Beyond the Grave

ONE

The Chief of police of Santa Barbara was a robust, bullnecked man with enormous bristling mustaches. His name was Vandermeer. He wore his blue uniform as if it were a West Point dress outfit, stood and sat with such erectness that Quincannon wondered idly if he had a deformed spine, spoke between tight-pursed lips, possessed a fondness for the word “mister,” and managed to convey a curious mixture of deference and suspicion in his speech and actions. He studied Quincannon's Secret Service credentials for a full three minutes, scowling all the while and at the last with such ferocity that Quincannon was certain he was about to pronounce them forgeries and hurl their bearer into the nearest cell; then he said in a deferential voice dripping with suspicion, “My office is at the government's disposal, mister. What can I do for you?”

Relieved, Quincannon said, “I'm looking for a man named James Evans, in connection with a counterfeiting case under investigation. The last address I have for him is number twelve hundred-and-six Anacapa Street, this city, but he no longer resides there.”

“Evans, eh? Evans.” Vandermeer shook his head as if to jog his memory but with such violence that his mustaches cracked like whips-or so Quincannon fancied. “Only one James Evans I know. Burglar and cracksman, among other things. I expect he's your man.”

“No doubt,” Quincannon said, “if he resided at number twelve hundred-and-six Anacapa Street.”

“We'll soon find out, mister. We'll soon find out.”

Vandermeer summoned one of his constables, who in turn brought in a thick file on James Evans. The constable's name was Ogilvy, and it developed that he had twice arrested Evans, once on suspicion of breaking-and-entering and once for public drunkenness and lewd and lascivious behavior at the Arroyo Burro hot springs. “Exposed himself to an old lady and two girls of sixteen,” Ogilvy explained. “Waved his pizzle about like it was Old Glory on a parade day. Drew quite a crowd.” He paused thoughtfully. “Most of 'em women, as I recall.”

Vandermeer was looking through the file. “Last known address, number twelve hundred-and-six Anacapa Street,” he said, and then fixed Ogilvy with a suspicious glance. “What happened to Evans? Any idea?”

The constable shook his head. “He seems to have vanished.”

“Dropped out of sight, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Not a whisper of him for some time now. Higgins and me went to question him about a robbery two months ago; he'd been gone awhile then.”

“Rumors as to where?”

“A passel. Los Angeles, Santa Maria, Los Alamos Valley, half a dozen more. None of 'em confirmed.”

Quincannon asked, “Has Evans dropped out of sight before this?”

“A time or two,” Ogilvy said. “Gone elsewhere on a job or to hide out from one he pulled here, I'll warrant. But he's always come back sooner or later.”

“Good riddance, if he's gone for good this time,” Vandermeer said. “Bad apple, that one. Spoiled enough barrels in this town.”

Quincannon asked if he could examine the file; Vandermeer, scowling his ferocious scowl, turned it over to him with suspicious deference. Reading through it at the chiefs desk, he learned that James Evans had served one three-year sentence at San Quentin for burglary and four shorter sentences at the county jail (one of those for exposing his pizzle at the Arroyo Burro hot springs). Evans had no particular specialities when it came to his choice of victims or the type of goods he stole; he was believed to have robbed the very poor as well as the very rich, and to have pilfered as much as eight thousand dollars and as little as twenty-seven pennies from a child's piggy bank. He had been born in Ohio, had come to California fifteen years ago, and had no known relatives living here. He had never married, or at least had not as far as the police knew. He had only two known acquaintances, Charles Tompkins and Oliver Witherspoon, with each of whom he had been arrested on suspicion of burglary. Quincannon asked about these two men.

“Tompkins is no longer a threat to society,” Vandermeer said with tight-lipped satisfaction. “San Quentin is where you'll find him these days. I put him there myself, eight months ago.”

“And Witherspoon?”

“Still active, mister. But he won't be for long, by God.”

“He lives in Santa Barbara, then?”

“He does,” Ogilvy said, “but if you're thinking he'll give you a lead to Evans's whereabouts, Mr. Boggs, I'm afraid you're in for a disappointment. I talked to Witherspoon myself after Evans disappeared. He claims to know nothing and couldn't be budged.” The constable tapped his knuckles meaningfully. “Nor persuaded.”

“I'll want to see him anyway,” Quincannon said. “That is, if you will be so good as to give me his address.”

“Certainly, sir.” Ogilvy started out.

“One other matter before you go. The reason I'm hunting Evans is that we of the Secret Service believe he is supplying stolen gold statuary to a vicious gang of koniakers, who then melt them down and use the raw metal to mint their counterfeit coins. We-”

“Diabolical scheme,” Vandermeer interrupted. He sounded impressed. “Clever swine, eh?”

