The Doomsters

17

I DROVE INTO PURISSIMA and checked in at a waterfront motel named the Hacienda. Not being on expense account and having forty-odd dollars in my wallet to tide me over until I qualified for the old-age pension, I picked the cheapest one I could find with telephones in the rooms. The room I paid eight dollars for in advance contained a bed and a chair and a limed-oak veneer chest of drawers, as well as a telephone. The window overlooked a parking lot.

The room surprised me into a sharp feeling of pain and loss. The pain wasn’t for Carl Hallman, though his fugitive image continually crossed my mind. Perhaps the pain was for myself; the loss was of a self I had once imagined.

Peering out through the slats of the dusty blind, I felt like a criminal hiding out from the law. I didn’t like the feeling, so I clowned it away. All I needed was a suitcase full of hot money and an ash-blonde moll whining for mink and diamonds. The closest thing to an ash-blonde moll I knew was Zinnie, and Zinnie appeared to be somebody else’s moll.

I was kind of glad that Zinnie wasn’t my moll. It was a small room, and the printed notice under the glass top of the chest of drawers said that the room rented for fourteen dollars double. Checkout time was twelve noon. Lighting an ash-blond cigarette, I calculated that I had about twenty-four hours to wrap up the case. I wasn’t going to pay for another day out of my own pocket. That would be criminal.

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there’s no way to hang up.

Before I made a long-distance call of my own, I went into the bathroom and examined my head in the mirror over the sink. It looked worse than it felt. One ear was cut, and half full of drying blood. There were abrasions on temple and cheek. One eye was slightly blackened, and made me appear more dissipated than I was. When I smiled at a thought that struck me, the effect was pretty grim.

The thought that struck me sent me back to the bedroom. I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up Zinnie’s doctor friend in the local directory. Grantland maintained an office on upper Main Street and a residence on Seaview Road. I made a note of the addresses and telephone numbers, and called his office number. The girl who answered gave me, after some persuasion, an emergency appointment for five-thirty, the end of office hours.

If I hurried, and if Glenn Scott was at home, I should have time to see him and get back for my appointment with Grantland. Glenn had retired to an avocado ranch in the Malibu hinterland. I’d driven up two or three times in the last two years to play chess with him. He always beat me at chess, but his whisky was good. Also, I happened to like him. He was one of the few survivors of the Hollywood rat race who knew how to enjoy a little money without hitting other people over the head with it.

I thought as I put through the call to his house that money happened to Glenn the way poverty happened to a lot of others. He’d worked hard all his life, of course, but he’d never knocked himself out for money. He used to say that he’d never tried to sell himself for fear that somebody might be tempted to buy him.

The maid who’d been with the Scotts for twenty years answered the telephone. Mr. Scott was outside watering his trees. Far as she knew, he’d be there all afternoon, and he’d be glad to see me, far as she knew.

I found him about a half-hour later, wielding a hose on the side of a sunburnt hill. The rocky barrenness of the hillside was accentuated by the rows of scrawny young avocado trees. Glenn’s jeep was at the side of the road. Turning and parking behind it, I could look down on the gravel roof of his cantilevered redwood house, and further down on the long white curve of the beach rimming the sea. I felt a twinge of envy as I crossed the field toward him. It seemed to me that Glenn had everything worth having: a place in the sun, wife and family, enough money to live on.

Glenn gave me a smile that made me ashamed of my thoughts. His keen gray eyes were almost lost in his sun-wrinkles. His wide-brimmed straw hat and stained khaki coveralls completed his resemblance to a veteran farmhand. I said: “Hi, farmer.”

“You like my protective coloration, eh?” He turned off the water and began to coil the hose. “How you been, Lew? Still brawling, I see.”

“I ran into a door. You’re looking well.”

“Yeah, the life suits me. When I get bored, Belle and I go in to the Strip for dinner and take a quick look around and beat it the hell back home.”

“How is Belle?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Right now she’s in Santa Monica with the kids. Belle had her first grandson last week, with a little help from the daughter-in-law. Seven and a half pounds, built like a middleweight, they’re going to call him Glenn. But you didn’t make a special trip to ask me about my family.”

“Somebody else’s family. You had a case in Purissima about three years ago. Elderly woman committed suicide by drowning. Husband suspected murder, called you in to check.”

“Uh-huh. I wouldn’t call Mrs. Hallman elderly. She was probably in her early fifties. Hell, I’m older than that myself, and I’m not elderly.”

“Okay, grandpa,” I said with subtle flattery. “Are you willing to answer a couple of questions about the Hallman case?”

“Why?”

“It seems to be kind of reopening itself.”

“You mean it was homicide?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Not yet. But the woman’s son was murdered this afternoon.”

“Which son? She had two.”

“The older one. His younger brother escaped from a mental ward last night, and he’s prime suspect. He was at the ranch shortly before the shooting–”

“Jesus,” Glenn breathed. “The old man was right.”

I waited, with no result, and finally said: “Right about what?”

“Let’s skip that, Lew. I know he’s dead now, but it’s still a confidential case.”

“I get no answers, eh?”

“You can ask the questions, I’ll use my judgment about answering ’em. First, though, who are you representing in Purissima?”

“The younger son. Carl.”

“The psycho?”

“Should I give my clients a Rorschach before I take them on?”

