The Instant Enemy

chapter 27

I WENT BACK to the freeway, where I seemed to live. I was running out of initiative, and sorely tempted to go home. Instead I drove to Long Beach on the bleakest stretch of pavement in the world.

The Corpus Christi Oil building was a massive four-story structure overlooking the waterfront and its slums. I was born and raised in Long Beach, within walking distance of the waterfront, and I could remember when the building had been put up, the year after the earthquake.

I parked in a visitor’s slot and went into the lobby. Just inside the front door, a uniformed security officer sat behind a counter. When I gave him a second look I found that I knew him. He was Ralph Cuddy, who managed Alma Krug’s apartment building in Santa Monica.

He knew me too. “Couldn’t you find Mrs. Krug?”

“I found her, thanks.”

“How is she? I haven’t had a chance to visit her this week. My two jobs keep me humping.”

“She seems to be doing pretty well for her age.”

“Good for her. She’s been like a mother to me all my life. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“She has been.” His emotional gaze narrowed on my face. “What sort of family matters did you discuss with her?”

“Various relatives of hers. Jasper Blevins, for instance.”

“Hey, do you know Jasper? Whatever happened to him?”

“He died under a train.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cuddy said moralistically. “Jasper was always in trouble. He was a trouble to himself and a trouble to other people. But Alma was good to him anyway. Jasper was always her favorite.” His eyes grew small and grudging, in a kind of rivalry.

“What kind of trouble?”

Cuddy started to say something and then decided not to. He was silent for a moment, his face groping for an alternative reply.

“Sex trouble, for example. Laurel was pregnant when he married her. I almost married her myself, till I found out she was in trouble.” He added in mild surprise, as if he hadn’t thought of the fact for some years: “I never did marry. Frankly, I never found a woman worthy of my standards. I’ve often said to Alma Krug, if only I wasn’t born too late–”

I interrupted him: “How long have you worked here, Mr. Cuddy?”

“Twenty years.”

“In security?”

“After the first three, four years, yep.”

“Do you remember the summer when Mr. Hackett was killed?”

“I sure do.” He gave me a rather worried look. “I had nothing to do with it. I mean, I didn’t even know Mr. Hackett personally. I was just an underling in those days.”

“Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Mr. Cuddy. I’m trying to find out what I can about a certain revolver. Apparently it was stolen from this office and used to shoot Mr. Hackett.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

His face closed up into a stiff mask of righteousness. I suspected he was lying.

“You have to remember the search for the gun if you were in security at the time.”

“Don’t tell me what I have to remember.” He manufactured a quick rage and stood up full of it. Cuddy was wearing a sidearm, which added weight to his rage. “What are you trying to do, force thoughts into my head?”

“That would be a hopeless task,” I said unfortunately.

He put his hand on his gun butt. “You get out of here. You got no right to come in here and brainwash and insult me.”

“I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing. I take it back. Okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.”

“You seem to think I’m after your scalp or something. The man I’m interested in is Sidney Marburg. He worked here as a draftsman.”

“I never heard of him. And I’m not answering any more questions.”

“Then I’ll try personnel.” I started toward the elevator. “What floor is the personnel manager on?”

“He’s out to lunch.”

“It’s only the middle of the morning.”

“I mean he hasn’t come in yet. He isn’t coming in today.”

I turned and faced Cuddy. “This is ridiculous. What do you know that you don’t want me to know?”

He lifted a hinged section of the counter and came out, pulling his gun. His mouth was mean.

“Go away,” he said in a yammering voice. “You’re not going to smear my friends, see.”

“Is Marburg a friend of yours?”

“There you go again, twisting the thoughts in my mind. I never even heard of any Marburg. Is he a Jew?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m a Christian. You can thank the Lord I am. If I wasn’t a religious man, I’d shoot you down like a dog.”

Righteous anger and a loaded gun: the combination scared me: it always had. I went.

My office on Sunset was beginning to look abandoned. A spider was working in the corner of the waiting room. Flies drowsed in the window, making a noise like time running down. A thin patina of dust had gathered on all the horizontal surfaces.

I wiped the top of my desk with a piece of Kleenex and sat and looked at the check Ruth Marburg had given me. Since I couldn’t deposit a postdated check in the bank, I put it in my safe. It didn’t make me feel rich.

I called Corpus Christi Oil in Long Beach and got in touch with the head of the drafting department, a man named Patterson. He remembered Sidney Marburg but was careful in what he said about him. Sid was a good worker, talented draftsman, always wanted to be a painter, glad he made it.

“I understand he married the former Mrs. Hackett.”

“So I heard,” Patterson said noncommittally.

“Did he work for you at the time of Mark Hackett’s death?”

“Yeah, he quit about that time.”

“Why did he quit?”

