“Nothing but myself,” she said. “Right?”
I didn’t answer. She had shown very little self-pity and I didn’t mean to encourage any smidgin that broke through.
At Eddie’s, Pete Richards hadn’t arrived. He didn’t come on until later. A few customers were eating steaks, the only entree on the non-existent menu. We ordered New York cuts. And beer.
Eddie was behind the bar and I had some questions to ask him, but it didn’t seem like the time. He had greeted Fidelia courteously when we came in but his eyes had just slid over me with no sign of recognition. The slob was sulking.
The steaks were better than I’d expected. The beer was excellent, tap beer, and cool. The back door was open and the smell of the sea drifted in. Some of the day’s tensions left me as I sat back and enjoyed the beer.
The customers in view looked normal enough; perhaps last night’s tragedy had frightened off Brian’s unfortunate companions. The police would be giving this bar special attention for a few days.
Pete Richards came in, looking weary but sober, and waved at us before going over to the piano.
His music didn’t seem as alien to my taste tonight. There still seemed to be less melody than harmony, but a thread of melody began to persist in my mind. I can’t say honestly that I followed it, but I enjoyed it.
After his first half-hour session, he came over to our booth, bringing a cup of coffee along. He sat down next to me and looked inquiringly at Fidelia.
“Beautiful,” she said. “You get better every day. That last — that was brand new, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“What are you calling it?” she asked.
“ ‘Requiem for a Lost Lady'.” He smiled. “Nothing personal, Fidelia.” His eyes went past her toward the door. Then he looked quickly at me. “Here’s the man I mentioned this afternoon, coming in now.”
I turned to see a tall, skinny, smooth and swarthy gent coming through the doorway. His shoulders were narrow, his chest cavernous, his tailoring straight from the Strip. His big, brown eyes considered me impersonally before shifting to Pete. He waved at Pete and headed our way.
“Serano?” I guessed quietly. “Lou Serano?” “Right,” Pete said. “Hell, he’s coming over!” He came over and smiled down at us. “Hello, kiddies. You look cozy.”
Fidelia said, “Hello, Lou,” and sipped her beer. Serano smiled at Pete. “I missed the first session, huh?” Pete nodded.
Serano looked at me. “And who’s the new face?” “My name,” I said, “is J. Edgar Hoover. Start running, punk.”
Fidelia looked startled, Pete Richards embarrassed. I had made an ass of myself again, but I couldn’t help it. I hated him. The hair on my neck had started to bristle as soon as I had seen him.
A silence. Serano exhaled heavily and stared at me with no fear I could notice. “What’s your beef, big boy?”
“I hate hoodlums,” I explained. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s always been. You may not even be a hoodlum, but you look like one. I’m getting sick. Go away.”
“I think I know you,” he said thoughtfully.
“Then run,” I said. “Go, man.”
“You’ve a reputation for being tough,” he persisted. “How tough, Puma?”
I looked up into his quiet brown eyes. “Tough enough to play it alone. Tough enough so that I never needed the help of a mob.” I started to get up.
But Pete Richards was on the open side of me, and he put a hand on my arm. “Easy, now, Joe. No trouble, please.”
Serano said, “Don’t worry, there won’t be any. I’m not a mug, a bar-fighter.” He threw his thin shoulders back and met my glare steadily. “I’ve a feeling you’re not long for this world, Puma.”
He gave us his well-tailored back and went to the bar.
I sat down again and met Fidelia’s wondering gaze. “I’m sorry,” I said. “They make me sick.” “Maybe you see yourself in them,” she said quietly. I said nothing.
“He might have been carrying a gun,” she pointed out.
“He’d have eaten it,” I answered.
Pete Richards chuckled. “You’ve been watching those westerns on TV, Joe. Be reasonable, man; you can’t lick the world.”
“I can die trying,” I told him. “Let’s have another beer.” I signaled the waiter.
“Coffee for me,” Richards said.
