Sleep with Slander Page 11

  Gibbings was looking around in fury, and if there’d been something handy Sader knew he would have thrown it.

  Sader rose from the chair. “I’m going to keep on working—for Kit Gibbings. Being the kind of woman she is, she’d want a thorough check made on Mrs. Champlain’s little boy. When I’m finished I’ll send the bill to your office.”

  Gibbings sprang from his own chair with an effect of being catapulted and careened toward Sader with a fist upraised. Sader hated to hit him. It was like knocking a dried twig off a rotten tree, but he struck down the arm and then pushed Gibbings bodily back into the chair. The old man sat there staring at the arm Sader had hit as if it might be broken. Sader bent over him, yanked at the claw-shaped hand. The skin was dry and cold but all of the finger moved like knives.

  “You’re okay.”

  “Get out!”

  “Just going anyway.”

  The ancient maid was lurking under the stairs. She hurried after Sader, and outside on the brick step he heard the lock turn behind him. No flies on Irene. He had no doubt she’d heard every word.

  He looked back at Tiffany Square from the big iron gateway. Against the dying light the chimneys were tall and black, the gables and turrets had the look of medieval grandeur. He waited for a couple of bats to sail out into the twilight and complete the sorcery, but nothing happened. Nothing ever would happen in Tiffany Square, on the surface. It and the people in it would be here unchanged fifty years from now, unless somebody planned a freeway through it and sent the bulldozers.

  Sader stopped at a drive-in eatery on the way back to Long Beach, and sitting under the neon in his car he searched through what he had done, trying to find a thread in it that would lead him on. The murder of Wanda Nevins cast a light on things, a light he didn’t like. Tina Champlain had found one child through the Nevins woman. It seemed logical she may have found the second, also. Had she paid forty thousand dollars for him? It didn’t sound likely.

  There had been something wrong about Mrs. Champlain’s taking the little boy. She had hidden herself and him away. Wanda Nevins must have known a lot about it, and she hadn’t told Sader because Sader hadn’t asked the right questions nor offered the proper sums of cash. And now Wanda was dead, and he knew the kind of questions to ask—too late.

  He looked at the food on his tray, finding it tasteless. Not because of Wanda. She had been a cool and clever woman who had used her wits to buy luxury and leisure, and her bargaining had brought her where she was now, on a coroner’s slab. The thing that turned Sader’s taste for food was still the thought of the child, the one who was whipped and who didn’t get enough to eat.

  When the car-hop had taken the tray Sader turned into the traffic. At the next intersection he swung west, toward Wilmington. It was a good time to see what the Perrines were doing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE BROKEN fence made a pale crosshatch against the dark. Sader eased in through the gate, went up the uneven walk to the porch, stood there in darkness and silence for a couple of minutes. Then he went around the house to the rear, avoiding the clutter in the yard. There was a lot of reflected light from the sky, and he could see the boat hulls on their chocks, and could smell the paint. At the rear door he tried the knob, and the door opened.

  He went in. There was a strong odor of spilled wine in the kitchen, a concentration of almost etherlike strength. Sader had brought a pencil-sized flashlight, used it now to examine the room. At first the mess seemed only a little more disorganized, the beer cans shoved off onto the floor and a chair smashed, and then Sader saw where the wine had smashed, and decided that the two men had had a fight. Then a prickle of warning brushed him, and he clicked off the light and listened.

  There had been some kind of noise from upstairs, too vague to be identified. Sader used the light to guide himself through the hall and up the stairs to the point where they turned, the spot where Brent Perrine had stood to reread the letter and to change his mind about showing it to Sader. He paused here again and heard the noise, a heavy breathless grunt. He went the rest of the way with caution. In the dark of the upper hall he waited, locating the sound of labored breathing.

  He found old man Perrine with the light, and when he saw what had happened to him, Sader switched on the bedroom lamp.

