The Double Take

by Roy Huggins

  We didn't say much driving over. There wasn't anyone in the lobby and the elevator was waiting for us. We lurched up to the fourth floor. We were halfway down the hall when I saw it. My door was open and it looked as if every light in the place was on including the one in the refrigerator.

  I said, “I think I have company. Wait here a minute.” I walked on down and went in with my arms hanging conspicuously at my sides.

  The place looked like the Broadway bargain basement after Dollar Day. And in the midst of it, sitting in my favorite armchair, there was a brick-faced fellow in a wrinkled gray suit. I had seen him before. He was Detective Lieutenant Quint of Central Homicide.

  He said, “Bailey, you're a hell of a housekeeper.” Quint talked like a man who was afraid you might hear what he said, mumbling his words into a kind of verbal nut sundae. He was known to have smiled twice and frowned four times in his twenty years on the force. But on the whole, expressions came and went on his brick-red face with the infinite variety of the seasons in Death Valley.

  I said, “If I produce the body will you send the boys back and clean the place up again?”

  “Not lookin' for a body. Came up to see you. Door wide open so I came on in. Kinda messy, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and looked out and saw Norma edging down the hall toward me. When she saw Quint she jumped but not much. I introduced them and Quint pulled his stocky frame up from the chair and almost smiled.

  “I'll be going,” he mumbled.

  “Stick around,” I said, and went over to the desk where I had put the pictures of Mrs. Johnston. The drawer was pulled out. There were a couple of bills in it. The pictures were gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  NORMA HELPED ME clean up a little and then I sent her home in a cab. I told her to call me if the man in the green coupe showed up again.

  Quint had sat in the chair while we worked, looking at nothing in particular and smoking a mangled cigar.

  I went into the kitchen and opened some beer and brought it in in a couple of highball glasses. Quint took one of the glasses and mumbled something I didn't understand. He didn't expect me to.

  I sat down on the sofa across from him and said, “You boys haven't looked under my rock for quite a while. Is the crime wave over?”

  “You must be working on something hot.” He swung his head in a little arc to take in the whole room.

  I didn't say anything.

  “What did you have against Buffin, tell me, Bailey?”

  “His clam chowder. It was too cold.”

  “Still being a smart guy, huh? Do you know how you stand down at Central?”

  “Yeah. Good with some, bad with others. Like most private eyes.”

  “Right now it's mostly bad. Walking away from a stiff is bad business—for you.”

  “So now I didn't kill him?”

  “Not unless we can't find anyone else for the ticket.”

  “What makes you so sure I found him?”

  “How do you think we got a line on you at all?”

  “He kept his phone in the ice box.”

  Something glinted behind Quint's eyes that looked like an emotion wanting to get itself expressed. “That just about sums up your opinion of the force, doesn't it? Let me tell you something. You were right when you decided he didn't have a phone. But you were wrong when you decided we'd never trace him to you because of it. It's probably a good story from your point of view; from ours it's just routine detective work.”

  Quint was in a mood for talk. I got out my pipe and lit it and got comfortable on the couch.

  “About three or four days ago the State Vehicle boys got a call from a guy claiming to be Sergeant Mike Moran—he's one of our boys on the narcotics detail. This guy says he's checking a hot car and wants to know who belongs to a certain license number.” Quint took a long drink of beer and belched quietly through his nose.

  “Well, the State man did just what he's supposed to do. He asks for the guy's number to call him back. Then he calls us up but Moran's out and nobody knows where he is. So the State man goes ahead and gives out the information. The answer being the car belongs to a guy named Bailey who resides right where I'm sittin'.”

  I said, “What d'ya know!”

  “But the State man don't like it. So he calls back when Mike's in. Mike takes the phone number and goes out to look into it—on his own time.”

  “He'll get ahead, will Mike.”

  “He finds it's a drugstore pay phone, down at Venice. The druggist don't remember anyone in particular using it that day. Then two days later we find this bird Buffin shot dead just a block or two above this place where the phone is. So...”

