As I said at the beginning of this report, everything at this end seems on the up and up. There is a puzzling factor involved which may have something to do with the case, and then again it may not. I give it to you for what it’s worth.
It concerns Joe O’Donnell, the man you asked me to investigate. He dropped out of sight a week ago. He’s been hanging around the Windsor bar every night for over a year. When he didn’t show up three or four nights in a row Emilio, the head bartender, paid a visit to his apartment. O’Donnell wasn’t there and hadn’t been seen by any of the neighbors for some time. His landlady claimed he skipped out because he owed back rent. This may be true but it doesn’t explain his absence from the bar, which he used to call his “office.” Emilio was vague on what kind of business O’Donnell conducted from his “office,” but he insisted it was legitimate, that O’Donnell had never been in trouble with the police or the management of the hotel. My guess is that he went in for any petty con game that came along, whether it was accepting loans from wealthy women he picked up, like Mrs. Wyatt; organizing poker parties for American businessmen, taking bets on the horses, stuff like that. Nothing illegal, nothing bigtime. O’Donnell has — or had — a lot of charm, apparently. Everyone has a good word to say for him: generous, kind, amusing, intelligent, good-looking. How come this superman is cadging drinks and playing gigolo at a bar every night? It doesn’t add up.
I questioned Emilio further. It seemed odd to me that a bartender should go checking up on a customer simply because he failed to appear for a few nights. Emilio was evasive — Mexicans are, usually, but they lie to please rather than to deceive, and once you understand this, it’s easy to cope with. It turned out that a letter had been delivered to the hotel in care of Emilio, addressed to Joe O’Donnell. It had been sent airmail from San Francisco, and on the envelope the sender had written “urgente y importante.”
When Emilio handed the letter over to O’Donnell, O’Donnell made some remark about being an Easterner and not even knowing anyone in San Francisco except people he’d met casually in the Windsor bar. Like Mrs. Kellogg and Mrs. Wyatt, I presume. Anyway, he sat down and read the letter over a bottle of beer. Emilio asked him, half kidding, what was so “urgente y importante,” and O’Donnell told him to mind his own goddamn business. He got up and left the bar immediately and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him.
Naturally, Emilio’s curiosity was aroused. Ever since Mrs. Wyatt’s death, he’s had suicide on his mind. For reasons not entirely religious, suicide has a more profound effect on the average Mexican than any other kind of violence. Emilio went to O’Donnell’s apartment in the vague fear that O’Donnell had killed himself because of some very bad news he’d received in the letter.
Well, there you have it. I know O’Donnell’s address and will check on him further. Also I’ve arranged with Emilio to contact me when and if O’Donnell shows up at the bar. He might. Then again he might be in Africa by this time. He would have no trouble getting out of the country since he’s an American citizen and not in any trouble with the authorities.
To get back to Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg. They checked out of the Windsor early on the morning of September thirteenth and took a cab to the airport. There was no sign of the nurse Kellogg had told the hospital authorities he intended to hire to accompany his wife on the trip. Maybe he changed his mind, maybe he arranged to meet the nurse at the airport. When they left the hotel, Mrs. Kellogg was wearing a bandage over her left temple and she had a black eye. According to the doorman, she acted as though she’d been drugged, but I’d be inclined to take this with a grain of salt. It may be a case of that national characteristic of lying to please — i.e., he assumed from my questions that I suspected something was wrong and he was merely trying to “help.”
I await further instructions. Best,
Dodd read the report through a second time, then he buzzed for Lorraine.
“Send a wire to Fowler.”
“Straight or night letter?”
“Night letter.”
“O.K., you have fifty words.” She copied Fowler’s address from the envelope containing the report. “Shoot.”
“Check all means of exit for O’Donnell. Search apartment for letters, bank statements, photographs, evidence of love interests. Get names of all friends he might contact. Keep up the good work. Sincerely. Dodd.”
“That’s not fifty words,” Lorraine said.
“So?”
“Maybe you should add something, like ‘give my best to your wife.’ ”
“I could,” Dodd said, “but it might not be in the best of taste. He’s a widower.”
“Oh. But if you’re paying for fifty words, and it’s almost two dollars...”
“Kindly send it as is, with no further editing. After that I’d like you to call Moffett Field and get the address and phone number of a pilot named Bert Reiner. I don’t know his rank. He lives in Mountain View with his wife.”
Lorraine rose. “Well, that’s a change from kennels and dog hospitals anyway.”
“You’ll get back to them.”
“If I only knew why you wanted to find this Scottie, it would make my work less boring. I mean, I’m your secretary, I should know these things.”
“Maybe you should, at that. Remind me to tell you, for Christmas.”
The exchange had given Lorraine a headache. She took an aspirin to relieve the pain, half a tranquilizer to quiet her nerves, and a vitamin pill on general principles. Then she reached for the telephone again.
13.
The town of Mountain View cowered under the benevolent despotism of the jet age. Its older residents held public meetings and wrote letters of protest to the newspapers, complaining of sonic booms and broken windows, flaming crashes and altered skies. In return, the air-force personnel and some of the more war-conscious citizens wrote letters which said in effect, “Where would you be without jet protection in case of attack?”
The Reiners lived in the lower half of a new redwood duplex near El Camino Real. Betty Reiner answered the door. She was a tall, slim, pretty brunette with green eyes and an automatic smile that looked less genial than a frown. She wore tight black Capri pants, a silk shirt, and a double strand of pearls that reached below her hips. Dodd wondered whether this was her ordinary housekeeping costume or if she had dressed for the occasion.
“I don’t know what this is all about,” she told Dodd as she led him into an immaculate black and white living room. “I was just going to have some coffee. Would you like some?”
“Thanks, I would.”
“Sugar and cream?”
“A little of both.”
She poured the coffee out of a white ceramic pot with a black lacquered handle. The only touches of color in the room were Mrs. Reiner’s green eyes and the orange polish on her fingernails. “I wish I had a nickel for every cup of coffee I’ve doled out on the job. As soon as the passengers realized it was free they couldn’t get enough of the stuff.” She handed him his coffee. “So Smitty sent you here, eh?”
“Yes. He thought you might have some information I need.”
“What gave him that idea?”
“He told me you had practically a photographic memory.”
Mrs. Reiner was too shrewd to be taken in by such obvious flattery. “It’s not that good. Some things I remember, some I don’t. What do you have in mind?”
“A certain flight from Mexico City to San Francisco.”