by Roy Huggins
I had my shirt half unbuttoned. I went and stood in the doorway and looked at her. She was leaning over, looking at the picture closely, with a derisive little smile on her face.
“It's an old flame,” I said. “I'm a little sentimental about her.” I put on a smile. She shrugged her shoulders, said, “Nice gams,” and went into the kitchen.
I went back into the closet and glanced into the dresser mirror. It wasn't a smile I had put on my face. It was a hideous grimace.
It was hard to take, being wrong about Norma Shannon. But it was more than that. It meant she hadn't been sent by Mrs. Johnston. Peg Bleeker had changed, but not that much. If Norma Shannon had even seen Mrs. Ralph Johnston—especially five years ago—she'd have recognized the picture.
I decided not to bother changing into my other suit. I finished dressing and went out to the kitchen. On the way out I thought of something, something simple and clear. Gloria Gay was the kind of name that might occur to more than one would-be show girl. That made me feel suddenly a little better, a little hopeful.
Norma handed me a cold drink in an old-fashioned glass and said, “Do I ever get to know what it is with Gloria? Why you're looking for her?”
I tasted the drink. It was good. I said, “Did Gloria Gay ever tell you her real name?”
Her eyes grew thoughtful. Her mouth lifted a little at the corners and she touched one of her freckles with a slender little finger. I thought it would be nice to kiss that freckle, and the cheek beside it, and the soft wide mouth.
She said, “Yes. It was Peggy something.” Then she looked at me and held the finger out stiffly. “It was Bleeker. Peggy Bleeker.” She smiled.
Chapter Nine
WE WENT BACK downtown and had dinner at Mike Lyman's. I didn't say much but she didn't seem to mind. She talked. Not too much, but with an easy humor and a pleasant, hyper-thyroid energy. While we were waiting for the sherbet and coffee I excused myself and went into the bar where there was a public telephone. I dialed a number, and a high-pitched female voice screamed into it.
I said, “Is Lee there? Lee Martinez?”
“It depends.”
“Tell him it's Stuart Bailey.”
The voice lost its stridence: “It's someone who says to tell you it's Stuart Bailey.”
Silence. Then, “Hi ya, Stu. Now whose dog do you want caught?”
“This is just a dog I want watched. A fox terrier. Should be an easy two, three days' work. Are you finished with the State job?”
“Yeah. Time-and-a-half for overtime?”
“My coffee's getting cold. The hitch is I want you tonight. Pick us up at the Kazbah so you can spot the girl and take her from there. I'll be with her so don't know me. I'll take her home. You stay on for an hour or so, then come back and pick her up in the a.m.”
“Uh-huh. Well, jus' minute.” There was some mumbling and then the high-pitched screaming came over the line as a background to Lee's, “Okay, Stu, the Kazbah. About an hour.”
“An hour's okay.”
At the Kazbah, Norma Shannon began to show signs of wear. But she did her best. Then Lee came in and leaned on the bar. I took her home.
She lived north of Sunset near the county strip. It was one of those apartment dwellings sprawled on the hillside that look as if they are holding their breaths to keep from sliding down onto the boulevard. A long flight of steps—five hundred, you decide after you climb them— divided it into halves.
Her apartment was at the top of the west side. You could probably see Catalina on a clear day if you cared to look. She got out a key while I caught my wind.
“That's how I keep my figure,” she said, as if she had just stepped out of an elevator.
“That won't keep me from feeling bitter about them,” I wheezed.
She opened the door and turned toward me. It was dark there under the little porte-cochere. Her face was a soft blue against the night, and her close warmth and the dry scent of her hair were all about me.
She whispered, “Come in for a moment. There's a fire laid, and I have some brandy you'd like.” Her breath was warm, and I could feel it moist on my lips.
I took hold of her shoulders and pulled her against me and looked at her; the warm breath was closer now, on my tongue, a part of my own. I found her lips and pressed and hurt them.
