Eureka (27 page)

“I'm sorry.” It sounded pitifully inadequate. I decided to lighten things up.

“I saw his picture in the living room. ‘Mill the Pill'?”

It got a laugh out of her.

“That's what he called me. Hugh was the hell-raiser in the family and I was Miss Proper. Growing up we fought like brother and sister, but when I was a teenager going to school back East he took me in hand.”

“So you turned into a hell-raiser, too?”

“I'm still trying.”

“And what's the most audacious thing you ever did?”

She thought about it for a full minute.

“I sneaked over the wall at Miss Brownington's School for Girls and went to see
King Kong
at the Radio City Music Hall.”

I faked surprise. “Wow!” I said.

“That was a major step for me, sir,” she said haughtily. “I could have been expelled.”

Not likely,
I thought.
Not when your father owns half of Montana.

The marquee said “Special Preview Tonight” and there was a long line at Grauman's Theater when we got there, plus the usual crowd of tourists looking at the wide walkway leading to the ticket booth with all the hand- and footprints of the stars immortalized in concrete. Frank was standing in the entrance in his tuxedo, smiling as the paying customers streamed in. He waved us over and led us into an almost full house. There were three rows toward the back roped off in velvet for the special guests.

Most of those seated in the “velvet rows” were studio execs. Producers, flacks, and their friends. The stars, if they showed up, would come in when the house lights dimmed.

Hedy Lamarr came in as the lights lowered, tall, dressed in a white hooded dress, her jet-black hair framing porcelain features. The ice princess, aloof, unreachable, the epitome of a Hollywood glamour queen. Frank unhooked the velvet rope and she took the aisle seat. Her escort, whom nobody noticed, stepped past her and sat down.

Jackie Cooper came in next, accompanied by an older woman I assumed was his mother. I hadn't seen Cooper in a movie since he was a kid. Now he looked to be about fifteen. Judy Garland came in last, and sat with a small, strange-looking man with bug eyes. The studio people nervously awaited the audience reaction to what was obviously one of their major pictures of the year. James Stewart, Lana Turner, Lamarr, and Garland were the stars. It was terrific. Three young singers and dancers make it big in the Ziegfeld Follies. There was a spectacular Busby Berkeley dance number, but Garland stole the show with a heartbreaking rendition of “I'm Always Chasing Rainbows.” The picture got a big hand from the audience and the stars slipped out while the cast credits were still rolling.

We stopped to thank Frank and then ran through the first drops of rain to the Phaeton. Big drops began to fall, splattering against the windshield as we got in the car.

“How about a nightcap?” I asked.

She leaned over close to me and said, “That would be very nice.”

Maury's C-Note was on Santa Monica near Moreland, on the edge of Beverly Hills. Maury Castellano had started the club with a one-hundred-dollar tip from Victor Mature, which he'd gotten when he was maître d' at Robie's Nightclub on Vine, a popular hangout for the movie set. He had used the C-Note to option a large garage and raised money from friends to remodel it. It was a comfortable supper club with pretty good food and a piano bar. The walls were lined with photos of Hollywood's greats and near-greats.

I let Millie out at the door, parked the car, and ran through the rain to join her.

Maury held down the corner of the main bar and got up to jiggle my elbow when we entered. He did not like to shake hands.

“Hey, Zee, long time no see.” He grinned.

“I've been fighting crime,” I said with as straight a face as I could muster, and introduced him to Millie.

He bowed low, made a pass at kissing her hand, and said to me, “The Bucket?” I nodded.

The attraction for aficionados was the back room, where a bass player named Chuck Graves held nightly jam sessions with musician friends. The room had become a spot for big-name musicians to stop by and sit in with Graves's trio. Chuck's daytime job was as a studio musician, playing in the orchestra at Columbia Pictures.

The room, located in the rear of the club behind closed doors, was small, a mecca for true jazz lovers who cared more about music than decor and comfort. It seated about fifty people, on bridge chairs. The tables were just big enough to hold a couple of drinks and an ashtray. The place didn't really get jumping until around midnight but things were lively enough when we entered.

