The Knave of Hearts (10 page)

Funny, and completely exasperating. How could people
be so obtuse?—to think, apparently, that it was like a mathematical
problem, one canceling out one-of anything.

Even Angel, she thought helplessly. Angel, of all
people, who ought to know better. After the time she’d had with Art
Hackett, knowing he was the only one she wanted as soon as she’d
laid eyes on him, and Art so maddeningly gentle and careful and
friendly, not saying a word, not even holding her hand at the
movies—all because he’d got the idea it wasn’t fair not to let
her look around a little—she’d never known many young men, been
around much. Angel complaining she could kill him, he made her so
mad, and what more could she do or say to the big dumb ox?

Oh, Angel ought to know how useless it was, trying to
substitute one man for another. But even Angel had a candidate to
exhibit .... It was funny: a very respectable, rather shy young man,
he was, Bruce Norwood, with such punctilious manners: a wholesale
candy salesman, for heaven’s sake, and he shook hands coming and
going, and never said damn or hell. Suddenly it was so hilarious that
Alison laughed aloud.

After Luis. Luis.

But all of them, any of them . . . Pat Moore’s
offering (and what could these people think of her, to choose such
men?) was almost as ridiculous; that one she’d only met the other
night—a cadaverous, solemn young man named Markham who worked in a
bank. And the Corders across the hall insisting that she come over
for dinner, just a few friends, nothing formal—and pairing her off
just as insistently with an earnest, oddly courtly young bond
salesman named Richard Brooke. People. Meaning so well. So incredibly
stupid. After Luis.

And the pain like a cancer there again, forever, so
that she couldn’t bear it. God, it must get less after a while,
after a long while? The telephone rang under her hand, and her heart
jumped at the sudden clamor: force of habit: always the quick fierce
thought, it might be—he might— But it never was, it never would
be.

Some one of these well-meaning silly people. Or one
of their impossible choices of a man for poor Alison.

She let it ring three times before deciding to
answer.
 

SEVEN

"Oh; my God," said Hackett resignedly. "No
rest for the wicked. But do I have to go and look at it? Farnsworth
can—"

"Wel1, I don’t know, Art," said Sergeant
Lake. "Maybe bein’ around our Luis so much, it’s rubbed off
on me—getting hunches. Or maybe everybody’s just jittery, with
the papers building it up. But only reason the sheriff's boy called
in is, he spotted it for maybe the same one—and he sounds damn
convincing?

"Good God, another? I’d better talk to him.
Switch the call through, will you, Jimmy?" Hackett was sitting
at Mendoza’s desk, at the end—or so he’d thought—of another
grueling day on this business. (Why the hell did the tough ones
always come in hot weather?) The county-patrol sergeant was hanging
on the phone patiently. Hackett got the details from him, swore,
asked the exact location; told Lake to assemble a homicide crew for
him from the night men just coming on, and called his own number. As
he listened to the phone ring his expression was grim (another field
day for the press tomorrow, another dead woman), but it softened when
Angel answered.

"Did I catch you in the middle of something
that’s got to be stirred, or measured in millimeters?"

"I don’t," she said indignantly.
"Inspired cooks use guesswork, mostly. And you’re going to
tell me you won’t be home. I think the police ought to have a
union, you weren’t in until eleven last night—"

"That’s a dandy idea, only first we’d have
to unionize all the crooks, pro and amateur—they don’t keep
regular hours either. Just one of those things, my Angel. . . . I
don’t know when, darling. I’m just leaving for some place down
near Malibu."

"For heaven’s sake . . . You needn’t ask, I
always miss you. Shall I keep something hot? . . . Well, maybe you’d
better stop somewhere, if it’s all hours. I don’t know why more
detectives don’t have chronic indigestion, the irregular hours
they— All right, but try to come home some time, just to let me
know I am married."

On his feet, hat in hand, Hackett hesitated. Spoil
Luis’ evening with this?—he grinned to himself briefly. Mendoza
had called in ten minutes ago; he’d had a busy and irritating day,
and had announced that he was taking the evening off to soothe
himself at the poker table with any pigeons he could pick up at his
very respectable club. Just three things Mendoza was good at—in
fact, brilliant—his job, women, and poker; Hackett’s heart had
bled momentarily for the unlucky pigeons who got inveigled into a
game with him.

