“Onions?” I asked.
“A bath. You want one?”
“Make mine with.”
“Sign the register,” he said. “That’s in advance.”
I pulled the register toward me, glad that I’d picked a place where no one cared who you were or what you were doing as long as you could pay the tab. I signed a phony name, took out my wallet, and flipped a bill at the pointed head behind the desk.
“How long you stayin’?” the kid asked.
“Depends on whether I like the dump,” I said. “Take out for the night.”
The kid shrugged, opened the drawer beneath the desk, put the bill away, and fished out my change. He handed it across to me and I waited. Finally he had to get up to get me my key. He yawned his way to a rack of cubby holes and drew a key out of one at the bottom.
“201.” He tossed it across to me. “One flight up and to your left.”
“Don’t bother to help with the luggage,” I said.
“You haven’t got any.” The kid was back in his chair with his face buried in the magazine and I was dead as far as he was concerned.
The room was no dream but who wanted dreams? The furniture was light brown bastard Spanish and the lace curtains over the windows were brown with matching dust. The bathroom was clean in the big spots and had an old-fashioned tub with claw feet. I looked for some soap, couldn’t find any, and opened the medicine cabinet and looked inside. There was a small tin box on the bottom shelf with an exotic name on the lid. The last guy who’d had the room had had himself a big sanitary night of it. It gave the place an air. I grabbed the threadbare huck towel off the rack and splashed some water on my face. After I’d dried off I took a look at myself in the mirror and decided never to do it again.
Back in the room I flopped across the bed and tried not to think about Gwynn driving back across the desert alone, but of what I had to do if I wanted to get off the front-page-and-dangerous-shoot-on-sight police circulars. My first move was to get in touch with Sam Talmadge and find out where I stood officially. Because Sam could help me. He could also break my neck. I glanced at the phone sitting on the nightstand and ruled it out because I couldn’t talk through a switchboard. Which meant I had to get to my feet, straighten my tie, and take off.
Three blocks from the hotel I found a drugstore, made for the phone booths at the rear of the fountain counter, settled into the one in the corner, fished for my address book and was glad I had a pocketful of change. Sam had a swank prefix that placed him out in the fancy real estate around Bel Air which just went to prove what could happen to a classy area when people weren’t careful about their neighbors and only worried about minimum building restrictions.
The guy who answered the phone sounded as if he were three feet underwater.
“Who’s calling, please?” he asked.
“Never mind that,” I said wearily, “just put Talmadge on.”
There was a short pause. “I’m afraid Mr. Talmadge isn’t in. If you’d like to leave your number—”
“Get the lead out of your ass and tell’m it’s his boy from Vegas,” I said.
“Very well,” the guy said and dropped the receiver like a hot potato.
I could hear footsteps down marble halls, or the Bel Air equivalent thereof. Then there was a period of silence, more footsteps, and Talmadge picked up the phone.
“Walters?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“There’s nothing like letting the telephone company in on it,” I said and noted that even his voice was bloated.
“Where are you?” he ignored my dig.
“On the street,” I said. I didn’t like his tone. “I want to see you.”
“You’re in a tight spot, Walters.”
“It took you to tell me,” I said. “Before that I wasn’t sure.”
“Now, look here,” he growled, “you’ve no reason to get fat lipped with me.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Come out here.”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “I’ll meet you somewhere. Tomorrow.”
“For a guy in your spot you’re pretty choosey.”
“Just what kind of spot am I in?” I said. “That’s what I want to find out. Make me a date.”
“All right,” he said, “if that’s the way you’ve got to have it. Downtown on Hill Street. The Glass Garter. I have business there at two o’clock.”
“You’ve business there all right,” I said. “Me.” I hung up and got out of the booth.
On my way out I bought soap and shaving gear, and back in the hotel room, my door locked, I swabbed out the tub in the bathroom, filled it with warm water, and climbed in. I soaped down enough to give the water a homey feel and just sat there sighing as the tiredness and stiffness eased out of my joints. But I combined business with pleasure by reading carefully through Ann’s address book.
Naturally the names were mostly of men. A varied and distinguished clientele but who could blame them? Toward the back of the book there was a page ripped out. I wondered about it for a moment, then let it pass. Vicki Mercer was listed as living in the Vanguard Apartments, which placed Vicki Mercer, because I’d heard about the Vanguard with its large fancy courtyard with expensive planting and a subterranean garage stuffed with Cadillac convertibles. There was a foyer with rugs so thick you could hardly get through them. The Vanguard was the address where the high tone and six-figure sports kept their private doxies in the manner to which their wives had never been accustomed.
Vicky Mercer had made good. Vicki Mercer, in fact, was a big fat success. Amend that—she had better not become fat. Suddenly I decided that I liked them fast and stylish and expensive. Also her name was in the book and Ann had started to write a letter to her which made me a mailman and no pun intended.
I climbed out of the tub, rubbed down with a towel that had just enough nap left to dry a flea’s ear, dressed carefully and hoped my suit could make some sort of miraculous comeback because I wanted to be fresh and fragrant for La Mercer.