A cloud of cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling like fog. It was hot. The mismatched furniture looked like it had been picked up off street corners, the walls were painted black, and the stage was a platform supported on concrete blocks. A fan high on one wall over the rear door was doing a failed job of sucking out the smoke and heat.

I didn't recognize anybody in the room, although some looked interesting: a big man with lazy eyes in a checked sports jacket, who Chuck said was an actor, making a name for himself in westerns, and who leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, chain-smoking, listening to every note; a bald man doing a crossword, tapping his foot to the music but never looking up; a woman in a leopard coat, sitting with a little man in a tuxedo who was sweating like a sumo wrestler.

The group consisted of Graves; a tall, ebony-black piano player with a grin almost as wide as the hall; a horn player named Turk Ziegler, who used a mute most of the time; Bravo Jones, a balding alto sax man in the baggiest suit I ever saw—no tie; a skinny drummer in a striped shirt and a bow tie; and a diminutive colored man with a thin mustache, dressed in a Sunday suit and tie, playing electric guitar. They were wrapping up a lively version of “Airmail Special” as we entered. We sat at one of the dime-sized tables near the bandstand and ordered drinks from a waiter who looked like he was wilting.

Graves, a tall, rangy, good-looking blond with a musician's pallor and sad brown eyes, walked over to the table with a kind of loose-limbed slouch. His soft, mellow voice drove the girls crazy, especially when he sang sad ballads.

“Hi, copper,” he said with a wry grin. But he didn't look at me, he was staring at Millie. He kissed her hand and added, “Chuck Graves, at your service, ma'am.”

“I'm over here,” I said.

“Oh, I know, son, but I doubt anybody cares.”

She looked embarrassed until it dawned on her that we were joking around.

“We can't stay long,” I said. “Millie's a working lady and I got to go up the coast at dawn.”

“That's cool.” And to Millie, “Next set's for you.”

The band came back, Chuck said a few words to them, and they looked over at the table. The piano man and Chuck laid down a beat, and Chuck started to sing:

I've flown around the world in a plane,

Dined on caviar and champagne,

And the North Pole I have charted

Still I can't get started

With you.

Chuck sang from the heart, soft as marshmallows, and finally wrapped it up:

I've been consulted by Franklin D,

Greta Garbo has had me to tea,

I got a house, a showplace,

Still I can't get no place

With you.

We stayed an hour.

When they wrapped for a break, Millie blew a kiss to Graves and I waved to the rest of the crew. I dropped a fiver in the bucket. From the corner of my eye I saw Millie add a hundred-dollar bill.

Maury held an umbrella over Millie's head as we raced out to the car. He helped her in.

“Hey, Zee,” he said, “don't get lost so much. We miss ya.” And to Millie. “Make him bring ya back, okay?”

He ran back into the club.

“Do you know
every
body in town?” she asked.

“This was my beat when I started out,” I said. “It's my old neighborhood.”

I started to put the key in the switch but she laid a hand on mine and stopped me.

“Was Chuck playing that song for me or you?” she asked.

“Which one?”

“ ‘I Can't Get Started.' ”

“Maybe he was telling me in his own way that . . .”

“Stop right there,” she said softly. “You can go anyplace with me, Zee. I'd fly around the world in a plane just to come home to you.”

She laid both hands on my cheeks. Her hands were as smooth as fine suede. She drew me to her and kissed me. Her lips were soft and full and giving, and she folded into my arms.

I shoved the gear stick into second to get it out of the way and slipped over to her side of the seat. She shifted, facing me, and her leg slid over mine. She reached over, her hand moved down my spine and pulled me to her. I could feel the heat of her as she crushed against me.

We never stopped kissing but I could hear her sigh deep in her throat and she began to tremble as my hands explored her.

I don't know how long we were there.

Long after the rain stopped.

