Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

The crowd began to disperse, perhaps to avoid association with these sentiments.

Granada raised his voice. “You people from the neighborhood, come into the store, please, all of you. Mr. Broadman has been assaulted, maybe robbed. Any information you can give us will be appreciated.”

Reluctantly, in twos and threes, the people who had gathered moved into the front of the store. There were nearly twenty of them, the desk clerk from the hotel next door, the tamale man and several other Spanish-Americans, women in shabby dresses with frightened eyes, a pensioner leaning on a cane, and the dark Cassandra in the shawl.

They took up awkward positions on Broadman’s collection of old furniture. Granada asked them questions while Wills prowled the store. I sat on a worn leather hassock to one side and listened to the answers, hoping for something that would help my client.

Nothing helpful was said. The inhabitants of Pelly Street seemed to lose their power of speech in the presence of the law. When Granada asked the woman in the shawl what she’d meant by her remark, she said she had heard at fourth or fifth hand that Broadman lent money at twenty per cent per week. He had a lot of enemies, but nobody that she knew.

The old man with the cane acted as if he might know something more: nobody could be as deaf and senile as he pretended to be. But he wasn’t telling. I made a note of his name: it was Jerry Winkler, and he said he lived in the hotel next door.

Granada saved Manuel for the last, and bore down hard on him. But the blood spots on his apron were easily explained. He had found Broadman half-conscious on the floor and helped him onto the couch. Then he phoned the police. Otherwise he had done nothing, seen nothing, heard nothing.

“Didn’t Broadman say anything to you?”

“He said they tried to rob him.”

“Who tried to rob him?”

“He didn’t say. He said that he was going to fix them himself. He didn’t want me to call the-call you, even.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

Granada dismissed him with an angry gesture, then called him back from the door.

“You want something else, Mr. Granada?”

Granada said with a flashing grin which the rest of his heavy face failed to support: “I just wanted to be remembered to your brother.”

“Gus remembers you already. My sister-in-law Secundina is reminding him all the time.”

Without obvious alteration, Granada’s grin become a scowl. “That’s nice. Where is Gus right now?”

“Gone fishing. I gave him the day off.”

“He’s working for you now, eh?”

“You know that, Mr. Granada.”

“But he used to work for Broadman, isn’t that right?”

“You know that, too. He quit. I needed help.”

“That’s not the way I heard it. I heard Broadman fired him the other day.”

“People say a lot of things that are not true, Mr. Granada.” Manuel put ironic emphasis on the “Mister.”

“Just don’t you be one of them. And tell Gus I want to see him when he comes back from fishing.”

Manuel went out balancing his heavy hat.

“Pelly Street,” Granada said to himself. He stood up and said briskly to me: “This could be a grudge case, Mr. Gunnarson. Twenty per cent a week is pretty good motivation for somebody that hasn’t got it. I’ve heard before now that Broadman grinds the faces. He’s probably one of these unknown millionaires. You know, like the bums they vag with bankbooks sewn into their rags.”

“I wish somebody would sew a nice fat bankbook into one of my suits.”

“I thought all lawyers were wealthy.”

We walked toward the rear of the store where Wills had disappeared. A rectangular area had been partitioned off and fenced and roofed with steel netting. The reinforced wire door was standing open, with its heavy padlock gaping, and we went into Broadman’s unusual office.

An old-fashioned black iron safe squatted in one corner of the wire enclosure. An unmade cot, pillow end against the safe, was partly hidden by a huge old desk. A telephone with the receiver off lay on the desk among a drift of papers. Reaching to replace the receiver, I almost fell through a hole in the floor. Granada grasped my arm with fingers like steel hooks. “Watch it, Mr. Gunnarson.”

I stepped back from an open trap door through which a flight of wooden steps descended into watery yellow gloom. Granada put the telephone together. It rang immediately. Wills came up the steps three at a time and lifted the receiver out of Granada’s hand. “I’ll take it, Pike.”

Wills’s face was streaked with sweat. It grew pale as he listened to what was said, throwing the grimy streaks into relief.

“Too bad. You better send over the identification squad. Got that?” Wills hung up and said to Granada: “Broadman died.”

“Did those blows on the head kill him?”

“We’ll go on that assumption unless the autopsy shows different. All we know for certain right now, he was D.O.A. See what you can turn up in the basement, Pike. There’s a lot of old rugs and mattresses down there, looks like somebody’s been heaving them around. I didn’t find anything significant, but maybe you’ll have better luck.”

“What am I looking for?”

“A blunt instrument, with blood on it.” As Granada went down the steps, Wills turned to me. “I’m glad you stuck around, Counselor, I want to talk to you. This changes things for your client.”

“For better or worse?”

“That’s largely up to her, wouldn’t you say? And up to you. She’s been in jail the past twenty-four hours, which makes her the one member of the gang who has clean hands, as far as this killing is concerned. There’s no sensible reason why she shouldn’t talk to us, and maybe save herself a long trip.”

“How could she know anything about this murder?”

“I don’t claim she knows anything about it specifically. But she must be able to identify the other members of the gang. If she comes clean-” Wills raised his hands in a gesture which didn’t go with his personality: the freeing of an imaginary bird. “Understand me, I’m not suggesting a deal. But where would we be if the people of the world didn’t co-operate?”

Just where we were, I thought, because they didn’t. Still, I was impressed by Wills’s attempt to talk my language.

“You blame this murder on the burglary gang?”

He nodded. “We’ve suspected for some time that Broadman was fencing for them-acting as one of their outlets, anyway. We got our first tangible evidence last week. An ormolu clock turned up in one of the L.A. auction rooms. A member of their robbery detail happened to spot it because it was unique, and checked with our circular. The clock was taken in the Hampshire burglary, out in the Foothill district, and it was part of a shipment from Broadman’s store.

“Broadman had a story ready, of course. He bought the ormolu clock from a little old lady in reduced circumstances that he’d never seen before. How did he know it was stolen? He had our pawn-shop list, sure, but his eyes were bad. If he spent all his time reading police lists, what would happen to business?”

Wills leaned on the desk and looked out thoughtfully through the wire netting. The jumbled contents of the store were evidence piled on evidence that you couldn’t take it with you.

“Broadman would have been better off in jail,” he said, “but the clock wasn’t enough to arrest him for. We couldn’t prove he had guilty knowledge. He knew we were on to him, though. And he wanted out. When Ella Barker sold him that hot diamond yesterday, he was on the phone practically before she was out of the store.”

“You think he knew that diamond ring was stolen?”

“I’m sure of it. He also knew who she was.”