How Like an Angel

Fifteen

On his way back to the motel Quinn passed the stucco building occupied by the staff of the Beacon. The lights were still on.

He wasn’t anxious to meet Ronda again since there were too many things he couldn’t afford to tell him. But he was pretty sure Ronda would find out he was in town and be suspicious if no contact was made. He parked the car and went into the building.

Ronda was alone in his office, reading a San Francisco Chronicle and drinking a can of beer. “Hello, Quinn. Sit down, make yourself at home. Want a beer?”

“No thanks.”

“I heard you were back in our fair city. What have you been doing all week, sleuthing?”

“No,” Quinn said. “Mostly acting as nursemaid to an ersatz admiral in San Felice.”

“Any news?”

“News like what?”

“You know damned well like what. Did you come across anything more about the O’Gorman case?”

“Nothing you could print. A lot of rumors and opinions, but no concrete evidence. I’m beginning to go along with your theory about the hitchhiking stranger.”

Ronda looked half-skeptical, half-pleased. “Oh, you are, eh? Why?”

“It seems to fit the facts better than any other.”

“Is that your only reason?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just checking. I thought you might have latched onto something you prefer to keep secret.” Ronda tossed the empty can into a wastebasket. “Since you got most of your information from me in the first place, it wouldn’t be sporting of you to withhold anything now, would it?”

“Definitely not,” Quinn said virtuously. “I’d take a dim view of such unsportsmanlike conduct.”

“I’m quite serious, Quinn.”

“So am I.”

“Then sound it.”

“All right.”

“Now we’ll start over again. What have you been doing all week?”

“I answered that before. I had a job in San Felice.” Quinn knew he’d have to tell Ronda something of his activities in order to allay suspicion. “While I was there I talked to Alberta Haywood’s sister, Ruth. I didn’t learn anything about O’Gorman, but I found out a few things about Alberta Haywood. I found out more when I went to see her in Tecolote prison.”

“You saw her? Personally?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. How did you manage that? I’ve been trying to get an interview for years.”

“I have a private detective’s license issued in Nevada. Law enforcement officials are usually glad to cooperate.”

“Well, how is she?” Ronda said, leaning excitedly across the desk. “Did she tell you anything? What did she talk about?”

“O’Gorman.”

“O’Gorman. Well, I’ll be damned. This is just what—”

“Before you go off the deep end I might as well tell you that her references to O’Gorman weren’t very rational.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s under the delusion that the uproar over O’Gorman’s disappearance caused her to lose her powers of concentration and make the mistake that sent her to jail. She even tried to convince me that O’Gorman planned it deliberately to get back at her for snubbing him or for being fired by her brother, George.”

“She blames O’Gorman for everything?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nutty,” Ronda said. “It would mean, among other things, that O’Gorman knew about her embezzlements a month before the bank examiners, and that he calculated both the uproar over his disappearance and its effect on her. Doesn’t she realize how impossible that is?”

“She’s dealing with her own guilt, not the laws of possibility. She completely rejects the idea that O’Gorman’s dead, because, in her words, if he was murdered, she has no one to blame for her predicament. She’s got to cling to the delusion that O’Gorman planned his disappearance in order to avenge himself on her. Without O’Gorman to blame, she’d have to blame herself, and she can’t face that yet. Perhaps she never will.”

“How far gone is she?”

“I don’t know. Too far to follow, anyway.”

“What made her crack up like that?”

“Five years in a cell would do it for me,” Quinn said. “Maybe they did it for Alberta.”

The memory of the scene in the penitentiary filled him with contempt and disgust, not at Alberta’s sickness but at the sickness of a society which cut off parts of itself to appease the whole and then wondered why it was not feeling well.

Ronda was pacing up and down the office as if he himself were confined in a cell. “I can’t print what you’ve just told me. A lot of people would disapprove.”

“Naturally.”

“Does George Haywood know all this?”

“He should. He visits her once a month.”

“How did you find that out?” “Several people told me, including Alberta. George’s visits are painful to her, and presumably to George, too, yet he keeps on making them.”

“Then his split with her was just a phony to fool the old lady?”

“The old lady, and perhaps other people.”

“George is an oddball,” Ronda said, frowning up at the ceiling. “I can’t understand him. One minute he’s so secretive he wouldn’t give you the time of day, and the next he’s in here pumping my hand like a long-lost brother and telling me about his trip to Hawaii. Why?”

“So you’d print it in the Beacon. That’s my guess,”

“But he’s never given us any society-page material before. He even squawks like hell if his name is included in a guest list at a party. Why the sudden change of policy?”

“Obviously he wants everyone to know he’s gone to Hawaii.”

