The Case of the Vanishing Beauty

by Richard S. Prather

  "Yeah. I imagine he does." I still couldn't figure the mess out, but maybe I'd got a little more to tie in with the rest when it started making sense. I'd been making headway on the bourbon, and Brent took the glass from my hand.

  "Mix you another." he said.

  "Thanks. Make it light." While he mixed the drinks, I ran over the few things I had in my head. There was starting to be a glimmer. I played with it and it got better. But it still wasn't good enough.

  When Brent handed me the drink, I was working on an idea. I said, "Got anything else you can give me?"

  "Can't think of anything. I just take the drivel out there, get my dough, and flash out."

  "O.K.," I said. "You can help if you want to. Maybe. How about it?"

  He thought a minute. "I could be cutting my own throat, but I'll go along. If you weren't kidding about murder, count me in."

  "I wasn't kidding."

  O.K. Who got murdered?"

  I shook my head. "It wouldn't make any difference to you. The less you know, the better for you. Now, how about the setup out at the temple? And have you got a phone number you can call Narda on?"

  "Yeah. I got a number. But I don't know much about the layout. Sometimes I go in the front in a big, black-draped room and just wait there, and sometimes I go to Narda's room, like tonight. You know where that is—on the side—if you saw me out there."

  "Ever see anybody else there besides Narda?"

  "Just that doll. That Loren. Sometimes I'd hear others, but they never came in."

  "Where's the phone in the house?"

  "I never saw it, but I heard it ring. Seems like it was just outside the big front room."

  I let it fit together in my head. Then I said, "You said you had the number. Who generally answers?"

  "Sometimes Narda. Sometimes one of the women."

  "O.K. If you want to help, do this." I looked at my watch; it was a minute or two before twelve-thirty. "Put in a call out there at exactly one o'clock. Exactly. If Narda answers, fine. If not, get him. You've got to talk to Narda himself. Then when you can get him on the line, keep him there as long as you can. I don't care what you give him, but hold him if you can do it without making him leery. Can you do that?"

  He frowned. "Sure. I guess so. What for?"

  "The less you know about it, the better. One other thing. If he should hang up, call him again, fast. Right away. Let the phone ring two or three times or till someone answers, then hang up. Hang up and forget all about it. Got it?"

  "Got it. Call him, get Narda, hold him, then if he hangs up I call him right back and hang up myself. Kinda nutty, don't you think? You used to bourbon?"

  I grinned at him. "Yeah. I'm used to bourbon. Just don't forget. One o'clock sharp. What time you got now?"

  He got his watch off the dresser and peered at it. "At the gong, it will be exactly twelve-thirty. Gong."

  My watch checked. "You seem O.K., Brent," I said. "But if you're pulling my leg, I'll come back and break your neck."

  He grinned. "You look like you could do it. But it's all straight, Scott. Let rife know what cooks."

  "Sure. Mighty good bourbon you serve here. Thanks. Try some of mine sometime. It's the same stuff." I got up.

  He stuck out his hand. "I'll make the call."

  I shook his hand. He grinned lopsidedly and said, "And peace be with you, brother."

  Chapter Eleven

  I WAS SPENDING a lot of time in these damn bushes. It smelled damp and musty, but I waited and smoked a cigarette cupped in my palm till exactly twelve-fifty-nine. I snubbed out the cigarette, made sure the little automatic was in the right-hand pocket of my coat, then walked quickly across the graveled drive. My feet made little scraping sounds on the gravel, but I walked right up to Narda's door and waited. A thin slice of light showed under the door, and I could hear someone pacing back and forth inside. Narda must have things on his mind.

  I checked my watch again. One on the nose. The phone rang inside. Brent was right on time.

  The phone kept ringing, then it stopped suddenly. In about thirty seconds I could hear somebody knocking on the far door of Narda's room.

  The sound of pacing stopped abruptly. The mellow voice I remembered from Sunday morning said, "Yes? What is it?"

  "It's me, darling. Loren."

  "Yes. What is it? What is it?" Rather brusque, I thought.

  "It's Mr. Brent on the phone. He wants to talk to you."

  "Can't it wait till morning? What an idiotic hour! What time is it?"

  "One o'clock. Open the door."

  "No!"

  Silence for a moment. Then, "Are you coming?"

