“So would a lot of people, Mrs. Falk.”
She glanced inquiringly at Clare. “Who’s your friend? You haven’t introduced us.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Archer, Mrs. Falk. Mr. Archer is a detective, Gretchen.”
“I was wondering. Ethel didn’t want me to call the police. I told her she ought to, but she said no. The poor darling’s so ashamed of herself, getting mixed up with that kind of a louse. She didn’t even get in touch with me until tonight. Then she saw in the paper about her car being picked up, and she thought maybe I could get it back for her without any publicity. Publicity is what she doesn’t want most. I guess it’s a tragic thing for a beautiful girl like Ethel to lose her looks.”
I said: “There won’t be any publicity if I can help it. Did you go to see the police about her car?”
“Jake advised me not to. He said it would blow the whole thing wide open. And the doctor told me he was kind of breaking the law by not reporting the beating she took. So I dropped it.”
“How did this thing happen?”
“I’ll tell you all I know about it. Come on into the living room, kids, let me fix you something to drink.”
Clare said: “You’re awfully kind, Gretchen, but I must go to Ethel. Where is she?”
“The Mission Rest Home. Only don’t you think you better wait till morning? It’s a private hospital, but it’s awful late for visitors.”
“I’ve got to see her,” Clare said. “I couldn’t sleep a wink if I didn’t. I’ve been so worried about her.”
Gretchen heaved a sigh. “Whatever you say, honey. We can try, anyway. Give me a second to put on a dress and I’ll show you where the place is.”
She led us into the darkened living room, turned the television set off and the lights on. A quart of beer, nearly full, stood on a coffee table beside the scuffed davenport. She offered me a glass, which I accepted gratefully. Clare refused. She was so tense she couldn’t even sit down.
We stood and looked at each other for a minute. Then Gretchen came back, struggling with a zipper on one massive hip.
“All set, kids. You better drive, Mr. Archer. I had a couple of quarts to settle my nerves. You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve gained five pounds since Ethel came down here. I always gain weight when I’m anxious.”
We went out to my car, and turned towards the banked lights of San Diego. The women rode in the front seat. Gretchen’s opulent flesh was warm against me.
“Was Ethel here before it happened?” I said.
“Sure she was, for a day. Ethel turned up here eight or nine days ago, Tuesday of last week it was. I hadn’t heard from her for several months, since she wrote me that she was going to Nevada for a divorce. It was early in the morning when she drove up; in fact, she got me out of bed. The minute I saw her, I knew that something was wrong. The poor kid was scared, really scared. She was as cold as a corpse, and her teeth were chattering. So I fed her some coffee and put her in a hot tub, and after that she told me what it was that’d got her down.”
“Dewar?”
“You said it, mister. Ethel never was much of a picker. When she was hostessing at the Grant coffee shop back in the old days, she was always falling for the world’s worst phonies. Speaking of phonies, this Dewar takes the cake. She met him in Las Vegas when she was waiting for her divorce from Illman. He was a big promoter, to hear him tell it. She fell for the story, and she fell for him. A few days after she got her final decree, she married him. Big romance. Big deal. They were going to be business partners, too. He said he had some money to invest, twenty-five thousand or so, and he knew of a swell little hotel in Acapulco that they could buy at a steal for fifty thousand. The idea was that they should each put up half, and go and live in Mexico in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. He didn’t show her any of his money, but she believed him. She drew her settlement money out of the bank and came to L.A. with him to close up her house and get set for the Mexican deal.”
“He must have hypnotized her,” Clare said. “Ethel’s a smart business woman.”
“Not with something tall, dark, and handsome, honey. I give him that much. He’s got the looks. Well, they lived in L.A. for a couple of weeks, on Ethel’s money of course, and he kept putting off the Mexican trip. He didn’t want to go anywhere, in fact, just sit around the house and drink her liquor and eat her good cooking.”
“He was hiding out,” I said.
“From what? The police?”
