Eureka (19 page)

At 12:02, a maroon Packard Super-Eight touring car drove up on Ocean Boulevard, turned into the street in front of the municipal building, and parked. A hard-looking guy with short-cut brown hair and a built-in frown got out of the driver's seat and strolled around the car—a guy who was a stranger to a smile. Before he could get to the back door it popped open, and I got my first live look at Thomas Brodie Culhane.

He was about my height, five-ten and change, broad-shouldered, with a waist that a Gibson girl would die for. A hundred and seventy pounds, no fat, shaggy eyebrows over pale blue eyes, short-cut brown hair that a lot of sun had lightened, bronze skin over a craggy face, and a square jaw with hard muscles bunched up under his ears. He was wearing a three-piece blue gabardine suit. He peeled off his jacket, tossed it in the backseat of the car, and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt about halfway to the elbows. Then he pulled his tie knot down six inches and took it off over his head without untying it, and let it join the jacket. A gold watch fob arched from one side of his vest to the other. When he was stripped for action the driver handed him a freshly rolled cigarette, and Culhane lit it with a wooden match, which he fired with his thumb. He was wearing his shield on his belt. No gun.

He was followed by a taller man, a little beefy but not soft, with white hair and a wary, expressionless face. He wore a white linen suit with a dark blue shirt open at the collar. He fell in behind Culhane and alongside the unsmiling driver.

There was a crowd of about one hundred and fifty people already gathered, and they stood stone-still while Culhane arranged himself. Then he waved and the crowd broke into the kind of whoop-up you expect when the home team scores a winning touchdown against its archrival. Down near the pier, what I assumed was the high school band struck up “Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.” They were awful. But nobody was complaining. Culhane walked across the street to the park and the crowd closed around him like water filling in behind a diver's splash. They were waving hand-painted signs: culhane for governor, captain to the capitol, things like that. Several were waving American flags.

I remembered what Moriarity had said.
Joan of Arc with a pecker.
He was right about that. It was a festive occasion for a man whose life had been spent as the sheriff of a county that would fit in my glove compartment and who was getting ready to take on a couple of machine politicians who probably owned most of the state legislators in Sacramento.

He strode casually through the crowd, most of whom he obviously knew, calling kids by name, roughing up their hair, hugging the women, and shaking hands with the men. He walked in an easy lope with a touch of swagger to it. A man in control, self-assured, and cut in the heroic mold.

I stayed seated, watching his trek through the crowd. I finished my hot dog and started to roll a cigarette. That was when he saw me. He looked through the crowd and his eyes locked on me. The smile never left his lips but the eyes changed from a kind of mischievous delight to blue ice cubes. I stood up, leaned against a Monterey pine, and waited for him to come by.

It took him fifteen minutes to get there. He veered from one side of the park to the other, strolling easily through his fans and flicking a glance my way every so often. I didn't move. I let him come to me.

CHAPTER 13

I watched Culhane work his way toward me through the crowd. He didn't look directly at me but I could tell I was fixed in his peripheral vision. He took his time closing in on me, like a snake toying with a rabbit. When he was ten feet away and still greeting his fans, I took out a wooden match as he had done and snapped it with my thumb to light my cigarette. The match broke and the top half blew away in the wind. Culhane turned and looked at me, took a match out of his vest pocket, walked over to me, snapped it afire, and cupped it against the wind.

“Allow me,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the light.

“I presume you're Bannon.”

“Zeke Bannon,” I said, and held out my hand. He had a handshake like a gorilla's.

“Brodie Culhane,” he said. “Call me Captain.” He had a relaxed smile. If something was bothering him he didn't show it. He was a very cool customer and I was beginning to understand why the mere mention of his name perked up so many ears. He was in complete control of his environment and he was comfortable with that power. This was a guy who had brushed off fear in all its forms a long time ago.

“You got my card, then?” I said.

“And I'm dying of curiosity.” He rested a hand on the shoulder of the big fellow in the white suit. “This is our ex-D.A., Brett Merrill,” he said, and jerked a thumb toward the driver, “and my right-hand man, Rusty Danzig.”

He took my elbow and led me to the edge of the park, out of the crowd.

