All Grass Isn't Green

5

Calhoun and I went into Unit 7.

The bed hadn’t been made. I put a couple of pillows behind my back and sat on the bed, giving Calhoun the only comfortable chair in the place.

“Well?” I said.

“Well, what?”

“Some more talk,” I told him.

He shook his head. He was worried. “Lam,” he said, “I can’t afford to have my name mixed up in this thing. Good Lord, if there’s any publicity and my wife should get hold of it — that lawyer of hers is a vulture. He picks the last shred of meat off the smallest bone he can find. This little escapade alone could cost me a... well, plenty.”

I said, “You don’t need to talk to anyone except me.”

“If I don’t talk, they’ll throw newspaper publicity all over me.”

“If you do talk, what’ll they do?” I asked.

He didn’t like the answer to that one either.

We sat for a couple of minutes in silence. I was thinking and Calhoun was worrying.

The door pushed open and Sellers came in.

“Well?” he asked.

I tried to look innocent.

“Start talking,” Sellers said.

“‘What happened to your friend?” I asked.

“He’s a deputy sheriff,” Sellers said. “He’s been call away on business.” He looked at me, grinned, and said “Important business. Maybe you know what it is.”

I shook my head.

“Talk,” Sellers said.

I said, “Calhoun and I are going on a fishing trip do to San Felipe when you get done bullying us around. I did a little job for him and he was very grateful. He offered to meet me here this morning and we’d go do to San Felipe together and try to catch some fish. He’s giving the party.”

“And what was the little job you did for your friend here?” Sellers asked.

I said, “Calhoun is planning an expose on drug traffic from Mexico. Colburn Hale has some material he wanted to get. Hale left overnight. My client wanted to find him.”

“And what brought you down here?” Sellers asked. “Go ahead, Pint Size, better think fast because you have time to think up a really good one and I’m going to trap you on any lies you tell. When that happens you and Bertha are going to be in serious trouble.

“We’re investigating a crime. You know what happens to people who give false information to officers who investigating a crime.”

“What sort of a crime?” I asked.

“Murder one,” Sellers said.

I came bolt upright on the bed. “Murder what?”

“Murder one, you heard me.”

“Who’s the victim? Is it Hale?”

“Nope,” Sellers said, “it’s a chap by the name of Ed Sutton. The name mean anything to you, Pint Size?”

I shook my head. “Not a thing.”

“Sutton,” Sellers said, “is part of a smuggling ring. They’re pretty slick.

“We hadn’t found out just how they worked until morning. Sutton posed as an enthusiastic yachtsman. He had a little houseboat on pontoons that he’d trail back and forth from San Felipe, sometimes down as far south as Puertecitos.

“Last night Sutton came back from San Felipe and checked through the border here a little after nine forty-five — perhaps as late as ten-fifteen — that’s as nearly as we can place it. He got through the border without any trouble. He got out to the outskirts of Calexico here and pulled off to the side of the road.

“We think a scout car was waiting to join him. That scout car was to go ahead and make sure the coast was clear. It would have had a Citizen’s Band radio.

“Last night there was a roadblock traffic check just this side of Brawley. The way we figure it, the scout car radioed back to Sutton.

“Sutton decided to hole up. He went back into the houseboat.

“He never came out.”

“Why?” I asked.

“On account of a bullet through the heart,” Sellers said. “We think it’s probably a thirty-eight caliber.”

“When was his body found?”

“About seven o’clock this morning.”

“How long had he been dead?”

Sellers shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe three hours, maybe seven hours.”

“Why tell us all this?” I asked.

“Because,” Sellers said, “I think that perhaps you can help us, and, in case you can’t, we’ll give you the facts so that you’ll know we’re investigating a murder case. Then if you do uncover anything you’ll know the consequences of withholding the information.”

Sellers pulled a cigar from his pocket, ripped off the end with his teeth, shoved the cigar in his mouth, but didn’t light it. He stood there looking at us with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

“Now then,” he said, “you two are going to take a little ride with me.”

“Official?” I asked.

“We can make it official.”

I got up off the bed and said to Calhoun, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Calhoun asked.

“Down to the police parking lot,” Sellers said.

“What for?”

“I want you to take a look at the scene crime.”

I said, “I may be able to help you, Sergeant.”

Sellers pulled the cigar out of his mouth, inspected the wet place and grinned. “I thought perhaps you’d break loose with a little information.”

“It’s not the kind you think,” I said. “It has nothing do with my reason for being here.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, tell me,” Sellers said, putting the cigar back in the right-hand side of his mouth and twisting it over the left side by rolling it with his tongue.

I said, “I was coming across the border last night foot and I saw this outfit coming through, at least it’s outfit that matches the description you gave me — a small houseboat on pontoons being carried on a trailer.”

“What time?” Sellers asked.

“I can’t give it to you any better than you have it already. It was somewhere, I would say, between nine forty-five and ten-fifteen. When I last saw it, it was about ten o’clock.”

“Anything else?” Sellers asked.

I said, “The man who was driving the pickup had parked the outfit someplace within easy walking distance of the Monte Carlo Café, went into the café and looked around to see if he could find somebody who was going meet him there.”