“Worse than that. Some gangster pal from Nevada was gunning for him; still is. Ethel wasn’t the only one he fleeced.”
“Nice guy, eh? Anyway, Ethel started to get restless. She didn’t like sitting around with all that money in the house, waiting for nothing. Last Monday night, a week ago Monday that is, she had a showdown with him. Then it all came out. He didn’t have any money or anything else. He wasn’t a promoter, he didn’t know of any hotel in Acapulco. His whole buildup was as queer as a three-dollar bill. Apparently he made his living gambling, but he was even all washed up with that. Nothing. But she was married to him now, he said, and she was going to sit still and like it or he’d knock her block off.
“He meant it, too, Ethel said. She’s got the proof of it now. She waited until he drank himself to sleep that night, then she threw some things in a bag, including her twenty-five thousand, and came down here. She was on her way to get a quickie divorce in Mexico, but Jake and me talked her into staying for a while and thinking it over. Jake said she could probably get an annulment right in California, and that would be more legal.”
“He was probably right.”
“Yeah? Maybe it wasn’t such a bright idea after all. We kept her here just long enough for Dewar to catch up with her. Apparently she left some letters behind, and he ran down the list of her friends until he found her at our place. He talked her into going for a drive to talk it over. I didn’t hear what was said—they were in her room—but he must have used some powerful persuasion. She went out of the house with him as meek as a lamb, and they drove away in her car. That was the last I saw of her, until she got in touch with me tonight. When she didn’t come back, I wanted to call the police, but Jake wouldn’t let me. He said I had no business coming between a man and his wife, and all that guff. I gave Jake a piece of my mind tonight on that score. I ought to’ve called the cops as soon as Dewar showed his sneaking face on our front porch.”
“What exactly did he do to her?”
“He gave her a bad clobbering, that’s obvious. Ethel didn’t want to talk about it much tonight. The subject was painful to her in more ways than one.”
“Did he take her money?”
“He must have. It’s gone. So is he.”
We were on the freeway which curved past the hills of Balboa Park. The trees of its man-made jungle were restless against the sky. Below us on the other side, the city sloped like a frozen cascade of lights down to the black concavity of the bay.
The Mission Rest Home was in the eastern suburbs, an old stucco mansion which had been converted into a private hospital. The windows in its thick stucco walls were small and barred, and there were lights in some of them.
I rang the doorbell. Clare was so close to my back I could feel her breath. A woman in a purple flannelette wrapper opened the door. Her hair hung in two gray braids, which were ruler-straight. Her hard black eyes surveyed the three of us, and stayed on Gretchen.
“What is it now, Mrs. Falk?” she said brusquely.
“This is Mrs.—Miss Larrabee’s sister Clare.”
“Miss Larrabee is probably sleeping. She shouldn’t be disturbed.”
“I know it’s late,” Clare said in a tremulous voice. “But I’ve come all the way from San Francisco to see her.”
“She’s doing well, I assure you of that. She’s completely out of danger.”
“Can’t I just go in for a teensy visit? Ethel will want to see me, and Mr. Archer has some questions to ask her. Mr. Archer is a private detective.”
&
nbsp; “This is very irregular.” Reluctantly, she opened the door. “Wait here, and I’ll see if she is awake. Please keep your voices down. We have other patients.”
We waited in a dim high-ceilinged room which had once been the reception room of the mansion. The odors of mustiness and medication blended depressingly in the stagnant air.
“I wonder what brought her here,” I said.
“She knew old lady Lestina,” Gretchen said. “She stayed with her at one time, when Mrs. Lestina was running a boardinghouse.”
“Of course,” Clare said. “I remember the name. That was when Ethel was going to San Diego State. Then Daddy—got killed, and she had to drop out of school and go to work.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Poor Ethel. She’s always tried so hard, and been so good to me.”
Gretchen patted her shoulder. “You bet she has, honey. Now you have a chance to be good to her.”
“Oh, I will. I’ll do everything I can.”
Mrs. Lestina appeared in the arched doorway. “She’s not asleep. I guess you can talk to her for a very few minutes.”
