The Ivory Grin

Chapter 8

The Mission Hotel was the most impressive building on Main Street. It was a concrete cube pierced with four rows of windows and surmounted by a broadcasting mast that thrust a winking red light towards the stars. Its flat white facade was stained red by a vertical neon sign over the entrance.

The lobby was deep and gloomy, furnished with dark wrinkled-leather chairs. Those near the half-curtained windows at the front were occupied by old men sitting in stiff impromptu positions, as if a flood had lodged them there years ago and then receded forever. On the wall above their heads, an obscure mural depicted U.S. cavalrymen riding strange horses with human knees in pursuit of still stranger Indians.

The desk-clerk was a mouse-colored little man who was striving against heavy odds to confer distinction on himself and his surroundings. With hair and eyebrow-moustache scrupulously brushed, a cornflower in his buttonhole matching the delicate pin-stripe in his flannels, and at his languid elbow a vase of cornflowers to underline his point, he might have inspired a tone poem by Debussy. He answered my question in tones of careful elegance, implying that he hadn’t always manned an outpost in the wilderness: “I believe Mrs. Larkin is in her suite. I haven’t seen her go out, sir. Whom shall I say is calling?”

“Archer. Don’t bother announcing me. What’s her room number?”

“One hundred and two, Mr. Archer. I think she’s expecting you.”

It was opposite the elevator on the second floor. At the end of the corridor a pair of curtained French doors had a red-lit sign above them: FIRE ESCAPE. I knocked on the door of 102. The elevator creaked and thumped behind me like an old heart running down.

A wan voice called through the door: “Who is it, anyway?”

“Archer.”

“Come in.”

The door was locked, and I said so.

“All right, all right, I’m coming.” The door swung inward.

Una looked sick. The olive-drab patches under her eyes had darkened and spread. In red Japanese pajamas she looked less like a woman than a sexless imp who had grown old in hell.

She stood back to let me enter the room and closed the door softly behind me. It was the sitting-room of the bridal or gubernatorial suite, if honeymooners or politicians ever came there. The two tall windows that overlooked the street had drapes of dark-red plush. They were lit from outside by a red neon glow that competed with the light of a parchment-shaded floor lamp made of twisted black iron. The tall carved Spanish chairs looked unsat in and unsittable. The only trace of Una’s occupancy was a leopard coat hanging over the back of a chair.

“What’s the trouble?” I said to her back.

She seemed to be supporting herself on the doorknob. “No trouble. It’s this foul heat, and the waiting and the uncertainty.” She saw where that was leading her, into candor, and switched off the little-girl whine. “I have a migraine, God bless it. They hit me regularly.”

“Too bad.” I added, with deliberate tactlessness: “I have a headache myself.”

She turned on me with a hypochondriac’s fierce competitive smile. “Not migraine, I bet. If you haven’t had migraine you don’t know what it is. I wish I could have my head amputated. Wouldn’t that be stylish, though, a headless torso strutting around?” She was making an effort to master her self-pity and carry it off as a joke. “Men wouldn’t know the difference.”

Una was flattering herself again. Even in lounging pajamas, her torso was no more interesting or curvilinear than a brick. I backed into one of the unsittable chairs, and said: “You’re a great admirer of men.”

“They’re an admirable race. Well?” She stood above me, her changed tone indicating that there was no more time for comedy.

“I have a report to make. Why don’t you sit down?”

“If you say so.” The chair was too big for her, and her feet dangled clear of the floor. “Go ahead.”

“Before I do, there are a couple of matters that need straightening out.”

“What does that mean?” The pain behind her tongue gave it a vicious twang.

“You lied once to me this morning, about the theft of some jewelry. It’s possible that you lied twice.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I’m asking you.”

“You’ve been talking to her.”

“Not exactly. Is that what I’d find out if I had? That you’re a liar?”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, I don’t like it. I gave you the reason I had for wanting Lucy followed.”

“The second time.”

“The second time, then.”

“You didn’t say very much.”

“Why should I? I’ve got a right to some privacy.”

“You had this morning. Not any more.”

“What is this?” she asked the room in perplexity. Her hands twisted, and their diamonds caught and reflected red light from the window. “I pay a man a hundred dollars to do a job for me, so he wants to know my grandfather’s middle name. It was Maria, curiously enough.”

“You’re very frank about things that don’t count. But you haven’t given me your own name yet. I don’t even know where you live.”

