The Blue Hammer

XII

I went to the nurses' station at the front and asked where I could find Mrs. Johnson. The nurse in charge was a middle-aged woman with a sallow bony face and an impatient manner.

"We have several Mrs. Johnsons working in the hospital. Is her Christian name Sarah?"

"Yes. Her husband's name is Jerry or Gerard."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'm afraid Mrs. Gerard Johnson is no longer employed in this hospital." She spoke with deliberate formal emphasis, like a court official pronouncing sentence on Mrs. Johnson.

"She told me that she worked here."

"Then she lied to you." The woman overheard the harshness of her words, and softened them: "Or it's possible you misunderstood her. She _is_ presently employed at a convalescent home down by the highway."

"Do you know the name of it?"

"It's called the La Paloma," she said with distaste.

"Thank you. Why was she fired here?"

"I didn't say she was fired. She was allowed to leave. But I'm not authorized to discuss it." At the same time, she seemed unwilling to let me go. "Are you from the police?"

"I'm a private detective cooperating with the police."

I got out my wallet and showed her my license photostat.

She smiled into it as though it were a mirror. "She's in trouble again, is she?"

"I hope not."

"Stealing drugs again?"

"Let's just say I'm investigating Mrs. Johnson. How long ago did she leave her employment here?"

"It happened last week. The administration let her go without a black mark on her record. But they gave her no choice about leaving. It was an open-and-shut case. She had some of the pills in her pocket-and I was there when they searched her. You should have heard the language she used to the superintendent."

"What language did she use?"

"Oh, I couldn't repeat it."

Her wan face flamed red, as if I had made an indecent proposal to her. She looked at me with sudden dislike, perhaps embarrassed by her own excitement. Then she turned on her heel and walked away.

It was past midnight. I had been in the hospital so long that I was beginning to feel like a patient. I left by a route different from the one I had come in by. I didn't want to see Captain Mackendrick or Purvis or Paola or either of the dead men again.

I had noticed the La Paloma sign from the freeway and had some idea of where the convalescent home was. Driving toward it from the hospital, I passed a dark row of doctors' offices, a nurses' residence and several blocks of lower-middle-class houses, all one-storied and built before the war. Between the houses and the freeway was a narrow park studded with oak trees. In their shelter a few late lovers were parked with fog on their windshields.

The one-storied stucco complex of the La Paloma was almost as close to the freeway as a filling station. Once I had stepped inside and closed the heavy front door, the noises of late-night traffic dwindled to a far-off irregular sound like that of distant surf. I could hear the more immediate sounds of the place, snores and sighs and vague indecipherable demands.

A nurse's muted footsteps came up behind me. She was young and black and pretty.

"It's too late for visiting," she said. "We're all closed down for the night."

"I want to see a member of the staff-Mrs. Johnson?"

"I'll see if I can find her. She's getting very sought after. You're the second visitor she's had tonight."

"Who was the other one?"

She paused, then said, "Would you be Mr. Johnson?"

"No. I'm just a friend."

"Well, the other one was her son-dude with a red mustache. He stirred up quite a hassle before I got him out of here." She gave me a hard but not unfriendly look. "I hope you're not planning to stir up another hassle."

"Nothing could be further from my thoughts. I want to stir one down."

"All right, I'll get her. But keep it quiet, eh? People are sleeping."

"Sure. What was the hassle about?"

"Money. Isn't it always?"

"Not always," I said. "Sometimes it's love."

"That_ comes into it, too. He had a blonde in the car."

"Not all of us are so lucky."

She hardened her look a little in order to deflect a pass, if that was what I had offered her. "I'll get Sarah."

Mrs. Johnson came unwillingly. She had been crying, and her eyes were swollen.

"What do you want?" She made it sound as if she had very little left to give.

"I'd like to talk to you for a couple of minutes."

"I'm behind in my work already. Are you trying to get me fired?"

"No. I do happen to be a private detective, though."

Her gaze veered around the dark little anteroom and rested on the outside door. Her thick body tensed as if she were getting ready to run out onto the highway.

I stepped between her and the door. "Is there someplace we can sit down in private for a few minutes?"

"I guess so. But if I lose my job it's on your head."

She led me into a visiting room that was crowded with mismatched furniture, and turned on a dim standing lamp. We sat down facing each other under the lamp, our knees almost touching. As though the touch of mine might contaminate hers, she pulled down her white nylon skirt.

"What do you want with me? And don't give me any more guff about being a newspaperman. I thought you were a policeman from the beginning."

"I want your son, Fred."

"So do I." She lifted her heavy shoulders and dropped them. "I'm getting worried about Fred. I haven't heard from him all day."

"He was here tonight. What was he after?"

She was silent for a moment, but not inactive. Her face worked as if she were swallowing her lie and possibly planning another.

"He needed money. That's nothing new. And it's no crime to ask your own mother for money. This isn't the first time that I've helped him out. He always pays me back as soon as he can."

I cut through her smoke screen of words. "Come off it, Mrs. Johnson. Fred's in trouble. A stolen picture is bad enough. A stolen girl compounds the felony."

"He didn't steal the girl. That's a lie, a sniveling lie. She went along with him of her own free will. In fact, it was probably her idea in the first place-she's been after Fred for some time. And if that little spade said something different, she's lying." The woman shook her fist at the door where the black nurse had disappeared.

