Cat and Mouse (11 page)

The local afternoon paper informed us that there had been another earthquake in Mexico City, a 7.3 jolt this time. It also informed us that the Los Angeles police were on the hunt for another weirdo, labeled the Serial Killer, a man who specialized in knifing prostitutes. Two of the ten women he had attacked had survived. When (and if) they recovered enough to talk, the L.A. police hoped to get a description. Chief Chandler Harris’s two-victim slayer could now be relegated to the want-ad pages.

Jan gave me a big kiss and a tight hug when she came home. I introduced her to Harley.

She said, “You boys must be bushed. I’ll make the drinks. I’ll take a bottle of Einlicher out to Corey first.”

“I’ll have the same,” I said.

“What’s Einlicher?” Harley asked.

“America’s finest beer. That’s what I was drinking at Heinie’s.”

“Make it three,” he said and smiled at Jan. “Please.”

When she left, Harley said, “No wonder you don’t mess around! You hit the jackpot, buddy.”

I changed the subject. “Maybe you ought to call your wife and tell her where you are.”

“I will after dinner. She’s in the rec hall now, playing bridge.” He sighed. “Six days a week, afternoon bridge.”

Corey was slated to eat in the living room, where he could watch the road. Harley suggested that he replace him this evening. Mrs. Casey seconded the suggestion. Jan didn’t look happy about that. She likes to look at skinny men who are closer to her age.

Back to the routine: Mrs. Casey to her old movies, Jan to her samples, me to my records. Harley phoned his wife and then sat with Corey in the living room, yakking and watching.

It was another misty night. The lawn lights were on; the guard’s car sat masked in the shadow of the garage and the shrubbery bordering the driveway.

Big Bear had a brother who had spent time in jail.
He
could be the man I might have put away. But my records weren’t that complete; there had been no mention in them of a bald and scarred brother, or any reason to record it. At the time.

Mrs. Casey, since Corey moved in, had made an exception to her dictum of not making breakfast. She got up at six so he could have his breakfast before the guard left and she generously stayed up to serve us lesser mortals.

Harley left after breakfast. I drove Mrs. Casey to her ten-o’clock Mass. When I returned to the house a couple of teenage boys were playing catch on the Crider lawn and there was a car with a Missouri license plate on their driveway.

“Do the Criders have visitors?” I asked Corey.

He shook his head. “They sold out and moved to Sun City.”

They had found their sanctuary.

Jan was on the phone when I came into the house. When she hung up she told me she had invited the Vogels for dinner. “And your friend Bernie asked if he should bring his gun. I don’t think that was funny.”

“Bernie,” I explained, “has to deal with hoodlums day in and day out. Most cops do. They have a less panicky view of the breed than we ordinary citizens do.”

I told Corey after lunch that I would stand guard for a while and he could get some exercise in the pool. The sheriff’s cruiser went past three times in my first hour of watch. I joined Corey and Jan in the pool. Let the bald cat play his nitwit game; I was a man, not a mouse. Corey was no longer being held. Our family was alive and well. But Jasper Belton was neither well nor alive and Harley Davidson Belton was on the hunt. Baldy was overmatched—I tried to tell myself.

When the Vogels came, we all sat in the living room, nobody in the front yard. Over the expensive Scotch I reserve for Bernie’s refined taste I related to him all that Harley and I had learned on the trip.

“So now,” I explained, “we know everything about the killer except his name.”

“Everything about the
suspect,”
he corrected me, “except his name.”

“Come on! He was living with Jane Meredith. She was beaten to death and five hundred dollars she had withdrawn from her savings is missing. Her car is found abandoned in Ventura. Corinth cigarette packages are found in the shack and in his hotel room, and I learned that’s what he smokes. We can tie the man up with Jasper. Are you telling me that’s not a case?”

“It’s reasonable cause for arrest,” he admitted. “But where is the hard evidence? Any prowler could have killed Jane Meredith and stolen her car and her money. And you can be sure the defense attorney will have half a dozen people in court who smoke Corinth cigarettes. And where’s the weapon? Corey’s is the only one that has been found, and it matched the slug in Belton’s neck. Think of what the defense can make of
that.”