“I want to go,” Fidelia said. “I want to drive along the ocean and smell the salt air. I want to get out of here.”
When the waiter came, I paid the check, and we went out. On the sidewalk Fidelia took a deep breath of the sea air. “People!” she said. “People, ugh!”
“It’s been a bad day for people,” I said. “We got all the wrong ones in a bunch.”
She nodded silently. Then she looked up at me. “Joe, I don’t want to drive along the beach. I want to go home. I’m bushed. I want to be alone. No offense?”
“Of course not. Why should I take offense?”
She didn’t answer. She walked over to the car and I held the door for her. She got in and I closed the door and went around to get behind the wheel.
This lassitude had come over her suddenly, I thought, but she had a reputation as a moody girl. Had something happened back at Eddie’s that I hadn’t noticed, something to change her mood abruptly?
She didn’t say a word on the trip to the cottage. There, I walked to the door with her and she patted my cheek, said good night and started to go in.
“Fidelia,” I asked, “are you all right?”
“I will be,” she answered. “A good night’s sleep is all I need. Don’t be upset, now; it’s just my weariness.”
“Okay. Good night.”
She smiled and closed the door.
I had a hunch that it would be smart to park somewhere out of sight and watch the cottage, but she was my client. I drove away.
Shaved, showered and wearing a clean shirt, and it was only nine o’clock. It would be a waste to go home. I went back to Eddie’s.
Lou Serano was still there, now sitting in the booth we had deserted. He was eating a steak and he wasn’t alone. Bob Tampett was having a steak too, sitting across from Serano.
Serano was facing the door and he said something to Tampett when he saw me. Tampett turned, glanced contemptuously at me, and went back to his steak. Serano smiled.
I went to the bar and ordered a bourbon and water.
Eddie’s face was stiff and he didn’t look at me as he served it.
I asked, “Got any kids, Eddie?”
He looked at me coolly. “Two. A boy and a girl. Both in high school.”
“Addicted to narcotics?” I asked.
He stood perfectly still. “Watch your big mouth.”
I said, “That’s Lou Serano sitting in that booth with Tampett. If Lou had his way, all the high school kids would be on the needle.”
Eddie said nothing, glaring at me.
“But you hate me, not him,” I said. “That’s what bugs me.”
He said quietly, “How many of you private eyes are ex-cons? You think you’re the first one I ever met?”
“I hold a license,” I explained, “from the state. So I’m clear. I’ll grant you some of the licensed boys hire ex-cons for tough help, but I’m a one-man agency. You can ask any police officer over at the Venice Station about me, Eddie.”
“So you’re clean,” he said. “That makes us buddies?”
“I’m clean and I hate hoodlums. That should make me a brother to any man with kids in high school. Or am I getting too profound for you?”
“You’re sure a mouthy bastard,” he said. He wiped the bar, looked over at the booth and back at me. “What do you want from me?”
“Everything that went on here after Mrs. Richards and I left last night.”
“I bounced Delsy. Then Tampett went back to that booth and in a couple minutes Serano came in. He went over and sat with Tampett and they yacked. Richards joined them later, for about twenty minut
es, between sessions.”
“Richards?” I asked. “This afternoon he had a hard time remembering if Tampett had company.”
Eddie shrugged. “He was loaded. That figures. This Pete Richards, he’ll all right, Puma. I don’t understand his music, but he’s on the up and up.”
“I’d like to think so, too,” I admitted. “But that’s a bad investigative attitude.”
At my elbow, someone asked, “Calmed down, now?”
I turned to face Lou Serano.
“I phoned you this morning,” he said. “Didn’t you get the message?”
I nodded. “But you’re not in the book. I couldn’t call back.”
“I see,” he said. “But when I walked in here tonight, you start flexing your muscles. Why?”
“It had been a bad day,” I explained. “I’d been jailed and lectured and threatened. A citizen like me. And then I sit here in my cheap suit and in you walk with that Strip tailoring, looking like you own the world. Are you a citizen, Lou?”
