Madder’s leg was bleeding slowly, not dangerously. He stared at me with fear-crazed eyes while I tied a tight handkerchief above his knee. I figured he had a cut tendon and maybe a chipped kneecap. He might walk a little lame when they came to hang him.
I went downstairs and stood on the porch looking at the two cars in front, then down the hill towards the pier. Nobody could have told where the shots came from, unless he happened to be passing. Quite likely nobody had even noticed them. There was probably shooting in the woods around there a good deal.
I went back into the house and looked at the crank telephone on the living-room wall, but didn’t touch it yet. Something was bothering me. I lit a cigarette and stared out of the window and a ghost voice said in my ears: “The Moors, Hattie. The Moors.”
I went back up to the fish room. Madder was groaning now, thick panting groans. What did I care about a torturer like Madder?
The girl was quite dead. None of the tanks was hit. The fish swam peacefully in their green water, slow and peaceful and easy. They didn’t care about Madder either.
The tank with the black Chinese Moors in it was over in the corner, about ten-gallon size. There were just four of them, big fellows, about four inches body length, coal black all over. Two of them were sucking oxygen on top of the water and two were waddling sluggishly on the bottom. They had thick deep bodies with a lot of spreading tail and high dorsal fins and their bulging telescope eyes that made them look like frogs when they were head towards you.
I watched them fumbling around in the green stuff that was growing in the tank. A couple of red pond snails were window cleaning. The two on the bottom looked thicker and more sluggish than the two on the top. I wondered why.
There was a long-handled strainer made of woven string lying between two of the tanks. I got it and fished down in the tank, trapped one of the big Moors and lifted it out. I turned it over in the net, looked at its faintly silver belly. I saw something that looked like a suture. I felt the place. There was a hard lump under it.
I pulled the other one off the bottom. Same suture, same hard round lump. I got one of the two that had been sucking air on top. No suture, no hard round lump. It was harder to catch too.
I put it back in the tank. My business was with the other two. I like goldfish as well as the next man, but business is business and crime is crime. I took my coat off and rolled my sleeves up and picked the razor blade backed with adhesive tape off the table.
It was a very messy job. It took about five minutes. Then they lay in the palm of my hand, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, heavy, perfectly round, milky white and shimmering with that inner light no other jewel has. The Leander pearls.
I washed them off, wrapped them in my handkerchief, rolled down my sleeves and put my coat back on. I looked at Madder, at his little pain and fear-tortured eyes, the sweat on his face. I didn’t care anything about Madder. He was a killer, a torturer.
I went out of the fish room. The bedroom door was still shut. I went down below and cranked the wall telephone.
“This is the Wallace place at Westport,” I said. “There’s been an accident. We need a doctor and we’ll have to have the police. What can you do?”
The girl said: “I’ll try and get you a doctor, Mr. Wallace. It may take a little time though. There’s a town marshal at Westport. Will he do?”
“I suppose so,” I said and thanked her and hung up. There were points about a country telephone after all.
I lit another cigarette and sat down in one of the rustic rockers on the porch. In a little while there were steps and Mrs. Sype came out of the house. She stood a moment looking off down the hills, then she sat down in the other rocker beside me. Her dry eyes looked at me steadily.
“You’re a detective, I suppose,” she said slowly, diffidently.
“Yes, I represent the company that insured the Leander pearls.”
She looked off into the distance. “I thought he would have peace here,” she said. “That nobody would bother him any more. That this place would be a sort of sanctuary.”
“He ought not to have tried to keep the pearls.”
She turned her head, quickly this time. She looked blank now, then she looked scared.
I reached down in my pocket and got out the wadded handkerchief, opened it up on the palm of my hand. They lay there together on the white linen, two hundred grand worth of murder.
“He could have had his sanctuary,” I said. “Nobody wanted to take it away from him. But he wasn’t satisfied with that.”
