The Four Last Things

by Timothy Hallinan

  I wasn't really crazy about the fact that they'd heard that last message. Well, at least Hammond hadn't identified himself as being with the police.

  Then I learned why they'd left the cassette.

  It was a man's voice, very hushed. “Get out of it,” he said. “No one will tell you again. Get out of it and stay out. If we have to come again, we'll do it when you're home.” He hung up. It was a thin, chilly little voice. It sounded sincere.

  I didn't know who it was, but I knew that it meant Needle-nose was alive. He was the only one who'd seen me at the Borzoi who could link me to Sally Oldfield's death. I didn't think it was Needle-nose's voice, although it sounded vaguely familiar. There was no mistaking the next voice.

  “Wo,” it said, “this be Dexter Smif in your ear. I took the liberty of writin’ down your number off the top of your phone. Good, huh? Think I got a future? Call me if you be needin’ a man of talent.”

  I could use one, I thought as I pulled some stuff together. They couldn't have been any more thorough if they'd passed everything through a sieve. Twice now they'd walked right into my house and right back out again. They'd killed two people under my nose. A lesser man might have had an identity crisis.

  Everything fit into one small bag. I made a desultory effort at straightening up, but the sound of the drip from the leak in the living-room roof sapped me of any excess energy I might have devoted to cosmetic efforts. There was too much to do without worrying about little things like whether the couch was right-side-up.

  I unplugged the phone and the answering machine and removed the cassette, replacing it with a new one. Tugging a few tacks loose, I pulled back a corner of the carpet. With a hand drill that I'd bought during a short-lived attempt to learn carpentry, I made a neat little hole in the floorboards and fed three or four feet of phone cord through it. The floor of my living room hangs right out over the hillside where the hill slopes down to meet the retaining wall onto which a bunch of hazy freaks who occupied the house before me had built the leaky little room under the sun deck.

  Then, clutching the answering machine in one hand and a flashlight in the other, I went outside and around to the side of the house. The rain had let up, but the creek churned loudly through its course at the bottom of the canyon.

  After using the flashlight to locate the phone cord and to check for any scorpions, snakes, or tarantulas that might be thoughtful enough to be hanging around in plain sight, I screwed my courage to its rather low sticking point and crawled in. I seemed to be doing a lot of crawling lately. The farther I crawled, the better Dexter's offer sounded.

  I hooked up the answering machine to the phone jack and then swore at myself briefly and vigorously. I slithered back out, tracked mud into the kitchen, and poked through the debris that had been dumped on the floor until I found a long extension cord and a black plastic trashbag. I plugged the extension cord into a living-room socket, lowered the female end through the hole in the floor, and recovered it with the carpet. Then I went outside and back under the house.

  When I was finished, the answering machine was on and functional, wrapped in the trashbag against mud and water, and, I sincerely hoped, hard to find. It could be activated to give me my messages from any touch-tone phone. You never knew when Hollywood might call, and I didn't think I was going to be home for a while.

  In a final bid for confidence, I took the knife I'd borrowed from the pimp and put it into my pocket, along with the cassette from the answering machine. Then I hefted my suitcase and slid back down the hill.

  The San Fernando Valley glittered hard and bright as Alice creaked her way down toward the fragment of Mulholland that intersects Old Canyon Boulevard and deposits you at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on Ventura. The cops hadn't blocked Old Canyon, so I had an uninterrupted ride.

  The freeway was black and slick and largely empty. It's been obsolete since the day it was opened, and it was almost exhilarating to coast along at the speed limit for a change. It would have been even more exhilarating if I'd had any good idea where I was going.

  Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Encino, and Sherman Oaks whizzed wetly by. I turned on the radio, got a DJ, and turned it off again. I tried listening to Angel and then Anna, but I wasn't in the mood for spiritual guidance. While I was mulling girls' names that began with A, it occurred to me that Alice was a highly conspicuous vehicle, and it might be a good idea to rent something a little less electric-looking for the next few days. Especially if I was going anywhere near Eleanor.

