“He’s dead.”
I could smell the fear on Donny: there’s an unexplained trace of canine in my chromosomes. The hairs were prickling on the back of my neck, and I wondered if Donny’s fear was of the past or for the future. The pimples stood out in bas-relief against his pale lugubrious face.
“I think he was murdered, Donny. You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“Me lying?” But his reaction was slow and feeble.
“The dead man didn’t check in alone. He had a woman with him.”
“What woman?” he said in elaborate surprise.
“You tell me. Her name was Fern. I think she did the shooting, and you caught her red-handed. The wounded man got out of the room and into his car and away. The woman stayed behind to talk to you. She probably paid you to dispose of his clothes and fake a new registration card for the room. But you both overlooked the blood on the floor of the bathroom. Am I right?”
“You couldn’t be wronger, mister. Are you a cop?”
“A private detective. You’re in deep trouble, Donny. You’d better talk yourself out of it if you can, before the cops start on you.”
“I didn’t do anything.” His voice broke like a boy’s. It went strangely with the glints of grey in his hair.
“Faking the register is a serious rap, even if they don’t hang accessory to murder on you.”
He began to expostulate in formless sentences that ran together. At the same time his hand was moving across the dirty grey blanket. It burrowed under the pillow and came out holding a crumpled card. He tried to stuff it into his mouth and chew it. I tore it away from between his discolored teeth.
It was a registration card from the motel, signed in a boyish scrawclass="underline" Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rowe, Detroit, Mich.
Donny was trembling violently. Below his cheap cotton shorts, his bony knees vibrated like tuning forks. “It wasn’t my fault,” he cried. “She held a gun on me.”
“What did you do with the man’s clothes?”
“Nothing. She didn’t even let me into the room. She bundled them up and took them away herself.”
“Where did she go?”
“Down the highway towards town. She walked away on the shoulder of the road and that was the last I saw of her.”
“How much did she pay you, Donny?”
“Nothing, not a cent. I already told you, she held a gun on me.”
“And you were so scared you kept quiet until this morning?”
“That’s right. I was scared. Who wouldn’t be scared?”
“She’s gone now,” I said. “You can give me a description of her.”
“Yeah.” He made a visible effort to pull his vague thoughts together. One of his eyes was a little off center, lending his face a stunned, amorphous appearance. “She was a big tall dame with blondey hair.”
“Dyed?”
“I guess so, I dunno. She wore it in a braid like, on top of her head. She was kind of fat, built like a lady wrestler, great big watermelons on her. Big legs.”
“How was she dressed?”
“I didn’t hardly notice, I was so scared. I think she had some kind of a purple coat on, with black fur around the neck. Plenty of rings on her fingers and stuff.”
“How old?”
“Pretty old, I’d say. Older than me, and I’m going on thirty-nine.”
“And she did the shooting?”
“I guess so. She told me to say if anybody asked me, I was to say that Mr. Rowe shot himself.”
“You’re very suggestible, aren’t you, Donny? It’s a dangerous way to be, with people pushing each other around the way they do.”
“I didn’t get that, mister. Come again.” He batted his pale blue eyes at me, smiling expectantly.
“Skip it,” I said and left him.
A few hundred yards up the highway I passed an HP car with two uniformed men in the front seat looking grim. Donny was in for it now. I pushed him out of my mind and drove across country to Palm Springs.
Palm Springs is still a one-horse town, but the horse is a Palomino with silver trappings. Most of the girls were Palomino, too. The main street was a cross-section of Hollywood and Vine transported across the desert by some unnatural force and disguised in western costumes which fooled nobody. Not even me.
I found Gretchen’s lingerie shop in an expensive-looking arcade built around an imitation flagstone patio. In the patio’s centre a little fountain gurgled pleasantly, flinging small lariats of spray against the heat. It was late in March, and the season was ending. Most of the shops, including the one I entered, were deserted except for the hired help.
It was a small cool shop, faintly perfumed by a legion of vanished dolls. Stockings and robes and other garments were coiled on the glass counters or hung like brilliant treesnakes on display stands along the narrow walls. A henna-headed woman emerged from rustling recesses at the rear and came tripping towards me on her toes.
“You are looking for a gift, sir?” she cried with a wilted kind of gaiety. Behind her painted mask, she was tired and aging and it was Saturday afternoon and the lucky ones were dunking themselves in kidneyshaped swimming pools behind walls she couldn’t climb.
“Not exactly. In fact, not at all. A peculiar thing happened to me last night. I’d like to tell you about it, but it’s kind of a complicated story.”
She looked me over quizzically and decided that I worked for a living, too. The phony smile faded away. Another smile took its place, which I liked better. “You look as if you had a fairly rough night. And you could do with a shave.”
“I met a girl,” I said. “Actually she was a mature woman, a statuesque blonde to be exact. I picked her up on the beach at Laguna, if you want me to be brutally frank.”
“I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t. What kind of a pitch is this, brother?”
“Wait. You’re spoiling my story. Something clicked when we met, in that sunset light, on the edge of the warm summer sea.”
“It’s always bloody cold when I go in.”
“It wasn’t last night. We swam in the moonlight and had a gay time and all. Then she went away. I didn’t realize until she was gone that I didn’t know her telephone number, or even her last name.”
“Married woman, eh? What do you think I am, a lonely hearts club?” Still, she was interested, though she probably didn’t believe me. “She mentioned me, is that it? What was her first name?”
“Fern.”
“Unusual name. You say she was a big blonde?”
“Magnificently proportioned,” I said. “If I had a classical education I’d call her Junoesque.”
“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
“A little.”
“I thought so. Personally I don’t mind a little kidding. What did she say about me?”
“Nothing but good. As a matter of fact, I was complimenting her on her — er — garments.”
“I see.” She was long past blushing. “We had a customer last fall some time, by the name of Fern. Fern Dee. She had some kind of a job at the Joshua Club, I think. But she doesn’t fit the description at all. This one was a brunette, a middle-sized brunette, quite young. I remember the name Fern because she wanted it embroidered on all the things she bought. A corny idea if you ask me, but that was her girlish desire and who am I to argue with girlish desires.”
“Is she still in town?”
“I haven’t seen her lately, not for months. But it couldn’t be the woman you’re looking for. Or could it?”
“How long ago was she in here?”
She pondered. “Early last fall, around the start of the season. She only came in that once, and made a big purchase, stockings and nightwear and underthings. The works. I remember thinking at the time, here was a girlie who suddenly hit the chips but heavily.”
“She might have put on weight since then, and dyed her hair. Strange things can happen to the female form.”