He stood up, tore off his mask, and threw it away into the sea with an angry gesture. He looked at me angrily, one arm holding the body of his wife against him. The white body half-floating in the shifting water was nude, a strange bright glistening catch from the sea floor.
“Go away,” he said in a choked voice.
I went to get a blanket out of the car, and brought it to him where he laid her out on the beach. He crouched over her as if to shield her body from my gaze. He covered her and stroked the wet hair back from her face. Her face was not pretty. He covered that, too.
I said: “You’ll have to call the police now.”
After a time he answered: “I guess you’re right. Will you help me to carry her into the house.”
I helped him. Then I called the police in Santa Barbara, and told them that a woman had been drowned and where to find her. I left Jack Ross shivering in his wet trunks beside her blanketed body, and drove to Hollywood for the second time that day.
Millicent Dreen was in her apartment. At noon there had been a full decanter of Scotch on her buffet. At ten o’clock it was on the coffee table beside her chair, and nearly empty. Her face and body had sagged. I wondered if every day she aged so many years, and every morning recreated herself through the power of her will.
She said: “I thought you were going back to Santa Barbara. I was just going to go to bed.”
“I did go. Didn’t Jack phone you?”
“No.” She looked at me, and her green eyes were suddenly very much alive, almost fluorescent. “You found her,” she said.
“Jack found her in the sea. She was drowned.”
“I was afraid of that.” But there was something like relief in her voice. As if worse things might have happened. As if at least she had lost no weapons and gained no foes in the daily battle to hold her position in the world’s most competitive and unpredictable city.
“You hired me to find her,” I said. “She’s found, though I had nothing to do with finding her — and that’s that. Unless you want me to find out who drowned her.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident. Or perhaps somebody stood by and watched her drown.”
I had given her plenty of reason to be angry with me before, but for the first time that day she was angry. “I gave you a hundred dollars for doing nothing. Isn’t that enough for you? Are you trying to drum up extra business?”
“I did one thing. I found out that Una wasn’t by herself yesterday.”
“Who was with her?” She stood up and walked quickly back and forth across the rug. As she walked her body was remoulding itself into the forms of youth and vigor. She recreated herself before my eyes.
“The invisible man,” I said. “My tennis partner.”
Still she wouldn’t speak the name. She was like the priestess of a cult whose tongue was forbidden to pronounce a secret word. But she said quickly and harshly: “If my daughter was killed I want to know who did it, I don’t care who it was. But if you’re giving me a line and if you make trouble for me and nothing comes of it, I’ll have you kicked out of Southern California. I could do that.”
Her eyes flashed, her breath came fast, and her sharp breast rose and fell with many of the appearances of reality. I liked her very much at that moment. So I went away and instead of making trouble for her, I made trouble for myself.
I found a booth in a drugstore on Wilshire and confirmed what I knew, that Terry Neville would have an unlisted number. I called a girl I knew who fed gossip to a movie columnist, and found out that Neville lived in Beverly Hills but spent most of his evenings around town. At this time of night he was usually at Ronald’s or Chasen’s, a little later at Ciro’s. I went to Ronald’s because it was nearer, and Terry Neville was there.
He was sitting in a booth for two in the long, low, smoke-filled room, eating smoked salmon and drinking stout. Across from him there was a sharp-faced terrierlike man who looked like his business manager and was drinking milk. Some Hollywood actors spend a lot of time with their managers, because they have a common interest.
I avoided the headwaiter and stepped up to Neville’s table. He saw me and stood up, saying: “I warned you this afternoon. If you don’t get out of here I’ll call the police.”
I said quietly: “I sort of am the police. Una Sand is dead.” He didn’t answer and I went on: “This isn’t a good place to talk. If you’ll step outside for a minute I’d like to mention a couple of facts to you.”
“You say you’re a policeman,” the sharp-faced man snapped, but quietly. “Where’s your identification? Don’t pay any attention to him, Terry.”
Terry didn’t say anything. I said: “I’m a private detective. I’m investigating the death of Una Sand. Shall we step outside, gentlemen?”
“We’ll go out to the car,” Terry Neville said tonelessly. “Come on, Ed.”
The car was not a green Chrysler roadster, but a black Packard limousine equipped with a uniformed chauffeur. When we entered the parking lot he got out of the car and opened the door. He was big and battered-looking.
I said: “I don’t think I’ll get in. I listen better standing up. I always stand up at concerts and confessions.”
“You’re not going to listen to anything,” Ed said.
The parking lot was deserted and far back from the street, and I forgot to keep my eye on the chauffeur. He rabbit-punched me and a gush of pain surged into my head. He rabbit-punched me again and my eyes rattled in their sockets and my body became invertebrate. Two men moving in a maze of stars took hold of my upper arms and lifted me into the car. Unconsciousness was a big black limousine with a swiftly purring motor and the blinds down.
Though it leaves the neck sore for days, the effect of a rabbit-punch on the centers of consciousness is sudden and brief. In two or three minutes I came out of it, to the sound of Ed’s voice saying:
“We don’t like hurting people and we aren’t going to hurt you. But you’ve got to learn to understand, whatever your name is—”
“Sacher — Masoch,” I said.
“A bright boy,” said Ed. “But a bright boy can be too bright for his own good. You’ve got to learn to understand that you can’t go around annoying people, especially very important people like Mr. Neville here.”
Terry Neville was sitting in the far corner of the back seat, looking worried. Ed was between us. The car was in motion, and I could see lights moving beyond the chauffeur’s shoulders hunched over the wheel. The blinds were down over the back windows.
“Mr. Neville should keep out of my cases,” I said. “At the moment you’d better let me out of this car or I’ll have you arrested for kidnapping.”
Ed laughed, but not cheerfully. “You don’t seem to realize what’s happening to you. You’re on your way to the police station, where Mr. Neville and I are going to charge you with attempted blackmail.”
“Mr. Neville is a very brave little man,” I said. “Inasmuch as he was seen leaving Una Sand’s house shortly after she was killed. He was seen leaving in a great hurry and a green roadster.”
“My God, Ed,” Terry Neville said, “you’re getting me in a frightful mess. You don’t know what a frightful mess you’re getting me in.” His voice was high, with a ragged edge of hysteria.
“For God’s sake, you’re not afraid of this bum, are you,” Ed said in a terrier yap.
“You get out of here, Ed. This is a terrible thing, and you don’t know how to handle it. I’ve got to talk to this man. Get out of this car.”
He leaned forward to take the speaking tube, but Ed put a hand on his shoulder. “Play it your way, then, Terry. I still think I had the right play, but you spoiled it.”