At four o’clock I rose, wet with perspiration, and my sinus headache back to nag me. I bathed carefully around my taped ribs so as not to loosen the adhesive. The doctor at the hospital had warned me the bandaging should be changed soon, but perhaps I’d be able to come out of hiding in time.
At five o’clock, I was out in the back yard when the Cadillac drove up to my neighbor’s house. It stayed there a long time.
By six o’clock, when Mona came, the Martinis had been in the refrigerator for two hours, with the glasses. And the salad I had made with my tender touch was keeping crisp there too.
“My,” she said, “aren’t you the thoughtful one?” I kissed her forehead. She stepped back to study me. “You don’t look right, Joe. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’ve a headache and my ribs are bothering me. Don’t worry about me.”
She asked softly, “Does anybody?” I shook my head. “How about you?”
“Nobody worries about me, either,” she said. She expelled her breath and smiled at me. “Shall we welter in a little private orgy of self-pity?”
“You should be married,” I said.
“So you’ve said before.” She poured us a pair of Martinis and sat next to me on the twelve-foot davenport. “This gentlemen I mentioned before, he was Italian, too.”
“A local?”
“Oh, no. I met him in Naples. He’s still there. A — a charming man.”
“And,’ I guessed, “though he rang some bells in you, you couldn’t help thinking that underneath all the charm he was simply a foreign fortune-hunter.”
She stared at me. “How did you know that?”
“Because it’s so standard,” I said. “And so many of your attitudes are, too. You’ve been rich too long to properly enjoy life.”
“I’ve been rich long enough to know the money alone is lure enough for most men.
“So okay, stay single. Greene soured you for any genuine men.”
She said nothing, turning her drink in her hand and staring into space.
I said, “You’re thirty-seven. At thirty-seven, you aren’t as likely to get bored with marriage as you were at twenty-five. At thirty-seven the froth is gone and so is the need for the lace valentines. You’re mature enough to adjust to the lack of freedom.”
“In that little speech,” she pointed out, “you used the figure ‘thirty-seven’ three times. Take it easy; it isn’t a figure I enjoy hearing.”
I lifted her hand and kissed the back of it.
“Don’t,” she said absently.
“A continental habit of mine,” I explained. “Did it remind you of somebody?”
She made a face at me. “The space age Sherlock Holmes. Jean Witherspoon certainly pegged you properly.”
She got up to get the Martini pitcher. She nodded at the papers she’d brought. “There isn’t anything in there to indicate you’re still in town. And yet, I’m sure Chief Slauson knows you are.”
“I’m sure he knows it, too. And when he’s ready to tell the newspapers that, he will.”
She came over to replenish my drink. “What do you think of him?”
“He’s a first-class police executive. There aren’t many towns this size that lucky.”
“I understand he doesn’t even accept his salary. He’s very wealthy, you know.”
“I guessed as much.” She said thoughtfully, “And he couldn’t abide Dennis. Do you think that’s one of the reasons Doctor West’s report wasn’t doubted?”
“No. The chief is all cop.” She finished her drink and stood up. “I brought an apron. You sit right where you are. I’ll show you I can cook well enough to be a poor man’s wife.”
I didn’t even flinch. For the first time in years a woman had mentioned marriage in my presence without making me flinch. I watched her move as she worked, a lovely, luscious child of thirty-seven.
We didn’t talk about the murders at dinner. We talked about a number of things; she was a remarkably well informed woman. It seemed to me she talked too much about Naples, but maybe I was only jealous.
When she left, it was growing dark. She told me to be careful. She kissed me gently and said it had been a good thing for her, meeting me. I took it as a compliment at the time, and perhaps it was, but later I was to regret the connotation.
The shaded side of the hills were black; in a cleft the sun still showed the grass as green. She had washed the dishes; I sat near the sliding glass door at the rear of the room, looking over toward my neighbor I couldn’t see all of the house from here, but I could see the road.
Lights were going on now, revealing the houses in the hills. A man can live in the Bronx all his life but he will get view-conscious as soon as he moves to California. The only view most of them had for the first fifty years of their lives was the house across the street. Now they all had to be up in the air, higher than their neighbors, looking down on everybody. Keeping above the Joneses, to paraphrase.
And now it was dark and I saw headlights swinging out of my neighbor’s driveway and heading toward town. I got my car coat and a putty knife and a screwdriver. And a flashlight.
It was getting cold as I went down the hill, keeping hidden as well as I could in the chaparral.
Chapter Thirteen
IT’S CALLED breaking and entering and it’s against the law as any fool knows, but it is one of the advantages a man in my profession employs that the municipal man doesn’t have. I mean breaking the law. And the philosophy that covers it is wrong; one needs to believe that the end justifies the means and it never does. But I was not a philosopher, I was a man of action. The law had been getting steadily nowhere while the bodies chilled in the ground and if there is one thing I can’t stomach it is the thought of a murderer breathing the free air.
Headlights from a car on the road swung in a wide arc, and I crouched in the high grass until they passed over me. Next to me, something slithered menacingly and I froze, snake-conscious, the faint taste of bile in my mouth.
