Extra Kill

SEVEN

"No you're not lucky to catch me exactly," said Mr. Stanley Horwitz. "I keep legit show business schedule-dark on Mondays-fancy of mine. Usually get a lot done on Sundays too, but it's been slow lately

… So you want to know something about Mona Ferne? I could write a book. Homicide-has she killed somebody?"

Hackett said he shouldn't think so but you never knew.

"Pity," said Mr. Horwitz. "Offer you a drink?… You boys don't have to be so damn moral about rules, you just do it to annoy. No pleasure drinking alone-but I will." He got out a bottle of Scotch, flicked down the lever on his intercom, said, "Milly, I'm busy for the next half hour or so, if that nance who thinks he's America's answer to Sir Laurence Olivier comes in, he can wait. And wait." Mr. Horwitz, who was edging sixty, five-feet-four in his elevator shoes, and possessed a shock of curly gray hair, poured himself a drink and slid down comfortably in his upholstered desk-chair. "I wish you'd have a drink, Sergeant. Nice to see somebody approximately normal in here, for a change."

“Don't you usually?"

"Dear God, these people," said Horwitz. "These people. Nobody, Sergeant, nobody at all is mixed up in show business to start with-or wants to be-unless he, she, or it has an exhibitionist complex. Just in the nature of things they're all egotistic as hell, and that's right where you can get into the hell of a lot of trouble with them, because they're so very damn smooth in covering that up, you know? You got to keep it in mind every minute, that they're just front. It gets tiresome." He swallowed half of the drink. "And maybe you better keep it in mind about me, because God knows I don't suppose I'd be in this rat race of a business if I wasn't a little bit like them. Just a little bit. Right now, of course, they're all busy overcompensating for the granddaddy of all inferiority complexes, and that makes 'em a little quieter than usual."

"How's that?" asked Hackett.

Horwitz eyed him in faint surprise over the glass. "You grow up in this town?"

"Pasadena," said Hackett.

"Don't you notice what's going on? Time was they were this town-this was the capital of honky-tonk, the Mecca for all faithful pilgrims who never missed the change of show at the Bijou. Time was, all the money in this town, the real money, was theirs-show-business money. Everything important that happened here was show-business kind of important. Sure, the legit folk back on Broadway kept their noses in the air, but, brother, when one of 'em got the nod from Goldwyn or De Mille, he came a-runnin'-and for why? The folding stuff, the long green. Oh, this was quite a town in those days, Sergeant. And them days is gone forever. The real money behind this town now, why, all the studios together never used or made money like that-they're just a drop in the bucket of capital now, since the aircraft and missile plants moved in, all kinds of business, and since all this irrigation made us, what is it, second highest in agricultural production of the nation? They're just peanuts now, and tell the truth, I figure the people in this town've got fed up with 'em too. It's time. Not surprising. You don't have to know one of 'em personally very long before you find out what they're like-personally-and I guess it just took a little longer for the public to learn, living in proximity as you might say. The gimmick doesn't work any more, not the way it did. The old glamour's dead. They don't get in the headlines-even local-any more, for losing a diamond necklace or marrying a European aristocrat. The gossip columns about the stars are shoved into the second section and a back page at that-there's too much interesting news about Cape Canaveral and the new government contracts at Lockheed and Douglas and what big companies are moving out here with all their personnel, building ten-million-dollar offices and so on. Too many vice-presidents and union officials riding around in Rolls Royces, too many of their wives in sable coats leading French poodles-and losing diamond necklaces at the opera-nothing to exclaim about any more, nothing to mark them as royalty, way they used to be. See? Notice how quiet they act these days, trying to pretend they're just like other people, plain down-to-earth folks. That's one of the symptoms. And, brother, how they hate the whole business! How scared and indignant they are, and how loud they deny it's happened!" Mr. Horwitz retired into his glass.

"They do, hm? I can see how that'd be. Never thought much about it before."