He dialed quickly. Probably catch him in the middle
of that necessary (if he was going out) second shave, or a bath—fussy
as one of his cats, Luis was. Come to think, Hackett would feel sorry
for any woman who succeeded in marrying him. One of those people who
couldn’t sit in a room with a picture crooked on the wall or a
wrinkle in the rug, and a damn sight more persnickety about his
person than most society ladies. Tomcat, thought Hackett, listening
to the phone ring at the other end: both affectionately and ruefully
he thought it: a lean, sleek black tomcat, that way and this way.

Mendoza answered and he
broke the news. "
¡Fuera!
"
said Mendoza. “
¿Qué mono
,
isn’t this pretty? Where? . . .
¡Santa
Maria!
—I trust you realize you have robbed
me of approximately five hundred bucks, friend—I was counting on
sufficient luck tonight to win back a pittance of my income tax ....
All right,
¡allá voy
,
I’m coming, I’m coming! I am also dripping bath water all over
the carpet, and El Senor is using my left leg to sharpen his claws.
¡A tú, mil maldicianes!
I’ll meet you there, damn it."

* * *

It was, of course, the worst hour of the day for
getting somewhere in a hurry. Mendoza cursed steadily all the way
down Sunset Boulevard from La Brea to Beverly Glen, before he took
himself in hand. One very damned good way to get ulcers or a heart
attack: getting mad at traffic. He made fairly good time at that,
down to Pacific Palisades—not much choice of routes; all of them
were jammed at this time of day, and like most residents he’d
learned to stay off the freeways at crowded hours. Then, where
Chautauqua took that sharp left turn and dropped suddenly down a
steep little hill, just before its end, of course he got balked—you
always did, there—it was the hell of a place to get by. Narrowing
to about a third of the usual width. And down there was the Malibu
road, the main drag, the coast highway, with another secondary street
running up diagonally, Chautauqua jutting down at another: one of
those three-way signals timed to outlast eternity, whichever of the
three you waited for. But he got the green at last, and swung the
Facel-Vega onto the coast road and made tracks up toward Malibu.

Just before the entrance to Topanga Canyon, Hackett
had said. The traffic department played a little game with L.A.
County residents, finding the best places to hide street signs,
behind light poles and bushes and traffic signals; but he spotted the
street easily, not by its sign but by the two big bulldozers parked
there for the night. Two hundred feet up the narrow winding road he
came on the scene of activity. An ambulance; Hackett’s car; two
county patrol cars; a battered sedan probably belonging to the
foreman on the job. Men standing around talking and smoking, not
doing much, Hackett looming in the midst of the little crowd talking
to a diminutive wiry fellow. The county sergeant introduced himself,
shook hands.

"I was just telling Sergeant Hackett,
Lieutenant, I took one look and says to myself, this one belongs to
the downtown boys—it’s just maybe another of your current Mr. X’s
jobs, same kind of thing anyway, way she looks."

"I don’t know that it’s worth missing your
five hundred for, Luis," contributed Hackett. "Though I
kind of think it might be our boy, too. Held it for you to look
at—not much the doctors can do here—maybe not anywhere else. At a
guess, the corpse got to be a corpse somewhere around two years ago,
a bit less."

"Ah," said Mendoza. "Like that? Well,
well. I said I wondered if we’d missed any."

". . . and, my God, Joe thinks a dead dog or
something at first, you know, when he hits it, and then he sees the
hair and yells—and, my God, it’s—" The little fellow was
still excited and shaken.

Mendoza walked on to where the interns from the
ambulance stood smoking. No, not a very savory corpse, though quite
well preserved by burial: this was sandy soil up here—that had
helped; and she was dressed too, which helped some more. Hard to
figure the time, maybe: the autopsy-surgeon would want soil samples.
She’d been blonde. What looked like a cotton skirt and blouse,
black with a red print—traceable?—the remnants of black sandals,
but yes, everything surprisingly well preserved.

