“Where do you live, Mrs. Swayze?”
She pointed toward the window.
“Over there,” she said brightly, “somewhere.”
I nodded and glanced out the window.
“No,” I said. “I don’t see your house either.”
“I look,” she said. “I look all the time, but I never seem able to find it.”
As I got closer I could see that her book was a high-class, well-printed four-color collection of some of the filthiest pornographic photographs I had ever seen. It was the kind of expensive smut that Arthur Gwynne Geiger had peddled out of his shop on Hollywood Boulevard near Las Palmas. But that was a while ago now, before I killed Lash Canino.
The old lady had lost interest in me and was studying her book again, licking her thumb periodically to turn a page. Hunched over the big book in her small lap, she looked like a gentle sparrow. On the bureau against the wall, and piled on the nightstand beside her bed, were other books just like the one she had, well bound, well produced, and filthier than a Tijuana latrine.
She looked up and saw me looking at the books.
“Would you like to read one of my books?” she said. “I love books like this. Do you?”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am,” I said. “Not exactly.”
“Well, I do,” she said firmly. “And the doctor gets them for me anytime I want them.”
“Dr. Bonsentir?” I said.
“Yes... well, not himself always, sometimes one of the young men gets them for me.”
“Mrs. Swayze,” I said, “do you know Carmen Sternwood?”
She let the book rest open in her lap. There were two women and a man in a double-truck full-color spread. I tried not to notice.
“Carmen?” she said. She had straightened and her forehead wrinkled slightly as she tried to pull the raveled threads of her aging mind together.
“Carmen Sternwood,” I said. “Young woman, smallish, nice figure, light brown hair. Her thumbs were sort of odd-looking.”
Mrs. Swayze smiled. It was the thumbs.
“Of course. Carmen. She lives here too. Yes. She often comes in to read my books. Sometimes we read them together.”
“Have you seen her lately?” I said.
Mrs. Swayze’s face tightened a little. It made her cheeks pinch and redden.
“I think she went off with Mr. Simpson. I think she’s visiting him.”
“Really?” I said. “Do you know Mr. Simpson’s full name?”
Mrs. Swayze’s eyes got very wide and she looked a little frightened.
“Me? I don’t know. I don’t know anyone’s first name. I don’t remember very much anymore. I can’t even remember where my house is. I look and I look and I can’t see it.”
“Do you know where Mr. Simpson’s house is?”
She shook her head vigorously, and pointed again, vaguely, toward the window.
“Over there,” she said, “I imagine.”
“Do you know why she went to visit Mr. Simpson?” I said.
Mrs. Swayze smiled secretively and winked at me.
“A lot of the young girls here go to visit Mr. Simpson.”
“Do they usually come back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Her tone suggested that the question was idiotic.
Then her eyes shifted past me and she said, “Hi, sweetie.”
I turned. Sweetie was the Mexican, on crepe-soled shoes, who had opened the door behind me. I should have smelled him. He was rank as a goat. His small eyes fixed on me and never left.
“I’ve been talking with Dr. Marlowe,” Mrs. Swayze said. “He tried to see my house for me but he says he can’t.”
The Mexican’s eyes never wavered.
“Si, Seriora Swayze,” he said. Then he raised a forefinger and curled it toward him and gestured me toward the hall. I turned to Mrs. Swayze and bowed slightly.
“If I see your house,” I said, “I’ll let you know.”
As I said it I slipped my gun out from under my arm and held it down against my leg, where the Mexican couldn’t see it. Then I straightened and turned to leave.
“Thank you, doctor,” Mrs. Swayze said. She was bent back over her book, fully engrossed again, wetting her thumb to turn the next page.
The Mexican backed out of the room ahead of me and as I reached the hall and stepped away from the door he whistled a punch with his left hand that caught me on the side of the jaw and slammed me back against the wall. It was like being hit by a bowling ball. I banged into the wall, my legs felt rubbery and I slid a little downward, trying to brace against the wall with my back as I slid. There was no expression on the Mexican’s face as he stepped in to me and rammed his forearm up under my chin, and pinned me back against the wall. His breath was sour in my face as he came in against me and I saw his eyes suddenly widen as I jammed the muzzle of the Colt into his belly under his rib cage.
“Back up,” I said hoarsely, “your breath is wilting my suit.”
The Mexican stepped back carefully and stood with his hands a little away from his sides, his small eyes still steady on me.
“Now,” I said, “you and I are going to walk down this corridor and into the front hall and out the front door. And you’re going to do it backwards.”
He made no motion, he said nothing. I could feel the tension in him, like a trigger waiting to be pulled. I hoped he could feel the same thing in me. Especially because I had a trigger to pull.
“Move,” I said.
He backed slowly down the corridor, moving through the patches of sunlight where the doors to patients’ rooms were open and the light streamed in from the east. Dust motes lazed in the sunlight. At the far end of the corridor there was a door in the right wall. I jerked the gun at it and it opened and we were in the entry hall where I’d waited to see Dr. Bonsentir. The slick-haired man in the white coat was there. He looked at me and made a move with his hand. I shook my head and he froze.
“You too!” I said. “Both of you face the wall, hands on the wall, spread your legs, back away from the wall so the weight is on your hands.”
They did as they were told. No one spoke. I patted them down. The Mexican had no gun. He’d probably gotten hungry one day and eaten it. I took a Smith and Wesson.38 out from under the other guy’s left arm.
“Anyone pokes his nose through the door,” I said, “gets a bullet in it.”
No one moved or spoke. I opened the front door carefully and looked out. The front yard was empty. The two orderlies leaned on the wall. I stepped out the front door and closed it and ran for my car.
9
There were 105 people named Simpson in the L. A. phone book, if you counted the guy who spelled it without the P, or the one who spelled it Sympson. Of them, five were women, and three more had only the first initial and thus probably were women. Which left only 97 people for me to run down. If Carmen was with someone whose phone was listed, or with someone in L. A. If his real name was Mr. Simpson. My source was not impeccable.
I got up from my desk and stared out the window at the heat shimmering up off Hollywood Boulevard. The sun was steady and hot, and the smell of the grill from the coffee shop downstairs went perfectly with the weather. My coat was off and hanging on my chair. My shirt stuck to my back and I had taken off my shoulder holster and hung it on the chair over my coat, handy in case a horde of sanitarium orderlies burst in and tried to stick me in a straitjacket. If I looked left I could stare down Cahuenga toward lower Hollywood, out of the glitter district where big comfortable homes with deep verandas still lined quiet streets. It would be cool inside those homes with their thick walls and their low roofs, some people kept the windows closed and the heat out, others opened them for ventilation and the lace curtains would stir lazily in the hot wind and make a soft whisper. But listen though I might, it didn’t whisper where Carmen Sternwood was. I needed a different approach.