Free Dead Pigeon by William Campbell Gault Page B

friend.”
    “You could have dropped the ‘old.’ I have to be back here at two-thirty. Turhan’s coming then.”
    “For an afternoon quickie?”
    She glared at me. “For our meditation session, you foul-minded jock! Turhan has helped me through some bad times, just as he tried to do for Mike. You can leave now.”
    “I apologize, Crystal. Please?”
    “Okay, okay! Maybe you had a right. I’ll admit I’ve never been the village virgin. I’ll have to change. You can watch a game show on the tube. That should fit your mentality.”
    “I love ’em,” I lied.
    She was wearing a blue silk sheath and blue pumps when she came out again, a welcome change from today’s silly fashions.
    In the car, she said, “Do you remember when you asked me if I lusted for Turhan and I said I did?”
    “Yes.”
    “I lied. He’s gay.”
    “And married—?”
    “His wife’s a lesbian.”
    “Let’s hope his devoted followers never learn that. I’m almost beginning to believe he means what he says, even if I don’t understand it.”
    “It’s kind of complicated. He has this belief that ours can’t possibly be the only planet in the universe. That would be sheer arrogance. There must be thousands of inhabited planets out there somewhere. And a lot of them with a more advanced civilization.”
    “I sure as hell hope so,” I said. “I ain’t too crazy about this one.”
    The sun came out. The food was fine, though not exactly geared to my peasant palate. We talked of other times and old friends, and where were they all today? As some sage has said, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
    I took her home in time for her celestial seance and drove to Denny’s.
    The bar was lined with males, except at the far end where Denny was paying off a female winner.
    She left with a handful of twenties and I took her place at the bar.
    “Did you get a chance to check out Gorman?” he asked.
    I nodded. “He’s clean.”
    “Clean? A drug pusher, clean? What kind of talk is that?”
    “He wasn’t a pusher; only a dealer. And he confined his trade to rich suckers.”
    “That’s better, but still not clean. Anything new on the murder?”
    I shook my head. He set a glass of Einlicher in front of me. I asked, “Did you ever pay off Clauss?”
    “Never! For my puny take? And a lot of my customers are mean and tough and they don’t like crooked cops.”
    He went down to the other end to serve a customer. The place was getting noisy and crowded, I finished my beer and left.
    Gorman had been cleared. So had Carlo Minatti. That left us Clauss as our prime suspect.
    The longest line of connections on my sheet was Gillete, Tucker, Bay, and Nolan. If Clauss was the who, what was the why? Motive, means, and opportunity are the deadly triplicate that a prosecutor requires for a Murder One conviction. What was the motive?
    I’d had almost a week of frustration, leading nowhere. My image of Mike had deteriorated in that time. Peter Scarlatti was probably right; I was a victim of the Sam Spade syndrome. Mike was my Archer. Archer had been Spade’s partner; Mike had been my roomie.
    Denny had not paid off Clauss. But Denny, so far as I knew, did not deal in drugs. Gorman had told me the small dealers were Clauss’s bread and butter. That description would include Mike. It wasn’t likely that he would get the Beverly Hills trade.
    Did he, I wondered, know that Turhan Bay was homosexual? If he did, it would be a motive for blackmail. That, I decided, was taking my image of Mike to a new low. And the possibility of Bay hiring a vicious killer like Clauss was highly unlikely.
    It was possible that if we ever found Clauss, we would have the who. But we wouldn’t have the why. To paraphrase Sherwood Anderson, I wanted to know why. What was Emil’s motive?
    The bullet from a pistol or rifle can be matched to the gun. But not a shotgun. Clauss obviously knew that. It could be the reason the shotgun was his choice.

CHAPTER TEN
    G ORMAN PHONED IN