The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (8 page)

“Not yet. Say, wouldn’t it be funny if he took it? He’s just dopey enough to try something like that!”

They paid their checks and walked out. Cruzon stared blindly at his coffee. Something was wrong! What did they mean by saying it was a good joke? He remembered all they had previously said, about not giving out the name of the driver or the route until the last minute, but had there been other precautions? Had…could he have been duped?

His spoon rattled on his cup and the man beside him grinned. “You’d better take on a lot of that, friend. You’re in no shape to be driving.”

“Mind your own business, will you?” His irritation, fear, and doubt broke out, his tone made ugly by it.

The fat man’s eyes hardened. “It is my business, chum.” The man got to his feet and flipped open a leather case, displaying a detective’s badge. The name, Cruzon noted, was Gallagher. “We’ve enough trouble without you morning-after drivers.”

“Oh…I’m sorry, officer.” Get hold of yourself, get a grip, his subconscious was saying. “I’ll be careful. Thanks for the warning.”

Hastily, he paid his check and left. When he got into the truck, he saw the fat man standing by the building, watching him.

Watching
him
? But why should he? How could they be suspicious of him?

For the remainder of the day he drove so carefully he was almost an hour late in finishing deliveries. He checked in his truck, then hurried to his car and got in. Even more carefully, he drove home.

He saw it as soon as he entered the hallway. Restraining an impulse to seize the envelope and run, he picked it up and walked to his room. The key rattled in the lock, and he was trembling when he put the envelope down on the table and ripped open the flap. He thrust in his hand, fumbling feverishly for the first packet. He jerked it out.

Newspapers…just newspapers cut in the size and shape of bills!

Desperately, his heart pounding, he dumped the envelope out on the table and pawed over the packets. More newspapers.

That was what they meant, then, and the joke was on him.

On him? Or on Weber?

Only Weber was out of it; Weber was beyond shame or punishment. Weber was dead, and he had been killed for a packet of trimmed paper.

But they did not know, they could not know. Weber could not talk, and that crime, at least, was covered. Covered completely.

Cruzon dropped into a chair, fighting for sanity and reason. He must get rid of the envelope and the paper. That was the first thing. It might be months before they found Weber’s body, and he could be far away by then.

Frightened as he was, he gathered up the papers and, returning them to the envelope, slipped out to the incinerator and dumped them in.

Back in his room, he left the light off, then hastily stripped off his clothes and got into bed. He lay sleepless for a long, long time, staring out into the shadowed dark.

He was dressing the following morning when he first noticed his hands. They were red.

Red?
Blood on his hands!
The blood of…! He came to his feet, gasping as if ducked in cold water. But no! That was impossible! There had been no blood on his hands but his own, that scratch.

The scratch? He opened his hand and stared at it feverishly; he pawed at it. There was no scratch.

The blood had been Weber’s.

And this? But this was not the red of blood, it was brighter, a flatter red.

Leaving the house, he pulled on his gloves. A good deal of it had washed away, and there were parts of his hands it hadn’t touched. Most of it was on the palms and fingers.

All morning he worked hard, moving swiftly, crisply, efficiently. Anything to keep his mind off Weber, off the newspapers, off the strange red tinge that stained his hands. Then, at last, it was lunchtime, and he escaped his work and went to Barnaby’s almost with relief. Even removing his gloves did not disturb him, and nobody seemed aware of the red in between his fingers. A thought crept into his mind.
Was it visible only to him?

Cruzon was over his coffee when the two men came in again. Eddie sipped his coffee and listened feverishly to the men beside him.

This time they discussed a movie they had seen, and he fought back his anxiety to leave, and waited, listening.

The red on his hands, he thought suddenly, might have come from a package he handled. Something must have broken inside, and in his preoccupied state, he had not noticed.

Then Gallagher walked in and dropped onto a stool beside him. He smiled at Cruzon. “Not so bad this morning,” he said. “You must have slept well?”

“Sure,” he agreed, trying to be affable. “Why not?”

“You’re lucky. In my business, a man misses plenty of sleep. Like yesterday evening. We found a body.”

“A body?” There was no way they could connect him with it, even if it was Weber.

“Yeah. Man found a gun alongside the road.” Gallagher pulled a cheap, nickel-plated revolver from his pocket. “Not much account, these guns, but they could kill a man. Lots of ’em have. The fellow who found this gun, he brought it to us. We made a routine check, an’ what d’you think? Belongs to a fellow named John Weber. He bought it a couple of days ago.”

