Jail Bait

Chapter Two

On Monday morning Jane bought a Journal at the newsstand near her bus stop. She found herself on the first page of the second section. She was gazing light into the camera, frowning in an ugly way and looking mad as a hornet. It was hideous.

Beside her picture was a picture of the Expressway Bridge with the usual dotted line extending from the parapet down into the front yard of a rather grubby-looking house. There was a fat woman in the yard of the house, a tiny figure pointing at the big maltese cross at the end of the dotted line.

GIRL SPOTS KILLER, the headline said. She felt indignant. That wasn’t fair. Howard spotted the killer, if anybody did. She’d had one good look at the victim. The article hardly mentioned Howard.

She read with interest that the victim had a real name now. Walter Fredmans. Age, thirty-six. Resident of Los Angeles. He had served two terms in prison, one for auto theft and one for burglary. He had left the small apartment hotel where he lived about two weeks ago, checking out for good. He was driving a blue Kaiser sedan. Occupation, unknown.

Jane got to her office at nine. She worked as one of the secretaries in the claims department of an insurance company. Mr. Stoller, her boss, arrived at five after. He gave her his usual grave good morning.

She was hard at work on the bi-monthly summary when the phone rang. It was Howard.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“Jane, did you see the headline in the paper? GIRL SPOTS KILLER. You know what it sounds like? It sounds as though you could give a positive identification. There’s a pretty good chance there’s a man in this town who would dearly love to see you as dead as Fredmans!”

“No!” she whispered, realizing in horror that it was true.

“I don’t know how you go about getting anybody put in protective custody, but I’m going to try. In the meantime, use every precaution, hear? Don’t go to lunch. That guy, if he can read, knows where you work. Wait for me tonight inside the building. I’ll be around as soon as I can make it.”

“I can get home.”

“You do as I tell you!”

“Now you’re roaring at me!” she said icily and banged the phone down. As soon as she did, it rang again. This time it was a long-distance call from a magazine. The editor said he wanted to send a staff writer and photographer to write up her experience with the murderer — and he wondered if she had any objection to being photographed in a bathing suit. She told him she wasn’t interested. Another man phoned and said he owned a place west of the city and he wanted to know if she could sing. She hung up on him. A woman called and said they were equipped to make a professional screen test of her at a nominal cost. A young man phoned and asked for a date. Jane phoned the switchboard and told them to please tell everyone that she had taken the rest of the day off.

After that she finished the report without difficulty, eating lunch at her desk.

At thirty seconds before five she swept her desk clear, centered the roller on the typewriter, thumped it down into its well, snatched her purse, and, at the stroke of five, put her hand on the doorknob and said good night to Mr. Stoller.

The elevators were crowded going down. When she got down to the lobby floor she looked anxiously around for Howard, but could not see him. She moved over into a far corner beyond the directory board and stood with her back against glossy, artificial marble and watched the elevators emptying the building. She looked so long and so anxiously for Howard that she kept imagining she could see him as he came sideways through the people hurrying in the opposite direction.

At five-thirty there was a less determined flurry of exits. Jane began to bite her lip. She began to feel conspicuous.

The October dusk came quickly. The lobby seemed bigger than before, gloomier. Jane was glad of the presence of the girl operator. There was a buzz and the girl pulled the doors shut and worked the lever that sent her upward. Jane hunched her shoulders, purse tucked under her arm, elbows in the palms of her hands. She shivered. Car headlights went by in the street. It was the time of day when traffic thinned.

A stocky figure appeared outside the glass doors, silhouetted by the street lights. Jane dropped her purse. It made a great crashing sound in the marble stillness. The figure shoved the door open and came in and it became a strong-looking old woman who turned and waited for a companion. Cleaning women, Jane guessed. She picked up her purse.

The women went through a heavy door that, said “Fire Exit.” Once they were gone, Jane hauled the door open cautiously. It was far too dark and creepy in there. Dim lights on the landings. Concrete stairs with metal treads. She let the door swing shut.

The elevator came down and a portly gentleman glanced at Jane and walked toward the night. The glass door swung shut behind him. The elevator operator looked at Jane.

“Face it, honey. You been stood up,” she said.

“I guess I have,” Jane said. “Do you know where I could phone?”

“Right down on the corner, honey, in the drugstore.”

“I mean, inside the building.”

“Get in, honey. There’s a phone in that crummy little dressing room they give us girls.”

The girl ran her up to the second floor. “Go all the way down there just as far as you can go and it’s the last door.”