"You're not in the business-and for that you can thank God. Oh, yes, they're wearing a chip on the shoulder all right-can't do this to us, you know?-and at the same time trying to pretend nothing's happened at all, that it's still their town… But you were asking about Mona. Case in point. One of the worst ones. I don't mind gossiping about Mona Ferne, if you're got time to listen-"

"I've got time."

"-And I got the feeling," said Horwitz dreamily, "I might do just that even if you were somebody from TV thinking of hiring her-because she annoyed the hell out of me just before you came in, and that was just once too often she did. To start with, in case you're curious, her real name was Minnie Lundgren, and she came from some place in South Dakota. Won some sort of piddling beauty contest back there, and right away made tracks for Hollywood-read ‘Mecca'-to join the royal family… You remember any of her pictures?"

"Hardly. I think I was about three when she was in her heyday as a star. I wasn't noticing females much yet. But I've seen her in bit parts, later on, when I was just a kid. Just vaguely remember the name."

"You didn't miss an awful lot," said Horwitz. "She never could act, she took direction, that's all. They built her up, like they built up a lot of others who didn't really have much on the ball. And you've got to remember that comparatively speaking it's a new medium-anyway it still was thirty-five years back-and fashions in these things, they change like other fashions. She was a star, sure, they made her one. And don't you forget either, Sergeant, that's just the end of one long road, and she nor nobody else gets there, usually, without the cold guts to kick anybody in the teeth who gets in their way. You married?… Well, when you come to get married, take my advice and don't pick a beautiful woman or an actress. The two don't always coincide. Point is, anybody naturally good-looking, they're awful apt to be-what's the head doctors' word?-narcissistic. Me, me, me, twenty-four hours a day. And some of it's other people's fault, building 'em up all the time, you what am I doing for her, when can she expect a new contract?-good God in heaven, I've given it to her straight enough times, but it just doesn't penetrate. Hear her talk, you'd think she'd had a couple of pictures gross a million in the last six months, and it's just a little legal fuss with the studio leaves her without a contract. Every once in a while she threatens to get another agent, and I wish to God she'd try, but she never will-she knows damn well, if she'd admit it, nobody else would ever put her on the books."

"I suppose she's living on what she used to make-investments?"

"Mostly, I think, on Carstairs' money-she spent most of hers as it came in. Maybe he'd begun to see through her at that, he'd tied it up in trust-in two trusts actually, one for the girl. They'd only been married a couple of years, the kid was just a baby, when he crashed. Sure, Mona's got plenty to get along on, but that's not enough for her."

"She is," said Hackett, "a member of a funny cult called the Temple of Mystic Truth. Know anything about that?"

Horwitz shook his head and shrugged. "Can't say I want to. This town used to have a reputation for that kind of thing too, and when you come to think of it, it's natural. You take these people-they're people without roots, you know?-and most of 'em are suckers for that kind of thing. Especially, you might say, as they get older. They feel a lack somewhere, they look around for something solid, for an answer, and because they're the kind of people they are, the orthodox doesn't attract them."

"Yes, I can see that. She'd been going around some with this fellow who got knocked off, Brooke Twelvetrees."

"Oh, that one, was it? And that's why you're interested. I remember him. She brought him in, pestered me to take him on. Well, you never know where you'll find something good, I looked him over. He had looks, the kind a lot of women go for, but don't get me wrong when I say, like I did about Mona, that's the first and only thing. It's important, but you and I could both name a dozen top stars without much in the way of looks. Mona and some like her, both sexes, got to the top on looks alone, but that doesn't hold you there. It's a thing there's no word for-showmanship, I guess that comes closest to it. Nothing to do with talent. I can name you people"-he did so-"who've been on top for years, without having anything but a lot of gall, and showmanship. It was that, even a little bit of it, this Twelvetrees didn't have. The personality didn't project, he couldn't've held an audience with the doors locked and safety belts to fasten 'em down. I said nothing doing, and Mona was mad as hell… No, that was the only time I ever met him, it'd be about two years ago… I heard later Meyer and Hanks took him on, don't know if or where they'd got him anything?

