McHugh, page 9
McHugh came up with a pair of old gray work pants and a shirt of the same shade. They were a little long in the arms and legs, but fit otherwise. He got his belt, with the empty holster still on it, and put it on, then stuffed his bare feet into his shoes. He used a rag to wipe the grime from the shoes. Junkie’s eyes moved to the holster and away again as McHugh said, “Where the hell am I anyway?”
“‘Bout ten miles outta the city. Lights you see over there is the Bayshore.”
McHugh’s wallet was on the table. He fingered a bill from it and slipped it under the jug of corn liquor. “How would I go about getting back?”
“No phone here, or I could call a taxicab.” Junkie chuckled. “‘Bout the best I can do right off is maybe get you a lift on a trash wagon. One’s pullin’ in to dump now.”
“I’m for riding in anything but a hearse. Let’s go.”
The driver was a Mexican, a roly-poly young man with curling sideburns and a quick grin. He was glad of the prospect of company on the ride back and insisted on delivering McHugh to the motel, but he protested when McHugh insisted on giving him twenty dollars.
Loris came out on the balcony as the truck clanked away. She stared at McHugh, and he didn’t know whether she was laughing or crying.
“Good God! It must be quite a story. Come on in and tell me all about your new job.”
He hauled himself up the stairs and went inside. The dump smell was gone, but there was a strong aroma from the yellow soap. He stripped the clothes off as he crossed the room, and reached for the bottle of Scotch on the bureau. He drank steadily from it while his free hand unbuttoned the shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut against the liquor and was glad there were no more buttons.
Loris was getting fresh underwear and picking another suit from the hangers. She winced when she saw the bruises. She touched them with the tips of cool fingers and said in a low voice, “McHugh—for God’s sake, will you be careful?”
He managed a smile with the torn lips and a wink with a black eye. “I’m running a contest. Guess the number of lumps and you win something.”
She shut her eyes. “Win what?”
He laughed softly.
“You won’t be able to pay off. Not for days and days.” She led him to the bed, set a pillow under his head and took the bottle away. “I’ll make you a human being’s drink. Then I’ll listen.”
“Yeah. Do that. Where’s Nadine?”
“Out. She took your advice, went looking for a new place.”
“Good.” He sighed. “Honey, where’s little sister stand now? Disenchanted, I hope.”
Loris put a glass with ice and soda as well as Scotch in his hand. “McHugh—I don’t know. She’s a strange little girl. You can never tell what she’s really thinking. She’s hardly mentioned Johnny since we got here. When I bring his name up she deftly changes the subject. You want a guess?”
“It’s more than I’ve got now.”
“I think she just doesn’t want to talk about it with anybody, particularly two people who don’t like Johnny. She hates to argue, so she’ll say nothing.”
McHugh frowned and shook his head. “And if Johnny should suddenly pop up with some tearjerker tale, what then?”
The green eyes were troubled. “I don’t know, McHugh. But I know this much. She’s been phoning whenever she thought she was alone—Stover’s apartment and the farm and some of his hangouts. I checked with the girl on the switchboard.”
“It’s a good thing God takes care of children and fools.” McHugh added another jolt to his glass, swigged it down and closed his eyes. He felt Loris’ hands moving tenderly over his bruised body and said, “What’s this?”
“Just trying to count lumps.”
McHugh slept through the night, and when he woke his body was stiff. A long soaking in a hot bath and a session with a bottle of liniment made him feel a little better.
Loris stuck her head in the bathroom and said, “Your name Bill Lambert?”
“Hell, no.”
“Well, Lambert, whoever he is, owes this pleasure palace another hundred dollars.”
“Pack the bags.” He climbed out of the tub. “Nadine get a new apartment?”
“So she says. Stonestown area.”
“Ugh!” McHugh dried himself and dressed. He got another gun from his bag, checked the loads and slipped in into the holster. “Let’s roll.”
“Home?”
“There first. Then I’ll go by the bar.” He picked up the bags. “Where’s Nadine?”
“Gone already.”
