Meet Me at the Morgue

chapter 14

The Acme Investigative Agency had second-floor offices in a narrow, stucco building above a loan company. I found a parking place across the street and made my way through the evening flow of traffic. The cars were fleeing wildly across the twilight, as if there had been simultaneous disasters at both ends of the boulevard. Lights were being lit like tiny watchfires all along the hills.

I walked up to the second floor and found, as I expected, that the Acme offices were locked and silent. There was a telephone booth which smelled of stale cigar-smoke in the corridor. A skylight above it filtered a dusty gray light. I used the phone to call the J. Thomas Richards home in Westwood. The maid informed me that Mr. and Mrs. Richards were still out on the golf course. Would I try the Bel Air clubhouse? Yes, they were expected home for dinner.

The telephone directory chained to the wall of the booth listed an alternative number for the Acme agency, to be called in case of emergency. I dialed it and got a man’s voice, rapid and edged:

“Bourke speaking. Is that you, Carol?”

“I’m Howard Cross, probation officer in Pacific Point–”

“Do I know you?”

“It looks as if you’re going to. We’ve had a murder and a kidnapping–”

“Not for me, thanks very much. I leave that stuff to the police. Who did you say you were – a probation officer?”

“You didn’t let me finish. You run the Acme agency, don’t you?”

“It runs me,” he said, “ragged.”

“One of your employees is involved.”

“Simmie? Not Simmie Thatcher?”

“We don’t know the name.”

“Won’t he talk?”

“He can’t. He’s been dead for eight hours.”

He didn’t speak for about five seconds. Somewhere behind the wall of the corridor, perhaps in the Acme offices, I heard a telephone ringing remotely, unanswered.

“What makes you think he works – he worked for me?”

“He was passing out your business cards.”

“Describe him.”

“A big old man, close to six feet, I’d say in his late fifties. Bald-headed, and he wears a brown toupee.”

There was another waiting silence on the line.

“Do you know him, Bourke?”

“I know him,” he said wearily. “What happened to him?”

“He was murdered.”

“I see.”

“Who is he?”

“The name’s Art Lemp. He worked for me last year for a while. I fired him.”

“I need all you have on him. Where can we get together?”

“Now?” he said in some dismay. “I’m expecting a call from my wife, I can’t–”

I overbore him: “Listen. This Lemp snatched a four-year-old boy this morning. Lemp’s dead. The boy’s still missing. You’re the only lead we’ve got.”

“I see. Well. Maybe she isn’t going to call me anyway. Where are you?”

“In the telephone booth outside your office.”

“I’m just three blocks away. Be there in five minutes.”

Before I had finished a cigarette he mounted the stairs, a man of about my age, broad-shouldered and short-legged, with quick suspicious Hollywood eyes set on ball bearings in an anxious face. While we exchanged a perfunctory handshake his eyes were all over me, estimating my height, age, weight, probable income, and Intelligence Quotient. There were Martinis on his breath.

He stabbed his office door with a small brass key. “Did I keep you waiting? Mind if I see your credentials?”

“I don’t carry any. Phone the sheriff at Pacific Point if you like. He’s probably been trying to get in touch with you, anyway.”

He snapped a switch inside the door. The awkward shadows of waiting-room furniture, settee, reed chairs, ash-stand, took on color and substance.

“Why bother?” he said with forced lightness. “You have an honest face. What did you say your name was?”

“Howard Cross.”

“Come on into the sanctum, Howard. I’ll do you for what I can. Joke.”

I followed him into his private office, a small room decently furnished in oak veneer. He sat on the edge of the desk and swung one highly polished toe.

“Frankly, this comes as a blow to me, Howard. Been taking quite a series of them lately. Wife left me, third time. Been trying to talk her into coming back. Big showdown scheduled for tonight. Isn’t that the irony of fate, Howard? Me in the divorce business, knocking myself out to keep a no-good blonde from leaving me. Sure, you say, let her go. Only she has what I need.”

“Pin up the back hair, Bourke. I’m interested in Lemp, not you.”