  "Yes. I'll be right out. And…forgive me, Loren. I didn't mean to be so abrupt. I was taking a nap."

  "Of course."

  I heard Narda moving around again. About two minutes later, I heard him open the door and shut it behind him. I pulled the keys I'd brought with me out of my pocket and had the door unlocked in thirty seconds. I held my breath, cracked the door open, and peered in. Empty. The bed was rumpled and the light was still on, but the far door was closed. I eased quickly inside and shut the door behind me. I got busy.

  I looked over the room. Bed, chair, dresser, closet, and an open door leading into the bathroom. I gave the closet a quick peek. Robes and turbans, that was all. If he had any business suits, they were someplace else. I knew I wouldn't have much time, so I shut the closet door and started going through the dresser. I found shaving tools, talcum, handkerchiefs, shorts—nothing important. I turned around and something sticking out from under one of the pillows on the rumpled bed caught my eye. If Narda was sleeping on something, it might be good. I went over and jerked out two registers that looked familiar. I opened one and took a look. It was the same kind of register I'd signed at the sunrise service. I flipped the pages till I came to a blank spot. I checked the last entries, and sure enough, third from the bottom was "Francis Joyne." I didn't see any other familiar names. I started to look into the other register, flipped it open, and noticed it also was a list of scrawled signatures.

  Outside, the phone rang.

  Damnit to hell, Narda must have hung up. He was probably on his way back to the room, and I didn't have what I'd really come for. I stuck the registers under my arm and made a jump for the bathroom, found the switch, and flicked it on. The first thing my eye lit on was a drinking glass over the washbasin. I stuck my fingers down inside it, whirled, snapped off the light, and took two quick steps back across the bedroom.

  The phone had stopped ringing and I could hear the vibration of footsteps close in the hall. I yanked the door in front of me open, stepped outside, and shut the door.

  Not a second too soon. I heard Narda come into the room at almost the same instant I shut the door. I stood a minute, listening. Nothing happened. I got out of there.

  I barged inside the City Hall and started for the elevators. The uniformed man that stands—or rather sits—guard over the register in the lobby said, "Hey!"

  I walked back to him.

  "Sign," he said.

  "No bombs. No plot."

  "Sign."

  "Real name?" Hell, I wasn't trying to be smart. I thought we could make jokes and be happy.

  "Sign?"

  I signed. This gent had no sense of humor whatsoever. I don't suppose I would either if I sat in a big lobby in a nice uniform with a nice book, and then stupid lugs like me walked right on by without signing. Miserable of me. Oh, well. I took the elevator to the Spring Street floor.

  Sam stuck the long, black cigar back in his mouth when I came in. "Wondered when you'd show up," he said around the cigar. "Where the hell you been? My wife's gonna divorce me if this keeps up."

  "And a good thing it would be for the poor woman," I said. I briefed Sam on what had happened to me up till the time I'd called him from Cornell Martin's, then added, "Just now I been raising hell. Including breaking and entering."

  Sam pulled a wooden kitchen match out of his pocket, looked at
it, laid it on the desk, and took the cigar out of his mouth. "Breaking and entering," he growled. He stuck his big chin out at me. "Breaking and entering. Didn't kill anybody else, did you? And what the hell you doing with that silly glass?"

  I was holding the glass upside down, my fingers stuck up inside it. He reached for it.

  I yanked it out of the way. "Uh-uh. Mustn't touch. One of the things I broke and entered for. Fingerprints."

  "Fingerprints? Whose fingerprints?"

  "I got the glass out of Narda's bathroom. It's logical to assume they're Narda's. No?"

  "Yeah. What's this 'no'?"

  "Company I keep. Anyway, since nobody seems to know who this Narda character really is, and since I think he's a crook from 'way back, maybe if we get prints, we can find out who the guy is."

  "Yeah."

  "O.K. How soon can you get the dope on this if there's latent prints you can lift?"

  "After we lift them, or get pictures—if you haven't messed them all up like you probably have—we check here. If that's no good, we'll check Sacramento, and put them on the wire down to San Diego and back to Washington. If it's got to be fast, we can probably get an answer back in just a few hours from the FBI in Washington. We've got identification in two hours before this."

  "Efficient," I said.

  "Damn right, efficient. Don't believe all you read in the paper. We're plenty damn efficient." He twisted his big mouth up. "No?"

