The Zebra-Striped Hearse

18

I FOUND A TELEPHONE booth and called Arnie Walters’s office in Reno. He answered the telephone himself.

“Walters here.”

“This is Lew Archer. I have some information on Campion’s movements. He’s driving a red Chevvie convertible–”

“We know that.” Arnie’s voice was low and fast. “Campion’s been seen in Saline City, talking to the key boy of one of the local motels. A patrol cop made him but he didn’t pick him up right away. He wanted to check with our bulletin, and he had an idea that Campion was checking in. But when he got back to the motel, Campion had cleared out. This happened within the last couple of hours. Do you have later information?”

“You’re ’way ahead of me. Did you get the name of the motel?”

“The Travelers, in Saline City. It’s a town in the East Bay.”

“What about Harriet?”

“Nothing so far. We’re starting dragging operations in the morning. The police lab established that the blood in the hat is her type, B, but that doesn’t mean much.”

“How do you know her blood type?”

“I called her father,” Arnie said. “He wanted to come up here, but I think I talked him out of it. If this case doesn’t break pretty soon, he’s going to blow a gasket.”

“So am I.”

By midnight I was in Saline City looking for the Travelers Motel. It was on the west side of town at the edge of the salt flats. Red neon outlined its stucco facade and failed to mask its shabbiness.

There was nobody in the cluttered little front office. I rang the handbell on the registration desk. A kind of grey-haired youth came out of a back room with his shirttails flapping.

“Single?”

“I don’t need a room. You may be able to give me some information.”

“Is it about the murderer?”

“Yes. I understand you talked to him. What was the subject of conversation?”

He groaned, and stopped buttoning up his shirt. “I already told all this to the cops. You expect a man to stay up all night chewing the same cabbage?”

I gave him a five-dollar bill. He peered at it myopically and put it away. “Okay, if it’s all that important. What you want to know?”

“Just what Campion said to you.”

“Is that his name – Campion? He said his name was Damis. He said he spent the night here a couple months ago, and he wanted me to look up the records to prove it.”

“Was he actually here a couple of months ago?”

“Uh-huh. I remembered his face. I got a very good memory for faces.” He tapped his low forehead lovingly. “Course I couldn’t say for sure what date it was until I looked up the old registration cards.”

“You did that, did you?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t do him no good. He took off while I was out back checking. The patrol car stopped by, the way it always does around eight o’clock, and it must of scared him off.”

“I’d like to see that registration card.”

“The cops took it with them. They said it was evidence.”

“What was the date on it?”

“May five, I remember that much.”

It was evidence. May the fifth was the night of Dolly Campion’s death.

“You’re sure the man who registered then was the same man you talked to tonight?”

“That’s what the cops wanted to know. I couldn’t be absotively certain, my eyes aren’t that good. But he looked the same to me, and he talked the same. Maybe he was lying about it, though. He said his name was Damis, and it turns out that’s a lie.”

“He registered under the name Damis on the night of May the fifth, is that correct?”

“They both did.”

“Both?”

“I didn’t get to see the lady. She came in her own car after he registered for them. He said his wife was gonna do that, so I thought nothing of it. She took off in the morning, early, I guess.”

“How do you remember all that, when you’re not even certain it was the same man?”

“He sort of reminded me. But I remembered all right when he reminded me.”

He was a stupid man. His eyes were glazed and solemn with stupidity. I said: “Do you have any independent recollections of the night of May the fifth?”

“The date was on the registration card.”

“But he could have registered another night, and said that it was May the fifth? And the man who signed in on May fifth could have been another man?”

I realized that I was talking like a prosecutor trying to confuse a witness. My witness was thoroughly confused.

“I guess so,” he said dejectedly.

“Did Campion tell you why he was so interested in pinning down the date?”

“He didn’t say. He just said it was important.”

“Did he give you money?”

“He didn’t have to. I said I’d help him out. After all, he was a customer.”

“But you’d only seen him once before?”

“That’s right. On the night of May five.” His voice was stubborn.

“What time did he check in that night?”

“I couldn’t say. It wasn’t too late.”

“And he stayed all night?”

“I couldn’t say. We don’t keep watch on the guests.” He yawned, so wide I could count his cavities.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Nelson Karp.”

“My name is Archer, Nelson. Lew Archer. I’m a private detective, and I have to ask you to return the five dollars I gave you. I’m sorry. You’re probably going to be a witness in a murder trial, and you’ll want to be able to tell the court that nobody paid you money.”

