“There’d have to be,” I offered cautiously.
“Yes,” was her equally neutral answer. “When Walter was alive, I felt guilty because I didn’t love him. Maybe it’ll get worse now.”
“I think not; you’re a pretty tough girl.”
She thought it over.
“You ever married, Jack?”
“For six years.”
“And then?”
“Listen, I’m the shamus.”
She laughed and splashed some water my way.
“The shamus. What happened to the marriage?”
“Nothing sensational. She wanted a nine-to-five guy and a house full of kids. Now she’s got both.”
“You bitter?”
“What for?” I heard myself say. “I don’t blame her; she just should have known what she was getting into, marrying a private dick.”
“Private dick,” Mrs. Adrian cooed. “Has a nice ring to it.”
We were a pair, all right, doing our little mating dance. I was still apprehensive, half-expecting a monsoon of tears to come blowing my way, but decreasingly so. I was getting used to the fact of our nakedness, getting comfortable with the strangeness of it all.
Some minutes later, I got very comfortable indeed, when Mrs. Adrian’s smooth foot burrowed soundlessly into a watery bed beneath my dozing balls. She wiggled her toes. I cackled delightedly. It felt awfully good.
“Hello,” she said, her eyes at once innocent and eager. This was some sweet baby.
“Hello,” I said. “Can I interest you in a vacuum cleaner?”
She giggled and kept wiggling those educated toes. Then her other foot joined the party. I casually reached over and took another sip of the warming brandy.
“You’re so jaded,” Mrs. Adrian said, greatly amused. “Such a bore, isn’t it?” She lowered her eyes to the water. “Well, lookee here.”
A circumcised periscope had surfaced, poking its blind eye through the darkening, glassy currents of the bath water. It pulsed. It throbbed. We studied it thoughtfully, as if it were a newly arrived guest.
“How lovely,” Mrs. Adrian said, and curled her hand around it. I closed my eyes and tipped my hat to the fates.
“I’ve done my best with it,” I said gravely. “Tried to raise it right.”
“No more jokes, Jack,” she said, both hands on it now, running wet fingers up and back.
I opened my eyes and moved forward in the tub. I raised her legs easily in the water and with the unencumbered grace of true love’s dumb luck, I entered the lady in one smooth motion. Like turning a soft lock with a soft key. We lay joined in the water, our hands on each others legs, staring at each other curiously but contentedly, feeling, I think, that this crazy thing was happening simply because it deserved to happen.
We began to rock each other slowly, barely moving, creating small waves that broke over the side of the tub and soaked the floor. Helen closed her eyes, her front tooth biting down softly on a bottom lip drawn into a mellow smile. She made little sounds, clucks of acknowledgment, rising and falling in the shallow water like someone floating in the Rockaway surf. There was at first a weightless, careful quality to our lovemaking, but with the first stirrings of urgency, we left our histories behind and let our bodies take over.
And then we were sea lions, in full, shiny frolic, staying one bristling and barking leap ahead of each other. The leaps grow longer, the arcs higher; we began to lose ourselves in the act. Except for one brief and unsettling moment in which I felt a sudden, peculiar estrangement from the beautiful woman flopping so blissfully about in the water. Who was she? What the hell was I doing? But the moment passed quickly and so did its aftertaste of wonder and doubt—as if losing a familiar, yet indeterminate face in a subway crowd.
Our steady rising and yielding grew more intense; our brains flowed sweetly to the very tips of ourselves. The water in the tub had all but vanished, and we thumped in a shallow pool on the white enamel. Helen bit her lip a little harder, flushing pink. “Jack,” she said, and then again, “Jack!” She thrashed the remaining water out of the tub, as I took my last leap in a thunderous surf; released, cresting, breaking, and then descending back to the ocean floor, emptied and warm.
And there we lay on the bare enamel, still joined, glistening like a pair of triumphant wrestlers: Jack the Skull and Helen the Red.
“Mmmm,” she said. I said something like that. Helen smiled and disengaged herself from me, then came crawling on over to my end. She placed her head on my chest and curled up like a small girl seeking safety, which she probably was. We lay there for a few minutes, nearly dozing off, but then grew chill and decided to get out of the tub.