  I grinned at him. "Yeah. How about the Seipels?"

  "You took long enough to ask, Shell. Also, you took long enough phoning in. Result, we get one Seipel. The other one's taken a walk. We don't know where yet."

  "Great. Sorry, Sam. I was more interested in the girl."

  "I sent a man out there to talk to her. Too bad you couldn't stay and hold her hand, Romeo."

  I got a charge out of Sam. He was gruff, and sometimes he made with the wisecracks, but he was a damn good cop, and he just ribbed me for fun. He'd have stuck his neck out for me—and he could have had my right arm if he'd asked for it. He wouldn't ask, though. That's the kind of guy he was.

  I asked, "You didn't see my gun out there, did you?"

  "No. No guns at all. You throw yours away?"

  "Yeah. I left in a hurry. Something else, Sam. I want an opinion."

  "On what?"

  I reached into my inside pocket and pulled out the funny-looking, funny-tasting cigarette I'd put in my pocket when I changed suits—the cigarette I'd got off Maggie's desk at El Cuchillo. I gave it to Sam and said, "I picked this up yesterday. Just before I went in to see Narda, I took a few big drags on it before it dawned on me it was screwy. Could that be a got-butt?"

  He took the cigarette from me, split open the end, and looked at the tobacco. Then he lit it and took a puff.

  "Marijuana? Hell, no. It's just a cigarette. Off brand." He squinted at one end. "Here. The name's stamped right on the paper. Sounds like a Mexican cigarette."

  I lit a Lucky and tried to feel my level best. It didn't work. "It is," I said. "That's what it is, a Mexican cigarette."

  "What you pulling, Shell? This a joke of some kind?"

  "No joke. Joke's on me. I'm laughing. Look, Sam, you'll check the prints, huh?"

  "We'll check the prints. Oh, yeah. That car you swiped. It was registered to Paul Seipel. He's the dead one."

  "Paul's the dead one? Then Peter's probably looking for me."

  "Probably."

  I got up. I hadn't told Sam about the registers I'd picked up at Narda's. I would, but I wanted to give them a little going-over first. "Say hello to the wife," I said. "I think she's a brave little woman."

  Chapter Twelve

  THE GUPPIES ALL crowded up against the front of the aquarium and darted back and forth when I stuck my nose in front of the tank. I was a low character—the fish in the office hadn't been fed since Saturday afternoon. Sometimes it's good for them, though. Fact, I sprinkled a little sardine meal in the feeding ring and they ricocheted off each other trying to get there first. I checked the water temperature, then went over and sat down behind my desk.

  You look at my desk and you'd think I made a hundred grand a year before taxes, and brother, would you be wrong! The desk is a solid, heavy chunk of mahogany I got after successfully completing a jewel job, and it makes the office look as if things get done in it. As a matter of fact, about the only time I spend in the office is when I come in to pick up mail addressed there and to feed the fish, or when I'm just sitting waiting for a job to turn up.

  Besides the desk, there's the swivel chair behind it, a couple of leather chairs for clients, one empty filing cabinet and one nearly full, and a bookcase stuffed with the Encyclopedia Britannica, Who's Who, and a three-volume set of Frank Harris' My Life and Loves, among other things, on top of the bookcase, a ten-gallon aquarium containing the dozen guppies. Dark-blue wall-to-wall carpet, and that's it.

  I'd brought the two registers with me and I had an idea they might turn out to be plenty important, so I looked around for a place to hide them. Finally I cut half the insides out of two old copies of True—sacrilege—and stuck one register in each. They fitted nicely, so I left the magazines in plain sight on top of the desk. Hardly original, but good enough.

  I put my cordovans on the desk—gingerly—and leaned back in the swivel chair. The last time I'd been in here had been when I'd talked to Georgia. Georgia Martin. Back when it had all started. How long ago had it been? A month, it seemed like, but actually, just thirty-six hours before. From two o'clock on a gloomy Saturday afternoon to two o'clock on a dismal Monday morning. Thirty-six hours punctuated by violent death and soft lips, hypnotic phrases and the hot breath of guns.

