“Not exactly,” she said, adjusting her posture a few inches here and there. “He’s letting me live with him while I finish my whatchamacallit – autobiography.” She was one of those whispering girls who said loud things.
“You’re going to be writing an autobiography.”
“I’m older than I look,” she said. “Twenty-four. I’ve had a very full life, and people kept telling me I should write it up. I mean, look how Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg cleaned up, writing up their youthful experiences. I’ve had many varied experiences.”
“I bet you have.”
“You may have heard of me. Jezebel Drake?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
“It’s just my professional name, my real name’s Jessie. Who wants to be a Jessie? So I called myself Jezebel after the song, and Drake after the hotel. I stayed there once, when I was in the chips. Which I am going to be again. I’ve got the looks. I’ve got the talent.”
She was talking more to herself than she was to me. I’d run into other young women like her: they believed the dream they lived in was their own dream because they had featured roles in it. She remembered me:
“Can I do anything for you?”
“I can think of several things. At the moment I’m trying to find out about the construction of this building.”
“The building?”
“The building. I work nights and sleep days. I want to be sure the walls are fairly soundproof.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Confidential work.”
She gave me another long slow look, estimating my value as material for autobiography. “Secret scientific stuff, like?”
“If I told you it wouldn’t be secret, would it? Do you mind if I check the walls on your side? I’ve already checked on my side.”
“Do you have to use equipment?”
“I tap them, manually. May I come in?”
“I guess it’s all right, since we’re going to be neighbors. At least I hope we are.”
The room was sparsely furnished with cheap black-iron pieces. Uncabineted stereo components and other sound equipment, including a tape recorder, were scattered around it. Against the wall I was interested in, a card table with a portable typewriter and a lighted desk-lamp on it stood in a drift of yellow paper.
I made a show of tapping the wall. There was no sign of the hole on this side. That didn’t mean much. A bullet could have expended itself between the layers of plaster, or caught in the lathing.
“How does it sound?” she said.
“All right, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t have any trouble sleeping in the daytime. I sleep a lot in the daytime myself. This place is real dead in the daytime. Everybody in it works but me.” One of her hips swung out as if in comment. She pressed it back into place with her hand. “Stanley keeps me up late at night.”
I didn’t dare ask her how. She answered the unasked question: “With his equipment. You’d think he’d get enough of it in the daytime, but he blasts my ears off half the night sometimes. He used to be a D-J.”
“Delinquent juvenile?”
“Disc jockey. Now he sells the stuff.”
Something in the baseboard had caught my eye. I got down on my knees. It was a hole in the wood the size and shape of a bullet-hole, but no bullet had made it. It had obviously been drilled, then refilled with wood paste which had dried a different color from the wood.
“What is it?” she said. “Termites?”
Call them termites. The hole behind the picture, the hole in the baseboard, the tape recorder, which belonged to a sound expert, combined to suggest one thing. The bedroom next door had been wired for sound from this room.
“Could be. How long have you been living here, Miss Drake?”
“Just since the beginning of the year. I was working up until Christmas, but they raided the place. What do termites do?”
“They infest the foundations and penetrate the walls.”
“You mean the whole place might fall down?” With a downward shrug of her shoulders, flutter of hands, bending at the knee, she enacted the whole place falling down.
“It could happen. It isn’t likely, but I’d better talk it over with your friend.” Your friend the termite. “Where does he work?”
“He doesn’t work, exactly. I mean, Stanley has his own record shop. It’s in the new shopping center this side of San Carlos.”
“I think maybe I know Stanley. What’s his last name?”
“Quillan.”
“Heavy-set blond boy?”
“That’s my boy,” she said, without pride of ownership, “if you talk to him, do me a favor, will you? Don’t tell him I let you into the flat. He’s awfully jealous.” Her hip popped out, repeating its silent comment.
“Known him long?”
“Just since the first of the year. That’s why he’s so jealous. I picked – I mean I met him at a New Year’s party at his sister’s house. It was a kind of a rough party, and I lost my date in the crush. Bad scene. But Stanley took over.” She smiled in bright dismay. “That’s the kind of thing that’s always happening to me. But I always land on my feet like a cat.” She jumped a few inches in the air and landed on her feet like a cat. “Speaking of cats, his sister didn’t like it me taking up with Stanley. She thinks she’s very hot stuff since she got married. But I’ve known Sally Quillan when she was prowling the Tenderloin for free drinks. And I happen to know that Stanley got canned last year for taking payola. Oops, I’m talking too much. I always talk too much when I meet somebody I like.”
She covered her mouth with both hands and looked at me between her heavy eye-shadow. “If you see Stanley, you won’t tell him what I said, will you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“He might hit me where it shows,” she said smiling. “Don’t even mention this conversation. We’ll keep it between ourselves, huh?”
That suited me. Before I left, I showed her Phoebe’s picture. She had never seen the girl, or heard of a Miss Smith or a Mrs. Smith in the next apartment.
“See you later, neighbor,” she said at the door.
I went downstairs and paused outside the door of the manager’s apartment to adjust my face. It felt from the inside as if I had it on a little crooked. The manager’s wife called out when I knocked:
“The door’s unlatched.”
She was lying among the pillows on her studio bed:
“Forgive me if I don’t get up. All that talking before there tired me out. You took long enough.” She peered up through the dimness into my face. “Is there something the matter with the apartment?”
I gave my face another internal yank. When you sense your face as a talking mask stuck to the front of your skull, it’s time to go for a long walk on the beach. I didn’t have time. I produced a grin:
“I like the apartment very much.”
She stirred and brightened. “You won’t do better than one-seven-five for a separate-bedroom flat in a good neighborhood like this one. With furnishings like that. How did you like the furnishings?”
“Fine. But I don’t quite understand about them. You say they belonged to the previous tenant, Mrs. Smith?”
She nodded. “That’s why it’s such good stuff. Mrs. Smith had money, I imagine you know that. When she moved in, she threw out everything that belonged to the building and put in all new stuff. It’s still in practically new condition, as you can see. She hardly ever used the place. I don’t think she was in it one night a week.”
“What did she use it for?”
“She said she did some painting as a hobby, and she wanted a place where she could get away and paint.” She squinted at me. “Seems to me you’re very much interested in Mrs. Smith. Just how well do you know her?”
“She’s only a passing acquaintance. But I don’t want to get in dutch with her. Won’t she be wanting her furniture back?”