Joe laughed aloud. This was the real breaks. He tried another envelope and another. A gold mine—guy could live for years on these. Look at that fat-ass councilman! He put the band back. In the top drawer eight ten-dollar bills and a bunch of keys. He pocketed the money too. As he opened the second drawer enough to see that it held writing paper and sealing wax and ink there was a knock on the door. He walked to it and opened it a crack.
The cook said, “Fella out here wants to see ya.”
“Who is he?”
“How the hell do I know?”
Joe looked back at the room and then stepped out, took the key from the inside, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. He might have overlooked something.
Oscar Noble was standing in the big front room, his gray hat on his head and his red mackinaw buttoned up tight around his throat. His eyes were pale gray—the same color as his stubble whiskers. The room was in semidarkness. No one had raised the shades yet.
Joe came lightly along the hall, and Oscar asked, “You Joe?”
“Who’s asking?”
“The sheriff wants to have a talk with you.”
Joe felt ice creeping into his stomach. “Pinch?” he asked. “Got a warrant?”
“Hell, no,” said Oscar. “We got nothing on you. Just checking up. Will you come along?”
“Sure,” said Joe. “Why not?”
They went out together. Joe shivered. “I should of got a coat.”
“Want to go back for one?”
“I guess not,” said Joe.
They walked toward Castroville Street. Oscar asked, “Ever been mugged or printed?”
Joe was quiet for a time. “Yes,” he said at last.
“What for?”
“Drunk,” said Joe. “Hit a cop.”
“Well, we’ll soon find out,” said Oscar and turned the corner.
Joe ran like a rabbit, across the street and over the track toward the stores and alleys of Chinatown.
Oscar had to take a glove off and unbutton his mackinaw to get his gun out. He tried a snap shot and missed.
Joe began to zigzag. He was fifty yards away by now and nearing an opening between two buildings.
Oscar stepped to a telephone pole at the curb, braced his left elbow against it, gripped his right wrist with his left hand, and drew a bead on the entrance to the little alley. He fired just as Joe touched the front sight.
Joe splashed forward on his face and skidded a foot.
Oscar went into a Filipino poolroom to phone, and when he came out there was quite a crowd around the body.
Chapter 51
1
In 1903 Horace Quinn beat Mr. R. Keef for the office of sheriff. He had been well trained as the chief deputy sheriff. Most of the voters figured that since Quinn was doing most of the work he might as well have the title. Sheriff Quinn held the office until 1919. He was sheriff so long that we growing up in Monterey County thought the words “Sheriff” and “Quinn” went together naturally. We could not imagine anyone else being sheriff. Quinn grew old in his office. He limped from an early injury. We knew he was intrepid, for he had held his own in various gunfights; besides, he looked like a sheriff—the only kind we knew about. His face was broad and pink, his white mustache shaped like the horns of a longhorn steer. He was broad of shoulder, and in his age he developed a portliness which only gave him more authority. He wore a fine Stetson hat, a Norfolk jacket, and in his later years carried his gun in a shoulder holster. His old belt holster tugged at his stomach too much. He had known his county in 1903 and he knew it and controlled it even better in 1917. He was an institution, as much a part of the Salinas Valley as its mountains.
In all the years since Adam’s shooting Sheriff Quinn had kept track of Kate. When Faye died, he knew instinctively that Kate was probably responsible, but he also knew he hadn’t much of any chance of convicting her, and a wise sheriff doesn’t butt his head against the impossible. They were only a couple of whores, after all.
In the years that followed, Kate played fair with him and he gradually achieved a certain respect for her. Since there were going to be houses anyway, they had better be run by responsible people. Every so often Kate spotted a wanted man and turned him in. She ran a house which did not get into trouble. Sheriff Quinn and Kate got along together.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, about noon, Sheriff Quinn looked through the papers from Joe Valery’s pockets. The .38 slug had splashed off one side of Joe’s heart and had flattened against the ribs and torn out a section as big as a fist. The manila envelopes were glued together with blackened blood. The sheriff dampened the papers with a wet handkerchief to get them apart. He read the will, which had been folded, so that the blood was on the outside. He laid it aside and inspected the photographs in the envelopes. He sighed deeply.
Every envelope contained a man’s honor and peace of mind. Effectively used, these pictures could cause half a dozen suicides. Already Kate was on the table at Muller’s with the formalin running into her veins, and her stomach was in a jar in the corner’s office.
When he had seen all of the pictures he called a number. He said into the phone, “Can you drop over to my office? Well, put your lunch off, will you? Yes, I think you’ll see it’s important. I’ll wait for you.”
A few minutes later when the nameless man stood beside his desk in the front office of the old red county jail behind the courthouse, Sheriff Quinn stuck the will out in front of him. “As a lawyer, would you say this is any good?”
His visitor read the two lines and breathed deep through his nose. “Is this who I think it is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if her name was Catherine Trask and this is her handwriting, and if Aron Trask is her son, this is as good as gold.”
Quinn lifted the ends of his fine wide mustache with the back of his forefinger. “You knew her, didn’t you?”
“Well, not to say know. I knew who she was.”
Quinn put his elbows on his desk and leaned forward. “Sit down, I want to talk to you.”
His visitor drew up a chair. His fingers picked at a coat button.
The sheriff asked, “Was Kate blackmailing you?”
“Certainly not. Why should she?”
“I’m asking you as a friend. You know she’s dead. You can tell me.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at—nobody’s blackmailing me.”
Quinn slipped a photograph from its envelope, turned it like a playing card, and skidded it across the desk.
His visitor adjusted his glasses and the breath whistled in his nose. “Jesus Christ,” he said softly.
“You didn’t know she had it?”
“Oh, I knew it all right. She let me know. For Christ’s sake, Horace—what are you going to do with this?”
Quinn took the picture from his hand.
“Horace, what are you going to do with it?”
“Burn it.” The sheriff ruffled the edges of the envelopes with his thumb. “Here’s a deck of hell,” he said. “These could tear the county to pieces.”
Quinn wrote a list of names on a sheet of paper. Then he hoisted himself up on his game leg and went to the iron stove against the north wall of his office. He crunched up the Salinas Morning Journal and lighted it and dropped it in the stove, and when it flared up he dropped the manila envelopes on the flame, set the damper, and closed the stove. The fire roared and the flames winked yellow behind the little isinglass windows in the front of the stove. Quinn brushed his hands together as though they were dirty. “The negatives were in there,” he said. “I’ve been through her desk. There weren’t any other prints.”
His visitor tried to speak but his voice was a husky whisper. “Thank you, Horace.”
The sheriff gimped to his desk and picked up his list. “I want you to do something for me. Here’s a list. Tell everyone on this list I’ve burned the pictures. You know them all, God knows. And they could take it from you. Nobody’s holy. Get each man alone and tell him exactly what happened. Look here!” He opened the stove door and poked the black sheets until they were reduced to powder. “Tell them that,” he said.
His visitor looked at the sheriff, and Quinn knew that there was no power on earth that could keep this man from hating him. For the rest of their lives there would be a barrier between them, and neither one could ever admit it.