Hold on to your hats, because this story has no respect for the speed limits. Benton Boyle is a character we want to see again...

Bent On Mischief

By William G. Schweizer

Mr. Plumtree, after an elegant exordium, entered into the definition of murder as laid down by Hawkins and Hale; described the two kinds of malice in fact and in law, or, as they are more generally called, malice express and malice implied; and contended that, from the circumstances of this case, the Court must imply that the prisoner was impelled by that malice which, according to the words of Mr. Justice Forster, showed "his heart to be regardless of social duty, and his mind deliberately bent on mischief."

In the matter of Bartholomew Quailn, Executed, after a great Legal Argument, On 7th of March, 1791, in the Isle of Ely , for the Murder of his Wife.

From the Newgate Calendar

The sun was shining, the air was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle, and Mrs. Churchill was singing like Vera Lynn doing We'll Meet Again . Mrs. Churchill's perky nose was pointed directly toward magnetic north, and my hands were squeezing her gently at ten and two o'clock.

Let me make the introductions before Mrs. Churchill complains of gas problems, not that she is much of a complainer.

Name, Benton Boyle, middle initial Q., occupation, author, raconteur , bon vivant , and of late, in the service of the Republic's Air Corps in the great struggle against fascism. The illustrious title of author is claimed most tenuously upon production of a short memoir of flying experiences and bombing runs over Italy and environs called Starlight Over Naples . Not a great work of the imagination but published nevertheless and actually read by a small coterie of people who could read the warning tag on a mattress and be stimulated.

Mrs. Churchill. What would you like to know about her? That I'm crazy about her? That's obvious. That it was love at first sight? How could it have been otherwise? When I first saw her I offered to trade my soul for her but in the end I got her for three cartons of Luckies.

Our group was billeted for a few months in Merry Olde, and my hostess was a widow whose son had been torpedoed in the Channel in '40. On a mizzling-drizzling Sunday morning in October, Aunt Gert, as she liked to be addressed, asked if I had a driving license and would I drive her to Church. I answered no and yes.

She took me to the shed behind the cottage and pulled away a canvas, and there stood Mrs. Churchill in all her glory. A 1935 MG PA, Gert's son had irreverently christened her Clementine, after the Prime Minister's wife. From the start I called her Mrs. Churchill out of extreme respect both for the machine and the PM's missus

British racing green, scant miles, and real rubber tires, or “tyres” as Aunt Gert preferred, Clemmie was originally the property of Aunt Gert's hapless son. It was only used for rare outings and an occasional visit to the racecourse, which visits Messrs. H and M had put in unfortunate and indefinite recess.

I really didn't have a driving license. Raised in Manhattan and Westchester I'd always been a perennial passenger even later in the Air Corps. So it seemed totally natural that my first lesson behind the wheel came from a British version of the Little Old Lady From Pasadena, but instead of Pasadena it was Stoke-On-Trent and, as usual, with me in the right front seat.

As I said, I immediately offered my soul, my cigarettes and my rabbit's foot to acquire said chariot. Item one had no value to Auntie, and she wouldn't deprive an airman of his luck charm. We agreed that she would accept the cigarettes on condition that I returned with both arms and legs and at least one eye. When I came back superficially intact, Aunt Gert gave me the ownership papers as though she was bestowing the Order of the Garter, and I valued them accordingly.

Shipping Mrs. Churchill back to the U.S. required every permutation of bribery and flim flam within my finite imagination. Ultimately, I had her crated and I stenciled a red cross on the crate to fool the bureaucracy hoping God would forgive me if this cargo displaced a displaced person.

The crossing was rough, and a coast-to-coast drive had its own hazards, but once in the West, Mrs. Churchill took to the California coast better than any British arrival since Robert Louis Stevenson. It was somewhat in honor of R.L.S. that we were traveling now. Motoring north to San Francisco with no plan, no schedule and no obligations, I was as far removed from the sway of authority as I could get, which was right where I wanted to be and where I deserved to be. Cruising up the coastline at a thoroughly genteel and respectable speed, destination San Francisco , looking to walk in the steps of RLS, Jack London and Mark Twain and trying to stay out of mischief.

