Leave Her to Hell

11

As it turned out, I didn’t go to Amity that day. I intended to go, and I kept thinking that I’d surely get started pretty soon, but I was diverted by a couple of things that kept nagging me in the head. The first of these things was a hit-and-run accident that probably didn’t have anything to do with anything that concerned me; but it was, nevertheless, another loose end and bothersome. Once, over two years ago, it had played a part in the plans or the fantasy of Regis Lawler, if the story of Robin Robbins could be taken as true. And the story had been told so casually and briefly, as something no more than incidental to something else, that it had the smack of truth.

Robin had discounted it, however. To her, she’d said, it was only Scotch talking, and I was inclined to accept this as being what Robin thought was true, whether it was, in fact, the truth or not. To be sure, Robin was a sly character when it suited her; but I couldn’t credit her with the accomplished duplicity it would have taken to make such a beautifully casual reference with some kind of deliberate intent.

I went back to see Lud Anderson again. He wasn’t at his desk when I arrived, and it wasn’t known when, if ever, he’d be back. I sat down and began waiting and smoking, and it was six cigarettes and thirty minutes later when I saw him flapping toward me in a kind of modified version of the lope once affected by Groucho Marx. He flopped in his chair and opened the drawer of his desk and poured himself a paper cup full of milk. It seemed to me to be the same cup he’d used the last time, and I wondered if it were possible to be fatally poisoned over a period of time by an accretion of old butterfat. After a large swallow and an ulcerous face, he pulled up to his typewriter and rolled paper under the platen.

“How are you, Lud?” I said.

“I see you,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure. I don’t remember hearing you say hello.”

“I didn’t say it. I was ignoring you in the hope that you’d get the hell away.”

My inclination was to spit in his eye and go, but a man looking for a favor can’t afford sensitivity, so I pulled on my elephant hide and stayed. Along with his ulcer and his evil disposition, Lud had one of the most cluttered minds in existence among upper bipeds. And I wanted, with his permission and assistance, to poke around for a few minutes in the fabulous accumulation of odds and ends in his long skull.

“I won’t stay long,” I said. “I thought you might be willing to give me a little information.”

“About what?”

“A hit-and-run accident.”

“Come off it, Percy. How many hit-and-runs do you think happen in this city?”

“This one was out in a county. About two years ago. Probably longer. A woman was killed, and I don’t think it was ever solved.”

“Which county?”

“I don’t know. Not too far out. I’m hoping you can tell me. Just try to remember where a woman was killed about the time I said.”

He finished his milk and leaned back and closed his eyes, and in the enormous transformation that is sometimes worked by such small changes, he looked completely at peace and almost dead. He was really only sifting and sorting the clutter, however, and after a while he raised his lids and fixed me with a baleful eye.

“I remember the one you probably mean,” he said. “Woman’s name was Spatter. Perfectly mnemonic. Impossible to forget. Can you imagine any name more appropriate for anyone who gets knocked seven ways from Sunday by a speeding automobile?”

“It would certainly be difficult. You remember when it happened?”

“About when you said. Over two years ago, less than three. It wasn’t my job, and it’s vague.”

“Were there any suspects?”

“Not to my knowledge. Someone hit her and killed her and got away, that’s all.”

“You think the morgue would tell me anything?”

“Why should the morgue tell you anything? There were no witnesses. No clues. Nothing to tell.”

“Maybe I’ll go down and check it just the same.”

“It’s your time. If you want to waste it, go ahead.”

“Didn’t I tell you the other time I was here? Wasting time is what I’m getting paid to do. I suppose the state troopers investigated the thing.”

“Sure. And the sheriff. Good old Fat Albert.”

“Fat Albert Gerard?”

“Who else? Fat Albert’s been sheriff off and on since then. All he has to do is put his name on the ballot, and that’s just about all he does do. Rakes off a little here and there. Gets a little fatter on the gravy. Don’t expect Fat Albert to know anything.”

“I used to know Fat Albert when I was a kid. I was born in his county seat, as a matter of fact. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk with him.”

“What could it hurt?” Lud looked at me through slits, as if he could not bear the sight of me full view, but I saw in the slits a bright gleam of interest. “Yesterday you were in here asking about the Markley dame. Today you’re back asking about an old hit-and-run. You working two jobs or trying to make a connection?”

“No connection. Not with Markley. Thanks, Lud. I’ll send you a quart of milk.”

“Go to hell,” he said.

Instead, I went down to the morgue, but it didn’t pay. About all I learned that I didn’t know was the exact date of the accident, which was no more significant than the approximate date, which I’d known already. If it was a loose end of anything that I was trying to put together and make tidy, it was still loose, and I was still wasting time for pay. I left the morgue and walked down the street toward my car.

In a phone booth, I used the directory but not the phone. All I wanted was an address, and the address I wanted was Colly Alder’s. Specifically, Colly’s office. I was curious about something I frequently get curious about.

