So much, he had thought, for parlor- and self-analysis. But even so, feeling armed with this insight, Farr had believed himself freed from his cowardice.
But it didn’t work that way, he had discovered. For, like a disease kept at bay with drugs, his weakness still lived in him despite his wisdom, appearing now and then in unrecognizable forms which he was almost always able to rationalize. Holly, he knew now, was the latest example.
Listening to the steady flutter of the pulse in his ears, Farr closed his eyes, morbidly summoning the flickering images which he had willfully censored until this moment. But all he could see now was that drowned face locked forever in the loneliness of death.
“To sleep,” an eerie whisper intruded on his thoughts, “perchance to dream—”
Farr’s eyes snapped open, and for one heart-stopping second, a breath of eternity seemed to chill him. Then he saw that his door stood slightly ajar. Thank God, it couldn’t be Scobie. Concealing his fury, he smiled as Drogey peered in. “It will be noted,” Farr exaggerated a Cambridge drawl, “that the quaint Eastern custom of knocking may never be experienced on the West Coast.”
“Knocking. Listen to him! Don’t you know that ain’t neighborly?” His chubby joker’s face flushed with delight at catching Farr off guard, Drogey tossed a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Out here we’ve got this open-door policy, man. Catnappers do so at their own risk.”
“I was concentrating.”
“Hoho.” Rivals by nature as well as circumstance, they grinned insincerely. “That’s the Jasprey stuff,” Drogey said. “Ask and ye shall receive.”
“Knock and it shall be opened. That’s a request, by the way. And thanks—for everything.”
“Please.” Drogey waved grandiosely. “It’s nothing. Any time I can accommodate—” and he slid through the door, closing it silently.
Clown, Farr thought sullenly, and for a brief time entertained the suspicion that Drogey might be trying to muscle in on the Jasprey project, which was his. Then he thought, The hell with it, and started reading again while another part of his mind diminished Krug and Casey, as well as Drogey, to the manageable dimensions of nuisance.
He had nothing to worry about anywhere, he told himself. And Holly was only an incident now. Yes, that was exactly the truth. One of those incidents which, however sad, seem to happen for no purpose. None at all, he thought, and decided to stop worrying. What’s done is done.
In the desert-like heat, downtown Santa Monica seemed more somnolent than usual to Casey. Even the half-shaded mall on Third was almost deserted, the sapling trees in their planter boxes droopy and dry-leaved, the surfaces of the small decorative pools dusty and littered with bits of waste paper. From speakers spaced at intervals, bland low-pitched music spun a sticky-sweet web of melody on the hot breeze—adding, Casey thought, to the general air of fakery which this whole mall construction superimposed on the old town. Santa Monica goes mod. Sort of.
“For chrissake,” Krug was grumbling. “Where the hell is this karate joint?” Pulling out his notebook, he stared suspiciously at the address he had scribbled in pencil. “You think maybe Farr steered us wrong?”
“More likely we’ve missed it.” Casey squinted through the dazzle from the second-story windows over the storefronts. “It’s got to be here someplace. Maybe we’d better forget names and look for numbers? Could be this Kenji doesn’t go in for advertising.”
The guess was a good one, they discovered a few minutes later. The address was a women’s shop at ground level; above it—reached by a narrow stair—the second-story windows carried the name of a dance studio.
Thudding up the stairs, they walked into a huge bare room lined with mirrors which cast back the glare from the windows. And half-blinded by the light, neither noticed at first glance the chunky figure sitting morosely in the corner watching them.
“Gentlemen?” his voice echoed across the dance studio, gently inquiring.
Glaring around like a baited bull, Krug finally located the seated man. “Your name Kenji?”
“Kenji Horita, yes, that is my name.”
Krug mopped his streaming forehead. “We have had”—emphatically, as if Kenji were to blame—“one hell of a time finding you. This is a karate, uh, studio?”