I'm not really a troublemaker, generally the opposite, but from earliest childhood mischief was my middle name. Literally. My Grandmother was the feared and adored matriarch of the family. She had been considered somewhat of a rebel herself as a young woman and like all disobedient people she demanded obedience of others but didn't expect it. Even so, she was obeyed in all things.  Whenever I saw her, she would shake her head and splitting my first name into two parts would intone with mock dismay “Bent on mischief ” somehow implying but with affectionate insincerity that I was most assuredly up to no good. I usually took it as inspiration and a license to malfease. Originally it was a question and after years of use it became a general substitute for “How are you? “or “Good day.”

 “Bent on mischief?” “ Not today.”

Based on Gran's testimonials to my lack of character my whole family regarded me as lawless and undisciplined, and, as in almost all things, they were fractionally correct. I wasn't exactly a black sheep, more a tattletale gray.

When I left for college Gran asked the usual question, and I answered, “You bet.”

That was the last I saw her. She was one swell dame, and I miss her.

I had gotten careless reminiscing. Mrs. Churchill saw him before I did. Her carburetor hiccoughed and the abrupt deceleration probably saved a vehicular homicide.

The man had been jumping up and down in the roadway waving his arms like a sailor signaling semaphore. I docked Mrs. Churchill at the roadside and stepped out. The crazy man gabbed my arm and yelled, “Follow me. Quick”

  He started pulling me up a grassy knoll toward a huge Mansard roofed red barn on the crest of the embankment. Once there he pulled me from the sunlight into the darkness of the barn.

“Who's the mysterious stranger?” A woman's voice behind me.

A second female to my left spoke this time. “Did you find your atheist?”

“He's right behind me. He was just coming up the road in a creaky old rattletrap jalopy.” I blushed with shame and indignation for Mrs. Churchill. Rattletrap jalopy indeed.

“Come inside Mr. Atheist. You're missing the show.” The first woman's voice again.

The show was right there in front of me, and it was obvious why I was kidnapped. A coal black mare had just foaled. The newborn critter was swaying on the ground covered with film and foam. The head was bobbing and the body lurching. Then, after one false start, she lurched to her feet and was standing uncertain but erect. She placed her spindly four legs as wide apart as possible and just stood that way for a moment. Than an uncertain step, then a second uncertain step, then a certain step, and then a certain and surefooted series of steps and then it seemed the horse was almost prancing.

“Do you believe in God now, Mr. Atheist? What could you do twenty minutes out of the womb?” the kidnapper asked.

“I'm happy to respond. First, I'm not an atheist, although this display might convert a nonbeliever. Have you ever heard the expression there are no atheists in the bomb bay? Second, I'm told, although my own memory is unclear, that as they were knotting my umbilical cord I grabbed the doctor's fountain pen and scribbled Kilroy Was Here on the his prescription pad.”

“Well, well. A flier and a writer, two very dubious credentials. Welcome to our humble barn. My name's Art Brantly and these half dozen freeloaders are my offspring. This ravishing beauty next to me is my wife Susan. Would you care to introduce yourself?”

“ Benton Quentin Boyle of the White Plains Boyles.”

“Quentin, a fifth son of a fifth son, am I right? Do you have the gift of second sight?”

“No that's reserved for the seventh son of a seventh son. Our particular gift is to always pull the long straw when drawing lots for suicide missions.”

“I imagine that power could come in very handy. At any rate Mr. Boyle, as our guest, and for reacting to our craziness with poise, we give you the honor of naming the foal.”

“Female right?”

“Of course.”

Without hesitation. “Clementine.”

“Elegant name. Clementine it is. Did you know that Tennyson's Locksley Hall can be sung to the tune of My Darlin' Clementine ?”

I sang it silently in my head. “In the spring a young man's fancy”-“Oh my Darlin' Oh my Darlin' ” Who knew?

I gained immediate respect for the range of Art's literary arcana. My type of guy.

“Now come up to the house for some chili and lemonade and Susie's special cornbread.” He beckoned. I followed. I never turn down a free lunch.

Art was a publisher of the newspaper for this town. The newspaper was called the Tattler and the town and the county, San Severina. The paper was more a hobby and the horse raising the livelihood or so it was alleged.

Art and Susan, with the approbation of their grown children, ceremonially adopted me into what they called “The Inner Circle” and made me swear to return before another moon grew full. I liked these people and I promised.

