“But she didn’t lose the inn.”
“No. She had her own money in it and most of her own ideas. She let him have everything else and gave him a year to get out of the inn. She was generous.”
“How did Mr. Teller take it?”
“Very hard. I saw him with my own eyes—after the divorce—I saw him sit right here in this booth and cry, tears running down his face, talking about how he’d worked and sweated and planned to build the Montezuma Inn and all he got for it was a kick in the teeth. Well, if you’ll excuse the expression, Mr. Marine, that was nothing but a lot of cry-baby crap. She built this place. She ran it. I tell you, when she was here, this was the best spot of its kind between the Mexican border and Las Vegas. People had fun here. She was a natural hostess, the greatest. Will be again.”
Bridges craned his neck to look over the top of the booth, then pulled a postcard from his pocket.
“Here’s the reason I’m celebrating tonight,” he said. “This came today. You’re welcome to read it. May give you an idea what she’s like.”
Mickey glanced at the view side of the card. It looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t place it at once and flipped the card over. There was a brief message:
“There ain’t no Bluebird of Happiness east of Yuma. See you soon. Love. M.”
Bridges was saying something, but Mickey couldn’t hear it. He was staring at the postmark. The card had been mailed from his home city. He turned it over again. Now he recognized the view, a monument in the principal park of the city. He had played in its shadow as a boy. As a policeman, he had once cornered two thieves near it.
He handed the card to Bridges.
“It’s from her home town,” Bridges said. “Some small city in Illinois. She went back there for a while right after the divorce. Didn’t stay long. She went to Europe. She’s been traveling mostly ever since.”
“Did Mr. Teller know where she was all the time?”
He realized, as he said it, it was not the kind of question he ought to ask, but the little manager, caught up in his memories and anticipations, took it casually.
“No, I’m sure he didn’t. Oh, he knew she went back home right after the divorce. There were details, you know, and their attorneys sending stuff back and forth. But she didn’t keep in touch with Teller personally.” He lowered his voice. “Tell you the truth, I think she was a little afraid of him. He’s a dangerous man in some ways, vengeful—and he has odd tastes.”
“May I ask you a personal question?” Mickey said.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“How is it that after Mrs. Teller went away—?”
Bridges stopped him with a gesture.
“I know what you’re going to ask,” he said. “Why did I stay? That’s simple. I was part of the settlement.”
Mickey stared at him.
“Well,” Bridges said defensively, “a child can be included in a divorce settlement; why not a manager of what you own? Someone to look after your interests.”
“I see.”
Bridges glanced at the postcard and slipped it into his pocket.
“I noticed she signed it with just an initial,” Mickey said. “You knew who it was from all right?”
“Oh certainly.” Bridges was divided now, his alert eyes on some subtle shift in conditions in the direction of the lobby, unnoticeable to Mickey. “Her maiden name,” he went on absently, “was Phillips. Michelline Phillips. Everybody called her Mickey.”
Suddenly he was on his feet, gazing toward the lobby.
“Christ,” he said, “it never stops. Excuse me, Mr. Marine, nice to talk to you.”
“Yes,” Mickey said. “Thanks for the drink.”
Bridges scurried away and disappeared. Mickey stared down at his stiff fingers lying on the littered table.
So it all fits, he thought. It’s all there now. It was Mrs. Teller’s home town and she was heading there and Teller knew it. And her name was Mickey Phillips.
* * * *
He lingered a while, so as not to appear too interested in Teller’s absence. But he left earlier than usual and when he picked Margarita up, she left with him readily, even though the first showing of the Rock Hudson movie wasn’t finished. Driving home, they agreed that the next day would be a good one for a picnic.
* * * *
But the next day, it rained. Mickey was just as glad. Sealed in the house with her, he felt secure, stabilized. He found her endlessly fascinating. She had organized her new wardrobe with ceremonial precision. She had a breakfast and dishwashing outfit, an outfit for cleaning the house, another for afternoon. Between changes, she nearly always bathed herself completely. He didn’t try to modify her obsessive cleanliness, but he was determined to teach her the enjoyment of leisure.
