The cook said, "Fella out here wants to see ya."
"Who is he?"
"How the hell do I know?"
Joe looked back at the room and then stepped out, took the key from the inside, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. He might have overlooked something.
Oscar Noble was standing in the big front room, his gray hat on his head and his red mackinaw buttoned up tight around his throat. His eyes were pale gray--the same color as his stubble whiskers. The room was in semidarkness. No one had raised the shades yet.
Joe came lightly along the hall, and Oscar asked, "You Joe?"
"Who's asking?"
"The sheriff wants to have a talk with you."
Joe felt ice creeping into his stomach. "Pinch?" he asked. "Got a warrant?"
"Hell, no," said Oscar. "We got nothing on you. Just checking up. Will you come along?"
"Sure," said Joe. "Why not?"
They went out together. Joe shivered. "I should of got a coat."
"Want to go back for one?"
"I guess not," said Joe.
They walked toward Castroville Street. Oscar asked, "Ever been mugged or printed?"
Joe was quiet for a time. "Yes," he said at last.
"What for?"
"Drunk," said Joe. "Hit a cop."
"Well, we'll soon find out," said Oscar and turned the corner.
Joe ran like a rabbit, across the street and over the track toward the stores and alleys of Chinatown.
Oscar had to take a glove off and unbutton his mackinaw to get his gun out. He tried a snap shot and missed.
Joe began to zigzag. He was fifty yards away by now and nearing an opening between two buildings.
Oscar stepped to a telephone pole at the curb, braced his left elbow against it, gripped his right wrist with his left hand, and drew a bead on the entrance to the little alley. He fired just as Joe touched the front sight.
Joe splashed forward on his face and skidded a foot.
Oscar went into a Filipino poolroom to phone, and when he came out there was quite a crowd around the body.
Chapter 51
1
In 1903 Horace Quinn beat Mr. R. Keef for the office of sheriff. He had been well trained as the chief deputy sheriff. Most of the voters figured that since Quinn was doing most of the work he might as well have the title. Sheriff Quinn held the office until 1919. He was sheriff so long that we growing up in Monterey County thought the words "Sheriff" and "Quinn" went together naturally. We could not imagine anyone else being sheriff. Quinn grew old in his office. He limped from an early injury. We knew he was intrepid, for he had held his own in various gunfights; besides, he looked like a sheriff--the only kind we knew about. His face was broad and pink, his white mustache shaped like the horns of a longhorn steer. He was broad of shoulder, and in his age he developed a portliness which only gave him more authority. He wore a fine Stetson hat, a Norfolk jacket, and in his later years carried his gun in a shoulder holster. His old belt holster tugged at his stomach too much. He had known his county in 1903 and he knew it and controlled it even better in 1917. He was an institution, as much a part of the Salinas Valley as its mountains.
In all the years since Adam's shooting Sheriff Quinn had kept track of Kate. When Faye died, he knew instinctively that Kate was probably responsible, but he also knew he hadn't much of any chance of convicting her, and a wise sheriff doesn't butt his head against the impossible. They were only a couple of whores, after all.
In the years that followed, Kate played fair with him and he gradually achieved a certain respect for her. Since there were going to be houses anyway, they had better be run by responsible people. Every so often Kate spotted a wanted man and turned him in. She ran a house which did not get into trouble. Sheriff Quinn and Kate got along together.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, about noon, Sheriff Quinn looked through the papers from Joe Valery's pockets. The .38 slug had splashed off one side of Joe's heart and had flattened against the ribs and torn out a section as big as a fist. The manila envelopes were glued together with blackened blood. The sheriff dampened the papers with a wet handkerchief to get them apart. He read the will, which had been folded, so that the blood was on the outside. He laid it aside and inspected the photographs in the envelopes. He sighed deeply.
Every envelope contained a man's honor and peace of mind. Effectively used, these pictures could cause half a dozen suicides. Already Kate was on the table at Muller's with the formalin running into her veins, and her stomach was in a jar in the corner's office.
