Come Die with Me (16 page)

“To some people. You weren’t nearly as informative as this the first time I came to see you, Miss Ronico.”

“You didn’t come to see me. You came to see my uncle. And I thought you were only investigating for Tip’s wife and meant to start a scandal.”

“
Reveal
a scandal, you mean, Miss Ronico. You would have started it by carrying on with a married man. The wrathful and righteous citizens despise peepers, but if they were truly righteous there’d be nothing to peep at.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she said. “A man in your racket …”

“Miss Ronico,” I said evenly, “I have never hit a woman. And I would hate to start with one as young and attractive as you. You have five seconds to get out of here. One—two …”

“I apologize,” she said quickly.

I drank some coffee and didn’t look at her.

“I’m
sorry!
” she said.

“All right, all right. Finish your coffee and go. You don’t need me and I don’t trust you. When they put the star on your dressing-room door I’ll still be living in this dreary dump, getting beat-up for day wages.”

“I can get a star without Uncle Frank,” she said.

“Maybe. It would be an interesting experiment. Are you going to try it?”

She lifted her chin. “I just might do that.”

What was she? A brat, a spoiled brat, using her power over an evil man to climb to her particular star. It was a soiled climb but then, it was a tawdry star.

How could I hate her? The world was full of her twins. I smiled and said, “Drink your coffee and relax. It’s an ugly world but it has some bright moments.”

“You’re not a nasty man at all,” she said. “You’re a lot like Uncle Frank.”

Considering that a few minutes back she had been accusing her uncle of a double murder and another one planned (mine), I couldn’t quite see how that was a compliment. But I was sure she had meant it to be one and I didn’t quibble with her.

Before she left she said, “One thing I promise you—if I learn that Uncle Frank is still seeing that Lily Chen, I will leave him. I couldn’t stand that.”

She meant her career couldn’t. I patted her shoulder and said, “You’ll make it, kid, one way or another. Keep pitching, never quit, and you’ll make it. It’s a stubborn town.”

“Don’t I know it!” she said.

I gave myself a sponge bath after she left and shaved sitting down. I thought of the web of this case, the connecting lines that led from one principal to another, the loyalties and lusts and relationships that I’d uncovered, and tried to find enough for a district attorney.

I had nothing really to go on but the Callahan intuition, born of a long line of superstitious Irish ancestors.

Another day, another hundred fish. And there’d be expenses today, probably. I would be using a lot of gas.

I got to the office fairly early and typed the story of my adventures up to and including Miss Ronico’s visit. I realized that too much of it was concerned with Selina Stone, so made another copy which omitted her name, and that left almost nothing for the carbon copy destined for the L.A.P.D. So I wrote a third, one-paragraph report, explaining that I had been too sick and weak to work late yesterday afternoon.

It was a compulsion I still couldn’t completely understand, this covering for Miss Stone. It could easily lose me my license.

I phoned Lawrence Crewe and got the name of the man who had run the spot in Santa Monica. Was I going up to Santa Barbara, he asked me? Did I need a chauffeur? I told him I didn’t.

I phoned Pete Petroff and asked if he learned anything about Dave’s whereabouts. He told me he hadn’t, but he had a hunch Dave might have gone to Phoenix, to get away from Giovanni for a while. He had an old girl friend in Phoenix, and Pete had phoned her yesterday. She had told him Dave had written her, saying he might drop in since he had business in Tucson.

“Keep me informed, won’t you?” I asked him. “I have a feeling Dave might be playing detective, too.”

“I’ll do that,” he promised. “And don’t forget to call on me if you need a chauffeur.”

“I may need you. Have you done any more checking on Giovanni?”

“I’m running down a Vegas rumor right now,” he said, “and I might have a surprise for you in a day or so.”

“Fine,” I said, and then asked, “Pete, did you and Dave quarrel about something?”

There was a pause. And then, “Well, I kind of bugged him about being so scared of Giovanni. Dave’s a little too sensitive to ragging.”

“I see. Of course, you’re not scared of Frank, are you?” A silence.

“See you around, Pete,” I said. “Keep your guard up.”

“Sure,” he said. “So long.”

He was a little sensitive himself. He was still fairly young, and possibly rich, and there should be no reason for him to be ashamed of fearing Frank, Pete had a lot to live for, young, rich and single.