Snakes don’t come out at night, I’d heard, not rattlers. It was only a thing I’d heard and it hadn’t been told to me by a snake. They give me the unholy shivers, perhaps because of their phallic symbolism.
No sound came; nothing moved. The stars overhead looked down without interest. Far below, a car made the last big turn before coming out onto the highway. I moved slowly, half-crouched, wary and fearful. Dry glass brushed my hands and a small rock clattered down the hill, dislodged by my heel.
There was no light in the house below. I had not seen a dog in my previous observation of the place. I could be shot, legally shot, if apprehended by the tenant, I could be attacked legally with any weapon the tenant chose to use.
It was a rectangular house, plain but not humdrum, genuine ranch in tradition, not expensive and not cheap. The rooms would be in a row, running the length of the house. I hoped I wouldn’t have to break any glass in order to get in.
I swung around toward the protection of the car port, watching for headlights. From the latticed side of that, I moved quietly around to the rear of the house. There was a sliding glass door here, looking out on the hills and it had always been my experience that sliding doors are the least likely to be locked in a house. This one was locked, but poorly. I slipped the putty knife through the crack at the edge of the door and lifted the latch easily. I took a deep breath and waited a few seconds before sliding the door open.
At the far end of the wide stretch of glass, something moved and I froze. But then I saw it was only the drape at that end, stirred by the night breeze.
No dog growled and nobody asked “Who’s there?” I left the sliding door open far enough to permit me a hasty exit, if that should be necessary. My flashlight showed me the entrance to the hall that served the other rooms.
It must have been my imagination but I could swear there was an odor of lavender in the bedroom. There was a detailed miniature racing yawl on the double dresser and an autographed picture from some former cinema star I had
better not mention.
I went through the dresser drawers, one by one, carefully. I put each article back just exactly the way it had been previously. I didn’t find what I was looking for there and had rather hoped that I wouldn’t.
From there, I went to the closet and on one of the clothes hangers in the closet, I found the name of a local dry cleaner. I wrote it in my notebook. Here, too, I didn’t find what I was looking for and it only served to strengthen my theory.
In the den, in a desk that could be locked, but wasn’t, I found a little pearl-handled .25 revolver. It wasn’t much of a weapon but even a .22 is lethal. Even a screwdriver is, properly used.
None of the other rooms yielded me any information in my search. I was heading for the still open glass door when headlights turned into the driveway from the road and flashed across the living room.
I was out and down the slope below the house by the time the sound of the car’s engine stopped. I stayed there, below the house, protected by an eroded overhang, until I could be sure the lights soon to go on in the house would not illuminate the route I must take to get back to my place. Now I saw light on the far side of the house and realized it must be the outside floodlight that was fastened to the car port. I kept to the shadows of the overhang and began to work toward the road below.
Going up the hill would put me into too much light; I had to risk the chance of discovery on the road. It was the long way home, a full three blocks, but traffic might be light.
When I came around the first turn, I could see the other side of my neighbor’s house and the Buick parked there under the floodlight.
I was going around the second turn when I saw the headlights of another car going up my neighbor’s driveway. It, too, came to park under the floodlight. It was Doctor Alvin West’s ancient Studebaker. Doctor West, like Carol Destry, was out mending his fences.
I was half a block from my place, now, and ahead of me, off the road, a car was parked. It was the gleaming, souped-up Merc of Lenny Devlin. I stopped and then walked off the side of the road into the tall grass.
It didn’t seem logical that Lenny could have found me and not Chief Slauson. I crouched lower in the grass and tried to get closer to the car, to see if it was occupied.
I could see nobody, but then I heard the giggle of a girl and the command, “Lenny, stop that! How many times do I have to tell — ”
Necking. But coincidence that he should have picked this place within view of my cabin? It could be. It wasn’t a well traveled road and the view was impressive. All the lights of the city were visible from where he sat.
I squatted in the grass, unable to travel any further toward the cabin without being seen by the young lovers. It galled me, this furtive creeping about at night I was a man who liked to work in the sunlight.
I heard Lenny laugh and the girl squeal and then Lenny stopped laughing and the girl said, “Damn it, don’t do that!”
I was glad to hear it; in less than a minute the souped-up engine growled into life and then the car was gunning down the winding road. I would hate to be the father of a teen-age daughter today. Back at the cabin, I could hear my phone ring as I unlocked the front door. By the time I had got to it, the line was dead.
I was tired, despite the nap I’d had this afternoon. I sat in the big room with the lights off, looking down on the two cars below.
There was a possibility Don Malcolm knew some things about his playmates he hadn’t mentioned to me. There was a possibility he was involved in the adventures he hadn’t mentioned and that had been the reason for his reticence.
So where was I — one man against a town? Who would co-operate with me? There were too many pressures on all of them; their guilts and their loyalties were rocks on the road to truth.
I worried too much. Tomorrow was another day and I was being paid by the day. I turned on the TV set. I was sitting there, bemused by the belligerence of Duggan, when my door chime sounded.
