by Mike Ashley
“Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. Why would anyone deliberately and brutally murder inoffensive, invisible Harry Spinner right after he told me he had discovered something “peculiar” about the Detweiler boy? Except the Detweiler boy?
“Tell me anything. If he and Harry were friendly, he might know something. Why do you keep calling him a boy; how old is he?”
She nodded and leaned her bulk on the registration desk. “Early twenties, twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe. Not very tall, about five-five or – six. Slim, dark curly hair, a real good-looking boy. Looks like a movie star except for his back.”
“His back?”
“He has a hump. He’s a hunchback.”
That stopped me for a minute, but I’m not sure why. I must’ve had a mental picture of Charles Laughton riding those bells or Igor stealing that brain from the laboratory. “He’s good-looking and he’s a hunchback?”
“Sure.” She raised her eyebrows. The one over the patch didn’t go up as high as the other. “If you see him from the front, you can’t even tell.”
“What’s his first name?”
“Andrew.”
“How long has he been living here?”
She consulted a file card. “He checked in last Friday night. The twenty-second. Six days.”
“What’s this spell he was having?”
“I don’t know for sure. It was the second one he’d had. He would get pale and nervous. I think he was in a lot of pain. It would get worse and worse all day; then he’d be fine, all rosy and healthy-looking.”
“Sounds to me like he was hurtin’ for a fix.”
“I thought so at first, but I changed my mind. I’ve seen enough of that and it wasn’t the same. Take my word. He was real bad this evening. He came down about four-fifteen, like I said. He didn’t complain, but I could tell he was wantin’ company to take his mind off it. We played gin until six-thirty. Then he went back upstairs. About twenty minutes later he came down with his old suitcase and checked out. He looked fine, all over his spell.”
“Did he have a doctor?”
“I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I asked him about it. He said there was nothing to worry about, it would pass. And it did.”
“Did he say why he was leaving or where he was going?”
“No, just said he was restless and wanted to be movin’ on. Sure hated to see him leave. A real nice kid.”
When the cops finally got there, I told them all I knew – except I didn’t mention the Detweiler boy. I hung around until I found out that Harry almost certainly wasn’t killed after six-thirty. They set the time somewhere between five-ten, when he called me, and six. It looked like Andrew Detweiler was innocent, but what “peculiar” thing had Harry noticed about him, and why he had moved out right after Harry was killed? Birdie let me take a look at his room, but I didn’t find a thing, not even an abandoned paper clip.
Friday morning I sat at my desk trying to put the pieces together. Trouble was, I only had two pieces and they didn’t fit. The sun was coming in off the Boulevard, shining through the window, projecting the chipping letters painted on the glass against the wall in front of me. BERT MALLORY Confidential Investigations. I got up and looked out. This section of the Boulevard wasn’t rotting yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
There’s one sure gauge forjudging a part of town: the movie theatres. It never fails. For instance, a new picture hadn’t opened in downtown LA in a long, long time. The action ten years ago was on the Boulevard. Now it’s in Westwood. The grand old Pantages, east of Vine and too near the freeway, used to be the site of the most glittering premieres. They even had the Oscar ceremonies there for a while. Now it shows exploitation and double-feature horror films. Only Graumann’s Chinese and the once Paramount, once Loew’s, now Downtown Cinema (or something) at the west end got good openings. The Nu-View, across the street and down, was showing an X-rated double feature. It was too depressing. So I closed the blind.
Miss Tremaine looked up from her typing at the rattle and frowned. Her desk was out in the small reception area, but I had arranged both desks so we could see each other and talk in normal voices when the door was open. It stayed open most of the time except when I had a client who felt secretaries shouldn’t know his troubles. She had been transcribing the Lucas McGowan report for half an hour, humphing and tsk-tsking at thirty-second intervals. She was having a marvelous time. Miss Tremaine was about forty-five, looked like a constipated librarian, and was the best secretary I’d ever had. She’d been with me seven years. I’d tried a few young and sexy ones, but it hadn’t worked out. Either they wouldn’t play at all, or they wanted to play all the time. Both kinds were a pain in the ass to face first thing in the morning, every morning.
