Black Money

25

Sekjar, Kitty’s maiden name, wasn’t in the telephone book. I went to the public library and looked it up in a city directory. A Mrs. Maria Sekjar, hospital employee, was listed at 137 Juniper Street. I found the poor little street backed up against the railway yards. The first person I saw on Juniper Street was the young policeman, Ward Rasmussen, marching toward me along the dirty path which served as a sidewalk.

I got out of my car and hailed him. He looked a little disappointed to see me. You feel that way sometimes, when you’re out bird-dogging and another man crosses your path.

“I found Kitty’s mother,” he said. “I went to the high school and dug up the girls’ counselor who remembered Kitty.”

“That was resourceful.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

But he was soberly pleased. “I didn’t have much luck with the mother, though. Maybe she’ll say more to you. She seems to think her daughter’s in serious trouble. She’s been in trouble since she was in her teens, the counselor told me.”

“Boy trouble?”

“What else?”

I changed the subject. “Did you have a chance to get to the bank, Ward?”

“Yessir, I had better luck there.”

He got his notebook out of his pocket and flipped the pages. “Mrs. Fablon has been getting a regular income from that bank in Panama, the New Granada. They sent her a draft every month until last February, when it stopped.”

“How much every month?”

“A thousand. This went on for six or seven years. It added up to around eighty thousand.”

“Was there any indication of its source?”

“Not according to the local people. It came from a numbered account, apparently. The whole transaction was untouched by the human hand.”

“And then it stopped.”

“That’s correct. What do you make of it, Mr. Archer?”

“I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions.”

“No, of course not. But it could be underworld money. You remember that thought came up at breakfast this morning.”

“I’m pretty sure it is. But we’re going to have a hell of a time proving it.”

“I know that. I talked to the foreign-exchange man at the National. The Panama banks are like the Swiss banks. They don’t have to reveal the source of their deposits, which makes them a natural for mobsters. What do you think we should do about it?”

I was anxious to talk to Mrs. Sekjar, and I said: “Get the law changed. Do you want to wait for me in my car?”

He got in. I approached the Sekjar house on foot. It was a small frame dwelling, which looked as if the passing trains had shaken off most of its paint.

I knocked on the rusty screen door. A woman with dyed black hair appeared behind it. She was large and heavy, aged about fifty, though the dyed hair made her look older. Handsome, but not as handsome as her daughter. Her cheap dye job was iridescent in the late afternoon sun.

“What do you want?”

“I’d like to talk to you–”

“About Kitty again?”

“More or less.”

“I don’t know anything about her. That’s what I told the other ones and that’s what I’m telling you. I’ve worked hard all my life so I could hold my head up in this town.” She lifted her chin. “It wasn’t easy, and Kitty was no help. She has nothing to do with me now.”

“She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, I guess she is.”

Her voice was rough. “She don’t act like a daughter. I’m not responsible for what she does. I used to beat her until she was bloody, it did no good. She was as wild as ever, making mock of the teachings of the Lord.”

She looked up through the rusty screen. Her own eyes were rebellious.

“May I come in, Mrs. Sekjar? My name is Archer, I’m a private detective.”

Her face was unyielding, and I went on rapidly: “I’ve got nothing against your daughter, but I’m trying to locate her. She may be able to give some information about a murder.”

“Murder?”

She was appalled. “The other one didn’t say nothing about a murder. This is a decent home, mister,” she said, with the tense precarious respectability of the poor. “It’s the first time since Kitty left me that a policeman came to this door.”

She glanced up and down the street, as if her neighbors were spying on us now. “I guess you better come on in.”

She unhooked the screen door and opened it for me. Her living room was small and threadbare. It contained a daybed and two chairs, a faded rag rug, a television set tuned in on a daytime serial, which said, in the snatch I heard of it, that things were tough all over.

Mrs. Sekjar switched it off. On top of the television were a large Bible and one of those glass balls that you shake to make a snowstorm. The pictures on the walls were all religious, and there were so many of them that they suggested a line of defense against the world.