Jane came to the door at the end of the hall and opened it. She found the light switch and turned it on — and let out her pent-up breath. Two sides of the windowless room were lined with gray steel lockers. The rest of the space was used for plumbing. The phone was on the right, with numbers scrawled on the wall on all sides of it — hundreds of numbers and comments. The dreary phone book hung in dejected tatters. The room seemed haunted by broken slip straps, worn girdles, and cheap perfume.

She phoned the cab company that advertised radio cabs, remembering that it was supposed to be safer because the driver could always call in case of trouble and his dispatcher could call the police. She gave the address and a voice told her the cab would be right along.

Jane turned out the light, shut the door, clacked back down the echoing hall. The elevator girl ran her down to the main floor. It wasn’t long before her cab pulled up in front of the building. “There it is,” the elevator girl said.

Jane paused with her fingertips on the door. The driver had reached back and opened the back door. She took a deep breath and shoved the door open violently and scuttled across the sidewalk, feeling far too conspicuous. She pulled the door shut behind her as she plunged into the cab and dropped with a sigh into the back seat. She gave her address and, as the cab started up, she looked through the rear window. The street seemed empty. Two women walked together. But she could not be certain. There were too many patches of darkness.

As they were approaching the apartment house she said, “Would you please drive around the block once? It’s that place on the left.”

“Anything you say,” the driver said. She was pleased not to have to invent an explanation.

He went by the apartment house slowly. Most of the rooms were lighted. A woman was coming out, leading a small black dog. Jane had seen her before. There was no one else. The driver went two blocks further and swung around so that he could let her off directly in front of the door. She stayed in the cab while she paid him and tipped him, and had her key in her hand when she hurried for the inner lobby door.

When she was inside with the door shut behind her, she was tempted to lean against it and close her eyes. She walked back to the self-service elevator, closed herself in, and, for the first time, sat on the little bench in the corner while the elevator crept upward, sighing as it reached its assigned floor.

She went down the corridor, sorting out her apartment key, and heard the dim sound of her phone ringing. She jabbed the key in the lock. The stubborn lock didn’t seem to work properly; it felt loose and made a grating noise. She made it work and pushed the door open and swung it shut and trotted toward the telephone in the dark room.

Halfway across the small room she kicked against something bulky and soft, and fell clumsily across it. She rolled quickly into a sitting position facing the unknown horror, and scuttled backward until her back was against the wall just beside the kitchen door.

The phone rang three more times and stopped. She felt as if something had her by the throat. She stared toward the warm softness until her eyes felt swollen.

She held her breath and listened. She could hear the horror breathing. She tilted her head a little and distended her nostrils. There was a faint something in the air. She could almost identify it. The odor did not seem to have bad associations. There was a certain astringent tartness about it... Shaving lotion that...

She gasped and scrambled awkwardly to her feet and turned on the kitchen light. She ran to him and turned him over. It was Howard. His underlip sagged. On top of his head, right in the middle, just forward of the crown, was an angry lump the size of a plum.

She remembered the young doctor on the third floor, the thin one who worked in a private clinic and made occasional broad passes at her. Began with an H. That was it. Halstead. She looked in the book, hands trembling. He answered on the first ring.

“This is Jane Bayliss, Doctor. Upstairs. I’ve seen you in—”

“Ho! The Rita Hayworth type. I memorized your apartment number off the mailbox in case you ever came down with—”

“Please, could you come up right away? Someone is hurt.”

“Right away,” he said in an entirely different voice.

He came in and gave her a casual glance and got down on his knees beside Howard. He took the pulse first, then thumbed up Howard’s eyelid and shone a light into the pupil. He gingerly fingered the skull around the area of the angry lump, then appeared to feel the temperature of Howard’s hands.

He sat back on his heels and looked up at Jane. “A lusty thump on the noggin. And don’t try to tell me he tripped. Were you being unsocial?”

“I found him here. I just got home.”

“From the look of that lump, and the amount of discoloration, I’d say he’s had a nice long sleep.” He got to his feet and headed for the phone. “An ambulance for this boy.”

“Is it bad?”

“He’ll have a thorough headache. I don’t suspect a fracture. Concussion and shock. A little bed rest is indicated.”

Howard moaned and opened his eyes and stared dully at the ceiling. Jane knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. “Darling! How do you feel?”

He turned his head slowly and looked at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here!”

“What am I doing here then?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” the doctor asked.

