You’re Lonely When You’re Dead

I

The sun crept around the edges of the blind and lay across the floor in two long, bright bands. In the hot, airless room there was a smell of whisky strong enough to get tight on, and it seemed to come from me: an overpowering smell as if I had fallen into a vat of the stuff and had taken a swim in it. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like myself. My head felt like hell. The bed on which I was lying was too soft and too hot. I kept thinking of a woman’s face framed in blood with a hole in her forehead through which you could stick your finger, and I didn’t like that either.

I looked at the two bright bands of sunlight on the floor. I wasn’t focusing well, but the carpet seemed familiar. There were holes in it burned by the cigarettes I had dropped on it. There was a ragged tear in it near the window where Benny’s spaniel pup had chewed it. It wasn’t much of a carpet, but it was a relief to see it, for it meant I was in my room and on my bed and the woman’s face framed in blood was probably a nightmare. Probably...

A man’s voice said, ‘He stinks like a distillery, and he’s as soused as a mackerel.’ A voice that sent a chill down my spine. Brandon’s voice. ‘Who’s the woman out there?’ the voice went on. ‘Ever seen her before?’

Mifflin said, ‘She’s a new one on me.’

I looked through my eyelashes. They were there all right. Brandon was sitting on a chair and Mifflin stood at the foot of the bed.

I kept still and sweated. The back of my head felt as if the bone had been removed. It felt pulpy and soft as if there was a hole there: a hole that let in the draught that suddenly played about my pillow.

Mifflin had opened a window by my bed. He had pulled the blind aside to get at the window and a lot of hot, bright sunshine fell on my face, sending shooting pains into my skull.

I thought of Anita Cerf lying out there on the casting couch and the bloodstained yellow cushion and the Colt automatic. A beautiful setup for Brandon to walk into. A red-handed, no alibi, God’s gift to a lazy cop setup. Even Brandon wouldn’t look far for the killer. I thought of the way he had looked at me when he was questioning me about Dana’s death.

But she had to pass your place to get to where she was killed, didn’t she? It seems funny to me she didn’t look in on you.

If a little thing like that seemed funny to him, imagine the bang he was getting out of a setup like this.

The same gun. Dana, Leadbetter and now Anita. All shot through the head. The same method; the same killer.

Motive? I didn’t kid myself that a little thing like a motive would stop Brandon. Ever since he had been in office the police administration had been sagging like a bed with worn-out springs. If he wanted to stop awkward questions, muzzle the Press, quiet the flutterings of the men who had put him in the job he had to solve these murders quick. He’d cook up some motive. He wouldn’t miss out on a chance like this.

‘Hey! Malloy! Wake up!’ Mifflin bawled. His heavy hand fell on my shoulder and shook me. Bright lights burst before my eyes, and the pain in my head went shooting down to my heels and back to my head like a runaway roller-coaster.

I threw off his hand and sat up, only to clap my hands to my head and bend over, groaning.

‘Snap out of it!’ Mifflin urged. ‘We want to talk to you. Hey! Malloy! Pull yourself together!’

‘What do you think I’m doing — a fan dance?’ I snarled, and swung my feet to the floor.

‘What have you been up to?’ Brandon demanded, leaning forward to peer at me. ‘What kind of drunk-up is this?’

I squeezed my aching head between fingertips and peered back at him. He looked fat, well fed and well shaven. His linen was immaculate; his shoes gleamed in the sunshine, and he looked every inch the corrupt policeman. In comparison I must have looked like hell. My fingers rasped my unshaven jaw, the awful stink of whisky fumes made me feel sick and my evening dress shirt stuck to my chest.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know. ‘Who let you in?’

‘Never mind who let us in,’ he barked and brandished his half-smoked cigar at me. It smelt as if he had picked it out of an ashcan on his way over. ‘What’s going on here? Who’s that woman out there?’

Not quite the right note, I thought, puzzled. Maybe these two birds were hard-boiled, but not so hard-boiled that they could be calm about a killing like the killing in the other room. And they were calm: disapproving, censorious and smug, like neither of them had ever touched a drop in their lives, but calm.

‘Is there a woman out there?’ I asked.

Not very bright, but the best I could manage under the circumstances. At least it was non-committal.

‘What’s the matter with this guy?’ Brandon demanded, and looked over at Mifflin.

‘He’s drunk,’ Mifflin said stolidly. ‘There’s nothing else the matter with him.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ Brandon said. ‘Get that woman in here.’

