The Double Take

by Roy Huggins

  “Would you have any idea who may have hired Martin for the job?”

  Cabrillo's eyes came from above five thousand miles away and looked at me. He looked at me with the piercing directness of a kindly owl looking into the gathering dusk, and said, “Do you think I did it, Mr. Bailey? Or were you just testing a hypothesis?”

  I smiled. “I don't even have an hypothesis to test, Mr. Cabrillo. Would it be possible for me to see Mrs. Cabrillo?”

  “That won't be necessary. We'll discharge Martin, of course, if what you say is true.”

  “Martin threatened my life. I'm afraid the law will take care of the discharging for you.”

  “You intend to bring charges?”

  “I might not. If I could talk with Mrs. Cabrillo....”

  Cabrillo stood up. He was all alone in the room. He looked a little sad, and said slowly, “Mrs. Cabrillo is home now. I'll have Doctor Cherkin take you over to the house.” He turned around and opened the door. The hissing sound filled the room. Then he was gone, and the sound was quiet and distant again like little breezes playing among tall trees.

  Chapter Eleven

  DOCTOR CHERKIN left me in a large room at the front of the house. I had been in cozier and more inviting rooms—the fossil room at New York's Museum of Natural History, for instance. There were a dozen or so portraits on the walls in varying sizes and moods. Some of them looked at me out of eyes that were full and compassionate, like the eyes of the little man with the cloud-white hair, but most of the faces were fatuous or predatory or just painted and meaningless.

  I heard a sound behind me like a butterfly sighing and turned around. There was a dark-haired, dark-eyed little thing standing in the vaulted doorway. She was wearing a black uniform that looked suspiciously like silk and I got the impression she would flit away if I did anything unusual like blowing my nose.

  She asked me to come with her in an accent that was cuter than Carmen Miranda's and not half as loud. We went up a circular stairway that couldn't have accommodated the five o'clock rush at Macy's—at least not on Saturday. We went along a hall with still more portraits of Vegas and Cabrillos long since called to their uncertain judgments. Then she opened a door and let me into a room.

  It was a large room. There probably weren't any small ones. Otherwise it was as foreign to the house as Keller's office was to the third floor of Milbrunner's Warehouse.

  It was a pink room. A half dozen tall windows were hung with rose velvet draperies pulled together so that the hard sunlight filtered in in a gentle pink diffusion. There were little tables and wood pieces here and there. They were painted in warm gray but they, and the large chesterfield and the little love-seats by the fireplace, were various hues and shades of pink. There was an enormous frosted glass bowl on the table behind the chesterfield. It was filled with talisman roses.

  The little thing in black whispered that Madam would not be with me for a little while and would I care for a drink.

  I shook my head and formed the word no with my lips. She vanished silently.

  There were no portraits in the room. Not even the little stand-photographs that usually go with milady's boudoir. There was one painting, a Madonna, hanging above a little prie-dieu placed against the right wall next to a high, wide door.

  There was a desk by one of the windows to the left of the fireplace. I looked around and then went over and tried to open the drawers. They were locked. The pigeon holes were empty. I walked to the chesterfield and buried my feet in a great fur rug and sat and listened to the silence until I thought I could hear the roses filling the room with their fragrance. In front of me was a long rose-gray coffee table with cigarettes on it and a decanter with two little glasses on a silver tray.

  It seemed a long time later that I heard a door open behind me. I stood up and turned around and looked at her across the rim of roses. She closed the door and walked toward me with a kind of stately carelessness. She had curves that were being treated with just the proper respect by a full-skirted black dress, taffeta maybe, fitted high and tight at the waist and with a low round neck. There were lace cuffs on the sleeves.

  She swung around the chesterfield and waded in the white fur rug to one of the love-seats. She said, “Please sit down, Mr. Bailey.”

  She put herself into the love-seat with a regal sweep and looked at me. She had one dark, full eyebrow raised in delicate alarm as if she half expected me to produce a pitching kit from my hip pocket.