After a while I pushed her away and for a moment I had to fight down the impulse to talk, to see her go down in a torrent of words, to watch the mask slip away. It wasn't the time for that...
I muttered, “Can't stay, darling, got my paper route to take care of.” I left her standing there and started down the long flight, feeling a little rotten inside, like a desert jack-rabbit in the off season.
I got up the next morning when I heard the paper clomp against the door. Buster had made page two, with a picture. He had been moved out of the dark stain of his blood, but they had left him on the floor. He had never been a big man; now he looked like a child, huddled grotesquely, grown old suddenly in death.
The story was brief. He had been shot with a .25 caliber gun, a woman's weapon, the story said. The police were investigating and were on the trail of a tall dark man driving a 1942 Buick convertible, who was seen leaving the scene of the slaying. I drive a 1939 Oldsmobile convertible. I wondered which door the tall man was seen leaving by.
I showered and drank two cups of coffee and went down to the office. There weren't any men in blue waiting for me. A call to Marshall Wherry at the Department of Motor Vehicles got me the name and address of the registered owner of the Packard. It was John Vega Cabrillo of Pasadena. I took the Oak Knoll car and got off at Berendo Drive and walked four blocks to the address Wherry had given me. I had gone out to look the place over.
But it wasn't that kind of a place. It covered two-thirds of a square block, surrounded by the most ambitious hedge in Southern California. The hedge probably wasn't more than six feet higher than the local ordinance allowed. The number was carved in an iron shield that hung by two chains from an arch topping a half-ton wrought iron gate.
I turned and walked back to wait for the red car. While I waited I wondered why I'd never heard of John Vega Cabrillo. When I got back I called Franklin Patterson. He'd been a newspaper man in Los Angeles for thirty years. Now he was teaching American and California History at U.S.C.
We insulted each other pleasantly for a few seconds. Then I said, “What can you tell me about John Vega Cabrillo?”
“Oil.”
I waited for a while, but he didn't say any more. “You were always a great one for gossip. Can you give me any other dirt on him?”
“He has a positive passion for anonymity—like a Presidential Assistant. Outside of the fact that he's grimy with gelt and socially stratospheric, I don't know anything about him.”
“Well, that's something. Thanks.”
“Why don't you call Noel Cruickshank?”
I said I would and we hung up.
Noel Cruickshank was society editor of the Evening Standard. For a promise to give him anything I might uncover for publication on John Vega Cabrillo, he gushed that Cabrillo was a member of one of California's oldest families, that he was sixty-five years old, married to a young Brazilian beauty and that he spent most of his time collecting and classifying microscopic fauna.
“I gather there are no purple pages.”
“Not in the past twenty years, probably never. As far as I'm concerned, he's strictly bad copy.”
“You said his wife was young. Know anything about her?”
He coughed delicately into the phone. “There've been some wolves at the door, but she seems to be the soul of discretion—or else very dull. He married her in Brazil several years ago. I haven't bothered to look into them very much further....”
“Definitely bad copy,” I said.
“Right. Tiresome people, really.”
I got my car and drove out to the iron gate and parked facing it about a quarter block up the street. I had the packet of money in my po
cket.
I waited for an hour and then opened my lunch box and ate. I waited three pipefuls longer and then the iron gate swung out. A station wagon rolled through, stopped, and a big fellow in a white shirt, gray peg pants and leather leggings got out and went back and closed the gate. I started my motor and hoped he wouldn't turn my way. He didn't. We both rolled down to La Junta, turned right, went a quarter of a mile and turned right again. He pulled up in front of a cleaning and pressing shop, got out, and went into the shop. I parked and went up to the station wagon and waited for him to come out.
When he did, he had three bright and lacy dresses on hangers held gingerly in his left hand. It was the menace with the lipless mouth. He looked different, though, with the dresses and without the hat. The nose wasn't as straight as it was meant to be and the chin had a deep cleft and a puckered scar. He had a mass of dark brown curls and dark eyes that were large and full-pupiled and dreamy. They looked like eyes that were never really at home except when they were looking at a woman, and nothing was being said because the eyes were saying it all.
