“That’s a cute little buggy,” he said. “Must be fifty G’s worth of car, at least. Are you sure you’re allowed to park next to it?”
“That’s Gorman’s car,” I said.
“He’s the shy banker?”
“Shy or ill-mannered or maybe both. Take your pick.”
Along the length of the pier were several booths, capped with bright umbrellas, offering everything from hot dogs, soft drinks, and sandwiches to booze. Between them and the pier were patio tables with the same patterned umbrellas providing shade. Beyond the pier, the ocean stretched off to the horizon under a cloudless azure sky.
We sat down at one of the tables and checked out the harbor. To the north, on the public beach, a couple of kids were building a sand castle while their mother was stretched out on a canvas beach chair, reading a book. Farther down, four bobby-soxers were horse-wrestling in the water, the girls teetering on their boyfriends’ shoulders. I raised a pair of binoculars to look up the side of the cliff to the overlook and then on up to Grand View. Only its spires were visible above the trees. Then I pulled the glass down below the overlook to the ledge. From my angle I could just see the edge of the ledge and the tops of the pine trees, bent and flat-topped from the ocean winds. Something started gnawing at the back of my brain but I couldn’t sort it out.
“See anything interesting?” Ski asked.
“Not from this angle. There’s a ledge about halfway up that mean-ass road on the side of the cliff.”
“With the flat-top trees?”
“Yeah. There’s also what’s left of a 192 °Chevy on that ledge.”
“No kidding. What’s it doing there?”
“Some kid lost control of his car and went over.” I handed him the binoculars. “See the little spur up there with the stone wall around it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s foggy up there every night. Apparently he missed the curve. They put the wall around it after that. The road’s closed now.”
“Ain’t you the fountain of information,” Ski said. “You ought to apply for a job as a tour guide.” Then he said, “There’s somebody up there.”
I looked up, but the overlook was too far away to tell anything with the naked eye.
“It’s a woman,” he said. “Rich; she’s wearing a hat and gloves. Carrying flowers.”
I took the glasses. Ski was right, she was rich. You can always tell. Even when a rich woman dresses down, she’s dressed up.
She walked to the edge of the wall, looked out over the ocean for a minute or two, then down at the ledge, and threw the bouquet over the side. I watched it tumble end over end, catch the updraft, and skewer out flat before it fell off the wind stream and dropped almost straight down. It caught for a minute on one of the trees then vanished, cut off by the angle of my view. When I swung the glasses back up to the overlook, the rich woman was gone.
I pulled down the glasses and stared up the side of the cliff without focusing on anything. The nibble in my brain became a big bite.
I looked back out at the bay but there was still no sign of a power boat.
“I just thought of something,” I said. “Have a hot dog; I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Are you embarrassed to take me?” he asked, feigning hurt feelings.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
I got in the car and drove down the main drag to February Street and grabbed a right, followed it down to Third Street. Nothing had changed at the Howland house. The collie was still sleeping in the front yard and he didn’t open an eye as I walked past. Mrs. Howland answered after my first knock.
“Remember me?” I asked. “Sergeant Bannon, L.A. police.”
“Oh yes. My goodness, and I’m just a mess.”
“Is Barney here? I won’t be but a minute, I need to ask him a question.”
“Yes. Come in.” She led me to the staircase and called down to him.
“Barney, that nice young fellow from Los Angeles is back. Should I send him down?”
“Mr. Bannon? Of course,” he yelled back.
I went down the steps and he was pecking away at his Royal.
“I have a question, Barney,” I said as we shook hands. I walked over to the framed front pages and found the one I was looking for. The story in the right-hand lower column with the picture of a ruined car, which I had breezed over the first time. The headline read: eli gorman jr. dies as car plunges off overlook
I remembered Culhane telling me his life had changed one night at the overlook.
“Who was Eli Gorman?” I asked.
“The kid’s grandfather. The dead boy was Ben’s son, named after Mr. Eli. Mr. Eli owned the whole valley. He won it in a poker game with his partner, Shamus O’Dell.”
“Of the Grand View O’Dells?”
“Yeah.”
I looked back at the framed front page.
“The car wreck. What happened?”
“Eli Junior was goin’ down to see a silent movie. He was a young hell-raiser, all those young-uns up there were always doing crazy things. He should never have gone down Cliffside; it was so foggy you couldn’t see the end of your nose. He missed the first curve and went right off the overlook. The car burned but of course nobody even noticed that. They didn’t spot it until the next day.”
“What do you mean, nobody noticed it?”
“That was the same night Buck Tallman was killed.”
When I got back to the park, Ski was still scanning the bay with the binoculars. A big Chris Craft with a mile- high flying bridge was entering the mouth of the harbor.
“This is probably our boy now,” he said. Then, “How’d the quickie go?”
“I just got another chapter in the history of San Pietro.”
“Ahh. Enlighten me.” He lowered the glasses.
“That car wreck up on the overlook?”
“Yeah.”
“It was Ben Gorman’s son. The wreck happened the same night as the Grand View shoot-out.”
“You ought to write a book.”
“A lot of action for one night in the life of a small town.”
“They happen that way. In threes. Something else big probably happened that night. Somebody’s cat got run over. Somebody’s Mercedes got a flat tire.”
I looked back up the cliff. “I’ll bet that was his mother. Or sister,” I said.
“Makes sense,” Ski said. “So what?”
“I don’t know. So something.”
“So why don’t you ask old man Gorman. That’s probably his boat.”
“I’ve got better things to ask him.”
“We going to ambush him when they come up?”
“We’ll ambush both of them.”
“My favorite endeavor,” he said with a smile.
We drank lemonades-“fresh squoze,” Ski informed me-and watched the big boat cruise up beside one of the docks. The engine growled as it went into reverse and the sea boiled up behind it like water boiling in a pot. Then Rusty appeared from behind us somewhere and strolled down to meet it. He was dressed, as always, in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. He didn’t acknowledge me. A deckhand grabbed the tie line, wrapped it around a cleat, and drew the bow in tight against some rubber tires attached to the side of the dock.
Culhane stepped off the cruiser as Rusty reached behind an ear and came up with a cigarette. Culhane lit it, then Rusty jerked a thumb back toward us. Culhane stared at us through dark amber sunglasses. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, baggy khaki pants, and white deck shoes. He turned back toward the boat, and the cigarette bobbed in his lips as he said something to somebody I couldn’t see. Then he came toward us with that loping, casual step