"Well, thanks. Where's that outfit?" Hackett took down the address. "You don't think there'd have been anything serious about their going around together? Just as an opinion."

Horwitz laughed. "Because Twelvetrees was maybe twenty-five years younger? Look, you don't need to be a psychiatrist to read these people. One of the damndest awful things about them is that they never get past a certain stage in life. They're kind of fixed at the mental age where parties and clothes and boy friends and girl friends, and all the-the froth, you know, is all that's important in life. It can have sad results. You take anybody fifty-five, sixty years old, even if he's got good health, nothing chronic, he's glad to let down once in a while, take things easier, stay home Saturday night and read a book. He's got a long way past being interested in kids' things-he's got to other things just as much fun. He's found out he doesn't have to be twenty-five years old and handsome as a movie star to get a kick out of making love to his wife, and she doesn't have to be Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't-you know-have to keep up a front. These people, the front's all they've ever had, and it's the most important thing in the world to them-they can't let themselves let down, ever. The front of perpetual youth. In looks and every other way. I tell you, once in a while I find myself in a night club or somewhere like that, not by choice but on business, and I don't know any sadder sight. These people like Mona, hell-bent on having a good time the same way the twenty-five-year-old kids are having a good time. Out of the fronts of things-good looks and clothes and going to parties.. Mona and this Twelvetrees? She always has a man in tow, to be seen with. Whatever she can pick up. She's got to. By the only rules she knows, if she didn't have something in pants to be seen with at the good-time places, it'd mean she was dead-as a female. And there are, in this town, enough men like her that she can always find one. But of course she'd always prefer one like Twelvetrees, to the ones her own age working just as hard as she is, with their toupees and expensive false teeth and corsets. Shows she's still an attractive, vital female-that's a word they like-to pick up a young man. You want my opinion, well, Twelvetrees was one of these people too, and he probably took up with Mona thinking she could do him some good in the way of contacts. Or just maybe because she paid the bills at the good-time places. I wouldn't say she'd gone down quite as far as that, to pay a fancy man to squire her around, but maybe-and there are nuances in these things, even with people like Mona."

"So there are," agreed Hackett. "Well, thanks very much for your help. Don't know that any of it's much use to us right now, but you never know-and anyway it's interesting to get the inside view on them."

"You find it interesting?" said Mr. Horwitz sadly. "Seems funny to think I ever did. These goddamned awful people… like reading the same page in a book over and over. Someday I got to get out of this business… "

Walsh didn't know yet why Mendoza was asking him about that D.-and-D. call; he was doing his best to be helpful, but it had been such a routine thing…

"I don't want to prompt you. But just visualize it in your mind-a big blacktopped area with apartments on two sides and across the rear. The one where the drunks were was Number Three, that's in the front of the second building on the right as you drive in. It was about seven-thirty, and it was raining. It was the landlady called in, and she was waiting for you-"

"Funny little fat lady in a man's raincoat," said Walsh suddenly. "Yeah, I got it, Lieutenant. We pulled up where she was, I guess it'd be in front of her place, she was waiting there on the porch, I remember that-and we both got kind of wet going across to the drunks' apartment-left the car where it was, see, it was just a step really but it was coming down pretty steady then."

"Yes, go on."

"Well-I don't know just what you want, sir. There wasn't anything to it. It's funny how just the sight of the uniform'll quiet 'em down sometimes. There was this big bruiser of a fellow and a little blonde woman, going at it hammer and tongs-you could hear 'em half a block away, the landlady needn't've come out to tell us where. Soon as Joe knocked and said who we were, they stopped and the man let us in. We talked to 'em a few minutes, you know the sort of thing: hadn't they better quiet down, have some consideration for the neighbors, and that's all it took really." He stuck again there, and was prodded on. "Well, let's see-Joe gave me the nod, I knew what he meant, and I went out to the car to report in. See, Joe figured, and I guess he knew from experience-he was a good cop, Lieutenant, the best for my money-"

"I know he was."

