77 Sunset Strip

by Roy Huggins

  Freddie said nothing at all to either of them. He walked around to a wide chesterfield that fronted the fireplace, sat down and lit a cigarette. Deep chairs upholstered in bright patterns were on either side of the chesterfield, with a great palette-shaped coffee table in the center. But it wasn’t a cozy room. A huge dark Regency fireplace dominated it like an aged and functionless matriarch.

  We were having the kind of conversation that makes drinking an essential part of life in a drawing room, and during the pauses I wondered what had made Trist so nervous that he hadn’t been able to explain me to his son without dragging me in for a drink. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  Freddie stubbed out his cigarette and said, “Are you in charge of the drinks, Mother?” He put a drawling emphasis on the last word and leered up at Mrs. Trist.

  Mrs. Trist pretended not to hear him. She raised a lovely round arm with a sliver of a watch on it and announced, “Sara’s late, as usual. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m thirsty.”

  “So am I, sweet.” The voice came from behind us. It was a warm husky voice, and it belonged to a tall willowy blonde with warm olive skin and dark eyes. She was making a nice entrance without being any more obtrusive about it than she could help. “Bourbon and soda will be fine,” she added.

  She said hello all around, kissed Gordon Trist ever so lightly on the cheek, and then brought her eyes to rest on me. Her mouth was open slightly, but there was nothing unbecoming about that, and she knew it. She looked under thirty, but not far enough under to be smug about it.

  Mrs. Trist said, “Oh, Sara, dear, have you met Mr. Tate?”

  Sara let the corners of her mouth turn up slightly. It was a nice full mouth. She drawled, “No-o, I haven’t. But I’m willing.”

  “I’ll try to keep it from being a strain,” I said.

  “I’m sure you will, and I’m sure it won’t be.” The corners turned up a bit more. The dark eyes looked as if they were ready for a little clean fun.

  Mrs. Trist smiled stiffly and said, “I hate to miss any of this scintillating conversation, but I think I should see about the drinks. Bourbon all around?” No one contradicted her. At the door she turned and said, “Her last name is Franzen, Mr. Tate. It’s in the book.” Freddie looked up at Sara Franzen and said, “I saw someone today who reminded me of you, Sally. A filly in the third race. I had forty dollars on her nose. She came in second.”

  There was a moment of silence. I saw Trist frown. Then Sara Franzen smiled warmly, almost affectionately. She looked at me and said, “Freddie insists I once had designs on his father—for his money, of course.”

  Trist chuckled and said, “Naturally.”

  “According to Freddie’s theory,” she went on, “I lost by a hair to Mildred.” I gathered that Mildred was the present Mrs. Trist.

  The doors from the hall pushed open and a maid came in. She had a long face and chilly gray eyes. She wasn’t carrying the bourbon. She had a tray in her hand with several cups, a glass bowl filled with individual tea bags, and a huge silver teapot perched on a copper samovar. There was a hot blue flame burning under it and sending a gay jet of steam from the silver spout. She put the tray on the coffee table and asked me if I took tea by any chance. She seemed sad when I told her I didn’t. We were all waiting for the drinks now with a frank and dry impatience, all except Trist, who was apparently a tea drinker. Crukston was looking at books, Sara Franzen was opening the console, and Freddie was straightening his tie in the mirror over the fireplace. I looked at Trist. He was holding a cup of tea while the maid poured cream into it. His face was tired.

  The doors opened again and Mrs. Trist came in, carrying a tray. “I knew you’d all appreciate it if I brought them,” she smiled, “instead of Henry.”

  I noted the tall frost-touched glasses and looked back at Trist. He was staring out into the room at nothing at all, and there was a gentle, resigned despair in his eyes.

  And then suddenly Trist’s face wasn’t there any more. The lights in the room went off. There was a shattering crash of glass, Trist’s voice saying, “Who is it?” and then a grim, malignant silence. I started toward Trist and collided with the sharp edge of the coffee table. I could see that the lights were still on in the hall. They shone behind the heavy draperies of the

  French doors, but neither they nor the blue flame of the samovar shed light in the dark room.

