Tengu (33 page)

“I don’t know.
What? You said I could go?”

“You think I’d
leave the fucking cell door wide open if you couldn’t? Go. Collect your
belongings at the desk.”

Maurice looked
almost disappointed. “You found out who really did it?” he asked, as he tugged
on his T-shirt and tried to straighten his hair in the two-way mirror. Skrolnik
watched this impromptu primping with disgust. “We didn’t find out who did it,”
he said. “We just happen to know that it wasn’t you. Although, believe it or
not, I said from the beginning that it wasn’t you. I only had to take one look
at that sheep’s behind of a face of yours, and I knew it wasn’t you.”

“You really
thought I was innocent?”

“You’re about
as homicidal as a pet llama. Physically, could have taken us both to pieces
when we arrested you, but you weren’t even angry. You didn’t know what you were
being arrested for, and you weren’t even angry.”

Maurice said,
“Can I claim compensation?”

“Compensation for what?”

“Well, for
spending a couple of nights in the cells. It was pretty uncomfortable. And my
mother’s totally convinced that I’m a mass murderer.”

Sergeant
Skrolnik took El Krusho’s beefy arm and led him down to the desk to collect his
belongings. He said confidentially, “If I were you, I would get the hell out of
this place, and not worry about compensation or defamation or any of that shit,
because the best place that anyone can ever be is miles and miles away from the
law. You got me?”

Maurice counted
his $27.76, thrust it into the back pocket of his jeans, and nodded. “I still
think there ought to be some kind of compensation. You
know,
a month’s exemption from parking tickets, something like that?”

Just then, the
swinging doors of the police headquarters opened and Mack Holt strode in, with
Olive close behind him. “Hey, Maurice!” said Mack. “They told me you were
sprung.” Tengu “You know why he was sprung,” said Sergeant Skrol-nik,
poker-faced.

“Well, yes, I’m
sorry about that,” said Mack.’“I guess I’m just pleased that Maurice is out,
that’s all. Are you coming back to my place, Maurice? How about it?
A couple of beers, a steak or two?
Fifteen
eggs?
Maurice has to keep up his strength,” he explained to Sergeant
Skrol-nik.

“Why was I
sprung?” asked Maurice, his eyes on Skrolnik. “You didn’t tell me that. You
just said I was free to go.”

Mack glanced at
Sergeant Skrolnik, then at El Krusho, and then back again to Sergeant Skrolnik.

“Ah,” he said
uncomfortably.

But Sergeant
Skrolnik said, “You were sprung because I didn’t believe you were guilty,
that’s all; and because twelve hours’ intensive police work has so far failed
to tease out the slightest evidence that you were the man responsible for
Sherry Cantor’s murder, or that you were anywhere near the Hollywood Freeway
when Patrolman Ed Russo was killed.”

Skrolnik
hesitated. Olive started to say something,
but ;
Mack
nudged her to keep quiet. This was, after all, I Skrolnik’s show; and Mack
considered that Skrolnik was reasonably human.

Whatever Mayor
Tom Bradley had said about “the dimensions of violent crime,” whatever Sheriff
Peter J. Pitchcss had said about everybody in Los Angeles suffering from a
“siege mentality,” whatever Governor Jerry Brown had said about prisoners
taking karate lessons in California’s prisons “so that when they get out,
they’re more dangerous than ever,” it was Sergeant Skrolnik who had to go out
on the streets and track down the killers and the weirdos and the homicidal
freaks, and Mack respected him for that. If Maurice had actually committed
those murders, Mack wouldn’t have gone near Maurice with a loaded .45 and half
a division of the California National Guard. Yet Skrolnik had arrested Maurice,
albeit mistakenly, with nobody to help him but Detective Pullet.

Sergeant
Skrolnik laid his hand on El Krusho’s shoulder and said, “The main reason you
were sprung is because last night someone broke into the Rancho Encino Hospital,
and tore several people wide apart in the same way that Sherry Cantor was torn
apart. The similarities of the killings are overwhelming; and besides that, we
have the body of the man who did it. So, what happened at Orchid Place quite
obviously wasn’t down to you.”

“You caught the
guy?” asked Maurice.

“If you want to
,know
the confidential truth, we caught the guy and blew his
fucking head off,” said Skrolnik.