“Academy, yes.” Groaning, he dragged himself out of the chair, explaining, as he shuffled across the bare dusty floor, that his classes used these premises only three nights a week now. “But was once very big academy,” he said sadly. “All this, mine. But no longer, you see. I am retired due to injury.” Short, powerfully built, but seriously overweight, he began to demonstrate how he was crippled by the disc which had slipped in his vertebra. “You see I cannot bend?” He grunted painfully, trying to do so. “You see I cannot lean this way? Or that? Is great tragedy. And now former Kenji Karate is not at all, but is Tae Kwon Do. Very humiliating. But what choice I have? Is either take this Korean for partner, or acquire tools and become gardener.” He hesitated courteously. “You wish enrollment, perhaps? Tae Kwon Do, although less superior to Japanese art of self-defense is nevertheless more superior than American boxing—”
Krug stopped the explanation mid-sentence, identifying them, then mentioning Farr’s name.
“Ah, Mr. Farr, yes.” Kenji looked anxious suddenly. “Understandable he is very disturbed over loss of keys—but surely no question of police matter? We have no locked dressing room, to be sure. Only this, as you see—” indicating a flimsy wallboard partition which chopped off the end of the long room. “But all valuables may be left with instructor. This Mr. Farr does know. Is not our fault if keys—”
“We’re not here about his keys,” Krug interrupted again. “What we’d like to know is how long Mr. Farr’s been a student.”
“Oh, some time, yes.” Kenji thought about it. “Surely a green belt, at least? I will have to investigate to be exact.”
“Just give us an idea,” Krug suggested. “Like a year, maybe? Six months?”
“A year perhaps, but no more. For a young man, strong like he is, this art soon mastered.” He chopped one palm with the side of the other hand. “Developing sudo, you see?” Then he brightened. “Tonight is exhibition by all students of chon gi huong. Perhaps you will wish to attend? Admittance is free. Is very exciting to observe sometimes.”
“Will Farr be here—in the show?”
“Oh, I think yes, assuredly so.”
Krug glanced at Casey. “We’ll be here, maybe. I’d like to see that sudo you were talking about.”
“Very good, splendid.”
“But don’t tell Mr. Farr.” Krug grinned. “We’ll let that be a surprise, okay?”
“Green belt. Chong-hong,” he groused as they plodded through the heat to their car parked illegally on Broadway. “Next I suppose we got to listen to a lot of shit about sailing.” He crooked one little finger, adding mincingly, “The gentleman’s sport. Big deal. Lives like a goddam millionaire, don’t he?”
“I’ll answer that when I see his boat.” Casey laughed. “For all we know, it’s got two oars and holes in the bottom.”
“Yeah,” said Krug. “Sure it does—in a pig’s eye.”
Out of their territory, they drove on Neilson through the half-rebuilt, half-ramshackle crazy quilt of Venice, both eyeing the hippies and lunatic-looking oldsters on the street with a curiosity that was only partly official. Then, at Washington, they turned left, leaving the sun-drenched semi-ruin behind. In a few blocks they could see the new building which surrounded the marina area—apartments, condominiums, hotels, and what seemed to be a hundred restaurants, each with its own stage-set décor.
There were literally acres of boats to be seen—yachts, launches, sailing shells, even a sloop like a gigantic swan casting its shadow across the waterway. Sun-dazzled, the channels looked like strips of pale-blue satin. The sky was so clear over the area, it looked translucent t
o Casey. Only the brownish sketching of jet exhaust from planes taking off from Los Angeles International marred the day.
“Here we go.” Krug swung in at a wide gate which opened a longish stretch of redwood fencing. Casey half read the sign as they passed through. Something Yacht Club. Sailing craft only. Before them, like an array of docile sea birds, lay sailboats of all sizes docked behind cyclone fencing.
They were expected, it appeared, and without wasting any time, the salty-looking manager of the yacht club led them to the gate, opened it, and pointed the way to Farr’s mooring. It was a three-minute hike over a low resounding boardwalk dock. Farr’s boat was a sleekly varnished natural-wood hull with an aluminum mast stepped amidships.
“Dig the name,” Krug muttered.
Portia. Casey smiled. Farr was not quite the stuffed shirt he seemed apparently.