She could not be idle. He guessed that if he didn’t interrupt her from time to time, sometimes by sheer force, she would go on from dawn to bedtime without a break. On that rainy afternoon, following a short nap, he had found her busily scrubbing the floor of the service porch where rain had seeped in under the screen door. He picked her up in both arms and carried her into the living room, put her on his lap. After a while her restlessness ebbed and she lay warmly against him.
“A little trabajo—a little rest,” he said. “All trabajo—no fun—very bad. Malo.”
“Sí,” she said.
He kissed her and she snuggled deep in his lap.
“Tell me about your village,” he said.
She told him, haltingly at first, then warming to it as she remembered. She remembered with fondness and he found himself caught up in the atmosphere she evoked. The picture of bucolic peace in a remote, primitive village appealed to him strongly. He would go there with her, right away after he had finished with Teller. He would find a way to fit in there, work with his hands, make a home for them.
“No picnics in your village?” he asked idly.
“No. Fiesta, Sí, but no peekneek.”
“You like picnics?”
“Sí. No peekneek today. Rain.”
“Well, we can have a picnic right here in the house.”
“Oh, Joe—”
“Sí. I fix. You make sandwiches.”
“W’at kind sandwiches?”
“Tortilla sandwiches.”
“Tacos?”
“Sí, plenty tacos.”
While she made the tacos, he spread a tablecloth on the floor of the living room and did some rearranging of the furniture. When she came in to see what he was doing she stared, openmouthed. He explained it, item by item.
“Tree,” he said, pointing to the floor lamp.
He upended the big armchair.
“Mountain,” he said. “Cerro.”
“Oh Joe—”
He put a sofa cushion on the floor for her to sit on.
“Rock,” he said. He got another. “Dos rocks. Rocks better for seat than head.”
She began to laugh.
“Joe, you crazy,” she said.
“Sí,” he said. “Where are the tacos?”
She brought them and they sat on the cushions, eating. She had got into the spirit and laughed often. When they finished the tacos, he sat for some minutes in quiet rumination, then jumped up suddenly.
“I forgot the most important thing,” he said. “You stay; I’ll be back.”
She watched him go outside and run to the car, parked in the street, his shoulders hunched against the rain. When he came in with the air mattress under his arm, she began to look askance. It took him some time to inflate it, on his knees on the floor, huffing and puffing and getting red in the face. Not till she began laughing again did he realize what a ludicrous picture he made. He started to laugh with her, lost his grip on the air nozzle and watched the mattress collapse with a long, shuddering sigh. When he got over the laughing fit, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
* * * *
She gazed up at him, drowsy and fulfilled.
“Joe,” she murmured, “this too
is peekneek?”
“Sí,” he said.
She smiled slowly.
“Peekneek—muy bueno,” she said.
He was reaching for her when he heard what sounded like a knock on the front door. The rain was making a clatter on the frame building and he couldn’t be sure. He got up and opened the bedroom door, listening. The sound came again, louder, unmistakably a knocking. When he turned back into the room and reached for his trousers and a shirt, Margarita stared up at him tensely. He smiled.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You stay here. I tell them to vamos.”
Barefooted, he left the room, closing the door behind him. The living room was neat enough except for the mess he had made himself. He tossed the cushions onto the sofa, picked up the tablecloth and stuffed it under the cushions and kicked the flabby air mattress into a corner. He headed for the door, but stopped short of it abruptly.
He had gone through this once before, in almost precisely the same way. The memory came back so sharply he caught his breath in quick pain. His facial muscles reacted to the savage blow, his stomach contracted violently.
But Roberts and Wister were dead…
After a moment he moved aside and looked slantwise through the window toward the door. He could see an arm and shoulder bundled in a raincoat, part of a hat. He couldn’t see who it was. He was pretty sure it was only one. There was no car parked out front. If it were somebody from Immigration, he thought, there would be a car.
