A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

Calhoun and I went into Unit 7.

The bed hadn’t been made. I put a couple of pillows behind my back and sat on the bed, giving Calhoun the only comfortable chair in the place.

“Well?” I said.

“Well, what?”

“Some more talk,” I told him.

He shook his head. He was worried. “Lam,” he said, “I can’t afford to have my name mixed up in this thing. Good Lord, if there’s any publicity and my wife should get hold of it — that lawyer of hers is a vulture. He picks the last shred of meat off the smallest bone he can find. This little escapade alone could cost me a... well, plenty.”

I said, “You don’t need to talk to anyone except me.”

“If I don’t talk, they’ll throw newspaper publicity all over me.”

“If you do talk, what’ll they do?” I asked.

He didn’t like the answer to that one either.

We sat for a couple of minutes in silence. I was thinking and Calhoun was worrying.

The door pushed open and Sellers came in.

“Well?” he asked.

I tried to look innocent.

“Start talking,” Sellers said.

“‘What happened to your friend?” I asked.

“He’s a deputy sheriff,” Sellers said. “He’s been call away on business.” He looked at me, grinned, and said “Important business. Maybe you know what it is.”

I shook my head.

“Talk,” Sellers said.

I said, “Calhoun and I are going on a fishing trip do to San Felipe when you get done bullying us around. I did a little job for him and he was very grateful. He offered to meet me here this morning and we’d go do to San Felipe together and try to catch some fish. He’s giving the party.”

“And what was the little job you did for your friend here?” Sellers asked.

I said, “Calhoun is planning an expose on drug traffic from Mexico. Colburn Hale has some material he wanted to get. Hale left overnight. My client wanted to find him.”

“And what brought you down here?” Sellers asked. “Go ahead, Pint Size, better think fast because you have time to think up a really good one and I’m going to trap you on any lies you tell. When that happens you and Bertha are going to be in serious trouble.

“We’re investigating a crime. You know what happens to people who give false information to officers who investigating a crime.”

“What sort of a crime?” I asked.

“Murder one,” Sellers said.

I came bolt upright on the bed. “Murder what?”

“Murder one, you heard me.”

“Who’s the victim? Is it Hale?”

“Nope,” Sellers said, “it’s a chap by the name of Ed Sutton. The name mean anything to you, Pint Size?”

I shook my head. “Not a thing.”

“Sutton,” Sellers said, “is part of a smuggling ring. They’re pretty slick.

“We hadn’t found out just how they worked until morning. Sutton posed as an enthusiastic yachtsman. He had a little houseboat on pontoons that he’d trail back and forth from San Felipe, sometimes down as far south as Puertecitos.

“Last night Sutton came back from San Felipe and checked through the border here a little after nine forty-five — perhaps as late as ten-fifteen — that’s as nearly as we can place it. He got through the border without any trouble. He got out to the outskirts of Calexico here and pulled off to the side of the road.

“We think a scout car was waiting to join him. That scout car was to go ahead and make sure the coast was clear. It would have had a Citizen’s Band radio.

“Last night there was a roadblock traffic check just this side of Brawley. The way we figure it, the scout car radioed back to Sutton.

“Sutton decided to hole up. He went back into the houseboat.

“He never came out.”

“Why?” I asked.

“On account of a bullet through the heart,” Sellers said. “We think it’s probably a thirty-eight caliber.”

“When was his body found?”

“About seven o’clock this morning.”

“How long had he been dead?”

Sellers shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe three hours, maybe seven hours.”

“Why tell us all this?” I asked.

“Because,” Sellers said, “I think that perhaps you can help us, and, in case you can’t, we’ll give you the facts so that you’ll know we’re investigating a murder case. Then if you do uncover anything you’ll know the consequences of withholding the information.”

Sellers pulled a cigar from his pocket, ripped off the end with his teeth, shoved the cigar in his mouth, but didn’t light it. He stood there looking at us with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

“Now then,” he said, “you two are going to take a little ride with me.”

“Official?” I asked.

“We can make it official.”

I got up off the bed and said to Calhoun, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Calhoun asked.

“Down to the police parking lot,” Sellers said.

“What for?”

“I want you to take a look at the scene crime.”

I said, “I may be able to help you, Sergeant.”

Sellers pulled the cigar out of his mouth, inspected the wet place and grinned. “I thought perhaps you’d break loose with a little information.”

“It’s not the kind you think,” I said. “It has nothing do with my reason for being here.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, tell me,” Sellers said, putting the cigar back in the right-hand side of his mouth and twisting it over the left side by rolling it with his tongue.

I said, “I was coming across the border last night foot and I saw this outfit coming through, at least it’s outfit that matches the description you gave me — a small houseboat on pontoons being carried on a trailer.”

“What time?” Sellers asked.

“I can’t give it to you any better than you have it already. It was somewhere, I would say, between nine forty-five and ten-fifteen. When I last saw it, it was about ten o’clock.”

“Anything else?” Sellers asked.

I said, “The man who was driving the pickup had parked the outfit someplace within easy walking distance of the Monte Carlo Café, went into the café and looked around to see if he could find somebody who was going meet him there.”

“The devil!” Sellers said.

I nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I was in the café.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” I said. “The guy wasn’t alone.”

“You mean someone was with him when he came in the café?”

“No, someone was in the pickup with him when he crossed the border.”

Sellers’ eyes narrowed. He bit several times on the end of the cigar, chewing it gently while he digested that bit of information.

“Description,” he said.

“I can’t give it to you.”

“Why not?”

“It was dark. I was walking across the border. This pickup was in the line that was waiting to go across. I got a good look at the driver, but the man with him was on the side of the car away from me and was in the deeper shadows.”

“Any idea how tall, how old, how heavy?”

“I’d say he was probably somewhere in his thirties, but that’s just making a blind stab at it from the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head. I don’t know how tall he’d have been if he’d been standing up, but when he was sitting he was about average height.”

“Come on,” Sellers said. “I’m going to show you jokers something.”

We followed him out to a police car. He took us to a parking lot by the police station.

“This the outfit?” Sellers asked, when we got out and faced a pontoon houseboat mounted on a trailer pulled by a Ford pickup.

“That’s the outfit.”

“Well, you can’t go in,” Sellers said. “We’re going through it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for fingerprints and clues, but I want to show you guys something.”