It came out of me before I could stop it.

‘No! I don’t want to see her! I don’t...’

The kind of voice you hear gangsters use on the movies when they’ve been cornered and are about to get the works. I snapped it off short, but it must have been pretty good because it brought Brandon to his feet and turned Mifflin as still as the Graven Image.

Then a voice said from the doorway. ‘What are you doing with him? Can’t you see he has the shakes?’

And there was Miss Bolus in a fawn linen frock, her red hair caught up with a green ribbon, and her chink eyes moving from Brandon to Mifflin and to me and back again.

‘I told you not to barge in on him,’ she went on, leaning her hips against the door frame, one hand touching her hair, pushing it into place. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone?’ She turned her head slightly to look at me. ‘Would you like a drink, honey? Or has the dog bitten you too hard?’

‘He doesn’t want a drink,’ Brandon said. ‘What did he mean, saying he didn’t want to see you? What goes on around here?’

I thought maybe my mind had given way. Right behind Miss Bolus, in the other room, was the casting couch. From where she stood, if she looked over her shoulder, she could see it. She must have seen what was on it as she came to my bedroom door. Brandon must have seen it. Mifflin must have seen it. And yet here they were as calm as three oysters on the ocean bed, making no attempt to put on the hand-cuffs, telling me I was drunk, and even offering me more drink.

Brandon was saying something as I pushed myself off the bed. But I didn’t listen. I had to see what was going on in the other room. I hoisted myself to my feet. I felt like a diver trying to walk on the floor of the sea without the sea being there.

Brandon suddenly stopped talking. None of them moved. Maybe they sensed something of what was going on in my mind. Maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If I looked anything like the way I felt I must have been something to see. They watched me crawl across the room. Captain Webb on the last lap of his Channel swim had nothing on me; but I got to the door.

Miss Bolus put her hand on my arm. Her fingers dug into my muscles, but I wasn’t in the mood for warnings and I shoved her aside. All I wanted to do was to look into the other room; to look at Anita Cerf lying on my casting couch with her face framed in blood and a hole in her head big enough for me to poke my finger in.

I looked into the other room and I looked at the casting couch and I felt the breath whistle through my locked teeth, and sweat start out on my face the way a boxer sweats when he has been hit far south of the line.

There was no Colt automatic lying on the carpet and no blonde woman on the casting couch. I here was no yellow cushion soaked in blood. No nothing — nothing at all.

II

I was back on the bed again. I didn’t remember how I got there, but I was there and Miss Bolus was standing over me, a glass of whisky in her hand. As I half-struggled up, she bent over me, holding the whisky to my lips, and as I drank I found myself looking down the front of her dress. I must have been pretty bad, because she hadn’t a brassiere on, and as soon as I saw she hadn’t a brassiere on, I closed my eyes. That’s how bad I was.

I drank the whisky. There seemed a lot of it, but there was no bite to it, so it was easy to keep drinking until there was nothing more to drink. It must have been all right because as soon as Miss Bolus moved away I felt its effect. I felt it rushing around in my system like a sheep dog chasing up sheep, only it wasn’t sheep the whisky was chasing, it was my nerves, and I could feel it pulling them this way and that, tightening them, disciplining them, bringing them back to their tough everyday standard. And after a minute or so although my head hurt still, I was suddenly and miraculously well again.

Cool fingers took the glass from my hand. Miss Bolus smiled at me.

‘I’ve seen the shakes a good many times in my young life,’ she said, ‘but nothing to compare to yours.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, and sat up slowly. ‘Let it be a lesson to you. It’s cured me. From now on—’ I broke off to stare at Brandon who sat on the straight-backed chair at die foot of the bed; his snake’s eyes missing nothing. ‘Hey!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I am seeing things. I’m seeing coppers. Look!’ I pointed. ‘Can you see coppers?’

‘I can see one,’ Miss Bolus said. ‘And the Police Captain. I wouldn’t call him a copper. He mightn’t like it.’

‘Cut out the funny stuff, Malloy,’ Brandon said bleakly. ‘We want to talk to you.’

‘Give me another drink,’ I said to Miss Bolus, and as she went across the room for the bottle, I said, ‘Who asked you in here, Brandon?’

‘All right, you can cut that out too,’ he said, glaring. ‘What’s going on here? Who’s this woman? What’s she doing here?’

