“Yes, who is this?”
“Thor,” I said. “Your husband Grayson vant me take care from your Joshua. Is all right I do it?”
“Yes, yes, of course, do whatever you must do, whatever Harold wanted,” she bleated.
“Good, friend here vants to speak to you.” I moved the phone from my ear, cleared my throat, and went to my best Toby Peters. “Mrs. Grayson, I’m an investigator for the Winning Institute. We’re trying to find your former husband.”
“I am very confused,” she said with a very confused sob. “What are you doing with Mr. Thor, and I thought Harold was killed by some little detective.”
Some little detective. O.K.
“Have you seen Jeffrey Ressner in the last week?” I demanded.
“Why yes. I told the policeman, the state policeman.” Her voice quivered. “I told Jeffrey that he had to go back, but I was never very good at telling Jeffrey or Delores or anyone what they should do.”
“What did Ressner want from you?”
“Money, and a call to the institute to tell them not to look for him. He was most insistent.”
“Did he tell you where he was going, where he would be, where he was staying?”
“No, no.”
“Do you have any idea of where he might be?”
The pause was enough to make me plunge on.
“For his sake, Mrs. Grayson. For your daughter and many innocent people. You must tell me.” I was into my Dr. Christian act.
“There is a hotel in Hollywood, just off Vine. We stayed there when Delores was born and Jeffrey wanted to be an actor. He liked it there, the Los Olvidados. Something he said. I don’t remember quite what made me think …”
“I know the place,” I said. “Keep the cowboy nearby and tell Delores Toby will call her.”
“Toby?” she repeated. “What about Mr. Gunderson and the Joshua?”
“He’ll be out as soon as he can.”
I hung up, turned around, and almost bumped into Mrs. Plaut, who was standing with a broom in her hand staring at me.
“Childish,” she said.
I agreed but said nothing as I eased past her and headed down the stairs. I had a lead and might not have to head for Fresno after all.
It was a Tuesday morning. Kids were in school and the street was clear. I got in the Ford and it started with no trouble. The radio still didn’t work, and I fought down the knowledge that I was doomed to endless worry about whether the car would have gas in it. I put my.38 in the glove compartment and vowed to keep a little notebook on when I filled up with gas. I knew I wouldn’t do it.
There was no problem finding the Los Olvidados apartment hotel. It was a paint-peeling dump on Selma with a sagging palm out in front that looked as if it had a hangover.
The lobby was dark with a fluorescent light sputtering and crackling in the corner. The desk in the lobby was just big enough for one human to get behind, and one was there, a woman reading Collier’s magazine and puffing on a cigarette. She was thin as a rolled-up weekday paper, and her hair was brown wire tied up in a bun.
“Can I do you for?” she said, lifting her eyes but not her head.
“Guy named Ressner registered?”
She gave me a little more attention.
“You a friend?”
“I’m more than a friend,” I said and pulled out my wallet to flash the Dick Tracy badge I’d bought from my nephew Dave. She caught the glint but didn’t ask to see it.
“Got no Ressner registered,” she said. “What’s he look like?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “He would have come here within the last week or so. Can you go through the names? Maybe something will ring a bell.”
She lifted her bony elbow from the desk, rolled up the sleeve of her brown sweater, and put her cigarette in a tin tray. Then she pulled the gray register with a red ribbon in it and started on the names.
“Griffith, Warren, LaSconda, Benetiz, Skrinski, Grayson, Beel-”
“Grayson,” I stopped her. “First name?”
“Talbott,” she said. “Talbott Grayson. Hell of a name, but we get a lot of guys want to be actors and make up all kinds of crazy-ass names. Know what I mean?”
I knew this time. He had taken the names of the two men he planned to kill.
“Is he in now?” I said, putting on the friendly grin meant to calm people, but which usually had the opposite effect.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t even remember what he looks like. So many come through. He’s in three D. You going up?”
“I’m going up,” I said. “You want to give me a passkey?”