  “So Mike tells you his story and you say 'it must be one and the same man.' You're a better man than I am, Quint. I'd have told Mike to go back to the griffa hunt.”

  “Thanks,” he said solemnly. “We took some pictures of this Buffin up to the drugstore and the druggist recognizes him. Then he remembers that the guy made another call the morning of the day he was shot. There was only one call made from that phone before noon that day. That was a call to you.”

  “How does that get me to Venice to play ghoul?”

  He took a folded sheet of paper out of an inside pocket. “We already had a statement from one of the scrub women at the dance hall. She saw a guy leave the place about eleven o'clock. Here's the description she give us: 'Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair parted like Cary Grant's, and a lean, criminal face.' That's better'n a photograph.”

  I got up and went in and refilled the glasses. When I came back I said, “Not in my book, Lieutenant. I didn't go down there.” I sat down.

  “Buffin called me and said he had a proposition for me that he couldn't talk about over the phone. He wanted me to come down. I told him it was his proposition, he could come up and see me. He said he would. But he never did make it.”

  “Okay,” Quint said. “We've pussy-footed around for about a half hour; now let's get our feet under the table. He had your license number. That's got to mean something.”

  “Maybe he got it playing bingo.”

  “He's got something to do with this fancy case you're workin' on.” He jerked his thumb toward a corner of the room that hadn't been cleaned up very well yet.

  “It could be,” I said.

  “Tell us about it.” He blew smoke at the stand-lamp and watched it funnel up through the shade and wander around looking for a place to settle.

  “You know better than that, Quint.”

  Quint sucked his teeth for a while, quietly. “You boys used to get by with the works,” he said. “Know why?” He didn't wait for me to tell him why. “It was because the fuzz-nuts in the department were afraid of you. They had such dirty noses themselves, they figured they had to let you private boys get away with a little murder now and then to even up the score.”

  “Mayhem, Quint, not murder.”

  “But they don't give us that kind of orders any more,” he went on. “You guys are finding out the law applies to you just like any other Joe Doakes.”

  “Yeah. The millennium. The trouble is there aren't any cops named Joe Doakes.”

  Quint stared at me for a long time out of eyes as full of expression as two peepholes in a circus tent. “Don't be wise, Bailey. I've got enough to wrap you in cellophane right now if I get in the mood—and make it stick.”

  “You'll have to try harder, Quint. I'm still breathing.... If I uncover anything that might help you it's yours. Is that good enough?”

  Quint stood up, slowly drank the rest of his beer, tossed a half inch of soggy cigar into the tray, and mumbled, “Maybe you think that license of yours came in a cracker-jack box. Maybe it did.”

  “Huh-uh. It came from the State Detective License Bureau. I was by there the other day and Mac was complaining about you City boys. He seemed to resent your thinking you had something to say about our licenses.”

  Quint gave me a watery look and shook his head slowly. “Too ba
d, Bailey,” he said. “Too bad.” He put on his hat and walked out.

  It was ten o'clock.

  I undressed and went in and got under the shower. I let it run hot on my shoulders; then I turned on the cold and made noises like a floundering porpoise. When I got out and put on my towel robe, the phone was ringing.

  It was Cabrillo telling me the coast was clear. Martin had driven Mrs. Cabrillo to an after-the-show jive session put on by the stars of the Benveniti Opera Company. It sounded exciting.

  “Come to the laboratory.”

  “Shall I leave my car outside?”

  “Not at all. This isn't a conspiracy.” It was a gentle reprimand.

  The air had grown cold, and the brittle dryness was gone from it. And there were odors of night-blooming jasmine and sage chasing each other across the night sky. It seemed like no drive at all to Pasadena.

  The gate was open and I drove in past the great house, the drive gleaming like a moat in the darkness.

  I walked down a flagged path to the laboratory. Cabrillo stepped out of the shadows and walked toward me, his white hair shining like a desert candle in the hard moonlight.