“Damn thing looks like an ad for Johnson’s wax, don’t it?”
“A real beauty.” Casey sighed enviously. “What would you say, about fifteen, twenty feet?”
“Beats me.” Staring up and down the boardwalk which connected the docking slips, he looked momentarily baffled. “Pete said there’d be people around we could talk to, for chrissake. People living on these things. But how the hell do you raise ’em?”
“We could walk up and down yelling ‘Ahoy there’ and see what happens,” Casey suggested facetiously.
“Now, there’s an idea.” Sour-faced, Krug fished for one of his poisonous little cigars. “Tell you what, sport, as long as it’s your idea, you walk up and down yelling ‘Ahoy there.’ I’ll wait and see what happens.”
As Krug flicked the head of a kitchen match with a huge amber-colored thumbnail, Casey momentarily loathed him for this and all the other bully-boy gestures which bolstered his conceit; for his constant grumbling; for the sordidness of his view of life. Then as swiftly as it had come, the feeling left him, replaced by a carefree sense that in the long run his own amiable nature, his humor must serve him better than Krug’s sour and ponderous seriousness. Nobody gave Sisyphus any prizes for groaning. And God knows, it takes less breath to laugh. “Ahoy there,” he called smartly, clomping back down the dock again. “Ahoy there, anybody aboard?” It surprised him, but not much, how soon he got an answer.
FIFTEEN
“Our local witch doctor’s finally finished,” Haynes reported as they checked in an hour later. “The Berry autopsy. Nasty stuff. The Lieutenant wants to see you about it.”
But Timms was on the phone. While they waited, Casey took over one of the typewriters and began pecking out a report—not that the morning amounted to much yet, but still, their time had to be accounted for. He was in the middle of a terse paragraph on Kenji when Timms hung up and called them over to his desk.
“Just talking to Zwingler,” he said. “He’s got Piggy nailed down for the funeral. He’ll meet him afterward and get whatever he hears on that knife job—if anything. Haynes and Norton and Hodiak are back-up for the time being. Got to spread out some today, damn the luck.” He rubbed his forehead, frowning. “Al, you’re the best one to cover this—” tapping a paper on his desk. “Our hit-and-runner’s brother-in-law called. Seems the damn fool’s skipped. The brother-in-law thinks the wife may know where he’s gone. See if you can squeeze it out of her. You know the drill. Better he faces the music now than later when it’ll go a hell of a lot tougher on him.” He handed over the information. “You,” he said to Casey, “keep going on the Berry case. You got anything new, by the way?”
“Not much,” Krug answered. “Except Farr was laying her. Also he’s got a boat. We did a fast run—compliments of Pete Springer—down to the marina. Nothing there, so far. But some people in the next boat live there all the time, we found out. We’ll catch ’em home sooner or later and see what they have to say.”
“Haynes tell you we got the final medical report on the girl?”
Krug nodded. “Something nasty, he said.”
“That’s his understatement for the day. No question any more it’s homicide. Deacon says she was systematically beaten. A nice methodical chopping—either a padded instrument or some karate nut at work.”
“Karate.” As Krug looked at him, Casey felt the hairs at the nape of his neck stirring.
“What killed her,” Timms was saying, “is one good one under the right ear. All the other stuff was either punishment or torture. Or both. Very expert, Deacon said. Which means a professional killer, maybe, so watch yourselves. Kellog, you better cover her landlord again.”
“Yes, sir,” Casey said. “And Synanon.”
“And we got a date tonight, remember,” Krug reminded him, his weathered face flushed slightly—excitement, Casey knew, over the idea they’d moved closer to Farr as a suspect. Krug explained to Timms about the karate exhibition at Kenji’s.
“Looks like you might be onto something there,” Timms agreed. “Better get somebody here started on a fast inquiry into this Farr’s pedigree. He from around here?”
“Back East, I’m sure,” Casey replied. “My guess is Harvard—which means he must’ve lived in Boston or Cambridge for at least a couple years. But if he had a record, the California Bar wouldn’t have licensed—” stopping as Timms glared at him.
“You telling me something you think I don’t know?”
