End of a Call Girl

by William Campbell Gault

  “Maybe Jean wouldn’t want company.” “I think she would. Could you pick up some steaks? I’ll pay you for them when you get here.”

  “Sure, sure. And you think I should come?”

  “I certainly do. I want to look at you, Puma. I like your looks.”

  Those had been the kindest words I’d heard today. I hung up gratefully and went down to the washroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

  It had been a hectic day, climaxed by the violence in Santa Monica. That murder was Santa Monica’s and though I was certain it was tied up with Ryerson’s death, it seemed likely I would have trouble getting any information out of the bay city Department.

  Trouble, hell; without the intervention of some powerful friend, it would be impossible. Even the Los Angeles Department would have trouble getting information out of Santa Monica.

  Well, Jack Ross would probably know somebody …

  The steaks I bought were filets and I wouldn’t accept Mary’s money for them. As I explained to her, we had eaten the finest and guzzled the best in Palm Springs. This was a small payment on that.

  “And he wants us back,” I said. “We’ve got a wealthy friend.”

  “Maybe,” Mary mused, “he could give you a good job and you could afford a wife.”

  “I can afford an inexpensive wife, right now.”

  “That isn’t the kind you’d want. Do you know how to make a decent Martini? With some vermouth in it. I don’t mean one of those tinted gin things.”

  “Yes’m,” I said. “Tom Talsman was killed with an ice pick. Does Jean know that?”

  “I’ve no idea and I’m certainly not going to ask her. The paper said something about his being drugged, too.”

  “What paper? I didn’t see anything in the papers about that.”

  “The Santa Monica Outlook, natch. For local news you have to read a local paper.” She nodded toward the living room. “It’s on the coffee table in there.”

  I put the Martini glasses in the freezer section of the refrigerator and went into the living room to read the Santa Monica Outlook.

  There was very little there I didn’t know. There was, however, one paragraph that was news to me. I read:

  Mrs. Castle, a new tenant in the building, has the apartment next to Talsman’s. She stated that between ten and eleven o’clock she heard some murmuring in the next apartment and then heard one shouted lewd remark and the talking ceased. The police have refused to reveal the shouted words but it might be significant that an immediate roundup of the known deviates who patronize the pier section known, to our local shame, as “Queer’s Alley” got underway immediately after Mrs. Castle’s statement.

  From the kitchen, Mary asked, “How about that bit regarding our local shame. I don’t think its existence would ever be publicly admitted.

  “I thought all the lavender lads hung out in the Santa Monica Canyon.”

  “Some do, not all. Tom didn’t seem like — one of those, did he? You had better hide that paper. I don’t want Jean to see it.”

  I brought the paper out to the kitchen and she put it in the wastepaper basket. I suggested, “Maybe Tom did the shouting. Maybe it was his visitor who was queer.”

  “Wouldn’t the paper say that Tom did the shouting?”

  “It doesn’t state he didn’t. And a new tenant might not know Tom’s voice. You know, this brings me back to Leslie Colt. A lot of those muscle men are double-gaited. And he certainly lived close enough to that house on Gallo where I met Eriksen. This Colt was released too soon.”

  “Take it easy,” Mary advised me. “You don’t even know what the remark was. And you don’t know who shouted it, Tom or his visitor.” She smiled and patted my cheek.

  “Why should I take it easy? Are you afraid I can’t handle Leslie Colt?”

  “I don’t want you to go off half-cocked. Your Latin temperament gives you a tendency to go charging in without thinking things through first.”

  I asked quietly, “Do you know anything about Tom Talsman that I don’t?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. No, I don’t.”

  I leaned against the refrigerator and watched her make the salad dressing. Her hand trembled as she poured the oil.

  “You’re nervous,” I said.

  She stared at me. “Ye gods! Jean’s my best friend and she’ll be here in an hour. And her brother was just killed. I simply don’t know what to say or do.”

  “Oh.”

  She continued to stare at me. “Puma you’re not playing Dick Tracy at the moment, are you? Not now?” I shook my head.

