I parked in a slot near the garage ramp and the sound of the ocean was very close and you could feel the drifting spray and smell it and taste it. We got out and moved over to the garage entrance. A narrow raised walk edged the ramp. A sign hung midway of the entrance said: Descend in Low Gear. Sound Horn. The girl grabbed me by the arm and stopped me.
“I’m going in by the lobby. I’m too tired to climb the stairs.”
“Okay. No law against it. What’s the room number?”
“Twelve twenty-four. What do we get if we’re caught?”
“Caught doing what?”
“You know what. Putting—putting it over the balcony wall. Or somewhere.”
“I’d get staked out on an anthill. I don’t know about you. Depends what else they have on you.”
“How can you talk like that before breakfast?”
She turned and walked away quickly. I started down the ramp. It curved as they all do and then I could see a glassed-in cubbyhole of an office with a hanging light in it. A little farther down and I could see that it was empty. I listened for sounds of somebody doing a little work on a car, water in a wash rack, steps, whistling, any little noise to indicate where the night man was and what he was doing. In a basement garage you can hear a very small noise indeed. I heard nothing.
I went on down and was almost level with the upper end of the office. Now by stooping I could see the shallow steps up into the basement elevator lobby. There was a door marked: To Elevator. It had glass panels and I could see light beyond it, but little else.
I took three more steps and froze. The night man was looking right at me. He was in a big Packard sedan in the back seat. The light shone on his face and he wore glasses and the light shone hard on the glasses. He was leaning back comfortably in the corner of the car. I stood there and waited for him to move. He didn’t move. His head was against the car cushions. His mouth was open. I had to know why he didn’t move. He might be just pretending to be asleep until I got out of sight. When that happened he would beat it across to the phone and call the office.
Then I thought that was silly. He wouldn’t have come on the job until evening and he couldn’t know all the guests by sight. The sidewalk that bordered the ramp was there to walk on. It was almost 4 A.M. In an hour or so it would begin to get light. No hotel prowler would come around that late.
I walked straight over to the Packard and looked in on him. The car was shut up tight, all windows. The man didn’t move. I reached for the door handle and tried to open the door without noise. He still didn’t move. He looked like a very light colored man. He also looked asleep and I could hear him snoring even before I got the door open. Then I got it full in the face—the honeyed reek of well-cured marijuana. The guy was out of circulation, he was in the valley of peace, where time is slowed to a standstill, where the world is all colors and music. And in a couple of hours from now he wouldn’t have a job, even if the cops didn’t grab him and toss him into the deep freeze.
I shut the car door again and crossed to the glass-paneled door. I went through into a small bare elevator lobby with a concrete floor and two blank elevator doors and beside them, opening on a heavy door closer, the fire stairs. I pulled that open and started up. I went slowly. Twelve stories and a basement take a lot of stairs. I counted the fire doors as I passed them because they were not numbered. They were heavy and solid and gray like the concrete of the steps. I was sweating and out of breath when I pulled open the door to the twelfth-floor corridor. I prowled along to Room 1224 and tried the knob. It was locked, but almost at once the door was opened, as if she had been waiting just behind it. I went in past her and flopped into a chair and waited to get some breath back. It was a big airy room with french windows opening on a balcony. The double bed had been slept in or arranged to look that way. Odds and ends of clothing on chairs, toilet articles on the dresser, luggage. It looked about twenty bucks a day, single.
She turned the night latch in the door. “Have any trouble?”
“The night man was junked to the eyes. Harmless as a kitten.” I heaved myself out of the chair and started across to the french doors.
“Wait!” she said sharply. I looked back at her. “It’s no use,” she said. “Nobody could do a thing like that.”
I stood there and waited.
“I’d rather call the police,” she said. “Whatever it means for me.”
“That’s a bright idea,” I said. “Why ever didn’t we think of it before?”
“You’d better leave,” she said. “There’s no need for you to be mixed up in it.”
I didn’t say anything. I watched her eyes. She could hardly keep them open. It was either delayed shock or some kind of dope. I didn’t know which.
“I swallowed two sleeping pills,” she said, reading my mind.
“I just can’t take any more trouble tonight. Go away from here. Please. When I wake I’ll call room service. When the waiter comes I’ll get him out on the balcony somehow and he’ll find—whatever he’ll find. And I won’t know a damn thing about it.” Her tongue was getting thick. She shook herself and rubbed hard against her temples. “I’m sorry about the money. You’ll have to give it back to me, won’t you?”
I went over close to her. “Because if I don’t you’ll tell them the whole story?”
“I’ll have to,” she said drowsily. “How can I help it?
They’ll get it out of me. I’m—I’m too tired to fight any more.”
I took hold of her arm and shook her. Her head wobbled.
“Quite sure you only took two capsules?”
She blinked her eyes open. “Yes. I never take more than two.”
“Then listen. I’m going out there and have a look at him. Then I’m going back to the Rancho. I’m going to keep your money. Also I have your gun. Maybe it can’t be traced to me but—Wake up! Listen to me!” Her head was rolling sideways again. She jerked straight and her eyes widened, but they looked dull and withdrawn. “Listen. If it can’t be traced to you, it certainly can’t be traced to me. I’m working for a lawyer and my assignment is you. The traveler’s checks and the gun will go right where they belong. And your story to the cops won’t be worth a wooden nickel. All it will do is help to hang you. Understand that?”
“Ye-es,” she said. “And I don’t g-give a damn.”
“That’s not you talking. It’s the sleeping medicine.”
She sagged forward and I caught her and steered her over to the bed. She flopped on it any old way. I pulled her shoes off and spread a blanket over her and tucked her in. She was asleep at once. She began to snore. I went into the bathroom and groped around and found a bottle of Nembutal on the shelf. It was almost full. It had a prescription number and a date on it. The date was a month old, the drugstore was in Baltimore. I dumped the yellow capsules out into my palm and counted them. There were forty-seven and they almost filled the bottle. When they take them to kill themselves, they take them all—except what they spill, and they nearly always spill some. I put the pills back in the bottle and put the bottle in my pocket.
I went back and looked at her again. The room was cold. I turned the radiator on, not too much. And finally at long last I opened the french doors and went out on the balcony. It was as cold as hell out there. The balcony was about twelve by fourteen feet, with a thirty-inch wall across the front and a low iron railing sprouting out of that. You could jump off easy enough, but you couldn’t possibly fall off accidentally. There were two aluminum patio chaises wilh padded cushions, two armchairs of the same type. The dividing wall to the left stuck out the way she had told me. I didn’t think even a steeplejack could get around the projection without climbing tackle. The wall at the other end rose sheer to the edge of what must be one of the penthouse terraces.