77 Sunset Strip

by Roy Huggins

  It came through for me at ten o’clock—Owen Madden calling from the lobby. I told him to come up.

  His clothes were wrinkled and he was wearing a blue stubble of beard on his face and a look of hostile contempt around his mouth, as if there was something a little indecent about people who slept in beds.

  “Mind if I take a shower and borrow your shave kit?”

  “Go ahead. Where’d you sleep last night?”

  “Under a koa tree, and how did you sleep?”

  He disappeared into the bathroom without waiting for an answer, and half an hour later he was out again looking cleaner but no happier.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what this is all about, would you?” he asked. “You were sort of putting your neck out a long way for people you don’t give a damn about. Why? Did you kill the old man?”

  “No.”

  “Frankly, I didn’t think you did.”

  “I thought you had that all figured out.”

  “I’m afraid I have. Well, so long, Bailey, it’s been weird knowing you.” He walked toward the door.

  “Going anywhere in particular?”

  “Over to the Big Island. I can get a job on a boat over—”

  He broke off as a knock sounded daintily at the door. I called out a come in, the door opened, and Eilene started in with a kind of half-smile on her face. She stopped abruptly when she saw Owen, and the smile broke like a piece of china.

  “I—I’ll come back some—”

  “I was just leaving,” Owen said, and he shook my hand and walked out the door, striding past Eilene as if she hadn’t been there, and closing the door firmly behind him.

  “He’s going over to Hawaii Island to get a job,” I offered.

  “How nice for him. I came up to thank you for— for every thing. I’d have come sooner, but the reporters have been at me since dawn.”

  “Do they know I’m here?”

  “No, they think you flew back.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  “Nothing, thanks. What are your plans?”

  “I’m going home. I’ve got space on today’s plane.”

  “Where’s the Skylark?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got some stuff on it,” I answered.

  “Oh. It’s at the Oahu Yacht Anchorage. Betty and I decided to put her up for sale.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yes, why not. Well, good-by. I’ll never know why, but you’ve been a good friend.”

  “Have I?”

  “I think so. And I’ll never forget it. Never.”

  I guided her gently toward the door and walked with her down the corridor to the elevator. While we waited for it to wheeze up to the fifth floor, I said, “Who do you think killed him, Eilene?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Don’t you think it does?”

  “It was Owen, of course,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t have cared if he’d had the honesty and manhood to face me with it.” She looked at me wide-eyed. “I’d have married him, knowing he’d killed to . . . Well, what’s the difference? It’s as dead as poor Glen now. Deader.”

  The elevator got there, and Eilene shook my hand vaguely and stepped in. Her eyes stayed on mine until the cage dropped below the floor level. I walked down the stairs to Betty’s room on the fourth floor. There were no reporters, but there was also no response to my knock. I went back up and tried her by phone. No answer, and the desk clerk had no idea where she might be.

  So I went on down to the Oahu Yacht Anchorage and found the Skylark, which was a little like coming home.

  It seemed infinitely quiet down in the lounge, and musty. And there also seemed something missing. As I stepped into the galley, it came to me: Owen’s guitar. It wasn’t lying there on the couch as it always had. I had left Callister’s letter under the paper in the galley cupboard; now I took it out and dropped it into a pocket.

  I opened Betty’s door. Even the lace spread was gone. I went back to the master’s cabin.

  The gun was there, the government’s identification tag still dangling from the trigger guard, the silencer gone. Possession of a silencer is against the law. I started opening drawers. Callister’s clothes were still there, and his pipes. And in the bottom drawer I found what I was looking for: a ball of twine, the same one I had noticed vaguely the first day Owen had shown me through the boat.

  I picked it up and held it to my nose. It didn’t have quite the odor I’d expected, but what it had spelled the same thing. For the first time I was absolutely certain I was right, and my hands trembled as I dropped the string into a pocket, picked up the gun, tore off the tag, and took out a cartridge. I pried out the lead, dumped the powder down the drain in the two-by-two head, and put the gutted cartridge into the firing chamber.

  Up on deck, I walked forward to where the anchor lay and knelt beside it, putting the barrel of the rifle across the anchor and lining it up carefully with the fishing seat. I stretched on the deck and sighted along it, moving the butt till it rested snugly against the side. That did it: a bullet out of that, gun would pass a few inches above the high back of the seat.

  My hands were beginning to sweat now. I brought out the ball of string and unwound about fifty or sixty feet, broke it off and put a tight loop twice around the anchor and once around the rifle stock. Keeping the string taut, I put a loop carefully around the trigger, then around the back of the trigger guard, bringing it toward me without slack and making my way, halfcrouched, toward the stern.

  I straightened slowly when I felt the seat touch the back of my legs. I turned the seat and sat down. The business end of the rifle leered at me with deadly intent.

  There was an extra three feet of string. I picked it up and laid it across my lap. Slowly, I fumbled a match out of a pocket, lit it, and held it against the loose end of the string. My left arm, keeping just the slightest tension on the long stretch of string was beginning to get numb. If the string dropped down from the trigger guard, I’d have to go through all this again. I wondered if Callister had had any trouble. No, he’d doubtless rehearsed it to a fine art.

