Too Many Crooks (5 page)

Carver scowled at me, the fleshy face drooping slightly and the dark-rimed eyes squinting a little. "You wouldn't be telling me my job again, would you, chum?"

"No. But I will tell you one thing. You call me chum again and I'll see just how tough the cops grow in this town."

He chuckled deep in his chest. "Get lost, Scott." He brushed by me and walked toward the chief.

I hesitated, but only for one second. Then I got out of there. If I'd waited two seconds, I'd probably have attacked the entire Seacliff police force. As I left, the thought occurred to me that I would get very little help from that pillar of honesty, Chief Thurmond.

I spent an hour downtown, but it didn't take me that long to notice that the town had changed. It didn't seem like the place in which I'd vacationed only six months ago. Then it had been clean, quiet, peaceful. Everybody was friendly, ready with a smile or a cheerful word. You could still see some of the same faces, the same smiles; the buildings and streets, all the physical details, were the same; but Seacliff was different.

The bars were filling up with belching men and scratching women; young toughs hung around on street corners cracking wise and making vulgar noises at the girls. And there were a few older men who didn't seem to fit; guys with hard faces, bored big-city airs.

In half an hour I had little trouble placing bets in two different cigar stores and finding a few slot machines. I even recognized some Los Angeles hoodlums; an L.A. dope pusher, a con man, a jewelry thief named Sammy. With all these guys around, I didn't want to be carrying a check for five grand, so I scribbled the address of my L.A. bank on the envelope and mailed the check in for deposit.

In the Gorgon Room, where I stopped for a beer and a look around, I saw a guy I'd run into several times in L.A., a safe burglar named James "Petey" Peterson. Every time I'd seen him, he'd been hungry for one of his two major interests in life: women or money. Or both. There was a chance he might have some information I could use. We knew each other's names and businesses, but we'd never had trouble, so I didn't think he'd give me the chill if I tried to talk to him. I bought him a drink and said, "You're a long way from home, Petey."

He shrugged, took the drink, and said, "Home's where my hat is." His ugly face was expressionless.

I said, "Lots of L.A. guys around. Just saw Blip French and Sammy the Iceman. Big attraction here?"

"I heard it was a good spot for a vacation," he said.

"You're vacationing?"

"Yeah. It was warm in L.A., and I heard they had a sea breeze here." He squinted at me. "Heard a rumble you were in town. What you after?"

"Know anything about Jim Norris?"

"Nothing you'd want."

"For money?"

He sighed. "I do believe I could use a few bills. But I don't know nothing. Just the man's name."

"He's a pretty big wheel in town, isn't he?"

"That's what I hear."

"The biggest?"

He shrugged. "I doubt it."

There was nothing else he could tell me except that he spent most of his time here or at the Beachcomber's, but from what he had said it seemed that Seacliff was a reasonably safe place to hide out. The "heat" Petey had mentioned was from a safe job he was wanted for in L.A. He thanked me for the drink and I left.

I spent another half hour finding and talking to the two men whom Dane had mentioned: Tom Fellows and Hale Prentice. Fellows was a small, frightened man about forty-five with rimless glasses and a black sling still cradling his broken arm. He wouldn't tell me a thing except that he'd sold his place, and that he'd fallen and broken his arm accidentally. Prentice was more cooperative, saying he'd thought his place was worth $25,000 but he'd taken $20,000 for it when three men—the three from Dane's porch, according to his description—had "kind of intimated something might happen to my family."

Prentice and his wife and two kids were moving out of town. Neither Prentice nor Fellows had gone to the police, and despite my contention that even one or two complaints would help, it didn't seem likely that either of them would complain about anything. At a quarter to five, I found myself outside the two-story
Star
building, and on the chance that Betty might still be there I went inside.

The
Star
was a small daily, with the presses and linotype machines upstairs. The main room, at street level, held half a dozen desks. Three doors in the far wall led into private offices. I found Betty just preparing to leave.

She was standing behind a desk with her harlequin glasses in one hand, rubbing her eyes with the fingers of the other, and she didn't see me at first. Her heavy gray jacket hung from a hook on a clothes tree behind her.

