Drive East on 66 (Lt Andy Bastian Mysteries Book 1), page 1
DRIVE EAST ON 66
Richard Wormser
© Fawcett Publications 1961
Richard Wormser has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1961 by Fawcett Publications.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter One
In our town of five thousand houses, the Bartlett house was the largest. This was no accident; Sidney Bartlett had planned it that way when he built the other four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine homes; your choice of ranch, split-level or traditional, two bedrooms or three, no down payment, GI, low move-in cost, FHA.
Our town, I suppose, is far from unique; there are a dozen more like it in Southern California, and I hear that you can find its twin in the San Francisco area, around New York, Boston, Philadelphia, a dozen other cities.
They weren’t here twenty years ago, and sometimes I get the feeling that they won’t be here twenty years from now. But in the meantime, Mr. Bartlett was rolling in money, honestly earned; the five thousand construction jobs had been solid, workmanlike and in all respects up to standard, GI or FHA.
I had only been in the Bartlett house once before, in the year I’d lived in Naranjo Vista, which was what our town was called.
There was no swank about Sidney Bartlett; if he had a butler, or even a maid, he still answered the door himself. He shook my hand, called me Lieutenant Bastian before I had a chance to identify myself, and pulled me in with a hand on my sleeve. “Put your cap there, and come into my study. We’ll have a drink, break the ice.”
I said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Bartlett, I don’t drink in uniform.”
He said: “Then take your coat off. Or jacket, or tunic, or whatever you call it.”
“It’s not that, sir.” I grinned, aware that I sounded stuffy. “But the way people drive, I could have a bump-up on my way home. I’d show lousy with liquor on my breath and a police uniform on my back.”
Mr. Sidney Bartlett frowned. I suppose he wasn’t used to getting anything but his own way, especially in the town he’d built and chosen to live in. He said: “You didn’t have to wear your uniform. You do drink, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m sorry if I sound a prig.” I watched, and his eyebrows shifted a little, I hoped in surprise that I knew words like that. “I smoke and drink and chase girls.”
“Then that decides it. You’ll have the drink, take a chair.” He smiled, though the deeply-grooved frown didn’t go away. “I’m sorry to make such a big issue of such a little thing, but the truth is, there’s some ice needs breaking. We’re going to have to talk pretty frankly, get to know each other very well very quickly, and a drink –” He threw his hands up in a gesture that was almost French; a strange movement in a man who could have been a rancher or a Western banker or a shopkeeper, but certainly not a Parisian.
My face doesn’t show anything unless I want it to; I didn’t want it to just then.
We went through a glassed in hall, showing a dining room on one side, a huge beamed living room on the other; the living room was lined with books and paintings, and there was an Oriental rug on the floor that even I knew ought to be in a museum.
He opened a door into a much smaller room, that had almost as many books in it. The rug here was Navajo, though, brown and yellow and black and white. I had to step on it, and I sank in a little; I’ve never seen an Indian rug woven that thick.
Mr. Bartlett said: “Finian, this is Lieutenant Bastian,” very gravely, and a tiny gray dog jumped out of a leather chair and stretched as though he were bowing to me. I reached down, and he let me pat him, and then curled up in the exact middle of the Navajo.
“He’s a Yorkshire terrier,” my host said. “They don’t shed. Take his chair, you won’t get hair on your uniform. Bourbon and soda all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “And I don’t take the uniform quite that seriously.”
Sidney Bartlett had opened a walnut cabinet, was pouring bourbon into monogrammed glasses. The quiet label on the bottle said it was eight years old; ads I had read had said it was the most expensive bonded bourbon on the market.
If you make a hundred dollars apiece on five thousand houses you have made a half million dollars. And Naranjo Vista was not the only town he had built.
I said: “You sent me a bottle of that whisky for Christmas.”
He nodded. “I wanted to give you something much more expensive, but the chief said no.”
“The old Army rule,” I said. “Don’t accept any gifts you can’t use up in a week.”
He handed me my drink, sat down in the swivel chair behind the walnut desk. The little dog raised one eyelid at him, and then went back to sleep. Sidney Bartlett didn’t bother with a toast, which pleased me. He said: “That’s right, you’re an old Army man. On pension, aren’t you?”
“Half pay,” I said. “Twenty years active duty; from seventeen to thirty-seven.”
“Your whole life.” He gave that shrug again. “And then you change Army OD for police blue. I can see why you’re uniform conscious.”
“I wish we’d never gotten on the subject of uniforms,” I said. “But as long as we did, I’ve worn one since I can remember. It was an orphanage uniform before I got old enough to enlist.”
He took a deep drag on his highball, exhaled.
He muttered something but not loud enough for me to be sure what it was. Whatever it was, he sounded said enough. He snapped his fingers, and the little terrier woke up, looked around, and then came and jumped in my lap. “Getting old,” Bartlett said. “He gets confused. I call him to be petted, and he goes to you. In another fifteen or twenty years, maybe you’ll sympathize with him. . . . I’m pretty old myself.”
