“Nice,” I said.
“A few centuries ago I remember promising you a drink,” she said, looking at me. “Jimmy,” she called, and then to me, “What’ll you have?”
I drank a beer when it came and looked at her with sympathy and more.
“The drink is all I promised,” she said hoarsely.
“The drink is all you promised,” I agreed, looking over at Costello, who was nursing a second beer.
“I’m going to be lucky to make it back to my place and into bed alone. It’s been a tough day.” She finished her drink and looked into the bottom of the glass.
“I understand,” I said. “You need a ride?”
“Just a ride,” she said, looking at me. From a distance she had looked all right, but close up I could see that dancing of the eyeballs that shows someone who might have trouble navigating the length of a napkin.
“Gotta get back to work,” she said, standing, steadying herself and making it back to the piano. She ran a handful of fingers through her hair, coughed and began to sing. The monkey at the bar left in about ten minutes. That left just Costello, me and the barkeep. Lola wrapped up a medley of Cole Porter without losing too many words, and I clapped. I gave Costello a dirty look, and he joined in clapping. Jimmy the bartender was already cleaning up for the night.
“You need anything?” I asked Lola at the piano.
“A steady arm and a new head,” she said and smiled, reaching under the piano for a small purse.
She said good night to the bartender, and I put my arm around her to give her support to the door. I nodded to Costello that it was time to go. He caught me at the door and grabbed my arm.
“I gotta wait for Marco. He took the car.”
“I’m not staying to keep you company.” I told him and went out into the Burbank night with Lola. Somewhere a dog barked. The street was dark and quiet, and so was Lola.
She almost fell asleep on the way to the Glendale address she gave me. I knew the way. I grew up in Glendale. At least I got older in Glendale.
Her furnished apartment was in a new war boom building on the commercial strip. Some people were sitting outside swapping songs, lies and stories, waiting for the factory shifts to change or unwinding after a long day. I got Lola through the hall with writing on the walls. There was no carpeting and no attempt to cover the cement blocks which the building was made of. Our footsteps bounced around, and the few words I said were lost in echoes.
At her door she found her key and turned to me.
“I wouldn’t be much good,” she said with a sad smile.
“Some other time,” I said wittily.
She touched my cheek and kissed me, her mouth soft and tired and tasting of sweet bourbon and lost dreams. I lost myself in the kiss, and then she pulled away.
“Like a teenage date,” she said, and then she disappeared through the door, closing it behind her.
I felt sorry for myself. Someone was trying to kill me, but that wasn’t what was making me sad. Ann was getting married. Carmen worked late and fought me off and Lola Farmer was too drunk and sad.
Heliotrope was quiet. Lights were out on the street, and Mrs. Plaut had long since tucked away her manuscript. I parked behind a Packard right in front of the house. It looked like Marco and Costello’s Packard. I checked the license plate and it sounded right. Marco wasn’t in the car.
No one stirred as I went into the house and up the stairs to my room. I went in quietly and turned on my lights. Costello was sitting at my table, looking up at me with his eyes wide and his mouth open.
“Okay,” I started to say wearily and then stopped. Something red trickled from Costello’s mouth.
When I reached him, I could see the glassy look of pain and surprise in his eyes. One reason for it was the knife in his back. It was a long knife. Now you might wonder how I would know it was a long knife if it was imbedded in the back of my uninvited guest. It was my knife, one of the two kitchen knives that had come with the room.
“Who did it?” I asked, kneeling next to Costello, who grasped my arm with the grip of death.
“He …” gasped Costello.
“Who?”
“Yes … He … No … Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes, no, yes?” I repeated.
“He … No … Yes,” agreed Costello.
With that enlightening exchange, my guest fell over on his face, just missing a spot of milk I had failed to clean up from breakfast. He was dead. I knew what I had to do. Costello was short, but too heavy to haul away, and I didn’t want to be caught trying. I could just let him sit there till morning and then call the police, but I didn’t think I’d get much sleep, and besides it would just be putting off the inevitable.
I went to the hall phone and called the Wilshire Police District Office. It wasn’t quite in this area, but that’s where my brother Phil was in charge of homicide.
Phil wasn’t at the station: The sergeant on the desk said he’d give me Officer Cawelti. I said no thanks. Cawelti and I were not sleep-over friends.
I called Phil at home. His wife Ruth answered sleepily.
“Ruth, this is Toby. Did I wake you?”
“No, what time is it? The baby’s up with something. What’s wrong, Toby?”
Before I could say more I could hear a grunt and the bouncing of springs. Behind that was the cry of my niece Lucy.
“Toby,” came Phil’s voice, wavering between concern and anger, “what do you want?”
“I’ve got something for the boys,” I said softly. “I picked up autographs of Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Mark Koenig and Bob Meusel this morning.”
“You’re drunk,” hissed Phil.
“I’ve also got something for you-your favorite-a corpse.”
“Where?” he said soberly.
“Here, in my room.”
“You did it?” asked Phil seriously.
“No, someone left him as a present.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
While I waited for Phil I went carefully through Costello’s pockets. They didn’t tell me much except that his last name was Santucci, that he was from Chicago and that he was married. He had forty bucks and a holster with a gun which hadn’t been fired. I thought over his nonsense comments and tried to make sense of them. I woke Gunther, who came in wearing a tiny gray bathrobe with a sash. Gunther avoided examining the corpse and told me that he had heard some noises in my room about an hour earlier, but that since I hadn’t answered when he knocked, he had assumed I was all right.
I told Gunther about my conversation a few minutes ago with the now-dead Costello, and Gunther listened seriously, touched his tiny chin and hurried to his room for a pencil and paper.
“I think I understand,” he said animatedly. “You asked him who killed him and he said …”
“He. No. Yes,” I finished, looking at Costello’s head.
“Okay,” I went on, wanting to make a Spam sandwich but thinking it might look bad if my brother came while I was munching over the corpse. “He was killed by He. Yes. No Yes.”
“Is there a street perhaps or a place in Los Angeles called Yesno or Yezno or Yeznoyes or …”
“That’s it, Gunther,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “No Yes. Noyes. There is a street called Noyes in Burbank, and that’s where I was tonight. Costello didn’t know how to pronounce it. Maybe he was telling us where he was killed, not who killed him. So what do we have?”
You have,” explained Gunther, “a man who was murdered on Noyes Street.”
“I don’t see what difference where he was killed makes. But that’s my knife in his back. Either the killer came here earlier and took it, or he got Costello here somehow and killed him. Either way he was dumped here to get me in trouble and out of a case I’m on.”
There was a loud knock at the door downstairs.
“Phil,” I said, and Gunther put his hands in his robe and hurried back to his room. He had no affection for Phil, and Phil in a bad mood would think nothing of drop-kicking Gunther through the window.