by Roy Huggins
“Sure it was her?”
“Hell, yes. She's got a voice you couldn't forget. She sounded excited, scared. Said she was in trouble and needed some help. My kind of help—that's what she said.” He pulled his mouth down in a kind of grim smile and his eyes became little slits for a moment, as if he were remembering better days and enjoying it.
He went on, “She asked me if I'd meet her in one hour, ten o'clock. I said sure. Then—of all the damned things—she asks me if I'll meet her at the bench by the swan pond in Westlake Park. Can you imagine that?” He scowled at me. “Maybe she likes swans.”
“Well, I was there anyways. But she wasn't. She never showed up. Hasn't called again.”
“Where'd she call? Here?”
“Sure. I own the joint. Can't get any honest help to run it.”
“Listed in the phone book, huh?”
“Sure.”
I stood there looking at a grease spot on Northwick's lapel and trying to make something out of what he'd told me. We stood silently for what seemed a long time, then from somewhere down the counter came a dull ring. Northwick jumped a little and moved to his right, then he turned and went the other way and disappeared through a door behind the far end of the counter.
I don't know what it was, maybe I was tired, maybe I'm not very bright, but it was several minutes before the meaning of Northwick's reversing his direction hit me. When it did I practically leaped over the counter. There was a phone under it to the right. I picked it up gently like someone handling a land mine. I heard Northwick's voice saying, “Okay, Gloria, ten o'clock tonight. But can't we make it some other place?” Then there was a little click and a dead silence. I put the phone back, gingerly, and jumped back over the counter. I just made it. Northwick came through the door, his complexion muddy, his gray brows pulled together.
“Goddammit,” he said. “You picked up that phone!”
I looked blank. “What phone?”
“Somebody did, and she hung up.”
I looked surprised. “You mean you were talking to Gloria Gay?”
His face relaxed. “Yeah,” he said, and grimaced. “She called to say she'd managed to settle the beef. Then she hangs up before I get a chance to find out where she lives or anything.” He glared at me again. “Someone got on the line.”
“That's a hell of a note. Must have been on her end.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you get a line on her it might be worth your while to get in touch with me.”
He gave me a cool stare. “Where'll I find you?”
“It's in the phone book.”
He nodded and I went out and drove away. A high gray fog had rolled up between the blue sky and the wide scattered city. And a cold wind was fingering down the broad streets and keening softly. I wondered if it was a lamentation for the dead that were or for those that were yet to be.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE OFFICE WAS WARM and crowded and smoke-filled, as if someone had just been fixed up with the Presidential nomination. One of my fellow tenants was standing in the middle of the room saying good-by to two corpulent gentlemen who smelled of dollar cigars and good scotch. Another man I'd never seen before was reading mail at the desk in front of mine, and Lee Martinez was standing at my private window gazing out at my private view. Hazel was fighting the switchboard but she found time to slip a note into my hand. I read the note and then went over to the desk and sat down.
Lee saw me and turned and went around the desk and sat in the conference chair. He ran his sharp black little eyes over my bruised face and said, “Don't tell me you didn't know she was married?”
“Don't be old-fashioned,” I said. “I've been accepted by Hollywood's upper classes—you'll have to get used to this.”
“Speaking of the upper crust—I'm not doin' so well on Mrs. Cabrillo.”
“I figured as much. What's wrong?”
“If you don't want that dame to know she's being tailed, I can't do the job for you. I'm not the Man of Tomorrow. She went to the beauty parlor this morning. Eighty miles an hour there, eighty miles an hour coming back. She's a regular junior jerk!”
“She driving herself?”
“Yeah. If you can call it driving.”
“Where else'd she go?”
“I wouldn't know. I been tryin' to get hold of you ever since. You can't tail anyone who drives like that without they know about it.”
I leaned across the desk and said, “Lee, this is important: What time was it when she left the house this morning?”
“After ten.”
“How much after ten?”
He looked at me blankly and said, “Six and one-half minutes after ten.”
