Eureka (29 page)

“Football's my game,” he said. “More action. Baseball's kind of boring.”

“Boring, then!” Brodie answered, and looked at Ben. “What have you been teaching the kid?”

Ben shrugged. “He's a halfback at the University of Pennsylvania,” he said.

“One more year to go,” Eli announced. “I took this semester off. Got a busted knee in the Army game so I'm taking it easy.”

“Then what?”

“Haven't decided yet. I may stay back East for a while. I've got some friends in Boston.”

“Male or female?”

A cocky grin: “Both.”

“Wanderlust, huh.”

Eli stuck his hands in his coat pockets and looked down at the ground. “I don't think I'd make a good banker,” he said.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Brodie said. “Neither would I.”

The kid laughed, and looked back and forth at his parents as if to say, “See, he understands.”

“I got a friend from the service who works down in Hollywood making moving pictures. Maybe you and me, we could take a day or two and go down, see how they do it.”

“That sounds great!” the kid said eagerly.

As they started toward the car, Ben ran ahead. “Wait there a minute,” he called over his shoulder. He reached in the car and got his Brownie camera.

“Can you work one of these?” he asked the conductor.

“I can try,” he answered. Ben handed him the camera. “Just look through here, hold it real still, and press the button.”

So they stood together: Brodie, with his godson's arm around his shoulder and his arm around the boy's waist, and Isabel with an arm around Eli and Ben. And a stranger took their picture and Culhane knew in his heart he was back to stay.

He opened the French doors and I followed him out to a redwood deck facing the bay. Culhane took my glass and went inside to freshen our drinks.

“Your partner's still in the hall of records, which is what we laughingly call it,” Culhane said. “He says he'll meet you after lunch. I ordered us steak sandwiches and baked potatoes. Sound okay?”

“Sure, thanks.”

I rolled two cigarettes and handed him one and lit them both. We leaned on the railing and watched a sailboat tacking its way to the mouth of the bay. I was wondering what he was thinking and why we were suddenly getting so chummy. Then he said, “How did you ever get in so deep with Palomino that time?”

He said it so casually it almost went by me. Then it hit me. I had thought we had finished elbowing each other and were ready to get down to business. Now he was bringing up my old business, a thing that had been put to bed a couple of years ago.

“Touché,” I said with half a grin.

“Just curious,” he said with a shrug.

“I made a mistake in a poker game,” I told him, without taking my eyes off the boat.

“How's that?”

“I was playing on borrowed money. If you don't have the price in your kick, never get in the game.”

“You were playing on Palomino's money, right?”

“That's right, and it was his game.” I shook my head. “That was my second mistake. Incidentally, it was never proven. That I didn't settle up with him, I mean.”

“Well, killing him did raise some eyebrows,” he said, raising his own.

“He more than had it coming,” I said, looking at him. “He was holding a fistful of hot diamonds and had left a string of bodies behind to get them, when it all went sour on him.”

“And three of his hooligans backing him up. That one was right on the edge, taking them all on like that.”

“I didn't have much choice,” I said. “They didn't want to go to the gas chamber and I was the only thing between them and the exit. We got all the rocks back, you should know that, having brought it up. Two hundred grand in hot ice. There wasn't an inquiry about the thou some people said I owed Palomino. That's why I have to wonder where you heard it. Sounds like something Eddie Woods might tumble onto.”

“Know Eddie, do you?”

“You know I met him yesterday,” I said flatly. “Until then, I wouldn't have known him if he'd walked up and kicked me in the ankle.”

“That thing with Fontonio was unfortunate.”

After a moment or two, I said, “Is it my turn yet?”

He smiled back with his lips. His eyes got a little bluer, a little less mischievous, a little warier.

“You want a look in my closet now, is that it?”

“It crossed my mind. How come you're not up at the club playing golf with the rest of the elite?”

“I have a bar tab in the clubhouse, that's as far as it goes. Sometimes somebody picks it up. Anonymously. That way it's not a bribe. The apartment and the car come with the job.”

