Sleeping Beauty

chapter 17

The Excalibur Arms was on a side street off Sunset Boulevard, not very far from my office. It had been there as long as I could remember. Its four-story façade stood in the diluted sunlight like an old woman with a powder-caked face surprised by morning.

I found the manager’s apartment, Number 1 on the ground floor, and rang the bell. A middle-aged man in his shirt sleeves came to the door chewing. The look in his eyes suggested that what he was chewing was bitter.

“We have no vacancies,” he said around his cud.

“Thanks, but I’m looking for Mrs. Mungan.”

He ruminated and swallowed. “She left here a long time ago.”

“Do you have a forwarding address?”

“We might have.” He turned and shouted into his apartment, “Do we have an address for Martha Mungan?”

A woman’s voice answered, “I’ll see.”

The man leaned on the doorframe. “You wouldn’t be a bill collector, would you?”

“No. I simply want to talk to her.”

He looked at me as if he didn’t believe me, hadn’t believed anyone for a number of years. He shouted back into his apartment again:

“What’s the holdup, anyway?”

“Wait a minute, can’t you? It took me a while to find the address book.”

The woman appeared behind him. She had a face matching his, with wary eyes and lines of discontent running down from the sides of her nose.

“The last we heard of Mrs. Mungan, she was managing a place called Topanga Court.” She gave me an address on the Coast Highway. “I can’t swear she’s still there. She drinks, you know.”

“Don’t tell her who told you,” the man added. “We have enough enemies as it is.”

I didn’t go directly to Topanga Court. It was several days since I had been in my office, and time I paid it a visit.

It was on the second floor of a two-story building on Sunset. I parked in my slot behind it and went up the back stairs. Girls were twittering in the modeling agency next door.

The name and occupation on my door, “Lew Archer: Private Investigator,” looked rather strange to me, and I understood how they might look to a client. There was no sign of any. The scattering of mail under the slot in the outer office was mostly advertisements and bills.

I took the mail into the inner office, discarded the advertisements, and mentally added up the bills. The total came to about three hundred dollars, which was the amount of the check in my pocket. I still had a couple of hundred in my checking account, but that was earmarked for the rent.

I wasn’t anxious, though the traffic below the window seemed to have a slightly anxious sound, as if it couldn’t wait to get where it was going. I told myself I was better off than usual. I was in the middle of a case, dealing with people who had plenty of money.

But I didn’t want to have to depend on those people. I decided to call Tom Russo and see where we stood.

The cousin answered, “This is the Russo residence.”

“Archer speaking.”

She dropped her formal tone. “Hello, Mr. Archer. Are you having any luck?”

“I think I’m making some progress. How are you, Gloria?”

“I’m all right. I guess you want to talk to Tom, don’t you?”

“It’s what I had in mind.”

“I really hate to wake him up. After he got off work last night, he was out on the streets driving around for hours. It was nearly dawn when he got home, and he was in poor shape. He was talking about death and destruction.”

“Exactly what was he saying?”

“I wouldn’t want to repeat it over the phone. You never know who’s listening these days. Anyway, it didn’t make too much sense.”

I decided I still had a client, and it was time I paid him another visit.

Gloria answered the door. Her dark hair was damp and spread to dry on her shoulders, which she had protected with a thick towel.

“You didn’t say you were coming or I wouldn’t have washed my hair.”

“I decided I better talk to Tom in person.”

“He’s still asleep. Do you want me to wake him up?”

“I’ll wake him.” I wanted an intimate look at Tom.

Gloria showed me his room and opened the door for me. The old wooden Venetian blinds were closed, and Tom was snoring in the gloom. I opened the blinds, and the light sliced in, but it didn’t disturb the sleeper. The back yard outside the window was a jungle of pittosporum dotted with red geraniums which had grown up through it toward the light.

Tom was huddled like a fetus under a light blanket, one fist against his chest, the other under his cheek. The lower part of his face was peppered with beard. The pillow crushed under his head was the only one on the bed, and I couldn’t see any signs of lipstick stains.

I looked around at Gloria. As if she could read my thoughts, she said from the doorway:

“I haven’t been sleeping with him, if that’s what you think.” Her voice was quite matter-of-fact. “Laurel’s the only girl he can see, and anyway I have a boy friend of my own.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“Last night? In the spare room. It was too late to go home. Anyway, my boy friend has the car.”

Tom groaned and turned onto his back, using his fists to shield his eyes from the light. I took him by the wrists and shook him a little. His half-awakened face was full of grief, and there were tears in the hollows of his eyes. He sobbed very loudly and pulled away from me.

“I tried to make her warm again,” he said. “But she was cold. Mummy was cold.”

Gloria said, “He’s having another bad spell. You just have to wait it out.”

“Shut the door, will you please?”

She gave me an insulted look, but she did as I asked her to. I stayed with Tom.

“What made Mummy cold?” I said.

“I pushed her and she fell down.” His voice seemed to mimic the voice of a child. “I didn’t mean to make her fall when I pushed her. I didn’t mean to die her. But the back of her head was all sticky.” He peered at his clean pharmacist’s hands. “And she was cold. I couldn’t warm her up.”

“People don’t turn cold right away when they die, Tom.”

“Mummy did.” He rocked his head from side to side. “She wouldn’t let me get in bed with them. She said I had to stay in the room with the little girl. She got out of bed and said she was going to spank me. The man said don’t, just get him out of here, but she said spank. She spanked me and I pushed her and she fell down on the floor and I couldn’t wake her up even by singing.”

