by Josh Lanyon
Mathew. Matt.
It suited him. Nathan stared down at the black-and-white photo. It was a tough face, but an intelligent one. Keen eyes—you could see it even in black and white. A stubborn chin, a full—but grim—mouth. Not a guy who gave up easily—if at all. It was a mouth that looked like it had learned the hard way not to smile too easily. It was an attractive face and it was hard to remember that this was the face of an adversary.
The hungry, restless feeling was on him again. For a few months in hospital he’d hoped—prayed—he was cured, but it was worse since he’d returned to Los Angeles. Much worse. Need was like a fever burning him up, burning up his inhibitions, his common sense, his instinct for self-preservation. Ironically, the war had kept him reasonably sane, reasonably steady. But now he was back to where he’d started.
He needed to give Lt. Mathew Spain a call.
But first he decided to go down to the Biltmore for a couple of drinks.
Chapter Three
“What have you got for me on the Arlen kid?”
Doc Mason shoved a file cabinet closed and locked it. “Straightforward, as far as it goes. There’s a bruise on his jaw like someone socked him, but that’s the only sign of a struggle. He was shot from the front from about six feet away. Hands were down at his side when he was hit. That might be significant or not. I leave it to you boys to decide. The bullet lodged in the heart. Didn’t exit the body. Here’s the interesting part.” The coroner moved to the long counter and waved a long pair of tweezers holding a misshapen slug of lead in front of Matt’s nose.
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s that?”
Mason smiled. “That, Lieutenant, is a .17, 4.3 mm ball.”
“A homemade bullet?”
“Possibly. But I think it’s the real McCoy.”
Matt said slowly, “You think the Arlen kid was shot with an antique pistol?”
“I’m guessing a derringer.”
Matt thought it over. A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth. “Swell.”
“I knew you’d appreciate it.”
“When was he killed?”
“Ah.” Mason dropped the bullet into a small cardboard container. “Monday evening. I’d say after midnight.”
“After the ransom was delivered.”
“That’s the way it adds up.”
“Or doesn’t,” Matt said.
“They haven’t seen Doyle at the Tribune-Herald since this morning,” Jonesy informed Matt when he entered Matt’s office later that afternoon. “He showed up long enough to turn in a story about the Arlen kid floating in the Brea Pit, and they haven’t seen him since. I get the impression he comes and goes as he pleases.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. “Must be nice.”
“They like him over there,” Jonesy admitted. “I gave them plenty of opportunity to say otherwise.”
“What do you think of Sid Szabo?”
“I’ve heard things, but nobody ever suggested he ran a crooked joint. That counts for something in this town.”
“How reliable a witness do you think Nora Noonan is?”
“On the stand or from my perspective?”
“From your perspective.”
Jonesy studied him. “I think Arlen left the Las Palmas Club with Doyle on Saturday night.”
“Yeah.” Matt sighed. “He lied by omission. I can’t think of a good reason for him not to mention he was with the Arlen kid on Saturday night.”
“What do you think he was doing out at the Arlen estate this morning?”
Matt had been wondering about that himself. People got skittish in murder investigations—and not always for the obvious reasons. But Doyle didn’t strike him as the skittish type. The opposite, in fact, which he thought was proved by Doyle’s visit to the Arlen estate.
“That’s what I plan on asking him the first chance I get.” He smiled at Jonesy’s suspicious expression. “What do you know about Nora Noonan?”
“She came to LA in ’37. Partnered up with Szabo. They started the Las Palmas Club together and it was a hit from the night it opened.”
“She’s from Denver originally,” Matt said. “Used to sing in the supper clubs. She was married to a cardsharp by the name of Stephen Reilly. The story is Reilly used to get drunk and slap Noreen—as she was called then—around, and one night she had enough of it and used a Remington Springfield on him. Claimed she thought he was a burglar. There was a trial, but Noreen was a popular lady, and she was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. She changed her first name to Nora, went back to using her maiden name and came out west where she hooked up with Szabo.”