“I didn’t mean that. He hire you to clear him?”

“No, it’s my own idea.”

“Hey, you’re not off on one of your crusades.”

“Hardly,” I said with more hope than I felt. “If my hunch pans out, I’ll get paid for my time. There’s a million or two in the family.”

“More like five million. I get it. You’re on a contingency basis.”

“Call it that. Do I get to ask you any questions?”

“Go ahead. Ask them.” He leaned against a boulder and looked inscrutable.

“You’ve answered the main one already. That drowning could have been homicide.”

“Yeah. I finally ruled it out at the time because there were no positive indications – nothing you could take to court, I mean. Also on account of the lady’s background. She was unstable, been on barbiturates for years. Her doctor wouldn’t admit she was hooked on them, but that was the picture I got. In addition to which, she’d attempted suicide before. Tried to shoot herself right in the doctor’s office, a few days before she drowned.”

“Who told you this?”

“The doctor told me himself, and he wasn’t lying. She wanted a bigger prescription from him. When he wouldn’t give it to her, she pulled a little pearl-handled revolver out of her purse and pointed it at her head. He knocked it up just in time, and the slug went into the ceiling. He showed me the hole it made.”

“What happened to the gun?”

“Naturally he took it away from her. I think he told me he threw it into the sea.”

“That’s a funny way to handle it.”

“Not so funny, under the circumstances. She begged him not to tell her husband about the attempt. The old man was always threatening to stash her away in a snake-pit. The doctor covered for her.”

“You get any confirmation of this?”

“How could I? It was strictly between him and her.” He added with a trace of irritation: “The guy didn’t have to tell me anything. He was sticking his neck out, telling me what he did. Speaking of necks, mine is out a mile right now.”

“Then you might as well stick it out some more. What do you think of the local law?”

“In Purissima? They have a good police force. Under-manned, like most, but one of the better small-city departments, I’d say.”

“I was thinking more of the county department.”

“Ostervelt, you mean? We got along. He co-operated fine.” Glenn smiled briefly. “Naturally he co-operated. Senator Hallman swung a lot of votes.”

“Is Ostervelt honest?”

“I never saw any evidence that he wasn’t. Maybe some graft crept in here and there. He isn’t as young as he used to be, and I heard a rumor or two. Nothing big, you understand. Senator Hallman wouldn’t stand for it. Why?”

“Just checking.” Very tentatively, I said: “I don’t suppose I could get a peek at your report on the case?”

“Not even if I had one. You know the law as well as I do.”

“You didn’t keep a copy?”

“I didn’t make a written report. The old man wanted it word-of-mouth, and that was the way I gave it to him. I can tell you what I said in one word. Suicide.” He paused. “But maybe I was wrong, Lew.”

“Do you think you were wrong?”

“Maybe I was. If I did make a mistake, like La Guardia said, it was a beaut: they don’t come often like that. I know I shouldn’t admit it to an ex-competitor. On the other hand, you were never a very serious competitor. They went to you when they couldn’t afford me.” Scott was trying to carry it off lightly, but his face was heavy. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t want you to climb way out on a limb, and get it sawed off from under you.”

“So?”

“So take a piece of advice from an old pro who started in the rack – in the business, before you learned toilet control. You’re wasting your time on this one.”

“I don’t think so. You gave me what I need.”

“Then I better give you something you don’t need, just so you won’t get elated.” Scott looked the opposite of elated. His voice dragged slower and slower. “Don’t start to spend your piece of that five million until after you deposit the check. You know there’s a little rule of law that says a murderer can’t benefit from the estate of his victim.”

“Are you trying to tell me Carl Hallman murdered his father?”

“I heard the old man died of natural causes. I didn’t investigate his death. It looks as if somebody ought to.”

“I intend to.”

“Sure, but don’t be surprised if you come up with an answer you don’t like.”

“Such as?”

“You said it a minute ago yourself.”

“You’ve got some inside information?”

“Only what you told me, and what the old man told me when his lawyer sent for me. You know why he wanted me to make a confidential investigation of that drowning?”

“He didn’t trust the local law.”

“Maybe. The main reason was, he suspected his own son of knocking out the mother and throwing her in the water. And I’m beginning to think that’s what actually happened.”

I’d seen it coming from a long way off, but it hit me hard, with the weight of Glenn Scott’s integrity behind it.

“Do you know what the Senator’s suspicions were based on?”

“He didn’t tell me much about that. I assumed he knew his own boy better than I did. I never even got to meet the boy. I talked to the rest of the family, though, and I gathered that he was very close to his mother. Too close for comfort, maybe.”

“Close like Oedipus?”

“Could be. There was apron-string trouble, all right. The mother raised a hell of a stink when he went away to college. She was a clutcher, for sure, and not very stable, like I said. Could be he thought he had to kill her to get free. There’ve been cases like that. I’m only brainstorming, understand. You won’t quote me.”

“Not even to myself. Where was Carl when she died?”

“That’s just the trouble, I don’t know. He was going to school in Berkeley at the time, but he left there about a week before it happened. Dropped out of sight for maybe ten days, all told.”

“What did he say he was doing?”

“I don’t know. The Senator wouldn’t even let me ask him. It wasn’t a very satisfactory case to work on. As you’ll discover.”

“I already have.”