“Social butterfly stuff, and the like? Nonsense. That doesn’t fit George.”

“A lot of things don’t fit George,” Quinn said. “But he’s wearing them anyway, and probably for the same reason I wore my brother’s cast-off clothes when I was a kid—because he has to. Well, I’d better shove off. I’ve taken enough of your time.”

Ronda was opening another can of beer. “There’s no hurry. I had a little argument with my wife and I’m staying away from the house for a while until she cools off. Sure you won’t join me in a beer?”

“Reasonably sure.”

“By the way, have you seen Martha O’Gorman since you got back?”

“Why?”

“Just wondering. My wife called her at the hospital this afternoon to invite her over for Sunday dinner. They said she’d taken the day off because of illness, but when my wife went over to the house to offer to help her, Martha wasn’t there and the car was gone. I thought you might know something about it.”

“You give me too much credit. See you later, Ronda.”

“Wait just a minute.” Ronda was hunched over the can of beer, staring into it. “I have a funny feeling about you, Quinn.”

“A lot of people have. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, but I am worried. This funny feeling tells me you’re holding something back, maybe something very important. Now that wouldn’t be nice, would it? I’m your friend, your pal, your buddy. I gave you the low-down on the O’Gorman case, I lent you my personal file.”

“You’ve been true-blue,” Quinn said. “Good night, friend, pal, buddy. Sorry about that funny feeling of yours. Take a couple of aspirin, maybe it’ll go away.”

“You think so, eh?”

“I could be wrong, of course.”

“You could be and you are, dammit. You can’t fool an old newspaperman like me. I’m intuitive.”

When Ronda got up to open the door he stumbled against the corner of the desk. Quinn wondered how long he’d been drinking and how much the beer had to do with his powers of intuition.

He was glad to get back out to the street. A fresh breeze was blowing, bringing with it half the population of Chicote. The town, deserted at noon, had come to life as soon as the sun went down. All the stores on Main Street were open and there were line-ups in front of the movie theaters and at the malt and hamburger stands. Cars full of teen-agers cruised up and down the street, horns blasting, radios blaring, tires squeaking. The noise eased their restlessness and covered up their lack of any real activity.

At the motel Quinn parked his car in the garage for the night and was closing the door when a voice spoke from the shrubbery: “Mr. Quinn. Joe.”

He turned and saw Willie King leaning against the side of the garage as if she had been, or was going to be, sick. Her face was as white as the jasmine blossoms behind her and her eyes looked glassy and not quite in focus.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said. “Hours. It seems hours. I didn’t—I don’t know what to do.”

“Is this another of your dramatic performances, Willie?”

“No. No! This is me.”

“The real you, eh?”

“Oh, stop it. Can’t you tell when someone’s acting and when she isn’t?”

“In your case, no.”

“Very well,” she said with an attempt at dignity. “I won’t— I shan’t bother you any further.”

“Shan’t you.”

She started to walk away and Quinn noticed for the first time that she was wearing a pair of old canvas sneakers. It seemed unlikely that she would put on sneakers before giving a performance. He called her name, and after a second’s hesitation she turned back to face him.

“What’s the matter, Willie?”

“Everything. My whole life, everything’s ruined.”

“Do you want to come in my room and talk about it?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“I don’t want to come in your room. I mean, it wouldn’t be proper.”

“Perhaps not,” Quinn said, smiling. “There’s a little courtyard where we can sit, if you prefer.”

The courtyard consisted of a few square yards of grass around a brightly lit bathtub-sized swimming pool. No one was in the pool, but the wet footprints of a child were visible on the concrete and one tiny blue swim fin floated on the surface of the water. Hiding the courtyard from the street and from the motel units was a hedge of pink and white oleanders, heavy with blossoms.

The furniture had all been put under cover for the night, so they sat on the grass which was still warm from the sun. Willie looked embarrassed, and sorry that she had come. She said lamely, “The grass is very nice. It’s very hard to keep it that way in this climate. You have to keep the hose running practically all the time and even then the soil gets too alkaline—”

“So that’s what’s on your mind, grass?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“George,” she said. “George is gone.”

“You’ve known that for some time.”

“No. I mean, he’s really gone. And nobody knows where. Nobody.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure of one thing, he didn’t take any trip to Hawaii.” Her voice broke and she pressed one hand against her throat as if she were trying to mend the break. “He lied to me. He could have told me anything about himself, anything in this world, and I would still love him. But he deliberately lied, he made a fool of me.”

“How do you figure that, Willie?”