"-He always said, about a deal like that, where they aren't really slum people who just naturally distrust cops, that you don't have to go acting tough, and a lot of times they'll listen to a good stiff talk from a man in uniform where they'd just get mad with somebody like the landlady or the neighbors. That's what he meant, see. We could see they wouldn't make any more disturbance, and so like I say I went back to the car to report in, and Joe stayed to talk to 'em, so maybe they'd think twice the next time."

"Yes. And then?"

"Well-that's all," said Walsh blankly. "I sat in the car and waited for Joe, and pretty soon he came out-with the landlady-she'd stayed in the drunks' apartment with him-and she thanked us and we got back on our route again."

Mendoza made a few marks on paper, shoved the page across the desk. "Look, here's the set-up, let's get it clear. The apartments numbered Five and Six are in the building across the end of this court. The landlady lives in Number Six. Numbers Three and Four are in this second building from the street, at right angles to that. Show me where your squad car was in relation."

Walsh hesitated, finally pointed. "I'd say just about in front of this rear building. I mean not in front of either of the apartment doors there but sort of in between them.”

"Damn it, I don't want to force this," said Mendoza softly, "if there is anything… When you both got out of the car, you went straight across to Number Three? Bartlett was with you?"

"Why, sure, of course." Walsh stared.

"He was in Number Three how long?"

"I guess about fifteen, twenty minutes-no, say eighteen. Altogether."

"You'd gone back to the car and reported in what it had turned out to be. How long did you sit there waiting for him?"

"About ten minutes, I guess. I remember I smoked a cigarette, it was just about finished when Joe came. I don't get what this is about, Lieutenant, it was just a routine-"

"Yes. Now when Bartlett came out of Number Three, did he come straight across to the car?"

"Yes, sir-at least, I'd think so. Wouldn't have any reason to do anything else, would he? I guess if you pinned me down I couldn't say I know he did, because I had my back to that side of the court, you know-he just came up and got in and said, ‘O.K., Frank, let's go.' The landlady came up behind him, with that funny raincoat over her head, and hopped up on her front porch and yelled ‘Thanks' at us and-well, that was that."

Mendoza sighed. "And if Bartlett didn't come straight from Number Three to the squad car, the landlady would know… " He could ask, but he had the feeling this was a dead end. Call it what, a minute, two minutes, for Bartlett to have seen something, heard something? " Que va! " he muttered to himself vexedly. "Can you think of anything else at all, Walsh, no matter how trivial it struck you at the time, that happened during the whole twenty minutes you were at this place?"

Silence. Walsh was looking nervous and perplexed. "I don't know what you're after," he said. "I just can't think- Well, a couple of the neighbors on each side of the drunks' apartment came out-I think one couple was out when we drove up, I seem to get a picture of them standing there on their front porch under the porch light. That'd be, I guess, Number Four-end apartment… What, sir? I think that was the only porch light on except the landlady's. Then when I came back g to the car, I saw the people on the other side-that'd be Number Two, in the first building-had come out on their porch. Wanted to see if we were going to take the drunks in, I guess, but there wasn't any need for that… I don't remember seeing anybody else out. I guess if it hadn't been raining they would have been-you know, the drunks making such a racket-but the way it was, it was just the people from the closest apartments to them who were outside-though probably everybody else was looking out their windows… I don't know what else I can. .. Oh, and just before Joe came up, somebody did open the door of the apartment next to the landlady's. And that's all I-what, sir? No, I they didn't come out on the porch, maybe when they saw it was raining so hard-"

"They,” said Mendoza, excluding any excitement from his tone.

"Two people, three, or what?"

