He put the key in his pocket, slammed the sprung door of the Lincoln, got in under the wheel. The motor caught. He backed the car away from the tree with a wrench of broken fender metal, swung it around slowly over the soft earth and got it back again on the road.
When he reached Riverside again he turned the lights on and drove back to Hollywood. He put the car under some pepper trees in front of a big brick apartment house on Kenmore half a block north of Hollywood Boulevard, locked the ignition and lifted out his suitcase.
Light from the entrance of the apartment house rested on the front license plate as he walked away. He wondered why gunmen would use a car with plate numbers reading 5A6, almost a privilege number.
In a drugstore he phoned for a taxi. The taxi took him back to the Chatterton.
FOUR
The apartment was empty. The smell of Shalimar and cigarette smoke lingered on the warm air, as if someone had been there not long before. De Ruse pushed into the bedroom, looked at clothes in two closets, articles on a dresser, then went back to the red and white living room and mixed himself a stiff highball.
He put the night latch on the outside door and carried his drink into the bedroom, stripped off his muddy clothes and put on another suit of somber material but dandified cut. He sipped his drink while he knotted a black four-in-hand in the opening of a soft white linen shirt.
He swabbed the barrel of the little Mauser, reassembled it, and added a shell to the small clip, slipped the gun back into the leg holster. Then he washed his hands and took his drink to the telephone.
The first number he called was the Chronicle. He asked for the City Room, Werner.
A drawly voice dripped over the wire: «Werner talkin’. Go ahead. Kid me.»
De Ruse said: «This is John De Ruse, Claude. Look up California License 5A6 on your list for me.»
«Must be a bloody politician,» the drawly voice said, and went away.
De Ruse sat motionless, looking at a fluted white pillar in the corner. It had a red and white bowl of red and white artificial roses on top of it. He wrinkled his nose at it disgustedly.
Werner’s voice came back on the wire: «1930 Lincoln limousine registered to Hugo Candless, Casa de Oro Apartments, 2942 Clearwater Street, West Hollywood.»
De Ruse said in a tone that meant nothing: «That’s the mouthpiece, isn’t it?»
«Yeah. The big lip. Mister Take the Witness.» Werner’s voice came down lower. «Speaking to you, Johnny, and not for publication — a big crooked tub of guts that’s not even smart; just been around long enough to know who’s for sale … Story in it?»
«Hell, no,» De Ruse said softly. «He just sideswiped me and didn’t stop.»
He hung up and finished his drink, stood up to mix another. Then he swept a telephone directory onto the white desk and looked up the number of the Casa de Oro. He dialed it. A switchboard operator told him Mr. Hugo Candless was out of town.
«Give me his apartment,» De Ruse said.
A woman’s cool voice answered the phone. «Yes. This is Mrs. Hugo Candless speaking. What is it, please?»
De Ruse said: «I’m a client of Mr. Candless, very anxious to get hold of him. Can you help me?»
«I’m very sorry,» the cool, almost lazy voice told him. «My husband was called out of town quite suddenly. I don’t even know where he went, though I expect to hear from him later this evening. He left his club —»
«What club was that?» De Ruse asked casually.
«The Delmar Club. I say he left there without coming home. If there is any message —»
De Ruse said: «Thank you, Mrs. Candless. Perhaps I may call you again later.»
He hung up, smiled slowly and grimly, sipped his fresh drink and looked up the number of the Hotel Metropole. He called it and asked for «Mister Charles Le Grand in Room 809.»
«Six-o-nine,» the operator said casually. «I’ll connect you.» A moment later: «There is no answer.»
De Ruse thanked her, took the tabbed key out of his pocket, looked at the number on it. The number was 809.
FIVE
Sam, the doorman at the Delmar Club, leaned against the buff stone of the entrance and watched the traffic swish by on Sunset Boulevard. The headlights hurt his eyes. He was tired and he wanted to go home. He wanted a smoke and a big slug of gin. He wished the rain would stop. It was dead inside the club when it rained.
He straightened away from the wall and walked the length of the sidewalk canopy a couple of times, slapping together his big black hands in big white gloves. He tried to whistle the «Skaters Waltz,» couldn’t get within a block of the tune, whistled «Low Down Lady» instead. That didn’t have any tune.
De Ruse came around the corner from Hudson Street and stood beside him near the wall.
«Hugo Candless inside?» he asked, not looking at Sam.
Sam clicked his teeth disapprovingly. «He ain’t.»
«Been in?»
«Ask at the desk’side, please, mistah.»
De Ruse took gloved hands out of his pocket and began to roll a five-dollar bill around his left forefinger.
«What do they know that you don’t know?»
Sam grinned slowly, watched the bill being wound tightly around the gloved finger.
«That’s a fac’, boss. Yeah — he was in. Comes most every day.»
«What time he leave?»
«He leave ’bout six-thirty, Ah reckon.»
«Drive his blue Lincoln limousine?»
«Shuah. Only he don’t drive it hisself. What for you ask?»
«It was raining then,» De Ruse said calmly. «Raining pretty hard. Maybe it wasn’t the Lincoln.»
«’Twas, too, the Lincoln,» Sam protested. «Ain’t I tucked him in? He never rides nothin’ else.»
«License 5A6?» De Ruse bored on relentlessly.
«That’s it,» Sam chortled. «Just like a councilman’s number that number is.»
«Know the driver?»
«Shuah —» Sam began, and then stopped cold. He raked a black jaw with a white finger the size of a banana. «Well, Ah’ll be a big black slob if he ain’t got hisself a new driver again. I ain’t know that man, sure’nough.»
De Ruse poked the rolled bill into Sam’s big white paw. Sam grabbed it but his large eyes suddenly got suspicious.
«Say, for what you ask all of them questions, mistah man?»
De Ruse said: «I paid my way, didn’t I?»
He went back around the corner to Hudson and got into his black Packard sedan. He drove it out on to Sunset, then west on Sunset almost to Beverly Hills, then turned towards the foothills and began to peer at the signs on street corners. Clearwater Street ran along the flank of a hill and had a view of the entire city. The Casa de Oro, at the corner of Parkinson, was a tricky block of high-class bungalow apartments surrounded by an adobe wall with red tiles on top. It had a lobby in a separate building, a big private garage on Parkinson, opposite one length of the wall.
De Ruse parked across the street from the garage and sat looking through the wide window into a glassed-in office where an attendant in spotless white coveralls sat with his feet on the desk, reading a magazine and spit over his shoulder at an invisible cuspidor.
De Ruse got out of the Packard, crossed the street farther up, came back and slipped into the garage without the attendant seeing him.
The cars were in four rows. Two rows backed against the white walls, two against each other in the middle. There were plenty of vacant stalls, but plenty of cars had gone to bed also. They were mostly big, expensive closed models, with two or three flashy open jobs.