A Is for Alibi

by Sue Grafton

  “Mr. McNiece isn’t in but the man you probably want to talk to is Garry Steinberg with two r’s.”

  “B-e-r-r-g?”

  “No, G-a-r-r-y.”

  “Oh, I see. Excuse me.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Everybody makes that mistake.”

  “Would it be possible to see Mr. Steinberg? Just briefly.”

  “He’s in New York this week,” she said.

  “What about Mr. Haycraft?”

  “He’s dead. I mean, you know, he’s been dead for years,” she said. “So actually now it’s McNiece and McNiece but nobody wants to have all the stationery changed. The other McNiece is in a meeting.”

  “Is there anybody else who might remember her?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

  She handed me my card. I turned it over and jotted down my motel number and my answering service up in Santa Teresa.

  “Could you give this to Garry Steinberg when he gets back? I’d really appreciate a call. He can make it collect if I’m not at the motel here.”

  “Sure,” she said. She sat down and I could have sworn she eased the card straight into the trash. I watched her for a moment and she smiled at me sheepishly.

  “Maybe you could just leave that on his desk with a note,” I suggested.

  She leaned over slightly and came up again, card in hand. She speared it on a vicious-looking metal spike near the phone.

  I looked at her some more. She took the card off the spike and got up.

  “I’ll just put this on his desk,” she said and clopped off again.

  “Good plan,” I said.

  I went back to the motel and made some phone calls. Ruth, in Charlie Scorsoni’s office, said that he was still out of town but she gave me the number of his hotel in Denver. I called but he wasn’t in, so I left my number at the message desk. I called Nikki and brought her up to date and then I checked with my answering service. There were no messages. I put on my jogging clothes and drove down to the beach to run. Things did not seem to be falling into place very fast. So far, I felt like I had a lapful of confetti and the notion of piecing it all together to make a picture seemed very remote indeed. Time had shredded the facts like a big machine, leaving only slender paper threads with which to reconstruct reality. I felt clumsy and irritable and I needed to blow off steam.

  I parked near the Santa Monica pier and jogged south along the promenade, a stretch of asphalt walk that parallels the beach. I trotted past the old men bent over their chess games, past thin black boys rollerskating with incredible grace, boogeying to the secret music of their padded headphones, past guitar players, dopers, and loiterers whose eyes followed me with scorn. This stretch of pavement is the last remnant of the sixties’ drug culture—the barefoot, sag-eyed, and scruffy young, some looking thirty-seven now instead of seventeen, still mystical and remote. A dog took up company with me, running along beside me, his tongue hanging out, eyes rolling up at me now and then happily. His coat was thick and bristly, the color of caramel corn, and his tail curled up like a party favor. He was one of those mutant breeds with a large head, short body, and little bitty short legs, but he seemed quite self-possessed. Together, we trotted beyond the promenade, past Ozone, Dudley, Paloma, Sunset, Thornton, and Park; by the time we reached Wave Crest, he’d lost interest, veering off to participate in a game of Frisbee out on the beach. The last I saw of him, he had made an incredible leap, catching a Frisbee midflight, mouth turned up in a grin. I smiled back. He was one of the few dogs I’d met in years that I really liked.

  At Venice Boulevard I turned back, running most of the way and then slowing to a walk as I reached the pier again. The ocean breeze served as a damper to my body heat. I found myself winded but not sweating much. My mouth felt dry and my cheeks were aflame. It hadn’t been a long run but I’d pushed myself a little harder than I normally did and my lungs were burning: liquid combustion in my chest. I run for the same reasons I learned to drive a car with a stick shift and drink my coffee black, imagining that a day might come when some amazing emergency would require such a test. This run was for “good measure,” too, since I’d already decided to take a day off for good behavior. Too much virtue has a corrupting effect. I got back in my car when I’d cooled down and I drove east on Wilshire, back to my motel.

  As I unlocked the door to my room, the phone began to ring. It was my Las Vegas buddy with Sharon Napier’s address.

  “Fantastic,” I said. “I really appreciate this. Let me know how to get in touch when I get down there and I’ll pay you for your time.”

  “General delivery is fine. I never know where I’ll be.”

  “You got it. How much?”