It was about four when I got underway again. Mrs. Churchill needed feeding herself, and Art said there was a roadhouse with a gas (call that petrol) pump ahead at the city outskirts about four miles north.

The roadhouse was easy to spot. The pump was near the road, but the tavern building was quite a distance back, connected to the service area by a serpentine gravel path maybe thirty yards long. Mrs. C crept up to the pump like a kitten creeping up on a saucer of cream.

A loud door slam got my attention, and I looked up the path to see a man and woman emerge from the roadhouse arguing to beat the devil. Hard words were exchanged back and forth. “Pathetic” “Worthless” “Spineless” “Contemptible”. Then they got personal. More words, fewer syllables. The woman screamed “Bart” and then toppled down a flight of five or six steps landing face down. The man also seemed to lose his balance and then either stumbled or jumped. He landed short and his size thirteen boot came down on the back of her neck like the blade of a guillotine. I'd never heard a neck break but the sound I heard could have been nothing else.

I ran up the hill forgetting to kill the engine. The woman's head had turned in profile and her neck was bent at an angle that most necks don't bend. If it is so that the soul leaves the body at death, this lady's soul was approaching Samoa by now.

A group of four men spilled out of the building and I failed to notice at first that they all wore brown police uniforms. They immediately covered the body with a blanket and quickly cuffed Bart to the porch rail.

“Well Bart, you said you'd do it and you did. You poor sorry fool.”

I told two of the uniforms I thought it could have been an accident, but my theory leaked like a sieve with holes in it. Inside the tavern Bart had promised that he would “take her outside and break her neck”, which statement seemed to carry the implication to all and sundry of malicious intent. I couldn't argue against that.

The Chief of Police showed up and had me put in the car where I sat for most of an hour at the end of which he came over and said he needed to interview me as a material witness. “Bayview Hotel at 6:30. Can't miss it. Big white building, down near the beach.” Even though in Libya our briefing and interrogation had been in a commandeered hotel, the Bayview or any hotel still seemed an odd place to question a “material witness” about a possible homicide. To kill time I took a long walk on the beach and tried hard to forget that awful cracking sound without any success.

When I arrived at the Hotel the chief was already seated and already eating. He motioned me to a chair opposite. “House specialty is their vegetable soup. They'll keep bringing it until you tell them to stop. You'll find it addicting.”

The soup was hot in temperature and spice, and I found myself wanting a second.

The Chief ordered wine for us both and lamb chops and string beans. The Chief was a large ruddy-faced man and definitely well fed. He had obviously spent the last few years on the home front. He had a deep bluish horizontal crease across his forehead, which I deduced to be an imprint of the brim of the Mounties hat he favored. His uniform was decorated with a row of medals, which were not military and looked silly.

He looked me over. “You were overseas?”

“Bombers.”

“Get hurt?”

“Got a few burns. No metal. I'm o.k.”

“You got a job now?”

“Not really.”

“How do you live?”

“Sparsely.”

“Then eat hearty. Its on the City.”

“Do you treat all your material witnesses to dinner?”

“Not all. Just the ones I'm trying to influence.”

“I don't think you have to influence me. You got your man.” I thought the Mounties always got their man.

“Well you see that's open to interpretation. Let me tell you about our city. Yes, we call it a city. We've got our own hospital, power plant and waterworks, and we're growing. When the state highway connects through to the Central Valley we're going to boom. Population last time we counted was over 10,000. On the other hand this is a tight community where everyone knows everyone and most of one another's business. About a dozen last names account for half the population. That's pretty tight.”

Pretty inbred I thought as I took up the challenge and ate hearty. That beach air had made me hungry and this was my second free meal of the day.

“Anyhow Bart's homegrown and we look after our own. He's dumb but not a monster. Bernadette, that's his wife, was his wife, was an outsider. She stopped by on her way somewhere else and never left. She fastened onto Bart like a barnacle.  Never gave him a minute's peace. You saw that. Right up to the end she was giving him the business. I don't want you to say anything that didn't happen. Clearly Bart was pushed to his breaking point. Now, the only way Bart's going to cheat the hangman is to show he was deranged. You saw him in action. Do you think he was deranged?”

“I don't know. I'm not an expert. I heard maybe a dozen words from the man and that was in a matter of seconds.”

“Cheat the hangman…” That was a strange choice of phrase.