Hackett said beside him, "And treasure trove, a
handbag buried with her." Dwyer had it laid out carefully a few
feet away, on a tarpaulin; he and Higgins squatted over it looking
doubtful.

"Don’t think we can expect any prints after
all this time, on this rough plastic stuff, Lieutenant. You want to
take a chance handling it a little?"

"With tenderness, Bert. Just in case . . . don’t
touch that metal clasp, I beg you—or anything smooth and stiff—"

"All right, all right, I’ve been to
kindergarten." And there came out on the tarp, in the
still-blazing late afternoon sunlight, a collection of humble
objects. They all squatted close around; no move to touch anything
yet. The little everyday things any woman’s bag might contain,
unimportant while she lived—maybe a man’s life (and other women’s
lives) depending on them when she was dead. A crumpled handkerchief.
A cheap, much-tarnished dime-store compact. Three half-used packets
of matches. A dilapidated pack of Luckies, a few cigarettes left in
it. A purse-sized bottle which had held cologne. A blackly tarnished
once-silverplated lighter. Two lipsticks, brass-gold cases decayed
black. A dirty powder puff. Four or five little papers, probably
sales receipts—

"
¡P0r el amor de Dios
,
get them!"—as the hill breeze swirled them off the ground;
Dwyer made a grab for them and Mendoza received them tenderly. A
scarlet leather wallet, bulging-fat. What had been a piece of
Kleenex, lipstick-stained. A quarter-size bottle of aspirin. Nine
brass bobby pins. A small black address book.

"
¡Una donaci
ó
n
de la Providencia!
" said Mendoza happily
and, for once careless of his clothes, knelt close over the address
book, unfolded the clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, with
utmost care inserted the tip of a shrouded forefinger under the cover
of the book and lifted it. Hackett delicately held down the first
page there as the breeze swept over them again.

One of those I. D. inserts with lines indicated for
name, address, phone. Carefully filled out in a round childish
scrawl. Julie Anne Anderson, General Delivery, Topanga—

"Christ!" said the little wiry man loudly.
He had come up behind them there, curious, in time to hear Hackett
read that aloud. They looked up at him. He’d been lighting a
cigarette, dropped the match
and then
automatically bent and ground it into the dirt—native westerner,
fire precaution on his mind six months a year. "Christ!
Julie—that’s Julie?—we dug up—"

"I will be damned," said the county
sergeant interestedly. "So she was dead after all. Well, there’s
a date for you, anyway, and she’s kept damn well, I will
say—wouldn’t have said the stiff was that old myself."

"Tell, tell! " begged Mendoza. "What,
when, and how?"

The sergeant cupped both hands, half turned, expertly
snatching a light from the breeze, took a long drag on the cigarette.
"It got transferred downtown to Missing Persons-your boys can
give you the details. Let’s see, it was June two years ago, call it
twenty-seven months. Not a big thing, you know—this chippy walks
off somewhere, and the girl friend she lived with keeps saying
something’s happened to Julie. We looked around, asked questions,
but what the hell? It looked a little funny that she hadn’t taken
most of her belongings with her, but a girl like that, they come and
go, and she might’ve taken off with some guy who’d just hit the
jackpot at Vegas, or for some other reason expected to start out
fresh somewhere. She didn’t have much to leave, that’s for sure.
We figured it like that. It happens. Don’t know what headquarters
figured, what else they got. "

"It happens. A girl like what?"

"Waitress at a joint up the road, along Zuma
Beach. Part-time," said the sergeant, and spat aside. "Lived
with another girl in a rented shack up in Topanga. Had quite a lot of
company. Funny thing, though, never any other girls."

"Either of them ever been tagged officially on
it?"

"Uh-uh. No complaints, no loud parties, and
outside city limits. We’re all for morality down here, Lieutenant,
but we’d need about twenty times the number of men we’ve got to
keep the citizenry in order on that count, and what the hell?—live
and let live—they didn’t run a pro house, they both held regular
jobs. Like Prohibition. You can’t enforce laws against human
nature. You got a whole roomful of files listing every easy dame,
amateur and pro, up in the big city?"