“It’s just a place by the sea. Like Los Angeles.”
I decided to go fishing, and hooked up some of the bait Winthrop had given me. “Were you there when J. Edgar Hoover staged his fireworks display in the twenties?”
“Yes, I was a child. Something to do with rum-runners, I think. That was during Prohibition.”
“Good years for the Laird.”
“I suppose so. He’s legitimate these days.”
“Yes. Although if he were as Scotch as he likes to pretend he is, you can be sure he’d have been deported by now.”
Janice Marsh’s eyes were sea-green. Round or not, they were fascinating. “Let me put your mind at rest, Mr. Lovecraft or whatever your name is,” she said, “the Esoteric Order of Dagon was never a front for boot-legging. In fact it has never been a front for anything. It is not a racket for duping rich widows out of inheritances. It is not an excuse for motion picture executives to gain carnal knowledge of teenage drug addicts. It is exactly what it claims to be, a church.”
“Father, Son, and Holy Squid, eh?”
“I did not say we were a Christian church.”
Janice Marsh had been creeping up on me and was close enough to bite. Her active hands went to the back of my neck and angled my head down like an adjustable lamp. She put her lips on mine and squashed her face into me. I tasted lipstick, salt, and caviar. Her fingers writhed up into my hair and pushed my hat off. She shut her eyes. After an hour or two of suffering in the line of duty, I put my hands on her hips and detached her body from mine. I had a fish taste in my mouth.
“That was interesting,” I said.
“An experiment,” she replied. “Your name has such a ring to it. Love... craft. It suggests expertise in a certain direction.”
“Disappointed?”
She smiled. I wondered if she had several rows of teeth, like a shark.
“Anything but.”
“So do I get an invite to the back-row during your next Dagon hoe-down?”
She was businesslike again. “I think you’d better report back to Janey. Tell her I’ll have Laird call her when he’s in town and put her mind at rest. She should pay you off. What with the War, it’s a waste of manpower to have you spend your time looking for someone who isn’t missing when you could be defending Lockheed from Fifth Columnists.”
“What about Franklin?”
“Franklin the President?”
“Franklin the baby.”
Her round eyes tried to widen. She was playing this scene innocent. The Panther Princess had been the same when telling the white hunter that Jungle Jillian had left the Tomb of the Jaguar hours ago.
“Miss Wilde seems to think Laird has borrowed a child of hers that she carelessly left in his care. She’d like Franklin back.”
“Janey hasn’t got a baby. She can’t have babies. It’s why she’s such a psycho-neurotic case. Her analyst is getting rich on her bewildering fantasies. She can’t tell reality from the movies. She once accused me of human sacrifice.”
“Sounds like a square rap.”
“That was in a film, Mr. Lovecraft. Cardboard knives and catsup blood.”
* * * *
Usually at this stage in an investigation, I call my friend Bernie at the District Attorney’s office and put out a few fishing lines. This time, he phoned me. When I got into my office, I had the feeling my telephone had been ringing for a long time.
“Don’t make waves,” Bernie said.
“Pardon,” I snapped back, with my usual lightning-fast wit.
“Just don’t. It’s too cold to go for a swim this time of year.”
“Even in a bathtub.”
“Especially in a bathtub.”
“Does Mr. District Attorney send his regards?”
Bernie laughed. I had been an investigator with the DA’s office a few years back, but we’d been forced to part company.
“Forget him. I have some more impressive names on my list.”
“Let me guess. Howard Hughes?”
“Close.”
“General Stillwell?”
“Getting warmer. Try Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Governor Culbert Olson, and State Attorney General Earl Warren. Oh, and Wax, of course.”
I whistled. “All interested in little me. Who’d ‘a thunk it?”
“Look, I don’t know much about this myself. They just gave me a message to pass on. In the building, they apparently think of me as your keeper.”
“Do a British gentleman, a French lady, and a fed the size of Mount Rushmore have anything to do with this?”
“I’ll take the money I’ve won so far and you can pass that question on to the next sucker.”
“Fine, Bernie. Tell me, just how popular am I?”
“Tojo rates worse than you, and maybe Judas Iscariot.”
“Feels comfy. Any idea where Laird Brunette is these days?”
I heard a pause and some rumbling. Bernie was making sure his office was empty of all ears. I imagined him bringing the receiver up close and dropping his voice to a whisper.
“No one’s seen him in three months. Confidentially, I don’t miss him at all. But there are others...” Bernie coughed, a door opened, and he started talking normally or louder, “...of course, honey, I’ll be home in time for Jack Benny.”
“See you later, sweetheart,” I said, “your dinner is in the sink and I’m off to Tijuana with a professional pool player.”
“Love you,” he said, and hung up.
I’d picked up a coating of green slime on the soles of my shoes. I tried scraping them off on the edge of the desk and then used yesterday’s Times to get the stuff off the desk. The gloop looked damned esoteric to me.