  Ralph Perrine lay across a patchwork quilt. It and a bare pillow and Perrine himself were the only things on the bare mattress. Sader thought to himself that Perrine must have been sick and the bed stripped because of it.

  Perrine was stretched on his back, dressed only in a pair of shorts and his socks. His eyes gleamed up at Sader, but the expression was glazed and disoriented. The skin over the right temple was shiny and purple, bulging over a lump, and Sader could see where blood had run from his puffed lips. There were bruises on his body, several big ones along his ribs, as if he might have been kicked when he had fallen. In contrast to his tanned, seamed face and leathery arms and hands, the flesh of his body was white and doughlike.

  Sader went out into the hall and located the bathroom. Some towels hung on a rack, several wadded and soiled ones and a couple by themselves that were neat and fresh. Sader thought, those clean ones belong to his son. He yanked a clean towel off the rack and ran cold water over one end of it, wrung it out, went back to the old man. He bent over Ralph Perrine and bathed the swollen face. The old man drew a couple of deep, shuddering breaths and a look of recognition came into his eyes.

  “Somebody gave you a rough time. How long have you been lying here?”

  Ralph’s head turned, and he seemed to examine the room beyond Sader. Then he shut his eyes. “I need a drink. God’s sake, get me one.”

  “Where do you keep the bottle?”

  “Under the . . . No, he broke that. Wait a minute. In the closet, an old Army duffel bag—” He tried to lift himself on an elbow, and a look of astonished pain flattened his mouth and drew back the corners of his eyes.

  “Don’t try to sit up.” Sader went to the closet, found the duffel bag on a hook. Inside, wrapped in a pair of old khaki pants, was a quart of muscatel. He brought it to the bed, broke the seal and unscrewed the cap, held it out to Ralph Perrine. The old man got himself up on an elbow. In spite of Sader’s help, he trembled so that he could hardly drink. Some of the wine spilled. Sader looked around for a window.

  When he had the window up he came back to the bed. Perrine held the bottle upright, shaking his head over it. He was making an obvious effort to keep the drink down. Sader handed him the damp end of the towel, and Perrine mopped his face gratefully. Sader sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Who worked you over?”

  “It wasn’t nothing. Just, me and Brent had a little argument.”

  “He played rough.”

  “I learned him to. Never wanted no pantywaist kid. This town, this part of it, a kid has to look after hisself. I learned him to use his fists and to ask questions afterward.”

  “How long since he left the house tonight?”

  Perrine squinted at a clock on the bureau. The clock had run down, no longer ticked. “How would I know? I’ve been asleep.”

  “He helped you get to bed?”

  Ralph Perrine tried to grin, but the grin went lopsided because of the lumps and bruises on his face. “Sure.”

  “When I left here yesterday it sounded as if a chair hit the wall in the kitchen. Was that when the fight started?”

  “Well, I guess so.” Perrine’s wits were fuzzy; he was trying to keep a guard up against Sader’s questions, and Sader could see the effort it took. “When I tried to iodine him, it kind of made him mad.”

  “I sort of got the idea he thought you were the one who took a shot at him.”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” Perrine chuckled, pretending Sader had made a joke. “Now where’d you get a goofy idea like that?”

  “It seemed to me that the direction the bullet came from was the house.”

  “Oh? Funny.” He was stalling. He took another swig of wine and
sweat stood out on the purple swellings. “Say, not to, uh, change the subject, or anything, but how’re you coming along, finding Tina’s kid?”

  “I haven’t found him. I know a little more about him. He wasn’t the first baby she had adopted. Did you know it?”

  The results of the beating Perrine had taken made an effective mask, hiding any sign of surprise. “I didn’t know it. Well, I didn’t pay much attention to the little kid. Brent and her used to talk about him, whether Brent might adopt him after they were married.”

  “Did Brent ever act jealous over the little boy?”

  “Hee, hee, hee.”

  “No, I mean it. I’m asking a serious question. It wouldn’t be the first time a man has resented a kid being around when he wanted to make love to the mother.”