He took the bill out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter. “I might of known there was a catch to it.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“You and who else is sorry?”

“Anyway, the State pays witnesses.”

I didn’t say how little, and Nelson Karp cheered up.

“When Campion left here tonight, which way did he go?”

“ ‘Crost San Mateo Bridge. I heard them say that.”

“By ‘them’ you mean the cops?”

“Yeah. They did a lot of telephoning from here.” He gestured toward the pay phone on the wall.

I stepped outside and looked across the flats, where piles of salt rose like ephemeral pyramids. The lights of the Peninsula winked blearily in the haze across the Bay. As the crow flies, or the hawk, I wasn’t more than ten miles from Menlo Park.

I went back into the office and got some change from Karp and placed a toll call under the name John Smith to Campion’s sister Mrs. Jurgensen. Her phone rang thirteen times, and then a man’s voice answered.

“Hello.”

“I have a person-to-person call for Mrs. Thor Jurgensen,” the operator intoned.

“Mrs. Jurgensen isn’t here. Can I take a message?”

“Do you wish to leave a message, sir?” the operator said to me.

I didn’t. Campion knew my voice, as I knew his.

Shortly after one o’clock I parked in the three-hundred block of Schoolhouse Road in Menlo Park. I crossed into the next block on foot, examining the mailboxes for the Jurgensens’ number. It was a broad and quiet street of large ranch-type houses shadowed by oaks that far predated them. Bayshore was a murmur in the distance.

At this hour most of the houses were dark, but there was light in a back window of 401. I circled the house. My footsteps were muffled in the dew-wet grass. Crouching behind a plumbago bush, I peered through a matchstick bamboo blind into the lighted room.

It was a big country-style kitchen divided by a breakfast bar into cooking and living areas. A used-brick fireplace took up most of one wall. Campion was sleeping peacefully on a couch in front of the fireplace. A road map unfolded on his chest rose and fell with his breathing.

He had on the remains of his grey suit. There were dark stains on it, oil or mud or blood. His face was scratched, and charred with beard. His right arm dragged on the floor and he had a gun there at his fingertips, a medium-caliber nickel-plated revolver.

No doubt I should have called the police. But I wanted to take him myself.

A detached garage big enough for three cars stood at the rear of the property. I approached it through a flower garden and let myself in through the unlocked side door. One of the two cars inside had the outlines of a Chevrolet convertible.

It was Dr. Damis’s car. I read his name on the steering post in the light of my pencil flash. The keys were in the ignition. I took them out and pocketed them.

I looked around for a weapon. There was a work bench at the rear of the garage, and attached to the wall above it was a pegboard hung with tools. I had a choice of several hammers. I took down a light ball-peen hammer and hefted it. It would do.

I went back to the Chevrolet and stuck a matchbook between the horn and the steering wheel. It began to blow like Gabriel’s horn. I moved to the open side door and flattened myself against the wall beside it, watching the back of the house. My ears were hurting. The enclosed space was filled with yelling decibels which threatened to crowd me out.

Campion came out of the house. He ran through the garden, floundering among camellias. The nickel-plated revolver gleamed in his hand. Before he reached the garage he stopped and looked all around him, as though he suspected a trick. But the pull of the horn was too strong for him. He had to silence it.

I ducked out of sight and saw his shadowy figure enter the doorway. I struck him on the back of the head with the hammer, not too hard and not too easily. He fell on his gun. I got it out from under him and dropped it in my jacket pocket. Then I unjammed the horn.

A man was swearing loudly in the next yard. I stepped outside and said: “Good evening.”

He turned a flashlight on me. “What goes on? You’re not Thor Jurgensen.”

“No. Where are the Jurgensens?”

“They’re spending the night in the City. I was wondering who was using their house.”

He came up to the fence, a heavy-bodied man in silk pajamas, and looked me over closely. I smiled into the glare. I was feeling pretty good.

“A wanted man was using it. I’m a detective, and I just knocked him out.”

“Evelyn’s brother?”

“I guess so.”

“Does Evelyn know he was here?”

“I doubt it.”

“Poor Evelyn.” His voice held that special blend of grief and glee which we reserve for other people’s disasters. “Poor old Thor. I suppose this will be in the papers–”

I cut him short: “Call the Sheriff’s office in Redwood City, will you? Tell them to send a car out.”

He moved away, walking springily in his bare feet.