Extra Kill llm-3

by Dell Shannon

  "I put up with you only for your mother's sake," Mendoza told him. He plucked him off the mantel and let all the cats out, went to the kitchen and cut up fresh liver pending their return, and made coffee. He carried a cup with him into the bedroom; with his tie off and shirt half-buttoned he paused to study those snapshots in Twelvetrees' wallet again.

  That girl. What was it that made her familiar?

  Studio agency. Twelvetrees had ambitions toward a screen career. He had done work as an extra, he had met other such people. This girl, maybe. Have I seen her in a film? wondered Mendoza. But he never went to film theaters. He never watched TV.

  He shook his head and went on undressing. He had a bath, and all the while that vague familiarity teased at his mind. He got into a robe and went back to the kitchen for more coffee. He let the cats in and fed them.

  Damn it. She stood there on an anonymous beach, in a white bathing suit, shoulder-1ength dark hair tossed in the wind-features too indistinct to identify individually, but something indefinable in the stance, the frozen gesture…

  He finished the coffee and washed the pot and cup.

  It was like a hangnail, he thought, he couldn't leave it alone. He-Hangnail. Hands. Manicure.

  " Por todos angeles negros y demonios de Satamis! " he exclaimed aloud. Of course, of course. He must be getting old. Marian Marner.. .

  SIX

  "… a special kind of model,” he said to Hackett the next morning, "it was only her hands they used. You know, for soap advertisements, hand lotion, wedding rings, and so on. But that was nearly twelve years ago, whether she's still in that job is anybody's guess. I'1l have a look at the agencies. And the damn funny thing is, I don't even remember where she lived-not that she'd likely still be in the same place, of course. And I didn't, I will say, know her very long. But it's odd how the mind operates sometimes."

  "I wouldn't say odd in your case that you mislaid one little wild oat out of the field of them you've sown," said Hackett.

  "True. You know the only other thing I remember about her at all is that she had a funny-shaped appendix scar, with a little hook at one end."

  "Now that's real helpful," said Hackett. "We'll just camp out on the beach until some day she comes by in a Bikini and we can identify her. I think the agencies are a better idea. I don't suppose she'll be much use when we find her."

  “ Por que no? "

  "Oh, well, I was just thinking of the snapshots-not what you'd call really good portraits, but the best is that one of him with this blonde. If he was really much interested in this Marner girl, he'd have provided himself with a better picture, wouldn't he? This thing"-Hackett 1 looked at it again-"it might be any woman with dark hair."

  "Something in that, sure. I'll have a look around for her anyway, and we'll see. I wanted to go after this blonde myself-"

  " Como no -naturally, naturally!" said Hackett.

  "-But I also want to see Arnheim and get whatever he may have on this Mystic Truth and the Kingmans, as well as following up Marian Marner-and I think I'll let you handle the blonde. You might see this Miss Webster too. The blonde"-Mendoza consulted the list of members Kingman had given him-"is one Mona Ferne, at least I deduce she's the one, the only Mona on the list. Whether Miss or Mrs. it doesn't say. She lives out in West Hollywood, here's the address."

  "O.K." Hackett stared at it absently. "Mona Ferne. That rings a faint bell in my mind-"

  "Don't tell me this is one of your wild oats intruding on the same case. Coincidence has a long arm, but-"

  "My past is pure as a virgin's dreams-compared to yours, anyway. No. It's- Mona Ferne, now what does it say to me?-up in lights, sure, there was a star by that name a while back. Quite a while back it'd be, I seem to remember I was just a kid when… Wouldn't be the same, I shouldn't think, not young enough for this one."

  "Well, go and ind out."

  "I'm going, I'm going. Enjoy yourself with your old girl friend if you find her."

  ***

  The address, when Hackett found it on one of the older residential streets out west of La Brea, proved to be a single house. This was a neighborhood of solid money, twenty-thousand-a-year-and-up class: the houses were bigger than most California houses, many of two storys. This was one of them. It tried to look like the traditional Southern mansion: it was white, it had pillars, but on a city lot there was space only for a strip of lawn, and the enormous blue spruce in the front yard dwarfed it, towering the height of the house again above the roof, and probably darkening all the front rooms. The wrong tree, as it was the wrong house, for a city lot.

