Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  She said that Vince had a job dealing dice at one of the smaller downtown places, but that he’d got the night off. She said there was a good show at the Thunderbird—as though that were important. Sure, they’d be there at eight o’clock.

  Iris’ eyes were shining with mischief when we left them. She was full of plans. She told me she knew Louis, the maitre d’ at the Thunderbird, and she was going to shoot the works: wedding cake (“and we’ll have him put a dove of peace on top”), orchestra playing the Wedding March as they walked in, champagne, corsage of white orchids and valley lilies, provided they were obtainable. “But white is for virgins, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “That went out years ago. White is for a first marriage. The virginity is assumed.”

  She giggled. “That’d make Vince a hell of an assumer, wouldn’t it?”

  We marched into the lobby of the Thunderbird, past the ubiquitous slot machines, and registered: Miss Iris Kent, Los Angeles; Daniel A. O’Leary, Los Angeles. The room clerk said the rooms were ready and he hoped we’d like them. He called the bell captain and told him him to get our luggage out of the car.

  “Connecting rooms,” he stated, deadpan. “I hope that will prove satisfactory.”

  Iris said she was sure it would. She gave me an impish , glance as she walked across to the slot machines and squandered three quarters and a nickel.

  The rooms were on the back of the building, big, beautiful rooms, handsomely furnished, with a door between.

  I walked to the window and looked out. There was a swimming pool in the center of the quadrangle formed by the buildings. Around it were beach chairs, iron tables that sprouted gay umbrellas, and a collection of bright-colored mattresses for sun-bathing. There weren’t many people in the pool because the afternoon was wearing on, and folks had started to drift inside for siestas to fortify themselves for the night’s activities.

  Way off was a backdrop of mountains, fantastically beautiful in the fading light of late afternoon purples and reds and yellows. I think that’s the only landscape I ever saw which was even more brilliant than the paintings of it.

  Iris was standing in my room with me. She suggested that each of us grab a little shut-eye before bathing and dressing. She said that even if I was accustomed to getting up at dawn and driving three hundred miles, she wasn’t. She patted me on the arm, walked into her room, and closed the door. I turned the key in the lock on my side. Her voice came through, freighted with merriment. She said, “You needn’t be that scared, Danny,” and I told her I wasn’t, only modest.

  I waited a few minutes and went downstairs. I went outside, crossed the street, and walked into El Rancho. I got some change, a whole pocketful of it, and stepped into a pay booth, where I put in a person-to-person call for Marty Walsh in Los Angeles.

  Fortunately, I got him without too great delay. He opened the conversation with a few kidding questions, and then we got around to the point of the call.

  I told him about the nuptials that had just been celebrated. He reacted instantly, and as expected. He asked a lot of the questions I’d been asking myself, and got the same inconclusive answers. We agreed on one point: that there was more to it—much more—than appeared on the surface.

  He told me I might do a little checking on Montero, and then he came up with another idea. He said he knew a guy who knew a guy who was close to Joe Hannibal, who was the kingpin in Los Angeles gambling. He was going to try to fix things so Hannibal would offer Vince a job in L.A. If I got a rumble of it at my end, I was to help things along.

  I knew what Marty wanted: to have Montero close at hand if he happened to need him suddenly. He figured that wheresoever Vince went, there also would his bride go. It turned out that way, too, because three days later when Iris and I started back we carried Vince and his wife as passengers. But that’s jumping ahead.

  I inquired what was doing on Marty’s end of the deal, and he said nothing much. Routine checking, which didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. He’d had a couple of confabs with the family lawyer, and had come up with a sackful of figures and dates, most of which we had already known. “Also,” he said, “you can be sure of one thing: If your Iris is the villainess of this piece, she didn’t do it for money. She’s lousy with it in her own right. What she inherited from her sister was just gravy.”

  “Where’d you get that dope?” I asked.

  “The lawyer. The bank. I reckon the parents must have left it fifty-fifty. Anyway, Iris has got too much to have wanted any more.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a lot of help.”

