Mr. Langdon had regained his confidence and so now I was the well-dressed janitor again; a man who would have to wait no matter what he needed to know.
“Okay,” I said mildly. “I just wanted to know about that special croquet set you worked on for our friend.”
To see a pale man turn white is a frightening thing.
“Go on, boys,” Langdon said. “We’ll start over tomorrow.”
“But the glue is ready, Mr.—”
“Go on now. Go, go,” the great white turtle stuttered and snapped.
The boys left complaining under their breath.
I sat down on the long bench of vises and smiled.
“What, what … what can I …” Langdon was floundering on his own tongue.
“You hollowed out a set of croquet balls and mallets for Roman Gasteau, right? Some Italian carpet balls and wooden dolls too.”
Now Langdon could only gasp.
“You did that,” I went on. “And he used them to smuggle drugs.”
“No, no, no,” Langdon said.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said.
He looked around the room for help but we were alone. “It’s not so bad really, Mr. Rawlins. I did make the croquet set but it was just for grass. We used to have marijuana parties.” He was talking loudly. I knew then that Roman Gasteau had been a fool. Only a fool would have taken on a partner like Langdon. A child could have forced the truth out of that wood shop teacher.
“With Idabell, Roman, and Holland?”
“Lots of people would come over.”
“How could you be such a fool to get involved with dope smugglin’?”
“It’s not like it was real drugs,” Casper said. “It was only pot. Roman used to go down to Tijuana and stuff the mallets or the dolls or the lawn balls with grass, sometimes hash.”
I didn’t correct Casper because I couldn’t see why he should know more than he admitted. He was scared enough to be involved with marijuana.
“It’s a girl, right?” I asked.
Langdon looked down. He held out his hands in front of his face and big tears splatted down on his fingers.
“What’s her name, Mr. Langdon?”
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
“Yes it is,” I said. “Roman took you out an’ got you high. Then he showed you a girl didn’t need any kind of promises or flowers. I know. I know.”
“She liked me.” Langdon blinked his heavy lids. The droplets clung to his eyelashes.
“What’s her name?”
“Grace,” he said. “But I haven’t seen her in two months.”
Any hope that I had for innocence was gone with a name. Roman knew Grace. I knew Grace. Grace was how I came to my job. It was as if I had been looking for the criminal and came upon myself on the way.
“Grace Phillips?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know how long I stood there speechless, staring at his fat white cheeks.
Finally I turned away from him and went to the bungalow door.
“Mr. Rawlins?” Langdon called from across the room.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell the police or, or Mr. Newgate?”
“The cops haven’t talked to you about this?”
“No. They showed me a picture of Roman and asked me if I knew him. I told them that he was Mrs. Turner’s brother-in-law. That’s all they wanted to know.”
“Well, you better hope that they don’t come back to you, Mr. Langdon. But if they do come back you better be quiet about what you know. Roman might have told you that it was all right but I don’t think that Sergeant Sanchez would agree.”
“Oh my God.”
SERGEANT SANCHEZ was sitting at Miss Teale’s desk.
“So, you decided to come in to work at last, eh, Rawlins?”
“Well, you know, there were some things that I had to do.”
He smiled. “You ready to talk to me?”