Why, I mean, does a person who wants a private detective hire one particular private detective instead of another particular private detective? I suppose the same question could be raised relative to doctors and dentists and lawyers. But there are more people who hire doctors and dentists and lawyers, and there are, therefore, more and easier ways to find out about the ones they hire. Very few people hire detectives, relative speaking. And how do the relative few who do, decide which one? Do they just shop around until they find one with good references? Do they just pick a name they like from the yellow pages? It’s an interesting speculation in which I’ve indulged, and right now I was speculating as to why Graham Markley, who could have afforded anybody, had hired Colly, who was practically nobody. The answer was something I wanted to get, and I thought that I might even be willing to pull Colly’s nose to get it.

The office was in a better building in a better block of a better street than I had expected. The office itself, congruously, was also better. It was, as a matter of fact, a suite of offices, if you can call two rooms a suite. There was an outer office and an inner office, and the inner office had a door with a nice pane of frosted glass and Colly’s name on the glass above the word PRIVATE. The outer office was small, as was the inner; but both were nicely appointed, and one of the nicest appointments in the outer was a small-sized secretary-receptionist. If I had to describe this small-sized secretary-receptionist in a word, I would say that she was cute. She had curly titian hair and sassy eyes and a pert nose and alert breasts and agreeable legs. She had, besides, an indefinable air of being more than merely employed.

“How do you do?” she said.

“How do you do,” I said, as polite as anybody. “Is Colly in?”

“Mr. Alder?”

“Excuse me. Mr. Alder.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Not I. I just dropped in.”

“Would you care to state the nature of your business?”

“I’m not sure. I may only ask Colly a few questions, and I may pull his nose.”

She flushed and looked at once hostile and wary, which led me to believe that others had dropped in to pull Colly’s nose and that she resented it. She was, definitely, more than merely employed.

“Who shall I say is calling?” she said coldly.

“Percy Hand. Tell Colly I’m determined.”

She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her hips and walked on her agreeable legs into Colly’s private office. In a couple of minutes she came back, leaving the door open behind her.

“Mr. Alder will see you,” she said.

“That’s generous of Mr. Alder,” I said.

I went in and closed the door that she’d left open. Colly was sitting in a swivel chair behind a desk that was big enough to emphasize his runtiness. He didn’t bother to get up and welcome me, but neither did he look as if he wished especially that I hadn’t come. As a matter of fact, he looked rather friendly.

“Hello, Colly,” I said. “What a fancy den you’ve got here. I didn’t dream you were so prosperous.”

“Business is good,” he said smugly. “Sit down and have a cigar, Percy.”

“Cigars even! I’ll just have a cigarette, though, if you don’t mind.” I sat down in an upholstered chair beside his desk and lit the cigarette and looked around the room. “YOU must have quite a bit of overhead here, Colly.”

“Quite a bit.”

“Everything nice and fairly expensive. Even that little red-headed item in the outer office. I’ll bet she’s fairly expensive too.”

“Rosie? I never counted the cost. Anyhow, you get what you pay for.”

“Sure. It’s a sweet sentiment. It’s fine as long as you keep a good set of values.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve got no idea. I had an idea it might sound profound or something.”

He shifted his weight in the swivel and stuck one of his cigars in his mouth. It was long and fat, king-size, and it looked almost ludicrous in the middle of his midget mug.

“You didn’t come here to moralize and make an inventory, Percy. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I got to thinking about our little encounter last night, and the more I thought, the curiouser and curiouser I got. Like Alice.”

“Like who?”

“Never mind. It’s an allusion. Incidentally, you aren’t sore about what happened, are you, Colly?”

“It’s all in the business.” He shrugged and rolled his cigar from one corner to the other. “Why should I be sore?’

“Has Markley called you today?”

“No. Why?”

“He’s going to fire you. I told him he might as well, and he agreed.”

He sighted me over the unlit tip of the cigar, and for the merest instant his little eyes turned yellow, but then he shrugged again and managed what might have been a laugh.

“I couldn’t care less, Percy. I was ready to give it up anyhow.”

“That’s a sensible attitude. Let me congratulate you. What I’ve been curious about, though, is how you got on the job in the first place.”

“It was a job. It was offered to me. Like you said, I’ve got quite a bit of overhead.”

“But why you? Colly Alder specifically?”

He looked at me in silence for a few seconds, and I began to feel that there was something turning over and over in his mind. I’m pretty sure that he was wondering whether to lie or tell the truth or simply to invite me to go to hell, and I was also pretty sure, when he finally answered, that he’d decided for his own reasons to tell me the truth.

“We’d had a previous contact,” he said. “I did some work for him.”

“What kind of work?”

“I tailed his wife when she was on the prowl with Regis Lawler. Back before she and Lawler broke loose and ran.”

