Noir(ish) (9781101610053) (13 page)

“No one. I was—”

I grabbed her arms again, and this time I shook her. “
I checked with Fritz.
His book says you made a dozen calls since you checked in, all but one to my numbers—the one I heard you talkin' to before I knocked!” I took a breath but held on to her. She didn't try to get away. “I've got friends at the telephone company, Miss Duryea,” I lied. “I
can
find out on my own. But I'd rather you told me.”

She said nothing but looked at my hands again. Her eyes swelled. “Are
you
going to hit me—too?” she said softly. I took another breath. Then, slowly, I let her go. She rubbed her arms. “Thank you, Robert,” she said. She hugged her arms around me, with her cheek to my chest, and whispered, “Please, I nee' your help. I nee' . . . you.”

“You want me to help you?”

“Yes, I do. I . . . don't know what to do, and I'm fearful.”

“I bet you are.” I laughed and pulled away from the embrace. “Poor helpless Lizabeth, huh. Afraid of everyone and everything. Except a gun, of course.”

“I tol' you, Dan gave it to me, there were no bullets in it, I just—”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me.” I sat down again. It was a way to keep from losing my temper again and doing what I'd have done if she'd been a man. “There were no bullets in it when you
showed
it to me,” I said, my voice strained. “But maybe you
did
find some, and you had them, say,
last
night, right before you called The Pickup. And maybe you had some Friday night, too, say, oh, around ten thirty—maybe nine of them. Or did Dan give you the gun afterward?”

“After . . . ?”

“Come on, Lizabeth. You want me to help you, you gotta let
me
do my job.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Find Dan,” I said reasonably. “Protect you. And protect the package. That's what you hired me to do, isn't it?”

“Dan's here. You know that.”

“Uh-huh. But neither of us knows exactly where, right?” She nodded slowly. “And I'm still protecting you and the package.” Another lie. At least the part about the package.

She looked worried. I figured she should be. I was willing to bet the bullets in it had come out of her gun. I hadn't told Stanwyck where they'd come from, but—client privilege or no client privilege—I'd given her forensic folks the nine little bullets and I'd give them the chance to test the gun that went along with that theory, if I could. It might not be the most ethical thing to do, but then neither is killing someone, and covering up a murder isn't part of the bargain when you hire me. Like I said, I don't like lying. Little white lies are bad enough, but big black ones are out of the question.

“You . . . don't have to protect that anymore,” she said. “You can give it back to me.” She sat on the foot of the bed, an arm's length away, and looked at me. Her eyes pleaded better than her words.

But not well enough. I shook my head. “But if I did that, I'd have to return some of your money. Maybe some of Dan's money, too. Just to keep my reputation for honesty intact.”

“
I'm
what has to be protect'. You can keep the money. I have some more.”

“That's right, you do. Ten or twenty thousand dollars.” I wiped the sweat off my face; more began to collect. “Y' know, you oughta put that in a bank.”

“I . . . don't trust banks.”

“Yeah, my father didn't either. At least not after nineteen twen—” I stopped and thought a split second. Then I said, “I mean, after 1936. You remember '36, don't you. I mean, even if you weren't in America yet, you must've heard about the big stock market crash? Everybody jumping out of buildings?”

She screwed her face. “I—of course.”

“And you probably heard something about Landon beating Roosevelt, too,” I went on. “That was news all over the world.”

She nodded. “I think so.”

I nodded, too. “Of course, you were just a little girl, you probably didn't pay much attention to boxing.”

Lizabeth looked down uneasily. “No,” she acknowledged. She glanced up, then stood and moved to a window, pulled back the curtain, and stared out.

I followed her and held the drape. There wasn't much traffic. A few people were hurrying along the street, looking up at the sky. It was still threatening. I heard a rumble of thunder. “Nothing there but storm clouds, sweetheart. And it's a little early, and a little dark, for the Evening Star, don't you think?”

“I think it's going to rain,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I don't like rain. It feels very—cold. And lonely.”