“What did you sing?”

“ ‘Jingle Bells.’ The bed made a noise like Jingle Bells. She called him that sometimes, and then they laughed.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was just a man.”

“Old or young?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

“I don’t know.” Tom looked at me anxiously, clutching at the bedclothes as if the strata of time were shifting under him and might bury him. “He said he’d come back and fix me if I told on him.”

“He won’t be coming back, Tom. That was a long time ago.”

He heard me, and seemed to understand me. I waited for him to come out of his half-waking dream. New tears formed like protective lenses in his eyes. Gradually they cleared, and he recognized me.

“Archer? Is Laurel dead? I dreamed that she was dead.”

“That doesn’t make it so, Tom. As far as I know she’s alive.”

“Where is she, then?” His voice was still distraught.

“Apparently she’s been kidnapped.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been a ransom demand made on her parents. And they’re prepared to pay it. But there’s some indication that it may be a phony and Laurel may be making a play for the money herself. Do you think that’s possible?”

“But Laurel has plenty of money.”

“Her family has. She doesn’t get on too well with them. And I understand she took them for some money with a fake kidnapping when she was in her teens.”

He regarded me with such loathing that it silenced me. His eyes narrowed down to dark slits, his lower lip pushed out. There were flecks of premature gray in his beard, like the first seeds of age beginning to sprout in him. He was just about young enough to be my son, and just about the age that I had been when I lost my wife.

“I read your letter to Laurel,” I said.

“Which one?”

“The one you sent to her grandmother’s house on Seahorse Lane. Laurel wrote you an answer on the back of it. But I guess she never got around to sending it.”

“What did she say?”

“The general idea was that she cared about you. I think she means to come back to you, if she can.”

“I hope she does.”

But he spoke without real hope. He sat on the bed with his legs dangling, like a man who had been invalided in combat with nightmares. I left him barely holding the ground he had won.

Gloria was waiting in the narrow hallway. I couldn’t help wondering if she hoped to inherit Tom, or if it might happen without her consciously wishing it. And I asked myself if my own unconscious wish might be to inherit Laurel.

We moved into the kitchen, where it had been easy to talk the night before.

“What happened to Tom’s mother, Gloria?”

She clasped her upper arms in her fingers and hugged herself as if she could feel a chill. “I don’t want to talk about it. Tom gets very upset when anybody talks about it.”

“He doesn’t have to know.”

“You expect me to talk behind his back?” she said unreasonably.

“Tom hired me to work for him, which probably means he trusts me.”

“Maybe he does. He trusts a lot of people. That doesn’t mean I should tell them the family secrets.”

“I think you better tell me, though. It could have some bearing on what happened to Laurel.”

“What did happen to Laurel?”

“I don’t know that either. Was Tom’s mother killed?”

“Yes, she was shot.” The young woman’s eyes were dark with feeling. “I don’t think Tom remembers except when he’s dreaming – he has these nightmares.”

“Does he have them often?”

“I don’t know how often. I don’t spend that much time here. I think he gets them in cycles, if you know what I mean. Whenever something comes up that sets him back.”

“Like Laurel’s taking off?”

She nodded. “And there was another thing that probably got him started. My mother brought up the subject of the killing again.”

“In front of Tom?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t stop her. Mother gets pretty emotional sometimes, and she still thinks if she could get Tom to remember the shooting, really remember it, she might find out who did it. She hasn’t given up hope of finding the murderer, even after all these years.”

“How many years?”

“Over twenty-five. It happened when I was just a tiny baby.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this last night?”

“I couldn’t. We don’t even talk about it in the family, let alone outside the family.”

“Who shot her?”

“Nobody knows. The killer was never brought to justice, anyway. I don’t know why I’m telling you these things. Mother would kill me if she heard me.” She caught her breath. “I don’t really mean that. Mother wouldn’t hurt anybody, let alone me. She’s her own worst enemy. She wouldn’t hurt a hair on anyone’s head.” Gloria stroked her damp hair absently.

“What was her relation to Tom’s mother?”

“They were sisters, almost the same age, and very close at one time. I used to wonder why Mother was always so sad, until I found out she had a reason.”

“Would she discuss it with me, do you think?”

“I doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t want to ask her.”

“Where is your mother?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” There was a sudden note of obstinacy in her voice which made me wonder what she was covering up.

“Aren’t you interested in what happened to your aunt? What was her name?”

“Aunt Allie. Alison Russo. Sure I’m interested. But I don’t want to put my mother through it again. She has enough on her mind.”

“So has Tom,” I said. “It might be a way of getting it off both their minds.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work that way. I said the same thing to my boy friend when he got gung ho on the subject. In our family, the only way to do is let things lie, keep things quiet.”

“You can’t, though. Look at Tom. He’s having nightmares about his mother’s death.”

“It’s better than daymares.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve tried them both,” she said.

“Has Tom ever talked to a psychiatrist?”

“Of course not. There’s nothing the matter with his head.”

I looked at my watch. The morning was wasting, and I was due back in Seahorse Lane at noon. I thanked Gloria and started out. She followed me to the front door.

“I hope there’s no hard feelings because I wouldn’t tell you certain things.”

“No hard feelings,” I said. “Take care of Tom.”

I was out of the house before I realized that I hadn’t asked him to pay me anything more. Perhaps I didn’t want to take his money.