  But plenty of parking space. He parked and walked up the path indicated by sunken steppingstones to the low brick porch. The woman who opened the door to him was obviously a domestic; her only association with this house would be strictly the dollar-and-a-half-an-hour kind. She was middle-aged, plain, neat, and dowdy, with a mouth like a steel trap.

  "Miss-or is it Mrs?-Ferne," said Hackett. "I'd like to-"

  "Miss Ferne, and she's not here, but she don't buy at the door."

  "I'm not selling anything." He produced his credentials. A detective sergeant of police made no more favorable impression on her than a salesman; she looked down her nose at him.

  "Miss Ferne ain't got nothing to do with the police. If it's a traffic ticket-"

  "Detectives," said Hackett, "don't have anything to do with that part of the business. I happen to be from Homicide, and it's important that I see Miss Ferne. When will she be home?"

  The maid retreated a step. "Murder, you mean-"

  "Well, that's not the legal definition but it'll do in this case."

  "Miss Ferne couldn't have nothing to do with a murder-"

  "We all have opinions. When will she be home?"

  "I couldn't say," snapped the maid. “I guess you better see Miss Carstairs." She retreated farther in tacit invitation and shouted, "Oh, Miss Angel!"

  Hacket went into the entry hall. He was right: the tree made all these rooms so dark that you'd want the lights on even at noon, to avoid the furniture. The several open doors off the hall looked like entrances to caves. Only the open front door shed any light here, on a polished parquet floor, a couple of fussy little pedestal side tables bearing knick-knacks, a grandfather's clock, a carpeted stairway.

  "Well, what is it now?”

  "The police," said the maid succinctly.

  Hackett couldn't place the girl coming down the stair. No housekeeper or secretary or-were there still such things as governesses?-would hold her job a day looking like that. She looked about twenty-five, and she didn't have bad features but she hadn't done anything about herself at all, for a long time. Lank brown hair was pinned back carelessly to straggle, overlong, past her shoulders; she wore no makeup, even lipstick was missing: she had on a drooping black skirt too long for her and an ancient darned gray sweater too large, no stockings, and flat-heeled brown shoes.

  "Oh," she said. She stopped at the foot of the stair and looked at him, neither surprised nor much interested, apparently, by her flat tone.

  “Homicide,” said the maid. "He wants to see your-Miss Ferne.”

  "Has she killed somebody?" asked the girl. "That'd be a little change, and very nice too, if they put her in jail."

  "You oughta be ashamed? said the maid viciously. "A nicer, kinder, sweeter woman I never-and you-"

  The girl said detachedly, "You're hired as a maid, Winter, not a nursemaid. I'll talk to the policeman." She jerked her head at him. "You can come in here."

  It was, when she switched on the lights, a big, stiffly formal, cold sitting room. She threw herself into a chair and told him ungraciously to sit down. "What do you want to see Mona about?"

  "A murder, Miss Carstairs. Someone she knew has been murdered, and we'd just like to hear a few little things, like when Miss Ferne last saw him and so on."

  "She's just left, what a pity-she'll enjoy that like anything." Evidently she wasn't interested in who had been murdered. "A man hanging on
her every word-even a policeman. Heaven knows when she'll be home, she's gone to see her agent. I suppose you could find her there if it's all that urgent-Stanley Horwitz, two doors from the Cha-Cha Club on the Strip. She'd be delighted to be chased down."

  Hackett watched her curiously. "Thanks very much, I may do that."

  She was thin enough, even a little too thin: she might have a nice figure under that sloppy outht. It wasn't the deliberate sloppiness some girls affected, thinking they achieved the casual air: it was just carelessness. Uncaringness. "You haven't asked who's been murdered."

  "Wel1, I know it wasn't Mona, more's the pity, and if it was one of her friends, it's not likely to make any difference to me."

  "It was a gentleman by the name of Brooke Twelvetrees."