I grinned. “Okay. I apologize.”
He got out a package of Bull Durham and some brown papers and began to roll a cigarette. He smiled and said, “Do I tail her or don't I?”
“It isn't too important. Make it a night job. She won't do more than fifty at night and you can use more angles to cover yourself.”
Lee lit the cigarette and said, “Okay,” and we sat and thought our private thoughts for a while. The man at the desk stood up and crammed his brief-case full of papers, put on his hat, and walked out without saying anything to anybody. I could hear Hazel going through the routine of quick little movements that meant she would be standing at the door in a minute saying good night and telling me the night line was on my desk. She did, and we had the office and the empty desks and the drifting twilight all to ourselves.
I opened the liquor drawer in the file cabinet and said, “Five o'clock. Time to call up the reinforcements.” I brought out a bottle and two clean tumblers.
Lee grinned and said, “I was wondering when you'd remember your manners. Besides, it's good business for you. I'm charging you for my time. When the bottle gets out on the desk I'm on my own again.”
I poured two tumblers a third full. Lee drank some and shuddered.
“I always said there's no bad whisky—but some is better than others.” He shuddered again and looked past me out the window. Sounds of tired laughter and the tail ends of conversation drifted into the room. The government office next door was closing for the night.
Lee said casually, “What the grief, Stu? Anything you can tell me about?”
“It isn't anything I can't tell you about. But it won't make much sense. I started out with something that seemed fairly simple. An ex-show girl was hiding from something. All I had to do was find out what it was. But it stopped being simple then.” The frugal laughter and the words were cut off in the rumble of the elevator doors. “I've gone roaring down alleys with long shadows and familiar doorways. And then somewhere in the middle I find that someone's changed the signs, shifted the meanings. I'm in the wrong town, a long way from home. And suddenly a gray face that I've never seen before hangs from a window and whispers my name.”
Lee looked down at his cigarette and rolled it between a thumb and finger. “Did they work you over pretty hard, Stu?”
I grinned. My head was throbbing and a dull pain was trying to lift me by my bootstraps.
“I could be closer to the answer than I think,” I went on. “I may crack it tonight. A hunch has been prowling around the edge of my consciousness like a hungry jackal...”I got out a pencil and paper and wrote the address and phone number of the Cheviot Club and pushed the paper over to Lee. “I'm going out there tonight. If I find a man named Keller there, the hunch is going to move in and take over. I'll know where to go from there.”
Lee was watching me with a worried look on his hard brown face. “I know that place,” he said. “Tailed a guy and his gal there one night. Need any help?”
“Yeah. I want you to call that number between eight-thirty and eight-forty-five tonight. If I don't come to the phone and tell you everything's okay, you call Don Giese in the sheriff's office and have him come out there and get me. Then you go out to Westlake Park. A man and woman will meet at the swan pond at ten o'clock. Tail the w
oman. Stay with her until you get a chance to call me.”
He made notes on the paper I'd given him and said, “Do I do any of this if you give me the okay from the club?”
The phone rang. “No,” I said, “I'll do it—you stay with Mrs. Cabrillo.” I picked up the phone and answered it. There was a windy silence, and then, “Bailey?”
“Yeah?”
“Listen shamus...” It was a voice like nothing I'd ever heard before, a rasping whisper like wind rustling through a wet cornfield at night. “I wanta thank ya—for leadin' me to Gloria Gay. It's been a long hunt... but get her outa the water. I don't like her in the water...”
“Sure,” I said. “We'll get her out of the water. You bet...” While I talked I wrote, “Trace—go to room 301” on a sheet of paper and pushed it at Martinez. He was out of the room before the voice whispered, “She's in the storm drain, shamus. Under the hills.”
“Well, we don't want that. What storm drain Is it? Out Sepulveda way?”
There was a tearing sound that may have been a laugh, and then a click and a silence that was as hollow as death. I leaned back and stared at the blank wall, feeling as if some quick hand had reached in and pulled a string and I had suddenly unraveled. It was another fact that would have to go wandering.