"Hello," I said, and she looked up at me.

When I had seen Betty at Dane's, I had thought she was attractive, with an odd, soft kind of beauty. But it surprised me that simply removing the black-rimmed glasses could bring about such an improvement in her face. And I noted, too, that the removal of her gray jacket brought about a startling improvement in the rest of her. What I was really curious to know, though, was if there had been any improvement in her attitude. Up till now she hadn't impressed me as a wildly hilarious tomato.

She stared at me for a moment from those extremely light brown eyes, a half-smile on her darkly tanned face, "Oh, hello, Mr. Scott." Then she put on her glasses, quickly slipped into the gray jacket, and plopped down in her chair.

I said, "Dane told me you might give me some help on the activity around here. And I wondered if you knew where I could find Mrs. Whist. I haven't been able to locate her."

She seemed glad to have something to talk about. "Mrs. Whist is working with the Red Cross people, helping with the drive they have on now. Gives her something to do, and I guess it helps. She's probably down on Main Street, at the speakers' stand there. And Emmett phoned me—said you'd most likely come in. I've checked quite a bit on his rezoning idea. You know about that, don't you?"

I nodded and perched on the edge of her desk. "Wanted to ask you about that. Suppose some hoods moved into town, grabbed property, and planned to have it rezoned for a fat profit. They wouldn't make the first move unless they were pretty sure their application would be approved. So who would they have to fix, bribe, put pressure on? Who would they need to have in their pocket?"

She answered right away. "Well, they'd have to file their application for rezoning with the city planning commission, which would act on it and send it with their recommendation to the city council. The application might be sent by the council to the city engineer for his recommendation, but that wouldn't
have
to be done. The most important man on the planning commission is the chairman; on the council, it's the mayor. So you can figure they'd probably have to bribe or control the planning commission chairman and maybe some of the commission members, and possibly the mayor—at least some of the councilmen. But it could be done."

"Looks to me like it has been. Thanks. That gives me several places to look, anyway." I slid off the desk. "Mrs. Whist's at the Red Cross stand? I saw the platform a while ago. Emmett sent me a card mentioning a blood drive, but I thought he was kidding. This something new?"

"Sort of a trial. A few of the local citizens thought it might be in bad taste—you know, appealing publicly for blood, loud-speakers and speeches and everything. But it was decided to try it out here in Seacliff as a test."

"Besides, nobody knew exactly what the definition of bad taste was, huh?"

She smiled. "I suppose."

Smiling like that, she looked relaxed and lovely, and I told her so. "Betty, you're really a beauty when you smile. That's the first real smile—" The smile went away. "I mean it was," I amended.

"Please," she said.

She got to her feet. I said, "You through for the day?"

"Yes."

"Can I give you a lift home?"

She bit her lip and looked at me. "I don't have far to go."

I told her, "Look, Betty, you act like I'm Jack the Ripper. I'm not going to bite you." I grinned at her. "Not without permission, anyway. Besides, I don't know Mrs. Whist. It would probably help if you'd—"

"All right," she said suddenly. "Let's go."

I held the door of the Cad for her and as she climbed in she said, "You're a gentleman, after all, aren't you?"

"Don't jump to conclusions. I do this only because of habit and fear of public censure. If I had the nerve I'd make you climb through the window."

I thought for a moment she was going to congeal again, but then she shook her head and said, "Well, really," in a kind of half-shocked tone.

I drove the four blocks to Main, where the Red Cross had erected a twenty-foot-square wooden platform between Fourth and Fifth Streets; the platform raised about six feet from street level and extending back over the sidewalk. Cloth covered the framework at its sides. Loudspeakers at both ends of the platform were turned out toward the street, but they were silent.

As I parked near the stand, Betty said, "The drive doesn't start till day after tomorrow. Four days, Wednesday through Saturday. The Red Cross has never done anything quite like this before, but I think it's a good idea. I wrote a series of articles about it for the
Star
. If it's a success here, there'll probably be similar drives in larger cities."