“This afternoon after you left the office, I began to get suspicious—I don’t know why, it just sort of came over me that maybe I’d been a patsy. I phoned all the airlines in Los Angeles long distance. I told them a story about an emergency in the family and how I had to contact George Haywood and wasn’t sure whether he’d gone to Hawaii or not. Well, they checked their passenger lists for Tuesday and Wednesday and there was no George Haywood on any of them.”

“They could have made a mistake,” Quinn said. “Or George might be traveling under another name. It’s possible.”

She wanted to believe it, but couldn’t. “No. He’s run away, I’m sure of it. From me and from his mother and the two of us fighting over him. Oh, not fighting physically or even outwardly, but fighting all the same. I guess he couldn’t stand it any more, he couldn’t make a decision either in her favor or mine so he had to escape from both of us.”

“That would be a coward’s decision, and from everything I’ve heard about George, he’s no coward.”

“Maybe I’ve made him into one without realizing what I was doing. Well at least I have one satisfaction—he didn’t tell her the truth either. I wish now I had gone to her house instead of telephoning her. I’d like to have seen the expression on the old biddy’s face when she found out her darling Georgie hadn’t taken the trip to Hawaii after all.”

“You called her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to,” she said harshly. “I wanted her to suffer the way I was suffering—to wonder, as I’m wondering, whether George will ever come back.”

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic? What makes you think he won’t come back?”

She shook her head helplessly.

“Do you know more than you’re telling me, Willie?”

“Only that he’s had something on his mind lately that he wouldn’t talk about.”

“By ‘lately’ do you mean since I arrived in Chicote?”

“Even before that, though it’s been worse since you started prying around and asking questions.”

“Perhaps he was afraid of my questions,” Quinn said. “And the reason he left town is to get away from me, not you and his mother.”

She was silent for a minute. Then, “Why should he be afraid of you? George has nothing to hide except—well, except that business the first night when I picked you up in the café.”

“That was George’s idea?”

“Yes.”

“What was the reason behind it?”

“He said” — her emphasis on the word seemed involuntary — “He said you might be a cheap crook planning an extortion racket. He wanted me to keep you occupied while he searched your room.”

“How did he know where my room was, or even that I existed?”

“I told him. I overheard you talking to Ronda in the office that first afternoon. I heard you mention Alberta Haywood and I thought I’d better call George right away. I did, and he asked me to follow you and find out who you were and where you were staying.”

“Then it wasn’t the name O’Gorman that caught your attention, it was Alberta’s?”

“Her actual name wasn’t mentioned, but Ronda referred to a local embezzlement and a nice little lady and I knew it had to be Alberta.”

“Do you run to the phone and call George every time someone mentions Alberta?”

“No. But I was suspicious of you. You had a look about you, a what’s-in-it-for-me look that I didn’t trust. Also, I guess I used the occasion to seem important in George’s eyes. I don’t,” she added somberly, “very often get the chance. I’m just an ordinary woman. It’s hard to compete with all that wheat germ and tiger’s milk and the other stuff Mrs. Haywood goes in for to attract attention and make other women seem dull by comparison.”

“You’re developing a real complex about the old lady, Willie.”

“I can’t help it. She bugs me. Sometimes I almost think that the reason I fell in love with George was because she was so dead set against it. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say, but she’s a monster, Joe, I mean it. More and more every year I can understand why Alberta committed those crimes. She was defying her mother. Alberta knew she’d be caught someday. Perhaps she deliberately arranged to be caught to punish and disgrace the old lady. Mrs. Haywood’s not stupid—this is as close to a compliment as she’ll ever get from me—and I think she understands Alberta’s underlying motive, and that’s why she cast her off completely and insisted George do the same.”

But Quinn couldn’t bring himself to believe it. “There were a hundred other ways Alberta could have punished her mother without going to jail herself and without dragging George into it.”

Willie was plucking blades of grass one by one, like a young girl playing he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not, with daisy petals. “Where do you think he’s gone, Joe?”

“I don’t know. It would help if I could find out why he left.”

“To get away from me and his mother.”

“He could have done that some time ago.”

It was the timing that interested Quinn. Martha O’Gorman had shown George the letter from her husband’s murderer, and, although George professed to consider the letter a hoax, it had excited him, according to Martha. Immediately afterward he had arranged to have it known all over town that he was taking a trip to Hawaii for his health. He had even made a point of having the news published in the local paper.

Quinn said, “Wasn’t it unusual on George’s part to make his plans public?”

“A little. It surprised me.”

“Why do you think he did it?”

“I have no idea.”

“I have. But you’re not going to like it, Willie.”

“I don’t like things the way they are now, either. Could they be worse?”

