The Man Who Followed Women Page 6

  Richie shook his head.

  Kernehan took a small dog-eared notebook from a pocket, made jottings to be put into his report: the name of the consignee in L.A., origin of shipment, the car number, the seal number, the estimated amount of shipment missing. It was going to bring Freight Claims down on them like a ton of bricks. He could hear Ryerson’s sulphurous cries from here.

  Richie replaced the cut seal with a new one from his own supply, and Kernehan added this second seal number to the list in his book. He then returned to the yard office, leaving Richie to continue checking cars, and telephoned their operator in Vermillion.

  Dyart seemed to be having lunch; he sounded as if he were chewing a sandwich. Kernehan asked him to examine his seal book, find out if the carload of cigarettes had been checked in Vermillion.

  It had. Dyart had done it himself. He and the night patrolman had been especially careful during the past couple of weeks. They’d checked any and all shipments even remotely movable, from tires and cigarettes up to appliances including washing machines; and they’d found no seals cut and stuck back the way this particular bunch of jokers was doing it.

  The car from which now about a thousand dollars’ worth of cigarettes was missing had been checked in Vermillion and had been intact.

  From Vermillion it had moved across the Colorado River into California, and out across the miles of desert, and so to Colton.

  Kernehan thought of the sidings where it must have stopped, and winced at the size of the job involved.

  The thing about being a railroad bull—Kernehan had thought of it before—was that you didn’t have to stop at city limits, or at county lines, if your work took you beyond them. You had all the way to the next division point, you could spread your wings, as it were. Only in something like this, thinking of those desert wastes between here and the Colorado, Kernehan wished his job were smaller.

  Then something else intruded, tentative, ghost-like; and Kernehan took a long second look at it. This man Jennings, the former employee of the railroad, had died out there, too. Somewhere on the desert. His death didn’t follow the pattern of so many accidents to bums, getting themselves maimed and killed jumping off or getting on trains, fighting with other hobos and left dying in boxcars. He had been murdered and put hastily into a hopper car; and the hopper must almost immediately have been loaded at Sidewinder Junction—out there in the middle of nowhere, a spur track from the main line up to the gravel pits, nothing but miles of sand and scrawny bitter sage and cactus all around.

  Kernehan thought, now wouldn’t it be something if—

  The easy way. He grinned at his own ready imagination.

  Oh, sure, he’ll turn out to be—

  Why not? Thieves fall out.

  Hard to believe, though. For Kernehan many things that he wanted to believe brought their own doubts with them, a built-in jeer and mockery.

  Just as he couldn’t believe that Lora’s brother had reformed, that he was a good kid now, repentant, wouldn’t swipe a car if it was a new Cad on a dark lot with the keys hanging in the switch. Oh yeah?

  Might not hurt, though, he decided, to do a bit of checking seals on those sidings near Sidewinder. Sidewinder would give a good starting point, and God knew they needed one. He thought about it, deciding to ask Ryerson to give him a partner; not that the job would be so hard, but that the long miles of driving, walking, and waiting needed someone to talk to.

  He wondered if Farrel would be free. Farrel had had a narrow squeak a couple of years ago; he’d been drinking too much and too obviously, and Ryerson had been about to can him. Then Farrel had been one of two investigators who had pulled Lobo Tunnel wreck off the griddle after all these years; and Ryerson decided to look the other way. Farrel still drank a little, in violation of Rule G, but he seemed to have it under control. He was full of experience, tolerance, and caution, and in Kernehan’s opinion would be a good man to have along in case something around Sidewinder proved to have juice in it.

  Kernehan had a hunch that this thing might need the plodding and unhurried approach that Farrel would bring to it.

  After drinking a Coke from the office machine to settle the dryness in his throat, Kernehan went back to the yards and helped Richie test seals. They didn’t find any more cut seals, or other signs of thievery. Kernehan knocked off about three-thirty to return to L.A.

