"Yes, I can see that. She'd been going around some with this fellow who got knocked off, Brooke Twelvetrees."
"Oh, that one, was it? And that's why you're interested. I remember him. She brought him in, pestered me to take him on. Well, you never know where you'll find something good, I looked him over. He had looks, the kind a lot of women go for, but don't get me wrong when I say, like I did about Mona, that's the first and only thing. It's important, but you and I could both name a dozen top stars without much in the way of looks. Mona and some like her, both sexes, got to the top on looks alone, but that doesn't hold you there. It's a thing there's no word for-showmanship, I guess that comes closest to it. Nothing to do with talent. I can name you people"-he did so-"who've been on top for years, without having anything but a lot of gall, and showmanship. It was that, even a little bit of it, this Twelvetrees didn't have. The personality didn't project, he couldn't've held an audience with the doors locked and safety belts to fasten 'em down. I said nothing doing, and Mona was mad as hell… No, that was the only time I ever met him, it'd be about two years ago… I heard later Meyer and Hanks took him on, don't know if or where they'd got him anything?
"Well, thanks. Where's that outfit?" Hackett took down the address. "You don't think there'd have been anything serious about their going around together? Just as an opinion."
Horwitz laughed. "Because Twelvetrees was maybe twenty-five years younger? Look, you don't need to be a psychiatrist to read these people. One of the damndest awful things about them is that they never get past a certain stage in life. They're kind of fixed at the mental age where parties and clothes and boy friends and girl friends, and all the-the froth, you know, is all that's important in life. It can have sad results. You take anybody fifty-five, sixty years old, even if he's got good health, nothing chronic, he's glad to let down once in a while, take things easier, stay home Saturday night and read a book. He's got a long way past being interested in kids' things-he's got to other things just as much fun. He's found out he doesn't have to be twenty-five years old and handsome as a movie star to get a kick out of making love to his wife, and she doesn't have to be Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't-you know-have to keep up a front. These people, the front's all they've ever had, and it's the most important thing in the world to them-they can't let themselves let down, ever. The front of perpetual youth. In looks and every other way. I tell you, once in a while I find myself in a night club or somewhere like that, not by choice but on business, and I don't know any sadder sight. These people like Mona, hell-bent on having a good time the same way the twenty-five-year-old kids are having a good time. Out of the fronts of things-good looks and clothes and going to parties.. Mona and this Twelvetrees? She always has a man in tow, to be seen with. Whatever she can pick up. She's got to. By the only rules she knows, if she didn't have something in pants to be seen with at the good-time places, it'd mean she was dead-as a female. And there are, in this town, enough men like her that she can always find one. But of course she'd always prefer one like Twelvetrees, to the ones her own age working just as hard as she is, with their toupees and expensive false teeth and corsets. Shows she's still an attractive, vital female-that's a word they like-to pick up a young man. You want my opinion, well, Twelvetrees was one of these people too, and he probably took up with Mona thinking she could do him some good in the way of contacts. Or just maybe because she paid the bills at the good-time places. I wouldn't say she'd gone down quite as far as that, to pay a fancy man to squire her around, but maybe-and there are nuances in these things, even with people like Mona."
"So there are," agreed Hackett. "Well, thanks very much for your help. Don't know that any of it's much use to us right now, but you never know-and anyway it's interesting to get the inside view on them."
"You find it interesting?" said Mr. Horwitz sadly. "Seems funny to think I ever did. These goddamned awful people… like reading the same page in a book over and over. Someday I got to get out of this business… "
Walsh didn't know yet why Mendoza was asking him about that D.-and-D. call; he was doing his best to be helpful, but it had been such a routine thing…
"I don't want to prompt you. But just visualize it in your mind-a big blacktopped area with apartments on two sides and across the rear. The one where the drunks were was Number Three, that's in the front of the second building on the right as you drive in. It was about seven-thirty, and it was raining. It was the landlady called in, and she was waiting for you-"
"Funny little fat lady in a man's raincoat," said Walsh suddenly. "Yeah, I got it, Lieutenant. We pulled up where she was, I guess it'd be in front of her place, she was waiting there on the porch, I remember that-and we both got kind of wet going across to the drunks' apartment-left the car where it was, see, it was just a step really but it was coming down pretty steady then."
"Yes, go on."
"Well-I don't know just what you want, sir. There wasn't anything to it. It's funny how just the sight of the uniform'll quiet 'em down sometimes. There was this big bruiser of a fellow and a little blonde woman, going at it hammer and tongs-you could hear 'em half a block away, the landlady needn't've come out to tell us where. Soon as Joe knocked and said who we were, they stopped and the man let us in. We talked to 'em a few minutes, you know the sort of thing: hadn't they better quiet down, have some consideration for the neighbors, and that's all it took really." He stuck again there, and was prodded on. "Well, let's see-Joe gave me the nod, I knew what he meant, and I went out to the car to report in. See, Joe figured, and I guess he knew from experience-he was a good cop, Lieutenant, the best for my money-"
"I know he was."
"-He always said, about a deal like that, where they aren't really slum people who just naturally distrust cops, that you don't have to go acting tough, and a lot of times they'll listen to a good stiff talk from a man in uniform where they'd just get mad with somebody like the landlady or the neighbors. That's what he meant, see. We could see they wouldn't make any more disturbance, and so like I say I went back to the car to report in, and Joe stayed to talk to 'em, so maybe they'd think twice the next time."
"Yes. And then?"
"Well-that's all," said Walsh blankly. "I sat in the car and waited for Joe, and pretty soon he came out-with the landlady-she'd stayed in the drunks' apartment with him-and she thanked us and we got back on our route again."
Mendoza made a few marks on paper, shoved the page across the desk. "Look, here's the set-up, let's get it clear. The apartments numbered Five and Six are in the building across the end of this court. The landlady lives in Number Six. Numbers Three and Four are in this second building from the street, at right angles to that. Show me where your squad car was in relation."
Walsh hesitated, finally pointed. "I'd say just about in front of this rear building. I mean not in front of either of the apartment doors there but sort of in between them.”
"Damn it, I don't want to force this," said Mendoza softly, "if there is anything… When you both got out of the car, you went straight across to Number Three? Bartlett was with you?"
"Why, sure, of course." Walsh stared.
"He was in Number Three how long?"
"I guess about fifteen, twenty minutes-no, say eighteen. Altogether."