About the Book

Brock finds a case that’s too juicy to refuse.

Brock Callahan was still playing for the Los Angeles Rams when Alan Arthur Baker first conned him. Masquerading as an investment banker, Baker talked the hapless jock out of $5,000, returning it only when Brock threatened to snap his back in half. Years later, Brock is a retired private detective living in the splendor of the Los Angeles suburbs, and Baker needs help tailing his wife, a high-priced call girl who may be in danger. The old grifter is as crooked as they come, but too charming for Brock to say no.

Brock puts protégé Corey Raleigh on the case, but can’t help keeping an eye on the investigation. When the boy detective runs into trouble, Brock throws himself into the middle of a mystery involving a retired palooka, a brutal heiress, and the famous estate of one of the richest men California has ever known.

About the Author

William Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like Paris Nights, Scarlet Adventures, and the infamous Black Mask. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime.

Death in Donegal Bay

A Brock Callahan Mystery

William Campbell Gault

BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

Copyright © 2015 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne, Germany

For the original edition:

Copyright © 2012 by The Mysterious Press, LLC, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY. U.S.A.

Copyright © 1984 by William Campbell Gault

Project management: Lori Herber

Cover adaptation: Christin Wilhelm, www.grafic4u.de

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

E-book production: Jouve Germany GmbH & Co. KG

ISBN 978-3-95859-341-1

www.bastei-entertainment.com

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this e-book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Bill Pronzini

good writer, avid collector, stalwart friend

Chapter One

ALAN ARTHUR BAKER HAD never hit it big in the field he chose for his lifetime career. The field was larceny. He had made his first appearance in court at the innocent age of seventeen. The charge was selling bogus location maps of the homes of movie stars in Hollywood and adjacent areas.

Selling these maps was not in itself unlawful. But Alan’s maps were several decades old; he had inherited them from an uncle who had been in the same business as a youth. Most of the stars had moved by the time Alan hit the streets. Quite a few of them had died.

The complainants—a vindictive and elderly couple visiting from Illinois—must have hoped for punitive rather than compensatory damages from Alan. They appeared in small-claims court without an attorney.

The case was dismissed without penalty. Alan had taken the precautionary step of buying a rubber stamp to update his avuncular inheritance. The stamp bore the single word Historic in print small enough to fit between The and Fabulous of the original title. The couple from Illinois might have had sight too dimmed by time to read it. The original title had been “The Fabulous Homes of All the Famous Cinema Stars.” Alan had made them historic.

He had gone on from there to other small con scams and had become a minor local celebrity. I had grown up in Long Beach, so I was not aware of his reputation when we first met.

I was in my second season with the Rams and being paid more than I was worth. Four years at Stanford had not made me as sophisticated as I imagined myself to be.

It was over drinks at Heinie’s that Alan explained to me how short the life of the professional athlete was, how bleak the years of retirement were—unless he prepared for them. Two days later, I gave him a check for five thousand dollars to be invested in Stadium Mutual Funds, of which Alan claimed to be the financial adviser.

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