  “I didn’t want suspicion to interfere with your romance, Danny. Maybe the little lady has homicidal tendencies, but I believe now that she isn’t mercenary.”

  I promised to keep him posted, and he advised me not to do anything he wouldn’t do, at least not more than twice as often. I told him he was a lecherous old goat and hung up the telephone.

  I bought a carton of cigarettes in the lobby of the Thunderbird to make it look good in case Iris had heard me leave the room. Then, after I undressed, I called downstairs, asked the telephone operator to give me a ring at six sharp, flopped on the bed, and went out like a light.

  At six I got up, showered, dolled myself up so I’d look my prettiest, and rang Iris’ room. No answer. I went downstairs and walked through the lounge into the casino.

  It was a nice room, large but not too large. Two dice tables were ready for action, but only one was getting it. There were two roulette layouts and a couple of blackjack tables.

  Adjoining the gambling room was a handsome bar and off to the right was a big doorway leading into the dining room. It was inside that door that I found Iris. She was huddling with the maitre d’, who was smiling and nodding and promising to have everything just as she wished it, only perhaps just a little more so.

  Iris had put on a simple, summery cocktail dress, one of those things that looks like it might possibly have cost $17.98 and had probably nicked her two or three hundred. The neckline wouldn’t exactly have qualified for television, but it plunged enough to make it interesting. She looked as cute as a little candy rabbit, and if she had anything on her mind more serious than enjoying herself, I couldn’t detect the symptoms of it.

  We had a couple of cocktails apiece, in the course of which she said she hoped I wouldn’t be a bigger fool than she already thought I was—meaning that I was to sign checks for whatever I bought while I was there: meals, tips, anything. She said she had credit in the casino and had already passed the word to the pit bosses and the cashier that any markers I wanted were to be tabbed against her account. I felt funny about it, but I knew she didn’t mean it the wrong way, and this wasn’t the time or the place to get sensitive. Hell, I was working, wasn’t I? And I couldn’t afford this sort of thing, so why should I get uppity? I didn’t.

  She got a bunch of nickels and gave me half, and we had a slot-machine contest. Each of us would put in twenty nickels and keep account of what came back. The one who won the most nickels got the other person’s money, too. It was lots of fun and cheap at half the price. We were very successful and didn’t lose all our nickels for almost an hour.

  At ten minutes of eight, Mr. and Mrs. Montero arrived. She attracted quite some attention. Nobody made a sound, but some of the dealers whistled with their eyes.

  Vince was as impassive as usual, yet he gave the impression that he was proud of his new marital role. Being able to strut ownership of this magnificent-looking woman in public was obviously a new experience for him and he made the most of it.

  The dinner was a success. Louis had done himself proud. We had enough food to take care of a regiment, and each course was tastier than the last. The orchestra banged out a few bars of the Wedding March as we entered, and they took bows in acknowledgment of applause. At the end of the meal, Louis himself arrived with the wedding cake. It was the biggest, fanciest thing I had ever seen. If that didn’t make them married, nothing ever would.

  At fir
st I’d been a trifle ill at ease. Here I was celebrating with three persons, any one of whom could have been guilty of two particularly nasty murders. I was here because of that. The thing began working on me until I had my third glass of champagne. Then nothing worked on me except a gorgeous glow that filled me with love for my fellow man and for at least one of my fellow women. I didn’t get plastered, but by ten o’clock I wasn’t feeling any pain, either.

  We enjoyed the show. We danced. Shifting from Iris to Dolores was quite an experience. Either way you had an armful, but with Dolores you couldn’t forget it, not for an instant.

  She and her new husband conducted themselves with the utmost good taste. Only once when I was dancing with her did she volunteer the information that she thought all cops were sonsofbitches, but she smiled when she said it so I couldn’t possibly take offense. I was just as polite as she was, and told her she was the best-looking whore I’d ever met, and she thanked me for the compliment. We were real good friends by the time the dance ended.

