Dead Seed (13 page)

“Who needs alcohol,” he asked, “when the very air is wine?”

The air had a tinge of horse manure in it, but I smiled and nodded. A man must do what he has to do, and believe what he has to believe.

When I climbed into the Scout to take off for Wendell’s place, Lydia said, “Be careful now, you damned fool!”

“I’m a big boy now, Lydia.”

She nodded. “
Boy
is the definitive word for you.”

A wingding at the Ponderosa Rifle Club was not likely to be a black-tie affair. I was wearing my oldest corduroy pants, a turtleneck sweater, and a fleece-lined field jacket. The night was frosty. Crisp would have been what Jerry called it.

Wendell’s attire was also informal; jeans, sweatshirt, and a well-worn mackinaw. “Alvin left the house half an hour ago,” he told me. “He should be pretty well oiled by the time we get there.”

We took the Scout, but Wendell drove it. It was dark now and he knew the road. I was glad it was dark. We were climbing. If it had been light I would have been able to see how deep the abyss was only a few feet from our right-side wheels.

The clubhouse was a long, low building of logs chinked with concrete. It had been built by the members, Wendell informed me. There were no power lines running up here; they had installed their own electrical system, a generator driven by a small gasoline engine.

There were only three cars in the parking lot, one of them the yellow pickup. But there were about a dozen men in the building when we entered. The bar, too, was obviously handcrafted by rough carpenters. It was composed of two long four-inch-by-twelve-inch planks set edge to edge on four-by-four-inch standards.

Some of the men were playing cards at the round, mission-oak tables. Alvin was standing by himself at one end of the bar.

Wendell and I went over to him. He looked up as we came closer, and his eyes narrowed when he saw me. “Don’t I know you?” he asked.

It was, I decided, the moment of half-truth. “You should,” I said. “I was with that cop who talked with you in San Valdesto.”

His eyes narrowed more. “What are you doing here?”

“Hoping to get the goods on Kelly,” I told him. “I used to work for the bastard. I don’t like the way he operates.”

He looked less suspicious. “You got a point there. That crooked son of a bitch wanted five thousand smackers from us.”

I nodded. “That’s when I quit him, when I learned he was gouging those poor parents. And I’ll tell you something else—he and that purple foot were splitting the take. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Hell, yes. Sarkissian you mean? They work together?”

“They do. You drinking bourbon?”

He nodded.

A skinny man with a narrow face had joined us as we talked, standing next to Alvin. “Who’s buying?” he asked. “I know it’s not Alvin.”

“Aw, shut up,” Alvin said. “I buy more than you do.”

“I’m buying,” I said. “How about you, Wendell?”

“Bourbon,” he said.

“Four double bourbons,” I told the bartender.

“I’d introduce you to my leeching cousin,” Alvin said, “but he’d have you buying all night. Why don’t you take your drink somewhere else, Clyde?”

Clyde smiled. “Not me. I’m waiting for your turn.”

Alvin turned his back on him and said quietly to me, “That double-dealing Armenian bastard!”

I said, just as quietly, “If you’ll give me a signed statement that Kelly wanted five thousand dollars to get Joel out, and his mother will confirm it, that will make it grand larceny. The other parents I talked with refused to tell me how much they paid. This way, we’ll have enough to nail both Sarkissian and Kelly. And Joel won’t be jailed up there any more.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Come over tomorrow. Wendell knows where I’m living now. Tonight, I drink and play cards.”

“So long as somebody’s buying,” Clyde said.

“Keep your goddamned mouth shut, Clyde,” Alvin growled, “until you have something sensible to say.”

Clyde wasn’t intimidated. He smiled. “I have something sensible to say. My glass is empty.”

“You miserable freeloader!” Alvin said, and reached into his back pocket for his wallet, a weather-beaten brown model with a steer head embossed in gilt on the flap. He called to the bartender, “Another whiskey for my idiot cousin.”

Clyde continued to smile. “When did you get that Mickey Mouse job? What happened to that classy alligator wallet you bought in San Valdesto?”

Alvin went suddenly rigid. There was a moment of ominous silence. The bartender set a glass of whiskey in front of Clyde. Wendell moved further down the bar, away from us.