Lee came in complaining, “You can't get a call traced if you let the guy hang up.”
“I know. The man who called knew it too.” I pushed the bar down with a finger, then released it and called City Hall. Quint hadn't left yet.
I said, “Any luck on Mrs. Johnston?”
“What do you care? I got your message—that phony medical report you sent me. That kind of fun is apt to snap right back in your teeth, brother.”
“You hurt my feelings. Pulling that infantile Yes-room technique on me wasn't nice at all.”
“What's on your mind? If it's just the Johnston deal, I'll ask the questions. I've got plenty of 'em to shoot your way.”
“Let me make just a couple of guesses. The boys went out to the Johnston house this afternoon. They found a gun.”
“You're not just guessing.”
“Where'd they find it?”
“Maybe you were just guessing. I'll let you guess where we found it.”
“Kind of thoughtful of her, wasn't it,” I said, “to pack a couple of bags and leave the murder gun behind?”
I could hear him breathing softly into the phone. Finally he mumbled, “Haven't tested the gun yet. I'll just keep it simple till I find her. What's on your mind?”
“I got a call about five minutes ago. A man—maybe disguising his voice, maybe not. He tried to act a little teched, but he wasn't too teched to hang up quick when I tried to stall him. He told me I'd find her in the storm drain, under the hills.”
Quint mumbled something into the phone. He was talking to himself.
“My guess is,” I said, “that the killer has some good reason for wanting the body found soon. He took her to some lonely spot to kill her, so he had to let us know where to look.”
“Jeee-zus! Don't you know a crank when you hear one, Bailey? The disappearance story hit the p.m. papers. We get calls like that three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Storm drain under the hills!”
“The same idea occurred to me, vaguely. But you'll want to follow this lead, Quint. The man who called used Mrs. Johnston's stage name—a name only a few people know.”
There was a short, lethal silence. Quint said, “A fact here, a fact there—if I keep in touch with you for about eighty years I might learn somethin', huh?”
“Asking questions might help. You weren't interested when I called you today—remember?”
“The last time I asked you a question it was about Buffin. You didn't know a thing about him. You never heard of the guy.” Quint's voice was still quiet, but with a strained and deadly tension. “What was her stage name, and where and when was she on the stage?”
“I'm sorry about the Buffin deal but I wasn't sure there was a connection, and I had a client. Mrs. Johnston's name was Gloria Gay. She was a stripper, Los Angeles, 1938 to 1939.”
“Saving the last five years for the next installment?”
“That's the works. What happened between 1939 and when she showed up again you'll have to find out for yourself. I can't do all your work for you. She might have made a trip to Mexico, but I don't give it much weight.”
“Bailey, that flip-lip of yours has begun to charm me. I want to hear more of it—say at nine o'clock tomorrow morning at my office.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
Quint hung up noisily and I put the phone back on its cradle and looked at Lee Martinez. He was studying a long ash on his cigarette, turning it around carefully in his fingers.
“Skip your date with the swans, Lee, but follow up on the rest of it.” He looked up from the ash and nodded. And then I found myself fingering the note in my pocket —the one Hazel had handed me. I brought it out now and read it again, “A character who wouldn't give his name called at four o'clock.”
Hazel was implacable about names. Taking messages, complete ones, was her major service to most of her tenants. But not even Hazel could have pried a name out of frog-voice. And she liked people. A man would have to be quite a character before she would think so. Frog-voice would rate as a character even in Hazel's abounding world of good-will. At four o'clock! I picked up the phone and dialed Hazel's apartment. She wasn't home.
But some of the vagueness and blank unease were slipping away from me, falling away with a sudden buoyance. I got up and put the liquor and glasses away, pulled the shades, locked my desk, and grinned at Lee Martinez.