I said aloud “This is a switch. The sheriff going to bat for the desperado.”

“Bart's no desperado. He just made one of the worst mistakes you can make. He picked the wrong woman to marry.”

The chief took a long gulp of the wine then looked me straight in the eye.

 “But do us all a favor and forget that accident theory. From the moment Bart entered the roadhouse that boy was bent on mischief.”

I dropped my knife, which clattered noisily on the stone tile floor. I steadied myself.

“What's next for me? Do you want a written statement?”

“No just a forwarding address. I'll contact you when and if you're needed.”

“There's an if?”

“There's always an if.”

No check ever came. We just left.

“I'm putting you up for the night in the cell in my office. Don't look so anxious. It's pretty comfortable. I sleep there myself when I'm working late. I'll even leave the door unlocked.”

When I woke the next morning the building was deserted except for a lone officer in uniform at the front desk.

“How did you like Bridger Hotel?”

“I've slept in worse places.”

“I'll just bet you have. Chief told me to get your whereabouts for the next month and cut you loose.”

I jotted the name of my Frisco hotel and the Date Palm Motor Court in Hollywood , then, on second thought, wrote a new note leaving out the Hollywood address.

Mrs. Churchill insisted on being gassed before leaving, and by 10:00 a.m. we were en route to a blind date with a pothole in Half Moon Bay. Ouch. With Mrs. C temporarily disabled with a gimp hind leg I had to call ahead and cancel dinner with Clelia in favor of breakfast the next morning.

            To describe Clelia as striking would be an understatement. Brown eyes, black hair, and skin with no bumps, spots or stripes, she had a pointed chin and a widow's peak, and she would jokingly compare her face to a garden trowel. To me she was more like a classic lady in waiting in a Tudor painting.

Clel was an old college friend, in fact my oldest college friend. Every college Lit department has at least one Ophelia or Olivia, but I didn't imagine that there were many that boasted a Clelia. When I saw her name on the class roster I was intrigued by the imagination of parents who would name their daughter after my favorite fictional heroine. I almost wanted to meet her mother as much as her. Mistake. It turned out Clel's mother got the name from a gravestone in Cypress Hills Cemetery where she buried the second of four husbands. Even so Clelia was aptly named, and her “thoughtful and tolerant soul” was worthy of her namesake. She signed me on as a friend and got someone loyal if not reliable. We always steered ourselves away from anything that might remotely evolve into something romantic and preserved a very rewarding friendship. Drat.

            Unlike me, Clel was able to graduate, and thereafter she immediately found work in intelligence, which she described fuzzily as doing something, somewhere, for somebody. Now she was living in San Francisco and working days and most nights in charge of an agency assisting Czech refugees. She spoke Czech of course. She said that languages were like merit badges. After your first five you can pick up one a month.

“How's the Black Widow?”

“If you mean mother, she's very well. She's getting married next month.”

“I take it the groom is well insured and in precarious health?”

“Come on Ben. She divorced her last husband.”

“What was the problem? Did he have too high a tolerance for Prussic acid?”

“Leave Mother alone. So how was the trip north? Any casualties? Did Clemmie survive?”

“One fatality and Mrs. Churchill did just fine.” So as not to upset the poor girl I left out the worse tragedy of the flat tire in Half Moon Bay.

“Very interesting trip. I saw one filly take her first steps, another filly take her last steps, and, oh yes, lest I forget, I spent a night in jail.”

“Well, since I expected the jail, why don't you start with the baby steps story and move on to the fatality.”

I filled her in sparing none of the gory details. I paused to sip some juice and glancing across the room I nearly jumped out of my trousers.

“Hey that's her.” Filly number two was just walking out of the dining room.

“That's who?”

“Her, the filly, the woman, not the horse, the dead filly, the dead one.” Almost everyone in the dining room was looking at me with transparent disapproval as I pointed toward the entrance and emptiness.

“Ben you're hallucinating. Who did you think you saw, the murdered woman?”

“Well, in a word, yes.”

“Ben you're incorrigible.”

“No, but maybe I truly am hallucinating!”

Considering that I had a very clear conscience as respects the unfortunate Bernadette, I figured if she was a ghost she was probably there to haunt someone else so why spoil my breakfast. I finally decided I probably had imagined the whole thing anyway.