A beer joint a couple of blocks down the street advertised sandwiches too so I stopped in for a roast beef and beer and ate and drank slowly as I pondered the picture in the mirror behind the bar: the tired, standard, naked doll soaking her bottom in a glass of champagne.
The bartender had bags under his eyes and it was easy to see how he got that way when you checked his chic clientele: at first glance you would say that the bleached blonde in the green satin blouse at the end of the bar had lost her figure; at second glance you’d say she never had it to lose.
I finished my beer and passed on back to the telephone booth behind the music box to deal out the number of the Vanguard and wait. When the high male voice at the desk answered I asked for Miss Mercer and chuckled. He sounded like a eunuch which was good sense for this apartment house of harems.
“Who’s calling, please?”
I took a quick look at Ann’s book and spotted a name I knew of a fix-it lawyer around town.
“Paul Stellman,” I said.
“Just a moment, Mr. Stellman,” High-Pitched Tonsils replied. “I’ll see if Miss Mercer is in.” He cut me off the line and presumably held a conference with Queenie herself but it wasn’t long before he flicked me back on.
“Here’s your party, Mr. Stellman.”
The guy bowed off and Vicki Mercer came on.
“Hello, Paul,” she said. “What a surprise to hear from you.”
Her voice was as soft and full of insinuation as a mink bedspread. The minute you heard it you knew what she could be like if she was in the mood and you were in her mood.
“Say some more, honey,” I said. “I could listen all night.”
“Just a second”—the softness went out of her voice, fast—“who is this?”
“Doesn’t anybody in this town take a chance?”
“I don’t like gambling.” She was short. “State your name and business or you’ve got a dead line.”
“I’m a friend of Ann Gunther’
s,” I said.
I heard her suck in her breath. “Should that mean something to me?”
“I thought you were Ann’s friend too.”
“What made you think so?”
“She was writing you a letter to tell you how things stood with her when she was cut off.” I emphasized the end of my sentence.
“Do you have the letter?”
“In my pocket.”
“Is this blackmail?”
“Just a fair exchange. Information.”
She paused for a moment. “I don’t want to get mixed up in it.”
“I didn’t either, but what choice does a letter carrier have except to deliver? Are you busy tonight?”
“No,” she said. You could almost hear her thinking over the line. “Shall I meet you somewhere?”
“Your place,” I said. “We shouldn’t be seen together in public.”
“Well,” she drawled, “how soon will you be here?”
“Right away. If you’re thinking of calling a friend, don’t.”
“I don’t need a friend,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll bet you can,” I said and hung up.
* * * *
The Vanguard was on a nice street with well-pruned trees and shrubs to give the neighborhood class and no kids playing around to muss the effect, all of which made a nice setting for the alley cats with the purloined pelts. The cabby pulled up in front of the joint and keeping my face out of the light I hauled out, tossed him a bill, and told him to keep the change. But I didn’t have to: on a Vanguard run they count on it.
I shoved through the front door and waded over to the desk through carpet piling as deep as everyone said it was, where the fellow on duty, a refined type with a blank expression, announced me in his eunuch-type voice as the gentleman who called earlier, and with his mechanical smile nodded that I was to be admitted.
“Apartment 320,” he said. “The elevator is directly across.”
“Thanks.” I waved and shoved off.
Three-twenty was to the right when you left the elevator and when I pressed the bell I could hear the inside buzzer breaking through soft music. A moment later the door opened and I looked at Vicki Mercer. The light was behind her as she stood in the doorway and if those highlights in her hair were the work of her hairdresser she owed the guy a bonus. Her eyes were dark, intelligent, and banked inner fires, the kind that burn deep. Vicki Mercer in the flesh was something to look at because the flesh had been so neatly arranged. I’d have laid big odds she would be a blonde, and the bet would’ve cleaned me; she was a brunette, dark brown, who wore a soft and flowing something that hugged the curves.
“Come in, Walters,” she said and I lifted an eyebrow. “I knew who you were when I talked to you on the telephone. It wasn’t hard.” She gestured with a red-lacquered nail to enter. “The tougher they talk, the bigger jam they’re in.” She looked me over as I stepped through the door. “You’re bigger than I’d pictured you.”
The apartment was swank, expensive, appointed in Italian modern; because I needed help I was willing to judge this was her good taste. A glass wall looked out on a wide terrace that in turn looked out over the rest of the city. All in all, a nice nest.
“You’re alone?” I asked.
Vicki nodded. “I said I would be.” She followed me to the center of the room. “I also said I didn’t want to get mixed up in Ann Gunther’s killing. That includes being the gorgeous brunette who turns you over to the law.”
“You play it close, don’t you?”
“I have to.” She undulated across the room to a permanent bar. “You may not understand this.” She turned to me. “But I’m”—my nod approved her diplomacy—“it makes me responsible to others. What’re you drinking?”
“Scotch,” I said. “Build it up with soda.”
Vicki mixed the drinks with professional competence, brought me a tall one, then took her own to the divan against the glass wall and sat down. I crossed and took the chair opposite her to be closer and for the better point of view. This paid off because Vicki crossed her legs and the grey flowing material dripped away from her legs. Her dark, now amused eyes followed my gaze, but the legs stayed crossed. She had nothing to hide.