CHAPTER 23

I picked up Ski a little after seven in the morning and took the same route I had taken going up to San Pietro the first time. Ski spent most of the trip dead asleep, sitting straight up with his arms folded. He didn't like long drives.

When we passed the fruit stand on 101, I looked up on the hill but the beautiful young girl on the pinto pony wasn't there. Maybe it had been a vision. Maybe there wasn't any girl on a pony dashing across the hilltop. Maybe it was subconscious. Maybe Millicent was the young girl and the pony was her baby-blue Phaeton. Maybe I was thinking too much.

At the turnoff I nudged my partner.

“Almost there,” I said. “Any time now a black Pontiac will probably drop in behind us.”

But it didn't. I stopped at the overlook and gave Ski a quick visual tour of San Pietro, the Hill, and Grand View House. I looked out on the bay but the Grebe yacht was gone. We drove down into town.

I parked in front of the city hall. The maroon Packard was parked haphazardly a few yards farther on.

“That's Culhane's prowler,” I told Ski as we got out.

“Does very well for the sheriff of a county the size of a saltine,” Ski said.

“The county owns it,” I said. “I guess that makes it legal.”

Ski just snorted derisively. I left him to stroll around the park.

There was no sign of Culhane or Rusty, but I couldn't imagine them being very far from his rolling office. I went in to the police station. Rosie was behind the counter. She recognized me when I walked through the door.

“Hi,” I said. “Remember me?”

She graced me with what might have passed for a smile and said, “He's fishing. It's Friday.”

“Ah. Wednesday everybody plays golf at noon, Friday morning they go fishing. When do they take their ballet lessons?”

“The captain wouldn't know one end of a golf club from the other.” She looked at the Seth Thomas on the wall. “He should be in any time now.”

“I'll just go down and wait by the pier.”

“It's a free world,” she said, looking for something else to do. As I was headed for the door she mumbled, “He said you'd be back.”

I went back to the car, drove to the foot of the street, and parked next to a silver Duesenberg Murphy convertible, which was sitting in a diagonal parking strip between the park and the pier area. Ski wandered over munching on a snow cone.

“That's a cute little buggy,” he said. “Must be fifty G's worth of car, at least. Are you sure you're allowed to park next to it?”

“That's Gorman's car,” I said.

“He's the shy banker?”

“Shy or ill-mannered or maybe both. Take your pick.”

Along the length of the pier were several booths, capped with bright umbrellas, offering everything from hot dogs, soft drinks, and sandwiches to booze. Between them and the pier were patio tables with the same patterned umbrellas providing shade. Beyond the pier, the ocean stretched off to the horizon under a cloudless azure sky.

We sat down at one of the tables and checked out the harbor. To the north, on the public beach, a couple of kids were building a sand castle while their mother was stretched out on a canvas beach chair, reading a book. Farther down, four bobby-soxers were horse-wrestling in the water, the girls teetering on their boyfriends' shoulders. I raised a pair of binoculars to look up the side of the cliff to the overlook and then on up to Grand View. Only its spires were visible above the trees. Then I pulled the glass down below the overlook to the ledge. From my angle I could just see the edge of the ledge and the tops of the pine trees, bent and flat-topped from the ocean winds. Something started gnawing at the back of my brain but I couldn't sort it out.

“See anything interesting?” Ski asked.

“Not from this angle. There's a ledge about halfway up that mean-ass road on the side of the cliff.”

“With the flat-top trees?”

“Yeah. There's also what's left of a 1920 Chevy on that ledge.”

“No kidding. What's it doing there?”

“Some kid lost control of his car and went over.” I handed him the binoculars. “See the little spur up there with the stone wall around it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It's foggy up there every night. Apparently he missed the curve. They put the wall around it after that. The road's closed now.”

“Ain't you the fountain of information,” Ski said. “You ought to apply for a job as a tour guide.” Then he said, “There's somebody up there.”

I looked up, but the overlook was too far away to tell anything with the naked eye.

