Bad Samaritan (7 page)

“I don’t know. Is Si Marner one of the names you won’t reveal?”

“Jesus. You’re really reaching! How could he be involved in his mother’s death?”

“Well, even Bernie thought maybe some mobster had a reason to scare Si, and this was his warning.”

“Does he really? And still he plays poker with Marner—and Pontius?”

“I’ll have to ask him about that. I’ll tell him I remembered that piece I read about Pontius in the
Times
.”

“Be damned sure you don’t mention my name.”

“I won’t.” I handed him the list of names Si had given me. “Could you look this over and pick out the worst apples?”

He scanned it. “Most of them look harmless to me. This Tishkin, now, Lenny Tishkin, he’s a very sour apple. This Jesus Gonzales used to pal around with him, but Gonzales, according to what Maude told me, was starting to straighten out. Lenny is the worst of this bunch.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I hope you’re wrong about the Mafia. I’m not big enough to tangle with
them
.”

“Who is?” he said. “Not even the Feds. Good hunting, Callahan.”

I went down his rutted driveway to the winding road. Halfway down that, a punk in a Porsche came whining up impatiently behind me, riding my deck, crowding for a chance to pass, when any sane citizen would know there was no chance to pass on a road this dangerous.

I could have stopped, pulled him from his car and muscled him into a little respect for his fellow motorists. There was a time when I would have, before Homer died.

Today, I waited for the first chance to pull over onto the dry grass and let him zoom by. Today, I was sue-able. Wealth has its disadvantages.

I rode on in my careful, solid-citizen way, heading for the domicile of Jesus Gonzales, on Vista Court.

Vista Court was a dead-end alley that opened off Rivera Street. The one-room, sink and toilet apartment of Jesus Gonzales was on the second floor, over a welding and brazing shop.

His wife was there. She had a baby on the floor and another in a crib and another in her arms. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

Jesus, she informed me sadly, had left her two weeks ago. He had bought himself the poor man’s divorce, a bus ticket out of town. The only Jesus she had left was there on her wall on His cross.

I didn’t bother her with questions. I went down the outside steps and out the alley to Rivera Street. About a half a block from where I stood was a place called Chickie’s. Like Kelly’s Kourt, it was no longer under the original management. Juanita Rico owned it. She made the tastiest enchiladas I had ever eaten.

There were only two customers in the high, dim room, one black, one Mexican. Juanita was behind the bar, jet haired and olive skinned, a hundred and forty-eight pounds of woman.

She recognized me instantly and that warm smile brightened the room. “I knew you’d be back someday. But you went and got married, you bastard! You knew I was single, and you went and got married!”

She had a macabre sense of humor. I had seen her make herself single in this very room by emptying both barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun into her husband’s stomach.

“I married the woman I loved, Juanita. It wasn’t your body that brought me back. It was your enchiladas.”

She sighed. “Some nasty tongue. And here I put in Einlicher, in memory of you.” She pointed at the spigot.

“You’ve got Einlicher on draft? Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

She drew me a beaker and said, “I made some enchiladas this morning. We could eat together, couldn’t we, at that little table in the corner, as we did so long ago?”

She was a very sentimental woman, away from her shotgun. I said, “I’m sure my wife wouldn’t mind. Especially if I don’t tell her.”

The enchiladas went down to join the Egg McMuffins, the Einlicher was introduced to the Olympia. “You still book, I suppose,” I said.

“I never did, and you know it. But if you’ve got a hot horse, I’ll go dollar-dollar with you on him.”

I remembered Joe Frisco’s line, and used it. “Not so loud,” I whispered, “we don’t want to change the odds.”

She laughed. “Smart-ass! And now you’re rich. You must be something to live with!”

“Did you know Maude Marner, Juanita?”

“So that’s why you’re here. I knew her.”

“You don’t sound as if you liked her.”

“She helped my people, a few who deserved it and a lot who didn’t. I’ve never been on welfare. Nobody in my family has ever been on welfare. But, today we go on it with no shame at all.”

“Mine, too,” I told her. “Five hundred generals in the Pentagon, and almost every one of them started his welfare career at West Point when he was seventeen.”

She shook her head. “You never did make much sense. No wonder you had to marry your money.”

