The Ferguson Affair

chapter 26

SPOTLIT ON A BLACK, jagged landscape, Sally was being carried away by a gorilla who was wooing her in Spanish. I caught them and tore off the gorilla suit. Then I was wrestling with a man whose name I couldn’t remember. I opened my eyes and saw Lieutenant Wills scowling at me through bars.

“You can’t keep me in jail,” I think I said. “Judge Bennett will give me a writ of habeas corpus.”

Wills grinned at me balefully. “It will take more than that to spring you out of this.”

I sat up swearing. My head took off from my shoulders and flew around the big dim room, bumping into empty beds. It looked more like a dormitory than a jail.

“Take it easy, now.” Wills leaned on the barred side that turned my bed into a sort of cage. Grasping my good shoulder, he pressed me back onto the pillowless sheet. “You’re in the recovery room in the hospital. You just got out of the operating room.”

“Where’s Sally? What happened to Sally?”

“Nothing happened to her, except in the course of nature. She gave birth to a little girl last night. Six pounds ten ounces. The two of them are right here in this same hospital, down on the third floor. Both doing well.”

“Is that where she went last night?”

“This is where she went. What bothers me is where you went, and why. What were you doing up in the mountains there?”

“Hunting deer by moonlight out of season. Arrest me, officer.”

Wills shook his head curtly. “Get off the pentothal jag. This is serious, Bill. You ought to know how serious. Pike Granada says you were within seconds of getting smothered to death. It he hadn’t been keeping an eye on those ambulance drivers, you would have been a goner.”

“Thank Granada for me.”

“I’ll do that, with pleasure. You owe him personal thanks, though, and maybe an apology, eh? Just for good measure, he gave you a pint of his own blood this morning.”

“Why would Granada do that?”

“He happens to be your blood type, and the bank was out of your type and you needed it. You needed it in more ways than one, maybe. You could do with a little Spanish blood in your veins. And a little cop blood.”

“Rub it in.”

“I don’t mean to do that. But you gave me a bad ten minutes yesterday, until I had a chance to talk to Pike. You know what you are, don’t you? Prejudiced.”

“The hell I am.”

“Prejudiced,” Wills repeated. “You may not realize it, but you don’t like cops, and you don’t like Spanish people. If you want to practice law in this town, do it effectively, you’re going to have to get to know la Raza, understand ’em.”

“What does la Raza mean?”

“The Spanish-American people. They call themselves that. It’s a proud word, and they’re a proud people. You don’t want to undersell them, Bill. They have a lot of ignorance, a lot of poverty, a lot of crime. But they make their contribution to this town. Look at Granada. He came up out of the gangs, sure, but you don’t judge a man by what he did in his crazy teens. You judge him by his contribution over the long hike.”

“I get the message.”

“Good. I thought I’d get my oar in while you were still feeling no pain. You were pretty hot against Granada.”

“I was half convinced that he killed Broadman.”

“Yeah. We all know different now, thanks to Granada. He figured out for himself that Whitey Slater and his partner Ronald Spice were the guilty ones. I didn’t buy it myself at first, so Granada followed through on his own time. After Doc Simeon told him Mrs. Donato was killed the same way Broadman was, he stuck to Spice and Slater like a leech.”

“Why didn’t he arrest them?”

“Premature. He wanted them to take him to their leader.”

“Have you caught Gaines?”

“Not yet.” Wills sat down solidly, and crossed his legs. “I was hoping for some help from you on that, and other matters.”

“I don’t want to be inhospital-inhospitable,” I said. “But I happen to have a wife and a new baby that I’m eager to see.”

“Forget them for now. You’d never make it down to the third floor anyway. And I have some things I want to ask you about. There’s been a lot of talk about a kidnapping. Was there a kidnapping?”

“Technically, yes. Gaines kidnapped me in Mountain Grove last night. He took me to the mountain lodge where Granada found me. Gaines and I had a fight there, which he more or less won.”

“He shot you?”

“I was shot, yes, and out for a while. He set fire to the house, probably by smashing a gasoline lantern, and left me to burn.”

“And Mrs. Ferguson? He left her to burn, too?”

“Evidently he did. I came to in time to get her out. Is she all right?”

