The Wycherly Woman

Chapter 18

He wasn’t in his store, either. I went on to the Conquistador Apartments and buzzed Apartment One. A gaunt man in shirtsleeves came to the door. He had a long unhappy face on which a sense of frustration had settled and caked like dust.

“Mr. Girston?”

“Yeah.” His tone was grudging, as if he hated to give anything away, even his identity. “Would you be the gentleman the wife was telling about? Interested in the apartment upstairs?”

“I’m more interested in the occupants of the apartment.”

“There’s nobody in it. It’s been empty for two months.”

“That’s one of the things that interests me.” I told him who I was. “Is there some place we can talk without being disturbed?”

He looked me over suspiciously and said in his grudging whine: “Depends on what you want to talk about.”

“This girl.” I brought out Phoebe’s picture. “She’s missing.”

He peered at the photograph. It was changing under all the eyes I showed it to. Phoebe looked strange and remote and a little worn like a statue that had been standing in the weather.

Girston’s mouth worked softly. “I don’t believe I know her.”

“That’s funny, your wife does. Mrs. Girston said she occupied Apartment Fourteen for some days last November.”

“The old woman runs too free at the mouth.”

“She’s an honest woman. And you’re an honest man, aren’t you?”

“I try to be, when it don’t put my neck in a sling.”

“You recognize the girl, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Back in November, like you said. She was moving out, and I helped her down with her bags.”

“Where was she going?”

“To Sacramento, to see her mother. I asked, because I happened to notice that they were her mother’s bags. The little girl wasn’t feeling so good, so I helped her down with them.” He looked as if he expected me to thank him.

“What was the matter with her?”

“I dunno, stomach trouble maybe. She was kind of bloated-looking in the face.”

“Can you pinpoint the date?”

“Let’s see, it was the day after the old woman went into the hospital. That was November eleven she went in. She was in for two weeks and three days, came out November twenty-eight. I still haven’t got it all paid for.” His slow mind made a connection: “The girl’s family has money, isn’t that right?”

“Some. How do you know that?”

“The clothes she wore – they were Magnin’s and stuff like that, the old woman said. And look at the way her mother refurnished the flat. You working for the mother, did you say?”

“For the family.”

“Is there reward money?”

“There should be, when the girl is found. I think I can guarantee it.”

Girston’s manner changed. With protestations of good will, he ushered me down the hallway to his office under the stairs. It contained an old safe, a roll-top desk, a broken-backed swivel chair. He switched on a green-shaded desk lamp, and urged me to sit down in the chair. I preferred to lean in the doorway where I could watch the entrance to the building.

“Getting back to the day she left here,” I said, “how did she leave? By taxi?”

“Car.”

“Green Volkswagen?”

“Naw, an old Buick, I think it was. She drove away with – with a guy.”

“Guy you know?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He pawed among some papers on his desk, found a paperclip, straightened it out carefully. His face was green in the lamplight, like ancient bronze. I felt like an archaeologist digging among the ruins of the recent past.

“How much reward money, would you say?”

“I can’t say, Mr. Girston. It ought to be substantial, if you give substantial help.”

“Okay,” he said. “I know him. We do – we did a little business from time to time. He was in the real-estate business – guy by the name of Merriman. I saw on TV where he got himself killed.”

“The girl dove away with Ben Merriman in November?”

“That’s correct.”

“Were they friends?”

“I guess you’d say so. He was the one that brought her here in the first place.”

“When was that?”

“Some time around the early part of November. He said she was Mrs. Smith’s daughter, said it was okay with her mother to let her use the apartment. It sounded all right to me.” Which meant that it hadn’t. “He was the one rented it to Mrs. Smith in the first place, and her lease wasn’t due to run out till the end of the year.”

“How long did the girl stay in the apartment?”

“A week, maybe a little longer. She was as still as a mouse up there. I don’t think she ever went out.”

“Did Merriman see her in the course of the week?”

“Just about every day he was in and out.”

“Were they having an affair?”

“I couldn’t answer that, mister.” His mouth moved like a chewing camel’s. He said out of the side of it, with sour primness: “We’re not responsible for what the tenants do in the privacy of their own dwellings.”

“Do you think they were having an affair? That information may be valuable.”

