I went out and left them smiling at each other. Like most small towns, Esmeralda had one main Street from which in both directions its commercial establishments flowed gently for a short block or so and then with hardly a change of mood became streets with houses where people lived. But unlike most small California towns it had no false fronts, no cheesy billboards, no drive-in hamburger joints, no cigar counters or pool-rooms, and no street corner toughs to hang around in front of them. The stores on Grand Street were either old and narrow but not tawdry or else well modernized with plate glass and stainless steel fronts and neon lighting in clear crisp colors. Not everybody in Esmeralda was prosperous, not everybody was happy, not everybody drove a Cadillac, a Jaguar or a Riley, but the percentage of obviously prosperous living was very high, and the stores that sold luxury goods were as neat and expensive-looking as those in Beverly Hills and far less flashy. There was another small difference too. In Esmeralda what was old was also clean and sometimes quaint. In other small towns what is old is just shabby.
I parked midway of the block and the telephone office was right in front of me. It was closed of course, but the entrance was set back and in the alcove which deliberately sacrificed money space to style were two dark green phone booths, like sentry boxes. Across the way was a pale buff taxi, parked diagonally to the curb in slots painted red. A gray-haired man sat in it reading the paper. I crossed to him.
“You Joe Harms?”
He shook his head. “He’ll be back after a while. You want a cab?”
“No, thanks.”
I walked away from him and looked in at a store window. There was a checked brown and beige sport shirt in the window which reminded me of Larry Mitchell. Walnut brogues, imported tweeds, ties, two or three, and matching shirts for them set out with plenty of room to breathe. Over the store the name of a man who was once a famous athlete. The name was in script, carved and painted in relief against a redwood background.
A telephone jangled and the cabdriver got out of the taxi and went across the sidewalk to answer it. He talked, hung up, got in his cab and backed out of the slot. When he was gone, the street was utterly empty for a minute. Then a couple of cars went by, then a good-looking well dressed colored boy and his prettied up cutie came strolling the block looking in at the windows and chattering. A Mexican in a green bellhop’s uniform drove up in somebody’s Chrysler New Yorker—it could be his for all I knew—went into the drugstore and came out with a carton of cigarettes. He drove back towards the hotel.
Another beige cab with the name Esmeralda Cab Company tooled around the corner and drifted into the red slot. A big bruiser with thick glasses got out and checked on the wall phone, then got back into his cab and pulled a magazine out from behind his rear-view mirror.
I strolled over to him and he was it. He was coatless and had his sleeves rolled up past the elbows, although this was no Bikini suit weather.
“Yeah. I’m Joe Harms.” He stuck a pill in his kisser and lit it with a Ronson.
“Lucille down at the Rancho Descansado thought maybe you’d give me a little information.” I leaned against his cab and gave him my big warm smile. I might as well have kicked the curbing.
“Information about what?”
“You picked up a fare this evening from one of their cottages.
Number 12C. A tallish girl with reddish hair and a nice shape.
Her name’s Betty Mayfield but she probably didn’t tell you that.”
“Mostly they just tell me where they want to go. Quaint, isn’t it?” He blew a lungful of smoke at his windshield and watched it flatten out and float around in the cab. “What’s the pitch?”
“Girl friend walked out on me. We had a little argument. All my fault. I’d like to tell her I’m sorry.”
“Girl friend got a home somewhere?”
“A long way from here.”
He knocked ash from his cigarette by flicking his little finger at it still in his mouth.
“Could be she planned it that way. Could be she don’t want you to know where she went. Could be you were lucky at that. They can drop the arm on you for shacking up in a hotel in this town. I’ll admit it has to be pretty flagrant.”
“Could be I’m a liar,” I said, and got a business card out of my wallet. He read it and handed it back.
“Better,” he said. “Some better. But it’s against the company rules. I’m not driving this hack just to build muscle.”
“A five interest you? Or is that against the rules too?”
“My old man owns the company. He’d be pretty sore if I was on the chisel. Not that I don’t like money.”
The phone on the wall jangled. He slid out of the cab and went over to it in about three long strides. I just stood planted, gnawing my lip. He talked and came back and stepped into the cab and was sitting behind the wheel all in one motion.
“Have to blow,” he said. “Sorry. I’m kind of behind schedule. Just got back from Del Mar, the seven forty-seven to L.A. makes a flag stop there. Most people from here go that way.”
He started his motor and leaned out of the cab to drop his cigarette in the street.
I said, “Thanks.”
“For what?” He backed out and was gone.
I looked at my watch again. Time and distance checked. It was all of twelve miles to Del Mar. It would take almost an hour to ferry someone to Del Mar and drop him or her off at the railroad station and turn around and come back. He had told me in his own way. There was no point in telling me at all unless it meant something.
I watched him out of sight and then crossed the street to the booths outside the telephone company’s office. I left the booth door open and dropped my dime and dialed the big 0.
“I’d like to make a collect call to West Los Angeles, please.” I gave her a Bradshaw number. “Person to person, Mr. Clyde Umney. My name is Marlowe and I’m calling from Esmeralda 4-2673, a pay phone.”
She got him a lot quicker than it took me to tell her all that.
He came on sharp and quick.
“Marlowe? It’s about time you reported in. Well—let’s have it.”
“I’m in San Diego. I’ve lost her. She slipped away while I was taking a nap.”
“I just knew I’d picked a smart cookie,” he said unpleasantly.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Umney. I have a rough idea where she went.”
“Rough ideas are not good enough for me. When I hire a man I expect him to deliver exactly what I order. And just what do you mean by a rough idea?”
“Would it be possible for you to give me some notion of what this is all about, Mr. Umney? I grabbed it off kind of quick on account of meeting the train. Your secretary gave me a lot of personality but very little information. You want me to be happy in my work, don’t you, Mr. Umney?”
“I gathered that Miss Vermilyea told you all there is to know,” he grumbled. “I am acting at the request of an important law firm in Washington. Their client desires to remain anonymous for the present. All you have to do is trace this party to a stopping place, and by stopping place I do not mean a rest room or a hamburger stand. I mean a hotel, apartment house, or perhaps the home of someone she knows. That’s all. How much simpler do you want it?”
“I’m not asking for simplicity, Mr. Umney. I’m asking for background material. Who the girl is, where she came from, what she’s supposed to have done to make this job necessary.”
“Necessary?” he yapped at me. “Who the hell are you to decide what is necessary? Find that girl, pin her down, and phone me her address. And if you expect to be paid, you better do it damn quick. I’ll give you until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. After that I’ll make other arrangements.”
“Okay, Mr. Unmey.”
“Where are you exactly and what is your telephone number?”
“I’m just kind of wandering around. I got hit on the head with a whiskey bottle.”