  He said, “We'll go in the rear, Mr. Bailey,” and walked down a little gravel path to the house.

  He opened a door with a key and said, “We'll go to Mrs. Cabrillo's suite first and get that over with.”

  We went up a thinly carpeted flight of stairs and then up another. We walked down a long wide hall. We were approaching the suite at the opposite end from the wide stairway at the front of the house.

  Cabrillo stopped and opened a door and silently switched on a light. It was a bedroom. It was a blue room. The rug, the drapes, the chairs, even the tile of the fireplace, were blue. Everything but the bed, which was a sterile white. It was canopied in white organdy and spread with stiff white lace. It was a room without warmth, a room in which passion would be as welcome as Worcestershire sauce on a marshmallow sundae. I didn't think it would tell me a thing.

  There was a long wardrobe closet across from the bed. I started there. There were enough shoes, coats, dresses, costumes and such to set someone up in a nice business. Cabrillo watched me silently while I felt in the pockets. There were very few pockets and I didn't find anything.

  There were two high chests of drawers. I felt between and under the soft fluffy things in them and left them pretty much as they had been.

  There was a dressing room, leading into the bathroom, that was as large as my whole apartment. I spent some time on it, but I didn't find anything there either. There wasn't anything in the bathroom I hadn't seen before but I'd have to get used to a carpeted bathroom.

  In a dark corner of the bedroom next to a tall window there was a little antique French desk with legs like a new-born colt. The middle drawer was locked. Mrs. Cabrillo had a good supply of razor blades in the bathroom. I got one and went to work. The drawer gave up without a struggle.

  There wasn't much in it. A fountain pen and some stationery. Far back there was a little pink-leather book, worn and a little faded, about the size of a folded wallet. I took it out and riffled the pages. It was full of names and addresses.

  I went over and sat in one of the blue chairs while Cabrillo stood by the cold fireplace and looked gloomily down at me. Most of the names at the front of the book were Spanish or Portuguese, with the addresses written in Portuguese. Toward the back I began to recognize a few names here and there, old-time Angelenos. One name was interesting enough for me to get an envelope out of my pocket and write it down. It was “A. Northwick,” with an address on Hollywood Boulevard and a Granite exchange telephone number. Northwick is an unusual name. I had known a top-drawer grifter named Barky Northwick several years back. I hadn't heard anything about him for a couple of years.

  Another name was interesting, too. It was “Mrs. Ralph Johnston, 1104 Duarte Road, Los Angeles.” The names weren't listed alphabetically. I copied the names that came just before and just after Mrs. Johnston's, just in case they might mean something.

  Cabrillo said, “Did you find something?”

  “Just a name I recognized. I don't think it means anything.” I read him the name that came just before Mrs. Johnston's.

  He looked bored and said, “That's her voice teacher.”

  “When did she start going to him?”

  “About a year ago. Yes, a few weeks better than a year ago. Why? Is it important?”

  And some time after that Mrs. Johnston's name had . gone into the little book. A little less than a year ago, Margaret Bleeker had suddenly disappeared from U.C.L.A. and married Ralph Johnston. “I don't think it is,” I said.

  There wasn't anything else for me in the little book. I put it back in the desk and shut the drawer. Unless she noticed the scratches on the latch she'd never know the difference.

  I spent another half-hour in the room with the rose drapes. The desk by the fireplace was unlocked, but it didn't yield anything except a handful of mixed nuts. I was glad to get them. I was hungry again. I didn't find anything else.

  Outside I said, “I'd just as soon skip Martin's rooms. I don't think they'll help us.”

  Cabrillo shrugged lightly. “Are you disappointed?”

  “Well, I'm afraid it hasn't helped me very much. Do you know anyone named Northwick?”

  “Was that one of the names in the book?”

  “Yeah. Another one was Mrs. Ralph Johnston.”

  He shook his head, and the moonlight played in his hair and cut deep shadows in his face.