  She sat up from her ungraceful slouch and stared. "Brooke? Who on earth would want to murder him? He's not-not important enough."

  "Somebody evidently thought he was."

  "Funny," she said. "And you have to go round asking questions to find out who and why. What a dull job. But I suppose you're used to it. Do they pay you much for sorting through other people's dirty laundry?"

  Hackett didn't often get mad, and he was used to overlooking insults from people he questioned, but unaccountably he felt his temper beginning to slide with this girl. "It's a living," he said shortly.

  "And gives you that nice feeling of power, I suppose, you can b-bully witnesses and beat up gangsters whenever you pl-"

  "Oh, for God's sake!" said Hackett angrily, and then stopped. Belatedly it came to him that she hardly knew what she was saying: she was caught up in some violent emotional maelstrom, and he'd just walked into the middle of it. She was trembling convulsively; now she sprang up, crushing both fists against her mouth, turning her back on him.

  "Here," he said, anger dropping away from him, "what's the matter?"

  She just stood there shaking. He went up and laid a hand on her shoulder. She was taller than he'd thought; unlike most women, she'd reach above his shoulder if she straightened up. But too thin.

  "Look, don't do that," he said helplessly. "You'll go working yourself up into hysterics in a minute, and that pune-faced maid'll think I'm murdering you."

  She gave an involuntary, half-tearful giggle. "I'm s-sorry. Just a minute. I'll be-all right-in a minute." She groped blindly for a handkerchief, blew her nose; after a minute she turned around and sat down again. "I'm sorry," she said more steadily. "I've been saying horrible things, I didn't mean- Not your fault… You'd better try Mr. Horwitz's office if you want Mona, and if she's not there I think she was going to the Fox and Hounds for lunch."

  She sat stiff and upright on the edge of the chair and said it like a child reciting a lesson. A child with nobody to see her hair was combed and her face washed and her nails scrubbed. Hackett was curious and oddly irritated: what was wrong with her? She wouldn't be bad-looking at all if she'd fix herself up a little. She had a small straight nose, nice teeth, a clear pale complexion; her eyes were good hazel-brown with black lashes, and if she was tall for a woman she wasn't all that outsize. And she sat there looking like hell, like some female in one of those funny sects where they thought colored clothes and short hair and lipstick were engines of Satan-worse, because those people did comb their hair and wash their hands. Her nails were like a child's, short and unpainted, and her hands weren't very clean, and that straight limp hair falling stringily down her back… And the maid had called her Miss Angel. Angel, my God, what a name, and for this one.

  He got up and said, "Thanks very much, I'll see if I can find her there."

  She went to the door with him. "I'll give you a little tip," she said, and her flat voice was metallic. "You just start out by telling her you remember all her pictures and think she's the greatest actress since Bernhardt, and she'll fall over herself to oblige you."

  "I thought I remembered the name-Mona Ferne-she's the same one who used to be in pictures, then?"

  "Oh, goodness, don't say that to her. Used to be. She's just taking a little rest between jobs, according to her. A little twenty-year rest." In the merciless light, from the open door, of pewter-gray cold daylight, she looked awful: she looked gray and cold as the sky, and her eyes I were too bright, too expressionless on him. "She'll like you, she likes big men. What's your name?… Oh, yes, that'll be all right too, a nice American-sounding name. Now I look at you, you look quite nice, because I like big men too. I've got to, haven't I, being so big and clumsy myself, but it's rather an academic question, of course, because it doesn't work the opposite way-nobody ever looks twice at me, no reason. Will you do me a favor, Sergeant Hackett?"

  The little fixed smile on her colorless mouth was somehow terrible. He said carefully, "Well, now, that depends on what it is, Miss Carstairs." Something very wrong here.

  "Oh, it's nothing difficult. Just, when you do locate Mona, and talk to her, or should I say listen to her, I'd like you to remember that she's my mother, and I'm twenty-six years old, and she was thirty-four when I was born-it was fashionable to have a baby that year, you see. Will you do that?"

  "Yes, I'll do that."