“If it was any of your business, I’d tell you. Who do you think you are?”

“Merely an ex-cop trying to hustle a living. I sell my services on the open market. It doesn’t mean I have to sell them to anybody.”

“That’s tall talk for a peeper. I can buy and sell you twenty times over–”

“Not me. You should have taken my advice and gone to the classifieds. There are bums you can hire for fifteen dollars a day to do anything short of murder. Murder comes higher.”

“What about murder? Who said anything about murder?” Her voice had dwindled suddenly to a bodiless whisper that buzzed and wavered like a mosquito’s flight.

“I did. I said it was expensive, in more ways than one.”

“But why bring it up, what’s the point? You haven’t been talking to anybody? One of these bums you mentioned?”

She was thinking of Maxfield Heiss. I said I hadn’t.

“Not Lucy?”

“No.”

“But you have been staying close to her?”

“As close as possible.”

“Where is she? Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know! I paid you good money to tail her. That was the whole point.”

She slid off the chair and faced me with clenched fists. I was ready to catch them if she flung herself on me. Instead, she used them on herself, beating her bony flanks in staccato rhythm. “Has everybody gone crazy?” she yelped at the ceiling.

“Settle down. You sound as if you have. I wouldn’t put homicidal mania past you–”

“Homicidal mania!” Her voice rose to the narrow limit of its range, and broke. “What about homicidal mania? You have been talking to Lucy.”

“No. I overheard you talking to her, though, this afternoon. I didn’t like the sound of it. There’s violence in my business but I don’t like cold-blooded violence, or people who threaten other people with it.”

“Oh. That.” She looked relieved. “I slapped her face for her, not very hard. She had it coming.”

“Tell me more.”

“You can go to hell.”

“Later, perhaps. Before I kiss you good-bye, I want some information. Who you are, where you came from, why you were after Lucy. Also what you were doing at five o’clock this afternoon. We’ll start with that.”

“Five o’clock? I was right here, in this room. Is it important?” The question was neither rhetorical nor defiant like most of her other questions. She knew or sensed what was coming.

“Never mind that. Can you prove it?”

“If I have to. I made a telephone call around five.” Her hands were moving over and over each other, trying to warm themselves at the cold fire of the diamonds. “I wouldn’t want to use that unless I have to. You haven’t even told me what it is I need an alibi for.”

“Who were you calling?”

“You wouldn’t be interested. I said I can prove it if I have to. It was long distance. They keep a record.” She retreated to a leather hassock and crouched uneasily on its edge.

“I’m interested in everything about you, Una. A little while ago I made a statement to the police, and I couldn’t leave you out.”

“You went to the cops?” Her voice was incredulous, as if I had leagued myself with the forces of evil.

“They came to me. I found Lucy with her throat cut shortly after five o’clock.”

“Did you say throat cut?”

“I did. She was dead in her motel room. I had to explain what I was doing there. Naturally your name came up – the name you’re using.”

“Why aren’t they here?”

“I didn’t tell them you were in town. I thought, before I threw you to them, I’d give you a chance to level. I’m also a little curious about who I’m sticking my neck out for, and why.”

“You sap! They might have followed you here.”

“Sap is the word.” I stood up. “I haven’t thought of a word for you, but I will.”

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the station to amplify my statement. The longer I wait, the more trouble it’s going to make for me.”

“No, you can’t do that.” She scrambled to her feet and ran jerkily to the door, spreading her arms across it like a crucified marionette. “You’re working for me. You can’t turn me in.”

I took the hundred from my wallet and tossed it at her feet. She stooped for it, watching me anxiously to see that I didn’t escape: “No. Please take it back. I’ll give you more.”

“You haven’t got enough. Murder comes very high on my price-list.”

“I didn’t kill her, you – Mr. Archer. I told you my alibi.”

“Telephone alibis are easy to fix.”

“I didn’t fix it. There’s no way I could have fixed it. I was here in this room. Ask the switchboard. I haven’t been out of here since early this afternoon.”

“And that’s why you’re taking it so calmly, eh?” I reached for the doorknob.

“What are you going to do?”

Her cold hand closed over mine. The bill fell like a crumpled green leaf to the floor. Braced against the door, breathing with terrier quickness, she didn’t notice it.

“I’ll see the switchboard girl, if the same one’s still on duty.”