“Maybe they were. He spent some awful late nights up there with her. He used to bring in groceries, too. And then they went off together, that signifies.”

“Went off to see her mother in Sacramento, you said.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Which of them said it – the girl or Merriman?”

“Merriman, I think it was. Yeah, it was him said it.”

“Did either of them say what she was going to do after that?”

“Not to me, they didn’t.”

“Did she seem to be looking forward to seeing her mother?”

“I doubt she was looking forward to anything much. She acted like a pretty sad little girl.”

“What about her mother? You knew her mother, of course?”

“Sure. She was a tenant here for six or eight months, off and on. Mrs. Smith is a different kettle of fish from her daughter.”

“In what way?”

“She’s a lively customer. These artists and people like that can be pretty wild sometimes.”

“She’s an artist?”

“So she said. She rented the apartment to have a quiet place where she could paint. I never saw her doing any painting, though. In fact I never saw much of her at all. Ben Merriman handled the whole deal. Sometimes a month would go by and I wouldn’t see her. She only stayed here off and on, and she came and went very quietly.”

“All by herself?”

“She came and went by herself.”

“No visitors?”

“I guess she had visitors. I don’t keep watch on their goings and comings, but I know what you’re getting at. You want to know if she was using the apartment to be with a man.” His prim mouth dirtied the phrase.

“Was she?”

“I wouldn’t say yes. I wouldn’t say no.”

“Did you ever see a man with her?”

“Not so’s I could swear to it. There’s people in and out of here at all hours of the day and night. It isn’t part of my job to spy on the tenants.”

“Could the man have been Ben Merriman?”

“Could have been at that.” He looked into a shadowed corner. His gaze swung around to me. “What happened to Ben, mister? It said on TV that he was clubbed to death.”

Before I could answer him, the front door opened. It wasn’t Stanley. It was a young woman in a dark hat and business suit. She closed the door, leaning wearily on the doorknob for a moment, then saw me and went upstairs. Her quick steps climbed the slanting ceiling of Girston’s office.

“Who did it to Ben Merriman?” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same question. You knew him better than I did.”

“You couldn’t say we were friends. We never visited in each other’s homes. I never thought much of his habits.”

“Such as?”

“Gambling and drinking and running around with women. I don’t throw my money away on things like that, and I try and keep away from people who do. I knew Ben in line of business, is all.”

“What kind of a businessman was he?”

“Ben was a sharpie – a little too sharp for his own good. He had his little tricks, a lot of them do. Couple-three years ago, when there was an apartment shortage, he had a little habit of squeezing cash bonuses out of prospective tenants. Then he had another little habit of using apartments as a roosting place for house prospects. He’d lease an apartment to them, then undertake to break the lease if they’d buy a house from him.”

“Did he do that with Mrs. Smith?”

“No. She didn’t break her lease. She just let it run out at the end of the year.”

“I understand she left her furniture.”

“Yep, just left it sitting there. Merriman said she didn’t want it back. It didn’t fit in with his plans for her new house.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Round about the beginning of December. He called up and told me Mrs. Smith couldn’t be bothered moving her furniture, I could rent the apartment furnished if I wanted. I didn’t know until then that she wasn’t planning to renew her lease.”

“Did you see Mrs. Smith after her daughter left here?”

“I don’t think so. But she might of used the apartment without me knowing. It was here for her to use, all paid up until the end of the year.”

I was puzzled. Apparently Mrs. Wycherly had moved into the Champion Hotel at a time when she had a perfectly good apartment in the San Mateo area, as well as the house being sold in Atherton.

“Why did she leave here? Do you know, Mr. Girston?”

“You mean Mrs. Smith? The mother?”

“Yes. Was there any trouble before she left?”

“Now that you mention it, she did have a little trouble with the fellow next door. But that was way last spring.”

“What month?”

He wrinkled his forehead and smoothed it with his fingers. “March, I think. March or April. It’s one of the few times I ever talked to her, to do more than pass the time of day. She came storming down here, claiming that Mr. Quillan was spying on her. Older women get that idea sometimes, ’specially when they’re man-crazy. She wanted me to evict him. I told her I couldn’t do that. Told her Mr. Quillan had no more interest in her than the flies on the wall. Luckily she got over the idea.”

