I passed the embroidered case back to her.
I knew a guy once who smoked jujus, she said. Three highballs and three sticks of tea and it took a pipe wrench to get him off the chandelier.
Hold the light steady.
There was a rustling pause. Then she spoke again.
Im sorry. She handed the case down again and I slipped it back in his pocket. That seemed to be all. All it proved was that he hadnt been cleaned out.
I stood up and took my wallet out. The five twenties were still in it.
High class boys, I said. They only took the large money.
The flash was drooping to the ground. I put my wallet away again, clipped my own small flash to my pocket and reached suddenly for the little gun she was still holding in the same hand with the flashlight. She dropped the flashlight, but I got the gun. She stepped back quickly and I reached down for the light. I put it on her face for a moment, then snapped it off.
You didnt have to be rough, she said, putting her hands down into the pockets of a long rough coat with flaring shoulders. I didnt think you killed him.
I liked the cool quiet of her voice. I liked her nerve. We stood in the darkness, face to face, not saying anything for a moment. I could see the brush and light in the sky.
I put the light on her face and she blinked. It was a small neat vibrant face with large eyes. A face with bone under the skin, fine drawn like a Cremona violin. A very nice face.
Your hairs red, I said. You look Irish.
And my names Riordan. So what? Put that light out. Its not red, its auburn.
I put it out. Whats your first name?
Anne. And dont call me Annie.
What are you doing around here?
Sometimes at night I go riding. Just restless. I live alone. Im an orphan. I know all this neighborhood like a book. I just happened to be riding along and noticed a light flickering down in the hollow. It seemed a little cold for love. And they dont use lights, do they?
I never did. You take some awful chances, Miss Riordan.
I think I said the same about you. I had a gun. I wasnt afraid. Theres no law against going down there.
Uh-huh. Only the law of self preservation. Here. Its not my night to be clever. I suppose you have a permit for the gun. I held it out to her, butt first.
She took it and tucked it down into her pocket. Strange how curious people can be, isnt it? I write a little. Feature articles.
Any money in it?
Very damned little. What were you looking for in his pockets?
Nothing in particular. Im a great guy to snoop around. We had eight thousand dollars to buy back some stolen jewelry for a lady. We got hijacked. Why they killed him I dont know. He didnt strike me as a fellow who would put up much of a fight. And I didnt hear a fight. I was down in the hollow when he was jumped. He was in the car, up above. We were supposed to drive down into the hollow but there didnt seem to be room for the car without scratching it up. So I went down there on foot and while I was down there they must have stuck him up. Then one of them got into the car and dry-guiched me. I thought he was still in the car, of course.
That doesnt make you so terribly dumb, she said.
There was something wrong with the job from the start. I could feel it. But I needed the money. Now I have to go to the cops and eat dirt. Will you drive me to Montemar Vista? I left my car there. He lived there.
Sure. But shouldnt somebody stay with him? You could take my car or I could go call the cops.
I looked at the dial of my watch. The faintly glowing hands said that it was getting towards midnight.
No.
Why not?
I dont know why not. I just feel it that way. Ill play it alone.
She said nothing. We went back down the hill and got into her little car and she started it and jockeyed it around without lights and drove it back up the hill and eased it past the barrier. A block away she sprang the lights on.
My head ached. We didnt speak until we came level with the first house on the paved part of the street. Then she said:
You need a drink. Why not go back to my house and have one? You can phone the law from there. They have to come from West Los Angeles anyway. Theres nothing up here but a fire station.
Just keep on going down to the coast. Ill play it solo.
But why? Im not afraid of them. My story might help you.
I dont want any help. Ive got to think. I want to be by myself for a while.
I okey, she said.
She made a vague sound in her throat and turned on to the boulevard. We came to the service station at the coast highway and turned north to Montemar Vista and the sidewalk cafe there. It was lit up like a luxury liner. The girl pulled over on to the shoulder and I got out and stood holding the door.
I fumbled a card out of my wallet and passed it in to her. Some day you may need a strong back, I said. Let me know. But dont call me if its brain work.
She tapped the card on the wheel and said slowly: Youll find me in the Bay City phone book. 819 Twenty-fifth Street. Come around and pin a putty medal on me for minding my own business. I think youre still woozy from that crack on the head.
She swung her car swiftly around on the highway and I watched its twin tail-lights fade into the dark.
I walked past the arch and the sidewalk cafe into the parking space and got into my car. A bar was right in front of me and I was shaking again. But it seemed smarter to walk into the West Los Angeles police station the way I did twenty minutes later, as cold as a frog and as green as the back of a new dollar bill.
12
It was an hour and a half later. The body had been taken away, the ground gone over, and I had told my story three or four times. We sat, four of us, in the day captains room at the West Los Angeles station. The building was quiet except for a drunk in a cell who kept giving the Australian bush call while he waited to go downtown for sunrise court.
A hard white light inside a glass reflector shone down on the flat topped table on which were spread the things that had come from Lindsay Marriotts pockets, things now that seemed as dead and homeless as their owner. The man across the table from me was named Randall and he was from Central Homicide in Los Angeles. He was a thin quiet man of fifty with smooth creamy gray hair, cold eyes, a distant manner. He wore a dark red tie with black spots on it and the spots kept dancing in front of my eyes. Behind him, beyond the cone of light, two beefy men lounged like bodyguards, each of them watching one of my ears.
I fumbled a cigarette around in my fingers and lit it and didnt like the taste of it. I sat watching it burn between my fingers. I felt about eighty years old and slipping fast.
Randall said coldly: The oftener you tell this story the sillier it sounds. This man Marriott had been negotiating for days, no doubt, about this pay-off and then just a few hours before the final meeting he calls up a perfect stranger and hires him to go with him as a bodyguard.
Not exactly as a bodyguard, I said. I didnt even tell him I had a gun. Just for company.
Where did he hear of you?
First he said a mutual friend. Then that he just picked my name out of the book.
Randall poked gently among the stuff on the table and detached a white card with an air of touching something not quite clean. He pushed it along the wood.
He had your card. Your business card.
I glanced at the card. It had come out of his billfold, together with a number of other cards I hadnt bothered to examine back there in the hollow of Purissima Canyon. It was one of my cards all right. It looked rather dirty at that, for a man like Marriott. There was a round smear across one corner.
Sure, I said. I hand those out whenever I get a chance. Naturally.