Private Eye Four-Pack, page 26
“Espresso, and thanks a lot for your help.”
She ignored the sarcasm and trudged off. I rubbed my temples and reminded myself that I could be sitting at home alone. Somehow the prospect didn’t seem as bad as it had a few hours ago. I looked around at the customers and wondered how many of them were regulars. A motley group occupied a corner table with an air of proprietorship. When the waitress brought my coffee, I nodded toward them.
“They come in here often?”
“Maybe. That’ll be a dollar. You have to pay when you’re served.”
A maybe from her made it pretty definite. I picked up my cup and walked over. There were three of them, sharing a bottle of cheap brandy, stirring it into their coffee. They eyed me speculatively as I pulled out the vacant chair.
“Mind if I join you?”
The one on my left fingered a wispy mustache and asked, “Whaddaya think, Mel? Vice? Narco?”
Mel was in the middle. He shrugged beefy shoulders. “I don’t give a shit, Tex. I ain’t done nothing. Bet she’s after Rodney. She after you, Rodney?” He poked the third one, a pale-faced boy who grinned nervously.
“I’m a private cop,” I told them. “Looking for a girl.”
“Ain’t we all,” Mel said.
“This one’s just a kid. A runaway.” I sat down and offered the picture.
“If I saw something that looked like that down here, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you, lady. I’d keep her all to myself.”
“Any money in it? A reward or something?” Tex licked fat red lips under his scrawny mustache.
“Something,” I agreed, “if the information checks out.”
“I haven’t seen her, but I’ll keep an eye open.”
“Thanks. I’ll give you a number to call.” While I dug out a card, Rodney picked up the picture and studied it.
“You know, I might have seen her,” he said hesitantly.
“Like hell,” Tex said. “You just heard about a reward, and—”
“No, I didn’t,” the boy said, hurt. “Anyway, I always share with you guys. Don’t I always share, Mel?”
“About the girl…” I said, anticipation straightening my spine. “When did you see her, and where exactly?”
“It was quite a while ago and it wasn’t around here. It was a party, someplace—Venice, I think, at Christmas. Yeah, I remember. It was a great party. We had this stuff, what is it? Wassail.” He stared at the picture earnestly and began to shake his head. “It sure looks a lot like her, but I don’t know…How old is this girl?”
“Fifteen.” And safely at home trimming the tree at Christmastime. George Crowell had said she ran away once before only two months ago. And, somehow, I couldn’t see her attending the kind of party Rodney would be invited to.
“The girl I saw was older and…well…different,” he trailed off weakly. “I guess it wasn’t her.”
“Great try, Rodney,” Tex said. Rodney’s lower lip quivered.
“It’s okay,” I assured the boy, hiding my disappointment. “I appreciate your help. Maybe one of you will see her. If you do, be sure to call me.”
I picked up my cup and moved back to my table. The coffee was thick as sludge, cold and bitter. I stirred it glumly and debated if a second circuit of the bars would be profitable. Activity was picking up. Any one of the regular customers might remember Cathy, or it was entirely possible I’d simply run into the girl myself. I thought the chance was very slim, but the possibility did exist.
Gloomily, I decided to give George Crowell his money’s worth. I started for the door. Midway there the waitress intercepted me.
“Your name West? Some dude’s asking for you. Pay phone over there by the rest rooms.”
If anybody was telephoning me at the Down Under, it had to be for only one reason. It was.
“You want to find that Crowell girl,” a voice croaked, “go over to the Altmont Hotel, room 315.”
“Who is this?”
“You want the girl, get moving.”
“But what—” I began, but I was talking to an empty telephone line.
While I didn’t much like having to go to some flophouse for my information, I didn’t think it particularly odd. Most informants crave anonymity. I asked the cashier for directions. He said it wasn’t far, but by the time I’d walked the two blocks, I was shivering in the damp air and wishing for a coat.