I discovered suddenly that the front of my dress shirt was soaked with whisky and that explained where the awful stink came from. I got unsteadily to my feet, ripped off my collar and dropped it on the floor with a grimace of disgust.

‘And get me some coffee,’ I said as Miss Bolus came over with the whisky. ‘Strong enough to lie on and plenty of it.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Brandon snarled, starting out of his chair.

‘Sure, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get an answer,’ I said, sending Miss Bolus away with a wave of my hand. ‘You have no right here. What’s it to you who she is? What’s it to you what’s going on?’ While I was talking I stripped off my tuxedo and shirt. ‘I’m getting myself a shower. Stick around if you have to. I shan’t be long.’

It was only when I was opening the bathroom door that I wondered if the body was in there. I kept right on, shut the door and shot the bolt. No body. I reached out and pulled the shower curtain aside. Still no body. There was nowhere else to look, so I stripped off the rest of my clothes and got under the shower. Two minutes of hissing cold water cleared my head the way nothing else could have cleared it. I was beginning to get things under control. The electric clock on the wall told me it was twenty minutes past eleven. Anita Cerf had been shot at three forty-five a.m. I had been unconscious for nine hours. My fingers explored the back of my head. It was tender and felt a little soft, but so far as I could judge it was still all in one piece, and that was something to be thankful for.

The body was gone. That seemed pretty obvious. If it had been hidden anywhere in the cabin Brandon would have found it. Who had taken it, and why? I flicked the electric razor into life and began to shave. Why take the body away? Why? Was the killer crazy? If he had left the body and the gun he could have been practically certain that Brandon would have nailed me for the murder. But maybe the gun could be traced. Was that it? Or maybe the killer hadn’t taken the body. Maybe someone else had. Miss Bolus? I couldn’t see Miss Bolus carrying away a body across her square young shoulders. She might have done. She had enough nerve, but I couldn’t quite sec her doing it. Who then? And who was the guy in the slouch hat who had sapped me? The killer?

That was as far as I got: not very far, but then I wasn’t in the condition for brilliant deductions. Brandon hammered on the door.

‘Come out of there, Malloy!’ he shouted.

I put down the razor, felt my chin and decided it was smooth enough, slipped on a bath robe and opened the door.

Brandon was standing just outside. He looked as amiable as a tiger and a lot more ferocious.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said violently. ‘You either talk here or you’ll come down to the station.’

‘I’ll talk here,’ I said, moving over to the table where Miss Bolus had put the coffee. ‘What is it?’

I could hear her humming in the kitchen. She wouldn’t hum like that, I thought, pouring coffee, if she had seen Anita Cerf, let alone handled her. It couldn’t have been her. Who then?

Brandon said, ‘Where’s Benny?’

I wasn’t expecting that one. I wasn’t aware that he even knew Benny. I picked up the cup of coffee, held it a few inches below my nose and stared at him through the steam. It was good strong coffee. The smell of it made my mouth water.

‘You mean Ed Benny?’

‘Yes. Where is he?’

‘He’s in San Francisco.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘What’s it to you?’ I asked, sitting on the bed.

‘The San Francisco Police Department are asking.’

‘They are? Well, why don’t they ask him? What’s the idea?’

For no reason at all I felt a cold chill run up my spine. I put the cup of coffee down on the bedside table.

‘It’s no use asking him,’ Brandon said harshly. ‘He’s dead.’

The cold chill spread right across my back.

‘Benny? Dead?’ The voice didn’t sound like mine.

‘Yeah. The harbour police fished him out of Indian Basin,’

Brandon said, his eyes glued to my face. ‘His hands and feet were tied with piano wire. They reckoned he died around nine o’clock last night.’

III

I stood at the window and watched them go.

Brandon stamped down the path to the gate, the dead and chewed cigar pinched between clenched teeth and tight lips, an angry, frustrated look on his smooth, fat face. The uniformed cop who opened the car door for him, saluted, but even that didn’t seem to please him. He bundled himself into the car and glared back at the cabin as if he would like to set fire to it and kick the ashes into the sea.

Mifflin followed him into the car. Mifflin didn’t look angry, but he looked very thoughtful, and he was still apparently thinking when the car drove away.

I remained at the window, looking at the ocean without seeing it. Dana, Leadbetter, Anita and now Benny. The thing had suddenly gone mad: it wasn’t a murder case anymore. It was a massacre case.