“I’m not sure I like that.”
“She didn’t want to wake you.”
“Wake me, hell. Taking off so quick makes me wonder.”
“What, McHugh?” They came to the car, and he put the luggage in the back end.
“If maybe she heard from Johnny.” He slid behind the wheel and got a cigarette going. “If she has, by God, I’ll tan her fanny good.” He spun gravel and drove off. Loris watched him with eyes that were half amused, half alarmed.
“Fly-boy’s back,” Benny said, jerking a thumb toward the rear of the bar.
Bud Chapman was picking the label from a bottle of Lowenbrau. He turned to McHugh and said, “What happened? Her husband show up?”
“Shut up and buy beer. I thought you left.”
Benny brought McHugh a bottle of beer, and Chapman said, “This one smells. It’s the Dutchman.”
“Do tell. Where’s he want to go?”
“He won’t say, so I’m stalling him. All he’ll say is the flight won’t go over ten hours. One airstrip letdown and one on water. One or two passengers both ways, and cargo. Gross load won’t go over fifteen hundred pounds, he claims.”
“When, and where from?”
“I told him the Goose is at International, and he says that’s okay. I tried to get it through his square head that I’d have to know the size of the cargo and number of pieces so I could balance the ship, but he either doesn’t know or won’t tell.”
“Ten hours flying,” McHugh mused. “What’ll the Goose do—two hundred?”
“A little less. A lot less if there’s a head wind. Got a lousy big hull on her.” Chapman wet a cigar and chewed on it. “I claimed to have another deal on and held out for five hundred a day waiting time. He screamed but kicked in three days in advance.”
“Then you can afford to buy me whisky.” McHugh rapped his bottle on the bar and signaled Benny for a shot. “Hear any more from whoever used my name in ordering the thing up in the first place?”
“Uh-uh.” Chapman groaned as Benny poured Pinch Bottle and scooped up a dollar of his money.
“So what happens when the Dutchman says to start flying?”
“Play it by ear, I suppose,” Chapman replied. “My guess, we’ll be making a meet with a sub. I called Navy Intelligence and they’ll have a PBY on my tail. If my passengers and cargo are funny enough, I’ll give them the come-on and they can order us down and board.”
“Not good. You’ve got a reputation of never losing a passenger or payload.”
Chapman grinned. “If that keeps up, the wrong people might start wondering why. We’ll see what it looks like first.”
“You cleared on that?”
“Straight from the general. He sent you his best.”
“I’ll bet.”
Benny came along the bar and said, “Phone, boss.”
McHugh went into the back room. It was the detective agency with a report.
“On that Pierce, we’ve drawn a lot of blanks, McHugh. It was originally bought by a land development outfit and used by one of the officials. His name was George Allaire. About a year later it was put in his name and he was the registered owner on the date you asked about, April twenty-sixth, nineteen thirty-six. Allaire died in ‘forty-nine but his widow is still around. She checks out clean. Matter of fact, the family’s been well-fixed for years. Got a big house out in the Brentwood hills. Like you told us, they sold the car in ‘thirty-eight. No luck yet on the next couple of owners. It was up on blocks through the war, and I guess after that it put in a lot of time on college campuses. God knows why something with as much iron in it as that wasn’t scrapped. Meanwhile, our office here drew a blank on this Stover who’s apparently got it now. The previous owner is still in town and—”
“I know about her,” McHugh cut in. “Should have told you that. Okay. Any possible tie-in between this Allaire and Dexter Orland? Or any other wrongo types?”
“Pretty thin chance. The business writer on the L.A. Times remembers him Says he’s one of those who bought a lot of land in the depression and hung onto it until the population started building up and there was some money around. Lived quietly, didn’t run around raising hell. Incidentally, his widow’s pushing fifty now and the word is she looks closer to thirty-five.”
“Maybe I’ll go see her. What’s the address?” McHugh wrote it down. “Okay. Might as well close the books on this one.”
McHugh checked his watch and went back to sit with Chapman. It was twenty minutes past eleven in the morning. “How quick can you get me to L.A.?”
