“Who fired the gun and what at?”
She pressed her temples with the heels of her hands. “I guess I must have. I must have been crazy. Where is it?”
“The gun? It’s safe. Just in case your dream came true, I might have to produce it.”
We were climbing now. I set the pointer to hold the Olds in third. She watched that with interest. She looked around her at the pale leather seats and the gadgets.
“How can you afford an expensive car like this? You don’t make a lot of money, do you?”
“They’re all expensive nowadays, even the cheap ones. Fellow might as well have one that can travel. I read somewhere that a dick should always have a plain dark inconspicuous car that nobody would notice. The guy had never been to L.A. In L.A. to be conspicuous you would have to drive a flesh-pink Mercedes-Benz with a sun porch on the roof and three pretty girls sunbathing.”
She giggled.
“Also,” I labored the subject, “it’s good advertising. Maybe I dreamed I was going to Rio. I could sell it there for more than it set me back new. On a freighter it wouldn’t cost too much to ferry.”
She sighed. “Oh, stop teasing me about that. I don’t feel funny today.”
“Seen your boy friend around?”
She sat very still. “Larry?”
“You got others?”
“Well—you might have meant Clark Brandon, althought I hardly know him. Larry was pretty drunk last night. No—I haven’t seen him. Perhaps he’s sleeping it off.”
“Doesn’t answer his phone.”
The road forked. One white line curved to the left. I kept straight on, for no particular reason. We passed some old Spanish houses built high on the slope and some very modern houses built downhill on the other side. The road passed these and made a wide turn to the right. The paving here looked new. The road ran out to a point of land and a turning circle. There were two big houses facing each other across the turning circle. They were loaded with glass brick and their seaward windows were green glass. The view was magnificent. I looked at it for all of three seconds. I stopped against the end curb and cut the motor and sat. We were about a thousand feet up and the whole town was spread out in front of us like a 45 degree air photo.
“He might be sick,” I said. “He might have gone out. He might even be dead.”
“I told you—” She began to shake. I took the stub of the cigarette away from her and put it in the ash tray. I ran the car windows up and put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her head down on my shoulder. She was limp, unresisting; but she still shook.
“You’re a comfortable man,” she said. “But don’t rush me.”
“There’s a pint in the glove compartment. Want a snort?”
“Yes.”
I got it out and managed to pull the metal strip loose with one hand and my teeth. I held the bottle between my knees and got the cap off. I held it to her lips. She sucked some in and shuddered. I recapped the pint and put it away.
“I hate drinking from the bottle,” she said.
“Yeah. Unrefined. I’m not making love to you, Betty. I’m worried. Anything you want done?”
She was silent for a moment. Then her voice was steady, saying: “Such as what? You can have those checks back. They were yours. I gave them to you.”
“Nobody gives anybody five grand like that. It makes no sense. That’s why I came back down from L.A. I drove up there early this morning. Nobody goes all gooey over a character like me and talks about having half a million dollars and offers me a trip to Rio and a nice home complete with all the luxuries. Nobody drunk or sober does that because she dreamed a dead man was lying out on her balcony and would I please hurry around and throw him off into the ocean. Just what did you expect me to do when I got there—hold your hand while you dreamed?”
She pulled away and leaned in the far corner of the car. “All right, I’m a liar. I’ve always been a liar.”
I glanced at the rear view mirror. Some kind of small dark car had turned into the road behind and stopped. I couldn’t see who or what was in it. Then it swung hard right against the curbing and backed and made off the way it had come. Some fellow took the wrong road and saw it was a dead end.
“While I was on the way up those damn fire stairs,” I went on, “you swallowed your pills and then faked being awfully terribly sleepy and then after a while you actually did go to sleep—I think. Okay. I went out on the balcony. No stiff. No blood. If there had been, I might have managed to get him over the top of the wall. Hard work, but not impossible, if you know how to lift. But six trained elephants couldn’t have thrown him far enough to land in the ocean. It’s thirty-five feet to the fence and you’d have to throw him so far out that he would clear the fence. I figure an object as heavy as a man’s body would have to be thrown a good fifty feet outward to clear the fence.”
“I told you I was a liar.”
“But you didn’t tell me why. Let’s be serious. Suppose a man had been dead on your balcony. What would you expect me to do about it? Carry him down the fire stairs and get him into the car I had and drive off into the woods somewhere and bury him? You do have to take people into your confidence once in a while when bodies are lying around.”
“You took my money,” she said tonelessly. “You played up to me.”
“That way I might find out who was crazy.”
“You found out. You should be satisfied.”
“I found out nothing—not even who you are.”
She got angry. “I told you I was out of my mind,” she said in a rushing voice. “Worry, fear, liquor, pills—why can’t you leave me alone? I told you I’d give you back that money. What more do you want?”
“What do I do for it?”
“Just take it.” She was snapping at me now. “That’s all. Take it and go away. Far, far away.”
“I think you need a good lawyer.”