“It's a woman,” he said. “Rich; she's wearing a hat and gloves. Carrying flowers.”

I took the glasses. Ski was right, she was rich. You can always tell. Even when a rich woman dresses down, she's dressed up.

She walked to the edge of the wall, looked out over the ocean for a minute or two, then down at the ledge, and threw the bouquet over the side. I watched it tumble end over end, catch the updraft, and skewer out flat before it fell off the wind stream and dropped almost straight down. It caught for a minute on one of the trees then vanished, cut off by the angle of my view. When I swung the glasses back up to the overlook, the rich woman was gone.

I pulled down the glasses and stared up the side of the cliff without focusing on anything. The nibble in my brain became a big bite.

I looked back out at the bay but there was still no sign of a power boat.

“I just thought of something,” I said. “Have a hot dog; I'll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Are you embarrassed to take me?” he asked, feigning hurt feelings.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

I got in the car and drove down the main drag to February Street and grabbed a right, followed it down to Third Street. Nothing had changed at the Howland house. The collie was still sleeping in the front yard and he didn't open an eye as I walked past. Mrs. Howland answered after my first knock.

“Remember me?” I asked. “Sergeant Bannon, L.A. police.”

“Oh yes. My goodness, and I'm just a mess.”

“Is Barney here? I won't be but a minute, I need to ask him a question.”

“Yes. Come in.” She led me to the staircase and called down to him.

“Barney, that nice young fellow from Los Angeles is back. Should I send him down?”

“Mr. Bannon? Of course,” he yelled back.

I went down the steps and he was pecking away at his Royal.

“I have a question, Barney,” I said as we shook hands. I walked over to the framed front pages and found the one I was looking for. The story in the right-hand lower column with the picture of a ruined car, which I had breezed over the first time. The headline read:

eli gorman jr. dies as

car plunges off overlook

I remembered Culhane telling me his life had changed one night at the overlook.

“Who was Eli Gorman?” I asked.

“The kid's grandfather. The dead boy was Ben's son, named after Mr. Eli. Mr. Eli owned the whole valley. He won it in a poker game with his partner, Shamus O'Dell.”

“Of the Grand View O'Dells?”

“Yeah.”

I looked back at the framed front page.

“The car wreck. What happened?”

“Eli Junior was goin' down to see a silent movie. He was a young hell-raiser, all those young-uns up there were always doing crazy things. He should never have gone down Cliffside; it was so foggy you couldn't see the end of your nose. He missed the first curve and went right off the overlook. The car burned but of course nobody even noticed that. They didn't spot it until the next day.”

“What do you mean, nobody noticed it?”

“That was the same night Buck Tallman was killed.”

When I got back to the park, Ski was still scanning the bay with the binoculars. A big Chris Craft with a mile-high flying bridge was entering the mouth of the harbor.

“This is probably our boy now,” he said. Then, “How'd the quickie go?”

“I just got another chapter in the history of San Pietro.”

“Ahh. Enlighten me.” He lowered the glasses.

“That car wreck up on the overlook?”

“Yeah.”

“It was Ben Gorman's son. The wreck happened the same night as the Grand View shoot-out.”

“You ought to write a book.”

“A lot of action for one night in the life of a small town.”

“They happen that way. In threes. Something else big probably happened that night. Somebody's cat got run over. Somebody's Mercedes got a flat tire.”

I looked back up the cliff. “I'll bet that was his mother. Or sister,” I said.

“Makes sense,” Ski said. “So what?”

“I don't know. So something.”

“So why don't you ask old man Gorman. That's probably his boat.”

“I've got better things to ask him.”

“We going to ambush him when they come up?”

“We'll ambush both of them.”

“My favorite endeavor,” he said with a smile.

