The offhand remarks near the start of the story, then, about motives that fuel crime, lie at the heart of the matter. (Since they also plant clues to solving the mystery, they serve double-duty: another hallmark of Macdonald's technique.)
Note the difference between Rogers and his hotel-detective colleague, who gets up and leaves when the talk turns serious. Incurious of cause, Al Sablacan may someday feel its effect. If he so allows, he might become like Otto Sipe, the corrupt house dick in Macdonald's The Far Side of the Dollar (1964): living in the ruin of the once-grand Barcelona Hotel, where the bright dreams of 1945 have turned to dust, and the only guests are ghosts.
Death By Water
He was old, but he didn't look as if he were about to die. For a man of his age, which couldn't have been less than seventy, he was doing very well for himself. He was sitting at the bar buying drinks for three young sailors, and he was the life of the party in more than the financial sense. In the hour or so that I had been watching him, he must have had at least five martinis, and it was long past dinner time.
"The old man can carry his liquor," I said to Al.
"Mr. Ralston you mean? He's in here every night from eight to midnight, and it never seems to get him down. Of course some nights he gets too much, and I have to take him home and put him to bed. But next day he's bright as ever."
"He lives in the hotel, eh?"
Al Sablacan was the hotel detective of the Valeria Pueblo, which charged ten dollars a day and up and, unlike many Los Angeles hotels, was worth it. Until a couple of years ago, he had been a private detective, like me, but he had finally succumbed to varicose veins and the promise of security in his old age.
"He's our oldest inhabitant," Al said. "He's got a bungalow over near the swimming pool. Been there about ten years, I guess, him and his wife."
"He doesn't act married."
Mr. Ralston had left the bar and was leaning on the grand piano watching a dark Spanish-looking girl who strummed a guitar and sang pseudo-Latin songs in a sweet soprano. She was making eyes at Mr. Ralston in an exaggerated way which was intended to indicate that she was humoring the old man. Mr. Ralston was making faces at her, as if to express passionate delight.
"You show them, Mr. Ralston," one of the sailors said from the bar. "There's life in the old boy yet."
"Most assuredly," said Mr. Ralston, in rich and gracious tones. He gave a dollar to the singer, and she began to play "The Isle of Capri." Mr. Ralston danced in a small circle between the bar and the piano, making expansively romantic gestures. "Most assuredly," he repeated, with a winning smile which made everyone in the bar smile with him. "I am a little old dried up man, but I have a youthful heart."
"Isn't he a card?" Al said to me. "His wife's an invalid, and he must do a lot of worrying about her, but you'd never know it. He's a card."
There was a recess in the music, and Mr. Ralston approached our table on light feet and with a glowing face. "And how are you this evening?" he said to Al in tones of cultivated solicitude. "I don't believe I've met your friend. I do hope you'll overlook the absence of a tie. I neglected to put one on after dinner. I don't know what I was thinking of." He gave a little laugh of indulgence at his boyish recklessness.
"Joe Rogers, Mr. Ralston," Al said. "Joe's a private detective. We used to work together."
"How utterly fascinating," Mr. Ralston said. "Do you mind if I join you for a moment? I have some guests at the bar, but I can continue to act as host by remote control, so to speak." He ordered a round of drinks for us and the sailors at the bar. His martini disappeared like ether in air.
"I've often thought," he said to me, "that the life of a detective would be an intensely interesting one. I rather fancy myself as a student of human nature, but my studies have been somewhat academic, you might say. Isn't it true that one sees deepest into human nature in moments of strain, moments of crisis, the kind of moments that must be delightfully frequent in your own life, Mr. Rogers?"
"You see deep enough into certain aspects of human nature, I guess. Some of the things I've seen I'd just as soon forget."
"Such as?" said Mr. Ralston, his eyes bright with curiosity and alcohol.
"Hatred. Greed. Jealousy. The three emotions that cause most crime. Impersonal love of inflicting pain is a fourth."
"Your word 'impersonal' is interesting," Mr. Ralston said. "It implies a concept which has occurred to me, that sadism need not have a sexual content. Don't you think, though, that there may be a fifth possibility? Surely people have stolen, even killed, for love. Or would your definition of love exclude the more criminal passions?"
"This is where I came in," Al Sablacan said to me. "I've got to mosey around a bit, anyway, and see that everything's O.K."
"Hate is usually a more compelling motive than love," I said when Al had excused himself. "I think you may be right about sadism, though. May I ask what your business is, or was, Mr. Ralston?"
His thin expressive face registered a touch of shame. "I have to confess I never had any. Hence, perhaps, the abstraction of my psychological concepts. At one time, of course, I took a good deal of interest in my investments. In recent years much of my time has been devoted to my wife. She is not well, you see."
"I'm sorry to hear it."
"No, Mr. Rogers, Beatrice is not at all well. She is afflicted with a progressive muscular atrophy of the legs which has deprived her of all locomotive power. Her thigh, Mr. Rogers, her thigh, is no thicker than my forearm." He pushed up his shirt sleeve to exhibit his thin arm. "I often thank whatever gods there be that I am able to provide her with the best of loving care."
The singer returned to the piano bench and began to play. Mr. Ralston rose with courtly grace and excused himself. "There's a number I've been intending to request all evening. I'm extremely fond of it."
The musician collected another of Mr. Ralston's dollars and began to play "In a Little Spanish Town." Mr. Ralston hummed the tune with her, meanwhile conducting an imaginary orchestra with great verve.
"That's the spirit, Mr. Ralston," one of the sailors yelled. "If you had any hair you'd look exactly like Stokowski."
"Do not judge me by the hairiness or otherwise of my scalp," Mr. Ralston said joyously. "Judge me by my musical imagination."
I finished my drink and went out to the lobby to look for Al.
Whenever I visited him, Al had a cot set up for me in his ground floor room. At half-past twelve I was getting ready to roll into it, feeling pleasantly comatose from half a dozen bottles of beer. Al had finished his midnight rounds a few minutes before, and was taking off his tie in front of the mirror. There was a knock on the door, and he put his tie back on.
It was one of the Filipino bellhops. "Mr. Sablacan," he said excitedly when Al opened the door. "There are men swimming in the swimming pool. I told them they must not swim there at night, but they just laughed at me. I think you must come and kick them out."
"O.K., Louie. Are they guests?"
"I don't think so, Mr. Sablacan. Only Mr. Ralston."
"Mr. Ralston? Is he there?"
"Yessir. He is bouncing on the diving board."
"Want to come along, Joe?"
Mr. Ralston interested me, and I put my shirt back on and went along. He was standing on the board shining a big flashlight on the pool. Three young men were chasing each other around in the water, diving like porpoises and blowing like grampuses. When we got closer we could see that Mr. Ralston had nothing on but a pair of striped swimming trunks. The young men had nothing on at all.