“Miss Tremaine, will you get Gus Verdugo on the phone, please?”
“Yes, Mr Mallory.” She dialed the phone nimbly, sitting as if she were wearing a back brace.
Gus Verdugo worked in R&I. I had done him a favour once, and he insisted on returning it tenfold. I gave him everything I had on Andrew Detweiler and asked him if he’d mind running it through the computer. He wouldn’t mind. He called back in fifteen minutes. The computer had never heard of Andrew Detweiler and had only seven hunchbacks, none of them fitting Detweiler’s description.
I was sitting there, wondering how in hell I would find him, when the phone rang again. Miss Tremaine stopped typing and lifted the receiver without breaking rhythm. “Mr Mallory’s office,” she said crisply, really letting the caller know he’d hooked onto an efficient organization. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at me. “It’s for you – an obscene phone call.” She didn’t bat an eyelash or twitch a muscle.
“Thanks,” I said and winked at her. She dropped the receiver back on the cradle from a height of three inches and went back to typing. Grinning, I picked up my phone. “Hello, Janice,” I said.
“Just a minute till my ear stops ringing,” the husky voice tickled my ear.
“What are you doing up this early?” I asked. Janice Fenwick was an exotic dancer at a club on the Strip nights and was working on her master’s in oceanography at UCLA in the afternoons. In the year I’d known her I’d seldom seen her stick her nose into the sunlight before eleven.
“I had to catch you before you started following that tiresome woman with the car.”
“I’ve finished that. She’s picked up her last parking-lot attendant – at least with this husband.” I chuckled.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“What’s up?”
“I haven’t had an indecent proposition from you in days. So I thought I’d make one of my own.”
“I’m all ears.”
“We’re doing some diving off Catalina tomorrow. Want to come along?”
“Not much we can do in a wetsuit.”
“The wetsuit comes off about four; then we’ll have Saturday night and all of Sunday.”
“Best indecent proposition I’ve had all week.”
Miss Tremaine humphed. It might have been over something in the report, but I don’t think it was.
I picked up Janice at her apartment in Westwood early Saturday morning. She was waiting for me and came striding out to the car all legs and healthy golden flesh. She was wearing white shorts, sneakers, and that damned Dallas Cowboys jersey. It was authentic. The name and number on it were quite well-known – even to non-football fans. She wouldn’t tell me how she got it, just smirked and looked smug. She tossed her suitcase in the backseat and slid up against me. She smelled like sunshine.
We flew over and spent most of the day glubbing around in the Pacific with a bunch of kids fifteen years younger than I and five years younger than Janice. I’d been on these jaunts with Janice before and enjoyed them so much I’d bought my own wetsuit. But I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did Saturday night and all of Sunday.
I got back to my apartment on Beachwood fairly late Sunday night and barely had time to get something to eat at th
e Mexican restaurant around the corner on Melrose. They have marvelous carne asada. I live right across the street from Paramount, right across from the door people go in to see them tape The Odd Couple. Every Friday night when I see them lining up out there, I think I might go someday, but I never seem to get around to it. (You might think I’d see a few movie stars living where I do, but I haven’t. I did see Seymour occasionally when he worked at Channel 9, before he went to work for Gene Autry at Channel 5.)
I was so pleasantly pooped I completely forgot about Andrew Detweiler. Until Monday morning when I was sitting at my desk reading the Times.
It was a small story on page three, not very exciting or newsworthy. Last night a man named Maurice Milian, age 51, had fallen through the plate glass doors leading onto the terrace of the high rise where he lived. He had been discovered about midnight when the people living below him had noticed dried blood on their terrace.
The only thing to connect the deaths of Harry Spinner and Maurice Milian was a lot of blood flowing around. If Milian had been murdered, there might be a link, however tenuous. But Milian’s death was accidental – a dumb, stupid accident. It niggled around in my brain for an hour before I gave in. There was only one way to get it out of my head.