“I’m drawing five hundred a day to go nowhere. Clear it with the boss and it suits me fine.”
“Let it go. I’ll pull some rank.” He telephoned a vice-admiral of Naval Intelligence and said, “I need a quick hop to L. A., and the plane and pilot will have to stand by for a return. Maybe less than a day in all. I’m on my own at the moment, but it’s a Federal case.”
“If it isn’t, it will be. Hold on.” McHugh waited. Before he had a cigarette half smoked, the admiral was back on the line saying, “Moffett Field is coming through with a two-seater jet that will do better than six hundred knots. Be at International inside half an hour. That do it?
“That’ll do it fine, sir. I’ll be lucky to make it from the bar out there in that time.”
“Stand by. I’ll send a car. There’ll be one waiting in L. A. to run you around there, too.”
“Thanks again, sir. You could get chewed if this doesn’t work out”
“Whale dung.” The admiral hung up.
McHugh grinned and felt good. He went back of the bar, pulled a drawer open and took out a toothbrush that came in a plastic container with a small tube of toothpaste, a badge and identification card that said he was a deputy sheriff of San Francisco County and a well-worn silver flask. He poured Scotch into the flask, poured a shot for Bud Chapman and another for himself.
“Bags packed just like that, hey?” Chapman said.
“You better believe it.” They touched glasses.
“Take care.” Chapman winked. “Rank has its privileges, I guess.”
“That’s what the rules are.” McHugh heard the whine of a siren in the street. He hurried from the bar as a black Cadillac sedan double-parked in front of The Door. He jumped in the open door while the car was still moving. The siren howled again, and the chief petty officer at the wheel cut around a pair of trucks and drove down the left-hand side of the street with his foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor. McHugh shut his eyes.
“Use the safety belt,” the chief said around the stub of a cigar. “Never know when some stupid bastard thinks the growler doesn’t mean him.”
McHugh fastened the belt, decided the ride could well be his last, so he opened his eyes determined to enjoy it. They were bouncing across the streetcar tracks on Market, heading for the freeway interchange and the Bayshore. The car screamed across the apron at the airport. Driving with one hand, the chief talked into the radio mounted under the dash.
The car sped down a taxi strip to the point where an F-89-H Northrup jet was turning on a runway. The pilot leaned from the cockpit, clambered out and tossed a pressure suit and helmet to McHugh.
“Know your way around one of these birds?” he shouted.
McHugh nodded and tugged the suit on. He eased the big helmet over his head and clambered into the other cockpit, plugged himself into the oxygen, pressure and radio lines, waved at the pilot and said, “Fly it.”
McHugh did not like airplanes. Particularly he did not like airplanes that took off almost straight up and weren’t happy until they were cruising at forty thousand feet. It was almost as bad as riding in the Cadillac. He wanted to take the oxygen mask off and switch to Scotch.
An hour later, the plane slanted down the final approach path through the gray-brown smog of Los Angeles and screeched its wheels on the runway. The car was a Ford this time, and the driver a Marine gunny sergeant in civilian clothes. The Ford went faster than the Cadillac had, if anything. McHugh told the driver to cut the siren when they were several blocks away from the house.
It ran all to hell over a couple of acres of hill that had a lot of stubby palms, two magnificent oaks and an assortment of flowering shrubbery that McHugh couldn’t identify. The house was a Spanish-influenced cream-colored stucco with the usual red tiled roof. The grounds were well-barbered, and a white-graveled drive curved up from the road and followed the contours of the land until it disappeared behind the house. It had the look of money.
McHugh felt uncomfortably warm in his San Francisco suit as he went up the walk and rang the bell. There was no response. He rang again, longer, then began to walk around the house. There was an attached garage, and cars—a small Jaguar sedan and an MG roadster—occupied two of the three stalls. He followed a flagstone walk beyond the garage and around to the rear of the house. There was a swimming pool, and there was a girl on the springboard. He had an impression of sleek, slender tanned limbs and a round rump with a scrap of cloth twisted across it. As he watched, the girl raised a beer can, shook it, pouted and dropped it in the pool.