Before I could change the subject Clel did so and very undiplomatically, I must say. “What's on the drawing board?” She knew better than to ask.

“Just a simple fable. A young man falls hard for a courtesan. She's notoriously fickle and criminally unfaithful. She contracts consumption which is some kind of coughing disease, and things go from bad to worse.”

“Don't tell me she dies at the end. Does her name begin with the letter C?”

“Clairvoyant.”

“Her name?”

“No, you.”

“I think it's been done Ben.”

“Well as I've told you. Like the periodic table there are only about a hundred plots that exist in nature. Its how you combine them that creates something original.”

“Why not at least give her a different name, like Myrtle for example.”

“Capital idea. Let me write that down.”

  I had calmed down, and we took our time finishing breakfast. At last, having put the apparition out of my mind, I kissed and hugged Clel and set off with Mrs. Churchill for the Valley of the Moon, Calaveras County and assorted points east and south. Let's see if a ghost can find Calaveras County .

I made it back to Hollywood without materially witnessing any further mayhem or for that matter any celebrated jumping frogs. When I reached my apartment there was a letter from Clel waiting, actually just a clipping from a San Francisco newspaper now almost two weeks old.

Twin Tragedies

San Severina , California

"Police officials in San Severina County reported today that a man being held on a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace was found hanged in his cell having used his necktie for a ligature.

The deceased was Bart Quailn, age 30, of San Severina. Police have tentatively ruled the occurrence a suicide pending further investigation. Quailn was despondent over the death of his wife Bernadette Quailn, age 27 who suffered a broken neck in a riding accident two days before."

What in the blinkin' blue blazes! Disturbing the peace. Riding accident. And wearing a necktie in jail. Where was he figuring to go? His wife's funeral or the Stork Club? Was this the way San Severina looked after its own? I guess Bart didn't cheat the hangman after all.

I made a mental note in blue-black brain ink to call Art the next day, which turned out to be unnecessary. He called me. 

I told Art all about the fight at the Roadhouse which was news to the newsman and my dinner with Chief Bridges which drew a long sigh. He knew Bart well, Bernadette not so well. Bridger he knew best, and what he knew he neither liked nor trusted. That Bart would come to a bad end had been predicted since his grade school days, but Art had also heard nothing about the riding accident, which would have been prime gossip in the small city. Art promised to keep an eye on Bridger, and I promised to visit him the next week.

While it seemed the authorities, whoever they were, probably would not require my presence in Court in San Severina, such was not the case in Los Angeles .

H.L. Mencken astutely observed that a juror is someone who having lied to the Judge about his health, hearing, and business engagements has failed to fool him. Having apparent good health, unimpaired hearing, and no business whatever, I found myself on this last Friday in June in a stuffy windowless jury room debating the fate of a hapless man charged with burgling a fishing tackle store.

He had been caught in the store and claimed he had fallen asleep and been locked in overnight. The man was neatly dressed but somewhat down on his luck. His face had the same pallor of a guy I knew who had acquired his as a fourteen-month guest of the Third Reich at one of their resorts for visiting aviators. The Stalag suntan told me the prisoner had already paid his own dues to society and part of mine and was no burglar of trout flies.

The chief complaining witness was a worm of a man who seemed to be in dire peril of being mistaken by his customers for bait. I took his testimony with a pillar of salt.

My colleagues disagreed. It was eleven to one for the gallows. We voted three more times. On the fourth ballot it was twelve-zero for sunshine. When the completely exonerated angler walked out of the Courtroom he gave me a brisk and appreciative military salute and I returned it. How he pegged me as a supporter was a puzzle.

Outside the courtroom my hallucination returned life-size and doing a good impression of being alive. The same ghost that had followed me from San Severina to Frisco had now shown up in L.A.   I was flabbergasted to see Chief Bridger directly across the hall talking quietly to a woman who was widely believed to have perished from a neck fracture. I stepped into the shadows and peered around the corner. This time there was no doubt about it. These were flesh and blood humans. They were smiling and talking quietly. The Chief out of uniform dressed in a business suit leaned forward and kissed the woman lightly. It wasn't steamy, but it was more than a Foreign Legion kiss. Straining to hear them, I made out the words I had already associated with them, “Bart” and “Bernadette”.

