In a Lonely Place

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  Dix smiled. The inner smile didn’t show, the outer one was a little embarrassed. The way a man is embarrassed at any show of emotion from a friend. “The bottles aren’t empty. Come back.”

  “Oke.” At the door. Brub hesitated. “Leaving town soon?”

  Dix was surprised at the question. As much as if it had been a police warning. He remembered then and he laughed easily. “Now that the book’s done? Oh, I’ll be around a couple of more weeks at least. Maybe longer. Depends on Laurel’s plans.”

  From the doorstep he watched Brub start away. Watched Brub stoop on the walk and a splinter of doubt again chilled him. But Brub turned back to him at once. “Here’s your paper.” he said.

  He didn’t want the paper. He didn’t want to look at it. The moment it was opened in his hands, there again in the solitude of his living room, he was sickened. He’d never felt this way before. He hadn’t felt this way when Brub was talking about it. Actually he hadn’t thought then, he’d been too busy playing the required part.

  He didn’t want to read about the girl and her dog, he didn’t want to look at the smile on her clean-looking, vital face. Even with the same morbid curiosity of the peasants tickling him, he didn’t want to read about it. He put the paper down with trembling hands.

  He hadn’t needed a drink for a long time, not the way he needed it now. He’d had enough. Another might be too much, might be the edge to start him on a binge. He didn’t dare go on a binge. He didn’t dare anything other than complete alertness in all of his senses.

  What he needed was dinner, a big, hearty, tasty dinner. Steak and french fries and asparagus and a huge fresh green salad, then a smoke and coffee and something special for dessert, strawberry tart or a fancy pastry and more coffee.

  Hunger ached in him. If only Laurel were here. He knew damn well she wasn’t coming; he’d known it all along but he’d been kidding himself. Teasing himself with hope. Wherever she was, whatever guy she’d gone off with, she didn’t think enough of Dix even to let him know. She’d never cared for him; she’d made him a convenience while Lover Boy was tied up with some kind of ropes. Once Mr. Big was loose, she didn’t even say goodbye. The old couplet taunted him . . . she didn’t even, say she was leavin’ . . . and he was furious at its popping into his head. The situation wasn’t funny. It hurt. It would hurt if he weren’t angry.

  Well, he wasn’t hanging around any longer waiting for Laurel. He was going to eat. He went fast, strode out the back door, down the alley to the garage. It was annoying to have to go through the whole stupid routine again. He shouldn’t have put the car up. Tonight he wouldn’t. If the police wanted to pry into the dust he’d make it easy for them. The car would be at the curb.

  There was a young fellow peering into the works of a Chevvie in the alley. He didn’t turn around to look at Dix. Or to say hello. Dix jutted his car out and drove away fast. He didn’t bother to close the garage doors. He hesitated at the Derby but he wanted something better tonight. Something as good as the Savoy. He could afford it. He had two hundred and fifty bucks, damn near, and he was hungry.

  This was the kind of a place in which to dine. These were the kind of people a man wanted to be a part of. People who knew the gentleman who seated you, who spoke to him by name. This was the way he was going to live someday. Nothing but the best. No worry about money. Or about nosey cops.

  He ordered a rich meal, and he ate it leisurely, appreciating every well-cheffed bite. He lingered as long as he possibly could, he didn’t want to leave this haven. Eventually there was nothing to do but go out again into the thin cold night. The fog had dissipated but there were no stars in the covered sky. And now? Not back to the unutterable loneliness of the apartment. There was always a movie. He drove down Wilshire slowly; he’d seen the Beverly, he parked around the corner from Warner’s. He didn’t care what the picture was; it was a place to pass time.

  There was a double bill. A mild comedy; a tear-jerking problem story. Neither was absorbing, he could scarcely stay awake during the tear-jerker. But the time was passed; it was midnight when he came out of the theatre. There was nowhere else to go now, the streets of Beverly were quiet as the streets of a nine-o’clock town. Nowhere but back to the apartment.

