car in front. You know the rest. Incidentally, Zimmerman told me he worked for Jim Norris. And Zimmerman is the bastard who killed Dane—one of them, at least. Norris is the pleasant character who put me in the hospital. And it's time you get that squared away."

The chief was quiet for a moment, then he said, "You got some proof of this?"

"A bent rib, a bashed skull, and my word. Isn't that enough? You should be able to fill up your jail with what I've given you."

"Yeah," the chief said. "Trouble is that you're the only one who's told this to us. We'll get Norris down here again, though."

"Again? You mean you actually went to the trouble of talking to him?"

Chief Thurmond's pale face flushed angrily. "I've had about enough of your popping off, Scott. Yes, we talked to him. Four hours down here. I don't like Norris personally, but there's no evidence he's committed any crime. Just about everything you
say
we've got came out of your loud mouth."

"Didn't Clyde Baron and Miss Manning give you the same story I have?"

He nodded. "They both came down. All they've got is some suspicions—mostly what you've told them they ought to be suspicious of."

There was a lot more talk, and I sat with the chief and Carver and Blake for another hour. They took my statement and I signed it, and by the time the hour was ended, I knew men had been dispatched to find Norris and a few of his goons whom I'd described. Zimmerman was included in the search, too, but I doubted that he would be anywhere around now. No word had yet come in on the Chevy.

Finally, Chief Thurmond said to me, "Well, we're going to let you go, Scott. Where you staying in town?"

I hadn't even thought about it till now. "I don't know. Dane's, I guess. At least, I was going to. I don't know."

"We got to know where you are, Scott. Might want you down here again."

"Make it Dane's."

During the last hour Carver had left the room and come back to put my .38 on the chief's desk. I said, "How about my gun?"

He chewed on his lip, but he poked the gun across the desk and I picked it up. Before I stuck it away, I broke it open and looked at the cylinder. Four empty cartridges were in it, but that was all. I usually keep one chamber empty under the hammer; now two chambers were empty. I looked at Carver.

"Test bullet," he said casually. "You didn't think we'd miss that, did you?"

I shrugged, stuck the empty gun in its holster, and walked out of the room. Carver went with me to the main entrance on Third Street.

At the door, he handed me my car keys. I said, "I don't suppose you'd have any loose thirty-eight shells. Empty gun's not much good."

"I don't suppose we would," he said. "I'd just as soon you never got any. The chief expects you to hang around, but I don't think he'd bust out bawling if you went back to L.A. You ask me, the best place for you is clear the hell out of this town."

"I'm not asking you, because I don't agree with you, Carver. Maybe I've got little use for what the cops say in this town."

His pouched eyes narrowed and muscle wiggled at the sides of his jaws. He reached out and grabbed my coat, bunched it together. "I'm goddamn tired of your loose mouth."

"Let go, Carver." I brought my right hand up from my side.

He grinned tightly. "You know what happens if you try swinging at me?"

"Yeah, you lose some teeth. And you let go."

He released my coat, glancing to his right. I followed his gaze and saw Blake near us, leaning against the wall. Carver said, "OK, beat it. But I'm awful sick of you. You better just keep on going. You give me any trouble again, it'll be a sad day for you, Scott."

I didn't say anything. Finally he walked over toward Blake and I left.

I flagged a taxi and had the driver take me to my Cad, and I asked him to wait while I unlocked the trunk and opened it. I wanted somebody around, and a little light, while I stood on the street. Pawing through all the equipment in the trunk, I finally found the box of .38 shells, loaded the gun, and dropped some extra rounds into my coat pocket. Then I locked the trunk, paid off the cab driver, and got behind the Cad's wheel.

I timed two red lights so that I barely slipped through, and later parked for two or three minutes at a stop sign. Then, reasonably sure nobody was on my tail, I drove fast back to where Carver had originally parked my Cad. Here was where I'd lost the Chevy, and I kept driving straight ahead for several blocks, then took a right and headed back, looking on both sides of the street.

Unless I was clear off the beam, it was almost sure that the Chevy would have been ditched. I wanted to be certain. Fifteen minutes later, I was. On Walnut Street, less than half a mile from where Carver and Blake had stopped me, I found the Chevy. A police car was parked behind it and several curious citizens were standing nearby. I parked around the corner and walked back.

It was the same car. Nineteen-fifty Chevrolet four-door sedan, license 1R61245, one bullet hole in the right rear fender. My aim was lousy. The policemen present weren't putting out any information, but I managed to get a look at the car's registration slip. It was in the name of Manuel H. Mendoza at an address in Santa Ana.

There wasn't much point in checking further to find out what I already knew—that another car would have been parked here and that the men would have driven away in it two hours ago. I went back to the Cad and drove clear out of town, then pulled into a service station and used the phone. I called a friend at the Motor Vehicle Department in Los Angeles, asked him to check the license number for me, then hung up and waited till he called back. The license plates had been issued to one Arthur Seaburn, of Coast Boulevard in Laguna Beach. That settled that.

Back in the Cad, I kept driving on up the coast till I found a motel. I got a room, parked my Cad in the adjoining garage, went inside, and climbed into bed. I lay awake a long time. I was going back to Seacliff, but I had a lot of thinking to do first, and I was going back in broad daylight. It seemed I was still on the edge of this mess, and I didn't want to get shot in the back while I worked in toward the middle. I drove into Seacliff the next morning at eleven. I felt safe enough on a busy street, but not so safe that I could completely relax, let my guard down. On Main, I waited for a red light to change, looking around automatically for any face I might recognize. I saw the newspaper stand on the corner. I looked right at the big black headlines on the local
Star
and away before the words registered. Then they penetrated. The light changed and a car honked behind me, but I turned my head again to stare at the newspaper, uncomprehending, as I read the blaring headlines: "Emmett Dane Suicide."

I had the attendant bring me a paper, paid him while cars honked loudly behind me, then pulled around the corner and parked while I read the story. It was bylined E. C. Lane and occupied the most prominent spot, two columns at the right edge of the front page. I glanced over it rapidly. The story didn't quite carry out the declaration of the headlines, saying, "While the possibility of foul play has not been discounted, a preliminary investigation indicates that Dane committed suicide last night in his home at 1844 Seacliff Drive. Dane, long active in community affairs . . ."