“How do you know?”

“She said so. She said in a day or so that she was mistaken about it. I should forget it. I said I already did. Mr. Quillan wouldn’t be interested in her. He has plenty of girls of his own.”

“What kind of a tenant is he?”

“He doesn’t cause any trouble. He used to play his records loud at night but I gave him a quiet talking-to and he got over that. He’s a fine young man, has a business of his own.”

So had Capone.

“Is Quillan home now?”

“I didn’t see him come in yet.”

I went upstairs to Quillan’s apartment. Jessie Drake answered the door, and smiled when she saw me:

“Did you make up your mind to take it?”

“I haven’t decided. I want to talk to Stanley first.”

“Isn’t he at the shop?”

“No, I just drove past there. May I come in and wait for him?”

“I wouldn’t want him to find you here.” She rubbed her shoulder through her sweater. “He didn’t like it the last time I let a man in.”

“You mean Ben Merriman.”

“Yeah.” She went through an exaggerated double-take, widening her eyes and mouth, then narrowing them suspiciously. “How do you know about it? Did Stanley tell you?”

“Stanley wouldn’t tell me the time of day.”

“Are you a cop?”

“A private one. Don’t get excited, Jessie. I’m not after you. Ben Merriman showed you some money yesterday.”

“I knew it was hot,” she whispered. “I didn’t touch it. I didn’t touch him or the money.”

“I wouldn’t care if you rolled in it like catnip. I’m interested in where it came from.” And where it went.

“Me, too. Naturally. He came busting in here with a jag on and wanted to take me to Mexico. Just like that. We could live like kings in Mexico, he said. I asked him what on, just to keep the conversation going, you might say. And he unfurled his roll. It was big enough to choke a rhinoceros, so big he had to carry it in a satchel. Hundreds and hundreds of hundred-dollar bills.” Her eyes were like glass.

“What kind of a satchel?”

“Little black leather case with his initials. He said he just got back from Sacramento. He made a deal with some woman – nobody I knew. He sold a house for her, he said, and he said she liked him so well she gave him most of the cash. Gave him the cash, he said, and kept the commission for herself. Which didn’t make sense to me. People don’t give money away, not in my experience which has been varied. They grind it out of you, like coffee. So I knew the money was hot. Anyway, you don’t want to go and five in Mexico the rest of your life unless you’re hot.”

“He intended to stay there for the rest of his life?”

“So he said. He was high, though. I didn’t put too much stock in what he said. I never have.”

“Did he ever ask you to elope before?”

“Not elope, I mean technically not elope. Sure, he’s been after me. He made a heavy pass at the New Year’s party, right in his own house. He suggested we ought to take off our clothes and dance around in our bones. I wasn’t interested, but he’s a hard man to discourage. Was.”

“How long have you known the Merrimans?”

“Sally I’ve known for years. I hardly knew Ben at all, I only met him three or four times in my life. But he was a fast worker, or so he liked to think. I have that effect on certain types. That’s probably why I didn’t see much of Sally after she married him.”

“What did she do before she married him?”

“She was an actress, like me. I met her when we were both trying out for the chorus line at the old Xanadu. I got the job, she didn’t. They told her she was too old. She had it rough for a while, and I helped her out. She paid me back when she got a job with Ben Merriman. Then he married her.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know exactly. Four-five years. For a long time I was out of touch with Sally. I was over in Nevada for a year. Or was it two years?”

The telephone rang in the room behind her. She jumped as if it had sounded an alarm, and left me standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Stanley,” she said into the receiver.

There was a lengthy silence while she listened and I listened to her listening. Her head turned gradually towards me. Her heavily shadowed eyes reminded me of a grease-monkey.

“Will do,” she whispered into the phone. “I get the message, darling.”

She hung up, carefully, as if the instrument was fragile and she was very clumsy.

“You’ve got to excuse me,” she said. “I have to do some things for Stanley.”

“What things?”

“I don’t have to tell you, and I’m not going to.”

“Where is Stanley?”

“He didn’t say. Honest,” she added in a dishonest voice.

I didn’t try to argue with the girl. I went downstairs. Girston was standing in his doorway. He looked at me like a lost soul whom I was cheating out of his hope of heaven. He lunged for me as I went by, digging his fingers into my arm and breathing into my face:

“What about the reward money?”