“John Weber?” So his name had been John? He had not known. “Has it been in the papers?”

“No, not yet. Well, anyway, that made us curious. A man buys a gun, then loses it right away, so we called this Weber, an’ you know what? He’d disappeared! That’s right! Landlady said his room hadn’t been slept in, and he hadn’t been to work. So we drove out to where this gun was lost and we scouted around.

“There was an old, washed-out dirt track up a hill away from the surfaced road. Nobody seemed to have been up there in a long time, but right up there on the track, we found the body.”

“Where?”
Even as the incredulous word escaped him, he realized his mistake. He took a slow, deep breath before speaking again. “But you said nobody had been there? How could he—”

“That’s what we wondered. His head was battered, but he managed to crawl that far before he died. The killer had slugged him and dropped him over the rim of the pit.”

Cruzon was frightened. Inside, he was deathly cold, and when he moved his tongue, it felt stiff and clumsy. He wanted to get away; he wanted to be anywhere but here, listening to that casual, easy voice and feeling those mild, friendly blue eyes. He glanced hastily at his watch. “Gosh! I’ve got to go! I’ll be late with my deliveries!”

The detective dismissed his worry with a wave of the hand. “No need to rush. I feel like talking, so I’ll fix it with your boss. I’ll tell him you were helping me.”

Eddie had a feeling he was being smothered, stifled. Something…everything was wrong.

The gun, for instance. He had never given it a thought, having been anxious to get away without being seen. And Weber not dead, but crawling halfway to the road!

“I won’t take much longer,” Gallagher said, “it wasn’t much of a case.”

“But I should think it would be hard to solve a case like that. How could you find out who killed him? Or how he got there?”

“That isn’t hard. Folks figure the cops are dumb, but nobody is smart all the time. I ball things up, occasionally, and sometimes other cops do, but we’ve got something that beats them all. We’ve got an organization, a system.

“Now take this Weber. It didn’t take us long to get the dope on him. He’d only been in town a year, no outdoor fellow, he just bowled a little and went to movies. So what do we figure from that? That it must have been the killer who knew about the gravel pit. It was an abandoned pit, unused in years. Not likely Weber would know about it.

“Meanwhile, we find there’s an attempted payroll robbery where this Weber works. We figure Weber either did it or knew who did and was killed because of it. That adds up. So while some of the boys checked on him, others checked on the gravel pit.”

Gallagher flipped open a notebook. “It hadn’t been used in eight years. The company found a better source for gravel, but one of the guys in the department knew about kids who used to play there. So we started a check on truck drivers who hauled from there, oil field workers who knew about it, and the kids.

“The guy who’s in the department, he gave us a list. His name is Ernie Russell.”

Skinny Russell!

“He remembered them all. One was killed on Okinawa. One’s an intern in New York. A girl works down the street in a coffee shop, and you drive a parcel delivery truck. Funny, isn’t it? How things work out? All of you scattered, an’ now this brings it all back.”

“You…you mean that was the same pit where we used to play?”

“Sure, Eddie. An’ you know? You’re the only one who might have known Weber. You delivered to that office, sometimes.”

“I deliver to a lot of offices.” They had nothing on him. They were surmising, that was all. “I know few people in any of them.”

“That’s right, but suppose one of them called you?” The placid blue eyes were friendly. “Suppose one of them thought he saw you pick up the payroll envelope? Suppose he wanted a piece of it?”

The detective sipped coffee. “So it begins to add up. Suppose you were called by Weber? Weber was planning something because he bought that gun Saturday afternoon. He wanted to be on the safe side. And you knew about the gravel pit.”

“So what? That isn’t even a good circumstantial case. You can’t prove I ever saw Weber.”

“You’ve got something there. That’s going to be tough unless you admit it.”

He got to his feet. “I’ve got to go now. I’ve done nothing. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Look, kid.” Gallagher was patient. “You can tell me about it now or later. You muffed it, you know, from beginning to end. We know you met him somewhere, an’ we can find it. Maybe it will take us a week, maybe two weeks or a month, but we’ll find it. We’ve got you on the payroll job, an’ we’ll get you on the killing, too, kid.”

“What do you mean, you’ve got me on the payroll job? I had nothing to do with it!”

Gallagher remained patient. “You’ve been trying to keep your hands out of sight. One of my boys was watching the house when you came out this morning. He was watching your hands, and he saw the red on them before you got your gloves on. He called me about it this morning. We checked your incinerator…closely packed papers have to be stirred around or they won’t burn. Only the edges a little, and they’ll brown over.