“A lot worse,” Quinn said. “All the noise George made about the trip might mean that he was trying to establish an alibi in advance for something that has happened, or is going to happen, right here in Chicote.”

She kept plucking away at the grass with a grim determination intended to conceal her fear. “Nothing’s happened so far.”

“That’s right. But I want you to be careful, Willie.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You were George’s confidante. He might have told you things he now regrets telling you.”

“He told me nothing,” she said roughly. “George never had a confidante in his life. He’s a loner, like Alberta. The way those two can clam up, it’s not—not human.”

“Maybe clams have a way of communicating with each other. Or do you still refuse to believe he went to visit Alberta every month?”

“I believe it now.”

“Think back, Willie. Was there ever a time when you were with George that he was off guard?—say he was in a state of extreme anxiety, or he’d had too much to drink, or he was heavily sedated.”

“George didn’t discuss his worries with me, and he very seldom drinks. Once in a while he has to take a lot of stuff for his asthma.”

“Did you ever see him on those occasions?”

“Sometimes. But he never seemed to act any different. Oh, maybe a little dopey, you know, not quite with it.” She hesitated, her hands quiet now, as if she was channeling all her energies into the task of remembering. “Then there was the time he had his appendix out, about three years ago. I went up to the hospital to be with him because Mrs. Haywood refused. She was at home throwing fits about how George’s appendix would have been perfectly all right if he’d eaten his wheat germ and molasses. I was in the room when he was coming out of the anesthetic.

“He was a scream. Afterwards he wouldn’t believe he’d said some of the things he did. The nurses were practically hysterical because he kept telling them to put on their clothes, that it was no proper way to run a hospital, with naked nurses.”

“Was he aware of your presence?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“He thought I was Alberta,” she said. “He called me by her name and told me I was a silly old spinster who should know better.”

“Know better than to do what?”

“He didn’t explain. He was mad at her, though, boiling mad.”

“Why?”

“Because she’d given away some of his clothes to a transient who’d come to the house. He called her a gullible, soft-hearted fool. Which made about as much sense as the naked nurses. Alberta might be a fool but she’s neither gullible nor softhearted. If there really was a transient, and if she gave him some of George’s clothes, she must have had a reason besides simple generosity. I mean, the Haywoods aren’t the kind who give handouts at the door. They might contribute to various organized charities but they’re not impulsive off-the-cuff givers. So I don’t believe it really happened, any more than the nurses had done a striptease.”

“Did you ask George about it later?”

“Well, I told him some of the things he said.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He laughed, not very comfortably. George is terribly dignified, he hated the idea that he’d made a fool of himself. Yet he has a sense of humor, too, and he couldn’t help laughing about the naked nurses.”

“Was he equally amused by his references to Alberta?”

“No, I think he felt guilty over calling her those names even when he wasn’t responsible for his words.”

Willie had lost interest in the grass and the little game of he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not. She had transferred her attention to a hole in the toe of her left sneaker and was picking at the frayed canvas like a bird gathering lint for its nest. Beyond the oleander hedge the city noise seemed remote and meaningless.

“What’s George’s financial status, Willie?”

She looked surprised that anyone should question it. “He’s no millionaire, he works for his money. And though business isn’t as good as it was a few years ago, it’s good enough. He doesn’t spend much except on his mother. She’s pretty extravagant. The last face job she had done in Los Angeles cost a thousand dollars and naturally she had to buy a new wardrobe to match the quote new unquote face.”

“Does George do much gambling, like his sister?”

“No.”

“Sure of that?”

“How can I be sure of anything at this point?” she said in a tired voice. “All I know is that he never talked about it and he hasn’t the temperament of a gambler. George plans things, he doesn’t like to take chances. He nearly blew a fuse when I bought a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes last year. He said I was a sucker. Well, I didn’t win, so maybe he was right.”

George and Alberta, Quinn thought. The two planners, the two clams who could communicate with each other through closed shells. What had they communicated, a new plan? Alberta’s parole hearing is coming up soon, it seems a funny time for George to disappear. Unless that’s part of the new plan.

Willie’s elaborate beehive coiffure had come undone and was sagging to one side like a real hive deserted by its bees and exposed to the weather. It gave her a slightly tipsy look that suited her; Willie’s judgments weren’t entirely sober.

“Joe.”

“Yes.”

“Where do you think George is?”

“Perhaps right here in Chicote.”

“You mean living under an assumed name in a hotel or boarding house or something? He couldn’t get away with that. Everyone in town knows him. Besides, why would he have to hide out?”

“He might be waiting.”

“For what?”

“God knows. I don’t.”

