Cat and Mouse (13 page)

He nodded in agreement. “And I’ve also been wondering if Big Bear carries a gun. He used mine to kill Jasper and to beat that woman to death in Santa Monica. If he has a record, he wouldn’t be permitted to carry a gun, would he?”

“I’m not sure. We know he’s not permitted to kill people.”

Vigilante justice…Even my refined, liberally inclined Jan had been guilty of voicing it about the Valley Intruder. The old western movies I had grown up on were shoot-’em-outs, the current movies and boob-tube series had become even more violent. Allegedly literate and responsible citizens had voiced support of it. Conservative politicians had endorsed it, including our actor President.

Our Bill of Rights was under attack by the millionaire TV ministers, our schools hassled by right-wing parents. A pregnant fourteen-year-old daughter was more acceptable to them than sex education in our schools.

All this I knew. But, still, there were times…

Patience,
I told myself.

L
ARRY RUBIN DROPPED IN
before dinner. My horse had won, but not at the morning odds we had hoped for. The payoff was sixty dollars and twenty cents. Deducting the twenty I owed Larry, that left me a net profit of forty dollars and twenty cents.

“And now,” he said, “we will have a quiet cup of coffee and you will tell me about your troubles.”

I shook my head. “Coffee only. We’ll talk about something else.”

“You bullheaded bastard! I have connections in Los Angeles you wouldn’t even be seen with. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had put away some of my best friends.”

“Do they include killers?”

“I’ve known a few who might be, two of them Mafia. Get the coffee and we’ll talk shop.”

Jan was in the den, Mrs. Casey in her room. We drank our coffee in the living room. I gave him a truncated history of all the frustrated days I had spent since the dead cat was first thrown on our lawn.

“And he was asking for you at Heinie’s? How would he know that used to be your hangout?”

I shrugged.

“It has to be some guy you put away, right?”

“Possibly.”

“Did Heinie tell you what he looks like?”

“A very big man, bald, with a long scar down his right cheek.”

“And you never tangled with a man like that? You put a lot of guys away, Brock.”

“I know, I know! But I went through my records thoroughly and remembered what most of them looked like. But not this weirdo.”

“I’m going to L.A. tonight,” he said. “I’ll look up some of my former—associates. They might know the man.”

“Mafia associates?”

“Watch your tongue,” he said. “Underworld, yes, that’s where I spent my youth. So a couple of Mafia boys financed me when I started to book. That was before I knew what they were. I bought my way out of that connection.”

“Okay, Larry. Walk carefully and carry a big schtick.”

“A pun,” he informed me, “is the lowest form of humor.”

“That’s where I am, low.”

He left. I went back to my records. Nothing.

Jan came in to ask, “What did Larry want?”

“I owed him twenty dollars on a horse that didn’t come through.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have half of it.”

“So am I.”

Dinner was quiet. Depressed might be a better word. Jan stayed up to watch the ten-o’clock news on the tube. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Around one o’clock I took a couple of her sleeping pills. They helped. I was still sleeping when Vogel came to pick up Jan.

My pajamas were soaked with sweat. I took a hot shower, dressed, and went out to the kitchen.

Mrs. Casey was sitting in the breakfast nook. She doesn’t make breakfasts, as I’ve mentioned, but she is a compassionate woman.

“Eggs?” she asked.

“Is there any of that Irish stew left over from last night?”

She nodded. “I’ll heat it. Maybe, just this once, we ought to have a sip of Irish to quiet our nerves?”

“We ought to,” I agreed.

She took her bottle from the cupboard. Good Irish whiskey and her famous Irish stew, and I was almost human again.

I was out at the pool, seeking nirvana, when the phone rang. Mrs. Casey had gone back to her room. I answered it.

It was Larry, calling from Los Angeles. He asked, “Do you remember that guy you put away named Glen Turbo?”

“Yes. He’s in my records.”

“Well, I played a little poker last night and I gave the boys your description of this guy you’re looking for. One of them told me it sounded like Glen Turbo’s brother. He was mostly a crap shooter. His name is Charles. The addicts call him Charley Seven.”