She looked slowly, lingeringly at the pearls. Then her lips twitched: Her voice got hoarse.
“Poor Wally,” she said. “So you did find them. You’re pretty clever, you know. He killed dozens of fish before he learned how to do that trick.” She looked up into my face. A little wonder showed at the back of her eyes.
She said: “I always hated the idea. Do you remember the old Bible theory of the scapegoat?”
I shook my head, no.
“The animal on which the sins of a man were laid and then it was driven off into the wilderness. The fish were his scapegoat.”
She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back.
She said, still smiling faintly: “You see, he once had the pearls, the real ones, and suffering seemed to him to make them his. But he couldn’t have had any profit from them, even if he had found them again. It seems some landmark changed, while he was in prison, and he never could find the spot in Idaho where they were buried.”
An icy finger was moving slowly up and down my spine. I opened my mouth and something I supposed might be my voice said: “Huh?”
She reached a finger out and touched one of the pearls. I was still holding them out, as if my hand was a shelf nailed to the wall.
“So he got these,” she said. “In Seattle. They’re hollow, filled with white wax. I forget what they call the process. They look very fine. Of course I never saw any really valuable pearls.”
“What did he get them for?” I croaked.
“Don’t you see? They were his sin. He had to hide them in the wilderness, this wilderness. He hid them in the fish. And do you know—” she leaned towards me again and her eyes shone. She said very slowly, very earnestly: “Sometimes I think that in the very end, just the last year or so, he actually believed they were the real pearls he was hiding. Does all this mean anything to you?”
I looked down at my pearls. My hand and the handkerchief closed over them slowly.
I said: “I’m a plain man, Mrs. Sype. I guess the scapegoat idea is a bit over my head. I’d say he was just trying to kid himself a bit—like any healthy loser.”
She smiled again. She was handsome when she smiled. Then she shrugged quite lightly.
“Of course, you would see it that way. But me—” she spread her hands. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter much now. May I have them for a keepsake?”
“Have them?”
“The—the phony pearls. Surely you don’t—”
I stood up. An old Ford roadster without a top was chugging up the hill. A man in it had a big star on his vest. The chatter of the motor was like the chatter of some old angry bald-headed ape in the zoo.
Mrs. Sype was standing beside me, with her hand half out, a thin, beseeching look on her face.
I grinned at her with sudden ferocity.
“Yeah, you were pretty good in there for a while,” I said. “I damn near fell for it. And was I cold down the back, lady! But you helped. ‘Phony’ was a shade out of character for you. Your work with the Colt was fast and kind of ruthless. Most of all Sype’s last words queered it. ‘The Moors, Hattie—the Moors.’ He wouldn’t have bothered with that if the stones had been ringers. And he wasn’t sappy enough to kid himself all the way.”
For a moment her face didn’t change at all. Then it did. Something horrible showed in her eyes. She put her lips out and spit at me. Then she slammed into the house.
I tucked twenty-five thousand dollars into my vest
pocket. Twelve thousand five hundred for me and twelve thousand five hundred for Kathy Home. I could see her eyes when I brought her the check, and when she put it in the bank, to wait for Johnny to get paroled from Quentin.
The Ford had pulled up behind the other cars. The man driving spit over the side, yanked his emergency brake on, got out without using the door. He was a big fellow in shirt sleeves.
I went down the steps to meet him.
THE CURTAIN
1
The first time I ever saw Larry Batzel he was drunk outside Sardi’s in a secondhand Rolls-Royce. There was a tall blonde with him who had eyes you wouldn’t forget. I helped her argue him out from under the wheel so that she could drive.
The second time I saw him he didn’t have any Rolls-Royce or any blonde or any job in pictures. All he had was the jitters and a suit that needed pressing. He remembered me. He was that kind of drunk.
I bought him enough drinks to do him some good and gave him half my cigarettes. I used to see him from time to time “between pictures.” I got to lending him money. I don’t know just why. He was a big, handsome brute with eyes like a cow and something innocent and honest in them. Something I don’t get much of in my business.