  The lights were on again before I reached Trist. Freddie was standing with his hand on one of the wall switches. Mrs. Trist was glaring at the shattered remnants of the highballs.

  She looked up and said, “Freddie, was that one of your bright—”

  She was interrupted by a thin-drawn scream that broke off almost before it started. It was Sara Franzen pointing a trembling finger at Trist. I had already seen it. He was slumped over, the hot tea spilled across his legs. But I didn’t think he was feeling it. I stepped closer to him and held my fingers to his throat.

  The lights had been off no more than half a minute. But a man can run an eighth of a mile in half a minute or a man can be killed. And Trist had been killed. He had been stabbed where the heart is. And the wound was empty and bleeding.

  There had been a minute or more of panicked confusion and hysterical accusation. Now the only sound in the room came from Mrs. Trist, a dry, edged sobbing that was taking on the fixed rhythm of hysteria. The maid had taken a couple of tentative steps toward the French doors, but I had told her the police might misunderstand it if she, or anyone else, left the room. Then I called Central Homicide and sat down to let the bitter tension grow.

  Freddie stood staring at me with a fixed, neurotic penetration. Sara Franzen paced quietly in the center of the room, and Crukston sat and studied the corpse in the barrel chair with a speculative horror. After a while, Mrs. Trist stopped sobbing and poured herself a cup of tea with trembling hands. I looked at the money Trist had given me. Three crisp new fifty-dollar bills. They had bought him one hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of nothing.

  The man in charge worked directly from Central Homicide. He was Lieutenant Quint, known affectionately to all those who worked with him as Lieutenant Quint. He was a brick-faced, freckle-eyed man with a sense of humor like an elder statesman and a passionate aversion for private eyes. He and his crew arrived about twenty minutes after I called. No one had left the room. The butler let them in, looking more curious than indignant. Quint looked at the body briefly, put a man at the French doors, gave some instructions and turned to us as the flash bulbs began to pop.

  His eyes rested on me for a moment, and then passed on as if he had never seen me before. He said, a bit unctuously, “Can you tell me, in just a few words, what happened?”

  Freddie answered. The words weren’t few and they were a little impassioned, but he told the story with a high degree of accuracy, mentioning that the French doors had remained closed.

  Quint nodded, looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “Who has the weapon?”

  Twelve innocent eyes stared up at him, and the rest was silence.

  Quint called to one of the men, “Parker, found the shiv yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Better check the windows.”

  “I did. Dust all over ‘em. They haven’t been opened for weeks.”

  Quint looked back at us. “Well, never mind,” he whispered. “We’ll find it.” He looked at Mrs. Trist and said, “You’re the wife of the deceased?”

  She nodded.

  Quint poked a short fat thumb at me and said, “What’s this man doing here, Mrs. Trist?”

  Mrs. Trist looked puzzled and said, “Why, he just dropped by. He’s from San Francisco, a friend of my brother-in-law.”

  “Your husband knew him then?”

  “Why—”

  “He’s a private detective, Mrs. Trist. Name of Stuart Bailey. Did you bring him out, or your husband?”

  Mrs. Trist turned and looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. Her mouth opened,
but no words came out. She coughed dryly and tried it again. “My husband didn’t know him. I’m sure of it! This man said his name was Tate!”

  “Mr. Trist never spoke to you about hiring a private detective?”

  “Never!”

  I said, “That’s going to look kind of bad for you, Mrs. Trist. Your husband didn’t take you into his confidence.”

  Mrs. Trist looked a little startled, and Quint said, “Shut up, you! . . . Parker, take this man downtown. Maybe we’ll book him for murder after we let him sweat awhile.”

  I stood up and held out the three crisp bills. “Check on these when you get around to it,” I said. “You’ll find that Trist drew them out of his bank—probably this morning.”

  Quint sucked his teeth and looked at the bills. He didn’t take them. He let me stand there holding them out to him.

  “How do I know,” he drawled, “that you didn’t take them off the guy after you killed him?”