“I don’t know,” she said, cautiously hiking up her sweater to reveal knobby elbows.
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I can kick the door down. Or you can come with me. It might get a little pushy, so if you come, just stand back.”
“I’ll stay here. Got to watch the desk,” she decided, handing me the key. “Bring it right back, and if you got to take him out, take him real quiet.”
“Real quiet,” I said.
I found the stairway, a dark, narrow gangway, and hurried up. My head was beating and I reached up to touch my bandage, fearing that it was coming off. I owed Ressner something.
Three D was at the end of a hall that smelled stale and a little wet.
I knocked, prepared to imitate the woman at the desk, the mailman, or General Wainwright. It would come to me when Ressner answered. I gripped the.38 in my pocket and knocked again. No answer. The key fit perfectly and turned easily.
“Mr. Talbott?” I squeaked, trying to do Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. No answer. I pulled the gun out, ready to give Ressner an airing, but it was clear that he wasn’t there. There really wasn’t anyplace to hide. There was one small room and a clearly visible little bathroom. It was typical prewar furnished with a bed in the corner that could look a little like a couch if the thick flower spread was put on just right, which it wasn’t, a chair with a wild spring ready to goose the guest, a small table, a battered dresser, and a painting on the wall of an Oriental woman dancing with a fan in front of her nose.
The place looked empty. Drawers were open, tin wastebasket on its side. I moved to the little table, where I could see a piece of paper with some writing on it. My guess, as I took the few steps to the table, was that I’d wind up warning the woman at the desk and then come back up here to wait out the day and night in the hope that Ressner would show again, though it didn’t look likely. Then I read the note:
TOO LATE, PETERS. TRY AGAIN. I’M JUST A LITTLE AHEAD OF YOU.
I put my gun in my pocket, folded the note, put it in another pocket, and went through the wastebasket. Nothing there.
I left the room and went back down the stairs.
“Not there?” hoarse-whispered the wiry woman, pointing up with her cigarette.
“No,” I said, throwing her the key and hurrying across the lobby.
“What do I do if he comes back?” she continued to whisper.
“He’s not coming back,” I said.
I breathed deeply when I got outside, looked up at the spring sun, and felt great. I was on my way beyond Fresno.
CHAPTER 10
I stopped to get gas at a Sinclair station before I left L.A. and got a dirty look from an attendant with a Deep South accent when the Ford only took two gallons.
There was nothing much to take my mind off the pain in my scalp except the light morning traffic and my right-handed playing with the radio. Once I’d cleared town and hit 43, static hummed instead of spitting, and once, I actually got the faint murmur of a station.
A hellfire and dammit-all preacher warned me and the rest of the coast that we’d better mend our ways fast if we were going to have the moral stamina to fight off the Japanese. He pronounced stamina in three distinct syllables: sta-min-nuh. He was all I could get, so I let him keep me company, quoting from the Bible all the way to Corcoran.
I had a chicken sandwich and some wa
r talk at the Elite Roadside Diner. The war talk was depressing, the chicken sandwich decent when washed down with the Elite’s homemade orange drink.
The overtoothed guy who gave me the orange drink asked about my head, and I told him I’d got drunk and tried to ram down a door. This seemed reasonable to him.
Back on the road, the Bible belter deserted me. His voice had begun to give out, and he turned the microphone over to a woman who began to confess her sins to accompanying organ music. Her list was amazingly long and lacking in detail. After twenty miles, somewhere near Selma, the station began to fade, and my head began to crackle with static, which worried me, since I had turned off the radio. The sun was still up, bouncing out towards the ocean beyond the hills. I decided to stop for the night and tackle Winning in the morning. The problem was that I couldn’t find an auto court for another ten miles, and the one I did spot was a series of gray wooden outhouses with a sign saying FREE RADIO. I pulled into the sandy driveway of Rose’s Rodeo Auto Hotel, got out, stretched my legs, and went in to see if there were any vacancies. I expected to have my choice.
