Extra Kill llm-3

by Dell Shannon

  The autopsy report wasn't in yet. Ballistics was silent on the gun. Mendoza went out for coffee, and at the drugstore counter found Goldberg sneezing violently into Kleenex over a half-eaten sandwich.

  "The very man I wanted to see," and he climbed onto the adjoining stool. Goldberg emerged from the Kleenex long enough to say that it was supposed to be his day off but something had come up.

  “Whad cad I do for you?"

  "Allergies," said Mendoza. "Everybody talks about them but when it comes down to it I don't seem to know much about them, except that they hit you different places. What are the symptoms?"

  "Are you kidding?" said Goldberg. The paroxysm over, he put the Kleenex away. "We could sit here until tomorrow while I told you. Almost anything. Me, I've read all the books and spent a lot of money on specialists, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody knows anything about it for sure. They can tell you what you've got-sometimes-and sometimes what to do about it, but by the time you've got one allergy cleared up you've developed another one. What are your symptoms?"

  "I haven't got any. What I want to know is this. If you find somebody using about three times as many handkerchiefs as the normal person, used handkerchiefs stashed away in every pocket, isn't it likely to be a symptom of an allergy? That's the way it takes most people?"

  "That it does," said Goldberg. "Some people have hives too, and some people itch, and various other things, but you can say that practically anybody with allergies is going to have, to start with, the nasal drip and the stuffed-up sinuses, and so he's going to be using a lot of handkerchiefs. Or Kleenex. Why?"

  "Yes, I thought so. My latest corpse did, I think. I wonder if he was going to an allergy specialist."

  "If he was crazy or a millionaire, he was," said Goldberg.

  "Don't they say it's psychosomatic?"

  "Listen, damn it, you say it if you want a good punch in the nose-go on, say it's all emotional. That's what they tell you when they mean they don't know and can't do anything else for you. So I'm allergic to about forty things, see, like whiskey and cat hair and the glue on postage stamps; all right, so I get hay-fever when I haven't been near any one of the things I'm allergic to, so what do they say? They say, well, well, Saul my boy, you must have grown another allergy, maybe your wife's nail polish, we'll find out-but if I haven't got the ten or twenty or thirty bucks for more tests, then they say, it's psychosomatic, maybe you'd better see a head doctor. Passing the buck. The hell with them."

  "I see. I suppose I can get a list of specialists from the Chamber of Commerce or somewhere."

  "And I wish you joy of them," said Goldberg, beginning to sneeze again.

  When Mendoza got back to his office Sergeant Thoms had finished calling the agencies, without result. "But being it's Sunday, I couldn't get hold of only about half of them, sir, and at most of those places it was an emergency number, not their office, and they couldn't say for sure without checking records. We're to check back tomorrow on those."

  "Damn Sunday,” said Mendoza. "I suppose none of the doctors' offices would be open either." It would, of course, be easier to check with someone who had known Twelvetrees: always providing they told him the truth. But there couldn't be much in it… "When Frank Walsh comes, shoot him in." He had called Slaney to borrow Walsh for more questioning. He went into his office and called the Temple, got Kingman, and asked him if Twelvetrees had had an allergy problem. Why, yes, so he had. Was he going to a specialist? Yes, Kingman thought so, but couldn't tell him which one definitely-it had been a doctor on Fairfax Avenue, he remembered that, and the name was something like Grass or Glass.

  Mendoza thanked him and had recourse to the phone book; and there was a Dr. Graas on Fairfax Avenue. Child's play, and what did it mean? Very likely nothing. Nevertheless, he'd ask. Just on the chance that there was something.

  He called Alison. "Would you like to visit a place called the Voodoo Club tonight? I'1l pick you up about eight. Preferably in that amber silk thing."

  "I can't say the prospect thrills me. Of the Voodoo Club, that is. You know I don't like night clubs-neither do you-why this sudden passion to be conventional?"

  "I just want to take a look at it, it may be mixed up in a case."

  "That doesn't reassure me," said Alison. "The first time I went out with you it was the same sort of thing, a place you just wanted to look at, and it ended in our getting shot at and my ruining a brand new pair of stockings."

