“Yeah, he had it with him, was raving on the phone to Schyler, waving the front page around,” Harve said.
“Does Schyler call often?”
“Not really,” said Harve. “I’ll get the book out and check. Schyler comes up every three or four months. Henry Dahlmus visited him once, a while back.”
“Who’s Dahlmus?”
“Ex-con. He and Riker were roommates for about six months,” Harve said.
“Dahlmus was illiterate,” said Rouche. “Riker taught him to read and write. He did four years of a two-to-five for manslaughter. Shot a clerk in a grocery store down in Ventura.”
“Anybody else?”
“Guilfoyle used to come over here every so often but I ain’t seen him in a while,” Harve said. “He calls Riker every now and again.”
I finished my coffee and doughnut, and said, “Okay, let me take a crack at him.”
Rouche gave me a small tin ashtray. “Bring it back when you’re finished,” he said. “They can be made into a shiv in the machine shop in about two minutes flat.”
I had a feeling of deja vu when I entered the interrogation room. I had seen it in various versions a dozen times before. Two chairs facing each other across a large metal table that was bolted to the floor. A high, screened window at one end of the room. Walls painted slate gray, the same color as the table, giving the room a depressing monochromatic look. Over the table, two 150-watt bulbs staring down through chicken wire.
Riker was sitting with his back to me when Rouche ushered me into the room. His right hand was handcuffed to one of the table stanchions, leaving his left free to drum on the tabletop, his thick fingers looking like the legs of a tarantula doing the lindy hop.
“Just rap on the door when you’re through,” the guard said. The bolt clicked as he pulled the door shut.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” Riker said without turning around. “Took you longer than I thought to get here. Must have stopped for breakfast along the way.” He spoke in a low but harsh voice that had the quality of fingernails scratching down a blackboard.
I walked around the end of the table and faced Riker for the first time. He was wearing blue denim prison garb and was shorter than I had pictured, five-seven maybe, although it was hard to tell since he was seated and slouched back in his chair. He was lean, with bony shoulders that emphasized a thin neck topped by a pale, creased, leathery face, ridged by years of hard time. His brown hair was cut scalp-close and streaked with gray. A thick nose separated dark brown eyes that looked almost black and peered up at me from a permanent squint. His thin lips struggled to keep from sneering.
More deja vu.
A face I had seen in various incarnations in every pen I had ever visited. Suspicious, wary, bored, angry, tough, desperate, wily. Assets for any lifer who wants to stay alive and relatively unscathed. But unlike most cons, his English was impeccable.
I moved the chair two or three feet back from the table before I sat down.
“What’s the matter, Sergeant?” he said coldly. “Afraid I’m contagious?”
“I like to stretch out my legs,” I said. I put the ashtray on the table, along with the pack of Chesterfields and my Zippo. He shook one loose and fired it with the lighter.
“The indefatigable Zippo,” Riker said, fondling its stainless steel case. “Invented in Bradford, Pennsylvania, 1932, by George Blaisdell. The unique feature is the patented windscreen. To date, it has outsold all other cigarette lighters in the world combined.”
“You own stock in the company?” I asked.
“Eighteen years in stir,” he said softly. “Nothing else to do but read. The library at Q was contemptible, same with Folsom. This one isn’t bad. I’ve scrutinized almost every book in here. Actually, I’m up to the F’s in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I read four newspapers a day, line by line, and do the crossword puzzles.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re a regular whiz kid. What do you want from me?”
I kept my eyes on him, watching all his moves. He didn’t have many. He speared a forefinger at me whenever he made a point he thought was worth emphasizing and his left eye blinked occasionally as if he had no control over it. When he stared back at me, the light from the overheads revealed the telltale milky-white opacity of a cataract forming over the eye’s lens.
“It isn’t what I want, Sergeant,” he said with a cryptic smile. “It’s what you want from me.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” I drawled. “Just get on with it.”
“How much did you have to pay that Pennington reporter for writing that laudatory piece about you in the Times today?”
“I bought him a beer,” I answered.
He chuckled. “He sells out cheap.”
I let the crack go by.
“I told you, I have information that will make your day-although not for the better I would guess.” Riker tapped the ash off his cigarette but never took his eyes off me.
“I assume this great revelation is going to cost me.”
He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and said, “Not one red cent. I don’t indulge in blackmail.”
“Then that’s about all you didn’t indulge in.”
“A smart mouth,” he said with disdain. “You think it’s so funny? A person facing life for something that person never did? That’s your idea of justice, isn’t it? I bet you and Culhane got along famously.”
“One murder’s as bad as another.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve dusted a lot of people in your time, Riker. You deserve every minute you’ve served, even if you were framed for the one thing they got you for. The one you keep whining about.”
He jumped up, forgetting he was cuffed to the table leg, and his arm snapped at the end of the cuff. I didn’t move, I just stared at him. He stood for a moment, his face reddening. Then he composed himself, smiled, and sat back down.
“I don’t know what else you’ve lost in stir,” I said quietly. “One thing you damn sure haven’t lost is your rotten temper.”
“I don’t whine,” he hissed.
Still staring at him, I said, “Whine, cry, whatever you call it. You’re in here to stay.”
He realized I was getting to him and his mood suddenly changed. He relaxed and slouched back in his chair again.
“He who laughs last, laughs best,” Riker said.
“It’s ‘laughs best, laughs last,’ ” I said. “You’re just full of homilies, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what, why don’t you sit there and have a big laugh. Me? I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.”
I started to get up.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” he said.
I was perplexed by the question. “About what?” I asked.
“That stuff about that Parrish dame?” he said. “You’re showboating, Sergeant Bannon. To be crude about it, you’re pissing in the wind.” He leaned forward again. “You aren’t any closer to Verna Hicks than I am to the King’s palace in London.”
“And you are?” I said.
“What do you think you’re doing here? When I saw the front page this morning I knew what was going on. As soon as I saw the paper today, I knew you’d been grabbing at straws.” He made a little motion with his hand, grabbing an imaginary speck in the air. “Grabbing at straws.” Then he chuckled. “Been working this case what, five, six days? A week, maybe? Still on square one?”
He was annoying me but I didn’t want to show it.
“Why don’t you just say what you have to say.”
“Maybe Lila’s picking up five C’s a month just like old Verna was. Maybe she had a little work done on her face. Culhane’s easy with the favors-all those rich friends lay it out for him.”
“That’s what you think? Everybody who leaves San Pietro has a meal ticket for life?”
“Verna’s paycheck ran out, didn’t it, Sergeant?”
“Why would anybody kill her?” I said.
He shook his head and chuckled.
“Your boy’s running for governor, certainly you’ve heard? The word is, he’s going to announce this week. Maybe that’s why Verna’s no longer with us.”
“Make your point, Riker. Why would Verna pose a threat to Culhane?”