  “If I really thought you were,” she said, “you’d be wearing this salad dressing.”

  “Your Latin temperament is getting the best of you,” I said calmly. “Couldn’t I have a sandwich or something? I can’t wait until eight o’clock to eat. I’ll get sick.”

  “There’s some of that canned ham left. Make your own.”

  I made a ham sandwich and warmed the left-over coffee. I ate in the dining area in a chair that faced the kitchen. I liked to watch Mary move. I like to watch any attractive and poised female move. They make an art of it.

  If Tom Talsman had been killed by the same person who killed George Ryerson, Tom’s death should help to delineate a path to the killer. The path was no clearer to me. The perversion angle opened new lines of investigation, but they might be confined to Santa Monica. Where I had no influential friends.

  I sipped my coffee. Mary stood with her back to me, facing the sink. I saw her shoulders tremble and I got up immediately and went over swiftly to put my arms around her. She began to cry.

  “Everybody dies,” I told her. “Everybody.”

  She dried her eyes and kissed me. “I’ll be all right.” She put her long, slim fingers to my lips.

  She was drying her eyes again when the door chime sounded. Three seconds later, she was crying once more, as Jean and she held each other and sobbed.

  Jack Ross looked at me uncomfortably and I returned the gaze with the same discomfort. He went to the kitchen, and I followed.

  In the kitchen, he poured a stiff jolt of whisky and drained it in one gulp. He expelled his breath and looked at me. “I’ve a feeling Jean is leary about me.” He poured another drink. “I came to town last night, you see. It was a poker game.”

  “You drove all that distance for a poker game?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Why not? Jean wasn’t feeling well and she wanted to go to bed early. And this was a gang I love to tangle with.” He sipped his second drink. “A game every three months; is that too much, Joe?”

  “It’s unfortunate it was last night. Captain Jeswald asked me a few hours ago where you were last night.”

  “Well, I’ll have all the witnesses to that I’ll need. And I’m sure they’re solid enough to impress your Captain Jeswald, whoever he is.”

  “Do you know Dennis Greene?”

  He smiled wryly. “Dennis the Menace? Everyone knows him, that lavender lovely.” “He’s queer — ?”

  Ross shrugged. “Who knows? Who can ever be positive? He never married and the nasty rumors about him have remained constant for a number of years.”

  “You never married,” I said.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “Nor you. Shall we dance?”

  “Greene claimed to be a good friend of yours when he came to see me. He asked me to send you his best.”

  “He’s no friend of mine. Joe, what are you driving at?”

  “Homosexuality has reared its repulsive head.” I told him about the account in the Outlook and asked him if he knew any police officer in Santa Monica.

  “No, but I know a reporter on the paper there.” He went to get the phone book. He found the reporter at home and asked him if he knew what the shouted remark was. He had the man repeat it for my benefit. The remark was: “ — you stinking homo, I know what you’re planning — ”

  I asked the reporter, “Was that said to Talsman? Or did Talsman say it?”

&n
bsp; “Nobody knows. A few of the local fags claim to have known Talsman well, but what does that prove? Some of my best friends are fags. And I’ve got five kids.”

  When I hung up, Jack Ross was staring out into the dining area, lost in thought.

  I said, “Jean will snap out of it. She really couldn’t have loved him so much, or she would have seen him oftener.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look hopeful.

  NINE

  JEAN stayed with Mary in the bedroom while Jack and I broiled the steaks and mashed the potatoes and made the coffee and heated the rolls. It was a quiet, gloomy meal and Jean scarcely touched her food. Nobody seemed to have anything to talk about. I was almost sorry I had come. After dinner, Jean and Jack left to make arrangements with a mortician and I helped Mary with the dishes. She was in a blue funk.

  I told her, “When a man decides to get into the rackets, he knows there’s a strong possibility he will die a violent death. With anyone as belligerent as Tom Talsman it could happen early.”

  “I’m not thinking of him. I’m thinking of Jean.” “They weren’t so close, were they?”