The Altmont was three stories of dirty adobe and sagging neglect. It was propped up on one side by a pawnshop and on the other by a vacant store with broken windows. Directly across the street All-Nite Liquors flashed a neon welcome to the neighborhood winos.
The lobby was surprisingly large and very bare. Furnishings consisted of a reception desk and one droopy plastic philodendron beside the stairs. The pot had been used for a long time as a combination ashtray, garbage can and urinal.
At the desk a scrawny old man with limp white hair snored, face down, in the register. Like the hotel, he reeked of defeat and sour red wine. I hesitated, rubbing warmth into my arms. Let the old guy sleep, I thought as I went up two flights of stairs, peered at the progression of room numbers, and decided 315 was down at the end of the hall.
Drunken, querulous voices rumbled like distant thunder from the floor below. But on the third floor it was quiet and dark. Very dark. Glass crunched under my shoes and I realized the ceiling bulb had shattered all over the floor. I walked softly on the balls of my feet, but there were still faint, gritty sounds as my shoes crushed the thin glass. My heartbeat sped up and blood roared in my ears.
I cursed myself bitterly for leaving my gun back in the apartment. I wouldn’t need it—I probably wouldn’t need it—but just the physical presence of the thing would have been reassuring.
Gripping my shoulder bag, I formulated vague plans for defense, tried to swallow some of the dryness in my mouth, and knocked carefully on the door of 315. There was no sound and no light showed beneath the door. I knocked again, waited a minute, and cautiously turned the doorknob.
It jerked violently, dragging me with it into the darkened room. Surprise stunned me for that one vital moment when I might have defended myself. Then something slammed against the side of my head, and the whole world exploded into pain and darkness.
SIX
So that was how it happened. That was how I came to be in a skid-row hotel with a corpse and a king-sized headache. I could account for all the hours from the time I awakened this morning until the moment, minutes before, when I opened my eyes in this small, dirty room. At least I could remember all the events that brought me here and know that I was not, thank God, responsible for the dead man on the bed across the room.
Over the roar of my thumping blood, the hotel rumbled around me: plumbing gargled air through loose pipes; male voices exchanged a barrage of muffled obscenities; and far away in the growl of traffic, a siren added its own high-pitched wail.
Knowing how I got into that hotel was one thing. There was another question left to answer. Why?
Had it been a setup? Robbery and then a fight between thieves? I had been stupid to walk around with Crowell’s advance in my purse—of course, my purse. I didn’t see it, and I had a sick feeling that the lousy thief had just grabbed it and taken off with it without going through its contents. Losing the money was bad enough, but to lose the purse Jack had given me…I got down on the floor and sighed with relief at the sight of the bulky leather pouch lying beneath the chair.
A look in my wallet confirmed my suspicions. The money was gone. Son of a bitch. Not only was I out the money, I’d discovered a body. That meant God knows how many hours of questioning by the police. And for what? What could I possibly tell them? I’d seen nothing, heard nothing, that would help solve the crime.
I would have liked nothing better than to walk away, but I’d had too many years of indoctrination, first as a cop’s daughter and then as a cop myself. I had no choice; I had to report the killing and cooperate with the investigation.
I stood up, intending to go downstairs and call the police. Instead I walked over to the bed with a sudden, irrational hope that I’d made a mistake. Maybe the man wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just in shock from loss of blood. In my condition it would have been very easy to miss a faint pulse. My stomach churned at the smell of drying blood, sweat and stale booze, but I forced myself to check again. Hope died as soon as I touched his wrist. The flesh was cooling and there was no throb of life in his veins.
Whoever he was, whatever he was, murder had cheated him of any dignity, had reduced him to a pile of anonymous flesh, subject to the police’s indifferent probing and to the coroner’s knife. Before that dehumanizing process began, I had an overwhelming urge to look at his face. A man deserves to have somebody remember him, even if it’s only a stranger. I leaned over to look beyond the hump of shoulder, and recognition hit me like a sledgehammer.