I let him make what he wanted to out of watching me work on my drink.
He said: “We might as well start. In the first place, I’ve cleared this with your chief. I don’t mean I’ve told him what I want you to do; just that I want your services for two weeks, on a personal matter. He said it was fine with him, but that he couldn’t guarantee you’d do it; that you were your own man.” He stopped, hauled an old-fashioned gold watch out of the top of his pants, looked at it. I ran my fingers through the little dog’s hair, and waited. I am very good at waiting.
“I’ve got two other men coming to talk with us.” Mr. Bartlett said. “My lawyer and the family doctor. . . . There’s nothing illegal about this, not at all. Nor dangerous to you. And the job pays a thousand dollars, and shouldn’t take you the full two weeks. I don’t see what would keep you from accepting it.”
It was time for me to talk. I said: “You haven’t told me what it is you want me to do,” and sat tense, waiting to hear. A thousand dollars is a lot of money, to me, at least.
But instead of just laying the job out, he had to do some more bush-beating. “I liked what you did last year, Lieutenant Bastian. I don’t mean that you kept my house from being robbed; naturally I liked that. But that you took the burglar without hurting him. You’d have been within you’re rights if you’d shot him to death.”
“We aren’t trained that way in the MP’s.”
“I suppose not. Your drink holding out all right? I see that it is. . . This is very hard, Lieutenant.”
Now he had run down completely, slumped into his chair, staring at his half-drunk drink. I said: “My first name’s Andrew, Mr Bartlett.”
“Andy,” he said. “I’m almost old enough to be your father.”
“Not unless ~~your~~ father was a maharajah,” I said. But he didn’t smile; instead he gulped the rest of the drink and went back to staring at the empty glass. I got up and took it away from him, and made him another highball.
He said: “Thanks. I –” he shook his head, and I could have sworn he was about to cry. But he drank instead, and seemed to get courage.
“Yesterday,” he said. “Yesterday, my son . . . All you have to do for me, Andy, is take my son for a ride.” He thought how that sounded, and rephrased. “For a drive. Drive East on Highway 66. A thousand miles, give or take a hundred. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Fifty dollars and a little expense money. Gas, meals, a couple of motel rooms. Two days each way. . . I’ve got a fairly good car.”
“Take mine,” he said, absently. “There isn’t anybody doesn’t enjoy driving a Cadillac convertible that’s almost new.” He looked at me, he tried to smile at me, and I sat as still as I know how, waiting for the gimmick, the hook. This was not just a way of trying to pay me back for catching a burglar for him. That had been part of my job as night lieutenant of his police force.
Because he paid us, the police department were employees of his. The sheriff had to approve of each of us, but the Bartlett Construction Company paid u
He said: “I told you, my doctor, my lawyer will be here any moment. Which should assure you that there’s nothing illegal about to happen, to be mentioned. . . . So – it’s not hard to read your mind, because it’s what I’d be thinking – what am I about to pay you for?”
Back when I was still a sergeant in the Army, we had a company commander who rated his MP’s on how good they were at shooting rabbits. In your spare time, you had to take a .22 out in the woods, and pot at bunnies. That was how I got to go to OCS: shooting rabbits. I didn’t like rabbit meat, and I got no strange thrill out of watching long-eared death throes, but I learned, move at the wrong time, and your bunny gets away.
This rabbit was worth a thousand dollars. I sat still.
“You don’t help me much,” Mr. Bartlett said. He turned the glass in his fingers. “All right. I’m paying you for keeping your mouth shut. Before you go, and when you come back. I don’t want your chief to know about this, or any of the other police officers, or your wife, if you ever marry.”
The time had come to talk, a little. “Mr. Bartlett, I’m not about to marry. But so far as the chief goes – he’s a smart cookie, sir. A sharp policeman. There isn’t much in this town that happens that he doesn’t know about sooner or later. If he finds out about this, whatever it is, I don’t want you blaming me.”
He nodded, stood up. His glass was empty; he took a couple of steps towards the liquor cabinet, then stopped, shook his head decisively, and set the glass down on his desk, hard. “There’s no answer in a bottle,” he said. “Help yourself if you want to. . . . No? . . . I’ll take my chances on you, Andy. I mean on not talking. I –” Then, suddenly, he laughed. “Cops. Pride yourselves on being in the know, don’t you? Something you and your chief don’t know. My son’s crazy,” he said. “I want you to drive him to an insane asylum.”
There was enough shock in the words to make me forget my careful self. “People don’t talk that way. Not any more. Your son has a bad neurosis. I’m to take him to a, sanitarium for treatment.”
Then, for a moment, we weren’t a man who wanted a thousand dollars, and another man who wanted to buy secrecy for a shameful secret. We were just two guys, and he said: “What do you mean, not any more?” and I said: “Not up here with the big money and the wide streets. That’s talk from back in the orphanage and the GI barracks.”
