I couldn’t help agreeing with him. “We won’t argue. Anyway, they’re well on their way to the Bay area by now.”
“Where in the Bay area?”
“Probably Sausalito.”
He clenched his fists and shook them as if he had dice in both hands. “Why aren’t you after them?”
“I thought you might say something useful.”
His eyes were still stained with anger. “Is that a crack?”
“It’s the truth. Why don’t you calm down? A friend of mine in San Francisco will be looking out for them.”
“A friend of yours?”
“A private detective named Willie Mackey.”
“What’s he going to do with them if he catches them?”
“Use his good judgment. Take the boy away from them if he can.”
“That sounds dangerous to me. What about my daughter?”
“It’s a dangerous life she’s chosen.”
“Don’t give me that. I want her protected, you understand?”
“Then protect her.”
He gave me a dreary look. The waitress came running with his drink, smiling desperately in an effort to counteract the boss’s mood. The drink was more effective than her smile. It heightened his color and made his eyes glisten with moisture. Even his sideburns seemed to take on a bristling new life of their own.
“It’s not my fault,” he said. “I gave her everything a girl could want. It’s Jerry Kilpatrick’s fault. He took an innocent girl and corrupted her.”
“Somebody did.”
“You mean it wasn’t him?”
“I mean he wasn’t the only one. One day last week – I think it was probably Thursday – she paid a visit to the Star Motel.”
“The one on the coast highway? Susie wouldn’t go there.”
“She was seen there. She spent some time with an escaped convict named Albert Sweetner. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“No, it doesn’t, and neither does the rest of your story. I just plain don’t believe it.” But his face was adjusting to it like an old fighter’s who had taken a lot of punishment and expected to have to take more. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You need to do some thinking, and a man can’t think without the facts. Al Sweetner was murdered Saturday night.”
“And you’re accusing Susan?”
“No. She was probably out at sea when it happened. I’m trying to get across to you the kind of trouble she’s in.”
“I know she’s in bad trouble.” He rested his folded arms on the table and looked at me over them like a man behind a barricade. “What can I do to get her out of it? I’ve been running around in circles since she left home. But she keeps on moving away out of my reach.”
He was silent for a minute. His gaze moved past me and grew distant as if he was watching his daughter slip away over a receding horizon. I had no children, but I had given up envying people who had.
“Have you any idea what she’s running from?”
He shook his head. “We gave her everything. I thought she was okay. But something happened – I don’t know what.”
He moved his head obtusely from side to side, groping for his daughter in a kind of blind man’s buff. It filled me with a tedious sorrow, perhaps not unlike his own.
I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Thanks for the steak.”
Crandall stood up facing me, shorter, wider, older, sadder, richer.
“Where are you going, Mr. Archer?”
“Sausalito.”
“Take Mother and I with you.”
“Mother?”
“Mrs. Crandall.” He was one of those men who seldom referred to their wives by their Christian names.
“I didn’t know you had her along.”
“She’s freshening up in the suite. But we can be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’ll pay all expenses. In fact,” he added, “let’s not beat around the bush – I want to buy your services.”
“I already have a client. But I’d like to talk to Mrs. Crandall.”
“Of course. Why not?”
I put down a dollar tip. Crandall picked up the bill, rolled it carefully, and, rising on his toes, tucked it into my outside breast pocket.
“Your money is no good in my place.”
“This is for the waitress.”
I unrolled the dollar bill and put it back on the table. Crandall started to get angry, and then decided not to let himself. He wanted me to take Mother and him along.
chapter 25
I accompanied him into the lobby and waited while he went upstairs to his suite. Joy Rawlins was behind the desk, taking things out of a drawer and putting them into a leatherette case. She was heavy-eyed and sallow as if she had suffered a loss of blood.
“He fired me,” she said in a flat voice. “He gave me fifteen minutes to get out. And I’ve been here more than fifteen years. I built this place up for him.”
“I’m sure he’ll reconsider.”
“You don’t know Les. He’s been getting awfully high and mighty since he started to make real money. He’s got a God complex, and it’s growing on him. It was just his good luck that his daddy’s ranch was between Petro City and Vandenberg AFB. But Les thinks that he did it all himself. And now he thinks he can wipe other people out like that.” She made a slicing motion with her hand. Her hand was trembling. “I need this job. I’ve got a boy in school.”
“What reason did he give for firing you?”
“No reason. But you know why and so do I. I was supposed to hog-tie Susie or something. He puts the blame on me because he hasn’t the guts to put it where it belongs – on him and his wife. They were the ones that brought her up. I could tell you things about Susie’s mother–”
Her face froze in a look of surprise, as if she had heard herself. She stopped talking. I tried to get her started again:
“What’s Mrs. Crandall’s background, anyway?”
“Nothing much. Her father was in the construction trades – dry-wall installation – and they batted around the state when she was a kid. She was still no more than a kid when she married Lester. He plucked her right out of high school. He was already a middle-aged man.”
“I noticed the difference in ages. And I wondered why she married him.”
“She had to.”
“You mean she was pregnant? That’s common enough.”
“There was more to it than that – a good deal more. She was running with a wild gang from Santa Teresa, and they stole Les’s car. She could have gone to jail if he had wanted to prosecute. One of the others did.”
“Albert Sweetner?”
Her face closed. “You’ve been putting me on. You already know all this.”
“Not all of it. But I ran into Sweetner yesterday. How did you happen to know him?”
“I didn’t, really. Only he came here last week. I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I remembered him from the other time. He wanted to know where to find her.”
“Find Mrs. Crandall?”
“Both the Crandalls.”
“And you told him?”
“No, I didn’t. But their address is no secret. It’s in the L.A. phone directory.” She added virtuously: “I didn’t even tell him that.”
“You mentioned another time that he came here.”
Her eyes shifted to longer focus. “It was a long time ago, when he was just a young guy hitching through. I wasn’t so old myself them.”
“How long ago?”
“Let’s see, I was pretty new on the job. And Susan was just about three. It must have been fifteen years, at least.” She grimaced. “I should have stood at home this week. Whenever that man passes through, he stirs up trouble.”
“What did he stir up fifteen years ago?”
“I don’t know exactly. He wanted to talk to Les – I figured he was hitting him for a loan. But after he left, all hell broke loose around here. Les and his wife had a knock-down drag-out fight.”