  “Fifty bucks. A discount. For you. She’s strictly unlisted and it wasn’t easy.”

  “Let me know when I can return the service,” I said, knowing full well that he would.

  “Oh, and Kinsey,” he said, “she’s dealing blackjack at the Fremont but she’s also hustling some on the side, so I hear. I watched her operate last night. She’s very sharp but she’s not fooling anyone.”

  “Is she stepping on someone’s toes?”

  “Not quite, but she’s comin’ close. You know, in this town no one cares what you do as long as you don’t cheat. She shouldn’t call attention to herself.”

  “Thanks for the information,” I said.

  “For sure,” he said and hung up.

  I showered and put on a pair of slacks and a shirt, then went across the street and ate fried clams drowned in ketchup with an order of french fries on the side. I got two cups of coffee to go and went back to my room. As soon as the door shut behind me, the phone began to ring. This time it was Charlie Scorsoni.

  “How’s Denver?” I asked as soon as he identified himself.

  “Not bad. How’s L.A.?”

  “Fair. I’m driving up to Las Vegas tonight.”

  “Gambling fever?”

  “Not a bit. I got a line on Sharon.”

  “Terrific. Tell her to pay me back my six hundred bucks.”

  “Yeah. Right. With interest. I’m trying to find out what she knows about a murder and you want me to hassle her about a bad debt.”

  “I’ll never have occasion to, that’s for sure. When will you be back in Santa Teresa?”

  “Maybe Saturday. When I come back through L.A. on Friday, I want to see some boxes that belong to Libby Glass. But I don’t think it will take long. What makes you ask?”

  “I want to buy you a drink,” he said. “I’m leaving Denver day after tomorrow, so I’ll be in town before you. Will you call me when you get back?”

  I hesitated ever so slightly. “Okay.”

  “I mean, don’t put yourself out, Millhone,” he said wryly.

  I laughed. “I’ll call. I swear.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  After I hung up, I could feel a silly smile linger on my face long after it should have. What was it about that man?

  Las Vegas is about six hours from L.A. and I decided I might as well hit the road. It was just after 7:00 and not dark yet, so I threw my things in the backseat of my car and told Arlette I’d be gone for a couple of days.

  “You want me to refer calls or what?” she said.

  “I’ll call you when I get there and let you know how I can be reached,” I said.

  I headed north on the San Diego Freeway, picking up the Ventura, which I followed east until it turned into the Colorado Freeway, one of the few benign roads in the whole of the L.A. freeway system. The Colorado is broad and sparsely traveled, cutting across the northern boundary of metropolitan Los Angeles. It is possible to change lanes on the Colorado without having an anxiety attack and the sturdy concrete divider that separates east- and westbound traffic is a comforting assurance that cars will not wantonly drift over and crash into your vehicle head-on. From the Colorado, I doglegged south, picking up the San Bernardino Freeway, taking 15 northeast on a long irregular diagonal toward Las Vegas.
With any luck, I could talk to Sharon Napier and then head south to the Salton Sea, where Greg Fife was living. I could complete the circuit with a swing up to Claremont on my way back for a brief chat with his sister, Diane. At this point, I wasn’t sure what the journey would net me but I needed to complete the basics of my investigation. And Sharon Napier was bound to prove interesting.

  I like driving at night. I’m not a sightseer at heart and in travels across the country, I’m never tempted by detours to scenic wonders. I’m not interested in hundred-foot rocks shaped like crookneck squash. I’m not keen on staring down into gullies formed by rivers now defunct and I do not marvel at great holes in the ground where meteors once fell to earth. Driving anywhere looks much the same to me. I stare at the concrete roadway. I watch the yellow line. I keep track of large trucks and passenger vehicles with little children asleep in the backseat and I keep my foot pressed flat to the floor until I reach my destination.

  12

  By the time Las Vegas loomed up, twinkling on the horizon, it was well after midnight and I felt stiff. I was anxious to avoid the Strip. I would have avoided the whole town if I could. I don’t gamble, having no instincts for the sport and even less curiosity. Life in Las Vegas exactly suits my notion of some eventual life in cities under the sea. Day and night mean nothing. People ebb and surge aimlessly as though pulled by invisible thermal currents that are swift and disagreeably close. Everything is made of plaster of paris, imitative, larger than life, profoundly impersonal. The whole town smells of $1.89 fried shrimp dinners.