The two didn't linger, and after they left I went into their courtroom where the clerk was alone.

“Say, I thought I saw a friend of mine in here. The Chief of Police. Was he testifying?”

“No chief of police in here. There was a couple who just settled a condemnation case.”

“What's that?”

“State was suing to get some property for a highway. Those folks got a pretty penny for that land. But no, no policeman in here. This court just handles civil suits.”

“Do you remember the couple's name?

“Yeah, Quailn. Unusual name. To me anyway.”

I stopped outside to copy the case number from a glass case outside the court which I would pass along to Art and then rejoined polite society.

My duty to the body politic having been discharged honorably, albeit with what eleven others saw as somewhat too much mercy, I decided to fete myself to a martini and a steak and possibly another martini and ponder the unlikely appearance of the Chief and the even more improbable recall to life of the late Mrs. Quailn. The late afternoon air was hot and dry, but, even so, I decided against a cab and went the five blocks to the Biltmore on foot. I ate at the bar, and after chewing on some very fine beef, continued chewing on possible explanations for the presence of Chief Bridger in Court incognito or, if not incognito, in mufti. I decided to call Art again in the morning before leaving for San Severina and pick his brain. Satisfied with my plan, I invested the money saved on the cab on another martini. No. Hang the expense. Make it a Gibson.

Art and I arranged to meet the next day at the Fair Grounds. He was racing one of his horses, and thought I might enjoy hobnobbing with the landed gentry of San Severina County. I arrived early and couldn't find Art. I snagged a program and perused the irrelevant names and numbers. Being a hopeless Romantic I bet sawbuck on a mare named Princess Flavia with odds longer than the Nile.

I sat down at a table and sipped an iced tea and munched a Polish sausage.

“Hey Lindberg, I see you found us.” It was Art.

“No problem. I just followed the flies.”

“What's that ticket you have there Junior. Have you started betting already? We're not racing for another hour. What number did you bet?”

“Just looking to see if Dame Fortune is grinning or scowling today. Number four.”

“Thunderation, tarnation, and fermentation. What were you thinking? Four's a gray horse. Why not just go out and shoot an albatross and tie it around your neck?”

“Slow down my friend. Is there some law against betting a gray?” He was sputtering. “Well, everyone knows they're just, just, well, darned unreliable.”

“Aren't all horses unreliable?”

He looked puzzled. “B.Q. That's about the dumbest question I ever heard.”

The Princess turned out to be very unreliable. She skipped home ten lengths ahead of a very reliable chestnut. I was now wealthier by three hundred green coupons, “rich beyond the dreams of avarice”, as Dr. Johnson might have said if he were a betting man, and I know he was. I silently and solemnly vowed to beat the system by never betting again in my life.

Art calmed down and got down to business, my business that is. Is there any other kind?

“Seems like your eavesdropping has led to the excavation of some very moldy, or is it moldering, skeletal remains. Metaphorically speaking of course. The unfortunate Bart apparently owned some very desirable property down south but it was held in trust until he turned thirty. Guess his Pop didn't trust his judgment. There were two other beneficiaries. Two you and I both know and one we don't. There was Bart of course, his wife Bernadette, and a lady named Joan Grimaud.

I thought out loud. “Bernadette and Joan. My two favorite Saints. Next to Crispin and Crispian, of course.”

“Right track, wrong train. They both have the same birth date.”

“Twins? Sisters?”

“I'll go with that theory for now. Guess who is the Trustee?”

“Clyde Bridger.”

“See, you do have second sight.”

Art's race was about to start and we adjourned to find the rest of the family at the paddock.

Art's entry was a black colt named Pardner's Tale. I've gotta get my peepers checked. That Black colt sure looked gray to me. Not to worry. Pardner's Tale won the race and Art the honor of having his name engraved on a beat up silver cup, which looked like it had been dropped several times onto cobblestones from a B-26.

My version of the spectacle at the roadhouse had not gained any currency in San Severina, which was odd for a town that Bridger had told me was fifty per cent related by blood. Art had learned that both Bart and Bernadette had died of broken necks two days apart. The riding accident was the only explanation given for either death. Considering that broken necks are usually not hereditary, Art's suspicious side got active. Art had also learned that Bridger had been doing some recent renovations at a house on Spoon Lake outside town and was spending quite a bit of time out there. We decided that after dinner we would ride out to Bridger's lake house for a look see.