  " Mi carina bella, not that sort of thing at all. I hope. I'll take good care of you. Eight o'clock."

  "Oh, damn," she said suddenly in his ear. "No, that's not for you, but that devilish kitten you insisted on giving me-Sheba, no!-I've been painting the view out the bedroom window, and she's got into the rose madder-Sheba, get down, not on the bed, darling-" The receiver crashed in his ear and Mendoza laughed.

  Sergeant Thoms put his head in the door and said Walsh was here. "Fine," said Mendoza, "bring him in and go get some coffee for all of us.!

  SEVEN

  "No you're not lucky to catch me exactly," said Mr. Stanley Horwitz. "I keep legit show business schedule-dark on Mondays-fancy of mine. Usually get a lot done on Sundays too, but it's been slow lately

  … So you want to know something about Mona Ferne? I could write a book. Homicide-has she killed somebody?"

  Hackett said he shouldn't think so but you never knew.

  "Pity," said Mr. Horwitz. "Offer you a drink?… You boys don't have to be so damn moral about rules, you just do it to annoy. No pleasure drinking alone-but I will." He got out a bottle of Scotch, flicked down the lever on his intercom, said, "Milly, I'm busy for the next half hour or so, if that nance who thinks he's America's answer to Sir Laurence Olivier comes in, he can wait. And wait." Mr. Horwitz, who was edging sixty, five-feet-four in his elevator shoes, and possessed a shock of curly gray hair, poured himself a drink and slid down comfortably in his upholstered desk-chair. "I wish you'd have a drink, Sergeant. Nice to see somebody approximately normal in here, for a change."

  “Don't you usually?"

  "Dear God, these people," said Horwitz. "These people. Nobody, Sergeant, nobody at all is mixed up in show business to start with-or wants to be-unless he, she, or it has an exhibitionist complex. Just in the nature of things they're all egotistic as hell, and that's right where you can get into the hell of a lot of trouble with them, because they're so very damn smooth in covering that up, you know? You got to keep it in mind every minute, that they're just front. It gets tiresome." He swallowed half of the drink. "And maybe you better keep it in mind about me, because God knows I don't suppose I'd be in this rat race of a business if I wasn't a little bit like them. Just a little bit. Right now, of course, they're all busy overcompensating for the granddaddy of all inferiority complexes, and that makes 'em a little quieter than usual."

  "How's that?" asked Hackett.

  Horwitz eyed him in faint surprise over the glass. "You grow up in this town?"

  "Pasadena," said Hackett.

  "Don't you notice what's going on? Time was they were this town-this was the capital of honky-tonk, the Mecca for all faithful pilgrims who never missed the change of show at the Bijou. Time was, all the money in this town, the real money, was theirs-show-business money. Everything important that happened here was show-business kind of important. Sure, the legit folk back on Broadway kept their noses in the air, but, brother, when one of 'em got the nod from Goldwyn or De Mille, he came a-runnin'-and for why? The folding stuff, the long green. Oh, this was quite a town in those days, Sergeant. And them days is gone forever. The real money behind this town now, why, all the studios together never used or made money like that-they're just a drop in the bucket of capital now, since the aircraft and missile plants moved in, all kinds of business, and since all this irrigation made us, what is it, second highest in agricultural production of the nation? They're just peanuts now, and tell the truth, I figure the people in this town've got fed up with 'em too. It's time. Not surprising. You don
't have to know one of 'em personally very long before you find out what they're like-personally-and I guess it just took a little longer for the public to learn, living in proximity as you might say. The gimmick doesn't work any more, not the way it did. The old glamour's dead. They don't get in the headlines-even local-any more, for losing a diamond necklace or marrying a European aristocrat. The gossip columns about the stars are shoved into the second section and a back page at that-there's too much interesting news about Cape Canaveral and the new government contracts at Lockheed and Douglas and what big companies are moving out here with all their personnel, building ten-million-dollar offices and so on. Too many vice-presidents and union officials riding around in Rolls Royces, too many of their wives in sable coats leading French poodles-and losing diamond necklaces at the opera-nothing to exclaim about any more, nothing to mark them as royalty, way they used to be. See? Notice how quiet they act these days, trying to pretend they're just like other people, plain down-to-earth folks. That's one of the symptoms. And, brother, how they hate the whole business! How scared and indignant they are, and how loud they deny it's happened!" Mr. Horwitz retired into his glass.

