by Joan Aiken
“First we try a better way, my way. You learn when you’re as old as I am there is a use for everything, and not to be wasteful. Not even wasteful with somebody else’s blood. She shot your brother, right? So now we have something on her, strong enough to keep her mouth shut for good. She’d get off with second degree, with what she’s got, but even that is five to ten in Tehachapi. I think all I need to do is tell her that. First we have to find her, eh?”
“I’ll find her. Bart didn’t have any trouble finding her.”
“With Vario’s tip to help him, no. But I think I’ll keep you here with me, Gino. You’re too hot-blooded, you and your brother both. I want her alive. Then I can talk to her, and then we’ll see.”
“You’re going soft in your old age, Angel.”
“Am I?” There was a light slapping sound of a blow on flesh. “I have killed many men, for good reasons. So I think you will take that back.”
“I take it back.”
“And call me Mr. Funk. If I am so old, you will treat my gray hairs with respect. Call me Mr. Funk.”
“Mr. Funk.”
“All right, your friend here, does he know where Fern is?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mr. Funk.”
“Mr. Funk.” Gino’s voice was a whining snarl. “I think he’s coming to. His eyelids fluttered.”
The toe of a shoe prodded my side. Somebody slapped my face a number of times. I opened my eyes and sat up. The back of my head was throbbing like an engine fueled by pain. Gino rose from a squatting position and stood over me.
“Stand up.”
I rose shakily to my feet. I was in a stone-walled room with a high beamed ceiling, sparsely furnished with stiff old black oak chairs and tables. The room and the furniture seemed to have been built for a race of giants.
The man behind Gino was small and old and weary. He might have been an unsuccessful grocer or a superannuated barkeep who had come to California for his health. Clearly his health was poor. Even in the stifling heat he looked pale and chilly, as if he had caught chronic death from one of his victims. He moved closer to me, his legs shuffling feebly in wrinkled blue trousers that bagged at the knees. His shrunken torso was swathed in a heavy blue turtleneck sweater. He had two days’ beard on his chin, like moth-eaten gray plush.
“Gino informs me that you are investigating a shooting.” His accent was Middle-European and very faint, as if he had forgotten his origins. “Where did this happen, exactly?’’
“I don’t think I’ll tell you that. You can read it in the papers tomorrow night if you’re interested.”
“I am not prepared to wait. I am impatient. Do you know where Fern is?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
“But you know where she was last night.”
“I couldn’t be sure.”
“Tell me anyway, to the best of your knowledge.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“He doesn’t think he will,” the old man said to Gino.
“I think you better let me out of here. Kidnapping is a tough rap. You don ’t want to die in the pen.”
He smiled at me, with a tolerance more terrible than anger. His eyes were like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood. Shuffling unhurriedly to the head of the mahogany table behind him, he pressed a spot in the rug with the toe of one felt slipper.
Two men in blue serge suits entered the room and stepped toward me briskly. They belonged to the race of giants it had been built for.
Gino moved behind me and reached to pin my arms. I pivoted, landed one short punch, and took a very hard counter below the belt. Something behind me slammed my kidneys with the heft of a trailer truck bumper. I turned on weakening legs and caught a chin with my elbow. Gino’s fist, or one of the beams from the ceiling, landed on my neck. My head rang like a gong. Under its clangor, Angel was saying pleasantly:
“Where was Fem last night?”
I didn’t say.
The men in blue serge held me upright by the arms while Gino used my head as a punching bag. I rolled with his lefts and rights as well as I could, but his timing improved and mine deteriorated. His face wavered and receded. At intervals, Angel inquired politely if I was willing to assist him now. I asked myself confusedly in the hail of fists what I was holding out for or who I was protecting. Probably I was holding out for myself. It seemed important to me not to give in to violence. But my identity was dissolving and receding like the face in front of me.