“This letter—” she began tentatively.
“You can forget it.” I said. “There’s nothing in it for you to worry about. In fact there’s nothing in it. It only had your name on it but it served as a note of introduction.”
“I guessed that, too. She looked at me from the corners of her eyes, “but I had to be sure. Now you hope I’ll tell you about—Ann.” Her voice dropped.
“I want to know what she was mixed up in and who got her mixed up in it,” I said after two sips of silence.
“The papers say you killed her.”
“Do you think I did?”
Vicki looked at me for a long time and I wished I looked better, was dressed more honestly. Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t. What was Ann to you?”
“Nothing, really,” I put down my drink. “Only a few minutes in a bar and next time I saw her she was dead.”
“But you’re in it up to your hips?”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded. “But it’s not just that. Not entirely. There’s Ann. Maybe I want to make it up to her for the way—she died.”
Vicki nodded her approval. “Ann had something that made you feel that way about her. I—imagine it—wanted to make it up to her for the way she lived. She was a pathetic kid. A funny kid.”
“She was pathetic but not funny the last time I saw her.”
Vicki turned away. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything you’ve got to tell.”
“That’s quite a lot,” she said. “I guess I’m the only one who really knows the whole story. Still”—she paused as if she were adjusting the weight of history and experience—“it’s a stiff order, mister. I’m in the story, too. And,” she said, her voice rising in challenge, “there are some things in the past I don’t admit to any more.” She put her drink down on the table, turned away from me and looked out at the glittering city beyond the windows. “It’s not a very good story.”
“I’m no critic,” I said with understanding.
Vicki smiled, but her gaze remained on the city as she told me that she had come here from Kansas when she was eighteen and green to crash the movies. And she was willing to let herself get pinched and patted by all the phonies, but this never got her to first base with the legitimate operators. Finally she landed a job in a cheap sewer as a show girl where she walked around on a stage in high heels and a yard of theatrical satin and let the sports and tourists make cracks about her figure. She ate hamburgers and lived in a series of cheap rooming houses and in one of them met Ann Gunther. She worked in a similar type show which accounted for living just about the same way.
One night Vicki was approached backstage by a big guy in an expensive suit who asked her if she wanted to make some real money, and easy. By that time she had had enough poverty, was tired of being dog meat. The proposition had to do with stag parties promoted by this operator in the expensive suit. He had a regular setup, a class layout in the Hollywood hills, but, more important, he had official protection. The operator laid it on the line: the money was easy but the shows were low; all Vicki had to do was show the skin as a warm-up. She was to be the artistic part of the program. He offered enough money to make her gasp. She was doing the same now for less. So she bit hard and swallowed the hook.
“The first show literally turned my stomach,” Vicki continued to stare through the window as she spoke. “I had to go out in the yard and vomit. The clientele was wealthy and perverted and there was a sort of audience participation at the end. I saw people doing things that animals wouldn’t even think of.”
After Vicki was paid off the boy with the expensive suit went on the make; Vicki looked as if she had talent and he was certain she could be worked into the after-show and be a real success. But
she knew how to avoid the mickeys which were being offered her during the sales pitch and after she scratched a deep line of ridges into this monster’s face she got out. She was out from then on, and that was fine with her. But the big guy kept right on recruiting and not too long after he pitched a girl in another show.
“Ann,” I said.
“Ann’s background was pretty much like mine,” Vicki nodded. “But she knew—it doesn’t sound possible—even less. So she went up the hill and stayed there. When I found out what had happened I was ready to kill the bastard.” Vicki’s fingers clutched automatically. “I liked Ann. I tried to find her—she didn’t even come back for her clothes—but the racket had swallowed her up and she was hidden away. It happened just that fast.” She snapped her fingers.
By this time Vicki had made up her mind about herself. She knew what she wanted for herself and how she would have to get it. And she was tired of fighting a losing battle. Working at the club had established some contacts and she became a party girl with a difference because she kept it personal and stayed away from the organizer. There wasn’t much anyone could do about a girl who was just naturally romantic. One night she ran across Ann at a party. And Ann looked awful, was messy drunk and putting on a tough act for Vicki’s benefit. Vicki tried to talk to her but Ann blew her cork and called her things people don’t even whisper, so Vicki left.
The next day Ann called up, crying and sorry and pleading for forgiveness. They met and Vicki told her to get out of the racket, but Ann had it fixed in her head that she couldn’t get out and Vicki gathered they had fixed some sort of vise on this poor girl who had played with vice.
“And?” I prompted her out of another silence.
“I didn’t hear from her for a while after that,” Vicki continued. “Then one day she called. She sounded like a different person and asked if she could see me.”
“Don’t tell me she sounded happy?” I was skeptical.
Vicki turned from the window and made a vague gesture with her hand. “I don’t know how to describe it,” she began. “She looked better and I was happy for that. But it was tragic too. Because Ann was trying hard to be like she used to be, but it was too late. Finally she got around to telling me she was in love.”
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