Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) (8 page)

“Shut up,
Goodey,” Ralph said. Maher liked that, but he wasn’t so cheerful when Ralph swiveled toward him and continued, “I don’t know how you got the job in the first place.”

“Nobody else was there to handle it,” said Maher sullenly.

“Well, there will be, starting right now, if I have to do it myself. As for you, haven’t you got enough to do with the D’Oro stabbing? I
think
you’re aware that the mayor would like that little matter settled—and soon.”

Maher looked like a kid caught with unfinished homework.

“By the way,” Lehman plunged on, “how are you doing on the D’Oro case? Have you anything to report?”

“Not yet,” said Maher, casting a sideways look at me. “I haven’t been able to locate the
Springler woman yet, but I will. There’s not too much to work on, but I’ll come up with the answer. Don’t worry.”

“I do worry,” said Lehman sharply. “I worry about retiring next year on two thirds of my lousy pay. I worry about you keeping those three stripes you so cleverly won. I hope you haven’t bothered to
sew them on, because if you don’t settle this D’Oro case and do it soon, you won’t have them long. Now, get out of here and accomplish something. And stay away from Goodey. He’s bad luck.” Maher fled without a glance at me.

“Thanks, Ralph,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I didn’t do anything for
you
. I was giving it to Maher straight. I want results, and I want them yesterday. But first, how does this latest murder fit in?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” I said, “but it certainly makes life more inter
esting. What time is it? Those guys downstairs have my watch, and I’ve got to call someone in New York and tell him about the demise of Seymour Kroll.”

“It’s nine-thirty. Who are you going to call?”

“My father-in-law. But it’s after midnight there. I might wait until morning. Kroll won’t be any deader then.”

“Well, then,” Lehman said, “if it’s not too much trouble, can we talk about the
D’Oro case for a minute?”

“Yeah,” I said. “After all, I’ve been on the damned thing a whole six hours, including the time I’ve been in your jail. I ought to have it wrapped up by now.” I put a hand toward the inside pocket of my coat. “I have the name of the murderer in this sealed envelope…”

“Okay, okay,” said Ralph. “But can’t we talk?”

“Sure,” I said. “But first get on that phone and tell them to let Gabriel Fong go.”

“Gabriel Fong?”

“That’s right. F-O-N-G. Rhymes with gong. He’s the guy I sublet my apartment to when you ran me out of town. He’s a Bible student, and we’ll be sharing the place while he takes a course here and mops up all the delinquents in Chinatown. He was with me this evening when Maher…”

“Say no more.” Lehman reached for the telephone and dialed. “Archie,” he said, “Chief Lehman. Have you got a guy down there called Fong? Well, let him go. Never mind what Maher says. Send him home and tell him we’ll be in touch.”

“And tell Archie to send my stuff up here,” I said. “They have all my money.”

“Oh, yes,” Ralph said. “Joe Goodey will be coming back down for his effects. Don’t throw him back in the cells. Okay?” He put down the receiver and swiveled back to me. “Give,” he said.

“There’s not much
to
give,” I told him. But, starting from the moment that afternoon when I’d left him in Bruno’s office, I gave him a rundown on my less-than-enlightening inquiries… right up to the time I’d found Chub, and Maher had found me. I even told him about the two Chinese kids.

At first Ralph didn’t say anything. He just gave a big, wheezy sigh as if the thumb of God were pressing on his chest in an unfriendly way.

Then he said: “I was right, wasn’t I, Joe? You should have been a private dick all the time. You’re a natural. Here you’ve had a private op’s license a full six hours or so, and you’re working overtime finding dead bodies, disappearing potential murderers and witnesses, bumping heads with detective sergeants all over the place. You’ve got the knack, boy.”

I tried to look modest, but he didn’t give me much of a chance.

“But the one thing you haven’t done,” he went on, “is make much visible or even invisible progress toward finding out what we all want to know—who iced Tina D’Oro. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said. “But tell me something. It oc
curred to me while Mr. Maher was here. By any chance has he read Tina’s diary? I mean beyond the point of learning that our leader was making beautiful music with Tina?”