“That’s a contradiction in terms,” she sneered. “If he was good, he wouldn’t be a lawyer.”
“Yeah. So you’ve had some painful experience along those lines. I’ll find out in time, either from you or some other way. But I’m still being serious. You’re in trouble. Apart from what happened to Mitchell, if anything, you’re in enough trouble to justify hiring yourself a lawyer. You changed your name. So you had reasons. Mitchell was putting the bite on you. So he had reasons. A firm of Washington attorneys is looking for you. So they have reasons. And their client has reasons to have them looking for you.”
I stopped and looked at her as well as I could see her in the freshly darkening evening. Down below, the ocean was getting a lapis lazuli blue that somehow failed to remind me of Miss Vermilyea’s eyes. A flock of gulls went south in a fairly compact mass but it wasn’t the kind of tight formation North Island is used to. The evening plane from L.A. came down the coast with its port and starboard lights showing, and then the winking light below the fuselage went on and it swung out to sea for a long lazy turn into Lindbergh Field.
“So you’re just a shill for a crooked lawyer,” she said nastily, and grabbed for another of my cigarettes.
“I don’t think he’s very crooked. He just tries too hard. But that’s not the point. You can lose a few bucks to him without screaming. The point is something called privilege. A licensed investigator doesn’t have it. A lawyer does, provided his concern is with the interests of a client who has retained him. If the lawyer hires an investigator to work in those interests, then the investigator has privilege. That’s the only way he can get it.”
“You know what you can do with your privilege,” she said. “Especially as it was a lawyer that hired you to spy on me.”
I took the cigarette away from her and puffed on it a couple of times and handed it back.
“It’s all right, Betty. I’m no use to you. Forget I tried to be.”
“Nice words, but only because you think I’ll pay you more to be of use to me. You’re just another of them. I don’t want your damn cigarette either.” She threw it out of the window. “Take me back to the hotel.”
I got out of the car and stamped on the cigarette. “You don’t do that in the California hills,” I told her. “Not even out of season.” I got back into the car and turned the key and pushed the starter button. I backed away and made the turn and drove back up the curve to where the road divided. On the upper level where the solid white line curved away a small car was parked. The car was lightless. It could have been empty.
I swung the Olds hard the opposite way from the way I had come, and flicked my headlights on with the high beam. They swept the cars as I turned. A hat went down over a face, but not quick enough to hide the glasses, the fat broad face, the outjutting ears of Mr. Ross Goble of Kansas City.
The lights went on past and I drove down a long hill with lazy curves. I didn’t know where it went except that all roads around there led to the ocean sooner or later. At the bottom there was a T-intersection. I swung to the right and after a few blocks of narrow street I hit the boulevard and made another right turn. I was now driving back towards the main part of Esmeralda.
She didn’t speak again until I got to the hotel. She jumped out quickly when I stopped.
“If you’ll wait here, I’ll get the money.”
“We were tailed,” I said.
“What—?” She stopped dead, with her head half turned.
“Small car. You didn’t notice him unless you saw my lights brush him as I made the turn at the top of the hill.”
“Who was it?” Her voice was tense.
“How would I know? He must have picked us up here, therefore he’ll come back here. Could he be a cop?”
She looked back at me, motionless, frozen. She took a slow step, and then she rushed at me as if she was going to claw my face. She grabbed me by the arms and tried to shake me. Her breath came whistling.
“Get me out of here. Get me out of here, for the love of Christ. Anywhere. Hide me. Get me a little peace. Somewhere where I can’t be followed, hounded, threatened. He swore he would do it to me. He’d follow me to the ends of the earth, to the remotest island of the Pacific—”
“To the crest of the highest mountain, to the heart of the loneliest desert,” I said. “Somebody’s been reading a rather old-fashioned book.”
She dropped her arms and let them hang limp at her sides.
“You’ve got as much sympathy as a loan shark.”
“I’ll take you nowhere,” I said. “Whatever it is that’s eating you, you’re going to stay put and take it.”
I turned and got into the car. When I looked back, she was already halfway to the bar entrance, walking with quick strides.
16
If I had any sense, I would pick up my suitcase and go back home and forget all about her. By the time she made up her mind which part she was playing in which act of which play, it would probably be too late for me to do anything about it except maybe get pinched for loitering in the post office.
I waited and smoked a cigarette. Goble and his dirty little jalopy ought to show up and slip into a parking slot almost any moment. He couldn’t have picked us up anywhere else, and since he knew that much he couldn’t have followed us for any reason except to find out where we went.
He didn’t show. I finished the cigarette, dropped it overboard, and backed out. As I turned out of the driveway towards the town, I saw his car on the other side of the street, parked left-hand to the curb. I kept going, turned right at the boulevard and took it easy so he wouldn’t blow a gasket trying to keep up. There was a restaurant about a mile along called The Epicure. It had a low roof, and a red brick wall to shield it from the street and it had a bar. The entrance was at the side. I parked and went in. It wasn’t doing any business yet. The barkeep was chatting with the captain and the captain didn’t even wear a dinner jacket. He had one of those high desks where they keep the reservation book. The book was open and had a list of names in it for later in the evening. But it was early now. I could have a table.