  The cassette from the answering machine pushed the handle of the pimp's knife uncomfortably against my thigh. I pulled Anna out of the cassette player and inserted the tape from the machine.

  Mrs. Yount blubbered, poor soul, and Hammond growled. Then the thin voice came on again. I listened to it three times, trying to pin down its familiarity.

  Brooks? I didn't think so. I hadn't really heard enough of Merryman to judge. Needle-nose? Once again, I'd only heard a few words. I knew this voice better, somehow.

  “Yo,” Dexter said through the speakers. He made his offer again and I was reaching out to eject the tape when I heard another click. I hadn't played it all the way through.

  “Hello?” a woman's voice said. “Is this the right number? I mean, I know it's somebody's number, but is it the number I dialed? That message could be anybody. Anyway, this is Rhoda Gerwitz and I've thought of something that might be something. Something important, I mean. Oh, and have you found Sally yet? If this is the right number, call me. I'll be up until Letterman's over. Unless it's a rerun. If it is, call me in the morning. Good-bye, I guess.”

  Just off Highland I found a phone booth that, miraculously, still had a directory in it. Gerwitz, R., lived on Yucca, at the foot of the Hollywood hills.

  She answered the door in a surprisingly short and fluffy nightie. “Whoosh,” she said, peering out at me, “I thought you were going to call.”

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Well, hold on until I slip into something a little less comfortable, could you? I mean, I can't let you in like this. Well, I suppose I could. You're not going to eat me. You know, you asked me about poor Sally's religion and then you ran away. Not even an exit line, and there I was alone with all those disc jockeys.”

  “You said something about letting me in.”

  “Boy, did I get swacked,” she said, opening the door. “And then I did like you said, I went home and washed my hair, just like Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, except with me it worked. I washed what's-his-name right out of my system, mixed metaphor, and then I called Mom. She wasn't too happy, but then she didn't know him, the lox. Him, I mean, not Mom. Jesus, I'm talking about anything just to avoid talking about Sally. Listen, you go into the living room and sit down and I'll be right back.”

  The living room was a comfortable, messy little nest dominated by a big color television from which David Letterman grinned in a gap-toothed fashion. The couch was a litter of magazines, curlers, and wadded paper tissues. The magazines were largely back issues of People and Us. The tissues had makeup on them.

  “I had a good cry tonight,” she said in an explanatory fashion, coming back in. “And then I laughed till I cried again.” She'd put on a caftan. “You know stupid pet tricks? They had them tonight, one dog like a Labrador or something, he sat at the dinner table and drank beer. Looked just like Herbert. There, I've said his name and I didn't even blink. And to think I was considering changing shampoos. Do you believe in Shampoo Buildup?”

  I said I really didn't have much of an opinion one way or the other.

  “You're probably part of that eight percent that's always in the polls. Do you think nuclear war would be good or bad for the world? Sixty percent bad, thirty-two percent good, and they're probably dupes of the military-industrial complex, and eight percent undecided. On the other hand, if I had hair like yours I could probably wash it in Cascade and it wouldn't make any difference. I mean, it would still look good,” she added hurrie
dly. “Should I turn this down?” She extended her chin reluctantly in the direction of the television set.

  “If you don't mind.”

  She came back from the set and plopped herself down on the couch, scattering the magazines. “Geez, what a mess,” she said. “But who knew? Do you want a drink?

  “No, thanks. Tell me about Sally.”

  “Sally.” She reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I'll have a little one. A greyhound. Sure you won't join me? Well, never mind. The road to hell is probably paved with greyhounds. Or paced by them, anyway.” She poured a little grapefruit juice into a glass from a bottle on the table and added about a pint of vodka. “See?” she said, hoisting it. “Vitamin C and everything.”

  “Especially everything.”

  “Oh, well. Girls just want to have fun. So ask.”

  “You said you'd remembered something about Sally.”

  “Boy, did I. But you left just when we started talking about religion.”