“Corey’s safe, isn’t he?”

“He can be picked up again. Is this the last of your drinkable Scotch?”

“I’ll bring you another,” I said. “But you sure as hell haven’t earned it.”

“Brock,” he said patiently, “I was only trying to point out what could happen. I’m sure you don’t believe in vigilante justice.”

“Of course not!” I half lied. “Neither Stan Nowicki nor I believe in that.”

“Nowicki!” he said scornfully.

“You have just contradicted yourself,” I told him.

“What in hell do you mean by that?”

“Mull it over,” I said, “while I get you another free drink.”

I don’t know if he mulled it over or not while I was getting his drink. The fact in hard evidence is that he didn’t reopen the discussion when I came back.

We changed pairings after dinner. Bernie and Jan talked about the new writers and artists I couldn’t understand and Ellie didn’t want to understand. Ellie and I talked about the various causes which were her present interest, all of them concerned with making this a better world, and I gave her a donation before they left.

The guard was on watch by that time. We all went to bed, except for Mrs. Casey, who was probably watching the late, late golden oldie movie on the tube.

T
HE MORNING WAS OVERCAST
but the weatherman promised us a clearing by noon. Mrs. Casey made us popovers and a cheese omelette for breakfast.

Harley phoned after breakfast to tell me he was staying at the Travis Hotel. He had visited a couple of area bars the day before but had learned only that he should have worn shabbier clothes. I told him I had gone the route of them all before my trip to Los Angeles and learned nothing except that Big Bear had left town. I would come there in half an hour to have a strategy conference.

I took Jan to work on the way and parked in a lower Main Street municipal parking lot. I walked to the hotel from there.

The desk clerk told me that one of my two informants had managed to avoid the drunk tank this weekend and was in his room. I had never learned his last name; the other residents called him Sarge. The rumor on him was that booze had cost him both his family and a profitable accounting practice.

He was a man of about forty who could pass for sixty-five, thin and bony, with bloodshot blue eyes and sparse gray hair. When he opened his door he looked first at Harley and then at me. “What is it this time?”

“It’s about a man wanted for murder. I noticed when I was here last week that his room was next to yours. The walls are thin and you have sharp ears.”

“A big man? Bald and with a scar on his cheek?”

I nodded.

“He never had any visitors in his room that I heard. But I saw him outside one morning getting out of a blue Toyota pickup truck.”

“Did you get the license number?”

He shook his head. “Why would I? I did notice that the frame around the license plate had a Ventura dealer’s name on it. I don’t remember the name.”

“Do you remember what the driver looked like?”

He shook his head again. “He was in the cab and I only saw the back of the truck.” He paused. “Is that worth a tenner?”

“Two fives,” I told him. “The first five goes for a solid meal. You can spend the second one any damned way you please. Promise?”

His smile was cynical. “Man, you are really square, aren’t you?”

“Guilty. Haven’t I always been square with you?”

He nodded. “I promise.”

I phoned the station from the pay phone in the lobby and told Bernie about the blue Toyota pickup. I suggested he pass it on to McClune.

He said he would, and added, “I suppose you don’t want to give me your informant’s name.”

“Your supposition is correct,” I said and hung up.

Harley said, “Jane Meredith’s car was dumped in Ventura. Maybe we ought to go there.”

“No. The way I see it, he dumped the car there because it was hot and maybe came up here in his friend’s Toyota. He can’t get to me by staying in Ventura. There’s one more place I want to visit.”

The place was Rubio’s Rendezvous. Rubio hadn’t been there when I had made my previous canvass of the area. It was only two blocks from the hotel; we walked.

Rubio had a big smile for me. “Pancho!” he said. “Who’s your friend?”

I introduced him to Harley and explained why we were here.

“I heard about your trouble,” he said, “and Lieutenant Vogel gave me a description of the man. He was never in here.” He smiled again. “I don’t get many
gringo
customers.”

“I’ve noticed that, except for me and The Judge. Has he been in lately?”

He sighed and shook his head. “We had a falling out. He isn’t staying at the Travis Hotel any more. Somebody told me he is living with a niece in Omega.”