  He drove into the basement garage and checked out the company car. He went upstairs and headed for Personnel. A girl brought him Jennings’s folder from the record room; and then, remembering Jennings’s friend, he asked for Pethro’s folder, too.

  Reading about these two, Kernehan spotted at once the source of their friendship. Both of them had gone through school in the town of Bishop, California. Both had apparently moved to Colton at about the same time, since they’d been employed for a year together by a trucking outfit named Eagle Transfer and Moving. Pethro was listed as a driver for the company. Jennings had put down his job as mechanic.

  Jennings had had no family. His mother was dead, his father had whereabouts unknown, the landlady in Colton was given under the space for next-of-kin to be notified in case of accident or illness.

  Pethro, though, had possessed a wife. Kernehan made note of the Colton address given as his home.

  Kernehan began to check through their physical descriptions, contrasting as he went. They must have made an oddly assorted pair. Jennings had been tall and slender, six foot two in height, and weighing one hundred and fifty-five. Pethro was five-six and weighed more than the taller man, one hundred and seventy. Fat, Kernehan thought. But the trainmaster hadn’t used that word. He’d said Pethro was dark and squatty. Well, perhaps the hundred and seventy was all muscle. Pretty big muscle, Kernehan commented to himself.

  Jennings’s hair had been light brown, his eyes blue. No marks or scars or tattoos. Age, twenty-eight at the time of hiring. Kernehan wished suddenly that he had a picture of him.

  He rechecked the employment record. Jennings had put in a spell of army service, apparently between the time he left home in Bishop and before coming to Colton.

  Pethro, too, had served a hitch. Pethro’s eyes were given as brown, hair black; and he had a star-shaped tattoo on his left wrist. He, too, had been twenty-eight at the time the railroad had hired him.

  Kernehan thought about the two of them, one short and dark, the other tall and slim and nearly blond; two men whose bodies were in contrast but who had found something to draw them together.

  Be interesting to know where Pethro was now.

  He went back to his own office, where Pete was rattling away on a typewriter and where, in his inner sanctum, Ryerson wore an expression as if he’d already had news of the thousand-dollar loss that day. Kernehan put in a call for Vermillion, got Dyart on the line again, asked him to check around town and see if Pethro had been seen there.

  He called Richie in Colton and asked him to run out to the address given by Pethro on Colton, see if he could find him home, if not, to talk to his wife. “Ask him about his friendship with Jennings, the guy they found dead in the hopper car. Find out how long since he’s seen his old pal—or how long since his wife saw him.”

  These wheels having been set in motion to clear up the background of Jennings’s death, Kernehan braced himself and went in to report to the chief.

  The interview was bleak. Ryerson seemed to divide his attention between what Kernehan was saying and some rumblings in the distance audible to himself: the thunder to be expected from Freight Claims, perhaps. But when Kernehan told him he’d chosen Sidewinder as the first stake-out point, Ryerson got interested.

  “What’s your reason?”

  “It’s the place where Jennings must have been murdered and stuck in the hopper car. Out next to nowhere. It’s somewhere to start, it’s between Colton and the Colorado.”

  Ryerson frowned. “What’s the connection between Jennings and the other?” Ryerson lit a new cigar as if, pessimistically, he must cheer himself against some ab
surdity.

  Kernehan found himself making up something from thin air. “When you get a stretch of line that lonesome, that deserted, and a couple of things happen, things that on the surface don’t even seem to belong together—like this seal cutting and Jennings’s murder—then I don’t think you’re too far out if you just start with the idea there might be some connection even if you can’t see it.” Rambling, he decided, but he was pleased with it nevertheless. He tried to see whether Ryerson was pleased, and couldn’t make out his expression through the smoke.

  “Pretty long chance,” Ryerson grunted.

  “I’d like to have Farrel along if that’s possible.”

  Ryerson thought it over, possibly thinking about whatever Farrel was on now. “Yes, I guess you can take him.”

  They settled the details. He and Farrel would go down to Sidewinder tomorrow, take a look around the country by daylight, then leave, then go back at night and stake-out on a couple of sidings.