“That could be the man,” I said, remembering that all his threats were seven words long. “Thanks, Larry.”

“You’re
almost
welcome. I lost five big ones at the game!”

“You can afford it. Thanks, again.”

Glen Turbo. I remembered that case. I had been hired by his wife to prove her charges of wife-beating and child molestation. I had testified in court for her.

I phoned Sheriff McClune and told him what I had learned.

“That could be a lead,” he said. “Do you have a record on this Charles Turbo?”

“No. Only on his brother. He got five years at Fulton. He might have been paroled by now.”

“The way things are going these days, he could have been paroled in six months. I’ll phone Fulton and get back to you.”

Vigilante justice and courtroom law fought a brief battle in me before I phoned Ricardo Cortez, head honcho of the Brotherhood. I told him what I had learned.

“
Gracias, amigo,
” he said.

“Remember now, you take whatever you learn to the police.”

“We always do,” he lied.

It was Ricardo Cortez I had cleared of a murder charge on my last case. The Brotherhood was a necessary evil in their domain; they didn’t get the police protection they needed under bigoted Chief of Police Chandler Harris.

We now had a name to go with the man’s description and we had a motive. His guilt was not a certainty. But all I had learned made Charley (Seven) Turbo the odds-on choice for the man the kids knew only as Big Bear.

Sheriff McClune phoned back before lunch to give me the information he had picked up at Fulton. Glen Turbo was dead. He had been killed by his fellow prisoners.

“Even the hard-core cons can’t stomach child molesters,” he said. “Though he was raped a number of times before they knifed him.”

“When was he killed?”

“Two months ago. If he had lived another week, he would have had a parole hearing. This Charles Turbo looks like our man, doesn’t he?”

“He does to me.”

“Don’t go off half-cocked now, Brock. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“I’ll alert Vogel.”

“Thank you.”

Don’t go off half-cocked…Where had he learned what he now knew? He had learned it all from me. As for the city police, Corey would now be scheduled for trial if Chief Harris and District Attorney Mallory had prevailed. Don’t go off half-cocked…

My record on the Glen Turbo case showed that he had had two children, Glen Junior, aged fourteen, and a daughter named Dianne, aged six. She was the girl he had molested. His wife, Eileen, was the woman he had battered. Dianne would now be nine, young Glen seventeen. They had lived in Santa Monica.

I phoned the Santa Monica station and Aram was there. I told him what I had learned since leaving his town.

“I remember the case,” he told me. “His wife and kids moved out of town after the trial. I don’t blame them, the shame they must have felt. I’m not sure, but I think they moved to Ventura. Should I call the chief there?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“Okay. But remember that we want him here, too, on that Meredith murder. You keep me informed.”

“Of course, Aram. Haven’t I always?”

“No. But this time—”

“I’ll keep you informed,” I promised.

I didn’t phone the Ventura police. I phoned the Toyota agency and asked for Gus Henshaw.

He was, the lady who answered informed me, out on a service call. But he should be back within the hour.

“Please have him phone me as soon as he gets back. I live in San Valdesto. My name is Callahan and he knows my phone number. Tell him to phone me collect.”

“I will, sir. But if it’s some trouble you’re having with your Toyota, I could connect you with our service manager.”

I assured her that I had never had trouble with any of my Toyotas; this was a personal matter. I didn’t tell her I drove only Fords.

Gus phoned twenty minutes later. He said, “I haven’t had time to check the records, Brock, but—”

“Look for the name Glen Turbo,” I interrupted.

“I don’t have to look for it. I know it. The pickup is registered in his mother’s name but he’s the one who drives it.”

“Eileen Turbo?”

“That’s right. They moved up here about three years ago from Santa Monica. The truck is blue. What’s this all about?”

“He’s the nephew of the man Harley and I are trying to find.”

“Oh, boy! Should I alert one of my cop friends?”

“No. I don’t want him heckled by the law. Give me his address.”

“That would be better,” he agreed. “He’s a real nice kid. Just a second.”

He gave me the address a few minutes later and the section of the town it was in.

I told Mrs. Casey I wouldn’t be home for lunch and told Corey where I was going and why.

“Are you taking your gun?” he asked.