“That red on your hands? That guy in the payroll office, he’s a funny one. He handles three payrolls a week for eight years, an’ never lost one. He’s always got an angle. The day you stole that envelope, he took the real payroll over in a taxi, all alone. But the papers you handled, they had red dye on them…hard to wash off.”

Eddie Cruzon sat down on the stool again and stared blindly down at his coffee. He blinked his eyes, trying to think. Where was he now? What could he do?

“Another thing. Weber, he lives out in Westwood, an’ he called you from home. It was a toll call, see? We got a record of it.”

The fool! The miserable fool!

Gallagher got to his feet. “What do you say, kid? You haven’t a chance. Want to tell us about it? My wife, she’s havin’ some friends over, an’ I want to get home early.”

Cruzon stared at his coffee and his jaw trembled. He was cold, so awfully cold, all the way through. And he was finished…finished because he’d thought…

“I’ll talk.” His voice was no more than a whisper. “I’ll talk.”

The Hand of Kuan-yin

T
here was no sound but that of the sea whispering on the sand and the far-off cry of a lonely gull. The slim black trunks of the sentinel palms leaned in a broken rank above the beach’s white sand, now gray in the vague light. It was the hour before dawn.

Tom Gavagan knelt as Lieutenant Art Roberts turned the body over. It was Teo.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Roberts said impatiently. “Who would want to kill
him
?”

Gavagan looked down at the old man and the loneliness of death was upon him, and a sadness for this old man, one of the last of his kind. Teo was a Hawaiian of old blood, the blood of the men who had come out of the far distances of the Pacific to colonize these remote islands before the dawn of history.

Now he was dead, and the bullet in his back indicated the manner of his going. Seventy-five years of sailing the great broken seas in all manner of small craft had come to this, a bullet in the back on the damp sand in this bleak hour before daybreak. And the only clue was the figure beside him, that of a god alien to Hawaii.

“It’s all we have,” Roberts said, “unless the bullet gives us something.”

The figure was not over fifteen inches in height, and carved from that ancient ivory that comes down to China from the islands off Siberia. The image was that of Kuan-yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy, protector of shipwrecked sailors, and bringer of children to childless women. It lay upon the sand near Teo’s outstretched fingers, its deep beige ivory only a shade lighter than the Hawaiian’s skin.

Wind stirred the dry fronds of the palms, whispering in broken sentences. Somewhere down the coast a heavier sea broke among the rocks.

“What would he want with a Kuan-yin?” Roberts was puzzled. “And where did he get it?”

Gavagan got to his feet and brushed the sand from his hands. He was a tall man with a keen, thoughtful face.

“You answer that question,” Gavagan said, “and you’ll be very close to the man who killed him.”

Roberts indicated the Kuan-yin. “What about that? Anything special?”

“The light isn’t good,” Gavagan said, “but my guess is you’ll find nothing like it outside a museum.” He studied the figure in the better light from Roberts’s flash. “My guess is that it was made during the T’ang dynasty. See how the robe falls? And the pose of the body? It is a superb piece.”

Roberts looked up at him. “I figured it was something special, and that’s why I called you. You would know if anybody would.”

“Anytime…” He was thinking that Teo had called and left a message with his service just two days ago. Odd, not because they had spoken only rarely in recent years, but because Teo had never liked using the telephone. He was a man at home with the sea and the winds and not comfortable or trusting around modern conveniences. Gavagan had intended to stop by and see the old man the night before but had gone to a luau up in Nanakuli instead.

Gavagan indicated the statue. “After you’ve checked that for prints, I’d like another look at it. You may have stumbled into something very big here.”

“Like what?” Roberts pushed him. “Teo was just an old fisherman. We both knew him. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know, but it’s a rare piece, whatever it’s doing here…no doubt it’s why he was killed.”

A car from the police lab had drawn up on the highway skirting the beach, and Tom Gavagan walked back to his convertible. In the eastern sky the clouds were blushing with a faint rose, and Gavagan sat still in his car, watching the color change, thinking.

To most things there was a semblance of order, but here everything was out of context. What would an old fisherman like Teo be doing in the middle of the night on a lonely beach far from his home? And with a museum-quality ivory statue, of all things?

Roberts had said little, for he was not a talkative man when working on a case, but Gavagan had noticed there was scarcely any blood upon the sand. The bullet wound must have occurred somewhere else, and Teo had evidently staggered out upon the beach and died.