  She had a lot of things that you can buy with time and money and some that you can't. A white velvet skin that could have been equaled by almost any woman under twenty-five with a million dollars to spend on it. High firm cheek bones with milk-blue shadows under them, and a smile playing around the corners of her cherry mouth and not getting anywhere. She looked like a woman who would save her smiles for the right moment.

  Her hair was as black as a raven's wing, and it was drawn tight from a gleaming white part in the center of her head and then allowed to express itself in a genteel way about her neck and shoulders. It made her look young, younger than I thought she should be.

  She came right to the point, “I'm afraid my husband is ver-ry sensitive to publicity, Mr. Bailey. It seems that I am seeing you to avoid some of it.”

  Her voice had the smoothness and rhythm of an ice ballet but not the warmth. There was only the moon-cast shadow of an accent. It was more like something born in a vacuum, with nothing in it of a foreign tongue or of the east, or south, or west. I had heard a few people talk like that, actors mainly, a couple of college professors. But it didn't sound affected.

  I said, “I'm just trying to clear something up, Mrs. Cabrillo, with as little disturbance as possible.” I told her about Martin.

  She nodded slightly when I had finished and leaned back and crossed her legs. I didn't look at the knee edging out from the dress. It was a nice knee or she wouldn't have bothered to show it to me. She arched her throat. That made it look whiter and longer.

  She said, “Mr. Cabrillo told me this much, Mr. Bailey. It is a curious story. This show girl. You are not looking for her. You are simply trying to find what she was doing a few years back. Why should anyone wish to interfere with you?”

  I smiled. “You are not questioning my story, are you?”

  She leaned forward. The low round neck of the dress had a lot of play in it. She was as indifferent as September Morn. She took a cigarette from the china tray on the coffee table and said, “But yes, Mr. Bailey. You see, I spoke to Martin. He knows nothing of the incident.”

  I held onto the smile, but it was getting a little stiff around the edges. “What might be my point in telling the story?”

  She had the cigarette lit now. She leaned back and arched her neck again and looked at me along her alabaster cheeks out of two clusters of black lashes. Then she smiled. And that was the moment. It was a sudden, breathless beauty like a falling star in a moonless sky. I should have been turning visceral somersaults. But I felt that her suddenly going radiant on me was a little unfair, like using a knuckle-knife.

  She said, “Quite so, Mr. Bailey. Even if your tale about Martin is true, what is the point of talking with me about it?”

  I said, “I know something even tougher than that to answer. Why haven't you had me thrown out before now?”

  She raised the dark lashes and gave me a long stare out of the heady depths of her eyes. There was a primeval sexuality and cold intelligence in them. I couldn't tell what color they were. In that face any eyes would have looked like two dark pools of moonlight.

  She said, with a slow languor, “You insisted on seeing me. That makes me curious. Then I find you are very tall, very handsome, and even genteel—in a crude North American way.” She gave me the arched neck and the smile again. This time she let a little pink tongue tip peer out of the smile in a kind of sultry invitation.

  “Would you like a drink, Mr. Bailey?”

  She didn't wait for an answer. She rose and stepped over to one edge of th
e fireplace and pulled a cord. It brought the little dark girl in as if she had been hanging onto the other end of it.

  They had a conversation in what sounded to me like Spanish and was probably Portuguese. The little girl dipped her head and skittered away again.

  Mrs. Cabrillo stayed by the fireplace, standing and looking down at me thoughtfully. She said, “I should hate to lose Martin. Is this—this thing at all serious?”

  “It's serious to me. I don't like to be told when I can or can't earn an honest dollar. Being a detective is my business. I earn my living that way—what there is of it.”

  She gave me a half-smile and tried it another way, “I mean—assuming your story is true, does it mean Martin might be involved in something serious and nasty? Or could he just be interested in the young lady you're investigating?”

  I gave her a broad slow smile. Maybe it was a smirk. “Mrs. Cabrillo, it's hard to believe you're a newcomer to our shores. Nice clean accent, too.”