The funny part was he had been a liquor runner for a pretty hard mob before Repeal. He never got anywhere in pictures, and after a while I didn’t see him around any more.
Then one day out of the clear blue I got a check for all he owed me and a note that he was working on the tables— gambling not dining—at the Dardanella Club, and to come out and look him up. So I knew he was back in the rackets.
I didn’t go to see him, but I found out somehow or other that Joe Mesarvey owned the place, and that Joe Mesarvey was married to the blonde with the eyes, the one Larry Batzel had been with in the Rolls that time. I still didn’t go out there.
Then very early one morning there was a dim figure standing by my bed, between me and the windows. The blinds had been pulled down. That must have been what wakened me. The figure was large and had a gun.
I rolled over and rubbed my eyes.
“Okay,” I said sourly. “There’s twelve bucks in my pants and my wrist watch cost twenty-seven fifty. You couldn’t get anything on that.”
The figure went over to the window and pulled a blind aside an inch and looked down at the street. When he turned again I saw that it was Larry Batzel.
His face was drawn and tired and he needed a shave. He had dinner clothes on still and a dark double-breasted overcoat with a dwarf rose drooping in the lapel.
He sat down and held the gun on his knee for a moment before he put it away, with a puzzled frown, as if he didn’t know how it got into his hand.
“You’re going to drive me to Berdoo,” he said. “I’ve got to get out of town. They’ve put the pencil on me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
I sat up and felt the carpet with my toes and lit a cigarette. It was a little after five-thirty.
“I jimmied your lock with a piece of celluloid,” he said. “You ought to use your night latch once in a while. I wasn’t sure which was your flop and I didn’t want to rouse the house.”
“Try the mailboxes next time,” I said. “But go ahead. You’re not drunk, are you?”
“I’d like to be, but I’ve got to get away first. I’m just rattled. I’m not so tough as I used to be. You read about the O’Mara disappearance of course.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, anyway. If I keep talking I won’t blow up. I don’t think I’m spotted here.”
“One drink won’t hurt either of us,” I said. “The Scotch is on the table there.”
He poured a couple of drinks quickly and handed me one. I put on a bathrobe and slippers. The glass rattled against his teeth when he drank.
He put his empty glass down and held his hands tight together.
“I used to know Dud O’Mara pretty well. We used to run stuff together down from Hueneme Point. We even carried the torch for the same girl. She’s married to Joe Mesarvey now. Dud married five million dollars. He married General Dade Winslow’s rickety-rackety divorcÈe daughter.”
“I know all that,” I said.
“Yeah. Just listen. She picked him out of a speak, just like I’d pick up a cafeteria tray. But he didn’t like the life. I guess he used to see Mona. He got wise Joe Mesarvey and Lash Yeager had a hot car racket on the side. They knocked him off.”
“The hell they did,” I said. “Have another drink.”
“No. Just listen. There’s just two points. The night O’Mara pulled down the curtain—no, the night the papers got it— Mona Mesarvey disappeared too. Only she didn’t. They hid her out in a shack a couple of miles beyond Realito in the orange belt. Next door to a garage run by a heel named Art Huck, a hot car drop. I found out. I trailed Joe there.”
“What made it your business?” I asked.
“I’m still soft on her. I’m telling you this because you were pretty swell to me once. You can make something of it after I blow. They hid her out there so it would look as if Dud had blown with her. Naturally the cops were not too dumb to see Joe after the disappearance. But they didn’t find Mona. They have a system on disappearances and they play the system.”
He got up and went over to the window again, looked through the side of the blind.
“There’s a blue sedan down there I think I’ve seen before,” he said. “But maybe not. There’s a lot like it.”
He sat down again. I didn’t speak.
