All Grass Isn't Green

7

I didn’t have much trouble finding where the houseboat had been parked. I drove slowly out of town, watching the road.

There was still a little crowd hanging around, enough people so that it was impossible to tell anything about footprints or wheel tracks. The police had apparently roped the place off earlier in the morning, and after they finished with their search and photography they had taken the ropes away, presumably when they moved the pickup and trailer. Then the people had moved in.

I looked the place over.

It was a real wide space on the west side of the road, which would be the left-hand side going north. It must have been a good fifty feet from the edge of the pavement over to a drainage ditch that was along the side of the road. On the other side of the drainage ditch was a barbed-wire fence and beyond that was an alfalfa field.

As the alfalfa field was irrigated, the surplus waters ran down into the drainage ditch, which was still moist with a base of muddy clay on the bottom.

I walked along the road, looking at the drainage ditch to see if I could see any footprints.

There weren’t any in it, but there were lots of them along the side. The police, and presumably some of the spectators, had looked to see if anyone had crossed that ditch. It couldn’t have been done without leaving a set of tracks.

I took off my shoes and socks and waded through the clay mud in the bottom of the ditch, climbed the bank on the other side, and crawled through the barbed-wire fence, holding my shoes and socks in my left hand, trying act natural and unconcerned — just a loco gringo doing something that didn’t make sense.

I walked about fifty yards along the bank, looking over the alfalfa field; and then I walked back to where I had started and walked fifty yards in the other direction.

I started back, and then I saw it, a gleam of bluish metal, reflecting the sunlight.

I glanced around. Everyone seemed to have lost interest in me.

I walked through the alfalfa field for about twenty feet.

The gun was lying at the foot of an alfalfa plant.

I studied it intently. It was a blued-steel .38-caliber, nosed revolver.

I turned and walked slowly away from what I had found.

I had taken only a few steps toward the fence when a little ten-year-old, black-eyed, barefooted urchin came running across the muddy bottom of the drainage ditch.

“What did you find, mister?” he asked.

“Find?” I echoed, trying to look innocent.

“You found something. You moved over. You... I’ll look.”

He started to run back to where I had turned into the alfalfa.

“Wait!” I called after him.

He stopped.

“I found something,” I said, “that is of great importance. I don’t want the other people to know. Can I trust you?”

His face showed intense excitement. “Of course, sure,” he said. “What do you want?”

I said, “I am going to wait here to see that what I found is not disturbed. I was going to call the police myself, but it is better this way. You have your mother and father near here?”

“I live in that house over there,” he said, pointing. “The white house.”

“Do you have a telephone?”

“Yes.”

I said, “I’ll wait here. Don’t say anything to any of the people out there. Go to your house. Get your father if he is home, your mother if he isn’t home. Telephone the Calexico police. Tell them to get out here right away, that Donald Lam has found some important evidence.”

“A Lam?” he asked.

“Donald Lam,” I said. “L-a-m. You think you can do that?”

“Oh, sure.”

“And don’t say anything to anybody except your parents.”

“Only my mother,” he said. “My father is at work.”

“Then hurry,” I told him.

I sat down on the bank of the ditch and waited while the kid wormed his way through the barbed-wire fence, spattered across the muddy bottom of the ditch, and, with his bare brown feet beating an excited tattoo on the ground, headed off for the big white house.

It took about fifteen minutes for Frank Sellers and a Calexico cop to get there.

The kid was waiting for them. He beckoned them eagerly and led the way across the ditch.

Sellers and the cop hesitated before getting in the mud, but finally they waded on through.

The people who had been aimlessly milling around suddenly became interested when they saw the cops’ car and the ten-year-old kid leading the two men across the drainage ditch. Then they noticed me and one or two came trooping across, but the officer waved them back before they got into the alfalfa field.

Sellers and the officer came slogging down to me.

“This had better be good, Pint Size,” Sellers said.

“Want to take a look?” I asked.

I led the way and stopped when I reached a point where they could see the gun.

“I’ll be go to hell!” Sellers said.

They looked at each other; then they looked at me. “Have you been over there?” Sellers asked.

“This is as close as I’ve been.”

“I hope you’re telling the truth,” Sellers said. “How did you know that gun was there?”

“I didn’t. I came out to look the place over.”

“Lots of people have looked the place over,” Seller said.

“I reasoned that if a man wanted to get rid of a gun, he’d stand on the edge of that drainage ditch and throw it out into the field, just as far as he could throw it.”

“Why not take it with him for a ways and throw it where it wouldn’t be found.”

“He might not have had that much time. The gun was too incriminating. He wanted to get rid of it right now.”

“All right, Pint Size,” Sellers said, “you masterminded that, but what caused you to cross the ditch?”

“Because no one else had crossed the ditch,” I said.

“How did you know that?”

“No one could have crossed the ditch without leaving tracks.”

“And so?” Sellers asked.