  “You disappoint, Mr. Bailey. You do not seem like a provincial. I assure you Brazil is a part of the New World, too. Rio is more like some parts of Los Angeles than Pasadena is.” She smiled almost sweetly and added, “And my mother was British, from Guiana. I spoke English almost before I learned Portuguese.”

  The little maid came in with a tray and made two drinks without asking any questions about it. I got scotch and liked it. It was full-bodied and smooth. Mrs. Cabrillo sat down again and looked into her glass. The sun was dying slowly and the pinkness was ebbing away, and darkness was gathering its strength in the high corners of the room.

  We sat and swallowed our drinks and looked at each other like a couple of tired jaguars sharing a waterhole.

  Then she leaned forward, still indifferently, and let go with the smile again. “You Americanos are so very devious. Could this be another of the so flattering ways you use to try to know somebody?” She finished the sentence with a little tinkling laugh.

  That sounded almost ingenuous enough to be honest. I began to wonder if I was crawling out the wrong branch.

  I said, “Not that you wouldn't be worth doing something as complicated as that for, but I didn't just make Martin up. He was there.”

  She smiled again and wrinkled her nose. “I am glad,” she said. “Impetuous men bore me. They are like little children. I have met too many.”

  I smiled. “About Martin...” I said.

  “You've finished your drink. Give me the glass.” I hadn't quite finished it but I gave it to her anyway. She re-built both drinks, handed me one, stood looking down at me for a moment, and went back to the love-seat.

  “Yes—about Martin...” The tinkling laugh came again. “You say you talked to him. What does he say about all this?” She took a wholesome drink.

  “That he was just hiring his gun to a mysterious gentleman from Chicago.”

  “Oh! That horrid place... I don't understand it. Martin has been so steady...” There was a lovely frown on her face.

  I drank some scotch. Mrs. Cabrillo slung a rugged highball. I said, “I wouldn't worry about it. Martin and his principal—if he has one—are about as professional as a pair of pop-guns.”

  Mrs. Cabrillo smiled. I took another drink. She got up and stepped over to the chesterfield and took hold of my glass. The smile was getting sultry.

  I held onto the glass and said, “I'm still nursing it.”

  She was still smiling, and it was still sultry. She put her other hand down on mine and tugged at the glass. I let go of it and her hand was in mine. It had just slipped in there accidental-like. I took hold of it. She set the glass on the table and then stood looking at me. Her attitude said I had the ball and what was I going to do with it?

  I gave a little tug, about enough to pull the leg off a gnat, and she was down on the chesterfield beside me. She slid her hand up along my arm and dropped her eyes to my mouth. She was still waiting. She wasn't going to be forward about it.

  I gave another tug, gentle and steady. That turned her halfway around and she was lying in my arms, her legs on the chesterfield, half-bent so that the loose dress fell away from them, the little pink tongue tip edging out from her upper lip, her heavy eyelids lowered.

  I kissed her and her arms went around my neck and she came up hard against me and her lips found my mouth and her tongue was hot against mine. She shivered, and pulled back a half-inch and whispered huskily, “You know how ver-ry attractive you are—to a real woman?”

  I drew my hand tightly across her back. The dress was cold and smooth. There was nothing under it. I didn't say anything.

  She said, casually, “Shall I discharge Martin?”

  “Men like Martin are pretty hard to find, Beautiful. And there's no future for him in crime.”

  “Then it isn't anything really serious that he's involved in?” She brought her hand down across my neck and played with the muscle at the side of it.

  I squeezed her a little. “Does Martin have a day off?”

  “Of course. Thursday.” She played with my hair.

  “Does he hang around here?”

  “No.” Cautiously. “He always goes away and doesn't usually return until quite late.”

  “Do you always let him have the Packard limousine on his day off, Beautiful? Or just on special occasions like last Thursday?”

  She sat up, leaning across me on one hand. Her upper lip raised for part of a second and then settled down again. “I suppose he could take it easily enough without my knowing. It is my car and I don't drive.” She gave me a ruby glare and pulled herself up from the chesterfield.

