She took her ringer out of her mouth. “I’m crazy about it. Are you sure that Jessie isn’t making it up?”
“I know damn well she isn’t.”
He raised his fist and held silent communion with it. There were fresh marks on the knuckles, which looked like toothmarks. His blue eyes were mean. He brushed his goatee with his fist:
“It isn’t the first time he made a pass at her. I didn’t tell you before. I’m telling you now. If you can’t stop him, I will. With what I’ve got on him–”
“You lay off Ben,” she said.
“Then you make him lay off Jessie. What’s the matter? Aren’t you getting along?”
“Oh, sure,” she said with bitter irony. “Everything’s coming up dandelions. Go away now, will you? I’m with a customer.”
“Since when are you working nights for Ben?”
“I told you he left me waiting here. We were going to go out on the town for a change.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I don’t, now. I guess he decided he’d have more fun by himself.”
“Yeah. Well, he better keep his hands off my pig.”
“Tell her to stop wiggling her fat little rump at him.”
They grinned at each other like old enemies. He slammed out. She sat forgetful of me, her eyes focused on something between us, invisible in the air.
“The dirty son of a bitch,” she said between her teeth. “Two can play at that game.” Then she remembered me, and said in a more human voice: “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll be all right in a minute. Give me a minute, will you?”
It was the least I could give her. She went into the back room and closed the flimsy door. I heard the clink of a bottle on a glass, the distinct pouring sound which solitary drinkers imagine nobody can hear.
She came out wearing fresh lipstick on a muzzy gin smile. “I’ve been looking at the figures on the Mandeville house. If you’re really interested, we might be able to work something out with the new owners. They got such a terrific buy, they could sell to you at a profit and still give you a bargain. Even at sixty thousand it’s a steal. It was originally listed at eighty, and it would cost a hundred and twenty to replace at today’s building costs.”
I said with the necessary smile: “For a girl who doesn’t work here, you put out a good spiel.”
“Thank you, sir. I used to sell for Ben.” She leaned across the desk, offering me her full white décolleté as a sort of bonus. “Seriously, are you interested in the property?”
“Very interested. Why don’t you show it to me, then we’ll talk about the deal?”
“Tonight?”
“Why not?”
She looked past me at the moving traffic in the street. “I better not leave, he might come back. Miracles can happen. If you can’t wait till morning, I’ll give you the keys. The electricity is on in the house, I think.”
She went into the back room again and came out looking flustered. “Ben must have taken the keys. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. I’ll come back in the morning.”
Whiteoaks Avenue was less than a mile from Camino Real. I found the moulded iron gates standing open, the padlock gaping on its chain. I gathered up the rest of the scattered newspapers and looked at the date lines. The latest was November 17. The earliest was November 3, the day after Phoebe disappeared.
The bellying gray sky above the trees was expectant with moon. The house seemed to grow before me as I trudged up the driveway. Its facade returned the glare of my flashlight like a blank white sepulchre.
The ornate front door was closed but unlocked. I went in and found a light switch beside the door. The parquetry floor of the hallway was tracked with old mud and sprinkled with the cards of real-estate salesmen. From the rear of the hallway a white-banistered staircase curved gracefully upward into darkness.
I entered the main room to the right, and touched the switch. A yellowing crystal chandelier lit up incompletely. Most of the furnishings went with the chandelier: old striped English sofas facing each other from opposite ends of the room, a white marble fireplace containing a gas heater, over the mantel a bad painting of somebody’s father, portly in a Prince Albert.
Mrs. Wycherly, or some other modern, had added a few touches of her own. The brash new multicolored drapes clashed like cymbals with the rest of the room. A blonde mahogany hi-fi console stood beside the fireplace. It was open, and it had a record on it: “Slow Boat to China.” On the inside of the door a cork dart-board hung, surrounded by the scars which the darts had made in the white panelling.
I closed the door, pulled one of the darts out of the cork, walked back across the room to the fireplace, and threw the dart at the board, which it hit. I went through the other downstairs rooms humming “Slow Boat to China” to myself and thinking about a story I read in high school. It was called “The Vision of Mirza” and it had been cropping up in my memory for years.
Mirza had a vision of a bridge which a lot of people were crossing on foot: all the living people in the world. From time to time one of them would step on a kind of trap door and drop out of sight. The other pedestrians hardly noticed. Each of them went on walking across the bridge until he hit a trap door of his own, and fell through.
I hit mine, or something like it, at the top of the graceful stairs. It wasn’t a trap door, exactly, and it wasn’t exactly mine. It was a body, and it sighed when I stumbled over it. It sighed as if it had fallen the whole distance and lived.
I found the upturned face with my flashlight. It wasn’t worth finding: a mask of blood behind which no life bubbled. The spattered striped bow tie and the sharp charcoal suit looked hickish and pathetic on a man so beaten and dead.
His jacket pockets were empty. I had to move him to get at his back pockets. He was heavy, as hard to lift as a cross made out of flesh. I found four one-dollar bills in his wallet, and a driver’s license made out to Ben Merriman. His little gun was missing.
I put the wallet in the breast pocket of his jacket, so that I wouldn’t have to move him again. Then I took it out and wiped it with my handkerchief and put it back. The flashlight on the floor watched me like a yellow suspicious eye. I picked it up and got out of there.
On my way back to Merriman’s office I passed the Southern Pacific station. It was closed for the night, but there was a pay telephone on the outside platform. I used it to call the police.
Mrs. Merriman was still sitting at the desk in the front of the office. She looked up with her muzzy smile when I came in:
“I’m sorry, Ben didn’t come back yet. I’m holding the fort all by my lonesome. Join me?” Then she saw the look on my face, and imitated it: “What’s the matter?”
“I want Mrs. Wycherly’s address.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You must have, if you sold the house for her.”
“Ben handled it. I told you I don’t work for him, not on a regular basis. He does most of his business out of his hat.”
“Let me see the listing.”
“What for? You trying to work out a deal behind our backs or something?”
“Nothing like that. I want to know where Mrs. Wycherly is.”
“The listing won’t tell you. Look, I’ll show you.”
She rose unsteadily. I followed her into the little back room. A half-full bottle of Gordon’s gin stood on a pile of papers on the desk. She riffled through the papers and came up with a mimeographed sheet. She was trying to read it with slightly blurred eyes when the telephone rang.
She picked it up and said yes and listened to it. Her face turned pearly young. Her eyes expanded. She thanked the telephone and put it down.