When he had seen all of the pictures he called a number. He said into the phone, "Can you drop over to my office? Well, put your lunch off, will you? Yes, I think you'll see it's important. I'll wait for you."
A few minutes later when the nameless man stood beside his desk in the front office of the old red county jail behind the courthouse, Sheriff Quinn stuck the will out in front of him. "As a lawyer, would you say this is any good?"
His visitor read the two lines and breathed deep through his nose. "Is this who I think it is?"
"Yes."
"Well, if her name was Catherine Trask and this is her handwriting, and if Aron Trask is her son, this is as good as gold."
Quinn lifted the ends of his fine wide mustache with the back of his forefinger. "You knew her, didn't you?"
"Well, not to say know. I knew who she was."
Quinn put his elbows on his desk and leaned forward. "Sit down, I want to talk to you."
His visitor drew up a chair. His fingers picked at a coat button.
The sheriff asked, "Was Kate blackmailing you?"
"Certainly not. Why should she?"
"I'm asking you as a friend. You know she's dead. You can tell me."
"I don't know what you're getting at--nobody's blackmailing me."
Quinn slipped a photograph from its envelope, turned it like a playing card, and skidded it across the desk.
His visitor adjusted his glasses and the breath whistled in his nose. "Jesus Christ," he said softly.
"You didn't know she had it?"
"Oh, I knew it all right. She let me know. For Christ's sake, Horace--what are you going to do with this?"
Quinn took the picture from his hand.
"Horace, what are you going to do with it?"
"Burn it." The sheriff ruffled the edges of the envelopes with his thumb. "Here's a deck of hell," he said. "These could tear the county to pieces."
Quinn wrote a list of names on a sheet of paper. Then he hoisted himself up on his game leg and went to the iron stove against the north wall of his office. He crunched up the Salinas Morning Journal and lighted it and dropped it in the stove, and when it flared up he dropped the manila envelopes on the flame, set the damper, and closed the stove. The fire roared and the flames winked yellow behind the little isinglass windows in the front of the stove. Quinn brushed his hands together as though they were dirty. "The negatives were in there," he said. "I've been through her desk. There weren't any other prints."
His visitor tried to speak but his voice was a husky whisper. "Thank you, Horace."
The sheriff gimped to his desk and picked up his list. "I want you to do something for me. Here's a list. Tell everyone on this list I've burned the pictures. You know them all, God knows. And they could take it from you. Nobody's holy. Get each man alone and tell him exactly what happened. Look here!" He opened the stove door and poked the black sheets until they were reduced to powder. "Tell them that," he said.
His visitor looked at the sheriff, and Quinn knew that there was no power on earth that could keep this man from hating him. For the rest of their lives there would be a barrier between them, and neither one could ever admit it.
"Horace, I don't know how to thank you."
And the sheriff said in sorrow, "That's all right. It's what I'd want my friends to do for me."
"The goddam bitch," his visitor said softly, and Horace Quinn knew that part of the curse was fo
r him.
And he knew he wouldn't be sheriff much longer. These guilt-feeling men could get him out, and they would have to. He sighed and sat down. "Go to your lunch now," he said. "I've got work to do."
At quarter of one Sheriff Quinn turned off Main Street on Central Avenue. At Reynaud's Bakery he bought a loaf of French bread, still warm and giving off its wonderful smell of fermented dough.
He used the hand rail to help himself up the steps of the Trask porch.
Lee answered the door, a dish towel tied around his middle. "He's not home," he said.
"Well, he's on his way. I called the draft board. I'll wait for him."
Lee moved aside and let him in and seated him in the living room. "You like a nice cup of hot coffee?" he asked.
"I don't mind if I do."
"Fresh made," said Lee and went into the kitchen.