“Hell, yes. I pay my taxes. That doesn’t look like a cheap suit, Puma.”
“I got it on sale,” I explained. “What’s on your mind?”
“A talk,” he said. “Do you want to come over to the booth?”
I looked at the booth. Tampett had left. I walked over there with Serano and sat down.
With operators like Serano, it’s hard to tell where sincerity leaves off and the pitch begins. He sure as hell looked serious and sincere as he gave me the “word.”
He has a Vegas friend, he told me, a pretty big man who had a piece of one of the better sucker traps, a man who had reason to admire Fidelia Sherwood Richards.
“Do you want to name the man?” I asked. “No. But believe me, Puma, he’s first class.” Nobody in Vegas was first class in my book, but he wasn’t quoting from my book. “Go on,” I said.
“This gent’s got a wife, one he’s had for eight years, and she got a little mixed up a couple years back and she went to this Dr. Foy. The damned quack almost put her in the bughouse for good. For life. It took the best psychiatrist in this town two years to cure her of Dr. Foy. You follow me?”
“I think so. But why come to me? Why don’t you tell this to Mrs. Richards?”
“Because, according to my friend, it could put her over the edge. The way these quacks work, she’s probably completely dependent on him, now. That’s the way they operate. In Fidelia’s case, he could lead her by the nose right up to the altar. The quack’s not married, you know.”
“All right. I’ll repeat my question — why come to me?” “Because, right now, you’re it.” I stared at him.
“Don’t get hot,” he said. “I mean, right now, she trusts you. She depends on you, see? And maybe you can wean her from this Dr. Foy. It takes time and patience.”
“Time I won’t have,” I said. “I’m only a temporary employee.”
He smiled. “That’s your only relationship, huh — employer-employee?”
I stared at him. “What else?”
He shook his head. “All right. All right! You’re a hard man to talk sense to, Puma.”
“Sit where I’m sitting,” I told him. “Pretend you’re Puma, and a notorious pusher tries to sell you the pitch that he’s such a great humanitarian he’s worried about the future of poor little Fidelia Sherwood. There’s not a dime in it for the pusher, you understand — just his big compassionate heart.”
He sat erectly in the booth and his narrow shoulders went back defiantly. “I’m not a notorious pusher. I was a guy who was on it. And to keep me going, while I was on it, I had to push it. Where else would I get the dough that costs? I broke the habit. So much for that.”
“And now you’re going into social work?” I asked.
“No, not by a damned sight. But this boy in Vegas asked me to do him a favor, because he knew I knew
Fidelia. And you do boys like that favors, it might not mean an immediate dime, but it sure as hell isn’t going to hurt my career, huh?”
“And what’s your career?” I asked.
“A fast buck,” he said. “What’s yours?”
He could be telling the truth. Even if it was the first time in his life, he could be telling the truth. I said, “I suppose you briefed yourself on Dr. Arnold Foy?”
“Open your ears and sit back,” he said.
Chapter Seven
How I slept that night….Without dreams, like falling into oblivion, like dying. I wakened to an overcast morning, damp and smoggy.
I read the Times with my coffee. In its thorough way, the Times had all the details of the Brian Delsy murder, though there was nothing in the account I didn’t know. The Fidelia-Puma bit that followed the murder yesterday afternoon was absent from the Times, so Loepke had obviously not confided in the reporters he had threatened us with.
My phone rang as I was shaving; it was Fidelia.
“When are you coming over?” she asked.
“Not until I have something to report,” I answered. “You hired me as an investigator, not a bodyguard.”
A silence, and then, “Are you angry about something? About last night?”
“Of course not,” I said gently. I took a breath. “Fidelia, you are much more self-sufficient than you realize. You need my abilities temporarily, but you don’t need me any more than you need anyone else. Hasn’t Foy told you that?”
“Not quite as bluntly,” she answered. “Joe, I will see you today, some time, won’t I?”
“If you really need me,” I said, “I can be there in fifteen minutes. If you don’t, I’ll drop in this afternoon.”