“If your information leads to the girl’s recovery, I’ll recommend you for a reward.”

“How much?”

“That will be up to my principal.”

“Couldn’t I get a percentage of it now? Just a small percentage?”

I gave him twenty dollars as you throw a dog a bone, and went outside. The sky above the rooftops was streaked green and yellow like an old bruise. Night was gathering in the corners of the buildings. Most of the cars in the road had their lights on.

I joined the traffic stream. From her second-floor window, Jessie watched me drive away. I turned off Camino at the first corner, U-turned and parked a hundred feet up the side street, ready to go north or south. The street was shadowed by broad-leaved trees whose name I didn’t know, and there were children playing in the twilight.

I walked back to the corner, where I could watch the entrance to the Conquistador. Two cigarettes later, a green cab with a pulsating tight on the roof honked at the curb in front of it. Jessie came out wearing a coat. She had a suitcase in either hand, a brown one and a white one. The driver scrambled out to take them from her. He slammed the door on her and drove on north.

His pulsating light was easy to follow, even in the evening rush. He went through Burlingame and turned right on Broadway. When he crossed the overpass at Bayshore, where Phoebe had stood in the rain above the river of traffic, I was close behind him. The lights of International Airport silhouetted Jessie’s head through his rear window.

Circling the parking lot, the taxi deposited her and her suitcases on the sidewalk in front of the main terminal. I found a green curb, and followed her into the building.

She took an elevator up to the main floor and lost me for a while. I picked her up about ten long minutes later, coming out of the ladies’ room. She passed within five feet of me in the crowd. She had fresh lipstick on, a bemused glitter in her eyes. She didn’t see me. She didn’t seem to see anyone.

She moved through the people like a bright-headed shadow passing among shadows. Men’s eyes trailed her. Keeping my distance, I followed her to the newsstand and saw her buy a magazine with an anguished female face on the cover. She settled down on a bench with it, crossing her legs. She was wearing high-heeled shoes and stockings, and under her coat a low-cut black dress that looked like a party dress.

I bought a Chronicle and sat down on the far side of the newsstand. Ben Merriman’s picture, the same one he used on his blotters, was on the third page. The accompanying story told me nothing I didn’t already know. It concluded with a statement from Captain Lamar Royal of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office, to the effect that his department was co-operating closely with local law-enforcement agencies in tracking down the hoodlums responsible for the brutal killing, and arrests were expected momentarily.

I glanced over the edge of the paper at Jessie. She was reading her confession mag with avid intensity, as if it was telling her the story of her next ten years. The roar of planes taking off below the windows, the hubbub of passengers coming and going around her, made no impression on her. From time to time she looked up at the clock.

The minutes went by so slowly that time itself seemed to be running down. Jessie began to get restless. She looked up at the clock again, stood up and scanned the whole enormous room, sat down again tapping her toe on the floor. She fumbled a cigarette out of her coat pocket and inserted it between her lips.

A dark man in a form-fitting overcoat froze like a bird dog near her, looked at her feet and body, swarmed in on her with clicking lighter. She twitched her cigarette away from the flame. I didn’t catch the look she gave him, but it sent him scurrying. She lit her cigarette and went back to her magazine.

This time it failed to hold her. She consulted the clock four or five times before she finished her cigarette. She threw down the butt and ground it under her shoe, standing up as she did so. She began to circle the newsstand, peering at all the waiting faces on the benches. I hid my face with the newspaper until she went by.

She returned to her place on the bench and put in some time crossing and recrossing her legs. The place was warm enough, but she looked cold. She wrapped her coat around her, plunging her hands in the pockets. She lay back stiffly with her head against the back of the bench and watched the clock like somebody on salary. The minutes were dribbling out as slowly as molasses in January.

It was an hour and a half since Stanley had telephoned her. We had been sitting in the terminal for over an hour. I’d read my way through the paper to the classified ads. An anonymous benefactor at a Grant Street address was offering the only authenticated photograph of Jesus Christ for sale or rent. I was so bored I felt like getting in touch with him.