We followed her to a room at the end of one wing of the house. A white-uniformed nurse was waiting at the door. “Don’t say anything to upset her, will you? She’s always fighting sedation as it is.”
The room was large but poorly furnished, with a mirrorless bureau, a couple of rickety chairs, a brown-enameled hospital bed. The head on the raised pillow was swathed in bandages through which tufts of blond hair were visible. The woman sat up and spread her arms. The whites of her eyes were red, suffused with blood from broken vessels. Her swollen lips opened and said, “Clare!” in a tone of incredulous joy.
The sisters hugged each other, with tears and laughter. “It’s wonderful to see you,” the older one said through broken teeth. “How did you get here so fast?”
“I came to stay with Gretchen. Why didn’t you call me, Ethel? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, darling. I should have, shouldn’t I? I didn’t want you to see me like this. And I’ve been so ashamed of myself. I’ve been such a terrible fool. I’ve lost our money.”
The nurse was standing against the door, torn between her duty and her feelings. “Now you promised not to get excited, Miss Larrabee.”
“She’s right,” Clare said. “Don’t give it a second thought. I’m going to leave school and get a job and look after you. You need some looking after for a change.”
“Nuts. I’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.” The brave voice issuing from the mask was deep and vibrant. “Don’t make any rash decisions, kiddo. The head is bloody but unbowed.” The sisters looked at each other in the silence of deep affection.
I stepped forward to the bedside and introduced myself. “How did this happen to you, Miss Larrabee?”
“It’s a long story,” she lisped, “and a sordid one.”
“Mrs. Falk has told me most of it up to the point when Dewar made you drive away with him. Where did he take you?”
“To the beach, I think it was in La Jolla. It was late and there was nobody there and the tide was coming in. And Owen had a gun. I was terrified. I didn’t know what more he wanted from me. He already had my twenty-five thousand.”
“He had the money?”
“Yes. It was in my room at Gretchen’s house. He made me give it to him before we left there. But it didn’t satisfy him. He said I hurt his pride by leaving him. He said he had to satisfy his pride.” Contempt ran through her voice like a thin steel thread.
“By beating you up?”
“Apparently. He hit me again and again. I think he left me for dead. When I came to, the waves were splashing on me. I managed somehow to get up to the car. It wasn’t any good to me, though, because Owen had the keys. It’s funny he didn’t take it.”
“Too easily traced,” I said. “What did you do then?”
“I hardly know. I think I sat in the car for a while, wondering what to do. Then a taxi went by and I stopped him and told him to bring me here.”
“You weren’t very wise not to call the police. They might have got your money back. Now it’s a cold trail.”
“Did you come here to lecture me?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I was half crazy with the pain,” she said. “I hardly knew what I was doing. I couldn’t bear to have anybody see me.”
Her fingers were active among the folds of the sheets. Clare reached out and stroked her hands into quietness. “Now, now, darling,” she crooned. “Nobody’s criticizing you. You take things nice and easy for a while, and Clare will look after you.”
The masked head rolled on the pillow. The nurse came forward, her face solicitous. “I think Miss Larrabee has had enough, don’t you?”
She showed us out. Clare lingered with her sister for a moment, then followed us to the car. She sat between us in brooding silence all the way to Pacific Beach. Before I dropped them off at Gretchen’s house, I asked for her permission to go to the police. She wouldn’t give it to me, and nothing I could say would change her mind.
—
I spent the rest of the night in a motor court, trying to crawl over the threshold of sleep. Shortly after dawn I disentangled myself from the twisted sheets and drove out to La Jolla. La Jolla is a semi-detached suburb of San Diego, a small resort town half surrounded by sea. It was a gray morning. The slanting streets were scoured with the sea’s cold breath, and the sea itself looked like hammered pewter.