He moved to the door, crouched near it with knee and shoulder braced to repel a forced entry, and opened it far enough to look outside. The caller was standing with head down. He glanced up as the door opened.
Mickey inhaled slowly, trying to keep the breath from running wild in his throat. Then he opened the door fully, watching the old, familiar, half-forgotten and now suddenly recalled face of Captain Andrews.
CHAPTER 17
Not until the Captain had taken off his coat and hat, with a grumbled apology, and Mickey had put them in the kitchen near the stove to dry and had returned to the living room did they greet each other. The Captain looked disgruntled and uncomfortable, which, as Mickey recalled, was normal.
“Hello, Phillips,” he said, extending a wiry hand.
“Captain,” Mickey said.
They shook hands stiffly.
“Well,” Mickey said, “sit down.”
The Captain sat on the edge of a chair with his hands between his knees. He gave the house a pretty thorough casing, but Mickey couldn’t tell what he saw.
“How are things back home?” Mickey asked.
“Stumbling along,” the Captain said. “Meyer got in an accident a couple of weeks ago. Run over by his own car. He was washing it and forgot to set the brakes.”
“Hurt bad?”
“You can’t hurt Meyer. He’s got a slight limp.”
Mickey couldn’t think of any more homey questions. His mind churned with other kinds of questions, but he decided to let the Captain get to it in his own way. The Captain seemed reluctant. He spread his hands out, backs up, and looked at them, rubbed them together between his knees, sat back with his legs crossed, then came forward again to the edge of the chair.
“Uh—Mickey,” he said, “I guess I better get down to cases. The way it goes kind of depends. To start at the beginning, when you asked me for a leave of absence, I figured that you wanted to go hunting a couple of guys, like I might have done in your shoes. But I couldn’t give you a leave of absence and you left anyway, which kind of hurt me at the time, but that’s all past. So I figured, again, that you would probably go on your manhunt anyway, on your own. Now if that’s what you did and if you’re still on it, that’s what we have to talk about. If not, if you just went off and did something else, that’s none of my business—or anybody else’s—and we can pass the time of day and I’ll go back home.”
It was Mickey’s turn to look at his hands.
“Well,” the Captain said after a minute, “have you been working on the case?”
“Yes,” Mickey said, looking up. “I have.”
“Tell me what you got.”
It was so characteristic, so familiar, that Mickey almost felt himself to be back on the job, in the squad room or the Captain’s office. Captain Andrews always, unquestionably, had been in charge.
“Well, Captain,” Mickey said, “I have some questions of my own.”
“Sure,” the Captain said. “I’ll answer any question you ask, if I know the answer, but I’ve got to hear from you first.”
You could always take the Captain’s word. It wouldn’t do any good to stall or try to hold out. The Captain had come a long way, and somewhere he had a good, solid reason.
“All right,” Mickey said, getting up. “Just give me a minute.”
He went to the bedroom, opened the door enough to slide inside and closed the door when he was in. Margarita was sitting cross-legged on the bed, naked, and her eyes were like ripe olives, watching him. He smiled, forcing it, and picked up his money belt from the chair where he had tossed it. He didn’t try to hide from her that he removed the photograph and clipping she had given him at the motel. He leaned over the bed and kissed her.
“Joe—” she whispered urgently. “Poleecy?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Amigo. Good friend.”
He turned away quickly and returned to the living room. He handed the photo and clipping to the Captain, who winced at the picture, then sat holding it, waiting for Mickey to go on.
“There was this guy,” Mickey said, “Frenchy Wister—”
It didn’t take long to tell it—from his arrival in Vista del Sol, with a passing reference to Margarita, to his examination of the county records, his discovery of Teller at Wister’s strongbox and the coincidence of Mrs. Teller’s maiden name. When he finished, he saw that the Captain knew he had only a piece of the story, but for reasons of his own was letting it pass for the time being.