  “As kids, they were very close. It was a great disappointment to Jean when she learned Tom was involved with hoodlums.”

  “So she made up for it by leading a blameless life?”

  Mary said tightly, “Easy, Puma. You’re on thin ice.”

  “I’m asking you to be reasonable. If that puts me on thin ice, so be it. Your morals are a little confused, though, sister.”

  “Go,” she said. “Leave.”

  “Relax,” I told her.

  She looked up and her eyes were agates. “I asked you to leave. Do I have to call the police to get you to leave?”

  I put down the dish towel and reached out for her. She backed away, water from her wet hands dripping on the kitchen floor.

  “Damn you, Joe, don’t touch me! I’ve had enough of you this evening. I want you to go right now.”

  It wasn’t a time to argue. Nor, I felt, was it a time to leave her alone. I went out and sat in the Plymouth in front of her apartment. When Jack and Jean returned from the mortician, I left. There were a few places I could have gone and perhaps should have gone but I was tired and spiritless. I went home.

  I stayed in the shower a long time, letting the stiff, warm spray massage the back of my neck and my taut shoulder muscles. Then I came out with a robe on and sat down with a can of beer to wait for the eleven o’clock news report on Channel Four. The commentator gave a little more than a minute of his time to the death of Tom Talsman and made no mention of the shouted lewdness. I finished the beer and went to bed.

  The morning Times had a front page story on the Senate Interim Committee currently probing the private investigation racketeers in this area. The piece about Tom Talsman flanked this story and my name was prominently mentioned.

  I had been damned by make-up proximity. A certain amount of unfavorable publicity is good for a private investigator’s business; we don’t get clients who would be better served by the police department. But connecting an investigator with any kind of Congressional committee was the road to bankruptcy in these frightened ‘fifties.

  Perhaps Mary was right. Perhaps I should butter up my rich friend, Jack Ross, in the hope that he would make a place for me in his operations.

  Motive, motive, automotive … I was trying to digest this with my Wheaties when the phone rang.

  Mary said, “I’m sorry, Joe. I haven’t time to talk, but I had to take the time to tell you I was sorry.”

  “Thanks for calling. You’re a sweet, warm, loyal girl and it would be a wonderful world if everybody was like you.”

  “If everybody was like me,” she protested, “there wouldn’t be any men. And that would be a horrible, world.”

  “Not for me. Take care of yourself. I’ll phone you later.”

  Motive, motive, automotive … People always phoned me right after I had put the milk on my breakfast cereal and I always came back to a limp dish. Motive, motive, automotive … To hell with that. I read that Arno Eriksen was still in the hospital, though his condition was hearteningly improved. No success had been achieved in the search for his assailant.

  What search? The newspapers hadn’t even been informed that Arno was one of the boys who had clobbered me. The only search, if any, being made for his assailant would be made by his partner. I hoped that Arno’s sidekick was still out of town and that they were not really close friends. Hoodlums aren’t likely to be out-foxed twice and there would be no financial complications limiting their next visit. They would be out for something simple, like revenge.

  My headache was gone but my ribs were still sore. I washed my few dishes and shaved and went to the office. The mail consisted of one bill, no checks. A throwaway shoppers’ newspaper and two car dealers’ ads claiming to have many models priced below the “so-called low-priced three.”

  It was another overcast day and I was at a dead end. A brighter man might have glimpsed the pattern by now; I sensed that the solution was about to bite me on the nose. Frustration and a feeling of insufficiency gnawed at me. The day’s dullness didn’t help. Well, the Department wasn’t being any more successful and they had thousands of men and acres of equipment. I had helped them more than they had helped me. Carry on, Puma, win, lose or draw.

  I phoned the office of George Ryerson and Eileen Rafferty answered. I asked her, “Would it be possible for you to have lunch with me today?”

  “Why should I? I’ve already been interrogated by the police.”

  “About what?”

  “About my — supposed relations with Mr. Ryerson. His widow has a nasty mind.”

