The Galton Case (24 page)

“I don’t dig you.”

“Why don’t you dissolve the brother act? Commit yourself where there’s some future. Your wife could do with a piece of you. She’s in a bad way, Lemberg.”

He didn’t answer me. He held his brother’s head possessively against his shoulder. In the light of the stars they seemed like twins, mirror images of each other. Roy looked at Tommy in a puzzled way, as if he couldn’t tell which was the real man and which was the reflection. Or which was the possessor and which was the possessed.

Footfalls thudded in the dust behind me. It was Mrs. Fredericks, wearing a bathrobe and carrying a pan of water.

“Here,” was all she said.

She handed me the pan and went back into the house. She wanted no part of the trouble in the street. Her house was well supplied with trouble.

I sprinkled some water on Tommy’s face. He snorted and sat up blinking. “Who hit me?” Then he saw me, and remembered: “You sucker-punched me. You sucker-punched a cripple.”

He tried to get up. Roy held him down with both hands on his shoulders:

“You had it coming, you know that. I’ve been talking to Mr. Archer. He’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“I’m willing to listen to the truth,” I said. “Anything else is a waste of time.”

With his brother’s help, Tommy got onto his feet. “Go ahead,” Roy prompted him. “Tell him. And no more kid stuff.”

“The whole truth, remember,” I said, “including the Schwartz angle.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Tommy was still dazed. “Schwartz was the one hired me in the first place. He sent one of his boys to look me up, promised me a hundred bucks to put a little fear into this certain party.”

“A little death, you mean?”

He shook his head violently. “Nothing like that, just a little working over.”

“What did Schwartz have against Culligan?”

“Culligan wasn’t the one. He wasn’t supposed to be there, see. He got in the picture by mistake.”

“I told you that,” Roy said.

“Be quiet. Let Tommy do the talking.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy said. “It was this beast that I was supposed to put on a little show for. I wasn’t supposed to hurt her, nothing like that, just put the fear of God in her so she’d cough up what she owed Schwartz. It was like a collection agency, y’unnerstan’? Legit.”

“What was her name?”

“Alice Sable. They sent me because I knew what she looked like. Last summer in Reno she used to run around with Pete Culligan. But he wasn’t supposed to be there at her house, for God sake. The way they told it to me, she was alone by herself out there all day. When Culligan came marching out, armed up to the teeth, you could of knocked me over with a ’dozer.

“I moved in on him, very fast, very fast reflexes I got, talking all the time. Got hold of the gun but it went off, the slug plowed up my arm, same time he dropped the gun. I picked it up. By that time he had his knife out. What could I do? He was going to gut me. I slammed him on the noggin with the gun and chilled him. Then I beat it.”

“Did you see Alice Sable?”

“Yeah, she came surging out and yelled at me. I was starting the Jag, and I couldn’t hear what she said over the engine. I didn’t stop or turn around. Hell, I didn’t want to rough up no beast, anyway.”

“Did you pick up Culligan’s knife before you left, and cut him with it?”

“No sir. What would I do that for? Man, I was hurt. I wanted out.”

“What was Culligan doing when you left?”

“Laying there.” He glanced at his brother. “Lying there.”

“Who coached you to say that?”

“Nobody did.”

“That’s true,” Roy said. “It’s just the way he told it to me. You’ve got to believe him.”

“I’m not the important one. The man he has to convince is Sheriff Trask of Santa Teresa County. And planes are taking off for there all the time.”

“Aw, no.” Tommy’s gaze swiveled frantically from me to Roy. “They’ll throw the book at me if I go back.”

“Sooner or later you have to go back. You can come along peaceably now, or you can force extradition proceedings and make the trip in handcuffs and leg-chains. Which way do you want it, hard or easy?”

For once in his young, life, Tommy Lemberg did something the easy way.

I
PHONED
Sheriff Trask long distance. He agreed to wire me transportation authorization for the Lemberg brothers. I picked it up at Willow Run, and the three of us got aboard an early plane. Trask had an official car waiting to meet the connecting plane when it landed in Santa Teresa.