Wills answered carefully. We were fencing, and both of us knew it. “It’s hard to tell. Her husband is having her privately looked after. He says he doesn’t trust the hospital, with all the shenanigans going on. I’m wondering if he doesn’t know more than I do about the shenanigans going on.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Just for a second, when he picked up his wife in the emergency ward. He wasn’t communicating, and I can’t force him to. He hasn’t done anything criminal, that I know about. The wife is another matter, now. I can’t figure what she was doing up in a mountain hideout with a wanted man. Was she there voluntarily?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some opinion on the subject. You saw her there with Gaines, didn’t you?”

“I saw her.”

“Was she tied up, or confined, or under duress?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you help knowing?” Wills said sharply.

“There are various forms of duress, including the psychological.”

“Was she conscious?”

“Yes.”

“Did he threaten her?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, he hit her with a gun.”

“Same gun he shot you with?”

“Same gun,” I said, but I was beginning to sweat. I hardly knew why I was framing my answers so as to protect the woman. I was in no condition to work out a conflict of conscience. The worst of these conflicts is the tendency they have to crop up when a man isn’t equal to handling them.

Wills sensed my indecision. “This psychological duress you mentioned, it’s an interesting idea. What does it boil down to, the fact that he had something on her?”

“I don’t know.”

He said as if at random: “Poor kid, they had to walk her for nearly two hours. She was loaded to the gills with morphine, did you know that?”

“I suspected she was drugged, yes.”

“Is she an addict? Is that what Gaines had on her?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I doubt that. You’ve had opportunities to talk to them, her and her husband both. I understand you’ve been seeing quite a bit of him in the last day or two.”

“I saw him once or twice. He’s pretty good man, in case you’re in doubt about that.”

“Would you vouch for the wife, too?”

“I hardly know her.” The sweat was soaking through my hospital gown. Unless I concentrated on my vision, I tended to see Wills in duplicate. One of him was too many at the moment. “Why don’t you go away and let me enjoy my misery in peace?”

“I’m sorry, Bill, honestly. But these are questions that need answering. Ronald Spice’s unsupported statement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. He confessed crimes that never even occurred. And some that did, of course.”

“I’d like to see that statement.”

“I’ll show it to you, soon as we get copies. I also wanted to show you a statement we got from a better witness than Spice-manager of the local Bank of America. It says that Ferguson drew a lot of cash out of his savings account yesterday. So much cash they had to borrow from their Los Angeles branches. Do you know what Ferguson did with all that cash?”

“I know what he told me.”

“What did he do with it?”

“Ask him.”

“I’m asking you, Bill. You’re a rash young fellow, but you’re basically sensible, and you’re building a position in this town. You wouldn’t lie there and try to sit on a major crime at this late date.”

“There have been several major crimes. Which one are you referring to?”

“Kidnapping. Spice says Gaines ran out with his and his partner’s share of two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand dollars which Ferguson paid to Gaines as ransom for Mrs. Ferguson. He says she was snatched from the Foothill Club while he and his partner stood by, monitoring our calls on their short wave so we wouldn’t get in the way. Which incidentally they’ve been doing all through this wave of burglaries. It was a neat little system they had, passing along information on hospital patients and then keeping track of our movements while Gaines and Gus Donato burglarized their houses.

“According to Spice, they did the same thing yesterday noon when Ferguson made the money-drop. They were supposed to get a cut of it, twenty-five grand apiece for services rendered. But Gaines ran out on them with the whole bundle. You can understand why Ronald Spice is spouting like a whale. Of course he’s trying to cheat the fireless cooker, too. Not that we’d make a deal with scum like that.”

Wills was hoarse with anger. “Scum of the earth, masquerading as public servants, using their position to knock off injured people. You know what they are. They almost did it to you.”

“Has Spice confessed the Broadman killing?”

“In effect he has. He didn’t know he was confessing. He thought he could blame it on his dead partner. Whitey Slater did the actual murder, apparently, while Spice was driving the ambulance to the hospital. But Spice shared the knowledge and intention, which makes him equally guilty, as you know. Gaines is equally guilty, too. Broadman was killed on his orders.”

“Why?”