“So, what can I do for you, Sergeant?” he said when we were near the street and sheltered under a big water oak. Merrill stood nearby being as innocuous as a big man can be. Danzig patrolled the perimeter of our spot in the shade like a watchdog.

“I guess you could say I'm up here on a mission of mercy.”

“Oh?” he said lazily, while smiling at someone passing by. “That's stalwart of you.”

“You wouldn't happen to know a woman named Verna Hicks, would you? Her married name's Wilensky. Probably left here in the mid twenties. I was hoping to find a parent or family of some kind.”

He stared at me, almost bemused.

“That's twenty years ago, more or less.”

“Right.”

“I take a great deal of pride in knowing everybody in this domain,” he said. “But I am at an age where fifteen years ago might as well be the turn of the century.” He turned to Merrill. “Name ring a bell to you, Doc? I don't think we have anyone named Hicks in town.”

Merrill pondered a minute and shook his head. “I don't recall anyone named Hicks ever living here.”

“What did she do?” Culhane asked.

“She got dead.”

That held his attention.

“Was she murdered?”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Your card. Bannon, central homicide . . .”

“Of course, right,” I said, rolling my eyes in embarrassment. “No, she slipped getting out of the bathtub and pulled her radio in on top of her.”

“My God,” Merrill said.

“Christ, what a way to go,” Culhane said, showing a modicum of concern. “How old a woman was she?”

“Her license says forty-seven.”

“You sound like you don't believe that.”

I smiled. “Well, you know how women are about their age.”

He chuckled but said nothing. I could almost hear the cogs whirring behind his eyes. He knew there was more coming. He was waiting for the stinger.

“There's a wrinkle to the story,” I said.

“Isn't there always?”

“She died without a will and left a sizable estate. No survivors, no letters, nothing to indicate anything about her prior to 1924.”

“What happened in 1924?”

“She moved to L.A. Here's the wrinkle: She worked in the tax assessor's office making forty bucks a week. But she bought her house with cash. Her car, which is a two-year-old DeSoto, and several other cars before it, were all paid for with cash. And she had ninety-eight-plus grand in a savings account.”

He whistled low through his teeth.

“So what brings you up here?” he said, and turned and knelt to give a kid his autograph.

“The ninety-eight large. Since 1924 she's been getting five bills a month in the form of cashier's checks. A good many of those checks came from the banks here.”

He didn't look up immediately. He gave the kid back his pen and stood up slowly. The blue eyes narrowed.

“I figure if we can get copies of one or two of the checks and look for the sender's name, maybe we'll find someone that'll stand for a decent funeral or hire a lawyer to try and nix the state out of her inheritance.”

Nothing changed in his face. The blue eyes just stared at me. No response.

“That sounds like a missing person's dodge,” he said after a minute crawled by. “How come a homicide cop is doing that kind of work?”

“I caught the case as I was leaving for the day,” I said. “My boss gave me a day or two to see if I could turn up anybody. He doesn't like the tax boys any more than I do.”

“And your boss is who?”

“Lieutenant Moriarity. Dan Moriarity.”

“I may have heard that name,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Why here?” Merrill asked.

“Because most of the cashier's checks came from the four banks here. I was hoping you might grease some rails for me. One of the bankers threw me out of his office and the other one bluffed me out.”

“McBurney called and screamed about you wanting some kind of confidential info, but he's a gruff old bastard. He's eighty-one and Scottish through and through. He saves minutes in a glass jar under his desk.”

It was a nice play. He was letting me know that McBurney and probably Ben Gorman had already checked in, as well as the two comics in the Pontiac. Having said it, he changed the subject.

“What do you think of our little town?” he said pleasantly.

“Very interesting,” I said. “Looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

“Like Rockwell, do you?”

“He's a little too cute for my taste.”

“What is your taste, Sergeant?”

“I'm a van Gogh man.”

“Ah, so you like the new guys. I prefer the old-timers. I like Rembrandt.”

“I'm younger than you are, I never met him.”

He was enjoying the patter, like a dueler tapping épées with an opponent before the match gets serious.

“About the banks . . .” I started.

“Sorry,” Culhane said. “I can't help you with that.”

“It's against the law,” Merrill interceded in a pleasant voice with a touch of the Southeast in it. “You'd need a judge's order.”