  We went back into the casino and Iris invited us to gamble a bit. Dolores said that this was her lucky day, and bought twenty silver dollars with her own money. Vince said he’d sit it out, that gambling was a mug’s game. I asked him whether he meant that the games in Vegas were crooked, and he said hell, no—they didn’t have to be. They was legal, wasn’t they? They got a steady play, didn’t they? They had the ol’ percentage workin’ for ‘em all the time, didn’t they? So why should they be rigged? “It’s this way, Danny,” he said. “It’s only the kind of games like I been working in L.A. that needs to be jobbed. There they gotta make it fast, see?”

  Iris was playing with yellow chips—five-dollar ones. She tossed a half dozen to me and I changed them into silver dollars. I did a little better than break even. She lost at first, got in about three hundred, then got a hot hand and won it all back and more. Winning or losing, I liked the way she played. She was having fun, not gambling. She did more tipping than was necessary, kidded with the dealers, gave a yellow chip to each of the three shills who worked the table when the guests weren’t crowding around, cashed in and called it a night. We wished the bridal couple well, and shoved them into a taxi.

  Iris and I walked out to the pool. The heat of the day had been dissipated, a cool breath came down from the mountains. We could look through the big windows into the hotel: the lobby, the lounge, the casino, the dining room. But we couldn’t hear anything. Out where we were it was soft and quiet and infinitely restful.

  We relaxed in beach chairs. Quite simply and unaffectedly Iris reached out and took my hand. We sat that way for a long time, saying nothing. We smoked, and the smoke from our cigarettes drifted slowly upward as though seeking the stars.

  I don’t know how long we sat there. Time means nothing in Las Vegas. They have midnight suppers and elaborate five a.m. breakfasts. You can eat any meal at any time. Casinos never close, day or night, weekdays or Sundays. It’s beautiful and it’s not expensive—unless, of course, you gamble and are unlucky.

  Eventually Iris said she thought she’d turn in. We walked through the lobby together and up to the second floor. We had our keys with us. She went into her room and I went into mine. I said good night, but she didn’t answer.

  I got undressed, snapped off the light, and stretched out on the bed. I lay there, letting my thoughts wander, speculating about what might be next on the agenda, when the door connecting Iris’ room with mine opened.

  The light was on in her room. She stood in the doorway with the light behind her, and it required a second glance for me to realize that she was wearing a nightgown of such sheerness that it really wasn’t there at all.

  I felt heat surging all through my body. I felt the pounding of my pulse. The intimacy of the situation, the inevitability of what I felt must happen, the pagan glory of that perfect figure standing in the doorway, fully revealed yet partially concealed, the fact that there had been promise but never fulfillment and that now there would be fulfillment—those things conspired to distort my sense of values, my judgment of right and wrong. I looked at her and wanted her, I wanted her so bad it hurt, I wanted her more than ever before because now I realized that I would have her.

  There was something natural about this, a feeling of thankfulness that it should come this way without the cloying seduction routine. I told myself that I should feel guilty, that it couldn’t possibly be as right as I felt it was. I couldn’t convince myself. And even if I had convinced myself, it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  For a moment she was motionless, an exquisite statue. Then she touched the light switch and the room was in darkness. For a long time there was no sound.

  She moved across the room, soundless as a wraith. She lay down on the bed beside me. Then, without warning, all resemblance to the supernatural vanished.

  Her arms were about me, her lips on mine; her body pressing, demanding, insisting. I couldn’t think. I had trouble breathing. But it didn’t matter whether I thought or breathed.

  All that mattered—all that could possibly matter—was that we were together and alone and that she was mine because she wanted to be and because I wanted her.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It’d be pretty difficult to describe our relationship during that trip to Las Vegas. “Sweet” isn’t the word, “wild” certainly isn’t. I wasn’t in love with Iris, and I knew damned well she wasn’t in love with me. Neither of us pretended. What happened—and this would seem to be a classic of understatement—was that we became friends.