  “I don't know either of them,” he said. “Does this affect our arrangement in any way, Mr. Bailey?”

  “That must have been some report your lawyer gave you on me,” I said. I turned and walked down the gravel path to the garage, got into my car and drove away. I didn't think about the little pink-leather book, or about Mrs. Johnston, because I didn't know what to think about them.... I thought about Cabrillo and his gentle quietude, and about his wife and her labored beauty. And about the sterile white bed in the? blue bedroom.

  I drove in on the Arroyo Seco Parkway. The night had made the world its own. The breeze was a stranger to the warm day's fragrance and the stars burned low in the sky, still and frosty, like watchfires on distant hills.

  I cut off to go into town on Broadway. That would take me by the Pacific Building. The bars were closed. I wondered if I needed a drink bad enough to bother to stop. I wondered if I wouldn't find my liquor poured down the sink anyway if I went up and my files spread out on the floor like a Fifth Avenue snowstorm. It wasn't the pictures they had been looking for. They probably found those in the first five minutes of the hunt. Whatever it was, I didn't think they had found it.

  I crossed Olympic Boulevard and started into the block the Pacific Building is on. There were only a few cars parked along the curb, looking like something left on a doorstep.

  One of them was a green Dodge coupe.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I PULLED IN BEHIND the Dodge and jumped out. The lights came on as I jerked the door open and the little fellow at the wheel was fumbling with a key in the ignition lock.

  I sat down and said, “Let's talk.”

  He looked at me and said, “Who the hell are you?” in a ragged voice that sounded as if it needed a good burring job.

  “I'm a guy who wants to talk. I'm lonely.”

  “Beat it,” said the little man. “I gotta be at the shipyards at seven o'clock.”

  There are a lot of green Dodge coupes in the world. I said, “What are you doing up here?”

  “If it's anything to ya, I been havin' a drink or two at the Figueroa Club.”

  “What are they serving with the rust-remover up there? Your breath ain't pretty but it wouldn't keep you out of a W. C. T. U. rally. Let's talk.”

  He looked at me and licked his upper teeth with his tongue.

  I said, “Maybe you'd like a drink. I've got some upstairs. Okay?”

  The little man smiled with the right half of his face and s
aid, “Pal, you're strictly from the squirrel's nest. But if it's liquor you're talkin' about, let's go.” He was rather happy about the whole idea.

  We went into the lobby and I pushed the night button on the elevator block. While we waited I looked him over. He was like a thousand other little men that you might see in any back street from London to San Diego. He had the hard, bony-chested, stringy thinness of a jockey who's a little too tall for the game. His cheeks pulled in tight against the bone in his face as if there was a vacuum in his throat. He had a gray hat on and the suit was gray and tailored to fit him. His eyes were a dull gray too, and they were looking me over as if there wasn't anything to look for above my necktie.

  The elevator came down and we got in and I said, “Four, Joe.” Joe knew better, but he was tired. If I wanted to ride past my floor, that was my business. But the little man stiffened when I said it and began abusing his lower lip with uneven discolored teeth.

  We got out on four and I took hold of the little man's right arm in a friendly way. Joe dropped back down to the second floor where he'd left his magazine and his bottle of beer. But I made a mistake. The little man was left-handed, and he almost had the automatic out of the bolster under his right arm before I could do anything about it. I managed to freeze it where it was by pulling him tight against me so the gun pointed sidewise and would blow as big a hole in him as it would in me if he pulled the trigger.

  We stood like that for a while breathing into each other's faces. On that basis he would win hands down before long. I started to squeeze my right hand down between us to where the gun was. He suddenly became a dead weight, as heavy as a load of coal, and I dropped him. I jumped and swung out with my right fist. I heard a yelp and something metallic clattered against wood.

  I stepped over and picked up the gun and the little man got up and brushed himself off. Then he described me with a series of filthy names and tried to kick me from five feet away. He couldn't, so he spit on the floor.

  I said, “I suppose the lights you left burning down there have tipped the boys off by now.”