She got out a cigarette. “May I?” I nodded my head and lit her smoke for her. She took a long drag. “Thank you. I need to get this off my chest.”
By the looks of her chest, I could vouch there might end up being quite a bit of talk before the interview was finished. “It’s okay, Mrs. Wilson. I’ve seen and heard a lotta strange things in my time.”
“Have you—have you ever handled cases with circumstances that cannot be explained? I mean, like things that don’t seem…worldly?”
“You might say that—plus six years on the Los Angeles Police force kinda gives you a crash course in human nature and odd occurrences, Mrs. Wilson.”
“Oh, I see. Well, you have a nice face. I guess I can tell you. But, please, this must remain in strictest confidence—or else people will think I’m…well, know you, crazy or something.”
“Shoot—I’m all ears.”
“Well, I’ve been married for about three years. My husband told me he was a developer of gold mines in Northern California and Nevada. He said his company rented heavy equipment to re-open and reinforce old mines that still had a lot of ore in them.”
“Okay…so far so good.” I took out a Lucky Strike and lit it.
“But when I asked him if I could go along and see one for myself he became irritated and said a mine shaft was no place for a woman. Maybe I could accept that, but then strange things began to happen. Four nights ago he called me here in Los Angeles and said he was phoning from Reno, Nevada and he’d be home in about a week. That night when I was going to bed, I happened to look out the window down at the street lamp before I drew the drapes. There leaning against the lamp post was my husband!”
“And you’re sure it was him? Weren’t you a little far away to make a positive identification?”
“Never with Todd. He’s six-foot six, always wears a light sport jacket with light-brown trousers, brown and white wingtip shoes and a straw Panama hat. That was exactly what I saw.”
“Well, granted there aren’t too many guys at six-six, lady, but still couldn’t it have been someone else your husband hired to look and act like him? But of course, that begs the question…why…doesn’t it?”
“It gets worse, Mr. Denning. Just as I turned the light off to get into bed, the phone rang again and it was Todd, my husband. He told me he forgot to tell me he loved me. I ran to the drapes and peaked out. That man was still standing there looking up at my window—while he was on the phone to me from Reno, Nevada!”
I took a deep drag on my cigarette and squinted my eyes to look important. I was thinking of my adventures in other dimensions with Lei-tao, Toggth, Ravna, the rather strange news that Honey’s sire was an alien from some other star system or whatever—and that he, too, looked just like us. So who was to say Mrs. Wilson’s husband was like Nazir Ravna had told me, “we look just like you, Denning…” I put my cigarette out and reached into my top right drawer for a bottle of gin. “Would you like a gin and tonic, Mrs. Wilson?” I asked.
She eyed me curiously. “Are you a drunkard, Mr. Denning? My father always told me to stay away from a man who drinks too much alcohol.”
I laughed. “Well, Mrs. Wilson, I think I drink moderately. So…do you want one or not—I don’t charge for drinks, you know.”
She smiled and relaxed her face a bit. “Yes, Mr. Denning. I do believe I would like that drink. Maybe it will relax me.”
I poured us both a jigger of gin and added the tonic, handing the lady one of the glasses. “Well, here’s to you, kid!” I said, gulping the whole damn thing down at once. Mrs. Wilson, a bit more lady-like, sipped hers. “So…now you’ve made your opening statement. Was the man standing in the lamp-light your husband or an imposter? And…are you certain the man on the phone had the voice of your husband?”
“Yes, absolutely. I would know Todd’s voice anywhere—even on the phone. It’s very distinctive. He never learned to articulate L’s or R’s. I find that curious, but he says he was educated—educated—uh—”
“—educated where, Mrs. Wilson?”
“I—I don’t know. He’s never said. But to continue, Mr. Denning.” She took a larger sip from her drink and sat back, a little more relaxed. “Now, perhaps you must suspend reality as we know it, because that’s what I’ve had to do. The very next night Todd calls me again. I go through exactly the same paces except I don’t go to the drapes before he calls. I answer the phone and he informs me he’s run into some difficulties with the mining operation in Nevada and he’ll be delayed a week or so more. Out of curiosity, I carefully make my way to the drapes, open them a crack and then—then—” Her eyes began to mist in terror. “—then…there stood two of my husband looking up at me in the light of the street lamp!”