“I've never been that lucky.”

“It's not luck, it's appreciation.” He looked at me and his eyes had softened again. “Everybody knows I'm underpaid, just like you are. All cops are underpaid and underappreciated. All we get is the dirty laundry.”

“So ask for a raise.”

“I don't need a raise. I do what I do because it's my job, just like you do. I don't want any more money. I'd just end up buying a lot of crap I don't need.”

The doorbell chimed and Culhane opened the door to a callow young man whose blue jacket was a little too broad in the shoulders and waist. He wheeled in the table, busied himself setting out sterling silver knives and forks, and lace napkins, and a sterling silver pot of coffee, then brought up sandwiches, still hot under stainless covers. Culhane gave him a dollar. There was no check to sign.

We sat down to eat. The sandwich was an inch-thick boneless sirloin larger than the slice of white bread that provided the sandwich part of the meal. The potato had been cut open, stuffed with butter, and mashed in the skin.

“What the hell are you
really
after, Cowboy?”

“The five hundred a month,” I said. “I think it was blackmail.”

“Maybe it was. But maybe it was a gift. And maybe you're looking in the wrong place.”

“Where would you look?”

“Hell, I don't know,” he said with a shrug. “I keep telling you, I never heard of this lady until you came along, and you've been in my hair ever since. You think I've been paying her five bills a month for all those years? I make
six
bills a month. I started at one-twenty-five. My raises come every three years and once in a while the council gives me a little Christmas bonus. I never take it unless my boys get the same. They provide me with this suite of rooms and the Packard, which belongs to the county.” He waved a hand toward the rooms. “And I don't have a printing press in the back room cranking out C-notes.”

“What do you know about electricity?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I know they use it to kill people back East. A hangman's knot is a hell of a lot easier. Even gas is kinder.”

“When you get electrocuted everything stops. You heart stops beating, your digestion stops, your brain fries, you stop breathing. Instantly.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

“Well, maybe I'm wrong, it just seems like an ugly way to dispose of even the most serious felon.”

“Verna Hicks's lungs were full of water.”

I said it casually, between bites. He looked at me as if to say, So what? Then I watched the sun rise behind his eyes, like dawn crawling over a mountaintop. He looked at his sandwich and then back at me. He put his fork down, got up, walked to the railing, and stared out at the ocean for a minute or so, then turned to face me.

“You sure know how to ruin a guy's meal,” he said. A growl, almost a whisper.

“You suspect this? That why you been sniffing around up here?”

“It's my
business
,” I said.

“It's my
county
,” he roared. “If somebody up here killed that lady,
whoever
did it, they'll answer to me.”

“It was done on my watch and my beat,” I said firmly. “If somebody up here's responsible, I intend to send them across.”

His frigid eyes stayed on me.

“I don't know who killed her,” I went on. “She's been down five days. You know how that is, every day the trail gets colder. The only clues I've got are those checks and a vague description of a guy who was seen in the neighborhood about the time she was dusted.”

It got dead silent.

“Jesus, how I hate murder,” he said. Then after a long pause: “And you say this lady had a decent life?”

“She was happily married and doing great until her husband was ironed out by a hit-and-runner four years ago,” I said, rolling him the cigarette. “She was just getting back on her feet.”

Culhane got up, and walked back to the railing of the deck, and smoked another cigarette silently for a while. I finished my lunch.

“I'll tell you this,” he said finally, looking me directly in the eyes. “Nobody I know personally is capable of such an act. Or having it done. Take that or leave it.”

“I have a hunch who she is. Or was.”

“Yeah? Who would that be?”

“Lila Parrish.”

Culhane looked stunned. “Lila Parrish?”

“The missing witness from the Thompson case.”

“I know who the hell Lila Parrish is. Where the hell did you come up with that notion?”

