“What do you want?”
You have to have a flair for it, an immediate and unthinking appraisal of the vulnerabilities. This one was wary and haughty. I could see that she was a big pale girl, Alice through a strange looking-glass. A twenty-year-old spinster. There are such. A big awkward fatty body in an unlovely jumper. A child face. Reddened nostrils. Pale heavy lips.
“I want to be sure you are Jocelyn Ives. Is there anything you could show me to prove it?” I kept my voice confidential.
“Why should I bother?”
“You do have the same accent.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I was associated with him in a certain venture quite a long time ago. I came here to make contact, and I just found out he’s dead.”
She gnawed her lip and then, to my utter astonishment, gave me a huge conspiratorial wink. She closed the door, unlatched the chain and opened it wide. “Please come in,” she said heartily. When she had closed the door behind us, she said, “I do understand why you can’t give me your name.”
“Uh… that’s good.”
“Back through here. The place is a mess. I’m off work today.” I followed her along the murky hallway into a small living room. It was crowded with furniture too large and too expensive for the small apartment. Every surface was covered with large photographic prints, and scores of them were on the floor and leaning against the furniture and the walls. Many of them were matted. With clumsy awkward haste she cleared two chairs. “Do sit down. I’ve been sorting out. Lens Lab… that’s a local hobby group… they want to put on a show of his best work. At the library. There are so many. I get quite confused.”
“I can see how you would. It looks like fine work.”
“Oh yes! That’s my responsibility now, to see that everyone learns how good Father was. I am going to set up a traveling show also. And there is some interest in Rochester, of course.”
“Of course.”
She sat facing me and knotted her hands to gether and said, “I have been so hoping that somebody would show up. It’s been so terribly difficult for me.”
“I suppose it has.”
“Poor Mr. Mendez has been doing his best to get everything straightened out for tax purposes. But having quite a large amount of cash turn up has sort of complicated things. And, of course, I couldn’t explain the cash. Not to him. If it was supposed to be for necessary expenses, I’m sorry. It’s all tied up now with courts and tax people and things. I will get it eventually, I imagine, or whatever part of it they don’t take. At least the house can be sold. You know, I have been hoping someone would show up. And you look almost exactly like the kind of man I pictured.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I kept my mouth shut, as Father would have wished. And I guess I do not really have to have any posthumous glory for him. He said that was the thing none of you could ever expect. He taught me to be very careful and discreet about… the contacts, and not to ask him questions. I have been wondering if you could go to Mr. Mendez and explain to him the sort of work Father was doing for you. I think it might make the estate work easier.”
“I’m sorry. I have no authority to do that.”
“I was afraid so,” she said. “Oh dear. And the ridiculous police will have to go right on thinking it was just someone after his pocket money?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She studied me. “Really, how do I know you are what I think you are?”
“We don’t carry that sort of identification.”
“I suppose not. It wouldn’t be very safe, I expect.” She looked uneasy. “But why wouldn’t you have known he was dead?”
“I’ve been out of touch.”
I now had the shape of it all. There was something unwholesome about her, a greasy sheen to her flesh, a soiled smell in the dark little apartment. But she was his loved daughter. Blackmail needed a cover story. Perhaps it had been her guess at first, that Father was in some sort of patriotic undercover work, and when she faced him with it, it was easiest to go along. And, of course, the Enemy had slain him.
I had to find the right way to open her up. I leaned toward her and said, “Jocelyn, I think I can promise you that some day it can all be told.”
Tear tracks like the sidewalk marks of snails gleamed on the round pale cheeks, and she made a froggy sobbing sound…
Ten
I LIKED the way Dana listened. She felt no compulsion to fill a silence with questions. She knew there was more to come. I could not see her distinctly. She sat over by the motel windows in darkness. The light was at my elbow, gleaming on the silver cup.
“Ives liked to live well,” I said. “He did freelance photography in Melbourne. Fashion, news breaks, everything. A Hollywood outfit made a movie over there. He got permission to work on the set. His stills were apparently damned good. The stars liked them. The studio brought him over. That was eight years ago. She was twelve. He had about four years of it, and did pretty well. And lived well. Then something went wrong. I guess he got himself on that little blacklist they have. I don’t imagine it is important to know what cooked him. The girl says it was jealousy. His work was too good. He moved up here to Santa Rosita. His studio was in his home. Weddings, parties, awards, portraits. A nice cover story. She thinks he had some other base in the city. She’s so proud of him. Proud of that cynical son of a bitch with his sports cars and fine house and housekeeper.”
I got up and collected both silver cups and fixed us another.
“She showed me the clippings. He went on a trip. She doesn’t know where. He was gone two days. He came back to the house. He went out again and said he would be back within the hour. That was ten in the evening last December tenth. They found his car, locked, on Verano Street. He was found about a hundred feet away, dragged behind a warehouse, with the top of his skull smashed in, pockets empty, watch gone. They thought he would be dead on arrival, but the heart kept beating for five days. As far as the girl knows, they haven’t a clue. Nobody knows what he was doing in that neighborhood. It’s mostly industrial small time, empty at night.”
After a long silence she said, “Did he leave her anything?”
“Small insurance. The equity in the house. About thirty-eight thousand in cash, already impounded while they check his tax returns. Then a lot of cameras, studio equipment, dark room equipment, huge stacks of arty photographs.”
She asked me if I was certain about Ives. I’d been saving it for her. I told her how I’d wormed it out of the girl. “So his loving daughter was the one who helped him operate that drop and flashed the green light at you to toss the money out.”
Dana shook her head slowly. “And I imagined horrible hoodlums out there… and it was that poor simple girl helping Daddy in his spy business. What a total bastard he must have been, to endanger her so!”
And I thought wistfully how easy it would have been for Lysa Dean to have busted it up in the beginning, before it got off the ground. “Ives could trust his daughter,” I explained. “And he didn’t have to split with her, and she didn’t even know what was in the packages. He used her the same way, with variations, on other projects.”
“Loyal little helper,” Dana said. “Just like me.”
“Let’s go eat.”
She put her sweater on. At the door she stopped me and said, “Trav, you didn’t give her any little suspicion that… all was not what it seemed?”
“When I left, I told her she could be proud of Daddy. She stood tall and the tears dripped off her fat chin.”