Before noon we were in the interrogation room in the Santa Teresa courthouse. Roy and Tommy made statements, which were recorded by a court reporter on steno and tape-machine. Tommy seemed to be awed by the big room with its barred windows, the Sheriff’s quiet power, the weight of the law which both man and building represented. There
were no discrepancies in the part of his statement I heard.

Trask motioned me out before Tommy was finished. I followed him down the corridor to his office. He took off his coat and opened the neck of his shirt. Blotches of sweat spread from his armpits. He filled a paper cup with water from a cooler, drained the cup, and crushed it in his fist.

“If we buy this,” he said at last, “it puts us back at the beginning. You buy it, don’t you, Archer?”

“I’ve taken an option on it. Naturally I think it should be investigated. But that can wait. Have you questioned Theo Fredericks about the Culligan killing?”

“No.”

“Is Fredericks doing any talking at all?”

“Not to me he isn’t.”

“But you picked him up last night?”

Trask’s face had a raw red look. I thought at first that he was on the verge of a heart attack. Then I realized that he was painfully embarrassed. He turned his back on me, walked over to the wall, and stood looking at a photograph of himself shaking hands with the Governor.

“Somebody tipped him off,” he said. “He flew the coop five minutes before I got there.” He turned to face me: “The worst part of it is, he took Sheila Howell with him.”

“By force?”

“You kidding? She was probably the one who tipped him off. I made the mistake of phoning Dr. Howell before I moved on the little rat. In any case, she went along with him willingly—walked out of her father’s house and drove away with him in the middle of the night. Howell’s been on my back ever since.”

“Howell’s very fond of his daughter.”

“Yeah, I know how he feels, I have a daughter of my own. I was afraid for a while that he was going to take off after her with a shotgun, and I mean literally. Howell’s a trap-shooter, one of the best in the county. But I got him calmed
down. He’s in the communications room, waiting to hear some word of them.”

“They’re traveling by car?”

“The one Mrs. Galton bought for him.”

“A red Thunderbird should be easy to spot.”

“You’d think so. But they’ve been gone over eight hours without a trace. They may be in Mexico by now. Or they may be cuddled up in an L.A. motel under one of his aliases.” Trask scowled at the image. “Why do so many nice young girls go for the dangerous ones?”

The question didn’t expect an answer, and that was just as well. I hadn’t any.

Trask sat down heavily behind his desk. “Just how dangerous is he? When we talked on the telephone last night, you mentioned a knifing he did before he left Canada.”

“He stabbed his father. Apparently he meant to kill him. The old man is no saint, either. In fact, the Fredericks’ boardinghouse is a regular thieves’ kitchen. Peter Culligan was staying there at the time of the knifing. The boy ran away with him.”

Trask took up a pencil and broke it in half, abstractedly, dropping the pieces on his blotter. “How do we know the Fredericks boy didn’t murder Culligan? He had a motive: Culligan was in a position to call his bluff and tell the world who he really was. And M.O. figures, with his knifing record.”

“We’ve been thinking the same thing, Sheriff. There’s even a strong likelihood that Culligan was his partner in the conspiracy. That would give him a powerful motive to silence Culligan. We’ve been assuming that Fredericks was in Luna Bay that day. But has his alibi ever been checked?”

“There’s no time like the present.”

Trask picked up his phone and asked the switchboard to put through a call to the San Mateo County sheriff’s office in Redwood City.

“I can think of one other possibility,” I said. “Alice Sable was involved with Culligan last year in Reno, and maybe since. Remember how she reacted to his death. We put it down to nervous shock, but it could have been something worse.”

“You’re not suggesting that she killed him?”

“As a hypothesis.”

Trask shook his head impatiently. “Even putting it hypothetically, it’s pretty hard to swallow about a lady like her.”

“What kind of a lady is she? Do you know her?”

“I’ve met her, that’s about all. But hell, Gordon Sable’s one of the top lawyers in the city.”

The politician latent in every elected official was rising to the surface and blurring Trask’s hard, clear attitudes. I said:

“That doesn’t put his wife above suspicion. Have you questioned her?”

