She took a tentative step towards the house, then paused and looked me over. She was an open-faced woman, not good at masking what was on her mind: was it safe to ask me into the house, or did my connection with Barr disqualify me? She said:
“Are you a friend of Mr. Barr’s?”
“I’m not his enemy.” He had been my client for a quick quarter of an hour, and I owed him that much. “I met him for the first time this morning. He tried to hire me to find a woman for him.”
She colored slightly, and her open look was confused by something hectic about her eyes. “Rose Breen?”
“That’s correct.”
“You say he tried to hire you. The implication is that he didn’t succeed. Then why are you here?”
“It’s a little hard to explain, even to myself. Barr’s staying in Malibu, and that’s more than halfway here. I decided to come the rest of the way.”
“On your own hook?” Her tone was faintly incredulous.
“Yes. I turned Barr down because I didn’t like his story, and I didn’t like his attitude. He said he’d hire someone else or run Rose down himself, and I believe him. He has a fixed idea, or claims to have, of marrying her after all these years and living happily ever after. She isn’t likely to fall in with the idea. Then there’s bound to be trouble—”
“That isn’t what he told me,” the woman cut in. “He said that he was her uncle by marriage, that he’d made some money and wanted to help her with it.”
“Now I know he’s a liar. He was probably lying to both of us. When his first story didn’t work on you, he changed it for me.”
She touched my arm. She wasn’t a small woman, but she had a hummingbird touch, light and vibrating and brief. “What do you suppose he really wants with her?”
“Nothing good, in my opinion. Rose would know.”
It was a question. She seemed embarrassed by it, and she let the embarrassment narrow into suspicion. “I fail to understand your interest in all this, or why you’ve come to me. What do you hope to gain?”
“Nothing. I like to sleep nights. That means that in the daytime I have to follow through—”
She cut me short: “On whose account are you here?”
“My own. And Rose Breen’s.”
“Do you know her?” she said sharply.
“I never heard of her until this morning. But I thought if she’s available I’d like to talk to her.”
“On what subject?”
“Joseph Barr. I thought I’d made that clear. He’s dangerous—dangerous to anyone and especially to a woman that he’s been dreaming about for fifteen years or so. He may be an escaped mental patient or convict—”
“And you may be a very imaginative man.”
“I try to be. The things that happen in the world can be pretty fantastic, and I try to stay attuned.”
She was not amused. The confusion in her eyes was affecting the rest of her face. Her beauty was loosening, coming apart like an overblown flower. I asked her the direct question:
“Mrs. Leverett, is Rose still working for you?”
“She certainly is not. Rose Breen was only with me a total of two or three months. She left fifteen years ago under circumstances that I don’t care to dwell on.”
“Circumstances?”
“I was ill at the time, and she left me without notice.” Her look was almost malevolent. The people in Foothill Drive took their servant problems very seriously. Such things happened to the emotionally unemployed.
“Is Rose still living in Santa Teresa?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
“Who would?”
“I can’t think of anyone. Not anyone.” She put on her wide hat and tied it under her chin as if it might help to hold her face together. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there are some instructions I must give the cook.”
“Do you mind if I wait for your husband?” “I see no point in it.”
“But do you mind?”
“Wait for him if you like.”
She left me standing and walked towards the house. Her heavy grace was heavier and less graceful. She went in. I got back into the car, wondering what had happened to the conversation. We’d been getting along fairly well, I’d thought, then suddenly we weren’t communicating. I hoped I wasn’t losing my fine interrogatory touch.
I had another chance to test it, right away. The young man in blue came out of the house and down the drive. In worn and faded Levi’s and sneakers, he looked like the assistant gardener, or somebody playing the role of assistant gardener. He walked like a zombie, scuffing his feet in the gravel as if he had poor contact with reality. His intense dark gaze seemed to be fixed on another world than this one, not necessarily a better world.
The pressures of this one had stretched the brown skin over the lumpy bones of his face. His hair was short and stood up.
I saw when he reached the side of the car that he was very tall, taller than I was by an inch or two, and about half as wide.
“You’ve upset Mother,” he said tightly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“She’s very upset. She went into her room without even speaking.”
“She upsets easily.”
He considered this proposition. “Mother has had enough trouble. I don’t want her bothered.”
“I have no intention of bothering her.”
“What are you doing camping in the driveway?”
“I want to talk to your father.”
“Leverett is not my father. Leverett is my stepfather.” He leaned over to peer in at my face. His eyes were burning black. “Is that clear?”
“Leverett is your stepfather.”
“My cruel stepfather from the Siberian steppes. He’s helping me up the stepladder of success, step by step.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“A non-joke. You can un-laugh if you like.”
I un-laughed. He grinned mirthlessly in at me. “What do you want to talk to him about?”
“Rose Breen. If you’re Peter Leverett—”
“Chantry. Peter Chantry. Is that clear?”
“You’re Peter Chantry. I understand a girl named Rose Breen looked after you for a while when you were a small boy. You may not remember her.”