“Cripes,” Jonesy said. “The things you pick up. You ever think of joining the police force?”
“Ha.”
“Can’t see she had much reason for getting rid of Arlen, Loot. Especially when he owed forty thousand in gambling debts.”
“Yeah, but did you get a look at how old those notes were?”
Jonesy shook his head.
“A couple of them were nearly a year old. Why did Szabo and Noonan keep extending him credit when he wasn’t paying up?”
“I don’t see how he could have paid up,” Jonesy said. “From what I can make out, he never worked a day in that big office his father gave him at Arlen Petroleum. And according to the brother, the old man had cut the kid off to try and put some backbone into him.”
“There was money from his mother, but he went through that in the first year after she passed away.”
Silence.
“You want me to bring Doyle in?” Jonesy said.
Matt thought it over. “He can wait. I think I’m ready to talk to the wife now. It sounds to me like, at the least, she took a dim view of his gambling. And see if you can locate the singer, Pearl Jarvis. I didn’t like the way she happened to slip out the back door while we were interviewing Noonan and Szabo. If she and Arlen really weren’t on speaking terms that night, I want to know why. Either way, I want to know what was between them.”
“That dame must have something going for her,” Jonesy said. “I get the feeling Szabo’s sweet on her too.”
“To each his own,” Matt said, and thought of Nathan Doyle.
“I found some letters from her once,” Claire Arlen was saying dully. “Awful things. Violet paper, purple ink…doused in scent.” She shivered—although that could have been due to the skimpy silk dressing gown she wore. The apartment was cold, and the only light was the one Claire Arlen had turned on when Spain and Jonesy had turned up at her door.
Someone should have been staying with her, in Matt’s opinion. But maybe she didn’t want anyone. He hadn’t wanted anyone after Rachel.
“And these letters were to your husband?”
She looked surprised, as though the other possibility had never occurred to her. “I thought so at the time. Phil said no. I didn’t believe him…but now I wonder.” Large green eyes—so pale a green that they looked gray—turned Matt’s way. “There was no name, you see. They were just addressed ‘darling.’”
“Why would your husband have these letters if they weren’t his?”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t know. But Phil said they weren’t his.”
Matt nodded. He was beginning to form a certain ugly idea about Phil Arlen. It had to do with gambling debts no one tried to collect on, and love letters that might not have been his.
Claire said, “I know what everyone thinks, that Phil wouldn’t have married me if his father hadn’t insisted, but it’s not true. We were happy together. Mostly.”
“What happened when you went to the Las Palmas Club on Saturday night?”
She stared at him like she didn’t understand the question.
“You went to the club and had words with Phil.”
“I had words with her,” Claire said. “I told her that if she didn’t stop—”
“If she didn’t stop,” Matt prompted.
“I…would go to Phil’s dad.” Her expression was a little defia
nt. “Mr. Arlen is a very powerful man. He could arrange things so that little floozy would never work again.”
Was floozy the kind of job that required good references? Matt doubted it, but he refrained from saying so. “You didn’t threaten to kill her or Phil?”
“I might have.” She waved that away almost absently. “I got a little hysterical when Carl tried to drag me out before I’d finished. But it was just…talk. I’d had two cocktails with supper, and I’ve never had a head for strong spirits.” She pressed her hands to her temple as though the very thought of strong spirits was making her head spin.
“Do you own a gun, Mrs. Arlen?”
“Of course not!”
“Did your husband own a gun?”
“No.”
“Your father-in-law told us that a woman called to say your husband had been kidnapped. Did you recognize the voice? Any idea as to who that woman might have been?”
Claire shook her head dully.
“If your husband and Miss Jarvis weren’t lovers, what do you think their relationship was?”
Again Claire shook her head.
“Do you have any idea why the kidnappers would have killed your husband after the ransom was paid?”
“No.”
“Do you have any reason to think the ransom might not have been paid?”