I poured myself a shot from the bottle I had picked up across the street and washed the taste of Janice Marsh off my teeth.
I thought of Polynesia in the early 19th Century and of those fish-eyed native girls clustering around Capt. Marsh. Somehow, tentacles kept getting in the way of my thoughts. In theory, the Capt. should have been an ideal subject for a Dorothy Lamour movie, perhaps with Janice Marsh in the role of her great-great-great and Jon Hall or Ray Milland as girl-chasing Obed. But I was picking up Bela Lugosi vibrations from the setup. I couldn’t help but think of bisected babies.
So far none of this running around had got me any closer to the Laird and his heir. In my mind, I drew up a list of Brunette’s known associates. Then, I mentally crossed off all the ones who were dead. That brought me up short. When people in Brunette’s business die, nobody really takes much notice except maybe to join in a few drunken choruses of “Ding-Dong, the Wicked Witch is Dead” before remembering there are plenty of other Wicked Witches in the sea. I’m just like everybody else: I don’t keep a score of dead gambler-entrepreneurs. But, thinking of it, there’d been an awful lot recently, up to and including Gianni Pastore. Apart from Rothko and Isinglass, there’d been at least three other closed casket funerals in the profession. Obviously you couldn’t blame that on the Japs. I wondered how many of the casualties had met their ends in bathtubs. The whole thing kept coming back to water. I decided I hated the stuff and swore not to let my bourbon get polluted with it.
Back out in the rain, I started hitting the bars. Brunette had a lot of friends. Maybe someone would know something.
* * * *
By early evening, I’d propped up a succession of bars and leaned on a succession of losers. The only thing I’d come up with was the blatantly obvious information that everyone in town was scared. Most were wet, but all were scared.
Everyone was scared of two or three things at once. The Japs were high on everyone’s list. You’d be surprised to discover the number of shaky citizens who’d turned overnight from chisellers who’d barely recognise the flag into true red, white, and blue patriots prepared to shed their last drop of alcoholic blood for their country. Everywhere you went, someone sounded off against Hirohito, Tojo, the Mikado,kabuki, and origami. The current rash of accidental deaths in the Pastore-Bru
nette circle were a much less popular subject for discussion and tended to turn loudmouths into closemouths at the drop of a question.
“Something fishy,” everyone said, before changing the subject.
I was beginning to wonder whether Janey Wilde wouldn’t have done better spending her money on a radio commercial asking the Laird to give her a call. Then I found Curtis the Croupier in Maxie’s. He usually wore the full soup and fish, as if borrowed from Astaire. Now he’d exchanged his carnation, starched shirtfront, and pop-up top hat for an outfit in olive drab with bars on the shoulder and a cap under one epaulette.
“Heard the bugle call, Curtis?” I asked, pushing through a crowd of patriotic admirers who had been buying the soldier boy drinks.
Curtis grinned before he recognised me, then produced a supercilious sneer. We’d met before, on theMontecito. There was a rumour going around that during Prohibition he’d once got involved in an honest card game, but if pressed he’d energetically refute it.
“Hey cheapie,” he said.
I bought myself a drink but didn’t offer him one. He had three or four lined up.
“This racket must pay,” I said. “How much did the uniform cost? You rent it from Paramount?”
The croupier was offended. “It’s real,” he said. “I’ve enlisted. I hope to be sent overseas.”
“Yeah, we ought to parachute you into Tokyo to introduce loaded dice and rickety roulette wheels.”
“You’re cynical, cheapie.” He tossed back a drink.
“No, just a realist. How come you quit the Monty?”
“Poking around in the Laird’s business?”
I raised my shoulders and dropped them again.
“Gambling has fallen off recently, along with leading figures in the industry. The original owner of this place, for instance. I bet paying for wreaths has thinned your bankroll.”
Curtis took two more drinks, quickly, and called for more. When I’d come in, there’d been a couple of chippies climbing into his hip pockets. Now he was on his own with me. He didn’t appreciate the change of scenery and I can’t say I blamed him.
“Look cheapie,” he said, his voice suddenly low, “for your own good, just drop it. There are more important things now.”
“Like democracy?”
“You can call it that.”
“How far overseas do you want to be sent, Curtis?”
He looked at the door as if expecting five guys with tommy guns to come out of the rain for him. Then he gripped the bar to stop his hands shaking.
“As far as I can get, cheapie. The Philippines, Europe, Australia. I don’t care.”
“Going to war is a hell of a way to escape.”
“Isn’t it just? But wouldn’t Papa Gianni have been safer on Wake Island than in the tub?”
“You heard the bathtime story, then?”
Curtis nodded and took another gulp. The juke box played “Doodly-Acky-Sacky, Want Some Seafood, Mama” and it was scary. Nonsense, but scary.