“He says not. Maher claims that he was just flicking through idly, not reading, when he spotted Sandy’s name. After that, he put it away and didn’t look in it again.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Not necessarily. Johnny’s too smart for his own good. Time will tell. But right now isn’t there something you should be out doing?”

“Yeah,” I said, “there probably is.”

I left him looking like part of the tired office furniture, collected my belongings from the still-shattered Archie, and again found myself standing on the sidewalk outside the police building.

10

I thought about heading right back to North Beach, nosing around, asking some questions, zeroing in on whoever did Tina in. I thought about going around and slapping the crap out of Johnny Maher, just for the fun of it. I thought about picking up one end of the Golden Gate Bridge and throwing it in the bay.

Exhausted, I headed for the friendliest thing in sight—a brightly lit, green telephone booth. I won a little argument with the booth’s folding door and looked at my watch. Just after ten. After one in the morning in New York. Who said Sonny Berkowitz had a right to an undisturbed night’s sleep? I had enough quarters in my pocket to invest in a cheap-rate three-minute call, and I started dialing area code 212.

The telephone on the other end rang with an annoyed rasp about seven times, and then a voice answered. I knew that voice.

“It’s me—Joe,” I said. “But don’t hang up. I’m calling Sonny.”

“Joe,” said my wife in a voice permeated with wariness. “Mom and Dad aren’t here. They’ve gone up to the Connecticut place for the weekend. They still haven’t had a telephone put in up there.” Was this the siren voice that made me rush to New York and go crazy six months before? It was hard to believe. All I could hear was a slightly nasal, vaguely babyish New York voice.

“You’ll have to give Sonny a message then,” I said. “I’ve got some bad news for him. That investigator he sent out to bug me was killed tonight. Somebody stabbed him just outside the door to the apart
ment.” I almost said “our apartment.”

“Killed?” said Pat. “But why? He was such a nice little man. Why would anybody want to kill him?”

I thought I’d skip the wisecracks. “I haven’t any idea, Pat,” I said. “I found his body only a couple of hours ago, and the police are investigating. They’ll probably find out who did it. As you may have heard somewhere, I’m not a cop anymore.”

There was a small silence on her end. Pat was probably trying to decide how sympathetic she could be without taking a chance of triggering me. It was a valid question.

“Yes,” she said. “Daddy told me. That was bad luck. Is the old man all right?”

“Yeah. He’ll be okay.”

“And you,” she said cautiously, “are you okay, Joe?” She meant to convey that she was concerned but not too much.

“Sure,” I said. “Never better.” Keep up a brave front,
Goodey.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Well, yesterday I was thinking about a little vacation in Mexico. But this morning I changed my mind. I think I’ll stick around here and see what happens. It’s a fairly lively place. I might take some sort of job. How about you? How are things at the agency? Still knocking them out, ad-wise?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “It gets pretty hectic at times.” There was a pause. “Joe—”

I knew what was coming. “Yeah?” I said warily.

“I know it seems terrible, what with Mr. Kroll just getting killed— I still can’t believe it—but are you going to let me have a divorce? It’s really the best thing for everybody, you know.”

I heard myself saying something I hadn’t planned. “Yes, Pat,” I said. “I know it is. I know.”

“Well, then?” she said in that logical tone of voice I used to hate. There was a long, long pause. The last five years flickered through my head like a high-speed movie.

“All right,” I said. “You can have it. Send me the papers, and I’ll sign them.”

The line went silent again. I knew I’d surprised her. I’d surprised myself. “Are you sure, Joe?” Pat asked. I suspected that she was try
ing to keep the excitement out of her voice.

“Sure,” I said. “Send me the papers before I change my mind. Tell Sonny that Seymour talked me into it. If there was a Mrs. Kroll, maybe he’ll give her a bonus. But let’s not talk about it right now. I’ve already got too much on my mind.”

“But, Joe…”

At that point the operator came on, demanding more money for more time, and I wasn’t sorry to say that I was out of quarters. So I said a quick goodbye and hung up. I wouldn’t have to think about the divorce again until the papers came.

