“Did you,” Mason asked, “know Roger Burbank?”
“No.”
Mason said, “I may get in touch with you again. In the meantime, if I were you, I’d make no attempt to communicate with Mrs. Milfield in any way.”
“Mr. Mason, can’t you tell me how she is? Can’t you tell me how she’s looking — how she’s standing up? This is a terrific strain. This is...”
Mason interrupted him to say, “Do you get talkative when you get drunk?”
Burwell laughed nervously, “No. I get dizzy and go to sleep.” There was something almost apologetic in the statement.
Mason held the door open for Della Street. “My advice to you then,” he said, his voice firm to the point of command, “is to start in without delay and get yourself quite drunk. Good night.”
Chapter 11
The Skinner Hills lay in rolling contours under a warm California sun. The early spring grass gave them a soft green texture that made the land seem fertile and prosperous.
A month or so later, when the dry season had become definitely established, the sun would toast the hills to a golden brown. Then the beauty spots would be the massive live oaks which would furnish relief from the glare of the eye-aching sunlight. Now those trees which dotted the green landscape were mere incidentals. The eye feasted upon the rolling green slopes.
Mason stopped his car on a turn in the road at the summit of the grade, and said to Della Street, “Well, here you are.”
“How beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“It is,” Mason agreed.
“Where are all these Karakul sheep?”
Mason took binoculars from the glove compartment, opened the car door and got out to stand in the warm, late, spring sunlight, his elbow propped against the door to steady the binoculars.
“There they are.”
“You mean those little spots way down there in the pasture?”
“Yes.”
“Let me look.”
Della Street swung quickly in a half turn, thrust out her feet, jumped to the ground with a swirl of skirts, then came to stand at Mason’s side. The lawyer handed her the binoculars, moved over so that she could rest her arm on the door of the car.
“Oh, how interesting!” Della Street exclaimed, looking through the powerful glasses. “So that’s where our fur coats come from?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean those sheep make...”
“Not the mature sheep. The hair from the mature sheep makes tweed clothing, blankets, rugs and that sort of stuff. Karakul coats are made from one day old, newborn lambs.”
“Seems a mean trick to play on the lambs,” Della said.
“It is.”
“I never knew that before.”
“On the other hand,” Mason said, “if it weren’t for the fur industry, the strain wouldn’t be cultivated, so the lamb wouldn’t be born at all — so there you are.”
“Something like which came first, the chicken or the egg.”
“Exactly.”
“And just what do you propose to do?”
Mason said, “I’m going to find this man, Frank Palermo, and see just what he knows — if he’ll talk. And then we’re going to have a nice, friendly session with our clients.”
Della said, “You think your clients are holding out on you?”
Mason indicated the winding road. “If what Van Nuys says is true, they are. According to my information, we turn off there to the left and take the road that winds over toward that range of brushy hills.”
Della handed the binoculars back to Mason, who put them in their leather case. They got back into the automobile and Mason drove down the winding grade.
They crossed over a little gully on a short bridge. The road started climbing. Mason gunned the car up the long rolling slopes, then abruptly turned to the left on a dirt road.
“Fresh car tracks on this road,” Della said. “It looks as though it had quite a bit of use.”
“Uh huh.”
“Do you know what Palermo looks like?” Della asked.
“I know his type.”
“What’s it like?”
“Bullheaded, obstinate, cunning, two-fisted, glittering eyes, an overbearing manner, and a breath that is composed of one part garlic, one part sour wine.”
Della laughed. “You make him sound very hard-boiled.”
“Probably not doing him justice even yet. He’s just the type you’d like to have discover corpses in cases the other fellow is handling.”
For several miles now they had been passing little shack houses, unpainted cabins with stovepipes thrust out through terra cotta rings serving as chimneys, desolate, weather-beaten, deserted cabins that bore silent witness to man’s struggle with the poverty of poor land. Now, thanks to the purchasing activities of Fred Milfield and the Skinner Hills Karakul Fur Company, the owners of this land had sold out at attractive prices and had moved away, basking in comparative affluence.
The dirt road topped a ridge, descended into a little canyon. Ahead of them was a cabin typical of all the other cabins save that a faint wisp of smoke was coming from the chimney.
“Probably cooking his Sunday dinner,” Mason explained to Della Street.
“Is this the place?”
“According to my sketch map, this is it.”
Mason drove the car across a dry wash, spurted up the incline on the other side, rounded a wooded knoll and turned into the refuse-littered yard around the cabin.
Immediately back of this cabin were the high hills which marked the end of the rolling sheep country. These hills were thickly covered with chamiso and scrub oak interspersed with clumps of grayish-green sage.
The door of the cabin was flung open. A thick-chested, florid-faced man with a shock of iron-gray hair stood in the doorway. His grayish-green eyes glittered with the effort of concentration.
“I’m looking for Frank Palermo.”
“All right. You come to right place. This, he is Frank Palermo. What you want?”
“I am Perry Mason, the lawyer.”
A sudden surge of enthusiasm flooded the man’s face. He came running forward, hand outstretched. “Mist’ Mason! By Gar — beeg lawyer like you come to see little sheepherder like me. Son-of-a-gun! I bet you that car cost plenty money, huh? Jiz’ get out. Bringa da lady. We make good talk — you and me. We have a good glass of vino, no?”
“No,” Mason said, grinning at Della Street. “We have to talk right here. I’m in a hurry.” He got out of the car, shook hands.
“But you have glass of vino, eh? I bring heem out.”
“Sorry,” Mason said, “but I never drink before noon.”
Palermo’s face fell. “I got some ver’ fine vino — kind you don’t get in no restaurant. Restaurant wine he’s too sweet. Iss not good for you drink sweet wine like that. Drink good sour wine that make you strong, no?”
“It’s all right if you’re accustomed to it,” Mason said. “If you’re not, it’s a pretty strong drink.”
“Not strong at all. Who’s the lady? Thata your wife?”
“That’s my secretary.”
“Your secretay, huh! Whatcha do with secretay?”
Mason’s eyes were smiling. “She writes down things that are said.”
Della Street gave Palermo a smile.
Palermo’s eyes twinkled with the lusty appreciation of one man of the world talking to another in a cryptic language which only they can understand. “By jiz’ that’s something! She writes things down, huh?” And Palermo threw back his head and laughed uproariously.
Della Street surreptitiously reached in the glove compartment of the car, took out a shorthand notebook and a pencil, held the notebook on her lap where Palermo couldn’t see it, her pencil poised over it. She said to Mason, “Your description seems to have been pretty accurate. How’s the halitosis, did you hit the nail on the head on that? I’m out of range.”