Lee looked worried again. It reminded me that my head still ached like the conscience of mankind. I said, “I was wrong, Lee. If things don't go right at the Cheviot Club tonight, you still go to the swan pond. If a woman doesn't show up, forget it. But if one does, don't try to be subtle. Stick to her like a plaster cast—and be careful. Be very careful.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I HAD SHOWERED, changed into a dark blue suit, eaten some pork and beans, and was strapping on my shootin' arm when Irene Neher called. She would be coming by for me as soon as she could make up her mind whether to wear her yellow dress or just nothing at all. I told her it was a warm night and it wouldn't make a lot of difference. Twenty-five minutes later she was at the lobby phone downstairs.
I said, “Anyone who drives here from Brentwood in twenty-five minutes I'm afraid to ride with. Lock up your car. We'll take mine the rest of the way.”
She was a lovely thing, standing beside a low-cut Packard convertible, the dim light from the entrance-way softening the hardness about her mouth. She was wearing a cornflower blue dress under a nice set of furs —the furrier probably closed the sale and then retired. The hair was somebody's eight-hour day, and it was as theatrical as a glob of grease paint. But I liked it. And there was nothing synthetic about the deep golden glow of her skin. I thought I could smell her all the way over to the steps. From there she smelled nice. She smiled and said, “Do you like me?”
I took her arm and we walked across the street to my car. “I'm trying not to,” I said, “but it's a losing game.” I helped her in. The furs seemed to require it. I drove up and turned right to Lucas. We drove north up Lucas, past the ancient willows and then dropped down into the black shadow of the First Street viaduct. Lucas became Glendale Boulevard there and we were on our way.
She tucked her long legs under her and cuddled against me and began to hum an aimless tune. Her perfume clung to the air and cloyed it. The Boulevard turned and twisted, past the tall bridges standing gaunt in the moonlight and along the viaducts' deep shadows. At San Fernando we turned left and the great Diesels and the night traffic of the highway lumbered by, rumbling into the night.
With the wisdom born of her body she didn't talk. She hummed, cuddled warmly, and drove out all the subtle odors of the night.
At Cheviot Drive we turned again and left the traff
ic and the lights behind as the canyon darkness lifted around us. Over us was a narrow shaft of sky and warm lights glowed distantly like campfires through the trees that lined the winding canyon road.
Irene Neher stirred and murmured, “One more turn and you're there.” I made the turn and I could see the two pillars that marked the drive. I slowed and turned in; a bright flash beamed into the car and waved us to a stop. A big man stepped out of the darkness behind the light and put his head down at the window. He wore the uniform of a special officer.
He had a polite soft Texas voice. “Good evening, sir. Are you a guest?”
The girl tittered beside me and said, “My, but you're polite to strangers, Bill. I think I resent it.”
The big man pushed his face in at the open window and grinned. Gin was his drink. He snorted and said, “Hi, Boots! First time I ever seen ya 'thout... Say, maybe I'd best keep my big mouth shet.”
“'S all right, Bill. He knows about it. How's the baby?”
“Fine. Sets up now. Just sets and howls. Go on in, mister. You're in the right company.”
I drove on up the drive and around the side of the house to a little asphalt parking lot. There were only a few cars and no attendant. I made a complete turn and parked facing the highway at the front of the lot. I wasn't sure just why I did it.
The house was a big, solid two-story affair built by a man who couldn't make up his mind whether he liked Dutch Colonial or Georgian. He got both. I had to remind myself that I had walked out of there less than twelve hours ago. It seemed a lot longer ago than that.
A small compact man in off-the-rack evening clothes opened the door for us. He had a cast in one eye and a polite smile in the other. When he saw Boots the smile broadened and became less polite. “Come on in, Gorgeous,” he said, and leered at me. “New blood, huh?”
“Take it easy, short change.” Her voice was cool, the hardness about her mouth granite. “We're here to see Spiros. 'S he down yet?”
The man pulled up another smile. He had lots of them. This one was hard and nasty. “Yeah, he's down.”