“Miss Tremaine, I’ll be back in an hour or so. If any slinky blondes come in wanting me to find their kid sisters, tell ’em to wait.”
She humphed again and ignored me.
The Almsbury was half a dozen blocks away on Yucca. So I walked. It was a rectangular monolith about eight stories tall, not real new, not too old, but expensive-looking. The small terraces protruded in neat, orderly rows. The long, narrow grounds were immaculate with a lot of succulents that looked like they might have been imported from Mars. There were also the inevitable palm trees and clumps of birds of paradise. A small, discreet, polished placard dangled in a wrought-iron frame proclaiming, ever so softly, NO VACANCY.
Two willowy young men gave me appraising glances in the carpeted lobby as they exited into the sunlight like exotic jungle birds. It’s one of those, I thought. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked over the tenant directory. All the names seemed to be male, but none of them was Andrew Detweiler.
Maurice Milian was still listed as 407. I took the elevator to four and rang the bell of 409. The bell played a few notes of Bach, or maybe Vivaldi or Telemann. All those old Baroques sound alike to me. The vision of loveliness who opened the door was about forty, almost as slim as Twiggy but as tall as I. He wore a flowered silk shirt open to the waist, exposing his bony hairless chest, and tight white pants that might as well have been made of Saran Wrap. He didn’t say anything, just let his eyebrows rise inquiringly as his eyes flicked down, then up.
“Good morning,” I said and showed him my ID. He blanched. His eyes became marbles brimming with terror. He was about to panic, tensing to slam the door. I smiled my friendly, disarming smile and went on as if I hadn’t noticed. “I’m inquiring about a man named Andrew Detweiler.” The terror trickled from his eyes, and I could see his thin chest throbbing. He gave me a blank look that meant he’d never heard the name.
“He’s about twenty-two,” I continued, “dark, curly hair, very good-looking.”
He grinned wryly, calming down, trying to cover his panic. “Aren’t they all?” he said.
“Detweiler is a hunchback.”
His smile contracted suddenly. His eyebrows shot up. “Oh,” he said. “Him.”
Bingo!
Mallory, you’ve led a clean, wholesome life and it’s paying off.
“Does he live in the building?” I swallowed to get my heart back in place and blinked a couple of times to clear away the skyrockets.
“No. He was…visiting.”
“May I come in and talk to you about him?”
He was holding the door three-quarters shut, and so I couldn’t see anything in the room but an expensive-looking colour TV. He glanced over his shoulder nervously at something behind him. The inner ends of his eyebrows drooped in a frown. He looked back at me and started to say something, then, with a small defiance, shrugged his eyebrows. “Sure, but there’s not much I can tell you.”
He pushed the door all the way open and stepped back. It was a good-sized living room come to life from the pages of a decorator magazine. A kitchen behind a half wall was on my right. A hallway led somewhere on my left. Directly in front of me were double sliding glass doors leading to the terrace. On the terrace was a bronzed hunk of beef stretched out nude trying to get bronzer. The hunk opened his eyes and looked at me. He apparently decided I wasn’t competition and closed them again. Tall and lanky indicated one of two identical orange-and-brown-striped couches facing each other across a football field-size marble and glass cocktail table. He sat on the other one, took a cigarette from an alabaster box and lit it with an alabaster lighter. As an afterthought, he offered me one.
“Who was Detweiler visiting?” I asked as I lit my cigarette. The lighter felt cool and expensive in my hand.
“Maurice – next door,” he inclined his head slightly towards 407.
“Isn’t he the one who was killed in an accident last night?”
He blew a stream of smoke from pursed lips and tapped his cigarette on an alabaster ashtray. “Yes,” he said.
“How long had Maurice and Detweiler known each other?”
“Not long.”
“How long?”