“So I knew that no one had looked in the alfalfa field.”

“And how did you know the gun was in the alfalfa field?”

“I didn’t, but as a matter of good investigative technique I knew that all the terrain around the scene of the crime should be explored, particularly places where a weapon could have been thrown.”

Sellers looked at the Calexico cop, took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth, walked over to the gun, bent slowly down, took a fountain pen from his pocket, inserted it in the barrel and lifted the gun.

“The chances of latent fingerprints on a gun are pretty slim,” he said, “but we’ll just protect this evidence as, much as we can and dust it for fingerprints.”

“For my money,” the Calexico cop said, “you’ll find the fingerprints of this slick detective.”

Sellers shook his head. “We may find it’s been wiped clean of fingerprints, but he’s too slick to pull a boob trick like that.”

We walked back along the bank of the ditch, Sellers, holding the gun up in the air, the fountain pen in the barrel, keeping it from falling.

He had some trouble getting through the fence and holding the gun, looking like a Japanese juggler trying to hold a ball aloft on a billiard cue.

By this time the crowd had gathered in a big semicircle, gaping at the officers and the gun.

The officers slogged across the muddy bottom of the drainage ditch. I walked across barefoot and over to where I had parked my car.

“Don’t try to get lost,” Sellers warned. “We may want you.”

“You can always find me,” I told him. “Unit Seven, Maple Leaf Motel, or somewhere in the vicinity.”

“You’re right,” Sellers said, “We can always find you. I just hope it won’t be too much trouble.”

I got back in my car and tried to drive barefooted. It was too ticklish.

I stopped at the first service station, got out, and turned the water hose on my feet. The attendant looked at me with a baffled expression.

“I got my feet dirty,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Now I’ve seen everything,” he said.

I didn’t try to put my socks on over my wet feet. I simply put my shoes on and drove back to the De Anza Hotel, found that Milton Carling Calhoun was in Room 3613, found the room and knocked on the door.

Calhoun opened the door eagerly.

His face showed disappointment when he saw who it was. “You again!” he said.

“Me again,” I told him.

My feet were dry by this time. I walked in and sat down in a chair, pulling my socks from my pocket. I took off my shoes and put my socks on.

“Now what,” Calhoun asked, “is the idea?”

“I went out to the scene of the crime,” I said.

“You mean the murder?”

“What other crime is there?”

“Dope smuggling.”

“It was the same scene,” I said.

“What happened?” he wanted to know.

I said, “The cops pulled a boner.”

“How come?”

I grinned and said, “Sergeant Sellers came down here from Los Angeles. He’s the high-powered liaison guy, the expert on homicide investigation, and he pulled a boner right in front of all these local cops. I’ll bet he feels like two cents right now.”

“What did he do?”

“He failed to search the scene of the crime for a weapon.”

“You mean they hadn’t...?”

“Oh, they’d looked the trailer over and they’d looked the ground over all around the trailer,” I said, “but there was an alfalfa field and a ditch with a muddy bottom between the edge of the highway right-of-way and the field. If anybody had tried to cross over they’d have left tracks.

“The officers looked the place over, found there were no tracks, so assumed no one had been over to the alfalfa field and they could cross it off the books.”

“And what happened?” Calhoun asked.

I said, “You should always search the premises, not only the immediate premises, but look at places where person could stand and throw some object such as weapon that he wanted to get rid of.”

“You mean there was a weapon?” Calhoun asked.

“There was a weapon,” I said. “A thirty-eight-caliber revolver, blued-steel, snub-nose — it looked to me an expensive gun. The police took it into custody and, course, got on the telephone right away.

“Within a matter of minutes they’ll have found the sales record of the gun from the numbers. Then they’ll process it for fingerprints — probably they won’t have much luck with that. Latent fingerprints aren’t usually found on a gun.”

“But they can identify it from the numbers?”

“Sure,” I said. “There’s a sales record on every gun. Now, is there any chance this is your gun?”

He shook his head emphatically. “Not one chance in a thousand. I know where my gun is.”

“Where?”

He hesitated, then said, “Home.”

“Let’s do better than that,” I said. “You may not know it, but you’re a poor liar.”

He took a deep breath and said, “All right, Nanncie has it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I gave it to her. The poor kid was worried sick and she was scared. I didn’t know she was going to try to run away. I thought she was going to stick it out... I told her, ‘Nanncie, when you go to bed, keep your door locked and don’t open it for anybody unless you know for sure who it is. Keep this gun under your pillow and if you have to use it, don’t hesitate to do so.’ ”

“And then?” I asked.

“And then I showed her how to pull the trigger,” he said. “You know, it’s a self-cocking gun. It sometimes takes a little practice for a woman to pull the trigger so she can fire the gun.”

“And you think Nanncie has hung onto the gun?”

“I know she has.”

“What are the chances,” I asked, “that Nanncie got involved in this thing and pulled the trigger on the gun out there in the trailer?”