I felt rather than heard Miss Bolus as she came to the door, and I could feel her watching me.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked without turning.

‘I called you around nine o’clock this morning,’ she said. ‘The operator said your receiver was off and no one was answering.’ She joined me at the window. ‘I hadn’t anything better to do so I came over. You were lying on the floor. The lights were on; the doors open. I got you on to the bed and was trying to bring you round when I heard them drive up. I poured whisky over you and told them you had been celebrating. I kept them away from you as long as I could. I didn’t want them to know you had been sapped. I didn’t think you would want them to know either. I don’t think they did, do you?’

‘No.’ I took a package of Camels from my pocket, shook out two, gave her one and lit up. ‘The whisky was a good idea. You didn’t see anyone else here when you came in?’

‘There wasn’t anyone else here. What happened?’

‘Someone was waiting for me. I walked in, and, Bingo! That’s all there was to it.’

She went over and began straightening the bed.

‘You make it sound pretty simple,’ she said.

‘Being hit on the head with a sock full of sand is simple. There’s nothing to it. You should try it some time.’

‘Don’t you have anyone to look after you?’

I had forgotten Tony, my Filipino boy, then I remembered it was Sunday. He didn’t come in on Sundays. That was a break. I wouldn’t have liked him to have walked in here and found me lying on the floor. He was a respectable boy. He would probably have quit.

‘Not on Sundays. On Sundays I have a beautiful redhead who comes in and does for me,’ I said, and went into the sitting room. I stood over the casting couch and stared at it. If the yellow cushion had been there I should have been convinced that I had had a nightmare, but the yellow cushion wasn’t there.

It was a pity about the casting couch. I had grown fond of it, but I would have to get rid of it. It was lucky there were no bloodstains on it, but it did smell of death. At least it smelt of death to me. You don’t make love to a girl on a couch that smells of death. Even a Malloy has his finer feelings at times, and this was one of the times.

I wandered around the room. Nothing out of place. There was no sign that Anita Cerf had been here: no sign whatsoever. I examined the carpet where the Colt automatic had lain. There were no oil stains. I got down on hands and knees and put my nose on the carpet and sniffed. There seemed to be a faint smell of gunpowder, but I couldn’t be sure if I was imagining it.

Miss Bolus stood in the bedroom doorway and watched me. A troubled little frown wrinkled her brow.

‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked. ‘Or do you always act like this?’

I stood up and ran fingers down the back of my head.

‘Sure,’ I said absently. ‘You want to see the way I act when I’m not hit on the head.’

‘I don’t think you’re well. Hadn’t you better go back to bed?’

‘Didn’t you hear what Brandon said? I have to go to Frisco to identify Benny.’

‘Bosh,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re not fit to go. I can go or someone from the office.’

I went over to the cupboard where I kept the aspirin.

‘Yes,’ I said, not paying a great deal of attention to what she was saying. I took four aspirins from the bottle and flicked them one after the other into my mouth. I washed them down with lukewarm coffee, ‘But I’m going all the same. Benny was a friend of mine.’

‘You had better get a doctor to look at your head,’ Miss Bolus said. I could see she was worried. ‘You may have concussion.’

‘The Malloys are famous for their rock-like skulls,’ I said, wondering if I had taken enough aspirins. My head still ached. ‘Nothing short of a sledgehammer would give me concussion.’ I shot two more aspirins into my mouth to be on the safe side. I was wondering why Anita Cerf had come to my place, and how the murderer knew she was there. Then an unpleasant thought dropped into my mind. Perhaps he didn’t know, and was waiting for me. That seemed much more likely. Maybe he thought I was getting too inquisitive and had come out here to silence me the way he had silenced Dana, and had knocked Anita off for practice. Well, not exactly practice... This needed a little thought. This needed one of those brain sessions for which I’m not particularly famous. I decided to put the problem in lavender until my head stopped aching.

‘I wish I knew what was going on in your mind,’ Miss Eolus said uneasily. ‘Has something happened? I mean apart from Benny?’

‘I’m glad to hear you call it a mind,’ I said. ‘You should hear what some people call it. No, nothing’s happened apart from Benny. Nothing at all.’ The two additional aspirins were on the job now. The pain in my head began to recede. ‘Why don’t you run along?’ I went on. ‘You must have things to do.’

She smoothed down her dress over her hips. She had nice hips: just the right shape and just the right weight. This wasn’t a new discovery. I had noticed them before.

