“Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood—and hates it. It ought to consider itself damn lucky. Without Hollywood it would be a mail-order city. Everything in the catalogue you could get better somewhere else.”
“You are bitter tonight, amigo.”
“I’ve got a few troubles. The only reason I’m driving this car with you beside me is that I’ve got so much trouble a little more will seem like icing.”
“You have done something wrong?” she asked and came close to me along the seat.
“Well, just collecting a few bodies,” I said. “Depends on the point of view. The cops don’t like the work done by us amateurs. They have their own service.”
“What will they do to you?”
“They might run me out of town and I couldn’t care less. Don’t push me so hard. I need this arm to shift gears with.”
She pulled away in a huff. “I think you are very nasty to get along with,” she said. “Turn right at the Lost Canyon Road.”
After a while we passed the University. All the lights of the city were on now, a vast carpet of them stretching down the slope to the south and on into the almost infinite distance. A plane droned overhead losing altitude, its two signal lights winking on and off alternately. At Lost Canyon I swung right skirting the big gates that led into BelAir. The road began to twist and climb. There were too many cars; the headlights glared angrily down the twisting white concrete. A little breeze blew down over the pass. There was the odor of wild sage, the acrid tang of eucalyptus, and the quiet smell of dust. Windows glowed on the hillside. We passed a big white two storied Monterey house that must have cost $70,000 and had a cut-out illuminated sign in front: “Cairn Terriers.”
“The next to the right,” Dolores said.
I made the turn. The road got steeper and narrower. There were houses behind walls and masses of shrubbery but you couldn’t see anything. Then we came to the fork and there was a police car with a red spotlight parked at it and across the right side of the fork two cars parked at right angles. A torch waved up and down. I slowed the car and stopped level with the police car. Two cops sat in it smoking. They didn’t move.
“What goes on?”
“Amigo, I have no idea at all.” Her voice had a hushed withdrawn sound. She might have been a little scared. I didn’t know what of.
A tall man, the one with the torch, came around the side of the car and poked the flash at me, then lowered it.
“We’re not using this road tonight,” he said. “Going anywhere in particular?”
I set the brake, reached for a flash which Dolores got of the glove compartment. I snapped the light on to the tall man. He wore expensive-looking slacks, a sport shirt with initials on the pocket and a polka-dot scarf knotted around his neck. He had horn-rimmed glasses and glossy wavy black hair. He looked as Hollywood as all hell.
I said: “Any explanation—or are you just making law?”
“The law is over there, if you want to talk to them.” His voice held a tone of contempt. “We are merely private citizens. We live around here. This is a residential neighborhood. We mean to keep it that way.”
A man with a sporting gun came out of the shadows and stood beside the tall man. He held the gun in the crook of his left arm, pointed muzzle down. But he didn’t look as if he just had it for ballast.
“That’s jake with me,” I said. “I didn’t have any other plans. We just want to go to a place.”
“What place?” the tall man asked coolly.
I turned to Dolores. “What place?”
“It is a white house on the hill, high up,” she said.
“And what did you plan to do up there?” the tall man asked.
“The man who lives there is my friend,” she said tartly.
He shone the flash in her face for a moment. “You look swell,” he said. “But we don’t like your friend. We don’t like characters that try to run gambling joints in this kind of neighborhood.”
“I know nothing about a gambling joint,” Dolores told him sharply.
“Neither do the cops,” the tall man said. “They don’t even want to find out. What’s your friend’s name, darling?”
“That is not of your business,” Dolores spit at him.
“Go on home and knit socks, darling,” the tall man said. He turned to me.
“The road’s not in use tonight,” he said. “Now you know why.”
“Think you can make it stick?” I asked him.
“It will take more than you to change our plans. You ought to see our tax assessments. And those monkeys in the prowl car—and a lot more like them down at the City Hall—just sit on their hands when we ask for the law to be enforced.”
I unlatched the car door and swung it open. He stepped back and let me get out. I walked over to the prowl car. The two cops in it were leaning back lazily. Their loudspeaker was turned low, just audibly muttering. One of them was chewing gum rhythmically.