We dressed silently in the bathroom, our water-wrinkled bodies redolent of a pool locker room. I hopped around on one foot trying to get into my pants. Helen giggled.
“Don’t assault my dignity,” I told her. We beamed at our reflections in the mirror, happy and more than a little confused.
Five minutes later, seated on a stool in the kitchen, I remembered what I was doing in California: investigating the murder of Helen’s husband. I felt no guilt, just a little negligence. The widow was spooning coffee into a percolator, her red hair spilling over a green dressing gown.
“Helen, do you have Carpenter’s address?” I asked.
“Dale?”
“Yeah, the cowboy.”
“I’m sure we do. Why?”
“I want to go see him.”
She finished measuring out the coffee and plugged in the pot. “Right now?”
“Right after coffee. I saw him earlier today at Parker’s and I want to follow it up.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t tell me Dale was there,” she said. “What was he doing?”
“A very relevant question. That’s why I’d like to chat with him. I saw Carpenter ring Parker’s bell. Parker came to the door and looked every bit as happy as if his fillings had just fallen out. But that’s all I know because that’s when my head came off.”
“Should I call Dale and tell him you want to see him?”
“Thanks, no. I’d prefer to sneak up on him. I don’t really have the slightest idea why he visited Parker today, but it’s not necessarily kosher. You call him and he’ll just have time to invent excuses.”
“You think he might be in trouble?”
“Definitely.”
The coffee was mediocre, as it always is out of a percolator, but Helen’s intentions were the best. We sat at the kitchen table and held hands. I was very tired. It was ten-thirty and I knew that if I didn’t leave immediately, I’d go find myself a blanket and fade away. So I kissed the lady’s cheek and got up.
“It wasn’t very good coffee, was it?” she asked. “You can be honest.”
“Passable coffee, superb service. You going to be all right here alone?”
She shrugged. I don’t think it had occurred to her that she would be by herself.
“I guess so. Could I come with you?”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t. Let’s not get into a ‘Thin Man’ routine, not yet. You could use some peace and quiet. I’ll be back soon.”
She took my arm.
“How soon?”
“Soon enough.”
“I’ll read in the meantime.”
Helen looked up Carpenter’s address—in the Hollywood Hills—and wrote out directions, then walked me to the door.
“Lock up,” I told her. “Front and back.”
“Stop trying to scare me, Jack,” she said chidingly. “I don’t need it, really.”
“I’m being realistic. Something nuts is going on and I don’t want you hurt. If there’s a gun in the house …”
“There is.”
“Then keep it handy and don’t let anyone in but me.”
I had made her afraid. It was for her own welfare, but I didn’t enjoy doing it.
“Hurry back.”
I gave her nose a little pinch and left. Walking down the steps, I heard the bolts
locking shut behind me. It was, and wasn’t, a comforting sound.
9
The slip of paper said 20 Mockingbird Lane and it was a fifteen-minute drive from Adrian’s house. Or should have been, according to Helen. I found myself driving in slow, majestic circles for an additional fifteen, before finding the little cul-de-sac off Doheny.
Mockingbird was a small, thickly wooded street, with perhaps a half-dozen large homes on each side. The homes looked to be of recent origin; new money had come here, with architect’s plans, yellow bulldozers, and picture windows. Mounds of earth were still piled up next to several of the homes; one was only three-quarters finished.
Number 20 was at the very end of the street, which dropped off behind concrete and chicken wire to a striking view of Beverly Hills below. I parked the Chrysler by the overlook and got out. The rain had ended and the sky was clearing; some stars had appeared. I walked over to the fence and looked down over the quiet wealthy glow of Beverly Hills. I could see where the neon fire of the Strip ended and the muted, pearly street lamps of the Hills began. Los Angeles. I still had no sense of it, no handle. For two and a half days, I had been wandering through a fun house, losing myself, forgetting my mission for hours at a time. All I knew was that Walter was dead and that he had been a Communist, and that his death was significant enough to bring the FBI and Congress into the act. Beyond those facts and the fact of two serious attempts on my life, I didn’t know a goddamn thing.