He snuffed his cigarette out on pure white alabaster and sat so prim and pristine I would have bet his feces came out wrapped in cellophane. He shrugged his eyebrows again. “Maurice picked him up somewhere the other night.”
“Which night?”
He thought a moment. “Thursday, I think. Yes, Thursday.”
“Was Detweiler a hustler?”
He crossed his legs like a forties pinup and dangled his Roman sandal. His lips twitched scornfully. “If he was, he would’ve starved. He was de-formed!”
“Maurice didn’t seem to mind.” He sniffed and lit another cigarette. “When did Detweiler leave?”
He shrugged. “I saw him yesterday afternoon. I was out last night…until quite late.”
“How did they get along? Did they quarrel or fight?”
“I have no idea. I only saw them in the hall a couple of times. Maurice and I were…not close.” He stood, fidgety. “There’s really not anything I can tell you. Why don’t you ask David and Murray. They and Maurice are…were thick as thieves.”
“David and Murray?”
“Across the hall. 408.”
I stood up. “I’ll do that. Thank you very much.” I looked at the plate glass doors. I guess it would be pretty easy to walk through one of them if you thought it was open. “Are all the apartments alike? Those terrace doors?”
He nodded. “Ticky-tacky.”
“Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it.” He opened the door for me and then closed it behind me. I sighed and walked across to 408. I rang the bell. It didn’t play anything, just went bing-bong.
David (or Murray) was about twenty-five, red-headed, and freckled. He had a slim, muscular body which was also freckled. I could tell because he was wearing only a pair of jeans, cut off very short, and split up the sides to the waistband. He was barefooted and had a smudge of green paint on his nose. He had an open, friendly face and gave me a neutral smile-for-a-stranger. “Yes?” he asked.
I showed him my ID. Instead of going pale he only looked interested. “I was told by the man in 409 you might be able to tell me something about Andrew Detweiler.”
“Andy?” He frowned slightly. “Come on in. I’m David Fowler.” He held out his hand.
I shook it. “Bert Mallory.” The apartment couldn’t have been more different from the one across the hall. It was comfortable and cluttered, and dominated by a drafting table surrounded by jars of brushes and boxes of paint tubes. Architecturally, however, it was almost identical.
The terrace was covered with potted plants rather than na
ked muscles. David Fowler sat on the stool at the drafting table and began cleaning brushes. When he sat, the split in his shorts opened and exposed half his butt, which was also freckled. But I got the impression he wasn’t exhibiting himself; he was just completely indifferent.
“What do you want to know about Andy?”
“Everything.”
He laughed. “That lets me out. Sit down. Move the stuff.”
I cleared a space on the couch and sat. “How did Detweiler and Maurice get along?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Fine. As far as I know. Maurice liked to pick up stray puppies. Andy was a stray puppy.”
“Was Detweiler a hustler?”
He laughed again. “No. I doubt if he knew what the word means.”
“Was he gay?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
He grinned. “Haven’t you heard? We can spot each other a mile away. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, I would. Thank you.”
He went to the half wall separating the kitchen and poured two cups from a pot that looked like it was kept hot and full all the time. “It’s hard to describe Andy. There was something very little-boyish about him. A real innocent. Delighted with everything new. It’s sad about his back. Real sad.” He handed me a cup and returned to the stool. “There was something very secretive about him. Not about his feelings; he was very open about things like that.”
“Did he and Maurice have sex together?”
“No. I told you it was a stray puppy relationship. I wish Murray was here. He’s much better with words than I am. I’m visually oriented.”
“Where is he?”
“At work. He’s a lawyer.”
“Do you think Detweiler could have killed Maurice?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He was here with us all evening. We had dinner and played Scrabble. I think he was real sick, but he tried to pretend he wasn’t. Even if he hadn’t been here I would not think so.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“He left about a half hour before they found Maurice. I imagine he went over there, saw Maurice dead, and decided to disappear. Can’t say I blame him. The police might’ve gotten some funny ideas. We didn’t mention him.”