Everybody was playing detective. Harry Adler had known Tip more intimately and that might have given him information the rest of us were still seeking. Likely enough, Harry had finally garnered too much information, enough to make him a threat. Did he try to use it for blackmail?

This was turning into more of a whydunit than a whodunit; without the “why” there is no case for the prosecutor. Because the “why” is the motivation, and without motivation, murder is manslaughter, a much less punishable charge.

Motive, means and opportunity. I thought of my isosceles triangle and the opportunity Giovanni and Selina had enjoyed that fatal night. But Selina had admitted being there and Giovanni had his alibi, his Lily Chen. That also worked in reverse, if there was any reason to implicate Lily in murder.

It was an alibi they hadn’t used; he was still sticking to the Las Vegas story. And his word, in court, would probably be more highly valued than mine. He was a rich man and I was only a crummy private eye.

The facts
…
Get the facts, Irish, and the judge will be forced to overlook your tailoring.

I filled the flivver with gas and brought the oil up to its operating level and turned her north, toward Santa Barbara. If I took the Cabrillo Highway, I would have to go through Oxnard on the way, but Oxnard could wait. Maybe I would learn something in Santa Barbara that would make an Oxnard visit unnecessary.

Along the Cabrillo Highway the flivver went chirping, a pleasant drive and a lovely day. There were a few rock slides south of Malibu, but otherwise the road was clear and the traffic light. It was too early in the season for the tourists and too late in the morning for the wage slaves. I could almost forget my aches and frustrations, driving up that scenic route.

Santa Barbara is about the prettiest town in the state, far enough from Los Angeles to be free of the Hollywood influence and populated with people who have learned there is more to life than a fast and dirty buck. It was starting to change, as all the towns in the state were, but at least in Santa Barbara the solid citizens were resisting the change.

The address of Joe Culver was on the far side of town, in a new subdivision northeast of the highway. Joe Culver was the man Larry Crewe had told me about.

It was a redwood and stucco house with a heavy shake roof, high on a slope that overlooked a walnut grove. In the distance the mountains were clear and serene.

A stocky man in dungarees and tee-shirt was gently watering the new dichondra lawn. He watched me as I manipulated my crippled bulk out of the flivver.

As I came up the walk, he turned off the hose and came down part way to meet me.

“Joe Culver?” I asked him.

He nodded, frowning. “Don’t I know you?”

“I’m Brock Callahan,” I said.

“Hell, yes. I’ve seen you plenty times.” He looked at the crutch. “You’re retired, aren’t you?”

“From football. I’m an investigator now. Larry Crewe gave me your name.”

He smiled. “Good old Larry—the last of the big spenders. What happened to your foot?”

“Some hoodlums pushed me off a cliff. I’m lucky to be alive.”

He shook his head. “They must have been big hoodlums. Come on around in back. I’ll get you a beer. That’s what you drink, right?”

“Exactly,” I said. I followed him around the side of the house to the rear patio that looked out onto the distant mountains.

There he settled me on a well-padded chaise lounge and went into the house for the beer.

When he came out again he said, “The wife playing golf and the kids swimming. This is the life, huh?” He handed me a cold bottle of beer.

Of Einlicher! I stared at the bottle and at him and he grinned at me. “You were the guy who steered me onto it. Didn’t you endorse it, a couple years back, in their ads?”

I nodded. “And I meant every word of it.” I took a deep swallow and sighed and looked at him. “Mr. Culver I came to ask you about a girl named Selina Stone.”

“Oh, boy!” he said. He sat in an aluminum and plastic chair and looked out at the mountains. “She’s going up in the world, isn’t she? She’s got a hotshot agent, that one.”

“She told me you made a play for her. Or what she really said was that you had a crush on her.”

He turned to look at me. “She lied. I have been happily and completely married for seventeen years, Brock. I brought Selina Stone in for almost a month’s run because she was getting a big play from the carriage trade. But she was never my kind of woman. Why would she say a thing like that?”

“It’s hard to tell. You see, Larry Crewe had a date with her one night, but he got beaten up by some mugs before he ever got to the date. And when I asked Miss Stone about that, she said you had this crush on her and you were the kind of man who would hire thugs.”