If so, why had he gone to that beach? And why would anyone shoot an old fisherman who was without enemies?

The only answer to that must be that Teo had something somebody wanted.

The Kuan-yin?

It was a valuable piece, a very valuable piece, but not many people would be in a position to know that. Kuan-yin figures, inexpensive ones, could be picked up in almost any curio store, and only an expert or someone with a rare appreciation for art would know this was something special.

It was a starting point, at least, for no one in the islands owned such a piece or Tom Gavagan would have known of it. Most of the islanders knew of his interest in art, and from time to time he had been asked to view almost every collection in Hawaii, sometimes to evaluate a piece for the owner, sometimes merely to share the pleasure in something beautiful.

Tom Gavagan was a curious man. He also was more than casually interested. His first voyage on deep water had been in old Teo’s ancient schooner, the
Manoa,
and much of his own knowledge of the sea had been acquired from Teo aboard that vessel. Gavagan had grown up with Teo’s three sons, one lost at Pearl Harbor, a second at Iwo Jima. Kamaki was the only one left, the last of his family now, for Kamaki had no children.

T
HE SUN WAS
a blast of flame on the horizon when Gavagan reached the deck of the
Manoa
. For a minute or two he stood very still, looking around.

There was no sound but the lazy lap of water against the hull, yet he felt uncomfortable, and somehow wary. Teo had lived on his boat, and for years had moored it at this abandoned pier down the shore from the village. Gavagan stood listening to a car go by on the highway a quarter of a mile away, and then he walked forward, his footsteps echoing on the deck. Suddenly, he paused. On the deck at his feet lay some splinters of wood.

He had seen such wood before. It was aged and had a faint greenish tinge. Squatting on his heels, he felt of the fragments. They still seemed faintly damp. These might be slivers from the pilings of the old pier, although there was no reason for their presence here.

Or they might be wood brought up from the bottom of the sea. They looked as wood does when it has been immersed in salt water for a long time.

He dropped the fragments and walked to the companionway. Hesitating there, he looked down into the darkness below, and then once more he looked around.

There was no one in sight. At the village a half mile away, there seemed to be some movement, and across the deep water a fishing boat was putt-putting out to sea. The mooring lines creaked lonesomely, and Gavagan put a foot down the ladder, then descended sideways because of the narrowness.

The small cabin was empty, but nothing seemed unusual unless it was a pulled-out drawer. He started to go on into the cabin, then stopped.

There were indications here that the
Manoa
had recently been out to sea. There were coiled ropes against the wall, not a place that Teo would store such things but, perhaps, a place he might put them while reorganizing his gear. Sacks of food lay in the galley, opened; rice, salt, both partly used. In the forward locker Teo’s ancient copper helmet and diving dress lay crumpled, still wet where the rubberized fabric had folded. Kamaki was not around and there seemed no indication of why Teo had placed the call.

Somewhere within the schooner or against the outside hull, there was a faint bump. His scalp prickled….

Turning swiftly to climb the ladder, he glimpsed something on the deck to the left of and slightly behind the ladder. He picked it up, startled and unbelieving. It was a bronze wine vessel in the form of an owl or a parrot, and covered with the patina of time. He had seen one like it in the Victoria and Albert Museum; behind it there was another one. It was…the hatch darkened and when he looked up, Al Ribera was standing up there, looking down.

“Hello, Gavagan. Looking for something?”

There had never been anything but active dislike between them. Al Ribera had been a private detective in San Francisco and Honolulu until he lost his license first in one place, then the other. He was an unsavory character, and it was rumored that he was a dangerous man. Tom Gavagan did not doubt it for a minute.

“I was looking for Kamaki.”

“Kamaki?”

“Old Teo’s son. I came to tell him about his father.”

Al Ribera’s face was only mildly curious. “Something wrong?”

“He’s dead…murdered.”

“Tough.” Ribera glanced around. “Son? I didn’t know he had a son. Friend of mine over from the coast wanted to charter a schooner for some deep-sea fishing.”

“Teo doesn’t charter…didn’t charter, I mean.”

Ribera shrugged. “My friend wanted a Hawaiian. You know how these mainlanders are.”

Gavagan thought swiftly. Not for a minute did he believe Ribera’s story. There were too many dressed-up charter boats around Honolulu, boats that would appeal to a tourist much more than this battered schooner of Teo’s.

Gavagan went up the ladder, and Ribera reluctantly stepped aside, glancing down the ladder as he did so. It was obvious to Gavagan that Ribera very much wanted to get below and look around.

