“He thinks the storm is going to knock down his apartments in Surf,” Dave said. “Will you take a message for him?”
“What I write down I get paid for,” she said. “He was going through phone books. So frantic he tore pages. Really. Look”—suddenly she stopped typing and stared at Dave—“I just sublet this space. We’re not in business together. He looks after his business. I look after mine. I’m self-sufficient.”
“Get a lot of work, do you?”
“I’m part of this community,” she said and began typing again. “A valued part. They gave me a testimonial dinner at the Chamber of Commerce last fall. Forty years of loyal public service.”
“I believe it,” Dave said. “Ever do anything for a man named Robinson? Recently, say—the last two weeks or so? Arthur Thomas Robinson?”
She broke off typing again and eyed him fiercely. “Are you a police officer? Are you authorized to have such information?”
“He wanted you to write out an affidavit for him, didn’t he? And to notarize it?”
“Now, see here! You know I can’t—”
“I’m not asking what was in it. I think I know. I also think it’s what got him killed.”
“Killed!” She went white under the circles of rouge. “But he only did it to clear his conscience! He said—” She clapped a hand to her mouth and glared at Dave. “You! You’re trying to trick me. Well, it won’t work. What I’m told is strictly confidential.”
Dave swung away. His knuckles rapped the Masonite as he went out of her cubbyhole. “Not with this partition,” he said. “With Dieterle on the other side.”
Past batting windshield wipers, he saw the steeple down the block above the dark greenery of old acacia trees. Merwin Robinson had told the truth about the neighborhood. Old one-story frame houses with weedy front yards where broken-down autos turned to rust. Stray dogs ran cracked sidewalks in the rain. An old woman in man’s shoes and hat dragged a coaster wagon through puddles.
CHURCH OF GOD’S ABUNDANCE was what the weathered signboard said. God’s neglect was what showed. Dave tried the front doors from which the yellow varnish was peeling. They were loose in their frame but locked. A hollow echo came back from the rattling he gave them. He followed a narrow strip of cement that led along the shingled side of the church to a shingle-sided bungalow at the rear. The paint flaking off it was the same as what flaked off the church, white turning yellow. There was even a cloverleaf of stained glass in the door. Rev. Merwin Robinson in time-dimmed ink was in a little brass frame above a bell push.
But the buzz pushing it made at the back of the house brought nobody. A dented gray and blue sedan with fifties tail fins stood at the end of the porch. Its trunk was open. Some of Arthur Thomas Robinson’s clothes were getting rained on. Dave tried the tongue latch of the house door and it opened. He put his head inside, called for the preacher. It was dusky in the house. No lights anywhere. Dave stepped inside onto a threadbare carpet held down by overstuffed chairs covered in faded chintz.
“Reverend Robinson?”
No answer. He moved past a room divider of built-in bookcases with diamond-pane glass doors. There was a round golden oak dining room table under a chain-suspended stained-glass light fixture. Robinson evidently used the table as a desk. Books were stacked on it. A loose-leaf binder lay open, a page half filled with writing in ballpoint. Am I my brother’s keeper? Sermon topic. But not for this week. Not for any week now.
Because on the far side of the table, by a kitchen swing door his head had pushed ajar when he fell, Merwin Robinson lay on his back and stared at Dave with the amazed eyes of the dead. One of his hands clutched something white. Dave knelt. It was an envelope, torn open, empty. But the stamp hadn’t been cancelled. He put on his glasses, flicked his lighter to read the the address. City Attorney, 200 Spring St., Los Angeles, CA. Neatly typed on an electric machine with carbon ribbon. Probably the battered IBM in Verna Casper’s office.
Which meant there wasn’t time to hunt up the rectory phone in the gloom, to report, to explain. It didn’t matter. Merwin Robinson wouldn’t be any deader an hour from now. But somebody else might be, unless Dave got back to the beach. Fast.
Wind lashed rain across the expensive decks of the apartments facing the Marina. It made the wet trench coat clumsy, flapping around his legs. Then he quit running because he saw the door. He took the last yards in careful, soundless steps. The door was shut. That would be reflex even for a man in a chronic hurry—to shut out the storm. And that man had to be here. The Triumph was in the lot.
Dave put a hand to the cold, wet brass knob. It turned. He leaned gently against the door. It opened. He edged in and softly shut it. The same yammering voice he’d heard earlier today in Surf above the wash of rain and tide, yammered now someplace beyond the climbing vines.
“—that you got him to help you try to rip off an insurance company—accident and injury. By knocking your car off the jack while one wheel was stripped and your foot was under it. And he told you he was going to spill the whole story unless you paid out.”
“I’m supposed to believe it’s on that paper?” Shevel’s voice came from just the other side of the philodendrons. “That Robbie actually—”
“Yeah, right—he dictated it to the old hag that’s a notary public, splits my office space with me. I heard it all. He told her he’d give you twenty-four hours to cop out too, then he’d mail it. But I didn’t think it was a clear conscience he was after. He was after money—for a sports car for that hustler he was keeping.”
“I’m surprised at Robbie,” Shevel said. “He often threatened to do things. He rarely did them.”
“He did this. And you knew he would. Only how did you waste him? You can’t get out of that chair.”
“I had two plans. The other was complicated—a bomb in his car. Happily, the simpler plan worked out. It was a lovely evening. The storm building up off the coast made for a handsome sunset. The sea was calm—long, slow swells. I decided to take an hour’s cruise in my launch. I have a young friend who skippers it for me.”
“You shot him from out there?”
“The draft is shallow. Manuel was able to steer quite close in. It can’t have been a hundred fifty yards. Robbie was on the deck as I’d expected. It was warm, and he adored sunsets with his martinis. Manuel’s a fine marksman. Twenty-four months in Vietnam sharpened his natural skills. And the gun was serviceable.” Shevel’s voice went hard. “This gun is not, but you’re too close to miss. Hand over that paper. No, don’t try anything. I warn you—”
Dave stepped around the screen of vines and chopped at Shevel’s wrist. The gun went off with a slapping sound. The rug furrowed at Dieterle’s feet. Shevel screamed rage, struggled in the wheelchair, clawed at Dave’s eyes. Dieterle tried to run past. Dave put a foot in his way. He sprawled. Dave wrenched the twenty-two out of Shevel’s grip, leveled it at them, backed to a white telephone, cranked zero, and asked an operator to get him the police. Ken Barker had managed a shower and a shave. He still looked wearier than this morning. But he worked up a kind of smile. “Neat,” he said. “You think like a machine—a machine that gets the company’s money back.”
“Shevel’s solvent but not that solvent,” Dave said. “Hell, we paid out a hundred thousand initially. I don’t remember what the monthly payments were. We’ll be lucky to get half. And we’ll have to sue for that.” He frowned at a paper in his hands, typing on a police form, signed in shaky ballpoint—Manuel Sanchez. It said Shevel had done the shooting. He, Manuel, had only run the boat. “Be sure this kid gets a good lawyer.”