“I don’t think they knew he was in the trunk.”
“Then who beat him up? The doctor said he took quite a clobbering, that he was beaten and kicked.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Do you have any thoughts on who did it to him?”
“Yes, but it will take time.”
He said he had plenty of time, all day in fact. I bought him breakfast, over his objections, and with his ham and eggs and coffee I made him the dubious gift of a piece of the Martel case.
Rasmussen listened intently. “You think Martel beat up Hendricks?”
“I’m morally certain he did—caught him spying on his house and let him have it. But there’s not much point in speculating. Hendricks can tell us about it when he’s able to talk.”
Rasmussen sipped his coffee and made a bitter face. “How did Hendricks’s car get down on the boulevard?”
“I think Martel drove it there, with Hendricks in the trunk, and left it where it would be liable to be stolen.”
Ward Rasmussen looked at me sharply over his coffee cup. His eyes had the blue intensity of Bunsen flames. With his square jaw and disciplined young mouth it gave him a slightly fanatical look. “Who is this Martel? And why would Virginia Fablon marry him?”
“That’s the question I’m working on. He claims to be a wealthy Frenchman who’s in trouble with the French government. Hendricks says he’s a cheap crook. Martel may be a crook, and I suspect he is, but he isn’t a cheap one. He’s traveling with a hundred grand in cash, in a Bentley, with the prettiest girl in town.”
“I knew Virginia in high school,” Rasmussen said. “She was a beautiful girl. And she had a lot on the ball. She made it to college when she was sixteen years old. She graduated from high school a whole semester ahead of the class.”
“You seem to remember quite a lot about her.”
“I used to follow her down the street,” he said. “Just once I got up the nerve to ask her to go to a dance with me. That was when I was captain of the football team. But she was going with Peter Jamieson.” A shadow of envy moved across his eyes. He lifted his crewcut head as if to shake it off. “It’s funny she’d turn around and marry this Martel. You think he came to town to marry her?”
“That’s what happened, anyway. I don’t know what his original plans were.”
“Where did he get the hundred thousand?”
“He deposited it in the form of a draft on a bank in Panama City, the Bank of New Granada. It fits in with his claim that his family has holdings in various foreign countries.”
Rasmussen leaned across the table, elbowing his empty cup to one side. “It fits in equally well with the fact—the idea that he’s a crook. A lot of criminal money gravitates to Panama, on account of their banking laws.”
“I know. That’s why I mentioned it. There’s another thing. The woman who was shot last night, Virginia Fablon’s mother, had an income from the same bank.”
“How much of an income?”
“I don’t know. You may be able to get the details from her local bank, the National.”
“I’ll give it a whirl.” He took out a new-looking notebook.
While he was making some shorthand notes, Eric Malkovsky arrived, carrying a manila envelope. I introduced the two men. Then Eric got his enlargements out of the envelope and spread them on the table.
They were about six-by-eight inches, fresh and clear as though they had been taken the day before. I could see every line on Ketchel’s face. Though he was smiling, sickness lurked behind his smile. The lines around his mouth might just as well have meant dismay. He had the look of a man who had fought his way to the top, or what he considered the top, but took no pleasure in that or anything else.
In the enlargement, the meaning of Kitty’s face had changed a little. Her eyes seemed to hold a faint suspicion that she was a woman who could do something better than just wear clothes. But in the Kitty I had met last night, here in the Breakwater Hotel, the suspicion seemed to have died and left no trace.
“You did a good job, Eric. These pictures will be a big help.”
“Thanks.” But he was impatient with me. He reached across me and stabbed at the top picture with his forefinger. “Take a good look at the man in the background, the one holding the tray.”
Almost immediately I saw what he meant. Behind the bus-boy’s wide black mustache I recognized a younger version of Martel.
“He was nothing but a waiter at the club,” Malkovsky said. “Not even a waiter. A busboy. And I let him walk all over me.”
Rasmussen said politely: “May I see one of those?”
I handed him the top picture, and he studied it. The waitress came to the table with a pot of coffee and a breakfast menu spotted with samples of past breakfasts. The waitress herself wore visible clues to her history, in her generous mouth and disappointed eyes, her never-say-die blonde hair, her bunion limp.
“You want to order?” she said to Eric.
“I’ve already eaten breakfast. I’ll have some coffee.”
I said that I would, too. The waitress noticed the picture in front of me when she was pouring it.
“I know that girl,” she said. “She was in here last night. She changed the color of her hair, didn’t she?”
“What time last night?”
“It must have been before seven. I went off at seven. She ordered a chicken sandwich, all white meat.” She leaned above me confidentially. “Is she a movie star or something?”
“What makes you think she’s a movie star?”
“I dunno. The way she was dressed, the way she looked. She’s a very lovely girl.” She heard her own voice, raised in enthusiasm, and lowered it. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to be nosey.”
“That’s all right.”
She limped away, looking slightly more disappointed than she had. Rasmussen said when she was out of hearing:
“It’s a funny thing, but I think I know her, too.”
“You may at that. She says she was raised here in town, somewhere in the neighborhood of the railroad tracks.”