Quinn looked around the comfortable sitting room. He felt that he didn't want his office much longer. He remembered hearing a doctor say, "I love to deliver a baby, because if I do my work well, there's joy at the end of it." The sheriff had thought often of that remark. It seemed to him that if he did his work well there was sorrow at the end of it for somebody. The fact that it was necessary was losing its weight with him. He would be retiring soon whether he wanted to or not.
Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do--makes the journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read. For many years the sheriff dreamed of spending the shining time hunting and fishing--wandering in the Santa Lucia range, camping by half-remembered streams. And now that it was almost time he knew he didn't want to do it. Sleeping on the ground would make his leg ache. He remembered how heavy a deer is and how hard it is to carry the dangling limp body from the place of the kill. And, frankly, he didn't care for venison anyway. Madame Reynaud could soak it in wine and lace it with spice but, hell, an old shoe would taste good with that treatment.
Lee had bought a percolator. Quinn could hear the water spluttering against the glass dome, and his long-trained mind made the suggestion that Lee hadn't told the truth about having fresh-made coffee.
It was a good mind the old man had--sharpened in its work. He could bring up whole faces in his mind and inspect them, and also scenes and conversations. He could play them over like a record or a film. Thinking of venison, his mind had gone about cataloguing the sitting room and his mind nudged him, saying, "Hey, there's something wrong here--something strange."
The sheriff heeded the voice and looked at the room--flowered chintz, lace curtains, white drawn-work table cover, cushions on the couch covered with a bright and impudent print. It was a feminine room in a house where only men lived.
He thought of his own sitting room. Mrs. Quinn had chosen, bought, cleaned, every single thing in it except a pipestand. Come to think of it, she had bought the pipestand for him. There was a woman's room too. But this was a fake. It was too feminine--a woman's room designed by a man--and overdone, too feminine. That would be Lee. Adam wouldn't even see it, let alone put it together--no--Lee trying to make a home, and Adam not even seeing it.
Horace Quinn remembered questioning Adam so very long ago, remembered him as a man in agony. He could still see Adam's haunted and horrified eyes. He had thought then of Adam as a man of such honesty that he couldn't conceive anything else. And in the years he had seen much of Adam. They both belonged to the Masonic Order. They went through the chairs together. Horace followed Adam as Master of the Lodge and both of them wore their Past Master's pins. And Adam had been set apart--an invisible wall cut him off from the world. You couldn't get into him--he couldn't get out to you. But in that old agony there had been no wall.
In his wife Adam had touched the living world. Horace thought of her now, gray and washed, the needles in her throat and the rubber formalin tubes hanging down from the ceiling.
Adam could do no dishonesty. He didn't want anything. You had to crave something to be dishonest. The sheriff wondered what went on behind the wall, what pressures, what pleasures and achings.
He shifted his behind to ease the pressure on his leg. The house was still except for the bouncing coffee. Adam was long coming from the draft board. The amused thought came to the sheriff, I'm getting old, and I kind of like it.
Then he heard Adam at the front door. Lee heard him too and darted into the hall. "The sheriff's here," said Lee, to warn him perhaps.
Adam came in smiling and held out his hand. "Hello, Horace--have you got a warrant?" It was a damn good try at a joke.
"Howdy," Quinn said. "Your man is going to give me a cup of coffee."
Lee went to the kitchen and rattled dishes.
Adam said, "Anything wrong, Horace?"
"Everything's always wrong in my business. I'll wait till the coffee comes."
"Don't mind Lee. He listens anyway. He can hear through a closed door. I don't keep anything from him because I can't."
Lee came in with a tray. He was smiling remotely to himself, and when he had poured the coffee and gone out Adam asked again, "Is there anything wrong, Horace?"
"No, I don't think so. Adam, was that woman still married to you?"
Adam became rigid. "Yes," he said. "What's the matter?"
"She killed herself last night."
Adam's face contorted and his eyes swelled and glistened with tears. He fought his mouth and then he gave up and put his face down in his hands and wept. "Oh, my poor darling!" he said.