  I stood up with her and shook my head. “We're a sorry pair,” I said, “a couple of suction pumps, attached to each other, working like hell, and getting nowhere.” I turned and started for the door.

  I heard a noise and turned around and looked back at her. She was watching me go, and the lip was up now, quivering like a nervous rabbit's. I went out the door and down the hall. The little dark maid caught up with me like a mislaid shadow when I was halfway down the stairs and followed me silently to the enormous front door.

  Chapter Twelve

  I HAD DINNER AT El Lobo's, bought a pint of whisky that was mostly neutral spirits, picked up two afternoon papers and a copy of Time, and went home to relax and try to find out a little bit about the world I live in.

  When I let myself in, the phone was ringing. It had a feverish sound to it, as if it had been ringing a long time and was getting tired of it. There was no one there when I answered it, but the line had the open, windy sound of a completed connection. I said Hello a couple of times across the hollow distant silence and hung up.

  I showered, put on my slippers and towel robe and mixed myself a tall drink with lots of ice and soda. I picked up one of the papers and looked to see what Dick Tracy was doing. He had just discovered the incinerator where Four Ears had been hiding for a month. The phone rang again.

  It was Johnston asking me where I'd been all day and if I had anything to report.

  “Yeah, I was going to call you in the morning. I overlooked something somewhere along the line and all hell's broken loose—I'm giving you back your retainer...”

  “Why!”

  “Because it hasn't been a satisfactory job. And because a man was shot yesterday. That sort of limits my usefulness. The man was the one who brought your wife to Los Angeles six years ago.”

  Johnston didn't say anything for a while. Then tightly, “Who did it?”

  “I don't know. But I'm afraid some bright boy is going to trace it to me and stop there.”

  “Does that mean you'll have to say what you were working on?”

  “It could. I'll give you all the breaks I can. I'm staying with the case, but I'd rather be on my own till I know where I stand.”

  “That won't be necessary. Keep that retainer, and send me a bill the end of the month.”

  I didn't say anything.

  Johnston said, “Have you heard anything?”

  “Yeah. Bu
t I couldn't tell you what any of it means. I've been threatened by an amateur trigger man, conned by a local lovely, and pumped by an international beauty. Your wife took the demure name of Gloria Gay and went on the bump and grind circuit. I got as far as a bubble dance in San Pedro in 1939 and lost track.”

  Johnston made a noise into the phone. It didn't convey anything to me. Then he said, “That's the answer to the phone call. Keeping people from knowing Margaret once did a strip tease would be worth quite a bit.... In fact, it would be worth as much just to keep Margaret from knowing that I know.”

  “I'm afraid it's not as simple as that, Mr. Johnston.... What kind of voice did this fellow have? Anything particular about it?”

  “No-o. It wasn't high or low especially. It was rather harsh, almost hoarse. Why?”

  “Just checking. I'll keep in touch with you....”

  “I'll expect you to.”

  We hung up. My hand was wet with sweat. I went in and washed it and mixed another drink, with less ice and less soda, but just as tall.

  At nine o'clock Norma Shannon called. She had worked late and was at the Zero Room on Wilshire. Why didn't I join her?

  I told her I was giving myself a facial and was going to bed in a minute.

  I finished the drink and pulled the bed out of the wall and crawled in. I slept a sleep as dreamless as death.

  Hazel was busy at the switchboard taking messages and two of my fellow tenants were sitting at desks reading their accumulated mail. There was nothing for me in the box so I got the newspapers out of the files and started in where I'd left off. I didn't know what I expected to find and I didn't find anything. At twelve-thirty I went out and ate lunch and while I was eating I suddenly realized that I was really waiting for something to happen. I didn't like that.

  At four o'clock the door opened and John Vega Cabrillo came in, holding a brown Borsalino in his hand, and looking like a lost Sealyham. He was wearing a dark brown business suit that had forgotten who it had been tailored for. He saw me and came toward me, hesitantly, as if he were afraid of intruding.