“Very clever.” Quincannon paused to light the second of the two Cuban panatelas he had bought at the Arlington Hotel. “Naturally,” he said, “we are anxious to find the source of this stolen statuary. There may be more of it, and if we can prevent any further loss, the Service is of course bound to do so. Confidentially, gentlemen-and it pains me to say it-it may take a while to put the coney gang out of business.”

“Expect you're doing your best, mister,” Vandermeer said. “The statuary was stolen here, you say?”

“Or the environs. We know for a fact that one of the statues was of the Virgin Mary-approximately fourteen inches in height, sculpted by an artist named Francisco Portola, and made of pure gold. Was such a statue reported stolen within the past six to eight months?”

“Not to my recollection. Constable?”

“No, sir,” Ogilvy said. “But I'll have a look at the theft reports.”

Quincannon sat back in the chiefs chair and patiently smoked his cigar while Vandermeer stood in a stiff military posture and glowered at nothing in particular. It was no more than ten minutes until Constable Ogilvy returned.

“Well, mister?” Vandermeer asked him.

“Nothing, sir. If a gold statue was pilfered here within the past year, the theft weren't reported to us.”

Quincannon sighed. More work for him; and the more difficult his task, the longer it would be before his return to San Francisco. He asked Ogilvy for Oliver Witherspoon's address. The constable gave him two: a boarding house on Arrellaga Street where Witherspoon resided, and a produce warehouse at Gaviota Beach where he was employed on an irregular basis.

“Try the boarding house first, Mr. Boggs,” Ogilvy advised. “Ollie Witherspoon only does honest work when he's forced to, and then you can be sure it ain't as honest as it might be.”

As Quincannon prepared to take his leave, Vandermeer said, “Keep us apprised of your progress, mister. Let us know if there's anything else we can do. We stand four-square behind the government here in Santa Barbara.”

“I'm sure the president will be pleased to hear that.”

“The president? You're personally acquainted with Mr. Cleveland?”

Quincannon had never met Grover Cleveland, nor seen eye to eye with him, for that matter. He said, “Oh yes. Grover is a close friend of mine.”

“Good man,” Vandermeer said suspiciously. “Fine president.”

“Indeed he is.”

“I voted for him, mister. You can believe that.”

Quincannon believed it. He said, “As any right-thinking citizen would.”

“You'll give Mr. Cleveland my regards?”

“The moment I see him.”

Vandermeer smiled-an occurrence no doubt as rare, Quincannon thought, as a drunken burglar displaying his pizzle for public inspection. And little wonder, too. Now he knew why the chief wore a perpetual scowl and spoke through such tight-pursed lips. Vandermeer possessed an enormous set of teeth any horse in the state would have been proud to call his own.

Oliver Witherspoon was not at his boarding house on Arrellaga Street. He was, in fact, his landlady said with some amazement, working at the produce warehouse at Gaviota Beach.

Quincannon produced another sigh. Times must be difficult in the burglary trade, he reflected, though no more difficult than they were-at least for the moment-in the detective trade. He returned to the Arlington Hotel, where he changed into rougher clothing from his warbag; then he set out again. A block away, on Victoria Street, were the hotel's stables. From the hostler he rented a rather spirited claybank saddle horse and obtained directions to Gaviota Beach.

When he arrived there half an hour later, he found himself not on the Pacific shore, as he had expected, but on that of the Santa Barbara Channel; the ocean was some distance away, around the bend of Point Conception. A grouping of warehouses, stock pens, and wharves had been built along the beach, and several small coastal freighters were tied up there. Teamsters and stevedores were busily transferring wool and a variety of produce from the warehouses, and cattle from the stock pens, to the waiting ships; profanity rang as loudly in the salt-tanged air as the bawling of livestock. Quincannon found the atmosphere to his liking. He had always loved water-the Potomac and Mississippi Rivers in his youth, the Pacific after his move to California. If he had not become a detective like his father, he felt that he might have taken up the adventurous career of a riverboat pilot or a seafaring man.

He located the nearest produce warehouse, dismounted, and began asking after Oliver Witherspoon. No one at this warehouse knew him, evidently; Quincannon rode to the next. But it was not until he came to the third and last warehouse that his questions produced results. A stevedore directed him around to where a group of men were unloading bales of wool from a Studebaker freight wagon bearing the words SAN JULIAN RANCH on its side panel. One of the men admitted to being Witherspoon, though he did so with reluctance, wariness, and as much suspicion as Chief of Police Vandermeer had displayed.

