by Robert Bloch
“You’ll be careful?”
This was my day, all right. Two women in a row telling me to be careful. I gave her hand a final pat. “Sure. Careful Clayburn, that’s me.” We got up and left the restaurant. “Can I drop you off?”
“No. I’m staying in town, at Gerry Summer’s house, until after the funeral. You’ll be there?”
I’d forgotten all about it. “Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow?”
“That’s right.”
“See you then.”
We parted on the corner. I went back to my office, and read the mail. I was particularly interested in a little bulletin from the editorial office of an eastern newspaper. They were starting a Sunday supplement and indicated they were open to the submission of short stories. Their requirements specifically emphasized that they were not interested in murders, crimes of violence, sexual transgressions, marital infidelity; no profanity or drinking in the stories, and absolutely nothing offensive to religious organizations or reflecting upon the morals and integrity of any group.
I did a little wondering about what would happen if they should apply the same standards to the real life stories on their front page, and then forgot it. Maybe they had something there; maybe their readers wanted a diet of pap for escape. Maybe they felt safer if they sat back and closed their eyes to the terrifying truth all around them.
But I couldn’t. I knew too much of the truth, because I’d been a part of it. And I had the rather stubborn personal conviction that the more people who knew the truth, the better. The truth about what makes people dope, and drink, and deviate and dissemble and destroy. Destroy...
I picked up the phone and called Bannock’s house. The maid answered.
“Hello, Sarah, this is Mr. Clayburn. Is Mr. Bannock there?”
“No sir, he’s out for the evening.”
“Mrs. Bannock?”
“She’s out, too.”
“Thank you. Tell Mr. Bannock I’ll get in touch with him tomorrow.”
That was that. Nothing to do now but go home and wait for tomorrow.
I locked the office and went downstairs.
Without realizing it, I’d had my luck working with me when I called and found Bannock was out. Because if he’d been home I’d have talked to him. And I wouldn’t have reached the street just when I did. Just in time to see the squad car pull up behind my heap.
I was out the door and down the street before anyone noticed. They didn’t go up right away; they were opening the door of my car. It took three cops to do it. One of them opened the glove compartment and brought out Kolmar’s gun. I could see him pointing at it, saying something.
He put it in his pocket and sat there in the front seat. The other two cops started for the doorway of the office building. I didn’t wait to see them go in. I knew all I needed right now.
Kolmar had started something. Probably cooked up some story about me coming out there and attacking him and Dean and stealing his gun. That’s a criminal offense. At least, it would be criminal enough to get me locked up. Locked up and out of the way.
So they’d come looking for me at the office. They’d be looking for me at the apartment, at the hotel. Technically now, I was a fugitive from justice.
What does a fugitive from justice do?
I know what I did. I walked over to the Hotel Mars and took a room under the name of Orville Wright. It was that kind of a fleabag. I could have brought in a blonde and registered her with me as my brother Wilbur and nobody would ask any questions. Any more than they did when they saw I didn’t have any baggage. Five bucks on the line in advance; that’s all they cared to know about.
I went upstairs and sat down in my crummy little room and spread my crummy little assets on the crummy little bed. Forty-four dollars and twelve cents in cash. A driver’s license, but no car any more. A key to an office which I wouldn’t dare to use. My own gun was up there, in the desk. A social security card, but no feeling of being socially secure to go with it.
There wasn’t much security left for me now, I realized; not with my name out, and my description. This eye-patch was easy to spot anywhere. I didn’t have much chance. And I didn’t have much time.
That was the rub. If I intended to do anything, I’d have to work fast from now on. The police were looking for me. Kolmar and his pals were looking for me. The murderer was looking for me, or was that last remark redundant? I didn’t know, but I’d better find out in a hurry. Somewhere in the streets below a siren wailed. I closed the window, pulled down the blinds and went to bed. That kept the siren out of everything.
Everything except my dreams.
Chapter Fourteen
I took a chance going out the next morning. I took a chance going into the barber for a shave, took another when I stopped off for breakfast.
But all this was only a rehearsal. A rehearsal for the big chance, when I called Bannock’s office.
The girl put me through.
“Mark. Where are you?”
“That’s what a lot of people would like to know. Have you heard?”
“Damned right I’ve heard. What’d you do?”
“Don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Where can I see you?”
“Better not come out here.”
“I didn’t intend to. But I want to go over some things fast. I’d counted on getting together with you at Trent’s funeral this afternoon. Now it looks as if I’m not going.”
Bannock was silent. “Hello?” I said, jiggling the receiver.
“I’m still here. Just thinking. Look, I’m leaving around noon to pick up Daisy. We planned to eat and then go to the funeral. Suppose I tell her to eat at home and I’ll come by for her later. That okay?”
“Fine.”
“Where’ll I find you?”
I hesitated. “You know Perucci’s?”
“You mean that spaghetti joint way down near the Union Station?”
“That’s the one.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve got to drive all the way down there.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “It’s pretty tough on you, I know that. Me, all I have to worry about is how to dodge the police and a couple of strong-arm artists and a murderer.”