  I found a motel near the airport, on the outskirts of town. The Bagdad looked like a foreign legion post made of marzipan. The night manager was dressed in a gold satin vest and an orange satin shirt with full puffed sleeves. He wore a fez with a tassel. His breathing had a raspy quality that made me want to clear my throat.

  “Are you an out-of-state married couple?” he asked, not looking up.

  “No.”

  “There’s fifty dollars’ worth of coupons with a double if you’re an out-of-state married couple. I’ll put it down. Nobody checks.”

  I gave him my credit card, which he ran off while I filled out the registration form. He gave me my key and a small paper cup full of nickels for the slot machines near the door. I left them on the counter.

  I parked in the space outside my door and left the car, taking a cab into town through the artificial daylight of Glitter Gulch. I paid the cabbie and took a moment to orient myself. There was a constant stream of traffic on East Fremont, the sidewalks crowded with tourists, hot yellow signs, and flashing lights—THE MINT, THE FOUR QUEENS—illuminating a complete catalogue of hustlers: pimps and prostitutes, pickpockets, corn-fed con artists from the Midwest who flock to Vegas with the conviction that the system can be beaten with sufficient cunning and industry. I went into the Fremont.

  I could smell the Chinese food from the coffee shop and the odor of chicken chow mein mingled oddly with the perfumed jet trail left by a woman who passed me in a royal blue polyester print pantsuit that made her look like a piece of walking wallpaper. I watched idly as she began to feed quarters into a slot machine in the lobby. The blackjack tables were off to my left. I asked one of the pit bosses about Sharon Napier and was told she’d be in at 11:00 in the morning. I hadn’t really expected to run into her that night, but I wanted to get a feel for the place.

  The casino hummed, the croupiers at the craps tables shoveling chips back and forth with a stick like some kind of tabletop shuffleboard with rules of its own. I once made a tour of the Nevada Dice Company, watching with something close to reverence as the sixty-pound cellulose nitrate slabs, an inch thick, were cured and cut into cubes, slightly bigger than the finished size, hardened, buffed and drilled on all sides, a white resinous compound applied to the sunken dots with special brushes. The dice, in process, looked like tiny squares of cherry Jell-O that might have been served up like some sort of low-cal dessert. I watched people place their bets. The Pass line, the Don’t Pass line, Come, Don’t Come, the Field, the Big 6 and the Big 8 were mysteries of another kind and I couldn’t, for the life of me, penetrate the catechism of wins, losses, numbers being rattled out in a low chant of intense concentration and surprise. Over it all there hung a pale cloud of cigarette smoke, infused with the smell of spilled Scotch. The darkened mirrors above the tables must have been scanned by countless pairs of eyes, restlessly raking the patrons below for telltale signs of chicanery. Nothing could escape notice. The atmosphere was that of a crowded Woolworth’s at Christmas, where the throngs of frantic shoppers couldn’t be trusted not to lift an item now and then. Even the employees might lie, cheat, and steal, and nothing could be left to chance. I felt a fleeting respect for the whole system of checks and balances that keeps so much money flowing freely and allows so little to slip back into the individual pockets from which it has been coaxed. A sudden feeling of exhaustion came over me. I walked back out to the street again and found a cab.

  The “Middle Eastern” decor of the Bagdad halted abruptly at the door to my room. The carpet was dark green cotton shag, the wallpaper lime-green foil in a pattern of overlapping palms, flocked with small clumps that might have been dates or clusters of fruit bats. I locked the door, kicked off my shoes, and pulled down the chenille spread, crawling under the covers with relief. I put a quick call through to my answering service and another to a groggy Arlette, leaving my latest location with the number where I could be reached.

  I woke up at 10:00 A.M., feeling the first faint stages of a headache—as though I had a hangover in the making before I’d even had a drink. Vegas tends to affect me that way, some combination of tension and dread to which my body responds with all the symptoms of incipient flu. I took two Tylenols and showered for a long time, trying to wash away the roiling whisper of nausea. I felt like I’d eaten a pound of cold buttered popcorn and washed it down with bulk saccharin.