I sat on the daybed. It smelled of Kitty, faintly but distinctly. The odor of her perfume seemed strange in these surroundings. It wasn’t the odor of sanctity.

“Kitty was here last night, wasn’t she?”

Mrs. Sekjar nodded, standing over me. “She came over the fence from the tracks. I couldn’t turn her away. She was scared.”

“Did she say what of?”

“It’s her way of life. It’s catching up with her. The kind of men she runs with, punks and hoodlums–” She spat dry. “We won’t discuss it.”

“I think we should, Mrs. Sekjar. Did Kitty do any talking to you last night?”

“Not much. She did some crying. I thought I had my own girl back for a while. She stayed all night. But in the morning she was as hard as ever.”

“She isn’t that hard.”

“She didn’t start out to be, maybe. She was a nice enough girl when her father was with us. But Sekjar got himself sick and spent his last two years in the County Hospital. After that Kitty got hard as nails. She blamed me and the other adults for putting him in the County Hospital. As if I had any choice.

“When she was a sixteen-year-old girl she went for my eyes with her thumb nails. I chopped them off for her. If I hadn’t been stronger than her, she’d of blinded me. After that I couldn’t do anything with her. She ran wild with the boys. I tried to stop her. I know what comes of running wild with the boys. So just to spite me she turned around and married the first man that asked her.”

She paused glaring among her angry memories. “Is Harry Hendricks the one that died?”

“No, but he was injured.”

“So I heard at the hospital. I’m a nurse’s aid,” she explained with some pride. “Who got murdered?”

“A woman named Marietta Fablon, and a man who called himself Francis Martel.”

“I never heard of either of them.”

I showed her the picture of Martel, with Kitty and Leo Spillman in the foreground. She exploded: “That’s him! That’s the man, the one who took her away from her lawful husband.”

She jabbed her forefinger at Spillman’s head. “I’d like to kill that man for what he did to my daughter. He took her and rolled her in the mud. And there she sits with her legs crossed, smiling like a cat.”

“Do you know Leo Spillman?”

“That wasn’t his name.”

“Ketchel?”

“Yeah. She brought him here to the house, it must have been six or seven years ago. She said he wanted to do something for me. That kind always wants to do something for you, and then before you know it they own you. Like he owns Kitty. He said he owned an apartment in L.A. and I could move in rent-free and retire from hospital work. I told him I would rather go on working than take his money. So they left. I didn’t see her again until last night.”

“Do you know where they live?”

“They used to live in Las Vegas. Kitty sent me a couple of Christmas cards from there. I don’t know where they live now. She hasn’t sent me any mail for years. And last night when I asked her she wouldn’t tell me where she lived.”

“So you don’t have any idea where I can find her?”

“No, Sir. If I did I wouldn’t tell you. I’m not going to help you send my daughter to the pen.”

“I’m not trying to put her in jail. I just want information–”

“You don’t fool me, mister. They’re wanted for income tax, ain’t they?”

“Who told you that?”

“A man from the government told me. He was sitting where you are sitting, within the last two weeks. He said I’d be doing my daughter a favor if I could talk her into coming forth, that her and me could even get a percentage of the money because they’re not lawful man and wife. I said it was Judas money. I said I’d be a fine mother, wouldn’t I, if I spread my daughter’s shame in all the papers. He said it was my duty as a citizen. I said there was duty and duty.”

“Did you talk to Kitty about it?”

“I tried this morning. That’s when she left. We never could get along. But that’s a far cry from turning her in to the government. I said it to the other one and I’m saying it to you. You can go back and tell the government I don’t know where she is and I wouldn’t tell you if I did know.”

She sat there breathing defiance. A train whistled from the direction of Los Angeles. It was a long freight train, moving slowly. Somehow it reminded me of the government.

Before it had finished rattling the dishes in the kitchen, I said goodbye to Mrs. Sekjar and left. I dropped Ward off at his father’s house, which was just about one grade better than Mrs. Sekjar’s, and advised him to get some sleep. Then I drove to International Airport and bought a return ticket to Las Vegas.