“She vanished before the appeal. Then Verna popped up a year later in L.A. with no pedigree. She had four grand in cash, used it to open a bank account. And then there was the five hundred a month. She saved almost all of it, bought a house and occasionally a new car, some antiques. She lived a simple life.”

He stared at me for a long minute, letting that sink in.

“So naturally you figure she was being paid off to drop out of sight.”

“You got a better idea?”

“I don't think much of that one.”

“Maybe she was having an affair with somebody up here and took a powder, or was paid to,” I said. “Maybe there isn't any connection with the Thompson case. But I have to find out. The money leads here, and I'll be here until I arrest the man or woman who killed her or I'm convinced otherwise.”

He smoked the butt almost to his fingers. He flicked the end off it, split the butt down the middle, and dumped the remaining tobacco into the wind. Then he balled the paper into a fly speck and popped it in his mouth.

“That's the way a Marine does it,” he said, and sat back down and poured us each a cup of coffee.

“How long were you in?” I asked.

“Two months short of sixteen years.” He stared into his cup for a long minute. “It was fine until we went over there. The Western Front was a stinking, bloody burial ground. I lost most of my company in two days. But we got across the river.” Then his lip curled and he repeated the line to himself, low with controlled rage and almost under his breath. “We got across that fucking river.”

In the time I knew Culhane, I rarely heard the sheriff use that word. When he did use it, it was when nothing else was appropriate.

The doorbell rang again and he left the table, returning a few seconds later with a tall, deeply tanned, angular man, over six feet, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a hawk nose, and the saddest eyes I had ever seen. He was wearing a pale gray silk sports jacket and dark gray flannels.

Culhane introduced us. “Sergeant Bannon, this is Ben Gorman.”

Gorman nodded at me and we shook hands.

“Want a drink? Cup of coffee?” Culhane asked.

“No thanks,” Gorman answered. “Isabel's waiting on the patio. We're having lunch.” He sat down at the table and looked across at me. “Sorry if I've been inhospitable, Sergeant,” he said. He took a folded 8
¹
⁄
₂
-by-11 manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, unfolded it, laid it on the table, and slid it in front of me.

I opened the envelope. There were three cashier's checks inside, made out to Verna Hicks, one dated March the first, 1941. The other two were dated a year or so ago. The signatures on the checks were all the same: Marsha Whittaker.

“Is Miss Whittaker still with the bank?” I asked.

Gorman nodded. “She'll be there until two.”

“May I talk to her?”

Gorman nodded. “She's expecting you.”

“Benny, the woman the checks are made out to, Verna Hicks?” Culhane said. “She wasn't killed in an accident. She was murdered.”

Gorman was stunned. He looked at me and then at Culhane, and said, almost in a whisper, “My God, Brodie, you told me she drowned in her tub.”

“She did, only it wasn't an accident,” I said. “Somebody shoved her head underwater and held it there until she died.”

A minute passed and nobody said anything. Then Gorman, sounding genuinely upset, said, “You think someone in San Pietro had something to do with this?”

“I don't know, Mr. Gorman,” I said. “I have a homicide on my hands. Somebody has been giving Verna Hicks five hundred a month for almost twenty years. That money trail leads here. That seems like more than a coincidence, and coincidence makes me nervous.”

“On the other hand, it could have nothing at all to do with her death,” said Culhane.

“Sure,” I agreed. “We have people working a lot of angles in L.A. But right now this is the angle I'm working on. If it's a dead end, I'll be the first to admit it.”

“Well,” Gorman said, “I don't want to keep my wife waiting. Come say hello, Brodie.”

“Of course,” Culhane said. “We're just wrapping things up.”

I followed the two men down the hall and through the lobby to the patio. Isabel Gorman was indeed the woman in the photo on Gorman's rolltop. She was as dignified in life as in the photograph, except her black hair was streaked with gray, there were lines around her mouth, and she had the same sorrow reflecting in her brown eyes as in Gorman's. She smiled sweetly when she saw Brodie.