‘Well, isn’t that fine?’ she said bitterly. ‘After all I’ve done for you. A brush-off. I don’t know why I bother with you. Can you tell me why I bother with you?’

‘Not right now,’ I said, not wishing to hurt her feelings, but wanting her to go very badly. ‘We’ll talk about that some other time. I’ll call you in a day or so. I must hurry up and change. You won’t mind if I say goodbye now, will you?’ and I went into the bedroom and closed the door.

After a couple of minutes I heard her car start up. I didn’t wave out of the window and I forgot her as soon as the sound of the car engine died away.

IV

The air taxi touched down on the long runway of the Portola airport, San Francisco, at twenty minutes past three. We came in on the tail of an air-liner full of movie stars, and when we reached the main gates of the airport there was a big crowd waiting to see the stars. A couple of excited bobby-soxers waved their handkerchiefs and screamed at us as we drove past, but we didn’t wave back. We weren’t in that kind of mood.

Kerman said, ‘You know it’s a funny thing, Vic, but a guy has to die before you get to know anything about him. I had no idea Ed had a wife and a couple of kids. He never mentioned them. He never told me his mother was living either. He never acted like a man with a wife and a couple of kids, did he? The way he used to horse around.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ I said. ‘What do we want to talk about his wife and kids for?’

Kerman took out his handkerchief and mopped his face.

‘I guess that’s right.’ And after a while he said, ‘I’ll be glad when it gets a bit cooler. March and a heat wave. It’s all wrong. Now, last night...’

‘And shut up about the weather too,’ I said.

‘Sure.’ Kerman said.

During the silence that followed, and while we drove along Market Street, I reconstructed the happenings of the morning. Paula had come over. Brandon had already been to see her about Benny. She had told the same tale as I had: that Benny had gone to San Francisco for the weekend. He hadn’t gone on business. He had gone up there on a sight-seeing trip. He did that sort of thing, Paula had said. I had said much the same thing. Brandon hadn’t believed us, but there was nothing he could do about it because Benny’s murder was out of his district.

While we talked Jack Kerman had arrived. Barclay’s alibi, he told us, after we had talked about Benny, was as water-tight as a submarine. He had been with Kitty Hitchens as he had said and hadn’t left her apartment until three-thirty of the afternoon following Dana’s murder. That put Barclay out of the running.

I then told them about Anita Cerf. By the way Paula and Kerman went over my rooms I could see they didn’t believe me. It was hard to believe, because there just wasn’t a trace of her ever having been in the cabin. But they both remembered the yellow cushion. The fact it wasn’t in the cabin finally convinced them I hadn’t imagined it: the cushion and the pulpy softness at the back of my head.

Paula didn’t want to go to San Francisco, but I said I was going. Around one o’clock I phoned through to the Orchid City airport and ordered an air taxi to take us out.

The trip in the aircraft didn’t do my head any good, and I kept thinking of Benny. I had known him for about four years. We had worked and played together. He was an irresponsible, crazy kind of guy, but I liked him. It gave me a sick feeling to think he was dead.

Kerman had said there was no proof to connect Ed’s death with the murder of Dana, Leadbetter and Anita. There wasn’t, but I was convinced that in some way or other there was a connection. Kerman’s theory was that Ed had got into a gambling game and had struck lucky and someone had taken his winnings and had thrown him into the harbour. Kerman wasn’t sold on the theory, but he said Ed was a wild character and he could have got into that kind of trouble.

I said no. Ed was working. Maybe he was wild, but not when he had a job on, and he had a job on. He had arrived in San Francisco around four-thirty yesterday afternoon. At one o’clock in the morning the police had fished his body out of Indian Basin. The medical report showed he had been dead about four hours. If that was anything to go by he had been killed around nine o’clock: four and a half hours after arriving in San Francisco. Time enough to begin his inquiries into Anita Cerf’s private life, but not time enough to get into a gambling game: work first, play after. We all followed that rule, and Ed was no exception.

Had he been followed to Frisco? If he had been killed at nine o’clock there would have been time for the killer to hop a plane and get back to Orchid City and shoot Anita.

Kerman asked me if I wasn’t getting fancy ideas, and where was my proof. Maybe I was getting fancy ideas, but I didn’t think so. I had no proof that was the way it happened, but I had a hunch I was right, and I’d rather play a good hunch against proof when proof was as non-existent as it was now.