The face was three-quarters profile, slightly distorted by the press of bone against mattress, but—oh, God—it was him.
Him…pitted skin, a rim of black beard, staring black eyes…
I stumbled backward a few steps, but my eyes riveted on that face and a silent scream echoed in my head. I fought it, afraid if I began screaming I might go on forever and plunge myself backward in time to that night on the cliffs above Dana Harbor.
I had followed Jack, sick with guilt at doing it, but determined to find out what he was hiding from me. Whatever the problem was, it had gone on long enough. He’d barely been in the office for days. During the little time he spent at home, he was grim and touchy. I don’t know when he slept. I kept waking up to find the bed empty and Jack either pacing the living room or sitting in the dark with a drink in his hand. He looked terrible. Shadows stained the skin around his raw eyes. I was sure he had lost weight. The worst part of it was that for the first time since we met, all communication lines were down. He was off someplace alone, some cold and painful place, and he wouldn’t let me in.
That last morning he left the apartment before I woke up. By the time he walked into the office at 2:00 P.M., all my frustration and helplessness had simmered into a towering rage.
“Any coffee?” he asked, slumping down at his desk.
“You disappear, stay away most of the day—no note, no call, nothing—and all you have to say is ‘any coffee’?”
“Delilah, please, I don’t want to argue with you.”
“You don’t want to argue with me; you don’t want to eat with me; you don’t want to sleep with me. What else is left?”
He refused to answer, just got up wearily and went to pour some coffee from the pot on the hot plate into a mug.
“Jack, this is crazy.” A cold twist of panic knotted in my stomach. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it the Terrell case? Have you found out something?”
“I know you’re trying to help, but I can’t talk about it right now.”
“Why not? This is supposed to be a partnership, remember? Fifty-fifty, all that jazz.”
He slammed down his mug. “For Christ’s sake, Delilah. Get off my back!”
I seethed all afternoon while he brooded and stared out the window at the fast-closing winter darkness, covering his desk pad with sprawling black doodles, jumping only when the phone rang.
Well, that’s it, I told myself.
The next time he went out, I would search his desk. In particular, I wanted to have a look at the file on Frank Terrell. The problem seemed to start shortly after Jack took the case. Knowing Jack, there was probably nothing written down that would help me, but I had to begin somewhere. Then I would make phone calls or whatever was necessary. And God help me when Jack found out.
The rest of the day dragged past. To my surprise, he agreed when I suggested that we go home early. Once there, he headed directly for the Scotch, barely touched the omelet I made for supper, and went to sit by the phone, tense and expectant.
It rang about eight o’clock. He snatched it up.
“Hello? I agree. Where?” That was the entire conversation from his end. He hung up and reached for his coat. “I have to go out, Delilah.”
“Jack…” I began, but he was gone, slamming the door behind him.
There was only one thing to do. He wouldn’t like it. He might never forgive me. But I had to do it. I grabbed my coat and car keys. It had gone far enough. If he wouldn’t tell me, I’d damn well find out for myself.
A midwinter wind screamed across the Pacific and a fine rain misted the windshield as I followed Jack down the freeway, down Crown Valley Parkway to the Coast Highway. The intersection was just south of Laguna Beach. He turned left and headed toward Dana Point.
If he hadn’t been so preoccupied, I’d never have been able to trail him in the light traffic. I kept as close as I dared; still, I almost missed his turn into a dirt road leading out to the cliffs. I overshot it and had to double back.
I drove slowly, searching the darkness for his car. Two cars sat at the end of the road. One of them was Jack’s. I didn’t recognize the other. I stopped, shut off the engine, and reached for the lights.
The wind roared and smashed the water below into thundering heights, whipping up sea spray, shattering the lights of the harbor into abstract diamonds. My hand froze above the light switch as the hoarse voice of a gun coughed twice. I yanked at the door handle and half fell from the car. The battering force of the wind snatched the screams from my lips and blinded me with salty mist.