  Suddenly Perrine seemed quite indignant. “Of course he wasn’t jealous. What was there to be jealous about? He was a nice quiet little kid, what I saw of him. He was no trouble to nobody.”

  “Tell me this. Did she ever say anything about Ricky’s real parents?”

  Perrine squinted with elaborate thoughtfulness at the light. “I don’t believe she did.”

  “Did she ever talk about how she happened to find him, why she adopted him?”

  “All she ever said to me was, ‘He belongs here with me,’ I remember that. It was once when Brent asked her if she’d thought about putting the boy in military school.”

  “He was kind of young for plans like that.”

  “Oh, Brent was just passing time, you might say.”

  “Where do you think the boy is now?”

  Something cunning and yet confused glimmered in the old man’s eyes, an evil knowledge not yet complete. “Hell, I guess her folks must have him. It seems likely.” In that moment Sader almost hit him.

  It took a moment of iron self-control. Sader turned deliberately so that he wouldn’t have to look at the old man. He stood up and walked to the window, and as he stood there he caught the sound of a motor below, and then the beam of headlights cut across the yard. Brent was home.

  Sader sat down again on the edge of the bed.

  The old man took another swallow of wine. He’d put away over a third of the bottle, and Sader thought that his breathing seemed heavier, that he was flushed. Suddenly Ralph Perrine lifted his head higher. “You know what? You know something about that little kid, that Ricky? He sure as hell looked like her a lot. Yessir.”

  Sader tried to figure out what could account for the switch. The old man seemed genuinely amused, his attitude was that of discussing an odd fact which had no bearing on anything important.

  “He looked like Mrs. Champlain?” Sader said.

  “I was surprised as hell when Brent told me he was adopted.”

  The back door slammed and there were footsteps downstairs. Sader watched the bedroom door.

  “I thought, maybe she got him from a relative, maybe some girl in her own family got into trouble, and that would account for the resemblance.” The old man nodded and grimaced over the wine.

  “It’s an idea.” Sader was wondering if there might be some truth in it. Wouldn’t something like this account for the aunt’s rejection of the little boy?

  There were footsteps in the hall below. They paused for a few moments, and Sader wondered if Brent had heard his father’s voice and realized that someone must be up here with him. But when the steps resumed they were unhurried; they came up the stairs deliberately, casually, and then Brent was at the door looking in, lighted by the light from the lamp.

  He wore a gray silk sport shirt and the usual denim pants, and filled both with the muscular tautness Sader remembered, and Sader thought again how much Brent personified the strong-man ads in the magazines of his youth, and how Brent even wore the strong man’s expression of looking out over other people’s heads as if seeking a proper opponent.

  Brent said, “I’ll be damned. I sure didn’t think you’d be around again. I thought you’d be running.”

  “From what?”

  “The cops. Don’t you scare easy?”

  “Not very. Why should I be running from cops?”

  “Because Wanda Nevins was found murdered and you were seen down there about the time she must have died.”

  Sader got up and moved to where he could see Brent a little better in the lamplight. “Who identified me?”

  “I don’t know.” Brent came to the doorsill and examined his father on the bed. Old man Perrine had lain down flat, the wine bottle concealed under a fold of the quilt. He was pretending to be asleep. “The county cops called me and I drove down to Santa Ana and talked with a lieutenant there. He seemed to know all about old man Gibbings and you, and what you wanted from Wanda . . . the whereabouts of Tina’s boy.”

  “Somebody put in a damned quick word,” Sader commented. “What strikes me is that the cops must know I have an office with a phone in it, and if they want me, why haven’t they called?”

  Brent shrugged, went to the end of the bed and bent there staring at his father. “Hey! He must have fallen down the stairs.”

  “He said you and he had a little argument.”

  “He’s a liar,” Brent responded, either in quick anger or an excellent imitation of it. “When I left him here this morning he was passed out on the bed, fit as a fiddle.”

