“Yesterday morning,” she said, half dreamily, “I said there was something about you I liked—you didn’t paw—and something I didn’t like. Know what it was?”
“That you didn’t make me do this then.”
“Your manner hardly encouraged it.”
“You’re supposed to be a detective. Please put out all the lights now.”
Then very soon in the dark she was saying, “Darling, darling, darling” in that very special tone of voice a woman uses only in those special moments. Then a slow gentle relaxing, a peace, a quietness.
“Still satisfied with my legs?” she asked dreamily.
“No man ever would be. They would haunt him, no matter how many times he made love to you.”
“You bastard. You complete bastard. Come closer.”
She put her head on my shoulder and we were very close now.
“I don’t love you,” she said.
“Why would you? But let’s not be cynical about it. There are sublime moments—even if they are only moments.”
I felt her tight and warm against me. Her body surged with vitality. Her beautiful arms held me tight.
And again in the darkness that muted cry, and then again the slow quiet peace.
“I hate you,” she said with her mouth against mine. “Not for this, but because perfection never comes twice and with us it came too soon. And I’ll never see you again and I don’t want to. It would have to be forever or not at all.”
“And you acted like a hardboiled pick-up who had seen too much of the wrong side of life.”
“So did you. And we were both wrong. And it’s useless. Kiss me harder.”
Suddenly she was gone from the bed almost without sound or movement.
After a little while the light went on in the hallway and she stood in the door in a long wrapper.
“Goodbye,” she said calmly. “I’m calling a taxi for you. Wait out in front for it. You won’t see me again.”
“What about Umney?”
“A poor frightened jerk. He needs someone to bolster his ego, to give him a feeling of power and conquest. I give it to him. A woman’s body is not so sacred that it can’t be used—especially when she has already failed at love.”
She disappeared. I got up and put my clothes on and listened before I went out. I heard nothing. I called out, but there was no answer. When I reached the sidewalk in front of the house the taxi was just pulling up. I looked back. The house seemed completely dark.
No one lived there. It was all a dream. Except that someone had called the taxi. I got into it and was driven home.
14
I left Los Angeles and hit the superhighway that now bypassed Oceanside. I had time to think.
From Los Angeles to Oceanside were eighteen miles of divided six-lane superhighway dotted at intervals with the carcasses of wrecked, stripped, and abandoned cars tossed against the high bank to rust until they were hauled away. So I started thinking about why I was going back to Esmeralda. The case was all backwards and it wasn’t my case anyway. Usually a PI gets a client who, for too little money, wants too much information. You get it or you don’t, depending on circumstances. The same with your fee. But once in a while you get the information and too much else, including a story about a body on a balcony which wasn’t there when you went to look. Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Comwon sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He’s high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it’s always somebody else’s money he’s adding up.
At the turn-off I dipped down into the canyon and ended up at the Rancho Descansado. Jack and Lucille were in their usual positions. I dropped my suitcase and leaned on the desk.
“Did I leave the right change?”
“Yes, thanks,” Jack said. “And now you want the room back, I suppose.”
“If possible.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a detective?”
“Now, what a question.” I grinned at him. “Does a detective ever tell anyone he’s a detective? You watch TV, don’t you?”
“When I get a chance. Not too often here.”
“You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off. What do you know about Larry Mitchell?”
“Nothing,” Jack said stiffly. “He’s a friend of Brandon’s. Mr. Brandon owns this place.”
Lucille said brightly: “Did you find Joe Harms all right?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“And did you—?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Button the lip, kid,” Jack said tersely. He winked at me and pushed the key across the counter. “Lucille has a dull life, Mr. Marlowe. She’s stuck here with me and a PBX. And an itty-bitty diamond ring—so small I was ashamed to give it to her. But what can a man do? If he loves a girl, he’d like it to show on her finger.”
Lucille held her left hand up and moved it around to get a flash from the little stone. “I hate it,” she said. “I hate it like I hate the sunshine and the summer and the bright stars and the full moon. That’s how I hate it.”
I picked up the key and my suitcase and left them. A little more of that and I’d be falling in love with myself. I might even give myself a small unpretentious diamond ring.
15
The house phone at the Casa del Poniente got no reply from Room 1224. I walked over to the desk. A stiff-looking clerk was sorting letters. They are always sorting letters.
“Miss Mayfield is registered here, isn’t she?” I asked.
He put a letter in a box before he answered me. “Yes, sir. What name shall I say?”
“I know her room number. She doesn’t answer. Have you seen her today?”
He gave me a little more of his attention, but I didn’t really send him. “I don’t think so.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Her key is out. Would you care to leave a message?”
“I’m a little worried. She wasn’t well last night. She could be up there sick, not able to answer the phone. I’m a friend of hers. Marlowe’s the name.”
He looked me over. His eyes were wise eyes. He went behind a screen in the direction of the cashier’s office and spoke to somebody. He came back in a short time. He was smiling.
“I don’t think Miss Mayfield is ill, Mr. Marlowe. She ordered quite a substantial breakfast in her room. And lunch. She has had several telephone calls.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I’ll leave a message. Just my name and that I’ll call back later.”
“She might be out in the grounds or down on the beach,” he said. “We have a warm beach, well sheltered by a breakwater.” He glanced at the clock behind him. “If she is, she won’t be there much longer. It’s getting cool by now.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back.”
