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“No, she just left it sitting. I think she told Alec she couldn’t be bothered moving it. Take it up with Alec, he’ll explain.”

“Do you and your husband own the Conquistador?”

“Not us. I wish we did. The owner lives in Sausalito. We hardly ever see him.”

“How long ago did Mrs. Smith move out?”

“Months ago. I haven’t seen her for months. Then that girl of hers used the flat a little while. It’s been empty since November. If Mrs. Smith wanted her furniture, she had plenty of chance to claim it. But take it up with Alec, he’s the one that had the dealings with her.”

“When will your husband be back?”

“He always gets home by suppertime. If you want to set a time for this evening, I’ll tell him that you’re coming.” She hunched herself up to a sitting position. “I don’t believe you mentioned your name?”

I mentioned my name, and said that I would be back around suppertime.

Chapter 17

Gallorini climbed out of his cab when he saw me. “Is she there?”

“She hasn’t been since early in November – around the time you saw her.”

“You still think I pulled something on her?”

“No. I found out who the blond boy is. Will you help me pin it down?”

He lifted his hands as if to feel for rain. “I dunno. How?”

“Drive down to San Carlos and let me show you a subject.”

“I can’t do it, mister. I lost an hour already – hour-and-a-half.”

“I’m paying for your time.”

“That’s different.”

I went ahead and Gallorini followed me down the highway. Vitamins, the signs said, Foreign Cars, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Fuchsias, Storage and Moving, Remedial Reading Clinic. Bury Your Loved Ones at Woodland, Rejuvenation, Real Estate. Stanley’s Stereo Shop was a plastic-fronted hole-in-the-wall with records and record-players in the window. It was one of twenty stores in a cheap new commercial development.

We parked in the off-street area. At my suggestion, Gallorini changed jackets with me and took off his peaked cap. I gave him money to buy a record.

He came out in five or six minutes, carrying a thin square parcel in his hand. He had a hot-eyed look, like a musician:

“The sonabitch reckanized me.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. But he reckanized me. I could tell, the way he looked me over.”

“And you recognized him?”

“He reckanized me, I had to reckanize him, didn’t I? He’s the one all right. I bet he’s got her stashed someplace.”

“I hope so, Nick.” It wasn’t too likely, though. Jezebel Drake would be all most men could handle at any one time.

I paid him off and waited for a while. I put in the time making notes of my expenses: Transportation and witnesses, $45.00; Music, $5.00. Nick had bought Cavalleria Rusticana, and I let him keep it.

When I went into the shop, a traffic-noises record was thundering and grinding through the glass wall of a listening-room at the back. Stanley turned the noises off and came out looking excited. He was the blond, goateed young man I had seen the night before in Merriman’s office. He didn’t seem to remember me.

“Yessir, can I help you?” It was a different voice from the snarl he had used on Mrs. Merriman.

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“Afraid I can’t help you with that. We don’t keep girls in stock, ha ha.”

“Ha ha. She called herself Smith, spent some time last fall in the Conquistador. Apartment Fourteen, next door to where you live.”

“How do you know where I live?”

“I’ve been asking around.”

“I don’t get it.” He was trying to be casual, but his voice had changed from baritone to tenor. His vocabulary changed with it. “Why don’t you bug off, I got work to do.”

“So have I.”

“Are you fuzz – from the police?”

“I’m a private detective.”

His protuberant blue eyes squeezed further out. He moved behind the counter. I leaned across it and flashed Phoebe’s picture under his nose:

“You must have seen this girl. She lived beside you for at least a week in November.”

“What if I saw her? What does that prove? I see a lot of people every day.”

“Who do you see at night?”

He glanced at me like a tomcat trying to feel like a Hon. Muscle or fat bulged under his hidden-button Italian jacket.

“Were you ever in her apartment, Stanley?”

“What if I was?” His hairy long chin waggled at me: “You sent that dago in to spy on me.”

“I sent him in to see if he could identify you. He could.”

“Did he tell you what he was doing in her bedroom? He had her down on the bed and he was stripping her. I heard these suspicious noises through the wall.”

“You have very acute hearing.”

“Yeah. I heard these suspicious noises, so I rushed in and threw him out on his ear. I was only doing what any fellow would do.”

“How well did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her. I don’t know any of the other tenants in the building. I saw her in the hall a few times, maybe. That’s all.”

“Why were you so interested in what went on in her bedroom?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You planted a mike in it.”

His face tried various colors and compromised on mottled lavender. I took hold of his hide-the-button lapels and dragged him across the counter towards me:

“Why did you bug her room?”

“I didn’t.” His voice had risen another octave.

“What happened to her, Quillan?”

“I don’t know nothing about her. I’m clean. You turn me loose.”

He was dirty. I shook him. His eyes bulged like a bottom fish’s jerked up from the sea. He had a fishy odor. I flung him away from me. His thick body slammed back against the record shelves. He leaned there blotched and quivering:

“You can’t manhandle me. I’ll call the cops.”

“Do that. We’ll go over to the Hall of Justice and compare backgrounds. Then we’ll all go and take a look at that bedroom wall.”

His face became drained of blood. His eyes were electric blue bubbles in its pallor. Like a sick man reaching for medicine, he groped under the counter. His hand came up with an automatic in it:

“Bug out now. I’ll gun you down like a dog.”

“Can you stand that rap on top of the other?”

“The rap is all yours. You come in my place of business and try to put pressure.” He punched his cash-register open with his left hand and threw some money at me. Dollar bills fell like leaves at my feet. “Out of here now or I shoot. You want to make me a hero?”

I didn’t think he would shoot, but I couldn’t be sure. His personality altered from minute to minute. He was one of the unpredictables who got hot sudden flashes from outer space. A little green man might tell him to squeeze the trigger, and he might squeeze it. I went.

Not very far. I drove around the shopping center and parked in a place at the south end from which I could watch his back door as well as his front. I didn’t have long to wait. It was the back door he left by.

He had on a red beret. He climbed into an Alfa-Romeo the same shade of red and turned south on Camino trailing dark oil smoke. I let him get far ahead of me, till his sports car was only a red corpuscle in the traffic stream. I followed him through Redwood City and Atherton, varying the distance between us and gradually decreasing it. His car had no real speed, and he drove it foolishly, changing lanes, spurting and braking.

He made a left turn on a green light in Menlo Park. I sneaked past the oncoming traffic on the tail end of the yellow. For a mile or more he jogged east, past the Stanford Research Center, then into an area so thickly grown with oaks that it was like thin forest. The red car disappeared around a curve.