  “Maybe his bruises just hadn’t had time to swell,” Sader suggested. He noted that Brent’s hands on the metal bed frame had no marks on them, no scars on the knuckles, and he didn’t see how the son could have beaten the old man—barehanded, anyway—without having a few marks to show for it.

  “I wouldn’t do that to him. Hell, he’s my old man,” Brent said, giving Sader a hard glance.

  “About Wanda Nevins—Did she ever talk to you about her source of income, how she made her living, what she worked at?”

  Brent hesitated, then answered, “I told you before . . . remember? I told you I’d only met her a couple of times, and all I know about her was what Tina told me. She’d been in a jam, some kind of juvenile delinquency rap, and Tina had helped her out. They stayed friends.”

  “Do you think Tina Champlain ever gave her any money?”

  Brent moved away from the end of the bed. He took out a pack of cigarettes, matches, lighted a cigarette and put the pack back in his pants’ pocket. “Hell, no. Wanda had money. You could see it in her clothes, the way she acted and the way she took care of herself. Her car. Those damned dogs. They’re purebred, they cost her plenty. She never needed anything of Tina’s.”

  “Wait a minute. You said she came here asking about Tina’s will, thinking Mrs. Champlain might have left her something.”

  “I said she never needed money. Not that she wouldn’t take it. My God, if Tina had left a will and left her anything, she’d have snapped it up like a shark.” Brent blew smoke out into the air above the prone figure of the old man. Sader had the feeling that behind the swollen lids, old man Perrine was watching his son. “What are you doing here tonight? Hiding out?”

  It was a silly question. The Perrines were no friends of his and Brent knew that Sader knew it. “I’m here on the same business as before. Looking for the kid. I know he wasn’t the first one Mrs. Champlain had adopted. It took a while to find that out.”

  Brent went on smoking.

  Sader said, “Surely she had told you about the other baby.”

  “I just figured it wasn’t any of your damned business,” Brent replied.

  “The aunt told me that Tina Champlain didn’t have any right to the little boy.”

  “She always had a lot of trouble from that aunt,” Brent said. “And then maybe all the relatives were sore because there wasn’t any money, the kid inherited what they thought they’d get.”

  “How do you know he inherited it?” Sader demanded. “I can’t even find a trace of him.”

  “Well, of course, he must have inherited it,” Brent said, his stare growing antagonistic.

  “Not if he wasn’t legally adopted. No
t if Tina Champlain had simply taken him in to replace the child that had died.”

  Brent made an angry, dismissing gesture with the hand holding the cigarette. “Look, I don’t know anything about it. And right now I want to get to work on my old man. He ought to have some liniment on those bumps. Someday he’s going to break his neck, trying to get downstairs to the wine when he’s already had too much.” Brent moved over to bend above the old man. “Just look at him. An old soak. Dirty. The bed filthy. I can’t keep the house in any order at all, he’s always reeling through in his stinking clothes, falling over everything.”

  Sader decided that Brent was explaining the disorder of the kitchen, in case he had seen it.

  “He was pretty positive that you and he had had a fight.”

  “D.t.’s . . . he imagines all kinds of things,” Brent said angrily. He put a big hand on the old man’s shoulder and shook hard, and the old man’s good eye came open in a malevolent glare.

  Sader went out of the room and down the stairs. He was tired of watching the play-acting, or whatever it was, that went on between the Perrines. He wondered in passing if Tina Champlain had ever come here, and what she had thought of the house. For some reason, it seemed to Sader that Brent Perrine was putting up with the mess in the manner one puts up with a temporary discomfort.

  It didn’t help him in what he had to do, to find Tina Champlain’s orphan.

  He drove back to Long Beach, parked, went upstairs to his office. He was fitting a key to the lock when he felt the approach of someone behind him in the dimly lighted hall. He looked back. The face and big frame was familiar. “Hello, Jackson.”

  “Got a minute, Sader?”

  “Hell, I’ve got all night.”