“It was the desk-clerk who handled the call. I recognized his voice.”

“All right, I’ll talk to the desk-clerk. Then you and I are going into this thing in detail.”

“Not with cops?”

“It’s up to you. We’ll see how your story checks.”

“No. Stay here. You can’t do this to me.” The words were punctuated by gasping breaths.

I turned the knob and pulled on it. She sat down against the door and began to scream wordlessly. The opening door pushed her sideways. Legs spraddled, mouth wide open, she looked up at me in the reddish murderous light and I looked down at her. She was making a steady unbearable sound like the screech of tearing metal. I closed the heavy door, cutting off the sound.

The desk-clerk beamed with pleasure at the sight of me. I was the fortunate traveler whose lady-friend in the expensive suite wore genuine leopardskin and probable diamonds.

“I’m looking after things for Mrs. Larkin,” I said. “May I see her room account?”

“Certainly, sir.” Plucking a large card from a filing drawer beside him, he leaned confidentially across the polished counter top. “I do hope Mrs. Larkin isn’t checking out. She tips quite beautifully. It’s good for general morale among the help.” His voice sank to a bashful murmur: “She isn’t a Hollywood personality, by any chance?”

“I’m surprised she told you.”

“Oh, she didn’t tell me. I deduced it. I recognize real class. Of course I did have a clue.”

His polished oval fingernail pointed to the top of the card. Una had given the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel as her home address. Below it, only three items were listed on the account: twelve dollars for the suite, which had been paid in advance; a telephone charge of $3.35; and $2.25 for room service.

“She’s been here less than one full day,” I said in a penny-pinching way. “Three thirty-five seems like a lot of money for phone calls.”

His small mustache rose towards his nostrils as if it was about to be inhaled. “Oh no, it’s perfectly legitimate. It was all one call, long distance and person-to-person. I took care of it myself.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“I wish it were. The daytime operator goes off at five, and the night operator was a little late. I was at the switchboard myself when Mrs. Larkin called down.”

“At five?”

“Maybe one or two minutes after. I’d just sat down in front of the board that minute. Switchboards have always fascinated me.”

“You’re sure it was Mrs. Larkin?”

“Oh, absolutely. Her voice is quite unique. Is she an actress of some kind, a character actress?”

“You’re quite acute,” I said. “She is also a character in her own right. It’s hard to believe she’d spend that much money on a single phone call.”

“Just ask her!” He was cut to the quick, which was very near the surface. “Go and ask her.”

“Mrs. Larkin doesn’t like to be bothered with these trivial details. She employs me to protect her from them, in fact. Now, if it was a call to Detroit, I could understand it.”

“Ypsilanti,” he said eagerly. “It was to the Tecumseh Tavern in Ypsilanti. That’s right outside Detroit, isn’t it?”

I assumed a thoughtful expression. “Let’s see now, who does Mrs. Larkin know in Ypsilanti?”

“His name was Garbold. She asked for a man called Garbold, person-to-person.” But his eagerness was beginning to fade at the edges. He looked down at his vase of cornflowers as if he suspected that noxious insects might be concealed among them.

“Of course. Garbold. Why didn’t you say so? There’s no trouble there. Mrs. Larkin will take care of it.” I scrawled my initials at the bottom of the card and left him quickly.

Una had been quicker. I knocked once on her door and got no answer. What I got was the feeling you get when you go to a great deal of trouble to hit yourself a sharp blow at the base of the skull with a rubber hammer.

The door wasn’t locked. The leopard coat was gone from the back of the chair. Bedroom and bathroom were as clean as a whistle. I left as Una had, by the fire escape.

In the alley behind the hotel, a woman in a shawl and a dragging black skirt was hunched over an open garbage-can. She looked up at me from an infinite network of wrinkles.

“Did a lady come down here? In a spotted coat?”

The ancient woman removed something from her mouth’s eroded crater. I saw it was a red steak-bone she had been gnawing. “Si,” she said.

“Which way did she go?”

She raised the bone without speaking, and pointed up the alley. I dropped the change from my pocket into her mummified hand.

“Muchas gracias, señor.” Her black Indian gaze came from the other side of history, like light from a star a thousand years away.

The alley led to the hotel garage. Mrs. Larkin had taken her car out within the last five minutes. It was a new Plymouth station-wagon. No, they didn’t keep track of license numbers. Probably she’d left a forwarding address at the desk. Try there.