  He reported then what he’d found out about Jennings—not much beyond the fact that the death hadn’t been an accident—and with these official discussions out of the way Kernehan left the inner sanctum and began to think about the evening ahead. No use calling Lora and being rebuffed. She hadn’t changed in the length of an afternoon; and he wouldn’t. Better to turn his attention to something else.

  For the hell of it … to Mr. Howery, the little man who followed women.

  Chapter 7

  In his kitchen Mr. Howery opened a can of beer and stood by the rear door to drink it, looking out through the pane at the twilight now closing down. It was going to be foggy again, perhaps not so foggy as the night before, but still pretty misty.

  Thinking of last night’s misadventure, being caught by that abominable policeman and being subjected to the indignity of search and of having his house searched, Mr. Howery almost choked with anger and a sense of injustice. How unfair it had been! Why hadn’t that railroad cop caught the woman? She was obviously an old hand at trespassing, involved in some shady business connected with freight trains … God knows what. She had a full set of expensive tires to sell, without apparently owning a car to go with them.

  And why in hell hadn’t he told them that?

  He couldn’t understand, himself, why he hadn’t betrayed her, given them her phone number. Was it the memory of the way she had stood at the counter in the market, writing on the card for the idiot board? A small slim girl with somehow a cheated and cheapened look about her, as if life had denied her the ease and good times her prettiness deserved? Was it the fact that she hadn’t worn hose on a chilly evening? Was it the skimpy bargain-basement dress?

  My God, Mr. Howery thought, I must be a fool. Feeling sorry for her. And she led me into a trap.

  He drank some more of the beer. Outside in the back yard the Chinese elm was dripping with moisture and the hedge at the back, not more than thirty feet from the door, was dim in the flowing mist. Of course she wouldn’t be going out tonight.

  Why not?

  He frowned over the instinctive conclusion, hunch, or whatever. Wouldn’t that cop have instructed the yard patrolman to look for her while he questioned the prisoner? Sure he would. She must have taken alarm and skipped out, or they’d have brought her in, confronted him with her, while he was still being questioned.

  It figured then that she’d be too scared to go back.

  She’d stay at home like a mouse in its hole.

  But suppose … suppose the yard patrolman just hadn’t looked in the right place? Suppose he hadn’t scared her but simply had missed her?

  Mr. Howery looked at the misty yard, gradually growing dark, and realized that for some reason he was as interested and as full of anticipation as he had been almost a year ago, on the night when he had followed his first woman. He felt brash and eager. He had recaptured a mischievous appetite, wholly renewed; and he felt renewed right along with it! Standing by the door, he wanted to kick up his heels! He licked his lips, eyes shining, tasting not the froth of beer but the flavor of adventure.

  I’m not a fool, he mused. I’m completely crazy!

  If I did go out, follow her—

  They’ll be waiting for me in that dark freight yard. For her, too.

  And then out of nowhere, the thought: I ought to warn her.

  He shook his head in disbelief over his own wild impulse, and then the memory of his previous plan flickered through his thoughts, the idea of going to see her about the tires she wanted to sell, questioning her, togged out in Uncle Sherman’s overcoat and horn-rimmed glasses and a hat. I could drive down to skid row even now and buy a secondhand hat; those places never close. I could find a dime store open and get the glasses. I could call her on the phone and tell her I know something about her friend who didn’t arrive, and set a place to meet. I’d have to play it carefully from then on. Mr. Howery’s skin prickled with goose-flesh, and his pulse thudded.

  He hung Uncle Sherman’s overcoat to air by the foggy bedroom window. He put on a jacket, went to the garage for the car, drove downtown, and bought the hat. Far from new, a gray felt with a notice tacked inside that it had been sterilized according to law. It smelt like iodine. On the way home again he bought heavy horn-rims with windowpane lenses at a variety store.

  In the living room he sat down by the phone. His palms were damp; he rubbed them on his pants before picking up the receiver.