A telephone booth can be a cozy place, especially when you have no particular place to go. But it’s not a way of life. I fished a dime out of what little change I had left and dialed a Sausalito number. Someone answered the telephone.

“
Buenas noches,” I said. “This is the international operator calling from Tijuana, Mexico. Will you accept a collect call from the Tijuana city jail from a Senor Jose Goodey?”

“Joe!” said Rachel
Schute. “That was a pretty short trip to Mexico, wasn’t it? Or are you really in Tijuana?”

“Not really.”

“And you’re not in jail?”

“Not just now,” I said truthfully. “I was giving some thought to coming over to see you in a little while.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “I’ve got a houseful of dinner guests, but they won’t be here forever.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Everybody,” she said. “But nobody you’d care to talk to.”

“I’m an antisocial bastard.”

“You are,” she agreed. “Do you think you’ll be here in about an hour?”

“That depends on a couple of things,” I said, “but I’ll try. If you haven’t gotten rid of those bums by then, I’ll throw them off the sun deck.” I’m a tough guy.

“See you, Joe,” she said.

The taxi dropped me at the corner of my street. As I was walking toward
Lum Kee’s, I was pleased to see my car still standing there. With my luck it could have been towed away. My suitcases were still in the trunk, and there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for going up to the apartment. It was highly likely that Maher or one of his pals was still somewhere around, although there was no squad car on the block.

As I was passing
Lum Kee’s shop on the other side of the street, the shop door opened and Lum Kee came out backward, looking like an overweight beetle in his black coat

“Hello,
Lum!” I said, just for the hell of it.

You’d have thought I’d touched him with a high-tension wire.
Lum started, jumped back about a foot, and looked as though he was going to run back through the closed door.

Instead, he turned around with the awkward speed of a man who didn’t want to see something but knew he had to get it over with. “Joe
Goodey?” he said. “Can it be you?”

“Sure it can,” I said. “The police decided that they didn’t want me after all.”

“What?” he said, and I could tell that he didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. He was still staring at me as if he couldn’t believe what he saw before him. “But the boy said—” he started. Then he stopped, clamped his mouth shut, and just stared some more.

“I’m glad to see that you’re so touched to have me back,” I said. “I never suspected that you cared.”

“Sure, sure,” Lum Kee muttered in a distracted way. “I’ve got to go now. I must go.” He shuffled toward the corner at high speed.

Shrugging, I continued on to my car. I checked the trunk, and my suitcases looked untouched. There was no reason to go upstairs at all.

I started driving toward Sausalito. It was only a twenty-five minute drive, even on a busy Friday night, so I had a bit of time to spare. For thinking. When I got to the Marin County end of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was still only ten minutes to eleven. I didn’t want to get in on the tail end of Rachel’s dinner party, so I cut into the lane leading to the observation area at the end of the bridge.

The night was too hazy to let viewers get much out of the San Francisco skyline, but a parking place was hard to find. As a semipro voyeur, I canvassed the parked cars I passed and was surprised to
find so many contained only one person. Maybe a lot of other people had things to think out.

I found a slot between an MGB and a big Buick convertible. Out
side, Led Zeppelin and Mozart bumped heads, and I settled down for a few minutes of concentrated thought. It’s times like that when a detective ought to smoke. A cigarette somehow lends credibility to heavy thinking. A man slowly destroying his lungs is hardly open to charges of daydreaming. But I didn’t even have a stick of gum.

What I had was a murder—or maybe two, if I took a professional interest in Chub’s death—to solve. But first Tina
D’Oro. Who had something to gain from Tina’s death? Or, on the other hand, who disliked her enough to kill her whether there was anything to gain from it or not?

I didn’t yet know all the players in the final drama of Tina
D’Oro, but any way I looked at it, Mayor Sanford F. Kolchik looked like the odds-on favorite. Who was involved romantically with Tina? S.F.K. Who stood to lose a great deal if that involvement became known? S.F.K. Who was the most likely target for blackmail if that was Tina’s game? Three out of three.