  "They do, hm? I can see how that'd be. Never thought much about it before."

  "You're not in the business-and for that you can thank God. Oh, yes, they're wearing a chip on the shoulder all right-can't do this to us, you know?-and at the same time trying to pretend nothing's happened at all, that it's still their town… But you were asking about Mona. Case in point. One of the worst ones. I don't mind gossiping about Mona Ferne, if you're got time to listen-"

  "I've got time."

  "-And I got the feeling," said Horwitz dreamily, "I might do just that even if you were somebody from TV thinking of hiring her-because she annoyed the hell out of me just before you came in, and that was just once too often she did. To start with, in case you're curious, her real name was Minnie Lundgren, and she came from some place in South Dakota. Won some sort of piddling beauty contest back there, and right away made tracks for Hollywood-read ‘Mecca'-to join the royal family… You remember any of her pictures?"

  "Hardly. I think I was about three when she was in her heyday as a star. I wasn't noticing females much yet. But I've seen her in bit parts, later on, when I was just a kid. Just vaguely remember the name."

  "You didn't miss an awful lot," said Horwitz. "She never could act, she took direction, that's all. They built her up, like they built up a lot of others who didn't really have much on the ball. And you've got to remember that comparatively speaking it's a new medium-anyway it still was thirty-five years back-and fashions in these things, they change like other fashions. She was a star, sure, they made her one. And don't you forget either, Sergeant, that's just the end of one long road, and she nor nobody else gets there, usually, without the cold guts to kick anybody in the teeth who gets in their way. You married?… Well, when you come to get married, take my advice and don't pick a beautiful woman or an actress. The two don't always coincide. Point is, anybody naturally good-looking, they're awful apt to be-what's the head doctors' word?-narcissistic. Me, me, me, twenty-four hours a day. And some of it's other people's fault, building 'em up all the time, you what am I doing for her, when can she expect a new contract?-good God in heaven, I've given it to her straight enough times, but it just doesn't penetrate. Hear her talk, you'd think she'd had a couple of pictures gross a million in the last six months, and it's just a little legal fuss with the studio leaves her without a contract. Every once in a while she threatens to get another agent, and I wish to God she'd try, but she never will-she knows damn well, if she'd admit it, nobody else would ever put her on the books."

  "I suppose she's living on what she used to make-investments?"

  "Mostly, I think, on Carstairs' money-she spent most of hers as it came in. Maybe he'd begun to see through her at that, he'd tied it up in trust-in two trusts actually, one for the girl. They'd only been married a couple of years, the kid was just a baby, when he crashed. Sure, Mona's got plenty to get along on, but that's not enough for her."

  "She is," said Hackett, "a member of a funny cult called the Temple of Mystic Truth. Know anything about that?"

  Horwitz shook his head and shrugged. "Can't say I want to. This town used to have a reputation for that kind of thing too, and when you come to think of it, it's natural. You take these people-they're people without roots, you know?-and most of 'em are suckers for that kind of thing. Especially, you might say, as they get older. They feel a lack somewhere, they look around for something solid, for an answer, and because they're the kind of people they are, the orthodox doesn't attract them."

  "Yes, I can see that. She'd been going around some with this fellow who got knocked off, Brooke Twelvetrees."

  "Oh, that one, was it? And that's why you're interested. I remember him. She brought him in, pestered me to take him on. Well, you never know where you'll find something good, I looked him over. He had looks, the kind a lot of women go for, but don't get me wrong when I say, like I did about Mona, that's the first and only thing. It's important, but you and I could both name a dozen top stars without much in the way of looks. Mona and some like her, both sexes, got to the top on looks alone, but that doesn't hold you there. It's a thing there's no word for-showmanship, I guess that comes closest to it. Nothing to do with talent. I can name you people"-he did so-"who've been on top for years, without having anything but a lot of gall, and showmanship. It was that, even a little bit of it, this Twelvetrees didn't have. The personality didn't project, he couldn't've held an audience with the doors locked and safety belts to fasten 'em down. I said nothing doing, and Mona was mad as hell… No, that was the only time I ever met him, it'd be about two years ago… I heard later Meyer and Hanks took him on, don't know if or where they'd got him anything?