Rose herself, a smiling balloon of a woman, sat perched on a little stool in front of the counter.
“Room, beer, information, or gas?” she asked.
“All of them,” I answered. She eased herself off the stool, waddled behind the counter, reached down, and came up with a cold Falstaff. She popped the cap and handed it to me, and I held it away while the foam eased down. It tasted fine.
“You can have cabin four,” she said. “Or one, two, three, or six. Believe it or not, someone’s already in five. Whatever business we get will be coming in later tonight. Going north or south?”
“Up near Clovis,” I said. “Place called the Winning Institute. Heard of it?”
“Think so,” said Rosie, opening her own bottle, which dripped foam over her fat wrist. “Big ugly fella of a place with teeth.”
“Sounds like the fella,” I said, downing some beer, which made my head throb.
“You got a relative up there?” she said.
“No, just some business.”
“Something wrong with your head?” she tried, pointing at my head with her bottle in case I didn’t know where my head was.
“Yeah, but nothing I need a headshrinker for. Had a little accident. I’m a salesman. Sell tongue depressors, bandages, stuff like that. Hard to get the products. Military takes most of it.”
“I can imagine,” said Rose, finishing her beer. “You got luggage?”
“Sure,” I said, finishing off the beer and putting the empty on her desk. “I’ll get it out of the trunk later, and I’ll get my gas in the morning.”
“Cash up front,” she said, holding out the registration book, which she turned toward me. “Nothing personal.”
“Good business,” I said, picking up the pen and signing in as Cornel Wilde.
She looked at the signature upside down.
“You ain’t Cornel Wilde,” she said, stifling a burp.
“Not the actor,” I chuckled. “That’s my real name. Quite a burden for a tongue depressor salesman. People let me in, expecting to see a movie star. I’ve thought of changing my name, but what the hell, I had it first.”
“I get your point. Three bucks cash plus twenty cents for the beer. You want another just to keep me company, it’s free.”
I pulled out my wallet, tried not to look at my dwindling cash supply, and gave her three bucks. I pulled the change out of my pocket and asked her where a good place might be for dinner.
“Not within twenty miles of here, but you’re welcome to eat with me in back about eight, or go four miles down the road to Ed Don’s. He runs a beanery attached to his gas station.”
I gave her a soft look and she laughed.
“There’s no lechery in my heart, son,” she said. “I’m just an old wreck who likes to have someone to talk to on lonely nights. I’ll tell you tales of the logging days up in the hills, or we can listen to the radio, or you can scat back to the cabin. No strings. Hell, I couldn’t pull ’em even if I had them.”
“Rosie, you got a date at eight,” I said. I took the key and went through the screen door. I found cabin four with no trouble. It was right between three and five. I opened the little pop lock and went back to move my car in front of the door. I also wanted my gun and the toothbrush I’d shoved in the glove compartment.
Through the screen door I could see Rosie with a fresh bottle of Falstaff, staring at the desk as if it were a crystal ball that would tell her sad secrets.
The cabin wasn’t bad, not the worst I had seen. It was clean and small. A bed with a green blanket and two pillows. A small dresser painted brown. A shower stall and a night-stand with a little radio. I turned on the radio, pulled the shades on the two windows, locked the door, and watched the road through a thin crack in the shade for whoever had followed me from the second I left Los Olvidados. He or she hadn’t been too good at it, but even if they had been, it would have been a tough job. The car was big and dark and probably a Packard, but I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t come close enough for that.
I put the gun on my lap and kept watching. The car didn’t show up for the first hour. Maybe it had lost me, but I doubted it. After “The Lone Ranger,” I propped a chair in front of the door and under the knob, got undressed with the.38 within reach, and took a shower.
