Palermo threw out his hands in a little gesture of disclaimer. “What the hell? You can’t get money from man who is dead. I know that. No writing, is no good. Lawyer tell my brother all about that.”
“So you did have some agreement with Milfield?” Mason asked. “Some understanding you’d reached over the telephone, something that would have worked out all right if Milfield had lived?”
“Is no witness,” Palermo said doggedly.
“All right, you went out to the yacht. What did you find?”
“I find yacht all right. I’ve got the name from that yacht written down on piece of paper, see? I scull out, I find the yacht. All right, I go around in boat. Me, I am pretty good boatman. I look at that yacht quick. I see is no way to get ashore from that yacht.”
“What do you mean?”
“No boat. No skiff. Just yacht. How you going to get to shore from yacht with no boat, huh? All right, to myself, I say ‘Little boat is gone. That means men aboard yacht are gone. That means Frank Palermo he come all the way for nothing.’ Me, I am sore. I yelled. Nobody answer. All right, I get aboard.”
“The yacht was at anchor?” Mason asked.
Palermo laughed. “The yacht she is stuck in the mud. Can’t go no place when yacht stuck in mud.”
“But there was water all around it?”
“Oh, sure. Water, but not enough.”
“You are in your own boat?”
“Sure, in my own boat. Right there is boat, all folded up. I take hunters out on lake in that boat. You think I am going to pay rent for boat when already I have boat? What the hell? You think I am crazy, me, Frank Palermo?”
“I was just wondering about the boat,” Mason explained.
“All right. Now you know. Is my own boat.”
“And what did you do?”
“I go down the stairs.”
“Was the hatch pushed back?”
“Hatch is pushed back.”
“And what did you find?”
“First I don’t find nothing. Then I look around, I see dead man. Is Milfield. Idea comes to my mind like one flash. ‘All right, Milfield is dead, so then is no witness. Contract is no good without witness.’ ”
“Where was Milfield lying?”
“Over against the side of cabin.”
“Against the low side?”
“Sure.”
“The yacht was tilted over?”
“Sure, is low tide.”
“What did you do?”
“Get out fast.”
“Did you touch anything?”
Palermo grinned. “Only my feet. I am not damn fool.”
“Perhaps you touched the top of the hatch when you went down into the cabin.”
“Sure.”
“You left fingerprints there?”
“Well, what of it? That was in the morning. Man is dead already for all night.”
“But you may have left fingerprints?”
Palermo raised his voice. “Say, what’s the matter? May be you like to make trap for me and take all that five thousand, huh? What you mean maybe fingerprints?”
Mason said, “I’m trying to find out...”
“You try to find out too damn much! Whatsa matter you don’t make a deal with me? Maybe you try get rope around my neck so you get property, huh?”
Palermo turned abruptly and stalked toward his cabin.
Mason said, “I simply wanted to ask you...”
Palermo whirled, his face was dark with rage. “You get the hell off my property,” he shouted. “When I get to cabin, I get shotgun.”
Mason watched the man turn and plunge along toward his cabin.
“I think, Chief,” Della Street said, “you’ve obtained just about all the information you are going to get.”
Mason nodded, said nothing, stood watching the cabin, saw Palermo pull the screen door to one side, enter the cabin, slam the door behind him.
“Better get started before be comes out with that shotgun,” Della urged. “He’s just about half crazy.”
Mason said, “Just as a psychological experiment, Della, I’d like to see whether he does bring out a gun.”
“Chief, I’m nervous.”
“So am I,” Mason admitted, grinning.
“He doesn’t seem to be coming out.”
Mason waited another thirty seconds, then slowly walked along the car, opened the door and slid in behind the steering wheel.
Della Street switched on the ignition.
“Do you want to ring up Paul Drake about that license number?” she asked, glancing apprehensively toward the cabin.
Mason’s lips tightened. “That,” he said, “isn’t going to be necessary I happened to recognize the license number.”
“You did! Whose car is it?”
“The car,” Mason said, “is the one in which I was given such an interesting ride yesterday afternoon. The one in which Carol Burbank took me up to the Surf and Sun Motel and subsequently back to the little ’dobe restaurant.”
Chapter 12
It was late afternoon when Della Street and Perry Mason emerged from the elevator and walked down the long corridor. As they went past Paul Drake’s office, Mason opened the door, thrust his head in and said to the girl at the switchboard, “Drake in?”
“Yes. He’s waiting.”
“Ask him to come down to my office. What are you doing at the switchboard? I thought this was your day off.”
“The girl who takes care of the board Saturdays and Sundays is laid up with the flu,” she said, “so I’m having to work right on through,” and she made a little grimace. “However, Mr. Drake says I can get off next week for... Here he is now.”
The door from one of the inner offices opened and Drake, talking in his characteristic drawl, said, “Hi, Perry. Thought I heard your voice. Hello, Della. Want to talk now?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay, I’ll come on down with you. I’ll be in Mr. Mason’s office if anything turns up, Frances. You have the unlisted number, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Hold everything, except on this stuff I’m doing for Mason; put that on through to me.”
Drake moved over to take Della’s arm. “Why don’t you work for a good outfit?” he asked. “We keep our girls on a five-day week, a seven-hour day.”
“Yes, I notice. Frances was just telling us.”
Drake laughed and said, “You can’t win!”
Mason opened the door of his office.
Drake said, “There’s something new on that murder, Perry. Remember that doorway to the after cabin on the yacht? It was shown in those pictures.”
“Yes, I remember. What about it?”
“The autopsy surgeon thinks that Milfield may have received the fatal injury by being knocked over against the raised brass-covered threshold between the main cabin and a smaller private cabin.”
“In other words, he may have met his death as the result of a fist fight? That would change it from first-degree murder to manslaughter.”
“That, of course, will be up to a jury. Police will go ahead on the first-degree murder theory. You understand this other thing is just a possibility, Perry. It...”
The phone on Mason’s desk rang sharply. Mason said, “Better answer it, Paul. It’s probably Frances relaying some information.”
Drake took the telephone, said, “Hello,” then listened carefully for nearly two minutes, made a couple of notes, said, “Okay Tell him to wait right there at that telephone for five minutes.”
Drake hung up, said, “We’ve located J. C. Lassing, the man who rented that double cabin at the Surf and Sun Motel. My operative says he’s got the guy parked outside the drugstore where he’s calling. He thinks Lassing will give him a written statement.”