“An invitation?”
“A written invitation to visit the Galton house.”
“He’s making very free with Mrs. Galton’s property. Do you happen to have the document with you?”
I handed him the letter. He studied it with growing signs of excitement. “I was right, by God!”
“What do you mean?”
“The dirty little hypocrite is a Canadian. Look here.” He put the letter on the table between us, and speared at it with his forefinger. “He spells the word labor: l, a, b, o, u, r. It’s the British spelling, still current in Canada. He isn’t even American. He’s an impostor.”
“It’s going to take more than this to prove it.”
“I realize that. Get busy, man.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll finish my lunch first.”
Howell didn’t hear me. He was looking out of the window again, half out of his seat.
A dark-headed youth in a tan sport shirt was talking to Sheila Howell at the poolside. He turned his head slightly. I recognized John Galton. He patted the shoulder of her terrycloth robe familiarly. Sheila smiled up full into his face.
Howell’s light chair fell over backwards. He was out of the room before I could stop him. From the front door of the clubhouse, I saw him striding across the lawn toward the entrance of the swimming-pool enclosure.
John and Sheila came out hand-in-hand. They were so intent on each other that they didn’t see Howell until he was on top of them. He thrust himself between them, shaking the boy by the arm. His voice was an ugly tearing rent in the quietness:
“Get out of here, do you hear me? You’re not a member of this club.”
John pulled away and faced him, white and rigid. “Sheila invited me.”
“I dis-invite you.” The back of Howell’s neck was carbuncle red.
Sheila touched his arm. “Please, Daddy, don’t make a scene. There’s nothing to be gained.”
John was encouraged to say: “My grandmother won’t like this, Doctor.”
“She will when she knows the facts.” But the threat had taken the wind out of Howell’s sails. He wasn’t as loud as he had been.
“Please,” Sheila, repeated. “John’s done no harm to anyone.”
“Don’t you understand, Sheila, I’m trying to protect you?”
“From what?”
“From corruption.”
“That’s silly, Dad. To hear you talk, you’d think John was a criminal.”
The boy’s head tilted suddenly, as if the word had struck a nerve in his neck. “Don’t argue with him, Sheila. I oughtn’t to’ve come here.”
He turned on his heel and walked head down toward the parking-lot. Sheila went in the other direction. Molded in terrycloth, her body had a massiveness and mystery that hadn’t struck me before. Her father stood and watched her until she entered the enclosure. She seemed to be moving heavily and fatally out of his control.
I went back to the dining-room and let Howell find me there. He came in pale and slack-faced, as if he’d had a serious loss of blood. His daughter was in the pool now, swimming its length back and forth with slow and powerful strokes. Her feet churned a steady white wake behind her.
She was still swimming when we left. Howell drove me to the courthouse. He scowled up at the barred windows of the county jaiclass="underline"
“Put him behind bars, that’s all I ask.”
Chapter 21
SHERIFF TRASK was in his office. Its walls were hung with testimonials from civic organizations and service clubs; recruiting certificates from Army, Navy, and Air Force; and a number of pictures of the Sheriff himself taken with the Governor and other notables. Trask’s actual face was less genial than the face in the photographs.
“Trouble?” I said.
“Sit down. You’re the trouble. You stir up a storm, and then you drop out of the picture. The trouble with you private investigators is irresponsibility.”
“That’s a rough word, Sheriff.” I fingered the broken bones in my face, thoughtfully and tenderly.
“Yeah, I know you got yourself hurt, and I’m sorry. But what can I do about it? Otto Schwartz is outside my jurisdiction.”
“Murder raps cross state lines, or haven’t you heard.”
“Yeah, and I also heard at the same time that you can’t extradite without a case. Without some kind of evidence, I can’t even get to Schwartz to question him. And you want to know why I have no evidence?”
“Let me guess. Me again.”
“It isn’t funny, Archer. I was depending on you for some discretion. Why did you have to go and spill your guts to Roy Lemberg? Scare my witnesses clear out of the damn country?”
“I got overeager, and made a mistake. I wasn’t the only one.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You told me Lemberg’s car had been stolen.”
“That’s what switched license plates usually mean.” Trask sat and thought about this for a minute, pushing out his lower lip. “Okay. We made mistakes. I made a medium-sized dilly and you made a peacheroo. So you took a beating for it. We won’t sit around and cry. Where do we go from here?”
“It’s your case, Sheriff. I’m just your patient helper.”
He leaned toward me, heavy-shouldered and earnest. “You really mean to help? Or have you got an angle?”
“I mean to help, that’s my angle.”
“We’ll see. Are you still working for Sable – for Mrs. Galton, that is?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Who’s bankrolling you. Dr. Howell?”
“News travels fast.”
“Heck, I knew it before you did. Howell came around asking me to check your record with L.A. You seem to have some good friends down south. If you ever conned any old ladies, you never got caught.”
“Young ones are more my meat.”
Trask brushed aside the badinage with an impatient gesture. “I assume you’re being hired to go into the boy’s background. Howell wanted me to. Naturally I told him I couldn’t move without some indication that law’s been broken. You got any such indication?”
“Not yet.”
“Neither have I. I talked to the boy, and he’s as smooth as silk. He doesn’t even make any definite claims. He merely says that people tell him he’s his father’s son, so it’s probably so.”
“Do you think he’s been coached, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know. He may be quarterbacking his own plays. When he came in to see me, it had nothing to do on the face of it with establishing his identity. He wanted information about his father’s murder, if this John Brown was his father.”
“Hasn’t that been proved?”
“As close as it ever will be. There’s still room for doubt, in my opinion. But what I started to say, he came in here to tell me what to do. He wanted more action on that old killing. I told him it was up to the San Mateo people, so what did he do? He made a trip up there to build a fire under the San Mateo sheriff.”
“It’s barely possible he’s serious.”
“Either that, or he’s a psychologist. That kind of behavior doesn’t go with consciousness of guilt.”
“The Syndicate hires good lawyers.”
Trask pondered this, his eyes withdrawing under the ledges of his brows. “You think it’s a Syndicate job, eh? A big conspiracy?”
“With a big payoff, in the millions. Howell tells me Mrs. Galton’s rewriting her will, leaving everything to the boy. I think her house should be watched.”
“You honestly believe they’d try to knock her off?”
“They kill people for peanuts. What wouldn’t they do to get hold of the Galton property?”
“Don’t let your imagination run away. It won’t happen, not in Santa Teresa County.”
“It started to happen two weeks ago, when Culligan got it. That has all the marks of a gang killing, and in your territory.”