“If he’d only confided in me, if he’d only asked my advice—” Her voice started to break again but she caught it in time. “But that’s silly, isn’t it? George doesn’t ask, he tells.”

“You think you’re going to change him after you’re married?”

“I don’t want to change him. I like to be told.” Her mouth was set in a thin, obstinate line. “I really do.”

“All right, all right, you like to be told, so I’ll tell you. Go home and get a good night’s rest.” “That isn’t the kind of thing I meant.”

“Let’s face it, Willie. You don’t like to be told one darned thing.”

“I do so. By the right person.”

“Well, the right person’s not here. You’ll have to accept a substitute.”

“You’re a lousy substitute,” she said softly. “You’re not sure enough of yourself to give orders. You couldn’t fool a dog.”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few lady dogs have taken me quite seriously.”

She turned away, flushing. “I’ll go home, but not because you told me to. And don’t worry about George and me. I can handle him—after we’re married.”

“Those are famous last words, Willie.”

“I guess they are, but I’ve got to believe them.”

He went with her to her car. They walked apart and in silence, like strangers who happened to be going in the same direction, absorbed by their own problems. When she got into the car he touched her shoulder lightly and she gave him a brief, anxious smile.

“Drive carefully, Willie.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Want to give me a written guarantee of that?”

“Nobody gets a written guarantee in this world,” Quinn said, “so don’t sit around waiting for one.”

“I won’t.”

“Good night, Willie.”

He passed the motel office on his way back to his room. The entire Frisby clan was gathered around the desk, Grandpa, Frisby and his wife, the daughter and her husband, and several people Quinn hadn’t seen before. They were all talking at once and the radio was going full blast. It was as noisy as a revival meeting. The hand-clapping, foot-stamping music from the radio suited the occasion perfectly.

Frisby saw Quinn through the window and came sprinting out of the door, his bathrobe flapping around his legs, his face glistening with sweat and excitement.

“Mr. Quinn! Wait a minute, Mr. Quinn!”

Quinn waited. A sense of foreboding shook his body, and he wasn’t quite sure whether it was imagination or whether he’d experienced the shockwaves of an actual earthquake. He said, “I have my key, thanks, Mr. Frisby.”

“I know that. But I figured, being as the radio in your room is on the blink, you maybe missed the big news.” The words tumbled moistly around Frisby’s mouth like clothes in a washing machine. “You’ll never believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Such a nice quiet little woman, the last person in the world you’d expect to pull a stunt like that.”

It’s Martha, Quinn thought, something’s happened to Martha. He wanted to reach out and put his hand over Frisby’s mouth to prevent him from saying any more, but he forced himself to stand still, to listen.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard about it. I yelled to the wife and she came running in, thinking I was having a fit. Bessie, I told her, Bessie, you’ll never guess what’s happened. ‘The Martians have landed,’ said she. ‘No,’ I said, ‘Alberta Haywood has escaped from prison.’”

“God.” The word was not an expression of surprise but of gratitude and relief. For a minute he couldn’t even think about the news of Alberta Haywood, his mind refused to go beyond Martha. She was safe. She was sitting, as he had last seen her, in front of the campfire, and she was safe.

“Yes, sir, Miss Haywood escaped clean as a whistle in a supply truck that was servicing the candy machines in the canteen.”

“When?”

“This afternoon some time. The prison authorities didn’t release the details, but she’s gone all right. Or all wrong, as the case may be, ha ha.” Frisby’s laugh was more like a nervous little hiccough. “Anyway, the police haven’t been able to find her yet because the supply truck stopped at three or four other places and she could have gotten off at any one of them with nobody the wiser. Maybe it was all planned ahead of time and she had a friend waiting for her in a car. That’s my story. What do you think of it, eh?”

“It sounds reasonable,” Quinn said. Except for two possible errors. Instead of a friend in a car, it might have been a brother in a green Pontiac station wagon.

The clams had communicated, the planners were at work.

“Maybe,” Frisby said, “she’s coming back here.”

“Why?”

‘“On television, when someone escapes from prison, they always return to the scene of the crime to straighten out a miscarriage of justice. It could be she’s innocent and she’s going to try and prove it.”

“Whatever she’s trying to prove, Mr. Frisby, she’s not innocent. Good night.”

For a long time after he went to bed Quinn lay awake listening to the whine of the air-conditioner and the loud angry voices of the couple in the next room quarreling over money.

Money, Quinn thought suddenly. Sister Blessing’s money had come from her son in Chicago, and the letter Martha O’Gorman had destroyed had been postmarked Evanston, Illinois. A son in Chicago, a letter from Evanston. If there was a connection, the only person to ask about it was Sister Blessing.