“Sorry,” he said, not without resentment. “What happened to old Art? Shot? I always told him he was going to get shot.”

“Icepicked. He was murdered in his car about eleven fifteen this morning, apparently hijacked for the ransom money. He’d just picked it up at eleven.”

“How much ransom money?”

“Fifty thousand.”

Bourke narrowed his eyes and pinched his lips between thumb and forefinger. He looked like a hungry barracuda wearing a bowtie. “Old Art tried the big time, eh? He shouldn’t have done that. He had no class. Naturally he got it in the neck.”

“In the neck?”

“Excuse my slang,” he said. “Don’t tell me that’s where he took the icepick.”

“That’s where.”

“Shut my big mouth, eh? But you’re way off the beam if you think I knew about it. I haven’t even seen Art Lemp for six months. I fired him in December. As a matter of fact, I kicked him downstairs.”

“Why?”

“The urge kept growing on me, it finally bust loose. I never should have hired him in the first place. Only did it as a favor to a pal.”

“What pal?”

The barracuda eyes grew wary. “Aren’t we getting kind of far afield, Howard?”

“I don’t think so. Lemp wasn’t alone in this. I’m trying to contact his associates.”

“You have a point. Well, it wasn’t exactly a pal that steered him to me, not my pal anyway. A little blonde chick name of Molly Fawn, at least that’s the name she uses. She’s done me a couple of favors in the past. When she told me about this deserving old goat with all the police experience, I broke down and gave him a job.”

“When was this?”

“October, early October. It took me two months to catch on to him. He wouldn’t have lasted that long if Carol hadn’t been driving me off my rocker. She left me the second time in November. Can I help it if I have contacts with women in my business? I told her I’m like a doctor, she wouldn’t listen. I never gave that–” he snapped his fingers loudly “–for Molly Fawn or any of the rest of them.”

“Where can I get in touch with Molly Fawn?”

His face expressed regretful concern. “I’ll be honest with you, Howard.”

“Don’t strain yourself.” I was always suspicious of people who made a point of proclaiming their honesty.

Leaning forward, Bourke slapped my shoulder heartily and laughed with his teeth. “No strain, I’m leveling with you, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t laid an eye on Molly this year. I broke with her and Lemp at the same time, for the same reason. I’ll even tell you the reason.” He looked sideways in surprise at his own generous candor. “They were using the leads Lemp got working for me, to run a little sideshow of their own.”

“Blackmail?”

“It boiled down to that. I get a lot of jealous wives in here.” He sniffed with distaste, as if female emotions had left traces in the room. “A fair percentage of them have nothing to be jealous about. It’s my job to set their minds at rest as soon as I can. Art Lemp was assigned to two or three of these cases. He played them the opposite way, for maximum trouble – a variation on the badger game. Twice that I know about, he maneuvered the husband into a compromising position with Molly, once in a car, once in a hotel room. Then this photographer pal of his took a picture. One of the suckers bought the picture from Lemp. What would you do if you had a jealous wife? The other one came to me. That was the day I kicked Art Lemp downstairs.” A reminiscent smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “I phoned Molly and gave her a tongue-lashing, and I haven’t seen her since, either. If it wasn’t so bad for business, I’d have marched the two of them down to the station-house.”

“Where was Molly living in December?”

“I don’t know where she lived.”

“Try her phone number.”

“I never knew her phone number.”

“You said you phoned her.”

“Through a friend,” he said, with an explanatory lifting of the hands. “She had an arrangement with this friend of hers to handle her phone calls for her.”

“Her friend should know where she is.”

“That I doubt. The friend in question is serving time in the L.A. County Jail. The Vice Squad put her away in January. Maybe they got Molly, too. I couldn’t care less.”

“Lemp had a nice circle of friends,” I said, thinking that Bourke had, too. “What about the photographer you mentioned, the one that took the compromising pictures?”

“I never met him. I’d have fixed him if I had. Don’t even know his name.”

“Or where he lived?”

