Finally Angel placed a clawed hand on his shoulder, and nodded to my handlers. They deposited me in a chair. It swung on an invisible wire from the ceiling in great circles. It swung out wide over the desert, across a bleak horizon, into darkness.
I came to, cursing. Gino was standing over me again. There was an empty water-glass in his hand, and my face was dripping. Angel spoke up beside him, with a trace of irritation in his voice:
“You stand up good under punishment. Why go to all the trouble, though? I want a little information, that is all. My friend, my little girl-friend, ran away. I’m impatient to get her back.”
“You’re going about it the wrong way.”
Gino leaned close, and laughed harshly. He shattered the glass on the arm of my chair, held the jagged base up to my eyes. Fear ran through me, cold and light in my veins. My eyes were my connection with everything. Blindness would be the end of me. I closed my eyes, shutting out the cruel edges of the broken thing in his hand.
“Nix, Gino,” the old man said. “I have a better idea, as usual. There is heat on, remember.”
They retreated to the far side of the table and conferred there in low voices. The young man left the room. The old man came back to me. His storm troopers stood one on each side of me, looking down at him in ignorant awe.
“What is your name, young fellow?”
I told him. My mouth was puffed and lisping, tongue tangled in ropes of blood.
“I like a young fellow who can take it, Mr. Archer. You say that you’re a detective. You find people for a living, is that right?”
“I have a client,” I said.
“Now you have another. Whoever he is, I can buy and sell him, believe me. Fifty times over.” His thin blue hands scoured each other. They made a sound like two dry sticks rubbing together on a dead tree.
“Narcotics?” I said. “Are you the wheel in the heroin racket? I’ve heard of you.”
His watery eyes veiled themselves like a bird’s. “Now don’t ask foolish questions, or I will lose my respect for you entirely.”
“That would break my heart.”
“Then comfort yourself with this.” He brought an old-fashioned purse out of his hip pocket, abstracted a crumpled bill and smoothed it out on my knee. It was a five-hundred-dollar bill.
“This girl of mine you are going to find for me, she is young and foolish. I am old and foolish, to have trusted her. No matter. Find her for me and bring her back and I will give you another bill like this one. Take it.”
“Take it,” one of my guards repeated. “Mr. Funk said for you to take it.”
I took it. “You’re wasting your money. I don’t even know what she looks like. I don’t know anything about her.”
“Gino is bringing a picture. He came across her last fall at a recording studio in Hollywood where Alfie had a date. He gave her an audition and took her on at the club, more for her looks than for the talent she had. As a singer she flopped. But she is a pretty little thing, about five foot four, nice figure, dark brown hair, big hazel eyes. I found a use for her.” Lechery flickered briefly in his eyes and went out.
“You find a use for everything.”
“That is good economics. I often think if I wasn’t what I am, I would make a good economist. Nothing would go to waste.” He paused and dragged his dying old mind back to the subject: “She was here for a couple of months, then she ran out on me, silly girl. I heard last week that she was in Acapulco, and the federal Grand Jury was going to subpoena her. I have tax troubles, Mr. Archer, all my life I have tax troubles. Unfortunately I let Fern help with my books a little bit. She could do me great harm. So I sent Bart to Mexico to bring her back. But I meant no harm to her. I still intend her no harm, even now. A little talk, a little realistic discussion with Fern, that is all that will be necessary. So even the shooting of my good friend Bart serves its purpose. Where did it happen, by the way?”
The question flicked out like a hook on the end of a long line.
“In San Diego,” I said, “at a place near the airport: the Mission Motel.”
He smiled paternally. “Now you are showing good sense.”
Gino came back with a silver-framed photograph in his hand. He handed it to Angel, who passed it on to me. It was a studio portrait, of the kind intended for publicity cheesecake. On a black velvet divan, against an artificial night sky, a young woman reclined in a gossamer robe that was split to show one bent leg. Shadows accentuated the lines of her body and the fine bones in her face. Under the heavy makeup which widened the mouth and darkened the half-closed eyes, I recognized Ella Salanda. The picture was signed in white, in the lower righthanded corner: “To my Angel, with all my love, Fern.”
A sickness assailed me, worse than the sickness induced by Gino’s fists. Angel breathed into my face: “Fern Dee is a stage name. Her real name I never learned. She told me one time that if her family knew where she was they would die of shame.” He chuckled drily. “She will not want them to know that she killed a man.”
I drew away from his charnel-house breath. My guards escorted me out. Gino started to follow, but Angel called him back.
“Don’t wait to hear from me,” the old man said after me. “I expect to hear from you.”
The building stood on a rise in the open desert. It was huge and turreted, like somebody’s idea of a castle in Spain. The last rays of the sun washed its walls in purple light and cast long shadows across its barren acreage. It was surrounded by a ten-foot hurricane fence topped with three strands of barbed wire.
Palm Springs was a clutter of white stones in the distance, diamonded by an occasional light. The dull red sun was balanced like a glowing cigar-butt on the rim of the hills above the town. A man with a bulky shoulder harness under his brown suede windbreaker drove me towards it. The sun fell out of sight, and darkness gathered like an impalpable ash on the desert, like a column of blue-gray smoke towering into the sky.
The sky was blue-black and swarming with stars when I got back to Emerald Bay. A black Cadillac followed me out of Palm Springs. I lost it in the winding streets of Pasadena. So far as I could see, I had lost it for good.
The neon Mexican lay peaceful under the stars. A smaller sign at his feet asserted that there was No Vacancy. The lights in the long low stucco buildings behind him shone brightly. The office door was open behind a screen, throwing a barred rectangle of light on the gravel. I stepped into it, and froze.
Behind the registration desk in the office, a woman was avidly reading a magazine. Her shoulders and bosom were massive. Her hair was blond, piled on her head in coroneted braids. There were rings on her fingers, a triple strand of cultured pearls around her thick white throat. She was the woman Donny had described to me.
I pulled the screen door open and said rudely: “Who are you?”
She glanced up, twisting her mouth in a sour grimace. “Well! I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Sorry. I thought I’d seen you before somewhere.”
“Well, you haven’t.” She looked me over coldly. “What happened to your face, anyway?”
“I had a little plastic surgery done. By an amateur surgeon.”
She clucked disapprovingly. “If you’re looking for a room, we’re full up for the night. I don’t believe I’d rent you a room even if we weren’t. Look at your clothes.”
“Uh-huh. Where’s Mr. Salanda?”
“Is it any business of yours?”
“He wants to see me. I’m doing a job for him.”
“What kind of a job?”
I mimicked her: “Is it any business of yours?” I was irritated. Under her mounds of flesh she had a personality as thin and hard and abrasive as a rasp.
“Watch who you’re getting flip with, sonny boy.” She rose, and her shadow loomed immense across the back door of the room. The magazine fell closed on the desk: it was Teen-age Confessions. “I am Mrs. Salanda. Are you a handyman?”