Blood on the Boards
Page 19
His eyebrows rose. “Scandal? Who mentioned scandal?”
“I did. The word shouldn’t be unfamiliar to a motel manager.”
He stared at me thoughtfully.
I said, “I’m here in lieu of the police. If I don’t find this girl, rest assured that the police will be your next visitors. I repeat, I’m not looking for trouble.”
He continued to stare at me for a few seconds. Then he picked up the phone on his desk. He asked for the clerk and told him, “A Mr. Puma would like to check our guest cards for night before last. He is on the way there now.”
He didn’t say any more to me, not even good-bye.
The desk clerk was an elderly man in a conservative suit but sporting a spectacular tie and a slight odor of lavender. He had the registration cards ready for me when I arrived at the desk.
George Reimers has been assigned to number 22-A. His signature didn’t look like the careful writing one would expect from a C.P.A.
I asked the clerk, “Do you remember the man?”
He nodded. “Fairly short man, but stocky.”
That description didn’t fit George Ryerson. I asked, “Thinning hair?”
“Oh, no. A full head of black hair.”
“Are you sure? How about his tailoring?”
“I’m sure. His tailoring was … well, I suppose it could be called expensive. But … rather, oh … George Raftish, if you know what I mean.”
“Did he have any visitors?”
He nodded immediately. “Ah, yes. A beautiful girl. They sat in the patio, of course. We don’t have visitors in the rooms unless—”
I interrupted him by taking out the picture of Jean Talsman. “Would you recognize the girl?” I put the portrait on the desk.
He held it up and looked at it for a few seconds. Then he said quietly, “That’s the girl. I’m certain of it.” “How long did she stay?”
The clerk frowned. “I don’t remember when she left.
Nor he. He didn’t have any luggage, so he paid in advance and we have no record of his check-out time.”
“Was there anything else about them you noticed?”
He looked at me skeptically. “Noticed …?”
“You remember them both so well I thought you might have given them a little—extra interest.”
“I remember a great number of our guests. But I don’t pry, Mr. Puma.”
“Nothing more you can tell me, then?”
“Nothing,” he said primly.
I thanked him and went into the bar off the lobby. I ordered a bottle of Eastern beer and put together what I had learned. Ryerson had lied. He’d lied twice.
He was not the man Jean Talsman was supposed to meet here, but the girl had come here to meet a man, a man registered under the name Ryerson was supposed to have used.
This could have happened: Ryerson arranged the meeting for one of his clients at the client’s request. The client had known Jean Talsman, but preferred to use a different name, for some reason. Jean had come here and met the man. And gone off with him? That I didn’t know.
But when Dora phoned Ryerson, he was on a spot. He didn’t know what had happened at the motel, so had tried to divorce himself from any involvement by claiming the girl had not fulfilled the date. For some reason, he couldn’t reveal the name of his client, and this flimsy lie had been his first response.
I phoned him from a booth in the bar.
The girl who answered the phone told me he had just left for lunch and she didn’t know when he would be back. I left my name.
I phoned Dora at her unlisted number and told her, “I’m at a temporary dead end.” I told her what I had learned.
“That miserable Ryerson,” she fumed. “I didn’t think he’d know what to do with a girl. I should have been suspicious when he phoned for one.”
“How did he happen to have your number, Dora?”
“He’s done some work for me, income tax work.”
“How about Jean’s friends?” I asked. “Is there any girl she’s particularly close to?”
“The girl she lives with. The address is on that paper I gave you. She and I aren’t friends so I don’t know whether she lied to me or not when I phoned about Jean.” “Is this girl home during the day?”
“Some days. She’s a model. Aren’t you going back to ask Ryerson why he lied?”
“He just left for lunch. I’ll get back at him as soon as possible. I don’t want to waste any time waiting.”
“Good boy, Puma. And keep my name out of it.”
I didn’t promise that. I could try to, but I couldn’t promise I’d be successful. I climbed into the Plymouth and drove over to San Vicente Boulevard. In an eight-unit apartment building there, built around a blue tile pool, I found the apartment of Jean Talsman.
And Mary Cefalu, the mailboxes in the lobby informed me. That would be a paisan, Mary Cefalu, and I hoped she would like me better than she did Dora.
• • •
She was a tall girl and thin. She had a thin face with brown eyes as big as Italian olives and a thin-lipped wide mouth. She probably wouldn’t qualify as pretty but she would attract all the truly masculine eyes within range. “My name is Puma,” I said.
She stood in the doorway of her apartment and looked at me without interest. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“I guess not. I’m looking for Jean Talsman.”