I waited until he noticed me. He was almost to the car when he really saw me. He stopped short and his feet did a little startled shuffle like a prize-fighter getting out of the way of a hay-maker.
I stepped up and shoved the pack of money at him. He took it. He'd have taken it if it had been an old shoe.
I leered at him and said, “You went off and left this last night. I took out a dollar for the trouble of finding you and bringing it back.”
His eyes took on a faraway look as if he were seeing me through a diminishing-glass. He was thinking and I could see he didn't like to be hurried when he was doing that. His lips moved slowly but no noise came out.
The conversation had got into a rut so I said politely, “Those are nice dresses you've got there. Did you make them yourself?”
He found some words. “Okay, wise guy. You made the wrong play, let's see how it comes out.”
I said, “How would you like it this way? I go downtown to the homicide detail and tell them about your little visit with me last night and where they can find you. You know, homicide—the detail you go to when people offer to shoot you, or cut off your head and such-like.”
He didn't like that. He looked skeptical, then he thought about it for a while, then he lowered his eyelids and stared out at me with the lower ten per cent of his big black pupils. I thought he might be trying to scare me to death. If I'd been a woman, I felt, I probably would have been, and enjoying it like anything. He said, '“You won't do that, chowderhead.”
“I'm afraid I'll have to, Svengali, unless you start making sense quick.”
His eyes widened a little, wavered, and fell to my necktie and bounced around there for a while. He looked panicky, if a man can do that without moving a muscle. I was a problem for him. I wasn't acting right and he was frozen. I decided I'd better help him or I might not like what he did when he pulled out of it. Little beads of sweat were coming out on his forehead.
I said gently, “Let's get in the car and talk.” I moved over and opened the car door for him.
He put the dresses on the rear seat and slid over under the wheel. I sat down beside him. He was feeling better, the sweat was gone.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you tell me whose snakes you were supposed to be killing or do I go ask your boss about it?”
He stared hard at the oak-grained dashboard and said, “Don't waste your time. They don't know nothin', and it'd only lose me my job.”
“What's so good about the job?”
He just looked at me on that one and didn't say anything.
“All right. Who sent you?”
He looked back at the dashboard and said, “You're nuts, chowderhead! My life wouldn't be worth a snowball in hell.”
“Really tough.”
“You said it.”
“Didn't give you any idea what the deal was, huh?”
“He just gimme a job to do.”
“Professional?”
“Yeah. From Chi.”
“How'd he recruit you?”
“I did some work for him once in Chi.”
I let that hang in the air for a while. Then I said, “Man, I've been to Chicago a couple of times myself.
They just don't grow 'em like that, not even in Chicago.” That didn't get anything out of him so I went on, “Your performance last night had me on the edge of my seat for the opening curtain, but that twist with the money was something right out of Aunt Sadie's hope chest. Whoever's in back of you is about as dangerous as a badminton bird.”
He kept right on looking at the polished dashboard and not saying anything.
“Wanta tell me about it, or shall I go now?” He looked at me then, lowered his lids and gave me the ten per cent again. He still didn't say anything.
I got out and leaned into the car. I said, “You know you shouldn't do that. One of these days you'll go right off to sleep in the middle of something big.” I shut the door softly and walked back to my car.
When I drove by him he was still sitting there, staring out at the gentle blue foothills beyond Altadena.
Chapter Ten
JOHN VEGA CABRILLO'S phone was unlisted and not even Noel Cruickshank knew what it was.
I called the Zoology Department at U.S.C. and learned that Cabrillo was an authority in marine biology and that his special field was the study of mutations in the species sporomitus. Then I called the Pacific Marine Life Society and said I had made a very unusual discovery involving sporomitus; I thought I had an unusual mutation and I wanted to get hold of John Cabrillo.
That's how I found out Cabrillo's phone number was Sycamore 64021. It didn't make me feel clever at all.