After the shower I checked out the window again. Another car was there, but it was a small Olds. A young couple and a kid were standing next to it, and the kid was crying loud enough so I could hear him. I got on the bed, let the radio keep playing softly, turned on my side, and closed my eyes. I slept. I think I dreamed about Cincinnati. Maybe I didn’t. There was just a flicker of the dream left when I woke up. The sun was down and the room dark except for the glowing face of the radio, which informed me that it was time for Fred Waring.
I threw my pants on, shoved the gun into my jacket, turned off the radio, and went out. A few more cars but no Packard.
Rosie was waiting for me. She had changed her flour-sack dress for another flour-sack dress and put a kid’s barrette in her hair.
“Thought you changed your mind,” she said.
“Slept,” I explained. “Hope I’m not late.”
“Hell, you could have come at midnight and not been late,” she chuckled and led the way beyond the counter into her back room. I followed and found a card table set up with a tablecloth and two place settings. There were two bowls on the table, both big, and a plate of dark bread. While Rosie got a pair of beers, I saw that the bowls were filled with tuna and potato salad.
“Looks great,” I said and meant it.
“Dig in,” she said, and we did.
“How’s business tonight?” I asked innocently.
“Pretty good, still a few left. Might pick up a late one or even two before midnight. Happens sometimes.”
Silence and I tried again.
“Mostly families, I suppose.”
“Mostly, a few loners like you,” she said, filling her fork with tuna. “Why don’t you just come out with it? Who are you expecting?”
I drank some beer, let the burp come, and told her the whole tale. She kept eating through it, her eyes open wide.
“This is better than ‘I Love a Mystery,’” she said. “Beats my logging stories all to hell. Tell the truth, I can’t tell if you’re a crazy or just the kind of guy who gets his rear in a wringer. I think you’re a wringer guy.”
“That’s a fact.” I toasted her and told her some more tales while we drank and ate. Then I listened to her tell me about logging in the old days while we had some chocolate ice cream.
“I better get some sleep,” I said. “This has been great. You have my gratitude.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She did a three hundred-pound blush.
“Cornel Wilde,” she chuckled as I walked into the front office. “I’ll keep an eye out for your fella in the Packard.”
“Just call me if he show
s up,” I said and let myself out. The screen door banged closed, sending the mosquitoes on it scurrying for a second before they returned. In the darkness, crickets chirped, and far down the road, I couldn’t tell which way, a truck changed gear.
I checked my room before going in, propped the chair up, took off my clothes, and went to sleep on my side, clutching the extra pillow and letting my left hand rest on the cool steel of my.38.
Morning seemed to come in seconds. I felt great again. My gun was there. The chair was still under the knob, and my head hurt less than the day before. Everything was fine until I moved to the basin to brash my teeth and saw the window in the shower stall. It was not very big, but big enough to let someone in, and it was open. It hadn’t been the night before.
There wasn’t any place for someone to hide, and I was still alive. I checked my gun. It was still loaded. I checked my pants. My wallet was missing. Twenty bucks, a driver’s license, and a Dick Tracy badge. I dressed fast and paid a visit to Rosie, who sat out in front of the office her hands folded in her lap, her head back absorbing the sun.
“Rosie,” I said. She opened her eyes and gave me a little smile.
“Morning,” she returned, shifting her bulk in the chair, which creaked beneath her.
“I had a visitor. Someone crawled through the window and took off with my wallet. Did the guy in the Packard show up last night?”
Rosie shook her head and chins with a definite no.
“Could have come in when I went to sleep around one,” she said. “In this business you sleep on and off, mostly hours when you don’t expect business. Could have been a local through the nearest town, Fowler about ten miles up. Could have been another guest. We get all kinds.”
“Skip it,” I sighed. “You want to buy a.38 automatic?”
She said no.
“How about I leave it with you for the loan of ten bucks and I collect it on the way back with two bucks interest? I’m going to see that client I was telling you about.”
“Got a better idea,” Rosie said, grunting herself up from the chair. “Did some nursing back in Trenton. That’s in Jersey. I’ll change that bandage for you and grubstake you to ten bucks. You can drop it off on your way back through.”
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