  “Because the lights weren’t off more than twenty seconds,” I said.

  Quint took the bills. “What’d he hire you for?”

  “You want me to tell you that . . . right here?” Quint’s ears reddened almost imperceptibly and he turned and bellowed, “What are you waiting for, Parker? I said get him out of here!”

  Parker got me out of there. They went over me as if they thought I might be a pearl-bearing oyster, and threw me into a tank. After twenty-four hours I would begin to have rights again, just as if they knew about the Constitution. To keep the record straight, I mentioned that I’d like to call my lawyer. That gave them such a good laugh they let me keep my cigarettes.

  At three o’clock the next afternoon they took me over to the City Hall and into Jed Green’s office. Green was behind his desk, and Quint was leaning against the wall in a chair that wasn’t built for it. Green was in charge of the Homicide Bureau, a mild-mannered, brown-eyed man in his early forties. His face was pale and he looked worried. He handed me my three fifties and asked rile to take a seat.

  “All right,” he said, “Trist checked those out two days ago. What was the deal?”

  “I never heard of Trist before yesterday evening. He phoned me at my office and asked me to come out to his house. When I got there, he had changed his mind.”

  Green put a cigarette in his mouth, then leaned over and offered one to me. Quint was chewing a cold cigar. We lit up and I went on, “It was just an accident that I was there when it happened. Trist had just handed me those three fifty-dollar bills when his son came up the walk. That seemed to confuse him, and he pulled me inside, introduced me as a Mr. Tate, and told Freddie I’d just dropped by for a drink.”

  No one said anything.

  “I never got the drink,” I added.

  Green tapped his desk for a while with a pencil, then looked up and sighed, “All right, Bailey, that’s your story.” His manner said that he was through with me—I could go any time now. I sat. I had seen them working before. He had just passed the ball to Quint.

  Quint let the chair down quietly on all four of its legs. “A hundred and fifty bucks,” he mused, “just for coming out to hear that the guy had changed his mind.” He shook his head slowly. “You usually do better than that.” This had all been said in a leisurely, in-conclusion manner.

  Then Green came in and shot a question at me fast. “Why didn’t he call you and tell you not to come out?”

  I grinned. “Maybe he did. I haven’t been in my office since he called me. I don’t know why he overpaid me. He seemed kind of nervous.”

  “Trist accumulated too much dough,” Green snapped, “to have had a nervous touch with money.” Quint leaned back against the wall again and said, “Maybe he thought Bailey was cute . . . Don’t you think Bailey’s kind of cute, Captain?”

  Green forced a smile. “Yeah. Cute as a bug—the kind that come out from under rocks.” Then he added sharply, “Where’s your office, Bailey?”

  “On Sunset Strip,” I answered politely, “number 77.” Quint growled, “What was the hundred-fifty for?” Green glanced at Quint and his brown eyes looked a little irritated. He said, “Bailey, that can be checked, can’t it? Whether or not he called you back again?”

  “I don’t think he had time. But I’ve got a phone arrangement with the public steno across the hall. If my phone rings five times and I don’t answer, it switches over to a phone in her office. Sometimes people call and hang up before the sixth ring.”

  Green pushed a button, and a big bald man put his head in at the door.

  “Burch, I want you to listen in to this call. Come in as soon as we hang up.”

  I dialed my number. It rang five times, and on the sixth a pleasant, French-accented voice said, “Prospect four-seven-one-two.”

  “This is Stu, Suzanne. Any messages?”

  “Yes, where’ve you been?”

  “In jail.”

  “Oh. Getting out in my lifetime?”

  “I’m almost out now.”

  “No messages.”

  “Nice going, angel, but it’s all right for you to talk.”

  “Okay, Lenhardt, of Caucasian Life, called. He wants you to take over a case as soon as they get New York clearance. It’ll be four or five days.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nup.”

  “Thanks. See you in the morning.”

  I hung up.

  The big man came in. He didn’t look very bright. He repeated my conversation verbatim.