I was on the point of approaching Jessie when she gave up. She threw a final furious glance at the clock, as if it had betrayed her, and took an elevator down to the ground floor. I caught up with her at the cab-rank outside:

“Don’t waste money on taxis, Jessie. I’ll drive you where you want to go.”

She backed away from me with her fist at her chin. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for Godot.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Tragicomic. Where do you want to go?”

She concentrated on this problem, slipping one knuckle in between her teeth. With a slight wrench, she removed it. “Back to the apartment, I guess. I was supposed to meet somebody. Their plane was delayed, I guess.”

“Is Godot travelling by plane these days?”

“Har dee har,” she said.

“My car’s parked on the other side. Do you want me to get the bags?”

“What bags?” She overacted, exaggerating her natural stupidity.

“The brown bag and the white bag you checked an hour ago. It looks as though you won’t be needing them.”

Her pentup anger burst out on me. She came up close to me shaking and whispering, calling me various names. “You’ve been spying on me.”

“A little. Give me the checks and I’ll go and collect the bags. You can wait in the car.”

“The hell I will.”

But when I gave her my arm she came along quietly. She was a girl who needed an arm, any arm. I made sure the key wasn’t in the ignition and left her sitting in the front seat while I reclaimed her baggage.

The bags were surprisingly light. Neither of them was locked. I opened them on a bench inside the entrance. The brown one held several men’s sports shirts, a dark blue suit on the verge of shabbiness, a set of the “trail clothes” affected by sports-car drivers: white ducks and black wool sweater; an electric razor, and a pair of military brushes in a pigskin case which had Stanley’s initials engraved on it in gold.

The other bag smelled of Jessie. Her meager wardrobe was wadded into it: sweaters and slacks and underwear with her initials on it, a couple of gaudy dresses, a little collection of toilet articles, a carton of cigarettes, and her typescript. It began: “I was always wild from the time my mother’s current love seized me in a passionate embrace on my twelfth birthday.” With my hands in the flotsam of her life, I was oddly relieved that the trip with Stanley hadn’t taken place. It would have been a trip to nowhere anyway.

I closed the bags and carried them out to my car. Jessie said when I got in:

“Stanley stood me up. I guess you figured that out for yourself.”

“Where were you supposed to be going?”

“Away, he said. That suited me. I’ve had enough of this place.” She looked around at the great lighted buildings.

“You were going to take a plane?”

“No, we were going to travel by oxcart. That’s why he told me to meet him at the airport.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“His store, maybe. I heard music behind him.”

“He could still be there.”

“Yeah.” Her voice brightened. “Maybe he got held up by something.”

I put the car in gear. Bayshore took us up in its rush and disgorged us in San Carlos a few minutes later. I drove across the town to the shopping center on Camino Real. The parking space around it was almost deserted. Not quite. Stanley’s red sports car was parked in front of his shop. There was a light inside, and the sound of music.

Jessie took hold of my shoulder with both hands. “You stay out of it. Please? Just set the suitcases out and blow. He’ll hit me again if he sees me with you.”

“I won’t let him.”

It sounded like a commitment, the way it came out. Her hands became more conscious of my shoulder; they lingered there with something like possessiveness. Her breast came up against me:

“You’re sort of sweet.”

“I always thought so.”

“Conceited, too,” she said indulgently.

She kissed me lightly. I think she was trying to nail me down just long enough to see if she still had Stanley. She climbed out of the car, and I handed her the suitcases. With one in each hand, like a German wife, she marched up to the front door of Stanley’s shop.

I heard the surge of music when she opened it. It was musical-comedy music, loud and insistently happy. I followed her under cover of the music. It burbled out of the glass-walled listening room at the rear of the store.

Stanley was sitting in the glass room with his back to me. He was listening very intently to the music. I couldn’t see Jessie, but the two suitcases were standing outside the door of the cubicle. I took out my gun and approached the open door.

Jessie was down on her knees behind the door. She was picking up money like a red-headed chick in a corn bin. Hundred-dollar bills spilled from a black leather satchel onto the floor. Jessie was stuffing them into the pockets of her coat.

Stanley was paying no attention to her. He was sprawled in his chair with a bullet hole in his forehead, listening to the happy music with dead and dreamy eyes.

It was the perfect time for the law to arrive. It arrived.