The main part of the lobby was up three steps and through an arch. There were people in it just sitting, the dedicated hotel lounge sitters, usually elderly, usually rich, usually doing nothing but watching with hungry eyes. They spend their lives that way. Two old ladies with severe faces and purplish permanents were struggling with an enormous jigsaw puzzle set out on a specially built king-size card table. Farther along there was a canasta game going—two women, two men. One of the women had enough ice on her to cool the Mojave Desert and enough make-up to paint a steam yacht. Both women had cigarettes in long holders. The men with them looked gray and tired, probably from signing checks. Farther along, still sitting where they could look out through the glass, a young couple were holding hands. The girl had a diamond and emerald sparkler and a wedding ring which she kept touching with her fingertips. She looked a little dazed.
I went out through the bar and poked around in the gardens. I went along the path that threaded the cliff top and had no trouble picking out the spot I had looked down on the night before from Betty Mayfield’s balcony. I could pick it out because of the sharp angle.
The bathing beach and small curved breakwater were a hundred yards along. Steps led down to it from the cliff. People were lying around on the sand. Some in swim suits or trunks, some just sitting there on rugs. Kids ran around screaming. Betty Mayfield was not on the beach.
I went back into the hotel and sat in the lounge.
I sat and smoked. I went to the newsstand and bought an evening paper and looked through it and threw it away. I strolled by the desk. My note was still in Box 1224. I went to the house phones and called Mr. Mitchell. No answer. I’m sorry. Mr. Mitchell does not answer his telephone.
A woman’s voice spoke behind me. “The clerk said you wanted to see me. Mr. Marlowe—” she said. “Are you Mr. Marlowe?”
She looked as fresh as a morning rose. She was wearing dark green slacks and saddle shoes and a green windbreaker over a white shirt with a loose Paisley scarf around that. A bandeau on her hair made a nice wind-blown effect.
The bell captain was hanging out his ear six feet away. I said: “Miss Mayfleld?”
“I’m Miss Mayfield.”
“I have the car outside. Do you have time to look at the property?”
She looked at her wrist watch. “Ye-es, I guess so,” she said. “I ought to change pretty soon, but—oh, all right.”
“This way, Miss Mayfield.”
She fell in beside me. We walked across the lobby. I was getting to feel quite at home there. Betty Mayfield glanced viciously at the two jigsaw puzzlers.
“I hate hotels,” she said. “Come back here in fifteen years and you would find the same people sitting in the same chairs.”
“Yes, Miss Mayfleld. Do you know anybody named Clyde Ummey?”
She shook her head. “Should I?”
“Helen Vermilyea? Ross Goble?”
She shook her head again.
“Want a drink?”
“Not now, thanks.”
We came out of the bar and went along the walk and I held the door of the Olds for her. I backed out of the slot and pointed it straight up Grand Street towards the hills. She slipped dark glasses with spangled rims on her nose. “I found the traveler’s checks,” she said. “You’re a queer sort of detective.”
I reached in my pocket and held out her bottle of sleeping pills. “I was a little scared last night,” I said. “I counted these but I didn’t know how many had been there to start with. You said you took two. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t rouse up enough to gulp a handful.”
She took the bottle and stuffed it into her windbreaker. “I had quite a few drinks. Alcohol and barbiturates make a bad combination. I sort of passed out. It was nothing else.”
“I wasn’t sure. It takes a minimum of thirty-five grains of that stuff to kill. Even then it takes several hours. I was in a tough spot. Your pulse and breathing seemed all right but maybe they wouldn’t be later on. If I called a doctor, I might have to do a lot of talking. If you had taken an overdose, the homicide boys would be told, even if you snapped out of it. They investigate all suicide attempts. But if I guessed wrong, you wouldn’t be riding with me today. And where would I be then?”
“It’s a thought,” she said. “I can’t say I’m going to worry about it terribly. Who are these people you mentioned?”
“Clyde Umney’s the lawyer who hired me to follow you—on instructions from a firm of attorneys in Washington, D.C. Helen Vermilyea is his secretary. Ross Goble is a Kansas City private eye who says he is trying to find Mitchell.” I described him to her.
Her face turned stony. “Mitchell? Why should he be interested in Larry?”
I stopped at the corner of Fourth and Grand for an old coot in a motorized wheel chair to make a left turn at four miles an hour. Esmeralda is full of the damn things.
“Why should he be looking for Larry Mitchell?” she asked bitterly. “Can’t anybody leave anybody else alone?”
“Don’t tell me anything,” I said. “Just keep on asking me questions to which I don’t know the answers. It’s good for my inferiority complex. I told you I had no more job. So why am I here? That’s easy. I’m groping for that five grand in traveler’s checks again.”
“Turn left at the next corner,” she said, “and we can go up into the hills. There’s a wonderful view from up there. And a lot of very fancy homes.”
“The hell with them,” I said.
“It’s also very quiet up there.” She picked a cigarette out of the pack clipped to the dash and lit it.
“That’s two in two days,” I said. “You’re hitting them hard. I counted your cigarettes last night too. And your matches. I went through your bag. I’m kind of snoopy when I get roped in on a phony like that one. Especially when the client passes out and leaves me holding the baby.”
She turned her head to stare at me. “It must have been the dope and the liquor,” she said. “I must have been a little off base.”
“Over at the Rancho Descansado you were in great shape. You were hard as nails. We were going to take off for Rio and live in luxury. Apparently also in sin. All I had to do was get rid of the body. What a letdown! No body.”
She was still staring at me, but I had to watch my driving. I made a boulevard stop and a left turn. I went along another dead-end street with old streetcar tracks still in the paving.
“Turn left up the hill at that sign. That’s the high school down there.”