"What about the picture, Mrs. Johnson?"

"What picture?"

"The painting that Fred stole from the Biemeyers' house."

"He didn't steal it. He simply borrowed it to make some tests on it. He took it down to the art museum, and it was stolen from there."

"Fred told me it was taken from your house."

She shook her head. "You must have misunderstood him. It was taken from the basement of the art museum. They're responsible."

"Is that the story you and Fred have agreed on?"

"It's the truth, so naturally we agree on it. Fred is as honest as the day is long. If you can't see that, it's because your own mind is twisted. You've had too much to do with dishonest people."

"That's true enough," I said. "I think you're one of them."

"I don't have to sit here and listen to your insults."

She tried to evoke her own anger but somehow it wouldn't come. The day had been too much for her, and the night hung over her like a slowly gathering wave. She looked down into her cupped and empty hands, then put her face into them. She didn't sob or cry or say a word. But her silence in the midst of the muffled freeway noises sounded like desolation itself.

After a time she sat up and looked at me quite calmly. "It's time I got back to work."

"Nobody's watching you."

"Maybe not, but they'll blame me if things are in a mess in the morning. There are only the two of us on in this crummy place."

"I thought you worked at the hospital."

"I used to. I had a misunderstanding with one of the supervisors there."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"It wasn't important."

"Then tell me about it, Mrs. Johnson."

"Why should I? I've got enough on my mind without you bullying me."

"And enough on your conscience?"

"That's between me and my conscience. I don't need any help from you in straightening out my conscience."

She sat as still as stone. I admired her as I might have admired a statue without concern for its history. But I wasn't content to let her stay silent. The case, which had begun with a not very serious theft, was beginning to draw human lives into its vortex. Two men were dead, and the Biemeyers' girl had been spun off into the darkness.

"Mrs. Johnson, where is Fred going with Miss Biemeyer?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you ask him? You wouldn't give him money without finding out what he intended to do with it."

"I did, though."

"I think you're lying."

"Think away," she said almost cheerfully.

"Not for the first time, either. You've lied to me already more than once."

Her eyes brightened with interest, and with the superiority that liars feel toward the people they lie to.

"For instance, you left the hospital because they caught you stealing drugs. You told me you left because you had a misunderstanding with a supervisor."

"Over drugs," she added quickly. "There was a discrepancy in the count. They blamed me."

"You weren't responsible?"

"Certainly not. What do you think I am?"

"A liar."

She stirred threateningly, but didn't get up. "Go ahead and call me names. I'm used to it. You can't prove anything."

"Are you on drugs now?"

"I don't take drugs."

"Not of any kind?"

"Not of any kind."

"Then who did you steal them for? Fred?"

She mimed laughter, and managed to produce a high toneless giggle. If I had heard the giggle without seeing its source, I might have taken her for a wild young girl. And I wondered if this was how she felt in relationship to her son.

"Why did Fred take the picture, Mrs. Johnson? To sell it and buy drugs?"

"He doesn't use drugs."

"To buy drugs for Miss Biemeyer?"

"That's a silly idea. She's independently wealthy."

"Is that why Fred is interested in her?"

She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, sober and dead serious. The woman who had giggled a moment ago had been swallowed up like a ghostly emanation by her body.

"You don't know Fred. You never will-you don't have the understanding. He's a good man. The way he feels about the Biemeyer girl is like a brother, an older brother."

"Where is the older brother taking his little sister?"

"You don't have to get snotty."

"I want to know where they are, or where they're going. Do you know?"

"No, I don't."

"You wouldn't give them traveling money unless you knew where they were going."

"Who says I did?"

"I say."

She clenched her fists and used them to strike both of her white nylon knees simultaneously several times. "I'll kill that little spade."

"I wouldn't, Mrs. Johnson. They'll put you in Corona if you do."

She grinned unpleasantly. "I was just kidding."

"You picked a bad subject and a bad time. A man named Paul Grimes was murdered earlier tonight."

"Murdered?"

"Beaten to death."

Mrs. Johnson pitched sideways onto the floor. She didn't move until the black girl, whom I called to help me, came and poured water on her head. Then she got up gasping and feeling her hair.

"What did you do that for? You've ruined my hairdo."

"You passed out," I said.

She swung her head from side to side, staggering a little. The other nurse put her arm around her shoulders and held her still. "Better sit down, hon. You were really out."

But Mrs. Johnson stayed on her feet. "What happened? Did somebody hit me?"

"I hit you with a piece of news," I said. "Paul Grimes was beaten to death tonight. I found him on the street not very far from here."

Mrs. Johnson's face went completely blank for a moment, then set in a scowling mask of ignorance. "Who's he?"

"An art dealer from Arizona. He sold that picture to the Biemeyers. Don't you know him?"

"What did you say his name was?"

"Paul Grimes."

"I never heard of him."

"Then why did you faint when I told you he'd been murdered?"

"I didn't. I have these fainting spells is all. They don't mean anything."

"You better let me take you home."

"No! I'd lose my job. I can't afford that-it's the only thing that keeps us going."

Head down and weaving slightly, she turned and moved away toward the wards.

I followed her. "Where is Fred taking the Biemeyer girl?"

She didn't answer the question or even acknowledge it.