I concentrated on hating Gino’s face. That kept it clear and steady for a while: a stupid, square-jawed face barred by a single black brow, two close-set brown eyes staring glassily. His fists continued to rock me like an air-hammer.
Finally Angel placed a clawed hand on his shoulder, and nodded to my handlers. They deposited me in a chair. It swung on an invisible wire from the ceiling in great circles. It swung out wide over the desert, across a bleak horizon, into darkness.
I came to, cursing. Gino was standing over me again. There was an empty water glass in his hand, and my face was dripping. Angel spoke up beside him, with a trace of irritation in his voice:
“You stand up good under punishment. Why go to all the trouble, though? I want a little information, that is all. My friend, my little girl-friend, ran away. I’m impatient to get her back.”
“You’re going about it the wrong way.”
Gino leaned close, and laughed harshly. He shattered the glass on the arm of my chair, held the jagged base up to my eyes. Fear ran through me, cold and light in my veins. My eyes were my connection with everything. Blindness would be the end of me. I closed my eyes, shutting out the cruel edges of the broken thing in his hand.
“Nix, Gino,” the old man said. “I have a better idea, as usual. There is heat on, remember.”
They retreated to the far side of the table and conferred there in low voices. The young man left the room. The old man came back to me. His storm troopers stood one on each side of me, looking down at him in ignorant awe.
“What is your name, young fellow?”
I told him. My mouth was puffed and lisping, tongue tangled in ropes of blood.
“I like a young fellow who can take it, Mr. Archer. You say that you’re a detective. You find people for a living, is that right?”
“I have a client,” I said.
“Now you have another. Whoever he is, I can buy and sell him, believe me. Fifty times over.” His thin, blue hands scoured each other. They made a sound like two dry sticks rubbing together on a dead tree.
“Narcotics?” I said. “Are you the wheel in the heroin racket? I’ve heard of you.”
His watery eyes veiled themselves like a bird’s. “Now don’t ask foolish questions, or I will lose my respect for you entirely.”
“That would break my heart.”
“Then comfort yourself with this.” He brought an old-fashioned purse out of his hip pocket, abstracted a crumpled bill and smoothed it out on my knee. It was a five-hundred-dollar bill.
“This girl of mine you are going to find for me, she is young and foolish. I am old and foolish, to have trusted her. No matter. Find her for me and bring her back, and I will give you another bill like this one. Take it.”
“Take it,” one of my guards repeated. “Mr. Funk said for you to take it.”
I took it. “You’re wasting your money. I don’t even know what she looks like. I don’t know anything about her.”
“Gino is bringing a picture. He came across her last fall at a recording studio in Hollywood where Alfie had a date. He gave her an audition and took her on at the club, more for her looks than for the talent she had. As a singer she flopped. But she is a pretty little thing, about five foot four, nice figure, dark brown hair, big hazel eyes. I found a use for her.” Lechery flickered briefly in his eyes and went out.
“You find a use for everything.”
“That is good economics. I often think if I wasn’t what I am, I would make a good econom
ist. Nothing would go to waste.” He paused and dragged his dying old mind back to the subject: “She was here for a couple of months, then she ran out on me, silly girl. I heard last week that she was in Acapulco, and the federal grand jury was going to subpoena her. I have tax troubles, Mr. Archer, all my life I have tax troubles. Unfortunately I let Fern help with my books a little bit. She could do me great harm. So I sent Bart to Mexico to bring her back. But I meant no harm to her. I still intend her no harm, even now. A little talk, a little realistic discussion with Fem, that is all that will be necessary. So even the shooting of my good friend Bart serves its purpose. Where did it happen, by the way?”
The question flicked out like a hook on the end of a long line.
“In San Diego,” I said, “at a place near the airport: the Mission Motel.”
He smiled paternally. “Now you are showing good sense.”
Gino came back with a silver-framed photograph in his hand. He handed it to Angel, who passed it on to me.