Quinn sat quietly and let him have it out, and after a time Adam's control came back and he raised his head. "Excuse me, Horace," he said.
Lee came in from the kitchen and put a damp towel in his hands, and Adam sponged his eyes and handed it back.
"I didn't expect that," Adam said, and his face was ashamed. "What shall I do? I'll claim her. I'll bury her."
"I wouldn't," said Horace. "That is, unless you feel you have to. That's not what I came about." He took the folded will from his pocket and held it out.
Adam shrank from it. "Is--is that her blood?"
"No, it's not. It's not her blood at all. Read it."
Adam read the two lines and went right on staring at the paper and beyond it. "He doesn't know--she is his mother."
"You never told him?"
"No."
"Jesus Christ!" said the sheriff.
Adam said earnestly, "I'm sure he wouldn't want anything of hers. Let's just tear it up and forget it. If he knew, I don't think Aron would want anything of hers."
" 'Fraid you can't," Quinn said. "We do quite a few illegal things. She had a safe-deposit box. I don't have to tell you where I got the will or the key. I went to the bank. Didn't wait for a court order. Thought it might have a bearing." He didn't tell Adam he thought there might be more pictures. "Well, Old Bob let me open the box. We can always deny it. There's over a hundred thousand dollars in gold certificates. There's money in there in bales--and there isn't one goddam thing in there but money."
"Nothing?"
"One other thing--a marriage certificate."
Adam leaned back in his chair. The remoteness was coming down again, the soft protective folds between himself and the world. He saw his coffee and took a sip of it. "What do you think I ought to do?" he asked steadily and quietly.
"I can only tell you what I'd do," Sheriff Quinn said. "You don't have to take my advice. I'd have the boy in right now. I'd tell him everything--every single thing. I'd even tell him why you didn't tell him before. He's--how old?"
"Seventeen."
"He's a man. He's got to take it some time. Better if he gets the whole thing at once."
"Cal knows," said Adam. "I wonder why she made the will to Aron?"
"God knows. Well, what do you think?"
"I don't know, and so I'm going to do what you say. Will you stay with me?"
"Sure I will."
"Lee," Adam called, "tell Aron I want him. He has come home, hasn't he?"
Lee came to the doorwa
y. His heavy lids closed for a moment and then opened. "Not yet. Maybe he went back to school."
"He would have told me. You know, Horace, we drank a lot of champagne on Thanksgiving. Where's Cal?"
"In his room," said Lee.
"Well, call him. Get him in. Cal will know."
Cal's face was tired and his shoulders sagged with exhaustion, but his face was pinched and closed and crafty and mean.
Adam asked, "Do you know where your brother is?"
"No, I don't," said Cal.
"Weren't you with him at all?"
"No."
"He hasn't been home for two nights. Where is he?"
"How do I know?" said Cal. "Am I supposed to look after him?"
Adam's head sank down, his body jarred, just a little quiver. In back of his eyes a tiny sharp incredibly bright blue light flashed. He said thickly, "Maybe he did go back to college." His lips seemed heavy and he murmured like a man talking in his sleep. "Don't you think he went back to college?"
Sheriff Quinn stood up. "Anything I got to do I can do later. You get a rest, Adam. You've had a shock."
Adam looked up at him. "Shock--oh, yes. Thank you, George. Thank you very much."
"George?"
"Thank you very much," said Adam.
When the sheriff had gone, Cal went to his room. Adam leaned back in his chair, and very soon he went to sleep and his mouth dropped open and he snored across his palate.
Lee watched him for a while before he went back to his kitchen. He lifted the breadbox and took out a tiny volume bound in leather, and the gold tooling was almost completely worn away--The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in English translation.
Lee wiped his steel-rimmed spectacles on a dish towel. He opened the book and leafed through. And he smiled to himself, consciously searching for reassurance.
He read slowly, moving his lips over the words. "Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.
"Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be."