  He dreaded sleep, sleep and dreams. If only she would come back, if only she’d take him and comfort him as she had on that other night. He didn’t tell himself a tall tale now, that she might be waiting for him, in all her beauty and warmth. He went into the soda fountain next to the theatre. It was closing but he didn’t care. He gathered a handful of magazines from the stand, the only kind of magazines there, movie stuff, crime stuff. Anything to keep his mind serviced until he was forced into sleep.

  He didn’t put the car up. It didn’t matter who saw him coming in. And he wasn’t going out again. If he changed his mind and did want to go out again, it was nobody’s business.

  He came to a sudden stop just inside the patio. It wasn’t lone and desolate, a figment of a blue dream. Someone was there. A dull red circlet was burning in the shadows, back by the rear apartments. For a moment he thought it might be Laurel, but in the silence he heard the flat-paced steps of a man, an unknown man.

  Dix covered his pause, stooping down as if he’d dropped something on the ground. Something small that had fallen without sound. Feeling for it until he found it, perhaps his latchkey or a packet of matches. Without another glance to the red circlet, he went to his own place, entered and shut the door, shut away the menace that might lie in the night. He was breathing heavily.

  It was ridiculous to have let the presence of a man affect him simply because there had not before been a man waiting in the shadows. How did he know but that this man had a last cigarette nightly in the patio before turning in? How could he know? He, Dix, always came the back way when he was late. The man might be a musician just home from work, pumping the stale air out of his lungs before bed. Maybe it wasn’t a guy who walked nightly, maybe he was locked out tonight and waiting for his wife to get home. Or it could be a guest, somebody’s uncle or cousin, who beat the family home. Dix could think up a thousand and one explanations. Any of them good. Any of them stamped with logic. Any except the first one that had hit him. that for some unfathomable reason the man had been put there to find out what time Dix Steele came in. As if anyone would care.

  He was all right now. He dropped the magazines on the couch and made for the bar. He’d have a nightcap, a small one before turning in. He was slightly chilled: there was a definite hint of autumn, if only the mildness of California autumn, in the air tonight.

  The guy might be, he smiled, a private dick. Somebody’s ex might have put him there to see how the lady was behaving. Maybe Dix wasn’t the only one wondering where Laurel was keeping herself. There was something funny about the divorce relationship between Laurel and her ex; she was so damn careful to keep men out of her apartment.

  He tossed off the drink, gathered up the magazines, and put out the lights in the living room. He needn’t worry about the man outside, it wasn’t someone interested in— He heard the footsteps then, the flat, muffled footsteps. They were coming this way. Panic squeezed him. Unhurried, inexorable, the footsteps were bringing the man up the portal to Dix’s door. Without sound, Dix quickly crossed to the window, flattening himself against the long drape. He could see out; the man could not see Dix even if he stopped and peered into the room.

  Dix stood, not breathing, not having breath. Listening, seeing the shadow, the approach of the red dot, the shape of the man himself, a dumpy, shapeless shape topped by a shapeless hat. The man did not pause. He walked past Dix’s door and out into the patio, crossed to the opposite Portal and started again to the rear.

  Dix leaned weakly against the curtain. Within his head his thoughts sounded shrill, falsetto. No one cared what he did. No one cared. No one cared . . .

  He left the window, walked the silent blue-dark room to his bedroom. He didn’t put on the lights, he lay on the bed with the darkness b
roken only by the red dot of his own cigarette. No one cared; Laurel didn’t care. She’d gone off without saying goodbye. She’d known, known that night that it was their farewell. He’d almost known it himself— he’d even questioned her. And she’d denied. She’d lied in his face, lied in his arms . . .

  He hated her. She was a cheat and a liar and a whore, and he hated her while the tears rolled from his eyes down his cheeks to salt his mouth. No one cared, no one had ever cared. Only Brucie. Brucie who had gone away leaving him alone, alone forever, for all of his life.

  He ground out the cigarette. It wasn’t ended with Laurel. He didn’t end things that way. She’d find that out. She’d come back; she had to come back. She wouldn’t walk off and leave everything in her apartment, her clothes would be important to her if nothing else was. If no person was. When she came back, he’d be waiting. He’d end it his way, the only way that meant a thing was finished.