We got out of the car and walked to the front of the stand.

Betty said, "Mrs. Whist should be in back, helping get things ready."

At the rear of the stand was a plywood-enclosed room covering the entire back third of the platform. We went inside and found one man and three women sorting cords and moving bottles and equipment, lining them up along one wall on shelves there. Betty pointed out Mrs. Whist, seated before a table. She was a slight, white-haired lady, busily putting printed forms into equal stacks. I stopped beside her.

Betty introduced us and told her I was an investigator working for Emmett Dane. I said, "I'd like to talk to you a little about your husband. If you'd prefer not to, it's all right."

She sighed. "No, I don't mind, Mr. Scott."

"Emmett told me you've sold to the Seacliff Development Company."

"Yes. I didn't want to keep the place . . . afterward. And the men were right there, with the money. It was— well, it was all over before I knew it."

"The Seaco representative had approached you and Mr. Whist before this morning, hadn't he?"

"Yes, Mr. Scott. Twice. They talked to Ed, but he refused to sell. He was quite upset about it. They threatened him, as Mr. Dane must have told you."

"Do you— that is, do you think there was anything strange about . . ."

"About Ed's death? I think there might have been. He might have drowned, but not from Gray's Rocks, like they said."

"I don't suppose you said anything to the police."

"I did, though. I told them I thought Ed's death might not have been an accident. And that the Seacliff Development Company had been trying to force us to sell our home. They said they'd look into it."

That stopped me for a minute. I'd assumed she hadn't gone to the cops. And the chief had told me there'd been no complaints about Seaco.

I said, "Did you talk to Chief Thurmond?"

"No. I spoke to a sergeant there. A man named Carver."

It was quiet for a few moments after that. We talked another minute but there was little Mrs. Whist could add except that she'd identified her husband's body. His face had been cut and bruised. That could have happened on the rocks. It could also, I figured, have been done by somebody's fist. I thanked Mrs. Whist, Betty spoke to her for a moment, and then she and I left.

In my car again, Betty said to me, "Do you think he was killed?"

"I don't know. I just can't swallow the idea that anybody would kill him for a chunk of land. Maybe there's too much I don't know. Incidentally, Em said he thought a guy named Jim Norris was the brains behind the Seaco bunch. How about that?"

"He's in it, I know that much. But I can't imagine him as the brains behind anything."

"He's manager of the Beachcomber's Lodge, isn't he? He'd have to be somewhere above the level of idiot if he can run a spot like that one."

"Actually, he's just manager in name only, I'd say. He's part owner of the place, but he seems too stupid and uncouth for actually running the lodge, meeting guests and so on. I think he just likes the title of manager. Likes to feel important."

She directed me toward her apartment house and I turned onto Eighth Street. "You've dug quite a ways into this Seaco bunch," I said. "How come you're so interested?"

"Well, naturally I'm on Emmett's side. He's a wonderful guy. And nobody wants criminals and ex-convicts moving into her town. And that's what this would amount to eventually. Besides, there's a real story in this—if I can ever get it printed. I've written two articles on it already, but Mr. Josephson, the publisher, killed them both. He seems terribly afraid we'll offend somebody." She sounded angry.

I said, "Like Norris, maybe?"

"Maybe."

I pulled in to the curb in front of her apartment house. As soon as the car stopped, she had the door open and started climbing out.

I said, "Where you going in such a rush?"

"Why, inside. Where did you think?" She shut the car door from the outside.

"I'm not sure. The way you took off, I thought maybe you planned to sprint around the block." I spoke pleasantly, just making conversation, but her face tightened again.

"Oh. Well, there wasn't anything else to say."

"How do you know? We could think of something. Shall we try?"

"No, no. No."

"One no would be enough, Betty." I grinned at her. "Since it has slowly become apparent to me that you are not going to invite me inside for wild bacchanals, I shall say good night. Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Scott."

"Why don't you call me Shell?"

She didn't say anything. "OK," I said. "See you in church. That noise you'll hear at midnight will be wild-eyed Shell Scott baying at the moon."