It was a studio portrait, of the kind intended for publicity cheesecake. On a black velvet divan, against an artificial night sky, a young woman reclined in a gossamer robe that was split to show one bent leg. Shadows accentuated the lines of her body and the fine bones in her face. Under the heavy makeup which widened the mouth and darkened the half-closed eyes, I recognized Ella Salanda. The picture was signed in white, in the lower right-hand corner: “To my Angel, with all my love, Fern.”
A sickness assailed me, worse than the sickness induced by Gino’s fists. Angel breathed into my face: “Fern Dee is a stage name. Her real name I never learned. She told me one time that if her family knew where she was, they would die of shame.” He chuckled drily. “She will not want them to know that she killed a man.”
I drew away from his charnel-house breath. My guards escorted me out. Gino started to follow, but Angel called him back.
“Don’t wait to hear from me,” the old man said after me. “I expect to hear from you.”
The building we walked out of stood on a rise in the open desert. It was huge and turreted, like somebody’s idea of a castle in Spain. The last rays of the sun washed its wall in purple light and cast long shadows across its barren acreage. It was surrounded by a ten-foot hurricane fence topped with three strands of barbed wire.
Palm Springs was a clutter of white stones in the distance, diamonded by an occasional light. The dull red sun was balanced like a glowing cigar-butt on the rim of the hills above the town. A man with a bulky shoulder harness under his brown suede windbreaker drove me toward it. The sun fell out of sight, and darkness gathered like an impalpable ash on the desert, like a column of blue-gray smoke towering into the sky.
The sky was blue-black and swarming with stars when I got back to Emerald Bay. A black Cadillac had followed me out of Palm Springs. I lost it in the winding streets of Pasadena. So far as I could see, I had lost it for good.
The neon Mexican lay peaceful under the stars. A smaller sign at his feet asserted that there was No Vacancy. The lights in the long low stucco buildings behind him shone brightly. The office door was open behind a screen, throwing a barred rectangle of light on the gravel. I stepped into it, and froze.
Behind the registration desk in the office, a woman was avidly reading a magazine. Her shoulders and bosom were massive. Her hair was blond, piled on her head in coroneted braids. There were rings on her fingers, a triple strand of cultured pearls around her thick white throat. She was the woman Donny had described to me.
I pulled the screen door open and said rudely, “Who are you?”
She glanced up, twisting her mouth in a sour grimace. “Well! I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Sorry. I thought I’d seen you before somewhere.”
“Well, you haven’t.” She looked me over coldly. “What happened to your face, anyway?”
“I had a little plastic surgery done. By an amateur surgeon.”
She clucked disapprovingly. “li you’re looking for a room, we’re full up for the night. I don’t believe I’d rent you a room even if we weren’t. Look at your clothes.”
“Uh-huh. Where’s Mr. Salanda?”
“Is it any business of yours?”
“He wants to see me. I’m doing a job for him.”
“What kind of a job?”
I mimicked her: “Is it any business of yours?” I was irritated. Under her mounds of flesh she had a personality as thin and hard and abrasive as a rasp.
“Watch who you’re getting flip with, sonny boy.” She rose, and her shadow loomed immense across the back door of the room. The magazine fell closed on the desk: it was Teen-age Confessions. “I am Mrs. Salanda. Are you a handyman?”
“A sort of one,” I said. “I’m a garbage collector in the moral field. You look as if you could use me.”
The crack went over her head. “Well, you’re wrong. And I don’t think my husband hired you, either. This is a respectable motel.”
“Uh-huh. Are you Ella’s mother?’’
“I should say not. That little snip is no daughter of mine.”
“Her stepmother?”
“Mind your own business. You better get out of here. The police are keeping a close watch on this place tonight, if you’re planning any tricks.”