Quincannon drew him around the corner of the warehouse, to where he had left the claybank horse. Witherspoon was a big man, heavy through the chest and shoulders, with powerful arms and legs; but he had one of the smallest heads Quincannon had ever seen. It put him in mind of a knobbly peanut crowned by a few sparse black fibers and set out upon a hulking rock. The kernels inside the peanut were proportionately small, Quincannon decided after two minutes with the man. So small, in fact, that they could not even be dignified by the term “brain.”

“Well?” Witherspoon said in a reedy, goober-sized voice. “Who the gawddam hell are you?”

“The name is Boggs. Down from Frisco.”

“Frisco? After what with me?”

“Nothing with you. It's Jimmy Evans I'm after.”

“Who?”

“Jimmy Evans. Used to hang his hat on Anacapa Street.”

“Don't know any Jimmy Evans.”

“Come along now, Ollie. None of that with me. I've got a lay on for Jimmy.”

Witherspoon's knobbly face screwed up as if it were being tightened in a vise. He seemed to be trying valiantly to think. At length he said, “Who sent you down from Frisco?”

“Luther Duff.”

“Don't know any Luther Duff.”

“He knows you, Ollie. How do you suppose I come to have your name and where to look you up?”

More facial contortions. “What's the job for Jimmy?”

“I'll tell that to him.”

“Not until I hear it first. Maybe I heard of Luther Duff, but I never heard of nobody named Boggs.”

“Where's Jimmy? Close by?”

Witherspoon glared at him and said nothing.

“Wouldn't be on the lammas, would he?”

“I ain't talking,” Witherspoon said. “You are. What's your game, Boggs?”

“Mine and Luther's. And Jimmy's, if he wants in.”

“Well?”

“Religious statues. Gold ones.”

“Huh?”

“Jimmy swiped a gold statue six months ago-the Virgin Mary-and laid it off to Duff. Duff's just sold it to a lad who wants more of the same. He sent me down to … Now what's this, Ollie? What's tickled your funny bone?”

Witherspoon was laughing. At least, Quincannon assumed that was what he was doing; the sounds that came out of him were a series of low rumbles and squeaks, as if a herd of mice were tumbling down a coal chute. The sounds continued for another fifteen seconds, at which point Witherspoon ran out of wind. He bent over at the middle, gasped several times, finally caught his breath, coughed explosively, and wiped drool off his mouth with the back of one hairy paw.

“Gawddam,” he said. “Gawddam.”

“If it's a joke, let me have a laugh, too.”

“It's a joke, all right. And gawddam if it ain't on you and Luther Duff.”

“How so?”

“There ain't no more of them statues like the one Jimmy swiped. Not where he got it, by Gawd.”

“And where was that?”

“Out of a Mex storekeeper's rooms, while the greaser was downstairs sellin' boots and shirts. Now ain't that a gut-buster?”

Quincannon's smile was genuine. “It is that, Ollie; I'll admit it. Where does this Mex live? Here in Santa Barbara?”

“Sure. Jimmy was on the hog at the time; he was only after some fast jack. I wisht I'd seen his face when he come on that statue. He said he like to fell down dead on the spot.” The rumbling and squeaking noises started again. “Gawddam,” Witherspoon said.

“What was his name?”

“Whose?”

“The Mex storekeeper's.”

“Who knows? Don't matter-he ain't got no more of them statues, that's for certain.”

“Too bad for Jimmy, then, if he's still on the hog.”

“He ain't. He blew wise to a pretty lay down south.”

“Is that where he is now?”

Witherspoon's good humor evaporated. “I ain't sayin'. You still after him?”

“Not anymore,” Quincannon said. He moved to the claybank, swung himself into the saddle. “When you see him tell him Duff's in the market for the right booty.”

“I'll do that. You headin' back to Frisco, Boggs?”

Quincannon said, “Tomorrow, with any luck. Let me give you some advice, Ollie: Never spark a stubborn widow, especially in the spring. It can be damned frustrating.” He rode off, leaving Witherspoon once more engaged in the monumental task of trying to produce thought inside a peanut shell.

Chief Vandermeer was gone from the police station when Quincannon paid his second call of the afternoon. Constable Ogilvy, however, was still on duty and as obliging as he had been earlier. He reexamined the local theft reports for the previous six months, and much to Quincannon's relief, found one filed on October 6, 1893, by a man named Luis Cordova who owned a dry-goods store on Canon Perdido Street and who lived in quarters above it. A gold statue of the Virgin Mary did not appear on the brief list of items stolen, nor did any other kind of statue, religious artifact, or valuable.

“Peculiar, ain't it, Mr. Boggs?” Ogilvy said. “This fellow Cordova lives poor in the Mexican quarter, so what was he doing with an expensive gold statue? And why didn't he report it stolen?”

“Why, indeed?” Quincannon said, and went to find out.