  "Well, thanks. Where's that outfit?" Hackett took down the address. "You don't think there'd have been anything serious about their going around together? Just as an opinion."

  Horwitz laughed. "Because Twelvetrees was maybe twenty-five years younger? Look, you don't need to be a psychiatrist to read these people. One of the damndest awful things about them is that they never get past a certain stage in life. They're kind of fixed at the mental age where parties and clothes and boy friends and girl friends, and all the-the froth, you know, is all that's important in life. It can have sad results. You take anybody fifty-five, sixty years old, even if he's got good health, nothing chronic, he's glad to let down once in a while, take things easier, stay home Saturday night and read a book. He's got a long way past being interested in kids' things-he's got to other things just as much fun. He's found out he doesn't have to be twenty-five years old and handsome as a movie star to get a kick out of making love to his wife, and she doesn't have to be Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't-you know-have to keep up a front. These people, the front's all they've ever had, and it's the most important thing in the world to them-they can't let themselves let down, ever. The front of perpetual youth. In looks and every other way. I tell you, once in a while I find myself in a night club or somewhere like that, not by choice but on business, and I don't know any sadder sight. These people like Mona, hell-bent on having a good time the same way the twenty-five-year-old kids are having a good time. Out of the fronts of things-good looks and clothes and going to parties.. Mona and this Twelvetrees? She always has a man in tow, to be seen with. Whatever she can pick up. She's got to. By the only rules she knows, if she didn't have something in pants to be seen with at the good-time places, it'd mean she was dead-as a female. And there are, in this town, enough men like her that she can always find one. But of course she'd always prefer one like Twelvetrees, to the ones her own age working just as hard as she is, with their toupees and expensive false teeth and corsets. Shows she's still an attractive, vital female-that's a word they like-to pick up a young man. You want my opinion, well, Twelvetrees was one of these people too, and he probably took up with Mona thinking she could do him some good in the way of con
tacts. Or just maybe because she paid the bills at the good-time places. I wouldn't say she'd gone down quite as far as that, to pay a fancy man to squire her around, but maybe-and there are nuances in these things, even with people like Mona."

  "So there are," agreed Hackett. "Well, thanks very much for your help. Don't know that any of it's much use to us right now, but you never know-and anyway it's interesting to get the inside view on them."

  "You find it interesting?" said Mr. Horwitz sadly. "Seems funny to think I ever did. These goddamned awful people… like reading the same page in a book over and over. Someday I got to get out of this business… "

  ***

  Walsh didn't know yet why Mendoza was asking him about that D.-and-D. call; he was doing his best to be helpful, but it had been such a routine thing…

  "I don't want to prompt you. But just visualize it in your mind-a big blacktopped area with apartments on two sides and across the rear. The one where the drunks were was Number Three, that's in the front of the second building on the right as you drive in. It was about seven-thirty, and it was raining. It was the landlady called in, and she was waiting for you-"

  "Funny little fat lady in a man's raincoat," said Walsh suddenly. "Yeah, I got it, Lieutenant. We pulled up where she was, I guess it'd be in front of her place, she was waiting there on the porch, I remember that-and we both got kind of wet going across to the drunks' apartment-left the car where it was, see, it was just a step really but it was coming down pretty steady then."

  "Yes, go on."

  "Well-I don't know just what you want, sir. There wasn't anything to it. It's funny how just the sight of the uniform'll quiet 'em down sometimes. There was this big bruiser of a fellow and a little blonde woman, going at it hammer and tongs-you could hear 'em half a block away, the landlady needn't've come out to tell us where. Soon as Joe knocked and said who we were, they stopped and the man let us in. We talked to 'em a few minutes, you know the sort of thing: hadn't they better quiet down, have some consideration for the neighbors, and that's all it took really." He stuck again there, and was prodded on. "Well, let's see-Joe gave me the nod, I knew what he meant, and I went out to the car to report in. See, Joe figured, and I guess he knew from experience-he was a good cop, Lieutenant, the best for my money-"