“Told me he had a chance to go to Mexico, on an art scholarship.”

“Do you remember a gun that was missing? A gun that was used in the killing of Mark Hackett?”

“I heard something about it.” His voice was getting fainter, like a receding spirit. “It wasn’t the responsibility of the drafting department. And if you’re pointing a finger at Sid, you couldn’t be wronger, mister. Sid wouldn’t kill anybody.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Whose responsibility was that gun?”

“It belonged to security. It was their responsibility to look after it. But don’t go running to them and quoting me. I don’t want any trouble with the head security man.”

“You mean Ralph Cuddy?”

“Listen, you’ve made me say more than I should already. Who is this calling, anyway? Did you say you were with the L.A. police?”

“I said I was working with them. I’m a private detective.”

Patterson hung up.

I sat and tried to do some thinking. My mind went around in a circle, and I had the frustrating feeling that there was a missing connection just beyond the circle. Or deep inside the circle, at its center, buried as deep as the dead.

I dug and groped for the missing connection, sure that it was in my memory if I could only recognize it. But you can’t force your unconscious mind to rap out information like a computer. It only retreats growling further into its lair.

I was stoned with weariness and frustration. I stretched out on the settee in the waiting room. I tried to stretch out, that is. The settee was a foot too short, and I lay with my legs hanging over the wooden arm, as usual.

I watched the spider in the corner of the ceiling, and wished my case was as neat and controlled as his web. I dropped off to sleep and dreamed that I was caught in a larger web, whose radii were hung with the husks of dead men. The web spun like a roulette wheel, and the spider at the center of the web had a croupier’s rake in each of his eight hands. He raked me in toward him.

I woke up wet under my shirt. The spider was still working in the corner of the ceiling. I got up, intending to kill him, but both my feet were asleep. By the time they came awake, my mind was awake, too. I let the spider be. Perhaps he’d catch the flies buzzing in the window.

My brief, nightmare-ridden sleep had somehow refreshed me. I discarded my damp shirt, shaved with an electric razor, and put on a fresh shirt that I kept in the closet. Then I went to the window to see what the weather was like.

It was fair and clear, only faintly tinged with smog. Early noon traffic was roaring along the boulevard.

Detective-Sergeant Prince and his partner Janowski got out of a police car on the far side of the street. I hoped they weren’t coming to see me; I was aware that I hadn’t been cooperating with them. But of course they were coming to see me.

They crossed the boulevard as if they were invulnerable or oblivious to traffic. Prince walked a step ahead, like a keen dog pulling Janowski along on a kind of moral leash.

I put on a jacket, and met them at the outside door of my office. They came in without being asked. Prince was wan with barely controlled anger. Even Janowski’s fair skin was blotched with feeling. He said:

“You haven’t been taking us into your confidence, Archer. We decided to come and ask you why.”

“I had other things to think about.”

“Such as?” Prince said unpleasantly.

“Such as trying to save a man’s life. His life got saved, incidentally.”

“Lucky for you it did,” Prince said. “Your neck was out a mile. It still is.”

I was getting tired of being sounded off at. The blood was pounding in my stomach and my sore kidneys.

“Moderate your tone, Sergeant.”

Prince looked ready to slug me. I almost wished he would. Like most Americans, I was a counter-puncher.

Janowski stepped between us. “Let me do the talking,” he said to his partner. He turned to me: “We won’t cry over spilt milk, but we’d like to have your cooperation now. There are places you can go, things you can do, that we can’t.”

“What do you want done?”

“This retired deputy sheriff, the one who was knocked off in the snatch–”

“Jack Fleischer.”

“Right. You probably know all this, but I’ll tell you anyway. Fleischer has had Laurel Smith’s apartment under electronic surveillance for several weeks. Apparently he recorded it all on tapes. Anyway, we know he bought the tapes and the other equipment. Those tapes could be very helpful to us, I think.”

“I think so, too.”

Prince spoke across Janowski: “Do you have them?”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. They may be in Fleischer’s house in Santa Teresa.”

“That’s our opinion, too,” Janowski said. “His widow denies it, but that doesn’t prove anything. I talked to her on the phone, and she was pretty evasive. I tried to get some action from the Santa Teresa police, but they won’t touch it. Fleischer had political connections, or so I gather, and now that he’s dead he’s a hero. They won’t even admit the possibility that he was bugging the dead woman’s apartment. Of course we could kick it up to the higher echelons–”

“Or kick it down to the lower,” I said with a smile. “You want me to go to Santa Teresa and talk to Mrs. Fleischer?”

“That would be very cooperative of you,” Janowski said.

“It’s no chore. I was planning to see her anyway.”

Janowski shook my hand, and even Prince smiled a little. They had forgiven me, to the extent that policemen ever forgive anything.