I turned and headed up the two-dozen winding steps to Carpenter’s house. It was a large ranch-style affair, built on two levels, rising on the right side to a connected pool house. When I got to the top of the stairs, I caught a blue glimpse of pool, brightly dappled by breeze and underwater lights. The house had a Southwestern look, constructed at sharp jutting angles of a bleached-out pine that suggested mesas, cactus, and a canopy of cloudless sky. Bull’s horns adorned the front door, hinged into a doorknocker. I pulled the horns down and knocked twice.
I waited. The lights were on inside but I heard no movement to the door, heard no splashing out by the pool. I studied my shoes and knocked again. More silence. Another rap of the bull’s horns and then I called Carpenter’s name. My shout sounded empty. I continued to wait. Maybe he was in the sack, with a starlet or a young ranch hand. It would take time to put on his robe, get into his slippers …
After the fourth knock, I tried the door. It was unlocked and opened into the living room.
The place was an unholy mess.
Everything had been turned on its ear: chairs, sofa cushions, fire irons, wastebaskets, liquor bottles, wine glasses, books, papers, folders, and manila envelopes, scattered with a hurricane’s logic across the length and breadth of the wood-paneled room. Only a pair of pearl-handled revolvers, long-barreled beauties circa 1860, stood undisturbed on mountings over the fireplace.
I entered the room and closed the door behind me. It was quiet enough to hear your own pulse. I stepped around a fallen rocker and surveyed the ruins. The work had been done frantically, objects flung wildly across the room, like the fireplace shovel, twenty feet from the fireplace, lying beneath a gouge it had made in the paneling. I picked the shovel up; it was not light. Somebody had been in a great hurry, or very frustrated, or both of the above.
I cleared my throat and called Carpenter’s name again, expecting, and receiving, no answer. I placed my right hand on the Colt revolver snoozing peacefully beneath my left armpit and started down the hall leading to the rest of the house.
First door on the left was a bathroom. The shower was still dripping and the cover of the toilet tank was ajar. Next to the bathroom was a guest bedroom. The closet had been emptied of old suits, hangers, and bags full of mothballs. A queen-sized mattress had been lifted and thrown over the foot of the brass bed. Drawers, shirts, and underwear had been hurled across the floor. I backed out of the room and continued on down the hallway. It was like visiting a museum of chaos.
Except that the master bedroom—a large, airy domicile with French doors leading out to a patio—was as perfectly neat and tucked-in as if the maid had just made her dutiful exit. There were two explanations for this: a sudden arrival had scared off the intruders, or said intruders had found what they were looking for.
I backed out of the bedroom and into the hallway. It veered off at a right angle from that spot, rising four steps and leading out to the poolhouse through a glass door, which was open. The poolhouse had showers, marked “Fillies” and “Stallions,” a long bar lined with wicker stools, and a picture window overlooking Beverly Hills. If this was communism, it looked pretty good to me.
Another sliding glass door led out to the pool. I went outside and followed a flagstone path that wound around a group of azalea bushes. It led me to the pool.
It was a handsome pool; the water looked inviting, a mild breeze breaking its blue surface into illuminated ripples. Ribbons of light shimmered across its face and fallen leaves spun slowly about in a whirlpool near the diving board. A pump, housed in a wooden shed, droned mechanically. The sky continued to clear, stars growing sharper and brighter and it would have been a swell night for a party. But the host wasn’t feeling very well. Dale Carpenter, sitting in a canvas chair at poolside, was as dead as Louis XIV.
Not as dead, exactly. Louie had a big headstart on Carpenter who, by the looks of it, had only checked out a few hours before. But that’s mere quibbling; the cowboy was plenty dead, shot through the chest, with no director around to say “cut!” and no wardrobe gal to dust off his pants when he got up off the ground. This was for ugly real, sitting in a chair next to his own pool, dressed in plaid swim trunks and a yellow terrycloth jacket—yellow with blotches of red. His knees were scraped; it seemed a fair assumption that he had been returned to the chair after falling over. Another fair assumption was that he had been killed by a thorough professional: two shots had done the job and one would have been sufficient. They were bull’s-eyes through the heart. Carpenter’s eyes were open and he was leaning against the side of the chair, as if listening to an amusing story.