“I think he lived in the same hotel with Lemp, one of those crummy joints downtown. That was where they took one of the pictures.”

“The Sunset Hotel?”

“You’re getting psychic, Howard.”

“The car Lemp was killed in belonged to a Kerry Smith, who gave the Sunset Hotel as his address. Does the name Kerry Smith mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing. If he’s the flashbulb boy, he probably isn’t there any more. Lemp checked out in December, the day I gave him the stairs treatment. Flashbulb probably went along with him.”

“You have no description of the photographer?”

“Not a thing,” he repeated. “I can give you a good one of Molly Fawn, if you want. Fawn isn’t her real name, incidentally – just a stage name.”

“Is she an actress?”

“They’re all actresses, Howard. Every female bum in town is an actress, if all they did was gallop in the second line of a third-rate nitery in San Francisco. Just like half the male bums call themselves artists and writers. And private investigators.” He smiled wryly.

“Molly’s description,” I reminded him.

“You’ve seen a hundred of her, Howard, maybe a thousand in your work. Well-turned little blonde, of course not natural blonde, height about five foot four, weight about one twenty-five, good legs but they could be better. Claims to be nineteen or twenty. One thing, if you catch up with her, don’t believe anything she says. She’s a psychopathic liar. They’re all psychopathic liars. I know, I’m married to one.”

“You could be prejudiced. Color of eyes?”

“Pansy-purple, I mean the flower. Her eyes are her best feature, and she knows it. Uses them all the time, on everything in trousers.”

“Distinguishing characteristics?”

“None that I know of. She has a very good skin. Funny thing about her, she doesn’t tan.” His voice dropped meditatively. “Funny thing.”

On the desk behind him, the phone rang in sharp remonstrance. Bourke pivoted and lifted the receiver. “Carol? Is that you, baby?”

It wasn’t Carol.

“Yes, Mr. Forest,” he said. “This is Bourke speaking. Yes, I run the Acme agency.”

He answered a series of questions about Art Lemp, and then my name came up. Bourke handed me the receiver. “F.B.I. man, wants to talk to you.”

Forest’s voice came rasping over the long wire. “You’ve got the jump on us, I see. Don’t fall and break your neck.”

“I never have. Any news on the Johnson boy?”

Bourke, who had started to pace, froze in a listening attitude.

“We’re combing the entire southwest,” Forest said. “Roadblocks on every highway out of the state. One definite lead: the Chrysler you found Lemp in was bought off a Third Street lot in December by a man named Kerry Snow. Checks with Kerry Smith. No description, but we have a line on the salesman that sold it to him. What’s at your end?”

“Bourke here put me onto a friend of Lemp’s, a girl named Molly Fawn. You’d better come and talk to Bourke yourself.”

“I intend to. Can he be trusted?”

“For our purposes, I’d say yes. He’s right beside me.”

“Send him out of the room.”

“It’s his room. He seems legitimate.”

“Thank you veddy much,” Bourke said at my back.

Forest was saying, darkly: “You never can tell about these private operators. The dirt they work in is always rubbing off on them. Well, put him back on the line, will you please?”

Bourke answered further questions, about himself and Molly Fawn and Lemp. Finally, I gathered, he was instructed to wait in his office for Forest. He promised to, and hung up.

The dialogue with authority had sobered and tired him, deepening the worry lines in his face. “He wants you to wait, too, Mr. Cross.”

“I don’t think I will. You’d better.”

“More woe,” he said lugubriously. “I haven’t had a piece of luck this year. My luck’s got to turn some time. You know this Forest?”

“I talked to him today. He’s not going to bite you.”

“That’s what you think. I’m in this thing up to my eyes.” He raised a stiff left hand to his left cheekbone. “You didn’t tell me it was the Johnson kid.”

“I didn’t know you’d be interested.”

“I’m not. I want to forget it. I want to go out in the desert and crawl in a gopher hole and forget everything. Only I can’t.”

“Let’s have the rest of it, Bourke. You might as well.”

“Don’t worry. You don’t catch me concealing evidence.”