“Broadman was an ex-leader of the ring, with emphasis on the ex. He was at the point of turning them all in. I think he knew they were on their way to capital crime, and he wanted to cut himself clear of them. The purchase of that diamond from Ella Barker was a small thing, but when he reported it to us, it served notice on Gaines. Gaines turned Donato loose on Broadman. Donato fumbled the job. Slater and Spice were standing by, and they stepped in and finished it. Next day they did the same to Donato’s wife, for the same reason.”

“Was Secundina a member of the ring?”

“I doubt it. But she knew who was, and she was about to talk to us. Granada thought she was, anyway. And apparently Gaines and his ghouls thought so. When she panicked and took those sleeping pills, it gave them a chance at her. They didn’t want her waking up.”

“Nice people.”

“Yeah. All nice people. What I don’t understand, Bill, you’ve got a chance to help us wind up the case, put the rest of them behind bars. But you won’t take it. What does this Ferguson woman mean to you?”

It was a hard question. The cliché phrases like “beauty in distress” didn’t answer it. Neither did the answer I gave him. “Ferguson is my client. He retained me yesterday.”

“Mrs. Ferguson isn’t.”

“Ferguson retained me for the specific purpose of procuring information about his wife. The information is privileged.”

“Her husband doesn’t trust her either, eh?”

“That’s your conclusion.”

“It sure is. What did you find out about her? I’m not asking you to talk for the record, just for checking purposes. Spice’s story got pretty fantastic at certain points, and I can’t afford to make any false moves.”

“You’ll be making one if you try to force me to give you privileged information. You can’t force Ferguson to talk about her, either.”

Wills sat with his chin in his hand, and pondered the situation. I tried to do some consecutive thinking about the rule of privilege, but my line of thought was invaded by images: my wife in childbirth, Secundina dead, a rose-tipped body fallen in fire, in weeds; and a woman firing across her knees at me. Whatever else was covered by the rule, that shooting wasn’t, and I knew it. I was holding back on my own responsibility, for reasons that wouldn’t stand up under examination.

Wills looked up from his deep thought. I suspected that it had been partly assumed, to give me time to consider.

“I know,” he said in a soothing voice, “you want to be fair to your client, and you want to be fair to the law. I’ll tell you a funny thing, it may help you to decide. Ronald Spice came up with quite a snapper when we pressed him. He claims that the kidnapping at the Foothill Club was a phony, something cooked up between Gaines and the woman to extort money from her husband. He claims that she co-operated with them all the way, that she even drove the car for Gaines when he picked up Ferguson’s box of money. That she deliberately showed herself to her husband at that time so that he wouldn’t know what action to take. Does that fit in with your information about her? Or was Spice just trying to get off the hook as accessory to a snatch?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t believe you, Bill. I talked to a waiter in a bar and grill where you and Ferguson had a pow-wow yesterday. He heard some mighty queer snatches of conversation. Privilege or no privilege, bullet wound or no bullet wound, you’re on shaky ground if you’re trying to cover up a kidnapping.”

“I thought your theory was that no kidnapping occurred.”

“I don’t have a theory. I don’t know what occurred. I believe you do. I’m asking you to tell me.”

“When I find out, I’ll be glad to.”

“It can’t wait. Don’t you see, if this Hollywood floozie is in cahoots with Gaines, she probably knows where he is, or where he’s headed. Don’t you want him caught?”

“As much as you do. Get that straight, at least.” From the jumble of images in my head, I dredged up a fragment of a scene in merry hell. “I remember something that was said last night. Gaines and the woman are headed for South America. Gaines’s mother was supposed to buy tickets for them.”

“Gaines’s mother?”

“She lives in Mountain Grove. Why don’t you question her?”

Wills stood up abruptly, crossed the room to press the elevator button, and came back to me. “This is the first I heard of a mother. Who and where is she?”

“Her name is Adelaide Haines. She lives on Canal Street in Mountain Grove.”

“How did you get a line on her?”

“Through Ella Barker. Incidentally, it should be plain by this time that Ella Barker’s involvement was innocent.”

“You’re probably right. Spice’s statement pretty well clears her.”

“Don’t you think she ought to be released?”

“She went home this morning. I got the D.A.’s office to agree to reduced bail and a friend of hers, a Mrs. Cline, put up a property bond.”

The elevator took him away. I let the images in my head whirl out centrifugally. The pentothal sleep came back like soft and sudden night.