My .38 was in my hand when I went to the door. Before opening it, I asked, “Who’s there?”
“Slauson.” I should have known. I opened the door and said, “I should have known. Come in, Chief.”
He smiled and came in. He looked around and said, “Nice place.” He walked over to the davenport and sat down.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” I told him. “I need an ally.”
“Isn’t Mrs. Greene enough?” I didn’t answer.
“In the hospital,” he said, “I told you to call me when you found a place.”
“I know you did. Who told you I was here — Lenny Devlin?”
He frowned. “Who’s Lenny Devlin?”
“A friend of a friend of yours. He was the tallest of those three hoodlums who attacked me. He is a nephew of the late David Hawley’s.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’d forgotten his name. Why didn’t you phone me?”
Again, I didn’t answer.
“Don’t you trust me, Mr. Puma?”
“I don’t completely trust anyone but myself, Chief.” He nodded. “I believe that. What have you learned, if anything?”
“Nothing I could take into court, nothing a prosecutor would get excited about.”
“But you must have a theory.” I nodded. He looked at his hands. “Patricia Duggan was in to register a complaint this afternoon. She thinks I ran you out of town.”
“Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she was only fishing.”
He frowned. “Fishing?”
“Maybe she wanted you to deny it and also deny that I had left town. Maybe she wanted to learn where I was. It should be simple enough for anyone to learn I’m not back at my Los Angeles apartment.”
“It was simple enough for me,” he admitted. “And a check with the local realtors on recent rentals gave me the rest, not this Lenny Devlin. Incidentally, I didn’t tell Lieutenant Ortega I had learned that. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for any lapse in your love life.”
“Thank you,” I said. His face was grave. “You’re unusually taciturn this evening, aren’t you?”
“I’m wary,” I explained. “This town is strange to me and I’m not sure who my friends are.”
“Neither am I,” he said, “and I’ve lived in the town most of my life. That doesn’t make the town unique.”
I said nothing.
“Damn it, man,” he said, “I’m a police officer and I can’t afford to be too friendly with anyone. But certainly you must know I wouldn’t do anything dishonest.”
“I’m sure of one thing — you would hesitate to do anything impolitic.”
His face stiffened. “Careful, now. I don’t need the job, Mr. Puma.”
“Yes you do. Not financially. But you need the job to feed your ego.”
He was silent, glaring at me. I said, “I could do both of us more good if I stayed out of sight.”
He shook his head. “That won’t be possible. Both Officer Schultz and Sergeant Purvis are entitled to hearings and you’ll be there if I have to subpoena you.” He stood up. I said, “Do you really want to trap the killer, Chief, no matter who it is and who gets hurt?”
“I give you my word of honor that I do.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what you can do for me — ”
Chapter Fourteen
HE WENT along with it. I had no way of knowing why or when he would turn on me, but I had very little chance of success without some trained help and I had to trust him. I had, frankly, more reason to trust him than he had to trust me. Private operatives at any level aren’t the most substantial citizens around and at the one-man-agency level, they are an uncommonly tricky lot.
What empathy Slauson and I enjoyed was based on mutual motives and (I like to think) mutual admiration. The best kind of alliance is that based on mutual preservation. Here he had the edge; he could live without me. And I could live without him — but not as well. The municipal man gets paid according to his seniority, not his success or lack of it.
I would s
tay in hiding while he personally checked the dry cleaners around town and the activities of Juan and Lenny. He would use Sergeant Dallas if he couldn’t handle it alone; Dallas was a man he could trust implicitly to keep our secret.
When he left, I stood by the open door, watching the fog outside. The air was damp; the night breeze was blowing the misty air up the canyons from the sea.
The TV was still on, showing a streaming American flag while the speaker bellowed the National Anthem. Channel Thirteen was signing off for the night. There were other channels still operating but I was back in business and needed no distractions.
I turned off the set and sat down with a pad of paper, adding the items that gave weight to my theory and writing down the investigation that would be needed to find motive.
Motive, means and opportunity — without them there is no murder. Opportunity and means the murderer had, but motive?
At my neighbor’s house, the floodlight was still on and Doctor West’s car was gone. In the space next to the Buick there was now an Olds like Darbo’s in everything but color. This seemed to be a General Motors town. The proximity of the cars could indicate a motive but not a motive strong enough for murder, only a motive strong enough to help hide a murderer.
They were all doing their bit to help the murderer, some in innocence and some in guilt. I undressed and went to bed.
In my dream, Carol said, “Keep me out of it and you’ll never have reason to regret it, Joe. You haven’t lived until you’ve slept with me, Puma.” She began to take off her sweater.
Slauson was right; I’d make a bad police officer. I was too vulnerable to certain kinds of bribery. I mean, a certain kind.
• • •
The morning dawned hot and clear. I looked out at the quiet hills and down at the white city and thought of Mona Greene. I thought of how it would be, settled down with her in a town like this and decided it would be all right. Dennis Greene had been an idiot.
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