I said nothing.

“I apologize,” she said softly.

“I wasn’t sulking, I was disappointed. If anybody should be friends, I thought it would be you and Maude Marner.”

“I liked her. She was a good, warmhearted woman. But sometimes people like her can do more harm than good. You’re old enough now to know that.”

“Let’s not argue. Do you know Jesus Gonzales?”

She made a face. “A good example. Just takes off! Leaves his sweet wife and three wonderful babies and
adiós
!”

“I know.” I took three hundred dollars from my wallet and laid the bills on the table. “Would you use this to buy her what you think she might need? Don’t tell the welfare people. It’s none of their damned business!”

“Yes,
amigo.
I hope, with your heart, that your wife is watching her money.”

“That’s enough of that,” I told her coolly. “Our money is money
I
inherited. My wife was down to her last lousy seventy grand when I saved her.”

She smiled. “I knew it! That Callahan, I told myself, would never marry money. He’s too proud and too dumb.” She laid a hand on mine. “Am I going to meet her? Are you going to bring her in here for my enchiladas?”

“We’ll be in. But now I’m here for your help. Will you keep an ear open? There isn’t much that happens down here that you don’t hear about.”

She nodded. “I’ll be all ears and no mouth.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know a short, thin man who drives a yellow El Dorado, would you?”

“What’s an El Dorado?”

“A Cadillac, a front-wheel-drive Cadillac.”

She shook her head. She smiled. “What are you driving these days, Pancho?”

“A Ford, same as always.”

“But not your wife, I’ll bet. She has class, huh?”

“Too much, at times. A car is transportation, Juanita. I’ve outgrown status symbols.”

“I always pictured you on a horse,” she said. “A big white horse, strong enough to carry your armor. Go with God,
amigo.
The enchiladas were on the house.”

I
T HAD BEEN AN
expensive day so far, a thousand-dollar whim and a three-hundred-dollar lunch. And unproductive, except for what Villwock had told me—which I still only half believed. I went back to headquarters to compare notes with Helms.

Vogel was with him, helping him fill the ashtray. “I’m stuck in court for the afternoon,” he told me. “I was scheduled to testify this morning, but that damned Nowicki is defending. That man could keep a parking ticket in litigation for two years.”

“Stanley Nowicki?”

Vogel nodded. “One of those A.C.L.U. bleeding hearts. Do you know the man?”

“I talked with him for a few minutes this morning. Is he a bad lawyer?”

Helms chuckled. “Bad lawyer for Bernie. That makes him a good lawyer for his client. Did you come up with anything?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that would help us. I learned that Jesus Gonzales has deserted his wife and three children.”

“It figures,” Helms said. “Gutless Gonzales, one of Maude’s lemons. She sure wasted a lot of her time on him.”

“How about the man who threatened Mary Serano?”

“Nothing solid. There’s a chance I might know more later today. Did you hit the whole list?”

“I hardly got started on it.”

Helms grinned and patted the holster that held his .38. “I’ll go with you this afternoon. Gotta protect our citizens against those hostile hippies.”

He didn’t go with me. I went with him, in a department car. The first two addresses were fruitless; the former occupants had moved on and left a rental deficit. The third address was up in the hills again, a commune.

The more cynical local citizens referred to these earnest young people as “Jesus freaks.” They had left the urban squalor for cooperative community living. They grew organic vegetables that they sold at their store in town. Their hair was still long and they still wore the gaudy clothes of the subculture, but they had deserted all the evil opiates from nicotine to heroin and found new peace in the service of the Lord.

The young man we wanted was Peter Allis. We found him thinning out a patch of squash. He was wearing army fatigue trousers, thong sandals and a loose blouse of hopsacking.

His blond hair was down to his shoulders, his gray eyes had the luminous shine of the true believer. He was several inches over six feet tall, and muscular.

“I heard what happened,” he told us. “If what I heard is true, she sinned. Suicide is a sin, in the eyes of God.”

“We didn’t ask for a judgment, Pete,” Helms said gruffly. “If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Marner, you wouldn’t be here today.”

“She didn’t bring me here,” the boy said quietly. “Our Savior brought me here.”