“Of course not! What’s the danger?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel nervous without it even when I’m in the shower.”

“Don’t tell me you’re running scared.”

He smiled. “I’m scared. But I’m not running, Brock. Good luck, boss.”

Traffic was sparse on the freeway once I left the stop-and-go lights of San Valdesto behind. It probably would have been wiser to phone before going to Ventura; but a phone call might have spooked the lad. There was a possibility he wouldn’t want to talk with the man who had put his father away.

The address Gus had given me was on the other side of the street from the direction I was traveling. It was a small stucco house in a neighborhood of small stucco houses. A thin youth in cutoff jeans and rubber thongs was washing a blue Toyota truck on the driveway.

He turned to face me as I walked the street. He frowned. “Mr. Callahan. Is that you?”

I nodded.

“I knew it. I think about you a lot,” he said. “It was because of you that Mom and I have finally found some peace. Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to find your uncle.”

“Uncle Charles?”

“That’s the man. He doesn’t share your opinion of me. I live in San Valdesto now.”

He stared. “So that’s why the bastard had me take him there! He’s kooky, Mr. Callahan.”

“He’s worse than that. He’s a suspect in two murders. The way it’s shaping up, I’m next on his list. I was wondering if you had an address on him in San Valdesto.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t even know he had our address until about a week ago. I took him up there. I was glad to see him go.” He took a deep breath. “But murder—?”

“He must have been very close to your father.”

“Oh, yes! Those two deserved each other.” He turned off the hose. “Mom is at work but I could make you a cup of instant coffee.”

“There’s a Big Boy restaurant only a few minutes from here. Let me treat you.”

“I’d better put on a shirt,” he said.

Over our cheeseburgers he told me that his sister was finally free of her nightmares after two years of psychiatric treatment. His mother was doing well as the manager of a local savings-and-loan institution. And his Uncle Charles had never, to his knowledge, owned a car. He had either borrowed one or bummed a ride.

“He
stole
Jane Meredith’s,” I pointed out. “If you ever learn his address, phone me.”

He nodded. “If it’s in San Valdesto. If it’s somewhere else, I’ll phone the police in that town. A murderer! Thank God, he didn’t stay in our house overnight. He told me he had a job waiting for him in your town.”

“It wasn’t a job, it was a mission,” I said. “He came there to kill me.”

I stopped in at the hotel on the way back but Harley wasn’t there. He was out in front with Corey when I came home.

“Anything new?” Corey asked.

“Only that we don’t have to go hunting for that Toyota truck any more.” I gave him the gist of my conversation with young Glen Turbo.

Harley said, “Mrs. Casey has invited me for dinner. I’ll be going home from here. My wife phoned this morning and informed me that she will be having an operation the day after tomorrow. I want to be there before she goes to the hospital.”

“Serious?” I asked.

“Serious,” he told me, “but not dangerous. A hysterectomy. We had this forlorn hope that maybe we could have another child, though she’s forty years old. But now—? Shit!”

There was a silence for seconds before he added, “I hope you get that creep, Brock.”

“We’ll get him, one way or another,” I promised.

“I hope it’s your way.”

“One way or another,” I repeated.

O
NE ALLY WAS GOING
home. We had a new recruit in Ventura. An army of professionals and a band of vigilantes were now trying to find one nitwit crapshooter with no success so far. How long could it last? And if he was finally captured would the police have a strong enough case to take into court? The burden of proof was on the prosecutor, as it should be under our Constitution. They could get him a couple of years for car theft (maybe). And then he would be out again. And this nightmare could start all over again. As a citizen, I should have been hoping the police would make the collar. As a victim, my last best hope was riding with the vigilantes.

I didn’t voice these thoughts at dinner. Dialogue flowed around me; I didn’t contribute. I was still wondering if the person who had driven Charles Turbo to Santa Monica was a San Valdestan. There was, of course, a possibility that he had taken the bus. But that would have exposed him too much to public view.

But so had the Valley Intruder been constantly exposed to public view and the hunt had been long and his capture a tactical error; he had wandered into an area of people who had very little reason to trust the courts for gringo justice.
They
rarely had a jury of their peers.