The dining room was dim, candlelit, divided by a low wall into two halves. It would have looked crowded with thirty people in it. The captain shoved me in a corner and lit my candle for me. I said I would have a double Gibson. A waiter came up and started to remove the place setting on the far side of the table. I told him to leave it, a friend might join me. I studied the menu, which was almost as large as the dining room. I could have used a flashlight to read it, if I had been curious. This was about the dimmest joint I was ever in. You could be sitting at the next table from your mother and not recognize her.
The Gibson arrived. I could make out the shape of the glass and there seemed to be something in it. I tasted it and it wasn’t too bad. At that moment Goble slid into the chair across from me. In so far as I could see him at all, he looked about the same as he had looked the day before. I went on peering at the menu. They ought to have printed it in braille.
Goble reached across for my glass of ice water and drank. “How you making out with the girl?” he asked casually.
“Not getting anywhere. Why?”
“Whatcha go up on the hill for?”
“I thought maybe we could neck. She wasn’t in the mood. What’s your interest? I thought you were looking for some guy named Mitchell.”
“Very funny indeed. Some guy named Mitchell. Never heard of him, I believe you said.”
“I’ve heard of him since. I’ve seen him. He was drunk. Very drunk. He damn near got himself thrown out of a place.”
“Very funny,” Goble said, sneering. “And how did you know his name?”
“On account of somebody called him by it. That would be too funny, wouldn’t it?”
He sneered. “I told you to stay out of my way. I know who you are now. I looked you up.”
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face. “Go fry a stale egg.”
“Tough, huh,” he sneered. “I’ve pulled the arms and legs off bigger guys than you.”
“Name two of them.”
He leaned across the table, but the waiter came up.
“I’ll have bourbon and plain water,” Goble told him. “Bonded stuff. None of that bar whiskey for me. And don’t try to fool me. I’ll know. And bottled water. The city water here is terrible.”
The waiter just looked at him.
“I’ll have another of these,” I said, pushing my glass.
“What’s good tonight?” Goble wanted to know. “I never bother with these billboards.” He flicked a disdainful finger at the menu.
“The plat du jour is meat loaf,” the waiter said nastily.
“Hash with a starched collar,” Goble said. “Make it meat loaf.”
The waiter looked at me. I said the meat loaf was all right with me. The waiter went away. Goble leaned across the table again, after first taking a quick look behind him and on both sides.
“You’re out of luck, friend,” he said cheerfully. “You didn’t get away with it.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Get away with what?”
“You’re bad out of luck, friend. Very bad. The tide was wrong or something. Abalone fisher—one of those guys with frog feet and rubber masks—stuck under a rock.”
“The abalone fisher stuck under a rock?” A cold prickly feeling crawled down my back. When the waiter came with the drinks, I had to fight myself not to grab for mine.
“Very funny, friend.”
“Say that again and I’ll smash your goddam glasses for you,” I snarled.
He picked up his drink and sipped it, tasted it, thought about it, nodded his head.
“I came out here to make money,” he mused. “I didn’t nowise come out to make trouble. Man can’t make money making trouble. Man can make money keeping his nose clean. Get me?”
“Probably a new experience for you,” I said. “Both ways. What was that about an abalone fisher?” I kept my voice controlled, but it was an effort.
He leaned back. My eyes were getting used to the dimness now. I could see that his fat face was amused.
“Just kidding,” he said. “I don’t know any abalone fishers. Only last night I learned how to pronounce the word. Still don’t know what the stuff is. But things are kind of funny at that. I can’t find Mitchell.”
“He lives at the hotel.” I took some more of my drink, not too much. This was no time to dive into it.
“I know he lives at the hotel, friend. What I don’t know is where he is at right now. He ain’t in his room. The hotel people ain’t seen him around. I thought maybe you and the girl had some ideas about it.”
“The girl is screwy,” I said. “Leave her out of it. And in Esmeralda they don’t say ‘ain’t seen.’ That Kansas City dialect is an offense against public morals here.”
“Shove it, Mac. When I want to get told how to talk English I won’t go to no beat-up California peeper.” He turned his head and yelled: “Waiter!”
Several faces looked at him with distaste. The waiter showed up after a while and stood there with the same expression as the customers.
“Hit me again,” Goble said, snapped a finger at his glass.
“It is not necessary to yell at me,” the waiter said. He took the glass away.
“When I want service,” Goble yelped at his back, “service is what I want.”
“I hope you like the taste of wood alcohol,” I told Goble.
“Me and you could get along,” Goble said indifferently, “if you had any brains.”
“And if you had any manners and were six inches taller and had a different face and another name and didn’t act as if you thought you could lick your weight in frog spawn.”