“Hey, there,” he called.
She was lying on her stomach. Now she rolled up on a hip. The movement arched her back and stretched the bikini tight across the points of young, full breasts. She looked at him from under a pair of dark glasses for a moment, then called, “Whoever you are, be a doll and bring me a beer. There, on the table.”
There was an awninged table with a lot of ice and beer cans dumped on it. McHugh used an opener on two cans, gave the girl one and drank from the other.
“We never buy anything,” she said. “But it’s fun swilling brew with guys who come around. Got a smoke?”
McHugh gave her a cigarette and lighted it. He opened his wallet and showed her the badge.
She winced and waved a bronzed leg in the air. “Looks like April got her number taken down again. ‘By-by driver’s license.”
“Not local,” McHugh said. “San Francisco. My name is McHugh, and I’d like to talk to Mrs. Arlene Allaire.”
The blonde puffed her cigarette. “I’d never have thought it of mother. What did she do?”
“You’re her daughter?” McHugh said. “I doubt your mother did anything, little girl. We’d just like to ask her a few questions about a case that’s been in the files a long time.”
“You try the house?”
“No answer.”
“She’s here. Probably in the hi-fi room. Come on.” She picked herself up, and McHugh saw she was taller than he’d thought. Her legs were long and slender, and they gleamed with suntan oil. The hair was wheat-blonde and shoulder-long. She was a living doll, and McHugh loved the sight of her.
“I’ve got another officer out in the car. He’s probably getting hot.”
“Good heavens, bring him in. Pour beer into him. Better, make some drinks in the bar. You look like a man who knows his way around a bottle.”
McHugh went out and got the gunny sergeant. He took a fast look at April’s back and said, “Dad, I will remember this address.”
McHugh busied himself at the bar in a room that was blessed with air conditioning. April came in and climbed on a stool as she said, “Mother’s on the way. This is a gin-and-tonic day and for God’s sake use bigger glasses.”
McHugh got a shock when he saw Arlene Allaire. She moved with a slender grace that reminded him of Loris, and could have passed for thirty-five. But the detective agency had said she was pushing fifty. There was a strong resemblance to April, although her hair was several shades darker.
“Police officers,” she said when introductions had been made. “San Francisco, at that What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
McHugh sipped his drink. It was tart and felt good going down. ‘“This may sound strange, Mrs. Allaire, but what we’re interested in happened more than twenty years ago. Maybe you can’t help us at all. But it concerns a Pierce-Arrow car. A custom-built phaeton that was apparently first bought by your husband’s firm and later signed over to you—”
“The Brute,” she said quickly. “Of course I remember. George bought it when he closed his first big deal after we were married. It was an impossible car to park, much too heavy for a woman. We had to hire a chauffeur.” A brief frown appeared at the corners of her mouth and was gone.
“I see. By any chance, were you in the habit of lending that car to anyone?”
“Never,” she said firmly. “Mr. McHugh, do you mean the Brute is still around? I thought surely it had been junked years ago.”
“A car collector has it now. We’d like to find the man, among other things.” He sipped his drink again and swirled the ice cubes in it. “Let me ask you this. Does the date of April twenty-sixth, nineteen thirty-six have any significance for you?”
She crossed her legs and looked thoughtful. “No, I’m sure it doesn’t. Is there any reason it should?”
“It’s unlikely.” McHugh saw the sergeant had April busy in a quiet conversation at a table in the far corner of the room. From the expression on her face, the Marines had established a beachhead. “After all these years, is there any chance you might be able to say where that car was on that particular day?”
“I know where I was, but the car…Let me think.” She took a cigarette from a thin case, and McHugh held a match. “I think I might at that. I was in the hospital. April had been born just five days earlier. It was quite hot in Pasadena, where we were living that year, and we were ready to open up the beach house. My husband was using his own car in his work, and I think the chauffeur may have taken the Pierce down while he worked on the place. Yes, that seems to be it.”