“How’s to break up this road block and let the citizens through?” I asked him.
“No orders, buddy. We’re just here to keep the peace. Anybody starts anything, we finish it.”
“They say there’s a gambling house up the line.”
“They say,” the cop said.
“You don’t believe them?”
“I don’t even try, buddy,” he said, and spat past my shoulder.
“Suppose I have urgent business up there.”
He looked at me without expression and yawned.
“Thanks a lot, buddy,” I said.
I went back to the Mercury, got my wallet out and handed the tall man a card. He put his flash on it, and said: “Well?”
He snapped the flash off and stood silent. His face began to take form palely in the darkness.
“I’m on business. To me it’s important business. Let me through and perhaps you won’t need this block tomorrow.”
“You talk large, friend.”
“Would I have the kind of money it takes to patronize a private gambling club?”
“She might,” he flicked an eye at Dolores. “She might have brought you along for protection.”
He turned to the shotgun man. “What do you think?”
“Chance it. Just two of them and both sober.”
The tall one snapped his flash on again and made a side sweep with it back and forth. A car motor started. One of the block cars backed around on to the shoulder. I got in and started the Mercury, went on through the gap and watched the block car in the mirror as it took up position again, then cut its high beam lights.
“Is this the only way in and out of here?”
“They think it is, amigo. There is another way, but it is private road through an estate. We would have had to go around by the valley side.”
“We nearly didn’t get through,” I told her. “This can’t be very bad trouble anybody is in.”
“I knew you would find a way, amigo.”
“Something stinks,” I said nastily. “And it isn’t wild lilac.”
“Such a suspicious man. Do you not even want to kiss me?”
“You ought to have used a little of that back at the road block. That tall guy looked lonely. You could have taken him off in the bushes.”
She hit me across the mouth with the back of her hand. “You son of a bitch,” she said casually. “The next driveway on the left, if you please.”
We topped a rise and the road ended suddenly in a wide black circle edged with whitewashed stones. Directly ahead was a wire fence with a wide gate in it, and a sign on-the gate: Private Road. No Trespassing. The gate was open and a padlock hung from one end of a loose chain on the posts. I turned the car around a white oleander bush: and was in the motor yard of a long low white house with a tile roof and a four-car garage in the corner, under a walled balcony. Both the wide garage doors were closed. There was no light in the house. A high moon made a bluish radiance on the white stucco walls. Some of the lower windows were shuttered. Four packing cases full of trash stood in a row at the foot of the steps. There was a big garbage can upended and empty. There were two steel drums with papers in them.
There was no sound from the house, no sign of life. I stopped the Mercury, cut the lights and the motor, and just sat. Dolores moved in the corner. The seat seemed to be shaking. I reached across and touched her. She was shivering.
“What’s the matter?”
“Get—get out, please,” she said as if her teeth chattered.
“How about you?”
She opened the door on her side and jumped out. I got out my side and left the door hanging open, the keys in the lock. She came around the back of the car and as she got close to me I could almost feel her shaking before she touched me. Then she leaned up against me hard, thigh to thigh and breast to breast. Her arms went around my neck.
“I am being very foolish,” she said softly. “He will kill me for this—just as he killed Stein. Kiss me.”
I kissed her. Her lips were hot and dry. “Is he in there?”
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
“Nobody else—except Mavis. He will kill her too.”
“Listen—”
“Kiss me again. I have not very long to live, amigo. When you are the finger for a man like that—you die young.”
I pushed her away from me, but gently.
She stepped back and lifted her right hand quickly. There was a gun in it now.
I looked at the gun. There was a dull shine on it from high moon. She held it level and her hand wasn’t shaking now.
“What a friend I would make if I pulled this trigger,” she said.
“They’d hear the shot down the road.”
She shook her head. “No, there is a little hill between. I do not think they would hear, amigo.”
I thought the gun would jump when she pulled the trigger. If I dropped just at the right moment—
I wasn’t that good. I didn’t say anything. My tongue felt large in my mouth.