I took it all in and tossed it around. A few quick thoughts surfaced: whoever had skulled me had seen Carpenter go into Parker’s house with the manila envelope. The actor had most certainly discovered something of importance and had brought it—for reasons I dearly wanted to know—to Parker’s attention. He had spoken with Parker and then returned home, watched all the while. Tired and strained from the day’s events, Carpenter changed into his trunks and went outside for a refreshing swim. When he climbed out of the pool, a marksman appeared and killed him. The house was searched; after ransacking the living room and guest room, the searcher or searchers found what he or they had come for and departed.
But the unknowns were staggering: what was in the envelop the cowboy star had been carrying? Why had he gone to see Parker? Was the Parker house under surveillance? Was Carpenter being followed? Was I? I’d swear to the fact that no one had tailed me; it’s the kind of thing I usually notice. But it didn’t really make much difference; Carpenter was dead and Parker remained the key to the whole shebang. And I began to have doubts about Parker’s life expectancy as well; he had looked not merely appalled when the actor rang his bell, he looked frightened. I didn’t feel so hot myself. It was nearing midnight, time to get back to Helen, time to leave Carpenter and call the cops. Anonymously, of course. Finding one stiff had caused me enough grief; catching the daily double raised the grim prospect of my becoming Homicide’s plumpest turkey.
I left the way I came, whipping out a hanky and smearing the doorknobs I had touched. Sure, it might have destroyed evidence, but I was goddamned if I was going to leave my prints all over the place. Besides which, the professional manner of the actor’s death led me to believe that he was dispatched by people who did such things wearing gloves. Like Mickey Mouse.
After closing the front door, I descended the stairs, through a green passageway of sculpted shrubs. The bushes were trimmed in exotic parabolas, not a t
wig was out of place. Only a single stray piece of paper broke the symmetry, a scrap that had nestled in the lower branches near the bottom of the stairs. Being a curious fellow, I reached down and picked up the scrap.
It was a newspaper clipping, an old one. It was brittle and yellow and incomplete, its ragged edges indicating disintegration, rather than tearing or scissoring. I went to the Chrysler and read it while lying down in the front seat.
“Pardee’s arrest on the rape charge,” it began, “is his second listed offense, according to Denver authorities. He was charged with disturbing the peace during a New Year’s fracas at the Big Sky Club in 1927, an incident which …” And that was it.
I turned it over, saw “POST” but no date. Maybe it was nothing at all, just something blown from a passing garbage truck, but my light turned red. Stop. Think this over. Forget the garbage truck. Let’s say this had fallen from a folder held by a man running down these very stairs, say, a couple of hours ago. Let us say, further, that the man had just committed a capital crime and was too preoccupied to notice the little scrap drop from the folder or envelope.
I placed the clipping in my wallet, certain that it was worth a large stack of chips.
I phoned the L.A. cops from a pay booth on Sunset, then drove back to Sherman Oaks, winding around the long dangerous curves of Mulholland Drive. It took longer than I had anticipated and I suddenly got anxious, terribly so, about Helen sitting all alone in that big house on Escadero. I wanted to speed things up, but that was asking for a trip back East in the baggage car, so I took the curves as well as I could, furious at myself for leaving Helen so vulnerable. My state of mind grew increasingly agitated, bordering on the frantic, and I began tearing about like a drunken stunt driver, stomping on the brakes, squealing around bends—virtually two-wheeling an awful curve near Franklin Canyon—in a solo race against my fevered imagination.
And I was dog-tired to boot, at the smoldering end of a long, mean, and frustrating day, in which my own death had nearly been sandwiched between Adrian’s funeral and Carpenter’s murder. I had been beaten on the head, I had made love to Walter’s wife, and now, finally, I had lost my balance.
Hollywood and Levine Page 12