“Blurt it out,” I said. “You’re wasting time.”

He circled the desk and sat down weakly in the swivel chair behind it. “This Johnson dame a friend of yours?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I know her. Know her husband, that is. He was one of my clients. What’s the old guy’s name?”

“Abel. He isn’t so old.”

“Too old for her. That’s not my opinion, it’s his. He came in here six-seven months ago, caught my ad in the paper. I told you about the jealous wives. There are also the jealous husbands.”

A whistling wind swept the region behind my eyes. In the ensuing blankness, something heavy and solid gathered. It felt like a headache. Then I discerned that it was shaped like a woman. But its face was blank, and its lower half was hidden.

“Go on.” My voice sounded strange in the blankness. The shape turned its face to the back wall of my mind. “Who was he jealous of?”

“Some lawyer, a guy called Siphon, something like that. I could look it up.”

“Don’t bother. The name is Seifel.”

He slanted a wise look at me. “Johnson didn’t make any accusations. He said he just wanted to know, one way or the other. The doubt was killing him, he said. It always is.”

“Did you settle his doubts?”

“I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure. Lemp was the one who handled it, see. As a matter of fact, he asked me to put him on the case, he seemed to be interested in it. I was busy myself on a studio job, and so were my other operators. I sent him down to Pacific Point. He watched the Johnson dame for four or five days. This was in November. He reported nothing there. Mrs. Johnson saw the legal eagle a couple of times but there was always a third party present, Johnson or the guy’s mother. I’m no jackal: I told Johnson he was wasting his money.”

“But now you’re not so sure.”

I tried to keep emotion out of my voice, but Bourke had a delicate ear for that sort of thing. “Don’t get mad at me. I got enough people mad at me already.” He raised his bent right arm as if to ward off a series of looping left hooks. “Okay, so you like the lady. Look at the thing dispassionately. I know now, I didn’t know then, Lemp’s reports aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Even if he caught them in flagrante, he wouldn’t report it to me. He saw a chance for something bigger there: he must have been planning this snatch since November, maybe before I assigned him to the case. So he wouldn’t do anything to precipitate trouble in the family. Would he?”

“I’d like to see his report.”

Bourke pulled open a drawer in a filing-cabinet. He riffled through the papers in the drawer, casually at first, then more and more intently. “It isn’t here. Lemp must have lifted it before he left.”

“You’re sure?”

“Look for yourself. This is all there is.” He showed me a record of payment: Abel Johnson, Pacific Point, $125.00, for services rendered. “Forest is going to like this, very much.”

He collapsed in the swivel chair and lifted a blue revolver from the middle drawer of the desk. Absently, he twirled the loaded chamber with his forefinger:

“Russian roulette, anyone?”

“Put it away,” I said.

“R.K.O.” He replaced the gun in the drawer. “Don’t mind me, Howard. I was just kidding. I’m a great kidder.”

“This is no time for comedy. If you know something more than you’ve told me, you’d better let me have it”

“Such as?”

“Where Molly Fawn lived. I think you knew her pretty well at one time. It’s possible you still do.”

“You’re wrong, you couldn’t be wronger.” His face was expressionless, but below the edge of the desk his hands were wrestling quietly with each other. “I haven’t seen that little twist since December.”

“Where did you see her?”

He countered with a question: “Is she involved in this snatch?”

“She’s involved with Lemp, and he’s the key man in it. I shouldn’t have to tell you this: your only chance of keeping yourself clear is to talk and talk some more.”

His right hand bent his left hand backward onto his knee and vanquished it. “I visited her a couple of times in her apartment. She probably isn’t there any more, but maybe she left a forwarding address. Anyway, you can try it. It’s in West Hollywood.” He gave me the address, and instructions for finding it.

“Thanks, Bourke. But why the long delay in spilling it?”

“I think she’s San Quentin quail.” He slapped himself across the eyes with his open left palm. “I must be nuts, I know what I ought to do every time, and half the time I can’t do it. Maybe I’m just another bum.”

I left him.