Alvin’s voice was hoarse. “There’s your whiskey, Clyde. You can take it over to a table and drink it, or you can stay where you are and wear it.”

Clyde was no longer smiling. “Sorehead,” he muttered, and took his drink to a nearby table.

Wendell moved back toward us. Alvin said, “Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He walked over toward a table some distance from the one where Clyde was now sitting.

“Do you play poker?” Wendell asked.

“Very badly,” I told him.

He smiled, “I thought I did, too, until I started playing with this crowd. Let’s pick up a few dollars before we go home.”

About a half-dozen tables were occupied by men playing some local game called kill-the-cat. Alvin sat at one of these. There were about as many tables devoted to poker. Wendell and I joined a group of four at one of the small-stakes tables.

Three hours later, I was forty-seven dollars ahead, Wendell fifty. As it was a two-bit-limit game, with a dollar on the last card, that was a revealing indication of the company we had been in. If I had grown up in Skeleton Gulch, it was possible I never would have needed a rich uncle.

After the midnight gourmet repast of greasy salami sandwiches on chain-store white bread, washed down with acid coffee, most of the players headed for home. Only five dedicated devotees of kill-the-cat were still in action when Wendell and I left.

“That bit about the wallet,” Wendell said, as we climbed into the Scout, “was that important? It sure shook up Alvin.”

“It might be,” I said, “but the world is full of alligator wallets. If it’s important, Alvin has probably burned it by now.”

“Maybe not. Maybe he only uses it for formal occasions. And he did say he would see you tomorrow, so he could figure you didn’t get the connection, whatever it is.”

“Tonight
he said he’d see me,” I pointed out. “But what about tomorrow, when he’s hung over and owly?”

“Don’t go too early,” Wendell advised me. “And it might help to throw in some nasty words about Carl, if you get to talk with him. All the Chittys resent Carl.”

“You,” I said admiringly, “are almost as tricky as I am.”

He agreed with a nod. “I’ve been in the horse business for fifty years and I’m still eating. I’ve had to be a little tricky.”

A
LL THE THREADS WERE
coming together, all the lines were beginning to connect. I had a partial picture. But even if the picture became whole, would we have a case we could take into court? Circumstantial evidence can afford a reasonable inference of the occurrence of the fact in issue both Webster and the prosecutor would agree.

Try to feed that line to a jury. Juries are made up of ordinary citizens, not Solomons. The twelve chosen citizens who sit in judgment are warned by the judge, if he is a just judge, about the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt admonition of guilt or innocence. Doubt is what successful defense attorneys sell.

I phoned Vogel after breakfast and asked him what was new at his end. A forest ranger, he told me, who had also seen the yellow pickup speed out of the fire area, had a cast of the tire imprint the truck had left in the marshy area below the road.

“We’ve checked half the yellow pickups in town,” he said, “and got nowhere. But I think we finally have Kelly nailed on a conspiracy and kidnapping rap. Even the DA agrees. And what have you learned down there?”

I gave him the zinger first. “Alvin Chitty is now driving a yellow Ford pickup truck he bought in San Valdesto.”

“Damn it! That’s why he left town in a hurry. Why didn’t I think of that? Is there a chance you can check the truck’s tires?”

“There is. I’m seeing him today.” I gave him an account of the other things I had learned and my talk with Alvin last night.

“If he’s sour on Kelly,” he said, “Mrs. Lacrosse must be, too. She might testify for us. Those tires are not standard equipment. They’re knobby, off-road tires. They are called Chippewa trailblazers. No tire dealer in town sells them, and our check so far at the car agencies hasn’t turned up any dealer who put them on a new or used truck.”

Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. He was still Bernie’s primary target. Mine wasn’t even in my sights. I told him I would phone him at the station or at home, depending on the time I learned anything new.

I used Lydia’s portable to type up a statement for Alvin to sign. I threw in some phony legalese to make the document sound important and official enough for me to have traveled this far from home. I took it and a bottle of Wild Turkey with me.

The pickup was parked on the side of the house today. Alvin was not in sight. I was bending over to check the tires when he came around from the back of the house.

“What you doing?” he asked me.

I stood up and smiled at him. “I noticed your tires. I’ve been trying to get a set of them for my Jeep. But there’s no Chippewa dealer in San Valdesto.”