“This place beyond Realito is on the first side road north from the Foothill Boulevard. You can’t miss it. It stands all alone, the garage and the house next door. There’s an old cyanide plant up above there. I’m telling you this—”
“That’s point one,” I said. “What was the second point?”
“The punk that used to drive for Lash Yeager lit out a couple of weeks back and went East. I lent him fifty bucks. He was broke. He told me Yeager was out to the Winslow estate the night Dud O’Mara disappeared.”
I stared at him. “It’s interesting, Larry. But not enough to break eggs over. After all we do have a police department.”
“Yeah. Add this. I got drunk last night and told Yeager what I knew. Then I quit the job at the Dardanella. So somebody shot at me outside where I live when I got home. I’ve been on the dodge ever since. Now, will you drive me to Berdoo?”
I stood up. It was May but I felt cold. Larry Batzel looked cold, even with his overcoat on.
“Absolutely,” I said. “But take it easy. Later will be much safer than now. Have another drink. You don’t know they knocked O’Mara off.”
“If he found out about the hot car racket, with Mona married to Joe Mesarvey, they’d have to knock him off. He was that kind of guy.”
I stood up and went towards the bathroom. Larry went over to the window again.
“It’s still there,” he said over his shoulder. “You might get shot at riding with me.”
“I’d hate that,” I said.
“You’re a good sort of heel, Carmady. It’s going to rain. I’d hate like hell to be buried in the rain, wouldn’t you?”
“You talk too damn much,” I said, and went into the bathroom.
It was the last time I ever spoke to him.
2
I heard him moving around while I was shaving, but not after I got under the shower, of course. When I came out he was gone. I padded over and looked into the kitchenette. He wasn’t in there. I grabbed a bathrobe and peeked out into the hall. It was empty except for a milkman starting down the back stairs with his wiry tray of bottles, and the fresh folded papers leaning against the shut doors.
“Hey,” I called out to the milkman, “did a guy just come out of here and go by you?”
He looked back at me from the corner of the wall and opened his mouth to answer. He was a nice-looking boy with fine large white teeth. I remember his teeth well, because I was looking at them when I heard the shots.
They were not very near or very far. Out back of the apartment house, by the garages, or in the alley, I thought. There were two quick, hard shots and then the riveting machine. A burst of five or six, all a good chopper should ever need. Then the roar of the car going away.
The milkman shut his mouth as if a winch controlled it. His eyes were huge and empty looking at me. Then he very carefully set his bottles down on the top step and leaned against the wall.
“That sounded like shots,” he said.
All this took a couple of seconds and felt like half an hour. I went back into my place and threw clothes on, grabbed odds and ends off the bureau, barged out into the hall. It was still empty, even of the milkman. A siren was dying somewhere near. A bald head with a hangover under it poked out of a door and made a snuffling noise.
I went down the back stairs.
There were two or three people out in the lower hail. I went out back. The garages were in two rows facing each other across a cement space, then two more at the end, leaving a space to go out to the alley. A couple of kids were coming over a fence three houses away.
Larry Batzel lay on his face, with his hat a yard away from his head, and one hand flung out to within a foot of a big black automatic. His ankles were crossed, as if he had spun as he fell. Blood was thick on the side of his face, on his blond hair, especially on his neck. It was also thick on the cement yard.
Two radio cops and the milk driver and a man in a brown sweater and bibless overalls were bending over him. The man in overalls was our janitor.
I went up to them, about the same time the two kids from over the fence hit the yard. The milk driver looked at me with a queer, strained expression. One of the cops straightened up and said: “Either of you guys know him? He’s still got half his face.”
He wasn’t talking to me. The milk driver shook his head and kept on looking at me from the corner of his eyes. The janitor said: “He ain’t a tenant here. He might have been a visitor. Kind of early for visitors, though, ain’t it?”
“He’s got party clothes on. You know your flophouse better’n I do,” the cop said heavily. He got out a notebook.
Collected Stories (Everyman's Library) Page 51