“It’s beside the point. He was there, and he did buy the heroin–”
“This heroin you’ve been talking about, did Joe steal it from Dowser?” Her face was intent on mine.
“Apparently.”
“And sold it to Speed?”
“For thirty thousand dollars.”
“Thirty thousand dollars,” she repeated slowly. “Where is it now?”
“It could be in Joe’s club-bag at the bottom of the sea, or making a fat roll in somebody’s pocket.”
“Whose?”
“Possibly Speed’s.” It seemed in retrospect that he’d handed over the heroin to me much too easily. “He might have known Joe’s plans, and been waiting for him on the boat Tuesday morning. He had a motive, in addition to the money. Your sainted husband fingered him for the mob last fall.”
Her eyes dilated. “I thought they were friends.”
“Speed thought so, too. Perhaps he found out different, and decided to do something about it. I say perhaps. There’s another possibility I like better.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Keith Dalling.”
“You’re a quick girl.”
“Not really.” Her smile was one-sided. “I’ve been thinking about him for days, trying to understand why he acted as he did, and why he was killed. He was spying on us in Oasis, you know. I thought he was carrying a torch for me. I didn’t suspect it was money he was after, though God knows he needed it.”
“You saw him Sunday night, I believe.”
“Yes. Did he tell you? He was waiting up the road when I left the house. He pretended to be worried about me. We went to a little place in Palm Springs, and he drank too much and tried to persuade me to run away with him.”
“Did he know what Joe was carrying?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me. Frankly, I thought he was naive, quite a bit of a fool. A nice fool, even.”
“So did I. But it’s pretty clear that he was on the boat, Tuesday morning. He was seen swimming ashore.”
“No!” She leaned forward across the red-checked tablecloth. “That would seem to make it definite, wouldn’t it?”
“Except for a couple of things that bother me. One is the fact that he was shot himself within an hour or two.”
“With your gun.”
“With my gun. It would be a nice irony if Dowser’s men shot him because they thought he was Joe’s partner. But how would they get hold of my gun? You said Joe took it. Are you sure of that?”
“I saw him. He put it in the club-bag along with his own.”
“There is a way it could have happened,” I said. “If Dalling took my gun when he took the money and brought it ashore with him, then Dowser’s men took it away from him in his apartment. It’s an old gang trick, shooting a man with his own iron.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know.” Her head was sagging again, under the weight of too much information at once.
“It would be a nice irony,” I said, “but a little too neat for real life. And it doesn’t begin to cover the second thing that bothers me. Why did Dalling go to the trouble of talking your mother into hiring me? It doesn’t make sense. Unless he was really schizo?”
“No. I think I know the answer to that one. One possible answer, anyway.”
“If you can figure it out, I’ll give you a job.”
“I could use one. The point is that Keith was deathly afraid of Joe. He wanted you to come out there and make trouble, the worse the better. If both of you got killed, that would be perfect. I’d be there in his house, unencumbered, complete with dowry. He wouldn’t even have to carry me across the threshold. Does it make sense? He’d be afraid to hire you personally for a job like that – too many things to go wrong.”
The waiter set a steak in front of her, and poured beer for me.
“The job is yours,” I said. “The steak is an advance on your first week’s salary.”
She paid no attention to the food, or to me. “It didn’t work out the way Keith wanted it to. Joe survived, and so did you. What did happen was, Joe thought that the gang was closing in, and he had to run for it. Maybe that’s all Keith counted on. Anyway, he was there at the dock, or on the boat, when Joe got there. And he did his own dirty work after all.”
“Very fine,” I said. “But how did he know where Joe was heading? You didn’t tell him?”
“I didn’t know. He might have followed us down here.”
“He might have. Or he might have had an accomplice.”
“Who?” Her eyes burned black.
“We’ll discuss that later. Eat your steak now, before it gets cold. I’ll be back shortly.” I slid out of my seat.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to catch the doctor before he leaves. Guard my beer, will you?”
“With my life.”
Chapter 33
McCutcheon, assisted by the man in the striped shirt, was sewing up an incision that ran from the base of the dead man’s throat to his lower abdomen. The doctor was wearing rubber gloves, a white coverall, and a hat that gave him an oddly casual appearance. A dead cigar projected from his mouth.
It didn’t turn in my direction till the sewing job was finished. Then McCutcheon straightened, using his forearm to push the hat back on his head. “Rotten sort of task,” he said. “I shouldn’t kick, I guess. He’s fresher than some.”
“Exactly how fresh, can you tell?”
“It’s a hard question, with bodies found in water. Rate of deterioration depends on water temperature and other factors. We happen to know that this laddie’s been in the water between fifty and sixty hours. If I didn’t know that, I’d say he’d been in longer. Decomposition’s rather far advanced for this time of year.” He started to reach for a pocket under the coverall, then remembered his gloved hands: “Light my cigar for me, will you?”
I gave him a light. “What about the cause of death?”
He dragged deep, regarding me through a cloud of blue smoke. “It isn’t definite yet. I need some work from the pathology lab before I stick my neck out.” He pointed a thumb at a row of jars the undertaker was labeling on the adjacent table. “Stomach contents, blood, lung tissue, neck structures. You a reporter?”
“Detective. Private, more or less. I’ve been working on this case from the beginning. And I simply want to know if he was drowned.”
“It’s not impossible,” he said around the cigar. “Some of the indications are consistent with drowning. The lungs are waterlogged, for one thing. The right side of the heart is dilated. Trouble is, those conditions are equally consistent with asphyxia. There are chemical tests we can use on the blood to determine which it is, but I won’t have a report on them before tomorrow.”
“In your opinion, though, he was drowned or smothered?”
“I don’t have an opinion until the facts are in.”
“No signs of violence?”
“None that I can ascertain. I’ll tell you this: if he was drowned, it was an unusual drowning; he must have died as soon as he hit the water.”
The mortician glanced up brightly from his jars. “I’ve seen it happen, doctor. Sometimes they die before they strike the water. Shock. Their poor hearts just stop ticking.” He coughed delicately.
McCutcheon ignored him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of here.”
“Sorry. But would you call it murder?”
“That depends on a lot of things. Frankly, there’s something a little peculiar about the tissues. If it weren’t a patent impossibility, I’d say he might have frozen to death. Anyway, I’m making a couple of microscopic sections. So there you have three alternatives. See what you can make of them.” He turned back to the table where Tarantine lay.
I drove to the sheriffs office and found Callahan. He was huddled over a typewriter that looked too small for his hands, filling out an official form of some kind. He looked pleased when I walked in, providing him with an excuse to leave off typing.