“You oughta get used to being in a lonely place, lady. It's gonna feel a lot colder and lonelier in a jail cell, Miss Duryea, 'specially when you're about to walk that last mile and you're waitin' for them to—”

I felt something hit my head. Then I blacked out.

* * *

This time when I woke up it was dark
and
noisy: Rain and hail were coming down fast and furious. My head felt like they'd been pummeling it for the last hour and the hailstones had been the size of bowling balls. A post-excess-bourbon trauma just didn't compare.

Luckily, I always carried aspirin in case my stomach rebelled. I swallowed three and sat for a few minutes, then made a quick check of the rest of me. My holster was empty. That was okay: I had another gun at home. I preferred the Colt, but I could make do with the Smith and Wesson for the time being. The slip of paper with the phone number Lizabeth had called was missing, too. It didn't matter. Fritz had it in his log, and I remembered it, anyway. I would look it up later, but I was willing to lay a sawbuck it was connected, somehow, to Dan Scott.

Other than that, I seemed intact. Nothing was bleeding, anyway.

I looked at my watch. Seven. I'd been out nearly three hours. I had no idea who'd sapped me, but whoever it was had known what he was doing. I waited until the aspirin started to kick in, then went into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. My face looked okay. I couldn't see the bump on my head, but I felt it. I was sure I was going to keep feeling it for quite a while to come.

I took a quick look around the suite. Lizabeth was gone. So was whoever had hit me. I thought about opening the bourbon and taking a long swallow, but that seemed like a bad idea on an empty stomach.

I sat on the bed, picked up the phone. When Jacques asked if he could help me, I gave him a number to dial. He did. When it answered, I asked for Stanwyck. She agreed to meet me at the Criss Cross in an hour. There were places that were closer, but I couldn't think of one at the moment, and the Criss Cross was a familiar haunt: Stanwyck and I had spent more than a few late nights eating Ed Hopper's sundees.

Right now, though, I wanted my breakfast.

* * *

I waited a while for my head and the weather to ease up. Fortunately, the hail stopped. The rain kept falling, but by the time I left the hotel, it was just a steady downpour and things were cooler. Not cool but not the middle of a Turkish bath, either. That would be tomorrow.

On the way down I asked Tab if he'd dropped anyone else on seven that afternoon. He scratched his blond head and said he thought so, but he didn't remember; it had been awful busy. He
did
remember taking down the girl in 711. “A real looker,” he said, “but kinda—strange. Her clothes?”

I said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. Was she by herself?”

He scratched his head again and said, “I think so.”

I sighed and nodded. “Thanks.”

He said “No problem” and flashed a smile that must have cost his parents a thousand bucks.

All the taxis were occupied and traffic was awful—even the streetcars were crawling—so I walked. I passed cops in shiny black rubber boots and rain slickers, who weren't used to trying to direct traffic in the rain, trying to direct traffic, and motorists trying to splash through because they weren't used to trying to drive in the rain. L.A. thrives in good weather. Give it a storm, even if everyone is expecting it, and everyone gets confused about where they're going and how to get there.

It only took me half an hour. My head still throbbed. The rain helped clear it. I was getting tired of it needing to be cleared.

The rain stopped just before I got to the diner, but I was good and soaked despite the coat and umbrella. I probably looked like a muskrat that'd tried to swim across Lake Michigan. I opened the door just after eight. Like it had been last night, the place was empty, but for once the radio was off. Ed sat behind the counter reading a paper and smiling: probably the funnies; he loved
Smilin' Jack
, especially the chicken eating Fatstuff's buttons as they popped off his shirt. I liked that, too.

Stanwyck was in a booth, staring at a coffee cup. She never remembered, either, until she tasted it. Bad as it was, I needed something now, and I hated the taste of tea even more than Ed Hopper's java. The truth was his wasn't all that much worse than it was in a lot of the twenty-four-hour diners in L.A. I'd eaten in most of them. Regularly scheduled meals aren't part of a PI's routine. Dinner is at three a.m. more often than six o'clock at night, and eight-in-the-evening breakfasts, like now, were nothing new either.