  3

  Startled out of sleep, he snatched up the phone, with the wild lurch of hope that it was she. The humming of dial tone answered his shout, “Hello.” And the long sound of the buzzer brought him fully awake, it was the door, not the phone, which had wakened him.

  The door at nine in the morning, with dreams heavy in his mouth and smarting in his eyes. Sometime in the night he had undressed, sometime he had fallen into frightful sleep.

  He pushed out of bed. Taking his time. Knowing that nothing of meaning to him could be leaning on the door buzzer at this morning hour. Knowing he did not want to answer the summons. Yet knowing that he must. It might be a wire from her. It might be Brub.

  He grumbled, “Keep your shirt on,” while he roped the belt of the silken Paisley robe about him, slid his feet into the morocco leather scuffs. He plodded into the living room, any man disturbed at his rightful slumbers, making no pretense at a smile as he flung open the front door.

  There were two men waiting outside; he had never seen either of them before. One was a portly man in a brown suit, a man with a heavy inexpressive face and spaniel-brown eyes. The other was a young fellow in gray, a neat-looking young fellow with bright gray eyes. The portly man wore a shapeless gray hat with a faded hatband; the young fellow wore a well-shaped brown fedora. It wasn’t that each hat belonged to the opposite suit; it was that they wore hats at all. Men didn’t wear hats in Beverly Hills. These men were strangers, strangers with purpose.

  The younger said, “We’re looking for Mel Terriss.”

  Dix didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe what he heard for the moment, it was shock but it was a dull shock. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this. After a moment he managed to say, “He isn’t here.”

  “This is his place, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dix said. “But he isn’t here.”

  The young fellow looked a little disappointed or maybe he was perplexed. He seemed to be trying to figure it out. He said finally, “Mind if we come in? I’m Harley Springer.” He gestured to his partner. “And Joe Yates.”

  Dix didn’t want them in. He didn’t want to talk about Mel Terriss at any time, certainly not now before his eyes were open, before his brain was quick. But there was nothing he could do outside of shutting the door on Harley Springer’s foot. The young fellow had it in the door.

  Dix said, “Yes, come on in. I’m Dix Steele.”

  “Looks like we got you out of bed,” the big Yates commented. He had a snicker in the corner of his mouth.

  “You did,” Dix agreed. He wasn’t going to get angry at this pair. Not until he found out why they’d come to him. And he wondered if Laurel had set them on it, Laurel with her stubborn determination to get Mel’s address. He didn’t believe Mel owed her any seven hundred. She’d put that in hoping Dix would think it was important enough to give out with the address. Thinking money would tempt him.

  He led the way into the living room. A neat living room, he hadn’t hung around it last night. “Sit down,” he said. There were no cigarettes in his pocket, none on the tables. He had to have a cigarette. A drink would help too but he couldn’t take a drink at this hour. It wouldn’t be a good tale for them to carry back to whomever had sent them. A cigarette was essential.

  He said, “Excuse me while I get my cigarettes, will you?” He went quickly into the bedroom, gathered up a pack and his lighter, returned before the men could have had time to walk over to the desk. They were still on the couch, the younger man with his leg crossed one way, the big fellow with his crossed the other. They hadn’t moved, only to light cigarettes of their own. He took the chair across from them. He was as much at ease as a man could be, dragged out of bed, entertaining a couple of strangers while he was wrapped in a bathrobe. Entertaining without knowing why. But he smiled at them. “What can I do for you?”

  The young one, Harley Springer, took off his hat. As if he should have remembered to do it before. As if he were a cop, someone from the D.A.’s office, not used to taking off his hat when he invaded a man’s privacy. He repeated then his first remark, “We’re looking for Mel Terriss.”

  “And he isn’t here,” Dix smiled.

  “Where is he?” Yates flipped.

  The young Springer gave Yates a look, a look that meant: Shut up, let me handle this. A look that meant: You’re an oaf and this guy’s a gent, let a gent handle it.

  Dix was actually beginning to feel at ease. He didn’t have to worry about being on his toes with Springer and Yates. They weren’t that well coordinated; it wasn’t like being with Lochner and Brub. He answered Yates as if Yates weren’t oafish. “He’s in Rio,” he told him. “He went down there on some big job. I subleased from him before he left.”