  The first match went out, but with the second the string began to burn and I dropped the loose end off my knees onto the deck. It burned quickly, fuse-like, with a flameless orange glow. I looked at the gun some fifty feet away. I should have had my back turned and my free right hand gripping the pole. But the pole was gone, and I wanted to watch. There were only a few inches of string left to burn before it reached my left hand. Slowly, slowly, I pulled. And the gun fired. The trigger had been filed to take only the slightest pressure. I dropped the string and watched it as it burned, the ash disappearing to a white dust in the quiet movement of the wind across the decks. The gun had held against the anchor, the barrel still pointed at my head.

  So here was the final answer to all the questions but one: Had Callister hoped to hang Eilene and her lover? For me that question had long since been answered, and the answer had made it impossible for me to let the world in on the little secret Glen Callister had thought he was taking with him. The answer was No, because there was no other way to explain his insistence that only one had intended to kill him. The state would have had to prove which one, and he had known they would never be able to do it. But the love affair that had killed him would itself be a long time dead. He had known that, too.

  I took his letter from my pocket and tore it to bits, dropping the pieces over the side. The string had burned nearly to the anchor now, and I walked forward and knelt beside it. The string burned around the rifle stock and the rifle turned and slipped to the deck. The string fell loosely beside it and went on burning, the faint white ash wafting away, rising, and vanishing.

  And in a moment there was nothing there but a rifle, lying as though it had been thrown from . . . The thought was suddenly broken as a soft voice said, “Now we both know.”

  I swung aroun
d to see Betty Callister looking at me from the boarding ladder. Only her head and shoulders showed above the deck and she was gazing at me with a gravely speculative air.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked.

  “Long enough to know that Dad . . . killed himself.”

  She came up the rest of the way and stepped over beside me. She looked down at the gun and her eyes seemed to darken and a muscle pulled along her jaw,

  “How long have you known?” she whispered.

  “Almost from the first day.”

  “Then it’s no surprise to you that Owen and Eilene have gone their separate ways.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Do you like playing God?”

  “No,” I said.

  She looked up at me, holding my eyes steadily with hers for a long while. I felt that it was somehow important to hold, not to look away. And, quite suddenly, her eyes misted and filled, and she turned away and looked out toward the open sea.

  After a moment I said, “I found quite a spot last night, in case you’re hungry. The Most Magnificent Chinese Food Place in the World.”

  She turned back to me and slowly smiled. “Sounds wonderful,” she said. “Let’s try it.”

  TEN

  Three days later Betty and I, in a pleasant state of togetherness, flew back to the States. The plane touched down at 4:20 P.M., and at 7:20 we were together again, rolling into the driveway at Dino’s and making plans for a full, rich evening.

  And then I made an unusual error of judgment: I suggested that since my office was just next door, maybe she’d like to come up with me to see if the furniture was still there.

  Betty sat patiently, looking the office over, while I went through what had accumulated on the floor under the mail slot. There were the usual circulars, a bill or two, and a telegram, delivered early that morning. I started to slip it into my pocket.

  “Isn’t that a telegram?” Betty asked.

  “It can wait.”

  “Not on my account. Go ahead. Open it.”

  I opened it, and I read it: STUART BAILEY, 77 SUNSET STRIP. MEET ME BAR, DESERT INN, TUCSON ARIZONA, THURSDAY NINE P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME. It was signed D. C. Halloran. The name meant absolutely nothing to me, but the money-order draft that came in the same envelope did. It was for seven hundred dollars. I did a rapid calculation and decided that if I got started by five o’clock in the morning I could be there.

  I took Betty to dinner, promised her that full, rich evening when I got back from Arizona, went home and tried to get some needed sleep.

  The drive to Arizona was long, hot and thirsty, but that only made the lush bar of the Desert Inn just that much more attractive. It had none of the crowding, the ostentation, the tense raw urgency of Hollywood’s bistros. And it was lighted. Not garishly, but when you picked up your drink you were sure it was yours and that you wouldn’t find somebody’s thumb in it. Bright earthy colors, hand-painted glass, Navajo rugs on the walls, deep-colored Moroccan ones on the tiled floor, a couple of Mexican guitarists stridently singing.

  One touch was familiar enough. The girl who had just come in and slid up on the stool beside me was making plans. She dropped her mink casually over the back of the seat, ordered a bourbon and ginger ale, and turned her head so that she could look at me without getting the tip of her nose in the way.

  The barkeep brought the girl her drink. She lifted it and peeked at me again. I finished the rye and soda and looked at my watch. Only twenty minutes to go. No time for the brunette. The Mexicans sang a song about Mexico. The girl brought up a black bag and opened it on the bar, bringing out a cigarette case and putting a cigarette between her lips.

  She turned her head toward me and said, “Do you have a match?”

  I really looked at her then for the first time. I had expected the trenchant eye, the practiced smile, the wordless pact contained in some ancient gesture. But they weren’t there. There was a fleeting, antic smile playing on a tiny face, and wide blue eyes that were neither knowing nor empty.

  I said, “No, but maybe I can find you one.”