  “And this had to do with her religion.” I felt like a painless dentist faced with a difficult extraction.

  “If you want to call it that. Still, I guess it was the only one she had. Although why anybody would need one is beyond me.”

  “Cultural uncertainties,” I said pontifically, with Bernie's voice in my ears. “Seeking after values.”

  “If you say so,” she said politely. “Or just being scared of everything.”

  “Was Sally scared?”

  “Well, you know, out here from some plotzy little town in upstate New York or somewhere. Trying to make it in, you should excuse the expression, the big city. Anyway, yeah, she seemed scared at the end.”

  “At the end.”

  “About a week before she . . . she disappeared. Before that prick, whoever he was, killed her,” she added bitterly. “Maybe not scared exactly, but upset and confused. Scratch all that. She acted scared.”

  “What did she say?”

  “This was one day at lunch. I was going on about the Herbert Question as usual, like it was the only thing in the world, and she all of a sudden broke in and said she was glad I hadn't gone to a church meeting with her, she had found out that the people who ran it were a bunch of phonies. Crooks, that was what she said. And I said, well, that's religion for you, look at all those awful popes, always claiming the Alps for their kids, and they weren't even supposed to have kids. At least I don't think they were.”

  “What did she find out?”

  “That one of them was a big crook. I said, what, only one?”

  “Did she say who?”

  “I don't think I gave her a chance,” she said reflectively. “I talk a lot.”

  “Did she tell you what she was going to do?”

  “That was the trouble. See, she still believed in the religion. She said it had really helped her. With her problems and everything. I guess Sally had more problems than she let on. Than I let her let on.” She picked up a wad of Kleenex and snagged at it with long, manicured nails. “Why can't I ever shut up?” she asked David Letterman.

  “Don't worry about it. It can't help Sally.”

  “No, but I could have. Maybe.” She swallowed half of her drink and shuddered. “I've been drinking more since the day she vanished,” she said with an air of self-discovery. “I thought it was Herbert.”

  “Well, that won't help her either. Rhoda, what was she going to do?”

  “She said she'd heard of this other man,” she said, rolling the shredded Kleenex into a tight little ball. “He had left the church or something and he had his own setup but he still believed in the same junk. Only it wasn't a church, exactly.”

  “It was a congregation,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That's it. A congregation.”

  Chapter 21

  “Go away,” Sister Zachary said at the door. In the bright morning light her fat face was bumpy and pitted, as though there were loose gravel beneath the skin. The tentlike dress was crumpled and dirty.

  “Mrs. Jenks,” I said, “it's either me or Homicide. You and Jinks may have even fewer choices in the immediate future.”

  “Homicide?” she said, not even noticing the use of her name. “What's Homicide got to do with it?”

  “They haven't traced Sally Oldfield here yet. They'll be real curious when they do.”

  “Why shouldn't she come here?” she said defiantly.

  “Even more interesting, why should you two and Jinks lie about it?”

  She caught the name this time. Her face stiffened. Her features were all squeezed tightly into its center, making her look like the end of a cigar that's been crimped and bitten off.

  “What do you know about Jinks?”

  “Not as much as I'll know in fifteen minutes.”

  “We told you she didn't come.”

  “And I know differently. Now, are we all going to sit down for a chat, or am I going to come back with the cops?”

  “You're going to get us into trouble,” she said childishly.

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “I don't mean the cops. We're used to cops.”

  She wavered irresolutely while the morning traffic on Vermont puttered north and south behind me. “I'm not going anywhere,” I said. “I'm not the kind of problem that disappears if you don't think about it. Come on, let's go talk to Jinks.”

  She decided. She tipped her two hundred pounds left, swayed, and then lurched to the right, hauling the door open as she went. I followed her, closed the door behind me, and snapped the lock.

  Wilburforce was right where we'd left him, sitting on the edge of his desk. He had an accountant's ledger on his lap and he looked up, startled, as Sister Zachary waddled swiftly into the room with me in panting pursuit.