  Crazy sort of friendship it was. It had nothing to do with understanding or with trust. I know I neither understood nor trusted her; I think she reacted the same way to me. But we were close. Every once in a while I’d have to remind myself that she had planned this, that it was working out just the way she had anticipated. But for three days and nights it was easy to quit worrying about why she had planned it.

  Here and there, a little at a time, never too much at once, she told me about herself. There wasn’t anything I didn’t know or hadn’t suspected; none of it was startling. And it was only when we started back to Los Angeles with Vince Montero and Dolores in the car that it occurred to me that all of it could have been cleverly calculated lies, lies told for the purpose of making me forget that I was a working detective, that my immediate job was to find out who had murdered Dorothy Halliday and her too handsome husband.

  There had been no chance for reality at the Thunderbird. Whether we’d been alone at the hotel or gallivanting around the garish spots on Fremont having fun, it had been an interlude; something utterly dissociated from Los Angeles and work and crime. It was the way she wanted it to be, and that was the way it was. Not until we were actually headed home did I start wondering whether I’d got anywhere, whether I’d accomplished anything.

  The Montero deal had worked out amazingly. Marty must have contacted the man who knew Joe Hannibal. Hannibal must have telephoned Vince suggesting that he and Dolores return to Los Angeles. The first I knew of it was when Vince came to me and told me he was going. He asked whether we’d give them a lift. If we didn’t have room, he and Dolores would hop a plane. It was Iris who settled that one. She insisted that they come with us.

  We went home the long way: over Cajon Pass and through San Bernardino. Between there and L.A., via Pasadena, there was plenty of traffic, too much traffic. I was back in my own world now, and I started thinking my own thoughts.

  We dropped Vince and Dolores and drove on to Iris’ big house on Valleycrest Drive. She had driven the last few miles, and now, as she parked in the driveway, she made no move to get out. She had said she’d drop me off at my place, but she wasn’t doing any of that.

  It was awkward. Whereas, a few minutes since, all that had transpired in Las Vegas had seemed vague and unreal, now it suddenly came to life again, and it was closer than it had ever been or ever could be again.

  It was she who snapped us both back to reality. She looked full at me and sai
d, “What do you think now, Danny? Could I be a murderer?”

  It was like the sneak punch of a clever fighter. It came when I wasn’t expecting it, caught me with my guard down.

  “The trip is over,” she said. “It was fun. But we’re back on the old official basis. I know that, perhaps even better than you know it. My hope was that perhaps by this time you’d know me better.”

  I made two false starts at an answer, and came up with nothing.

  She said, “I never kidded myself about why you accepted my invitation. What I’m asking now is this: Have you decided anything?”

  I must have looked as miserable as I felt. I said I hadn’t thought much about it. I said I had just let myself go and had enjoyed doing it.

  She said she didn’t think that was possible; she insisted that in the back of my mind I must have been sizing her up at all times. As for herself—“I’ve always had a wild streak, Danny. Dorothy couldn’t control that.”

  I said, “You’re not nearly as bad as you make out.”

  “I’m not bad at all, Danny. Not really. Maybe what I do hurts me—it doesn’t hurt others.”

  “Why kid yourself, Iris? Sure you hurt others. Just because this lad Bayless is in love with you, just because he’s willing to keep smiling while you throw punches at him—that doesn’t signify he likes it.”

  She nodded. “You’re right, of course. I suppose I hurt Dorothy, too.”

  The same thought must have hit us both at the same time because our eyes met and held. She said, flatly, “You still think I either did it or know something about it, don’t you, Danny?”

  “What I think is of no importance, kid. A lot of the evidence points your way. Why can’t we leave it at that for the present?”

  “Since when did a person have to prove his innocence?”

  “You don’t. But there’s something about you, Iris-something cold and calculated. I’m handing it to you straight. You planned this trip with me. You couldn’t have been sweeter or more generous. But there was another element in the thing, too—a second purpose without which I don’t believe you’d have thought of Las Vegas or of me. That was the Laverne-Montero setup.”