Ward Rasmussen scratched his crewcut. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her. What’s her name?”
“Kitty Hendricks. She is, or was, Harry Hendricks’s wife. According to her, she’s still married to Hendricks, but they haven’t been living together. Seven years ago she was living with the man in the picture there—his name is Ketchel—and she probably still is. She fed me an elaborate story about being private secretary to a tycoon that Martel stole some securities from. But I don’t put much stock in that.”
Ward took some notes. “Where do we go from here?”
“You’re in this, are you?”
He smiled. “It beats citing people for jaywalking. My ambition is to do detective work. Incidentally, may I keep a copy of this picture?”
“I want you to. Remember she’s seven years older now, and redheaded. See if you can track down her family and get a line on her whereabouts. She probably knows a lot more than she told me. Also, she’ll lead us to Ketchel, I hope.”
He folded the picture into his notebook. “I’ll get right on it.”
Before he left, Ward wrote his address and telephone number on a page of his notebook. He was still living with his father, he said, though he hoped to get married soon. He handed me the tornout page, and strode out of the coffee shop, eager even on his own time.
My heart went out to the boy. More than twenty years ago, when I was a rookie on the Long Beach force, I had felt very much as he did. He was new to the harness, and I hoped it wouldn’t cut too deep into his willing spirit.
chapter 18
THE TENNIS CLUB didn’t open till ten o’clock, Eric told me. I found Reto Stoll, the manager, in his cottage next door to Mrs. Bagshaw’s. He was wearing a blue blazer with gilt buttons which went strangely with the heavy somber furniture in his living room. There was nothing personal in the room except the faint stale odor of burnt incense.
Stoll gree
ted me with anxious courtesy. He made me sit down in the armchair where he had obviously been reading the morning paper. He fidgeted and wrung his hands.
“This is terrible about Mrs. Fablon.”
“It couldn’t be in the paper yet.”
“No. Mrs. Bagshaw told me. The old ladies of Montevista have a grapevine,” he added parenthetically. “This news comes as a terrible shock to all of us. Mrs. Fablon was one of our most delightful members. Who would want to kill such a charming woman?” No doubt he was sincere, but he didn’t have the knack of sounding that way about women.
“You may be able to help me answer that question, Mr. Stoll.” I showed him one of the enlargements. “Do you recognize these people?”
He carried the picture to the sliding glass door which opened onto his patio. His gray eyes narrowed. His mouth pursed in distaste.
“They stayed here as guests a number of years ago. Frankly, I didn’t want to admit them. They weren’t our type. But Dr. Sylvester made an issue of it.”
“Why?”
“The man was his patient, apparently a very important patient.”
“Did he tell you anything else about him?”
“He didn’t have to. I recognized the type. It belongs in Palm Springs or Las Vegas, not here.” He screwed up his face painfully, and slapped his forehead. “I should be able to remember his name.”
“Ketchel.”
“That’s it. Ketchel. I put him and the woman in the cottage next to me”—he gestured toward Mrs. Bagshaw’s cottage—“where I could keep an eye on them.”
“What did you see?”
“They behaved better than I expected. There were no wild drinking parties, nothing like that.”
“I understand they played a lot of cards.”
“Oh?”
“And that Roy Fablon took part.”
Stoll looked past me. He could see the threat of scandal a long way off. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Mrs. Fablon.”
“Then I suppose it must be true. I don’t remember, myself.”
“Come off it, Reto. You’re plugged in to the Montevista grapevine, you must have heard that Fablon lost a lot of money to Ketchel. Mrs. Fablon blamed him for her husband’s death.”
The threat of scandal darkened on his face. “The Tennis Club is not responsible.”
“Were you here the night Fablon disappeared?”
“No. I was not. I can’t stay on duty twenty-four hours a day.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. He was getting ready to terminate the interview.
“I want you to take another look at the picture. Do you recognize the young man in the white jacket?”
He held the picture up to the light. “Vaguely I remember him. I think he only lasted a few weeks.” He sucked in his breath abruptly. “This looks like Martel. Is it?”
“I’m pretty sure it is. What was he doing working for you as a bus-boy?”
His hands made a helpless outward gesture encompassing the past and the present and a fairly dubious future. He sat down. “I have no idea. As I recall he was only part-time help, doing mostly cleanup work. At the height of the season I sometimes use the cleanup boys to serve the cottages.”
“Where do you recruit the boys?”
“At the State Employment office. They’re unskilled labor, we train them. Some we get from the placement bureau at the state college. I don’t remember where we recruited this one.” He looked at the picture again, then fanned himself with it. “I could look it up in the records.”
“Please do. It could be the most important thing you do this year.”
He locked the door of his cottage and took me through the gate into the pool enclosure. Undisturbed by swimmers, the water lay like a slab of green glass in the sun. We walked around it to Stoll’s office. He left me sitting at his desk, and disappeared into the records room.
He emerged in about five minutes with a filing card. “I’m pretty sure this is the one we want, if I can trust my memory. But the name is not Martel.”