  “Counting souls?” I said, sitting down in the same uncomfortable chair.

  “What? What?” he said a little wildly. He sounded like an outboard motor. “Oh, souls, I see. Souls, indeed. A little newspaperman's joke.” He summoned up a rheumatic chuckle from the lower depths.

  “Newspaperman, my ass,” Sister Zachary said. “He just threatened me with the cops.”

  “You're not a newspaper reporter?” Affronted innocence flooded his eyes.

  “So we all lied a little,” I said. “You didn't tell me about Sally Oldfield, and I didn't tell you I was a detective.”

  His eyes got very small and he looked over at Sister Zachary, who was sulking in the corner. “Show me your buzzer,” he said.

  “I don't have a buzzer, Jinks,” I said, reaching for the book. He was quicker than I was. He slammed the ledger shut and placed it carefully on the desk behind him.

  “That was a former life,” he said with an air of great dignity. “That person no longer exists. And if you haven't got a buzzer you're not a detective, are you?”

  “I'm a private detective.”

  “Well,” he exhaled, giving me the false choppers from ear to ear, “then I don't have to talk to you. You might as well be a Campfire Girl.”

  “Wrong. You're withholding evidence in a murder investigation. I'm involved in that investigation in a semiofficial capacity.”

  “Semi,” he said, with a blinding grin. “A miss, as they say, is as good as a mile.”

  “And the Homicide cops,” I said, smiling back at him, “are as near as your phone.”

  “He knows she was here,” Sister Zachary said. “Stop farting around, Jinks. He knows she was here.”

  “My dear,” Jinks said reprovingly. “Language, language. Remember what Malagrida said. ‘Language was given to man to conceal his thoughts.’ ”

  “Who was Malagrida?” I asked in spite of myself.

  “I don't have the faintest idea. Stendhal quotes it in a chapter heading for The Red and the Black.”

  “That must be a useful book in your profession.”

  “We can all learn from Julien,” he said sententiously. “It's a young man's education in the ways of the world, really. It's not Julien's fault that the world
's machinery is oiled with religious hypocrisy. There's a lesson in it for all of us.”

  “This is fascinating,” I said. “If we had the rest of the morning we could probably get through The Charterhouse of Parma too. But we don't. I know Sally Oldfield was here, and I know that you—both of you—went to some lengths to convince me that she wasn't. I want to know why you lied and I want to know what happened here.”

  “I don't mean to be thick,” he said, “but could you explain again why we shouldn't just throw you out?”

  “No. Mrs. Jenks here just indicated that the cops were no worry compared to—what?—the Church?”

  “You didn't,” Jenks said, stricken. Sister Zachary gave him a sullen shrug.

  “As far as I'm concerned, you can have them both,” I said. “Talk to me, and I'll try to see that you only get the cops.”

  ”Un embarras de richesses,” Jenks said bitterly in second-year French. “We have a nice little life here. We're not breaking any laws, we're not hurting anyone. I haven't performed surgery in years, not even an appendectomy. The nearest hypodermic is probably down on the sidewalk. Why should you come along all of a sudden and ruin everything?”

  “Ask Sally Oldfield.”

  “She's dead,” Jenks said promptly.

  “Precisely.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then, after a minute he said, “She was just a girl.”

  “She found out something about the Church. She came to you. What did she say?”

  Husband and wife exchanged a long, fraudulent look. “Who told you she came here?” Sister Zachary said at last.

  “Forget it. I want to know what happened.”

  “It doesn't seem fair,” he said.

  I got up, and both their heads snapped up to follow me. Their chins and sub-chins quivered.

  “Listen,” I said. “As Mrs. Jenks said, stop farting around. Who was it? Who'd she find out something about?”

  “Merryman,” Mrs. Jenks said. She pronounced the name very quickly, as though it were something she had to get out of her mouth before she tasted it. “It was Merryman.” Jenks looked at her as though she were Benedict Arnold.