The Blue Hammer

XXXIV

I left her and drove south along the waterfront. The traffic was still fairly heavy. It wasn't really late, but I was tired. The long indeterminate conversation with Mrs. Chantry had drained my energy.

I passed a hamburger stand that reminded me that I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I had a couple of hamburgers and some French frieds. Then I checked in at my motel, hoping that Betty might have left a message for me.

She hadn't. But there was one from Paola Grimes, who wanted me to call her at the Monte Cristo Hotel. I got the front desk of the hotel after some difficulty.

Paola answered her room phone on the first ring: "Hello?"

"This is Archer."

"It's about time." Her voice was flat and angry. "My mother told me she gave you some money for me. Fifty dollars. I need it. I can't get out of this flea-trap without it, and my van won't start, either."

"I'll bring you your fifty now. I tried to deliver it earlier."

"You could have left it at the desk."

"Not that desk. I'll see you, Paola."

I found her waiting for me in the Monte Cristo lobby. She had evidently brushed her hair and washed her face and put on fresh lipstick. But she looked sad and out of place among the night-blooming girls and their followers.

I handed her the fifty dollars. She counted and rolled the bills, and thrust them into her brassiere.

I said, "Will that cover your hotel bill?"

"Up until now I guess it will. I don't know about tomorrow. The police want me to stick around but they won't release any of my father's money. He was carrying quite a lot of money."

"You'll get it back, or your mother will."

"Or my great-grandchildren will," she said bitterly. "I don't trust cops and I don't like this town. I don't like the people here. They killed my father and I'm afraid they'll kill me."

Her fear was contagious. I followed the movements of her eyes and began to see the place as she was seeing it, an anteroom where lost souls waited for a one-night stand that was never going to end.

"Who killed your father?"

She shook her head, and her black hair fell like night around her face. "I don't want to talk about it. Not here."

"We could talk in your room."

"No, thanks." She gave me a sharp dark paranoid look, like a frightened animal peering out from the cover of her hair. "The room may be bugged. That's one reason I can't stay in it."

"Who would bug it?"

"Maybe the cops. Maybe the killers. What difference does it make? They're all in this together."

"Come out and sit in my car."

"No, thanks."

"Then let's take a walk, Paola."

Surprisingly she agreed. We went out and joined the people on the sidewalk. Across the road, a line of palms tossed their plumes above the empty booths of the weekly art show. Beyond them the phosphorescent white waves broke and rose and receded as if they had been set the eternal task of marking time and measuring space.

Gradually, as we moved along the sidewalk, Paola became less tense. Our movements seemed to relate to the natural rhythms of the sea. The sky opened out above us, poorly lit by the low sinking moon on the horizon.

Paola touched my arm. "You asked me who killed my father."

"Yes."

"You want to know what I think?"

"Tell me what you think."

"Well, I've been going over in my mind everything my father said. You know, he believed that Richard Chantry was alive and staying here in town under a different name. And he thought that Chantry actually painted that picture of Mildred Mead. I thought so, too, when I saw it. I don't claim to be an expert, like my father, but it looked like a Chantry to me."

"Are you sure your father's opinion was honest, Paola? The picture was worth a lot more to him if it was a Chantry."

"I know that, and so did he. That's why he did his best to authenticate it. He spent the last days of his life trying to locate Chantry and trace the picture to him. He even looked up Mildred Mead, who is living here in town. She was Chantry's favorite model, though of course she didn't actually sit for that particular portrait. She's an old woman now."

"Have you seen her?"

She nodded. "My father took me to see her a couple of days before he was killed. Mildred was a friend of my mother's in Arizona, and I've known her ever since I was a child. My father probably thought that having me there would get her talking. But Mildred didn't say much the day we visited her."

"Exactly where was this?"

"She has a little place in a court. She was just moving in. I think it's called Magnolia Court. There's a big magnolia tree in the middle of it."

"In town here?"

"Yes. It's in the downtown section. She said she took it because she couldn't do much walking any more. She didn't talk much, either."

"Why not?"

"I think she was scared. My father kept pressing her about Richard Chantry. Was he alive or dead? Did he paint that picture? But she didn't want to talk about him. She said she hadn't seen him in over thirty years and he was probably dead, and she hoped he was. She sounded very bitter."

"I'm not surprised. Chantry may have killed her son William."

"And he may have killed my father, too. My father could have traced the picture to him and got himself killed for his trouble."

Her voice was low and frightened. She looked around suspiciously at the palms and the low moon, as if they were parts of a shabby stage set hiding the actual jungle life of the world. Her hands grasped at each other and pulled in opposing directions.

"I've got to get out of this town. The police say I have to stick around, they need me for a witness. But they're not even protecting me."

"Protecting you from what?" I said, though I knew the answer.

"Chantry. Who else? He killed my father-I know that in my bones. But I don't know who he is or where he is. I don't even know what he looks like any more. He could be any man I meet on the street."

Her voice was rising. Other people on the sidewalk had begun to notice us. We were approaching a restaurant-bar that was spilling jazz through its open front door. I steered her in and sat her at a table. The room was narrow and deep, resembling a tunnel, and the band at its far end was like a train coming.

"I don't like that music," she said.

"No matter. You need a drink."

She shook her dark head. "I can't drink. Alcohol drives me crazy. It was the same with my father. He told me that was why he went on drugs." She covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes. "I've got to get out of here."

I took her hand and drew her to her feet. Pulling and jerking against my movements, she followed me out. She stared at the people on the street in profound distrust, ready to yell if anyone looked twice at her. She was on the narrow edge of hysteria or something worse.

I gripped her arm and walked her quickly in the direction of the hotel.

She hung back. "I don't want to go back there. I don't like it there. They kept me up all night, knocking and fooling around and whispering. They think that any woman is their meat."

"Then check out of the place."

"I wouldn't know where to go. I guess I could go back to the gallery. I have a little room in the back there. But I'm afraid to."

"Because your father isn't there?"

"No." She hugged herself and shuddered. "Because he might come back."

That sent a chill through me. I didn't quite believe that the woman was losing her mind, but she was trying hard to. If she went on like this, she might succeed before morning.

For various reasons, I felt responsible for her. I made a kind of superstitious bargain with the controlling forces of the world, if any. If I tried to look after Paola, then maybe Betty would be looked after.

I took Paola into the Monte Cristo and paid her bill and helped her pack her suitcase and carried it out to my car.

She trotted along beside me. "Where are we going?"

"I'll get you a room in my motel. It's across from the yacht harbor, and it's quieter. There's an all-night restaurant on the corner if you get hungry."

"I'm hungry now," she said. "I haven't been eating."

I took her to the restaurant for a sandwich, then got her checked into the motel. Biemeyer could pay for her room. She was a witness.

I left the motel without going into my own room. But when I was out in the parking lot getting into my car, I had a sudden wild idea that Betty might be waiting for me in that room. I went and looked. The room was empty, the bed unslept-in.

There was only one thing I could do: follow my case until it took me to her. Not too late. Please.