“Where were you last night?” Gavagan asked.

Ribera’s features chilled, and he measured Gavagan with cold, hard little eyes. “Are you kiddin’? What’s it to you?”

“Teo was a friend of mine and Art Roberts grew up with Teo’s boys, like I did.”

“What’s that got to do with me? If it makes any difference,” he added, “I was with a doll last night.”

Taking a cigarette from a pack, Ribera put it between his lips, then struck a match. He was stalling, not wanting to leave.

Gavagan leaned back against the deckhouse. “Hope Kamaki gets back soon. I’ve got to be back at the Royal Hawaiian to meet a guy in a couple of hours.”

“I think I’ll go below and have a look around.” Al Ribera threw his cigarette over the side.

“No.”

“What?” Ribera turned on him, angrily. “Who’s telling who around here?”

“I’m telling you.” Gavagan studied the man coolly. “The police want nothing disturbed…especially”—he glanced over—“the bronze owl.”

Al Ribera stiffened sharply, then slowly let his muscles relax, but Gavagan knew he had touched a nerve. “Who’s interested in owls? I don’t get it.”

“A lot of people are going to be interested,” Gavagan explained, “especially when a man who has fished all his life suddenly turns up with a bronze owl of the Chou dynasty which any museum would cheerfully pay thousands of dollars for.”

Al Ribera spread his legs slightly and lit another cigarette. He showed no inclination to leave, and Gavagan began to grasp the idea that somehow Ribera intended to get below before he left the schooner, even if it meant trouble. There was something here he wished to cover up, to obtain, or to find out.

“That owl,” Gavagan said, “is a particularly fine specimen of Chinese bronze. I’d like to own it myself.”

“You’re welcome to it, whatever it is. I’ll not say anything.”

“Somewhere,” Gavagan suggested, “Teo came upon several valuable pieces of art. There’s nothing like any of this in the islands, and pieces like this can’t very well be stolen. Or if they were stolen the thief would get nowhere near the real value from them…they’re known pieces.”

Ribera’s hard eyes fastened on Gavagan. “I expect,” he said slowly, “from what you say there aren’t many people in the islands who would know these pieces for what they are. Am I right?”

“Maybe two…there might be a half dozen, but I doubt it.

“You’re wasting time.” Gavagan stood up. “The
Manoa
isn’t for charter.”

Ribera turned angrily and started for the gangway, but at the rail he paused. “Suppose I decided to go below anyway?”

“I’d stop you.” Gavagan was smiling. “What else?”

Ribera turned back. “All right,” he said, more mildly, “another time, another place.”

The big man walked to his car, and when he started off, the wheels dug into the gravel, scattering it behind him like a volley.

H
E GOT BACK
to the gallery around five. It was a dim, tunnel-like shop that displayed African and Oceanic art by appointment only. A long canoe with outriggers hung from the ceiling; primitive drums, carved life-sized human forms, and cases of stone idols lined the walls. He snapped on the light over his desk and called his service.

He had waited several hours for Kamaki to show up, but there was no sign of him. The bronze owl he had given a quick once-over and it was as fine a piece as the Kuan-yin. He hesitated to call Roberts about this new find and the fact that Ribera had been by until he had spoken with Kamaki…something was up and he had no intention of getting his old friend in trouble. Finally, he’d walked down to the village and asked a couple of people to tell Kamaki to call if they saw him. He also asked them to keep an eye on the boat, suggesting that they might call the police if they saw anyone lurking about.

There were two messages: Art Roberts wanting to know if he’d had any further thoughts and a woman named Laurie Haven. She’d been by the shop, got the phone number off the door, and would be waiting until six at a place down the street called Ryan’s.

T
HE GIRL
at the table was no one he had ever known, and not one he would have forgotten. She was beautiful, and she dressed with a quiet smartness that spoke of both breeding and wealth. He walked to her table and seated himself. “I’m Tom Gavagan,” he said.

Her eyes, in this light at least, were dark blue, and her hair was brown. “I am Laurie Haven. I wanted to know if you had any information regarding the Madox collection.”

“Those were some fabulous pieces.” He was surprised and immediately cautious. Madox had once had a superb collection of Chinese art.
Once,
however, was the operative word. Both the man and his artifacts had disappeared. “A man who would take such a collection to sea was a fool,” Gavagan said.

“Not at all.” Laurie’s eyes measured him coolly. “My uncle was an eccentric man, but he was also a good sailor.”