We drank lemonades—“fresh squoze,” Ski informed me—and watched the big boat cruise up beside one of the docks. The engine growled as it went into reverse and the sea boiled up behind it like water boiling in a pot. Then Rusty appeared from behind us somewhere and strolled down to meet it. He was dressed, as always, in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. He didn't acknowledge me. A deckhand grabbed the tie line, wrapped it around a cleat, and drew the bow in tight against some rubber tires attached to the side of the dock.

Culhane stepped off the cruiser as Rusty reached behind an ear and came up with a cigarette. Culhane lit it, then Rusty jerked a thumb back toward us. Culhane stared at us through dark amber sunglasses. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, baggy khaki pants, and white deck shoes. He turned back toward the boat, and the cigarette bobbed in his lips as he said something to somebody I couldn't see. Then he came toward us with that loping, casual step of his. We held our chairs down. Rusty disappeared around the car and got in on the driver's side, to roll another cigarette, I assumed.

He came up to the table and said with a crooked smile, “You're a real bad penny, Cowboy. I see you brought the whole riot squad with you this time.”

“Captain,” I said with a nod. “This is my partner, Ski Agassi.”

Culhane pulled his sunglasses down an inch and stared over them at me. He nodded at Ski, who sat as he usually does, straight-backed, with his melon-sized hands on his knees. Culhane went to the booth and ordered a lemonade.

“It really wasn't necessary; you made your point the other night,” he said as he came back to the table and sat down. “I owe you an apology about that. There was some . . . miscommunication between the boys and me. I assume you didn't get mussed up too much, considering the outcome.”

“The one with the one eye kicks like a mule. Did he locate it, by the way?”

He nodded. “It was okay after he washed the mud off. That was some fancy footwork you showed Max and Lenny.”

“The one with two arms should have grabbed me.”

“That would be Max. Lenny hits harder.”

“Lenny hits very hard. I've still got a couple of very sore ribs. Out of curiosity, are all your cops walking-wounded?”

He looked over at me and said, “Lenny lost his arm and Max lost his eye in the same battle. And the reason Rusty doesn't say much is he caught shrapnel in the throat at the same time. It missed his jugular but took out his voice box.”

I didn't know how to respond to that so I kept my mouth shut.

“Three damn good cops nobody else will have,” he said. “There's a couple more around. You'll probably meet them if you make this a habit.”

“That the fight you won the Silver Star and Purple Heart in?”

“You been doing your homework.”

“It was in the
Times
. That's the kind of juice they always salvage from canned résumés. Which reminds me, Max broke the car's window with his head. It cost the city eleven bucks to fix.”

“Did you have to pay for it?”

“No, thank God. On my salary that's a significant sum of money.”

“Two and a quarter a month plus another fifty after you put in your first ten years.”

“You been doing a little homework yourself.”

“Public record. I'm a taxpayer; they have to tell me.”

“What else do you know about me?”

“You made detective after only five years on the force and got kicked up to sergeant three years later. That says a lot about your capabilities. Got a bit of a temper, which gets you in hot water on occasion. You drive a four-year-old Olds, which cost you a hundred bucks used, live in a one-bedroom house. No debts to speak about. You're unmarried, thirty-four years old, went to college for a coupla years, California State, then dropped out to become a cop. Why, I don't know.”

“I ran out of money,” I said. “And got tired of slinging hash in the White House hamburger joint on Sepulveda for fifteen cents an hour when everybody else was getting rich playing the stock market.”

“They all went broke two years later.”

“Yeah. And I had a guaranteed job with a pension and a health policy.”

“Somehow I don't think the amenities had a lot to do with it.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“I told you before, I been around cops all my life. The best and the worst. I can read 'em all. You're the most dangerous kind.”

“Dangerous?” I laughed.

“Yeah. You're a bulldog. When you're on to something, you bite it in the ass and don't let go, even when it's the wrong something.”

“Is there supposed to be a message somewhere in all that?”

“You'll figure it out.”

I let that go and backed up a few sentences. “Those amenities you were talking about get more and more important as time goes by,” I said.

“The way you play the game, I'd take the short-end odds you won't be around to collect that pension.”