Goodbye California (18 page)

Ryder looked up from the sheaf of notes he was studying. He said, as mildly as one could in a necessarily loud voice: ‘Oh, I don’t know. We discovered that even learned academics can tamper with the truth when they see fit. We learned – leastways I did – about earthquakes and this earthquake syndrome. As for Sassoon, nobody expected to learn anything from him. How could we? He knew nothing – how could he? He was learning things from us.’ He returned his attention to his notes.

‘Well, my God! They’ve got Susan, they’ve got Peggy and all you can do is to sit there and read that load of old rubbish just as if –’

Dunne leaned across. No longer as alert and brisk as he had been some hours ago, he was beginning to show the effects of a sleepless night. He said: ‘Jeff. Do me a favour.’

‘Yes?’

‘Shut up.’

There was a pile of papers lying on Major Dunne’s desk. He looked at them without enthusiasm, placed his briefcase beside them, opened a cupboard, brought out a bottle of Jack Daniels and looked interrogatively at Ryder and his son. Ryder smiled but Jeff shook his head: he was still smarting from the effects of Dunne’s particular brand of curtness.

Glass in hand, Dunne opened a side door. In the tiny cubicle beyond was a ready-made-up camp bed. Dunne said, I’m not one of your superhuman FBI agents who can go five nights and days without sleep. I’ll have Delage’ – Delage was one of his juniors – ‘man the phones here. I can be reached any time, but the excuse had better be a good one.’

‘Would an earthquake do?’

Dunne smiled, sat and went through the papers on his desk. He pushed them all to one side and lifted a thick envelope which he slit open. He peered at the contents inside and said: ‘Guess what?’

‘Carlton’s passport.’

‘Damn your eyes. Anyway, nice to see someone’s been busy around here.’ He extracted the passport, flipped through the pages and passed it to Ryder. ‘And damn your eyes again.’

‘Intuition. The hallmark of the better-class detective.’ Ryder went through the pages, more slowly than Dunne. ‘Intriguing. Covers fourteen out of the fifteen months when he seemed to have vanished. A bad case of wander-bug infection. Did get around in that time, didn’t he? Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, Manila again, Singapore, Manila yet again, Tokyo, Los Angeles.’ He passed the passport to Jeff. ‘Fallen in love with the mysterious East, it would seem. Especially the Philippines.’

Dunne said: ‘Make anything of it?’

‘Not a thing. Maybe I did have some sleep but it wasn’t much. Mind seems to have gone to sleep. That’s what we need, my mind and myself – sleep. Maybe when I wake I’ll have a flash of inspiration. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.’

He dropped Jeff outside the latter’s house. ‘Sleep?’

‘Straight to bed.’

‘First one awake calls the other. Okay?’

Jeff nodded and went inside – but he didn’t go straight to bed. He went to the bay-fronted window of his living-room and looked up the street. From there he had an excellent view of the short driveway leading to his father’s house.

Ryder didn’t head for bed either. He dialled the station house and asked for Sergeant Parker. He got through at once.

‘Dave? No ifs, no buts. Meet me at Delmino’s in ten minutes.’ He went to the gas fire, tilted it forwards, lifted out a polythene-covered green folder, went to the garage, pushed the folder under the Peugeot back seat, climbed in behind the wheel and backed the car down the driveway and into the road. Jeff moved as soon as he saw the rear of the car appearing, ran to his garage, started the engine and waited until Ryder’s car had passed by. He followed.

Ryder appeared to be in a tearing hurry. Halfway towards the first intersection he was doing close on seventy, a speed normally unacceptable in a 3 5 mph limit, but there wasn’t a policeman in
town who didn’t know that battered machine and its occupant and would ever have been so incredibly foolish as to detain Sergeant Ryder when he was going about his lawful occasions. Ryder got through the lights on the green but Jeff caught the red. He was still there when he saw the Peugeot go through the next set of lights. By the time Jeff got to the next set they too had turned to red. When he did cross the intersection the Peugeot had vanished. Jeff cursed, pulled over, parked and pondered.

Parker was in his usual booth in Delmino’s when Ryder arrived. He was drinking a Scotch and had one ready for Ryder who remembered that he’d had nothing to eat so far that day. It didn’t, however, affect the taste of the Scotch.

Ryder said without preamble: ‘Where’s Fatso?’

‘Suffering from the vapours, I’m glad to say. At home with a bad headache.’