Carefully, I watched Mrs. Wilson’s expression. She seemed to be on the level. “Just so we make things crystal clear here, let me ask you: are you on any drugs or hallucinatory medications that might make you see double or create some kind of fantasy scenario?”
She looked rather indignantly at me. “Mr. Denning! I pride myself on good diet, good exercise and moderation in all things.”
“Okay, okay, Mrs. Wilson. Just making sure.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “So let me put this thing together in my words and you tell me how it sounds to you. First of all your husband goes away to work in Nevada. Presumably, he calls you one night from that state and while you’re talking to him you also happen to see him physically standing below your apartment under a streetlight. What floor do you live on?”
“The second. I don’t like ground floor apartments, safety and all, you know. Todd and I have always lived in second or third-floor apartments.”
“So you’d have a pretty good view from the second floor. Now, I need to ask another question. Was he in the habit of calling you every night to say hello or that he missed you?”
“No. He hardly calls when he’s away. But these two nights in a row he did call. It was not like him, but I certainly welcomed the sudden attention. Todd’s not a man to be…be…shall I say, demonstrative?”
“I see. Okay, so on this second night he calls, you’re getting ready for bed. You answer and while you’re talking to your husband, you quietly make your way over to the drape. How far was the location of the phone from the window?”
“We have a long extension cord on our telephone. It’s not a wall type, but one of the newer Bakelite portable dial phones.” She looked at me with a slight flush of color coming to her cheeks. “I’m not lying to you, why would I lie to you? Why would I waste your time—or mine by coming here?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Wilson, humans are a strange lot. Sometimes loneliness drives people to strange places.”
“Do I look like a lonely woman to you, Mr. Denning?”
I looked her over a second time. Her fingernails were done immaculately, she wore a pair of gold earrings and her hair was meticulously perfect. “You want my truth or a courtesy?”
“I always appreciate the truth.” She looked at me with those very blue eyes, as if I were to say the wrong thing she’d crumble right there in front of me.
“I’d say yes, Mrs. Wilson. I think you’re lonely and even though you’re financially comfortable, I’d guess you feel you got yourself into a lonely marriage, the kind where only one of you is playing the game.”
She looked away. “Okay…so if we’re telling truths—yes, Todd is often cold and absent, even when we’re together. But I don’t see what my intimate life has to do with what I came to you about.”
“They’re all mixed up in the same batch of human behavior, lady. You see, being a cop taught me there are a thousand crossover lines between fact and fiction, love and hate, happiness and despair. You come in here looking for help, right? How can I help if I don’t understand what makes you and your husband tick? You know why? Because when you send me out onto that street out there, the more I know the quicker I can resolve this whole thing and save me some shoe leather and you a lotta dough. People hide behind their mor
al or religious partitions, pretending that all is hunky-dory when all the time they’re dyin’ inside from lack of sleep, lack of love, lack of friends and missing the one thing in their lives they sought out in a relationship with another person, companionship with security. Now you tell me, Mrs. Wilson, I’ll bet you’re experiencing neither quality companionship nor an all too secure life just about now.”
She got up out of her chair. She reached into her purse for another smoke. I came around and lit it for her. “Thank you.” She walked away from me, her tall, wonderful body looking just fine in that tight skirt, her buttocks moving like slow pistons on a quality engine. “No one’s ever spoken to me like that, Mr. Denning. I can see why you might be very successful at what you do. You’re a good psychologist.”
“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Wilson. I just call it as I see it.”
“But you can’t see my life from your eyes, Mr. Denning.”
“Maybe not, but there’s a pretty good chance I have a pair of lenses that fit. That’s why I’m a private dick.”
She flushed. “A private what?”