“I was supposed to pick you up and take you to dinner, honey. I thought we might go to the Taffeta Room later and—”

“That was Saturday!” she cried. “This is Monday.” She looked up at the doctor. “What’s wrong with him?”

The doctor grinned. “Don’t scare the patient. A bump like that often results in temporary amnesia. It will probably go away in a few days. Hey, don’t get up.”

“I got to,” Howard said earnestly and doggedly. “I’m going to be sick.”

They helped him up and the doctor led him away to the bathroom. When they came out Howard looked a luminous blue. He sat in the big chair and shut his eyes.

“I think I can walk him down to my car,” the doctor said. “Come on, pal. Let’s see if we can make it. What’s his name, Miss Bayliss?”

“Howard Saddler.”

“Okay, you notify the police and whoever else Howard here would want you to tell. Come on, now. Upsy-daisy. And I wouldn’t touch anything, Miss Bayliss. Somebody gave this place a good going over.”

She walked them to the elevator. As soon as it started down she raced back to the apartment, shut the door and put the night chain on it. Then she saw the apartment more clearly. The bureau drawers, the cosmetics, the medicine cabinet was bad enough. The final straw was in the kitchen, where flour, sugar, coffee, rice and less identifiable substances had all been dumped out on the counter top and had spilled over onto the floor. She wanted to cry.

She phoned and asked for Detective Sergeant Sam Dolan.

“This is Jane Bayliss. Could you... could you come over?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Somebody hit Howard on the head and turned my apartment upside down.”

“Don’t touch anything. Be right there.”

Dolan arrived in eight minutes, accompanied by a uniformed officer, two lab men and the Journal reporter named Locatta.

Dolan listened patiently while she told what had happened. The lab men took her fingerprints. They began to go over the apartment. After the first five minutes one of them came over to Dolan and said, “Waste of time. Doorknobs, catches either smeared or clean. The joker wore gloves. Two strangers off the outside knob is as good as we’ll do, but odds it wasn’t him or them. Knock off?”

“Jerry, take these boys back. Loco here will give me a lift if I ask him nice.” He turned to Jane. “You have anything valuable here?”

“No.”

“Who is the other girl? Tell me everything you know about her.”

Jane gave him a complete report on Betty Alford. Halfway through he began to look bored. Before she had finished he was roaming around again, whistling tunelessly. He stopped and scratched his red head. “These things have a smell. If you can find where they left off, then the odds are they found what they wanted. This guy didn’t leave off. He kept looking.”

“There’s nothing here to find, that’s why.”

“Fill her in on developments, Red,” Locatta said in his thin, boyish voice. “Maybe she can make things fit by remembering something.”

“A couple of other things have happened. We don’t know if they’re related or unrelated. Somebody broke into the Taffeta Room last night. It was a professional job of breaking and entering, but it stopped being professional right there. They wore gloves. They stood at the bar and had a drink of the best scotch in the house and went out the way they got in. The only thing they didn’t do was leave a tip.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“Like drunk college kids doing it on a dare,” Locatta said.

“Item number two. This will be on local news tonight and in the paper in the morning. The Los Angeles Police tried to find out who Fredmans was running around with. They got a line on a girl friend. They shook down her place and didn’t find anything that meant anything except a ring. That ring disappeared along with a bunch of unmounted stones in Savannah about eight months ago. A salesman for a diamond wholesale house was slugged. He had his locked case chained to his wrist. They cut the chain with what was believed to be a heavy pair of snips. It was well planned.

“The girl was scared, and she talked. She told them Fredmans was in on the robbery. She didn’t know who else was. He gave her the ring. It was a common type of setting and a pretty fair half-carat stone. Apparently Fredmans never noticed the initials inside the band. The girl did, but she didn’t realize those initials could be dangerous, and so she didn’t throw it away. She said she hadn’t seen Fredmans for two weeks. But she said some men she didn’t know had been asking her about him. She said they acted sore. She couldn’t give an adequate description.”

Jane looked at Dolan and then at Locatta. She shook her head. “I don’t know why you should think all that should mean anything to me. It just confuses me.”

Locatta held up a snapshot Betty Alford had taken of Jane at the beach the previous summer. She had on the bathing suit that always made her obscurely uncomfortable when she wore it. “Do I have your permission to use this delectable thing in our miserable newspaper?”

“You do not! Where did you get it?”

“There’s a lot of them in that drawer, and some on the floor under the table.”

“Give it here!”

Locatta handed it over reluctantly and shrugged.

“Who hit Howard, Mr. Dolan?” Jane asked.

“Some burglar, I guess.”