“And this Wister is dead?” the Captain said.
“Yes sir.”
“And the big fella, Teller, he’s away?”
“That’s right. But he’ll be back.”
The Captain looked at the wisps of film and newsprint in his hand and made a gesture of hopelessness.
“And this is the evidence?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Did anybody see you find it in Wister’s box?”
“No,” Mickey said.
“Anybody besides you see Mr. Teller going through the box?”
“No.”
The Captain sighed heavily.
“I didn’t have much choice, Captain,” Mickey said. “If I hadn’t taken it out of Wister’s box, Teller would have taken it and we wouldn’t even have this much. Wister was dead and I had to move fast.”
“Well, there’s still the property deal on the county records. Nobody can change that. Go ahead. What do you think happened?”
“I think it was like this,” Mickey said. “Teller was going to lose the inn here to his divorced wife, if she came back to claim it. It was probably set up so that if she never claimed it, he would keep it. Somebody would have to keep it. Anyway, Teller knew she was going back to her home town. He had this hungry oddball hanging around, Frenchy Wister, and he made him a deal. Half of the motel wouldn’t be much to pay for insurance that Mrs. Teller would never show up to claim the inn. But it would look pretty good to Wister, who was a gambler and probably hungry most of the time.”
“Why would Wister do it like this?” Andrews cut in, glancing at the picture. “Why this weird stuff?”
“I don’t know. It might have been his own idea, for kicks. Or he might have wanted to make it look good to Teller, who is on the weird side himself. Or Teller might have ordered it that way, so the victim would make no mistake who was behind it.”
“But Wister didn’t kill Mrs. Teller. He killed—somebody else. You mean to tell me that when he turned up this picture, as proof he’d done the job, Teller wouldn’t know t
he difference?”
“Teller,” Mickey said, “like other people, is shrewd in some ways and stupid in others. He was stupid to hire a killing, put himself on the hook. Maybe he didn’t think of it at the time, but he would have thought it over by the time Wister got back. Wister would have a bad thing on him the rest of his life. So even if he knew Wister had got the wrong one, he wouldn’t have much choice but to pay off and shut up. It would be foolish to try again. It’s true you can only hang once, but if you kill twice, you’re twice as likely to get caught.”
The Captain’s fist, clutching the meager evidence, thudded on his thigh.
“But why—why Kathy Phillips!”
“I don’t know,” Mickey said. “We lived in the country—it was convenient. Wister probably scouted around town. When he couldn’t find Mrs. Teller—who had moved on by then—being desperate and hungry, he started looking for somebody else—anybody.”
“But you said that when you answered the door that night, they asked you, ‘Does Mickey Phillips live here?’”
“A name, Captain. The name was on the mailbox, in the phone book. I think Wister never saw Mrs. Fred ‘Mickey Phillips’ Teller. Maybe he thought Kathy was the one. Even after he found out different, he had Teller over the same barrel. Teller had to pay off.”
The Captain got up, turned to the window and looked out at the rain.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve got enough to pick Teller up for questioning. I guess the local men will co-operate—”
“Captain, it won’t work,” Mickey said. “The local police are friendly with Teller. They might co-operate, but routine questioning won’t do it. The only case against Teller is in his head.”
The Captain’s back stiffened.
“You mean we have to sweat it out of Teller informally—what they call extra-legally?”
“I mean I do, Captain.”
The Captain turned slowly.
“The way you sweated it out of that other one—Roberts—in Colorado?” he said.
Mickey stared at him.
“How do you think I caught up with you?” Captain Andrews said. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“I was going to ask—”
“I started a while back. I got a call from a police officer in Chicago, the one showed you the mug shots. He said he gave you a batch of old APB’s and you told him your man wasn’t in them. So he was running through them later and he came across this Lou ‘The Barber’ Roberts. On a hunch he called me. I checked with Kansas City and they said Roberts had blown town.”
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