“Private dick, you know, detective—probably named after police detectives like the hero in those Dick Donovan detective books.”
“Oh,” she said, clearing her throat and taking a puff on her cigarette.
I sat back down behind my desk. Rusty Wilson followed and came to sit opposite me once again. “So how’d you get the name ‘Rusty’? Somehow you don’t look like a Rusty to me.”
“My hair, when I was a girl. I was born Florence McCready. My mother is Irish, my father was Scottish. I used to be called Flo.”
“Do you mind if I call you Flo? You can call me Cable to cut out all the formal crap. I’m not much for stuffy protocol.”
“Okay, Cable. Actually, I like Flo better. It’s more feminine, don’t you think?”
“Definitely.” I lit up another smoke, poured us both some more booze and sat back in my chair. “Now, Flo, as I see it, you need someone to sniff out this mystery hubby that shows up in twos—and is supposed to be a few hundred miles away at the same time on the telephone.” I was thinking of Lei-tao and the tricky shape-shifting I had witnessed. “I think I need to start in your bedroom.”
She giggled under her breath. “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean I need to see the pattern. The phone calls, the guys appearing under the street lamp, etcetera. Is your husband scheduled to call again soon?”
“Why, as a matter of fact he is. That in itself is unusual. He said he needed to talk to me tonight about meeting him in San Francisco for a holiday. Of course I was quite taken aback by that. He’s never done that before in the three years of our marriage.”
“Maybe he misses you. So, when is he calling you again?”
“Tonight. Can you come? I want you to know, Mr. Denning—uh, Cable, I’m already building a confidence in you. So…perhaps now I can tell you the most horrible part of it.”
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Flo. Yeah, I can be there—what time is Mr. Wilson supposed to be calling?”
“Nine o’clock. He said he would be calling at the same time, on the dot.”
“So, now, what’s this most horrible thing I need to know?”
“Well, first of all, Todd was only six-feet two when we married. Each year he’s grown taller. I know because I’ve had to change out his entire wardrobe each year.”
I raised my eyebrows on that one. “Hmmm…so that means your husband has grown about an inch and a third each year.”
She took a deep slug from her drink. “Now, here’s the part that frightens me so, that I can hardly speak of it, Cable.”
“Just go slow, Flo. I’m right here and so far you’re hitting a hundred percent on my truth meter.”
“So one day the maid was late in cleaning the bathroom and I needed to take a shower. When I entered I noticed a lot of flaky patches of skin all over the shower floor. Todd had left that morning for Reno. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. A day later I was sorting out Todd’s older clothes to take downstairs into our garage to donate to charity. We keep a big burlap bag. I went downstairs with an armful of his clothes. The bag seemed fuller than I had remembered, so I rummaged around in the bag to make more room. Suddenly….oh, Cable—suddenly…I, uh,…..oh!”
“Suddenly what? You can’t leave it hangin’ here, kid.”
“Suddenly…my hand felt something---ooooo! cold and leathery. It was large and as I pulled on it a very long scaly skin-thing emerged! I screamed to myself and dropped it on the floor. But then I regained my senses. On a tool bench in front of our car, I found a yardstick. The light in the basement was dim, but I could see well enough to spread this horrible thing out to measure it. It came out to be almost six-foot six!”
Now we had crossed that line into the incredulous. Somewhere in human experience there comes a threshold when one either dismisses what he’s hearing or suspends his notion of reality long enough to see it through. I always chose the latter. I thought carefully about what my client had told me. “I have to admit this sounds very bizarre, Flo. But you know what, I believe you. I’ve experienced a few inexplicable things in my life—enough to know we live in a limited three-dimensional world here.”
“Then you really do believe me?” she said, her eyes lighting up. She got up, came over to me and hugged me where I sat. “Thank God! At least there’s one other person who believes me!”
I smiled up at her as she withdrew her arms. “So, if you want to hire me on the spot, I receive twenty-dollars a day plus expenses, like carfare, meals and any photos or documents taken pertaining to your case. How’s that sound?”