“They all die in water. That’s what I’ve heard. Sometimes, on the Monty, Laird would go up on deck and just look at the sea for hours. He was crazy, since he took up with that Marsh popsicle.”
“The Panther Princess?”
“You saw that one? Yeah, Janice Marsh. Pretty girl if you like clams. Laird claimed there was a sunken town in the bay. He used a lot of weird words, darkie bop or something. Jitterbug stuff. Cthul-whatever, Yog-Gimme-a-Break. He said things were going to come out of the water and sweep over the land, and he didn’t mean U-boats.”
Curtis was uncomfortable in his uniform. There were dark patches where the rain had soaked. He’d been drinking like W.C. Fields on a bender but he wasn’t getting tight. Whatever was troubling him was too much even for Jack Daniel’s.
I thought of the Laird of theMonty. And I thought of the painting of Capt. Marsh’s clipper, with that out-of-proportion squid surfacing near it.
“He’s on the boat, isn’t he?”
Curtis didn’t say anything.
“Alone,” I thought aloud. “He’s out there alone.”
I pushed my hat to the back of my head and tried to shake booze out of my mind. It was crazy. Nobody bobs up and down in the water with a sign round their neck saying “Hey Tojo, Torpedo Me!” The Monty was a floating target.
“No,” Curtis said, grabbing my arm, jarring drink out of my glass.
“He’s not out there?”
He shook his head.
“No, cheapie. He’s not out there alone.”
* * * *
All the water taxis were in dock, securely moored and covered until the storms settled. I’d never find a boatman to take me out to the Montecito tonight. Why, everyone knew the waters were infested with Japanese subs. But I knew someone who wouldn’t care any more whether or not his boats were being treated properly. He was even past bothering if they were borrowed without his permission.
The Seaview Inn was still deserted, although there were police notices warning people away from the scene of the crime. It was dark, cold, and wet, and nobody bothered me as I broke into the boathouse to find a ring of keys.
I took my pick of the taxis moored to the Seaview’s jetty and gassed her up for a short voyage. I also got my .38 Colt Super Match out from the glove compartment of the Chrysler and slung it under my armpit. During all this, I got a thorough soaking and picked up the beginnings of influenza. I hoped Jungle Jillian would appreciate the effort.
The sea was swelling under the launch and making a lot of noise. I was grateful for the noise when it came to shooting the padlock off the mooring chain, but the swell soon had my stomach sloshing about in my lower abdomen. I am not an especially competent seaman.
The Monty was out there on the horizon, still visible whenever the lightning lanced. It was hardly difficult to keep the small boat aimed at the bigger one.
Getting out on the water makes you feel small. Especially when the lights of Bay City are just a scatter in the dark behind you. I got the impression of large things moving just beyond my field of perception. The chill soaked through my clothes. My hat was a felt sponge, dripping down my neck. As the launch cut towards the Monty, rain and spray needled my face. I saw my hands white and bath-wrinkled on the wheel and wished I’d brought a bottle. Come to that, I wished I was at home in bed with a mug of cocoa and Claudette Colbert. Some things in life don’t turn out the way you plan.
Three miles out, I felt the law change in my stomach. Gambling was legal and I emptied my belly over the side into the water. I stared at the remains of my toasted cheese sandwich as they floated off. I thought I saw the moon reflected greenly in the depths, but there was no moon that night.
I killed the engine and let waves wash the taxi against the side of the Monty. The small boat scraped along the hull of the gambling ship and I caught hold of a weed-furred rope ladder as it passed. I tethered the taxi and took a deep breath.
The ship sat low in the water, as if its lower cabins were flooded. Too much seaweed climbed up towards the decks. It’d never reopen for business, even if the War were over tomorrow.
I climbed the ladder, fighting the water-weight in my clothes, and heaved myself up on deck. It was good to have something more solid than a tiny boat under me, but the deck pitched like an airplane wing. I grabbed a rail and hoped my internal organs would arrange themselves back into their familiar grouping.
“Brunette,” I shouted, my voice lost in the wind.
There was nothing. I’d have to go belowdecks.
A sheet flying flags of all nations had come loose, and was whipped around with the storm. Japan, Italy, and Germany were still tactlessly represented, along with several European states that weren’t really nations any more. The deck was covered in familiar slime.
I made my way around towards the ballroom doors. They’d blown in and rain splattered against the polished wood floors. I got inside and pulled the .38. It felt better in my hand than digging into my ribs.
Ligh
tning struck nearby and I got a flash image of the abandoned ballroom, orchestra stands at one end painted with the name of a disbanded combo.
The casino was one deck down. It should be dark but I saw a glow under a walkway door. I pushed through and cautiously descended. It wasn’t wet here but it was cold. The fish smell was strong.
“Brunette,” I shouted again.
I imagined something heavy shuffling nearby and slipped a few steps, banging my hip and arm against a bolted-down table. I kept hold of my gun, but only through superhuman strength.
The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02] Page 29