‘Shouldn’t be surprised. Very hard thing, the butt of a ‘thirty-eight. Maybe I hit him harder than I thought. Enjoyed it at the time, though. Twenty minutes from now he’s going to feel a hell of a sight more fragile. Thanks. I’m off.’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. You clobbered Donahure. Tell me.’

Briefly and impatiently, Ryder told him. Parker was suitably impressed.

‘Ten thousand bucks. Two Russian rifles.
And
this dossier you have on him. You have the goods on him all right – our
ex
-Chief of Police. But look,
John, there’s a limit to how far you can go on taking the law into your own hands.’

‘There’s no limit.’ Ryder put his hand on Parker’s. ‘Dave, they’ve got Peggy.’

There was a momentary incomprehension then Parker’s eyes went very cold. Peggy had first sat on his knees at the age of four and had sat there at regular intervals ever since, always with the mischievously disconcerting habit of putting her elbow on his shoulder, her chin on her palm and peering at him from a distance of six inches. Fourteen years later, dark, lovely and mischievous as ever, it was a habit she had still not abandoned, especially on those occasions when she wanted to wheedle something from Ryder, labouring under the misapprehension that this made her father jealous. Parker said nothing. His eyes said it for him.

Ryder said: ‘San Diego. During the night. They gunned down the two FBI men who were looking after her.’

Parker stood up: ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No. You’re still an officer of the law. You’ll see what I’m going to do with Fatso and you’ll have to arrest me.’

‘I’ve just come all over blind.’

‘Please, Dave. I may be breaking the law but I’m still on the side of the law and I need at least one person inside the law I can trust. There’s only you.’

‘Okay. But if any harm comes to her or Susan I’m out of a job.’

‘You’ll be welcome in the ranks of the unemployed.’

They left. As the door swung to behind them a lean Mexican youth with a straggling moustache that reached his chin rose from the next booth, inserted his nickel and dialled. For a full minute the phone rang at the other end without reply. The youth tried again with the same result. He fumbled in his pockets, went to the counter, changed a bill for loose change, returned and tried another number. Twice he tried, twice he failed, and his mounting frustration, as he kept glancing at his watch, was obvious; on the third time he was lucky. He started to speak in low, hurried, urgent Spanish.

There was a certain lack of aesthetic appeal about the way in which Chief of Police Donahure had arranged his sleeping form. Fully clothed, he lay face down on a couch, his left hand on the floor clutching a half-full glass of bourbon, his hair in disarray and his cheeks glistening with what could have been perspiration but was, in fact, water steadily dripping down from the now melting ice-bag that Donahure had strategically placed on the back of his head. It was to be assumed that the loud snoring was caused not by the large lump that undoubtedly lay concealed beneath the ice-bag but from the bourbon, for a man does not recover consciousness from a blow, inform the office that he’s sorry but he won’t be in today and then relapse into unconsciousness. Ryder laid down the polythene
folder he was carrying, removed Donahure’s Colt and prodded him far from gently with its muzzle.

Donahure groaned, stirred, displaced the ice-bag in turning his head and managed to open one eye. His original reaction must have been that he was going down a long, dark tunnel. Wher the realization gradually dawned upon his befuddled brain that it was not a tunnel but the barrel of his own .45 his Cyclopean gaze travelled above and beyond the barrel until Ryder’s face swam into focus. Two things happened: both eyes opened wide and his complexion changed from its normal puce to an even more unpleasant shade of dirty grey.

Ryder said: ‘Sit up.’

Donahure remained where he was. His jowls were actually quivering. Then he screamed in agony as Ryder grabbed his hair and jerked him into the vertical. Clearly, no small amount of that hair had been attached to the bruised bump on his head. A sudden scalp pain predictably produces an effect on the corneal ducts and Donahure was no exception: his eyes were swimming like bloodshot gold-fish in peculiarly murky water.

Ryder said: ‘You know how to conduct a cross-examination. Fatso?’

‘Yes.’ He sounded as if he was being garrotted.

‘No you don’t. I’m going to show you. Not in any textbook, and I’m afraid you’ll never have an opportunity to use it. But, by the comparison, the cross-examination you’ll get in the accused’s box
in court will seem almost pleasant. Who’s your paymaster, Donahure?’

