“How do you know?”
“She said so. She said in a day or so that she was mistaken about it. I should forget it. I said I already did. Mr. Quillan wouldn’t be interested in her. He has plenty of girls of his own.”
“What kind of a tenant is he?”
“He doesn’t cause any trouble. He used to play his records loud at night but I gave him a quiet talking-to and he got over that. He’s a fine young man, has a business of his own.”
So had Capone.
“Is Quillan home now?”
“I didn’t see him come in yet.”
I went upstairs to Quillan’s apartment. Jessie Drake answered the door, and smiled when she saw me:
“Did you make up your mind to take it?”
“I haven’t decided. I want to talk to Stanley first.”
“Isn’t he at the shop?”
“No, I just drove past there. May I come in and wait for him?”
“I wouldn’t want him to find you here.” She rubbed her shoulder through her sweater. “He didn’t like it the last time I let a man in.”
“You mean Ben Merriman.”
“Yeah.” She went through an exaggerated double-take, widening her eyes and mouth, then narrowing them suspiciously. “How do you know about it? Did Stanley tell you?”
“Stanley wouldn’t tell me the time of day.”
“Are you a cop?”
“A private one. Don’t get excited, Jessie. I’m not after you. Ben Merriman showed you some money yesterday.”
“I knew it was hot,” she whispered. “I didn’t touch it. I didn’t touch him or the money.”
“I wouldn’t care if you rolled in it like catnip. I’m interested in where it came from.” And where it went.
“Me, too. Naturally. He came busting in here with a jag on and wanted to take me to Mexico. Just like that. We could live like kings in Mexico, he said. I asked him what on, just to keep the conversation going, you might say. And he unfurled his roll. It was big enough to choke a rhinoceros, so big he had to carry it in a satchel. Hundreds and hundreds of hundred-dollar bills.” Her eyes were like glass.
“What kind of a satchel?”
“Little black leather case with his initials. He said he just got back from Sacramento. He made a deal with some woman – nobody I knew. He sold a house for her, he said, and he said she liked him so well she gave him most of the cash. Gave him the cash, he said, and kept the commission for herself. Which didn’t make sense to me. People don’t give money away, not in my experience which has been varied. They grind it out of you, like coffee. So I knew the money was hot. Anyway, you don’t want to go and five in Mexico the rest of your life unless you’re hot.”
“He intended to stay there for the rest of his life?”
“So he said. He was high, though. I didn’t put too much stock in what he said. I never have.”
“Did he ever ask you to elope before?”
“Not elope, I mean technically not elope. Sure, he’s been after me. He made a heavy pass at the New Year’s party, right in his own house. He suggested we ought to take off our clothes and dance around in our bones. I wasn’t interested, but he’s a hard man to discourage. Was.”
“How long have you known the Merrimans?”
“Sally I’ve known for years. I hardly knew Ben at all, I only met him three or four times in my life. But he was a fast worker, or so he liked to think. I have that effect on certain types. That’s probably why I didn’t see much of Sally after she married him.”
“What did she do before she married him?”
“She was an actress, like me. I met her when we were both trying out for the chorus line at the old Xanadu. I got the job, she didn’t. They told her she was too old. She had it rough for a while, and I helped her out. She paid me back when she got a job with Ben Merriman. Then he married her.”
“How long ago was that?”
“I don’t know exactly. Four-five years. For a long time I was out of touch with Sally. I was over in Nevada for a year. Or was it two years?”
The telephone rang in the room behind her. She jumped as if it had sounded an alarm, and left me standing in the doorway.
“Hello, Stanley,” she said into the receiver.
There was a lengthy silence while she listened and I listened to her listening. Her head turned gradually towards me. Her heavily shadowed eyes reminded me of a grease-monkey.
“Will do,” she whispered into the phone. “I get the message, darling.”
She hung up, carefully, as if the instrument was fragile and she was very clumsy.
“You’ve got to excuse me,” she said. “I have to do some things for Stanley.”
“What things?”
“I don’t have to tell you, and I’m not going to.”
“Where is Stanley?”
“He didn’t say. Honest,” she added in a dishonest voice.
I didn’t try to argue with the girl. I went downstairs. Girston was standing in his doorway. He looked at me like a lost soul whom I was cheating out of his hope of heaven. He lunged for me as I went by, digging his fingers into my arm and breathing into my face:
“What about the reward money?”
“If your information leads to the girl’s recovery, I’ll recommend you for a reward.”
“How much?”
“That will be up to my principal.”
“Couldn’t I get a percentage of it now? Just a small percentage?”
I gave him twenty dollars as you throw a dog a bone, and went outside. The sky above the rooftops was streaked green and yellow like an old bruise. Night was gathering in the corners of the buildings. Most of the cars in the road had their lights on.
I joined the traffic stream. From her second-floor window, Jessie watched me drive away. I turned off Camino at the first corner, U-turned and parked a hundred feet up the side street, ready to go north or south. The street was shadowed by broad-leaved trees whose name I didn’t know, and there were children playing in the twilight.
I walked back to the corner, where I could watch the entrance to the Conquistador. Two cigarettes later, a green cab with a pulsating tight on the roof honked at the curb in front of it. Jessie came out wearing a coat. She had a suitcase in either hand, a brown one and a white one. The driver scrambled out to take them from her. He slammed the door on her and drove on north.
His pulsating light was easy to follow, even in the evening rush. He went through Burlingame and turned right on Broadway. When he crossed the overpass at Bayshore, where Phoebe had stood in the rain above the river of traffic, I was close behind him. The lights of International Airport silhouetted Jessie’s head through his rear window.
Circling the parking lot, the taxi deposited her and her suitcases on the sidewalk in front of the main terminal. I found a green curb, and followed her into the building.
She took an elevator up to the main floor and lost me for a while. I picked her up about ten long minutes later, coming out of the ladies’ room. She passed within five feet of me in the crowd. She had fresh lipstick on, a bemused glitter in her eyes. She didn’t see me. She didn’t seem to see anyone.
She moved through the people like a bright-headed shadow passing among shadows. Men’s eyes trailed her. Keeping my distance, I followed her to the newsstand and saw her buy a magazine with an anguished female face on the cover. She settled down on a bench with it, crossing her legs. She was wearing high-heeled shoes and stockings, and under her coat a low-cut black dress that looked like a party dress.
I bought a Chronicle and sat down on the far side of the newsstand. Ben Merriman’s picture, the same one he used on his blotters, was on the third page. The accompanying story told me nothing I didn’t already know. It concluded with a statement from Captain Lamar Royal of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office, to the effect that his department was co-operating closely with local law-enforcement agencies in tracking down the hoodlums responsible for the brutal killing, and arrests were expected momentarily.