“Instant
justice,” said Olive.

Skrolnik looked
at her balefully. This morning she was wearing a thin cheesecloth blouse that
dimly revealed the darkness of her nipples and an extremely tight pair of
canary-yellow pants.

The effect of
the pants, as Detective Pullet was to remark afterward in a moment of intense
lateral thinking, was to remind him of two bananas side by side.

Mack said,
“It’s over, then? You’ve caught him and killed him?”

“You think it’s
over. The governor thinks it’s over. The mayor thinks it’s over. Even the
police commissioner thinks it’s over. But, of course, we now have several weeks
of intensive and incredibly tedious investigation to carry out to discover who
this fruitcake was, and why he committed those killings.”

“Isn’t that
what we pay you for?” asked Olive sharply.

Skrolnik
grinned tightly. “You also pay me to keep the next murderer away from your
door, Mrs. Nesmith.
And the next.
Hillside Stranglers,
Manson gangs, Lawrence Btttakers. Hell’s Angels, muggers, intruders, rapists,
perverts, sadists,
lone
headcases. You’re not safe
now. I’ll never pretend that you are. But you’re a whole lot safer than if I
wasn’t here, taking care of you.”

El Krusho said,
“I could use a beer.”

Skrolnik said,
“Sign here for your belongings and you can go sink as many beers as you like.”
Olive asked, “Where’s the body now?”

“What body?”
said Sergeant Skrolnik, watching El Krusho sign “M. Needs” in a large, rounded
scrawl.

“You said you
killed him.
The murderer.
Where’s his body now?”

“They’re
keeping it on ice for me, in the morgue at Rancho Encino. I’m going up there to
collect it later today. The medical examiners can’t wait to slice it up and sec
what made it tick.”

Olive said,
“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for
what?” asked Skrolnik.

‘‘I’m sorry I
bugged you. I don’t know. Don’t press me. Just accept that I’m sorry.”

Sergeant
Skrolnik put his meaty, red-freckled hands on Olive’s bare black shoulders and
smiled at her. “Listen,” he said, “if only one-tenth of the population said
what you just did, sorry, then Los Angeles would be a happier city. We make
mistakes in the police department. Everybody does. If it costs you, as a
taxpayer, then I personally apologize. But it’s nice to hear someone say sorry
in return. After all, we’re all in this thing together.”

“This is all
getting unnecessarily emotional,” said Mack. “Do you think we might leave now?”

“Go ahead,”
said Skrolnik, and gave Olive a comfortable squeeze on the behind.

“As the
criminals get weirder, the cops get weirder,” Maurice remarked as they climbed
into Mack’s battered Volkswagen.

“At least
you’re out of there,” said Mack. He gave Maurice a friendly punch on his
muscular arm.

“You know, it’s
fantastic to see you. You’re looking great.”

“What happened
up at Encino?” asked Maurice as Mack started up the Volkswagen’s blaring
engine, stuck his hand out of the window, and pulled out right in front of a lumbering
Hostess Cupcakes truck.

“You shithead!”
roared the truck driver.

“I see your
driving hasn’t improved,” Maurice remarked. “Do you remember the time you drove
off the

I edge of that
cliff at Santa Barbara?”

“I didn’t drive
off any cliff,” Mack protested. “It was just a gully, that’s all. Don’t give me
cliff.”

Olive said, “We
heard about it on the radio this morning. Some mad guy broke into the hospital
at Rancho Encino and ripped a nurse to pieces. Some other people were shot. The
police went in there and killed him.”

“Was that all?”
asked Maurice.

“So far.
The cops are being really cagey about giving out
information to the media. I guess they don’t want to make the same mistake they
made with the Hillside Strangler, catching people every two or three days and
then having to let them go again.”

“If they blew
this guy’s head off and it’s the wrong guy, at least they won’t have the
problem of letting him go again,” said Olive.

Mack said,
“Despite her sensitive apologies to Sergeant What’s-his-name just now, Olive is
still very deeply into citizen’s rights vis-a-vis the police and the civil
authorities. Olive believes that arrest and trial should be a socio-biological
process activated by mutual concern and respect for the general well-being of
the human village, rather like eaeting health foods and wearing shoes that are
higher at the front than they are at the back.”

“We should
absorb crime, rather than attempt to excise it from our systems,” added Olive.

