Lister stepped out, closing the door behind him. It became very cozy with the three of us on the yard-square landing, like the components of fission coming together. Lister’s bare feet were silent on the concrete. His voice was soft:
“Maude is busy. I’m pretty busy myself. I was just going to take a shower. So my advice to you is, go away. And don’t bother coming back. We’re going to be indefinitely busy.”
“Busy spending her money?” Harlan said.
Lister’s teeth flashed in his beard. His voice took on an edge.
“It’s easy to see why Maude won’t speak to you. Now take your detective friend and remove yourself from my doorstep.”
“So the old hag got in touch with you? How much of a percentage are you paying her?”
Lister moved quickly around me. He took Harlan by the front of his coat, lifted him, shook him once, and set him back on his feet.
“Speak of your mother with some respect, you little schnook.”
Harlan leaned on the railing, gripping it firmly like a child daring adults to dislodge him. His face in the yellow light looked sick with humiliation. He said in stubborn malice:
“I want to see my sister. I want to see what you’ve done to her, you bully.”
I said: “Let’s go,” and laid a hand on his arm.
“Are you on his side, too?” He was almost crying.
“A man’s home is his castle, after all. He doesn’t like you, Reginald. Neither does she, apparently.”
“You can say that again,” Lister said. “The little leech has sucked her blood for too long. Now get out of here before you make me mad for real.”
“Come on, Reginald. We’re getting nowhere.”
I detached him from the railing. Below and behind me, a man’s voice was raised. “Trouble up there, Lister?” The voice sounded as if its owner hoped so.
He was a gray-haired man in a Hawaiian print shirt, standing spraddle-legged in the splash of light at the foot of the stairs. It colored his spongy face and made his eyes look colorless.
“No trouble, Dolph. These gentlemen are just leaving.”
Lister stood with his back against the door, a seedy hero in a dirty bathrobe defending his two-bit castle, and watched us go down the stairs. The door closed sharply, and the yellow light went out. Harlan muttered under his breath.
The gray-headed man was waiting for us at the bottom. He whispered through an alcoholic haze: “Cops?”
I didn’t answer. He jerked at my coatsleeve, naggingly:
“What’s lover-man been up to now?”
“You wouldn’t be interested.”
“That’s what you think. You got another think coming. He’s got a woman with him, hasn’t he?”
“None of your business.”
I pulled my coatsleeve free. But he was hard to shake off. He thrust his pudgy face forward into mine.
“What Lister does is my business. I got a right to know if my tenants are living in sin.”
I started to walk away from him and his breath. He followed me across the driveway, bracing his wavering stride with one outstretched hand against the closed garage door. His voice trailed huskily after me:
“What’s the beef about? I got a right to know. I’m a respectable man, see. I don’t run any callhouse for brokendown four-flushers.”
“Wait a minute,” Harlan said. “Are you Lister’s landlord?”
“Sure thing. I never liked the s. o. b., it was the little woman that rented him the apartment. She thought he was class. I saw through him at a glance. Another movie has-been. A never-was.”
He sagged against the stucco wall. Harlan leaned over him like a prosecutor, his face a leaden silhouette in the dim light from a blinded window.
“What else do you know about Lister, my man?”
“I’m going to throw him out on his ear if he don’t watch himself.”
“You mentioned his dealings with women. What about that?”
“I don’t know what goes on up there. But I’m going to find out.”
“Why don’t you go up now? You have the right to, you know, you own the place.”
“By God, I will.”
I went back to Harlan and took his arm. “Let’s get out of here, Reginald. You’ve made enough trouble for one night.”
“I make trouble? Nonsense. My sister’s married to a criminal, a whoremonger.”
The man against the wall wagged his gray head solemnly. “You couldn’t be righter. Is the woman with him your sister?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s married to him?”
“I believe so. But I can’t let her stay with him. I’m going to take her home–”
“Not tonight, Reginald.” I tightened my grip on his arm.
“I have to do something. I have to act.”
He tried to break away from me. His hat fell off, and his meager hair fell down over his ears. He almost screeched:
“How dare you? Take your hands off me.”
A woman’s full-breasted shadow fell on the blind. Her voice issued sharply from the window:
“Jack! Are you still out there?”
The gray-headed man straightened up as if he’d been touched by live current. “Yeah. I’m here.”
“Come inside. You’re drunk, and you’ve been talking nonsense.”
“Who’s going to make me?” He said it under his breath.
She heard him. “I said come in. You’re making a laughing stock of yourself. And tell your friends to go home.”
He turned his back on us and walked uncertainly to the front door. Harlan tried to follow him. I held Harlan. The door slammed. A bolt clicked home.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Harlan said, “with your mishandling and your interference! I was just about to learn something.”
“You never will.”
I released him and went to the car, not caring whether he came along or not. He caught up with me at the curb, wiping his hat with a handkerchief and breathing audibly.
“The least you can do for the money I paid you is drop me at my hotel. The cab fares are scandalous here.”
“All right. Where is it.”
“The Oceano Hotel, in Santa Monica.”
“This is Santa Monica.”
“Really?” He added a moment later: “I’m not surprised. Something guided me to Santa Monica. Maude and I have had a sort of telepathic communication, going back virtually to infancy. Especially when she’s in trouble.”
“I wonder if she is in trouble.”
“With that brute?” He laughed harshly. “Did you observe his conduct to me?”
“It seemed fairly normal under the circumstances.”
“Normal for this Godforsaken place, perhaps. But I’m not going to put up with it. And incidentally, if you intend to do nothing further, I expect a rebate of at least fifty per cent.”
I wanted to ask him who had stolen his rattle when he was a baby. Instead I said: “You’ll get paid in services. I’ll spend tomorrow on Lister. If he’s a wrong number, I’ll find out. If he isn’t–”
“It’s clear that he is. You heard his landlord’s remarks.”
“The guy was drunk. And I wouldn’t go around calling people names without some proof. You almost got your head knocked off.”
“I don’t care what happens to me. It’s Maude I’m anxious about. I have only one sister.”
“You have only one head.”
He sulked the rest of the way. I let him out at the white curb without a word. In the neon kaleidoscope of the ocean front, against the pink backdrop of the hotel, he looked like a displaced shadow from a dark dream. Not my dream, I congratulated myself.
Prematurely.
In the morning I called a friend in the District Attorney’s office. Lister had a record; two drunken driving convictions, a battery complaint reduced to disorderly conduct, nothing worse. He had been a small-time producer before television. His last recorded place of employment was the University.