She went on slowly, in a soft tired voice: “With Stein it did not matter. I would have killed him myself, gladly. That filth. To die is not much, to kill is not much. But to entice people to their deaths—” She broke off with what might have been a sob. “Amigo, I liked you for some strange reason. I should be far beyond such nonsense. Mavis took him away from me, but I did not want him to kill her. The world is full of men who have enough money.”
“He seems like a nice little guy,” I said, still watching the hand that held the gun. Not a quiver in it now.
She laughed contemptuously. “Of course he does. That is why he is what he is. You think you are tough, amigo. You are a very soft peach compared with Steelgrave.” She lowered the gun and now it was my time to jump. I still wasn’t good enough.
“He has killed a dozen men,” she said. “With a smile for each one. I have known him for a long time. I knew him Cleveland.”
“With ice picks?” I asked.
“If I give you the gun, will you kill him for me?”
“Would you believe me if I promised?”
“Yes.” Somewhere down the hill there was the sound of a car. But it seemed as remote as Mars, as meaningless as the chattering of monkeys in the Brazilian jungle. It had nothing to do with me.
“I’d kill him if I had to,” I said licking along my lips.
I was leaning a little, knees bent, all set for a jump again.
“Good night, amigo. I wear black because I am beautiful and wicked—and lost.”
She held the gun out to me. I took it. I just stood there holding it. For another silent moment neither of us moved. Then she smiled and tossed her head and jumped into the car. She started the motor and slammed the door shut. She idled the motor down and sat looking out at me. There was a smile on her face now.
“I was pretty good in there, no?” she said softly.
Then the car backed violently with a harsh tearing of the tires on the asphalt paving. The lights jumped on. The car curved away and was gone past the oleander bush. The lights turned left, into the private toad. The lights drifted off among trees and the sound faded into the long-drawn whee of tree frogs. Then that stopped and for a moment there was no sound at all. And no light except the tired old moon.
I broke the magazine from the gun. It had seven shells in it. There was another in the breach. Two less than a full load. I sniffed at the muzzle. It had been fired since it was cleaned. Fired twice, perhaps.
I pushed the magazine into place again and held the gun on the flat of my hand. It had a white bone grip. .32 caliber.
Orrin Quest had been shot twice. The two exploded shells I picked up on the floor of the room were .32 caliber.
And yesterday afternoon, in Room 332 of the Hotel Van Nuys, a blonde girl with a towel in front of her face had pointed a .32-caliber automatic with a white bone grip at me.
You can get too fancy about these things. You can also not get fancy enough.
27
I walked on rubber heels across to the garage and tried to open one of the two wide doors. There were no handles, so it must have been operated by a switch. I played a tiny pencil flash on the frame, but no switch looked at me.
I left that and prowled over to the trash barrels. Wooden steps went up to a service entrance. I didn’t think the door would be unlocked for my convenience. Under the porch was another door. This was unlocked and gave on darkness and the smell of corded eucalyptus wood. I closed the door behind me and put the little flash on again. In the corner there was another staircase, with a thing like a dumb-waiter beside it. It wasn’t dumb enough to let me work it. I started up the steps.
Somewhere remotely something buzzed. I stopped. The buzzing stopped. I started again. The buzzing didn’t. I went on up to a door with no knob, set flush. Another gadget.
But I found the switch to this one. It was an oblong movable plate set into the door frame. Too many dusty hands had touched it. I pressed it and the door clicked and fell back off the latch. I pushed it open, with the tenderness of a young intern delivering his first baby.
Inside was a hallway. Through shuttered windows moonlight caught the white corner of a stove and the chromed griddle on top of it. The kitchen was big enough for a dancing class. An open arch led to a butler’s pantry filled to the ceiling. A sink, a huge icebox set into the wall, a lot of electrical stuff for making drinks without trying. You pick your poison, press a button, and four days later you wake up on the rubbing table in a reconditioning parlor.
Beyond the butler’s pantry a swing door. Beyond the swing door a dark dining room with an open end to a glassed-in lounge into which the moonlight poured like water through the floodgates of a dam.