  I turned her handbag toward me, reached in and drew out a packet of paper matches. I struck one and held it out for her. Red light from behind the bar danced in her eyes. She raised the cigarette to her mouth and put it against the flame. It glowed orange and I shook the match out.

  She said, “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “That just goes to show,” I whispered “I thought you’d get a big bang out of it.”

  She suddenly wasn’t enjoying herself any more. Her full dark brows pulled together and there were lines of tension around her mouth. The whole thing had abruptly ceased to make sense.

  “I’m flattered like everything,” I said, “but I’ve got an appointment in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh.”

  I was beginning to feel like a man who reaches into his pocket and finds a hand already there. There was something all wrong with the scene. After a while I said, “How did you get into this racket? And don’t tell me you guess you were just lucky.”

  She smiled then. It was bright and warm, almost painfully unaffected, slightly daffy, and wholly beautiful; the kind of unlabored loveliness you’re sure the possessor knows nothing about; and it had authority. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.

  “I wasn’t,” she said brightly, “trying to pick you up.”

  “That’s bitter news. For a minute there I thought you were.”

  “I wanted to find out if you could be picked up.”

  “Round-heels Bailey, they call me. But right now I have an appointment.”

  She looked mildly disappointed and said, “Yes, I know you have, Mr. Bailey. With me.”

  Driving to Tucson, I had had a long day of sand, sheer rock, saguaro and loneliness to imagine what D. C. Halloran might be like. In none of my imaginings was he a wide-eyed girl with an anxious smile and a penchant for melodrama.

  I said, “What was the name again?”

  “Halloran.”

  “Do you live here at the hotel?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a nice place if you don’t mind sharing your secrets. Let’s go find some privacy.”

  She nodded and pulled the mink coat around her. She took the long way out across the bar toward the tile stairs that led to the lobby. She was a little thing, her hair dark and long and hanging in loose ringlets about her shoulders.

  We were in the alcove between bar and lobby. She stopped suddenly and stiffened. She moved convulsively and pushed past me through glass doors that led to a dark empty patio. I followed and she turned and pulled me into the shadow out of the moonlight. Her nails dug into my wrist frenziedly while she stared back into the inn at two people coming down the stairs from the lobby. The woman was in the lead, young, blond, walking with languid confidence. Sleek, satin dress, an air of calm purpose, and a wide red mouth. Behind her the man, baldish, high-hipped, and a face that was just a great round cipher. The woman paused slightly and glanced sharply at the glass doors, and the girl beside me stiffened, and the fingers began to dig. The blonde gave her hair a pat and looked away. They went on by, into the bar.

  The girl let go my wrist slowly, a little reluctantly, and leaned against me, trembling. I could hear her voice, tiny and tight, saying, “I knew they were here . . . I knew it . . . I knew it! . . .”

  I supported her for a while, then whispered, “All right, they’re here. Now what’s bad about that?”

  And then it came. She pushed away from me slowly and lifted her head. Her eyes met mine and slanted off, and she brought them back slowly, as if by some terrible effort of will, bright and dark. Her teeth were clamped together as if she were holding on to life by them.

  She said, “I . . . don’t . . . know.”

  We were getting into my car. We hadn’t gone through the inn, but had gone out past the fifty-dollar-a-day cottages and through a gate in the pink-stuccoed wall. I turned and drove up toward Campbell slowl
y, waiting for her to let the tensions unwind and to tell me about it in her own time. I turned left on Campbell toward town.

  I glanced at her. She was turned so that she could watch the night traffic coming up behind us through the rear window. She caught the glance and smiled weakly.

  “We’ll go to the Paddock,” she murmured. “It’s downtown, just off Congress. It’s a bar, but it’s very dark there. No one will see us there.” There was something in her tone I didn’t like.

  I said, “What do the initials D. C. stand for?”

  “Dorothy Caroline. My daddy named me. He’s dead.”

  There was something off-key in the tone. It didn’t go with what had happened or with what she said.

  I turned on Speedway, went down to Sixth Avenue and turned left again. We dipped through the underpass and came into the mid-town traffic. She still hadn’t told me anything.

  I said, “What’s it all about, Miss Halloran? What do I do to earn the seven hundred dollars? That’s a very healthy retainer.”

  “I—I don’t know. Sometimes I think they want to kill me.”

  I looked at her sharply. She was leaning back against the door. She looked exhausted, and she had sounded like a child caught in a terror all of her own making.

  I said, “You’re not going to turn out to be a screwball, are you?”

  “I’ll tell you about it, Mr. Bailey,” she whispered. “But not just yet. I— Seeing them coming into the bar, as if they knew right where to look for me . . .” She stopped talking abruptly and stared past me at nothing. Then she laughed. It was really a nice little laugh, soft and unaffected, and as gay as a mourning veil. “I’ll try not to turn out to be a screwball. Turn left at the next street.”

  I turned. A block down, a neon jockey hung out over the street riding a horse that wasn’t there. Neon script spelled out THE PADDOCK. I pulled into the curb a few feet down from the place, and Dorothy opened her door and got out.

  She suddenly froze, then reared back into the car and whimpered, “Oh, God!”