“I do, though. I remember her very well. Rose treated me very well. She used to do a lot of clowning around. She taught me to swim in the pool. She even got me started reading, mirabile dictu.” The memory softened his eyes. They needed softening. He almost smiled.
“Mirabile what?”
“Mirabile dictu. It’s a Latin phrase. Rose and I had a wonderful time together—the best time that I ever had in my life. I’ve been thinking about her a lot these last couple of days. I sat up most of last night thinking about her.” He added confidentially: “I do my best thinking at night.”
He appeared to be about twenty, but he acted younger. Still I had the impression that he was playing a role—assistant gardener, village idiot, family fool—behind which his intelligence lay in ambush. I’d run into similar fronts in other young people who felt displaced at home.
“Maybe I better come back around midnight or something. We’ll synchronize our watches.”
“Mine is already synchronized,” he said, deadpan. “What’s your name?”
“Lew Archer. I’m a private detective. Is that clear?”
He looked at me in boyish confusion. Then he decided to laugh. Or un-laugh. “I’m sorry, but I don’t like to be mistaken for Leverett’s son.”
“Where did you pick up the is-that-clear bit? Television?”
“Leverett. He used to say it all the time. I started saying it back to needle him. It must have crept up on me. Things do.”
“Tell me more about Rose. Sit in the car if you like.”
“No thanks.” But he leaned his arm on the door. “Why is everybody suddenly so interested in Rose? A man was here the other day—it’s what got me started thinking about her. I�
��d hate to think of that Barr person catching up with Rose. He isn’t really her uncle, is he?”
“He’s not her uncle. I don’t know who he is.”
“What does he want with her?”
“She’s the one to ask. Do you have any idea where she is, Peter?”
“How would I know?” His face had gone blank and stupid. “She may be dead, for all I know.”
“But you don’t think she is.”
“I don’t want to think she is.”
“How did the idea come up?”
“Everybody I care about dies or goes away.” He kicked the earth, spraying the car-door with gravel.
“When did you last see her?”
“I was about five. She took off without even saying goodbye. I felt very badly about it. I cried. That was about the last time I ever cried. You see, she treated me like a mother. My own mother never did. Rose took me to her place and we used to pretend that I was her little boy.” His voice cracked with self-pity.
“Didn’t she live in?”
“She did at first. After Father came home from the war she moved into her own place, down the road. I suppose there wasn’t room for her in the house. But you’d think there would be, wouldn’t you?” He looked at the house. “It’s a big house, and there was—there were only Mother and I for a long time after that.”
“What about your father?”
He turned on me. “What about him?”
“You said that he was home from the war.”
“He didn’t stay,” the boy said. “He went away again around the same time Rose did. Maybe it was the same time. I don’t remember exactly.” He winced, as if the razor edge of memory was hurting him.
“He went back to the war?”
“The war was over, I know that much. It was over long before he ever came home in the first place.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t he tell you? Or didn’t your mother tell you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” His sneaker toe was digging a hole in the gravel. “I wish you wouldn’t ask questions about my father. It’s painful to me. I hardly remember him. Besides, his run-out has nothing to do with Rose Breen.”
I wondered. Maybe he was wondering too. He raised his eyes from his little excavation. They were bleak and blind in the sunlight. They winced away from mine like an animal’s.
The sound of a heavy car was approaching in the road.
“That’s Leverett now,” he said. “You’d better move your car. Leverett doesn’t like people to get in his way.”
I started to move the car to the side of the driveway. A mass of chrome and color hove up in my rearview mirror and honked at me. I got out, leaving the motor running. So did the other driver.
He was a middle-aged man in a dark gray suit that matched his dark gray hair. Either he had a good tailor, or he was very fit under his clothes. His face was brown with suntan that hadn’t come out of a bottle, and not bad-looking, except for a prissy little mouth under a prissy moustache. His eyes were keen and glacial.
“Don’t block the driveway, please,” he said precisely.
“I was just unblocking it. There’s room for you to get by.”
THE COUNT OF MONTEVISTA
I went through my mail in search of hopeful omens. One interesting-looking envelope came from Spain and had pictures of General Franco and the Santa Maria on the stamps. It was addressed to Señor Lew Archer at my Sunset Boulevard address. Inside it said: “Cordiales Saludos: This comes to you from faroff Spain to call your attention to our new Fiesta line of custom furniture with its authentically Spanish motif…”
There was a bill from The Bottle Shelf.
Its size astonished me. Combined with the weekend I had just put in, at Palm Springs, it made me determined to quit drinking almost any day now. I was planning my anti-drinking campaign, with emphasis on how to spend all the money I would save on liquor, when the telephone on my desk rang.
It was Eric Griffin of the Beverly Hills law firm Griffin and Shelhovbian. I had done a little work for him in the past. He wanted to know if I was free to undertake a small job. I was.
“I have a young man with me in my office now. He’s the son of an old acquaintance of mine, and he seems to feel that he needs the services of a detective.” Griffin sounded as if he had his doubts about the need. “Apparently his girl has thrown him over in favor of some sort of foreigner. He seems to think that the man may be crooked or even dangerous.”