She looked up as I walked in and shook her head. “And I thought you looked bad last night.”

“Nice to see you again, too,” I said, and hung up the umbrella and my hat and coat and let them drip on Ed's nice dry floor. “Hey, Ed,” I called. “Couple slices of toast with a sliced hard-boiled egg between 'em. With some lettuce and mayo.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Grahame. Comin' right up.”

“And coffee,” I added. “Thanks.” I sat across from Stanwyck and wiped my face with a napkin. One didn't do the trick, so I wadded up three or four and tried again. That dried my face, but I'd need a lot more than the diner had on hand to dry the rest of me.

“So,” she said, “how are you?”

“Like I said on the phone: I got a headache, Lieutenant. In more ways than one.”

She snorted. “Tell me about it.” She sipped her coffee and winced.

“I already have, last night at the station; your stenographer took it down for posterity. The meat, anyway. My ‘client's' disappearing act this afternoon was just the gravy.”

Ed brought my coffee. I added two teaspoons of sugar and a large dollop of cream and drank deeply. It was like a transfusion after losing six pints of blood. My taste buds cringed, but the rest of me felt much better. Stanwyck stared; I shrugged. “Sometimes it's worse
not
to drink it,” I said. “What'd you find out about Gloria?”

“We checked her pocketbook, Robert. No identification. Nothing but some cash and a miniature dictionary.”

“English?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm!” Gloria may not have been erudition-in-a-skirt, but her spoken English was fine, and I never saw her look up a word in the
Webster's
on her desk. Of course, now that I thought about it, I'd never seen her open any book, or any magazine, either, not even one of those we got every week to keep the clients entertained. The things you don't know about people, even when you're around them every day. “Her apartment?”

She shook her head. “The address is a rooming house. The owner, old gal named Martha Ivers, never heard of her.”

“Nuts.” I finished the coffee in another long gulp and waved at Ed for a refill.

“
You
—sure,” he said, with the same astonished smile he'd displayed when Lizabeth Duryea had asked for more. Even
he
didn't drink his own coffee.

Stanwyck sipped hers cautiously. “How long'd she work for you?”

“I told you last night: a couple months.”

“You didn't check her out very carefully.”

“I needed a secretary, Lieutenant. She applied. She typed. She smiled. She made coffee.” Ed filled my cup. “
Good
coffee.” Ed beamed. I added cream and sugar.

“So does Bacall,” said Stanwyck, “but at least I called his mother before I gave him a job.”

“Bacall's a kid.”

“And Gloria Mitchum's a kidder. A dead kidder.”

Ed reappeared, this time holding a beige ceramic plate. “Here y' go, Mr. Grahame,” he said. He set the sandwich down. The phone behind the counter rang. “'Scuse me,” he said, and went to answer it.

I drank again. The second cup was less necessary, and even with the additives, it made me wince. “He must put bullets in with the grounds,” I said, and added more sugar. “Speaking of bullets: Learn anything from the ones I gave you?”

“Criss Cross,” Ed said into the phone.

Stanwyck shook her head. “Just that they're from a gun like we've never seen before.”

“Oh?” Somehow, that wasn't a surprise.

“Yeah. Probably something experimental, for the war, that never got mass-produced.”

“Yeah,” said Hopper, “she's here. One second.”

“The bullets must've really flattened out,” she went on. “We can't figure out how they made that big a hole if they came out of Siegel. It's—”

Ed covered the mouthpiece and called, “Lieutenant Stanwyck? It's for you. Officer Bacall.”

“Okay, Ed. Thanks.” She got up and headed for the phone. “If they
are
the ones, it's like they shrank, Robert, after they went through whatever they hit. Be right back.” She lifted the receiver. “Yeah, Humphrey.”

I had never seen Stanwyck turn pale, but whatever Bacall said drained all the color out of her. “
You're kidding!
” she exploded at him. “And you double-checked?
Triple
-checked? . . . Well, what does
he
say?—besides ‘It's impossible.' . . . Well, find it!” She sighed, a deep, exasperated growl. “Yeah, okay, okay. I'll be right there.”