A gentle male voice answered.
I said, “I'd like to speak to Mr. Cabrillo.”
“This is he.”
“This is Stuart Bailey, Mr. Cabrillo. The Marine Life Society gave me your number. I have something rather important to discuss with you.”
“The Marine Life Society? I see. Would you like to come out here?” My name didn't seem to have meant anything to him.
“Yes. When?”
“At your convenience, sir. I am always here.”
“All right. Three o'clock.”
“You have the address? All right. You will be met at the gate.”
When I turned in at the iron gate there was someone there to open it for me. It wasn't the man with the dreamy eyes. I drove in and stopped.
He closed and locked the gate and came toward the car. He was a tall, elderly, bald-headed man in a work-dirty white smock. I wondered if the old gentleman made a practice of opening the gate for people as well as answering his own phone.
I opened the car door and the man got in with a tentative smile on his face. “I'm Cherkin,” he said, “Mr. Cabrillo's assistant. Follow the drive around the house. The laboratory is in the rear.”
The house was a large, graying French chateau. It had a genuine look to it, an air of decayed dignity, a kind of brooding nostalgia. The laboratory was different. It was long and low with huge rectangles of glass-brick and stretches of glaring white stucco. I drove into a four-car garage next to the laboratory and we got out.
“I'm afraid you'll find it uncomfortable in the lab, Mr. Bailey.” He looked at me briefly. “But of course you know what to expect.”
“No. I'm afraid not. I'm not a zoologist.”
“Oh, I see.”
We went into a small office that looked crowded and tight as if the laboratory were trying to push it on out of the building. It had a white and chrome desk and a couch and two chairs of white leather and chrome. There wasn't room for anything else. It looked as sterile as a surgeon's tool kit.
Cherkin said, “If you'll wait just one moment. You'll find the latest copy of the... Uh, but you...” Mr. Cherkin turned and went on into the laboratory.
In about five minutes he came in. He was a little man, not more than five and a half feet tall. He had on a
clean white smock. His face was dark and slender, with eyes that had seen the ultimate fate of man, or they looked as if they had. They were set deep in his face and looked out of their shadows with an infinite patience. His hair was fine and white, and lay about his high-domed head like a cumulus cloud.
He walked over to me and held out his hand. It was dry and brittle and I didn't squeeze it very hard.
“What was it, Mr. Bailey? Sit down.” He sat in one of the chairs beside the couch. I hadn't thought he would get behind the desk. He didn't need to.
I said, “I came about Gloria Gay. Or should I say Margaret Bleeker?”
His forehead wrinkled and the patience in his eyes gave way to a gentle sadness. “I'm afraid I don't understand, sir,” he said.
I smiled. “I'm sorry. I was shooting the moon. Shall I start at the beginning?”
“Please do.” There was still no sharpness.
“I'm a private detective. I was hired to find out what went on in the life of a show girl named Gloria Gay from 1938 to a little over a year ago when she showed up again.” I took my pipe out of my pocket. “May I smoke?”
He nodded and smiled. It was a gentle smile. It said he was still prepared to tolerate me in spite of everything.
“I started making inquiries a little over a week ago. The other night a man came to my office and told me to lay off or else. He seemed to mean business. I was able to trace him here. Dresses like a chauffeur. Tall, lots of curly hair. Looks like he might have been in the ring once.”
Cabrillo had begun to look interested. “How did you trace him here?”
“He was driving a Packard registered to you.”
Cabrillo nodded silently for a moment and said, “That would be Martin, Mrs. Cabrillo's chauffeur.” He glanced at me vaguely like a man looking at a brick wall. “There couldn't be any mistake?”
“Huh-uh. I talked to him. He said his boss wouldn't know anything about it. Did he mean you?”
Cabrillo thought about that for a while and said, “No. He would mean my wife. But of course she could not help you.”
We sat for a while, listening to a steady hissing sound like escaping steam coming from behind the laboratory door.