‘What in God’s name –’ He broke off with a shout of pain and clapped his hands to his face. He reached finger and thumb inside his mouth, removed a displaced tooth and dropped it on the floor. His left cheek was cut both inside and out and blood was trickling down his chin: Ryder had laid the barrel of Donahure’s Colt against his face with a heavy hand. Ryder transferred the Colt to his left hand.

‘Who’s your paymaster, Donahure?’

‘What in the hell –’ Another shout and another hiatus in the conversation while Donahure attended to the right hand side of his face. The blood was now flowing freely from his mouth and dripping on to his shirt-front. Ryder transferred the revolver back to his right hand.

‘Who’s your paymaster, Donahure?’

‘LeWinter.’ A strangely gurgling sound: he must have been swallowing blood. Ryder regarded him without compassion.

Donahure gurgled again. The ensuing croak was unintelligible.

‘For looking the other way?’

A nod. There was no hate in Donahure’s face, just plain fear.

‘For destroying evidence against guilty parties, faking evidence against innocent parties?’ Another nod. ‘How much did you make, Donahure? Over the years, I mean. Blackmail on the side of course?

‘I don’t know.’

Ryder lifted his gun again.

‘Twenty thousand, maybe thirty.’ Once more he screamed. His nose had gone the same way as Raminoff’s.

Ryder said: ‘I won’t say I’m not enjoying this any more than you are, because I am. I’m more than prepared to keep this up for hours yet. Not that you’ll last more than twenty minutes and we don’t want your face smashed into such a bloody pulp that you can’t talk. Before it comes to that I’ll start breaking your fingers one by one.’ Ryder meant it and the abject terror on what was left of Donahure’s face showed that he knew Ryder meant it. ‘How much?’

‘I don’t know.’ He cowered behind raised hands. ‘I don’t know how much. Hundreds.’

‘Of thousands?’ A nod. Ryder picked up the polythene folder and extracted the folder, which he showed to Donahure. ‘Total of just over five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in seven banks under seven different names. That would be about right.’ Another nod. Ryder returned the papers to the polythene folder. If this represented only Donahure’s rake-off, how much did LeWinter have safe and sound in Zurich?

‘The last pay-off. Ten thousand dollars. What was that for?’ Donahure was now so befuddled with pain and fright that it never occurred to him to ask how Ryder knew about it.

‘Cops.’

‘Bribes to do what?’

‘Cut all the public phones between here and Ferguson’s house. Cut Ferguson’s phone. Wreck, his police band radio. Clear the roads.’

‘Clear the roads? No patrols on the hi-jack van’s escape route?’

Donahure nodded. He obviously felt this easier than talking.

‘Jesus. You are a sweet bunch. I’ll have their names later. Who gave you those Russian rifles?’

‘Rifles?’ A frown appeared in the negligible clearance between Donahure’s hairline and eyebrows, sure indication that at least part of his mind was working again.
‘You
took them. And the money. You –’ He touched the back of his head.

‘I asked a question. Who gave you the rifles?’

‘I don’t know.’ Donahure raised defensive hands just as Ryder lifted his gun. ‘Smash my face to pieces and I still don’t know. Found them in the house when I came back one night. Voice over the phone said I was to keep them.’ Ryder believed him.

‘This voice have a name?’

‘No.’ Ryder believed that also. No intelligent man would be crazy enough to give his name to a man like Donahure.

‘This the voice that told you to tap LeWinter’s phone?’

‘How in God’s name –’ Donahure broke off not because of another blow or impending blow but because, swallowing blood from both mouth and nose, he was beginning to have some difficulty
with his breathing. Finally he coughed and spoke in a gasp. ‘Yes.’

‘Name Morro mean anything to you?’

‘Morro? Morro who?’

‘Never mind.’ If Donahure didn’t know the name of Morro’s intermediary he most certainly didn’t know Morro.

Jeff had first tried the Redox in Bay Street, the unsavoury bar-restaurant where his father had had his rendezvous with Dunne. No one answering to either of their descriptions had been there, or, if they had, no one was saying.

From there he went to the FBI office. He’d expected to find Delage there, and did. He also found Dunne, who clearly hadn’t been to bed. He looked at Jeff in surprise. ‘So soon. What’s up?’

‘My father been here?’

‘No. Why?’

‘When we got home he said he was going to bed. He didn’t. He left after two or three minutes. I followed him, don’t know why, I had the feeling he was going to meet someone, that he was stepping into danger. Lost him at the lights.’