“No, sir. Just, uh, reminding myself.”
“Okay, get Haynes going on a teletype to the Boston area. Hodiak and Norton can scratch around locally. For sure the brother’ll have a record. Longella’s out now on a lead on the uncle. Some motel on Ocean. We ought to hear in fifteen, twenty minutes whether it’s a dud or not. All I hope is we don’t have anything else turn up that can’t be put off—” a daily hope which they all knew was useless.
Casey drove his own car to the old made-over house on Pacific. Drove slowly for a change, automatically, as his professional mind struggled with the clinging horror dragging at his imagination. Systematically beaten, he kept thinking. Punishment or torture. The sun shone and the world glittered, but what he saw seemed only a sham crust over a seething darkness so malignant and evil that it was beyond hope of comprehension. The nape of his neck kept prickling, and all the tiny hairs on his body rose as he thought of a professional killer. He knew he was afraid. Not of the killer, not physically, but of the idea of him. For when they faced him at last, it wouldn’t be a beast they confronted, a demon, some recognizable form of evil—only another man.
“Hey,” Saretti said as he opened his door, “you again. Where’s your sidekick?”
“Busy.” Casey shuffled through the mail on the table by the door. “Anything come for Berry yet?”
“Not a thing. You want in her place again?”
Casey nodded, and they started up the stairs.
“Fifty times a day, up and down, up and down,” Saretti complained, jangling his keys. “Wonder I don’t get a bad heart. I read someplace it’s the worse thing you can do my age, climb stairs all the time.”
“Maybe not if you’re used to it. By the way,” Casey added, “that lock on her door. Did you install it?”
“Not a chance. They want expensive locks like that, they do it their-selves.”
“You mean she had it installed.”
At the top of the stairs, Saretti turned to him, puffing. “Something wrong somebody wants their own lock on their door?”
“Just covering a point,” patiently. “Did she?”
“Sure she did—who else?”
Casey watched him flipping through his bundle of keys, finding the right one. It looked newer than the others, still brassy-bright. So did the lock. “When was it, do you remember?”
With his key in the lock, Saretti paused, pondering. “When,” he repeated. “I don’t know exactly, a while ago,” and he opened the door. “Here you go.”
“Maybe you can remember when she gave you the key.”
&nbs
p; “What key?”
“The one you just used, Mr. Saretti. If she had the lock installed, she must’ve given you the second key.”
“Oh, yeah.” For an instant Saretti looked uncomfortable. “Well, like I said to her, ‘Look, it’s okay with me you get your own lock, but this is my building, I got to be able to get in my apartments, it’s only good business—’ ”
“So then she gave it to you.”
“I’m trying to tell you. She says she don’t want anybody in her place, even me. So I told her if she felt like that, she could pack up her stuff. I don’t want anybody living in my house is scared of everybody. That’s what I told her. I’ve had them kind, I know. Trouble every one, you better believe it.”
Swift as the shadow of a bird in flight, a tenuous idea flitted through Casey’s mind. He dropped the key subject, and thanking Saretti, firmly closed the door in his face.
Chances of finding anything they might have missed yesterday were dim, he knew, but even so, he methodically searched the room again. He went through bureau drawers, shelves, looked under every inch of the shabby carpet, behind and under the studio bed, between the mattress and springs, under the seats of the creaky chairs, under the table top. He found nothing stashed, pasted, fastened, or hidden in any way. Nor did he find any sign of anything having been bidden and taken away.
Oprressed as he had been yesterday by the bleakness, the meanness of Holly Berry’s existence, he went back down the stairs again. Saretti’s door was slightly ajar. Tapping on it lightly, Casey called, “anybody home?” and pushed it wider open.
Mrs. Saretti glared at him from the garishly flowered couch where she lay half-supine with a sweater tossed over her feet. “Well, what do you want now?” she asked nastily. “Can’t you see I’m resting? You want to talk to him”—jerking her head to indicate the street—“he’s out front sweeping the junk them damn nigger trash men always leave every time. Not a week goes by—”
Poor Poor Ophelia Page 8