By this time the taxi had reached Third Street and pulled up outside Police Headquarters.

‘Leave the talking to me,’ I said to Kerman.

We climbed the worn stone steps, pushed open the double swing doors and asked a patrolman going off duty where we could find the Desk Lieutenant.

He was a nice civil cop, and although he was going off duty, he retraced his steps down the passage to show us the way.

As soon as I told the Desk Lieutenant who I was and what I had come about, he told the patrolman to take us to the Homicide Department. The patrolman led the way up a flight of stone stairs, along another passage to a small room furnished with four chairs, two desks, a window with bars and yellow walls and ceiling There was a smell of stale bodies, dirt and vomit in the room: the smell of most police stations.

We sat around, not saying anything and waited. About five minutes crawled by, and then the door opened and a couple of plain-clothes dicks came in.

One of them, a big, square-faced man with the usual hard eyes, set mouth, big feet’ that are more or less the standard uniform of a copper, waved us to a couple of straight-backed chairs, and waved the other dick to one of the desks.

‘I’m Dunnigan,’ he said, as if he wasn’t particularly proud of the fact. ‘Detective district commander. Are you relations of the deceased?’

It seemed odd to talk of Ed Benny as the deceased, and it gave me a cold, spooked feeling. I said we weren’t relations, but friends, and when I told him our names I saw his mouth tighten, and guessed Brandon had been telling him about us.

‘We’ll want you to identify him,’ he said. ‘Give this officer your names and addresses, and then I’ll take you along to the morgue.’

We helped the plain-clothes dick fill up a couple of forms, then followed Dunnigan from the room, down the corridor, down the stairs into a yard, across to a squat brick building.

There were three bodies under the sheets on the long marble slab facing us as we entered the morgue. The attendant in a long white overall rolled back the sheet covering the body in the middle.

Dunnigan said curtly, ‘Is that him?’

It was Benny all right.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

He looked over at Kerman, whose face had gone the colour of a fish’s belly.

‘You, too?’

Kerman nodded.

The attendant dropped the sheet back over Benny’s face.

‘Take it easy,’ Dunnigan said. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for him. It comes to us all, and it was quick. He was socked at the back of his head with a sandbag. He didn’t know anything about the water. Come on; let’s get out of here.’

As we went across the yard my head began to ache again.

V

The bellhop was lean and grey-faced and about thirty-three, and his uniform was too tight for him. He took us up the stairs and along a dim corridor. He had a kind of dancing walk, and his behind stuck out either because his trousers were so tight or because that was the way he was made. I couldn’t make up my mind about this; not that it mattered.

The rattled a key in the lock, opened the door and sneered at the room beyond. Kerman and I sneered at it too. There were two beds, a bamboo table, an armchair that looked as if an elephant had once sat in it, a carpet that once had some pile, but had long since lost its self-respect. In places it showed its canvas backing: by the bed, by the window and by the armchair; the three places where people used their feet the most. Over one of the beds there was a coloured print of a pretty girl on a ladder. There was a dog at the foot of the ladder and it was looking up at the girl and it had a leer in its eyes. The girl was pretending to look embarrassed, but she wasn’t making much of a job of it. Over the other bed there was another print of the same girl. This time she was standing on a chair, holding her dress up round her neck, and it was a mouse and not a dog that was leering at her.

‘Shower cabinet in there,’ the bellhop said, jerking his thumb. He crossed to the window, pulled down the blind and let it snap up with a bang. ‘Everything works if you handle it right,’ he said. ‘Careful how you use the shower. The system’s a mite old, and it’s got to be handled right.’

He ran his rat’s eyes along the ceiling, down the wall on to our feet and up to our faces.

‘Got all you want?’ he went on, hopefully expectant.

‘What else have you got?’ Kerman asked, edging his way into the room.

‘Liquor or women or dope,’ the bellhop said, eyeing us speculatively. ‘So long as you can pay for it I can fix it. I know a blonde who can be over here in three minutes.’

We settled for liquor.

When he had gone, Kerman said, ‘Do we have to get fixed up in a joint like this? Couldn’t our expense sheet run to something a little less murky?’

I went over to the window and beckoned. When he joined me I pointed to a building across the street, exactly opposite the hotel. The first floors were dingy-looking dwelling apartments. The ground floor was a photographer’s shop. The word LOUIS was spelt out across the facia in black letters against a yellow background.