“The devil!” Sellers said.

I nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I was in the café.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” I said. “The guy wasn’t alone.”

“You mean someone was with him when he came in the café?”

“No, someone was in the pickup with him when he crossed the border.”

Sellers’ eyes narrowed. He bit several times on the end of the cigar, chewing it gently while he digested that bit of information.

“Description,” he said.

“I can’t give it to you.”

“Why not?”

“It was dark. I was walking across the border. This pickup was in the line that was waiting to go across. I got a good look at the driver, but the man with him was on the side of the car away from me and was in the deeper shadows.”

“Any idea how tall, how old, how heavy?”

“I’d say he was probably somewhere in his thirties, but that’s just making a blind stab at it from the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head. I don’t know how tall he’d have been if he’d been standing up, but when he was sitting he was about average height.”

“Come on,” Sellers said. “I’m going to show you jokers something.”

We followed him out to a police car. He took us to a parking lot by the police station.

“This the outfit?” Sellers asked, when we got out and faced a pontoon houseboat mounted on a trailer pulled by a Ford pickup.

“That’s the outfit.”

“Well, you can’t go in,” Sellers said. “We’re going through it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for fingerprints and clues, but I want to show you guys something.”

He led us over to the rear part of one of the pontoons.

I could see this had already been processed for fingerprints. There was dusting powder over it and a couple of good latents which had evidently already been photographed.

Sellers said, “Just a minute.” He picked up two bottle openers that were on a stool by the end of pontoon, fitted the two bent ends to a little ridge on pontoon and pulled.

The cap loosened.

Sellers took his handkerchief so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints and took the end completely off.

The pontoon underneath was filled with dried marijuana that had been stuffed in and packed until it was solid.

I gave a low whistle.

Calhoun said nothing.

Sellers said, “As you can see, we got a couple of go fingerprints off the tip here. Now then, just to protect yourselves, I think it will be a good idea if you’ll just sit inside the station with me and leave your fingerprints.”

“Why?”

“We just want to make sure that the latents we have developed aren’t the prints of either one of you.”

I looked at Calhoun.

“I don’t think you have any right to take our prints under the circumstances,” Calhoun said.

“Probably not,” Sellers said, “but I think we’re going to take them just the same — one way or another. What’s the matter, you got any objections?”

“None at all,” I said hastily. “As a matter of fact, you’ve got mine on file. You’ve taken them several times.”

“I know, I know,” Sellers said.

Calhoun said, “This is an arbitrary high-hand procedure. If you had the faintest reason to suspect either one of us it would be different, but you’re just on a general fishing expedition and—”

“And,” Sellers interrupted him, studying him with a cold, speculative eye, “we’ve been looking you up, Mr. Milton Carling Calhoun.

“You and your wife are separated. Since the separation you have been living in the Mantello Apartments, a very swanky apartment out on Wilshire Boulevard.

“Around nine-thirty last night you got a call from Mexicali which came through the apartment switchboard. Right after that you phoned the apartment garage, told the attendant you had to have your car right away, that you were being called out of town on a business trip.

“Evidently the call gave you information which was important enough so you left immediately for the Imperial Valley. You must have arrived about two o’clock this morning. It must have been rather a tough trip because of the rain. I thought you looked a little tired when I met you.

“You know, you must have driven right past this houseboat where it was parked by the side of the road when you came into town. You might have recognized the outfit. I don’t know. You may have stopped and gone inside. We’re finding a few fingerprints on the inside as well as these on the outside on the cover of the pontoons.

“Now Mr. Milton Carling Calhoun, would you like to step inside and have your fingerprints taken?”

Calhoun took a long breath. “How in the world did you find out about the telephone call and the time I left Los Angeles?”

Sellers grinned around the cigar. “Don’t underestimate the police son. I put through a long-distance call after I talked with you at breakfast and had the information I wanted within a matter of minutes. You are very law-abiding. When you changed your residence, you even notified the Department of Motor Vehicles of your new address — it’s very commendable. That’s the law, you know. Now, that Mantello Apartments is a swanky outfit. They have a twenty-four-hour switchboard service. The night operator didn’t listen in on your call, but remembers that it came from Mexicali. Do you suppose there’s any chance that it was Eddie Sutton who calling you to tell he’d reached the border okay with his shipment and you told him to park the outfit and until you got there?”

“You’re crazy,” Calhoun said.

Sellers pulled the soggy end of the cigar out of mouth, inspected the frayed end which he had chew put the cigar back in his mouth, pulled out a light snapped it into flame and held the flame at the end of cigar until a cold, bluish-white wisp of smoke made its appearance.

“So far I haven’t anything to go on except hunches,” he said. “But I’m playing hunches. Come on in and we’ll take your fingerprints.”

We went inside and Sellers took our fingerprints.

It was evidently the first time Calhoun had had all his fingerprints taken. He was a little awkward, and fingerprint technician had to hold the tip of each fin firmly as he gently rotated the finger. He also fumbled around a little when it came to handling the paper tissue with the ink solvent on it which the technician handed him.

Sellers puffed on the cigar.

“All right, you two,” he said, “I’ll take you back to motel. Be sure to let me know if you think of anything else.”