There was no plan other than to see what was to be seen and maybe nose around in the trash. For that last chore Art insisted on picking up his errand boy from the paper, Ronnie Piltdown. We stopped by Ronnie's place where he was waiting on the sidewalk with a camera twice his size with a flash reflector the size of a pizza pan. Ronnie himself was ninety pounds including shoes and most of that ears and neck. His red hair looked like he shampooed with nitroglycerine.

“I've heard good things about you Mr. Boyle. Pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure is reciprocal Ronnie. I've heard great things about you too.” I had heard nothing.

Ronnie turned backed to Art. “What's up boss? Are we taking down the Chief?”

“Calm down Private, we're just going to do some reconnoitering, and we need someone to make sure our car doesn't get stolen. You're strictly on lookout tonight, so I don't think the camera's necessary.” Ronnie firmly disagreed so we gave up arguing and set out in Art's big Plymouth.

We eased through the tree-canopied drive and killed the motor. The house was fifty yards away and lit up like the Cathedral at Chartres on Christmas Eve.

“Ronnie you stay here. If you hear anything you don't like, hightail it into town and ring the Sheriff from San Luis Obispo County. Not local police. You got that?” Art's command was unambiguous.

“Roger.” He slid behind the wheel as Art and I got out.

The lights were on in the house and there were loud voices almost like I had heard from the Roadhouse. We just quietly walked up onto the porch outside the door and listened. We could have as easily listened from the car.

The chief's voice. “ I told you Joan. You have your cut. Now its time for you to leave town. Permanently.”

“ This is a switch. I thought you liked me. Well, I don't really think I'll be going anywhere. I like it here. I don't like my share, but that's fixable. I think it should be a tad more, don't you? After all I'm the last heir. Right?”

“Bernadette was the heir.”

“Yes, and if she hadn't had the stupidity to fall and break her neck she would be telling you what I'm telling you, only not as nicely. You were lucky she had a sister and a loving one at that. How would you have transferred the land without me?”

“Don't worry sister. I'd have found a way. Actresses like you and your sister can be found on any street corner. What you need to worry about is leaving here upright and forgetting everything.”

“ Well Clyde, that's not going to happen. Bart and my sister owned a house too. What's wrong with a relative from the East showing up and moving in? More money, more property. That's what I see in the cards.”

“What's wrong is that I say no. I'm not Bart, and you ain't your sister.”

“What could you possibly do about it?”

“Use your imagination. Nobody knows Bernadette had a sister so nobody will be missing you.”

“Don't be too sure of that.”

“I'll take that chance.”

Then the voices went soft. We moved up closer to the door.

Then loud. A woman. “You don't have the nerve.”

A woman's shriek and then two loud pops. Gunfire. Stupid I know, but I yanked open the door.

Right in front of me lying on the ground, head in profile and soul miles and miles away, was the replica of the woman at the Roadhouse. Standing over her was Chief Bridger looking right at me, smoking revolver pointed right at my liver.

We looked eye to eye just as we had at dinner only this time I had the feeling he intended to stick me with the check.

His finger tightened on the trigger imperceptibly. I said the Airman's Prayer to myself. In your last seconds of life you're supposed to see your whole life flash before your eyes. What I saw flash before my eyes was every bomb I had ever dropped, the whistle, the flash of light, the concussion. Countless. One after another. Then there was a final grand explosion of light. Inexplicably, Bridger saw this last explosion. His eyes closed and his hand dropped reflexively. I charged Bridger and hit him with a low tackle. He went down hard, and his head hit the stone floor with a sound something like I had once heard outside a roadhouse somewhere in a pretty little town somewhere on the Central California Coast.

“I got it. I got his picture.” Ronnie's squeaky voice. The explosion that had temporarily blinded Bridger was the flash of Ronnie's camera. He had disobeyed his boss and followed us but, lucky for me, he had. Turns out it was lucky for him too.

Within twenty-four hours the photograph of Chief Bridger standing over the body of Joan Grimaud and glaring from behind his smoking revolver was on the cover of every newspaper in the country. Most magazines displayed the picture in full-page glory before the month was out.