Omega was a lower-middle-class suburb at the other end of town. I asked, “Politics, again?”

“Sí.
He’s so damned Republican! Pancho, I will ask around for you.” He looked at Harley. “Take good care of our friend. He’s—kind of hotheaded.”

Harley winked and nodded.

Outside, he asked, “Where next?”

“I’ve run out of sources,” I told him. “Now we can sit and wait. I’m going home.”

“I think I’ll cruise the town,” he said, “and see if I can spot a blue Toyota pickup from Ventura.”

“Okay. But drive carefully. We have a lot of one-way streets.”

“I know,” he said. “I almost got clobbered yesterday driving the wrong way on one.”

Mrs. Casey was setting a card table on the driveway in front of the garage door so she could share lunch with Corey. She graciously agreed to set another plate for me.

The afternoon yawned at me after lunch. I decided to go out and visit with my old friend and mentor, Wallace Stanton. That was his name when he was not in Rubio’s Rendezvous. There he was called The Judge, the arbiter of all in-house disputes except the political. I had to assume he would miss his former bar companions; he might enjoy a visit from one of them.

His name was not in the phone book. I called the Travis Hotel and got his forwarding address.

It was a small frame house at the end of a narrow road in Omega. The Judge was sitting in a wicker rocking chair under the shade of a pepper tree on his gray Bermuda-grass lawn. He didn’t get up as I walked toward him. Three hundred pounds is a lot of weight to lift just to meet a guest.

“My friend!” he said. “What brings you here?”

“I come as a peacemaker.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” he quoted, “for they shall be known as the children of God.” He frowned. “But I don’t understand its application here. Surely you don’t mean my spat with Rubio?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“That’s nonsense! I moved out here to be with my niece. I don’t have a car and neither does she.” He pointed at the redwood bench next to his chair. “Sit down.”

I sat. He said, “That Rubio is so petulant! You tell him I still consider him one of my dearest friends and explain my transportation problem.”

“Why don’t you?”

“We don’t have a phone. So, how are things with you?”

“You shouldn’t have asked,” I said. I went on to give him the sordid history of my current travels and travail.

“A psycho,” he said. “He’ll probably find help down there. We’ve always had our criminal element. But the drifters from the big towns have been coming in. That’s why I moved out. Our local Chicanos used to maintain a rough kind of vigilante order in the area. They had to, the skimpy police protection they were getting. But these newcomers—”

“The feeling I get about the man is that he wants to turn me into a nervous wreck before he makes his move.”

“Who can read a warped mind? The reverse could be that he’s trying to trigger you into making the fatal move. You’re an impulsive man, Brock. Don’t let your impatience make you the victim.”

“I’m trying not to. McClune and Vogel have been cooperative and I’m having the house guarded. But without the man’s name, the police department or the sheriff’s men haven’t enough to work with.”

“Patience,” he said. “Let us talk of other things.”

We talked of other things; of our dangerous foreign trade deficit, our disastrous national debt, the recent spell of commercial airline crashes, the job his niece had at a local electronics firm, the Dodgers and the Lakers. We never got around to ships and shoes and sealing wax, nor cabbages and kings.

I didn’t stay to meet his niece; I left before she came home.

I was heading for the freeway entrance when I saw a blue Toyota pickup turn into the frontal road. I followed it. When it was within viewing distance of the license plate frame I learned the dealer was a local agency.

Patience…

Corey was out in front, reading another mystery, the stalwart sentinel. I told him to go and get some exercise in the pool and took over his job.

I was still sitting there when Vogel brought Jan home. She went into the house; Bernie came over to where I sat.

“Anything new I should know?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“This is tough going for Jan,” he said. “I don’t think she should stay here.”

I told him that had been my thought originally but neither she nor Mrs. Casey had agreed. “And, thinking about it now, she’d be even more vulnerable at some hotel than she is here. Want a drink?”

He shook his head. “Ellie is waiting to have one with me. Don’t play cowboy if you get a lead, Brock. This one is for cooler heads than yours or Belton’s. Jan told me he’s a retired Marine.”

“And a tiger,” I said. “I’ll try to keep a leash on him.”