She looked up, wide-eyed. “That’s just what that reporter suggested.”
Matt and Jonesy exchanged looks. “Doyle?” Matt asked. “From the Tribune-Herald?”
“That’s right. He’s a friend of Bob’s. Or he was. He was at the club that night too. I suppose he thought I was too upset to remember, but I remember. He was there, and he was plenty mad himself. I know.” She met Matt’s gaze steadily. “He was smiling, but he was bone white—and his eyes were…glittering.” She gave a little shiver. “I don’t know why, but I do know he was mad enough to kill.”
Matt didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he glanced at Jonesy. “I think maybe it’s time to have another word with Mr. Doyle,” he said.
Mr. Doyle had still not returned to roost at the Tribune-Herald. The address the paper had on file for him turned out to be his mother’s Adam’s Hill residence in Glendale.
The house was one of those old-fashioned English-style cottages: red brick with white-trimmed windows and doors. Tidy hedges surrounded the house, and instead of lawn there was neatly trimmed ivy. Christmas lights were draped along the shingled roof of the house.
Mrs. Doyle was tall and thin and fair. She had the elegant bone structure and same light, restless gaze as her son. She took policemen on her welcome mat with remarkable cool, inviting them into an immaculate living room. Matt looked around. Plastic covers on all the lamp shades and antimacassars on the arms of the chairs and sofa. Three pictures of Nathan Doyle at various ages hung in a corner over a large white statue of the Blessed Virgin. Eleven pictures of Jesus at various ages took up the rest of the wall space. A large nativity sat on a long table behind the sofa.
Nathan, Mrs. Doyle informed them, had moved to his own place on Bunker Hill. She offered them tea and cookies, apparently as a consolation prize, and to Jonesy’s astonishment, Matt accepted her invitation and made himself comfortable across from the photos of Nathan Doyle. Even as a kid, Doyle had been serious-looking, but then Mrs. Doyle didn’t look like a lot of laughs.
Mrs. Doyle carried in a tea tray and set it down on the table. China cups and a lovely china tea pot with purple pansies kept a plate of Girl Scout cookies company.
“How is your son adjusting to civilian life?” Matt asked.
Mrs. Doyle fixed him with those cool eyes so like her son’s. “Nathan is a realist,” she said, which he thought was sort of strange. “Were you in the service?”
Matt admitted that he had been, and she asked him a number of interested questions, and then talked to him about the care packages the church was sending to servicemen all over the world. It was not that she declined to discuss her son; she just managed to answer with as little information as possible. Matt had a fair bit of experience with interrogation, but he suspected Mrs. Doyle could probably hold her own against the SS.
Still, it was interesting seeing the home Nathan Doyle had grown up in. Matt wasn’t sure if it would prove relevant, but he didn’t regret listening to Mrs. Doyle talk—although he could feel Jonesy’s unease. Jonesy took a dim view of Catholics and their arcane ways.
Finally, when they had eaten the last Girl Scout cookie and drunk the last of the tea, Mrs. Doyle said, “I suppose you’ll want to see his room?”
She supposed right, but Matt was mildly grateful she’d taken the initiative. Then again, Mrs. Doyle didn’t strike him as a lady who ducked unpleasant duty. He accepted the offer, rising, and Mrs. Doyle led them down a short hall and up a short flight of steps—the house was oddly laid out—to a room overlooking the quiet street.
As Matt would have expected, the room was spotlessly neat. A large crucifix of a particularly handsome—but tortured—Christ hung over the crisply made bed. Matt examined the bookshelves. A number of catechism books, tomes on the saints’ lives rubbed shoulders with well-worn copies of the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and the Radio Boys novels. A large framed map of the world hung on the wall across from the bed—the first thing young Nathan would have opened his eyes to every morning growing up? There were a few class pictures in frames, and a couple of model airplanes. Matt looked around himself, but could get no feel for the boy Nathan Doyle must have been.