She reached into her purse and handed me five twenty-dollar bills. “Can we accomplish this in five days—and can you start tonight?”
“Didn’t you say old Todd boy is supposed to call tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Then give me your address and telephone number and we’ve got a deal.”
“What about agreements, contracts—something in writing that I paid you? Even a receipt?”
I opened my center drawer and took out a receipt book. I scribbled the necessary info and handed it to her. “As far as a contract is concerned, Flo, I work on the honor system—you trust me to deliver and I’ll trust you to always tell the truth and update me as the situation requires.”
She smiled and then took a last swallow of her gin and tonic. “I think I like you, Cable Denning, Private Detective. I’ve never known any man to talk as frankly as you do. It’s like you don’t care, but you do—I mean, when you talk. I must admit, I feel a little disarmed around you.”
“Well, don’t let that cloud the business at hand, Flo.” I got up and escorted her to the door. On an impulse she grabbed my shoulders and hugged me, kissing me on the cheek.
“I’ll bet not all your clients do that, Cable, do they?” she cooed.
“Frankly, no…but I’m flattered. I’ll see you at your apartment about eight-thirty tonight.”
“Please be punctual. We don’t want to miss Todd’s call.”
“I’m always punctual, Flo—unless, of course, I’m dead.”
A shiver ran through her. “Please….don’t even joke about that, Cable. So far you’re the only human being I can trust. I need you to believe in me. You still do, don’t you? I feel very vulnerable right now.”
“It’s okay, Flo. Yeah, I’m with you—and you’re in safe hands. See you tonight.”
She walked down those stairs from the landing with the kind of movement that wars could be fought over. I had a feeling, however, it was gonna be a hell of a night!
Flo ‘Rusty’ Wilson lived off Hyperion on Rowena Avenue, between the Los Feliz area and the Silver Lake area. I took the red car out and hoofed it a few blocks over to 3228 Rowena. It was just getting good and dark by the time I reached the building. I glanced up at the second floor and then across the street where Flo had told me her duplicate husbands stood in the light
under the lamppost. At 8:25 I rang her buzzer downstairs and she admitted me. I knocked on the door that read “#2.” She opened the door and if I had thought this woman to be a voluptuous babe before, what I saw now knocked me six ways from Sunday! She was dressed in a black negligée with a wonderful light-pink over-robe, matching pearl slippers. She had taken her hair down and it flowed like laced marble over her shoulders. Her skin was that tone of alabaster one sees in paintings except without much makeup, one could make out the freckles that trademarked so many redheads. “Cable,” she greeted me, “Thank you for being so punctual.”
“I told you that’s my second name, Flo.” I entered and looked around at the very rich furniture and the thick floor-to-ceiling drapes that hung at the two large windows, one of which faced the lamppost across the street. Then I looked back at her. “Wow, lady, I—I, uh, didn’t expect such an elegant reception. You’re quite a knock-out in that evening wear.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Cable. May I offer you a drink?”
“Got any smooth English gin?” I asked, still looking around.
“As a matter of fact I do. I went out and bought some bootleg this afternoon since I knew that’s what we were drinking at your office earlier.”
“Well, I’m afraid mine was half rot-gut and half raw alcohol.” She went to the wet bar and fixed us both a drink. She came over to me and handed me one. “Thanks, Flo. You have a nice place here. It just doesn’t look very lived in…no offense.”
“It is a bit sterile, isn’t it. Todd is so fussy about things being just so. Personally, I’m a little bit more of a scatter rug person. But we make do.”
We sat opposite each other for a few minutes. After she finished her first drink, however, she came over to the sofa where I was and sat down next to me. She was wearing an exotic perfume that was transforming some of my organs to some new land of erotic fantasy. “Your—your perfume…is it something…that affects you…the way…it affects me?”
“How does it affect you, Cable?”
“Affectionately, is the best way I can put it. It kind of transports a guy to some other place, if you know what I mean.”
Golden Throat (Cable Denning Mystery Series Book 1) Page 36