“All right, I’m sorry. I’ll be there. Twelve?”
“Good. Reason I picked it is nobody ever comes there at noon. And they’ve got a back room.”
“Fine. Mark, I’m awfully upset about getting you into such a mess.”
“Don’t be. If you want to help, here’s what you do. Try to get a line on Estrellita Juarez for me.”
“But I thought the cops—”
“Sure, they looked for her. Probably called Central Casting, stuff like that. You know a few people. Get on the phone this morning and ask around. Make it sound as if you had a part lined up, or she has a check coming for back work. Say anything. Do what you can for me. I think it’s important.”
“You do? You mean you’ve found something out?”
“Tell you when I see you.”
And I did.
He met me at Perucci’s and we ate spaghetti. That is, he ate spaghetti and I talked. While he was busy unraveling the stuff, I was busy unraveling the saga of the past two days, including, of course, my reasons for trying to locate Miss Juarez.
He shook his head. “No dice, pal. I tried. Called everybody in town. Nobody knows where she disappeared to. I even contacted Central Casting, just for the gag of it. They said her name had been dropped from the rolls. How do you like that?”
“I don’t. We need her, Harry.”
“If you say so, sweetheart.”
I stabbed my fork at him. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Matter? Nothing’s the matter. Why?”
“I don’t know. Anytime anybody makes with that ‘sweetheart’ stuff I get suspicious. Level with me, Harry. Has your wife been talking to you?”
He moved his head up and down between mouthfuls.
“Wants you to drop this investigation, is
that it?”
Another movement.
“How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed his plate back. “I’ve been doing some thinking, Mark. About this whole setup. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we made a mistake stirring up trouble when we didn’t have to. Just suppose I hadn’t gotten this idea of trying to clear Ryan’s name. So I wouldn’t sell the series to See-More for a while. What of it? In another five or six months or so, everybody’d have forgotten. I could sell it to them then, or someone else. But no. I had to play eager beaver. I had to get smart, call you in. And now where are we? With all these killings, Ryan’s name has fresh mud all over it.”
I tugged my mustache. “Is this you talking, Harry, or is it Daisy?”
“Oh, she gave me hell all right. But not about the business deal. It’s the murders that worry her. Ever since I got this call telling me to lay off she’s been frightened about it. Last night she told me about seeing you, made me promise to quit.”
“Did you promise?”
“Well—”
“Do you want to fire me?”
“Mark, what the hell are we going to do? I don’t want to get bumped off, and I don’t want to see you get bumped off, either. If Kolmar or anybody else finds out I’m responsible for you re-opening the case, my goose is cooked all over town. Look at the trouble he’s caused you already. You can’t expect to dodge the cops forever.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Just give me another twenty-four hours.”
“You really think you’re that close?”
“Just a hunch,” I answered. “If I could only talk to one or two people.”
“But couldn’t the police do it? If you went to them?”
“I can’t go to them. Kolmar’s fixed that. They’ll put me on ice so fast there won’t be a chance to get a word in edgewise. By the time they listen to me anything can happen. And you know what I mean by anything, Harry.”
“I know.”
“Besides, if I went to them, I’d have to go clean. Tell them the works, all about you hiring me and why. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Twenty-four hours, that’s all I ask. I’ve come this far. Maybe we can still save this deal for you. That’s worth a gamble, isn’t it?”
“If Daisy knew—”
“Don’t tell her, then. No sense of her worrying any more. Leave it to me, Harry. I’ll get word to you before tomorrow night. Either way.”
“Where you going now?”
“It’s best that you don’t know,” I said. “Give me a hundred on account, though. Hiding out costs money.”
He gave me two hundred.
“Thanks. Now run along and pick up Daisy and go to your funeral. Tell her I called you and you fired me over the phone because the cops are after me. Tell her anything that’ll make her happy. And just wait until you hear from me.”
Bannock scratched his head. “The way you act, anybody’d think you had some kind of personal interest in this case.”
I smiled at him. “Maybe you’ve got something there. After a guy gets his apartment broken into, his life threatened, his brains knocked out, and his liberty jeopardized by the police, he’s inclined to take a rather personal interest in such matters.”
Harry Bannock glanced around the back room, then pulled me over into the corner. “I almost forgot,” he murmured. “Can you use this?” His hand disappeared inside his coat, emerged again. I caught the glint of metal on a gun barrel.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked.
“It’s mine. I’ve been carrying it, ever since I got that call. But something tells me you’ll probably need it more than I will.”
“Something tells me you’re right,” I said.
I slipped the gun into my pocket.
“Careful, it’s loaded.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
Then he went out and climbed into his big car, and I went out and climbed into the nearest drugstore.
They didn’t have what I was looking for, so I went to another, and another. Finally I hit a dingy little place which carried the product I was looking for. It was the City Directory.
Nothing so remarkable about that. You want to look somebody’s address up, that’s the first thing you go for. Even the cops use it.
But nine times out of ten, they look in the current issue. And nine times out of ten, that’s all they ever look in.
That’s why I tried the run-down drugstores, the ones with the dusty displays in the windows and the rubber goods counter up front. Sometimes they have an older edition of the Directory. This one did.
