The card was a driver’s license which described the blonde briefly, said she lived in Menlo Park and her name was Anne Marie Booker.
I returned the license. She glanced at it absently and tossed it on the dresser. I gave her a cigarette, took one myself, lit them. She dropped into the chair by the writing desk and said, “Ralph Booker was my stepfather.”
“You heard?” I decided the bed would hold me and sat on it.
“After you left, they let me go in the bedroom,” she said. “I was listening to the radio, hoping to get those awful people out of my mind, when the announcer interrupted with a news flash.” Anne shivered a little. “There was no one in the living room, I could hear the men talking in another part of the house. I just picked up my things and walked out. I caught the first bus I saw and it brought me downtown. I walked around for a while, wondering what to do, and then decided to register at a hotel.”
“You picked a good spot.”
“Oh, I feel such a fool,” she said tearfully. “I had no idea what I was doing. I walked into it blindly and trustingly, and I had no right or reason to trust him.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I want to. Those men are after you; and the police are looking for you, the announcer said. If it hadn’t been for me...”
“Cheer up. These things happen in my business.”
Anne crushed her cigarette in the desk tray and fastened her eyes on a vanishing hummingbird in the pallid wallpaper. “My mother was a registered nurse,” she said. “My father had been dead six years when she met Ralph Booker. He was a lung patient in the hospital where she worked and, for reasons I’ll never understand, she fell in love with him.” She was speaking laboriously, with a catch in her voice. “Ralph was in terrible pain at the time, perhaps pity grew into love. Anyway, he was operated on successfully, one lung was removed and my mother married him shortly afterwards.”
Anne reached for another cigarette. I lit it for her and snuffed out mine.
“I suppose Ralph received no more drugs while he was ill than any other patient, but he grew too fond of them. A slight cold, a business setback, anything, became an excuse to seek relief in narcotics. It became a habit. Mother worried and coddled him, even fought with him, but it was no use.” Anne shook her head, dropped her eyes to the floor. “We couldn’t find out where or how Ralph got the stuff. We did know he was paying extravagantly for it. He was squeezed out of his business finally, and was forced to take a salaried job with Mayflower, a company he organized himself.”
I asked, “Before that, what business was he in?”
“Sungate Investments,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “Ralph started the company from scratch. Later he took in his attorney, Ashton Brubaker, as a partner. It was Mr. Brubaker who forced him out. Think of where he is today.”
“He’s somewhere, all right.”
“Mother hung on to Ralph, always hoping he would straighten out. When I was ready for college she dug into her savings and sent me to UCLA. I could have gone to Cal or Stanford, but mother wanted to get me away from the unwholesome atmosphere in our own home.” Anne frowned at her cigarette. “She died two years ago, just before I graduated, sick with worry and helplessness over Ralph. She wasn’t fifty years old.”
“After UCLA I took a position with a Menlo Park attorney and moved there,” she continued. “From time to time Ralph called and asked me to have dinner with him, or to attend one social function or another. I always accepted. Petty and weak as Ralph was, I knew mother would have wanted me to help him. I was his only family and I think our meetings, going out in public together, gave him a big lift.”
“I can see that.”
“On Wednesday he came down to Menlo Park himself,” Anne said “He told me that one of his salesmen, Robert Donaldson, had disappeared without a trace, and some valuable designs and patterns had disappeared with him. He told me Donaldson might be trying to sell out to a Mayflower competitor, or he may have met with an accident, but it was imperative he be found. Because of the publicity which would result if he had done anything dishonest the company wanted to soft pedal his disappearance and by-pass the police. It was Ralph’s personal responsibility.” She sighed resignedly, put out her cigarette. “He outlined his plan: I was to impersonate a non-existent ex-wife and employ you to find him. It seemed like a harmless ruse then. I agreed and arranged for time off with my boss. You know the rest.”
“You’re damn lucky his plan failed,” I observed. “If Mortola’s hoods followed me to Donaldson, you and I would be the leads to what happened to him later.”
“They wanted to kill him.”
“Yeah, they did. Ralph Booker was a pawn in a giantic narcotics’ operation. Murder is a mere business detail to them.”
“I was a fool,” she said bitterly.
“I don’t believe your step father realized you were in danger. He probably thought Donaldson and I would be taken care of quietly and you could return to Menlo Park in complete innocence.” Anne refused a cigarette, I lit another. “That seems to be the original plan. Later, when things got involved, Ralph Booker was eliminated because he wouldn’t stand for what they were doing to you. How did you happen to leave the hotel this morning with Benny Lufts?”
“He called at the hotel and said Ralph asked him to drive me home. He took me to Mortola’s instead and held me prisoner.”
“Your stepfather may not have known about that.”
“I’d like to think so,” Anne said wistfully. She added, “They’re planning to find out from you where Donaldson is located, I overheard them talking this afternoon. If you haven’t led them to Donaldson by eight o’clock, they expect to beat it out of you.”
“What happens at eight?”
“They’re having some kind of meeting. I overheard Mortola say that a shipment came in this afternoon and they’d have to get things straightened out before they could move it.”
“A shipment of heroin?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, they’re pretty excited about it.”
“Where are they meeting?”
“It sounded like Danzee’s, or Danzer’s.”
“Danzig’s, the Green Slipper?”
“Possibly.”
“That’s a break,” I said, getting up. “I’m going to leave you now, for awhile. I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here in your room though, tough assignment.” I squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Don’t leave under any circumstances.”
She smiled bleakly. “I’ll stay.”
Nine
I made two phone calls from the lobby of the hotel. The first was to my office, where a cop was still stationed. Jack Holland hadn’t turned up yet. I filled in Hilda on the latest developments, and asked her to pass them on to Jack when he arrived.
“Yes, Mr. Ottomeyer,” she said.
I dialled police headquarters and asked for Inspector Stroth, homicide. A gruff voice said, “Inspector Stroth speaking.”
“Hello, Hank. This is Bill Sweeney...”
“You son of a bitch, we’ve got a bulletin out on you, as if you don’t know. Where the hell are you?”
“Take it easy, Hank. I called to tell you about it,” I said into the phone. I began with my first visit to Ralph Booker and sketched in all the picture I had.
When I finished Hank snapped, “Come down to the Hall.”
“Let me play it my way. They need me bad, Hank. I’ll just walk into the Green Slipper tonight and see what happens.”
“You’ll get yourself killed,” he said. “No special loss, but we need you to finger these guys. Come down to the Hall.”