All Grass Isn't Green

6

When Sellers had driven away, I said to Calhoun, “Suppose you come clean with me.”

“I’m already clean with you,” he said irritably. “You talk like that damn Los Angeles cop.”

I said, “All right, I’ll ask a few questions. Why did you want to find Hale?”

“I’ve told you why. Because I wanted to look for Nanncie.”

“And why did you want to find Nanncie?”

“Because I knew she was getting mixed into a very dangerous situation.”

“This man, Hale, was a rival of yours?”

“With a girl as good-looking as Nanncie, everybody is a potential rival.”

“And how did you know Hale was working on a dope story?”

“Because Nanncie told me.”

“She betrayed Hale’s confidence?”

“It wasn’t his confidence. Nanncie was the one who had lined up the story for him in the first place.”

“And where did Nanncie get it?”

“She got a tip from an operator in a beauty shop and followed up on the story.”

“Why? Because she was interested in dope?”

“No because she was interested in Hale. She knew he was looking for something that would make a sensational article and she thought this would be it. It was a man’s story.”

“Did she have details?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t pull that line with me. You and Nanncie were pretty close. If she told you anything, she told you all. Did she say anything about a houseboat on a trailer?”

Calhoun didn’t answer that question for a second or two, then he said, “I’m not going to have you cross-examine me this way, Lam.”

I said, “You damn fool, I’m trying to save your bacon. You’ve left a broad back trail. Don’t underestimate the police. Frank Sellers is going after Nanncie.”

“And we’ve got to go after her,” Calhoun said.

“He’ll pick her up somewhere,” I said. “She didn’t have a car. She probably didn’t take a taxi. Somebody came and picked her up, probably about three or four o’clock this morning. That was shortly after you had arrived in Calexico. I think you did it.”

“You think wrong,” Calhoun said. “I only wish to heaven I had been the one. I’d have taken her and put her in a safe place.”

“Safe for whom?” I asked. “You or her?”

“Her.”

“I’m still not sure you didn’t pick her up,” I told him. “Now, we’ll come back to the original question. Did she tell you anything about a houseboat that was used in the smuggling operation?”

“Well, generally.”

“So when you drove into town in the wee small hours of the morning and saw a pickup with a pontoon houseboat on a trailer parked by the side of the road, what did you do?”

“All right, he said. I thought — well, I didn’t know what to think. I stopped the car and went across to try to get in the door of the houseboat.”

“What did you do?”

“I knocked.”

“And you left fingerprints.”

“Knuckles don’t leave fingerprints.”

I said, “What were you intending to do if the guy had opened the door — ask him if he was the dope peddler your that girlfriend, Nanncie, had been telling you about?”

“No, I was going to sound him out a bit, pretending I a yachtsman and wanted information about launching facilities at San Felipe.”

“At three o’clock in the morning?” I asked.

“I tell you I was worried sick about Nanncie,” he said “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“And you’re not thinking clearly now,” I told him, then I asked him abruptly, “Do you own a gun?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“Where is it?”

“I... why, home, I guess.”

“Where is home? Where your wife is living or in the Mantello Apartments?”

“In the... in the home, I guess.”

“You sure?”

“No, I’m not absolutely certain. I haven’t seen it for some time.”

“What is it?”

“A thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”

“You’re sure you didn’t bring it with you when you came down here last night?”

“No, certainly not. Why would I have brought it?”

“Sometimes people carry guns when they’re traveling at night over lonely roads in an automobile.”

“I don’t. I’m law-abiding.”

“All right,” I said. “The best thing for you to do is to lick to Los Angeles.”

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “I’ve got to stay down here and together we’ve got to look for Nanncie.”

“Not together.”

“I want to be kept posted. I want to know what you’re doing. I want to work with you.”

“You would simply clutter up the scenery,” I told him.

“I have reason to believe she’s in danger.”

“If she is, I can help her a lot better if I’m alone than if you’re hanging around. What are your feelings toward Colburn Hale? I want to know.”

“I hate him,” he said.

“Jealous?”

“I’m not jealous. I just tell you that the man dragged Nanncie into danger, fooling around with this article of his on dope smuggling.”

I told Calhoun, “If you won’t go back to Los Angeles, there’s just one thing I want you to do.”

“What?”

“Get in that Cadillac of yours, drive to the De Anza Hotel, go into your room, close the door, don’t do any telephoning, and stay put.”

“For how long — I’d go crazy.”

“Until you hear from me,” I said.

“How long will that be?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On when I can find some of the answers.”

“Answers to what?”

I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Answers to some of the things you’ve been doing and have lied about.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I have a feeling you’re not being frank with me.”

“I’ve paid you everything you’ve asked. You’re working for me.”

“That’s right,” I told him, “and if you want to keep me running around in circles like a trotting horse that’s being trained at the end of a rope, that’s your privilege. I’ll trot around just as far as you want and as fast as you want at fifty bucks a day and expenses.

“On the other hand, if you want to take the rope off my and let me trot straight down the road so I can get somewhere, I’ll try to get somewhere.”

“Perhaps then you’d get to some place that I don’t want you to be.”

“There’s always that chance.”

“I can’t take it.”

“You can if you tell me where you don’t want me to go,” I said, “and why you don’t want me to get there.”

He shook his head.

I said, “Has it ever occurred to you that you could find yourself charged with murder?”

“With murder?”

“With murder in the first,” I said. “Sellers is measuring you for size right now. A fingerprint or two or just some bit of evidence and you’d be elected.”

“Why, they couldn’t... they wouldn’t dare.”

“And,” I said, “there’d be nice, juicy big headlines in papers. LOS ANGELES MILLIONAIRE ARRESTED IN DOPE-SMUGGLING MURDER.”

He acted as though I’d hit him in the stomach.

“Think it over,” I told him. “I’m trying to help you. Despite all the double crosses you’ve given me, I’m still trying to help, but there are certain things I can’t do. I can’t suppress evidence. And when I know that the police are investigating a murder case, I can’t lie to them. After all, I’m a licensed private detective and I have certain obligations under the law.

Now get out of here. Go to the De Anza Hotel. Shut self in your room and stay there.”

He looked at me as a wounded deer looks at the Then he got up and walked out.