coming. He was waiting for the stinger.
“There’s a wrinkle to the story,” I said.
“Isn’t there always?”
“She died without a will and left a sizable estate. No survivors, no letters, nothing to indicate anything about her prior to 1924.”
“What happened in 1924?”
“She moved to L.A. Here’s the wrinkle: She worked in the tax assessor’s office making forty bucks a week. But she bought her house with cash. Her car, which is a two-year-old DeSoto, and several other cars before it, were all paid for with cash. And she had ninety-eight-plus grand in a savings account.”
He whistled low through his teeth.
“So what brings you up here?” he said, and turned and knelt to give a kid his autograph.
“The ninety-eight large. Since 1924 she’s been getting five bills a month in the form of cashier’s checks. A good many of those checks came from the banks here.”
He didn’t look up immediately. He gave the kid back his pen and stood up slowly. The blue eyes narrowed.
“I figure if we can get copies of one or two of the checks and look for the sender’s name, maybe we’ll find someone that’ll stand for a decent funeral or hire a lawyer to try and nix the state out of her inheritance.”
Nothing changed in his face. The blue eyes just stared at me. No response.
“That sounds like a missing person’s dodge,” he said after a minute crawled by. “How come a homicide cop is doing that kind of work?”
“I caught the case as I was leaving for the day,” I said. “My boss gave me a day or two to see if I could turn up anybody. He doesn’t like the tax boys any more than I do.”
“And your boss is who?”
“Lieutenant Moriarity. Dan Moriarity.”
“I may have heard that name,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Why here?” Merrill asked.
“Because most of the cashier’s checks came from the four banks here. I was hoping you might grease some rails for me. One of the bankers threw me out of his office and the other one bluffed me out.”
“McBurney called and screamed about you wanting some kind of confidential info, but he’s a gruff old bastard. He’s eighty-one and Scottish through and through. He saves minutes in a glass jar under his desk.”
It was a nice play. He was letting me know that McBurney and probably Ben Gorman had already checked in, as well as the two comics in the Pontiac. Having said it, he changed the subject.
“What do you think of our little town?” he said pleasantly.
“Very interesting,” I said. “Looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.”
“Like Rockwell, do you?”
“He’s a little too cute for my taste.”
“What is your taste, Sergeant?”
“I’m a van Gogh man.”
“Ah, so you like the new guys. I prefer the old-timers. I like Rembrandt.”
“I’m younger than you are, I never met him.”
He was enjoying the patter, like a dueler tapping epees with an opponent before the match gets serious.
“About the banks…” I started.
“Sorry,” Culhane said. “I can’t help you with that.”
“It’s against the law,” Merrill interceded in a pleasant voice with a touch of the Southeast in it. “You’d need a judge’s order.”
“And why bother?” Culhane said. “Seems to me if somebody went to all that trouble not to be found, somebody doesn’t want to be found. Just an observation.”
“Because the way it looks now, her dog, the next-door neighbors, and I are the only ones who’ll be there to drop a rose on her grave.”
“Had a dog, huh? What happened to it?”
“He’s probably sleeping under the yucca plant in my backyard.”
He gave me a slow, knowing look. His lips parted in a grin. “You got a soft streak, Bannon. Better watch it; in our business that can get you killed.”
“A guy could make a threat out of that,” I said, smiling back.
“Nah, not a chance, not in this town,” he said. “We watch over our visiting firemen.”
“That why those two heavyweights have been on my tail since I got here?”
“You noticed them, huh?”
“Well, they could have been a little more obvious. One of them could have stuck his thumb in my eye.”
“The boys don’t get much practice. There’s not much call for tail jobs in San Pietro,” he said casually.
“I’m just trying to finish off the lady’s days with a little class,” I said, getting back to the subject again.
“Sure you are,” he said. “You’re not at all interested in who’s been slipping her five C’s a month and why, are you?”
I ignored the jibe.
“So you don’t know who she is-or was?”
“I never heard that name before you mentioned it.”
“Maybe you knew her under another name.”
“That’s possible, but if I did I wouldn’t know it, now would I?”
“Well, Captain, somebody up here knew her real well.”
He gave me a long, hard stare.
“You think she was blackmailing somebody,” he drawled. It was not a question.
“It’s an option.”
“An option that doesn’t concern me.”
“A majority of those checks came from the four banks here in San Pietro.”
“Coincidence,” he said.
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
He fell silent again. His eyes never left mine. Then an ironic smile crossed his lips.
“You really expect me to fall for that crap about poor little whoever not getting a decent send-off?” he said. “You’re up here sniffing around and annoying some substantial citizens and you haven’t got dip. When that radio cooked her, school was out. Who the hell cares what went on before? Even if she was grifting somebody, it’s immaterial now. The point is, the lady’s dead and whatever there was, if there was anything to start with, died with her. You’re acting a little like a goddamn tenderfoot. Or…” he paused a minute and raised his eyebrows until his forehead wrinkled. “Or maybe there’s something else going on in that noggin of yours.”
I could feel the muscles in my face tightening up. He was goading me. I backed off and let my pulse slow down.
“I told you what was going on,” I said, perhaps a little too softly.
“I know what you said,” he answered. He put his hands in his back pockets, with the thumbs pointing down. He very slowly paced up and down in front of me. “But you could be from Osterfelt’s camp or Bellini’s, up here nosing around to see if you can stir up a little dirt on me. Or maybe you’re planning your own little grift? Find out who was sending those checks and become the new beneficiary. See what I mean?”
“She deserves a little decency,” I said quietly. “I don’t give a damn if it’s the President of the United States; whoever was sending her that money knows her and that somebody ought to be told.”
“And you want to do the telling.”
“It’s my case. It’s my responsibility.”
He stopped pacing and just stared at me.
“Look,” I said, “maybe you could prevail on one of your banker pals to look it up and pass it on to the proper individual. You can leave me out of it.”
“It’s against the law for the banks to do that,” Merrill said. “It’s confidential information protected by state law.”