‘See that,’ I said. ‘That’s where Ed started his investigation. Wait a minute. Let me show you.’ I opened my suitcase, produced from the bottom of it the photograph of Anita Cerf I had found in Barclay’s bedroom. ‘You haven’t caught up with this yet,’ I said, and told him how I had got it. ‘The first thing Ed said he would do when he got here was to check on the photo. I had a copy made for him before he caught the plane.’ I turned the photograph over and showed Kerman the rubber-stamped name and address on the back. ‘That’s why we’re here.’ I jerked my head to the shop across the way. ‘That’s it.’

‘Not much of a joint,’ Kerman said, studying it.

I put the photograph back in the suitcase and sat on the bed. My head was aching badly now, and I wanted a drink. I hoped the bellhop wouldn’t take all night.

D.D.C. Dunnigan had asked a lot of questions, but our story was that Ed had come up here for a weekend of sight-seeing and we had no idea why he should have landed up in Indian Basin, and we stuck to it.

I felt sorry for Dunnigan. He obviously wanted to find the killer. But we couldn’t help him without giving Cerf away, so we had to sit around in the yellow-walled room and lie ourselves black in the face. He told us he was checking all the hotels, and that worried me. Sooner or later he would find out Ed stayed in this joint, and that might lead him to the photographer’s shop across the way. It might, but I doubted it, although some coppers get a break, and he might be one of them.

‘What are we going to do?’ Kerman asked. He lowered himself carefully into the armchair. It held him, but only just.

‘There’s nothing we can do tonight,’ I said. ‘The shops shut; everything’s shut, but first thing tomorrow we’ll get going. We have no more to work on than Ed had. Somewhere along the line he stepped out of turn and tipped his hand. That’s something we have to watch. The quickest way to work this, Jack, is for me to go to work exactly the way Ed did, and for you to lurk in the background. Tomorrow morning I’ll go over to that shop and show this guy Louis the photo. I don’t know what will happen, but you can bet something will happen. Your job is to stick to me like glue without being seen. If I run into trouble, you’ll be on the spot to get me out of it. I’m going straight ahead as if Ed had never been here. Maybe I’ll end up in the Basin too, only this time you’ll be around to fish me out. Do you get it?’

Kerman stroked his dapper moustache and said he did. He said, ‘I’d just as soon do the job and you did the body-guard business, but if that’s the way you want to play it, okay.’

A tap sounded on the door at this moment, and the bellhop slid into the room. He brought with him two bottles of whisky, some ginger-ale and glasses. These he set down on the bamboo table.

Kerman looked the assignment over and asked, ‘What’s the third glass for?’

The bellhop leered at him.

‘You might bust one or you might want to give a guy a drink. A third glass is always useful, mister. The drinks I’ve missed because there ain’t been a third glass.’

‘We’ll all have a drink,’ I said. ‘Make them big ones, Jack.’ I said to the bellhop, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Carter,’ he told me, and fetched out a crumpled cigarette from inside his pillbox hat, wrapped his lips around it and set fire to it.

‘Been here long?’ I asked, leaning back on my elbows and looking beyond him at the girl on the ladder. I wondered what the dog could see that I couldn’t that made him leer.

‘Ten years,’ the bellhop said. ‘When I first came the joint wasn’t bad. But the war knocked it. The war knocked everything.’

Kerman gave him a drink you could have floated a duck on. He sniffed at it, poured a little of it into his mouth, and rinsed his teeth with it.

‘See what I mean about the third glass?’ he said when he finally got it down.

I shook four aspirins into my hand, washed them down with whisky. He watched me without interest.

‘How would you like to earn a little money?’ I asked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Exercising your memory?’

He took another pull at his glass, went through his rinsing movements and swallowed.

‘What’s my memory got to do with it?’

I took out my wallet, produced a photograph of Ed Benny and handed it to him.

‘Ever seen this guy?’

He didn’t take the photograph, but leaned forward and peered at it. The seams of his trousers creaked but held. Then he straightened, poured the rest of the whisky down his throat, put the glass on the bamboo table and slid to the door.

‘All right, guys,’ he said, his hand on the doorknob. ‘It was a beautiful act while it lasted, and you certainly fooled me. Coppers buying a guy a drink! Ain’t that something? For crying out loud! Who would believe it? But you don’t get anything from me. I don’t talk to coppers.’

Kerman hauled himself out of his chair, grabbed the bellhop by the scruff of the neck and sat him on the bed by my side.