I turned to J in a hurry. Juarez. Plenty of names here; a lot of them right in this neighborhood, around Olvera Street. But no Estrellita. Of course, I could start calling or start hiking around. Maybe I’d strike a family sooner or later...if she lived with her family.
No, come to think of it, she wouldn’t have. She’d been Trent’s girl, and before that probably anybody’s. Including guys like Joe Dean.
Joe Dean. I went after the Ds now. Dean was living with Kolmar on the ranch, and he’d worked for Ryan. But where was he two years ago?
I found out. Dean, Joseph. And the address, on Broadway, not more than five blocks away.
Hunch, long-shot, call it whatever you like. I only knew that I had to start someplace. And it might as well be over on Broadway. That seemed to be the right neighborhood for what I was interested in.
I walked over, slowly. The afternoon sun was hidden by smog, and the streets were gray, gray as stone. And crawling along them were what you find when you turn over a stone.
This was Broadway. Not Broadway, New York. Broadway in L.A.; just a knife’s throw from Main and a blind stagger from Olive. Bumway. Skidway. Wrongway. The kind of a street you find in every big city. Even in that nice eastern city where the newspaper doesn’t want to contaminate its readers with sordid stories of unpleasant people.
I saw plenty of unpleasant people during my walk, and their sordid stories were usually quite apparent. There was a girl with platinum blonde hair who somewhat resembled Polly Foster in appearance. But her dress was sleazy, her eyes were puffy, and she was walking with a big Mexican who’d never put her in the movies; at least, not in the kind of movies that would lead to stardom in anything except a public health clinic. I noted a man of the same general physical build as Harry Bannock, up to a point. Down to a point, rather; he rolled along on a coaster platform because he lacked legs. I saw a baldheaded little fellow who might have passed for Abe Kolmar, except that Kolmar wouldn’t have been snoring in an areaway with an empty pint of rotgut cradled in his lap. A fellow resembling Al Thompson stood picking his teeth in front of a cigar store; he stepped out and offered to sell me some pictures Thompson would never have approved of, and said he could introduce me to the subjects if I so desired. I saw a man almost as handsome as the late Dick Ryan, in a Latin sort of way. He was cursing and being cursed by a fat Indian woman whose four offspring clung to her skirts and pummelled her pregnant belly. There was a girl about the same age and complexion as Billie Trent; at least I thought so until she turned her head and I saw the purple blotch covering the left side of her face. And there was a man with a mustache and an eye-patch, just like me. Only his patch covered both eyes, and he held out a battered tin cup. There but for the grace of God...
Yes, there but for the grace of God went all of us, and there seemed to be plenty the grace of God had somehow overlooked. Everybody overlooked them, including the nice, clean family newspapers and the smug little moralists who devoted their oracular pronouncements to solving the vital problems of people who couldn’t make up their minds between buying a new station wagon or taking a vacation in Hawaii this season.
I walked on, thinking there wasn’t anything particularly original about my philosophy. On the other hand, there wasn’t anything particularly original about a run-down neighborhood or its run-down inhabitants, either. Maybe they were happy.
Maybe they pitied me. Most of them would, if they knew the police were looking for me. That they could understand.
And remembering, I kept a lookout for squads or patrolmen. My luck held. My luck held all the way to the Harcourt Apts.
That’s what the grimy stone lettering read: Harcourt Apts., in abbreviated grandeur. There hadn’t been much grandeur to begin with when they built this old three-story block of flats, and none of it remained now. The lobby was about the size of a pay toilet and looked no more inviting. To the right on the ground floor was a liquor store; the left had been retained as living quarters by someone who’d placed a sign in the front window reading Gypsy Horoscopes.
I walked up the steps, into the lobby. There were twelve buzzers to ring, but only seven names to choose from in the adjoining panels. Three of them I could read; the other four were either illegibly written or had been rendered illegible by the action of time and grime.
There was nothing resembling the name of Dean or Juarez that I could read. Maybe I was the wrong guy for the job. Fellow name of Jean-Francois Champollion might have had better luck. This stuff couldn’t be much harder to decipher than the Rosetta Stone. Say 50 percent harder at the most.
I was still squinting, wondering whether or not I ought to start ringing doorbells at random and going into a one-eyed version of a Fuller Brush Man routine, when somebody shuffled out into the hall and leaned against the side of the wall.
“Lookin’ for me?”
She was a fat woman with almost invisible eyebrows and pale yellow hair done up in pin curlers; she was wearing a pink housecoat decorated at the throat with braid and egg yolk. I smiled at her.
“Could be,” I said.
“You after a readin’? C’mon in.”
I remembered Gypsy Horoscopes. Victor Herbert should see this little Gypsy Sweetheart. But I followed the un-corseted amplitude of her behind into the musty flat off the first landing.
The front room was dark, rankly odorous. She waddled over to a gas burner.
“Sit right down,” she said. “First I gotta make the tea.” But she didn’t move away immediately. I noticed she had her paw out. “Two bucks,” she said. “Advance.”