royalties to buy more oil rights, and the thing just went on mounting up. I guess he ran out of things to buy in Canada, so he moved in on California.”
“And bought Holly May?”
“I don’t think it was like that. If you ask me, the lady was never for sale.”
“She is now.”
“Yeah. I only wish I could do something.”
We emerged from the hedge-lined private lane. With a sudden, angry twist of the wheel, Padilla swung the big car into the road. “Where do you want me to drop you off?”
“Downtown, if you have the time.”
“I have the time. I’m not going back to the Club tonight, let Frankie wash the glasses. Maybe I’ll cut over after and see how the Colonel’s doing. He shouldn’t ought to be alone all night. Where downtown?”
“Pelly Street.”
“What you want to go down there for? You could get yourself rolled.”
“That’s not what I had in mind. You know that street pretty well, don’t you?”
“Like the back of my hand.” In the glow of the dash lights, he glanced at the back of his hand. “I just moved my mother off it within the last four years, when the old man died. Four years ago next November twenty-three.”
“Do you know Gus Donato?”
“I know him. Frankie told me he heard on the radio that Gus is wanted for murder. Old man Broadman. Is that what you heard?”
“It’s no rumor. How well do you know him, Tony?”
“About as well as I want to. I see him on the street. I know his brother better, Manuel. He’s the worker in the family. Manuel and me was in the same class at Sacred Heart school one year, before he quit to go to work. Gus has always been a cross on his back. They sent him up to Preston when he was sixteen years old.”
“What for?”
“Stealing cars and stuff. He was stealing cars when he was so little he couldn’t see over the top of the steering wheel. I guess they taught him some fancier tricks at Preston. He’s been in and out of jail most of his life. Now he’s really fixed himself good.”
Padilla’s tone was carefully indifferent. He performed his ritual of rolling down the window and spitting.
“I talked to his brother and his wife tonight. The wife claims he’s innocent.”
“Gus’s wife?”
“Secundina, her brother-in-law called her. You know her, don’t you?”
“I know her. Working in different kinds of bars, you see a lot of people. I watch them the way you watch the flies on the wall. But let’s get this straight, Mr. Gunnarson, they’re not my kind of people.” His tone was formal. The discussion had put an obscure strain on our relationship.
“I realize that, Tony.”
“Why ask me questions about them, then?”
“Because you know Holly May, and want to do something for her. There seems to be some connection between what happened to her and the Broadman killing. Gus Donato may be the key to it. And I got an impression talking to his relatives that he may be ready to give himself up. If he’s approached carefully, through his brother, or through his wife-”
“I don’t like to step on cops’ toes.”
“Neither do I. But I’m within my rights as a lawyer in trying to reach Donato and talk him into surrendering.”
“Sure, we could get knocked off, too. That’s within anybody’s rights.” But Padilla was with me. “I know where Manuel lives.”
The shoreline road crossed the highway on an overpass and curved around to the left to join the northbound lane. Neon-lighted clouds hung low over the city, changing like red smoke as we moved under them.
The freeway slanted up across a wilderness of railroad sidings, packing plants, and warehouses, and then the residences of the lower town. Its swarming courts and overflowing cottages were squeezed like living sponge between the freeway and the railroad. Padilla turned off on a ramp and circled under the freeway between concrete pillars that seemed as ancient and deserted as Coliseum arches. Somewhere ahead, the sound of a siren rose in jungle howling and fell away into animal sobbing.
“Jeeze, I hate that noise,” Padilla said. “Practically every night of my life for twenty years I heard that noise. It’s the main reason I had to get out to the other side of the tracts.”
Manuel Donato lived on this side of the tracts, in a white clapboard bungalow which stood out among its neighbors. The rectangle of lawn behind its picket fence was green and smooth, hedged by white-blossoming oleanders. The porch light was on. Padilla knocked on the door.
In the yard next door, shadowed by the oleanders, some boys and girls were playing late giggling games. One of the boys raised his voice. “Donato ain’t home.”
“Is he still downtown?” Padilla said.
“I guess so.” The boy came up to the fence. His fluorescent shirt made him look like a torso miraculously suspended, until I saw his eyeballs reflecting the light. “You cops?”
“We’re friends of Manuel Donato’s,” Padilla said.
“He may be down at the police station. A cop came a few minutes ago, and Manuel went away with him. Is he in trouble?”
“I hope not,” Padilla said.
“Reason I asked, it looked like he was crying.”
“Yeah,” one of the girls said from the shadows. “He was crying. I felt sorry for him.”
The desk sergeant at the police station told us the reason for Manuel Donato’s grief. His brother Gus was in the morgue. Pike Granada had shot him.
“Just like that, eh?” Padilla said.
The desk sergeant looked at him thoughtfully, then at me. “You representing the family, Mr. Gunnarson?”
I pretended not to hear him. “When did all this happen?”
“Within the last hour or so. It wasn’t channeled through me,” he said with disappointment. “Pike was off duty. He got a tip where Donato was hiding out. He’s young and eager.”
“Who tipped him?”
“Ask him yourself. He’s back in the squad room making up his preliminary report. He probably won’t tell you, but go ahead and ask him.”
The squad room was dim except for the circle of light from the lamp on Granada’s desk. His two-fingered typewriter stuttered and gave up when we walked in. He lifted his head, heavily, as if it had been cast in the bronze it resembled.
“I understand you shot Augustine Donato.”
“Yeah. He went for his gun.”
“Too bad you had to silence him. He might have told us some useful things.”
“You sound like Wills. He just got off my back. Don’t you climb on, Mr. Gunnarson.” He peered through the dimness at Padilla. “Who’s your friend?”
“You remember me,” Padilla said.
“I used to tend bar in the Rosarita Room.”
“Oh, yeah. Tony. Still working around town?”
“At the Foothill Club,” Padilla said in his formal voice. There was tension between the two men.
“Where did you catch up with Donato?” I said.
“In the old ice plant out by the railroad tracks. It’s a good place to hide, truck and all, and I figured he was out there.”
“That’s pretty close figuring.”
“I had some help. A little bird told me they seen a truck. I live on that side of town, so I mosied over. I caught him unloading the stuff.”
“What stuff was it?”
“Loot from the burglaries, cameras and furs and dresses. Apparently Broadman had it stashed in his basement. Donato killed him to get at it.”