“Why did he want her tailed? According to my information, he wasn’t much concerned with what she did.”

“True enough. He wasn’t. But it doesn’t hurt to have evidence on your side in case it’s needed. It might save some alimony.”

“I see. So you tailed Constance Markley. What did it come to?”

“Nothing. I did the job and made a few reports, and then she and Lawler made their break. That was the end of it.”

“Were you on her tail the night she disappeared?”

“I started on it, but I fell off. I lost her.”

“Where’d you lose her?”

“At Lawler’s apartment. She went in, but she didn’t come out. Not the way she went in, I mean. They must have left together by a back way or something.”

I was pretty sure, as I said, that Colly had started telling the truth, but I wasn’t so sure at all that he was keeping it up. Somehow, I had lost my conviction.

“No wonder Markley’s firing you,” I said. “It seems like every time he’s given you a job, you’ve fumbled it.”

If he was raw, he didn’t show it. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and his face had in repose the kind of dry and bloodless and withered look that I have seen in the faces of aging midgets. Not that he was a midget, of course. He was just a runt.

“It makes no difference,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of the racket anyhow. I’m thinking of giving it up.”

“Is that so? What are you thinking of doing instead?”

“I don’t know. I been thinking about going south. Out of the country south. Maybe Mexico. Maybe South America. I’ve got a yen to lie on a beach and soak up some sun. I been thinking about taking Rosie and going.”

“How does Rosie feel about it?”

“Agreeable.” He opened his eyes and stared at me with an odd kind of quiet assurance. “Rosie’d go anywhere with me, and I wouldn’t go anywhere without Rosie. She’s the only person in the world I’ve ever trusted, and I guess that’s because she’s the only one who’s ever trusted me.”

I had again the conviction that he was levelling. Colly and Rosie forever. One of those odd and dedicated pairs that sometimes stick together in the attrition of things that happen. There was a kind of pathos in it that made me, for a moment, feel almost partial to them.

“You and Rosie at Acapulco,” I said. “It sounds like fun, and it sounds like money.”

“Could be I’ve got money.” He leaned forward earnestly. “How’d you like to earn a little of what I’ve got?”

“I wouldn’t. Why do I have to keep repeating to people that I’m poor but honest?”

“This is honest, Percy. All you have to do to earn a century is one simple thing. One simple thing.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Maybe you’d do it as a favor.”

“Why the hell should I do you a favor?”

“Look, Percy. I know how you feel about me. You don’t like me, and you don’t trust me, and I don’t give a damn. You’ve got a reputation for being honest, and I need an honest, dependable guy for one hour to do one honest, simple thing.”

There was something compelling in the runt’s earnestness. He had something on his mind, that was certain, and whatever it was, whatever piece of sordid craft for the sake of Colly Alder, it was something big by the dimensions of Colly’s world.

“What one honest, simple thing?” I said.

He took a deep breath and released it in a long sigh that seemed exorbitant as a reaction to my slight concession of asking for information that committed me to nothing.

“This is it. You go to your office tonight at nine and stay until ten. Just an hour. If I haven’t called by ten, you go see Rosie in her apartment. She’ll have something interesting to tell you. I promise it’ll be interesting.”

“Nix, Colly.” I shook my head and stood up. “I can smell this thing already. Do I look like the kind of cheap crook who’d get himself involved in one of your shady operations just to do a favor or earn a lousy century?”

He popped out of his swivel and came around the desk and put a hand on my arm. I looked down at the hand without moving or speaking until it dropped away. In his voice when he spoke was a peculiar mixed quality of entreaty and sincerity and tiredness.

“You won’t get involved in anything, Percy. I swear to God you won’t. If I call before ten, you’ll never hear anything more about it. If I don’t call, you’ll hear something you’ll be glad to know.”

“From Rosie?”

“That’s right. From Rosie.”

I looked down at him and wondered what it is that makes a man agree in the end to do something he feels he shouldn’t do. Maybe it’s because he’s a fool or avaricious or curious or riding his luck or whatever may be in accordance with the man and the circumstances. In my case, I think, it was because I had this odd conviction of Colly’s sincerity and need and something more. Was it fear? I thought it was. He was, I thought, a bad little egg involved with something bigger and worse, and what he wanted to make of me at most was a kind of precarious insurance against some kind of threat. Besides, he had been connected in at least a minor way with Constance Markley, and he knew that I was trying to find her, and he had now appealed to me to do this one honest and simple thing — me of all persons to whom he might have appealed or might have bought. And why would he have chosen me if there were not a connection between the two that might or might not become clear later?

“All right,” I said. “From nine to ten. One honest, simple thing.”

“Thanks, Percy,” he said. “You won’t be sorry.”

I hoped I wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure.

“Give me Rosie’s address,” I said.

He wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to me, and I folded it four times into a small square and stuck it in the watch pocket of my pants. Then I went out of the better office and the better building and down the better street.