“Where’s Ella now?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s probably gallivanting off around the countryside. It’s all she’s good for. One day at home in the last six months, that’s a fine record for a young unmarried girl.” Her face was thick and bloated with anger against her stepdaughter. She went on talking blindly, as if she had forgotten me entirely. “I told her father he was an old fool to take her back. How does he know what she’s been up to? I say let the ungrateful filly go and fend for herself.”
“Is that what you say, Mabel?” Salanda had softly opened the door behind her. He came forward into the room, doubly dwarfed by her blond magnitude. “I say if it wasn’t for you, my dear, Ella wouldn’t have been driven away from home in the first place.”
She turned on him in a blubbering rage. He drew himself up tall and reached to snap his fingers under her nose. “Go back into the house. You are a disgrace to women, a disgrace to motherhood.”
“I’m not her mother, thank God.”
“Thank God,” he echoed, shaking his fist at her. She retreated like a schooner under full sail, menaced by a gunboat. The door closed on her.
Salanda turned to me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Archer. I have difficulties with my wife, I am ashamed to say it. I was an imbecile to marry again. I gained a senseless hulk of flesh and lost my daughter. Old imbecile!” he denounced himself, wagging his great head sadly. “I married in hot blood. Sexual passion has always been my downfall. It runs in my family, this insane hunger for blondeness and stupidity and size.” He spread his arms in a wide and futile embrace on emptiness.
“Forget it.”
“If I could.” He came closer to examine my face. “You are injured, Mr. Archer. Your mouth is damaged. There is blood on your chin.”
“I was in a slight brawl.”
“On my account?”
“On my own. But I think it’s time you leveled with me.”
“Leveled with you?”
“Told me the truth. You knew who was shot last night, and who shot him, and why.”
He touched my arm, with a quick, tentative grace. “I have only one daughter, Mr. Archer, only the one child. It was my duty to defend her, as best as I could.”
“Defend her from what?”
“From shame, from the police, from prison.” He hung one arm out, indicating the whole range of human disaster. “I am a man of honor, Mr. Archer. But private honor stands higher with me than public honor. The man was abducting my daughter. She brought him here in the hope of being rescued. Her last hope.”
“I think that’s true. You should have told me this before.”
“I was alarmed, upset. I feared your intentions. Any min
ute the police were due to arrive.”
“But you had a right to shoot him. It wasn’t even a crime. The crime was his.”
“I didn’t know that then. The truth came out to me gradually. I feared that Ella was involved with him.” His flat black gaze sought my face and rested on it. “However, I did not shoot him, Mr. Archer. I was not even here at the time. I told you that this morning, and you may take my word for it.”
“Was Mrs. Salanda here?”
“No sir, she was not. Why should you ask me that?”
“Donny described the woman who checked in with the dead man. The description fits your wife.”
“Donny was lying. I told him to give a false description of the woman. Apparently he was unequal to the task of inventing one.”
“Can you prove that she was with you?”
“Certainly I can. We had reserved seats at the theatre. Those who sat around us can testify that the seats were not empty. Mrs. Salanda and I, we are not an inconspicuous couple.” He smiled wryly.
“Ella killed him then.”
He neither assented, nor denied it. “I was hoping that you were on my side, my side and Ella’s. Am I wrong?’’
“I’ll have to talk to her, before I know myself. Where is she?”
“I do not know, Mr. Archer, sincerely I do not know. She went away this afternoon, after the policemen questioned her. They were suspicious, but we managed to soothe their suspicions. They did not know that she had just come home, from another life, and I did not tell them. Mable wanted to tell them. I silenced her.” His white teeth clicked together.
“What about Donny?”
“They took him down to the station for questioning. He told them nothing damaging. Donny can appear very stupid when he wishes. He has the reputation of an idiot, but he is not so dumb. Donny has been with me for many years. He has a deep devotion for my daughter. I got him released tonight.”
“You should have taken my advice,” I said, “taken the police into your confidence. Nothing would have happened to you. The dead man was a mobster, and what he was doing amounts to kidnapping. Your daughter was a witness against his boss.”