  “George might have given her reason to have a nasty mind. He wasn’t exactly a saint, you know.”

  “And I’m not exactly an adulteress, Mr. Puma. I see no point in having lunch with you.”

  “I’m single,” I argued, “and you could pick an expensive place to eat. What can you lose?”

  A pause. And then her voice became warmer. “All right. I’ll meet you at Stormoff’s at one o’clock.

  I replaced the phone and turned around in my chair to stare out at the sullen day. I thought of all the people I had questioned and had heard from and about, looking for relationships.

  Finally, I took a piece of typing paper and printed each name in a separate box on it. Then, with lines, I connected the names that had obvious connections, such as Jean and Mary and Ross. I connected Greene with the hoodlums tentatively and the hoodlums with Talsman definitely. I put a tentative line between Eileen Rafferty and George Ryerson. I made the tentative lines light and the obvious relationships darker.

  I was getting nowhere, but having fun, when Sergeant Lehner walked in. He seemed unhappy.

  “Welcome,” I said. “I was about to make some coffee. Would you like a cup?” I went over to put the water on my hot plate.

  He slumped down in my customer’s chair. “I thought it was about time we had an honest meeting of minds, Puma.” He paused. “And exchange of information.”

  “You thought? Or your superior thought?”

  He said evenly, “I’d like to talk without any of your sarcastic humor. Will that be possible?”

  I nodded, and turned the plate to high. I came back to sit behind my desk. “What did you boys learn when you questioned Eileen Rafferty?”

  “Not much. Except that it seems Mrs. Ryerson was pathologically jealous.”

  “Even though she was back-dooring Ryerson?”

  He nodded. “Those are the kind, I heard, who are the most jealous. The psychologists have a name for it.”

  “Projection,” I supplied. “It’s a word Mrs. Ryerson gave me when she was explaining about George. He was jealous, too. How clear is she for the time her husband was killed?”

  “Solid. The maid supports her and the maid isn’t exactly in her fan club. I suppose that’s where you got the lead to Colt, from the maid?”

  “I suppose. How about th
is homo angle on Talsman?”

  “If we picked up all the homos in this area, we’d have to fence off Griffith Park to hold them. It could tie Dennis Greene in, though. Did he threaten you yesterday?”

  “No. He accused me of insolence. Otherwise, it was a friendly visit.”

  Lehner rubbed his temples. “I thought you saved your insolence for us. Isn’t that water boiling yet?”

  “Not yet, Sergeant. You know, if that other hoodlum thinks there’s a dollar in this business, he’ll be back to see me. And Eriksen, too, once he’s out of the hospital.”

  He smiled dryly. “Even if there isn’t a dollar in this mess, either or both could be back because of the job you did on Eriksen. That’s what you’re really thinking.”

  I looked at him innocently. “Didn’t Captain Jeswald explain that to you? I wasn’t the one who beat up Eriksen. Don’t you read the papers, Sergeant?”

  He yawned. “Stop the bull, Puma. I’m glad I’m not you right now.”

  “The Department will protect me,” I said. “I have a lot of faith in the Department. That water’s hot enough now.”

  I took out two cups from a drawer of my desk and put some instant coffee into them. I poured the hot water and said, “No cream or sugar. Sorry.”

  He leaned back and sipped the coffee. “Cozy, aren’t you? What do you charge the suckers, Puma?”

  “A hundred a day.”

  “Man, that’s thirty-six thousand a year, if you work every day.”

  “It’s about nine thousand a year, net,” I said. “My best year was fourteen thousand. And that was because of bonuses for exceptional service. On my daily rate, I wouldn’t come near it.”

  “It’s a lot more than I make,” he said.

  “You could get a license and try it, Sergeant.”

  He said nothing. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked gloomily past me, out the window.

  “You’re nowhere in this case, aren’t you?” I asked. “Just like I am.”

  His glance came back to meet mine. He didn’t speak. I returned the favor.

  Finally, he said, “That Jean Talsman is a call girl, isn’t she?”