Bill Pronzini - Beyond the Grave

“Not to my recollection. Constable?”

“No, sir,” Ogilvy said. “But I'll have a look at the theft reports.”

Quincannon sat back in the chiefs chair and patiently smoked his cigar while Vandermeer stood in a stiff military posture and glowered at nothing in particular. It was no more than ten minutes until Constable Ogilvy returned.

“Well, mister?” Vandermeer asked him.

“Nothing, sir. If a gold statue was pilfered here within the past year, the theft weren't reported to us.”

Quincannon sighed. More work for him; and the more difficult his task, the longer it would be before his return to San Francisco. He asked Ogilvy for Oliver Witherspoon's address. The constable gave him two: a boarding house on Arrellaga Street where Witherspoon resided, and a produce warehouse at Gaviota Beach where he was employed on an irregular basis.

“Try the boarding house first, Mr. Boggs,” Ogilvy advised. “Ollie Witherspoon only does honest work when he's forced to, and then you can be sure it ain't as honest as it might be.”

As Quincannon prepared to take his leave, Vandermeer said, “Keep us apprised of your progress, mister. Let us know if there's anything else we can do. We stand four-square behind the government here in Santa Barbara.”

“I'm sure the president will be pleased to hear that.”

“The president? You're personally acquainted with Mr. Cleveland?”

Quincannon had never met Grover Cleveland, nor seen eye to eye with him, for that matter. He said, “Oh yes. Grover is a close friend of mine.”

“Good man,” Vandermeer said suspiciously. “Fine president.”

“Indeed he is.”

“I voted for him, mister. You can believe that.”

Quincannon believed it. He said, “As any right-thinking citizen would.”

“You'll give Mr. Cleveland my regards?”

“The moment I see him.”

Vandermeer smiled-an occurrence no doubt as rare, Quincannon thought, as a drunken burglar displaying his pizzle for public inspection. And little wonder, too. Now he knew why the chief wore a perpetual scowl and spoke through such tight-pursed lips. Vandermeer possessed an enormous set of teeth any horse in the state would have been proud to call his own.

Oliver Witherspoon was not at his boarding house on Arrellaga Street. He was, in fact, his landlady said with some amazement, working at the produce warehouse at Gaviota Beach.

Quincannon produced another sigh. Times must be difficult in the burglary trade, he reflected, though no more difficult than they were-at least for the moment-in the detective trade. He returned to the Arlington Hotel, where he changed into rougher clothing from his warbag; then he set out again. A block away, on Victoria Street, were the hotel's stables. From the hostler he rented a rather spirited claybank saddle horse and obtained directions to Gaviota Beach.

When he arrived there half an hour later, he found himself not on the Pacific shore, as he had expected, but on that of the Santa Barbara Channel; the ocean was some distance away, around the bend of Point Conception. A grouping of warehouses, stock pens, and wharves had been built along the beach, and several small coastal freighters were tied up there. Teamsters and stevedores were busily transferring wool and a variety of produce from the warehouses, and cattle from the stock pens, to the waiting ships; profanity rang as loudly in the salt-tanged air as the bawling of livestock. Quincannon found the atmosphere to his liking. He had always loved water-the Potomac and Mississippi Rivers in his youth, the Pacific after his move to California. If he had not become a detective like his father, he felt that he might have taken up the adventurous career of a riverboat pilot or a seafaring man.

He located the nearest produce warehouse, dismounted, and began asking after Oliver Witherspoon. No one at this warehouse knew him, evidently; Quincannon rode to the next. But it was not until he came to the third and last warehouse that his questions produced results. A stevedore directed him around to where a group of men were unloading bales of wool from a Studebaker freight wagon bearing the words SAN JULIAN RANCH on its side panel. One of the men admitted to being Witherspoon, though he did so with reluctance, wariness, and as much suspicion as Chief of Police Vandermeer had displayed.

Quincannon drew him around the corner of the warehouse, to where he had left the claybank horse. Witherspoon was a big man, heavy through the chest and shoulders, with powerful arms and legs; but he had one of the smallest heads Quincannon had ever seen. It put him in mind of a knobbly peanut crowned by a few sparse black fibers and set out upon a hulking rock. The kernels inside the peanut were proportionately small, Quincannon decided after two minutes with the man. So small, in fact, that they could not even be dignified by the term “brain.”

“Well?” Witherspoon said in a reedy, goober-sized voice. “Who the gawddam hell are you?”

“The name is Boggs. Down from Frisco.”

“Frisco? After what with me?”

“Nothing with you. It's Jimmy Evans I'm after.”

“Who?”

“Jimmy Evans. Used to hang his hat on Anacapa Street.”

“Don't know any Jimmy Evans.”

“Come along now, Ollie. None of that with me. I've got a lay on for Jimmy.”

Witherspoon's knobbly face screwed up as if it were being tightened in a vise. He seemed to be trying valiantly to think. At length he said, “Who sent you down from Frisco?”

“Luther Duff.”

“Don't know any Luther Duff.”

“He knows you, Ollie. How do you suppose I come to have your name and where to look you up?”

More facial contortions. “What's the job for Jimmy?”

“I'll tell that to him.”

“Not until I hear it first. Maybe I heard of Luther Duff, but I never heard of nobody named Boggs.”

“Where's Jimmy? Close by?”

Witherspoon glared at him and said nothing.

“Wouldn't be on the lammas, would he?”

“I ain't talking,” Witherspoon said. “You are. What's your game, Boggs?”

“Mine and Luther's. And Jimmy's, if he wants in.”

“Well?”

“Religious statues. Gold ones.”

“Huh?”

“Jimmy swiped a gold statue six months ago-the Virgin Mary-and laid it off to Duff. Duff's just sold it to a lad who wants more of the same. He sent me down to … Now what's this, Ollie? What's tickled your funny bone?”

Witherspoon was laughing. At least, Quincannon assumed that was what he was doing; the sounds that came out of him were a series of low rumbles and squeaks, as if a herd of mice were tumbling down a coal chute. The sounds continued for another fifteen seconds, at which point Witherspoon ran out of wind. He bent over at the middle, gasped several times, finally caught his breath, coughed explosively, and wiped drool off his mouth with the back of one hairy paw.

“Gawddam,” he said. “Gawddam.”

“If it's a joke, let me have a laugh, too.”

“It's a joke, all right. And gawddam if it ain't on you and Luther Duff.”

“How so?”

“There ain't no more of them statues like the one Jimmy swiped. Not where he got it, by Gawd.”

“And where was that?”

“Out of a Mex storekeeper's rooms, while the greaser was downstairs sellin' boots and shirts. Now ain't that a gut-buster?”

Quincannon's smile was genuine. “It is that, Ollie; I'll admit it. Where does this Mex live? Here in Santa Barbara?”

“Sure. Jimmy was on the hog at the time; he was only after some fast jack. I wisht I'd seen his face when he come on that statue. He said he like to fell down dead on the spot.” The rumbling and squeaking noises started again. “Gawddam,” Witherspoon said.

“What was his name?”