“Is there any truth to this?”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Besides, only two people know for sure what happened that night, Culhane and Delilah. You got to accept their word. And Culhane did what he promised. He and Brett Merrill, the D.A., sent Riker up to the gas chamber for killing Wilma Thompson. Riker claimed he was framed and some people believed him.”
“Do you?”
He shook his head as he leaned over and took a deep whiff of my smoke.
“The evidence was overwhelming. Riker had a thing for the girl. He had no alibi. Her blood was in his car, in his boat, and all over him. And there were two eyewitnesses. A girl named Lila Parrish and her date, a soldier. Later, Riker appealed the case and his sentence was commuted to life without parole. Last I heard, he was still up in Folsom dancing to the piper.”
I tapped an ash off my cigarette and shook my head. “Any other scandals?” I asked.
“There was the thing with Eddie Woods.”
“Who’s Eddie Woods?”
“Ex-cop, one of Brodie’s best. Flashy dresser and a kind of ladies’ man. After Riker was sent up, Fontonio took over the mob. He was the last straw. Culhane was determined to get rid of him and shut down the town. Woods shot Tony Fontonio. Eddie went to his apartment to deliver a subpoena. He says Fontonio went for a gun and he plugged him. But Fontonio’s bodyguards, his wife, and some legit people in town all said Fontonio never carried a gun. The attorney general called for an investigation, but Eddie resigned and Brett nol-prossed the case and that was the end of that.”
I went back over to the front pages. One of them featured a 36-point banner headline, boxed in black: president harding dead at 57
The story ran down the left-hand side of the page. On the right, under it, in slightly smaller type: riker murder trial goes to jury
There was a fuzzy picture of Wilma Thompson, a slender blonde in a nondescript dress, wearing a coy smile, with the ocean forming a vista behind her. The picture of Lila Parrish didn’t help much. She was rushing away from the courthouse and hidden behind the soldier. Short, dark-haired, nice figure.
The picture of Eddie Woods surprised me. I had expected a beefy, tough-looking cop; what I saw was a kid, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, with a cocky grin and a pencil-thin mustache, which was the rage in those days. He was a flashy dresser, wearing a checked suit and a dark tie, and was standing in front of the municipal building.
And in the lower right corner, this: ex-mobster rodney guilfoyle elected mayor of mendosa
With a picture of a burly, hard-looking galoot in a light-colored, three-piece suit, a cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth, and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his vest.
“Who’s this guy Guilfoyle?” I asked.
“That’s a real irony, that page. After Fontonio was killed, the third man in line was Guilfoyle. He left and took what remained of Riker’s gang down the road to Mendosa. It’s about twenty-five miles south of here, in Pacifica County. Then all the joints moved down there with him. You probably heard of it, people call it ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ after that outlaw gang because there’s so many crooks down there.”
“Can’t say as I have,” I said. “Is he still alive?”
“Oh yeah, and it’s still a wide-open town. Guilfoyle was mayor for two or three terms and then he ran for sheriff. Still is.”
“What’s Culhane think of that?”
“They hate each other. Have for years. Guilfoyle’s a killer-or has people who do it for him. But they each stay on their own side of the county line.”
“Mr. Howland, thanks for the history lesson,” I said. “You’re one helluva storyteller, but I’ve got to be going.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help you about the Hinks girl.”
“It’s Hicks,” I said.
“Right, Hicks. Come back again. I enjoyed the visit.” He patted the drawer and smiled. “And Jack thanks you.”
“Anytime,” I said.
CHAPTER 15
It was five o’clock when I left Howland’s house. The black Pontiac wasn’t waiting for me. The maroon Packard was.
The heavyset chauffeur was leaning on the front fender, rolling a cigarette as usual. When he saw me come out, he wiggled a finger at me and opened the rear door. I walked over to the car and looked in at Culhane.
“Hello again,” he said in a gravelly but pleasant voice. “Hop in.”
I looked around. The streets were empty.
“Don’t worry, I won’t shoot you.” He laughed.
“What about my car?”
“Couldn’t be safer,” he said. “Nobody’s gonna heist it, not in this town.”
I crawled in and sank to my hips in an elegant, maroon velvet backseat. The plush floor carpeting belonged in somebody’s living room. The car had push-button windows, a radiophone, an Atwater-Kent radio built into the back of the front passenger seat with four loudspeakers in back and two in the front, and a small cubbyhole, which held a bottle of Irish Mist, four highball glasses, and a small, hammered silver ice bucket.
“Very plush,” I said patting the seat. “Where’s the bathtub, in the trunk?”
He chuckled. Okay, pal, I thought, just what is your game? It didn’t take long to find out.
“We got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I’m sorry; you’re just doing your job.”
“What about all that paranoia: I’m snooping for your competition, I’m trying to set up my own grift…?”
“Forget I said it.”
“Okay, it’s forgotten.”
“I got an hour to kill,” he said, “I thought I’d give you the twenty-five-cent tour.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve seen the village. We’re going up on the Hill.”
“What’s the Hill?”
“It’s where the money hides,” he said.
He rested his right ankle on his left knee and took out an old-fashioned gold pocket watch. Culhane snapped it open and checked the time, and said to the driver, “We got some time, Rusty, take the scenic route.” And to me, “You don’t have an appointment right now, do you?”
“I don’t know, my date book’s back in the car.”
Culhane laughed. “You got one for every occasion, don’t you, Cowboy.”
We drove around the park. Two small kids were on the swings. They were swinging in opposite directions and ducking every time they passed each other. An elderly gent was standing next to the slide, gently trying to coax his granddaughter, who was sitting on the top rung and hanging on for dear life, into sliding down. More Norman Rockwell stuff. Cheery little robots having the time of their lives.
“By the way, are my boys doing any better?” Culhane asked. “I had a talk with them.”
“I got behind them and dogged the Pontiac for a while,” I said. “In case you’re interested, I’m not planning to litter the sidewalk or rob a bank. Why the hell am I getting the squeeze?”
“You’ve had a curious effect on some of our most substantial citizens.”
“You’ve already told me that. I’m just doing my job.”
“You sticking with that story about burying the widow?”
I sighed. “What would suit you better: I needed a day out of town because the weather’s been awful? Incidentally, speaking of banks, I find it interesting that there are four of them in a town this size. I would think one, two at the most, would be sufficient.”