  "Thank you very much," she said. "I'm sorry I said nasty things to you, before. Goodbye." She still wore the fixed smile when she shut the door after him.

  Hackett got out a cigarette and lit it, and was surprised to find that his hand was shaking. That one, he said to himself, is just about ready for the men in white coats. But it didn't pass through his mind academically or cynically. And as a cop he'd seen a lot of trouble and grief and evil and lunacy, and he'd learned to shut off much feeling about it because that got you nowhere-you'd just tear yourself to pieces over it and accomplish nothing. But right now he felt something, he couldn't help it, about that girl-he felt so damned sorry for her he could have wept-and that surprised him all over again.

  ***

  "I just had the feeling," said Mendoza, "that Mr. Martin Kingman is a little too smooth and slippery to be entirely unacquainted with the law. Of course there's a very thin line there, I admit it-that kind is always very smooth. The same essential type, it goes in for politics and the church and show business, as well as legally dishonest jobs, and you've got to separate the sheep from the goats

  … But it was all very pat, rather like a pair of professional gamblers sitting with a pigeon, you know-I had the distinct feeling there was a cold deck rung in."

  "Not surprising," said Lieutenant Arnhelm, and sighed. He looked like someone's jolly and indulgent grandfather, bald, round, and amiable, but in reality was a bachelor and a complete cynic. “They get that way. After all, it's six of one, half dozen of another whether they keep inside the letter of the law or not-it's still a racket. It's still a front they're putting up, and it gets to be like a seasoned vaudeville act, the automatic routine."

  "I wish you could give me something else on them."

  "I've got just so many men and there are still only twenty-four hours in a day," said Arnhelm. "We can't go looking every place there's a possibility of fraud. Keeps us busy enough investigating complaints. Sure, we keep a little list, just on the chance we'll be looking into this or that some day-another fortune teller takes out a county permit, another funny cult gets set up, we file what information shows up on the applications and so on-but that's as far as it goes, unless somebody comes in with a complaint."

  "Yes, and what are the odds on the information being false? It's like income tax returns, you can't check them all. I know those applications for permits, those affidavits-Have you ever served a prison-term, Have you ever been known by another name, and so on. Like asking when you stopped beating your wife. Nobody in his right mind is going to put down Yes, and give chapter and verse, but so long as he scratches in No with a post office pen and signs any name that occurs to him, it gets duly approved."

  "I tell you," said Arnhelm, "you go out and recruit the force about five thousand more men, nice bright boys with superior I.Q.'s, and we might begin to do things the really e
fficient way. Check up on every single application for every kind of permit, among other things."

  "All right, all right, I know the problem. And at that, those recruits would do more good walking beats the old-fashioned way-and five thousand just a drop in the bucket for that job, in this town."

  Arnhelm agreed gloomily. "And the point is here, what's the difference? It's a way to milk the public, sure. So is any business, in the long view, except that some businesses sell things the public needs. Mostly it's things they just think they need, which is what's called human nature. You're got to gull the public in some way to sell anything, but the law draws a line as to how bad you can gull them. As long as people like the Kingmans keep inside the line, we can't go poking our noses into their private racket, any more than we can into the cosmetic business, or the automobile factories, for instance. And if we did it wouldn't do any good, they'd just find more pigeons. People are such damn fools. Why d'you think women go on buying some new brand of face powder? Because the ads say it'll make them look younger. Why do men go on buying hair restorer? Because they're damn fools. We can't cure that situation."

  "All true, but it doesn't stop me wishing you had something more on the Kingmans," said Mendoza. “However, thanks very much for the lecture." He started back to his own office thinking about the little he'd got from Arnhelm. The Kingmans, according to the affidavits they'd supplied in the process of incorporating the Temple, hailed from Philadelphia, where Kingman had been in the hardware business. He was fifty-nine, she was fifty-one. References consisted of the people here who had supplied capital for establishing the sect. And that was just about the sum total of usable information.

  Sergeant Thoms, who sat at Sergeant Lake's desk on Lake's days off, was still patiently working his way through the phone-book list of model agencies. He shook his head silently at Mendoza.