“Not a chance in the world,” he said. “Not a chance in a million.”

I thought it over and said, “Well, maybe you’re right. I’m basing my judgment on the fact that she didn’t have an automobile and she’d hardly have hired a taxicab to follow the dope car up to the place where the crime was committed, then told the taxi to wait while she went in, pulled a gun and got rid of Eddie Sutton.”

“You talk like a fish,” Calhoun said impatiently. “Nanncie wouldn’t have—”

Imperative knuckles sounded on the door.

I said, wearily, “You’d better open the door for Sergeant Sellers.”

Calhoun opened the door.

Sellers took one look at me and said, “Well, well, Pint Size, I see you hotfooted it up here to tell your client the news.”

“I’ve told him the news,” I said.

Sellers said to Calhoun, “You own a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight-caliber revolver with a one-and-seven-eighths inch barrel, number one-three-three-three-four-seven. Where is it?”

“Go ahead and answer the question,” I told Calhoun. “He’s now suspecting you of a specific crime and asking you a specific incriminating question. He hasn’t warned you of your constitutional rights and anything you say can’t be used against you...”

Sergeant Sellers resorted to profanity, fished the Miranda card out of his pocket.

The Miranda card is something that officers carry these days since the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Miranda case. They have to give a series of warnings to anyone, either when they’re making an arrest; or when the investigation has quit being an investigation in general terms and has moved into a specific area where they are questioning a specific suspect about a specific crime.

Sellers started reading.

“You are,” Sellers droned in a monotone, “under suspicion of having murdered one Edward Sutton. You are warned that anything you say may be used against you. On the other hand, you are advised that you do not need to make any statement at all. You are also advised that you are entitled to consult an attorney of your own choice and to have an attorney represent you at all stages of the investigation. If you are unable to afford an attorney, the state will get one to represent you.”

Sellers put the card back in his pocket. “Now then,” he said, “when did you last see this gun?”

I said to Calhoun, “You’re entitled to have an attorney at all stages of the proceeding. Do you have a lawyer?”

“Not here,” Calhoun said.

“Suppose you keep out of this,” Sellers advised me.

“You mean he’s not entitled to have an attorney?” I asked.

“I’ve already told him,” Sellers said, “he’s entitled to have an attorney.”

I caught Calhoun’s eye and surreptitiously put my finger to my tightly closed lips.

Calhoun said, “I have no statement to make. I want to consult a lawyer.”

“You may call a lawyer,” Sellers said.

Calhoun gulped, thought, then suddenly turned to me. “Lam,” he said, “I want a lawyer.”

“Don’t you have one in—”

“Not one that would be any good in a situation of this sort,” he said. “I want a local lawyer and I want the best lawyer in the country — the best criminal lawyer.”

Calhoun reached in his pocket, pulled out his billfold and started counting out fifty-dollar bills; then he changed his mind, looked in the other side of the billfold and pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills. He handed them to me. “Three hundred is for you,” he said. “Two hundred is for a retainer for the lawyer. Get him to come to the jail and talk with me. I’ll make arrangements for his fee then.

“In the meantime, you go ahead and keep working on this case. I’m well able to pay at the price we agreed upon.”

“There will be expenses,” I said.

“Incur them.”

“Where do I stop?” I asked. “What’s the limit?”

Calhoun pointed upward. “The sky is the limit.”

Sellers said, “I hate to do this to you, Calhoun. If you would cooperate with us, it might not be necessary to take you into custody. After all, we simply are trying to find out about the gun and to trace your movements.”

Calhoun looked at me. I shook my head.

“You aren’t his lawyer, Pint Size!” Sellers said irritably. “You don’t need to advise him.”

“I’m his investigator,” I said.

“Then you’d better be damn certain you keep your nose clean or we’ll give you an adjoining cell. Then you can do all the yakety-yakking you want to.”

“With both cells wired for sound,” I said.

“You’re damn right we’ll have them bugged,” Seller said angrily. “How simple do you think we are?”

“You’d be surprised,” I told him.

Sellers turned to Calhoun. “I’m not going to put handcuffs on you under the circumstances, but you’re under arrest and don’t make any mistake about it. Don’t make any false moves. Come on, let’s go.”

They got to the door and we went out. Calhoun locked the door. I went as far as the lobby with them. Sellers Calhoun in a police car where a local cop was waiting they drove away. I went to the public phone in the lob and called Bertha.

“I’m down here at Calexico,” I said. “I’m still in Unit Seven at the Maple Leaf Motel. I’m probably going to around here for a while. For your information, I just got some more money out of our client and instructions to ahead...”

“Money out of our client!” Bertha yelled. “Where is he? And how the hell did you do that?”

“He’s down here.”

“How long’s he going to stay?”

“Probably some little time,” I said. “Frank Sellers and a local officer just arrested him for murder.”

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said.

“I’ll take it from there,” I told her, and hung up while, she was still sputtering.