“Did He come up with the seven hundred bucks to get you off the hard stuff? Mrs. Marner did.”

“With the help of Jesus, she did.” His chin lifted.

Helms shrugged, and looked at me. I asked, “When was the last time you saw her?”

“About a week ago. She thought I might know something about Jesus Gonzales.”

“A week ago? He left town two weeks ago. Didn’t Mrs. Marner know that?”

“She knew he had disappeared. She wasn’t sure he had left town.”

“And she came here to look for him? Are you a friend of his?”

“I was. Before I was cured, before I got the call. We went to high school together. We played football together.” His face tightened. “Then he introduced me to drugs.”

“To grass,” Helms interrupted. “Only to grass, Pete.”

The gray eyes glowed. “Marijuana, heroin, nicotine, alcohol, pills—they’re all poison, aren’t they? He introduced me to poison. Do friends do that to you?”

“Some friends might,” Helms said. “Real friends, now, they hit their sons for seven hundred fish to put you into a clinic. When was the last time you saw Gonzales?”

“Almost two months ago. And he was still smoking—both cigarettes and marijuana. And he was still drinking beer.”

“We’ll have to start a file on him,” Helms said dryly. “In five or six hundred years, it might be as thick as the file we have on you. Try not to get too holy, Pete. I have a weak stomach.”

The boy’s smile was beatific. “You can’t make me angry, not anymore, Sergeant. I don’t hate anymore.”

“That’s nice, real nice. What else did Mrs. Marner ask you about Gonzales?”

“Nothing. Did she really commit suicide, Sergeant?”

“We don’t know. Back to the squash, Peter. Toil, son, for the night is coming.”

We went past the community meeting hall and chapel toward the car. Helms said, “I liked him better when he was on horse. He was one tough kid.”

“I take it you’re not religious.”

“I’m very religious. I worship in the temple of Mammon. How about you?”

“I was brought up as a Roman Catholic,” I said, “I don’t go to Mass anymore, but I guess I’m as much that as anything.” I thought of the crucifix on Mrs. Gonzales’s wall. “I got the impression from Mrs. Gonzales that she knew Jesus had left town. Do you know for sure?”

“I heard it. I didn’t check it. If she reported him missing, the report is still down at the station. Should we head back?”

There were still some names on the list, but it had been a hot and tiring day. I nodded.

Mrs. Gonzales had reported her husband missing, but there were no additional details in the report. Nothing was reported about taking a bus out of town.

Helms asked, “Did you notice a phone when you were there?”

“I didn’t. Let’s look in the book.”

There was no Vista Court Gonzales in the phone book. Helms asked, “Should we run over and talk with her?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve had enough for today.”

He smiled. “That rich living has given you a sensitive stomach.”

“I suppose. We’re nowhere, aren’t we? Maybe it
was
suicide.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s too early to tell the chief that. All of Maude’s friends weren’t poor, remember.”

I took Main Street down to 101. We had the only traffic lights on this freeway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which made it a way station for young wanderers.

They were lying on the grass between the sidewalk and the highway, with their packs and their signs. The signs read San Francisco and Monterey and San Jose. One comic gypsy was less specific. Anywhere but Here was chalked on his board.

They were mostly white and probably middle-class or higher. Old Karl Marx was wrong once again; the revolt had not come from the proletariat. It had come from the children of the merchant class he despised.

Nor had he foreseen labor unions riddled with hoodlums and supporting oppressive administrations. Nor the opiates for the masses that had supplanted the church: TV, the movies, dope. Karl would have made a lousy horseplayer.

The diesel trucks blatted along, fouling the air. The plastic punks in their overpriced sports cars darted in and out, changing lanes without clearance, pretentious innocents playing with bombs.

They peeled off at the Montevista ramp with the Cad and the Continentals. My old heap trailed behind, carrying a disgruntled and incompetent investigator home to his first booze of the day.

“I’ll make them,” Jan decided. “Then I’ll know how much you’re drinking.”

I didn’t argue.

“Nothing new,” she guessed. “I can tell by your face.”

“Nothing new that would make me happy,” I said. “Make the drinks.”

“In a minute. We’re going over to Glenys’s for dinner,” she informed me. “Paul Pontius will be there.”