“And why bother?” Culhane said. “Seems to me if somebody went to all that trouble not to be found, somebody doesn't want to be found. Just an observation.”

“Because the way it looks now, her dog, the next-door neighbors, and I are the only ones who'll be there to drop a rose on her grave.”

“Had a dog, huh? What happened to it?”

“He's probably sleeping under the yucca plant in my backyard.”

He gave me a slow, knowing look. His lips parted in a grin. “You got a soft streak, Bannon. Better watch it; in our business that can get you killed.”

“A guy could make a threat out of that,” I said, smiling back.

“Nah, not a chance, not in this town,” he said. “We watch over our visiting firemen.”

“That why those two heavyweights have been on my tail since I got here?”

“You noticed them, huh?”

“Well, they could have been a little more obvious. One of them could have stuck his thumb in my eye.”

“The boys don't get much practice. There's not much call for tail jobs in San Pietro,” he said casually.

“I'm just trying to finish off the lady's days with a little class,” I said, getting back to the subject again.

“Sure you are,” he said. “You're not at all interested in who's been slipping her five C's a month and why, are you?”

I ignored the jibe.

“So you don't know who she is—or was?”

“I never heard that name before you mentioned it.”

“Maybe you knew her under another name.”

“That's possible, but if I did I wouldn't know it, now would I?”

“Well, Captain, somebody up here knew her real well.”

He gave me a long, hard stare.

“You think she was blackmailing somebody,” he drawled. It was not a question.

“It's an option.”

“An option that doesn't concern me.”

“A majority of those checks came from the four banks here in San Pietro.”

“Coincidence,” he said.

“I don't believe in coincidence.”

He fell silent again. His eyes never left mine. Then an ironic smile crossed his lips.

“You really expect me to fall for that crap about poor little whoever not getting a decent send-off?” he said. “You're up here sniffing around and annoying some substantial citizens and you haven't got dip. When that radio cooked her, school was out. Who the hell cares what went on before? Even if she was grifting somebody, it's immaterial now. The point is, the lady's dead and whatever there was, if there was anything to start with, died with her. You're acting a little like a goddamn tenderfoot. Or . . .” he paused a minute and raised his eyebrows until his forehead wrinkled. “Or maybe there's something else going on in that noggin of yours.”

I could feel the muscles in my face tightening up. He was goading me. I backed off and let my pulse slow down.

“I told you what was going on,” I said, perhaps a little too softly.

“I know what you said,” he answered. He put his hands in his back pockets, with the thumbs pointing down. He very slowly paced up and down in front of me. “But you could be from Osterfelt's camp or Bellini's, up here nosing around to see if you can stir up a little dirt on me. Or maybe you're planning your own little grift? Find out who was sending those checks and become the new beneficiary. See what I mean?”

“She deserves a little decency,” I said quietly. “I don't give a damn if it's the President of the United States; whoever was sending her that money knows her and that somebody ought to be told.”

“And you want to do the telling.”

“It's my case. It's my responsibility.”

He stopped pacing and just stared at me.

“Look,” I said, “maybe you could prevail on one of your banker pals to look it up and pass it on to the proper individual. You can leave me out of it.”

“It's against the law for the banks to do that,” Merrill said. “It's confidential information protected by state law.”

“Then I guess I'll have to locate the judge and seek a subpoena,” I said. “What's his name again?”

Culhane said, “I wouldn't bother. Gus Wainwright's got bad breath, a bad heart, the gout, and his brain's missing about half its gray matter.”

“Actually,” Merrill said, “the banks are federal now. You need a United States judge.”

“All for a dog and a coffin,” Culhane said, shaking his head.

“I guess the nearest judge would be Homer Jennings over in Santa Maria,” I said. “He's usually cooperative with the police.”

Culhane's face changed an iota. The eyes, which had softened up a bit, went dead again. The muscles in his jaw tightened and loosened.

“There's nothing you can learn in San Pietro,” he said sharply.

“I've got a job to do, Captain. I'm going to keep at it.”

“You do what you have to do, Sergeant Bannon,” he said. “I've got constituents to talk to. Have a nice trip back to Los Angeles.”

He turned and went about his business.

I looked at my feet as if expecting to see the gauntlet he had just thrown down, but there was nothing underfoot except the emerald grass.