“I bought the truck in Ventura,” he told me. “The tires were on it.” He looked at the bottle in my hand. “You a morning drinker?”

I shook my head. “This is a token of my thanks to you. I brought a statement for you to sign.”

“Come in,” he said. “I got some coffee on. We can jazz it up with a shot of that stuff.”

He was wearing the same clothes he had worn last night. They looked as if they had been slept in, and probably had. The front door opened directly into the living room. It was damp in here, compared with the dry air outside, and faintly fetid. The furniture was discount-house, medium-range modern.

“Sit down,” he said, and went through an archway to the kitchen.

I sat on a box-square black-and-white-striped couch upholstered in some synthetic fabric that had not resisted wear. The black enameled coffee table in front of me was stacked with copies of the
National Enquirer.

Alvin came back with two big mugs of spiked coffee. He set one in front of me on the coffee table and sat in a black imitation-leather armchair at the end of the table. I handed him the typed statement.

Coldwell had been wrong. Alvin’s lips did not move. He finished reading and looked up. “You a lawyer?”

I shook my head. “I had a year of pre-law, but it was too complicated for me. Football was about all I was good at in college.”

He sipped some coffee. I sipped some coffee. “Got a pen?” he asked.

I handed him a ballpoint pen. I said, “Another guy, I’d like to meet up with is Carl Lacrosse. Do you know where he is now?”

“Naw. What’s your beef with him?”

“I think he should pay to send Joel to college. From what I’ve learned so far, the man is loaded.”

“You know Joel?”

“Not personally. A young friend who is working with me is up at that cult. He gave me the word on Joel.”

He leaned forward to sign the statement. “I don’t know. The way I see it, there’s more Lacrosse in him than Chitty.”

“Maybe. But Joel sure hates his father.”

“Most of the people around here do. He’s a snotty bastard. His old man couldn’t afford to be. He was in business here. I still can’t figure what good it will do you to put Kelly away.”

I swallowed another jolt of coffee. “Just between us? You’ll keep it to yourself?”

“Hell, yes.”

“That Vogel,” I said, “that cop who was with me when we talked with you, remember him?”

He nodded.

“Well, he’s got something on me that could—” I paused. “Put it this way, better Kelly should go to the can than me.”

“This Vogel’s got something heavy on you?”

I took a deep breath. “About twenty years in the slammer heavy.”

“Oh, boy! But this Vogel hates Kelly worse than you?”

“Vogel doesn’t hate me. He only uses me.”

“He’s a yid, right?”

I nodded. “And a vindictive cop. Kelly was a crooked cop who got bounced from the department—and tried to implicate Vogel. Vogel has made a crusade out of nailing him. If I help him with Kelly, he told me, he’d never call on me again.”

“It’s starting to make sense,” he said. “Another jolt?”

He brought it. I sipped it. He suggested we play a little kill-the-cat. It was a simple game, he assured me; he could teach it to me.

It was more than simple; it was dumb. I played it dumber and drank slower than he did. The booze didn’t get to my head, but the coffee started rumbles in my stomach. I played on, losing steadily.

The final time he went to get himself a refill, he was wavering on his feet, almost staggering when he returned.

About two minutes later, he said, “I didn’t hit the sack last night until three o’clock this morning. I’m going to catch a snooze. You owe me seventeen dollars.”

I laid a ten, a five, and two singles on the coffee table.

“You sober enough to drive?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “I’ll go out and get some air. Maybe when you wake up, we can play some more. I think I’m getting the hang of this game.”

“Suit yourself, sucker. Give me a couple of hours. There’s booze left in the kitchen if you want a comeback jolt later. And we can eat, too. I brought home some of that chow from the clubhouse.”

I waited until he started to snore before going through the drawers in the kitchen. Nothing. And nothing in the one drawer in the coffee table.

All that was left was the bedroom where he was still snoring. The rumble in my stomach would be drowned out by that—I hoped. The small discount-house chest of drawers in there held three drawers.

The nausea in me began to rise as I opened the top drawer of the chest. There were three pairs of sweat socks in there, one white shirt, one blue work shirt, one pair of corduroy pants.