Ronnie started picking up prizes like I pick up paper cuts. The guy was grateful in his own way. I'll give him that. He once mentioned me in a news interview not exactly by name but as his sidekick. “Lo how the mighty have fallen.” To be called the sidekick of a natural born sidekick, “Oh the humanity.”

I had started to develop a liking for the Frisco fog mostly because of the chance to fraternize with Clel, so when Ronnie invited me to another of his awards dinners up there I thought it would be a lark to don the monkey suit and drink and dine on the tab of some misguided foundation or other. I asked Clel to go along, and she jumped at the chance to tie on her paste choker and take the fox stole out of the fridge.

Ronnie's picture of Chief Bridger was on stage, blown up like a poster of Lenin in Red Square. If one looked very closely, a small piece of my elbow, which was immune to cropping, could be seen at the edge of the poster. Fame is so sweet.

Of course, with my prime connections, we got assigned to a table at the extreme rear of the hall. Clelia got up to powder her nose leaving me alone at the table. I signaled the waiter for a refill, but he ignored me like DiMaggio passing on a three and 0 curve ball.

“You look like you need a cocktail, Pilgrim. Waiter, get the Squire a beaker of old fashioneds toot sweet, and bring it right away.”

The assertive and welcome Samaritan plunked his rangy frame in the chair beside me.

“You a friend of the guest of honor?”

I nodded.

“Great natural photographer. “The Smoking Gun”. There will never be another picture like that. It doesn't get any more candid. I mean when they photographed MacArthur wading ashore it had to be repeated five times. Old Ronnie got history on the first attempt.”

I readily agreed, but out of gratitude for the old fashioned and not from conviction.

He looked me up and down like he was buying a used car. I looked back like I was selling one. He was fiftyish, tanned, well over six feet and sucking on a MacArthur corncob pipe that smelled like smoldering compost. Apparently he was a fan of the General.

“What's your line Bill?” He apparently mistook me for someone named Bill.

“The name's Boyle. Benton Boyle. I'm a writer.” Then I lied. “I write.”

“Hey what do you know? Ain't this world the size of a billiard ball? You write. I publish.”

He stuck out a bear's paw, and before I knew it my delicate typing fingers were oozing out of his grip like Vienna sausages.

“Wendell Porter, Whalebone Press. You must know us. We publish that guy who does the safari stuff and the bullfights and that woman with the glasses and the negative attitude.” I assumed he meant H. Rider Haggard and Emily Dickinson. There was no disputing these were very impressive clients.

Then the question I feared. “You scribbling anything now?”

“Well, yeh, I'm trying to put some ideas together.” That much was true, but please don't ask what. He asked anyway.

“Tell me about it.”

“Just kind of a rough idea for a novel”

“Let's have it. I won't steal your idea.”

“Well it's about a student or maybe an ex-student. He's kind of a mixed up kid but underneath it all he's trying hard. Even so, he goes off the deep end and clobbers an old lady pawnbroker. He subsequently sympathizes with a prostitute and plays an extended game of cat and mouse with a relentless police inspector.”

“Stop right there. I don't want to hear another word.” He popped up out of his seat smoking like burnt toast from a toaster.

No sense of humor. My mistake.

“You got an agent Bill? You got an editor? Of course you do. Fire them. You're coming on board with Whalebone.”

He scratched furiously at a checkbook that appeared from nowhere. “Here's an advance. I need three chapters by the 30 th . Your new editor is named Nadine. If you don't like her, fire her too, but before you do first get a look at her in a sweater. Welcome to Whalebone.”

The check was made out to one B. Boyle (apparently B for Bill) and had a number one followed by three very rotund and satisfying zeros.

“Listen Bill, I like the pawnbroker angle. What's her nationality, American?”

“Russian.” I stammered.

“Russkies are our pals now. Make her German, Bill, and let's make some money together.”

He was gone before the drink arrived. I stared at the check like it was a Vermeer. It had a cute little spouting whale imprinted on the border, which made me think I might have a whale in the book. Possibly a white whale. Maybe the pawnbroker was a former whaler who gave up whaling for pawn broking. As I considered the idea it shaped up in my mind as exceedingly plausible and more and more likely. Clelia strolled up and with her remarkable powers of observation detected the vestigial remnants of an idiotic grin.

“Hey there. What's so amusing? You look like a cat that ate two chocolate covered canaries. What are you plotting Benton, mischief?”