“While I was on the way up those damn fire stairs,” I went on, “you swallowed your pills and then faked being awfully terribly sleepy and then after a while you actually did go to sleep—I think. Okay. I went out on the balcony. No stiff. No blood. If there had been, I might have managed to get him over the top of the wall. Hard work, but not impossible, if you know how to lift. But six trained elephants couldn’t have thrown him far enough to land in the ocean. It’s thirty-five feet to the fence and you’d have to throw him so far out that he would clear the fence. I figure an object as heavy as a man’s body would have to be thrown a good fifty feet outward to clear the fence.”
“I told you I was a liar.”
“But you didn’t tell me why. Let’s be serious. Suppose a man had been dead on your balcony. What would you expect me to do about it? Carry him down the fire stairs and get him into the car I had and drive off into the woods somewhere and bury him? You do have to take people into your confidence once in a while when bodies are lying around.”
“You took my money,” she said tonelessly. “You played up to me.”
“That way I might find out who was crazy.”
“You found out. You should be satisfied.”
“I found out nothing—not even who you are.”
She got angry. “I told you I was out of my mind,” she said in a rushing voice. “Worry, fear, liquor, pills—why can’t you leave me alone? I told you I’d give you back that money. What more do you want?”
“What do I do for it?”
“Just take it.” She was snapping at me now. “That’s all. Take it and go away. Far, far away.”
“I think you need a good lawyer.”
“That’s a contradiction in terms,” she sneered. “If he was good, he wouldn’t be a lawyer.”
“Yeah. So you’ve had some painful experience along those lines. I’ll find out in time, either from you or some other way. But I’m still being serious. You’re in trouble. Apart from what happened to Mitchell, if anything, you’re in enough trouble to justify hiring yourself a lawyer. You changed your name. So you had reasons. Mitchell was putting the bite on you. So he had reasons. A firm of Washington attorneys is looking for you. So they have reasons. And their client has reasons to have them looking for you.”
I stopped and looked at her as well as I could see her in the freshly darkening evening. Down below, the ocean was getting a lapis lazuli blue that somehow failed to remind me of Miss Vermilyea’s eyes. A flock of gulls went south in a fairly compact mass but it wasn’t the kind of tight formation North Island is used to. The evening plane from L.A. came down the coast with its port and starboard lights showing, and then the winking light below the fuselage went on and it swung out to sea for a long lazy turn into Lindbergh Field.
“So you’re just a shill for a crooked lawyer,” she said nastily, and grabbed for another of my cigarettes.
“I don’t think he’s very crooked. He just tries too hard. But that’s not the point. You can lose a few bucks to him without screaming. The point is something called privilege. A licensed investigator doesn’t have it. A lawyer does, provided his concern is with the interests of a client who has retained him. If the lawyer hires an investigator to work in those interests, then the investigator has privilege. That’s the only way he can get it.”
“You know what you can do with your privilege,” she said.
“Especially as it was a lawyer that hired you to spy on me.”
I took the cigarette away from her and puffed on it a couple of times and handed it back.
“It’s all right, Betty. I’m no use to you. Forget I tried to be.”
“Nice words, but only because you think I’ll pay you more to be of use to me. You’re just another of them. I don’t want your damn cigarette either.” She threw it out of the window. “Take me back to the hotel.”
I got out of the car and stamped on the cigarette. “You don’t do that in the California hills,” I told her. “Not even out of season.” I got back into the car and turned the key and pushed the starter button. I backed away and made the turn and drove back up the curve to where the road divided. On the upper level where the solid white line curved away a small car was parked. The car was lightless. It could have been empty.
I swung the Olds hard the opposite way from the way I had come, and flicked my headlights on with the high beam. They swept the cars as I turned. A hat went down over a face, but not quick enough to hide the glasses, the fat broad face, the out-jutting ears of Mr. Ross Goble of Kansas City.
The lights went on past and I drove down a long hill with lazy curves. I didn’t know where it went except that all roads around there led to the ocean sooner or later. At the bottom there was a T-intersection. I swung to the right and after a few blocks of narrow street I hit the boulevard and made another right turn. I was now driving back towards the main part of Esmeralda.
She didn’t speak again until I got to the hotel. She jumped out quickly when I stopped.
“If you’ll wait here, I’ll get the money.”
“We were tailed,” I said.
“What—?” She stopped dead, with her head half turned.
“Small car. You didn’t notice him unless you saw my lights brush him as I made the turn at the top of the hill.”
“Who was it?” Her voice was tense.
“How would I know? He must have picked us up here, therefore he’ll come back here. Could he be a cop?”
She looked back at me, motionless, frozen. She took a slow step, and then she rushed at me as if she was going to claw my face. She grabbed me by the arms and tried to shake me. Her breath came whistling.
“Get me out of here. Get me out of here, for the love of Christ. Anywhere. Hide me. Get me a little peace. Somewhere where I can’t be followed, hounded, threatened. He swore he would do it to me. He’d follow me to the ends of the earth, to the remotest island of the Pacific—”
“To the crest of the highest mountain, to the heart of the loneliest desert,” I said. “Somebody’s been reading a rather old-fashioned book.”
She dropped her arms and let them hang limp at her sides. “You’ve got as much sympathy as a loan shark.”
“I’ll take you nowhere,” I said. “Whatever it is that’s eating you, you’re going to stay put and take it.”
I turned and got into the car. When I looked back, she was already halfway to the bar entrance, walking with quick strides.
16
If I had any sense, I would pick up my suitcase and go back home and forget all about her. By the time she made up her mind which part she was playing in which act of which play, it would probably be too late for me to do anything about it except maybe get pinched for loitering in the post office.
I waited and smoked a cigarette. Goble and his dirty little jalopy ought to show up and slip into a parking slot almost any moment. He couldn’t have picked us up anywhere else, and since he knew that much he couldn’t have followed us for any reason except to find out where we went.
He didn’t show. I finished the cigarette, dropped it overboard, and backed out. As I turned out of the driveway towards the town, I saw his car on the other side of the street, parked left-hand to the curb. I kept going, turned right at the boulevard and took it easy so he wouldn’t blow a gasket trying to keep up. There was a restaurant about a mile along called The Epicure. It had a low roof, and a red brick wall to shield it from the street and it had a bar. The entrance was at the side. I parked and went in. It wasn’t doing any business yet. The barkeep was chatting with the captain and the captain didn’t even wear a dinner jacket. He had one of those high desks where they keep the reservation book. The book was open and had a list of names in it for later in the evening. But it was early now. I could have a table.