“What did Ressner want from you?”
“Money, and a call to the institute to tell them not to look for him. He was most insistent.”
“Did he tell you where he was going, where he would be, where he was staying?”
“No, no.”
“Do you have any idea of where he might be?”
The pause was enough to make me plunge on.
“For his sake, Mrs. Grayson. For your daughter and many innocent people. You must tell me.” I was into my Dr. Christian act.
“There is a hotel in Hollywood, just off Vine. We stayed there when Delores was born and Jeffrey wanted to be an actor. He liked it there, the Los Olvidados. Something he said. I don’t remember quite what made me think …”
“I know the place,” I said. “Keep the cowboy nearby and tell Delores Toby will call her.”
“Toby?” she repeated. “What about Mr. Gunderson and the Joshua?”
“He’ll be out as soon as he can.”
I hung up, turned around, and almost bumped into Mrs. Plaut, who was standing with a broom in her hand staring at me.
“Childish,” she said.
I agreed but said nothing as I eased past her and headed down the stairs. I had a lead and might not have to head for Fresno after all.
It was a Tuesday morning. Kids were in school and the street was clear. I got in the Ford and it started with no trouble. The radio still didn’t work, and I fought down the knowledge that I was doomed to endless worry about whether the car would have gas in it. I put my.38 in the glove compartment and vowed to keep a little notebook on when I filled up with gas. I knew I wouldn’t do it.
There was no problem finding the Los Olvidados apartment hotel. It was a paint-peeling dump on Selma with a sagging palm out in front that looked as if it had a hangover.
The lobby was dark with a fluorescent light sputtering and crackling in the corner. The desk in the lobby was just big enough for one human to get behind, and one was there, a woman reading Collier’s magazine and puffing on a cigarette. She was thin as a rolled-up weekday paper, and her hair was brown wire tied up in a bun.
“Can I do you for?” she said, lifting her eyes but not her head.
“Guy named Ressner registered?”
She gave me a little more attention.
“You a friend?”
“I’m more than a friend,” I said and pulled out my wallet to flash the Dick Tracy badge I’d bought from my nephew Dave. She caught the glint but didn’t ask to see it.
“Got no Ressner registered,” she said. “What’s he look like?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “He would have come here within the last week or so. Can you go through the names? Maybe something will ring a bell.”
She lifted her bony elbow from the desk, rolled up the sleeve of her brown sweater, and put her cigarette in a tin tray. Then she pulled the gray register with a red ribbon in it and started on the names.
“Griffith, Warren, LaSconda, Benetiz, Skrinski, Grayson, Beel-”
“Grayson,” I stopped her. “First name?”
“Talbott,” she said. “Talbott Grayson. Hell of a name, but we get a lot of guys want to be actors and make up all kinds of crazy-ass names. Know what I mean?”
I knew this time. He had taken the names of the two men he planned to kill.
“Is he in now?” I said, putting on the friendly grin meant to calm people, but which usually had the opposite effect.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t even remember what he looks like. So many come through. He’s in three D. You going up?”
“I’m going up,” I said. “You want to give me a passkey?”
“I don’t know,” she said, cautiously hiking up her sweater to reveal knobby elbows.
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I can kick the door down. Or you can come with me. It might get a little pushy, so if you come, just stand back.”
“I’ll stay here. Got to watch the desk,” she decided, handing me the key. “Bring it right back, and if you got to take him out, take him real quiet.”
“Real quiet,” I said.
I found the stairway, a dark, narrow gangway, and hurried up. My head was beating and I reached up to touch my bandage, fearing that it was coming off. I owed Ressner something.
Three D was at the end of a hall that smelled stale and a little wet.
I knocked, prepared to imitate the woman at the desk, the mailman, or General Wainwright. It would come to me when Ressner answered. I gripped the.38 in my pocket and knocked again. No answer. The key fit perfectly and turned easily.
“Mr. Talbott?” I squeaked, trying to do Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. No answer. I pulled the gun out, ready to give Ressner an airing, but it was clear that he wasn’t there. There really wasn’t anyplace to hide. There was one small room and a clearly visible little bathroom. It was typical prewar furnished with a bed in the corner that could look a little like a couch if the thick flower spread was put on just right, which it wasn’t, a chair with a wild spring ready to goose the guest, a small table, a battered dresser, and a painting on the wall of an Oriental woman dancing with a fan in front of her nose.
The place looked empty. Drawers were open, tin wastebasket on its side. I moved to the little table, where I could see a piece of paper with some writing on it. My guess, as I took the few steps to the table, was that I’d wind up warning the woman at the desk and then come back up here to wait out the day and night in the hope that Ressner would show again, though it didn’t look likely. Then I read the note:
TOO LATE, PETERS. TRY AGAIN. I’M JUST A LITTLE AHEAD OF YOU.
I put my gun in my pocket, folded the note, put it in another pocket, and went through the wastebasket. Nothing there.
I left the room and went back down the stairs.
“Not there?” hoarse-whispered the wiry woman, pointing up with her cigarette.
“No,” I said, throwing her the key and hurrying across the lobby.
“What do I do if he comes back?” she continued to whisper.
“He’s not coming back,” I said.
I breathed deeply when I got outside, looked up at the spring sun, and felt great. I was on my way beyond Fresno.
CHAPTER 10
I stopped to get gas at a Sinclair station before I left L.A. and got a dirty look from an attendant with a Deep South accent when the Ford only took two gallons.
There was nothing much to take my mind off the pain in my scalp except the light morning traffic and my right-handed playing with the radio. Once I’d cleared town and hit 43, static hummed instead of spitting, and once, I actually got the faint murmur of a station.
A hellfire and dammit-all preacher warned me and the rest of the coast that we’d better mend our ways fast if we were going to have the moral stamina to fight off the Japanese. He pronounced stamina in three distinct syllables: sta-min-nuh. He was all I could get, so I let him keep me company, quoting from the Bible all the way to Corcoran.
I had a chicken sandwich and some war talk at the Elite Roadside Diner. The war talk was depressing, the chicken sandwich decent when washed down with the Elite’s homemade orange drink.
The overtoothed guy who gave me the orange drink asked about my head, and I told him I’d got drunk and tried to ram down a door. This seemed reasonable to him.
Back on the road, the Bible belter deserted me. His voice had begun to give out, and he turned the microphone over to a woman who began to confess her sins to accompanying organ music. Her list was amazingly long and lacking in detail. After twenty miles, somewhere near Selma, the station began to fade, and my head began to crackle with static, which worried me, since I had turned off the radio. The sun was still up, bouncing out towards the ocean beyond the hills. I decided to stop for the night and tackle Winning in the morning. The problem was that I couldn’t find an auto court for another ten miles, and the one I did spot was a series of gray wooden outhouses with a sign saying FREE RADIO. I pulled into the sandy driveway of Rose’s Rodeo Auto Hotel, got out, stretched my legs, and went in to see if there were any vacancies. I expected to have my choice.