His laugh was short and bitter. “I’d still be in business if I was that kind of man. That’s why I’m up here, instead of Las Vegas, because I’m not that kind of man. She was conning you but good.”

“I figured at the time she probably was. Tell me, did you ever hear of Lily Chen?”

He nodded. “Dancer. Chinese, right? A real looker. Last I heard, somebody had set her up in a little house of her own.”

“You heard right. She’s Frank Giovanni’s mistress.”

He stared at me. “You’re not tangling with him, are you?” He looked at my cast. “Is that how you got that?”

I nodded.

“Retire,” he said. “Sell out and come up here. Stay alive. Giovanni’s only one of many. There’s no law in Nevada now, and the way Vegas is reaching, Phoenix and L.A. will go next. Don’t tangle with Giovanni. You won’t have a friend in the world, and especially in the Police Department.”

I smiled. “You must have tangled with him.”

“Me?” He shook his head emphatically. “In those days Santa Monica had more hoodlums than I could handle.”

“It’s all behind me now,” he went on, “but looking at it from here, I still get the shivers.”

“You’re bitter,” I said. “Do you know much about Lily Chen?”

“Not much. She played the best places in town and then at Vegas she did some dances that even Los Angeles balked at.
Anything
goes there, you know. Wait …” He tapped his forehead. “There was a fat little mobster, a former Siegel hood, that used to squire her around. What was his name…? Damn it, it’s on the tip of my tongue …”

“Tony Jessup?” I asked.

He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. A real puke.”

“He’s working for Giovanni now,” I said. “I’m sure he’s the boy who pushed me off the cliff.”

“That lard-ass? Man, you should be ashamed! You must have been looking the other way.”

“I was,” I said sadly and looked at my empty bottle.

He stood up and grinned at me. “I’m on the way. Don’t move.”

In a minute he was back with two more bottles of the world’s finest beer. “This is the life,” he said again.

He sounded a little like a man who was trying to convince himself. Though I had to admit he looked content, sitting there with the hills all around him and the Einlicher in his hand.

We talked some more, mostly about the Rams. He had given me all he knew about Selina Stone and Lily Chen. He sounded like an honest man, and it figured that any honest man who could make it would get out of the Los Angeles area. If nothing else, its newspapers would keep Los Angeles phony.

I ate a late lunch at a Spanish restaurant in town, vast and lofty and ancient, filled with serene people and polite waiters. Very few of the customers were young, though. It was not a young people’s town. A trio played Spanish music and I thought of Selina Stone, who had started with that kind of music in Oxnard long ago.

Selina Stone had been born in Oxnard. And the lanky, busty, blonde Gloria Duster Malone had been born right here in Santa Barbara. Though she hadn’t been lanky, busty
or
blonde then, of course. And I thought, in my sad and nostalgic way, of the loss of innocence and wondered if this wouldn’t be a better world if we all died at fourteen.

The waiter asked, “More coffee, sir?” and I told him, “More tears and less coffee, that’s what we need.”

He smiled in his well-trained way and said, “I’m sure you’re right, sir, but it wouldn’t hurt to warm it a little.”

An adjusted and sensible man, and I tipped him well, by my standards.

Then I wormed into the hot flivver and headed for Oxnard. In Ventura I ran into some heavy traffic and it was almost four o’clock when I pulled into Oxnard. Joe Culver had given me the name of the man who would be most likely to be of help in Oxnard, and I drove directly over to his office.

It was a dingy three rooms in an ancient adobe building in the Mexican district. It was called the Valencia Entertainment Agency, and was composed of one Juan Lopez and a dark-skinned and amply proportioned secretary.

Mr. Lopez, she told me, was down in San Diego arranging for musicians to appear at a fiesta, and wouldn’t be home until late tonight. Would it be possible for me to call back in the morning?

I told her, “My ankle is acting up, anyway. Maybe I’ll stay over here in town tonight.”

She told me where the better gringo motels were located and I went out that way and found one that looked as if it had been constructed in the last century.

I went in and lay on the bed. The ankle was throbbing and my ribs seemed to be on fire. It was a clean break in the ankle and a sturdy cast, but I had been a fool to leave the hospital so soon. I closed my eyes and saw Lily Chen writhing in an exotic dance and I saw the bandy legs of Frank Giovanni.