He had forgotten Mrs. Doyle was watching them. “He was very badly wounded, you know. They didn’t think he would live.” She spoke quietly from the doorway, and Matt turned. “I don’t think he has quite got used to the idea himself.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He never speaks of it. They gave him a medal. The George Medal. For civilian bravery. He won’t speak of that either. I think he’s a little ashamed. Newspaper men are supposed to be neutral, and in the end, he wasn’t.”
Matt moved toward the door.
She said, “Whatever you think he’s done, you’re wrong. Nathan is a good man. A man of honor.”
Matt said only, “Thank you for letting me see this, ma’am.”
“No wonder he went off his rocker,” Jonesy remarked as they headed over to Bunker Hill.
Matt glanced at him, but didn’t answer.
“From the first minute I saw him, I sort of thought something might not be right with him,” Jonesy pursued. “You get an instinct for it.”
“I don’t see any obvious motive for him wanting the Arlen kid out of the way, but I also can’t see any reason for him to have concealed the fact he was at the club. But people hide things in a homicide investigation. They get spooked. It doesn’t always mean they’ve committed murder.”
He remembered his father and Jonesy telling him this very thing many years before, but Jonesy looked unconvinced now. And Matt wasn’t convinced himself.
Doyle lived in an apartment in one of the original Victorian houses on Olive Street.
Matt and Jonesy identified themselves, and the apartment manager led them upstairs into a chilly room with large bay windows overlooking what must have once been a lovely garden. In the center of the room was an unmade pull-down bed and a table with a typewriter, a half-full bottle of Teacher’s blended Scotch whisky beside it.
No pictures and no religious icons. A tall bookshelf stood mostly empty except for a couple of Christmas cards, a parcel wrapped in reindeer paper, and several volumes on travel and history and archeology. The books included a copy of the dialogs of Plato and Thomas Aquinas.
You could tell a lot about a man by what he chose to read, in Matt’s opinion. He liked a good Western himself, but it was a long time since he’d read any.
More books were stacked on the table, a couple of medical books, and books on psychology. A book lying next to the bed bore the title The Homosexual Neurosis.
“Thanks very much,” Matt said to the apartment ma
nager. “We’ll take it from here.” He turned, nudging the book beneath the bed with the toe of his shoe, and forced the man out into the hall, nearly closing the door on the end of his inquisitive nose.
He leaned back against the door, and realized his heart was pounding hard and heavily, as though he’d barely escaped some terrible threat.
“Couple of bottles of painkillers in the bathroom, Loot.” Jonesy poked his head out. “Nothing illegal.”
Matt nodded.
“Did you find something?” Jonesy asked him.
“Huh? No.” He turned away from Jonesy’s curious gaze and opened the drawer of a built-in dresser. A neatly wrapped Walther rested amidst some carefully folded sweaters and corduroys. A beautiful weapon. Modern and efficient. The kind of weapon he personally would choose if he was going to commit murder.
But to each his own.
He closed the drawer again. Rain dripped soothingly from the eaves above the windows. Despite the physical temperature of Doyle’s quarters, this room was more alive and warm than the room he had spent his boyhood in. He could feel Doyle here—feel him too well.
“Nothing,” Jonesy muttered from the bathroom, and for the first time Matt wondered if Jonesy was losing his touch. Of course, if it hadn’t been for the war, Jonesy would have retired by now. But it was harder than hell to find good men these days.
Jonesy rejoined him in the main room. “I guess he didn’t kill Arlen for the money,” he remarked as they stared around the monklike setting. “It’s like a barracks in here.”
Matt nodded.
They went downstairs and spoke to the building manager once more.
“Quiet. Keeps to himself. No problems.” The little man licked his lips. “Is there something I should know?”
Matt thought of the book he had shoved under the bed. He had thought of putting it under the mattress, but Doyle was liable to panic when he didn’t find it. And the last thing he wanted to do was panic Doyle. Not with a gun in his drawer and a medicine chest full of painkillers.