A long pause. And then, “About three-thirty this afternoon?”
“I’ll be there,” I promised.
I hung up reflecting that she had two rocks now, Foy and Puma. And both of them were hired friends. And was Foy any kind of friend?
I went out and headed for Wilshire….
The Sunset College of Clinical Psychology advertised in various magazines, some newspapers and occasionally by direct mail. I had never heard the college advertise on the radio or TV and could guess why. I would hate to trust an announcer with a tongue twister like Sunset College of Clinical Psychology.
It occupied a suite of offices on the second floor of a new building near Fairfax. The receptionist in the waiting room had glossy black hair piled high on her head, a dusky complexion, and an intriguing cleavage.
I told her my name was Temple Hawkins Reeve and I was interested in their courses.
She told me the chancellor, Dr. Alecont, would see me in a few minutes, and would I please wait?
I waited in a foam-cushioned Danish-modern chair and looked around. There were some magazines on the table next to me, and I checked through them. Time, Life and the A.M.A. Journal. Now there was a touch, that last. There is probably no law that prevents the A.M.A. Journal from being found anywhere, and it did add a touch of authenticity for the gullible.
And I was sure that Dr. Alecont catered to a widely different pair of groups. One would be the sharks and the other the gullible.
I intended to impersonate a shark.
In a few minutes, the stacked brunette rose from behind her burnished walnut desk and went quietly to a door that opened off a small corridor.
She went through it, closing it behind her. Less than a minute after that she returned and told me Dr. Alecont would see me now.
I went into a walnut-paneled office, furnished in gray and dusty yellow, with walnut-framed diplomas on the walls. I had heard of none of the schools represented except for the Sunset College of Clinical Psychology, where Doctor Alecont had earned his doctorate.
He was tall and dark, with a goatee and pince-nez — quite an authentic reproduction of a society doctor in an old Universal or Columbia picture.
“Good morning, Mr. Reeve,” he said sonorously. “Won’t you be seated?”
I sat in the chair on the sucker’s side of his desk and he sat down again and smiled at me. “A local resident, Mr.
Reeve?”
“Long Beach,” I said. “I was in oil down there, and real estate. And I dabbled in second mortgages, of course.”
“Of course,” he said warmly. “And now?”
“Well,” I said, “it occurred to me I’ve spent a lot of time in the wrong professions.”
“Oh?” he said.
“I’ve always been interested in psychology, and you know something, Doctor?”
He smiled encouragingly. “What?”
“People confide in me. At parties and on busses, they tell me the damnedest things?”
“Busses?” he asked, frowning. If I had said “planes” or “trains,” I’ll bet he wouldn’t have frowned.
“Sure,” I went on. “Busses. Perfect strangers.”
“Hmmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “You mentioned oil and real estate. You were, or are, a speculator, Mr. Reeve?”
I smiled and shook my head. “A promoter, Dr. Alecont. I — don’t like to operate on my own money.”
His answering smile was doubtful. “And the second-trust deeds?”
“I had a small office,” I explained, “and acted as broker for second-trust deeds.”
“I see,” he said, and studied me. He had his picture of me now, a smalltime grifter, assets unknown. He smiled. “And you feel that psychology is your forte?”
“I sure do, Doctor. I always had a bent for getting people to talk and I’ve helped a lot of them. Free, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. “What’s your educational background, Mr. Reeve?”
“I had a year and a half at Stanton Teacher’s College.” I looked at him candidly. “I had some psychology there.”
“That will help,” he said thoughtfully. “We offer three degrees here, Mr. Reeve — bachelor, master and doctor. The length of study for any of the degrees would be determined by your own aptitude and application, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. He had me doing it, now. “And the fees?”
“The initial tuition,” he said, “is two hundred dollars. That includes the basic texts. Further fees are based on the number of examinations you will require to earn your desired degree. You seem like a highly intelligent man, Mr. Reeve, and I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting through our examinations.”
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