Behind Griffin’s voice I heard a younger man say: “He is dangerous.”
“I’ll let him talk to you himself,” Eric said.
“Not on the phone. Shall I come over there?”
“No, I’ll send him over to you. His name is Peter Jamieson Three,” he said with a faintly sardonic intonation. “Treat him gently.”
“Is he fragile?”
“Not exactly. I knew his father at Princeton.” His voice was full of unspoken information. “The family lives in Montevista. Peter will handle the financial arrangements himself, since he’s not really my client.”
The young man arrived in about twenty-five minutes. He was puffing from the climb to my second-floor office. He couldn’t have been out of his early twenties but his face was fattish and rather apologetic, the face of a middle-aging boy. His body was encased in a layer of fat like football padding which made his Ivy League suit too tight for him. He looked like money about three generations removed from its source.
“I’m Peter Jamieson.” He let me feel his large amorphous hand.
“Yes. Sit down. Mr. Griffin told me you were coming.”
“I heard him. Mr. Griffin thinks I’m making a fuss about nothing. I’m not, though.” He peered around at the mug shots on the walls. He had the kind of soft brown eyes which are very often shortsighted.
“I can’t make your girl come back to you if she doesn’t want to. Griffin will tell you the same thing.”
“He already has,” the young man said rather wistfully. “But even if she doesn’t come back, to me, we can save her from making a terrible mistake.”
100 PESOS
It started out to be one of those germ-free cases, untouched by the human hand. The firm of lawyers who called me in, Trotter, Griffin and Wake, had the kind of reputation young men dream about aspiringly when they’re sitting up late studying for their bar exams. Their exquisitely hushed offices surrounded a garden court in Beverly Hills.
The lovely young thing in the front office looked at me with aesthetic distance. “Yes?”
“Mr. Archer to see Mr. Griffin.”
“Mr. Griffin is free now.”
He was a lean man in summer gray, with a white crewcut and a wintry smile. The tan against which his teeth flashed hadn’t come out of a bottle. He shook my hand vigorously but briefly, offered me a mottled greenish cigar which I refused, closed the box without taking one himself, waved me into a padded leather chair, leaned back in his own chair and clapped his hands, once.
Nothing happened, except that I jumped a little.
“We’ll get right down to business,” Griffin said. “That suits me and I’m sure it suits you. You’re a busy man, I’m given to understand.”
“By whom?”
“Mr. Colton of the D.A.’s office has recommended you highly, among others. He gave me to understand that you’re among the more intelligent and persistent members of your—ah—profession.”
“That was nice of him.”
“Yes. As you may know, we specialize in corporation law and don’t have much occasion to use detectives. I’m—ah—negotiating with you simply as a favor to a colleague.”
“That’s nice of you.”
He gave me a stainless-steel look. “Yes. Well. It appears that there is this certain person in La Mesa who needs looking into. You know La Mesa?”
“Not like the back of my hand, but I’ve been there. Who’s the certain person?”
“He calls
himself Smith. Presumably Smith is not his real name. He’s a man who came to town—to La Mesa, that is—several days ago. Apparently he’s been stirring up a certain amount of trouble, of a rather indeterminate nature.”
“And I’m supposed to run him out of town?”
“Nothing like that,” he said sharply. “Your assignment is to find out who he actually is, where he came from, what he’s doing in La Mesa. Get to know him, if you can. Get him talking. We want a full report on his background, his identity, his intentions.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He’s probably staying at some waterfront motel. It shouldn’t be too hard to pick him up—I can give you a fairly good description of the man.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“No. This is at second hand, but I can assure you of its accuracy.” He shuffled the papers on his desk and picked out a sheet of typewriter paper scribbled over in pencil. “Smith is a man who appears to be in his middle fifties. His hair has streaks of gray in it. It was originally black. His skin is quite dark—whether for—ah—racial reasons or simply because he’s been out in the sun a lot, I can’t say. Brown eyes, almost black—his eyes are said to be his most notable feature. Also, he has a rather large nose with a hump in it—evidently broken at some time. This and his general manner give him the appearance of a rather rough-looking customer, and a fairly exotic specimen, you might say.”
“Foreign?”
“That isn’t clear. He seems to speak English without any accent.”
“Who has he been speaking English to?”
Griffin compressed his lips. “I’m afraid I’m not authorized to name our client, if that is what you mean. In point of fact, the client in question isn’t properly ours. I’m acting in this matter for a colleague in La Mesa.”
“Another lawyer?”
“That is correct.”
“What’s his name?”
“I’m not authorized to give it to you. It was thought best not to.”
“I like to know who I’m working for. And why.” “Naturally.” Griffin smiled his wintry smile. “Certainly we’re implying no lack of confidence in you, or we’d never have asked you to take a hand in this. But there are circumstances in the present case—family and—ah—psychological considerations—which impose a certain amount of security on us. I’m asking you to go along with it, and I give you my personal assurance that you’re dealing with the highest type of people.”
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