  I shut my eyes for a minute and pictures danced through my brain: Lina in black shorts and scarlet bolero, screaming and leaping from the path of a thrown knife; piercing eyes under a white turban; blood spurting from a dying man's throat; the shy glance of a green-eyed girl, blushing from head to toe; an imposing figure with arms raised, under a huge, almost nebulous portrait; a fat woman slapping her stomach and wheezing; a white arm sliding slowly down the seat of a car, twitching once…

  I jerked myself upright in the chair and dragged my feet off the desk. I looked at my watch. Two-thirty. I'd come close to falling asleep for the night.

  I got up, stretched, and took the little .32 automatic out of my coat pocket. I pulled out the clip and looked at it. Two rounds left. I felt naked without my .38 under my arm. I wondered where that sweet little Colt was. The last time I'd seen it was when Paul Seipel had lifted it out of my holster when Narda and I were getting along so famously. And me? I've got one gun. Uh-huh, one whole gun. No arsenal. You know why? In the first place, it's all I need. In my business you need a gun, sure. You need it maybe one case out of ten. Nine times out of ten you'll never need it. It's that tenth time. If you don't have it then, there may never be an eleventh. And also in my business, if you get your gun taken away from you, usually you either get it back or you don't have any more use for guns. Or anything. I'd just been lucky, but that left me with plenty of cartridges for a .38 revolver, but a .32 automatic in my pocket.

  Two-thirty of a Monday morning, and I still had a long way to go before everything fitted. The pattern was getting clearer as it got crazier, and the clearer it grew, the more vicious and evil it became. I got up, turned off the light over the aquarium, flicked off the overhead bulbs, and went down to the street. I had a hankering to see the mountainous Mrs. Remorse again.

  It was a little after two-thirty, but there was a chance I could catch Maggie out at El Cuchillo. I turned the nose of the Cad up Broadway and sniffed the air. It was heavy, damp, getting ready to rain again. I had enough now to justify asking Mrs. Margaret Remorse some pertinent and possibly embarrassing questions. That was one gal, though, I'd hate to have really mad at me. She'd probably take two falls out of three.

  L.A. at around two-thirty in the morning is like any other big city a half hour or so after the bars close. Not
much traffic, few people on the streets, a handful of cars filled with die-hard celebrators or high-school delinquents hopped up on bennies or goof-balls and looking for something with a real kick, a new pop.

  So I didn't pay too much attention at first when I kept catching the reflection of lights in the rear-view mirror. But when I left Sunset behind and headed up North Broadway I half unconsciously watched the corner behind me and, sure enough, the lights kept about half a block back. I'd been idling along about thirty, so I kicked it up to fifty. So did the lights. I slowed down again; the lights slowed down. Eenie meenie, two plus two. It wasn't hard to figure. The lights followed me into College Street, and I had a good idea who was back there.

  I wasn't happy about it, and it worried me. I could have been wrong. I wasn't, but I kept hoping I was.

  After so long a time you get a little sick of violence. You see guys gasp and bleed and die, and it makes you feel a little funny, a little sick while it's happening, when it's right in front of your eyes. But it isn't ever quite real when it's going on, when you're in it. Maybe a muscle man slugs you, or a torpedo takes a shot at you, or you're pulling a trigger yourself or smashing a fist into a guy's face, and you're hurting or crippling or killing some trigger-happy hood. But when it's actually happening, you've got adrenalin shooting into your blood stream, your heart pounds, your breath comes faster, pumping more oxygen into your veins. Glands and body organs start working overtime to keep you sharp, keep you alive, and you're not the same; you're not thinking like the same guy. It's all kind of a blur like a picture out of focus jumping in front of your eyes, and you don't think much about what's going on, just let your reflexes take over. If the reflexes are trained right, and if you're lucky, you come out scared but O.K. Nothing to it, all over.

  But when it is all over, when you've got time to think, that's when you get sick remembering vivid little details you hardly noticed at the time. The way a body jerked when a bullet ripped through fine skin and flesh and muscle and bone, or the way it jerked just before it stopped being a man and became what they call down at the morgue a "dead body" or the "deceased." Maybe you even wonder what kind of man he was, what he liked for breakfast, where he was born, stupid things like that—and wonder what made him get a gun in his hand and like the feel of it. Maybe you even wonder what it is that goes out of a man when 158 grains of lead drive into his brain or his heart. Maybe you get sick and your stomach turns upside down and then it's all over and you forget about it. Almost.