One of us probably got control back before the other. I sat back in my chair, and he went around behind the desk and was the executive in the swivel seat, tilting his fingertips together. His voice could have been asking me to bid on wiring a hundred houses, or supplying sand for the cement mixers on a job. “If he tries to get away from you – you’re the officer who took that burglar without – without violence. Take him back the same way.”
I was full of questions, like, is the boy curable? Like, do we have to tell him where he’s going? Like – I wasn’t to get a thousand dollars for asking what wasn’t my business. I said: “I’m a police officer, not a doctor. If he has an attack, or whatever, on the way, what do I do?”
“A young lady goes with you,” Mr. Bartlett said. “A graduate student in psychology from the University.”
Faintly, a bell tinkled. “The front door,” Mr. Bartlett said. “The doctor or the lawyer. You’ll want to talk to them?”
“If they want to,” I said. “I’d rather meet the boy.”
Chapter Two
Mr Bartlett and a man he said was Dr. Martin stood near the front door and watched while I rapped on the handsome limed oak they said led to the boy’s apartment, his wing of the big new house. Ralph, they said the boy’s name was, Ralphie.
A key worked on the other side of the door, it opened, a girl stood there. A young lady. Tall, about five seven or eight, thin. Too thin, really; she could have covered it up with fluffed hair and a frilly blouse, but she hadn’t bothered.
“I’m Andy Bastian,” I said. “I’m going to drive Ralph to Kansas.”
The eyes were grey, with just a touch of blue. They closed, and then opened again, saying yes, she knew. “Come on in. Ralph’s reading. I’m Olga Beaumont.”
“And how is Fletcher these days?”
She failed to be impressed. “Dead, I presume, since Beaumont and Fletcher were contemporaries of William Shakespeare.”
I said: “Ouch. I was just trying to prove I’d read a book.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t like policemen. I don’t mean I dislike you, I don’t know you. But I dislike the idea of the police. I think there must be a weakness in any man who takes up law enforcement for a life’s work.”
My head was shaking, all by itself. I had always heard that screwtighteners and people who work in loony-zoos get a little whacky themselves. Now it seemed to be proving out. I thought of rapping her sane with a brisk line of police talk, starting with “Sister –” and then let it go. “I came here to talk to Ralph.”
“He’s reading. He doesn’t like to be interrupted.”
“Does he get violent?”
The grey eyes stared at me. Then the blue in them was more apparent. “No. Not really. Whatever you’ve heard. He’s disturbed, there’s no doubt about it, but –” She stopped. “Anyway, you’re a big, strong man, and he’s a little boy. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Don’t carry your cop hating far enough to make your back ache. I’m leaving my badge here.”
She sighed, and walked ahead of me down a short hall. There were two places on the wall, rectangles that showed lighter than the rest of the paint; pictures had hung there recently. Without knocking, she opened a door.
Ralph was a little boy, she’d said, but the legs that sprawled around the heavy white leather chair were longer than mine; he’d be taller than I when he stood up, but he’d weigh fifty pounds less, and I am not a fat man.
His hair was mussed, and getting no better from the beating he was giving it with his right hand. The left was helping his knee hold up a heavy, red cloth book. First the left knee would push the book up towards his glasses, then the right. He was an expert squirmer.
Miss Beaumont said his name; she got less response than I’d earned with my crack about Beaumont and Fletcher. She cleared her throat, and said: “Lieutenant Bastian’s going to drive us to Kansas.”
This did it. The bony fingers tore out a small lock of hair, put it in the book for a place mark, and closed the book carefully. Light coloured eyes blinked, refocussing themselves, and Ralph said: “What kind of a lieutenant?”
I looked around the room; up till now I’d been concentrating on him. One side of it was book-lined, like his father’s study though with harder-used books. Then there was the big leather chair – again, like his father’s but white instead of tan – and that was it. There wasn’t even a carpet on the hardwood floor.
Miss Beaumont made some kind of a noise in her throat and went away.
Ralph said: “I tore up all the furniture yesterday, but you can sit here if you want.” He showed as much regret as a soda jerk announcing he’d sold all the raspberry ice.
“No, thanks. A policeman gets used to leaning on walls.”
Ralph slung his improbable legs over the arm of the chair. “Oh, you’re that kind of lieutenant. Tell me, are you experimental, or intuitive?”
The noise I made was no more intelligible than Miss Beaumont’s had been.
Ralph laughed. “What I mean, is this. Say you are given a crime to solve; there are two ways of going about it. The empiric, or trial and error approach would be to accuse everyone possible of the crime, one at a time; and thus to find the suspect the circumstances fit, and convict her, or him. The intuitive, or abstract inference way would be to sit perfectly still, thinking, until you have eliminated all but one suspect.”
I scratched my shoulders against the wall and shoved my hands deep in my pants pockets. One of the windows was starred, no doubt from Ralph’s furniture destruction. I said: “Well, we use a combination of both. Of course, a man likes to use his brain. But the taxpayers expect him to use his feet.”
Ralph nodded. He groped around in the inside pocket of his rumpled coat, and got out a silver pencil and a little leather notebook and made a note of my deathless words. “In this town, my father’s the only taxpayer.”