  The two exchanged a look. Dix waited. Let them explain it. Make them do the talking. He’d changed his mind about these two being cops, more like from a collection agency, trying to get on Mel’s trail over those unpaid accounts.

  “You’re sure he went to Rio?” Springer frowned.

  Dix laughed. “Well, I didn’t fly him down and get him settled. But he told me he was going there. I took his word for it. I don’t know why he should have told me that if it weren’t true.” He laughed again. It was his turn now. Time for their explanation. He stopped laughing. “Are you friends of his?” he demanded.

  “Nah,” Yates said.

  Springer gave his partner another shut-up look. He said, “We’re from Anson, Bergman and Gorgonzola. Lawyers. Our firm handles Mel Terriss’ trust.”

  It was time to walk softly. He didn’t know about trusts.

  Springer continued, “We haven’t heard from Mel Terriss since July.” Evidently it was unusual. The way that Springer said it. “He hasn’t even been around for his check.”

  “He didn’t communicate with you from Rio?” Dix showed surprise.

  ”No. We had no idea he’d gone to Rio until recently. Mr. Anson or Mr. Bergman heard something about it.”

  Or Mr. Gorgonzola. From an alley cat who’d blabbed, who for some reason wanted to get in touch with Mel Terriss. Bad enough to ask her lawyer about him. Her lawyer and Mel’s lawyer. There wouldn’t be two Gorgonzolas prominent in legal circles.

  “It’s strange he didn’t communicate with Mr. Anson before leaving. Or since. Particularly since it was Mr. Anson who had so often urged he go there.”

  Yates said, “Anson thought he might straighten up if he got out of town.”

  Harley Springer gave a light sigh.

  Yates went on doggedly, “Mel’s been gassing about getting a job in Rio long as I can remember. Every time he was extra loopy. He never had no intention of going to work.”

  Springer cut in quickly, “Do you know when he left?”

  “He told me I could move in the first of August. He’d be gone before then.”

  “You don’t know by any chance if he went by boat or plane?”

  “I don’t,” Dix smiled slightly. They were going to check passenger lists. “He did say something about going by freighter, a sea voyage to get in trim.” He shrugged, w
idened his smile. “I can’t say I believed him. He was too fond of comfort for such rigors.” Let them try to check all the freighters that steamed out from the California ports. They’d get nowhere.

  He’d had enough of this. He wanted his coffee. He wanted peace. He prodded them, “I’m sorry I can’t help you any more than this, gentlemen.” He rose. “I didn’t know Terriss particularly well. He’d hardly confide his plans to me. I’m a tenant, that’s all.”

  Yates was going to stick his big foot into it again. There was a malicious look in his soulful brown eyes. “The trust pays Mel’s rent in advance. To keep him off the street. How’d you arrange to pay him?”

  Even Springer’s embarrassment didn’t quiet the rage in Dix. He smiled wryly as if it were none of Yates’ business to so question a gentleman, but being asked, he would reply. “I gave him a check for a year’s rent, Mr. Yates. He said he intended to be away at least that long.” This time he was polite but firm. “If that is all—”

  He waited for them to rise. Springer made apology. “I’m sorry to have had to bother you. Mr. Steele. You understand it’s a job—when Mr. Anson—”

  “Or Mr. Bergman or Mr. Gorgonzola,” Dix smiled wholeheartedly. “I understand.” He didn’t include Yates in his understanding. He moved the two men to the door, opened it. Yates went on outside. Springer stopped on the doorstep. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Little enough,” Dix said.

  Springer had another question. He’d been holding it, now he sprang it. “What about his mail?”

  It came too fast for preparation. But Dix could think fast. He could always think fast in a pinch. “I suppose some has been coming,” he said as if it had never occurred to him. “I’ll ask my secretary—” He laughed, “She keeps everything so efficiently I wouldn’t know where to look. I’ll tell you, leave your address and I’ll have her forward it.” He accepted the card from Springer, said goodbye. Yates was already out in the patio, watching the gardener plow up geraniums.