“Law and order
is a digestive process, not a surgical one.”

“Is this lady
for real?” Maurice asked Mack.
“Digestive?
You mean
the cops are supposed to eat you, instead of bust you?”

“El Krusho is
not known for his sociological perception,” Mack said to Olive.

They turned on
the radio and tuned it to KABC. There were a few minutes of chatter about
sophisticated city dwellers moving out to Santa Ynez to take up farming, then a
news bulletin.

“Listen to
this,” said Olive, turning up the volume.

“Police at
Encino have released more details this morning of the grisly murder at Rancho
Encino hospital of Mrs. Mary Thorson, wife of Admiral Knut Thorson.
Also the violent slaying of a hospital nurse and two armed security
guards.

Apparently, the
crimes were committed by a multiracial hit team, including at least three
Japanese and a Caucasian. The bodies of two of the Japanese were found in the
hospital shrubbery after the attack; one obviously slain by a security guard’s
bullet, the other the apparent victim of his Caucasian colleague. The principle
assailant, who was shot and killed by police after his homicidal attack on Mrs.
Thorson and on Nurse Ruth Abramski, was also said to be Japanese.

“Admiral
Thorson, who survived the attack, has already spoken with the police, although
no details have yet been released.

“Chief of
Detectives Harry Calsbeek said that the crime was similar in most respects to
the recent homicide of television star Sherry Cantor, who played the part of
Lind-say in Our Family Jones. He is cooperating closely with Hollywood
detectives in an attempt to discover why such an attack should have been
launched against this luxury private hospital, and by whom. So far, said
Calbeek, the butchery remains a mystery.”

Mack switched
the radio off. “We were right. Did you hear that? We were right from the very
beginning.”

“Who was
right?” asked Maurice.

“Me! 7
was
right! And Jerry Sennett, the guy who lives in the house
next door to Sherry’s place, he was right too. He said he was sure that the
killer was Japanese, something to do with Japan.

You remember that
face they showed on television? Well, maybe you didn’t see it. But Jerry said
it was an ancient Japanese No mask. And when I pointed out that it was easy to
mistake his house number for Sherry’s, he agreed that the killer could have
been after him. And the clincher was that he fought against the Japanese during
World War Two, something to do with Naval Intelligence, and as far as I can
work out, he was personally responsible for some really important Japanese
defeat.” Maurice pulled a face. “This is all beginning to sound extremely
complicated. I think I need a beer first.”

“It’s not
complicated at all,” said Mack. “I believe that the Japs are getting their
revenge on us, that’s what. Anybody who did anything really heroic or important
during World War Two–the Japs are wiping them out with a hit squad. Don’t you
think that’s amazing?”

“I also think
it’s unbelievable,” said Maurice. “Is it very much further? My goddamn neck’s
aching in the back of this mobile peanut.”

They drew up
outside Mack’s apartment on Franklin Avenue. It was beginning to grow warm.

Mack helped El
Krusho out of the car and then led the way along the path. Olive said, “It
looks like you’ve got yourself a visitor. Mack.”

In the shadow
of the porch, unshaven, smoking a
cigarette,
stood Jerry
Sennett, with the look of a man who has had a hard and unsuccessful night.

“Did you hear
the news?” Mack asked him as he came up to the door. “Did you hear what
happened at Rancho Encino?”

Jerry nodded.
“I heard. And that’s presumably why they released your friend here?”

“That’s right.
El Krusho is loose. Maurice, this is Jerry Sennett. Jerry, this is the
strongest man south of Visalia.”

“Visalia?”
asked Jerry, shaking El Krusho’s hefty hand.

“We had an
interesting evening in Visalia once,” explained Mack. “It was something to do
with three women and four bottles of Wild Turkey. The rest I forgot.”

Olive looked at
Jerry and pulled an expression which very clearly meant, “Who are they trying
to kid?” Jerry smiled back at her, impressed by her wild Rastafarian beauty,
and by the tightness of her canary-yellow pants. But there was a frightened
ache deep down inside him which wouldn’t go away, an ache that made
pleasantries impossible.

He said, as
steadily as he could manage, “I’m sorry I came around so early. I don’t want to
break up any parties or anything. But I think I’ve found out who’s behind all
these killings, and why they’re committing them.”