  He glanced around the room. Last night, sitting here under the gaze of the two railroad cops, he’d have been willing to swear—if anyone had asked him—that he would never, but never, fool around with stray and strange women again. It just showed you how long good intentions lasted.

  He picked up the receiver and dialed.

  No man’s voice this time, no intermediary, no going to call her, no time of waiting. She must have been sitting right by the phone. For a moment, hearing her voice in his ear, Mr. Howery was speechless.

  He remembered then that he had talked to her recently before. She might recognize his voice. He lowered it to a whispery monotone. “You’ve been … waiting for someone?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation.

  “And he hasn’t shown up?”

  “No.” She didn’t ask who was calling, Mr. Howery noted.

  “I might have news for you.”

  “Where can we meet?”

  The abrupt taking-for-granted tone, the intuitive accord with his own plan, the willingness again stumped him. He wondered uneasily if there was a real person supposed to be playing his part, someone she already knew and expected. He worried his lower lip, trying to think of something to say.

  “Do you know where I live?” she asked.

  “Yes. That is, I think so.” He almost forgot to disguise his voice.

  She mentioned the street address. “How about nine-thirty, on the sidewalk in front of the house?”

  A nerve twitched in his cheek. “No. The … the corner. The corner just south of the house.”

  “I’ll see you.” Without another word she hung up.

  He put the phone in its cradle and sat looking at it, as if some further explanation might be forthcoming from the instrument. Then he tried to collect his thoughts. Some things had been made obvious, at least. She had been expecting someone to meet her in that freight yard, and he hadn’t shown up. He had been supposed to ride in on that train, the first one, the big one.

  The fact that she had been waiting by the phone and her matter-of-fact response—low-voiced, too, somehow almost secretive—implied that she had been anticipating some word about her missing friend.

  More than friend, though. He remembered his impression that first night, that she was uplifted and overjoyed and going to meet someone whom she loved. She was a shabby almost nondescript girl, her only assets a pretty face and a lovely head of hair; but she had given off an emanation of rapture. No other way to put it. He could be wrong, of course. He didn’t think he was.

  Now she was anxious for news. She was willing to go out into the d
ark street and meet a stranger to get it.

  Mr. Howery wondered, for a bleak wistful moment, how it would be to have someone love you, like that.

  He went into the bedroom, switched on the lights, took down the coat from the window, shut down the pane. The room was quite cool. The coat didn’t give off too much mothproofing smell, since it had aired some the night previous and again tonight. He put it on, noting again how it changed his shape. He took the glasses out of the paper sack, topped his face with the gray felt hat.

  Amazing.

  He seemed at once rather military and aloof. The glasses wiped the mildness from his face, giving it a scholarly remoteness. He looked—yes, definitely!—he looked important. He leaned toward the mirror, engrossed, thinking, “I ought to go out like this once in a while, just stroll around. No one would recognize me.” He licked his lips, wondering if he dared chance the freight yards ever again, in case she led him there.

  The doorbell rang.

  He plucked the glasses from his eyes, jerked the hat from his head, in an almost instantaneous reaction of fright. He put the glasses into the crown of the hat, put it inside the closet on the floor, and shucked the coat quickly and hung it up. He was sweating.

  He went into the living room, crossed it to the front door. He opened it a crack. The railroad cop, the one named Kernehan, stood there watchfully. A big, good-looking bastard, Mr. Howery thought with a flare of anger; the kind of jerk who didn’t have to do anything to seem impressive except just to look natural.

  “What the devil do you want now?” Mr. Howery demanded.

  The tone surprised Kernehan. The little twerp was actually belligerent.

  Kernehan came in, in spite of Howery’s obvious reluctance. He looked around quickly, checking without even thinking about it to see if anything had been changed or moved. He noted, as on the night previous, the cretonne bag in the corner of the couch with some knitted stuff protruding from between its handles; and wondered again why Howery didn’t put away this reminder of his mother.