“No.” Trask became explanatory, as though he felt that he had missed a move: “I haven’t been able to get to her. Sable was opposed, and the head-shrinkers backed him up. They say she shouldn’t be questioned on painful subjects. She’s been borderline psychotic since the killing, and any more pressure might push her over the edge.”

“Howell’s her personal doctor, isn’t he?”

“He is. As a matter of fact, I tried to get to her through Howell. He was dead set against it, and as long as it looked like an open-and-shut case, I didn’t press the point.”

“Howell should be ready to change his mind. Did you say he’s somewhere around the courthouse?”

“Yeah, he’s down in Communications. But wait a minute, Archer.” Trask rose and came around the desk. “This is a touchy business, and you don’t want to hang too much weight on the Lemberg brothers’ story. They’re not disinterested witnesses.”

“They don’t know enough to invent the story, either.”

“Schwartz and his lawyers do.”

“Are we back on the Schwartz kick again?”

“You were the one that got me on it in the first place. You were convinced that the Culligan killing was a gang killing.”

“I was wrong.”

“Maybe. We’ll let the facts decide when they all come out. But if you were wrong, you could be wrong again.” Trask punched me in the stomach in a friendly way. “How about that, Archer?”

His telephone chirped, and he lifted the receiver. I couldn’t make out the words that came scratchily over the wire, but I saw their effect on Trask. His body stiffened, and his face seemed to grow larger.

“I’ll use my Aero Squadron,” he said finally, “and I ought to be there in two hours. But don’t sit around waiting for me.” He slammed down the receiver and reached for the coat draped over the back of his chair.

“They made the red Thunderbird,” he said. “Fredericks abandoned it in San Mateo. They were just going to put the word on the teletype when they got my call.”

“Where in San Mateo?”

“Parking-lot of the S.P. station. Fredericks and the girl probably took a train into San Francisco.”

“Are you flying up?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a volunteer pilot standing by all morning. Ride along with us if you want. He has a four-passenger Beechcraft.”

“Thanks, I’ve had enough flying to last me for a while. You didn’t ask them to check Fredericks’s alibi.”

“I forgot,” Trask said lightly. “I’ll take it up with Fredericks personally.”

He seemed glad to be leaving Alice Sable in my lap.

T
HE
communications center of the courthouse was a windowless room on the basement level, full of the chatter and whine of short-wave radio signals. Dr. Howell was sitting with his head down in front of a quiet teletype machine. He raised his head abruptly when I spoke to him. His face was gray in the white overhead light:

“So here you are. While you’ve been junketing around the country at my expense, she’s gone away with him. Do you understand what that means?”

His voice rose out of control. The two deputies monitoring the radios looked at him and then at each other. One of them said: “If you two gentlemen want to talk in private, this is no place to do it.”

“Come outside,” I said to Howell: “You’re not accomplishing anything here. They’ll be picked up soon, don’t worry.”

He sat in inert silence. I wanted to get him away from the teletype machine before the message from San Mateo hit it. It would send him off to the Bay area, and I had a use for him here:

“Doctor, is Alice Sable still under your care?”

He looked up questioningly. “Yes.”

“Is she still in the nursing home?”

“Yes. I should try to get out there today.” He brushed his forehead with his fingertips. “I’ve been neglecting my patients, I’m afraid.”

“Come out there with me now.”

“What on earth for?”

“Mrs. Sable may be able to help us terminate this case, and help us reach your daughter.”

He rose, but stood irresolute beside the teletype machine. Sheila’s defection had robbed him of his force. I took hold of his elbow and steered him out into the basement corridor. Once moving, he went ahead of me up the iron stairs into the hot white noon.

His Chevrolet was in the county parking-lot. He turned to me as he started the engine:

“How can Mrs. Sable help us to find Sheila?”

“I’m not certain she can. But she was involved with Culligan, the Fredericks boy’s probable partner in the conspiracy. She may know more about Theo Fredericks than anyone else does.”

“She never said a word about him to me.”

“Has she been talking to you about the case?”

He said after some hesitation: “Not being a practicing psychiatrist, I haven’t encouraged that line of discussion with her. The matter has come up, however. Unavoidably so, since it’s part and parcel of her mental condition.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I prefer not to. You know the ethics of my profession. The doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct.”