"Oh-well," said Walsh vaguely, "I don't know. I said ‘they' because I couldn't see whether it was a man or woman who opened the door. The porch light wasn't on there. I think there was a light inside but not in the living room, maybe, not right by the door or behind it-I seem to I get that impression. I couldn't see-I don't know if anybody else was there besides who opened the door. I just, you know, sort of registered it in my mind, the door opening… This what you want, Lieutenant, about that? Well, let's see… I remember thinking, they've finally tumbled something's going on, and're looking out to see what-but I didn't notice whoever it was-and it was just a minute before the door shut again. Tell you the truth," said Walsh a little shamefacedly, "I was looking at the lightning really, I just kind of saw that door open out of the tail of my eye. I get a kick out of electric storms, and we never used to get them out here much, you know, it's only the last ten or twelve years… I was waiting for the thunder… "

"Yes,” said Mendoza. "Now, think about this one carefully. Someone was standing in the open door of Number Five-by the way, wide open?"

Walsh thought, shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so, but I can't say for sure."

"O.K. Someone's there, and there's lightning in a flash-big stroke?"

"Pretty close. Lit up the whole sky-it was fine."

"Yes. And about that time Bartlett was, maybe, on his way to the car from Number Three? Could it be that whoever was standing there saw Bartlett by that big flash, and thought Bartlett might have seen him-or her?" But that was really reaching for it, surely, he added to himself. A flash of lightning. One little moment-to fix in mind the nondescript features of an ordinary cop-and an hour and a bit later, catch up to him and kill him? And Bartlett would probably have had his head down against the rain; whoever was in that doorway would also see that he couldn't be noticing…

Walsh's expression took on the glazed look of one trying to recapture a past time in photographic reproduction. He said almost at once, "No, sir. I got that piece clear, just remembering it by the lightning, now. This is how it went, see: there's the lightning, just after the door opened there-and I looked up, and kind of automatically started to count seconds, the way you do, you know-and it was close, it wasn't quite three seconds until the thunder-and then that door closed. And right after that-yes, I've got it now, funny how little things come back to you-I heard the other apartment door close, and that was Joe and the landlady coming out of Number Three. And almost right away, Joe opened the car door and got in beside me and said, ‘O.K., let's go.' " Walsh looked at Mendoza triumphantly, anxiously. "Is that the kind of thing you want, sir? I don't see what it has to do with-"

" Oye, oiga, frene!-Que se yo? " Mendoza sat up abruptly. "Wait a minute now, you were driving? Bartlett got in beside you, you said-you being behind the wheel."

"Why, yes, sir," said Walsh. "We generally change round like that, you know, if there're two of you on patrol, one drives the first half of the tour, the other the second half. That night, we changed after the coffee break, and Joe took the wheel."

Mendoza looked at him, but he didn't see Frank Walsh's square, honest, amiable face at all. He saw that ugly courtyard, on that dark rainy night-and a murderer opening a door (all right, no evidence, nada absolutamente, to back that up, but it made a picture, it filled in an empty space)-and being confronted with that black-and-white squad car, unexpected and so close; and in that moment, one great flash of lightning lighting the whole scene-pinpointing it in time and space. What picture in a murderer's mind of that one moment? A uniformed cop at the wheel of that car, looking up alertly-apparently toward the open apartment door. And Mrs. Bragg's porch light shining full on the front of the squad car and its L.A. police number.

That was all. That was enough. Mendoza's patrol days being far behind, that one little fact hadn't occurred to him, that a pair of cops in a squad car changed around at the wheel. The ordinary civilian wouldn't think of it.

So, there was the answer: and say it wasn't backed up by any kind of evidence the D.A. would look at-Mendoza knew surely it must be the right answer. All somebody had known, had been afraid of, was the driver of the squad car number such-and·such. It didn't matter then-the idea was that Twelvetrees should vanish, that he'd never be found in his makeshift grave down that kitchen trap-it didn't matter if the driver saw and remembered a face. Not if things went the way somebody planned. But just in case Twelvetrees was found, in case questions were asked, and the driver of that car was able to identify a face-Panic? Impulse? And a very damned lucky shot-or a very damned skillful one… into the wrong man.

And, after all, Frank Walsh hadn't seen whoever stood in that open door.