‘Do we look like coppers?’ he demanded furiously. ‘I’ve a mind to shove that ugly snout of yours through the back of your neck!’

‘Well ain’t you coppers?’

I took a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet and laid it on the bed between us.

‘Do we act like coppers?’

He eyed the bill avidly.

‘Can’t say you do,’ he said, and licked his lips. ‘They were here this afternoon asking questions. He’s dead, isn’t he? They showed me a photo of him: a morgue photo.’

‘So he did stay here?’

His hand strayed towards the bill.

‘Yeah, he stayed here all right. The manager didn’t want the cops tramping over the joint. He told them he didn’t know the guy.’

I picked up the bill and gave it to him.

‘Give him another drink,’ I said to Kerman. ‘Can’t you see he’s thirsty?’

‘You’ll keep this to yourselves?’ the bellhop said, a little anxiously. ‘I wouldn’t like to get the sack.’

‘You surprise me,’ Kerman said. ‘By the way you talk I should have thought it was the one thing you prayed for.’ He thrust another man’s-sized drink into the bellhop’s hand.

‘Look,’ I said, as he started to go through his rinsing movements again, ‘this guy was a friend of ours. Someone sapped him and threw him into the Basin. We’re trying to find out why. Have you any ideas?’

The bellhop shook his head.

‘I guess not. He booked in at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. He took the room next to this one. He went out almost immediately after, and that’s the last we saw of him.’

‘Did he leave a bag?’

The bellhop’s eyes shifted.

‘Yeah, but the manager’s got that. He’s entitled to it. The guy didn’t pay for his room.’

‘Go and get it,’ I said.

The bellhop stared at me.

‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘If the managers saw me with it...’

‘Go and get it or I’ll talk to the manager myself.’

‘You mean — now?’

‘Yes; now.’

He put the half-finished whisky down on the overmantel and after giving me a long, thoughtful stare, eased himself towards the door.

‘Do I make anything out of it? Or does that twenty cover it?’

‘You make another ten.’

When he had gone Kerman said, ‘That was a lucky break. How did you guess Ed came here?’

‘Why did we come here? Give me another drink. Talking to that rat makes my headache.’

While he was fixing me a drink, I opened the suitcase again and took out Anita’s photograph. I put it face down on the bed.

Kerman said, ‘Do you think he’ll know her?’

‘It’s worth trying. He’s been here ten years.’

The pain in my head was a little better, but still not right. I washed down two more aspirins.

‘You’re taking too much of that stuff,’ Kerman said, frowning. ‘And you’d better lay off whisky. You should have seen a doctor.’

The bellhop came in with the suitcase and put it on the bed.

‘I’ve gotta take it back,’ he said, a worried look on his rat face. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble.’

I went through the suitcase. I didn’t expect to find anything and I wasn’t disappointed. It was just an ordinary suitcase a guy would pack who is going away for the weekend. The only thing in it that was missing was Anita’s photograph. I put the things back, closed the case and shoved it on to the floor.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Take it back.’ I took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and dropped it on the bed. ‘Take that too, and keep your mouth shut. Okay?’

He picked up the note and the bag.

‘Is that all I can do for you?’ he asked, suddenly reluctant to leave us.

I turned Anita’s photograph over and flicked it towards him.

‘Ever seen this dame before?’

He put the bill in his pocket, set the bag on the floor and picked up the photograph. He held it at arm’s length, squinting at it.

‘Looks like Anita Gay to me,’ he said, and shot me an inquiring look. ‘It’s her, ain’t it? Jeepers! The times I’ve seen her. Sure, it’s Anita Gay.’

‘Don’t act coy,’ I said. ‘Who’s Anita Gay? What does she do? Where can I find her?’

‘I don’t know where you’ll find her,’ he said regretfully, and laid the photograph on the bed. ‘I haven’t seen her for months. She used to do a turn at the Brass Rail. And, boy, was she a sensation! That fur glove routine of hers certainly packed them in.’

‘What’s the Brass Rail?’

‘You don’t know the Brass Rail?’ He looked astonished. ‘Why, it’s a big beer-dill-pickle hippodrome on Bayshore Boulevard. It hasn’t had my custom since Anita quit. She wouldn’t be coming back, would she?’

I thought of the face framed in blood with the hole in the forehead big enough to poke my finger in.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She won’t be coming back.’