  I stepped out of my motel room, the light causing me to squint. The air, at least, was fresh and there was, by day, the sense of a town subdued and shrunken, flattened out again to its true proportions. The desert stretched away behind the motel in a haze of pale gray, fading to mauve at the horizon. The wind was mild and dry, the promise of summer heat only hinted at in the distant shimmering sunlight that sat on the desert floor in flat pools, evaporating on approach. Occasional patches of sagebrush, nearly silver with dust, broke up the long low lines of treeless wasteland fenced in by distant hills.

  I stopped off at the post office and left a fifty-dollar money order for my friend and then I checked out the address he had given me. Sharon Napier lived in a two-story apartment complex on the far side of town, salmon-pink stucco eroding around the edges as though animals had crept up in the night to gnaw the corners away. The roof was nearly flat, peppered with rocks, the iron railings sending streaks of rust down the sides of the building. The landscaping was rock and yucca and cactus plants. There were only twenty units, arranged around a kidney-shaped pool that was separated from the parking area by a dun-colored cinder-block wall. A couple of young kids were splashing about in the pool and a middle-aged woman was standing in front of her apartment up on the landing, a grocery bag wedged between her hip and the door as she let herself in. A Chicano boy hosed down the walks. The buildings on either side of the complex were single-family dwellings. There was a vacant lot across the street in back.

  Sharon’s apartment was on the ground floor, her name was neatly embossed on the mailbox on a white plastic strip. Her drapes were drawn, but some of the hooks had come loose at the top, causing the lined fabric to bow inward and sag, forming a gap through which I could see a beige Formica table and two beige upholstered plastic kitchen chairs. The telephone sat on one corner of the table, resting on a pile of papers. Beside it was a coffee cup with a waxy crescent of hotpink lipstick on the rim. A cigarette, also rimmed with pink, had been extinguished in the saucer. I glanced around. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to me. I walk
ed quickly through a passageway that connected the courtyard to the rear of the apartment building.

  Sharon’s apartment number was marked on the rear door, too, and there were four other back doors at intervals, the rear entrances emptying into little rectangles surrounded by shoulder-high cinder-block walls designed, I suspected, to create the illusion of small patios. The trash containers were lined up on the walkway outside the wall. Her kitchen curtains were drawn. I eased onto her little patio. She had arranged six geraniums in pots along the back step. There were two aluminum folding chairs stacked against the wall, a pile of old newspapers by the back door. There was a small window up on the right and a larger window beyond that. I couldn’t judge whether it might be her bedroom or her neighbor’s. I looked out across the vacant lot and then eased out of the patio, turning left along the walk, which opened out onto the street again. I got back in my car and headed for the Fremont.

  I felt as if I’d never left. The lady in royal blue was still pasted to the quarter slot machine, her hair sculpted into a glossy mahogany scrollwork on top of her head. The same crowd seemed to be pressed to the craps table as though by magnetic force, the croupier pushing chips back and forth with his little stick as if it were a flat-bottomed broom and someone had made an expensive mess. Waitresses circulated with drinks and a heavyset man, whom I guessed to be plainclothes security, wandered about trying to look like a tourist whose luck had gone bad. I could hear the sounds of a female vocalist in the Carnival Lounge, singing a slightly flat but lusty medley of Broadway show tunes. I caught a glimpse of her, emoting to a half-deserted room, her face a bright powder pink under the spotlight.

  Sharon Napier was not hard to find. She was tall, maybe five ten or better in her high-heeled shoes. She was the sort of woman you noticed from the ground up: long shapely legs looking slender in black mesh hose, a short black skirt flaring slightly at the tops of her thighs. She had narrow hips, a flat stomach, and her breasts were pushed together to form pronounced mounds. The bodice of her black outfit was tight and low-cut, her name stitched above her left breast. Her hair was an ashen blonde, pallid under the houselights; her eyes an eerie green, a luminous shade I guessed to be from tinted contact lenses. Her skin was pale and unblemished, the oval of her face as white as eggshell and as finely textured. Her lips were full and wide, the bright pink lipstick emphasizing their generous proportions. It was a mouth built for unnatural acts. Something about her demeanor promised cool improvisational sex for the right price and it would not be cheap.