Kolchik
had a whole lot of other credentials which qualified him to be my man. Not the least of which was a hard, ruthless brother whose career was as firmly attached to Sandy Kolchik’s as the earth is to the sun. If Sandy took a fall, The Brother was a goner. Perhaps outweighing all this was the fact that Kolchik was the one potential suspect that Johnny Maher wouldn’t touch. He was virgin territory, and he was all mine. I had the additional satisfaction of knowing that if Sandy was had for Tina’s murder, he couldn’t very well get tough with me over his cousin. Or could he? It was worth thinking about.

But not just then. A Sheriff’s Department prowl car had pulled into the parking area and was making the circuit with his spotlight. It was probably just some young punk deputy getting revenge on the parkers for having a better time than he was, but I wasn’t in the mood to find out. There’s something about being a recent ex-cop which encourages paranoia. Mine didn’t need much encouragement. I rapidly started the Morris and got out of there, which was probably what the Sheriff’s boy wanted in the first place.

Sausalito was a small fishing village. About fifty years ago. But now it was a strange mélange of the idle rich, hustling merchants, and descendants of the original fishermen, who hated, scorned, and envied the first two categories. Rachel Schute fell into the first class and lived in a cantilevered, multidecked phantasmagoria high up over the waterfront, with the San Francisco skyline as its private light show.

Rachel was saying goodbye to the last of her departing guests as I pulled into the shallow parking area under the lower deck. I recog
nized Moses Stanfield’s showy, green Continental. Ho-hum, I thought, it’s old home night. The Stanfields were being shepherded down the steep wooden steps as I came up them with a suitcase in my hand. I could have been the Fuller brush man on a night call.

“Oh, hello, Joe,” Rachel said easily. “You’re just in time to meet Justice and Mrs. Stanfield.”

“A pleasure, Justice,” I said, giving him the old fraternity grip and a winning smile. “Mrs. Stanfield and I are old friends.” I slipped her a half wink. “Not leaving so soon, I hope?” Like hell I did.

Mrs. Stanfield had had just enough to drink to be caught midway between ladylike gaiety and slatternly sullenness. A drink sooner, and she’d have greeted me like an old shipmate. A drink later, and she’d have bitten my head off and spat it in my face. As it was, she
paused, one foot in the air, and looked at me as a poker player would at a hand containing two jacks of diamonds. She didn’t miss the suitcase, either.

The justice obviously didn’t remember my name. “A pleasure,” he lied absent-mindedly. “We really must be going, Rachel. Lovely dinner.” And they were gone. The big Lincoln sucked a couple gallons of gas into its carburetors and ate up several hundred yards of street. We were alone.

“Evening,” I said to Rachel. “Are there any leftovers? I didn’t have any real dinner. Let’s go into the kitchen, and I’ll tell you where I didn’t eat it.”

Rachel stood poised on the top step. She was smiling, but as usual she looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to fall into my arms or kick me into the street. It may sound fishy for me to keep insisting on it, but Rachel
Schute was a hell of a good-looking woman. Especially all kitted out in a jade-colored dress that cost more than I ever made in a month and with that pale strawberry hair pushed up over her pointy ears like small ostrich plumes. Rachel’s pale-blue eyes were a bit naked and raw-looking, the way redheads’ often are, but she knew how to get the best out of them with make-up. At three in the morning, with a face full of tears and a mouth full of recriminations, she was dead ugly, but right now she’d do just fine.

“Sure, Joe,” she said, weakening as usual. “Let’s go see what’s left.” She held out a warm, freckled left hand to me, and I took it. The strength of the squeeze she gave my hand told me she hadn’t quite given up on me. She should have known better. Hell, I should have known better and married her. But neither of us did.

Rachel’s spade housemaid-cook shot me her usual I-know-you-hustler look, adding, “Good night, Mrs. Schute,” before leaving us really alone. I sat down at the kitchen table and started ravaging what was left of the prime rib and potatoes julienne, while Rachel perched herself across the table and waited for me to bring her up to date.

I didn’t disappoint her. I told her most of what I knew, leaving out only the mayor’s involvement and Tina’s diary. I could tell from the way she was listening that she didn’t necessarily believe that the department brought me back—me, whom they’d just thrown out—just to look into the murder of a go-go girl, even Tina. So she didn’t have to believe me.