The name was Feliz Cervantes. He had been recruited through the state college and employed on a part-time basis, afternoons and evenings, at $1.25 an hour. His period of employment had been brief, extending from September 14 to September 30, 1959.
“Was he fired?”
“He quit,” Stoll said. “According to the record he left on September 30, without collecting his last two days’ pay.”
“That’s interesting. Roy Fablon disappeared on September 29. Feliz Cervantes quit September 30. Ketchel left October 1.”
“And you connect those three happenings?” he said.
“It’s hard not to.”
I used Stoll’s telephone to make an eleven o’clock appointment with the head of the placement bureau at the college, a man named Martin. I gave him the name Feliz Cervantes to check out.
While I was still at the club I paid a visit to Mrs. Bagshaw. Reluctantly she gave me the address of her friends in Georgetown, the Plimsolls, whom Martel had claimed to know.
I sent the address Airmail Special, along with Martel’s picture, to a man named Ralph Christman who ran a detective agency in Washington. I asked Christman to interview the Plimsolls personally, and to phone the results to my answering service in Hollywood. I should get them some time tomorrow, if everything clicked.
chapter 19
THE COLLEGE WAS in what had recently been the country. On the scalped hills around it were a few remnants of the orange groves which had once furred them with green. The trees on the campus itself were mostly palms, and looked as if they had been brought in and planted full grown. The students gave a similar impression.
One of them, a youth with a beard which made him look like a tall Toulouse-Lautrec, told me how to find Mr. Martin’s office. Its entrance was behind a pierced concrete screen at the side of the administration building, which was one of a Stonehenge oval of buildings surrounding the open center of the campus.
I stepped out of the sunlight into the cold glare of fluorescent lights. A young woman came up to the counter and informed me that Mr. Martin was expecting me.
He was a bald man in shirtsleeves with a salesman’s forceful stare. The paneled walls of his office were cool and impersonal, and made him look out of place.
“Nice office,” I said when we had shaken hands.
“I can’t get used to it. It’s a funny thing. I’ll be here five years in August, but I’m still nostalgic for the quonset hut we started in. But you’re not interested in past history.”
“I am in Feliz Cervantes’s past history.”
“Right. That’s quite a name. Feliz means ‘happy,’ you know. Happy Cervantes. Well, let’s hope he is. I don’t remember him personally—he didn’t stay with us long—but I had his records pulled.” He opened a manila folder on his desk. “What do you want to know about Happy Cervantes?”
“Everything you have.”
“That isn’t much, I’m afraid. Just why is Mr. Stoll interested in him?”
“He came back to town a couple of months ago, under an assumed name.”
“Has he done something wrong?”
“He’s wanted on suspicion of assault,” I said, toning it down. “We’re trying to establish his identity.”
“I’m glad to co-operate with Mr. Stoll—he uses a lot of our boys—but I may not be too much help. Cervantes could be an assumed name, too.”
“But don’t your students have to present records, of birth and education and so on, before you let them in?”
“They’re supposed to. But Cervantes didn’t.” Martin peered down at the contents of the folder. “There’s a note here to the effect that he claimed to be a transfer student from L.A. State. We admitted him provisionally on the understanding that his transcripts would reach us by the first of October. By that time he’d already left us, and if the transcripts ever arrived we sent them back.”
“Where did he go?”
He shrugged, retracting his ba
ld head tortoiselike between his shoulders. “We don’t keep track of our dropouts. Actually he never was our student.” He had no transcript, Martin seemed to be saying, therefore he didn’t exist. “You might try his old address here, in case he left a forwarding address. It’s care of Mrs. Grantham, on Shore Drive, number 148. She has quite a few apartments which she rents to students.”
I made a note of the address. “What courses was Cervantes taking?”
“I don’t have a record of that. He didn’t stay long enough to have his grades posted, and that’s all we’re interested in. I suppose you could try the Dean’s office, if it’s important. He’s in this building.”
I walked around the outside of the building to the Dean’s office. His secretary was a large-busted brunette of uncertain age who handled herself with a kind of stylized precision. She typed Cervantes’s name on a piece of paper and took it into a filing room, emerging with the written information that he had registered in French Language and Literature, on the senior level, and upper-division Modern European History.
I was certain for the first time that Feliz Cervantes and Francis Martel were the same man. I felt a certain humiliation for him. He had taken a big leap and found a toehold. Now he was falling.
“Who taught him French Language and Literature?”
“Professor Tappinger. He’s still teaching the course.”
“I was hoping it would be Professor Tappinger.”
“Oh? Do you know him?”
“Slightly. Is he on campus now?”
“He is, yes, but I’m afraid he’s in class.” The woman glanced at the electric clock on the wall. “It’s twenty minutes to twelve. He’ll finish his lecture at twelve exactly. He always does.” She seemed to take a certain pride in this.
“Do you know where everybody on campus is all the time?”
“Just some of them,” she said. “Professor Tappinger is one of our institutions.”
“He doesn’t look much like an institution.”
“He is, though. He’s one of our most brilliant scholars.” As if she was an institution herself, she added: “We consider ourselves very fortunate to have attracted him and kept him. I was worried he’d leave when he didn’t get his promotion.”
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