I drove the Ford to within a block of the park, left it beside a big apartment house where it wouldn’t attract attention, then I walked the rest of the way to the park. At the entrance was a four-way boulevard stop, and a big overhead light. It was late at night, with very little traffic — none at all right now. I crossed the street and slipped into the shelter of the thick shrubbery and eucalyptus trees.
Fog drifted thinly past on a cold breeze setting in from the ocean. The surf was a faint, faraway boom not as loud as the brittle sound of the breeze in the eucalyptus leaves. The fog condensed on the leaves, and the cold drops fell on the back of my neck.
For the time, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait, and remember back to last Sunday and the picnic with Julie. It was the third day after my release from prison...
“Julie, I can’t do it. If I even go near that guy, there’s no telling what might happen. If you knew how many times I’ve dreamed of strangling him with my bare hands—”
“Mel, he’s changed.”
“Well, I haven’t.”
“He visited me several times while you were — away. I believe he is sincere. He wants to make it up to you some way. Help you get a new start.”
I guess my laugh was bitter.
“Please, Mel.” Her face had that earnest, puckered look it gets when she wants something very much. “He has changed a lot. He does a lot of charity work, spends a great deal of his time down at the Rescue Mission — you know, where they work to rehabilitate men who are down—”
“I’m not a charity case, baby.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m trying to make you see how Vince Dobleen has changed.”
“Listen, that’s the guy who sent me to prison. Maybe he has got religion, but I can’t forget what he did to me. You can’t hate a guy the way I have, and as long as I have, then just—” I shut it off, made myself smile at her. “Heck, we’re spoiling the picnic. Forget Vince Dobleen. I’ll get a job all right, then you and me—”
2
Well, maybe you remember me now — Mel Karger. Mel Karger, the guy who brought home all the medals, who shot down all the enemy planes, the guy they gave the parade and the keys of the city to. Mel Karger, the guy Vince Dobleen turned into the prize chump of the century.
Don’t ask me how he worked it, because I never knew.
All I know is he was promoting a real estate development, low cost housing, that looked good. I sunk all my cash into it; and somehow I wound up as general manager, where I had no business being at all, because I know next to nothing about that end of it. Selling is my line; and with all that war hero publicity I was getting, I was a natural — I pulled money into the deal that ordinarily wouldn’t have touched it with a forty-foot pole.
As a salesman I was hot, but as general manager I somehow always turned out doing what Vince Dobleen advised me to. He showed me how to handle things, what to do, what to sign — brother, how I did sign things.
For a while I was a big shot riding around in a new Cadillac; and the next thing I knew I was in a courtroom watching the prosecution parade all those signatures before a jury, and demanding to know what I’d done with the money.
In the end, even my own attorney believed I was guilty.
Dobleen? He came through without a scratch. He came through with all my money, and God knows how much money belonging to the other sheep I’d led to the shearing.
I remembered that last day in court, with me being led away, yelling I’d get him if it was the last thing I ever did. I remembered that, and the cold shiver that ran through me now wasn’t just the cold wind and the drops of water falling on the back of my neck.
And now I could hear his voice on the phone two nights ago: “Don’t hang up on me, Mel, until you hear what I say. I can’t make up all the money you lost on that deal — I haven’t got that much myself — but I would like to pay back enough of it to give you another start. Say twenty thousand dollars?”
I was too astonished even to answer him.
“Mel? You still there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you say? Can you come over to my place tonight and talk it over?”
“I guess so.” He’d knocked the wind out of my sails completely. Maybe the guy had gotten religion.
“Fine. Make it nine o’clock sharp?”
“I’ll be there.”
Vince Dobleen lived in a big, beautifully landscaped, Spanish style place that overlooked the ocean. There were lights behind the curtains when I got there; and, figuring he was home, I paid off the cab driver. I walked up the flagstoned path that curved through the shrubs and trees, and I rang the doorbell.
And nobody answered.
I rang and waited three more times without answer. Evidently he hadn’t called from the house, and he wasn’t home yet. I waited more than half an hour, and there was no doubt now that something had come up to delay him. I’d call him again tomorrow. I gave the bell one last ring, in case he’d been asleep or something; then for the first time I gave the doorknob a try. It turned and the door opened to my push.
I hesitated. Should I go in and wait a while longer?
I leaned inside. “Dobleen? Anybody home?”
There was no sound except the roll of the ocean against the cliff back of the house. I stepped into the entry hall, which was dark except for reflected light from the living room. “Dobleen?” I walked into the living room, and it was empty. The door to the library was closed, and it was barely possible he had fallen asleep in there and not heard the bell.
I opened the door. I looked inside and my heart seemed to stop cold inside my chest. I stared, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even breathe. Then suddenly my stomach seemed to turn a somersault, I turned and I ran. I made it to the front door, then I got sick.
3
Listen, he’d been lying there on his stomach, a small, slender, silver haired figure in a tweed suit, with both hands under him, his face turned toward me. Only it wasn’t a face any more. Somebody had fired God hows how many bullets into it at point-blank range; and — what with the bullet holes, the blood, and the powder burns — it wasn’t anything like a face, it was just a red ruin.
For a while I just stood outside, sick, then it began to come to me — the kind of jam this put me in — and I began to get scared.
That was Vince Dobleen, the guy who’d sent me to prison. That was the guy I’d sworn to get. I had reason to kill him, the cab driver would remember bringing me here, I had no alibi for the last half hour. I thought of all that, and for a second I was on the verge of running; then I went back into the house.
There was a gallon can of gasoline near the body on the red tiled floor. Some of it had been sprinkled on the body and around it, and a lot more was on the piled papers and drapes spotted around the base of the panelled wall, as if the killer had been interrupted in the act of setting fire to the house to conceal his crime.
The whole library was a mess — desk drawers open, papers and books littering the floor, the big wall safe open and empty.
Call the cops? I threw that idea away instantly. This murder fitted me like a glove. I forced myself to feel the body, and it was almost as warm as my own. That meant he’d probably been killed only minutes before I’d arrived. That put me on the scene of the crime at the right time with the right motive and a record of having threatened to murder him. The cops wouldn’t have to look twice to decide who had murdered him.
The killer — where was he? If I’d interrupted him in the act of setting fire to the place, where had he gone? He sure hadn’t passed me out front. He could be still in the house.