  It seemed to make Green a little angry for no visible reason. “Damn you free-lance boys!” he cried. “Don’t you know you can’t operate if we don’t want you to? Sure, the state gives you your license, but one word from me to Lenhardt and you don’t get any more work from Caucasian Life. Now let’s have it. What did Trist hire you for?”

  I stood up. I was hungry, and I could still feel the crawling, obscene filth of the jail, and smell its sour odor of spewed wine. I said, “You didn’t find the knife on me, Green. So I don’t get this. I know you’re tough. I know you don’t like private eyes. I’m properly impressed—in fact, I’m scared to death. And I’ve told you what I know about Trist. So I’m leaving now or calling my attorney—which way do you want it?”

  Green glared at me for a while, then he leaned back and exchanged a glance with Quint. When he looked back at me, he seemed to have made up his mind about something.

  “Sit down,” he said, and leaned forward, pressing hard on the top of the desk with the flat of his hands. “We’re about to be fed to the wolves, Bailey. When this story breaks, we’ll be charged with corruption, collusion, idiocy and whatever else our friends can dream up.”

  “You mean you’re sitting on the story?”

  “Yeah, but not just sitting. We’ve been working, all night last night, all day today.” Green’s mouth was drawn tight, and I knew something was coming that I wasn’t going to be prepared for.

  “A man was killed,” Green breathed. “Six people in the room, room all shut up. In much less than a minute of darkness a man was stabbed in that room. And no one left it until the police came and took them away. But the police don’t find a weapon. Nothing on the six people, nothing in the room, or of the room, that could have been used to kill the man.”

  The skin at the base of my skull suddenly tightened, and I put my hand up and rubbed the back of my neck. It didn’t help. Nothing—not Green’s quiet voice, nor the casual way he spoke—could dispel the quality of terror from the words.

  “They prepared a hiding place in advance,” I said. “Maybe in the fireplace.”

  Green shook his head.

  Quint said, “We brought that gang downtown under glass, and we went over them with everything from a curry-comb to a fluoroscope. I left two guards in the room overnight and stationed one outside. This morning we went out there with every gadget, electronic what-not and gimmick known to man. We had ten experts with us. There’s nothing hidden in that room and no way for it to have got out of the room. We know that.”
/>   “It’s an interesting story and I appreciate hearing about it, but why?”

  “Because you were there,” Green said, “and because this is a cockeyed, screwball case where police knowhow and organization are just thrown away.”

  “Now I know,” I said, “how a straw feels when it’s being grasped at. I gather you think I might come up with some fey solution befitting a private detective-like his being stabbed with an icicle. The maid looked like she might grow them. Or maybe he was stabbed with something that was dropped into the water to dissolve.”

  Quint snorted. “Those ideas aren’t too dumb. We checked both of them. The weapon was withdrawn— wiped across Trist’s sleeve, in fact. And there wasn’t anything dissolved in the tea water. It was just water.”

  “The main thing is that you were on the scene,” Green put in. “I’m going to assume for a few days that you’re leveling with us. Think over exactly what you saw. Talk to the others who were there, if you want.

  You can even use my name if you have to, but don’t expect me to back you up if they challenge it.” He stood up. “You could use a little good will, brother. And we may have to make you our pigeon, anyway, if nothing else turns up.”

  I stood up and grinned at him. “You ought to make up your mind whether you’re going to try to con me or scare me to death.” I went to the door and opened it. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to help. Murder is out of my line, and I don’t know anything as fleeting as good will from a city cop, unless it’s a snowflake.”

  I stepped out and closed the door. The big bald man was sitting in the anteroom reading the sports page. I said, “They’re going to put a tail on me. Tell him I’ll be at El Lobo’s the rest of the afternoon getting drunk.”

  “Sure,” the big man sneered, “I’ll do that little thing.”

  EIGHTEEN

  There was a call I had to make first before I went to El Lobo’s. Out in Westwood. The widow was home. She answered the door herself. She was dressed in black, but it wasn’t sack-cloth. She looked fine. She didn’t shudder or slam the door in my face, but she did seem a little surprised.