I warmed myself with a short-order breakfast and went the rounds of the hotels and motels. No one resembling Dewar had registered in the past week. I tried the bus and taxi companies, in vain. Dewar had slipped out of town unnoticed. But I did get a lead on the taxi driver who had taken Ethel to the Mission Rest Home. He had mentioned the injured woman to his dispatcher, and the dispatcher gave me his name and address. Stanley Simpson, 38 Calle Laureles.
Simpson was a paunchy, defeated-looking man who hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He came to the door of his tiny bungalow in his underwear, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “What’s the pitch, bub? If you got me up to try and sell me something, you’re in for a disappointment.”
I told him who I was and why I was there. “Do you remember the woman?”
“I hope to tell you I do. She was bleeding like a stuck pig, all over the back seat. It took me a couple of hours to clean it off. Somebody pistol-whipped her, if you ask me. I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she said no. Hell, I couldn’t argue with her in that condition. Did I do wrong?” His slack mouth twisted sideways in a self-doubting grimace.
“If you did, it doesn’t matter. She’s being taken good care of. I thought you might have got a glimpse of the man that did it to her.”
“Not me, mister. She was all by herself, nobody else in sight. She got out of a parked car and staggered out into the road. I couldn’t just leave her there, could I?”
“Of course not. You’re a Good Samaritan, Simpson. Exactly where did you pick her up?”
“Down by the Cove. She was sitting in this Buick. I dropped a party off at the beach club and I was on my way back, kind of cruising along—”
“What time?”
“Around ten o’clock, I guess it was. I can check my schedule.”
“It isn’t important. Incidentally, did she pay you for the ride?”
“Yeah, she had a buck and some change in her purse. She had a hard time making it. No tip,” he added gloomily.
“Tough cheese.”
His fogged eyes brightened. “You’re a friend of hers, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you say I rate a tip on a run like that? I always say, better late than never.”
“Is that what you always say?” I handed him a dollar.
The Cove was a roughly semicircular inlet at the foot of a steep hill surmounted by a couple of hotels. Its narrow curving beach and the street above it were both deserted. An offshore wind had swept away the early morning mist, but the sky was still cloudy, and t
he sea grim. The long swells slammed the beach like stone walls falling, and broke in foam on the rocks that framed the entrance to the Cove.
I sat in my car and watched them. I was at a dead end. This seaswept place, under this iron sky, was like the world’s dead end. Far out at sea, a carrier floated like a chip on the horizon. A Navy jet took off from it and scrawled tremendous nothings on the distance.
Something bright caught my eye. It was in the trough of a wave a couple of hundred yards outside the Cove. Then it was on a crest: the aluminum air-bottle of an Aqua-Lung strapped to a naked brown back. Its wearer was prone on a surfboard, kicking with black-finned feet towards the shore. He was kicking hard, and paddling with one arm, but he was making slow progress. His other arm dragged in the opaque water. He seemed to be towing something, something heavy. I wondered if he had speared a shark or a porpoise. His face was inscrutable behind its glass mask.
I left my car and climbed down to the beach. The man on the surfboard came towards me with his tiring one-armed stroke, climbing the walled waves and sliding down them. A final surge picked him up and set him on the sand, almost at my feet. I dragged his board out of the backwash, and helped him to pull in the line that he was holding in one hand. His catch was nothing native to the sea. It was a man.
The end of the line was looped around his body under the armpits. He lay face down like an exhausted runner, a big man, fully clothed in soggy tweeds. I turned him over and saw the aquiline profile, the hairline moustache over the blue mouth, the dark eyes clogged with sand. Owen Dewar had made his escape by water.
The skin-diver took off his mask and sat down heavily, his chest working like a great furred bellows. “I go down for abalone,” he said between breaths. “I find this. Caught between two rocks at thirty-forty feet.”
“How long has he been in the water?”
“It’s hard to tell. I’d say a couple of days, anyway. Look at his color. Poor stiff. But I wish they wouldn’t drown themselves in my hunting grounds.”
“Do you know him?”
“Nope. Do you?”
“Never saw him before,” I said, with truth.
The Archer Files Page 29