“Why?”
“She’s missing. Do you know where she is?”
“I think I do. You’re not the police, are you? God knows, you’re big enough to be.”
“In a way, I’m a policeman,” I admitted, “though I’m licensed by the state.” I took out the photostat of my license.
She looked at it and said, “A private detective. Good day to you, sir.” She started to close the door.
“Wait!” I said sharply.
She stood there, the door half closed.
“I can come back with a policeman,” I explained, “and he’ll want to know what Jean was doing the night she disappeared. I’ll have to tell them all about the engagement she had. And you’ll make all the papers as her roommate. Now, Miss Cefalu, how much modeling work do you think you’ll get after that happens?”
Her chin lifted. She looked like nothing below a duchess. “Are you presuming to threaten me, Mr. Puma?”
“Believe me, paisan, I’m not. I’m leveling.”
“Dora Diggert sent you, didn’t she? You’re working for her.”
“At the moment. I’m in business for myself, not Mrs. Diggert.”
She stood in the doorway appraising me in indecision for seconds. Then she said quietly, “Come in.”
The apartment was furnished in wrought iron and glass and bright nubby fabrics. The dining area overlooked the pool.
Mary Cefalu closed the door behind me and stood there, still skeptical. Then she asked, “Where are you from?”
“Fresno, originally,” I answered. “Why?”
“You have that—peasant look. I’m from Tulare, myself.”
“And you have that princess look,” I said. “Well, that’s the way the mop flops.” I sighed.
She laughed and the room seemed warmer. She said, “I’ve just put some coffee on. Would you like a cup?”
“Thanks,” I said, and went over to sit at the wrought-iron and glass table in the dining area.
She was in the kitchenette, reaching up for a cookie jar, when she said, “Dora and I don’t get along. I blame Dora for what happened to Jean.”
“You know what happened to Jean?”
She turned to stare at me. And then her face lightened. “Oh, I meant what happened—you know, why Jean got into—that line of work.”
“I understand. Dora didn’t twist her arm, did she?”
“No. But she introduced Jean to some of those cowtown billionaires and Jean is entirely too vulnerable to that kind of living.”
“You mean she was used to living well?” “About as much as you
and I are. But she had a brother who got involved with the Syndicate and he began to live high off the hog. She thought a lot of that brother.”
“And she went to work for Dora in rebellion?” Mary Cefalu paused in the act of putting some cookies on a plate. “Maybe. You know, I never thought of it that way, but it could be …”
She brought the cookies over. The electric percolator on the table was through perking and she poured us two cups of coffee.
“Cream?” she asked. “Sugar?”
“Neither, thank you,” I said. “You told me before that you thought you knew where Jean was. Has she been in touch with you?”
“Not directly. Her brother phoned.”
“Oh? And—”
“He was the man who was waiting for Jean at the Beverly Canyon Motel.” “God!” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“I was just thinking of how horrible that must have been. Imagine going to an assignation and discovering it’s your brother waiting for you.”
“He told me it was the only way he could get to talk with her. She hated him ever since he became a mobster. He thought the shame of her being discovered might make her listen to reason.”
“He told you this on the phone?”
Mary Cefalu nodded.
“Do you know him? Did you recognize his voice?”
She shook her head. “I never met him. Jean has told me about him. Why did you ask that?”
“Because it means you can’t be sure it was her brother who phoned. What did he tell you?”
“That he and Jean were going to Palm Springs for a couple of days.”
“And why couldn’t you have told Dora Diggert that when she called?”
Her thin face stiffened. “I wouldn’t tell Dora Diggert anything. I despise that woman!”
I sipped my coffee and ate a cookie. I said, “It’s phoney. If Miss Talsman was going to Palm Springs, she would have come home for some clothes, first. And she would have phoned you.”
“She did come home for some clothes,” Mary said. “That same night. I was out.”
“In that case,” I said, “this seems like a voluntary disappearance.” I waited for her to look at me. “Do you think it is?”
She nodded, looking at me doubtfully. “If I didn’t, I would have gone to the police yesterday.”
The phone rang and she went to answer it. It was for me.
It was Dora Diggert. “That redhead from Ryerson’s office just phoned me. You told her I’d sent you over there, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. I thought it would help to get me in to see Ryerson if I used your name.”
“Well, the girl says she didn’t tell the police you were sent by me. But she did tell them you talked with George this morning.”
“The police—? What are they bothering her about?”
“Because George was just found dead, that’s why. He was murdered.”
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Copyright © 1953 by William Campbell Gault, Registration Renewed 1981
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
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