I ran, stumbling, almost to the perimeter of my headlight’s glow, when the man came out of the darkness. He stopped, swaying in front of me, and for an instant I saw his face lit by the car lights from over my shoulder. The gun was still in his hand. It swung in a metallic arc as he aimed for the side of my head…
Concussion and pain must have scrambled my memory. At any rate, I could never pick him out of any mug book or provide the police with a decent composite. He was distinct in my nightmares but once awake, the features had distorted like melting wax.
Somewhere, far away, the siren died at the height of a crescendo. A red flash strobed the room from the street-side window. I ignored it and studied the face of the dead man.
All the months I stumbled after useless leads; all the nights I sweated in the depths of nightmare—it was over now.
I’d found Jack’s murderer.
SEVEN
Above the throbbing in my head, I heard heavy footsteps in the hall and pounding on the door. I really couldn’t move to open it. I felt as if I were torn in two parts. One part was lost, reliving a nightmare. The other part stood in that filthy hotel room, trying to accept the fact that Jack’s killer was dead and by some crazy circumstance I was bending over his body.
Flashes of clarity penetrated the fugue: the sound of a door banging open, reflections off a polished badge, faint whiffs of garlicky breath. I shook my head, blinked hard, and realized that my hands were handcuffed behind my back. A patrolman was reading me my rights off a white index card.
“…right to remain silent…anything you say can be used against you…right to remain silent…”
“What is this?” Panic shot enough adrenaline into my system to clear away some of the paralysis.
“You understand your rights?” he persisted.
“Yes, I understand them.”
“You give up the right to remain silent?”
“Yes, yes. Why am I handcuffed?”
“A man’s been murdered.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. He was dead when I got here. Look, I’m not going anywhere.”
He considered briefly, nodded and unlocked the cuffs. He was a big man with a well-muscled body running to fat beneath the black uniform. Although he outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, he watched me closely, and one hand hovered above his gun butt.
“Can I sit down?” I asked shakily.
He indicated the chair. “Have a seat.”
Thankfully I sank in it, gripping the arms, remembering the feel of the upholstery in the darkened room. It was horsehair, faded maroon, stained by oily heads and sweaty hands. My purse was in the corner of the chair where I had dropped it. I picked it up and held it, needing something familiar.
By now my head was clear enough to note there was another patrolman in the room, over by the door, talking to the desk clerk. He was young with a thin, wiry body, that he kept ramrod stiff. I doubted that he shaved more than once a week, but his voice was crisply authoritative as he opened his notebook and asked, “Can you identify this woman, Mr. Wellsey?”
“Never seen her before.” The desk clerk was wide awake now, shocked into a sobriety that popped out his watery eyes and palsied his liver-spotted hands. He looked at me as if he’d discovered a snake in his wine bottle. “She musta snuck in the back way. My hearing ain’t so good anymore. Can’t be expected to know everything that goes on around here.”
“How about the victim? Know, who he is?”
Wellsey’s face turned a pasty gray. “I don’t feel so good. I gotta—” He put his hand over his mouth and bolted out the door.
“Stick around, Mr. Wellsey. We’ll need a statement,” the young cop called after him. He snapped shut his notebook and nodded toward me. “Can you handle her while I go call in?”
“I think I can manage,” his partner said dryly.
“Right.” He marched briskly out the door.
“Officer—” My mouth still felt like dry rubber. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember if you told me your name.”
“Ellis. That was Keats.”
“I’m Delilah West, a private investigator.”
“Miss West?”
“Mrs. My I.D. is in my wallet. Is it okay if I take it out?”
“I’ll do it.” He flipped through the wallet. “Guess you’re who you say you are. Doesn’t cut any ice with me, and it won’t with the detectives. Want to tell me what happened?”
“There was a lot of money in my wallet. Take a look. It’s gone.”
He checked. “You have a lot of credit cards. Thieves usually go for credit cards.”
